China's rural road system during the reform period

Abstract

During the 1980s China's countryside saw unprecedented increases in output, specialization, and mobility. These put tremendous pressure on the rural infrastructure, particularly the road system. The paper begins by describing the nature of China's road system in the early eighties and the challenges it faced, including the special problems it inherited due to the excessive decentralization of planning during the Maoist era. The limitations of continued reliance on the traditional Road Maintenance Tax (Yanglu Fei) as the major source of fiscal support for road construction and maintenance are discussed. Finally, the changes made in the funding system during the early 1980s are discussed and evaluated against the needs for a higher level of funding and a reduction of investment to address key bottlenecks. Government policy generally did a good job of directing resources to the improvement of major intercity roads, but rural roads were left largely without a system of support.