Township And Village Enterprises Research Articles

Who protests in China: Mobilizing workers across China’s diverse urban labor force

ABSTRACT Since 1990, China has experienced thousands of local protests over issues of land and labor rights. Grievance based theories identify incentives to protest among employees in township and village enterprises (TVEs), privately owned enterprises (POEs), and state owned-enterprises (SOEs). Resource mobilization theory explains how variations in labor-management relations across these categories affect their capacity to mobilize for protest. We use survey data from the 2010 Chinese General Social Survey to estimate the determinants of individual participation in protests. We find that TVE and POE employees are more likely than SOE employees to participate in protests. POE workers are motivated by issues of salary while all three categories of workers are motivated by unfair treatment by officials. The findings support the claim that variations in the capacity to mobilize are more relevant to protest participation than are grievances. Grievances are widespread across all categories; the capacity to mobilize is not.

The Land System and the Rise and Fall of China’s Rural Industrialization: Based on the Perspective of Institutional Change of Rural Collective Construction Land

China’s rural industrialization, which flourished in the 1980s, has suddenly declined since the mid-1990s. Based on the perspective of institutional change of rural collective construction land, this paper discusses the reasons behind the rise and fall of China’s rural industrialization. Using the empirical tests of China’s provincial panel data from 1987 to 1997, it is found that from the 1980s to the mid-1990s, the government relaxed the regulation of collective construction land and allowed its transfer, which was the institutional basis for the rapid rise of China’s rural industrialization with township and village enterprises (TVEs) as the main form. Furthermore, this paper takes the government’s policy of prohibiting the circulation of collective construction land from the mid-1990s as the breakthrough point, and uses the “Land Administration Law of China” promulgated in 1998 as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the causal relationship between restricting the circulation of collective construction land and the decline of TVEs. It is found that the restrictions on the circulation of collective construction land caused by the implementation of the law significantly hindered the development of TVEs. After the implementation of the Land Administration Law, in areas affected more by the law, the development scale of their TVEs shrunk even more. The analysis of this paper shows that deepening the reform of the system of property rights on agricultural land and ensuring farmers’ rights of land circulation are important ways to revitalize the rural areas.

People, Inc.? Law, Economic Enterprise, and the Development of Inequality in China

Abstract This Article tells the story of two Chinas and of different forms of public enterprise associated with each: state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in urban China and township-and-village enterprises (TVEs) in rural China. Historically SOEs have constituted the dominant form of socialist enterprise in China. However, China’s unprecedented economic growth began with the rise of rural industry in the 1980s, and the bulk of rural growth was generated by a new type of entity known as TVEs. While legal scholars have mostly ignored TVEs, economists have devoted a great deal of theoretical attention to them: How were TVEs able to succeed in the absence of legally protected property rights, in defiance of standard economic theory? Remarkably, they operated without a formal legal basis. This Article argues that long before the enactment of the PRC’s first Company Law in 1993, in TVEs local government law performed the core functions of corporation law—a phenomenon this Article characterizes as “Village, Inc.” It was this law of local governance, and the formal and informal institutions supporting it, that propelled China’s phenomenal growth for nearly two decades while helping close the historic welfare gap between city and country. The Article next compares TVEs’ record of success with that of SOEs. The Company Law promulgated in 1993 marked a reorientation from rural reforms to restructuring urban SOEs. Despite its apparent novelty, in many respects the Company Law simply codified institutional arrangements pioneered by TVEs. Even after SOEs were “corporatized” in order to attract outside capital, the state remained a controlling shareholder—a configuration this Article describes as “People, Inc.” However, despite the benefit of a formally promulgated corporate statute, as a group corporatized SOEs have not been able to replicate TVEs’ extraordinary success. Beyond the Company Law’s formal structures, there has been no informal “local law” of SOEs to regulate them, equivalent to the relatively egalitarian village institutions that governed the operation of TVEs. Significantly, however, the corporatization of SOEs has not only restructured the state’s relationship to capital. The final part of the Article considers how it has also fundamentally altered the relationship between capital and labor. The enactment of the Company Law was accompanied by the promulgation of a new Labor Law in 1994, mandating that all employees be provided with employment contracts. Since then, the revolutionary political subject of Maoism—“the people”—has been atomized into independent economic subjects responsible for their own welfare outside of work. This, in turn, has resulted in tectonic shifts in the boundaries among the state, the market, and the family. Moreover, with the contractualization of all labor, even urban workers no longer enjoy a guaranteed share of the benefits of economic development. Today, an earlier state-enforced inequality between city and country is increasingly overwhelmed by a society-wide gulf between the rich and the poor, without a necessary geographical correlate.

