Farewell to Peasant China

Rural Urbanization and Social Change in the Late Twentieth Century

Gregory Eliyu Guldin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315293431
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Chinese urbanization, including the daily life, migration strategies, and life choices of villagers and townspeople, is the focus of this study by Chinese and North American scholars. The study looks at the urbanization process and the vitality of post-reform Chinese society.

Part I

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Introduction

1

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The Anthropology of Rural Urbanization in China

Gregory Eliyu Guldin

The Topic of Research

This volume is comprised of a collection of field reports on the urbanization of rural areas in Guangdong, Fujian and Yunnan provinces in southern China, plus reports from Tibet in the west and Liaoning in the northeast. All of these reports, save for that on Liaoning, were part of a joint effort of a team of Chinese scholars and, intermittently, the American editor of this volume. Professor Zhou Daming of Zhongshan University was Project Co-Director along with Professor Guldin of Pacific Lutheran University. The field research for these chapters, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, was conducted between spring 1992 and fall 1993, with each field stay lasting from one to several weeks, and some sites visited at least twice. The Liaoning field study, although it followed the same research guidelines as devised for the rest of the project, was conducted with separate funding and undertaken in early 1996.

The approach of the project is ethnographical and explicitly comparative, seeking to understand the multiple dimensions whereby “rural” areas are becoming increasingly influenced by the twin processes of industrialization and urbanization. Given China’s depth and breadth, the project endeavors to cover a variety of sites, including some in the more prosperous coastal regions of Guangdong and Fujian as well as areas where the process has just begun, such as in parts of Yunnan and Tibet. The inclusion of non-Han nationality districts, two special economic zones, and three variant urban patterns in the northeast, is an attempt to broaden the comparison.

Before commencing the project, the participants came together in Guangzhou to hammer out a common research frame for the undertaking. Representatives from each of the engaged danwei (Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, Xiamen University in Fujian, Yunnan University in Kunming, and the China Tibetology Research Center in Beijing) as well as the editor agreed to explore how economic changes were affecting social and cultural life styles in their respective sites. Data was therefore gathered on changes in production, and on the flow of information, capital, and population. The intent was to emphasize the oft-neglected cultural dimension of China’s reform process as more and more areas in China metamorphose into an urbanized society.

The “Reform Era” inaugurated in 1979 and 1980 with the dismantling of the commune system, the establishment of special economic zones and the move towards a Chinese-style market economy, led to rapid changes in the countryside. With farming contracted out to individual households, pressures rose to release labor from the agricultural sector; these laborers were then put to work in the expanding tertiary and secondary sectors, and especially in transportation and construction. Further expansion of the rural enterprises (xiangzhen qiye) helped absorb agriculture’s surplus labor and, in turn, helped to boost the demand for such labor. Complex migration trails began to take shape, with implications for both receiving and exporting districts. Increasing flows of people, capital, goods and information have spearheaded an urbanization process which promises to radically transform the lives of the solid majority of Chinese citizens. These reports describe the multiple forms that urbanization is taking in China, and give credence to the prediction (Guldin 1992:230) that by the year 2000, if we consider not only those living in officially designated urban areas but in urbanized townships and villages as well, the majority of Chinese will be living urbanized lifestyles.

The Articles

The articles were all penned by Chinese and American scholars who consider themselves anthropologists (although Liu Zhongquan probably leans more towards a sociological self-description). Anthropology was revived officially in China during the early 1980s with the establishment of anthropology departments in Zhongshan and Xiamen Universities, and then later in the decade as a disciplinary major (zhuanye) within the History department of Yunnan University. All three of these danwei participated in the project. Furthermore, the director of the Tibetan section of the project, Dr. Gelek, received China’s first in-country Ph.D in anthropology at Zhongshan University in 1986.¹

Urban anthropology did not become a distinct subfield, however, until its inauguration at the First International Urban Anthropology Conference held in Beijing in 1989–1990 (Guldin and Southall 1993). Since then the China Urban Anthropology Association has been set up in Beijing under the auspices of the Nationalities Institute of CASS and the Ministry of Nationality Affairs, and an International Urban Anthropology Conference was held in Shandong. Research projects have taken longer to materialize. One problem has been the lack of explicitly urban-oriented materials, and another, the absence of senior scholars with urban field experience. To combat these deficiencies, training seminars reviewing urban anthropological theory and method were conducted in Guangzhou and Beijing by this editor for those scholars interested in this project. The fieldwork which then ensued and the results reported in this volume represent the first large-scale urban anthropological research project in the People’s Republic.

