The Places of Primitive Accumulation in Rural China

“Rural” is a category of enduring significance in China. The trajectories of social change in China’s rural areas reflect local dynamics and new forms of economy that encroach from local or distant cities and international sources. One indicator of change is the separation of people from their means of production: the development of the preconditions for capitalist production. Using information from villages scattered across China, this article identifies the sources of this separation and poses a theoretical question: can these changes be comprehended in a nondeterministic manner? The article demonstrates that the principal means of separating rural people from their means of production have been market based and largely local (reflecting forces within China), supplemented, however, by forcible dispossession. It also shows that the processes that drive primitive accumulation do not simply reflect an economic logic; they include environmental modernization, ethnic politics, nation building, and personal motives. The extraeconomic bases of economic change imply that primitive accumulation is not a process on a path to a known end point or to a predictable geography.