Rural China is experiencing rapid and far reaching changes precipitated by global, national and local development interventions. While not downgrading the pursuit of aggregate economic growth, in 2003 Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao committed their regime to a socially just, 'people centred', sustainable rural development paradigm that hinged on upgrading physical and social infrastructure, commercialization of agriculture and urbanization. More recently, in response to global financial crisis and recession, the leadership has proposed to sustain the country’s economy and forestall social instability with a 4 trillion yuan stimulus package intended to boost consumption and provide employment to a growing population of laid-off migrant workers and landless farmers. The World Bank and China's National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Agriculture have cautioned that an even larger investment is needed to fund ecologically viable energy generation, social and medical insurance and education in the countryside. In addition, critics of China's rural development paradigm warn that it is exacerbating, rather than ameliorating, rural-urban, regional and social disparities.

This conference will address why gender gaps in rural political representation, income, employment, health and welfare have not closed, and indeed continue to increase, despite decades of rural development interventions and women’s growing presence as participants in, and objects of that development. It will also consider how gender politics shape the concepts, processes and practices linking China’s rural development paradigm and growth model, and how rural development and growth, in turn, alter gender politics, social equity and citizenship in China’s countryside.

Organizers: Tamara Jacka, Sally Sargeson