EDITOR'S NOTE
As the political, economic and cultural centers of rural China, currently accommodating nearly 80 percent and in earlier times an even larger proportion of the nation's population,
small towns have a vital bearing on the overall social and economic life of China. They are essential to the solution of the country’s emerging problems of population, employment, commodity production and circulation. Also depending much on the development of small towns are the rationalization of the nation's economic and administrative structure and the redivision of rural labour and trades. The construction of small towns has become ever more significant in China's present modernization drive to build a socialist society with Chinese characteristics.
The present book represents a most authentic and up-to-date study of the subject by Professor Fei Hsiao Tung, a Chinese authority in the field, and members of his research groups. Professor Fei first became aware of the existence of small towns as an independent social entity and their far-reaching significance to the entire society during field study in the 1930s in Kaixian’gong Village in Wujiang County of southern Jiangsu Province. It had been his long-cherished hope that he could one day expand his research on individual villages to cover entire areas with small towns as their centres. However his chance for such a comprehensive and systematic study did not come until 1983. This research project on small towns is, therefore, his “dream come true.”
Since the beginning of his studies in 1983, Professor Fei Hsiao Tung has led research groups on four investigative tours in the rural areas of Jiangsu Province, covering its vast areas in southern, central and northern sections. His two 1983 trips to southern Jiangsu, one of the most affluent areas of the country, included Wujiang County, which has the greatest number of small towns, and the four municipalities of Changzhou, Wuxi, Nantong and Suzhou. His early 1984 trip to northern Jiangsu, formerly a a relatively underdeveloped area by the national standard, covers the five municipalities of Xuzhou, Lianyungang, Yancheng, Huayin and Yangzhou. His trip to central Jiangsu in October 1984 covered the Nanjing-Zhenjiang-Yangzhou region, commonly known as the silver triangle. The four essays by Professor Fei Hsiao Tung in this book are based on the findings of the above-mentioned four investigation tours.
During the research, a standard was set that all studies must be based on first-hand information and on-the-spot investigation. The procedure was to analyse collectively the conditions of the areas to be investigated to determine the concrete problems and research topics to be assigned to each individual and group accordingly. The nine other papers included in the book were chosen personally by Professor Fei from among dozens of papers by individual researchers and groups. They are either case studies of small towns of different classifications or papers focused on specific problems or social phenomena.
The research has been a multidisciplinary project which involves the participation of people engaged in social and natural sciences, university teachers and people from the relevant
departments of the central government and the provincial, municipal and county levels. It is unprecedented in both the number of towns studied and the personnel involved. We are convinced that the book will be of great help both to specialists and the general reader in a better understanding of the social and economic life of China.
