ABSTRACT
The reform of China’s rural economy has remained to this day one of the most radical reforms the post-Mao leadership has attempted in the past two decades. With the rapid and eventual dismantling of the collective farms, peasants in China have since then been able to farm on an individualized basis. Commonly known as the household responsibility system (HRS), the family farm is an institution that frees the farmers from the stranglehold typical of a collectivized agriculture; above all, it allows them to earn an income commensurate with the effort that they and their family members honestly and industriously expend on the soil of the clearly demarcated plots. The overall success of this reform is beyond dispute: both peasant incomes and crop output experienced the sharpest growth during this brief period (roughly between 1978 and 1984) in the history of Communist China. 1
