Rural Industrial Sector Research Articles

The politics of industrial pollution in rural China

After more than three decades of extremely rapid industrial growth, China faces an environmental crisis. The rural industrial sector, which includes millions of loosely regulated factories and employs hundreds of millions of workers, is a major focal point of this crisis. This paper provides a critical review of scholarship on industrial pollution in rural China and advances a new framework for thinking about the topic as a political domain with three inter-related parts:• The politics of knowledge: What do rural citizens know about environmental contamination, and how do they know they know it? What sources of information are available to the public regarding pollution incidents? How does uncertainty about pollution sources and severity, as well as the potential links to health risks, shape rural peoples' experience of pollution?• The politics of action: What strategies do individuals, communities and civil society organizations use to combat pollution? What outcomes are associated with such strategies?• The politics of regulation: How are national laws and policies regarding pollution control implemented in rural areas? How do agencies and enforcement officials balance the competing objectives of environmental protection and economic growth?The paper concludes by considering the implications of this framework for how scholars understand industrial pollution in rural China and briefly discussing a future research agenda for this field.

Industrial Pollution and Environmental Health in Rural China: Risk, Uncertainty and Individualization

AbstractAfter more than three decades of extremely rapid industrial growth, China faces an environmental public health crisis. In this article, I examine pollution in the rural industrial sector and its implications for community health. Drawing on recent ethnographic research in an industrial township in rural Sichuan, including interviews with government officials, environmental regulators, industrial workers and local residents, I explore how community members understand the linkages between air and water pollution from nearby factories and their health and well-being. The article has two main goals. The first is to examine the various ways in which uncertainty about pollution sources, about the severity of pollution levels and about the links between pollution and human health shapes villagers' experiences of pollution on a day-to-day basis. The second goal is to examine the rising trend of “individualization” taking place in China today and explore how this process is related to people's experiences of toxic exposure. I consider the implications of this trend for how social scientists should approach the study of environmental illness in contemporary China.

Management and growth paradox of rural small-scale industrial sector in Ghana

It has been argued that Small Scale Industries (SSIs) scarcely grow rather they stagnate and most of them eventually die off mainly due to poor management. The situation has been blamed on a number of factors and therefore a systematic analysis of the key influential factors will givebetter understanding of the phenomenon. Data was mainly collected through interviews of owners/ managers of small industrial units in the Mfantseman District of Central Region of Ghana. Logistic regression was used to distinguish the factors influencing management and growth of the RSSI sector and to estimate the impact of each explanatory variable in the equations. The study shows that record keeping and banking, which are key ingredients of good management practices are largely influenced by the age of the firm, the type of technology used, how proprietors acquired their skills, the production level and the source of investment capital. Similarly, growth of firm is influenced by the gender of the proprietor, the sources of raw materials and how proprietors acquired their skill.

The Political Ecology of Pollution Enforcement in China: A Case from Sichuan's Rural Industrial Sector

AbstractThis article uses a case study approach to examine the processes and consequences of pollution enforcement in an industrial township in rural Sichuan. China's national pollution emissions standards are relatively strict, but enforcement is the responsibility of some 2,500 Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs) within municipal and county governments. EPB officials exercise considerable discretion in prioritizing and carrying out enforcement activities, but exactly what factors influence regulatory behaviour within EPBs is poorly understood. Data for the article are drawn from interviews with EBP officials, township government officials, industrial managers and local residents, as well as a review of township and district financial records and pollution enforcement records. In this case study, EPB enforcement priorities and actions were guided by State Council directives and State Environmental Protection Administration policy, but citizen complaints and media exposure regarding polluting factories also played a key role, and action culminated in the forced closure of township factories. The article uses political ecology as an analytical framework for understanding how pollution enforcement is shaped by the competing values, goals and priorities within the EPB and the administrative unit in which it operates. This is crucial in China, where the decentralized nature of environmental oversight requires an examination of both policy formulation and implementation. The implications of pollution enforcement on rural enterprises for ecological health, fiscal revenue and rural development are also discussed.

