| Abstract: | China’s rural enterprises were responsible for 48 per cent of the $US 151 billion in exports and absorbed nearly 20 per cent of total foreign direct investment in 1996. Clearly, the significant and increasing role of rural enterprises in China’s integration with the world economy demands attention. The penetration of global capital into the rural enterprise sector and the desire of such enterprises to benefit from expansion into international markets have important implications at the local level. The impact of international, domestic and local forces on institutional and structural reforms is reflected in particular spatial outcomes in rapidly developing non‐urban regions. Local authorities have responded to external forces in ways which do not conform to the conventional expectations. Evidence from the lower Yangtze (Yangzi) delta reveals how the supposedly universalising pressures of globalisation have been mediated and adapted at the local level, particularly in terms of enterprise location and the proliferation of special zones. Expanding on the desakota hypothesis, the notion of rural agglomeration is introduced to capture the paradox of spatial economic transformation as it was linked to local circumstances, and localised responses to external pressures of globalisation. |
