The relevance of the Chinese experience

The Chinese experience clearly shows that it is possible to involve the whole of the rural population in land reform processes. The really exceptional feature of this land reform, though, lies elsewhere: it was the first redistributive land reform in which the newly introduced manland relation equalled the average manland relation. The democratization of the access to land does not necessarily provoke stagnation and widespread poverty. All land reform processes operate from the concept of an economic holding. The reshaping of China's agriculture into a peasant agriculture at the end of the 1970s had a multifaceted and far reaching impact on subsequent developments. Take the notion of a smallholding. According to the accepted definitions there are extensive smallholding sectors everywhere. In the USA, Poland and the Netherlands. In Russia and Ukraine. Markets and policies are increasingly represented as presenting a dichotomy. This applies a fortiori to markets for food and agricultural products and to rural and agricultural policies.