Since the mid-2000s, the Chinese government has promoted village modernization under the banner of “building a new socialist countryside.” To explain the origins and outcomes of this policy, this ...article examines the case of Ganzhou city in Jiangxi province. Ganzhou became a national model for rural development known for involving organizations called peasant councils in policy implementation. The study found that despite an initial emphasis on rural participation and moderate change, the new socialist countryside evolved into a top-down campaign to demolish and reconstruct villages. Three factors shaped this process: the strength of bureaucratic mobilization, the weakness of rural organizations, and shifting national policy priorities. After obtaining model status, Ganzhou's rural policy became more ambitious and politicized, leaving little space for participation. This insight suggests there are both benefits and costs to China's policy process. Despite the advantages of policy innovation, scaling up local experiments may actually undermine their success. 21 世纪头十年的中期以来, 中国政府在建设社会主义新农村的口号之下推动乡村现代化。本文通过分析江西省赣州市的案例试图解释该政策的来龙去脉。赣州作为农村发展的全国性模式, 利用农民理事会推动政策实行。本研究发现, 尽管政策最初强调农民参与和渐进式改变, 但是在很多地方, 新农村建设最后演化成一场自上而下、大拆大建的运动。造成这个结果有三个因素: 行政体制过于强势, 农民组织的孱弱, 以及国家政策的转变。在成功取得国家模式地位后, 赣州的农村政策变得更加雄心勃勃, 其目的趋向政治化, 农民参与的空间更为压缩。这种见解显示, 中国的政策制定和实施既有实惠, 又有代价。尽管地方政策创新获益良多, 然而从地方实验提升到国家政策将削弱其成功。
Mobilizing for Development tackles the question of how countries achieve rural development and offers a new way of thinking about East Asia's political economy that challenges the developmental state ...paradigm. Through a comparison of Taiwan (1950s–1970s), South Korea (1950s–1970s), and China (1980s–2000s), Kristen E. Looney shows that different types of development outcomes—improvements in agricultural production, rural living standards, and the village environment—were realized to different degrees, at different times, and in different ways. She argues that rural modernization campaigns, defined as policies demanding high levels of mobilization to effect dramatic change, played a central role in the region and that divergent development outcomes can be attributed to the interplay between campaigns and institutions. The analysis departs from common portrayals of the developmental state as wholly technocratic and demonstrates that rural development was not just a byproduct of industrialization. Looney's research is based on several years of fieldwork in Asia and makes a unique contribution by systematically comparing China's development experience with other countries. Relevant to political science, economic history, rural sociology, and Asian Studies, the book enriches our understanding of state-led development and agrarian change.
Mobilizing for Development tackles the question of how countries achieve rural development and offers a new way of thinking about East Asia's political economy that challenges the developmental state ...paradigm. Through a comparison of Taiwan (1950s-1970s), South Korea (1950s-1970s), and China (1980s-2000s), Kristen E. Looney shows that different types of development outcomes-improvements in agricultural production, rural living standards, and the village environment-were realized to different degrees, at different times, and in different ways. She argues that rural modernization campaigns, defined as policies demanding high levels of mobilization to effect dramatic change, played a central role in the region and that divergent development outcomes can be attributed to the interplay between campaigns and institutions. The analysis departs from common portrayals of the developmental state as wholly technocratic and demonstrates that rural development was not just a byproduct of industrialization.
Looney's research is based on several years of fieldwork in Asia and makes a unique contribution by systematically comparing China's development experience with other countries. Relevant to political science, economic history, rural sociology, and Asian Studies, the book enriches our understanding of state-led development and agrarian change.
Scholars in the China field have benefited greatly from local gazetteers (difangzhi, also translated as local records or annals), using them to understand how national events have unfolded at the ...local level and to conduct inter-regional comparisons. The earliest gazetteers date back to the Song and Yuan periods, but most existing imperial gazetteers were compiled during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Including the Republican era, more than 8,000 gazetteers were published before 1949. During the Cultural Revolution, gazetteer work was temporarily suspended, and did not resume again until the reform period. Since the early 1980s, the central state has encouraged and set guidelines for the compilation of gazetteers at three levels - provinces (shengzhi), cities (shizhi) and counties (xianzhi). According to the latest catalogue from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), there are now more than 19,000 "new" gazetteers. This article focuses on a special kind of gazetteer that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s - the village gazetteer (cunzhi). Unlike other gazetteers, village gazetteers grow out of local initiatives and are not formally regulated by the state. This new source can assist field researchers in China and provide scholars with the opportunity to conduct village-level case studies.
South Korea’s industrialization was accomplished in just two decades. Between 1962 and 1981, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 8.4 percent, with a peak average of 10.2 percent for ...1972–1976.¹ Only a small number of countries have ever achieved such spectacular growth. To explain South Korea’s rise, scholars have stressed the role of Japanese colonialism in creating an effective state bureaucracy, the advantages of late industrialization, especially the borrowing of technology from early innovators, and the presence of internal and external threats that caused the country’s leaders to equate growth with national security.² While these same
In Taiwan, the defeated Kuomintang regime (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) sought to regain control of mainland China by transforming the island into a model province that would legitimize its ...right to rule. Knowing that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had established its rural base in large part through redistributive land reform, the KMT carried out a comprehensive land reform program in the early 1950s, which led to the creation of a smallholder farm economy with extremely low levels of inequality. In addition to land reform, the KMT built up a rural extension system to provide technical education and production
Introduction Looney, Kristen E
Mobilizing for Development,
05/2020
Book Chapter
Global poverty continues to be a predominantly rural phenomenon despite increasing urbanization. The World Bank estimates that 78 percent of the world’s poor, or nearly 800 million people, live in ...rural areas and depend on agriculture, forestry, and fishing for their livelihoods. Related to this point, the majority of people suffering from hunger are smallholder farmers in developing countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture still accounts for one-third of gross domestic product (GDP) and three-quarters of employment.¹ Fundamentally, rural development matters for poverty reduction, food security, and economic growth. And yet, governments routinely fail their rural citizens. The history of modernization
Conclusion Looney, Kristen E
Mobilizing for Development,
05/2020
Book Chapter
What lessons can be drawn from the East Asian experience? Scholars writing about the developmental state have long struggled with this question. In a 2018 study, Stephen Haggard reflects on the ...literature’s evolution. It was initially motivated as an attempt to explain the high-growth outliers of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and, to a lesser extent, Singapore and Hong Kong. It challenged orthodox ideas about development, describing the effective use of industrial policy as markedly different from the socialist or capitalist models. As it was extended to other regions, intermediate cases of success were identified among particular sectors, agencies, and subnational
