China Today. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2014. xvii, 233 pp. (Tables, maps.) US$24.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-7456-5337-2.
China has experienced nothing short of a new social revolution since market reforms were launched in 1978. The centrally planned socialist system of the late-Mao era has been transformed into a very different social order today, one in which foreign capitalists are welcome to invest and native millionaires and even billionaires are entering (or re-entering, after an absence since the 1950s) the historical stage. What should we call this transformed Chinese social order? How are structures of wealth and power currently organized, and what terms should we use to characterize contemporary social stratification? Which individuals and groups are the primary beneficiaries, and the major losers, as a result of this new social revolution? These are the kinds of “big questions” that David S.G. Goodman, a Chinese politics specialist at the University of Sydney, tackles in this important book.
Goodman situates his book within a venerable tradition by framing it as an analysis of social class in contemporary China. This choice is inherently problematic, since the term class carries so much ideological baggage from prior intellectual and political traditions. Are we talking about class in the sense used by Karl Marx, by Max Weber, or perhaps by Milovan Djilas or Ralf Dahrendorf? Do classes in China today have clear boundaries, and if so what are the primary classes by which stratification is currently structured? Do contemporary Chinese classes possess class consciousness (à la Marx) or shared values, opportunities, and ways of life (à la Weber)? How do contemporary classes relate to the classes and class struggle that Mao Zedong placed at the centre of Cultural Revolution battles in the 1960s? In analyzing contemporary stratification, is it preferable to avoid using the term class (jieji) in favour of the simpler but vaguer term stratum (jieceng)? Some of these questions bedevil attempts to conduct class analysis in any complex modern society, but the rapidity of the changes in China and the historical context of an explicit rejection of the type of class analysis employed during the Cultural Revolution make the dilemmas of what class means in China today particularly problematic.
Fortunately, Goodman is aware of all of these issues and many more. His book does not present the results of a specific research project he has conducted, and he does not argue for a particular interpretation of class as the best or only framework for analyzing inequality in China today. Instead this work could be viewed as a massive review of the existing literature, from both China scholars in the West and from social scientists in the People’s Republic of China, in order to describe both the major changes that have occurred in stratification since the reforms were launched as well as competing ways of conceptualizing and explaining those changes. As such it provides a very welcome and useful overview of recent debates about a wide range of issues regarding evolving patterns of inequality and stratification. Even though social class remains front and centre in much of his analysis, the term does not prevent Goodman from considering a number of issues that do not readily fit into conventional class analysis.
Goodman joins many analysts in emphasizing the irony that Mao’s revolution, which was dedicated to eliminating the property-owning basis of all social classes in the Marxist sense in the 1950s, has in effect been repudiated, with rich entrepreneurs and real estate magnates not only prospering mightily, but even being welcomed into membership in the Communist Party and into service as delegates to the national legislature. However, he resists referring to China today as a restored capitalist society by emphasizing that major parts of the social and political order built during the Mao era have been retained, thus creating a hybrid social order that is difficult to pigeon hole as either capitalist or socialist. Furthermore, he makes it clear that the political elites in China today are still dominant over the new economic elites, with the latter having much less autonomous power and influence than their counterparts in more fully capitalist societies. At the same time he does not fully endorse the Djilas option of referring to the political elites as a “new class,” instead lumping political and economic elites together in a chapter devoted to China’s dominant class.
The author also stresses other distinctive features of stratification in China today that make that society quite different from more conventional class societies. In particular, he emphasizes the key role of China’s system of household registration (hukou) in creating a rigid, caste-like status barrier between China’s rural and urban citizens, with both rural residents and urban migrants consigned to the low end of the social hierarchy, which Goodman again refers to in somewhat vague terms as “subordinate classes.”
Particularly interesting is Goodman’s chapter on China’s middle classes. He summarizes and wades into debates about multiple and conflicting criteria for classifying Chinese as belonging to the middle class, as well as debates about the implications for political stability of a large and growing middle class. He is quite skeptical of claims that China’s middle class is already very large and growing rapidly. And based upon both his more conservative estimate of the present size of the middle class and research showing the diversity and ties to the status quo of many who might be classified as middle class, he casts doubt on the view that the growth of the middle class is driving China toward a democratic transition anytime soon.
Despite the very broad range of topics covered in the book, there is some unevenness. As the author is well aware, the primary focus is on social patterns and class formation in urban China, even though roughly half of the population remains rural. Nevertheless, anyone interested in how the structures of inequality are changing in China today will want to consult this book.
Martin King Whyte
Harvard University, Cambridge, USA