The Political Economy of Rural Industrialization in China

While the people's communes were formally dismantled in 1984 with the implementation of the Household Responsibility System (HRS), in Shandong province this dismantling has not resulted in a privatized rural economy. After eighteen years of economic reform, many peasants who have gained autonomy in agricultural production are still largely dependent on rural collective institutions for their income and welfare. Paradoxically, the communal benefits and services that one would normally associate with socialism, which were rarely found in Shandong's countryside before the economic reform, have appeared only after the demise of socialism under the incentives of market pressures. If socialism had originally promised prosperity and mutual benefit, why was the promise not fulfilled under the Maoist model of development from 1958 to 1978, and why is this promise being fulfilled in many villages in Shandong today? This case study of the village conglomerate (VC; cunjituan zonggongsi) provides a partial answer by examining the politics of rural industrialization as it occurred in four villages in Shandong province. It describes in detail the extreme end of the continuum of villages on the local state corporatism scale.'