Reforming China’s state-owned farms: State farms in market transition and agrarian transition
Abstract
China’s 2000 strong state-owned farms are experiencing a dual transition in the country’seconomic reforms: the market transition (from state-owned enterprises embedded in theredistributive system to independent enterprises in the new market economy) and agrariantransition (from small-scale, household-based agriculture to large-scale, capitalist forms ofagriculture that rely on market exchanges of land, labor and products). This paper highlights theresults of a comparative analysis of the state farms and rural farming households in the agrariantransition to address the theoretical debate about agrarian transition. Using field research datafrom state farms in Heilongjiang Province and drawing extensively from secondary sources inChinese, this paper examines the he process of agricultural modernization in state farms’ reformexperience. This paper argues that the state farms followed a path distinct from that in the rest ofrural China.