Socialist Market Inequality

Abstract

China's gradualist transition to markets, in which the Communist Party maintained pre eminent authority, spawned an economic ex pansion that has been anything but gradual. Thanks to the spectacular economic growth, the total number of people dwelling in poverty plummeted from 250 to 32 million in just over 20 years (Davis and Wang forth coming). But, soaring growth has also creat ed vast disparities in living standards. How do China's socialist-era institutions shape cur rent modes of stratification? Where are the major, new fault lines of inequality? Three new books put China's economic transforma tion into perspective, as they assess central dimensions of inequality. Together they pro vide a detailed picture of the new mecha nisms producing gaping social and econom ic disparities. In The State and Life Chances in Urban China, Xueguang Zhou examines macro historical trends in stratification covering the Mao era and the initial 14 years of the mar ket reform period (1949-1994). Building up on research on socialist stratification mecha nisms by Yanjie Bian and Andrew Walder, Zhou carefully constructs a portrait of social ist and reform-era social inequalities. Based on life-history surveys of over 5,500 respon dents in 22 variably sized cities and munici palities selected from six provinces, the find ings are especially useful for placing China's socialist and reform eras in comparative per spective. For example, Zhou finds that unlike the USSR and Eastern European socialist so cieties, which formed an ossified nomen klatura elite that consolidated its hold on power and privilege (Djilas 1961; Konrad and Szelenyi 1979), China did not develop an en during bureaucratic class with pronounced material advantages. Even though party cadres enjoyed minor privileges over rank and-file workers, political campaigns and mass mobilizations (such as the anti-rightist movement that purged over 530,000 intellec tuals from the party, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution) prevented the bureaucratic class from securing an enduring Thbe State and Life Chances in Urban China: Redistribution and Stratification, 1949-1994, by Xueguang Zhou. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 400pp. $75.00 cloth. ISBN: 0521835070.