Marginalisation in China

Perspectives on Transition and Globalisation

Bin Wu, Richard Sanders, Heather Xiaoquan Zhang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754644279
• eBook ISBN: 9781317100683
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Economic transition in China has witnessed (re)centralization of resources from the margin to the core in economic, social and political senses. This book employs a marginalization lens to reveal, delineate and better understand the processes, patterns, trends, multiple dimensions and dynamics of the phenomenon, and the consequences and implications for development and well-being in the country. Bringing together a wide range of domestic and international experts and disciplinary perspectives, the book combines empirical research and conceptual analysis to provide an insightful overview of China's recent development. It contributes to the debate over marginalization and its interactions with globalization and transition in China, and has significance for various domestic and international policy arenas in respect of tackling marginalization, poverty and social exclusion effectively while striving for the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals in China and beyond.

Chapter 1
Introduction: Marginalisation and Globalisation in Transitional China

Heather Xiaoquan Zhang and Richard Sanders

Despite the general acknowledgement of China’s achievements in terms of rapid and sustained economic growth during the last 28 years, scholars, policy makers and practitioners concerned with human development and well-being may question whether such achievements can compensate for the environmental and social costs wrought as a result. A close examination of the distribution of the costs and benefits of economic growth amongst the Chinese population raises important issues, including, for example, the degree to which economic development and social well-being are related to each other and the extent and means by which the benefits of China’s growth can be more equitably shared. Other questions present themselves. How can the many downsides of rapid societal change be avoided or effectively addressed and what are the roles of the state and of civil society in so doing? What new institutions need to be put in place and what reforms should be made to existing institutions?

We intend to analyse the above issues and challenges using the concept of marginalisation. This concept, we maintain, refers to the processes and consequences of economic, political and social changes leading to the (re)centralisation and control of scarce resources, including natural, financial, social and political capitals, from marginal areas, sectors and groups to core areas, sectors and groups: for example, from the rural to the urban or from the people as a whole to elites. Marginalisation is not a new phenomenon in China. Yet the market reforms and economic transition since the late 1970s, and in particular since the mid-1990s, characterised as they are by intensifying globalisation, have rendered the phenomenon more salient. Growing inequalities and polarisation in all aspects of life have interwoven with the emergence of new forms of poverty, vulnerability and social disadvantage and with environmental degradation and natural resource depletion. All this has reshaped socio-economic and power relations, creating ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, and generating greater uncertainty, insecurity and risks in livelihoods, as well as compromising the ways individuals, families and communities respond, adapt to and absorb external shocks.

Marginalisation in China cannot be fully understood without taking into account the impacts of globalisation, broadly interpreted as a process through which the world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent in respect of economy, society, culture, environment and polity (cf. Beck, 2000; Castells, 1996; Giddens, 1990; Martin, 2004). Studies on globalisation have gained increasing currency in international academic and policy making circles in recent years. The globalisation discourse, however, is often marked by heated debates about the benefits and costs, advantages and disadvantages, winners and losers in its process and about its impact on poverty, inequality and environmental and social sustainability globally, nationally and locally (cf. Dasgupta, 1998; Masina, 2002; Stiglitz, 2002). Indeed, examining the development path and outcomes of post-reform China, we may well argue that globalisation has been a significant influence on the processes and patterns of marginalisation in the country, as a result of the induced changes in the exercise and modalities of power over resources and the consequent (re)distribution of costs and benefits at various levels.

Since the market reforms initiated in the late 1970s, China has sustained impressive rates of economic growth of approximately 9% per annum, a remarkable achievement when compared with other developing regions of the world. A major factor contributing to this has been China’s increased integration into the global economic system. The pace of globalisation further accelerated with the country’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) near the end of 2001. China’s decision to strive for WTO membership was based on the leadership’s optimistic perception of globalisation’s potential for economic opportunities and benefits, discounting the likely challenges and costs that it might pose to vulnerable sectors of the economy and society. Similarly positive predictions predominate in academic circles and policy domains both within China and without (cf. Chang, et al., 2001). And while it is undeniable that China has actively participated in globalisation and that certain regions, sectors and groups have been able to take advantage of this, it is also arguable that too much emphasis has been placed on narrow growth indicators as evidence of the positive impact of globalisation on China at the expense of a more critical scrutiny of the ways in which globalisation has engendered differential effects on Chinese society. Whereas China is frequently applauded as a success story in relation to globalisation, relatively less attention has been paid to its negative impacts and to the often drastic socio-economic and cultural changes wrought by it on the lives and livelihoods of disadvantaged groups, sectors and regions, and their implications for poverty, inequality, vulnerability and marginalisation.

