Social Economy in China and the World

Thirty years of economic transformation have changed China and turned it into one of the major players in the global capitalist economy. However, China's economic growth has generated rising problems in inequality, alienation, and sustainability. The crises that gave birth to experiments in social or solidarity economy are the "agrarian crises" of the late 1990s, and the continuous migration and labor conflicts, both being problems of systemic sustainability. "Agrarian crisis" refers to the intertwined problems in sustaining rural production, rural community, and rural livelihood. Three decades ago, the rural reform instituted a separation between ownership and management of farm land. While the ownership of farm land remains collective, the reform made land use and management rights household based. Since the 1990s, much of rural China has seen a decline in agricultural production, the fragmentation and atomization of community life, and difficulties in community cultural reproduction. The family-based peasant economy could neither achieve productivity nor sustain social reproduction, making it difficult to increase the farmers' income, and impossible to develop economic activities other than agriculture in rural areas.