Migration and Urbanization in China (review)

Abstract

440 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 for endorsement ofhis view that the Manchus were usurpers and that Chinese Christians had a duty to denounce them and to refuse all offices under them, even that of schoolteacher. The Jesuits, he told the Inquisition, should be condemned as seeking to govern the world, and the Confucians, he wrote, were simultaneously atheists and idolaters. It is readily understandable why a work so abounding in quotations should use the method ofcitation by lumping references to a paragraph or section in one note. However, the annotation is not consistent, and in several places I was unable to locate a quotation or find the source for a comment that appeared to need substantiating in the forest of citations in the reference section at the end ofthe book. And some ofthe bibliographical details were inaccurate; to take but one amusing example, Basil Guy's ironic "Ad majorem Societatis gloriam: Jesuit perspectives on Chinese mores in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries" is listed as a conventional "AMDG." One test ofthe importance of a book is the challenge it offers to accepted ideas. By this criterion, Cummins' A Question ofRites is a major work. It is far from being a definitive history of the Rites question, even for the third half of the seventeenth century. But it presents with verve, wit, and, at times, well-deserved acerbity, one side ofthe question. It will, I hope, provoke much further work on this important episode not only in Sino-Western relations, but in the general history ofideas. Paul Rule La Trobe University mm Lincoln H. Day and Ma Xia, editors. Migration and Urbanization in China. Studies in Chinese Environment and Development. An East Gate Book. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. 272 pp. Hardcover $55.00. Most ofthe papers collected in this book are based on a large-scale migration survey conducted by the Academy ofSocial Science of China in 1986, a survey which offers a wealth ofinformation on population migration and related socioeco- ^i noe L rr · ·* nomîc details. In addition to its richness of information, the book also provides a© 1995 by Universityr ofHawai'i Pressgood view ofChina's population migration from different angles, including historical changes in the patterns ofmigration, migration motivation, permanent and temporary migration differentials, interregional migration, economic adjustment ofmigrants in urban areas, and the basic characteristics ofmigrants. Reviews 441 Population migration is one ofthe most significant components ofsocial change in China in the reform era. The new patterns ofpopulation migration in the 1980s were largely different from those ofthe pre-reform era. However, due to limitations in the availability ofdata, the intensive study ofmigration has been neglected to some extent in past decades. The large-scale migration survey conducted by the Academy ofSocial Science was the first effort to collect such comprehensive and detailed information about population migration nationwide. The data derived from the survey provide a quantitative basis for theoretical generalization on the relationship between population migration and socioeconomic development , and also have implications for related policy making in the future. The issues discussed in the book are a response to the wide-ranging social changes now under way in China. Migration patterns are covered by three chapters , which provide an overview of these patterns and discuss the reasons for migrating , interregional migration, and changes in the patterns ofmigration in urban China. The analyses ofthese patterns show that the trend ofmovement from rural to urban areas persisted throughout the pre-reform era. They also reveal that changes in political and economic conditions often affected fluctuations in both the direction and rates ofpopulation migration over the past three decades. The early period ofplanned population migration was westward, and was reflected in governmental policies to develop the western drop-back regions. After the inauguration ofeconomic reform in the late 1970s, the direction ofmigration shifted toward the east, especially the coastal regions. The new migration patterns are also closely related to the reduced effectiveness ofhousehold registration and other administrative systems controlling people's migration behaviors. The analysis ofpermanent and temporary migration differentials probes more intensively into how economic reform and related policies strongly affect changes in migration patterns. The responsibility system...