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Because the present-day Chinese academic system gives little value to monographic studies, and non-Chinese scholars are very, very rarely able to compose in Chinese, Chinese studies today severely lacks high quality monographic research in Chinese. At the same time, most Chinese scholars in China (distinguished from Chinese-origin scholars abroad) are generally only able to translate from English into their mother tongue Chinese, and seldom able to do the reverse of translating into their non-mother tongue English. As a result, quality English-language studies by mainland Chinese scholars are also rare. On a global level, therefore, high quality book-length scholarship on China is in fact largely limited to English language studies by non-Chinese foreign scholars and overseas Chinese scholars, and is severely lacking in studies by mainland Chinese scholars, whether in Chinese or English. This is a situation that cries out urgently for change. 摘要: 由于中国国内的学术体系相对轻视专著，而非华裔学者们则罕有能够用中文写作专著者，现有的中文中国研究文献中极少有优秀的专著。同时，中国大陆的学者（区别于海外华裔学者）多只能将外语翻成自己的中文母语，少有能够将中文翻成非自己母语的英文外语者，因此，现有英语文献也少有优秀的中国大陆学者的著作。在全球范围中，目前的中国研究实际上高度偏重外国学者和海外华裔学者的英文原作，严重缺乏高水平的中国学者的中文或英文原作。这是个亟须改进的局面。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking back at the past half-century since the founding of the journal Modern China in 1975, we can see that in the beginning non–Chinese American scholars accounted for fully 73 percent of all articles. That figure remained at a fairly high 64 percent at the end of the century, but has declined greatly since, first down to 26 percent by 2005-2009, and further to just 11 percent in 2020-2022. That decline has been partly countered by the increasing numbers of Chinese-origin scholars (US citizens or not) based in the United States. At the same time, the proportion of articles published by mainland China–based scholars has steadily increased in the past two decades, reaching the present 28 percent. If we add to that articles by Chinese-origin scholars both inside and outside the United States, citizens or not, the total proportion rises to 65 percent, nearly two-thirds of all our articles, a sea change for the journal. Alongside that change, there has been the rise and expansion also of non–Chinese-origin scholars in the rest of the English–language world outside the United States, who now account for 24 percent of all our articles. Together these changes tell about the dramatic transnationalization of English language–based China studies as a whole, from mainly non–Chinese-origin American scholars to an ever-increasing proportion of Chinese-origin scholars, and from mainly a US endeavor to an ever more transnational one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In socialist China today, neoliberal economics has actually come to wield institutionalized hegemonic power in academic evaluations of economic studies, while in neoliberal America, there is ironically considerably more pluralism in the practice of academic evaluations of economic studies. The origins of this state of affairs lie not in just a simple matter of ideology or policy choices, but rather in different tendencies in the operative practices of two different systems of governance. While China leans strongly toward centralized bureaucratism, along with scientism and numericism, the United States leans more toward multicentered pluralistic practices. Regardless, what scholarship needs is pluralistic contention for sustained long-term development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chayanov, outside of his theoretical analysis of how peasant households are distinctive for being at once a production and a consumption unit, and the multiple implications of that fact, has made two other major theoretical contributions, one making clear that peasant economies observe the logic of "differential optimums" rather than the simple logic of economies of scale, the other having to do with the need for co-operatives for "vertical integration" of small peasant economies, in order to preserve for the peasants more of the value of their products in the BIG MARKET. The former can be readily observed in the "new agriculture revolution" of the Chinese economy in the past few decades; the latter can be readily seen in the striking modernization of the "East Asian" (i.e. Japan, South Korea, and the Taiwan area) economies since 1945. China's annual "Number One Documents" about agriculture of the past two decades have shown how the country first mistakenly tried to imitate the simple scale-economy logic of the United States, and then shifted since 2018 toward a new emphasis on the peasants as the principal agents of agricultural development and of peasant villages as the basic unit for agricultural co-ops. Those have been the basis for new advances as well as for reinterpretations and modifications of Chayanov's two major theoretical visions. 