In the last two decades, China has risen to become an economic power, and has now become the fourth largest economy in the world. However, there are still more than 100 million people in rural areas, predominantly small farmers, living off less than US$ 1 per day.

The extreme prosperity gap between city and countryside, between the south-eastern coastal region and the western regions are obvious. Poverty and extreme regional disparities in income are not least the result of the loss of employment opportunities in agriculture, together with a lack of alternative job opportunities. Furthermore, these are also the results of considerable deficits in the economic development of China’s agricultural sector during the course of the economic reform. The very small family farms, which operate around 90% of agricultural land, are very poorly integrated into the goods and factor markets. All of these are embedded in a continued threat of severe resource degradation which put additional pressure on rural households.

The interlinking project aims at a more comprehensive and coordinated analysis of the dynamics of agricultural development, and social-economic and ecological process in China’s rural areas, and it will endeavor to provide possible solutions to the aforementioned development deficits.