Unequal China

Wanning Sun, Yingjie Guo, Wanning Sun, Yingjie Guo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136229978
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Economía internacional

Economic development and a dramatic improvement in living standards in many parts of the People's Republic of China during the past three decades of economic reforms have been hailed by the Chinese Communist Party and many commentators in the international arena as the most spectacular achievements in the history of humanity. However, three decades of economic reforms have also transformed China from one of the world's most egalitarian societies into one of the most unequal.

This book offers a comprehensive account of inequality in China from an interdisciplinary perspective. It both draws on, and speaks to, the existing body of literature that is generated mainly in the fields of economics and sociology, while extending its scope to also examine the political, social, moral and cultural dimensions of inequality. Each chapter addresses the question of inequality from a specific context of research, including housing, health care, social welfare, education, migration, land distribution, law, gender and sexuality. Moving beyond traditional socio-economic theories, the contributors to this volume explore a wide range of social, political, economic and cultural practices that result from, as well as further entrench, the inequalities in Chinese society. Importantly, the essays in Unequal China probe the hidden causes of inequality - namely, the role of state power and the importance of culture - and underline how both state power and cultural factors have a key part to play in legitimating inequality.

With an innovative approach that moves beyond the economic and sociological roots of inequality in China, this volume is a welcome addition to what is a growing field of study, and will appeal to students and scholars interested in Chinese culture and society, Chinese politics and Asian social policy.

1 Political power and social inequality

The impact of the state ¹

Yingjie Guo

An essential question in the study of social inequality is where to place the primary emphasis–class, status, power, race, ethnicity, gender or religion–and the measurement of equality is largely dependent on the choice of the ‘focal variable’ (Sen 1992: 1–2). A recurrent debate in the social sciences has, in particular, revolved around the choice between class and political power, which is roughly paralleled by a second debate that centres on whether inequalities are created and sustained principally within the economic structure, or whether the nature of inequality is determined in the political structure (Grabb 1984: 7). More recently, in what is dubbed a ‘cultural turn’ in the research on social inequality and class, the primary emphasis has shifted towards culture.

Disputes about the choice of focal variables cannot be settled theoretically, for the right decision must be based on the specific conditions under which inequality is produced and individuals’ ability to control their own life and influence society. It is plausible to hypothesize that economic, political and cultural forms of inequality may predominate in different systems, and that its sources and formative dynamics may differ accordingly. It is also evident that under political systems in which state power is ubiquitous, such as the PRC, economic and cultural inequalities at the societal level are developed and perpetuated primarily within the political domain. What is more, social spheres overlap too much to be easily separated, thus making it impossible for economic approaches to capture all the manifestations or causes of social inequality. A careful consideration of these possibilities will help address the economic-centred perspective in the literature on the subject, and lead to a nuanced understanding of the defining features of unequal China.

Combining Max Weber’s causal pluralism of inequality and Louis Kriesberg’s typology, this chapter proposes an alternative framework for approaching social inequality in postsocialist China. The proposed framework encompasses three key dimensions, namely power, class and status inequalities, which, as Kriesberg (1979: 22) stresses, affect social life to such an extent that the workings of any aspect of it cannot be fully understood without considering the context and basis for action that variations in these dimensions provide. However, it is misleading to insist, as does Kriesberg (1979: 26), that the three dimensions are best considered separately, within the economic domain, the cultural system and the political order. State power, in particular, is rarely confined within the political sphere but pervades others as well.

In China, political structures and processes bear on all dimensions of social inequality, for these create and sustain unequal rights, opportunities, rewards and privileges in all social domains. Furthermore, state power is often implicated in economic assets and social status, and it is even able to trump the latter by increasing or reducing differences in material privileges and prestige, or by rendering these differences significant or insignificant. It is therefore central to the generation of social inequality. This is not to imply that state power has no role to play in addressing inequality; on the contrary, government policies can reduce or eliminate some forms of inequality, and the Chinese government has been keen to deal with glaringly unequal welfare, particularly when it is concerned about the implications for social stability. Nor is this to ignore or discount other sources or forms of inequality. While acknowledging the existence of multiple causes and forms of inequality in the PRC, this chapter aims to draw attention to the critical role of state power in its generation–a subject that has not been addressed even schematically–by focusing on power, class and status inequalities.

Power as a source of economic inequality in the PRC

Power has figured prominently in analyses of inequality in postsocialist China, and some of these, such as studies of inequality in relation to the hukou (household registration) system, encompass political dimensions that determine people’s access to public goods and create a vast gulf of inequality, including unequal citizenship rights. Excepting this body of literature, power is almost unanimously treated as a source of unequal welfare and living standards or a mechanism of socio-economic stratification, rather than as a form of inequality in its own right or a common factor that determines the nature and extent of all kinds of inequality. The main division among analysts centres on whether power has transferred from the state to the market or whether structures of power of the socialist era have persisted throughout ‘reform and opening’.

