Local responses to macro development policies and their effects on rural system in China’s mountainous regions: the case of Shuanghe Village in Sichuan Province

Abstract

China has promulgated a series of policies including the Western Development Program, the Grain for Green Project, agricultural support policies and building a new countryside strategy to eliminate east-west differences and urban-rural disparities since the late 1990s. This paper gives a holistic examination on local responses to the four typical macro socio-economic development policies and their effects on rural system based on a case study of a mountainous village in southern Sichuan Province. The results showed that the policies have not moved the case study village from its historically marginal status. To some extent, its socio-economic situation might have been worsened by accelerated outmigration of the youth, loss of agricultural land due to afforestation and industrial plants, increased fire hazard due to afforestation and reforestation, increased environmental pollution due to industrial enterprises attracted to the village and a steep decline in agricultural production due to loss of and inefficient use of cultivated land. Factors causing local villages' dilemmas include the nonuniformity of actors' objectives, finiteness of villagers' abilities, and the imperfect incentive and restraint mechanism for local government's activities under existing policy framework composed of uncoordinated one-size-fitsall policies. We suggest that China's rural policy in the new period should gradually shift from a sectoral to a place-based one, from top-down incentives to the development of bottom-up projects, and fully recognize the diversity of rural space, so as to lift local capacities and make good use of the knowledge shared by different actors. Moreover, it is also necessary to integrate the various sectoral policies, and improve the interministerial and interdepartmental coordination of rural policies at regional and local levels.

When and where did the Loess Plateau turn “green”? Analysis of the tendency and breakpoints of the normalized difference vegetation index

“…Many studies have explored vegetation dynamics and its driving forces using various methods, such as linear regression and correlation analysis. In studies on changes in vegetation cover, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and enhanced vegetation index datasets acquired through sensors such as Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), Moderate‐resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and SPOT have been widely used to quantify vegetation cover (Y. P. Chen et al, ; S. Li et al, ; Y. R. Li, Liu, Long, & Wang, ; B. Q. Zhang, He, Burnham, & Zhang, ; Zhou, Van Rompaey, & Wang, ). The dynamics of vegetation cover have been displayed using line charts for specified scale regions (S. Li et al, ).…”

Spatio-temporal pattern of China's rural development: A rurality index perspective

“…As the central government of China has maintained a comparative advantage and an open door policy that focus on the growth of coastal regions to attract foreign investment and stimulate economic growth, the eastern coastal regions have made remarkable achievements in rapid economic growth and rural development (Liu, 2007;Long and Woods, 2011;Li et al, 2014a). However, the vast central and western regions of China, especially their rural areas, have been lagged behind severely, under the combined effects of the poor economic base and infrastructure, scarcity of human capital endowments, market distortions and poor geographical location (Li and Qiao, 2001;Ying, 2003;Xu and Tan, 2002;Wei and Ye, 2009;Li and Wei, 2010;Li et al, 2013Li et al, , 2014bLi et al, , 2014c. In 2010, about 50% of China's population still lived in the rural areas and 36.7% of total employment was working in the agriculture sector which generated a 10% gross domestic product (GDP) (NBSC, 2011a).…”

“…So far, the existing policy framework of China concerning rural development is still mainly composed of uncoordinated one-sizefits all policies Li et al, 2013). Compared with Europe and the North America, the approach of targeting policies to rural areas based on informed knowledge of rurality in current China is still lacking and this to a large extent, has been responsible for the relatively poor and fragmented rural development in China.…”

“…Compared with Europe and the North America, the approach of targeting policies to rural areas based on informed knowledge of rurality in current China is still lacking and this to a large extent, has been responsible for the relatively poor and fragmented rural development in China. As for China, more efforts could be made on improving regional policies and rural policies concerning local characteristics Li et al, 2013Li et al, , 2014b.…”

Changing human-environment interactions in medium mountains: the Apuseni Mts (Romania) as a case study

“…Song et al 2007;Feng et al 2007;Ding et al 2014;Telbisz et al 2014) to local (e.g. Li et al 2013;Huber et al 2015). Whereas global and regional studies usually rely on statistical and GIS data, local (household) scale studies often use semi-structured interviews.…”