Post-reform China Research Articles

Snakes and ladders: differential patterns of post-reform social mobility in Siping, north-east China

ABSTRACTThis analysis of the relative winners and losers from economic and social change in post-reform China focuses on the small, fourth-tier city of Siping, north-east China. Following Louis Chauvel’s work in France, the impact of economic transformation on different age cohorts is examined, and a ‘lucky generation’ is identified, made up notably of those born between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, who were educated and whose working lives coincided with the expansion of economic and social opportunities in the reform era. Its fortunes are contrasted with other age cohorts and with the groups formerly employed in north-eastern rust-belt states and collectively owned enterprises, rural dwellers and rural–urban migrants.

Una temporalidad en mosaico: nuevas dinámicas del sistema matrimonial y de género en la China urbana contemporánea

Contemporary Chinese society has witnessed ongoing complex institutional and cultural reconfiguration, driven by the transition from the socialist planned economy to marketization and later its deep engagement in globalization and neoliberalism. In this reshaping of Chinese society, tradition and modernity, the resurgence of patriarchal Confucian tradition, the socialist version of modernity, the capitalist version of modernity, and the socialist heritage intermingle, and all seem to define a mosaic temporality.Facing the increasing uncertainties of the market, family members in post-reform China have to stick together as an economic safety net, emotional harbor and spiritual fortress. Chinese parents heavily invest in their children and continue to support them in their adulthood; whereas, the youth is under great obligation to providing old age care for their parents; and parents may regard this heavily-invested offspring as their private product. This resurgent but modified familialism, is not an exact replication of traditional familialism, but is definitely different from the family modes featured by individualism in Western contexts. Mosaic familialism is characterized by a sequential symbiosis between parents and children facing financial constraints and unforeseeable uncertainties with a lack of a social safety net. At the same time, patriarchal Confucianism is rejuvenated to a certain degree, women’s traditional wife and mother role is once again stressed, if not glorified; and the neoliberal discourse articulating personal choice and responsibility, but not individual right, stands by seamlessly. Parents and children, husband and wife are dependent on each other in the intimate family, following a clearly gendered pattern.

Four decades of transition to first marriage in China: Economic reform and persisting marriage norms

This study draws on three waves (2012, 2013, and 2015) of pooled data from the China General Social Survey to examine two major dimensions of the transition to first marriage among four cohorts of youths, i.e., the transition tempos and the homogamy patterns. Key findings include: (1) There is no evidence of systematic delays in family formation among cohorts coming of age after reform, albeit moderate cross-cohort heterogeneity. Two cohorts are identified for their unique trajectories: The Cultural Revolution cohort with a relatively protracted transition process and the late reform cohort with a rather condensed marriage formation pattern, (2) respondents who belong to older cohorts, who are men, who have received higher education and hold urban hukou have lower risk in entering first marriage by a certain age, and (3) I recorded steady growing strengths of homogamy over cohorts, with the Ф parameters rising from 0.42 for the Cultural Revolution cohort to 0.56 for the late reform cohort. The overall message is that four decades of rapid economic development in post-reform China have failed to weaken persisting marriage norms and practices among young people, contrary to well-documented empirical evidence from many other national contexts. I ruminate on potential institutional and cultural mechanisms underlying such an intriguing phenomenon.

Administrative urbanization and city-making in post-reform China: a case study of Ordos City, Inner Mongolia

In post-reform China, local governments, instead of the central state, have become major promoters of urbanization. Differing from the existing literature based on Western theories, this article argues that a localized perspective, ‘administrative urbanization’, can provide a contextual explanation for the mechanism of urbanization in the reform era. The case study of Ordos indicates that new town construction, especially in the inland area, has become the main strategy for investment attraction and economic development. The local government has played a dominant role in this construction through a series of administrative measures, including avoidance of central state regulations, land leasing, high standard infrastructure construction, relocation policies and industrial attraction. This article also explores the issue of unsustainability in the new town, and identifies that underdeveloped industrialization, slow population agglomeration and real estate bubbles are primary threats to the sustainability of administrative urbanization.

Gender, Work Burden, and Mental Health in Post-Reform China

ABSTRACTThis study investigates how total work burden, including paid work and unpaid care work, affects the mental health of prime-age, employed women and men in urban China. Based on the 2010 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), regression results indicate that total work burden is negatively related to the mental health of both men and women, consistent with the idea that additional work hours reduce time available for rest and leisure. Women have longer working hours and are more likely to be time poor than men, and this gender inequality in total work burden contributes to the gender gap in mental health. The relationships between the components of total work burden – paid and unpaid work – and mental health shed further light on the strength of gender norms and the barriers to redistribution of unpaid work from women to men necessary to reduce the gender gap in mental health.