Victor Nee is the most articulate proponent of the power transfer thesis. His general view is that China’s redistributive economy before 1978 allowed the redistributors to maintain overall control over and benefit from the production and allocation of resources, but that they have lost much of that power as a result of economic and political reforms (Nee 1989). Consequently, market capacity, including capital, ownership of productive property, entrepreneurship and business skills, has become a crucial means of attaining status in the post-Mao-era market, as did political capital in the Maoist era.

It is indisputable that the shift from command to market economy has empowered those in a position to take advantage of market opportunities and made market capacity an important means of status attainment. The question is whether that constitutes a power transfer and whether market capacity has replaced the state’s redistributive power as the most significant determinant of status attainment. Even if the answer is affirmative, more questions recommend themselves. Have other kinds of political power with no less or even more impact on inequality replaced redistributive power? Does upward mobility in the reform era derive from market capacity alone or a combination of such capacity and political capital? Is it possible that power has become a component or determinant of market capacity?

Nee’s thesis is disputable on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Theoretically, it appears to be related to Szelenyi’s postulations of social inequality under state socialism and welfare capitalism. Szelenyi (1978) suggests that inequality under welfare capitalism stems primarily from market relations and positions rather than state redistributive mechanisms, which are secondary to the market and typically designed to equalize material rewards to the members of society. By contrast, he observes, the redistributive system of economic integration in state socialist systems dominates economic activities and constitutes the major source of inequality, whereas market-like transactions counteract the inequality resulting from redistribution.

Szelenyi’s postulations are flawed not least because he draws too sharp a distinction between political systems. A question that remains subject to debate is whether the PRC is ‘capitalist’, or whether it retains ‘socialist’ or at least statist elements. Additionally, he precludes the possibility that both the market and the state generate and reduce inequality, or generate some forms of inequality while reducing others. Even more problematic is his radical dichotomization of state and market, which does not hold in the light of the massive state intervention in almost all industrialized countries during the recent financial crisis. When applied to China, his postulations run up against the hybrid nature of China’s ‘market economy with Chinese characteristics’. As long as it is impossible to establish pure market relations untouched by state power, inequality cannot be attributed to the former or the latter. If one follows Szelenyi’s logic, it is possible to conclude that the rising inequality in postsocialist China has ensued from increasing redistributive power in the hands of the state or decreasing market capacity on the part of Chinese citizens. Such a conclusion cannot be further from the truth. Rather, it seems either that inequality is not correlated with redistributive power and market capacity in the way Szelenyi suggests, or that something else is also at work or has replaced redistributive power in generating inequality.

At any rate, there is ample evidence of continuing returns to political capital and of the persistence of political power in the economic arena in China (Walder 1995, 2002a, 2002b; Bian and Logan 1996; Parish and Michelson 1996; Song 1998; X. Zhou 2000, 2004; Bian et al. 2001; X. Lu 2002; C.-J. Chen 2004, 2006; Peng 2004; Davis et al. 2005; Walder and Zhao 2006; Goodman 2008b; Davis and Wang 2009; X. Liu 2009). There is also convincing evidence of alliance between state and capital (Lee and Selden 2005, 2007). The evidence cautions against generalizations about the transformative power of the market and points to the persistent involvement of political power of various kinds in market positions and relations. As X. Liu (2009: 86) has put it, the Chinese market is so embedded in the bureaucratic authority structure that the two are virtually inseparable. This argument finds strong support and further elaboration in F. Wang’s (2008) book on urban inequality and in numerous other works on China’s political economy.

It should be stressed, however, that power does not mean the same thing to these analysts, as X. Liu (2009: 86) notes. Like Nee, some equate power with the state’s redistribution of economic resources and rewards. For others, power means the state’s bargaining power for economic returns in the political market. Still others take power to be the ability of the political elites to reap economic returns. To X. Liu (2009: 86), power includes ‘redistributive power, rent-seeking ability, and market capacity’. Of particular significance in Liu’s explanation of social stratification are relationships between state power and property rights as well as contractual principal–agent relationships that allow Party-state officials to extract excessive rent.

These differences notwithstanding, the proponents of the power persistence thesis have demonstrated convincingly that in postsocialist China market capacity and state power are intimately intertwined and that various forms of state power continue to determine the nature and extent of inequality. Some even disagree with Nee about the shift of power from redistributors to producers. What these writers mean by ‘inequality’, however, is essentially economic inequality, whereas other forms of inequality are largely elided. State power is taken into account, but only as a source of economic inequality or a causal mechanism of social stratification.

An outstanding exception is Davis and Wang’s recent book (2009), which encompasses the social, political and cultural contexts and the interactions of individual attributes within organizational settings that define patterns of social stratification. Nevertheless, economic factors continue to predominate in what they see as the core elements of China’s new social order and institutional dynamics of stratification. They conclude that income is highest for those who have access to capital, that China has shifted from a status-ranked society towards one in which economic assets trump, and that China is converging towards a pattern of inequality found throughout other capitalist market economies. These conclusions will be disputable if inequalities in non-economic contexts and non-economic dimensions of inequality are taken into account.

