Freeing China's Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era (review)

300 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 David Zweig. Freeing China's Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era. Socialism and Social Movements Series. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. xv, 365 pp. Hardcover $62.95, ISBN 1-56324-837-9. Paperback $24.95, isbn 1-56324-838-7. Freeing China's Farmers is a collection of twelve of David Zweig's previously published papers, which appeared as journal articles or chapters in edited volumes between 1983 and 1995. To these, the author has added a newly written introductory chapter in which he lays out the main elements of the research agenda he has pursued since 1980 and addresses some of the major scholarly debates surrounding the origins and development of China's rural reforms, as well as a concluding chapter in which he evaluates the successes and failures ofrural reform in several dimensions. Zweig's rich primary data come from several periods offield research, beginning in 1980, in rural counties in the vicinity of Nanjing in Jiangsu Province. He is well aware that, given wide interregional variations in rural China, Jiangsu cannot be taken as representative of the whole country. In order to enhance the generalizability ofhis findings, he has included significant intraregional variation in his research design by collecting data on wealthier and poorer counties in Jiangsu. He also makes excellent use of Chinese documentary sources (press accounts, social science journal articles, and government reports) as well as the extensive secondary literature in English in order to locate his research sites within the range ofnational variation. He is thus in a position to assess the impact ofvariations in local economic conditions in determining the implementation ofnational policy. The book's core chapters are organized in roughly ascending chronological order ofpublication and reflect Zweig's efforts to analyze major developments in China's rural reforms as they were unfolding: decollectivization, reemergence of rural marketing structures, rural industrialization, migration and shifting patterns ofurban-rural relations, and die linkage of China's rural industrywitii international markets. Throughout, Zweig maintains a concern with the interplay between central policy (with its many fluctuations) and local implementation. On the question ofhow the causal credit for decollectivization of agriculture in the late 1970s and early 1980s should be apportioned, for example, Zweig stakes out a middle position between statist approaches that grant most ofthe influence to y niversity centrai political leaders and bottom-up approaches (advanced most forcefully by Kate Xiao Zhou) that argue that farmers themselves deserve most of the credit for dismantling collective agriculture. He argues that the reform faction in the national Party leadership played a crucial role by creating a policy context in which ofHawai'i Press Reviews 301 farmers were able to assert their interests in breaking the constraints ofcollective agriculture. Ifthey had wanted to, Zweig contends, central leaders could have thwarted farmers' spontaneous inclinations to dismande the collectives. An enduring concern for Zweig is the transformation oflocal cadre power under China's rural reforms. He gives attention to the changing role oflocal cadres both in relation to the central and provincial levels ofthe Party-state and in relation to the local populace. Certainly the dissolution of the institutions ofcollective agriculture and the return to household-based farming deprived local cadres ofan important source ofpower vis-à-vis the local populace. The use ofproduction contracts, the gradual emergence ofnewlegal institutions, and village-level elections may all have the effect ofconstraining what Zweig refers to as the "rapaciousness" ofcadres in tiieir dealings with farmers. The weakening of the household registration (hukou) system has allowed for much greater geographic and, perhaps, social mobility for the rural populace as well. And yet he shows how other aspects ofrural reform have allowed rural cadres to increase their control over valuable resources. They often retain control over local water and electricity distribution as well as administrative power to make binding decisions about local land use and other matters ofconcern to farmers. Central taxation policy has given local officials powerful incentives to promote rural industrialization. The growth of township and village enterprises, in particular, has increased local cadres' incomes and power and has strengthened their position vis-à-vis the central state. This is especially...