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

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 commodification of education and marriage has fuelled a local real‐estate boom during the past decade. At the same time, it has put peasant‐migrant households under severe economic pressure, forcing them to relocate unpaid female 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 disappeared.