| Contemporary China is in the throes of monumental change. Over two decades after Deng Xiaoping launched the “Four Modernizations” economic reform program, an emerging market economy and new webs of commerce have generated unprecedented productivity and prosperity. No where is this more apparent than in China's township and village enterprises (TVEs). Based in China's rural areas rather than urban metropolises, these firms are not just a curious, transitional phenomenon in the Chinese economy. In fact, TVEs often rank among the most profitable and best-performing enterprises in China.; This dissertation explains why rural enterprises have not just survived, but thrived in the competitive reform environment. Contrary to the marketization and local state corporatism perspectives, this study suggests that local industrialization did not occur because of new financial incentives or the active intervention of local cadres. Instead, enterprise success resulted from the effective amalgamation of a collectively-oriented, trust-based, social ethos with an individually-oriented, profit-driven, industrial production regimen. By utilizing rather than rejecting existing social and institutional legacies, enterprise members prevented social turmoil from engulfing and destroying the factory. As these firms expanded and changed, enterprise leaders continually wrestled with maintaining a balance between the demands of production and the needs of community in the three developmental stages of survival, expansion, and reintegration.; Through personal interviews and participant observation conducted at enterprises in Wenzhou and Jinhua prefectures of China's Zhejiang province, this dissertation highlights how the institutional frameworks of these firms were created and how they evolved in response to changing organizational imperatives. These enterprise-building experiences differed significantly from those in Western Europe and the United States, constituting an historical substitute, an alternative developmental path to industrialization. They also demonstrate that peasants can indeed make effective industrial workers and more importantly, that they can examine and effectively shape their understandings of work, authority, and equity. |
