Real Estate Boom, Commodification and Crises of Social Reproductive Institutions in Rural China

Real-estate Boom, Commodification and Crises of Social
Reproductive Institutions in Rural China
Tiantian Liu
ABSTRACT
Based on 12 months of ethnographic, interview and archival research in

a poor rural county in China, this article argues that three state policies,
namely the concentration of rural educational resources in the county seat,
the decision to make access to county-seat public schools conditional upon
homeownership in school districts, and the (former) one-child policy, have
compelled rural households to participate in the real-estate market to meet
the reproductive needs of basic education and marriage. The increasing com-
modification of education and marriage has fuelled a local real-estate boom
during the past decade. At the same time, it has put peasant-migrant house-
holds under severe economic pressure, forcing them to relocate unpaid fe-
male care labour away from the village and to become heavily indebted.
These outcomes have had serious repercussions for two other reproductive
institutions, leading to a breakdown in intergenerational care and financial
support for the elderly, and a sharp decline in the rural birth rate. The Chinese
countryside as a social space in which peasant-migrant households were able
to reproduce themselves in a relatively non-commodified manner has disap-
peared.
INTRODUCTION
During the past two decades, the rapid expansion of real estate has been one
of the most eye-catching phenomena in China’s socio-economic transform-
ation. Not only has real estate come to play a crucial role in China’s eco-
nomic growth, but tens of millions of Chinese people also spend their life
savings to become homeowners. However, to date, real estate has generally
The OYCF-Chow Foundation Dissertation Fellowship supports the fieldwork on which this art-
icle is based. I would like to thank Dong Yige from the University of Buffalo for first introdu-
cing me to the social reproduction framework. I owe an intellectual debt to Beverly Silver, Joel
Andreas, Michael Levien and other members of the Johns Hopkins Sociology community for
their helpful comments. I am also grateful to Song Qi and Ruan Zhihang from Northwestern
University, Xu Mengran from University of Toronto and Liu Chuncheng from UCSD for their
thoughtful suggestions, and to the anonymous referees for their input.
Development and Change 54(3): 543–569. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12769

© 2023 The Authors. Development and Change published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf
of International Institute of Social Studies.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCom-
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original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
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544 Tiantian Liu
Figure 1. Sunshine County Real-estate Boom
Source: County statistical yearbooks, 2009–21.
been understood as an urban/peri-urban issue. There has been little discus-

sion in the existing literature on the recent dramatic expansion of real estate
in China’s rural hinterland, and how it is drastically reshaping the social re-
production of rural households. To fill this crucial gap, this article looks at
one county in China’s northern Anhui Province, which we will call Sun-
shine Country (a pseudonym); far from being a booming suburban region
with ample off-farm economic opportunities, Sunshine County is poverty-
stricken and deeply agricultural. With most of its population engaging in
household farming and migrant wage labour, the county’s average GDP per
capita was only RMB 17,748 (approximately US$ 2,568) in 2019,1 while the
national average was RMB 70,892 (US$ 10,259).2 Following conventional
wisdom, few would expect a real-estate boom in such a poor region. Yet,
between 2011 and 2020, the number of apartment units sold in the county
seat (the administrative centre of the county) increased 10-fold, with average
prices per square meter soaring (see Figures 1 and 2). As real estate becomes
a dominant feature in local socio-economic lives, this article explores two
interrelated questions: (1) why would rural households buy apartments in
the county seat, when they have houses in the villages? (2) how does in-
volvement in the real-estate market reshape the reproductive activities of
rural households?
This article builds upon the social reproduction literature and draws from
ethnographic, interview and archival research in Sunshine County. It argues
that three state policies — namely, the concentration of rural educational
resources in the county seat, the decision to make access to county-seat
public schools conditional upon homeownership in school districts, and the
1. Average exchange rate in 2019 was US$ 1 = RMB 6.91. See: www.exchangerates.org.uk/
USD-CNY-spot-exchange-rates-history-2019.html
2. Figures from the county’s statistical yearbook for 2020.
Commodification and Social Reproduction in Rural China 545
Figure 2. Rising Average House Prices in Sunshine County (RMB per m2 )
Source: County statistical yearbooks, 2009–21.
(former) one-child policy — have compelled rural households to partici-

pate in the county real-estate market in order to meet the reproductive needs
of basic education and marriage. While fuelling a local real-estate boom
during the past decade, increasing commodification of these key reproduc-
tive institutions has put tremendous and unsustainable economic pressure on
peasant-migrant households, forcing them to relocate unpaid female care la-
bour away from the village and to become heavily indebted. These immedi-
ate consequences of commodification have set off a chain reaction, causing
a crisis in other reproductive institutions and leading, first, to a breakdown
in intergenerational financial and care support for the elderly and, second, to
a sudden, sharp decline in the rural birth rate. The rest of this article unpacks
these dynamics.
LITERATURE REVIEW
In recent years, a renewed interest in social reproduction theory (SRT) has

emerged in feminist and Marxist scholarship. Building on Marx’s original
focus on the daily regeneration of labour power (Marx, 1976; Vogel, 2013),
SRT expands the definition of social reproduction to incorporate three core
aspects: (1) biological procreation; (2) child rearing (the socialization and
education of the next generation); and (3) the provision of livelihoods
and care to maintain human well-being, especially for the elderly (Bakker,
2007; Jacka, 2018: 1342; Kofman, 2012). These activities are typically or-
ganized by different social reproductive institutions. Marriage is often the
pre-requisite for biological procreation, and schools are key to chil-
dren’s education and socialization. Furthermore, the intergenerational and
546 Tiantian Liu
gendered division of labour within households, together with household

property ownership, structure the arrangements of care provision and finan-
cial assistance. These institutions are interconnected components that form
different regimes of reproduction, which vary across time and space (Dong,
2020; Laslett and Brenner, 1989; Rao, 2021).
In China, rural social reproduction in the post-reform era (from the late
1970s onwards) has rested upon three pillars: migration to and wage in-
come from the urban sectors; domestic care provision, mostly provided by
women and carried out in rural areas; and household farming based on
land entitlement. First, with most economic opportunities concentrated in
urban areas, both men and young women have left villages to work in cit-
ies. Over the years, migration has led to a partial commodification of the
reproduction of rural households, as wage labour now contributes more
than half of village households’ annual income (Zhang, 2015). As Chinese
law and filial culture oblige working-age household members to provide
and care for young and elderly members (Qi, 2015; Ye et al., 2017), wage
labour constitutes an important source of remittances. At the same time,
the duty of providing care labour has fallen disproportionally upon rural
women, because patriarchal gender norms emphasize women’s role as care-
givers. Therefore, while men often keep migrating until they become too
old to find work, women tend to quit migrant work at an earlier age and re-
turn to the village, where they attend to the daily needs of children and the
elderly — frequently without any monetary compensation (Chuang, 2016,
2020; Fan, 2004; Jacka and Gaetano, 2004). Moreover, since reforms in the
1970s restored land-use rights to rural households, women have become
a crucial source of agricultural labour. Their farming activities constitute
a stable and less commodified source of livelihood, meeting the food and
small cash needs of household members who remain in the village (Chuang,
2016; Jacka, 2018; Murphy, 2020). Gendered divisions of labour overlap
with clear spatial boundaries between production and reproduction. These
arrangements have allowed rural households to reproduce themselves at low
cost and outside of capital accumulation (Andreas and Zhan, 2016; Arrighi,
2007; Hart, 2002).
This spatially separated reproduction regime also largely applies to educa-
tion. Because municipal governments seek to control overpopulation and re-
fuse to cover migrant workers’ reproduction costs, there has only been limit-
ed progress in providing adequate and affordable schools for rural children
in Chinese cities over the years. Thus, while increasing numbers of rural
children attend schools at migration destinations, the majority still stay in
the countryside (Friedman, 2022: Ch. 2). The resilience of the production–
reproduction spatial distinction and the continued importance of rural so-
cial spaces in social reproduction constitute an important backdrop for this
article. This traditional regime has allowed the reproduction of rural house-
holds to continue in a relatively non-commodified manner, thereby subsidiz-
ing and sustaining several decades of labour-intensive capital accumulation
in China. This article shows, however, that the traditional regime is reaching
its limits and entering crisis.
RESEARCH SITE AND METHODS
Located in northern Anhui Province, Sunshine County3 was classified as

