Since its founding, the government of the People's Republic of China has strived to transform rural production, the theme of this volume of History of Contemporary China. Fourteen articles translated from the Chinese journal Contemporary History (Dangdai Zhongguo shi yanjiu) offer both empirical account and theoretical analysis of a broad range of historical events and issues, such as the guiding policy framework of the “three rural issues,” the causes and consequences of the deep plowing movement and the development of public canteens during the Great Leap Forward, child care, enterprises and collectives, and private lending in the post-Mao era, and the changing dynamics of interregional flows of goods and people throughout the second half of the 20th century. These studies shed light on the historical origins of some of the agricultural and rural problems in China today.

Highlighting the interwoven relationship between Chinese rural society and larger historical forces, this book charts the evolution of China’s rural society from 1901 to 1949, concentrating on the major changes of this period and the scenarios developed to modernize rural society during the half century leading up to the Revolution. The modern history of rural China is one of sweeping institutional and structural transformation across many dimensions. As the first half of the twentieth century unfolded, against a backdrop of turbulent changes across a country that underwent industrialization, urbanization and modernization, China’s agriculture, rural population and rural communities encountered many crises, but also showed remarkable resilience and capacity for adaptation and reform. In each of the six chapters, the author delves into one aspect or examines one period of this massive transformation, and identifies the social, economic, political and cultural signifi cance of these tumultuous processes at work. The book will appeal to both scholars and general readers interested in modern Chinese history and the transformation of rural China.

My dissertation "Mao's Agrarian Reforms: The Socialist Rural Transformation in an East China County, 1946-1965" focuses on the 1949 communist revolution and its impact on Chinese society. In particular, it examines a series of key stages of the socialist rural transformation from 1946-1965 in Baoying County, an area near Shanghai comprising over 1,000 villages and a population of nearly 500,000. The dissertation starts with the study of the land reform movement from 1946-1952, which introduced class struggle for the first time to the villagers of Northern Jiangsu Province, where Baoying County was located. Next it examines the agricultural collectivization movement enforced by the state from 1952-1957, followed by a chapter on the Great Leap Forward Movement in 1958-59, which ended in a great famine. The dissertation concludes by exploring the accumulated tensions between farmers and the communist officials as exposed in the Socialist Education Movement, a political campaign later became the prelude to the Cultural Revolution. Unlike previous scholarship, which has mostly relied on interviews with a limited number of participants or officially published writings that have undergone severe censorship, my research is based on more than five thousand pages of unpublished documents culled from the county archives and inner-Party publications that I managed to collect during the past years. These primary sources enable me to explore in-depth issues that have been ignored or underdeveloped in the existing literature, such as the varied responses of farmers towards the socialist agrarian reforms and the widespread corruption among the grassroots officials, which was rooted in the practices of collectivism in agriculture. Furthermore, by viewing the process from the bottom up, I hope to provide a solid foundation of facts for reassessing the intricate relations among farmers, state officials and the Communist Party in late and post-revolutionary China.

This book examines the agricultural policies and programs adopted by the Chinese leadership since 1949 and analyzes the role of agriculture in China's changing development strategies. Dr. Hsu gives particular attention to the measures intended to improve agricultural technology and to the sources of funds for agricultural investment. He concludes that, although the collective system has been effective in mobilizing China's rural resources for agricultural development and in promoting progress in labor-intensive agricultural technology, periodic extreme leftist policies and interference by rural party cadres have caused various kinds of inefficiency, offsetting the advantages gained from collective farming. This is the first book to systematically analyze the ways in which China's agricultural development is being financed. By critically examining the level and nature of state resources allocated to agriculture, the author challenges the view that China has pursued an agriculture-first strategy of economic development since the early 1960s.

Kenneth Walker, the doyen of modern Chinese economic studies from the 1960s until his death in 1989, was the world's most authoritative commentator on China's agricultural development in the first four decades of the People's Republic. With an unparalleled authority derived from the use of primary Chinese sources, his collected papers provide a unique account of this era. In addition to their historical importance, the papers offer valuable insight into contemporary China's agricultural sector, which arguably poses the most serious economic and social problems for the Bejing government today. Including the posthumously-published study of `Food and Mortality During the Great Leap Forward,' Walker's comprehensive analysis of forty years of China's agricultural development will be a valuable resource for scholars and researchers of China, as well as undergraduates and postgraduates.