Episode summary
China's countryside isn't heading toward one future. Sociologist Forrest Zhang walks us through four different scenarios: suburbanising villages turned tourist destinations, industrial-scale grain belts managed by smart phones, intensive vegetable farms facing a looming labor crisis, and aging villagers returning to subsistence farming. We explore the shift from socialist to capitalist agriculture, and ask whether the next era may take a "sustainability turn,” a door opened by a shrinking population, food oversupply, and a rising public health crisis.
About the guest
Forrest Zhang
Dr Qian Forrest Zhang is a Professor of Sociology and the Associate Dean for Research at the School of Social Sciences at Singapore Management University in 2005. His research focuses on China’s agrarian political economy and rural development. His recent works have investigated agricultural cooperatives, industrial pig farming, the agrarian capitalist class, and land politics. He is the recipient of the 2015 Bernstein & Byres Prize in agrarian change, and he is one of the editors of the Journal of Agrarian Change.
Recommended resources
Article: Searching for Sustainability: Industrial Agriculture of Small Farmers in China and Its Structural Strains (Forrest Zhang, 2026)
Article: The decline and transformation of smallholders in Chinese agriculture: national trends (Forrest Zhang and Meiling Wu, 2024)
Article: Producing industrial pigs in southwestern China: The rise of contract farming as a coevolutionary process (Forrest Zhang and Hongping Zeng, 2021)
Consultation paper: China's Food Future (SystemIQ, 2026)
Relevant TABLE podcast episodes
Feeding 1 in 6: China's food future (Part 1)
Feeding 1 in 6. Can you feed the people?
Feeding 1 in 6. Who grows the rice?
Feeding 1 in 6. Small mighty fish farms
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