The Rise of Agrarian Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Agricultural Modernization, Agribusiness and Collective Land Rights
By Q. Zhang, John A. Donaldson. China Journal, 2008
205 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In what forms are agribusinesses entering agriculture and interacting with farmers? How are land, labor and capital now controlled by corporate and individual actors, and then organized into agricultural production? How does such control and organization shape the relationships between the actors? In this article we argue that agrarian capitalism is expanding in China. The means of production, such as capital and land, are increasingly controlled by agribusiness, while direct producers increasingly sell their labor for a living. We document various forms in which agribusiness companies are conducting transactions with individual agricultural producers. We also argue that China's unique system of land rights featuring collective ownership but individualized usage rights has acted as a powerful force in shaping interactions between agribusiness and direct producers. It provides farmers with a source of economic income and political bargaining power, and restricts corporate actors from dispossessing farmers of their land. We find strong norms protecting farmers' collective land rights in the agricultural sector, contrary to the received wisdom about weak protection of land rights in China. In the rest of the paper, we first review the policy context in which this transformation has taken place. Next we introduce our method of data collection, summarize the five forms of agribusiness-farmer interaction found in our study, and analyze each of the five forms in depth. We conclude with a discussion of the causes and characteristics of the rise of agrarian capitalism, with a focus on the role of the land rights system.
Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aed3be5020f7e7d291cda8f31a501bc44a2559c0
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Citations in the corpus
- South–South Cooperation, Agribusiness, and African Agricultural Development: Brazil and China in Ghana and Mozambique (2016, background): “…provided for recognition of intellectual property rights, membership of World Trade Organization (WTO), and the vertical integration of agriculture and smallholder production through the rise of agribusiness and contract farming (Brautigam, 2009; Li, Xin, & Yuan, 2009; Zhang & Donaldson, 2008).”
- Land Transfer and the Pursuit of Agricultural Modernization in China (2015, background): “The key policies advocated (and academically debated) have been land transfer (tudi liuzhuan) and agricultural modernization – both of which relate directly to the first issue – agriculture (Zhang and Donaldson 2008; Chen 2013; Han 2014).”