Introduction

Abstract

China’s massive peasant population and its alleged political inertia are often pointed to, not least by progressive Chinese intellectuals, as an insuperable obstacle to democratization, in the sense of transition to a society in which opposition politics is legitimate. But this is not where the problem ultimately lies. In the first place, the Chinese population has been increasingly urbanized by the spread of rural enterprises and townships (Yin-Wang Kwok et al., 1990; Yok-shiu F. Lee, 1989).