The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988

Download or read book The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988 written by Philip C. Huang and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Ming-Qing period, involution usually meant a switch to more labor-intensive cash crops and low-return household sidelines. In post-revolutionary China, it typically meant greatly intensified crop production. Stagnant or declining returns per workday were absorbed first by the family production unit and then by the collective. The true significance of the 1980's reforms, the author argues, lies in the diversion of labour from farming to rural industries and profitable sidelines and the first increases for centuries in productivity and income per workday. With these changes have come a measure of rural prosperity and the genuine possibility of transformative rural development. By reconstructing Ming-Qing agricultural history and drawing on twentieth-century ethnographic data and his own field investigations, the author brings his large themes down to the level of individual peasant households.