摘要: 除了关于小农户作为一个既是生产也是消费的独特经济单位而形成的诸多特点的理论论析之外，恰亚诺夫的另外两大理论贡献，一是说明小农经济生产遵循的不是简单的规模经济效益，而是"差异化最优"的逻辑，二是提出小农户为了应对大市场，需要扎根于小农户自身组织的"纵向一体化"的合作社来维护其生产收益。前者可以充分见证于中国近几十年来的"新农业革命"，后者则特别清晰地展示于"东亚地区"（主要指日本、韩国及中国台湾地区）1945年以来非常突出的小农经济现代化经验。近二十年的中央一号文件充分见证了国家农政的重点之前在模仿美国模式和简单的规模经济效益理论，但在 2018 年以来则转向以小农经济为生产主体和以小农户为合作社主体的新趋向，既见证也推进和选择性地重新解读了上述恰亚诺夫的两大理论洞见。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chayanov, outside of his theoretical analysis of how peasant households are distinctive for being at once a production and a consumption unit and the multiple implications of that fact, has made two other major theoretical contributions, one making clear that peasant economies observe the logic of "differential optimums" rather than the simple logic of economies of scale and the other having to do with the need for co-operatives for "vertical integration" of small peasant economies in order to preserve for the peasants more of the value of their products in the BIG MARKET. The former can be readily observed in the "new agriculture revolution" of the Chinese economy in the past few decades; the latter can be readily seen in the striking modernization of the "East Asian" (i.e., Japan, South Korea, and the Taiwan area) economies since 1945. China's annual "Number One Documents" about agriculture of the past two decades have shown how the country first mistakenly tried to imitate the simple scale-economy logic of the United States and then shifted since 2018 toward a new emphasis on the peasants as the principal agents of agricultural development and peasant villages as the basic unit for agricultural co-ops. Those have been the basis for new advances as well as for reinterpretations and modifications of Chayanov's two major theoretical visions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kenneth Pomeranz and Li Bozhong have recently conceded that they had been wrong that "the great divergence" between China and the West occurred only after 1800, but they continue to insist that when it came to agriculture and its labor productivity, their earlier argument still holds. This article summarizes the broad differences between eighteenth-century England's crops cum animal husbandry agriculture and China's crops-only agriculture to demonstrate the fundamental differences between the two. It is time we recognize fully how very different the two were and are, and how and why each follows an entirely different pattern to modern development. It is simply wrong to continue to obscure those basic differences by insisting on equivalence between them. 摘要 彭慕兰 (Kenneth Pomeranz) 和李伯重最近承认自己过去坚持中国和西方经济的"大分流"要到1800年之后方才出现是错误的，但他们仍然坚持，在农业和农业劳动生产率方面自己原来的论点是正确的。本文总结英格兰18世纪以来的农牧结合模式和中国的单一种植模式的根本不同。我们需要掌握两者的差异才能认识到其过去和未来发展出路的不同。坚持两者的相同和相等性只可能继续导致错误的认识和抉择。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In socialist China today, neoliberal economics has actually come to wield institutionalized hegemonic power in academic evaluations of economic studies, while in neoliberal America, there is actually considerably more pluralism in the practice of academic evaluations of economic studies. The origins of this state of affairs lie not in just a simple matter of ideology or policy choices, but rather in different tendencies in the actual practices of two different systems of governance. While China leans strongly toward centralized bureaucratism, along with scientism and numericalism, the U.S. leans more toward multi-centered pluralistic practices. What scholarship needs is pluralistic contentions for sustained long-term development. 摘要 在社会主义的中国，如今新自由主义经济学居然已经占到制度化了的学术霸权地位；而在自由主义的美国，反倒展示相当程度多元化的学术评估实践。究其根本，来源不在简单的意识形态或某种决策，而在强烈的体系化运作倾向。前者倾向集中的官僚主义、"科学主义"和数据化主义运作，后者则比较倾向多元化的实际运作。学术需要的是多元争鸣的实际运作才会具有长远的生命力。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory and ideology of mainstream Anglo-American "marketism" do not accord with reality. Its core idea—equating all trade with equal and mutually beneficial market exchanges, and believing that such exchanges are certain to lead to division of labor and transformative changes in labor productivity—is a one-sided, idealized construction. It erases unequal exchanges under imperialism and ignores the realities of the use of cheap informal labor in developing countries by hegemonic capital in the globalized economy. It also disregards pervasive unethical pursuits of profit among producers and widespread human weaknesses among consumers. If we proceed instead from China's actual experiences, we can come to see and grasp the many different varieties of trade that differ from the abstractions