by Jasper Becker.
Hardcover: New York: The Free Press, 2000. 304pp. $27.50.
Softcover: New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 464pp. $17.95.

Today's China is a rapidly changing behemoth. In the last 20 years or so, gray and dingy cities have sprouted shiny new skyscrapers and shopping malls and offered new job opportunities. Society has become more open, and even attitudes toward work, family, and politics have changed. Rural China has also been affected, with millions leaving the countryside to find work in the cities. Yet these sweeping changes have not reached every corner of China. In some remote pockets of the countryside, life goes on in almost the same way it has for centuries. And the changes that have brought rising living standards to millions (and millions to a few) have, at the same time, plunged others into desperate straits. In The Chinese, Jasper Becker, a long-time China correspondent, draws on his experience of nearly two decades living in, and reporting on, this complex country.

The book starts out with a brief overview of China's entire history, stressing events—such as the reign of the first emperor and the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century—and schools of thought, such as Legalism and Confucianism, among others, that still influence China today. Then Becker turns to exploring the genesis of different aspects of contemporary society.

He starts out with the poorest of the poor—hill tribes in southwest China—but notes that other areas, notably the northwest and the loess plateau, where Chinese civilization was born, are also severely afflicted. He then moves on to China's peasants, now taxed to the breaking point in many places by greedy local officials, and to township-and-village enterprises, which promised prosperity in the 1980s but collapsed in a heap of debt, poor management, and market saturation in the late 1990s.

He explores the urbanization debate—whether to encourage mega cities or smaller towns and cities—and the role of Special Economic Zones, which successfully attracted foreign investment but also brought back evils such as prostitution and sweatshops. He describes the decline of state-owned enterprises, once the mainstay of the Chinese economy, now collapsing in a heap of debt and corruption and giving rise to massive unemployment, and the rise of private enterprise, once the scourge of the Communist Party but now its main hope for job creation and social stability. Becker tracks the path of the nouveau riche and the rise of living standards that helped create this new class, and explains the evolution of education and healthcare, both of which have suffered greatly as the state has cut funding. He also discusses the country's intellectuals and their place in society and relationship to the Communist Party and government.

Turning to China's modern institutions, Becker discusses the relationship of the People's Liberation Army to the Party, government, and society, and he argues that the bureaucracy and legal system have changed little since imperial times, though current legal reforms hold hope for the future. In chapter after chapter, the state, Party, and personal connections (guanxi) seem to form a web of nepotism and corruption that ensnares nearly every facet of life in China and makes political reform extremely difficult.

The Chinese is written as an introduction to contemporary China for those with little knowledge of the country. Lengthy explanations of various historical periods and movements can be a little tedious to readers already familiar with them, but these passages also serve as a useful refresher and a reminder that many of China's current problems have roots in ancient and not-so-ancient history. The text is eminently readable, with well-researched background information and explanations of Chinese habits and customs, interspersed with colorful interviews with people from all walks of life. The Chinese succeeds in drawing an accurate portrait of this society and is recommended for anyone who wants to understand contemporary China better.

—Virginia A. Hulme

Virginia A. Hulme is associate editor of The CBR.

by Jonathan Unger. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2002. 272pp. $60.95 hardcover; $23.95 softcover.

As we are inundated with articles about World Trade Organization implementation, company press releases, and congressional testimony, it's easy to forget how far China has come in the last half-century. It's also easy to forget, amidst the dizzying bustle of Chinese cities, that most Chinese citizens live in the diverse landscape of the Chinese countryside. In The Transformation of Rural China, Jonathan Unger, director of the Contemporary China Centre at Australian National University, does more than remind us of these common oversights; he traces the political, ideological, and social structures in rural China from the early 1950s to the present day in a way that clarifies just how deep the roots of the country's problems lie.

The first four chapters focus on rural life under Mao. Unger spends little time dwelling on the disasters of the Great Leap Forward (1958-61) and instead sets his sights on the reorganization of collectives, which took place in its wake. He explains how "production teams" were modified to constitute a village and contain 10 to 50 households. These families collectively owned and worked a block of land, and shared the harvest. Unger points out the positive consequences of this system, including the democratic election of team leaders. In many villages, by the late 1960s, production team revenues provided economic security and almost-free healthcare, education, and welfare for the needy. But ultimately, Unger argues, it was paranoid government interference from above that caused the downfall of Mao's socialist experiment. Communist Party leaders dictated which crops to grow without taking into account local conditions. This not only resulted in failed harvests, but cut off trade between production teams, making them dependent on the state rather than on each other.

The last several chapters of the book explore the post-Mao period in both poor and prosperous areas of the countryside. Unger's research shows that the movement away from collective agriculture and toward small family holdings was not a result of farmer initiatives, as many scholars argue, but of government directives. De-collectivization raised productivity in some villages and gave farmers more freedom to decide what crops to grow, but also created new problems. Unger thoroughly explores how the land was divided among farming families, the growing gap in incomes of—and in opportunities available to—villagers, the plight of rural migrant laborers, the rise of private entrepreneurs in more prosperous rural areas, current peasant protests against local officials' abuses of the system, and grassroots elections, among other topics.

The author's long experience in China is by far the greatest strength of this book. The Transformation of Rural China is the culmination of 25 years of research and in-depth interviews with people from well over a hundred Chinese villages.

The result is a sometimes surprising view of volatile topics. For instance, Unger states that of the 31 villages he interviewed about the Cultural Revolution, 11 escaped relatively unscathed. He then plunges into the horrifying depths of those who were less fortunate. And, undermining the notion that many of China's minorities yearn for independence, Unger includes an interview with a Yao peasant in Guanxi Zhuang Autonomous Region who told him, "If we could afford to, we'd live in Han homes...we wouldn't mind, if we lived where the Han are the majority, if we were to speak Chinese at home—and wouldn't mind if our grandchildren couldn't speak Yao."

Unger points out that while most Western economists are impatiently urging a shift to a full-fledged private property regime in the Chinese countryside, a survey of 800 farmers in eight counties across China found that only 14 percent of the respondents wanted farm households to own their own land. Some farmers, particularly among minority groups, fear that their families or entire minority groups will become dispossessed because poor families will be forced to sell off their land to wealthier (usually Han) farmers to survive. Many farmers truly believe in the idea of community ownership—if it is done well.

Though Unger's field research certainly lends credence to his arguments, a closer look into the lives of the interviewees and their surroundings would have provided a much-needed personal touch and would have made for a more engaging read. Nonetheless, The Transformation of Rural China provides unparalleled insight into the heart of the Chinese countryside and should be on the reading lists of historians, economists, political scientists, and students of China alike.

—Rick Burns

Rick Burns is a former research assistant at The CBR.