Description
Book SynopsisFor nearly four decades, China's manufacturing boom has been powered by the labor of 287 million rural migrant workers, who travel seasonally between villages where they farm for subsistence and cities where they work. Yet recently local governments have moved away from manufacturing and toward urban expansion and construction as a development strategy. As a result, at least 88 million rural people to date have lost rights to village land. In Beneath the China Boom, JuliaChuang follows the trajectories of rural workers, who were once supported by a village welfare state and are now landless. This book provides a view of the undertow of China's economic success, and the periodic crisesa rural fiscal crisis, a runaway urbanizationthat it first created and now must resolve.
Trade Review"This book is an outstanding new contribution to the literature on China’s urbanization as well as on socioeconomic development more broadly. Moreover, it is a very engaging read. I would highly recommend it to experts, scholars, as well as students from related disciplinary backgrounds."
* Asien: The German Journal on Contemporary Asia *
"Chuang’s book is a
tour de force in revealing the complexities and interconnections of China’s economic boom, especially the more recent developments occurring in the country’s interior provinces." * Exertions *
"Beneath the China Boom is an excellent example of unlocking large-scale social processes through multisited ethnography." * American Journal of Sociology *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Index of Characters
1. China’s Rise
2. A Tale of Two Villages
3. Into the World of Chinese Labor
4. Rural/Urban Dualism
5. Urbanization and the New Rural Economy
6. Paradoxes of Urbanization
7. The Future of Chinese Development
Appendix
Notes
References
Index
