Social capital for rural revitalization in China: A critical evaluation on the government's new countryside programme in Chengdu

摘要

In the context of urbanisation and decline of its countryside in the 21st century, the Chinese government has initiated a campaign namely "building a socialist new countryside" in 2006 which is now renamed as "rural revitalisation". Bringing together social capital, government intervention and other capital, we argue that rural revitalisation can be viewed as a process of the interaction between land transfer and community building leading to multiple gains of all stakeholders. Given the predomination of top-down government intervention and external capital investment in its campaign, this paper sheds new light on social capital in terms of not only mobilising community members' participation, but also reaching a balance with interests of government and other stakeholders. The importance of social capital can be illustrated from critical evaluation on governmental pilot projects in the suburban zone of Chengdu, a model municipal in China in urban-rural integration. In particular, this paper aims to address the following questions: How does social capital engage and contribute to rural restructuring for sustainable rural livelihoods? What role can social capital play in the decision making of land transfer and community building? This paper contributes to rural revitalisation and land use debates in three aspects. Firstly, we post a triangular model by bringing together government intervention, social and other capital to emphasize the interwoven nature of the relationship between land transfer and community building for better understanding of the intrinsic dynamics within the communities and their interests interfaced with external stakeholders. Secondly, with respect to the impact of land transfer on sustainable livelihoods, we propose an evaluation framework to account and compare the roles of social capital against government intervention and other conditions in land transfer decision making. Thirdly, applying the above framework to sample villages, we identify three types of rural restructuring: government-led, farmer self-organising, and returned entrepreneur-oriented. Policy implications and further research direction are discussed.