4. The characteristics of rural industry
4.1. Small is not beautiful
One of the common characteristics of rural industry is
small enterprises. The mushrooming Chinese economy
allows a few small rural enterprises to become large and
some successful rural enterprises have grown to employ
well over 1000 workers. Likewise, those rural enterprises
registered as foreign or Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan owned
employed on average over 130 workers (Table 1). Nevertheless,
the average size of all rural enterprises was only six
employees in 2003. In fact, more than 93% of all the rural
enterprises are run by rural households (MoA, 1995). Most
rural enterprises are relatively small; indeed, most private
enterprises in rural China are family run businesses, many
using outdated methods and primitive production technology
with low energy and resource use efficiency and high
pollution (Liu, 1992)