a national-level poverty county until 2019. Of its population of 1.72 mil-
lion people, 87.5 per cent are to be found in rural households, pursu-
ing livelihoods which combine household farming and migrant labour. In
the early 2010s, the government of Sunshine County started to promote
the real-estate sector to stimulate local economic development and meet
fiscal needs. In the course of that decade, the number of property de-
velopers in the county jumped from 11 to 29, and the newly built area
increased year on year, from 138,494 m2 in 2010 to 1,293,765 m2 in
2019.4
In this context, I examine the causes and impacts of rural households’
participation in the real-estate market by drawing on 12 months of fieldwork
with 48 rural households from Deer Village in Sunshine County. Reflecting
county-level dynamics, 44 of these rural households have at least one mem-
ber actively engaged in migrant wage labour, with other members staying
behind and engaging in household farming, growing vegetables and raising
poultry for daily consumption. They also cultivate and sell crops (corn and
wheat) to generate cash income to cover necessary production costs and liv-
ing expenses. Moving between Deer Village and the county seat of Sunshine
County, 15 km away, I conducted interviews and ethnographic research to
observe how rural households manage different reproductive tasks across
separate social spaces, as they participate in the county real-estate market. I
also carried out archival analysis and interviews with local officials and real-
estate agents, to trace Sunshine County’s housing and education policies
over the past decade.
In the following sections, I first analyse the socio-economic and political
mechanisms that compel rural households to buy apartments in the county
seat, resulting in the commodification of key institutions of social repro-
duction. I then examine how the immediate consequences of this commodi-
fication set off a chain reaction which leads to a crisis in interconnected
reproductive institutions. The article ends by discussing its theoretical im-
plications in the context of the broader SRT literature.
3. To ensure anonymity of the interviewees, all place names used in this article are pseud-
onyms, including Sunshine County, Deer Village, Dragon Town and City A. For the same
reason, some sources — such as county yearbooks — have been given generic names, and
exact URLs are not specified.
4. County statistical yearbooks, 2009–2020.
548 Tiantian Liu
COMMODIFICATION OF RURAL BASIC EDUCATION
The first mechanism which creates demand for county-seat apartments is

the commodification of rural basic education. This process is primarily
driven by two state policies: the concentration of educational resources in
the county seat; and county authority’s decision to make access to county-
seat public schools conditional upon homeownership in the school district.
The first is a national-level policy, and the second is a common practice
adopted by many local governments to boost real-estate sales.
County Schools Become the Only Option
A Chinese rural county has a three-tiered administrative structure. With vil-

lages at the bottom and townships in the middle, the county seat sits at the
top of the pyramid, where the best local resources are concentrated.5 Un-
der this structure, the phenomenon of rural parents sending their children
away from villages is not new. Jacka’s fieldwork in central Henan Province
demonstrated that aspiring parents are willing to put their children into more
expensive county-seat schools for the sake of a better education (Jacka,
2018). Such parental aspirations for upward social mobility have become
a major driver of agrarian change and shaped peasant households’ repro-
duction (ibid.). Similar dynamics are at work in Deer Village. Among the
48 households in the study, 40 per cent of primary-school-age children (16
out of 40 children) either go to public or private schools in the county seat
(10 out of 40), or attend schools in the places where their parents work (6 out
of 40, all private), as households worry about the poor educational quality
of village schools (see Table 1). According to Grandpa Wen, ‘They all say
that teachers are equally assigned between village and county schools, but
that is not true. Village education is poor. The school my grandson attends is
not the best county-seat school. But students don’t leave school until 6 pm.
You know when kids from the village school leave? 4 pm! How much time
difference in one day!’.6
However, aspirations can only explain so much about parents’ decision
making regarding their children’s education. At the primary-school stage,
parents in Deer Village do have the option of choosing cheap, easily access-
ible village schools, albeit at a lower quality, rather than the more expensive
education in the county seat or at migration destinations. In my study, the
majority did indeed choose village schools (24 out of 40 children) to reduce
education expenditure. More expensive primary-school education is, there-
fore, a matter of choice, not compulsion. However, as children approach the
5. In heavily agricultural counties like Sunshine County, the county seat is primarily an ad-
ministrative centre and has little industry.
6. Interview, Deer Village, April 2021.
Table 1. School Choice among 48 Households, Deer Village

