The Middle Class in Neoliberal China

The Middle Class in Neoliberal China PDF Author: Hai Ren
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415501350
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Since the late 1970s, China's move towards neoliberalism has made it not only one of the world's fastest growing economies, but also one of the most polarised states. This economic, social and political transformation has led to the emergence of a new Chinese middle class, and understanding the development and the role of this new social group is crucial to understanding contemporary Chinese society. Investigating the new politics of the middle class in China, this book addresses three major questions. First, how does the Chinese state deal with problems of national sovereignty and political representation to create the middle class both as a legitimate category of the people and as an ideal norm of citizenship? Second, how does the recognition of the middle class norm take place in the practice of everyday life? Finally, what kind of risks does the politics of the middle class generate not only for middle class subjects but also for the disenfranchised? In answering these questions, this book examines a set of practices, bodies of knowledge, measures, and institutions that aim to manage, govern, control, and orient the behaviours, gestures, and thoughts of Chinese citizens. This investigation contributes not only to the understanding of the Chinese middle class society but also to the scholarly debate over the relationship between governmental apparatuses, subjectification, and life-building. Drawing on ethnographic information, historical archives, and the media, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars working in the fields of Chinese studies, Chinese politics, ethnic studies and urban studies, as well as those interested in culture, society, class and welfare.

The Middle Class in Neoliberal China

The Middle Class in Neoliberal China PDF Author: Hai Ren
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415501350
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Since the late 1970s, China's move towards neoliberalism has made it not only one of the world's fastest growing economies, but also one of the most polarised states. This economic, social and political transformation has led to the emergence of a new Chinese middle class, and understanding the development and the role of this new social group is crucial to understanding contemporary Chinese society. Investigating the new politics of the middle class in China, this book addresses three major questions. First, how does the Chinese state deal with problems of national sovereignty and political representation to create the middle class both as a legitimate category of the people and as an ideal norm of citizenship? Second, how does the recognition of the middle class norm take place in the practice of everyday life? Finally, what kind of risks does the politics of the middle class generate not only for middle class subjects but also for the disenfranchised? In answering these questions, this book examines a set of practices, bodies of knowledge, measures, and institutions that aim to manage, govern, control, and orient the behaviours, gestures, and thoughts of Chinese citizens. This investigation contributes not only to the understanding of the Chinese middle class society but also to the scholarly debate over the relationship between governmental apparatuses, subjectification, and life-building. Drawing on ethnographic information, historical archives, and the media, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars working in the fields of Chinese studies, Chinese politics, ethnic studies and urban studies, as well as those interested in culture, society, class and welfare.

Embodying Middle Class Gender Aspirations

Embodying Middle Class Gender Aspirations PDF Author: Kailing Xie
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811611394
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This book takes a feminist approach to analyse the lives of well-educated urban Chinese women, who were raised to embody the ideals of a modern Chinese nation and are largely the beneficiaries of the policy changes of the post-Mao era. It explores young women’s gendered attitudes to and experiences of marriage, reproductive choices, careers and aspirations for a good life. It sheds light on what keeps mainstream Chinese middle-class women conforming to the current gender regime. It illuminates the contradictory effects of neoliberal techniques deployed by a familial authoritarian regime on these women’s striving for success in urban China, and argues that, paradoxically, women’s individualistic determination to succeed has often led them onto the path of conformity by pursuing exemplary norms which fit into the party-state’s agenda.

Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China

Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China PDF Author: Deborah Davis
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804759316
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Presents an up-to-date look at the social processes and consequences of China's rapid economic growth.

Driving toward Modernity

Driving toward Modernity PDF Author: Jun Zhang
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501738410
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
In Driving toward Modernity, Jun Zhang ethnographically explores the entanglement between the rise of the automotive regime and emergence of the middle class in South China. Focusing on the Pearl River Delta, one of the nation's wealthiest regions, Zhang shows how private cars have shaped everyday middle-class sociality, solidarity, and subjectivity, and how the automotive regime has helped make the new middle classes of the PRC. By carefully analyzing how physical and social mobility intertwines, Driving toward Modernity paints a nuanced picture of modern Chinese life, comprising the continuity and rupture as well as the structure and agency of China's great transformation.

Class And Class Conflict In Post-socialist China

Class And Class Conflict In Post-socialist China PDF Author: Alvin Y So
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814449660
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Class and Class Conflict in Post-Socialist China traces the origins and the profound changes of the patterns of class conflict in post-socialist China since 1978.The first of its kind in the field of China Studies that offers comprehensive overviews and traces the historical evolutions of different patterns of class conflict (among workers, peasants, capitalists, and the middle class) in post-socialist China, the book provides comprehensive overviews of different patterns of class conflict. It uses a state-centered approach to study class conflict, i.e., study how the communist party-state restructures the patterns of class conflict in Chinese society, and brings in a historical dimension by tracing the origins and developments of class conflict in socialist and post-socialist China.

