Lexington Books Dragons with Clay Feet?: Transition, Sustainable Land Use, and Rural Environment in China and Vietnam (Rural Economies in Transition)

Dragons with Clay Feet? presents state-of-the-art research on the impact of ongoing and anticipated economic policy and institutional reforms on agricultural development and sustainable rural resource in two East-Asian transition (and developing) economies-China and Vietnam. The contributions to this volume focus on the regional and sectoral impact of transformational policies, farm household decision making under a changing economic and institutional environment, and potential trade-offs between agricultural growth and sustainable land management in the two countries. The analysis of household responses to economic policies and changing institution, and their implications for agricultural production and sustainable resource use in East-Asian transition economies, is a relatively new research field. This collection by a group of Chinese, Vietnamese, and international researchers reflect the rapid progress that is being made in this important research field. Review Transition has brought about considerable environmental degradation in the rural countryside, with rural resources such as land, forests, and water suffering at the expense of these transitions. This book takes up the challenge to examine what the impacts have been of these transformations for farmers in China and Vietnam. The authors as a whole investigate rural inequality and a range of farm decision-making processes through a predominantly economic lens. In sum, the twenty-eight authors involved--and it is positive to note that many are from China or Vietnam--through their sixteen chapters, bring to light new, in-depth case studies and analyses on agricultural diversification, production growth, urban encroachment, and the widespread use of agro-chemicals.--Development and Change, March 2009 Dragons with Clay Feet is a book that all scholars of development and transition will want to read. Combining work from some of the best researchers working on China and Vietnam in the world, there are papers that document the miracles of East Asia's transition and others that identify and analyze the region's most critical developmental and environmental challenges. The editors, Max Spoor, Nico Heerink, and Qu Futian, have put together a volume that is ambitious in its scope, careful in its scholarship, and bold in its conclusions.--Scott Rozelle, Stanford University About the Author Max Spoor is associate professor at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague/Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Nico Heerink is associate professor at Wageningen University in The Netherlands and visiting professor at Nanjing Agricultural University in Nanjing, China. Futian Qu is professor at the College of Land Management and vice president of the Nanjing Agricultural University in Nanjing, China.