Books
Prospects for Sustainable Development in the Chinese Countryside: The Political Economy of Chinese Ecological Agriculture
by Richard Sanders
Edition: Ashgate Publishing Company; (January 2000)

An excellent and much needed contribution to the literature on rural development in China, that will also be of interest to those who study or are trying to implement ecologically friendly agriculture in the developing world.

The first part of this book is an extensive review, via secondary sources, of the rural development experience of China since 1949, and its evolving strategies as the political winds shifted. This part of the book serves as a useful foundation for non-China specialists, and a good directional bibliography for those looking to jump into these issues in more detail. Next up is a discussion of the current environmental problems that rural China faces, which include soil burning, nutrient exhaustion, water pollution, erosion, etc. The account stresses the seriousness of these problems, but avoids overblown alarmist sensationalism. Before proceeding to his field work, Sanders comments on the problems of doing research in China; i.e. will people tell him the truth, or just defer to the village party members who will just give him the Ministry of Agriculture´s official line? He explains that initial barriers tend to fall once personal trust is established with villagers, something that can only be achieved with time and patience. The last section of the book addresses one potential solution to rural ecological problems. Sanders visited numerous villages that have experimented with an ecological agriculture program, and each is presented in case study form, complete with a village history review up the implementation of the program, and the results since. Most were from the wealthier east coast (both north and south), but some were from medium-income provinces and a couple were from poorer areas like Anhui or Sichuan. The program included things like tree planting, eco-friendly rotations, green manure, energy recycling, increase in organic fertilizers (chemical fertilizer was never abandoned, only reduced to less harmful levels). The results are mostly positive. In nearly all cases, villages substantially improved the ecological situation, while increasing income as well. Income increases, nearly every case study showed, were essential to winning the peasants over to the program. The state helped with some technology sharing, but the income increases were not Potempkin frauds, they were the result of the program. The only necessary qualifier is that in a couple of cases, a pre-existing base of rural industry was used to finance the program, and thus the income increases may be both from the program or from unrelated rural industry expansion (in today´s China, it´s far easier to expand a base of rural industry than start new ones). But since income increases were achieved in those without rural industry, the program holds promise. Regarding how repeatable these successes are, Sanders is not terribly optimistic. This is because these case studies tend to indicate that a strong ´´jiti´´ or collective is a prerequisite for the program´s success, and he´s not sure whether a large number of villages have this, or if they don´t, can get it. Some of the case study villages were outright collective farms (some with and some without collectively owned rural industries) and some had individual family management of land but a high level of coordination and formalized cooperation; a strong ´´collective core´´ either way. An ecological agriculture program simply requires village level public action and public goods. These examples show what some past work on rural China also showed, that a socialist ethic on the part of Chinese peasants is highly linked to economic results (i.e. increase their incomes, peasants will work hard for the collective; don´t, they won´t) and moral appeals like Mao favored and pushed (but not exclusively as often thought) had a short shelf life back then, and less today. These cases demonstrate a more general conclusion as well, beyond ecological agriculture, that village collectives or cooperatives, if they can be formed, have better prospects today than in the Mao era, where irrational ideological restrictions, the lack of a market, and the heavier taxation of agriculture inhibited growth (despite these substantial barriers, their performance in the period after the ´Great Leap Forward´ disaster, 1963-81, was above average by developing country standards).