ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the social transformations that have taken place in rural China. It deals with economic change: local commercialisation, labour migration and the changes in land ownership. This leads over to the political changes in the countryside, specifically in terms of political administration, participation and the relationship between various levels of government and local communities. The chapter presents the transformations of rural families and communities, and it makes some tentative generalisations about the modernisation processes taking place in rural China, in terms of nation-state building, individualisation and new ruralities. Whilst property in land had been based both on social agreement in local communities and state registers, there has never been a very accurate cadastre of agricultural land plots until the day. Farmers throughout China have also regularly re-allocated landholding rights in local communities, usually to ensure a relatively egalitarian distribution of land between neighbours.