Beyond unemployment: Informal employment and heterogeneous motivations for participating in street vending in present-day China

The proliferation of urban street vending in developing countries is generally viewed as being as a result of unemployment. Using a theoretical approach based on mainstream perspectives on informal employment and first-hand material from 200 semi-structured vendor interviews in Guangzhou, we challenge this view by revealing the heterogeneity of people’s motivations for participating in street vending in present-day China. Various types of labourers, including wage workers, farmers, the unemployed and small businesspeople, participate in street vending with diverse motivations, but in a common attempt to improve their livelihoods. Such motivations are driven both by the labourers’ responses to multiple socio-economic forces including unemployment, the low quality of waged jobs, rural poverty, the difficulties of maintaining a formal business and the poor remuneration of jobs in cities, and by their desire to achieve autonomy and flexibility. Street vending is mainly argued to be an effective strategy of ordinary labourers to cope with the unfavourable situations they face amidst socio-economic transformation. It should not be seen as a problem, but a potential part of the solution to the problems arising from socio-economic transformation in post-reform China.

Planning centrality, market instruments: Governing Chinese urban transformation under state entrepreneurialism

This article defines the key parameters of ‘state entrepreneurialism’ as a governance form that combines planning centrality and market instruments, and interprets how these two seemingly contradictory tendencies are made coherent in the political economic structures of post-reform China. Through examining urban regeneration programmes (in particular ‘three olds regeneration’, sanjiu gaizao), the development of suburban new towns and the reconstruction of the countryside, the article details institutional configurations that make the Chinese case different from a neoliberal growth machine. The contradiction of these tendencies gives room to urban residents and migrants to develop their agencies and their own spaces, and creates informalities in Chinese urban transformation.

Suffering and Tears: Authenticity and Student Volunteerism in Postreform China

AbstractThis article examines a conundrum in my ethnographic fieldwork with Chinese university students who volunteered in service trips to rural communities: why did participants volunteer to suffer and to cry? This article explains students’ quest for hardship and tears in relation to emerging desires for authenticity in China. It discusses how the political state and student volunteers co‐constructed the peculiar expressions of these desires. As authentic emotions came to the forefront in students’ understanding of meaningful engagement, they diluted the political connotation of volunteerism and consequently undermined the state's moral authority as the “lead volunteer.” This created the room for students to align the definition of responsible citizenship with authentic commitment and youthful innocence. Delineating the paradoxes and obstacles that volunteers encountered in their quests, this article problematizes the potential and limits of authenticity in transforming the foundations of sociability and moral leadership in postreform China.本文通过大学生对情绪表达的追求分析志愿活动在中国的冒起。作者跟随大学生往赴农村「支教」, 发现志愿者都渴慕最苦最累的体验, 以及由心而发的泪水。这些追求反映了年轻人对社会上种种造假和功利主义的不满。志愿者以汗水和泪水明志, 宣告自己参与志愿工作不为名利报酬, 只为满腔热诚所使。这种热血主导的志愿精神对参与者的道德观带来什么冲击, 如何造就年轻人对社会状况的反思? [Authenticity, Emotion, Youth, Volunteerism, China]

Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Dissolution in Postreform China

The author uses cohabitation data from the 2010 Chinese Family Panel Studies to analyze the association of premarital cohabitation with subsequent divorce of first marriage. After balancing selection factors that influence premarital cohabitation through propensity score matching, the author uses Cox proportional hazards models to examine the selection, causation, and diffusion perspectives on the relationship between premarital cohabitation and marital dissolution. The results show that premarital cohabitation is positively associated with divorce for those married in the early‐reform period (1980–1994) when cohabitation was uncommon. However, this relationship disappears for those married in the late‐reform period (1995–2010) when cohabitation became more prevalent. The findings suggest variation in the link between premarital cohabitation and divorce across different marriage cohorts and provide strong evidence for the diffusion perspective in postreform China. Supplemental sensitivity analyses support the robustness of the conclusion.

