Small town China

"Small Town China provides a picture of the organisations, economy, administration and lifestyles in three 'small towns' occupying very different positions within a developmental spectrum in China in the late 1990s. The authors argue that a major change in planning policy in 1978 to dam the flood of migration from rural areas to large cities encouraged rural migrants to move instead to small towns and activated numerous economic and social incentives. This has proved to be so successful that the majority of the Chinese population now lives in small towns and they are still growing rapidly. With a scarcity of published material about this crucial sector of the Chinese economy, this book provides a unique insight into a subject which is generally treated either in piecemeal fashion or at the level of aggregated statistics."--Jacket.