Number of
Age Group School Type Children/Students Cost and Access
0–3 N/A 13 N/A
4–6 Kindergarten at migration 7 High tuition cost, personal
Kindergarten destination connection
age
Village, public 10 Low tuition cost, easy to get in
kindergarten
7–12 County school (private 10 High tuition and living costs, or
Primary included) homeownership in school
school age districts
School at migration 6 High tuition costs, personal
destination (private) connection
Village public school 24 Low tuition, easy to get in
13–15 County public school 15 Difficult to get in,
Junior-high homeownership in school
age districts
County private school 7 High tuition and living costs
School at migration 1 High tuition costs, personal
destination (private) connection
Township public school 7 Low tuition costs, poor
education quality
16–18 County public school 8 Difficult to get in, need to pass
High school exam
age
County private school 1 High tuition and living costs
Source: Interviews, Deer Village, January–June 2021.
age for junior-high school, this freedom of choice vanishes almost entirely.
Although reforms have made it easier for children to attend schools at mi-
gration destinations, sending children back home for junior high is still the
only option for most parents. This is because taking the high-school entrance
examination at migration destinations requires a local xueji (education regis-
tration). Despite regional variations, the criteria demanded by most cities
include local hukou (household registration) and homeownership, both of
which are beyond the reach of most migrant workers (Friedman, 2022: Ch.
2). As a result, many parents send children back early, for junior high, to
adjust to different curriculums and exam levels (Murphy, 2020).
With options in cities remaining limited, the nation-wide landscape of
county junior-high education has changed significantly in the past 15 years,
as the Chinese state gradually shifted rural educational resources from town-
ships to the county seat (Ding et al., 2016; Jacka, 2018; Murphy, 2014).
Between 2009 and 2021, the number of county-seat schools in Sunshine
County grew from 14 to 23, while the total number of schools in its 27
townships decreased from 69 to 41. Furthermore, individual county-seat
schools have been expanding to enrol more students while the size of town-
ship schools has been shrinking. For instance, Dragon Town — the juris-
diction in which Deer Village is located — used to have three junior-high
550 Tiantian Liu
schools before 2015. Since then, two have closed and only one remains. The
capacity of the remaining school has been declining and cannot cater for the
township’s student population. Between 2011 and 2020, the number of stu-
dents in the school shrank from 580 to around 500, even as the township’s
population increased from 33,000 to 35,400. In 2021, its maximum enrol-
ment allowed for 160 seventh-grade students. In comparison, No.1 Junior
High in the county seat admitted 1,370 seventh-graders, with 4,000 students
in total.7
Another consequence of the state’s centralizing policy is that Dragon
Town’s one remaining junior high has been underfunded for years, and is
losing its good teachers and students. As one township cadre complained,
‘Whenever the township school has a good student, the county schools will
poach the student and her teacher’.8 Given the deterioration in the township
school’s educational quality, only 25–35 per cent of its graduates have been
able to enter high school in recent years. In comparison, the high-school
entrance rate for the worst county-seat public junior high is 50 per cent,
and for the two best ones it stands at more than 70 per cent.9 The smaller
size and shrinking number of township schools result in a limited number
of township graduates being able to enter high school. Together, the grow-
ing unevenness in school distribution and the different prospects for high
school in the township and the county seat make many parents feel that
sending their children to a county-seat junior high is not a luxury, but rather
a necessity.
Above all, this pressure derives from parents’ changing conception of
the minimum requirement for children’s upbringing. While the more am-
bitious families choose expensive county-seat education from the start, to
‘get ahead’, and talk about college and even post-graduate aspirations, par-
ents who do not send their children to the county seat until junior-high
age are more compelled by a fear of ‘being left behind’. Witnessing rapid
changes through their own migration experience, they believe their children
cannot survive in future society by only selling labour. During interviews,
parents repeatedly said: ‘At a minimum, they need to finish high school. Oth-
erwise, how are they going to survive? They [employers] won’t even let you
guard the gate’.10 Rural parents increasingly consider middle-school edu-
cation as a basic and essential component of children’s upbringing, reflect-
ing how meanings and content of social reproduction are constantly chan-
ging. Thus, paying for the more expensive county junior-highs no longer
represents a dream of upward social mobility. Instead, it is an unwanted but
7. Numbers are taken from school and government websites, ‘Summary of Education Institu-
tions’, August 2022. The numbers include both public and private schools.
8. Interview, Dragon Town, May 2021.
9. No. 1 and No. 3 Junior High websites; interviews with township schoolteachers and offi-
cials.
10. Interviews, Deer Village, February 2021.
unavoidable expenditure, as parents hope to reach the minimum high-school

education requirement. Old Ma expressed this feeling of having no option:
‘It’s so difficult to get your children into schools now. It is either county
private school, or county public school. There is no other option. We can’t
afford to do nothing. It’s for children’s education. Previously there were
junior-highs nearby. But they all closed down’.11
Consequently, in the Deer Village study, most children (22 out of 30)
in the 13–15 age bracket now attend county junior-high schools (Table 1).
Only students from the economically worst-off households still attend the
township public school. For two of these, their parents have divorced and
completely abandoned the family. The remaining five come from three poor
households suffering long-term illness. Even these villagers are quite clear
on the township school’s undesirability: ‘If we had money and I could work,
we would definitely send them to the county, just like everyone else’.12 In
Sunshine County, the percentage of students attending county-seat schools
increased from 36.97 per cent in 2009 to 51.31 per cent in 2016 and 58.41
per cent in 2021.13
The county government is obliged to meet the central government’s nine-
year compulsory education requirement. Thus, parents’ main problem is not
an absolute scarcity in junior-high education. Rather, as the county author-
ity has the power to determine school locations and resource allocations, a
growing imbalance between townships and county seat in the distribution
of schools and the prospects for achieving high-school admission is ser-
iously constraining the options for parents seeking the minimum necessary
educational levels for their children.
School Access through Homeownership
So how does attending county-seat schools commodify education? First,

some parents choose private schools, which have been fully commodified
since their inception in the late 1990s. Tuition fees are usually several times
higher than public-school tuition, ranging from RMB 4,000 to RMB 7,000
for each semester (usually two per year). As most mothers either rent a
place in the county seat to care for their children, or send them to boarding
schools, one household’s annual education-related expenditure for private
schools could easily exceed RMB 20,000. The amount will be higher if a
couple has more than one child. Moreover, the county authority has sought
to reduce the competition for student recruitment between private and public
schools. It has thus closed down at least seven private junior-high schools
since 2016, including the two biggest, and limited the enrolment quota of the
11. Interview, Deer Village, February 2021.

12. Interview, Deer Village, March 2021.
13. Statistical yearbooks of City A, 2009–21.
552 Tiantian Liu
rest.14 This reduces the capacity of private schools to host more village stu-
dents and creates concern about future school closures among rural parents,
pushing many to choose county-seat public schools.
Before 2015, village parents could get their children into county-seat pub-
lic schools by giving school administrators a jiedu fei (sponsorship fee). Typ-
ically costing around RMB 10,000, this was a one-off payment that could be
easily arranged, often through middlemen. Once enrolment was completed,
parents only needed to pay modest tuition fees of several hundred renminbi
per year. However, in 2015, the county authority announced that, hence-
forth, for their children to enrol and obtain xueji in county public schools,
parents must have both homeownership and children’s hukou registration in
the newly designated school districts.15 Despite the official goal of improv-
ing education quality, the control on enrolment from outside school districts
in fact aims to create demand for county real-estate projects. According to
a county official: ‘Everything is connected to real estate. The government
closed down village schools over these years, intentionally forcing village
students to attend county-seat schools. Since they need homeownership cer-
tificates (meaning parents need to buy school-district apartments), the gov-
ernment can push up demand and housing prices’.16
Such a policy is not unique to Sunshine County. Originating in China’s
mega cities, many cities and counties, including those adjacent to Sunshine
County, have used school eligibility policies to support real-estate develop-
ment. For county governments, real estate is crucial to local GDP growth
and government budgets; shoring up house prices helps attract more de-
velopers and sustain revenue from land sales. However, while benefiting
local government and developers, this policy creates new burdens for rural
households.17 Since parents can no longer pay sponsorship fees to secure
school enrolment, they are forced into buying county-seat apartments. This
makes school access dependent upon a commodity, even if public education
itself remains non-commodified. Two officials described how things have
changed:
Ten years ago, to get your children into county public schools, you only needed to find the
school administrator and treat him/her with a lavish dinner. Today, this is not enough. You
either buy a school-district apartment or have rock-solid connections. Why do you think
those buildings are worth such high prices?
14. ‘Announcement of the Closure of 22 Private Schools’, Sunshine County government,