of conventional marketism, including the "commercialization of extraction" that long characterized the principally unidirectional "trade" based on severe inequities between town and country, as well as the "growth without (labor productivity) development," or "involutionary commercialization," that long characterized domestic Chinese commerce that emerged under severe population pressures on the land. If we turn instead to the "take-off" period of the recent decades in Chinese economic development, we can see also the great contrast between Chinese realities and the mainstream economics construct of a "laissez faire state," and see instead the state engaging most actively in development, and state-owned enterprises working closely together with private enterprises. Those realities are perhaps most evident in the recent dramatic development of China's mammoth real estate economy that has been the main engine of rapid development since about 2000—most especially in its immense process of the "capitalization of land." We can also see how the tradition of the "socialist planned economy" has operated in unison with the new capitalist market economy, by combining the twin ideals and mechanisms of "people's livelihood" and "private profit." What is needed is a new kind of political economy that can grasp and illuminate such changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the most basic level of governance, China had long relied on a state-society interactive "third sphere" approach, leaving considerable space for societal self-governance, lightening thereby the oppressiveness of bureaucratic government. This article delineates once more the modes and operative mechanisms of that third-sphere mode of governance. After China entered its revolutionary and contemporary periods, that system was transformed by the rise of Communist Party organization into a new third sphere model with a close relationship between party leadership and popular participation. It turned out to be one that released immense energies, as evidenced in the revolutionary movement and the "people's war" that ended in victories first over Japanese occupation, then in the civil war against the Guomindang, and further in fighting to a standstill the even stronger U.S. led forces in the Korean War. That party and people combination evinced great energies also in the early-stage cooperatives based on the natural villages (and the return back to that mode of organization by 1963 after the errors of the Great Leap Forward), and again in the Reform era when the party-state yielded individual decision-making powers in the newly marketized economy to peasant households through the "responsibility land system." To be sure, there were also multiple errors of excessive bureaucratic control along the way. Nevertheless, even today, a mutually beneficial cooperative relationship between the party and the people can still be a good path for basic-level governance, one that could counter the excesses of "bureaucratism" and its "iron cage" effects, to enter into a kind of (popular) participatory socialist market economy, distinguished from a controlling bureaucratic socialist planned economy. 摘要: 在最基层的治理中，中国长期以来广泛采用由官方和民间互动所形成的"第三领域"，给予基层社会相当高度自主的空间，减轻了官僚体系的压迫性。本文重新系统梳理其中的运作方式和机制。进入现当代，由于崭新的中国共产党组织的兴起，形成一个新型的党与人民二元结合的第三领域模式，通过党组织的领导和人民的积极参与发挥了巨大的能量，可以见于中国革命和"人民战争"中诸多实例，在抗战和内战中取得胜利，更在抗美援朝战争中, 凭借党与军队紧密结合的优势而与更加强大的敌人打成平手。之后也多次展示其威力，尤其是在初级合作社阶段，并在大跃进失败之后返回那样以生产小组（自然村）为基本单位的组织模式，以及再后来的赋权赋能予农民的承包制改革中。虽然，也曾显示过脱离实际和过分由上而下的官僚主义命令型弊端。今天，党与农民的良性二元结合仍然不失为一个可以采用的治理进路，可以借此来克服官僚主义和科层制"铁笼"的弊端，进入一种民众参与式的社会主义市场经济，区别于管控式的官僚主义计划经济模式。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the history of the word "involution," the empirical basis of the concept of "agricultural involution," and the mechanisms operating behind that phenomenon. It then considers the very different empirical bases and mechanisms of "bureaucratic involution." State and peasant might interact in a positive way that leads to development – as when the state in the Reform era gave peasants the power and right to respond to market stimuli and develop the "labor and capital dual intensifying" "new agriculture" that has led to genuine development, demonstrating how small peasants have been the true primary subjects of Chinese agriculture and the true key to genuine agricultural development. By contrast, if bureaucratic involution should force on peasants policies that run counter to realities, it can lead to malignant "ultra-involution." Similar consequences can be seen in spheres with scarce opportunities relative to the number of people seeking them, once they are placed under the forces of bureaucratic involution, as in the "examinations-above-all-else education system" as well as in similar (public and private) enterprise management. That is why the word "involution" has recently triggered such widespread resonance among so very many people. What is needed is state-party policies that truly accord with the interests of the people and draw their active participation. That kind of combination is what can check tendencies toward ultra-involution. 