De-peasantization:Agrarian Transformation In The Context Of State-led Development

Chinese society as a whole is going through a rapid transformation, in which the rural society and agriculture are no exceptions. In view of this context, this dissertation proceeds to analyze the concrete practice and influence of the agricultural modernization development strategies of rural China. Applying a humanistic research methodology, this dissertation presents with case studies the agricultural changes of Ping Town in Southern Anhui Province after the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees. Between2007and2014, the agriculture of Ping Town, shifted from peasant farm to capitalist farm, and now the family farm has become the dominant form of production. In other words, agricultural production in Ping Town has changed from the hands of8,700households of peasants into the control of five agricultural companies and nearly100family farmers. By carrying out an in-depth field survey, the author found that the Ping Town government has started its farmland infrastructure improvements with the support of a series of agricultural modernization programs since2007, which has resulted in the penetration of capital into the countryside, large-scale land transfers and the development of modern agriculture.The research has revealed that, as a major agricultural town in a large industrial county and faced with financial pressure after the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, Ping Town sought for various agriculture-related programs from the above to transform the local agriculture carried out by the "left-behind","the elderly" and "the weak" against the backdrop of massive outflows of rural labor, when the whole country is pushing for agricultural modernization development strategies. With the aid of various investments in forms of many agricultural modernization programs, the government of Ping Town has modernized the physical base (i.e., roads, irrigation and water conservancy, and farmland) of its agricultural production, which not only facilitates large-scale management and mechanized operations but also completely replaces the peasant production-oriented field irrigation and water conservancy system.Second, by providing preferential policies, big household production subsidies and facilitating capitals to permeate the countryside, the government has encouraged large-scale land transfer, with the purpose of replacing the local "left-behind agriculture" with enterprise-based capitalist farm. However, these Agricultural companies have not been able to conquer either the natural barriers for capital-intensive agriculture, or the social obstacles posed by peasant resistance in Ping Town, and they quitted agricultural production, or transformed their development strategies. In face of the failure of capitalist farms in thousands acres and the ceaseless resistance of peasants, the government began to reform the standards and rules of land consolidation and land transfer, meanwhile encourage the development of family farms. The "agrarian transformation" process from peasant farming to capitalist farms and finally to family farms in Ping Town has manifested defining characteristics of de-peasantization, as mainly embodied in the following two aspects:First, the "capitalist" agricultural business pattern has stripped out the characteristics of peasant economy, and the agricultural management system has dis-embedded from the rural society and begun to comply with the highly commercialized market system; second, the new-type of family farms still preserve the outlook of family farming, but the commercialized reproduction of farms no longer follow the dominant organizational logic in peasant economy.The research also found that it’s difficult to explain such a great transformation with the Marxist theory that "large-scale production" is superior to "small-scale production". Just the opposite, these capitalist enterprise farms, which are deemed as constituting an "advanced" production mode, are not that "advanced" in the real sense, as their market competitiveness is mainly derived from the intervention and support of the state, and they must rely on state financial subsidies and programs to sustain their survival. In addition, the highly commercialized family farms do not pose themselves as a good substitution of capitalist agriculture; nor do they represent the victory of peasant business pattern. On the contrary, with the complete commercialization of the reproduction factors of farms, the entire agricultural production system have deeply integrated into market exchanges, and the relations of production and reproduction of family farms have been intensively embedded in the capital-dominated market economy, and these new family farms have to face new market dilemma. In the end, seen from the profit distribution perspective, the benefit of agricultural development is not shared by most peasants. Just the opposite, the value of agricultural production of family farms is increasingly being taken away by industrial and commercial capitals; as for the profits in the production, the peasants’ share is being gradually squeezed by external industrial and commercial capitals by means of market exchanges, circulation and processing; the agricultural profits in the production process previously retained in the hands of peasants are flowing out step by step. Independent family farms still can not exist on their own in a context of capitalist economy, and have formed new relations in terms of labor division and subordination in the market, and constituted new market dependence together with capitals.In short, the rural population outflows and the government interventions through agricultural modernization programs have promoted the full-scale agrarian transformation in Ping Town. To be specific, both agricultural production and agriculture governance have manifested a highly uniform "de-peasantization". In the process of "de-peasantization", the agricultural sector which used to sustain tens of thousands of peasants self-employment has now become the "business" of nearly100farmers due to the government intervention, and what used to be the public agricultural resources shared by all the peasants have now been redistributed to a few elites, which was the essence of the development of agricultural modernization in Ping Town. More specifically, only a few peasants benefited from the agricultural modernization intervened by the government, while most of them are leading an increasingly intense life and undertaking the higher pressure with commercialization of subsistence. That is the achievements of "development" seized by only a few.