November 2021.
15. ‘Sunshine County’s Plan to Enroll Kindergarten, Primary-School, and Junior-high Stu-
dents’, 2015.
16. Interview, Sunshine County, April 2021.
17. In Sunshine County, the policy includes a 5 per cent quota for students from other school
districts. However, as officials confessed, this was usually reserved for children of influential
people, not ordinary rural parents.
Previously, all village students could attend county public schools, so long as their parents
paid. We never heard of students unable to get in. Scarcity only began after the school-district
policy came out.18
Even those whose children haven’t reached junior-high age cannot escape
pressure. For example, Uncle Dong’s family works in Guangdong Province.
However, because his three grandchildren do not have Guangdong hukou
and xueji, they cannot take the high-school entrance examination there. With
the oldest child reaching junior-high school age in two years, the family is
planning to borrow money to buy a county-seat apartment as soon as pos-
sible. Thus, while some parents are motivated by aspirations of social mobil-
ity, more and more are being compelled by state policies to pay for expensive
county-seat schools, fuelling the commodification of basic education.
The Visible Hand: Reproduction-driven Accumulation
The county government also directly helps certain developers. It is an ‘open

secret’19 that, through backchannel communications, local officials some-
times disclose government school-district plans to well-connected or influ-
ential developers (of national or provincial companies) before official pub-
lication. This enables developers to buy land and build projects in areas that
will become the school districts and will command high prices. For hous-
ing that is not built in new school districts, the county authority facilitates
sales by expanding existing public schools. With local government approval,
developers donate money to county public schools, encouraging them to es-
tablish new campuses in the areas of their real-estate projects, effectively
making them into new school districts. While places in good schools are
always attractive, even access to ordinary and poor public schools has now
become valuable. As one city-level official said, ‘The expansion of county
public schools is a tool used by local authority to help developers boost
sales’.20
However, not all developers can count on this form of support from the
local authority. Small developers, or those that do not have good relations
with the county authority, are often unable to align their projects with the
school-district map. Yet, still seeking to exploit rural parents’ anxiety about
education in order to sell apartments, they use false advertisements or make
empty promises. Between 2017 and 2021, at least five developers were sued
for misleading advertisements, as parents could not send their children to
the schools promised by developers. Even when parents purchase apart-
ments in the designated school districts, schools may still refuse to admit
18. Interview, official of Sunshine County, January 2021; interview, education bureau official,
City A, June 2022.
19. Interview, education bureau official, City A, June 2022.
20. Ibid.
554 Tiantian Liu
their children, because public schools’ enrolment quotas, now under care-
ful government control, are almost always smaller than the number of new
apartments being sold. As the county government website states: ‘A student
may attend the school only when two conditions are simultaneously met: 1.
The student’s parents have homeownership in the school district; 2. There is
a vacancy in the school’s admission quota’.21
Homeownership is therefore a necessary but not a sufficient condition to
enrol children in county public schools. However, this crucial information
is frequently withheld from rural parents during house-purchasing negoti-
ations. Developers, and the county government, aggressively exploit rural
households’ reproductive needs to accumulate capital, taking advantage of
their lack of information on local policy. Enmeshed in state policies that
drain rural educational resources and connect school access to real estate,
basic education, while formally a non-commodified public good, has in-
creasingly become a de facto commodity, compelling rural parents to enter
the real-estate market.
COMMODIFICATION OF MARRIAGE
In China, marriage remains the most prevalent social institution through

which rural households perform biological procreation and generational re-
production. However, the marriage market has become much tougher for
men in recent years, as the implementation of the one-child policy in re-
gions with strong son preference has produced a significant gender ratio
imbalance. This has led to rising bride prices and to rural residents buying
expensive apartments to boost their sons’ marketability in marriage. These
dynamics drive the commodification of rural marriage and the county real-
estate market.
Unbalanced Sex Ratio
Enforcement of the one-child policy gathered steam in the early 1990s.

Studies show that the policy’s impact on regional demographic structures
has been shaped by the specific implementation paths of local governments
(Loh and Remick, 2015; Wu et al., 2006; Zhu et al., 2009). In traditionally
agricultural regions with a strong patriarchal culture, like Sunshine County,
son preference was strong among rural families. Rujie, a 63-years-old vil-
lager, recalled, ‘Government control [on childbirth] was the strictest during
the 1990s. But the tighter the control, the more badly villagers wanted a boy.
21. ‘Official Reply to Questions on School Districts’, Sunshine County government, March
2021. In these circumstances, parents may choose private schools or township schools in
their home town, but both are less likely to meet parents’ minimum education requirements.
Figure 3. Sunshine County Male–Female Sex Ratios, 2019
Note: Yearbooks for Sunshine County do not have sex-ratio and population-size data for the five-year age
groups. Sunshine County falls within City A’s jurisdiction; given similarities of their demographic and socio-
economic structures, I used sex ratios of City A’s five-year age groups as proxies to calculate age-group
populations in Sunshine County.
Source: Author’s calculations based on statistical yearbooks for City A and for Sunshine County, 2020.
You know, to have someone carrying on the family name and caring for you
when you are old’.22
This ‘at-least-one-son’ preference led the Anhui provincial government
to allow a second child for rural couples whose firstborn was a girl. This
decision greatly distorted the sex ratio of children born since the 1990s,
as second-child births had the highest male-to-female sex ratio. Moreover,
since all levels of government threatened punishments for having more
children than officially allowed, many couples stopped having children if
their firstborn was a son. This further reduced the number of females. Con-
sequently, the early 1990s marked a watershed in local demographic struc-
ture. As Figure 3 illustrates, compared to those born before 1989, the age
cohorts born during the 1990s and 2000s (aged between 10 and 30 years old
in 2019) have staggeringly skewed male-to-female sex ratios.23 While mar-
riage has always been a competition for social status and prestige in local
communities (Jiang et al., 2015; Zhu, 2010), the entrance of these cohorts
into the marriage market has greatly intensified the pressure. Households of

23. Figure 3 includes the 10–14 and 15–19 age groups to show the marriage market situation for
the coming decade. The dynamics described here are not unique to Anhui Province: strong
son preference is well documented across vast regions of rural, and even urban, China.
556 Tiantian Liu
marriage-age men now have to invest more material resources, especially

