Peasants, Rural society and the Modernization of a Nation State: A Review of “Idylls and Rhapsodies”

In discussing the “three rural issues,” neoliberal market theory sees state extraction as the sole cause of the agricultural crisis, based on the self-evident premise that the problem can be solved if the state withdraws and marketization is implemented. The problems caused by the market are attributed to flaws in the countryside itself. However, the agricultural market is clearly located outside of the countryside. Neoliberalism does not provide an answer to the question of where the market space for Chinese agriculture is and whether or not Chinese agriculture currently has that space. This should be the crux of the issue and the starting point for debating whether the state should withdraw from agriculture. And, in examining the historical motives of state extraction, the issue must be placed within the historical framework of the formation of the nation-state since the late Qing Dynasty, because it was from this time that state power entered the lowest levels of rural society. Before 1949, the historical conditions for the formation of the urban-rural dichotomy had already existed. Since the late Qing Dynasty, the pressures of modernization have created an urban-rural dichotomy that differs from the pre-modern urban-rural relationship. This distinction is critical to understanding modern and later Chinese rural problems.