Marginalisation as a consequence of a skewed process of redistribution of scarce resources involves a range of actors and complex interest relations. In this regard, perhaps, China can be deemed as unique in the developing world not only in terms of the extent of socio-economic differentiation and inequality amongst different regions, sectors and social groups which have emerged during the era of transition, but also in terms of the various initiatives that the government has taken to tackle the problems. Such initiatives are, in part, linked to the legacies of state socialism associated with an earlier part of the People’s Republic’s developmental history but are, additionally, heavily influenced by official apprehension at the possibility of political instability caused by growing social discontent. There is also, within China, a cultural tradition, which values egalitarianism and reciprocity and nurtures diverse and strong familial, kinship and social networks. With respect to trends in China’s political reform, it should be noted that democratic election of local government officials has already been initiated at village and township levels and that the new leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in the early twenty-first century has started paying more attention to marginal regions and peoples and vulnerable and disadvantaged groups (bianyuan yu ruoshi qunti) manifest, for instance, in the new emphasis on a people-centred approach (yiren weiben) to development, on urban-and-rural balanced and holistic development (chengxiang tongchou fazhan) and on the need for a more harmonious and inclusive society (hexie shehui). However, how such rhetoric is to be translated into reality remains to be seen. While neo-liberal discourses of globalisation, marketisation and de facto privatisation have continued to shape the reform agenda, the extent to which the problems of marginalisation in China will be successfully tackled remains doubtful.

Whilst the concept of marginalisation is gaining increasing prominence in an understanding and analysis of the more recent changes and emerging forms of inequalities in China, there has been a lack of systematic and interdisciplinary employment of a marginalisation lens to reveal, delineate and better understand the processes, patterns, trends, multiple dimensions and dynamics of the phenomenon, the challenges that it has posed and the consequences and implications for development and for well-being of the Chinese people. In this context, this volume constitutes the first attempt to address the issues as identified above through such a lens, thereby contributing to the debate over marginalisation and its interactions with globalisation and transition in China. It brings together a wide range of domestic and international experts and disciplinary perspectives, combining empirical research and conceptual analysis in an attempt to map out the contour of China’s development landscape in the reform era. As such, the research presented here has significance for various domestic and international policy arenas in respect of tackling marginalisation, poverty and social exclusion effectively and striving for the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals.

This volume is structured in two parts. Part 1, China in Transition: Inequality, Poverty and Marginalisation, contains six chapters. In chapter 2, Richard Sanders, Yang Chen and Yiying Cao discuss the question of marginalisation in the Chinese countryside since the rural reforms using data from the 2003 Rural Household Survey of the National Bureau of Statistics of China, and informed by recent evidence presented in the Chinese Farmers Report, officially banned in the country, containing first-hand accounts of the precarious, marginalised status of many Chinese farmers nowadays, in particular the rural poor. The chapter testifies to the enlarging inequalities in China, illustrated by a high and still rising Gini Co-efficient in recent years, not just between urban and rural areas, but within the countryside itself, and offers a range of explanations for such a state of affairs. It is clear from their analysis that some farmers face such a barrage of interlocking disadvantages – geographical, employment, educational, ethnic, social, political and personal – that it is hardly surprising that they remain mired in absolute poverty. Still others experience perceived relative marginalisation as institutional factors – to include excessive fees, taxes, arbitrary actions of local officials, continuing structural constraints on mobility and opportunities, regressive fiscal policy and so on – combine to sideline them, often to such an extent that the expression of their grievances, in the absence of appropriate mechanisms of political representation, leads to violent conflicts with the authorities. The chapter argues that unless the new Chinese leadership of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao seriously faces up to the farmers’ predicament and finds effective ways of alleviating the increasingly marginalised ‘farmers’ burden’, their ‘balanced and holistic development’ blueprint will remain a pipedream.

