Countryside and the future of growth in China

 12th European conference on agriculture and rural development in China

As China once again enters a period of fundamental economic, structural, and social transformation, focus tends to be on the cities and industrial development. However, the much needed reforms, such as development of substantial and inclusive social services and security mechanisms that provide the basis for a middle class of consumers; a viable municipal revenue model and financial system that fosters efficient allocation of capital benefitting enterprises of various size as well as household consumption, will all require corresponding adjustments in the countryside.

The conventional rural challenges of agricultural production and landscape conservation as well as services and welfare for the diminishing number of farmers and other rural inhabitants remain as pressing as ever. Old divisions—some cemented in physical infrastructure of housing and other property, others stamped in registration papers—stand, while new opportunities as diverse as the credit market for farmland use rights and the rapid rise of online shopping and deliveries to towns and villages are cutting the differences and conceptual distance between the bricks and the sticks.

Diminishing the rural-urban divide has been a clear goal of the efforts to construct the New Socialist Countryside. Through direct subsidies and compensation schemes farmer welfare and fragile ecosystems are supposed to gain reprieve from hardship and degradation. Are these investments delivering a proportionate return? Are rural Chinese catching up with their urban compatriots and even their countryside counterparts in other regions?

Topics to be addressed at ECARDC XII include but are not confined to the following:

• Interconnections between the countryside and urban areas via flows of people, goods, and capital;
• Delivery of social services to short and long-distance migrants;
• Pension, health care, social assistance… – transformation of the countryside through social reforms;
• The evolving status of Chinese farmers—from peasants to citizens, from producers to consumers;
• Rural governance reforms and their global connections;
• The rise and proliferation of farming and environmental subsidies: welfare farming or welfare through (not) farming?
• The changing role and significance of land property rights from key social security provision to auxiliary asset;
• Do community and customary rights remain important for natural resource management?
• Between grazing bans and intensification: are grassland regions keeping up with the rest of the agricultural sectors?
• The role of the central and local state, farmers’ organizations, and foreign and Chinese companies in the globalization of rural China;
• China as a player on the global market for agricultural products. What will be the consequences of Chinese agricultural outsourcing to other developing and emerging economies?
• Consequences of China’s integration in global markets for the organization of agriculture, and the development of agribusinesses;
• Wine, organics, hydroponics… – the emergence and diversification of specialty farming.

Organising Committee

Core Contact: Prof. Xinping Guan, Director, Institute of Social Development and Administration, Nankai University, Tianjin, China (guanxp@nankai.edu.cn)

Please send your abstract and paper to Dr. Wen Hu, Nankai University (huwen1130@126.com, +86-18920286385)

Date

• Friday 11 – Sunday 13 December 2015

Location

• Nankai University, Tianjin, China

Deadline for submissions

• 15 July 2015

ECARDC_XII_Call_for_Papers_2015-5-22 (PDF)

Further details about the ECARDC network at www.ecardc.org

Monique Abud

Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine, EHESS, Paris, France

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