societal transformation in China

I have just been reading a paper about "market transition" in China.

Nee, V., & Matthews, R. (1996). Market Transition and Societal Transformation in Reforming State Socialism. Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 401-435.

I would have to read it several times through very carefully to grasp the content adequately. But I am intrigued by this paragraph in relation to China's approach to rural development:



"Byrd and Gelb (1990) show that market-oriented rural industrialization is advantageous for rural communities as a whole and for the cadres who oversee them. First, salaries of local officials are closely tied to revenues generated from township and village enterprises...Ironically, in localities where township and village enterprises are well-developed and profitable, local cadres have an incentive not to be promoted to higher salaried positions in the state heirarchy because this would result in a reduction in their incomes...Local cadres thus have an incentive to improve the general standard of living in their area through development of rural industry. In this way, the relationship between local cadres and rural residents is becoming less vertical as local cadres focus efforts on marketizing community production."



I have all kinds of questions about examples of how this is occurring and the impact on the environment and land use patterns and loss of agricultural land and so on... but still I cannot help but be intrigued by the fact that in China there is still so much space for grass roots innovation and development. I have certainly witnessed this myself in my trips to the rural parts of Northwestern China. Seems to me there is more to be learned and understood about this state of affairs.

Another fascinating point relates to the Chinese approach to economic reform as compared to other postcommunist governments such as the states of the former Soviet Union which applied "textbook economics" to dismantle old institutions and replace them with market institutions--probably adapted from the West. In China, however, "reformers emphasized piecemeal incremental change, not by design, but by trial and error, resulting in an open-ended evolutionary process of institutional change."

Ha! How about that? They adopted a "posture of learning" and it paid off in many respects. How wise.

[All pictures taken during my stay in China, in Gansu province in Fall 2004]