China’s Rural–Urban Inequality in the Countryside

Description

This book approaches the issue of rural-urban inequality through fieldwork conducted in a specific township (Zuogang) in Qinggang County, part of Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China. Presenting painstaking fieldwork in a single location, it successfully illuminates fundamental aspects of the reality and the complexity of rural-urban inequality that cannot be found in macro-level studies, most of which are prepared by economists. The book offers a unique combination of rigorous economic analysis with insightful social and anthropological analysis, as well as revealing interviews with local government officials. This approach provides a rich tapestry of rural perceptions of rural-urban inequality. With in-depth analysis and empirical evidence on questions concerning the development and root causes of urban-rural disparities, the book significantly enriches our understanding of the widely discussed issue of rural-urban income inequality, but from the unique perspective of rural China. Front Matter ....Pages i-xviii The Rural–Urban Transition (Yan Gao, Shailaja Fennell)....Pages 1-23 Theoretical Background (Yan Gao, Shailaja Fennell)....Pages 25-45 Institutions and Policy Making (Yan Gao, Shailaja Fennell)....Pages 47-84 Quantitative Measures of Inequality (Yan Gao, Shailaja Fennell)....Pages 85-97 The Perspective of Peasants (Yan Gao, Shailaja Fennell)....Pages 99-125 The Officials’ Perspective (Yan Gao, Shailaja Fennell)....Pages 127-147 Institutions, Urban Bias and Local Relations (Yan Gao, Shailaja Fennell)....Pages 149-157 Qinggang—Ten Years on (Yan Gao, Shailaja Fennell)....Pages 159-174 Back Matter ....Pages 175-181