Financial Support and Growth of Township and Village Enterprises in China: Fresh Evidence From Regional Analyses

This article aims to investigate the impact of financial support on output of township and village enterprises (TVEs) during 2007 to 2013. We use panel data of 28 provinces of China to study the he...

Spatio-temporal evolutionary analysis of the township enterprises of Beijing suburbs using computational intelligence assisted design framework

Township and village enterprises (TVEs) are market-oriented public enterprises under the purview of local governments based on townships and villages in the People’s Republic of China. TVEs have become a vibrant part of the Chinese economy following the significant expansion during the 1980s reform period. In the mid-2000s, TVEs became an integrated part of Chinese industry after the property rights transition. In this study, we examined the dynamic behaviours of TVEs in the near-inner-outer suburbs; we simulated these behaviours using computational intelligence aided design framework, which embedded the micro-genetic algorithm with variable populations (VPμGA). Specifically, we assume that conditions follow development, which includes industry scale, industry profit, employees and district development; we then utilise the VPμGA method to simulate the industrial structure and spatio-temporal evolution of the TVEs across seven industrial sectors and closely analyse the consequences of the transition. Our analysis results are consistent with actual observations, and a macro-level analysis showed that TVEs experienced defined scenarios. For Beijing, these scenarios are as follows: rapid development → chaotic development → steady development. The micro-level analysis showed that TVEs and labour have gradually formed a specific industry, a complex trend that evolved in both space and time. We determined the dynamic behaviours of the structures at micro-scales, meso-scales and macro-scales, clarifying the development of TVEs in the Beijing suburbs.

The Impact of Regional and Institutional Factors on Labor Productive Performance—Evidence from the Township and Village Enterprise Sector in China

This paper investigates the determinants of Township and Village Enterprise (TVE) labour productivity in China, examining behaviour at both the national and regional levels. The results suggest that human capital, the real wage level, foreign intensity, export intensity, capital investment, and firm size are the most important factors affecting labour productivity at the national level, but their relative importance varies significantly between the regions. The results also indicate that government privatization reforms had a major impact on labour productivity in the TVE sector across the regions

Agglomeration or dispersion? Industrial land-use pattern and its impacts in rural areas from China's township and village enterprises perspective