The mutual effects between the fiscal relations of central and local governments and economic growth in post-reform China

The fiscal relation between central and local governments is one of the main institutional forms that have affected economic growth of China since its reform and opening up. This article examines its impact on China’s economic growth from the viewpoint of financial budgeting and further analyses the mechanism how economic growth and financial structure of local and central governments influence each other. This article describes the interaction of local and central fiscal entities in China throughout the whole period of its economic growth from 1978 till 2014. Dividing it into the first sub-period (1978–1992), the second (1993–2001) and the third (2002–2014), it explains peculiar features of the relationship between public finance and economic growth in China. In the first period (1978–1992) since the fiscal system of China was designed to strengthen the centralized budgetary control, local governments had to rely much on the extra-budgetary finances. They gained extra-budgetary income from their investment on township enterprises, which also generated economic growth on the local level. In 1993, facing the decline in GDP growth due to the squeeze of the extrabudgetary fund, central government loosened restrictions of the sale of land by local governments to raise extra-budgetary revenues. This provided the local government with new resources, and formed a new mechanism of “land finance” to promote economic growth. This mechanism opened the way to a bubble economy, particularly associated with the rise of land and housing prices, as well as the cost of China’s economy. Thus, the root cause of the present slowdown of China’s economy is not cyclical one, but the institutional structure, mainly the special local/central fiscal relationship and its interaction with economic growth.

Worlding Developmentalism: China's Economic Zones Within and Beyond its Border

This paper examines the development of Economic Zones in post-reform China and the recent export of zoning practices as a part of the country's ‘going global’ strategy. I propose ‘worlding developmentalism’ to conceptualise the synergy between a polymorphous yet capable state in directing the path of domestic growth and overseas ventures, and a population who actively captures emerging economic opportunities in transnational contexts. The concept is then substantiated by the promotion of Economic Zones under the Belt and Road Initiative and China–Africa Cooperation. The contested spaces produced in the Global South under these new development paradigms necessitate keen scholarly investigation. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

From Political Power to Personal Wealth: Privatization, Elite Opportunity, and Social Stratification in Post-Reform China

The impact of market transition on the changing order of social stratification in post-socialist regimes has been a highly prominent topic in sociology in recent decades. However, the debate has yielded no concrete conclusions, due in part to the lack of substantive institutional analysis. In this article, we aim to provide new answers to this age-old question by specifically examining how the economic opportunities available to former political elites have been shaped by the process of privatization. Based on firm-level data from a national representative survey on Chinese private enterprises, we show that nomenclatures in some regions successfully converted their political power into personal wealth by acquiring privatized firms, and the extent to which they could exploit the opportunities available to them was contingent upon how the privatization process was structured and regulated in a local context. Further analysis reveals important institutionalized inequality among private entrepreneurs, with former nomenclatures at the top of the social hierarchy in post-reform China.

Implementation methods and economic impacts of national node strategies

Pilot reforms gradually implemented through key nodes have become an important pattern of regional development in China since the policy of reform and opening up was introduced in 1978. On the basis of an analysis of the evolution processes and characteristics of regional development policies in post-reform China, this paper develops the concept and analytical framework of national node strategies (NNS), defined as regional development strategies centered on specific spatial nodes, by addressing their theoretical basis and research scope. The regional economic impacts of NNS were explored quantitatively through the examples of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, Pudong New Area and Tianjin Binhai New Area in different stages of the reform and opening up. The results indicate that the evolution of China’s regional development policies can be divided into three stages: the exploration stage led by Special Economic Zones (SEZs), the expansion stage dominated by Economic Development Zones and the optimization stage featuring State-level New Areas and National Comprehensive Reform Pilot Areas. During all the three stages, NNS have played an important demonstrative and leading role and promoted the rapid evolution of China’s regional development policies from localized to widespread implementation, and the role of the government has also changed accordingly. As an innovative application and development of the growth pole theory in transitional China, NNS have become engines of regional development as well as important conduits of institutional innovations. NNS and regional development have achieved a benign coupling and formed a gradated regional development model. Empirical research indicates that NNS are an important method used by the government to guide and regulate regional economic development, with complex and diverse economic effects that differ depending on the stage of regional development and the spatial scale of analysis.

