A rural carpenter Photo: TUCHONG

Since the reform and opening-up policy, China’s rural society has undergone dramatic changes in labor, employment, agriculture, daily life, and education. Social changes have been amplified by external shifts such as China’s marketization and urbanization. On one hand, the disappearance of certain traditional tradesmen has become an irreversible reality. On the other hand, some rural tradesmen have found that urban-rural integration and the fast-growing digital economy present them new challenges and opportunities.

At any rate, rural tradesmen play an indispensable role in rural vitalization. It is thus essential to rethink the trajectory of rural craft transformation and to examine how changes in workers’ skills influence the structural development of a skills-based society.

Case study

Research on the skilled labor of rural tradesmen generally falls into three theoretical frameworks: the theory of technological substitution, the theory of technological complementarity, and the theory of cultural heritage. While these perspectives address external causes for disrupted demand in rural tradesmen’s skills, they often overlook the agency of the tradesmen themselves. Therefore, this study focuses on the skilled labor and daily lives of a specific masonry group in a small village in rural China, collecting case data through interviews and providing diachronic and synchronic portraits of the group of masons from a life-course perspective.

The surveyed village, located in southern Shaanxi Province, has a relatively undiversified economy. Over the last 30 years, the village’s adult labor force has relied primarily on three types of trades beyond agricultural cultivation: masonry, carpentry, and loading/unloading cargo. Although the work produced by local masons does not exhibit strong artistic or cultural characteristics, their techniques have been passed down for at least a century, making them quintessential rural “tradesmen.”

As they fit the “tradesmen” archetype, the masons of this village were selected as the research focus for our study. Through an empirical analysis of data on these masons, this study identified three phases of occupational and skill transformation from the 1980s till today. Societal progress and changes within rural communities provided the objective conditions to catalyze the transformation of tradesmen’s workspaces. However, the transition of occupational spaces from rural to urban areas also reflects some degree of proactive choice.

Village as the center

First, as a cultural ecosystem, the village is central to the formation of rural tradesmen’s skills. From the 1980s to the early 21st century, the masons’ primary activity area was clustered around their own village, extending at most to surrounding villages. The masons belonged to teams which began as informal organizations, with an operational logic based on relationships and trust within rural society.

Informal masonry teams were typically village-centered and embedded within kinship and geographical networks, creating a unique environment for rural skill transmission. This village is categorized as an acquaintance society, and as such the threshold for masonry apprenticeships was low. Young people frequently pursued apprenticeships with skilled tradesmen to make a living.

Masons enjoyed a high social status in rural society, and the village-centered occupational space was central to this prestige. As work experiences accumulated, novice masons gradually became skilled masons who could work independently from their mentors. Some even took on the role of a team leader. Their skills began to shape their status in rural society. These tradesmen’s skills were rooted in the countryside and ultimately served the countryside. On a macro level, the coexistence of masonry skills and rural areas created a skill-dependent rurality. On a micro level, tradesmen were completely embedded in rural society, making the labor value of these “capable individuals” entirely reliant on their rural setting.

Relying on the county

Becoming reliant on the county, instead of their rural village, signaled the extension of rural tradesmen’s occupational spaces. In the 21st century, China’s economy rapidly developed on county levels and close ties between rural areas and counties broadened the professional development space for rural tradesmen. Around 2000, policymakers began to prioritize urban-rural relations, actively promoting the transfer of surplus rural labor, and focusing expansion on non-agricultural economies connected to nearby towns and counties. At the same time, the state proposed new strategies for cultivating new types of farmers.

In response, skilled laborers based in villages gradually extended their sphere of work into county economic centers. For instance, the geographic working space for masons in our study shifted from a tight cluster with their village in the center and networks extending toward surrounding villages, to a large sphere surrounding the nearby county town.

In addition to geographic changes to working spaces and an expanded labor market, the organizational structure of the masonry team became more formal. Highly complex tasks, such as the construction of high-rise residential buildings and the renovation of school buildings, correspondingly enhanced masons’ professional skills.

Overall, working at the county level represented an important transition for the masons as they moved towards the city. The changes in their working space and professional skills also indirectly affected their economic and social status. The tradesmen’s labor space, now centered on the county, provided a stable workload that not only served as a basic guarantee for their economic income but also gave them time to take care of agricultural work at home.

