ABSTRACT
Reviewing the Chinese rural employment policies at the transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Plan, a few salient features stand out. Beyond any further doubt, China has absorbed its rural unemployment. Thanks to the intelligent use of available labour, China has made tangible progress toward restoring a healthy ecological balance and replenishing her renewable natural resources: soil, water, forest. With the help of mechanization China's agriculture may attain the goals set for the Fifth Plan. China's rural institutions have become financially more self-supporting and are approaching the point of being capable of fully financing the auto-expansion of the rural sector. Central fiscal funds are left for more important or more global development tasks. In other words, China's rural economy, thanks to its intensive use of manpower, the one production factor in most ample supply, has in a first stage made full use of all possibilities of capital accumulation in order to build its own industry.
