Uneven development in period and space does not occur simply due to a statistical or accidental absence of evenness, and nor does it occur due to local inability to adjust to politically correct designs of development. According to Neil Smith, uneven development is a sign of capitalist civilizations, their geographic signature, and a direct spatial translation of the logic of capital accumulation. In this paper I will compare and contrast how two important authors link China’s geographical unevenness to its development.
Nongjiale Tourism and Contested Space in Rural China written by Choong-Hwan Park refers to a unique Chinese form of rural tourism, which involves peasant families welcoming urbanite visitors to their farm guesthouses serving …show more content…
The author approaches urban unevenness by studying the relationship between urban and countryside, and how it influences the development of China. The Chinese urban-rural relationship is not necessarily positive: “Peasant hosts … belittle city people in their struggle [to …show more content…
The author links urban unevenness with Hukou, which presents as a key institutional driver of China’s underlying urban-rural chasm. The Hukou system was implemented to allow the state to achieve crash industrialization by putting peasants under closer surveillance: “By immobilizing the peasantry and putting them under close surveillance, the state was able to orchestrate extractions from the agriculturalists to support the paramount goal of crash industrialization” (215). The Hukou system was also implemented as a stepping-stone to turn China into “the world’s low-cost supplier of manufacturing products” (215) by exploiting peasants as an exceedingly low-cost mobile labor force. Hukou was a success kin terms of the economic dividends that it drove, “first through Mao’s forced industrialization and second through the post-Mao “world-factory” strategy” (215-216). The author states that the most common development ideologies associated with the Hukou system are urban bias: “This practice … perhaps not unexpected given the inherently meager concern accorded peasantries in the communist doctrines penned by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, … the de facto exploitation of the countryside incorporated within the Soviet development model, …and more broadly, the strong urban bias in most
Nongjiale Tourism and Contested Space in Rural China written by Choong-Hwan Park refers to a unique Chinese form of rural tourism, which involves peasant families welcoming urbanite visitors to their farm guesthouses serving …show more content…
The author approaches urban unevenness by studying the relationship between urban and countryside, and how it influences the development of China. The Chinese urban-rural relationship is not necessarily positive: “Peasant hosts … belittle city people in their struggle [to …show more content…
The author links urban unevenness with Hukou, which presents as a key institutional driver of China’s underlying urban-rural chasm. The Hukou system was implemented to allow the state to achieve crash industrialization by putting peasants under closer surveillance: “By immobilizing the peasantry and putting them under close surveillance, the state was able to orchestrate extractions from the agriculturalists to support the paramount goal of crash industrialization” (215). The Hukou system was also implemented as a stepping-stone to turn China into “the world’s low-cost supplier of manufacturing products” (215) by exploiting peasants as an exceedingly low-cost mobile labor force. Hukou was a success kin terms of the economic dividends that it drove, “first through Mao’s forced industrialization and second through the post-Mao “world-factory” strategy” (215-216). The author states that the most common development ideologies associated with the Hukou system are urban bias: “This practice … perhaps not unexpected given the inherently meager concern accorded peasantries in the communist doctrines penned by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, … the de facto exploitation of the countryside incorporated within the Soviet development model, …and more broadly, the strong urban bias in most