How does China maintain authoritarian rule while it is committed to market-oriented economic reforms? This book analyzes this puzzle by offering a systematic an

Explores the economic, social and financial changes that have transformed China's rural governance over the past twenty years.

The financial burden imposed upon the Chinese farmer by local taxes has become a major source of discontent in the Chinese countryside and a worrisome source of

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

Presents a story of two Chinas – an entrepreneurial rural China and a state-controlled urban China. In the 1980s, rural China gained the upper hand. In the 19