when it comes to bride price and homeownership.
Bride Price
Settling on a bride price is the first crucial step in negotiating a rural mar-
riage. Parents with daughters, and sometimes also the daughters themselves,
are fully aware of their strong bargaining positions. They frequently demand
high bride prices to earn ‘face’ in the eyes of other villagers (Shi, 2017). As
one villager commented, ‘Every household is competing with others! If one
receives a high bride price and the information gets out, every other house-
hold will demand this amount and even higher. That’s why the bride price
keeps increasing’.24 Exorbitant bride price is now an everyday topic in vil-
lage gossip. Villagers estimate that the amount has more than doubled from
around RMB 100,000 to RMB 200,000 in the past few years. Mostly viewed
as the parents’ responsibility, paying bride price has become a source of
anxiety and even intergenerational household conflicts. Such tensions sur-
face whenever villagers discuss their sons’ marriages. According to 61-year-
old Hong-e:
When my son got married several years ago, the bride price was not that high. We paid
around 100,000 yuan. Last year, one family even paid 420,000 in nearby Y town! Where can
we get all this money? We have to borrow. You can’t let your son go celibate. If he can’t get
a wife, he will fight you and think you are useless.25
Most rural parents have to exhaust their entire savings to cover soaring
bride prices. But on its own, this is seldom enough: they are also forced to
borrow from friends and relatives. Those whose close connections cannot
help sometimes take high-interest loans from usurers. According to Deer
Village’s Party Secretary, in one extreme case, a family took out a RMB
300,000 bank loan. As rural parents in their late 40s and early 50s shoulder
most of the bride price, marrying off a son often means indebtedness for the
rest of their lives. Hong-e’s words capture older villagers’ difficulties well:
‘Old people’s entire saving is spent on children’s [sons’] bride price. When
children [sons] get married, we borrow money. It is also we who repay the
debt. Consequently, old people slide back into poverty. No money, no wife.
… Go ask around, everyone owes debt’.26
While parents who have two children sometimes use daughters’ bride
prices to cover sons’ weddings, this often cannot significantly lighten their
financial burden. First, by local traditions, only the bride can dispose of
the money. She may keep some of it as savings or as an emergency fund.
In most cases, a large portion immediately goes into the consumer market

26. Ibid.
to purchase furniture and electrical appliances for the couple’s new home.
Using bride price for a son’s wedding therefore requires careful negotiation
between parents and daughters, who have conflicting interests.27 Moreover,
villagers believe that only ‘indecent’ or ‘greedy’ parents would use their
daughter’s bride price for their son’s wedding. The risk of being ridiculed
and criticized in village gossip deters many villagers from doing this.
Homeownership as Entry Fee
To succeed in the fiercely competitive marriage market requires not only

the payment of bride price, but also homeownership. In Dragon Town, with
so few marriage-age women available, this has become the criterion deter-
mining households’ competitiveness in today’s marriage market, and their
chances of generational reproduction: ‘Matchmakers won’t even introduce
girls to you if you don’t have a house’.28 Therefore, parents have no other
option but to pay huge sums to buy homes for their sons. As Old Ma, who
recently bought a house for his unmarried son, lamented, ‘I know that he
may still not get married. But at least parents need to do our part’.29
To meet the homeownership requirement, rural households with sons can
either buy county-seat apartments or build village houses. While the latter
used to be more common (Chen, 2020; Shi, 2017), this is no longer the case.
Would-be brides’ households increasingly demand county-seat apartments.
In addition to practical concerns, such as access to public schools and con-
venience for wives in caring for children, buying a county-seat apartment
also improves households’ status within village communities, as villagers
see such purchases as signs of affluence and upward social mobility. Cor-
respondingly, building village houses has become the less attractive option,
adopted mostly by economically worse-off households. This hierarchical
preference for housing directly translates into competitiveness in the mar-
riage market. Households that cannot afford county-seat apartments are less
likely to find a wife. Jiaxue, who recently rebuilt his village house for his
son, complained, ‘Nowadays who would marry you if you don’t have a
house? Even after building one in the village, we still worry that this is
not enough. Now all girls’ parents demand county apartments’.30
As such reproductive needs push villagers into the county market, their
demands drive up local housing prices (see Figure 2 above), which in turn
puts an even heavier burden on rural households. Parents who have already
spent all their savings (and more) on bride prices must resort to further
27. Sisters providing financial assistance for brothers’ weddings is common, but usually in-
volves their earnings and personal savings rather than bride price.
28. Interview, Old Ma, Deer Village, January 2021.
29. Ibid.
30. Interview, Deer Village, January 2021.
558 Tiantian Liu
borrowing to help their sons meet the down payment for an apartment. The
newly wed couples need to pay 10–20 years of bank loans as soon as they
get married.
At the lower end of the ownership hierarchy are the economically worse-
off households, who can only afford to build village houses, hoping this will
suffice to attract a bride. In Sunshine County, a typical two-floor house costs
around RMB 250,000, including building materials, labour and decoration.
Although this is only half or two-thirds the cost of a county-seat apartment,
few poor households have sufficient income to pay the full amount. Like the
apartment buyers, they borrow extensively from relatives and friends. Some
leave their houses undecorated and still owe money to workers and suppliers.
As Jiaxue said: ‘11 people came to me during the last New Year asking for
money. What could I do? I had nothing to give them’.31 Heavy indebtedness
of the poorer households, who cannot purchase a county apartment but have
to build their own houses, shows that the pressure of homeownership has
reached the bottom of an increasingly stratified rural society. The impact
of commodified marriage is structural and reaches much further than the
number of county-seat apartments being sold might suggest.
It is important to note that the strong bargaining positions of parents with
daughters, due to a scarcity of local marriage-age women, does not neces-
sarily improve women’s social status. Instead, women are often perceived as
‘valuable commodities’, susceptible to being priced, bargained and traded in
the local marriage market (Loh and Remick, 2015: 297). Moreover, heavy
financial burden and indebtedness often lead to parents-in-law feeling re-
sentment against daughters-in-law. In at least three households in Deer Vil-
lage, such tensions have evolved into serious domestic violence.
The words of a real-estate salesperson offer a chilling summary of the
situation: ‘99 per cent of apartments are bought by village households for
children’s education and marriage. Why would people buy them otherwise?
They hold little investment value’.32 Indeed, it is rural households’ repro-
ductive needs that compel them to buy county-seat apartments, thereby fuel-
ling local real-estate capital accumulation.
IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF INTENSIFIED COMMODIFICATION
Draining of Female Reproductive Labour
The transformations in rural education and marriage have two immediate

results. The first is the drain of unpaid female reproductive labour away
from the village. This happens in two ways. Among the interviewed house-
holds, most of the mothers of the 32 children attending county schools stay
31. Ibid.
32. Interview, county seat, Sunshine County, July 2021.
in the county seat to provide care, only occasionally visiting the village to
check on the elderly.33 Therefore, although rural women’s gendered role as
caregivers changes little, they no longer perform reproductive work in the
village, and now predominantly focus on the children. While this is an un-
welcome change for old villagers, some women embrace it to get away from
abusive parents-in-law. This highlights the gendered and exploitative nature
of pre-existing, patriarchal care arrangements.
Even in households whose children attend village kindergarten and
primary school, it is parents-in-law in their late 50s and 60s, rather than the
daughters-in-law, who stay in the village to provide care. Worrying about
the heavy costs of children’s education and future marriage, most working-
age mothers resume migration as soon as possible. As Sister Ma explained,
‘I could not afford to “squat” in the village to just farm and look after my
child. That way, I would not earn any money. I left the village and star-
ted working again when my son was six months old. He would soon need
money’.34 Consequently, grandparents cover a significant portion of chil-
dren’s daily living expenses, including food, small-scale pocket money and
medical costs. They also spend all their daily reproductive labour on chil-
dren. Grandfathers take children to and from school; grandmothers cook
meals and do everyday chores.
Whether due to spatial relocation or generational re-division of labour, the
result is the same: the old institution of filial responsibility, through which
young women returned from migrant work to the village to farm and care
for children and elders, is being replaced by a new model, in which the
reproductive labour of daughters-in-law is relocated spatially and is more
concentrated on the youngest generation. Young, and even middle-aged,
women have become rare sights in the village in recent years. Villagers like
Grandma Zhang have noticed this change too: ‘Previously, men went out
working and women stayed behind to farm and care for children. Now no
women who can still work would stay. They either go out working or care
for children in the county seat. It’s very different from 10–15 years ago’.35
Household Indebtedness
Another direct consequence of the increasing commodification of education

