ABSTRACT
As with all major shifts in rural policy since 1949, the current Chinese reforms have altered the distribution of power, authority, and resources at the county and subcounty levels. Farmers have been freed from the dependent relations that bound them to their village leaders; 1 this change allows them greater leeway to determine which crops to grow and their avocation. Some farmers can now migrate into other rural or urban settlements. A booming rural industrial sector, legitimized by the central government in 1984, is generating new resources, which have strengthened the power of lower-level officials, who control and tax these new enterprises, vis-à-vis their administrative superiors. 2 And, resurgent markets and market towns have revitalized both the “natural economy” and interregional trade that crosses administrative boundaries, further weakening the influence of administrators who previously had tightly controlled all rural marketing. 3