The first article is written by Zhou Daming, Associate Professor in Zhongshan’s Anthropology Department. As project co-director, Professor Zhou provides the background and sets the framework for the project by first reviewing the debate regarding rural urbanization in the Chinese literature and the political factions that support different positions. He also introduces us to the complexity of defining “urbanization” in the Chinese context. He cautions us in the use of the common but insufficient yardsticks for measuring basic data such as growth in the officially registered urban population, or an increase in the number of rurally-registered people who change to “non-agricultural registration status,” that is, urban registered status (nong zhuan fei). His article is also interesting in that it is a comparison of different prosperous areas. This is an unusual undertaking as most studies of these areas analyze them in isolation. Anhai in Fujian and Humen in Guangdong make for an instructive contrast, not the least of which is their similar overseas/Hong Kong connections.² By also contrasting these areas with Yunnan, he is able to draw on a wider canvas for his classification of urbanization types.

The second article, by the editor, reviews the multiple rural urbanization venues of the project, and asks whether a new pattern of Asian urbanization, the desakota process described by the geographer Terry McGee of the University of British Columbia, is emerging in southern China. Like Zhou, Guldin revisits urbanization definitions (this time from folk and scholarly perspectives), but then calls for a distinction to be drawn between “townization” and “citization,” as “urbanization” is too broad a category to accurately describe the varying processes underway in contemporary China.

The next section of the book highlights regional and local patterns. The first article in this segment, co-authored by Zhou and his colleague Zhang Yingqiang, focuses on the process of urbanization in one area in the prosperous Pearl River Delta. The authors show that even there there is no single mode of urbanization, but rather four distinct patterns. In their analyses they adopt an applied anthropological perspective. After reviewing the problems which have arisen in each of the four patterns, they offer solutions as policy recommendations. Their comparative frame is refreshing, as is their emphasis on the human side of the economic changes experienced by both migrants and locals. Their description of the mangliu (the so-called “blind migrants”) is particularly worth reading.

Shi Yilong, Associate Professor of Anthroplogy at Xiamen University, reports on his observations over a decade of the transformation of an agricultural village into an industrializing “suburb” of the Xiamen Special Economic Zone. He begins his article by critiquing demography-based definitions of urbanization (“concentrations of rural population in cities”) which completely neglect the processes of rural urbanization. Professor Shi prefers a definition of urbanization that is more sociological, one that emphasizes the acquisition of urban ways of life. At times, though, he seems almost to be equating urbanization with prosperity and standard of living with lifestyle.

Rural urbanization is also a phenomenon in the northeast. Lisa Hoffman of the University of California at Berkeley and Liu Zhongquan of Dalian University of Technology analyze urbanization processes in the northeast and look at how local leaders are engaging reforms and the new economic policies. A study of three research sites—a village, a town, and a new form of farmer-initiated urbanization—reveals the critical importance of local leadership in determining which rural areas undergo urbanization first.

The next article, by Dr. Gelek and Li Tao of China’s Tibetology Research Center, investigates rural urbanization processes in a suburban county outside of Lhasa, an area far removed from the coastal prosperity of Guangdong and Fujian. Here we see a relatively slow rate of increase in the proportion of the secondary and tertiary sectors in the economy, although the shifts have indeed begun. Out-migrant remittances back home to Duilongdeqing County have formed an investment capital pool that serves to jump-start the local economy, a pattern we saw in Hunan, Yunnan, and elsewhere. Gelek and Li note many lifestyle changes, including far more rural-urban economic ties than even a few years ago, leading them to conclude that rural urbanization has indeed commenced in Tibet as well. The trickle-down effects from the economic reforms of the 1980s have reached the Tibetan plateau, but it is clear that, at this point at least, rural urbanization is more a ripple than a flood. Interestingly enough, Gelek and Li also point to changes in food preferences (to vegetables, fruits, noodles, and rice) as indicators of “urbanization or acculturation” to the majority Han population. Probably both.