The economic focus in the literature is justified in so far as inequality is most noticeable in people’s access to the essential material means of existence, while income is the most measurable variable. It appears even more justified in the eyes of those China watchers who believe that ‘the underlying objective of studies of inequality is to understand differences in welfare or living standards’ (Gustafsson et al. 2008: 13). This assumption resonates with a widespread view in the social sciences at large that ‘the economic system and the class relations emerging from it form the crux of any analyses of social inequality’ (Grabb 1984: 8). The view is translated into a customary practice among analysts of using economic class as the primary classification criterion for inequality (Dalton 1925; Kuznets 1961, 1966, 1973; Hobsbawm 1964; Lydall 1966; Atkinson 1972, 1975; Miliband 1977; G. A. Cohen 1978, 1988; Kolakowski 1978; Roemer 1982; Marglin 1984; Edwards et al. 1986; Dahrendorf 1988). This economic centrism is clearly too one-dimensional to convincingly account for the patterns of power and inequality that result in China; there is a clear need to add to this an understanding of political forms of inequality as well as the political shaping of inequality and the political consequences of inequality.

Power and inequality

Some redress can be found in Weber’s conceptual framework, which ties the understanding of virtually all social hierarchies, including class, status and other social criteria, to the analysis of power. Weber’s (1978: 53, 926) pluralist conception of power vis-à-vis inequality posits three major bases for power, or ‘the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance’, namely class, status and party. On these bases, different constellations of interests emerge and determine the nature and extent of inequality. Classes derive power from their economic clout; status groups from the social honour or prestige distributed within the status order; and parties from the collective pursuit of interests (Weber 1978: 284–5, 926–7). What is most crucial to the formation of inequalities between social actors is their differential success in the contest between competing or conflicting interests (Weber 1978: 53). The contest is the essence of what Weber means by politics, while power is the factor that determines its outcome and the nature and extent of inequality.

Though Weber’s focus falls on the bases of inequality, his insight has been adapted to the analysis of various forms or dimensions of inequality. Particularly pertinent to this chapter is Kriesberg’s (1979: 24) typology of class, status and power inequalities. The typology is obviously indebted to Weber’s analytical framework, and so are Kriesberg’s concepts of class, status and power. In his conception, class inequality means differences in material privileges, especially money income and ownership or control of property; status inequality is defined as differences in prestige or honour accorded to persons or positions; and power inequality refers to differences in people’s ability to impose their will on others.

If Weber’s framework is combined with Kriesberg’s typology, it is possible to construe power at the same time as a basis or primary cause of all kinds of inequality and as a form of inequality itself. It is also feasible to examine all forms of structural inequality by means of a single, unified scheme that treats power relations in economic and cultural as well as political contexts as the elemental inequality-generating factor. Such a conception of power can be usefully applied or adapted to the analyses of all kinds of power vis-à-vis inequality and particularly approximates the role of state power in the formation and perpetuation of inequality in postsocialist China.

However, the concept of power which Kriesberg shares with Weber is hard to work with, as it is too broad, encompassing impermanent and sporadic power relations that tell one little about the general, established and patterned systems of domination that provide most of the framework for inequality at the societal level (Grabb 1984: 58–9). Weber addressed the problem by introducing the idea of domination as a special kind of power relation in which regular patterns of inequality emerge, or which enable members of the dominant classes, status groups and party associations to impose their will on the rest of the population on a regular basis (Weber 1978: 941, 53).

Nevertheless, his definition of power or domination has not been widely applied. Those who find it hard to operationalize when analysing inequality redefine power completely or highlight particular aspects of it. Their alternative conceptions of power are by no means perfect, but some elements can be adapted fruitfully to the analysis of social inequality in the PRC. These include Dahrendorf’s idea of authority relations;² Parkin’s notions of social closure, exclusion and usurpation;³ and Lenski’s concepts of control over coercion and access to legally sanctioned rights,⁴ or the ability to establish and enforce certain special rights relative to others.

Prominent features of state power in the PRC

It is readily admitted that many kinds of power affect social inequality. The analytical framework proposed here takes note of Weber’s emphasis on patterned power relations in the idea of domination and focuses on the structures of the Party-state, which arguably play a more critical role in creating and sustaining inequality than anything else and generate power and status inequalities as well as (economic) class inequalities. For analytical purposes, state power in the PRC can be divided into (i) institutional power vested in, or claimed by, Party-state agencies; (ii) discretionary power at the disposal of Party-state officials; and (iii) access to state power by ordinary citizens on a regular basis or at critical moments in their employment, business, education, career, and so on. The first makes up the core of state power; the third is a derivative of state power; and the second is a combination of the two.

The state’s institutional power is more formal and better defined than discretionary power, consisting chiefly in rule-making, rule-enforcing and rule-adjudicating functions. In this case, ‘rule’ refers to policies and decisions as well as laws and regulations. Specifically, institutional power includes

• 1. the coercive or regulative power of controlling political, economic, social and cultural activities and the behaviour of individuals and groups;
• 2. the extractive power of obtaining physical and human resources from society and mobilizing them for particular purposes;
• 3. the distributive power of allocating goods, services, status and other kinds of opportunities in society; and
• 4. the symbolic power by which the state creates meaning systems and commands discursive means of mustering popular support for its regulative, ...