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Since the mid-2000s, rural development and politics in China has entered a new phase that revolves around what the central government calls 'agricultural modernization'. Transforming the once-dominant smallholding, family-based agriculture has become a focal point of the government's programme of rural rejuvenation, where a range of economic changes unleashed by urbanization and industrialization also converge. We argue that in this new context, agrarian change has become the key vantage point from which to study rural China. We review key contributions of the papers in this special issue and highlight their insights on rural differentiation, land politics and rural livelihoods. We discuss how studying the ' Chinese path' of agrarian transition can contribute to ongoing debates on key themes in agrarian studies, including both the agrarian questions of capital and of labour, and how agrarian political economy offers unique perspectives on the overall processes of capitalist development in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is undergoing a rapid agrarian transition from dispersed household farming to large-scale, mechanized, and commercialized agricultural production, while retaining collective rural land ownership. Reforms have encouraged transfers of rural land to new subjects of agriculture including agribusinesses, family farmers, and cooperatives, leading to capitalist dynamics in agriculture both from above and from below. Central-state pressure to scale up and modernize agriculture has led local governments to engage in creative experimentation with new institutional forms. This article investigates one such innovation, which has been widely lauded as an important model: the creation of an "agricultural co-management system" in Chongzhou City, Sichuan province, which combines land shareholding cooperatives (LSCs), the hiring of new professional farm managers for the LSCs, and state-provided agricultural services aimed at modernization. We demonstrate that the Chongzhou government's experimentation arose from political economic incentives to capitalize and modernize agriculture as well as the locally specific circumstances of the failure of a dragonhead enterprise. Examining the three components of the agricultural co-management system in depth, we argue that it has deepened rural differentiation through a process of state-led accumulation, and that the continued scaling up of LSCs in the context of a new modern agricultural functional zone threatens to further erode shareholder control. These LSCs, set within the agricultural co-management system, are a new subject of agriculture that combine elements of capitalization from above and below. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political trajectory of agribusiness firms called 'dragon head enterprises' in China's ongoing agri-food transformations. It starts from the premise that state and private elites in China are working together to consolidate a robust domestic agribusiness sector, as both an arena for national-level rural and economic development, and a new frontier for access to resources and markets abroad. Through analyses of policy documents, market share data and ethnographic materials, I explore the organization and operation of dragon heads in the pork sector. My findings reveal that agribusiness development in China's pork sector is largely domestic, has a mixed state-private form and tends to marginalize the foreign-based TNCs that have been the most powerful actors in the global agri-food system to date. I argue that China is not only a destination for 'external' transnational capital, but also a site of agribusiness development in its own right. This has important implications for analysing capitalist transformations and for engaging global agri-food politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unsustainability of China's agricultural production requires an urgent shift from traditional to more sustainable practices; however, the acceleration thereof remains challenging. New agricultural business entities (NABEs) lead agricultural modernization and strongly guide the application of innovative agricultural technologies and models. Thus, an understanding of the factors that influence NABEs' adoption of sustainable intensification practices will promote their widespread adoption. We developed a model based on innovation diffusion theory and the technology–organization–environment framework, which can both distinguish the influencing factors at different adoption stages and identify the influencing factors of technology adoption from a multidimensional perspective. The results indicate that differences in regional agroecological endowments emerge as the most important influencing factor. Relative advantage, perceived barriers, and agricultural extension services have a significant effect on adoption intention and decision, but a smaller effect on intention. Management and risk response capacities have a significant positive effect on adoption decisions, but no effect on intention. Meanwhile, organizational size has no effect on adoption intention or decision. Adoption intention significantly positively influences, but only partially explains, adoption decisions. Our findings provide a basis for technology promoters to categorize potential adopters by technology adoption stage and provide targeted strategies to stimulate technology demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]