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1 One of the most distinctive features of the economic changes in China over the last decade was the expansion of the private sector. Whereas the economic expansion of the 1980s was largely due to the rural collective enterprises, expansion in the 1990s was based in part on the rapid growth of the private enterprises 1. In order to understand the conditions under which private economic activity has re-emerged, identify the modalities of a shift from planning to markets, and to describe this new market economy, it is not sufficient to settle for an analysis on a scale of a single province, of one sector of activity, or of the economic policies applied. A reconstitution of the strategies of the actors, of their stories, and of the choices they have made is essential. An understanding of the economic mechanisms now appearing is conditional on their being applied to the rationales of the individual and of the family according to local configurations.

2 This was the perspective we adopted in a study that we carried out in the city of Yiyang, 75 kilometres west of Changsha, Hunan province, in the autumn of 2002 2. Several hours of interviews were conducted with the owners of private enterprises and with local cadres. More precisely, the analysis concerned the limited area of a neighbourhood, which we here call an economic area. Up to the beginning of the 1990s, this comprised the places of residence and work of the employees of three state enterprises. These have since closed down completely, but their former employees are still resident, and a number of them have opened private workshops—which are also engaged in production—in the very places where …