| Social transformation started when rural economic reform was carried out in the late 1970s in China. Rural poverty, which had been neglected and ignored for more than 20 years, has become the focus of researchers'concern, to which policy-makers have also devoted considerable consideration. Under the leadership of The Central Government, national anti-poverty campaign took place on a large scale. After 20 years'effort to fight against poverty, China has made considerable achievements in the rural anti-poverty endeavor. But on the one hand, the research about rural poverty nearly stagnated and, since 2000, anti-poverty practice has plunged into a state of low efficiency; on the other hand, the increase of peasants'income has been getting tardier and tardier in the recent years. Income gaps between the rich and the poor, which dwindled a little once, are getting much wider and wider with an irreversibly increasing tendency, plunging our society into severe income disparity and polarization. To explore the deep cause and the mechanism of the reproduction of poverty in countryside will help us understand and keep track of the characteristics of rural poverty, as well as its developing trend. It will also provide a theoretical basis and solid evidence for policy-makers to make policies for the alleviation of rural poverty.This paper, through a detailed discussion and analysis of social exclusion and poverty, probes into rural poverty in China from the perspective of social exclusion, and aims to establish the causal model and the mechanism of the poverty reproduction. It focuses on the exploration of the cause of rural poverty and claims that China's rural poverty in the context of social transformation results from the interaction between historical factors, natural factors, peasants'individual factors and social exclusion originating from the public policy system. Though historical factors, natural factors and peasants'individual factors are correlated to rural poverty, the existing dual social system and social policies, which came into being in the planned economy,together with market factors, have particularly deteriorated rural poverty, which hinders the fast development of the countryside. Rural poverty, therefore, is an inevitable consequence of the influence of the institutional exclusion and the other factors mentioned above, which are not only enhancing peasants'poverty in China, but also producing new sorts of poverty and lending it arduous for us to eliminate the rural poverty. The conclusion is that what is essential to get rid of rural poverty is to take into account making an integrated social policy which incorporates city and countryside so as to eliminate social exclusion in rural area, and that developmental social policies should be effectively carried out to aid poor peasants in order to promote their ability of self-development and self-accumulation in the context of building a harmonious socialist society.This paper comprises six chapters. The first chapter mainly discusses the context and reason of this subject, research scope, methods and data sources. It also introduces the structure, innovation, limitations of this paper, as well as the difficulties we encountered in the course of the survey and analysis.The second chapter reviews the theories of social exclusion and poverty. On the basis of analyzing the limitations of the existing studies, it defines social exclusion and poverty again and gives a brief presentation of its main content and task. Chapter 3 sums up the characteristics of rural poverty through the case study of the poor counties in the hilly countryside in Jiangxi and Hunan Province, which are viewed as the poorest ones by the Central Government. After analyzing the evidence collected from the case study, we establish the casual model of rural poverty in China.On the basis of the data colleted through our survey, Chapter 4 expatiates on the influence of historical factors, natural factors, peasants'individual factors on the rural economy and society, and analyzes social exclusion originating from the dual policy system. It suggests that rural areas have undergone social exclusion for a long time, which embodies in five dimensions such as economic, political, social life, welfare system, cultural and educational exclusion. From the analysis of the chapter, it is clear and obvious that social exclusion is the deep-rooted cause of rural poverty. The chapter also reveals the characteristics of social exclusion in rural area in China..Chapter 5 puts forward some countermeasures to fight poverty in the context of building a harmonious socialist society. It emphasizes that, to alleviate rural poverty, we should eradicate the institutional social exclusion, implement developmental policies in countryside, promote peasants'ability of self-development and self-accumulation, and so on.The last chapter stresses that poverty has exerted great harmful influence on the rural society and comes to the conclusion that only when we have eliminated all kinds of inequalities resulting from social exclusion through the innovation of policy system, can we guarantee rural resident to participate in social activities in an equal manner and to ensure them a fair social development. It should be noted that this is the rational choice and the only way for us to get rid of rural poverty, build up a well-off society, and realize our great blueprint of building a harmonious socialist society...
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