Why have China's smallholder farmers been able to flourish for so long?

China has been a country of smallholders throughout its history, and this is even more true today. With 230 million household contracted farming households, in terms of agricultural operating entities, this is 100 times the 2.3 million in the United States and 1,000 times the 230,000 in the United Kingdom. Why have Chinese smallholders occupied such a long-term dominant, principal and main-force position in agriculture? Apart from the characteristic that agriculture requires the family as the basic operating unit, there are also profound historical backgrounds and a special institutional environment.

I. Excellent genetic endowment

Chinese civilization is one of the oldest civilizations in the world, and the only civilization in the world that has never been interrupted. Why is this so? The key lies in the fact that Chinese agriculture in the era of agricultural civilization possessed four excellent genetic endowments.

First, geographical cooperation between one river and one river. Dryland farming in the Yellow River basin and rice farming in the Yangtze River basin jointly nurtured China's 10,000-year agricultural history. The greatest problem faced by ancient Chinese agriculture was water management. The 5,000-year history of agricultural civilization is a history of water management of one river and one river. Water management requires concerted efforts upstream and downstream, on the left and right banks, cooperation geographically, and coordination spatially, cultivating a spirit of cooperation and forming a community of interests through cooperation. As early as several hundred years before Qin unified China, some vassal states had already meticulously designed many water conservancy projects, and local chronicles are full of records in this regard. The Yellow River in the north was seriously silted up, often overflowed and brought huge disasters known as the "River Tragedy"; the change of the Yellow River's course even destroyed Wang Mang's Xin dynasty; in the densely populated Chengdu Plain of Sichuan Province in the southwest, almost all agricultural water came from Dujiangyan, built during the Warring States period by Li Bing and his son, which still benefits the multitude to this day; in the southeast region, rice cultivation required careful control of irrigation water. The management of water resources was very important. Villages through which a river or a canal flowed formed groups protecting the interests of smallholders, and different groups, in order to share water conservancy resources, combined into cooperative circles beyond the village level. And based on the state's overall control of water conservancy facilities, a centralized unified national community was formed. Water management was so important that some scholars call China a "hydraulic society." The "benefit" of water comes from the sustained geographical cooperation of upstream and downstream, left and right banks over generations; the alliance of atomized smallholder households on the issue of water management is the key to turning water disasters into water benefits.

Second, the collective power of cultural unity. Since Qin's unification, China has consistently used the Chinese language and Chinese characters; no country or ethnic group has such an advantage. India still has more than 100 languages and scripts to this day. At present, 1.4 billion people in the world speak Chinese as their mother tongue, while only 400 million speak English as their mother tongue. If China had no unified writing, we might see a multilingual situation similar to that of Europe, and of course it would not have formed such a super-energetic creativity as China's. The Guodian Chu Slips unearthed in 1993 show that although different dialects and unique local cultures existed, with the help of a mutually intelligible writing system, around 300 BCE during the Warring States period the various states all participated in the same philosophical debates and discussions, forming numerous schools of philosophical thought and a large-scale cultural region. And as early as the Warring States period, the vast majority of the content of the Daodejing was already circulating in China. No matter how the storms of history changed, they could not extinguish the continuity of Chinese culture. The inclusiveness and tremendous ideological comprehensiveness of Chinese culture created the extremely strong cohesion of the Chinese nation, making it easier to create, spread and inherit culture.

Third, the first-mover advantage of following natural laws. China's traditional agriculture was life-centered agriculture, following natural laws, not confronting nature, developing year after year in a closed internal circulation loop - the fruits of crops were left for humans to eat, the roots, stems and leaves were fed to livestock, and then human and livestock manure was returned to the fields as fertilizer for crops. Modern Western agriculture is production-centered agriculture; it broke this internal circulation and injected two external forces - chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and machinery - greatly increasing output and greatly increasing efficiency. The pure pursuit of production efficiency caused many drawbacks. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring revealed the serious consequences caused by a society that sought only "profit": chemical substances used in large quantities for industrial and agricultural development, especially the production and use of synthetic pesticides, were quietly threatening human life and the environment. Traditional agriculture created by Chinese smallholders developed more slowly because it did not rely on the two external forces of chemical pesticides and fertilizers and machinery, but it was relatively stable and lived in harmony with nature, possessing green, ecological and organic characteristics. As the drawbacks of later-developing Western agriculture are increasingly criticized by society, the first-mover advantages of China's traditional agriculture are increasingly prominent, showing vigorous vitality and receiving more and more attention.

