Comparing local models of agrarian transition in China

• Main Author: ZHANG, Qian Forrest
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2013
• Subjects: China; agrarian transition; capitalism; family farming; cooperatives; agribusiness; Asian Studies; Rural Sociology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1185; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/2441/viewcontent/Comparing_Local_Models_of_Agrarian_Transition_in_China.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The development of markets and the penetration of capital into agriculture have started the agrarian transition in rural China, which is transforming smallholding, household-based agriculture into various forms of capitalistic production. This again raises in a new historical and social context the long-debated question in the agrarian transition literature: Can family farms survive the onslaught of capitalist agriculture based on wage labor and what shapes the confrontation between family farms and agro-capital? I argue that it is the local political economy—rather than some natural obstacles in agriculture to the penetration of capitalism—that shapes this confrontation and gives rise to a variety of local patterns in how family producers interact with agro-capital. Conceptually, the primary dimension in which local patterns diverge is how direct producers’ transactions with the product market are mediated. Based on this distinction, I identify three distinct local paths of agrarian transition—agribusiness-led corporate production, independent household production, and cooperative production. I use data collected from fieldwork and secondary sources to show how, in each model, characteristics of the local pattern are shaped by the local political economy.