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China Consequences of Rural Reform
The state retained both its powers and its role in the rural
economy in the 1980s. Decollectivization, like the collectivization
of the 1950s, was directed from the top down. Sometimes,
apparently, it was imposed on communities that had been content
with their collective methods. But in permitting households and
communities greater leeway to decide what to produce and in
allowing the growth of rural markets and small-scale industries,
the state stepped back from the close supervision and mandatory
quotas of the 1960s and 1970s.
Decollectivization obviated the supervisory functions of lowlevel cadres, who no longer needed to oversee work on the
collective fields. Some cadres became full-time administrators in
township offices, and others took advantage of the reforms by
establishing specialized production households or by leasing
collective property at favorable rates. Former cadres, with their
networks of connections and familiarity with administrative
procedures, were in a better position than ordinary farmers to take
advantage of the opportunities offered by the growth of markets and
commercial activity. Even those cadres not wholly devoted to
increasing their own families' income found that to serve their
fellow villagers as expected it was necessary to act as
entrepreneurs. Village-level cadres in the mid-1980s were
functioning less as overseers and more as extension agents and
marketing consultants
(see Post-Mao Policies
, ch. 6).
By 1987 rural society was more open and diverse than in the
1960s and 1970s, and the rigid collective units of that period,
which had reflected the state's overwhelming concern for security,
had been replaced by networks and clusters of smaller units. The
new, looser structure demonstrated the priority placed on
efficiency and economic growth. Basic security, in the sense of an
adequate supply of food and guarantees of support for the disabled,
orphaned, or aged, was taken for granted. Less than half of China's
population remembered the insecurity and risks of pre-1950 society,
but the costs and inefficiencies of the collective system were
fresh in their minds. Increased specialization and division of
labor were trends not likely to be reversed. In the rural areas the
significance of the work unit appeared to have diminished, although
people still lived in villages, and the actions of low-level
administrative cadres still affected ordinary farmers or petty
traders in immediate ways.
The state and its officials still dominated the economy,
controlled supplies of essential goods, taxed and regulated
businesses and markets, and awarded contracts. The stratification
system of the Maoist period had been based on a hierarchy of
functionally unspecialized cadres directing the labors of a fairly
uniform mass of peasants. It was replaced in the 1980s by a new
elite of economically specialized households and entrepreneurs who
had managed to come to terms with the administrative cadres who
controlled access to many of the resources necessary for economic
success. Local cadres still had the power to impose fees, taxes,
and all manner of exactions. The norms of the new system were not
clear, and the economic and social system continued to change in
response to the rapid growth of rural commerce and industry and to
national economic policies and reforms.
Data as of July 1987
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