In chapter 3, Jun Tang, Mingzhu Dong and Mark Duda analyse another critical group of Chinese adversely affected during China’s transition: those who have been laid off from state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which, in the fierce competition of a market-oriented economy and faced with hard budget constraints, have had to downsize their workforces, with some even facing bankruptcy. The authors highlight a critical feature of the pre-reform (but, to a much lesser extent, the post-reform) social structure, that of the work unit or danwei, which provided workers with not only life-long employment and wage income but also access to a package of welfare benefits, frequently to include pensions, subsidised housing, medical care, primary and secondary education for their children and, most significantly, an associated sense of community belonging and social inclusion. Against this backdrop, being laid off during the industrial restructuring has involved much more profound effects than just losing a job. For not only does it mean, for workers, losing their wage incomes but it also involves separation from welfare benefits at precisely the time when they are needed most. And with the loss of wages, social benefits and their sense of social belonging, the workers involved experience ‘transition’ from insider to outsider status, from a state of relative social inclusion to one of marginalisation – indeed a ‘double marginalisation’ – in terms of access to the market and the state. Using evidence from a number of studies in China, to include a study carried out by the authors in Wuhan, central China, at the turn of the last century, Tang, Dong and Duda show that government re-employment policies are frequently ineffective and that those laid-off workers who do find themselves re-employed may well do so in the increasingly large informal sector, which are inadequately regulated and likely to carry little or no social benefits. They conclude that laid-off workers experience great difficulties in finding secure or full-time jobs again and, in consequence, suffer from considerable marginalisation in multiple dimensions. They argue that unless strong institutional support in the form of a fundamental reform of the social security system is provided for those laid-off, in particular with resources necessary for them to weather the storm, the SOE laid-off workers will continue to suffer from double marginalisation, preventing China from building a truly harmonious society and achieving common prosperity.

In chapter 4, Philip Andrews-Speed looks at marginalisation in China’s energy sector, using the case of township and village coal mines (TVCMs). He charts the rise and fall of TVCMs since the early 1980s, and the important role that they have played in the national economy through their contribution to China’s energy supply during its industrialisation drive. Throughout the 1980s, TVCMs played no small part in generating employment for local and migrant populations, as well as revenues for local governments, thus alleviating poverty in many rural areas endowed with coal reserves. At the same time, however, many TVCMs contributed to local environmental problems, posed harsh and dangerous working conditions, were mired with official corruption driven by the possibility of huge material rewards and were a source of large numbers of industrial accidents resulting in fatalities and injuries, problems which increasing official regulation of the mines in the 1990s and 2000s have failed to solve. The author concentrates on the period after 1998, when overcapacity in the coal industry, competition with larger state-owned coal mines and new government regulations combined to produce a wave of closures, resulting in increased unemployment and aggravated rural poverty in many areas. The lack of policies and programmes to prepare the coal mine communities for absorbing such external shocks and, for the remaining mines, the continued violation of miners’ rights to life, decent working conditions and pay, all mean that material and social deprivation, vulnerability and marginalisation remain typical in small TVCMs and their surrounding communities.

In chapter 5, Li Zhang examines the marginalised status of rural migrant workers (mingong) in Chinese cities. Zhang employs a model of ‘urban accumulation’ to explain a wide range of discriminative practices and policies adopted by urban authorities nowadays against rural migrants, including, for instance, restrictions imposed on migrant workers in the labour market by barring them from better-paid, more secure jobs of higher-status through attaching conditions of eligibility, to include possession of permanent urban household registration (hukou), and the exclusion of migrant workers from the newly introduced social security schemes like pension, health and workplace injury insurances. ‘Urban accumulation’, in this context, is construed as a process of reallocation and (re)centralisation of resources as possessed by migrant workers by the more powerful from rural peripheral to urban core areas. Zhang identifies and analyses recent developments and trends in relation to rural-urban migration in China, including such phenomena as urban residential segregation manifest in the emergence of the so-called urban villages, or chengzhongcun, which are in fact, residential enclaves of migrant communities in large cities, and the ‘commodification’ of the hukou, which involves the selling of permanent residency rights to those who can afford it in order to allow urban governments to expand their revenue bases. The consequences, Zhang points out, are the exploitation and marginalisation of migrant workers, reducing them to de facto second-class citizens in Chinese cities.

