Family Farms and Modern Industrialization in China: Analysis of the Shanghai Songjiang Area as a Case Study

Accompanied by the continuous transformation of the industrial structure, massive rural labor in China has begun their migration to nonagricultural industries. This huge transfer of rural labor has shown a positive pushing influence on the transformation of China’s industrial structure, creating a timely opportunity to the development of agriculture and the structural transformation of the rural area. This paper investigates the interrelations between the transformation in the industrial structure and the rural-urban labor movement, and provides an in-depth analysis of the unique advantages of the family farm system as well as its bottlenecks by exploring the practices of the Songjiang family farm system in Shanghai as a case study