Abstract
To tackle the issues concerning agriculture, farmers, and rural areas, the central government of China initiated a new strategy called ‘new countryside construction’ in 2005. For better understanding its actual effect, this paper analyzes the regional diversity of peasant household response to this new countryside construction strategy based on Kruskal-Wallis H test and sampling survey data from 586 households in the Bohai Rim Region (BRR), Yangtze River Delta Region (YDR), and Pan Pearl River Delta Region (PPR). The result indicates that regional diversity in eastern coastal China (ECC) does exist in the form of recognized priority sequence, policy requirements, expected policy effects, and behavior response. As a result of the deviation between local policy practice and households’ inherent demand, peasants fulfill their de facto demand via individual effort instead of government aid, and therefore the new countryside construction fails to carry out the expected target. It thus needs to shift the current policy priority, ensure the peasants’ mainstay role, and formulate scientific ‘Rules for new countryside construction’.
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Foundation: National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.40635029; No.40871257; Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.KZCX2-EW-304; No.KZCX2-YW-QN304
Author: Liu Yansui (1965–), Ph.D and Professor, specialized in land sciences, regional agriculture and rural development.
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Liu, Y., Chen, Y. & Long, H. Regional diversity of peasant household response to new countryside construction based on field survey in eastern coastal China. J. Geogr. Sci. 21, 869–881 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-011-0886-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-011-0886-x