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Twelve Urbanizing Rural China: Bureaucratic Authority and Local Autonomy
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The Special Case of Jiangsu Province

Writing about local changes in China is complicated by the vast regional discrepancies that have emerged. Although these were not insignificant under Mao, today less pressure for uniform policy implementation allows each locality's natural or historical characteristics to affect policy implementation. Therefore one must be cognizant of the uniqueness of Jiangsu province and the focal points of this discussion, Jiangpu county, outside Nanjing, where I did most of my interviewing, and southern Jiangsu (Sunan), where I also did some interviewing, but which is the primary locale referred to in many of the secondary sources used for this chapter. Jiangpu county, as a suburban county (shiqu ), may be more tightly controlled than counties in China that are not directly under a city administration.[16] However, Nanjing has contributed little to its economic development, leaving it with only average per capita income for the nation as a whole. Jiangpu's county-towns and townships are poorer than Sunan's, and rural industries, though important, are less developed. Therefore Jiangpu reflects national trends more than Sunan. However, unlike those in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, private businesses in Jiangpu were quite restricted. As of 1986 there were few private entrepreneurs in the county-towns and townships, although in 1987–88 their numbers increased. Also, there has been little migration to this area from outside the county.

Conditions in Sunan, particularly in counties in Suzhou and Wuxi municipalities, do not reflect national trends. Sunan is more industrialized and urbanized, with a tradition of small towns. For example, Wujiang county, outside Suzhou, where I carried out some interviews in summer 1988, has seven county-towns that have historically been of significant size. As county-towns they had only two vegetable brigades under their authority. Since 1983, however, six of them have been combined with neighboring townships, thus increasing their control over the surrounding countryside. The extent to which this has occurred in other parts of China is unclear; moreover, it is unlikely that there were more than a thousand towns like these Wujiang towns in all of China in the early 1980s.

Towns in Sunan also have powerful industrial bases, and these local government-owned factories inhibit private industrial activity. Wujiang county's Supply and Marketing Co-op simply "swallows" private industrial firms before they become serious competitors.[17] Also, although rural migration is a major factor in parts of rural China (Vogel 1989, 404–


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5; Siu 1988), Wujiang and Wuxi factories employ outsiders mainly as construction workers. The townships treat the factories as community resources that should benefit local residents. Only one town in Wujiang county hires outside laborers. Another experimented with moving peasants into town; six hundred peasants moved in, but the policy was not introduced elsewhere in the county.

As owners of most enterprises in this area, Sunan township and county-town governments have more leverage with both peasants and the county government than governments elsewhere in China. Private enterprises may resist government demands for investment funds, but county-town governments can draw funds from factories they own far more easily. Also, county-towns in Wuxi county are wealthy, so the new "financial responsibility system" (caizheng baogan )—a new form of tax farming where each level of government has a fixed tax quota to pass up to the next level of government—makes them more independent, for with so many factories they still have enough funds for urban development.[18] On the other hand, towns in poorer areas in Jiangsu province, such as those in Jiangpu county, which rely on county assistance for urban development, remain vulnerable to county control. To this extent, Jiangpu is more representative of trends elsewhere in China, although the limited development of the private sector and the tighter constraints on migration there strengthen the town's authority vis-à-vis the peasants.


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Twelve Urbanizing Rural China: Bureaucratic Authority and Local Autonomy
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