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Despite general impressions in the Western world that China has made remarkable strides in solving its food production problems, the indications are that China's agricultural policies, in particular those pertaining to the bringing into production of marginal lands, have been environmentally disastrous. Erosion, salinisation, deforestation, dessication as well as contamination of shrinking water supplies are all serious problems besetting China. (Economische Voorlichtingsdienst)

The communist revolution brought a fundamental change in income distribution in rural China. Wealth at the top of rural society and abject poverty at the bottom were both wiped out. The creation of new economic institutions combined the goals of production increase and greater income equality. Experience showed that it was difficult to attain both: land reform was followed by the emergence of new economic inequalities; the people's commune by economic disaster. After the consolidation of the collective production team as the basic economic accounting unit in 1962 the institutional framework underwent little change until 1980. However, an unprecedented growth of the rural population and the technical transformation of agriculture during this same period greatly transformed the economic conditions of China's peasantry.