ABSTRACT
An important issue in China's post-reform villages was the degree to which the local authorities could extract resources from the individual non-farm economy. Following the death of Mao Tsetung in 1976 a sea change took place in Chinese political economy. The most important event in signalling these changes was the third plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, held at the end of 1978. An important part of the post-Mao rural reforms was an attempt to increase rural economic efficiency by formally separating party from both government and economic administration in the villages. In the 1960s and 1970s, China's rural industries expanded quite rapidly. Under Maoist policies their economic function — centres of free market trade, petty manufacture, service provision, and information exchange — declined drastically. China's villages are in the process of transformation from self-sufficient and semi-self-sufficient production to relatively large-scale commodity production.
