Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China

Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China

Author: Deborah Davis

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2008-12-09

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780804761161

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Chinese economy's return to commodification and privatization has greatly diversified China's institutional landscape. With the migration of more than 140 million villagers to cities and rapid urbanization of rural settlements, it is no longer possible to presume that the nation can be divided into strictly urban or rural classifications. Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China draws on a wide variety of recent national surveys and detailed case studies to capture the diversity of postsocialist China and identify the contradictory dynamics forging contemporary social stratification. Focusing on economic inequality, social stratification, power relations, and everyday life chances, the volume provides an overview of postsocialist class order and contributes to current debates over the forces driving global inequalities. This book will be a must read for those interested in social inequality, stratification, class formation, postsocialist transformations, and China and Asian studies.


Boundaries and Categories

Boundaries and Categories

Author: Feng Wang

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780804757942

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A systematic and in-depth analysis and explanation of China's rapid increase in inequality in the last two decades.


Inequality and Public Policy in China

Inequality and Public Policy in China

Author: Björn A. Gustafsson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2008-04-07

Total Pages: 19

ISBN-13: 113947006X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume examines trends in inequality in the People's Republic of China. It contains findings on inequality nationwide, as well as within the rural and urban sectors, with an emphasis on public policy considerations. Several chapters focus on inequality of income; others analyse poverty, inequality in wealth, and the distribution of wages. Attention is given to groups such as migrants, women, and the elderly, as well as the relationship between income and health care funding and the impact of the rural tax reform. All contributors to this volume make use of a large, nationwide survey of Chinese households, the product of long-term co-operation between Chinese and international researchers that is unique in its scope and duration. Using these data, the contributors examine changes in inequality from 1988 to 2002.


Anxious Wealth

Anxious Wealth

Author: John Osburg

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2013-04-03

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 080478535X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An ethnographic study of China’s new elites and their rarified world of debauchery and corruption: “A must have book for China studies” (Choice). This pioneering investigation reveals the private lives—and the nightlives—of the powerful entrepreneurs and managers redefining success and status in the Chinese city of Chengdu. For more than three years, anthropologist John Osburg accompanied wealthy Chinese businessmen as they courted clients, partners, and government officials. Now he invites readers along on his journey through the highly gendered world of luxury karaoke clubs, saunas, and massage parlors—places designed to cater to the desires of elite men. Within these spaces, a masculinization of business is taking place. Osburg details the complex code of behavior that governs businessmen as they go about banqueting, drinking, gambling, bribing, exchanging gifts, and obtaining sexual services. These intricate social networks play a key role in generating business, performing social status, and reconfiguring gender roles. Yet underneath the façade, many entrepreneurs feel trapped by their obligations and moral compromises in this evolving environment. Osburg examines their deep ambivalence about China’s future and their own complicity in the major issues of post-Mao Chinese society—corruption, inequality, materialism, and loss of trust.


State-Sponsored Inequality

State-Sponsored Inequality

Author: Shuang Chen

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2017-04-11

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13: 1503601633

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores the social economic processes of inequality in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century rural China. Drawing on uniquely rich source materials, Shuang Chen provides a comprehensive view of the creation of a social hierarchy wherein the state classified immigrants to the Chinese county of Shuangcheng into distinct categories, each associated with different land entitlements. The resulting patterns of wealth stratification and social hierarchy were then simultaneously challenged and reinforced by local people. The tensions built into the unequal land entitlements shaped the identities of immigrant groups, and this social hierarchy persisted even after the institution of unequal state entitlements was removed. State-Sponsored Inequality offers an in-depth understanding of the key factors that contribute to social stratification in agrarian societies. Moreover, it sheds light on the many parallels between the stratification system in nineteenth-century Shuangcheng and structural inequality in contemporary China.


Myth of the Social Volcano

Myth of the Social Volcano

Author: Martin Whyte

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2010-02-24

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0804769419

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book reports the results of the first systematic nationwide survey in China of the attitudes that ordinary Chinese citizens have toward increased inequalities generated by the market reform program launched in 1978.


Strangers in the City

Strangers in the City

Author: Li Zhang

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0804742065

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

With rapid commercialization, a booming urban economy, and the relaxation of state migratory policies, over 100 million peasants, known as China's "floating population," have streamed into large cities seeking employment and a better life. This book traces the profound transformation this massive flow of rural migrants has caused as it challenges Chinese socialist modes of state control.


Postsocialism and Cultural Politics

Postsocialism and Cultural Politics

Author: Xudong Zhang

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2008-04-25

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780822342304

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Xudong Zhang offers a critical analysis of China's 'long 1990s', the tumultuous years between the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and China's entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001.


Organizing Through Division and Exclusion

Organizing Through Division and Exclusion

Author: Fei-Ling Wang

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is an original and comprehensive examination of China's hukou (household registration) system, a system that fundamentally determines the Chinese way of life and shapes China's sociopolitical structure and socioeconomic development.