ABSTRACT
In the complex interaction of China's planning strategies, one aspect stands out - it is the attention paid to the countryside with its farms, villages and country towns. It has been a concern which has not only embraced agricultural production but the whole rural economy and with it the issue of the industrial-agricultural relationship, the urban-rural dichotomy and the rural to urban drift. It is precisely in this ensemble of issues that least success has been achieved in most developing countries. The failure to maintain adequate agricultural productivity, to give a self-sustaining vitality to rural areas, to stem the flood of cityward migrants, has underlain the problems of so many developing countries. While the Chinese have held to this concern, their approach to it has evolved from experimentation. Alternative strategies have been tried and the final solution, successful though it has been in terms of its own objectives, is proving itself to be but a stage in an unending process of social and economic evolution.
