Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Re-Thinking The Rural-Urban Divide In China’S New Stratification Order, Qian Forrest Zhang
Re-Thinking The Rural-Urban Divide In China’S New Stratification Order, Qian Forrest Zhang
Qian Forrest ZHANG
I use a Marxist framework centred on the mode of production to conceptually analyze the changing stratification structure in today’s China with a focus on the changing nature of rural-urban inequality. As the state-managed tributary mode of production, once dominant under socialism, is being gradually eclipsed by the reviving petty-commodity mode of production and the newly emerged capitalist mode of production, both of which are market-based and enable the transfer of surplus from labour to capital, a new set of mechanisms are creating and sustaining rural-urban inequality in China. Rural-urban inequality – although still significant in its magnitude – is …
Status And Hierarchy: A Framework For Understanding Stratification And Inequality In Today’S China, Qian Forrest Zhang
Status And Hierarchy: A Framework For Understanding Stratification And Inequality In Today’S China, Qian Forrest Zhang
Qian Forrest ZHANG
Social hierarchies and inequality in a society are shaped by the modes of production that extract and transfer surplus among social groups. In China under socialism, the redistributive economy established a powerful tributary mode of production (TMP) that extracted surplus from rural areas to cities and from commoner producers to cadre-officials. This TMP created two fundamental hierarchies in socialist China: the urban-rural divide and the official-commoner divide, both of which were based on politically defined statuses. China’s post-socialist transition has led to both a resurgence of the traditional petty-commodity mode of production (PCMP) and the rise of a novel capitalist …