Rural Reforms and the Sustainability of the Chinese Rural Political Economy

Decollectivization has been greeted with very different reactions from scholars, many of whom (e.g. Unger, 1985, Ross, 1988, Lin, 1990, 1992) accept the breakup of Maoist collective structures as desirable, progressive and inevitable while others, (e.g. Chossudovsky, 1986, Hinton, 1990, Muldavin, 1992, 1996a, 1996b) paint the process in almost wholly negative terms. Chossudovsky, for example, sees the process as responsible for restoring the rich peasant economy, proletarianizing the poor peasantry, encouraging rural-urban migration (as the basis for the development of a free market in hired labour), reinforcing social inequality, downgrading rural social welfare programmes and partially privatizing health and educational programmes (1986, pp.59–76). Muldavin laments the mining of communal capital (1992, p.4).