ABSTRACT
In the mid-1990s, TVEs in Sunan encountered serious setbacks due to increased competition, tightened credit policy, and internal deficiencies associated with public ownership. External political and ideological constraints unfavorable to the development of the private economy were also relaxed after 1997 when the CCP’s Fifteenth National Congress called for support to the private sector. Community governments thus engaged in a massive privatization of TVEs. Within several years, tens of thousands of previously collectively owned enterprises were transferred to private individuals. Like their unexpected emergence, the privatization of TVEs was also initiated from below: local and community governments privatized TVEs under their jurisdiction without direction and guidance from the central government, and without debate among stakeholders. It was thus called a “quiet revolution” (Shi and Zhao, 2001).