The Lost Generation

In the 1960s and 1970s, China’s barefoot doctor system was acclaimed worldwide for providing inexpensive and equally accessible medical care for rural populations. In the 1980s, with the advent of market reform, the barefoot doctor system came to an end. Many barefoot doctors either became private doctors or gave up medical practice. More than three decades have passed since this dramatic change, and barefoot doctors seem to have been forgotten. However, the legacy of the barefoot doctor system is still felt in the hardship of aging former barefoot doctors who now find themselves pensionless. Based on ethnographic research in a county in Sichuan Province from 2011 to 2012, this article explores the experience of a group of former barefoot doctors to observe their transition in post-reform China, and their struggle for payment, pension, and status in recent years. It records the change these doctors experienced from barefoot doctors working under very difficult conditions in the collective era, to individual doctors in the market era who struggle with qualification requirements, market competition, and selfsupport, to the newly ambiguous status of village doctors, who constitute an important part of the primary health care network but are still marginalised in the health care system.

Marketization and Market Capacity: The Formation of Middle Class in China—An Empirical Study in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou

In the post-reform China, the middle class remains relatively weak despite its expanding size, which is a basic structural feature of the Chinese society. How to develop the Chinese middle class has become one important issue in the middle-class research. It is suggested that three approaches can be relied on to develop Chinese’s middle class: education, expertise, and the market. Based on the three approaches, as well as data from the Survey of Living Conditions of Residents in Megacities, this study analyzes how the middle class is formed in China from the perspective of marketization and market capacity.

Living space and psychological well-being in urban China: Differentiated relationships across socio-economic gradients

Western research has shown that a shortage of living space is associated with poor psychological well-being. By contrast, norms and practices of extended family co-residence, collectivist social or...

Growth channels of human capital: A Chinese panel data study

This paper studies the growth channels of human capital using the provincial level panel data in post-reform China. Specifically, it aims at distinguishing between the “factor-accumulation channel,” whereby human capital augments production as an input factor, and the “productivity channel,” whereby human capital affects output by raising total factor productivity. Our system GMM estimation results support the hypothesis that different types of human capital affect economic growth through different channels: Basic human capital contributes to growth via the “factor-accumulation channel” and advanced human capital via the “productivity channel,” both individually and simultaneously.

Context-Specific Eldercare Patterns, Cultural Categories of Elder Mistreatment, and Potential Social Causes in Post-Socialist China

This article explores the impact of housing reform on eldercare patterns through examining the social causes for the increasing phenomenon of elder mistreatment in urban China. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, this article suggests a new eldercare pattern, including prioritized conjugal care, “heritage-based” adult-child care, as well as housing-for-pension care. This pattern has been constructed in the post-reform era in Chinese urban areas, which lays a foundation for a culture-related elder mistreatment. Three cultural categories of elder mistreatment have been identified: neglect and/or intergenerational conflicts, family care and ties contingent upon inheritance of the seniors’ houses, and “structural mistreatment.” Further examination suggests three major factors contributing to the emerging phenomenon of elder mistreatment: (1) privatization of housing ownership resulting in social-spatial differentiation of living affecting care patterns and potential for mistreatment of the elderly; (2) sociocultural limitations and structural restrictions on approaching social eldercare resulting from an economically-focused social environment; and (3) transformed social values, such as materialism and individualism, which have led to reinterpretation of intergenerational exchange. By contextualizing elder mistreatment within housing reform, this study offers a new perspective for studies of the family in post-reform China.

Reclaiming the Party’s Control of the Gun: Bringing Civilian Authority Back in China’s Civil-Military Relations

ABSTRACTSince emerging as China’s top leader following the 18th Party Congress, Xi Jinping has moved swiftly to consolidate his formal authority as Central Military Commission chairman over the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. In redressing the civil-military imbalance wrought by Dengist economic reforms, the commander-in-chief has combined institutional mechanisms with the use of fear to impose authoritative civilian control over the military. This paper proposes that a combination of changes to the Chinese strategic environment has contributed to Xi’s utility of the anti-corruption campaign to purge the regime’s coercive forces of its previous underpinnings, and advances that the war on military malfeasance has given rise to a new set of dynamics in civil-military relations in post-Reform China.

Understanding the Kuznets Process—An Empirical Investigation of Income Inequality in China: 1978–2011

This paper investigates income inequality in post-reform China using both national time series and provincial panel data from 1978 to 2011. We identify a Kuznets inverted-U relationship between economic development and income inequality and show that this relationship was driven by the process of urbanization. We estimate that the Kuznets turning point occurred in the mid-1980s, and argue that increased urbanization after the mid-1980s had the effect of narrowing income inequality but its effect was more than offset by other factors. In particular, we found that low productivity in agriculture relative to that of the economy as a whole (i.e., dualism) and inflation were significant contributing factors to income inequality. We also present evidence to suggest that secondary education and higher education may have different effects on income inequality at the national level and at the provincial level.