and marriage is widespread household indebtedness. By winter 2021, 34
among the 48 Deer Village households had purchased apartments or built
houses over the past five years, with another two planning to buy apartments
to access county schools. All except one are heavily in debt.
33. Three mothers continue migrant work, as their children are in boarding schools.
560 Tiantian Liu
To illustrate the surging costs of social reproduction: in 2018, an apart-

ment of average size and price would cost RMB 573,000 (Figure 2). De-
velopers typically require a 30 per cent down payment, which is RMB
171,900. If we add in bride price, a household’s one-time payment for
marriage and housing can easily reach RMB 400,000, with another RMB
400,000 of bank loans (more than US$ 120,000 in total).36 In comparison,
Sunshine County’s GDP per capita was only RMB 16,036 (US$ 2,422) in
2018. The huge gap between income and reproductive costs means that most
households cannot pay this significant sum without borrowing. Although
rural households in China are no stranger to debt, especially when it comes
to marriage (Shi, 2017), participation in the real-estate market has increased
the burden several-fold. Some even have to borrow money to service exist-
ing debts. Many interviewees complained about increasing debts with little
chance of saving. According to one villager: ‘This [past] couple of years are
very different from six to seven years ago. It’s so difficult to save any money
now. Even if our wages are still growing, the cost of everything has soared
beyond bounds’.37
Consequently, households often exhaust their limited labour and financial
resources. Grandparents use all their savings and take on debt to maximize
their grandchildren’s chances of marriage and procreation. Young couples
spend most of their income repaying bank loans and paying for children’s
education. This leaves little money to support elderly household members.
In terms of care, old villagers provide daily care for young grandchildren
but receive little care themselves, as young daughters-in-law relocate their
reproductive labour from the village, as illustrated in Figure 4. These dy-
namics have set in motion a chain reaction which affects two other cru-
cial reproductive institutions — namely intergenerational filial support and
childbirth — and undermines the established regime of social reproduction
in Deer Village and many villages like it.
CRISES IN INTERCONNECTED REPRODUCTIVE INSTITUTIONS
The Abandoned Elderly
Heavy debt and the relocation of female labour are causing the dismantling
of filial responsibilities, creating a financial and care crisis for rural elderly.
Almost all the inhabitants of Deer Village who are older than 55 have long-
term health conditions, such as high blood pressure and serious back pain,
due to years of hard labour. Since daughters-in-law, as well as sons, either
migrate or move to the county seat, old villagers have to meet medical needs
36. Average exchange rate in 2018 was US$ 1 = RMB 6.62. See: www.exchangerates.org.uk/
USD-CNY-spot-exchange-rates-history-2018.html.
37. Interview, Sunshine County, March 2021.
Figure 4. Within-household Flow of Resources under Intensified

Commodification
Older than 70s
Limited care
and financial
help
Grandparents (late 40s-
60s): Live in the village;
Often Indebted
Bride price; Limited care
Down payment and financial
help Care labour; daily living costs
Young Parents (20s-30s): Either when children are
migrating or living in the county; small and young
Often Indebted mothers are absent
Care; education and
living costs; bank loan;
money to buy apartment
School-Age Children (below 20s)
entirely by themselves. To get routine medication, those in their 60s and

70s need to go to the township hospital, which is 4 km from the village,
every month. This journey is physically taxing and, given the high number of
road traffic accidents, can be dangerous. Even during medical emergencies,
help from younger household members may not come. For instance, 78-
year-old Hongkuo had serious pneumonia in 2019. With no young people
around, he had to get himself to hospital with a 39-degree fever. During two
weeks of hospitalization, Hongkuo’s children only made two short visits.
Eventually, he left the hospital before he was fully recovered, as he could no
longer afford spending RMB 30 per day on hospital meals. Among the 48
households surveyed, only one has young members attending to the routine
medical needs of elderly members. As old villagers frequently complained:
‘We can only rely on ourselves now. Who else will care for us?’.38
In addition to the paucity of care, financial support for the elderly is also
meagre. The household of Uncle Dong’s younger brother is a telling ex-
ample, showing how reproductive pressure plays out between different gen-
erations. The brother and his wife are in their late 40s. They left the village
for migrant work in Zhejiang in the early 2000s, and now own a small gar-
ment workshop. Their 23-year-old son, who married several years ago, now
lives and works in Guangdong Province and has two young children. Their
parents are now in their 80s and have stayed in the village for their entire
38. Interviews, Deer Village, April 2021.

562 Tiantian Liu
Table 2. Care and Financial Support for the Elderly among 48 Households,
Deer Village
Care/help received by elderly (age > 55) Number of People
Routinely receive money or care 5
Receive money during festivals or occasional care 4
Receive no money or care 25
Source: Interviews, Deer Village, January–June 2021.
life. When asked about whether their young married son has ever sent them
money, the middle-aged couple replied:
His earnings are not enough for his wife and two children. He can’t save a cent! Sometimes
he even has to borrow from us. The lives of people born in the 1960s and the 1970s are just
too tiring and stressful. Now I have so much illness and need to take medicine for the rest of
my life. Other people have asked me to rest. But I dare not. I have to work.39
Although working non-stop throughout the year, their income is only suf-
ficient to help their son. When asked about support for their octogenarian
parents, Uncle Dong’s brother took out his mobile phone to show the RMB
64,000 bank loan that he and his wife were still paying, as they had recently
rebuilt their village house. He then answered with a feeling of powerless-
ness: ‘Now we really cannot look after our parents. We can barely cover
ourselves. If we have money, we’ll give them some. If we don’t, we will not
give. They never ask for money, and we just simply don’t have the ability [to
care for them]’.40
Their experience is common for many households. Facing the hard choice
between providing for the old or the young, while themselves being heavily
indebted, most middle-aged Deer villagers choose the latter. Another ex-
ample comes from 47-year-old Jiabao, who said: ‘I’m not a good son. I
rarely give my mother money, perhaps only several hundred yuan during
New Year. Now I just cannot. I have to think about ourselves. My wife and
children need money, and I may become jobless in a year or two’.41 As
Table 2 shows, only a small fraction of old villagers say that they receive
help from younger household members.
The lack of care and financial help from younger household members has
produced reactions among older villagers. Many are very aware of their chil-
dren’s heavy burden and have accepted this lack of help as an unpleasant but
unavoidable fact. They rarely ask for help, even when they need it, as they
see little point in making such requests. Those who can still work undertake
farming and/or occasional labour to remain economically self-sufficient and
slowly pay off the debts accrued when financing the weddings of their sons.

