We present a summary analysis of the important changes in township and village finance in China between 2000 and 2004, based on a survey of 100 villages in 50 townships in 25 counties in five provinces. The reforms included the elimination of regular fee assessments imposed on rural households...

This paper argues that the Chinese central government has fully abandoned the previous policy of an urban bias in resource distribution. Party doctrine for much of the Maoist era sought to take the economic surplus from the countryside and use it to feed the industrialization of the urban areas....