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This paper examines the transition of rural industry in China, particularly changes in the recent decade following the privatization of collective enterprises. Based on fieldwork in a Jiangsu county and drawing on national data, the author shows that rapid urbanization has fundamentally altered the nature of rural industry, with previous village-based rural enterprises replaced by large industrial corporations and urban real estate. While urbanization seems to many an inevitable outcome of economic development, this paper argues and shows that the current form of urbanization in China has been driven by an unsustainable accumulation regime that prioritizes the needs of local revenue, real estate development and large capital at the expense of the previous broad-based rural industry. This is thrown into sharp relief by comparing with the accumulation regime based on local state corporatism during the early reform period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political trajectory of agribusiness firms called 'dragon head enterprises' in China's ongoing agri-food transformations. It starts from the premise that state and private elites in China are working together to consolidate a robust domestic agribusiness sector, as both an arena for national-level rural and economic development, and a new frontier for access to resources and markets abroad. Through analyses of policy documents, market share data and ethnographic materials, I explore the organization and operation of dragon heads in the pork sector. My findings reveal that agribusiness development in China's pork sector is largely domestic, has a mixed state-private form and tends to marginalize the foreign-based TNCs that have been the most powerful actors in the global agri-food system to date. I argue that China is not only a destination for 'external' transnational capital, but also a site of agribusiness development in its own right. This has important implications for analysing capitalist transformations and for engaging global agri-food politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]