This ethnographic story is an account of what we heard and experienced during the fieldwork in 2001 in a Zhuang village in the mountainous region of southwest China. It aims to decipher the formation of local economy in the post reform China through focusing on the state economic intervention and villagers’ negotiation, accommodation and resistance in shaping the local economic development. We also intends to argue that most current development projects by the local government under the influences of developmentalism, are not able to meet the needs of local community; but cause the re emergence of rural poverty.
