The Changing Lives and Values of Chinese Rural Youth in the 1980s and 1990s

Abstract

Since the late 1970s economic reforms have profoundly changed China's rural society by encouraging individual initiative, stimulating migrations to the cities, and generating new social strata. While the gap between the cities and countryside is still wide, farmers have gained so much power and influence that some scholars have argued that it was they who changed China. Indeed, to a large extent, it was the vast majority of rural people whose economic activities ameliorated the fragile national economy, significantly improved people's material life, and thus created the conditions for comprehensive reforms in the second half of the 1980s. In the 1990s, increasing numbers of rural residents have participated in electing village leaders, an important step toward more political democracy. In the process of contributing to economic development and social change, these rural people have changed themselves as well.