Societal Development in Rural China

Wenrong Qian

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9789811380815
• eBook ISBN:
  9789811380822
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a broad survey of Chinese rural households, examining ongoing changes in Chinese society and economy through the lens of the situation of rural families in China. Based on data from Zhejiang University's China Rural Household Panel Survey (CRHPS) in 2015 on rural households, which analyses all aspects of grass-roots rural households in China, this volume offers  a scientific analysis of social development in rural China, exploring notably the basic structure, employment situation, income and expenditure, social security, and education situation of Chinese rural households, as well as the governance and public services of rural communities.

Part ISurvey Background and Sampling Design

© The Author(s) 2019

W. QianSocietal Development in Rural Chinahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8082-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Wenrong Qian et al.¹

(1)

Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

Wenrong Qian et al.

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

China Rural Household Panel SurveyHistorical backgroundSurvey purpose

End Abstract

The household is the most basic unit of society. It is also the most fundamental social cell constituted by marital, blood and adoptive relationships. As social resources are very limited, households, the connection between the individual and society, pursue the maximization of efficiency and family welfare by interacting with society.

Rural households, on the other hand, are the basic organizational unit of rural society that combines production and social lives. Rural households are the basic units of rural consumption and demands as well as the supply side (including labor, capitals etc.) of production factors. To obtain the maximum satisfaction, rural households not only need to purchase various types of consumptive goods and the needed household’s productive materials from the market but also need to obtain income by utilizing the labor, material and time resources of the whole household. As resources are always scarce and limited, the goal of the decisions made by the entire rural household is to maximize the efficiency of these resources. Therefore, like other rational economic entities, rural households make decisions frequently in terms of production and consumption to maximize the profits or efficiency.

The China Rural Household Panel Survey (CRHPS) launched by Zhejiang University (hereafter referred to as ZJU) in 2015 aimed at setting a baseline for investigating rural issues in China. This comprehensive survey involved complete information on China’s rural households, including their basic household structure, employment, income and expenditure, household wealth, agricultural production and management, land utility and circulation, migration of population and urbanization, financial behavior, health and social security, education and training and so on. Moreover, the survey covered the basic conditions of China’s rural grass-roots units (village committees), which included information on local public services, social economy, social governance and environmental characteristics, as well as other areas.

The CRHPS could scientifically record and analyze the transition of China’s rural households, and integrate the multidimensional information of society through rural families at the micro level. It could also help us understand the development of rural China in the dimensions of society, economy, politics, culture, and resources and environment, as well as the basic features of rural consumption and demand, their production factors and the changes in their supply from a micro level. By continuously tracking and investigating all aspects of China’s rural households and regularly recording their all-directional transitions using micro-statistics, the objective reality of China’s rural households could be thoroughly understood, and the inner mechanism of the various kinds of social problems could be probed into. By doing so, the development and change of rural society could also be explained and predicted from their causal relationship so that the decision-making ability could be elevated, modernization of the national governance system and ability could be promoted and an in-time and overall statistics foundation and security could be achieved for major national strategic demands.

1.1 History of Related Rural Household Panel Surveys

The China Rural Household Panel Survey is an integral part of China’s household surveys. In fact, the research on China’s rural household problems has had a long history. According to the research of Li and Deng (2009), in as early as 1914, a foreign scholar, C. G. Dittmer, had already organized a rural survey which targeted 195 farmers around the Tsinghua Campus. However, the earliest rural survey conducted by the Chinese, as commonly accepted by historians, was the survey on Chengfu Village in the western suburb of Beijing in 1923 (Li and Deng 2009). In the 1920s and 1930s, lots of surveys were conducted in rural China. The history of related rural household surveys (RHSs) that had been carried out so far is introduced as follows.

1.1.1 Rural Surveys During the Period of the Republic of China

During the period of the Republic of China, rural China economy had had an unprecedented crisis and western economics research paradigms had gradually gathered the attention of Chinese scholars who hoped to obtain an in-depth knowledge of the real circumstances in rural society by means of field investigations (Ge 2012). “Field investigation is an important way to understand information, accumulate materials and promote studies. It has a long-standing and well-established history in China, but scientific methods are used in field investigation only recently” (Li 2008). Under the influence of western economics paradigm, many people from all walks of life took part in the survey. The organizers of the survey included Chinese and foreign scholars as well as revolutionaries. Rural construction organizations, research institutions and tertiary institutions also organized and participated in the rural survey. In addition, government agencies carried out various kinds of rural investigation activities for some political purposes. However, although a nationwide rural survey was the highest goal of the scholars during that period, it was not feasible due to the limited technology, personnel and funds. Therefore, Chen Hanqian, Li Jinghan and their partners had to take a step back, select a typical place and conduct a small regional survey. In the first half of the twentieth century, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, the following research and investigations on rural China were of big scales and had made significant impacts: two national rural surveys conducted by John Lossing Buck; rural surveys in the three regions of north China, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta by Chen Hansheng; rural surveys in Ting Hsien by Li Jinghan, as well as the Mantetsu surveys et cetera. Other representative rural China surveys during the period of the Republic of China are shown in Table 1.1 (Li and Deng 2009).

