1. Contributions of particular importance in clarifying the policies in agriculture are those of Wiens, Thomas B., “Issues in the structural reform of Chinese agriculture,” The Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 11 (1987), pp. 372–384CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stone, Bruce, “Developments in agricultural technology,” The China Quarterly, No. 116 (1988), pp. 767–822CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sicular, Terry, “Agricultural planning and pricing in the post-Mao period,” The China Quarterly, No. 116 (1988), pp. 671–703CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chung, Jae Ho, “The politics of agricultural mechanization in the post-Mao era, 1977–87,” The China Quarterly, No. 134 (1993), pp. 264–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For industry see Naughton, Barry, “Inflation: patterns, causes and cures,” in Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States, China's Economic Dilemmas in the 1990s: The Problems of Reforms, Modernization and Interdependence, Vol. 1 (1991), pp. 135–159Google Scholar; and Wong, Christine, “Material allocation and decentralization: impact of the local sector on the industrial reforms,” in Perry, E. and Wong, C. (eds.), The Political Economy of Reform in Post-Mao China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).Google Scholar In finance see Prime, Penelope, “Taxation reform in China's public finance,” in Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States, China's Economic Dilemmas in the 1990s, Vol. 1 (1991), pp. 167–185.Google Scholar

2. For example, Oi, Jean, “Fiscal reform and local government response to fiscal austerity in rural China: a problem of agency,” in a paper presented at the XXI Annual Meeting of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, Tokyo, Japan, 1991Google Scholar; and Lin, Justin, “Public research resource allocation in Chinese Agriculture: a test of induced technological innovation hypotheses,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 40 (1991), pp. 55–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar have looked at how county officials and bureaucrats respond to reform policies and the new signals that are generated in the economy. Nee, Victor and Young, Fred, “Peasant entrepreneurs in China's ‘second economy’,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. XX (1989), p. 20Google Scholar; and Rozelle, Scott and Boisvert, Richard N., “Grain policy in China's villages: simulating the response of grain yields to pricing, procurement and loan policies,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 75 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar have investigated aspects of the decisions made by village leaders. Sicular, Terry, “Plan and market in China's agricultural commerce,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 96 (1988), pp. 283–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lin, Justin, “Education and innovation adoption in agriculture: evidence from hybrid rice in China,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 73 (1991), pp. 713–723CrossRefGoogle Scholar have analysed the responses of farmers to the reforms.

3. Jiyun, Tian, “Wo guo bawu nongye jihua” (“The Eighth Five-Year Plan for China's agriculture”), Renmin ribao (People's Daily), December 1991.Google Scholar

4. Parish, William L. and Whyte, Martin, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).Google Scholar

5. Oi, Jean, State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).Google Scholar

6. Walder, Andrew, Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986).Google Scholar

7. Village leaders in China vary in their ability and willingness to take control over certain management functions in the local economy. Sicular, Terry, “China's agricultural policy during the reform period,” in Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States, China's Economic Dilemmas in the 1990s, Vol. 1 (1991), pp. 304–364Google Scholar includes the results of a recent survey by a key Chinese research institute which makes it clear that the description here is not uncommon.

8. State Statistical Bureau (SSB), Zhongguo tongji nianjian (China's Statistical Yearbook) (Beijing: State Statistical Bureau Press, 1989–91)Google Scholar

9. Gaoyou and Xinghua counties were among the areas most severely affected by the record floods during the summer of 1991.

10. Buck, John L., Land Utilization in China, Statistical Volume (Nanking: Nanking University Press, 1937).Google Scholar

11. Gaoyou Statistical Bureau, Gaoyou jingji nianjian (Gaoyou Economic Yearbook) (Beijing) (Gaoyou, Jiangsu Province: Gaoyou Tongjiju, 1984).Google Scholar

12. SSB, Jiangsu tongji nianjian (Jiangsu Statistical Yearbook) (Beijing: State Statistical Bureau Press, 1989).Google Scholar

13. For data on Gaoyou county, see Gaoyou jingji nianjian; for data on Xinghua county, see Xinghua Statistical Bureau, Xinghua jingji nianjian (Xinghua Economic Yearbook) (Xinghua, Jiangsu Province: Xinghua Tongjiju, 1987).Google Scholar

14. SSB, Jiangsu tongji nianjian, 1989.Google Scholar

15. Ezhou is a single-county prefecture. Hence, Lianzihu and Huarong are actually districts. In Ezhou, however, they are customarily referred to as “county-level districts” (xianjiqu).

