ABSTRACT
After more than three decades of extremely rapid industrial growth, China faces an environmental crisis. News headlines such as ‘Pollution turns China village into cancer cluster’ and ‘Choking on growth’ have become routine in recent times. The rural industrial sector, which sounds paradoxical to many Western ears, includes millions of loosely regulated factories and employs hundreds of millions of workers in the countryside; it is also a major focal point of this environmental crisis. For China’s 800 million villagers, the rural
I would like to thank the organizers of this collection on politics in rural China, as well as the anonymous reviewers whose comments helped to focus and refine my analysis. Many colleagues recommended important research to include in the paper or provided critical feedback on earlier drafts, including Chen Ajiang, Jennifer Holdaway, Rachel Stern, Anna Lora-Wainwright, Benjamin Van Rooij and Zhang Lei.
