ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an opportunity to assess the changes of a dramatic decade, and gives some hint of trends that might be suppressed or promoted in the decades to come. It discusses the details of the shift in city structure and the question of whether this tendency is being reversed in the post-1978 policy era. Before 1980, the nonagricultural labor force was simply the sum of workers in state, urban collective, and urban private enterprises. With rural laborers working outside agriculture included, 41 percent of the total labor force was working outside agriculture by 1988. Cities grew sharply along with nonagricultural labor in the late 1950s6. With the exclusion of peasants in the 1960s, urban population declined and, as a proportion of total population, remained almost level through the 1970s.