With the onset of industrialization over the past several decades, the rural areas are undergoing considerable changes in China. Optimal rural industrial land use distribution provides a spatial foundation for sustainable development in rural areas. Moreover, the importance of appropriate rural industrial land use adjustment is evident in rural spatial restructuring. This paper investigates rural industrial land use patterns and its impact on rural areas in Pinggu District of Beijing based on a combined method of “landscape indices” and the “geospatial analysis.” Subsequently, this paper proposes a rural industrial land use adjustment. The results show that according to the relevance of township and village enterprises (TVEs) to rural development, rural industrial land can be classified as rural industry land (RI-land) and non-rural industry land (NI-land). “Small scale, spontaneous dispersion” is the overall rural industrial land use pattern in China, and the spatial patterns between the two types of rural industrial land are quite different: the pattern “dispersion inside rural settlements” is usually observed in RI-land, while “agglomeration around regional central towns” and “linear sprawl” are common on NI-land. Considering the peculiarity of TVEs, the dispersion for RI-land is designed to absorb the surplus labor and raw materials nearby in the countryside to enhance their output-efficiency, whereas the agglomeration for NI-land is to pursue the efficiency of agglomeration economies. This paper also revealed that current disperse rural industrial land use pattern has generated polluting effects on the environment. Therefore, following the “classification principle,” rural industrial land use adjustment should not merely pursue economic efficiency and agglomeration efficiency but should also engage in labor absorptivity and environmental benefits. The formation and development of rural industrial land in China is quite different from traditional industrial land; these differences are largely attributed to their unique driving mechanisms and historical backgrounds. In particular, the traditional Theories of the Location of Industries directed by “agglomeration,” are unsuitable for rural industrial land in China. Therefore, the results in this paper can help form a basis for sustainable planning of rural industrial land and contribute to rural transformation development in China.

The Effectiveness of Chinese Regulations on Occupational Health and Safety: A Case Study on China’s Coal Mine Industry

To assess the effectiveness of Chinese regulations on occupational health and safety, this study provides an exploratory method by applying multiple interrupted time series (MITS) analysis. Taking coal mine safety in China as a case study, this article analyzes the background of the coal industry, especially during the period 1980–2009, and selects three typical pieces of national legislation specific to mining and work safety as the interventions. The data relevant to coal mine safety and the ‘third variables’ were collected to empirically support the study. The estimated results indicate different effects of these interventions on state-owned enterprise (SOE) mines and township and village enterprise (TVE) or small mines. Specifically, though the mortality rate in SOE mines is on a downward trend, these interventions have had no significant effect on it. However, only the 2002 act significantly reduced the mortality rate per million tons in TVE mines. The effectiveness of the interventions seems to depend on certain conditions, such as technology, administration and socioeconomic environment and type of coal mine.

Economic transition, industrial location and corporate networks: Remaking the Sunan Model in Wuxi City, China

This research investigates the transition of the Sunan model, which was centered on local-state directed township and village enterprises (TVEs), through a case study of Wuxi City. Based on questionnaire surveys and firm/government interviews, we have found that Wuxi has been undergoing a series of institutional changes, economic transition and spatial restructuring. TVEs have been replaced by domestic private enterprises and to a lesser extent, foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). However, in comparison with Suzhou, a leading city in Sunan (southern Jiangsu) where FIEs are a major driving force of economic restructuring, domestic capital and private firms have played a more important role in Wuxi. It is found that domestic firms in Wuxi have their own local production networks, rather than forming networks with FIEs. Moreover, local governments remain a key agent of economic transition and firm (re)location. The case of Wuxi highlights the multiple trajectories of remaking the Sunan model, the strong hand of local states, and the uneven process of economic development.

Dual-track urbanization and co-location travel behavior of migrant workers in new towns in Guangzhou, China

Guangzhou has experienced a pattern of dual-track urbanization since economic reforms began in the 1980s. Industrialization and an increasing population have caused the city to relocate jobs and housing to the suburbs. Simultaneously, town governments have developed township and village enterprises (TVEs) and built affordable housing in villages. TVEs have become major industrial processing centers, and the towns that house them have seen the emergence of co-location effects whereby migrant workers become concentrated in urban villages and live near TVEs to optimize their commuting time. It is argued that these co-location adjustments are heavily influenced by institutional policies. This paper reports the results of two surveys, the first a questionnaire survey administered in ShijingTown and the second comprising a series of in-depth interviews carried out in two of Shijing’s urban villages. The results show that a high proportion of the respondents worked and lived in ShijingTown or one of the research villages. Most respondents spent a short time commuting to work. The results also suggest that the pattern of co-location among migrant workers and TVEs observed here reflects the desire to optimize commuting time. Some respondents noted that they had relocated to the research villages because they were ineligible to apply for public housing due to the hukou system.

