Record Item Language: English

In their effect on marriage and the family, as in so many other domains, the reforms can be seen as having a dual thrust. On the one hand, by giving the land in long-term leases back to the family, and allowing it to invest in a variety of small and medium-sized ventures, they have restored something like the situation in rural China before the collectivization of 1956, when the family estate was the source of income and investment in opportunity for most rural Chinese. On the other hand, the reforms have been undertaken explicitly in the name of modernization, and […]

In this paper I analyze the language and concepts framing approaches taken by the Chinese women’s movement to women and rural development. Until the late 1990s the language adopted by Chinese women’s organizations concerned with rural development was quite different from that of development agencies elsewhere, but since that time it has become increasingly similar. In this paper I ask: to what extent did the earlier language of Chinese women’s development activists point to understandings and practices that were different from those of the global development movement? And what might be the significance of the growing convergence between the two?

Abstract: Land reform has recently become a topic of interest to the media. Given historical experience and current changes, are land reform policies still worthwhile objects of struggle for rural women? The article discusses arguments ‘against’: for instance, women have been excluded from most past land reforms, and many rural people have had to diversify their livelihood bases, so that agriculture has diminished in importance. Despite these and other points, the article argues that land reform which includes women would be of great benefit: it would increase food security, would allow wives to keep better control over their own incomes, […]

Decollectivization and the division of land have raised questions about whether a landed basis might reappear for a contemporary reformulation of patriliny in the Chinese countryside. This article addresses these questions by examining the processes through which formerly collective land has been divided and partially brought together again in informal, nameless co-operative groupings with an apparent patrilineal tinge.

Since the mid-1990s, a new land-use rights regime has gradually come into effect in China. It follows upon a series of earlier changes — land reform, collectivization and the first wave of contracting land to households — that paid attention to women’s role in publicly recognized work and provided access to land. The new regime, which has gradually come into effect as previous (usually fifteen-year) terms expired, authorizes an adjustment in land allocation which is then normally frozen for thirty years. An apparently inadvertent effect of this policy is not only the exclusion of young people from direct access to […]

The story of the rural Chinese family household in the post-Mao period is generally told in one of three ways, which might be labelled modernization, tradition restored, and demographic determinism. Modernization parallels the family theories of classical sociology: economic development and education tend to undermine extended family living arrangements by instilling nuclear family preferences, while the relaxation of migration restrictions allows young men to seek their fortune away from home. “Tradition restored” sees collectivization as having undermined the foundation of the extended family household, the family economy. The return of family farming has, in this view, restored the conditions under […]

ABSTRACT: The government of China targeted conversion of farmland to industrial and residential uses, especially in the most productive agricultural regions, as the chief threat to the nation’s continued capacity to produce adequate levels of staple cereals. In response, it has introduced a number of measures aimed at protecting farmland, especially farmland with the greatest production potential. This paper reviews the existing evidence regarding the performance of China’s farmland protection policies in light of its food security goals. We summarize recent farmland protection measures. Despite administrative restrictions on farmland conversion, cropland continues to decline. The evidence suggests that a substantial […]

Even though the recent revisions to the marriage laws have been hailed as some of the most significant and positive changes in family law in China, thus far no empirical evaluation of the laws’ effectiveness in actual practice has been conducted. The article raises some questions as to the practical effect these revisions will have on women’s rights. The article suggests recommendations that will help bring the marriage law in compliance with the international standards set out in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, as well as helps deliver on the promise of the revisions to the […]

ABSTRACT: China’s rural land rights regime is being reformed. Most explanations for the reforms focus on the efficiency effects anticipated from the strengthening of villagers’ land rights. In contrast, this article argues that rural land rights reforms are intended to resolve the intra-state and state-society contention generated by China’s market transition and globalization, and to mediate villagers’ dispossession of their land and their transformation into a proletariat.