John A. Donaldson.

Research · Area IV

Rural Restructuring in China

What happens to peasants?

Modernization of agriculture implies land consolidation, urbanization, and an increasing role for agribusiness. Can smallholder farmers benefit under these conditions? With long-time collaborator Q. Forrest Zhang, this line of work has traced how China's agrarian transition has differentiated rural society and reshaped land-rights institutions. A new edited volume, Remaking Rural China: The Political Economy of Rural Transition Under Xi Jinping (with Kristen E. Looney, Elena Meyer-Clément, and Jesper W. Zeuthen), is under review with Cornell University Press.

Publications

Remaking Rural China: The Political Economy of Rural Transition Under Xi Jinping

Looney, Kristen E., Elena Meyer-Clément, John A. Donaldson, and Jesper W. Zeuthen, eds. Remaking Rural China: The Political Economy of Rural Transition Under Xi Jinping. Manuscript under review. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Post-Productivism and Rural Revitalization in China: Drivers and Outcomes

Wu, Meiling, Forrest Q. Zhang, and John A. Donaldson. 2024. Journal of Rural Studies 110.

Why Do Farmers' Cooperatives Fail in a Market Economy? Rediscovering Chayanov with the Chinese Experience

Hu, Zhanping, Qian Forrest Zhang, and John Donaldson. 2023. The Journal of Peasant Studies 50(7): 2611–41. Also published in Chinese as "理解中国农民合作社的发展困境: 来自恰亚诺夫视角的解释," 开放时代 (Open Times) 309(3): 178–95 (2023).

Farmers' Cooperatives in China: A Typology of Fraud and Failure

Hu, Zhanping, Forrest Zhang, and John A. Donaldson. 2017. China Journal 78: 1–24.

On the Social and Political Effects of Opening

Cheng, Housi, Q. Forrest Zhang, and John A. Donaldson. 2015. Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal 1(1): 609–36.

China's Agrarian Reform and the Privatization of Land — a Contrarian View

Zhang, Q. Forrest, and John A. Donaldson. 2013. Journal of Contemporary China 22(80): 255–72.

The Transformation of China's Agriculture System and its Impact on Southeast Asia

Luo, Phoebe Mingxuan, John A. Donaldson, and Qian Forrest Zhang. 2011. International Journal of China Studies 2(2): 289–310.

From Peasants to Farmers: Peasant Differentiation, Labor Regimes and Land-rights Institutions in China's Agrarian Transition

Zhang, Q. Forrest, and John A. Donaldson. 2010. Politics and Society 38(4): 458–89. Awarded the Research Paper Award from the Asia & Asian American Section of the American Sociological Association.

终结的开始？当代中国的农业现代化和农民阶层的分化 (The beginning of the end? Agricultural modernization and dissolution of the peasantry in contemporary China)

Zhang, Q. Forrest, and John A. Donaldson. 2010. 中国研究 (China Studies), No. 7–8: 187–214.

Whither China's Agriculture and Rural Sector?

Donaldson, John A., and Forrest Zhang. 2009. In Yeoh, E.K., ed., Towards Pax Sinica? China's Rise and Transformation. Kuala Lumpur: Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya. Reprinted in Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations 1(1): 51–74 (2015).

The Rise of Agrarian Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Agricultural Modernization, Agribusiness and Collective Land Rights

Zhang, Q. Forrest, and John A. Donaldson. 2008. China Journal 60: 25–47.

← All research areas

Join the conversation.

Occasional notes on the book, research in progress, and dispatches from a growing network of academics, practitioners, and others working on poverty. No more than once a month.

Free · Unsubscribe anytime