Agrarian policies and institutions in China after Mao / by Azizurr Rahman Khan and Eddy Lee

For several decades the Chinese experience in the organisa tion and development of the rural sector has been looked upon as an almost unique example of successful socialist transformation of agriculture combining reasonably rapid growth with equality. Many aspects of the Chinese experiments and policies have come to be regarded as of great relevance not only for the developing socialist countries but also for those contemporary developing countries which do not adhere to the social system adopted by China. The appropriateness of the production technology blending the traditional methods with modern methods and making intensive use of labour, the steady improvement in agriculture's terms of trade in spite of a rapid rate of accumulation, the decentralisation of decision-making to the virtually autonomous communes, the emphasis on self-reliant local development with little dependence on redistributive welfare measures for households and communities, and an organisation that facilitated vast amounts of rural capital construction on the basis of the mobilisation of local labour that would otherwise be redundant are but some of the special features of the experience on which attention was focussed. Much of the appeal for these features derived from their rejection of some of the orthodoxies of prior socialist policies towards the rural sector.

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