摘要: 文章首先梳理"内卷"一词的历史，并总结"农业内卷化"概括的经验依据以及其运作机制。然后，进而讨论"官僚主义内卷化"的很不一样的经验依据和机制。在政府和农业的互动中，两者可能良性结合——特别是改革期间国家赋权赋能予小农之后所呈现的市场经济中的"劳动与资本双密集化"的"新农业"发展，说明小农户乃是中国农业的真正主体，也是中国农业真正现代化的关键。但是，当官僚主义强加于小农不符实际的设想，它会导致恶性的违反农民意愿和利益的"超内卷化"。类似的现象可以见于机会相对稀缺和竞争者相对众多，处于官僚主义内卷化之下的应试教育制度以及与其相似的（公私）企业管理体系。"内卷"一词因此而在最近触发了人们广泛和深层的共鸣。抑制超内卷化的倾向需要结合党和国家的良性领导与人民的积极参与。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how the “old agriculture” of grain production operates today mainly by an administrative model, while the “new agriculture” of high-value-added products (high-end vegetables, fruits, meat-poultry-fish, and eggs-milk) operates mainly by a laissez faire market model. The former serves to protect low-value agricultural products from violent market price swings and international competition to ensure China’s “grain security,” but is prone to a commandist approach that can disregard peasant interests and wishes. The latter has stimulated peasant initiatives through market incentives, but suffers from violent price fluctuations and merchant extractions. A third model, “specialty co-ops,” has thus far been guided by a mistaken model of trying to imitate U.S. co-ops, which are purely economic entities, to the disregard of Chinese village communities. This article urges the adoption of an “East Asian” model of semi-governmental, integrated co-ops based on peasant communities (villages), extending from there up through the governmental hierarchy of townships, counties, provinces, and the central levels. Such co-ops provide “vertical integration” (processing and marketing) services for small-peasant agricultural products, offer technical assistance, organize the purchase and supply of agricultural inputs, extend credit services, engage in community activities, and see to peasant social-political interests, as was done so successfully in Japan-Korea-Taiwan, most especially during the period when their per capita GDP and relative proportions of industry and agriculture stood at levels roughly comparable to China’s today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to provide a broad overview response to the question: Whence and whither Chinese agriculture? The point of departure is a summary and discussion of the ten articles of this symposium, five empirical and theoretical discussions from economic historians, two from scholars doing solid and illuminating research on the "new agriculture," and finally three that explore the issue of what road Chinese agriculture should adopt for the future. The article places the agricultural and rural history of the People's Republic into the broad perspective of changes since the eighteenth century. It distinguishes between cooperativization, collectivization, and the people's communes, and between the open-field "old" grain agriculture and the high-value-added "new agriculture." It examines the differences between the New World's "lots of land and few people" and the East Asian "lots of people and little land" agricultures, and the former's land-and-capital-dual-intensifying and the latter's labor-andcapital-dual-intensifying paths of modern change. From that perspective, it examines the successes and failures of the people's communes vs. cooperativization-collectivization, of dragon-head enterprises vs. small peasants, and of the American specialty co-ops vs. the East Asian integrated co-ops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an updated overview of China's "informal economy," based mainly on social-economic and legal history, and attempts to clarify its conceptual origins, composition, nature, size, and changes in the past thirty-five years. Special attention is paid to the rise of "dispatch work" and of the "new generation peasant workers" in the past decade. The article then introduces and discusses the content and issues raised by the six articles and two commentaries of the symposium, "China's Informal Economy, Reconsidered." The focus is on how China's "informal economy" is different from or the same as the older category of "the proletariat" and the newer category of "the precariat." 本文从社会经济史与法律史的视角对中国的非正经济进行更新了的综述,试图澄清其概念起源,以及其构成、性质、规模和近三十五年中的变化。文章特别关注到最近十来年中"劳务派遣"以及"新生代农民工"的兴起。然后,文章介绍了本专辑"中国非正规经济——再思考"所纳入的六篇论文和两篇点评,主要关注的问题是中国的"非正规经济"和之前被广泛使用的"无产阶级"以及新近被使用的"危难工人"(precariat)两个范畴之间的异同。 (This article is in English.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]