ABSTRACT
Throughout history, rural collectivism has existed on a wide scale in many regions of China, yet the most typical collectivist development model was the one in the southern Jiangsu region. The most marked feature of rural collectives in southern Jiangsu is their historical continuity. Rural grassroots organizations and collective property rights are the two basic dimensions of rural collectivism. The complexity of rural organization and governance presented in many studies also uncovers that rural collectivism is a multidimensional organizational form, and its carrying foundation is rural grassroots organization. With the help of the empirical operating experience of China’s collective property rights, Liu Shiding attempted to introduce the dimension of social embeddedness to improve the theoretical elements of economics’ property rights analysis. The developmental history of Hecun Village shows that although it suffered the impact of de-collectivization several times, the collective economy as the main development model has been preserved.
