Commercialization and agricultural development

This book provides a major reinterpretation of the impact that the accelerated commercializa tion of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had on growth and income distribu tion in the rural economy of Central and Eastern China. Rather than having caused increased poverty and greater inequality, as has long been contended, commercialization is determined to have had just the opposite effects.

Underlying this process were the integration of Chinese markets with the international econ omy as well as the growth of China's urban and non-agricultural sectors. Both forces contrib uted to increasing specialization and exchange in the rural sector, and ultimately to increased. productivity and higher incomes. Estimates cal culated by the author suggest that between the 1890s and the 1930s agricultural output in creased annually at a rate roughly twice that of estimated population growth.

The author pays particular attention to the distributive consequences of rural economic growth. Taking issue with previous analyses that have characterized markets in rural China during the period as highly uncompetitive and exploitive, Brandt argues that relatively efficient rural product and factor markets provided farm households fairly equal access to the ket opportunities commercialization created. The author's research confirms that many new mar households benefited significantly from the growth in the rural sector.

While redressing a serious historical imbal ance in assessments of the pre-1949 economy. this book is also relevant to studies of the eco nomic policies of the P.R.C. The evidence of the importance of specialization the sector to rural economic growth vides histor ical perspective with which to judge mous costs that enforced self-suffic other highly restrictive commercial, rural the enor ency and polici between the P.R.C. imposed on the rural for the mid-1950s and the late 1970s