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The Role of Collective Mobilization in the Divergence of the Rural Economies of China and India (1950-1990)
[摘要] The economic divergence of China and India in the post-1950 era has appeared as one of the most intriguing puzzles of comparative and historical social sciences in recent decades. In 1950, although both countries were very poor, China was much poorer, with a per capita GDP 38% less than that of India. This situation changed completely in the decades following Indian independence (1947) and the Chinese Revolution (1949). China’s economy caught up with India’s in 1978 and greatly surpassed it later on, making its per capita GDP 30% higher than India’s in 1990. The differential performance of their rural economies contributed significantly to this outcome. This study argues that this outcome was closely related to two countries’ differential performance in the development of physical infrastructure and human capital in the countryside. In China, the radical land reform of 1947-52 and the rural collectivization after 1952 eliminated the power of the rural elite, flattened the political economic terrain, and enabled the state to establish the rural collectives. By mobilizing unpaid labor and financial resources of the villagers through the mediation of the rural collectives, the Chinese state developed rural infrastructure, technology, and human capital at a pace and geographical scope that was far beyond its limited fiscal capacity. Rural collectives also enabled the state to tax the increasing agricultural surplus and utilize it for agricultural modernization and rural industrialization. I argue that efforts by the Indian state to establish rural organizations with similar mobilization capabilities failed due to the effective opposition of well-entrenched political and economic interests in the countryside. Unable to mobilize the unpaid labor and financial resources of the rural population, the Indian government relied primarily on its limited fiscal resources, which produced a much slower and geographically narrower development of physical infrastructure and human capital. It also failed to tax the agricultural surplus effectively, which constrained agricultural modernization and rural industrialization. As a result, China’s agriculture and rural economy developed much more rapidly than India’s, which contributed significantly to the divergence of their economies in the post-1950 era.
[发布日期]  [发布机构] Johns Hopkins University
[效力级别] India [学科分类] 
[关键词] China;India;economic development;industrialization;agriculture;rural industry;labor;collectivesystem;taxation;Sociology [时效性] 
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