ABSTRACT
If at the macro-level, reform, as had revolution before it, became synonymous with state-planned economic and socio-political development, national policies of reform remained - as does perhaps all development rhetoric - a somewhat idealised, generalised and opaque set of prescriptions which were communicated through the administrative hierarchy to the village. How such state policies, be they of revolution or reform, define, modify or translate into village practice is a subject of abiding interest to social scientists. To provide some insights into village policy, programme and experience of reform, and to take account of particularities of place, occasion and circumstance, nine case studies have been assembled from diverse regions of China to document, quantitatively and qualitatively, village and household practices to do with land, labour and income-generation.
