Rural development and population retention: China and Cuba
Simmons, A.B.
International Development 4: 175-195
1988
Document Number: 392748
Cuba and Chnia have both seriously pursued the combined objectives of rural development and rural population retention. They are, moreover, socialist nations with centralized planning capacity and hence have the ability to coordinate state investments in economic infrastructure and social services with direct controls on population movement through job assignments and housing allocation. Cuba is a small, relatively homogenous country, which had high levels of literacy and urbanization and a large proleterian labour force prior to its revolution. China is a huge, heterogenous nation, which had low levels of literacy and urbanization and a predominantly peasant labour force prior to its revolution. These differences, among others, have influenced the nature of the rural development and population redistribution strategies and their results in each nation. Cuba was able to undertake a much more rapid transfer of economic opportunity and services to rural areas. Through these and related mechanisms, Cuba created an economic climate favourable to population retention in rural areas, and even perhaps to some 'reverse' migration from city to countryside. The government did not resort to the use of administrative controls on population distribution independent of economic incentives. Important differences in rural-urban incomes and the quality of social services have persisted in China, despite major efforts to overcome them. The extensive reliance on administrative measures and ideological pressure to restrict rural-urban migration and encourage urban workers to move to the countryside, over the 1960s and 1970s, may be explained by the rural development strategy and the governments' inability to quickly overcome the rural-urban gap in living standards.