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Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China(CPC),the collective economy in rural China has entered a new historic stage,and its central place and crucial role in rural development has been increasingly prominent in practical,policy and theoretical terms.With the establishment in the General Provisions of the Civil Law of rural collective economic organizations as“special legal persons”and the work of special-purpose legislation officially started,fresh experience in respect of reorganization of farmers has sprung up across the country in different forms.This is a new phenomenon following the country’s rural economic reform that started in 1978,marking the advent of the point of turning from a low level to a high level of collectivization in what Comrade Deng Xiaoping envisaged in 1980 as the“second take-off”of agricultural development.We call it the rising of a“neocollectivist”trend of thought.Understanding practical manifestations and intrinsic causes of this trend of thought and the logic of reform that ran through the“previous thirty years”and the“forty years that followed”,and proceeding to analyze,compare and evaluate on a yearly basis current collective economic development in rural China,will help steer and improve the socialist market economy system,advance the rural rejuvenation strategy and accelerate the process of agricultural and rural modernization.
To this end,we have prepared Annual Report on Rural Collective Economy of China(2020)to draw attention to the“new three-tiered”system as regards village and town coordination.
This Report comprises five parts,namely Master Report,Assessments,Special Topics,Region-specific,and Case Studies,25 reports altogether.The Master Report proposes,based on the new phenomenon of the emerging“neocollectivist”tendencies,a coherent theoretical framework on the rural economic system and change thereof,explains the logic of dynamic transformation from“centralization”to“decentralization”and subsequently from“decentralization”to“centralization”,and points out the direction of evolution for the Chinese rural collective economy - a“new three-tiered”system as regards village and town coordination,which breaks with the segmented development pattern where“both villages and households seek development alone”,and under which a village-based development strategy is implemented.The Assessments section includes 2 reports,which provide a comparative analysis of current rural collective economic development and reform in Chinese provinces,and estimate trends therein.The Special Reports section,composed of 4 reports,throw light on the problem of regional solidification both at macro and micro level in terms of collective economic development,which signifies the objective inevitability of“coordinated”development.The Region-specific section comprises 10 reports about typical experience and characteristics of local collective economic development.The Case Studies section contains 8 chapters altogether,which employ typical cases to interpret the“coordination”essence of the“neocollectivist”tendencies and demonstrate the wide applicability and stage-specific patterns of the“new three-tiered”system as regards village and town coordination; there are mainly three patterns:(1)“cross-village joint management and development”under town coordination,as in the case of the joint development of villages in Xiaoyudong Town,Pengzhou,Sichuan,and of the cross-village establishment of specialized cooperatives in Karu Town,Nyêmo County,Lhasa;(2)“joint management and development of villager groups”under village coordination to promote large-scale management,as in the case of the implementation of the Tangyue Path in Qingkou Village,Maochang Town,Dafang County,Bijie,Guizhou,and of the returning of land to villager groups in Majigou Village,Huanghaojie Town,Jingbian County,Yulin; and(3)under village-collective coordination,breaking with the traditional practice that“each household seeks development alone”,as in the case of the village renewal in Dashengzhuang Village,Xihongmen Town,Daxing District,Beijing,and in Wufang Village,Qingcun Town,Fengxian District,Shanghai,and of the development of cooperatives in Dongyuantou Village of Shewopo Town and Yijia Village of Tingkou Town,Qixia,Shandong,under the leadership of village Party committees.