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The Transformation Of Urban Vegetable Retail In China: Wet Markets, Supermarkets, And Informal Markets In Shanghai, Qian Forrest Zhang, Zi Pan
The Transformation Of Urban Vegetable Retail In China: Wet Markets, Supermarkets, And Informal Markets In Shanghai, Qian Forrest Zhang, Zi Pan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The state-monopolised system of vegetable retail in socialist urban China has transformed into a market-based system run by profit-driven actors. Publicly owned wet markets not only declined in number after the state relegated its construction to market forces, but were also thoroughly privatised, becoming venues of capital accumulation for the market operators now controlling these properties. Self-employed migrant families replaced salaried state employees in the labour force. Governments’ increased control over urban public space reduced the room for informal markets, exacerbating the scarcity of vegetable retail space. Fragmentation in the production and wholesale systems restricted modern supermarkets’ ability to establish …
China’S Agrarian Reform And The Privatization Of Land: A Contrarian View, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson
China’S Agrarian Reform And The Privatization Of Land: A Contrarian View, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Many media and scholars outside China are advocating for the privatization of land ownership in China, claiming it to be a necessary step before China can transform its agriculture into large-scale, market-oriented and technology-intensive modern agriculture. Chinese scholars advocating land privatization, on the other hand, typically argue that land privatization would offer farmers more protection of their rights. In this paper, we present a contrarian view to these calls for land privatization published in both mainstream media and academic journals. We argue that, under China’s current system of collective land ownership and individualized land use rights, the aforementioned goals can …
Comparing Local Models Of Agrarian Transition In China, Qian Forrest Zhang
Comparing Local Models Of Agrarian Transition In China, Qian Forrest Zhang
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The development of markets and the penetration of capital into agriculture have started the agrarian transition in rural China, which is transforming smallholding, household-based agriculture into various forms of capitalistic production. This again raises in a new historical and social context the long-debated question in the agrarian transition literature: Can family farms survive the onslaught of capitalist agriculture based on wage labor and what shapes the confrontation between family farms and agro-capital? I argue that it is the local political economy—rather than some natural obstacles in agriculture to the penetration of capitalism—that shapes this confrontation and gives rise to a …