The abolition of agricultural taxes and the transformation of clientelism in the countryside of post-Mao China

Abstract

A substantial body of research has revealed the historical transformation of clientelism in the countryside of capitalist societies. Although rural China has distinct politico-economic structures, I argue that the framework of clientelist transformation also fits it. I identify the abolition of agricultural taxes as a watershed moment in facilitating the transformation. This national policy marked a dramatic change in state-peasant relations from state extraction based on taxes to state provision of economic subsidies, state extraction through land expropriation, and market extraction through wage labor and contract farming. In the former relation, clientelism based on the ethics of egalitarian distribution and subsistence security protected peasants from excessive extraction. In the latter, clientelism based on external linkages is instrumental for peasants to access state and market resources. The new clientelism widens the economic inequality and facilitates class conflicts within villages; it also opens villages up to more state and market extraction.