A REVISIONIST VIEW OF CHINESE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY?

Although productivity increased during the initial Chinese agricultural reforms, there is less clarity about subsequent reform efforts. Several studies find that productivity growth either slowed or stopped in the mid‐1980s, but these studies use official labor statistics that indicate an increasing farm labor force during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Using an alternative calculation of China's farm labor force showing a decrease in agricultural labor, this article reexamines the data on Chinese agricultural productivity and notes that the changes in productivity appear to correlate to changes in economic policies.

Emerging markets, evolving institutions, and the new opportunities for growth in China's rural economy

In this essay, our goal is to assess the state of China's rural economy and examine whether rural China is capable of participating in the sequence of economic events that will lead to modernization. We examine how agricultural productivity has changed, the nature of the shift of labor moving from rural to urban areas, how commodity markets have evolved, and how the rural industrial sector is adjusting the recent reforms. According to our own work and that of others, we show how the rural economy is beginning to be fundamentally transformed and is contributing to China's modernization.

Gender occupational segregation and its impact on the gender wage differential among rural-urban migrants: a Chinese case study

Since the late 1980s, massive rural - urban migration in China has attracted considerable attention from economists and policymakers, both within and outside China. One of the most striking features of rural - urban migration is that job attainment among the migrants differs considerably between males and females. It is of great interest to know the reasons for this difference and, more importantly, whether gender occupational segregation has a large impact on the gender wage differential among migrants. This paper examines these issues using data on 1504 migrants collected in Jinan city, Shandong province. It is found that gender occupational segregation in this sector is mainly due to the unequal treatment of male and female attributes in occupational assignment and that this contributes very significantly to the gender wage differential among migrants. A comparison with another study on China's rural industrial labour market is made, which suggest that intra-occupational gender wage discrimination is lower in the labour market for rural - urban migrants than in the labour market in the rural industrial sector.

Male–female wage determination and gender wage discrimination in China's rural industrial sector

This paper examines male–female wage determination and gender wage discrimination in the newly developed rural industrial sector in China. It is found that female wages in this sector can be explained by the human capital model and that gender wage discrimination is much more serious in China's rural industrial sector than in other industrial and developing economies. This situation, however, has changed as the labour market has been liberalized: wage discrimination is found to account for all of the gender wage differential for the non-market group, while it accounts for only two-thirds of the gender wage differential for the market group.

Pearl from the Dragon's Mouth: Evocation of Feeling and Scene in Chinese Poetry (review)

