Institutions, Urban Bias and Local Relations

Abstract

This research has combined qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate rural–urban income disparities. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have shown that counties like Qinggang in Heilongjiang are at a very low level of development. The interview data indicate that farming was almost the only source of peasants’ income and maize as their major product. The peasants were largely confined to the land, with few income-generating opportunities, apart from agriculture. The quantitative results confirm that transferring the surplus labour out of agriculture will help to increase rural income, thus reducing the rural–urban income gap.