Social Stratification Cannot Be Covered Up (Part I)—Transcript of a Dialogue Between Yang Fan and Lu Jianhua

Abstract

In recent years, people with different social backgrounds or with different social resources have gradually formed interest communities or interest groups with different social tendencies. It is true that the emergence of interest communities is an inevitability of the development of a market economy as well as a sort of advance for society, but the series of new social problems it brings is something we cannot evade. Under the new historical circumstances, the country's stability and future will be directly affected if the voice of each interest group is not given equal respect and if the phenomenon whereby people possessing social resources seek illegal profits for themselves is not curbed. We are publishing here, in two installments, a dialogue on social stratification that took place between economist Yang Fan and social scientist Lu Jianhua. Yang Fan and Lu Jianhua are both scholars who have been very active in the field of social sciences in China in recent years, and we hope that their discussion will provide our readers with some enlightenment.—Ed. [of Gaige neican].