Chinese urban life under reform: the changing social contract

✍ Scribed by Xiaoling Zhang

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 51 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.742

✦ Synopsis

Drawing on a number of social theories (e.g. Janos Kornai and Alex Inkeles) and the urban experiences of Eastern socialist states, this book by a political scientist and a sociologist presents a comprehensive picture of varying patterns of life chances, work, interest articulation, gender and attitudes among urban Chinese since the introduction of market reforms in the early 80s. The book is mainly concerned with two issues: whether socialist and market social contracts have a host of systemic consequences and who `wins' in the politics of market transition, the distributors (administrators) or producers (entrepreneurs, workers). It offers fresh data on the social and political aspects of the dramatic transformation in China when old patterns are beginning to break down and new ones are emerging. This book is a reasoned evaluation of a wide range of arguments and ideas about the social consequences of China's reforms, based on the analysis of a unique set of national social surveys completed over 10 years.

The book is made up of eleven chapters divided into four parts. It opens with a brief introduction, followed by Chapter 2 (Part I) which focuses on an overview of the historical background that brought China to the post-1978 reform period. This is followed by a detailed section on group interests (Part II), which examines in succession: economic returns among different groups (Chapters 3±4), attitudes among different occupation, education and regional groups (Chapters 5± 7), and evolving patterns of political participation (mainly in Chapter 8). Part III looks at the impact of the transition on the social conditions of women both at work and in the home (Chapters 9±10). Part IV reviews the issues raised in earlier chapters, this time with comparisons to highly marketized Taiwan (Chapter 11) and tries to provide some indication of China's future under the new market social contract. Throughout the book the authors seek to answer the issues raised at the beginning: the systemic consequences of socialist and market social systems and which group `wins' in the politics of market transition.

The main conclusions are that socialist and market societies do affect the lives of both male and female urban residents. They show striking differences between pre-and post-reforms in people's attitudes and behaviour, such as workers' dependency on their superiors in the pre-reform socialist system and far more individualistic and independent decisions in the market system era. Greater occupational mobility in market society is another important change in urban life. In line with Guthrie (2000), who suggests that often those closest to the market and the most subject to new competitive pressures will be the least rewarded, they also conclude that current work on market transformation is under-theorized and that the simple distinction between producers and redistributors is inadequate to ®t the reality in China. They argue that the income gaps between government administrators, enterprise managers and others in responsible positions and manual workers are extremely moderate. Neither group was winning very much in the struggle for income and bene®ts through the early 1990s. They also show that contrary to general reasoning, and despite the market-accelerated tendencies (employers have more autonomy to discriminate, for instance), urban women in China continue to gain on men in education, jobs and seemingly bargaining power at home.

The main strength of the book lies in the authors' careful analysis and sensitive interpretation of reliable and extensive sources of data from both Mainland China and Taiwan. These include ESRIC Surveys (1987±1992)