Fourth, theoretical guidance from agricultural philosophical thought. Of China's works on agriculture, more than 500 titles can still be identified today, and more than 300 original texts can still be seen. These vast writings laid the foundation of China's agricultural philosophical thought and revealed that the true relationship between heaven and humanity is that of partners and friends; we should follow the natural laws of unity between heaven and humanity and coexistence between heaven and humanity. These writings are the crystallization of our ancestors' agricultural practice. The agricultural philosophical thought of "favorable timing, geographical advantage and harmony among people" is universally recognized by the world as the golden rule of human civilization, applicable everywhere, and is theoretical guidance of the highest order. That Chinese agricultural civilization became the only civilization in the world that has never been interrupted is one of the important secrets.

II. High-quality historical accumulation

Through a vast 5,000-year history of civilization, Chinese agriculture has grown continuously and passed on its flame, accumulating rich history and culture.

First, animal and plant culture. Traditional Chinese society often used "abundant harvests of the five grains and prosperity of the six domestic animals" as auspicious words for praying for the new year. Judging from unearthed relics, 10,000 years ago the Yangtze River basin and the Yellow River basin had already become two different origins of crop cultivation. About 9,000 years ago, those ancestors of China who harvested wild rice began to cultivate rice in the Yangtze area, and about 8,000 years ago they began to cultivate millet in the northern Yellow River basin. In other words, the social system of northern millet and southern rice had already begun to be established by 8,000 years ago. Before the invention of modern breeding technology based on the theory of biological genetics, our ancestors had already mastered a self-contained set of techniques and methods for selecting and breeding crops. On this basis they cultivated rich and varied traditional crop varieties and formed a unique native agricultural culture, of which the most representative are millet culture, wheat culture, rice culture, sericulture culture, tea culture and livestock and poultry culture.

Second, agricultural technology. Our ancestors created a complete set of unique ways of agricultural activity and a technical system of intensive cultivation. Its essence is still an element worthy of reference and development in the development of modern agriculture worldwide today. Agricultural calendars for examining the seasons and observing things are still used to calculate traditional festivals and arrange agricultural activities. Intensive cultivation techniques, animal domestication techniques, forest and fruit breeding techniques, and fermentation and brewing techniques played pioneering and enlightening roles in the long river of accumulating civilization.

Third, operating models. From the technical level, operating models such as rice-fish symbiosis, pig-biogas-fish, intercropping and relay intercropping, and three-dimensional farming were created. From the macro pattern, the traditional smallholder economy mainly used the family as the unit for production and consumption, was self-sufficient, and relatively affluent families even had a rule: family members should not eat or wear things they did not produce. At the same time, the smallholder economy maintained the combination of small agriculture with household sidelines and the combination of subsistence production with commodity production. Under this "walking on two legs" economic model, it displayed the characteristics of a typical ecological agricultural culture, formed a special circular agriculture model, and supported a relatively large population with relatively little land, possessing extremely high economic efficiency and tough competitiveness. It even defeated the model of urbanization-based handicrafts and large farms run with hired labor.

Fourth, agricultural philosophy. Traditional agriculture not only gave birth to an agricultural production philosophy represented by the "three talents" theory of heaven, earth and humanity, but also generated the life philosophy of Chinese farmers, mainly embodied in folk proverbs and customs. Philosophical sayings among the people are quoted in many ancient works such as the Book of Songs and the Laozi, and many are very valuable, positive and healthy.