Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2020

 

“Mutual Assistance and Restraint”: Fei Xiaotong’s Theory of Urban-Rural Relations in the 1930s and 1940s

(Abstract)

 

Li Jinzheng

 

In the 1930s and 1940s, the relationship between urban and rural areas in China became a hot issue. Renowned sociologist Fei Xiaotong gave this some attention from the rural standpoint, creatively putting forward the concept of “mutual assistance and restraint,” in the belief that the tension it involved had affected and determined the historical evolution of the urban-rural relationship in China. Although the countryside was to some extent ruled and exploited by the cities, the traditional urban-rural relationship was more one of “mutual assistance” featuring “balanced exchanges” and “organic adjustment.” The key to mutual assistance lay in the role of farming households’ handicraft production featuring the “integration of agriculture and industry.” Since the beginning of modern times, the urban-rural relationship has changed from one of “mutual assistance” to “mutual restraint,” i.e., separation and opposition. In other words, cities and towns have increased their extraction from the countryside, absorbing many of the rural intellectual elite, dealing a devastating blow to rural handicraft industry, and impoverishing rural dwellers. In order to solve the problem of urban-rural “mutual restraint” and realize “mutual assistance” between the two, we should focus on rural social and economic construction, and especially the recovery and development of rural industry. However, rural industry should not be confined to completely traditional handicraft industry and sideline production; instead, it should be gradually mechanized, with industrial cooperatives being established in rural areas. Even today, Fei Xiaotong’s idea of “mutual assistance and mutual restraint” in the construction of rural industry still has merit.