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This book discusses the historical transformation of the destiny of Chinese peasants under the contemporary political economic conditions, and tries to explore the institutional mechanism behind the formation and maintenance of these conditions. The analysis focuses on the consequences of the great social mobilization brought about by the reform. The phenomenon of migrant workers is the most significant consequence of the change of Chinese peasants'life courses. The destiny of migrant workers will be the destiny of Chinese peasants. The introduction chapter of this book discusses the historical context and peasants'fates, their political participation, and citizenship of peasants after they become urban dwellers. Chapter one discusses the social implication and economic consequences of the urbanization of rural population. Chapter two discusses the living conditions for peasants that moved to work in cities, including working environments, living environments, education of their children, and their social networking. Chapter three discusses the challenges that the mobilization of peasants has posed on government policy making and urban managements. Chapter four discusses the latest development in the social mobilization of Chinese peasants.

This book is an analysis and exploration of the relationship between peasants and policies within the process of reform in China. After examining the long term rural policies, either before or after the reform, it was found that all these polices have been expected to promote peasants'interests and claimed to take enhancing peasants'happiness as their goal. Nonetheless, the history and current reality of rural development have demonstrated that the same policy starting point had lead to very different policy designs. Even today, quite a few institutional arrangements with good intentions have ended up with opposite results and have even become bad policies that do harm to people. This book argues that the reason for such serious deviation, between political intentions and institutional arrangements, as well as between policy goals and its results is: as a political force, the peasantry itself has not effectively engaged with the political process of the country.

This book focuses on analyzing the inter-relationship between Chinese peasants and the reform and it tries to understand the conditions of peasants during the course of the Chinese social transition. This book argues that Chinese peasants are the most important force that keeps the reform going. More importantly, this book argues that this force comes from the peasants'pursuit of their own social, political and economic interest, not some spontaneous demand for “reform” itself. This inherent relationship between the peasants and the reform is summarized into five major relationships: the inter-relationship between peasants and the central government; between peasants and local government; between peasants and rural democratization; between peasants and social constructions; and between peasants and local officials. These five inter-relationships are the prime mechanism for the interaction between Chinese peasants and the reform, and these forms the basis for understanding and analyzing the inter-relationship between the state and peasants.