© 1998 by University ofHawai'i Press Reviews 251 economic development. It would also serve well as a case study from which to generate discussion in graduate seminars. Eugene Cooper University ofSouthern California Eugene Cooper is an associateprofessor ofanthropology and EastAsian studies with recent research experience in the rural industrial sector ofZhejiangProvince. Cecile Chu-chin Sun. Pearlfrom the Dragon's Mouth: Evocation ofFeeling and Scene in Chinese Poetry. Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies, vol. 67. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University ofMichigan, 1995. xvi, 248 pp. Hardcover, isbn 0-89264-110-x. Sooner or later, every student oftraditional Chinese poetry and poetics has to grapple with the special vocabulary that Chinese poets have used to critique, qualify, and just talk about their art. As scholars have pointed out, much ofthis critical terminology is itselfpoetic—notoriously allergic to paraphrase, and as redolent with meaning as the most evocative lines of a Tang quatrain. In many cases, terms are drawn from the pool ofthe most common words and then organized into pairs. By pairing these everyday words in sometimes unexpected combinations , writers defamiliarize them, drawing attention to their specialized significance in the context ofliterary discussion. FengM1 and gu UT—"wind" and "bone"—is a pair that comes readily to mind, as does the ever untranslatable bi XL· and xingjPI. But one pair ofterms stands out as being particularly resistant to this type ofdefamiliarization: qingIff andjingS, sometimes translated as "sentiment " and "milieu," sometimes as "feeling" and "scene." Contrary to what one might expect, the very familiarity ofthese two words constitutes a challenge to the scholar with hopes of understanding either the meaning ofthis dyad, or the history ofChinese poetics through the lens it provides. The difficulty is compounded by the widespread, if tacit, presence of qingandjingin almost all aspects of traditional Chinese poetic thought. Yet this is the challenge taken up, first by the Song dynasty literati who brought the qing-jingcompound into the arena ofliterary discourse, and then by the many traditional scholars ofclassical poetics who inherited the questions thereby raised. Most recently, in Pearlfrom the Dragon's Mouth: Evocation ofFeeling and Scene in Chinese Poetry, Professor Cecile Chu-chin Sun sets out to provide 252 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1998 a chronological overview ofboth the theory and praxis of qing-jing discourse. Her ambitious study begins witii the Han dynasty exegeses of the Shijing and closes with the theoretical discussions ofWang Fuzhi and Wang Guowei, the Qing dynasty literary thinkers most closely identified with the use of these terms. Sun's book is the first full-length treatment in English exclusively devoted to studying "how the critical perception of this essential phenomenon has evolved throughout the Chinese tradition" (p. xiii).' Wisely wary of suggesting that hers will be the definitive and complete work on a vast and complex topic, the author warns that she has limited the parameters ofher discussion to "the most crucial phases" ofits evolution. She lends further precision to her goals by proposing to the Western reader a window on "what Chinese poets and critics themselves have perceived poetry to be" (p. ix), as distinct from, one assumes, presenting either a personal or a comparative view of the tradition. Sun walks us through the history of the "feeling-scene" issue of Chinese poetics in four "phases," apparently borrowing the nomenclature for each phase from James J. Y. Liu's Chinese Theories ofLiterature, the pragmatic phase, the affective phase, the aesthetic phase, and, finally, the synthetic phase.2 Although the terms are modern and carry a certain New Critical air ofscientific methodology, the periodization they describe predates that approach by at least a couple of centuries . Specifically, Sun associates the pragmatic phase with the Han dynasty, a period when the Confucian view of poetry as a didactic tool was dominant. She labels the Six Dynasties period the affective phase, when the rising influence of Taoism contributed to a new critical sensibility, liberating poetry from its didactic role and conferring upon it the power of expressing human emotion, usually through the evocation of imagery drawn from the natural world. The Tang dynasty , then, corresponds to the culmination ofboth the awareness and the application of the interplay...

An examination of wage determination in China's rural industrial sector

Under traditional Chinese socialist ideology, labour is not considered as a commodity, and wages are not viewed as the price of labour. Market-oriented economic reform initiated in the late 1970s, however, has brought some changes to this politically sensitive area - pricing and allocation of labour, especially in the rural industrial sector, are now much more sensitive to market pressures. The performance of labour markets are examined in China's rural industrial sector after 10 years of economic reform. When modified to reflect the peculiar circumstances of the Chinese rural labour market, can conventional models of wage determination be used to explain variations in wages in this sector of China? It is found that after only a decade of change, the pattern of wage determination in rural China has many parallels with wage determination in Western countries.

The Role of Education in Wage Determination in China's Rural Industrial Sector

The TVP labour market has undergone a great change during the economic reform period. Starting from a fully controlled recruitment system, more employees obtained employment through a more market oriented mechanism. This study applies human capital theory to investigate the impact of this institutional change on TVP wage determination. It is found that education as one of most important human capital variables plays an important role on the wage determination of those who obtained jobs through own effort (the market group), while it is insignificant for those who were assigned to the jobs (the non-market group). The further analysis suggests that although education plays different role on the market and non-market groups wage determination they are both productivity orientated. And the reason for this might be that the underlying technological processes of the work undertaken by the market group is higher than that for the non-market group. Does education, therefore, plays no role for the non-market group? The paper employs a logit model to prove that education is an important determinant for both the market and the non-market groups' occupational attainment. This suggests the following general picture: for the market group, there is a direct relationship between education, occupation and wage determination; for the non-market group this relationship is somewhat indirect. The rate of return to education is more likely to be reflected by non-wage benefit.

