ABSTRACT
Rural reforms seemed to presage further changes in which the scope of markets would increase and the controls of the plan be reduced, thereby limiting even further the party-state's role in rural society and the rural economy. This chapter examines one aspect of the party-state's relations with the peasants, namely, the impact on peasants of ideologically based assumptions and definitions and of policies about household contracting and associated reforms. The reshaping of agricultural institutions and policies that began in 1978 and culminated in the virtually universal adoption of household contracting by 1983 was among the most spectacular of China's post-Mao reforms. Household contractors yearned for stability but feared not only change in the particulars of government policies but a change in line, that is, abrogation of the reforms and a return to collectivism. Retention of Marxist-Leninist values even while market values were also espoused meant that reform policies were necessarily based on contradictory premises.
