Half Working And Half Farming

This is an empirical research on social structures’changes in contemporary rural China by the perspective of social class.Under the background of urbanization, peasants migrate on a large scale and rural areas’social structure changes orderly. It is very meaningful to illustrate and analyses these questions. This article analyses basic modes of the interaction between peasants and modern market economy under the background of Chinese rural-urban binary structure, basic methods of peasants migration to urban areas in Chinese context, and corresponding basic logics of agricultural adaptability’s variation.Scholars mainly discuss "changes of rural social structure" by the theoretical structure of market. This means that they hypothesis peasants enter into market system and then discuss peasants’rim condition which is both an uptrend and at same time restricted by institutions. However, most scholars ignore the institution factor which influences urban-rural binary structure and preserves the basic structure of family farming by separating rural areas from urban areas. They cannot explain why most peasants are in the edge of modern world, but at the same time Chinese social structure is sustainable. This article tries to avoid these flaws. From family farming in the system of urban-rural, this article treats peasants as the initiative of urban-rural binary structure. This means that peasants are not permanent social class. Also this article can view the changes of social structure as an orderly migration and classification of peasants and an orderly urbanization process of peasants’ migration to urban areas and endogenous development of family farming.This article’s empirical proposition is that in the binary structure of urban-rural most peasants live in the mode of half work and half farming by the base of intergenerational labor. The mode of half work and half farming reproduces the character of peasants between urban and rural areas. Peasants can enter into urban areas respectably and go back rural home freely, preventing them from dropping down to the edge of society. At the same time, for rural land can voluntary circulate, new middle-class of peasants adjust to the migration of gradual urbanization. The changes of rural areas have a primary side and a secondary side, which can provide social bases of peasants’orderly migration. On the contrary, if authorities abolish the protective binary structure of urban-rural or rural market develops without any restricts, it will destroy the order of peasants’migration and social development, and eventually Chinese peasants and rural areas will be like the United Kingdom’s, which means that the peasants of top class will exclude lower middle class. That will be a regression of Chinese modernization.The structure of half working and half farming is a basic concept and category for describing and explaining Chinese rural areas’changes. It correctly responds how revolutions and reforms in20th century have influenced contemporary social structures. It views peasants as an initiative position of social economy rather than the edge of modernization. The development of half work and half farming indicates that Chinese peasants extend their subjectivity after they turned over in the built of socialist regime. Traditional peasants have migrated and classified orderly into a part of modern social structure.