Wage Determination and Occupational Attainment in the Rural Industrial Sector of China

The development of China's rural township, village, and private enterprises (TVP), in which real wages have grown at around 11% per annum over the past decade, is one of the most remarkable achievements of China's economic reform. This achievement has taken place despite relatively rigid control of labor mobility and job assignment by local authorities. Individual firms, however, have considerable influence over wage determination. This study applies human capital theory to explore the wage setting process in this sector. It is found that the impact of both labor market experience and education reflect labor productivity rather than sociopolitical rules of wage setting. The paper employs a logit model to investigate the links between education and occupational attainment. The relationship between wages, education, and occupational attainment, for those who find jobs through their own efforts, is similar to that of western market economies. Although education does not affect wages of those assigned jobs it affects their occupational attainment.

Control in a dynamic village economy: The reforms and unbalanced development in China's rural economy

A dynamic control framework is used to model the Chinese village economy in order to explain the rural sector's unbalanced growth in the post reform period. Village leaders are assumed to maximize a multi-attribute utility function by manipulating local policy instruments subject to the structural relationships in the economy. The model's parameters are estimated econometrically using a data set from forty villages in eastern China. The empirical results identify important linkages between agriculture and rural industry in village economies. Unbalanced growth can partially be explained by the way economic incentives induce individuals in rural areas to move resources toward the rural industrial sector and away from agriculture.

Returns to Education in China

We were fortunate in having access to a survey of 800 adults in Nanjing that was conducted by the International Wool Secretariate in 1986. The survey was intended for market research (e.g., brand recognition), but questions were asked about the respondent's age, occupation, income, and education level. These questions, though not ideally worded, were sufficient for the undertaking of a returns-to-education study. We believe the data to be unique and, of course, the issue of interest is whether a member of the workforce in China faces investment decisions on education similar to those faced elsewhere. The influence of sex and marital status on the level of income achieved by an individual was also examined. The basic equation modeled personal income as a nonlinear function of schooling and experience, but multicollinearity problems were encountered. As a result, a production function approach was successfully adapted to the returns-toeducation model. The collinearity problem was overcome, and this approach allowed the ease of substitution of education for experience in income generation to be examined more formally. An additional problem of errors in variables arose from a failing in questionnaire design and was handled statistically.

