Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xii, 154 pp. (Maps, tables, figures.) US$90.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-03046-6.
Based on extensive fieldwork in three Chinese villages, Xiaoshuo Hou shows how local party leaders and villagers successfully promoted economic development and raised living standards during the era of reform. In all three villages—Nanjie, Huaxi and Shangyuan—the author learned that cadre and villagers found different ways to mobilize the resources they needed to finance industrialization and secure investment from state officials and foreign investors, decided who should own industrial enterprises, houses and residual farmlands (collectives, joint ventures or individuals), determined how the benefits should be distributed to participants (as individual wages or as collective/welfare benefits and subsidies), and decided who should get them. It is clear from her account that villagers and local cadre took a lot of initiative and used their relative autonomy from central government authorities to adopt rather different strategies to promote economic growth and advance local variants of what the author calls “community capitalism.”
Although local villagers adopted different approaches to investment, ownership and benefit distribution, they all decided to distinguish between “local” residents and “migrants” and subsequently developed a two-tier system for the distribution of benefits. Because migrants outnumbered locals in Nanjie and Huaxi (she does not provide information about the ratio of locals to migrants in Shangyuan), a majority of residents were denied equal participation in political decision-making or in the distribution of economic benefits. Although migrants outnumbered locals 3 to 1 in Nanjie, the author does not seem to regard their treatment as “second-class citizens” as problematic, though their exploitation by locals was, in effect, part of the villagers’ development strategy. Although she discusses some internal debates about who might be incorporated into the group by marriage and who might be, in effect, exiled from the community, she might have done more to explore the dynamics and tensions between local and migrant villagers.
During the last 25 years or so, villagers managed to promote industrialization and transform themselves from rural farmers to urban workers while remaining in the village. By staying in place,rather than moving to other cities in search of work, villagers were able to keep their social networks, parochial values (collectivist in Nanjie; individualistic in Shangyuan), and families intact.The author and the villagers regard this as one of their most important social achievements. In a sense, they were able to realize Mao’s goals during the Great Leap Forward. During the 1950s, Mao promoted industrialization in rural areas, in part to prevent peasants from moving to the cities, which could not accommodate them. Although Mao kept villagers in place during the Great Leap Forward, he was unable to promote successful rural industrialization. By contrast, in recent years, cadre-villagers have found ways to industrialize and urbanize while remaining in the village, without unleashing the kind of out-migration characteristic of rural villages in other countries. Still, their success has encouraged the in-migration of workers from less-industrialized rural villages.
The author provides a careful account of “Community Capitalism” in all three villages. She discusses problems with corruption in Nanjie and the consolidation and transfer of political power by one cadre to his family members in Huaxi, “what most outsiders would look at as nepotism” (83). She identifies how villagers were able to build “close-knit communities” and provide social-welfare benefits to members that were not being provided by central government authorities.
This upbeat and positive assessment, reminiscent of Jan Myrdal’s Report from a Chinese Village, highlights the agency and relative autonomy of cadre and villagers during the reform era. But how representative was this sample? She chose them because they were successful. But how much can their experience tell us about villages that “failed” to industrialize, about villages that provided migrant workers for other, more successful villages and cities? It is difficult to tell. The author admits that “it is hard to generalize the research findings to the whole nation” (134). Moreover, the author’s reliance on a “grounded theory” approach makes it difficult for her to explore the structures, opportunities and constraints imposed by “the State” and “the Market” on small villages in contemporary China. This fine micro-study would have benefitted from an appreciation of the wider political and economic institutions that have shaped “community capitalism” in Chinese villages during this period.
Robert K. Schaeffer
Kansas State University, Manhattan, USA
pp. 841-843