Village Inc.: Chinese Rural Society in the 1990s (review)

Today, China's "villages" have little in common with old images or classic definitions. The changes to urban China may seem incredible, but the effect of reform era policies and opportunities on rural China—if less visible—are no less fantastic. As most readers of Village Inc. and of this review will recognize, the last twenty years have seen China's towns and villages linked in unprecedented ways both to China's great and genuinely powerful urban core and to the global economy. Such new linkages invariably result in broad transformations of economic and social relations. Beginning with the December 1978 reforms, local experimentation, seemingly endless policy adjustments from the center, and often novel counter-responses from the periphery have challenged the people of rural China to rely increasingly on local and often novel solutions to their economic and social problems.

The new challenges facing China's farmers and other rural residents are fundamentally associated with changing core-periphery relations and the expansion of the national economy. However, as the essays in this collection clearly indicate, at the present time, local responses—which are reflections of local opportunities and conditions—are of equal or possibly even greater importance. These responses to changing conditions have radically altered not only the economy and morphology of the countryside but also the cultural and social relations of rural China. Each county, township, and village in China has responded differently to these changing currents—often with varying results. In short, if there ever was homogeneity even during the early years of the People's Republic, it is now long gone.

Christiansen and Zhang's edited volume offers a selection of research essays that provide a contemporary assessment of some of the current conditions and challenges facing the people of rural China in different locations. The selections well represent the increasingly dissimilar conditions that these people and places currently experience, particularly with respect to financial systems, economic investments, and social relations. The focus of many of these essays on finance and social/gender relations is particularly welcome as both of these areas are difficult to research and thus have not received the attention they deserve.

The eleven essays that comprise the book are derived from research papers presented at the Fourth Session of the European Conference on Agricultural and Rural Development in China held in Manchester, England, in 1995. Most, but not all, are case studies based on fieldwork completed before 1995, and as such are largely oriented to reporting local conditions, while linking this information to broader issues of development and society. At the risk of excessive generalization, five of the essays are largely concerned with rural finance, industry, and management (George Brown, Wolfgang Taubmann, Jenny Clegg, Pei Xiaolin, and Orjan Sjoberg and Zhang Gang); two with agricultural strategies in the reform era (Claude Aubert and Lai Xiufang, Johanna Pennarz); and four with changing social relations and gender issues (Huang Xiyi, Zhang Weiguo, Hein Mallee, and Delia Davin). Of course, there is considerable overlap—with the meeting ground often illustrated by a particular activity (industry, agricultural commercialization) that employs a particular form of economic or commercial organization (village township industry shareholding, genuine cooperatives, private investment).

By and large, the essays themselves are well written and offer much useful information, despite the time lag between research and publication. (Things change quickly in modern China.) The contribution of the introduction, however, to the success of the book should not be overlooked. In one of the better executed introductions I have read, Christiansen and Zhang tie the individual chapters to larger themes while effectively summarizing each author's topic and perspective. The introduction persuasively makes a book out of essays that, taken separately, would at first glance seem to have little in common beyond the fact that they are all about rural places and problems in China. Of course, as would be expected from an edited volume of this type...