Published in: journal Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 10, Issue 1 March 2009 , pages 138 - 153

Abstract

NSC (the Chinese government's campaign to 'construct a New Socialist Countryside') aims to increase agricultural productivity, improve the rural environment, and promote peasant welfare (fuli).1 In order to achieve this goal, peasants must get organized. Since most young peasants leave the countryside to work in the city, elderly people have become the main agents of production and life in the villages, so peasant organization must involve the organization of the elderly. Experiments in NSC demonstrate, moreover, that the development of seniors' associations and the mobilization of seniors' abilities in rural governance (xiangcun zhili)2 are good starting points for NSC. NSC should, therefore, draw lessons from the experiences of seniors' associations in NRR (New Rural Reconstruction) experiments. This article describes the development of five seniors' associations in NRR experimental sites in Hubei and Henan as examples of how NSC might develop seniors' organizations and mobilize seniors' abilities.

Wang Ximing is an associate professor of rural sociology at Southwest Jiaotong University, director of its Western China Center for Rural Studies, and author of Senior Welfare in Rural Governance (2007) and Village Community Governance on the Western Sichuan Plain: A Study of Jing Village, Luojiang County《川西平原的村社治理：四川罗江县井村调查》 (2009).