Modern China

Society, Culture and Literature

Geeta Kochhar

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367343422
• eBook ISBN: 9780429589188
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book looks at the transition of modern Chinese society in terms of its culture and literature. Since the economic reforms and open door policy in 1978, the Chinese society has undergone a drastic transformation. It is headed towards becoming an ultra-modern advanced society and a world superpower. Among the pillars of great change are the advances in technology and communication that have reshaped Chinese society. This volume explores China's march towards modernity in the 21st century as defined by its own terms. It discusses China's social structure, ageing population, gender stratification, marriages, cultural identity, cosmopolitanism, its history of communism, law, economic reforms, financial institutions and challenges of the global markets. The book sheds light on Chinese literature and media and brings out various facets of social changes across time.

With its topical debates and issues, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of Chinese studies, East Asian studies, geopolitics, area studies, international relations, politics and foreign policy, along with think tanks and those in media and journalism.

1 Changing society in China

Debates and issues

Geeta Kochhar

China has undergone various changes since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the leadership of Mao Zedong. Although the core ideological guidelines of the Communist leaders over decades remain the same, the changes in party policies and global influence has drastically transformed China from being a ‘Revolutionary China’ to a ‘Socialist Market Economy’, thereby marching towards becoming a ‘modern society’. Modern China is viewed as a revolutionary strong nation and the historic records reveal an upsurge for change – change from feudal to a communist society and from socialist society to ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’.

China is now the world’s second largest economy and is poised to overtake the US by 2030. There is a clear demarcation of China pre-1978 and post-1978, quite visible in the policy orientations and objectives. After the reform and open door policy of 1978, Deng Xiaoping laid down a ‘three-step strategy’ for resolving the ‘wenbao’ (温饱 enough to eat and wear) problem of the Chinese masses; triggering the economic engine; and pulling China to a modernized level. The achievements of China are not without cost and the future challenges are huge. At the political front, there is a debate over the future path of reform and development, and questions have been raised on the issue of sustainability of this model of development.

However, the re-introduction of private entrepreneurship to China post-1978 has transformed the Chinese society from being a classless society to divisions based on different layers of social strata unknown in Maoist China. With the changes in leadership, there has been a constant push towards re-creating a ‘New China’, a shift from a poor and backward nation to a strong nation with a well-off society. In a march towards building a modern society, Chinese leaders have made arduous efforts to root out absolute poverty and resolve the issues of ‘enough to eat and wear’. Yet, many issues confront today’s China and the process of transformation is ongoing. The chapter looks at the various debates, issues and changes in policy that impacted the social transformation of China.

Sociology as a discipline and theoretical contestation over modernity

After the Communist Party under the leadership of Mao Zedong gained full control over China, the study of society, i.e., sociology, was condemned as a bourgeois subject and its practitioners were regarded as reactionary tools of imperialism. One of the main reasons was that communists looked upon sociology as a foreign import, a form of cultural imperialism. As a discipline studying social change as well as social structure, sociology was in direct competition with Marxism (Stockman, 2000: 12). Although the disciplinary study of sociology was not promoted, the study of the Chinese society progressed in various other forms. China established a different version of sociological work, which L. C. Young described as ‘mass sociology’ (Young, 1974).¹ It was only after Deng Xiaoping came to power that sociology as a discipline was accepted and institutes were established for specialization. In the 1980s, there were debates in China over the possibility of creating a specifically ‘Chinese sociology’ (Stockman, 2000: 15).

The focus of study on Chinese society tended towards comparative study. Hence, the studies on social relationships and social interactions in China have also implicitly or explicitly compared China’s orientations and values (sometimes Asian or Eastern culture, or Oriental culture) with those of the West, i.e., the Occidental culture. Most scholars posit that there existed a dynamic West and an unchanging East, which gave rise to the ‘modernization theory’ in the 1950s and 1960s (Stockman, 2000: 31). Hence, the debate was linked to the distinction between two forms of society: the traditional and the modern. The notion of ‘modernity’ was established in contrast to the traditions that defined the past and provided reasons to think for alternatives for coping with future problems. The emphasis on reason and experiment in the theory of modernization placed science and scientific technology at the core of the process of modernization (Stockman, 2000: 31). From this understanding of the theoretical framework, Chinese society was considered as a backward and un-modernized at the end of Mao era with the transition to modernity incomplete (Stockman, 2000: 33).

The pre-reform period in Chinese society saw revolutionary changes. In the more radical phases, such as the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the revolutions were aimed at complete transformation of higher education, family life, marriage law and so forth. However, in the post-reform period, Chinese leaders and intellectuals regarded the revolution as far from complete and intended further social change to make China a fully modernized country (Worden et al., 1987). Yet, the continuum of social change was to defy the Western-style modern society and cut the umbilical cord of past traditional Chinese society. The changes were rooted in the transformation of rural land control, education system and urban life, which had impacted on almost every aspect of Chinese society, including the family structure.