Moving towards the city

A hierarchical structure for rural tradesmen began to take shape as more laborers moved towards the city. In the 2010s, with urban-rural integration and the reform of the household registration system, the transfer of agricultural populations to urban areas accelerated. Using the same village as our example, masons transitioned from being village-centered at the end of the 20th century to moving to the county market at the beginning of the 21st century. But after 2010, they gradually surpassed the county-level professional space and began to shift towards first- and second-tier cities with wider employment markets. This move towards urban employment markets laid the foundation for the professional expansion of rural tradesmen, and the high mobility of rural skilled laborers has facilitated the integrated development of urban and rural areas.

As labor flowed into large cities, rural tradesmen also penetrated labor markets in neighboring provinces or counties. Formerly village-centered rural skilled laborers entered a diversified employment market, which not only reshaped their existing labor space but also provided them new professional development paths.

Overall, as rural craftsman joined urban labor markets it brought them new employment prospects and expanded their professional space. The urban-rural mobility and professional transformation of rural tradesmen altered their original skillset, thus changing the economic and social status of these skilled laborers. According to data from our study, since around 2012, the influx of professional construction teams from “outside” the village led to fierce competition among informal mason organizations, particularly in terms of job searches and management systems. Personal relationships and trust in informal organizations provided stable work for these masons from the end of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century. However, professional construction teams have recently begun relying on operational mechanisms like strict management regulations, formal organizational relationships, and a tiered subcontracting system for working opportunities.

How rural society is reshaped

The historic changes in the geography of rural tradesmen’s professional spaces reflect the transformation of the scope of rural skilled labor. The migration of tradesmen from rural areas to cities has directly resulted in the diversification of their careers, and behind this lies a shift in skilled labor trends, which has restructured both the artisan economy and social life. Conversely, the transformation of individual tradesmen’s lives has also reshaped rural society.

With the expansion of rural tradesmen’s occupational space, their increasingly complex working environment has directly led to an enhancement of their skills. For rural tradesmen, skills guarantee their basic material livelihood; those with a trade in the countryside generally possess the economic ability to support their families. Therefore, occupational changes are first reflected in their own lives and social status. As the working space for these masons shifted from rural areas to county regions and then on to cities, rural tradesmen had to retrain themselves and learn new professional knowledge to enhance their work skills in order to adapt to the new working space and new occupations. This has effectively led to new skill acquisition and professional upgrading.

The formation of skills relies on accumulating practical experiences and theoretical knowledge, and rural tradesmen “learn by doing” masonry work. Although upgraded skills are a prerequisite for the steady enhancement of their economic and social status, tradesmen remain constrained by external factors such as the environment, age, and their own cultural backgrounds. Consequently, not all masons can integrate into urban areas via skill improvement.

Unfortunately, the expansion of occupational spaces from rural areas to cities has accelerated the disappearance of the craftsman group. From the beginning of the 21st century, as policies such as the agricultural tax were adjusted, the external pressures on farmers have decreased. However, with higher human capital investments and lower income returns, farming is no longer a popular economic source in rural areas. When labor spaces changed for rural tradesmen, returning to farming was not the first choice for masons. Most masons decided to shift into other fields, leaving the construction labor market and seeking new jobs by acquiring new skills. Urban-rural integration and the urbanization of farmers not only launched the professional transformation of rural tradesmen but also shaped a more diverse occupational space for tradesmen in general.

Moving away from their original work environments towards new occupations requires the acquisition of new skills. Some tradesmen have successfully crossed the occupational threshold and launched new careers through proximal, kinship, and acquaintance relationships, which all serve as shortcuts to skill acquisition.

On one hand, masons must upgrade their skills to maintain the stability of their original jobs. On the other hand, they are compelled to seek new work in other fields. This dilemma gives rise to two polarized states of skills: one group of tradesmen relies on skill upgrades or the acquisition of new skills in the field of masonry to remain consistently employed, while the other group, influenced by objective factors such as age and institutional barriers, have become seasonal or “gig” workers.

In essence, skill differentiation among rural tradesmen underscores the employment challenges and predicaments this group currently faces, particularly during their transition from rural to urban occupational spaces. The situation is especially dire for many older migrant workers, who were once skilled artisans but have since become part of an unstable labor force. While we need rural tradesmen to help build a skill-based society, the labor market for these workers is increasingly narrow, and a growing number of older migrant workers in large cities face bleak employment prospects. To ensure their continued relevance and competitiveness, it is crucial to provide rural tradesmen with effective skill training and re-employment support.

Xu Jiahong is from the Marxist Sociology Research Center at Nankai University. Chi Shuai is from the Department of Sociology at Nankai University.