BOOK REVIEWS

Samuel P. S. Ho and Y. Y. Kueh eds., Sustainable Economic Development in South China

The articles in this collection, edited by Samuel P. S. Ho and Y. Y. Kueh, are the work of Chinese members of a Canadian research project investigating sustainable economic development in South China. The aim of the volume is to provide a report on the changes in the Chinese countryside due to industrialisation since 1978, by focusing on an area limited to ten provinces (Anhui, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Szechuan, Yunnan, and Zhejiang) and two municipalities (Chungking and Wuhan).

The volume consists of four subsections covering the following aspects: 1) the means employed to organise and allocate capital and labour; 2) the problems arising from the industrialisation of the countryside, and its consequences for the prospects of sustainable development; 3) the reactions of local administrations to the consequences of the agricultural reforms; and 4) the management of the land in a rural society facing rapid urbanisation and largely orienting itself towards an industrial market economy.

These are familiar issues. The collection edited by Ho and Kueh provides a clear and convincing account of them, but its main interest lies in its case studies and its close analyses of these general problems in their local rural context. The different chapters are linked by their shared concern with questions such as the role of local administrations in agricultural production, the changes in the different sectors of rural society, and that society’s links with the urban centres. The authors analyse the practices and the policies of the public authorities, and suggest what solutions to their problems they might adopt in the future.

For example, Xu Zhiming throws light on the dependent relationships between the local administrations and the collective enterprises in the Suzhou area by examining the ways in which investments for development are raised. He shows how, within the current decentralised economy, investment in rural industries comes from several sources: from official banking channels, from the employees of the collective enterprises themselves, from external contributors or the local community at large and, finally, since 1992, from loans raised by the enterprise or its shareholders. Before central government opposition reduced their extent quite considerably, funds were also raised either from informal financial bodies dependent on the township or village authorities, which were not officially recognised by the People’s Bank of China, or else they took the form of direct loans from these same authorities. A higher local authority could also use its administrative power over enterprises that depended upon it, in order to raise loans from production units enjoying certain advantages on behalf of those in difficulty.

Wu Qun lays out in detail the perverse effects of excessive dispersal within rural industrialisation: on the one hand it stops enterprises belonging to villages and rural communities from benefiting from economies of scale, and on the other it does not allow the authorities to mount an effective struggle against industrial pollution, to put a limit on the reduction of agricultural land, to develop profitable services, and to effectively build their villages into small towns. The writer then goes on to show the solutions adopted, and the attempts at economic concentration, in a large part of Jiangsu province. Their achievements are indisputable. The enterprises in the localities concerned have witnessed a rise in productivity, along with technological progress and a simultaneous reduction in pollution. Nevertheless, this process of relocation and geographical concentration of firms in specialised industrial zones is still held back by the basic Chinese law, which compels local authorities to deal only with their own administrative territory. This means that they follow a strict pattern of dispersing industrial sites, which is detrimental to future economic development. In this regard, Wu Qun emphasises the extent to which the Chinese economy remains subject to essentially political considerations.

Wei Xiangdong takes up the theme of economic concentrations through the example of Shengze in Jiangsu province, said to be the first of China’s rural industrial townships. Thanks to a high degree of specialisation based on modern methods of production and trade, this regional centre of silk production has achieved a rapid increase in per capita income, and a large degree of urbanisation. It now offers itself as a model for others.

Other articles deal with related matters, such as the efforts by the Nanking municipal authorities to raise investments, aimed at sustaining productivity and increasing agricultural production in accordance with a long-term strategy for keeping up with the swiftly rising peasant incomes (the article by Yan Yinglong). The article by Bao Zhongshun takes a more global view, dealing with the inadequacy of services (such as credit, or information) provided to the agricultural producers in Jiangsu province, and he points to the regional disparities in this respect—the southern area benefiting from the collective practices of the peasants themselves even more than from the greater dynamism of the local cadres. Another article, by Lu Liansheng, is concerned with the various measures adopted by the authorities in Anhui to control the reduction in agricultural land and to set up “economic belts” around the towns, thus placing a limit on urban sprawl.

To sum up, this is a very readable book. It manages to deal with the economic issues, while avoiding excessive recourse to mathematical formulations, by relying principally on concrete descriptions. It will be equally valuable to economists, specialists in rural affairs, geographers, sociologists, and experts on questions relating to local administration in China.