The roots of Chinese oriental society are traced in Confucianism that became a lifeline of China since imperial times. Confucianism created hierarchy in the Chinese society both in social organizations as well as in political organizations. The rigid hierarchical social order of Confucianism was to be broken when Mao Zedong came to power. Hence, the leaders destroyed all aspects of rigid structures and created new forms of morality and conduct. Yet, the traditional Confucian notions remained as the heart line of Chinese society, while China embarked on becoming a modern society.

In the 1980s and the 1990s, sociologists in China were going through a process of specialization and professionalization. The 1990s, in particular, witnessed a new generation of researchers trained specifically in sociology at home or abroad. Sociology, therefore, did not remain just as a ‘tool’ for resolving the problems in Chinese society, but was regarded as a scientific discipline with its own agenda and its own standards (Merle, 2004: 4).

Pre-reform period Chinese society

In the traditional Confucian scheme of social stratification, scholars were at the highest level of society, followed by farmers, then by artisans, with merchants and soldiers in last place (Worden et al., 1987). In the society at large, the highest and most prestigious positions were those of political generalists, such as members of the emperor’s council or provincial governors. Experts, such as tax specialists or physicians, ranked below the ruling political generalists, and Confucianists disparaged merchants. Common soldiers occupied a low position in society and were recruited from its lowest ranks (Worden et al., 1987). This notion of social stratification continued to define social recognition even though Mao Zedong tried to inculcate a sense of equality. The deep-rooted divisions remained at the base of social acceptance, yet the social transformation due to government policies created new consciousness of cadres and mass population. The core of Chinese communities generating prestige, hence, hovered around education, abstention from manual labour, wealth expended on the arts and education, a large family with many sons and community service and acts of charity.

1 Rural society

Land reform in the 1950s was the first attempt to break the traditional society and redistribute the land to the poor peasants. The policy changed the hierarchy in the rural areas as work teams were sent to villages, where land was taken away from the wealthier families or landlords and equally distributed to the poorest population of peasants. The village families were classified into categories to identify the social hierarchy as landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants or poor peasants. By 1958, as collectivization of agriculture was almost complete with the establishment of the people’s communes, the household became the basic unit, although some differences in standards of living still remained.

The traditional society, however, continued with family size and structural complexity directly linked with class. Rural landlords and government officials had the largest families, while the poor peasants had the smallest families. Scholars opine that in China couples who had no sons or no children at all adopted or bought infants; families with daughters but no sons tried to find men willing to marry their daughters and move into their families, abandoning their original families and sometimes even their original surnames; and families with daughters but no property to attract a son-in-law were sometimes forced to sell their daughters as concubines or prostitutes (Worden et al., 1987). The land reform and the people’s communes brought in greater parity with the least power on land and wealth.

In the late 1970s, the Household Contract Responsibility system was introduced, due to which experiments on new forms of tenure and production at provincial-level units began. This resulted in breaking the collective production team and created contract with individual households for work assigned on portions of collective land for expanding the variety of crops or livestock production. With the initial success, the experiments were spread in all districts. By winter of 1982–1983, the people’s communes were abolished and were replaced by administrative townships and a number of specialized teams or businesses that often leased such collective assets as tractors and provided services for money (Worden et al., 1987).

By 1987, most families were raised to the level of having a portion of land. Marriage was based on moving to the husband’s family. The state had banned concubines, child betrothal and the sale of infants or females, all of which were formerly practiced, though had become rare due to the changes in the pre-reform period (Worden et al., 1987). However, what continued in rural areas was the kinship and lineage system, even though officially since the 1950s, the communist leaders suppressed such feudal system of groupings. However, in recent China, under the cover of ‘guanxi’ (关系) networks, one can find a reversal of those old forms of linkages based on kinship and lineages.

2 Urban society

China’s urbanization rate, which has surpassed 50 per cent and is expected to increase at an average annual rate of 4 per cent, projects a modern urbanized China by 2050. However, the basis of this rising urban population mainly lies in demographic mobility, rather than natural urban population growth. Hence, the issue of concern is the increasing number of migrants in relatively developed cities. According to the latest Census data, the total mainland’s population has grown to more than 1.3 billion, while the annual average population growth is just 0.57 per cent over the past decade. Yet, the proportion of urban population has increased by 13.46 percentage points since 2000, reaching a total of 665.57 million, which was 49.68 per cent of the total population by 2010.

The Household Registration System (HRS, or as generally called Hukou 户口), a citizen registration system based on the place of birth, as a distinct feature that controlled and shaped urban China since the liberation of the PRC. It created barriers on mobility, thereby dividing urban life from the rural population. The urban areas were, hence, predominantly composed of workers, whereby the wage earners were dependent on their work units for housing, old-age security and opportunities. Urban families were generally smaller than rural families and had the highest-level managers and cadres.

