Politically directed accumulation in rural China: The making of the agrarian capitalist class and the new agrarian question of capital

• Main Authors: ZHANG, Qian Forrest, ZENG, Hongping
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: agrarian transition; capitalist agriculture; local state; pig farming; political capitalism; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Asian Studies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3434; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4691/viewcontent/joac.12435__1_.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We study the formation of the agrarian capitalist class in the pig farming sector in a Chinese county. We propose a new framework for analyzing the dynamics of accumulation and class formation in agriculture that focuses on the role of the state and public resources. In what we call “politically dir...