The Individualization of Chinese Society

Yunxiang Yan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000323740
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

Chinese society has seen phenomenal change in the last 30 years. Two of the most profound changes have been the rise of the individual in both public and private spheres and the consequent individualization of Chinese society itself. Yet, despite China's recent dramatic entrance into global politics and economics, neither of these significant shifts has been fully analysed. China may indeed present an alternative model of social transformation in the age of globalisation - so its path to development may have particular implications for the developing world.The Individualization of Chinese Society reveals how individual agency has been on the rise since the 1970s and how this has impacted on everyday life and Chinese society more broadly. The book presents a wide range of detailed case studies - on the impact of economic policy, patterns of kinship, changes in marriage relations and the socio-economic position of women, the development of youth culture, the politics of consumerism, and shifting power relations in everyday life.

CHAPTER I
THE IMPACT OF RURAL REFORM ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION*

‘Let some peasants get rich frst’ was one of the leading slogans of China’s rural reforms, beginning in the early 1980s. After almost a decade, who has become rich? Who has benef tted the most? And what specif c changes have resulted to the structure of social stratif cation in rural China? All of these questions become centrally important when we examine the consequences of rural reform. Many scholarly efforts have been made to answer these questions, but the overall picture of inequality and stratif cation in the past decade is still unclear.¹

The present study will offer an account of such shifts in inequality and stratif cation in one north China village since the rural reform. Instead of focusing on peasant income alone, I will also examine changes in economic position, political power, and social status, i.e., the three major dimensions of social stratif cation. I will begin with the general background of my survey and brief y describe the status groups in the previous hierarchy of the collectives. Then I will answer the question, ‘who got rich f rst?’ by presenting the results of the village survey and will analyse the impact on the structure of stratif cation. I will conclude by discussing the implications of the case study beyond this village’s boundaries.

THE VILLAGE SURVEY

This study draws mainly on information gathered during f eldwwork in north China between January and May 1989. My decision to investigate the issue of social stratif cation was initially inspired by interviews with peasants during a visit to a village in Shandong Province where I had lived from 1966 to 1971. There, old friends complained that the current ‘class line’ was wrong and that people from ‘exploiting-class’ families had benef tted from the reforms much more than they themselves had. This sort of discontent was also evident in subsequent visits to villages in Hebei Province.² In response to this widespread dissatisfaction, I decided to conduct a systematic, inclusive household survey in Xiajia village, Heilongjiang Province.³ The reason for choosing this f eld site was simple: I had lived in the village for seven years (1971–78) and knew the life histories of most residents, thus making it possible to observe the changes in their social status.

Xiajia is located on the southern edge of Heilongjiang Province. According to the household register, last updated in 1982, it has a population of 1,602 in 284 households, farming 8,310 mu of land, growing mostly maize and soybeans. It used to be a brigade consisting of four production teams and is now an administrative village (xingzheng cun). In the late 1960s and the 1970s, Xiajia was relatively successful in collective agriculture. The average value for ten work points had been kept at 1.10 to 1.30 yuan, which placed Xiajia among the richer villages in north China. This partially explains the delay in the village’s decollectivization, which did not occur until 1983.⁴

At that date, encouraged by central government policy, peasants privatized everything, including the tractors and other heavy agricultural machines. Farmland, the fundamental means of production, was divided into two categories: ration land (kouliang tian) and contracted land (chengbao tian). Everyone in the village was entitled to have two mu of ration land and every adult labourer got ten mu of contracted land. The peasants’ obligations to provide the state with cheap requisitioned grain only applied to the contracting land.

Due to its poor transport links (with only an unpaved road into the county town), there was no rural industry in Xiajia village at all during the period of collectives, and only a few grain processing factories exist now, all of them family businesses. The major income of most households still derives from farming and family sidelines. The average net income per capita in 1988 was 528 yuan (the national average was 545 yuan), which places Xiajia almost precisely at mid-point economically among Chinese farming communities.

THE SOCIALIST HIERARCHY WITHIN THE PRE-REFORM COLLECTIVES

Although Western scholars have recognized the urban-rural income gap and regional inequalities in Maoist China, the egalitarian image of rural life within the collectives has yet to be demystifed (about this I will have more to say below). However, it was well-known in the West that China, like other state socialist societies, was a status society, in which structure of social stratif cation was based on bureaucratic ‘rank order’ rather than any market-based system of ‘class order’.⁵ So it is appropriate to follow Weber’s conventions⁶ by identifying the ‘status groups’ in the socialist collectives. In the case of Xiajia, six groups were clearly identif able according to their prestige, privileges, and abilities to gain access to resources and opportunities in the bureaucratic redistributive system of the collectives: (i) the incumbent cadres; (ii) the retired and fallen cadres; (iii) the shi shu hu; (iv) the peasants of ‘good class’ label; (v) those of ‘middle peasant’ origins; and (vi) the ‘four bad elements’.

