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China The Role of the Household
Decollectivization increased the options available to
individual households and made household heads increasingly
responsible for the economic success of their households. In 1987,
for example, it was legally possible to leave the village and move
into a nearby town to work in a small factory, open a noodle stand,
or set up a machine repair business. Farmers, however, still could
not legally move into medium-sized or large cities. The Chinese
press reported an increased appreciation in the countryside for
education and an increased desire for agriculturally oriented
newspapers and journals, as well as clearly written manuals on such
profitable trades as rabbit-raising and beekeeping. As
specialization and division of labor increased, along with
increasingly visible differences in income and living standards, it
became more difficult to encompass most of the rural population in
a few large categories. During the early 1980s, the pace of
economic and social change in rural China was rapid, and the people
caught up in the change had difficulty making sense of the process.
Data as of July 1987
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