Regional diversity of peasant household response to new countryside construction based on field survey in eastern coastal China

To tackle the issues concerning agriculture, farmers, and rural areas, the central government of China initiated a new strategy called ‘new countryside construction’ in 2005. For better understanding its actual effect, this paper analyzes the regional diversity of peasant household response to this new countryside construction strategy based on Kruskal-Wallis H test and sampling survey data from 586 households in the Bohai Rim Region (BRR), Yangtze River Delta Region (YDR), and Pan Pearl River Delta Region (PPR). The result indicates that regional diversity in eastern coastal China (ECC) does exist in the form of recognized priority sequence, policy requirements, expected policy effects, and behavior response. As a result of the deviation between local policy practice and households’ inherent demand, peasants fulfill their de facto demand via individual effort instead of government aid, and therefore the new countryside construction fails to carry out the expected target. It thus needs to shift the current policy priority, ensure the peasants’ mainstay role, and formulate scientific ‘Rules for new countryside construction’.

[1]  Allen M. Featherstone,et al.  Agricultural Policy Reform and Off-farm Labour Decisions , 2005 .

[2]  Yan-sui Liu,et al.  Differentiation of rural development driven by industrialization and urbanization in eastern coastal China , 2009 .

[3]  D. North,et al.  Elements of Reason: Shared Mental Models: Ideologies and Institutions , 1994 .

[4]  F. Ellis,et al.  Peasant Economics: Farm Households and Agrarian Development , 1989 .

[5]  Yansui Liu,et al.  Building new countryside in China: A geographical perspective , 2010 .

[6]  Yan-sui Liu,et al.  Characteristics and mechanism of agricultural transformation in typical rural areas of eastern China: A case study of Yucheng City, Shandong Province , 2010 .

[7]  R. Gunatilaka,et al.  Great expectations? The subjective well-being of rural-urban migrants in China. , 2010 .

[8]  Yan-sui Liu,et al.  Spatio-temporal analysis of land-use conversion in the eastern coastal China during 1996–2005 , 2008 .

[9]  Nico Heerinka,et al.  China's New Rural Income Support Policy: Impacts on Grain Production and Rural Income Inequality , 2006 .

[10]  Hualou Long,et al.  Poverty alleviation in China: A lesson for the developing world? , 2006 .

[11]  Yansui Liu,et al.  Dynamic evolvement of agricultural system and typical patterns of modern agriculture in coastal China: A case of Suzhou , 2009 .

[12]  H. Long,et al.  Analysis of arable land loss and its impact on rural sustainability in Southern Jiangsu Province of China. , 2010, Journal of environmental management.

[13]  Shaohua Chen,et al.  Are there lasting impacts of aid to poor areas , 2009 .

[14]  Laurence J. C. Ma,et al.  Privatization of rural industry and de facto urbanization from below in southern Jiangsu, China , 2005 .

[15]  Chenguang Xu,et al.  Attitudes of farmers in China's northern Shaanxi Province towards the land-use changes required under the Grain for Green Project, and implications for the project's success , 2009 .

[16]  Simon X. B. Zhao,et al.  The sustainability dilemma of China’s township and village enterprises: an analysis from spatial and functional perspectives , 2002 .

[17]  I. Scoones.  Livelihoods perspectives and rural development , 2009 .

[18]  A. Joseph,et al.  Social and environmental regulation in rural China: bringing the changing role of local government into focus , 2003 .

[19]  A. Kontoleon,et al.  How sustainable are sustainable development programs? The case of the sloping land conversion program in China. , 2009 .

[20]  Laure Latruffe,et al.  Attitudes to Agricultural Policy and Farming Futures in the Context of the 2003 CAP Reform: a Comparison of Farmers in Selected Established and New Member States , 2008 .

[21]  Yansui Liu,et al.  Appraisal of typical rural development models during rapid urbanization in the eastern coastal region of China , 2009 .

[22]  W. Kruskal,et al.  Use of Ranks in One-Criterion Variance Analysis , 1952 .

[23]  Changes in income inequality and welfare under economic transition: evidence from urban China , 2002 .

[24]  He Xuefeng.  New Rural Construction and the Chinese Path , 2007 .

[25]  Charles Francis,et al.  Farmers and nature conservation: What is known about attitudes, context factors and actions affecting conservation? , 2008, Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems.

[26]  L. Keister,et al.  THE RATIONAL PEASANT IN CHINA , 2001 .