The issue of social and citizenship rights of the Chinese is further explored by Zhiqiang Feng in chapter 6, which focuses on China’s more recent health system reforms and their impacts on poverty, inequality and marginalisation. Feng examines the universalistic and egalitarian approach to healthcare provision during the first three decades of the People’s Republic, when, despite China’s low average income level, life expectancy increased from 35 to 68, infant mortality declined from 250 to 40 deaths per 1,000 live births and malaria was effectively brought under control. He argues that these remarkable achievements were largely attributable to the official emphasis on preventative healthcare and an equitable public health policy of ‘Health for All’. He demonstrates that these were realised through three major institutionalised schemes, namely, the public-funded medical care system (gongfei yiliao) for the public sector employees, the labour medical security system (laobao yiliao) for permanent workers in SOEs and large collective enterprises, both urban-based schemes, and the cooperative healthcare system (hezuo yiliao) in rural areas. In more recent years, however, there has been a state retreat from its previous commitment to preventative healthcare and health for all as market principles have been steadily introduced into the health system. Thus we find in China today a health service which has received low levels of public funding (much lower than in most comparable countries), where services, to include state hospitals are being privatised, where health insurance schemes are patchy at best and where the direct costs of healthcare, including medicines, diagnosis and treatment, have risen sharply to a level which seriously hinders access by large sections of the Chinese population and has led to a reduction in its utilisation despite an increase in the numbers falling ill. Feng argues that this is a profound form of social exclusion, marginalising disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, such as migrant workers in urban areas and the urban and rural poor, and that, if the situation is to be remedied, the Chinese government needs to reconstruct healthcare as a public or semi-public good, not to be treated just like any good in the marketplace, and to provide strong support in terms of the funding, organisation and delivery of healthcare and the urgent development and scaling up of new health insurance schemes.

In chapter 7, Ka Lin, adopting an institutional approach, delineates the changing patterns of poverty as it has been linked to social exclusion and marginalisation in China since 1949. The institutional perspective differs from the approaches to poverty studies currently predominant in China in that its overarching concerns are not the measurement and incidence of poverty. Rather, it focuses on institutional responses to poverty problems and the changing state poverty reduction strategies in different historical periods. Lin analyses the dynamics of the national profile of poverty during the past half century or more, focusing on the ways in which increased marketisation of the economy in the reform years has reconfigured Chinese society in respect of shifting social stratification as well as class and power relations. This has generated new patterns of poverty and inequality: it has not just worsened regional inequality, but has created new sources and forms of inequality within regions, to include relative poverty and deprivation, social exclusion and marginalisation. Lin shows that while the incidence of absolute poverty in rural areas has fallen significantly since the initiation of the reforms, recent development has witnessed the emergence, rise and, to some extent, entrenchment of urban poverty and social exclusion to include the SOE laid-off workers, the unemployed and many rural migrants. Lin charts three stages in the development of the Chinese government’s responses to poverty since 1949, characterised by a state-organised collective welfare system in the first phase (the pre-reform years) followed by a state-initiated growth-led anti-poverty strategy, particularly targeting regional poverty, from the early 1990s onwards, and, since the late 1990s, by increased state intervention through the introduction of more redistributive policies and mechanisms to include various social insurance schemes and the improvement of social security and social assistance programmes. Examining the strengths and weaknesses of the three approaches to poverty, social exclusion and marginalisation, Lin concludes that the neo-liberal solution to poverty – the single-minded pursuit of economic growth through market-based reforms which has, until recently, characterised the reform years’ institutional responses to poverty – is overly simplistic and inadequate. He therefore calls for a better balance between growth- and redistribution-oriented approaches to poverty and marginalisation in order to achieve the goals of equity, welfare and social cohesion.

Part 2 – Marginalisation in the Era of Globalisation in China – entails six more chapters exploring the links between marginalisation and globalisation. In chapter 8, Bin Wu, based on secondary data and supplemented by the author’s empirical research on Chinese seafarers, looks at the marginalisation of a special group, overseas contract workers, who have gone abroad through authorised recruitment agencies to provide labour services for foreign employers in the years of China’s reform and opening up to the outside world. While increasing globalisation of the Chinese economy has witnessed greater labour mobility both nationally and globally, leading to a growing number of such contract workers, Wu argues that insufficient attention has been paid to the distribution of benefits and costs among the different actors and agents involved in the process, especially in...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction: Marginalisation and Globalisation in Transitional China
• PART 1: CHINA IN TRANSITION: INEQUALITY, POVERTY AND MARGINALISATION
• PART 2: MARGINALISATION IN THE ERA OF GLOBALISATION IN CHINA
• Index