Cadres

The cadres, of course, stood highest in the system of social stratif cation. This is not to say that the composition of the cadre group in a given collective was unchanging; in fact, as will be shown below, the distinction between being ‘in off ce’ and ‘out of off ce’ at the time of decollectivization has resulted in a signif cant difference for these off cials’ post-decollectivization economic performance. I will accordingly classify separately those cadres who were in power in 1982 or are currently holding power – namely, the post-reform off ce-holders – as against those who had fallen or retired from power before 1982. There are twelve such former cadres (not including cadres below the level of team head). Half of them were so-called tugai ganbu [cadres during the Land Reform of the 1950s]. These former cadres did not enjoy the same privileges as the cadres in power; but they were still regarded with deference and generally had access to the best jobs in the collectives. Since all of them were Party members, they also had some inf uence in village elections.

At the end of 1982, the eve of decollectivization, there were thirteen full-time incumbent cadres in the Xiajia brigade (cadres lower than heads of production team again are not included), and of these, ten held Party membership.⁷ They enjoyed considerable political power, economic advantage, and social privilege within their little collective empire, just like their counterparts throughout rural China. And as in other places, they also played the role of patron to selected peasants – their clients.⁸

Among such clients, the political activists deserve particular attention. They tended to be assigned desirable jobs, such as tractor driver or head of a small group in a production team. More importantly, as in all villages, they enjoyed the prospect of becoming cadres themselves some day.⁹ But as these activists had no stable political power or f xed economic advantage to distinguish themselves as a status group, and as the composition of the activist group was always changing along with changes of political environment, I will not regard them as an independent group in the social hierarchy of the collectives, even though their role in that hierarchy is too important to ignore.

The Si Shu Hu

There is yet another group called si shu hu (four types of households) that also ranks in the upper level of the village hierarchy. This category has not been recognized by earlier scholars of Chinese social stratif cation. Si shu hu include the spouses and children of state cadres, workers, teachers, and military offcers, all of whom live in the village and belong to the rural population. In Xiajia, nineteen households could be counted as si shu hu in 1982. They enjoyed dual economic benef ts – from both the state and the collective. On the one hand, given that the head of each such household was a government employee, they had a guaranteed cash income from the state; on the other hand, they received their shares of grain and other goods at low prices from the collective distribution system, even though they did not work for the collective. For this reason, in some rural areas they were called dui lao shen (literally, ‘the gentry of the production teams’).¹⁰

Ordinary Peasants

An important indicator of social status in the socialist hierarchy was the privilege of avoiding manual labour, especially farm work. For example, brigade cadres almost never did farm work and the heads of production teams did so only occasionally. The ordinary peasants in Xiajia accordingly called themselves ‘black hands’ (hei zhuazi), because they were continually working the land and thus exposing themselves to the sun, and the privileged were called ‘white hands’ (bai zhuazi) because they were able to avoid tanning their hands by farm work. The unequal access to opportunities and discrimination ref ected in this distinction between ‘white hands’ and ‘black hands’ constituted a quite serious problem of social inequity.

While the cadres, the si shu hu, and some political activists occupied the upper level of the hierarchy in Xiajia, the ordinary peasants stood somewhere in the middle. According to Maoist class theory,¹¹ the former ‘poor peasants’ and ‘lower-middle peasants’ — those who had been impoverished before the revolution — are the only revolutionary force in the countryside, and special opportu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction: The Rise of the Chinese Individual
• 1. The Impact of Rural Reform on Economic and Social Stratif cation
• 2. Changes in Everyday Power Relations
• 3. The Triumph of Conjugality: Structural Transformation of Family Relations
• 4. Practicing Kinship, Remaking the Individual
• 5. Rural Youth and Youth Culture
• 6. Girl Power: Young Women and the Waning of Patriarchy
• 7. The Individual and Transformation of Bridewealth
• 8. How to Be a Calculating yet Nice Person?
• 9. The Politics of Consumerism
• 10. Of Hamburger and Social Space: The Making of New Sociality
• Conclusion: The Individualization of Chinese Society
• Permissions
• Index