40. Ibid.
For instance, 61-year-old Hong-e has been working tirelessly on her house-
hold plot and on odd jobs to service her debts. As she says: ‘What can we old
people count on? My son has his entire family. We will not ask for money
unless we absolutely cannot work anymore. Even if he gives, what good will
a tiny amount do?’.42 Similarly, 78-year-old Hongkuo does not seek help
from his children. When asked, he just shrugged his shoulders and sighed:
‘Even if we ask, he won’t give any’.43 Hongkuo’s 10 mu of land is the only
source of income for him and his wife; he intends to farm it for as long as
he can.
While Hongkuo can still farm, the loss of young female labour from the
village has seriously impacted the farming income of villagers who are too
old or sick to work. Despite greater mechanization, farming several mu of
household land still needs one to two healthy labourers (to fertilize, weed
and irrigate the land). During harvest, daughters-in-law would load grain
from the field and transport it to nearby markets to sell. Without their labour,
old villagers often cannot complete these tasks in time. For example, Aunt
Wang used to grow wheat. However, when her daughter-in-law resumed mi-
gration in 2020 in order to pay off debts, she could not harvest by herself
and had to watch her crops rotting in the field. Many old villagers said they
were no longer physically capable of farming, and they may have to give
their land to relatives for free so that it would not become fallow. Therefore,
the departure of daughters-in-law from rural areas may significantly reduce
old villagers’ farming income and disrupt the institution of land entitlement,
which has been important for rural livelihoods. For these villagers, their only
income is a RMB 120 per month pension, which the Anhui provincial gov-
ernment provides for villagers older than 60. This tiny amount can only buy
enough food to prevent starvation, with little left for anything else, not even
medicine. Thus, many old people have to endure poverty, reducing their
consumption to a minimum survival level. As 78-year-old Shijian, who has
been living alone and cannot do any labour, said: ‘You can keep yourself
alive even with one bowl of noodles. Sometimes I only eat one meal a day.
It does not matter if I skip one. At least I have my pension. Although it is
small, I can use it to buy rice. I won’t starve to death’.44
While accepting this lack of care and help as reality, many old villagers
still express deep disappointment, as their sons and daughters-in-law fail to
perform filial duties.45 The old saying ‘Have a son to protect you against
old age’ has lost its meaning today. Some old villagers feel their current
condition is a poor repayment for a lifetime of dedicated labour and care.
42. Interview, Deer Village, April 2021.

43. Interview, Deer Village, May 2021.
45. Parents with daughters tend to receive more/better care than those with only sons, as
daughters provide some care when possible. Nevertheless, most daughters have migrated
or moved to the county seat, reducing the amount of care that they can give.
564 Tiantian Liu
Consequently, intergenerational tensions abound. Shijian‘s bitter complaint

about his sons represents a widely shared feeling: ‘If they don’t give me
[money], I won’t ask. It all depends on their conscience. I did a lot of labour
for them when I was young. They left their children to me to go out working
and never asked about us. They only think of you when they need help’.46
A Rural Demographic Collapse
High reproductive costs also compel young rural couples to have fewer chil-
dren. Many express the wish to ‘have at least another child’, but are afraid
to do so. This puts households’ biological reproduction under great strain
and leads to a drop in local birth rates.
Existing literature documents how ideational changes, education and ur-
banization can move people to willingly have fewer children, thereby lead-
ing to fertility decline in urban and even some rural parts of China (Cai,
2010; Lavely and Freedman, 1990; Shi, 2017; Zhang, 2007). However, these
factors rarely came up during interviews. When explaining their decision not
to have more children, rural couples overwhelmingly emphasized the heavy
economic burden, particularly soaring education and marriage costs. Rather
than ‘do not want’, they constantly chose the phrase ‘do not dare’, reflecting
the importance of external, material constraints.47 For example, Small Yang
is a 29-year-old migrant worker with one son. When asked about having
more children, he answered:
What if the second one is still a boy? They say it costs a lot to raise children in the city. But
it is not much cheaper in the village either. If it is a boy, I need to buy him a car and an
apartment. Even two million yuan may not be enough. Not to mention that village children
also need to go to after-school tutoring and everything else.48
Like Small Yang, most young couples feel they cannot provide for more
than two children. They would rather concentrate their limited resources on
the one or two children they have. These concerns have led to a decline in
the birth rate in Deer Village. Among the 48 households surveyed, there are
40 children aged 7–12, and 39 children aged 13–18. However, there are only
30 children between 0 and 6 years of age (see Table 1). Only one couple has
more than three children under the age of 10.
The wider picture is similar. The annual number of newborns in Sunshine
County reached a peak of 35,197 in 2015 (Figure 5), when birth control
policies were relaxed nationally. But it has declined rapidly since then. The
year 2021 saw only 16,880 newborns. This number is 47.9 per cent of that

47. I am not arguing here that other factors play no role. Rather, I am highlighting the impacts
of intensified commodification and calling for more studies to examine the rural fertility
decline.
48. Interview, Deer Village, August 2021.
Figure 5. Sunshine County Annual Newborn Population, 2010–21
Note: Sex ratios for 2020, 2021 are not available.

Source: Statistical yearbooks for City A, 2010–21, Sunshine County government websites.
in 2015, and 76.4 per cent of that in 2011 (Figure 5). In comparison, the
reproductively active female population (between 20 and 35 years of age)
only decreased by 5.34 per cent from 2014 to 2019, and by 7.9 per cent
between 2016 and 2021.49 This drastic decline in the birth rate has happened
simultaneously with the county real-estate market fully taking off, and at a
time when birth control policies in China have been loosened. As a township
cadre describes it: ‘The local newborn population fell off a cliff’.50
High reproductive costs seem to have also weakened rural households’
strong son preference. After reaching its peak for what is now the 10–14
age group, Sunshine County’s male-to-female sex ratio has declined during
the past decade (Figure 5). In Deer Village, everyday gossip is now filled
with complaints and jokes about certain unfortunate households having too
many sons, as illustrated by this (only half-joking) exchange with two Deer
villagers:
Those with two sons start to worry the moment they wake up every day. Even those with two
daughters dare not to have another child, fearing it may be a son. Previously, we valued sons
much more than daughters. Now it is the opposite.
49. Changes in the reproductively active populations are estimates based on City A’s statistics
(see note to Figure 3), but the general trend is clear: the number of newborns has declined
at a much faster rate than the reproductively active population.
50. Interview, Dragon Town, June 2021.
566 Tiantian Liu
No one dares to have children anymore. It’s better if it is a daughter. The other day we heard
a couple in nearby village had a third son. They wanted to give the baby away. But nobody
would take him.51
These findings corroborate recent studies from other parts of China

