ABSTRACT
The reintroduction of household farming in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the transition to a more commercialized rural economy have loosened the bonds of the command economy that had previously subordinated the rural people’s communes and their members to the dictates of the state plan. As a result, as early as 1981, procurement agencies in some locations were deluged with more produce and livestock than they could manage, while in other locations procurement of vital products, including grain, fell woefully short of state plans. To resolve these dilemmas, establish a more flexible link between plan and market, and implement the new developmental strategy based on the commercialization of Chinese agriculture, 1 the PRC in 1982 began to introduce a system of rural contracts that controlled commercial relations among rural producers, the state, and collective agencies that were responsible for agricultural inputs and outputs. In April 1985, the government further refined this system by abolishing the system of unified purchased sales (mandatory sales quotas) established in 1953, 2 replacing it with a system based on “voluntary” contracts between the producer and the state. Henceforth, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the state have expected contractual obligations to govern commercial relations between rural producers and state purchasers and even to regulate private commercial transactions in the vastly expanded free-market sector.
