Agricultural Producer Training and Class Differentiation in China

ABSTRACT This study adopts Marxist class analysis and techno‐political perspective as its core framework, drawing on deskilling/reskilling theories to examine four government‐led/enterprise‐led farmer training programmes and their impact on rural class differentiation amid agricultural capitalization. Historically, the mass‐oriented training during the Mao era pursued universal skill empowerment and mitigated rural stratification. In contrast, the shift toward a professional elite‐focused model since the reform era has replicated the capitalist division of labour between ‘concept’ and ‘execution’ in agricultural production. Governments implement a classified training strategy, using targeted programmes to shape specialized households into production managers and smallholder households into skilled labourers. Meanwhile, enterprise‐led training erodes smallholders' inherent production experience through deskilling by fostering consumers and raw material suppliers that align with capitalist demands, and it develops standardized labourers through targeted reskilling. This process essentially constitutes capital's covert domination through skill restructuring: Skills are fragmented and transformed into tools for capital accumulation and instruments of labour control. With training centred on capital's needs and the inequitable distribution of skills shaped by capital logic, rural class relations have undergone profound reshaping.