The peasant family in the transition from Maoist to Lewisian rural industrialisation

Abstract

Rural industrialisation in China in the post‐Maoist era involves the social transformation of the peasant population into a new class, which is partially detached from agriculture and employed in diverse non‐state enterprises ranging from family‐run businesses to village and township‐run enterprises. The peasant family internalises this transformation, as it reallocates labour and capital into new industrial and tertiary sectors while maintaining agricultural production as a first and last means for labour absorption and subsistence. Since it is peasant families, not the Chinese state or the collective, that now wholly undertake the burden of supporting the sizeable labour surplus, their managerial autonomy tends to result in an energetic effort at economic rationalisation mainly through sectoral diversification of family income sources. Statistical analysis shows that the adoption of household production responsibility systems in agriculture, while ambiguous in its effects on agricultural productivity, was a core determinant of economic diversification into non‐agricultural sectors. The historical transition from Maoist to Lewisian rural industrialisation has been intimately related to the reinstatement of the peasant family economy.