ABSTRACT
In the China of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the myriad small towns scattered throughout the countryside played a vital role as centres of both administration and economic exchange. Prior to the Communist Party’s assumption of power in 1949, China had endured a century of civil war and foreign invasion which had destablized the rural economy, and undermined the economic and administrative functions of the rural settlement system. Such prohibitions denied to China’s small towns their function as points of production and exchange for the range of goods and services required by any agricultural community. The most visible and eminently argued case in favour of a small town strategy derives, surprisingly, from social scientists with a primary interest in making relevant to present-day needs the historic experience of China’s small town network. The question of measurement of China’s urbanization rate is notoriously difficult, mainly because of changing official criteria.