The next section looks at the social dimensions of rural urbanization. The first two articles focus on the migrant population. Lan Daju, a young researcher at Xiamen University’s Anthropology Institute, worked with Professor Shi as well as Professor Chen Guoqiang in Caitang. Lan had great rapport with his migrant informants and buttressed the fairly unrefined questions utilized in his survey with keen observations. His article is noteworthy, especially for the segment on migrant self-perception. He reports that they were unclear whether they were rural or urban workers and then tells us that “actually they [the migrants] were little bothered by such things; all they knew was that they were out to earn money, and that was enough!”

Zhou Daming’s study of migrant (odd-job) workers sites his “hamlet” within the great metropolis of Guangzhou. He takes the “urban village” approach to his investigation and explores the dynamics of social life in this migrant “ethnic neighborhood.” He delivers fine ethnographic detail and shows us the quality work that part-time, off-residence Chinese fieldwork can accomplish.

In the last article, Zhou teams up with his Zhongshan University colleague, political science department researcher Guo Zhenglin, to assess the changes to the rural social security system that rural urbanization has brought about. As a companion piece to Zhou’s chapter above on rural urbanization in the Pearl River Delta, this article helps explain how setting up rural social security systems in the postcommune era’s rural townships has helped to narrow the gap between “rural” and “urban” dwellers’ lifestyles significantly. The authors also alert us to the emergence of a new “shareholders” pattern of distributing social security benefits, a pattern that promises to establish a “socialist social security” pattern without hindering the growth of the market or of capital accumulation. Finally, the article points out the continuing importance of the collective sector in prosperous areas.

In both of these last two articles, the authors also demonstrate the strongly applied emphases of Chinese anthropology when they make specific policy recommendations. In the former, Zhou argues for comprehensive and equitable treatment for the odd-job workers, while in the latter, Guo and Zhou make the case for improving the social security system, call for better job safety precautions, and appeal for better treatment of both rural migrants in cities and migrant laborers in the countryside. With these suggestions, they follow the tradition of Chinese ethnographers and scholars making useful social contributions.

Terminology and Translations

Certain terms are hard to translate precisely from the Chinese. How should “nongmin” be rendered in English? The traditional translation as “peasant” is inappropriate in a non-feudal context, as the standard usage of the English term refers commonly to societies in which agriculturalists have little decision-making authority over production and marketing. If this was true during previous eras before and after the Communist Revolution, it is certainly not true today. The term might thus today be more accurately given as “agriculturalist” (or farmer) in some contexts, and “village resident” in others. In this volume we avoid using “peasant” altogether, other than in the hybrid term “peasant-workers” (min-gong).

Wailairen (“outsiders”) or wailai renkou (“outsider population”) refer to people not native to a locale. As used in Guangdong, they refer both to people from elsewhere in the province as well as waishengren, those from other provinces. We translate the former pair as outsiders and the latter as migrants.

Some other terms are best rendered in their Chinese original with occasional English versions given for variety’s sake. Thus we use danwei/unit, lianheti/multi-family enterprise, hukou/household registration, and getihu/individual entrepreneur. The articles also make frequent reference to the oft-changing and perpetually confusing hierarchy of administrative towns, cities, counties, and local districts. For help with this, we point those interested to Ma 1992, whose article helps make sense of the differences between designated and undesignated towns (jianzhi and feijianzhi zhen).³ For the Zhang and Zhou article specifically, the reader should note that Dongguan County has become Dongguan City and that we refer to the old county seat as Dongguan Municipality to distinguish it from the county-wide Dongguan City.

We also use the standard abbreviations GVIAO and GVIO, to stand respectively, for Gross Value Industrial and Agricultural Output and for Gross Value of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword: The End of Peasantry
• Acknowledgments
• Tables and Figures
• Contributors
• Part I. Introduction
• Part II. Urbanizing China
• Part III. Regional Patterns
• Part IV. Social Dimensions of Rural Urbanization
• Part V. Conclusion
• Glossary
• Index