Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. xviii, 202 pp. US$50.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-295-99924-1.
In Rural Origins, City Lives: Class and Place in Contemporary China, Roberta Zavoretti narrates fruit-business owner Zhang’s family life, recounts interviews with bakery-owner Huang and his colleagues, and portrays the lives of tailors Xu Qing and Ding Li, and extends her discussions on how to understand nongmingong, or rural-to-urban migrants, in the context of Chinese urbanization and the country’s market-oriented social transformation.
The term nongmingong refers not only to peasant workers in manufacturing industries, but includes those rural-to-urban migrants working in the service and commerce sectors. These nongmingong are not always employees; some are self-employed and have small household business, and some even recruit native laid-off workers into their work units. Neither are they always poor; some even have privately owned vehicles, though these vehicles are mostly used for business and production purposes and not consumption. Some nongmingong even purchase homes in their host cities. Therefore, the nongmingong are not a homogeneous group; they are diverse in terms of work patterns, incomes, family arrangements, attitudes towards marriage and childbirth, lifestyles, and urban identities.
That said, their inferior situation is obvious. Nongmingong leave rural areas to live in the city, some in city centers and mixed residences with native city residents, though their living conditions remain poor. Some nongmingong live in their workplaces, and some live in the basements of buildings. Their lifestyles often seem frugal and incompatible with urban consumerism. Their social image is that of backward rural bumpkins, obviously not a “modern urban population,” and sometimes they face social discrimination and even insults from the native city dwellers. For example, natives might see a migrant fruit vendor as “dirty” and not allow him to touch the fruit he is selling.
Zavoretti argues that nongmingong suffer from an inferior status not because of low suzhi, or uncivilized upbringing, but mainly because of their disadvantageous situation in the acquisition of urban resources, and lack of sufficient social protection and life security in their host cities. That is, the inferiority of nongmingong’s urban living standards is a result of their low social status.
Zavoretti further argues that class formation, not residence status, is key to understanding nongmingong’s inferiority and inequality in their host cities. After China’s economic opening and reform, the privileges urban residents enjoyed in terms of employment, public housing, education, and medical services, which were previously affiliated with danwei in the Mao era, were weakened, as those services became increasingly provided by commercialized market mechanisms. Both migrants and the urban poor have been squeezed into the lower social stratum during this market-oriented economic transition. Their comparatively low incomes determine the nongmingong’s poor and inferior status in China’s cities.
However, the author’s argument neglects to examine the factor of the hukou system, an urban residential institution shaped in the context of China’s planned society in the 1950s, which served as an instrument of welfare provision and social management and which is still an important factor determining the nongmingong’s inferior status. The rise of market forces and the retreat of government have caused increasing social class disparity. This mainly influences the wellbeing of the native urban citizens, but has not greatly impacted the welfare of the nongmingong, who were unable to enjoy urban welfare before the market reforms as urban welfare provisions were based on the hukou system, and who remain cut off since despite decades of market reforms the hukou admission certificate, as well as hukou-based welfare and services provision, have been stubbornly preserved. The privileges of the urban population with hukou status are still very obvious. Those privileges include public housing, education, social security, poverty relief and so forth. In fact, the welfare gap between China’s urban residents and its rural population, and between the urban hukou population and the nongmingong group, is widening. Although non-hukou migrants now can buy housing (although in some cities, non-hukou migrants are still not permitted to purchase housing and real estate because they lack a native hukou certificate), the hukou system is still effectively preventing the nongmingong from acquiring public housing, while cheap rental housing and publicly supported affordable housing are more needed by nongmingong. Nongmingong still face various forms of institutional exclusion and inferior treatment in areas such as childhood education, healthcare, and social security as a result of their hukou status, and hukou has actually become an institutional mechanism of class formation in China, rather than just a market mechanism. This may explain one anecdote the author provides in the book: although bakery-owner Huang recruits a laid-off worker who is a Nanjing native, the boss Huang still considers this laid-off worker as the richest person in the bakery. Actually, the nongmingong’s stories as detailed in this book also reveal how the market can actually support, instead of harm, their social mobility and wellbeing. The “market” can help nongmingong establish new businesses, explore new opportunities unimaginable in rural villages, and develop their livelihoods and aspirations in the city. To the nongmingong, the market actually provides a kind of mechanism for their upward development, rather than worsening their situation by entrapping them in the lower social stratum.
These hukou-based institutional obstacles not only cause nongmingong to suffer from poor living standards in the short run, but in the long run also deprive them of development opportunities. For example, the migrants’ children are unable to enjoy education opportunities equal to those of native urban citizens, leading to higher unemployment risks and lower social status when those children enter the labour market. Peasant workers have greater difficulties securing loans and seeking start-up support. In short, hukou status has a negative influence on the nongmingong’s development capacity in cities. As new urban dwellers, they have difficulties integrating into their host cities, making it difficult for them to realize their migratory aspirations and to improve the wellbeing of their families.
Yuan Ren
Fudan University, Shanghai, China