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Key to China's plans to promote rural development is the de-marginalisation of the countryside through the incorporation of rural areas into the urban-based market-oriented financial system. For this reason, Chinese development planners have turned to microcredit -- i.e. the provision of small-scale loans to 'financially excluded' rural households -- as a means of increasing 'financial consciousness' and facilitating rural de-marginalisation. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in rural China, this book examines the formulation, implementation and outcomes of government-run microcredit programmes in China-illuminating the diverse roles that microcredit plays in local processes of socioeconomic development and the livelihoods of local actors. It details how microcredit facilitates de-marginalisation for some, while simultaneously exacerbating the marginalisation of others; and exposes the ways in which microcredit and other top-down development strategies reflect and reinforce the contradictions and paradoxes implicit in rural China's contemporary development landscape.
List of contents
Front Material 1. Introduction 1.1 Contested and Paradoxical Rural Development in China 1.2 The Rise of the Global Microfinance Movement and the Adoption of Microcredit in Rural China 1.3 Research Questions and Objectives 1.4 Research Methodology and Fieldwork Sites 1.5 Book Outline 2. Rural Financial Services in China: Historical and Literature Review 2.1 The Trajectories and Contours of the Rural Financial Landscape since 1949 2.2 Research on Rural Financial Services in China 2.3 Conclusion 3. Making Microcredit: Policy Formulation and Implementation 3.1 The Formulation of Microcredit Policy 3.2 A Tale of Three Townships: Microcredit Implementation at the Local Level 3.3 Conclusion 4. Variation in Microcredit Implementation: Understanding Heterogeneity from a Relational Perspective 4.1 Differentiated Financial Landscapes and Segmented Financial Markets 4.2 Strategising and Rationalising Pressures and Incentives 4.3 Interpersonal Relationships and Negotiations at the Interface 4.4 Emergence and Complexity in Implementation Outcomes 4.5 Conclusion 5. Microcredit as Modernisation and De-marginalisation 5.1 The Linear Progression Development Paradigm 5.2 Local Interpretations of Microcredit as a Means of De-marginalisation 5.3 Microcredit as De-marginalisation Through Capital, Knowledge, and Technology Transfers 5.4 Microcredit as De-marginalisation Through the Formation of New Socio-political and Socioeconomic Linkages 5.5 Microcredit as De-marginalisation Through Employment, Local Cooperation, and Financial Inclusion 5.6 Microcredit and Local Livelihood Improvement 5.7 Conclusion 6. Microcredit, Precarious Livelihoods and Undercurrents of Marginalisation 6.1 The Unequal Foundations of Development and Relational Marginality 6.2 The Rural-Urban Dichotomy and Relational Marginality in the Chinese Context 6.3 Microcredit as Resource Diversion and Extraction 6.4 Microcredit as Elite Capture and Exclusion 6.5 Microcredit as Precarity, Risk, and Exploitation 6.6 Conclusion 7. Conclusion 7.1 In Summary 7.2 Key Findings 7.3 Directions for Future Research End Material - Bibliography - Interview Lists - Index
About the author
Nicholas Loubere is an Associate Senior Lecturer in the Study of Modern China at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University. His research examines socioeconomic development in rural China, with a particular focus on microcredit and migration.
