Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: politics and markets in rural China / Björn Alpermann -- Factor markets -- Agrarian change in China : the commodification of collective land / Rene Trappel -- The constricted evolution of China's rural labor market / Gunter Schucher -- Greasing the wheels of development : rural credit in China / Lynette H. Ong -- Franchising the state : farmers, agricultural technicians and the marketization of agricultural services / Graeme Smith -- Product markets -- Grain market and policy in China / Li Xiande, Wang Shihai and Jla Yan -- The reorganization of the sugar industry in China in the context of globalization : insights from Guangxi province / Louis Augustin-Jean -- China's cotton sector : the politics of a managed market / Bjorn Alpermann -- The role of the state in modernizing China's fine wool marketing sector / Scott Waldron, Colin Brown, and John Longworth -- Rural policies -- Paving the road to a socialist new countryside : China's rural tax and fee reform / Christian Gobel -- Building a new socialist countryside : model villages in Hubei / Stig Thogersen -- The nature of cooperatives in China : the implementation and paradoxes of the law on cooperatives in Shanxi province / Louis Augustin-Jean and Xue Ruining -- Surveys and learning about village elections and rural China : an analysis of a 2005 national village election survey / John James Kennedy and Yaojiang Shi -- The end of urban-rural differentiation in China : Hukou and resettlement in Chengdu's urban -- rural integration / Jesper W. Zeuthen and Michael B. Griffiths.