Small-scale industries in rural areas in China are today an essential element of regional development programs. This monograph analyzes two main development strategies: technology choices in a number of industrial sectors and the integrated rural development strategy.

Aims to understand the process of rural industrialization in China during the post-reform period (after 1978), and brings out lessons for developing countries of Asia from the experience of the rapid growth of Chinese rural industries during the 1980s.

This book is a comprehensive and positive study of the special pattern of China's industrialization and economic development, covering all of the relevant, main policies (more than one hundred) from 1949 to the twenty-first century.

'The Industrialization of Rural China' highlights the economic & social achievements of the Maoist regime. Using a constructed dataset covering China's 2000 plus counties & complemented by a detailed econometric study of county-level industrialization in the provinces of Sichuan, Guangdong & Jiangsu, the author shows that history mattered.

"A distinctive and important contribution."—Thomas P. Bernstein, author of Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages

China and India are the most extraordinary economic success stories of the developing world. Both nations’ economies have grown dramatically over the past few decades, elevating them from two of the world’s poorest countries into projected economic superpowers. As a result, the numbers of Chinese and Indians living in poverty have rapidly fallen and per capita incomes in China and India have quadrupled and doubled, respectively. This book investigates the reasons for these staggering accomplishments and the lessons that can be applied both to other developing nations and to the problem of poverty that remains in these two countries. The contributors pay particular attention to agriculture and the rural economy, examining how initial conditions and investments and the prioritization and sequencing of different policies and strategies have led to successes, and how the agricultural and rural sectors connect to overall economic expansion. They also emphasize the importance of anti-poverty programs and safety nets in helping poor people escape poverty. The book offers a set of policy and strategic options for future growth and poverty reduction. These include setting the right priorities for public spending, identifying trade and market reforms, building social safety nets for the poorest of the poor, and building accountable institutions that can provide public goods and services effectively. The book concludes by examining future challenges to China and India’s economic development, such as the need to ensure growth that is sustainable, equitable, and environmentally friendly. The Dragon and the Elephant offers valuable insights to development specialists anxious to multiply the benefits experienced by two of the greatest economic successes in recent times.

A comprehensive analysts of China's rural reforms, this book links local experiences to national policy, showing the dynamic tension in the reform process among state policy, local cadre power and self-interest, and the peasants' search for economic growth. Key topics covered include: the responsibility system, privatization and changing property rights, industrialization, social conflict, cadre corruption, urban-rural relations, conflict over land, rural urbanization, and the impact of globalization. The introduction skillfully integrates the themes that run throughout this work and the concluding chapter focuses on current and future problems in rural China.