The Middle Class in Neoliberal China

The Middle Class in Neoliberal China PDF Author: Hai Ren
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136169407
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Since the late 1970s, China’s move towards neoliberalism has made it not only one of the world’s fastest growing economies, but also one of the most polarised states. This economic, social and political transformation has led to the emergence of a new Chinese middle class, and understanding the development and the role of this new social group is crucial to understanding contemporary Chinese society. Investigating the new politics of the middle class in China, this book addresses three major questions. First, how does the Chinese state deal with problems of national sovereignty and political representation to create the middle class both as a legitimate category of the people and as an ideal norm of citizenship? Second, how does the recognition of the middle class norm take place in the practice of everyday life? Finally, what kind of risks does the politics of the middle class generate not only for middle class subjects but also for the disenfranchised? In answering these questions, this book examines a set of practices, bodies of knowledge, measures, and institutions that aim to manage, govern, control, and orient the behaviours, gestures, and thoughts of Chinese citizens. This investigation contributes not only to the understanding of the Chinese middle class society but also to the scholarly debate over the relationship between governmental apparatuses, subjectification, and life-building. Drawing on ethnographic information, historical archives, and the media, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars working in the fields of Chinese studies, Chinese politics, ethnic studies and urban studies, as well as those interested in culture, society, class and welfare.

How China Escaped Shock Therapy

How China Escaped Shock Therapy PDF Author: Isabella M. Weber
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042995395X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country’s rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China’s path. In the first post-Mao decade, China’s reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization—but struggled over how to go about it. Should China destroy the core of the socialist system through shock therapy, or should it use the institutions of the planned economy as market creators? With hindsight, the historical record proves the high stakes behind the question: China embarked on an economic expansion commonly described as unprecedented in scope and pace, whereas Russia’s economy collapsed under shock therapy. Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, the book charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China through a longue durée lens. Overall, the book delivers an original perspective on China’s economic model and its continuing contestations from within and from without.

Gated Communities in China

Gated Communities in China PDF Author: Choon-Piew Pow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113402097X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book examines the nature and dynamics of gated communities within the specificities of reform Shanghai, a city that arguably has been at the forefront of China’s new urban/consumer revolution.

Liberalism 2.0 and the Rise of China

Liberalism 2.0 and the Rise of China PDF Author: David Tyfield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317565398
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
What can we do in this period of historic, global turbulence? Mainstream narratives have no plausible account of how to stop exacerbating the multiple, overlapping challenges; much less begin to address them meaningfully. The only thing everyone agrees is innovation will be needed. But what is innovation? Usually, it is understood as new technologies that will ‘solve’ specific ‘problems’ – and, it is hoped, return life to a ‘business as usual’ of progress in individual freedom and wealth. But innovation is a thoroughly social process with profound implications for the arrangement of power in a society, hence shaping the emergence of new social systems. Exploring evidence from the key arenas of low-carbon innovation, including in the pivotal location of a rising China, this book describes the global systemic crisis of a neoliberal world order and the embryonic emergence of an alternative global power regime of a ‘liberalism 2.0’. This augurs both a web 2.0-based revitalization of the classical liberalism of the nineteenth century and new Dickensian inequalities and injustices. Against hopes that the present is a ‘revolutionary’ moment, therefore, political engagement with this emerging power regime is thus presented as the most productive strategy for a progressive twenty-first century politics.

Middle Class China

Middle Class China PDF Author: David S. G. Goodman
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1781005710
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
A general expectation has developed that ChinaÕs middle class will generate not only social but also political change. This expectation often overlooks the reality that there is no single Chinese middle class with a common identity or will to action. This timely volume examines the behaviour and identity of the different elements of ChinaÕs middle class Ð entrepreneurs, managers, and professionals Ð in order to understand their centrality to the wider processes of social and political change in China. The expert contributors seek to identify the social space occupied by the Chinese middle class rather than identifying social backgrounds and attitudes. In so doing they explore socio-political issues, the development of a consumer society, relationships between gender and class in the workplace, home-ownership and the appearance of gated communities, and the political interaction between the Party-state and the entrepreneurial middle classes and their impact on the new institutional economics. Providing a more nuanced understanding of the structure of the middle class in China and identifying dynamic elements in their behaviour, this unique book will prove a fascinating and thought provoking read for academics, students and researchers with an interest in Asian studies and public policy.