16. For a comparison of the agricultural productivity of counties in Hubei versus the rest of China, see SSB, Hubei jingji nianjian (Hubei Economic Yearbook) (Beijing: State Statistical Bureau Press, 1988).Google Scholar For a description of the rural economy of Ezhou, see Guizhen, Wang, Jubian zhong de Ezhou (Ezhou: In the Middle of Transition) (Beijing: Beijing Agricultural University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

17. Ezhou Statistical Bureau, Ezhou jingji nianjian (Ezhou Economic Yearbook) (Ezhou, Hubei Province: Ezhoushi Tongjiju, 1987).Google Scholar

18. See, for example, McMillan, J., Whalley, J. and Zhu, L., “The impact of China's economic reforms on agricultural productivity growth,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 97 (1989), pp. 781–807CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Shengen, Fan, “Effects of technological change and institutional reform on production growth in Chinese agriculture,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 73 (1991), pp. 266–275.Google Scholar

19. An example of such a specification is found in Lin, Justin, “The household responsibility system in China's agricultural reform: a theoretical and empirical study,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 36 (1988), pp. 199–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. For a description of imperfections in markets in the rural economy, see Justin Lin, “Farming institutions and technological choice in Chinese agriculture,” a paper presented at the Symposium on Chinese Rural Development, American Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meetings, Louisiana, July 1989; and Wiens, “Issue in the structural reform of Chinese agriculture,” pp. 372–384.

21. For limitations on hiring labour, see Taylor, Jeffrey, “Rural employment trends and the legacy of surplus labour,” The China Quarterly, No. 116 (1988), pp. 736–766.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a discussion of areas with active labour markets, see Christiansen, Flemming, “The ambiguities of labour and market in periurban communities in China during the reform decade,” in Delman, J., Ostergaard, C. and Christiansen, F. (eds.), Remaking Peasant China (Denmark: Aarhus, University Press, 1990).Google Scholar For a case study on a locality which restrict Wrings to local residents, see Xin, M., “The rural labor market,” in Byrd, W. and Lin, Q. (eds.), China's Rural Industry: Structure, Development and Reform (Washington, D.C.: World Bank Press, 1990).Google Scholar

22. Feder, Gershon, Lau, Lawrence, Lin, Justin and Xiaopeng, Luo, “The relationship Li between credit and productivity in Chinese agriculture: an application to a microeconomic model of disequilibrium,” paper presented at the American Agricultural Fxonomics Association Annual Meeting, Vancouver, Canada, August 1990.Google Scholar

23. West, Loraine, “China's rural credit policy and meeting the financing needs of farmers,” paper presented at the XXI Annual Meeting of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, Tokyo, Japan, 1991.Google Scholar

24. William Byrd, “Entrepreneurship, capital and ownership,” in Byrd and Lin, China's Rural Industry.

25. Veeck, Gregory, The Uneven Landscape: Geographical Studies in Post-Reform China (Baton Rouge, LA: GeoScience Publications, 1991).Google Scholar

26. Guanzhong, Wen, “The current land tenure system and its impact on the long term performance of the farming sector: the case of modem China,” mimeo, Department of Economics, The University of Chicago, 1989.Google Scholar

27. Johnson, D. Gayle, “Economic and non-economic factors in Chinese rural development,” Office of Agricultural Economics Research, The University of Chicago, Paper No. 89:13, 1989.Google Scholar

28. Sicular, “Agricultural policy during the reform period.”

29. Crook, Frederick W., “Land tenure in the People's Republic of China,” CPE Agricultural Report, Vol. III, No. 6, 1990.Google Scholar

30. Sicular, “Agricultural policy during the reform period.”

31. Oi, Stale and Peasant in Contemporary China.

32. Sijing, Su, “On China's labor market,” mimeo, Department of Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1989.Google Scholar

33. In other analyses of labour markets in rural areas similar restrictions are reported on the flow of wage labourers. See, for example, Q. Wu, H. Wang and X. Xu, “Non-economic determinants of workers’ incomes,” in Byrd and Lin, China's Rural Industry.

34. Rozelle, Scott, “Increasing inequality and rural industrialization,” mimeo, Stanford University, 1992.Google Scholar

35. Rozelle, Scott and Boisvert, Richard N., “Grain policy in China's villages,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 74 (November 1992), pp. 122–145.Google Scholar

36. These decisions facing village leaders are the same ones described by Wiens, Thomas B., The Microeconomics of Peasant Economy: China, 1920–1940 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1982).Google Scholar In his micro-economic analysis of decision-making in Chinese agriculture in the 1930s, Wien argues, “If fanners are constrained by endowments of land and capital, and if the ratio of endowed capital to endowed land increases with the farm size, then … smaller farms will use higher labor (and capital) intensities than larger farms” (p. 28). While Wiens uses these agro-technological relationships to explain the landlord's choice of the amount of land rented to peasants, it seems reasonable to assume that similar factors would account for the behaviour of village cadres as they continually reallocate land among farm households.

37. Although his sample regions are more widely dispersed, the same divergence of wage patterns is found in Xin, “The rural labor market.” The explanation in his analysis also depends on the fact that the industrial market structure is not perfectly competitive either within or among areas.

38. See Crook, Frederick W., “China's current household contract system (part I),” CPE Agricultural Report, Vol. II, No. 3, May/June 1989Google Scholar for a translated example of a contract from one of this study's sites.

39. Qiaolun Ye, “Price and non-price factors in the determinants of fertilizer use in reform China,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Food Research Institute, Stanford University, 1992. Ye demonstrates in a multi-variate regression framework that the farmer's grain delivery quota was but one of several factors that determined subsidized input distribution.