Las Township and Village Enterprises (TVE) y su contribución al empleo y a las exportaciones chinas

Following its own trajectory of economic development, China achieved an average GDP growth of 9.6 % between 1979 and 2004, and maintains 60 % of its population in rural areas. Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) emerged in these areas in the early 1980s, considered by various scholars as the Chinese economic "engine of growth." With their innovative organizational structures they absorb large contingents of workers and have contributed to the rapid industrialization of the country. In addition to their great contribution to Chinese economic development, TVEs are responsible for high levels of exports. This article describes some of the characteristics of its ownership and organization, and points out how they contribute to employment and the Chinese export strategy. To conclude, it synthesizes the experience of TVE development and the teachings that could be applied in other geographical and cultural contexts, especially in Latin America.

Industrial Development and Spatial Structure in Changzhou City, China: The Restructuring of the Sunan Model

This study investigates the transition of Sunan, located in China's southern Jiangsu Province, China using the orthodox Sunan model of development through a case study of Changzhou City. We found that post-Sunan development retains some of the characteristics of the orthodox Sunan model, and the current production map of Sunan is a combination of new development and the legacies of the development and restructuring of township and village enterprises (TVEs). We have identified the emergence of a new form of core-periphery uneven development, indicating that agglomeration is a pervasive force in production and that globalization is centralizing resources as well as development. We also traced the continuous involvement of local states in economic development and discovered evidence of policy convergence in coastal China. The dominance of manufacturing in the economy of Changzhou provides on-the-ground evidence concerning the rise of China as the global manufacturing floor. However, Changzhou's industry is still mainly made up of traditional industries that exhibit industrial isomorphism and a dispersed spatial layout. Industrial development in Changzhou has been handicapped by its semi-peripheral location in the Yangzi River Delta, less successful local policies, and the legacies of the Sunan model.

Enlightened Localism in Contemporary China: Political Change in Property-Rights Institutions of Township and Village Enterprises

AbstractI examine the dynamic and interactive relationships between local governments and local economic elites as they attempted to privatize China’s township and village enterprises (TVEs) in the late 1990s. To pursue financial interests shared with the local economic elite, local governments informally privatized public TVEs and thereby compromised their role as political agents of the central government. This institutional change in property rights demonstrates a Chinese pattern of “enlightened localism” (Gregg 2003) by which the local political and economic actors develop a pragmatic way of coping with ambiguous legal issues. The deployment of enlightened localism in the TVE sector shows that China’s policies of economic decentralization unintentionally have led to a decentralization of political control.

State Capacity in Contemporary China: ‘closing the pits and reducing coal production’

This paper analyses the capacity of China's central state to control society and implement its policies at the local level, using as a case study the implementation from 1998 of a major policy initiative—‘closing the pits and reducing coal production’. The aims of this policy were to close down many of the TVE (township and village enterprise) mines, thereby ameliorating China's coal safety record, and to reduce output in order to balance supply and demand, thereby improving the situation of the SOE (state-owned enterprise) coal mines. The paper concludes that, despite some success, the state found it difficult to overcome resistance from a powerful coalition of local cadres, mine bosses, workers and farmers who depended directly or indirectly on the mines for their living. It therefore highlights continuing shortfalls in China's state capacity, particularly in situations where the state is trying to control or influence the distribution of economic rents as between different groups in society.

Origens e desenvolvimento das Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) chinesas

Origins and development of Chinese Township and Village Enterprises. Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) performed an important role during China’s rapid economic development. Based on a review of the recent literature on these “engines of growth”, this study characterizes TVEs and their contribution to China’s development trajectory. It draws attention to institutions that are key to explaining TVEs, including responsibility contracts and organizational structure. It concludes that the paradigmatic experiences of TVEs have played an important role in terms of employment and export generation which contributed to China’s sustained levels of economic growth and development.