Table 1.1

China rural surveys during the 1920s and 1930s

Investigator	Time (Year)	Sites	Contents	Representative achievements
C. G. Dittmer	1914–1918	195 rural households around the Tsinghua Campus	Basic conditions such as household scale, income, expenditure and scale	An Estimate of the Standard of Living in China ^a
D. H. Kulp	1919–1920	Phoenix Village in Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province	Demographic structure and migration, marital state, land, village wealth, religion, language and education	Country Life in Southern China
Lenyon L. Butterfield	1921 Autumn	More than 10 provinces in China	Problems of agriculture and agricultural education	Submission on Improving Agriculture and Agricultural Education of China
J. B Tayler, C. B. Malene	1922 Summer	240 Villages in Hebei, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong and Zhejiang	Residents, families, residence, land possession, succession of predecessors’ career, occupation, economy et cetera	The Study of Chinese Rural Economy
H. S. Bucklin	1923–1924	Song—Ha Kang, Shanghai	Families, religious life, local administration and punishment system, education, business of agriculture, industry and commerce, health and public hygiene, entertainment, housing et cetera	A Social Survey of Song—Ka Hang
John Lossing Buck	1921–1925	2866 rural households in 17 places of 7 provinces excluding Northeast China^b	Focusing on production and technology: crop planting, grain yield per mu, planting scale and profit of household agricultural crops and the efficacy relations between production factors	Chinese Rural Economy
	1929–1933	38,256 rural households in 16,786 farms of 22 provinces excluding Northeast China	Population or land way of use or natural or common factors that influence land utilization (successful) extent	Land Use in China
A. R. Radcliff—Brown	1926	25 field areas around Xinkaisi on Mount Emei in Sichuan Province and 50 rural households on the Chengdu Plain	Field areas, houses, land possession and education, utensils, seeds, cattle, household industry, fruits, land property and labor income, labor allocation, tax, fertilizers, foodstuff, earnings and expenditure et cetera	A Survey of 25 Field Areas in Mount Emei, Sichuan
Sidney D. Gamble	1931–1932	Villages in Ting Hsien of Hebei Province	Population, households, lands, agricultural production, household industry, commercial trades and social activities et cetera	Ting Hsien: A North China Rural Community
H. D. Lalnson	1933	50 rural households of 4 villages near Yangshupu of Shanghai	Household organization, occupations and income of household members, property ownership right (household income and landownership), surplus and deficit of income and expenses, life expenses, farmers who leave villages and enter into factories to work as well as rural economy, education and religions	Influence of Industrialization on Rural Life—Survey of 50 Rural Households in 4 Villages around Yangshupu in Shanghai
Mantatsu^c	1933–1945	Mainly in areas of Northeast China, Northern China and Eastern China	Rural population and economic state, rural resources and rural productive conditions^d	Agriculture of Zailai, Mantatsu
Li Jinghan	1929–1933	Ting Hsien of Hebei Province	General situation of the whole county and survey into different villages, including household registration, land, production, tax, markets, education and customs	Land Survey of Ting Hsien
Chen Hansheng^e	1929–1934	Villages, households, markets, farmhouses in Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Northern China	Communication, economic life (land renting patterns etc.) landownership relations and allocation of means of production	Land Issues of Modern China

^aDittmer (1918)

^bSheng (2001)

^cThe full name is “the South Manchuria Railways Co. of Japan”

^dCao (1991)

^eChen (1988)

The academic achievements of the American scholar John Lessing Buck in the agricultural economy were derived from the data and information collected from two comprehensive systematic household surveys conducted in rural China from 1921 to 1925 and from 1929 to 1933. During the 1920s and 1930s, he investigated 2866 rural households in 17 places of 7 provinces excluding Northeast China and 38,256 rural households in 16,786 farms of 22 provinces.¹ In terms of the investigation method, Buck utilized the sampling survey method² of which the subjects were mainly students from Jinling University and the main contents were areas such as population, lands, grain output and scale of household agricultural plants. Some scholars think that “a complete understanding of studies on modern China agricultural economy by U.S. scholars must be started with John Lossing Buck”.

At that time, another representative and a comprehensive rural household survey was the one organized by “Mantetsu”, which utilized the modern economic anthropology theoretical paradigm. Setting a natural village as a survey unit and rural villagers as the respondents, this rural survey was really concrete and complete. “In terms of the factual survey of Mantetsu surveys, a vast area of China was covered, stretching from Heilongjiang in the north to Hainan Island in the south” (Cao 1991). Meanwhile, during the period from 1908 to 1945, the Mantetsu specially established various investigatory institutions focusing on different areas so that the whole survey was well organized and brought a high level of unity and comparability to rural materials of different regions and economic types. Thus, the “Report Materials of Mantetsu Survey” was formed. These considerable book materials and documentaries have been valuable for studies on the rural economy during the period of the Republic of China. These are historical materials in rural household surveys that are worthy of systematical retrospect and analysis.

In general, during the period of the Republic of China, although the rural survey method was not mature and the objectivity of survey materials and results were also controversial to some extent, in any case the gained statistics and materials of the rural household survey were obtained after thorough questionnaires or in-depth field investigations by sociologists of that period, and the results also came from systematic standardized processing and comprehensive quantitative analysis (Xia 2007). Today, these surveys have become valuable documents for studying China’s modern history as well as significant sources for social anthropology and economics. Many studies on the agricultural economy during the contemporary Republic of China period have referred to and taken advantage of these materials, which has largely boosted the progress of humanities and social sciences.

1.1.2 National Po...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Part I. Survey Background and Sampling Design
• Part II. Basic Characteristics of Rural Households
• Part III. Public Service of Rural Households
• Part IV. Research Conclusions