(Murphy, 2020; Shi, 2017), suggesting potential structural change. But we
should not conclude from these findings that villagers’ gender preferences
have undergone a fundamental and progressive shift. Daily conversations
with villagers clearly show that their resistance to daughters has decreased
largely because the reproductive cost for raising daughters is much lower
than that for sons. It is also likely that, with astronomical surges in bride
price, many parents now see daughters as more attractive commodities. Fur-
ther research is necessary to assess the relationship between commodifica-
tion and rural China’s deep-seated patriarchal social culture.
CONCLUSION
This article makes several contributions to our understanding of social re-

production in rural China and beyond. First, by exploring how state policies
have compelled rural households to buy county-seat apartments to meet
basic education and marriage needs, the article shows that not only rural
household incomes, but also some key reproductive institutions have be-
come increasingly commodified. Through an examination of how these pro-
cesses have put filial responsibility and biological procreation under stress
in a chain reaction, the article traces interactions among reproductive insti-
tutions, and explores why pre-existing regimes of reproduction have reached
their limits and may experience escalating crises — dynamics which have
been inadequately covered by earlier studies. Second, the article pushes us
to rethink our conventional understandings of China’s rural–urban divide.
Until recently, the countryside has remained a space for most reproductive
activities and has been separated from cities, where capital accumulation
happens. Now, with the commodification of key reproductive institutions,
the ‘countryside’ itself has undergone an internal differentiation between
villages/townships and the county seat. The latter’s emergence as a site
for intense reproduction-based, real-estate capital accumulation means that
the less-commodified rural reproductive space, where cheap labour power
is produced, has disappeared. Considering the urban dynamics described
by Friedman (2022), we may be witnessing a squeeze on peasant-migrant
households’ reproductive space from two directions: while a true urbaniza-
tion of the migrant population remains difficult, the village is losing its key
roles in reproduction. This pushes villagers towards the county seat, with
heavy costs and few alternatives.
51. Interviews, Deer Village, March 2021.

This article also contributes to broader SRT discussions about crises

of reproductive institutions. Past work has largely focused on developed
countries, especially the way that state withdrawal from welfare provision
under neoliberal reform has led to care crises (Folbre, 2012; Fraser, 2016;
Glenn, 2010). This article adds to a growing body of literature grounded
in the Global-South context (Cousins et al., 2018; Mezzadri, 2019; Rao,
2021; Scully and Britwum, 2019). Although its focus is on everyday lives
at a county level, the political and social mechanisms identified are not
locally specific. The centralization of rural educational resources and the
one-child policy are — or have been — long-term national policies. Many
local governments in China have used school access to boost the real-estate
market. Moreover, although beyond the scope of this article, it should be
noted that mechanisms such as birth control policy and the tight marriage
market are not neoliberal in their origin. Even the school-district policy is
probably better understood through the lens of developmentalist local gov-
ernments that prioritize GDP growth. In identifying and analysing these
mechanisms, this article lays the groundwork for future studies to examine
whether and how they may undermine existing regimes of social reproduc-
tion on a structural level. It adds China to the literature on the varying factors
behind crises of reproductive institutions, and calls for more comparative
studies.
Finally, as Fraser (2016: 101) sharply observes, while ‘social reproduction
is a condition of possibility for sustained capital accumulation’, ‘capital-
ism’s orientation to unlimited accumulation tends to destabilize the very pro-
cess of social reproduction on which it relies’. This crisis tendency of capit-
alism (Bhattacharya, 2017) captures how the county real-estate boom both
depends on the commodification of key reproductive institutions and sim-
ultaneously makes reproduction unsustainable. This article contributes to
this discussion by revealing two potential trajectories through which every-
day crises of reproductive institutions may lead to systemic-level crisis for
capital in China. First, the surge in reproductive costs and the drastic de-
cline in rural birth rates may significantly reduce the continuous supply
of cheap labour, undermining the labour-intensive manufacturing and ser-
vice sectors that have been crucial to China’s current mode of capital accu-
mulation. Second, in previous economic crises, the Chinese state was able
to tap into rural populations’ consumer power to absorb shocks, as it dir-
ected the sale of surplus products in the countryside (Wen, 2013). How-
ever, declining rural population growth and escalating rural household debt
put the future of rural consumption into doubt. This makes another spa-
tial fix of the market difficult when facing future economic recessions.
These mechanisms may limit continued capital accumulation and could
constitute a potential trajectory towards systemic-level crisis for capital
in China.
568 Tiantian Liu
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His research interests include development, agrarian change, historical cap-
italism and contentious politics.

Real Estate Boom, Commodification and Crises of Social Reproductive Institutions in Rural China

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Real Estate Boom, Commodification and Crises of Social Reproductive Institutions in Rural China

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Real-estate Boom, Commodification and Crises of Social

Reproductive Institutions in Rural China

Based on 12 months of ethnographic, interview and archival research in

Development and Change 54(3): 543–569. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12769

Figure 1. Sunshine County Real-estate Boom

Source: County statistical yearbooks, 2009–21.

been understood as an urban/peri-urban issue. There has been little discus-

Figure 2. Rising Average House Prices in Sunshine County (RMB per m2 )

Source: County statistical yearbooks, 2009–21.

(former) one-child policy — have compelled rural households to partici-

In recent years, a renewed interest in social reproduction theory (SRT) has

gendered division of labour within households, together with household

RESEARCH SITE AND METHODS

Located in northern Anhui Province, Sunshine County3 was classified as

COMMODIFICATION OF RURAL BASIC EDUCATION

The first mechanism which creates demand for county-seat apartments is

County Schools Become the Only Option

A Chinese rural county has a three-tiered administrative structure. With vil-

Table 1. School Choice among 48 Households, Deer Village

Source: Interviews, Deer Village, January–June 2021.

unavoidable expenditure, as parents hope to reach the minimum high-school

School Access through Homeownership

So how does attending county-seat schools commodify education? First,

11. Interview, Deer Village, February 2021.

14. ‘Announcement of the Closure of 22 Private Schools’, Sunshine County government,

The Visible Hand: Reproduction-driven Accumulation

The county government also directly helps certain developers. It is an ‘open

In China, marriage remains the most prevalent social institution through

Unbalanced Sex Ratio

Enforcement of the one-child policy gathered steam in the early 1990s.

Figure 3. Sunshine County Male–Female Sex Ratios, 2019

22. Interview, Deer Village, March 2021.

marriage-age men now have to invest more material resources, especially

24. Interview, Deer Village, February 2021.

Homeownership as Entry Fee

To succeed in the fiercely competitive marriage market requires not only

IMMEDIATE CONSEQUENCES OF INTENSIFIED COMMODIFICATION

Draining of Female Reproductive Labour

The transformations in rural education and marriage have two immediate

Another direct consequence of the increasing commodification of education

To illustrate the surging costs of social reproduction: in 2018, an apart-

CRISES IN INTERCONNECTED REPRODUCTIVE INSTITUTIONS

The Abandoned Elderly

Figure 4. Within-household Flow of Resources under Intensified

entirely by themselves. To get routine medication, those in their 60s and

38. Interviews, Deer Village, April 2021.

Source: Interviews, Deer Village, January–June 2021.

39. Interview, Deer Village, January 2021.

42. Interview, Deer Village, April 2021.

Consequently, intergenerational tensions abound. Shijian‘s bitter complaint

A Rural Demographic Collapse

46. Interview, Deer Village, March 2021.

Figure 5. Sunshine County Annual Newborn Population, 2010–21

Note: Sex ratios for 2020, 2021 are not available.

These findings corroborate recent studies from other parts of China

This article makes several contributions to our understanding of social re-

51. Interviews, Deer Village, March 2021.

This article also contributes to broader SRT discussions about crises

Tiantian Liu (tliu49@jhu.edu ) is currently a PhD candidate at the Depart-

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