Capability sequencing: strategies by township and village enterprises in China

PurposeThis study aims to identify and assess the strategies of township and village enterprises in China to capture competitive advantages.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs a self‐administered questionnaire survey approach, involving a sample of managing directors of township and village enterprises in the Fujian Province, China.FindingsThe analysis identifies the causal linkages across time between firms' different capabilities. Labor‐intensive industries and rural locations offer township and village enterprises (TVEs) opportunities to create capabilities to minimize costs. The cost minimization and systematic learning capabilities, in turn, lead to low‐priced innovator positioning. It also suggests that the co‐evolution and co‐existence of different capabilities contribute to capability inimitability.Research limitations/implicationsFuture studies on Chinese TVEs should expand the empirical database and include TVEs in underdeveloped areas and to investigate how firms survive within severe resource limitations.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study indicate that dynamic capabilities are important not only for firms in rapidly changing environments, but also for those in relatively stable industries, such as labor‐intensive industries. Firms should develop different capabilities over time and combine these into complex capabilities bundles.Originality/valueThe findings from this study indicate that firms in developing countries can achieve cost leadership and differentiation, but the route to the destination has a path‐dependent history.

The evolution of township and village enterprises (TVEs) in China

PurposeThis article presents a summary of the development and current status of township and village enterprises (TVEs) in China, examines the latest development in property restructuring in TVEs and explores the key challenges facing TVEs.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is a reflection of the key policies that were conducive to the development of township and village enterprises.FindingsThis article argues that the further development of rural enterprises in China should focus on a number of policy issues, including promoting private enterprises, upgrading industrial structure, developing the agri‐food processing industry, improving quality and branding, encouraging business concentration in towns, and encouraging regional economic and technical collaborations.Originality/valueThe article highlights the trajectory of the development of township and village enterprises in China and the lessons that have been learnt in the process.

Economic and institutional reform packages and their impact on productivity: A case study of Chinese township and village enterprises

In this paper, we investigate the privatization of township and village enterprises (TVEs) in rural China by considering the economic and institutional reform packages and examining their effects on enterprise performance. Using production function analysis, we conclude that the impact of privatization per se is not determined unambiguously because it is indistinguishable from the contribution of technological progress. In addition, we find that market competition is a significant factor in promoting efficiency gains in TVEs. Moreover, the modernization of fiscal and financial institutions in the mid-1990s is shown to be a major proximate cause of privatization and to play an important role in improving enterprise performance through the elimination of the soft-budget regime. We conclude that these reform packages interacted together to generate the economic benefits observed from the privatization of TVEs. Journal of Comparative Economics 34 (1) (2006) 167–190.

Does Property Right Transformation Improve Township and Village Enterprises Performance?

AbstractTo date, few observations have been made about the performance improvement that resulted from the property right transformation of the collective‐owned township and village enterprises (TVE) in the middle of 1990s. Using data collected from a questionnaire survey on the privatized TVE and their employees, the present paper provides some empirical evidence about this topic, and the analysis suggests that property right transformation has had a positive impact on sample enterprises' performance, including business improvement, employment expansion, incremental investment and contributions to government revenues. The present study concludes that, from a transient viewpoint, the property right transformation has not distorted local governments' intentions to establish TVE in earlier years.(Edited by Xinyu Fan)

Strategy Process and Guanxi in Chinese Township and Village Enterprises: A Case-Study Approach

The development of township and village enterprises (TVEs) has been of strategic significance to the Chinese economy. Based on long-term, in-depth case studies of a selected number of Chinese TVEs, this research seeks deductively to characterize their strategy processes in terms of strategic perspectives and approaches and inductively reveals that a guanxi-based view helps to understand better the strategy process in these TVEs. Overall, the strategy process in these TVEs appears as an amalgam of an outside-in perspective and a deliberate approach, with guanxi being pervasive throughout the strategy process.