Sustainable Development of Rural Household Economy Transition of Ten Villages in Zhejiang, China, 1986-2002

This book won the Monograph Award (ranked 1st out of 6 winners in total) in the Third China Rural Development Research Award (2008). It was also awarded the

Second Class Excellent Research Achievement in Humanities and Social Sciences by the Ministry of Education (2009). With the help of rich and detailed first-hand data collected from fixed observation sites in ten villages in Zhejiang for 17 consecutive years, this book gives a panoramic analysis of Chinese rural society in transition from the viewpoint of rural household behaviour. It starts the examination from individual rural households, before develops the investigation to the whole villages, so that the study could be carried out in a coherent, reliable and systematic way. Viewing the countryside from its micro perspective under the national political economy framework, the book steps out of the traditional way of inspecting exclusively the rural households and therefore is able to generalise its conclusion at a macro level. The award selection panel in 2008 believed it a unique monography for understanding the macro transition of the Chinese “agriculture, countryside and peasant (??)” issues from the micro aspect of household behaviour.