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Class Differentiation in Rural C hina: Dynamics of Accumulation, Commodification and State Intervention
Author(s) -
Zhang Qian Forrest
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of agrarian change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.63
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1471-0366
pISSN - 1471-0358
DOI - 10.1111/joac.12120
Subject(s) - commodification , agrarian society , economics , subsistence agriculture , state (computer science) , wage , labour economics , market economy , sociology , geography , agriculture , archaeology , algorithm , computer science
This paper develops a classification of the emerging agrarian class positions in C hina today. Using an instrument based on rural households' combination of market positions in four markets – land, labour, means of production and product – I identify five agrarian classes: the capitalist employer class, the petty‐bourgeois class of commercial farmers, two labouring classes of dual‐employment households and wage workers, and subsistence peasants. This classification is then used as a heuristic device to organize the empirical analysis that examines how dynamics of agrarian change drive class differentiation in rural C hina. For the capitalist employer class, the analysis focuses on their diverse paths of accumulation; for the petty‐bourgeois commercial farmers, their contingent resilience and tendencies of differentiation; and for the two classes of labour, the commodification of their subsistence. The state plays important but varying roles in all these processes.