Financial Times - May 4, 2015
A shrinking labour force from rural areas is driving huge economic change
When Deng Xiaoping left his rural village of Guang’an in 1919 to study in Paris, he was leaving behind a desperately poor agricultural community in Sichuan province where standards of living had barely risen in over 200 years.
Sixty
years later, when Deng’s historic economic reforms unleashed a wave of
migrants that powered the country’s transformation into an industrial
powerhouse, his fellow villagers from Guang’an led the charge.
China’s farm output soared in the 1980s as agricultural communes were
dismantled. By allowing farmers to keep a portion of what they
produced, Deng gave them incentive to boost their yields. But Guang’an’s
hilly landscape was unsuitable for mechanised agriculture, blunting the
gains from reform.
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