René Trappel: China’s Agrarian Transition – Peasants, Property and PoliticsWeijing Le

ASIEN – Nr. 147 (2018) pp. 139–40

Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016. 203 S., 71,35 USD

This book derives from the dissertation project of Dr. René Trappel. It concerns the question of how commercial agriculture could emerge in China’s countryside, where the farmland is still managed under the socialist collective ownership. The author argues that the Chinese agrarian transition is a result of commodification of farmland in spite of the fragmented property rights and the absence of a free market. More specifically, peasant differentiation, rural politics and property rights contribute to the major institutional changes in agriculture that remold the existing institutional constraints due to the collective ownership and accelerate the emergence of commodification of rural land in China…