Post-reform transformation

With the call of Deng Xiaoping “its glorious to become rich” and “it does not matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches the mice”, there was a drastic shift in the post-reform socialist line of Communist China, which has reshaped present-day China. As China marched rigorously towards wealth accumulation, the fundamentals of Chinese society have undergone complete transformation; the youth of China, especially, are creating a different society unknown ever in the history of the PRC. What was discarded as ‘bourgeois liberalism’ has now deeply penetrated Chinese society, with the communist leaders off and on launching ‘anti-spiritual pollution’ campaigns and re-instilling the socialist line of adhering to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong thought along with a dose of nationalism. The economic changes made a big impact on youth ‘looking towards money’ (向钱看 xiangqiankan) and materialism could not be avoided once the profit motive had been allowed to thrive. Consumer culture has engulfed the entire Chinese society and has also lead to new, greater divisions.

The introduction of diverse forms of business ventures and the penetration of capital into the economy has brought in drastic transformation in Chinese society. Mainly, three kinds of changes can be highlighted: one, destruction of old institutions and support systems; two, continuity of old institutions that maintain control over the peoples’ movement; and three, new reproductive policies that asserted control over peoples’ lives. Reforms broke some of the traditional structures established on socialist ideologies. A direct impact was the breaking up of the ‘iron-rice bowl’ and delinking units (单位 Danwei) from undertaking the overall responsibility for the welfare of industrial workers. The impact of sector-specific reforms was felt in almost all areas relating to employment, housing, health, education, wages and pensions and state guarantees for on-the-job health and other issues. The broader framework of social welfare (社会福利 Shehui fuli) was expanded to include social services (社会服务 Shehui fuwu) as well as social relief (社会救济或者社会救助 Shehui jiuji huozhe shehui jiuzhu). Under the new conditions, social relief and social guarantee (社会保障 Shehui baozhang) have become significant factors in demands that the state play its role as a ‘welfare state’. The gradual shift towards greater privatization in all social welfare programmes of the state points towards capitalization of Chinese economy. The state is now a guide and supporter of goods, rather than a provider of welfare needs. Hence, there is reform in housing, medical, education and so forth. This has created new social divisions unknown in Mao’s China, where the gap between the highest layer and lowest layer were relatively low.

By 2002, the divisions and disparities became a subject matter of serious concern among Chinese scholars, with Lu Xueyi, a CASS scholar, producing first-of-its-kind work titled ‘Research Report on Contemporary China’s Social Stratum’ (当代中国社会阶层研究报告 Dangdai Zhongguo Shehui Jieceng Yanjiu Baogao). The work introduced the concept of ‘social strata’ (阶层 Jieceng) along with the notion of ‘class society’ (阶级社会 Jieji shehui). The work classified Chinese society into ten major social strata: state and social administrators (国家与社会管理阶层 Guojia yu shehui guanli jieceng), managerial personnel (经理阶层 Jingli jieceng), private entrepreneurs (私营企业主阶层 siying qiyezhu jieceng), professional (专业技术人员阶层 Zhuanye jishu renyuan jieceng), clerical staff (办事人员阶层 Banshi renyuan jieceng), owners of small and medium-sized private business (个体工商户阶层 Geti gongshanghu jieceng), service sector employees (商业服务人员阶层 Shangye fuwu renyuan jieceng), industrial workers (产业工人阶层 Chanye gongren jieceng), agricultural labourers (农业劳动者阶层 Nongye laodongzhe jieceng) and the unemployed and semi-employed (无业、失业和半失业阶层 Wuye, shiye he banshiye jieceng) in cities.

While pointing out that there is marked decline in the children of peasants becoming state and social managers as mobility to upper levels was difficult, it stressed that a peasant has no way to climb to a level of becoming leaders. Workers and peasants were placed...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Glossary of Chinese terms
• 1 Changing society in China: debates and issues
• 2 China’s economy in transition
• 3 Growth itinerary of China’s rural economy and the way ahead: past contributions, present challenges and future opportunities for financial institutions
• 4 Continuity, integration or metamorphosis? Retracing the evolution of China’s social structure and cultural identity through history
• 5 Greying China: challenges and solutions
• 6 Interpreting law in China: history, communism and economic reforms
• 7 Foreign nationals and Chinese-foreign marriages in cosmopolitan China: statistics, state policies and media discourse (2000–2012)
• 8 Gender stratification in literature and media in post-Mao China
• 9 Love and society in the works of Zhang Jie and Shen Rong
• 10 The use of Lenin in Chinese Sovietology in the 1990s
• Index