Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T05:36:29.205Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Village Reconstruction in Rural China: The Importance of Being Urban

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2019

Saul Wilson  and
Xiaorong Zhang
Saul Wilson
Affiliation:
Harvard University. Email: skwilson1@g.harvard.edu.
Xiaorong Zhang*
Affiliation:
Renmin University of China
*
Email: xrzhang@ruc.edu.cn (corresponding author).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Using examples from village reconstruction programmes in rural China, we show that local cadres often prioritize project visibility over publicized policy goals. While central policies and the academic literature emphasized land reclamation or rural welfare, local cadres – and the projects they designed – tended instead to focus on projecting an image of urban, wealthy villagers. Where such image-driven behaviour is most deleterious to villagers, it can evince opposition. We observe that some areas avoid conflict by making these projects voluntary or adjusting projects to local conditions. However, we provide a case study of a village with strong village leadership, showing that contrary to recent claims that village cadres are increasingly impotent, some maintain the authority to override widespread objections from villagers.

摘要

本文对中国农村的旧村改造项目进行了案例研究。研究发现,在实施旧村改造项目前，村干部更多的是考虑项目实施的可行性，而非项目的最终效果；项目实施过程中，村干部及项目设计目标倾向于突出城市化的小康农民形象，而非政策及学术所强调的土地复垦或农村福利。以这种动机实施项目将不利于村民，并且会引起村民的反对，因而村干部通过村民自主选择或调整项目的方式避免这类冲突。本文采用村干部领导力较强的村庄案例，得出与上述村干部行为相反的结果，即在村民持反对意见的情况下村干部使用其权力来实施旧村改造项目。

Keywords

village reconstructionrural politicsvillage cadre powerimage building旧村改造农村治理村干部权利面子工程
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 238 , June 2019 , pp. 438 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahlers, Anna L. 2014. Rural Policy Implementation in Contemporary China: New Socialist Countryside. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bray, David. 2013. “Urban planning goes rural.” China Perspectives 3, 53–62.Google Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2003. “Collective ownership or cadres’ ownership? The non-agricultural use of farmland in China.” The China Quarterly 175 (September). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741003000890.Google Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2004. “Irresponsible state: local cadres and image-building in China.” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 20 (4), 20–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/1352327042000306039.Google Scholar
Chen, An. 2014. “How has the abolition of agricultural taxes transformed village governance in China? Evidence from agricultural regions.” The China Quarterly 219 (September), 715–735. https://doi.org/10.1017/S030574101400071X.Google Scholar
Daley, Elizabeth. 2005. “Land and social change in a Tanzanian village 1: Kinyanambo, 1920s–1990.” Journal of Agrarian Change 5 (3), 363–404. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0366.2005.00105.x.Google Scholar
Guo, Xiaolin. 2001. “Land expropriation and rural conflicts in China.” The China Quarterly 166 (June). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009443901000201.Google Scholar
Ho, Peter. 2005. Institutions in Transition: Land Ownership, Property Rights, and Social Conflict in China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hsing, You-tien. 2010. The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jaros, Kyle. 2014. “The politics of metropolitan bias in China.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.Google Scholar
Landry, Pierre F. 2008. Decentralized Authoritarianism in China: The Communist Party's Control of Local Elites in the Post-Mao Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Latham, Richard. 1985. “The implications of rural reforms for grass-roots cadres.” In Perry, Elizabeth J. and Wong, Christine (eds.) The Political Economy of Reform in Post-Mao China. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies/Harvard University, 157–173.Google Scholar
Liu, Kan. 2013. “Upheaval in Chinese villages: a case study of rural land expropriation for ‘large scale’ commercial farming in rural China,” LDPI Working Paper #18. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08a2fed915d622c0005e1/LDPI_WP_18.pdf. Accessed 27 March 2014.Google Scholar
Looney, Kristen. 2015. “China's campaign to build a new socialist countryside: village modernization, peasant councils, and the Ganzhou model of rural development.” The China Quarterly 224 (December), 909–932. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741015001204.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Daniel. 2016. “Elite capture: how decentralization and informal institutions weaken property rights in rural China.” World Politics 68 (3).Google Scholar
Oi, Jean C., Babiarz, Kim Singer, Zhang, Linxiu, Luo, Renfu and Rozelle, Scott. 2012. “Shifting fiscal control to limit cadre power in China's townships and villages.” The China Quarterly 211 (September), 649–75. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741012000823.Google Scholar
Ong, Lynette H. 2014. “State-led urbanization in China: skyscrapers, land revenue and ‘concentrated villages.’” The China Quarterly 217, 162–179. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741014000010.Google Scholar
Perry, Elizabeth J. 2011. “From mass campaigns to managed campaigns: ‘constructing a new socialist countryside.’” In Heilmann, Sebastian and Perry, Elizabeth J. (eds.), Mao's Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 31–61.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Lior. 2013. “Urbanising the rural.” China Perspectives 3, 63–71.Google Scholar
Rozelle, Scott, and Li, Guo. 1998. “Village leaders and land-rights formation in China.” The American Economic Review 88 (2), 433–38.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Sorace, Christian Phillip. 2014. “Beyond repair: state-society relations in the aftermath of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.” Thesis. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/28070. Accessed 10 February 2016.Google Scholar
Thiele, Graham. 1986. “The Tanzanian villagisation programme: its impact on household production in Dodoma.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 20 (2), 243–258. https://doi.org/10.2307/484872.Google Scholar
Thøgersen, Stig. 2011. “Building a new socialist countryside: model villages in Hubei.” In Alpermann, Björn (ed.) Politics and Markets in Rural China. Routledge Contemporary China Series 72. London: Routledge, 172–186.Google Scholar
Tomba, Luigi. 2014. The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China. Ithaca; Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Xiao, Yuan. 2014. “Making land fly: the institutionalization of China's land quota markets and its implications for urbanization, property rights, and intergovernmental politics.” PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/95581.Google Scholar
Yeh, Emily T. 2013. Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar