The journal makes deep searches on rural reformation and development and shows current condition of chinese villages in different points of view. Main readers include researchers of rural economics and theory institutes, teachers and students of higher education and people who search rural economics and social problems.
Compared with the traditional social network, organizations and culture, the awareness of common economic benefits is more likely to survive under the erosion of modern economic power. Cohesion of the awareness of common economic benefits can enhance the village concept and cognitive norms, and reproduce the actions of reciprocity and collective protection. This paper analyzed witch-initiated renovation of the temple in Village S where villagers shared dispersed economic benefits, and examined the witch’s effort of promoting institutionalization of the actions of reciprocity and collective protection by way of constructing an awareness of common economic interests. The analysis showed that the awareness of common economic interests without a specific foundation of economic interests had its limitations, which could barely produce the actions of reciprocity and collective protection. In a village with dispersed economic interests, the construction of village concept was hardly effective. Institutional equity was more important than a forced concept.
This paper examined social rationality as an important driving force for family migration of migrant workers. Using the survey data of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta, the study started with constructing hypotheses and examined different variables of social rationality that might influence family migration. The results were as the follows. First, the number of migrant workers’ opposite-sex friends in the cities where they work had a significantly positive influence on migration of their spouses and children, and migration of their spouses had a significantly positive influence on migration of their children. This demonstrated that the social rational motivation of migration mainly concerned family reunion in order to meet migrant workers’ basic physiological and emotional needs. Second, there is a significant negative correlation between the number of migrant workers’ relatives in the city where they work and migration of their spouses and children. This illustrated social rationality that enhancing family support and establishing an urban social network as forces driving family migration. Third, it showed that migrant workers’ willingness to remain in the city where they work had a significant positive influence on migration of their spouse and children, the number of migrant children and the number of children attending urban schools. This reflected social rationality that migrant workers voted by feet to avoid institutional exclusion due to the dual urban-rural system and a demand for equal urban public services. Fourth, the results showed that migrant workers’ perception of the need for family reunion which was not met had a significantly negative influence on migration of their spouses and children. This reflected social rationality that to fulfill family ethical responsibility drove migrant workers to migrate with families. Social rational logic of family migration proved that migrants were social men, and predicted a need to change the migration paradigm from focusing on economic rationality to multi-rationality with a prominent feature of social rationality.
Throughout the changes of human society, based on natural order, perceptual order is the basic form of social order in both traditional and modern society. Perceptual characteristics are important to the traditional rural society with a collective nature in China. Traditional perceptual order has shaped the form of rural order in China in the transitional period. After introducing the concept of perceptual order and its origin, this paper examined perceptual order in traditional rural communities in China where it functioned and served as a basis of the rural system during the transition. It further analyzed disintegration of perceptual order in rural China under the influence of emerging rationality, commodity economy and construction of state power in the wave of modernization. On the one hand, in terms of the social structure, the dissolution of village communities and family dysfunction had destroyed ethical order of the rural society. On the other hand, in terms of social action, social resources as bases of perceptual order had decreased. Therefore, the study concluded by proposing a need to understand China’s rural social structure and farmers’ action from the perspective of perceptual order. This may provide an approach to reconstruct social order of rural communities by way of promoting mutual interaction between the state and farmers, between the market and rural communities, and between urban and rural areas.
Based on large sample data from China Family Panel Studies, this paper analyzes the impacts of Hukou conversion on Chinese households’ life satisfaction. Based on cross-section analysis, the results reveal a significant gap between rural and urban residents’ subjective well-being which is represented by life satisfaction. However, the analysis has not supported the traditional view that rural residents have a higher subjective well-being than their urban counterparts. Based on time-series analysis, the study employs a difference in difference model and a propensity score matching model, and finds that Hukou conversion can significantly improve their subjective well-being. This supports the saying “cities make life better.”
The number of farmers’ cooperatives in China has increased rapidly since the implementation of the Law of the People’s Republic of China. However, based on a survey on many samples chosen randomly in Jiangsu Province, Jilin Province and Sichuan Province, this study found a very limited number of real cooperatives. This paper aimed to explain this phenomenon. By adopting the transactional cost theory, this paper made a clarification of the appropriate conditions for the development of farmers’ cooperatives, and analyzed cooperatives’ adaptability in the current environment. The study concluded by offering an explanation why it was difficult to find real cooperatives in China. The reason for that lied in the fact that the cooperative advantages of helping to reduce the transactional cost and achieve the economy of scale could hardly be expected whereas the cooperative disadvantage of high organizational cost was prevalent. Based on the analysis, the fact above derived from the observation of an inadequate supervision on agricultural product quality, the characteristics of small-scale agriculture and strong heterogeneity among farmers, as well as a lack of systematic construction of external support.
This paper examined the change in community social capital in rural China during the process of commercialization of rural labor force. It discussed the effects of mutual exchanges of labor in a traditional rural community, including a decrease in production and living costs of farmer households, and the accumulation of community social capital by facilitating production and reproduction of the community identity, norms of mutual benefits, and community involvement. Commercialization of rural labor force changed ways of villagers’ cooperation, which led to a loss of community social capital and a dilemma of collective actions. As a result, it became difficult for the rural community to develop based on its internal strength.
During the process of urbanization, China has witnessed an increasing number of urban communities previously identified as village communities. Within these new urban communities, significant changes have occurred in elections of local committees. This has brought both opportunities and challenges to the coordinated development between urban and rural areas. Based on a case study on a community of Dazhou City in Sichuan Province, this paper analyzed the problems of elections in residents’ committees, including single-candidate elections, electing someone not on the list of candidates, vote buying and intervention of local government. Through observation and in-depth interviews, it further elaborated three main elements that might influence elections, namely, the requirements for a candidate’s qualifications, the choice of election methods, and roles of the local authority and the residents’ committee.