Women, Wages, and Discrimination: Some Evidence from Taiwan

Previous articleNext article No AccessWomen, Wages, and Discrimination: Some Evidence from TaiwanKenneth GannicottKenneth Gannicott Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Economic Development and Cultural Change Volume 34, Number 4Jul., 1986 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/451556 Views: 9Total views on this site Citations: 26Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1986 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Hwei-Lin Chuang, Eric S. Lin, Shih-Yung Chiu The gender wage gap in the financial industry: Evidence from the interindustry ranking, International Review of Economics & Finance 55 (May 2018): 246–258.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iref.2017.07.016Yi-Fang Yang, Yahn-Shir Chen, Lee-Wen Yang Gender gap, training and financial performance: evidence from public accounting industry, The International Journal of Human Resource Management 24, no.1919 (Nov 2013): 3697–3718.https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2013.778313Eric S. Lin Gender wage gaps by college major in Taiwan: Empirical evidence from the 1997–2003 Manpower Utilization Survey, Economics of Education Review 29, no.11 (Feb 2010): 156–164.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2008.12.004Scott M. Fuess, Jack W. Hou Rapid Economic Development and Job Segregation in Taiwan, Journal of Family and Economic Issues 30, no.22 (Mar 2009): 171–183.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-009-9146-yVoraprapa Nakavachara Superior Female Education: Explaining the Gender Earnings Gap Trend in Thailand, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2007).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1032981Chris Sakellariou Gender-earnings differentials using quantile regressions, Journal of Labor Research 25, no.33 (Sep 2004): 457–468.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-004-1024-7Chris Sakellariou The use of quantile regressions in estimating gender wage differentials: a case study of the Philippines, Applied Economics 36, no.99 (May 2004): 1001–1007.https://doi.org/10.1080/0003684042000233230Hwei-Lin Chuang, Hsih-yin Lee The Return on Women's Human Capital and the Role of Male Attitudes Toward Working Wives. Gender Roles, Work Interruption, and Women's Earnings in Taiwan, American Journal of Economics and Sociology 62, no.22 (Apr 2003): 435–459.https://doi.org/10.1111/1536-7150.t01-2-00008Günseli Berik Mature Export-Led Growth and Gender Wage Inequality in Taiwan, Feminist Economics 6, no.33 (Jan 2000): 1–26.https://doi.org/10.1080/135457000750020119Mun Heng Toh, Chai Shing Wong Rates of Return to Education in Singapore, Education Economics 7, no.33 (Dec 1999): 235–252.https://doi.org/10.1080/09645299900000020Tung‐Chun Huang The impact of education and seniority on the male‐female wage gap: is more education the answer?, International Journal of Manpower 20, no.66 (Sep 1999): 361–374.https://doi.org/10.1108/01437729910289710Ernesto M. Pernia, M.G. Quibria Chapter 45 Poverty in developing countries, (Jan 1999): 1865–1934.https://doi.org/10.1016/S1574-0080(99)80014-5 Yana van der Meulen Rodgers A Reversal of Fortune for Korean Women: Explaining the 1983 Upward Turn in Relative Earnings Meulen Rodgers, Economic Development and Cultural Change 46, no.44 (Jul 2015): 727–748.https://doi.org/10.1086/452371Xin Meng Male–female wage determination and gender wage discrimination in China's rural industrial sector, Labour Economics 5, no.11 (Mar 1998): 67–89.https://doi.org/10.1016/S0927-5371(97)00028-6Joseph E. Zveglich, Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, William M. Rodgers The Persistence of Gender Earnings Inequality in Taiwan, 1978–1992, ILR Review 50, no.44 (Jul 1997): 594–609.https://doi.org/10.1177/001979399705000403Tony Tam Reducing the gender gap in an asian economy: How important is women's increasing work experience?, World Development 24, no.55 (May 1996): 831–844.https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-750X(96)00004-6Xin Meng The Economic Position of Women in Asia, Asian-Pacific Economic Literature 10, no.11 (May 1996): 23–41.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8411.1996.tb00004.xSolomon W. Polachek, W. Stanley Siebert Family Labor Market Incentives: Men and Women Working for Pay, (Jan 1996): 159–194.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5384-3_8M.G. 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Al‐Qudsi SEX DISCRIMINATION IN THE LABOUR MARKET OF KUWAIT, International Journal of Manpower 9, no.33 (Mar 1988): 10–22.https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045175

Rural Industrialization: A comparison of development planning in China and India

This paper attempts to show the very considerable differences in rural industry promotion and development in China and India. Both countries have a rural industrial sector with employment levels in the region of 20 million. Overall figures and characteristics are compared and contrasted. The Chinese planners stress skill formation and the development of regional industrial structures while employment per se is emphasized in India. This has considerable consequences for urban–rural relations, which are specifically discussed in the Chinese context. Finally, the paper shows how the expansion of the rural industrial sector enables the consolidation of the collective economy at a higher level and thus assists the implementation of socialist transformation.

Technology and employment in China

When discussing technology and emplo);ment policies in China, it may be useful to look at China’s economy as being made up of three different sectors, which are the modern industrial sector, the rural industrial sector and the agricultural sector. The sectors are becoming more closely linked and interdependent with the ultimate goal of establishing a modern economy. However, for the time being, manpower policies and technology requirements differ widely between the sectors. This is due to a number of factors where limited foreign exchange resources, necessity to limit capital requirements, a desire to control urban migration, etc., all play a role. In order to better understand the relation between manpower and technology policies, a few aspects of the Chinese development-as it has emerged-will first be mentioned. This paper will further discuss the technology requirements of the Chinese economy and describe certain manufacturing technologies-cement manufacture, local industrial systems, development of local engineering industry and the rolling-bearing industry-with relevance to the rural industrial sector and the agricultural sector. Finally, some of the needed infrastructure technologies and social technologies are mentioned.