Introduction
-- The Summary of the Reading Materials:
The PRC hukou system, whose formal name is “huji” system, institutionally divides and organizes the Chinese people. To fully appreciate the significance of the hukou system, however, is not easy, even though many, especially those who have lived under the system, can vividly and endlessly attest its mighty presence. For it extensively and powerfully affects almost every aspect of the Chinese society and way of life. In this process, the hukou system tends to generate multifaceted, sometimes even contradictory and conflicting effects on China’s politics, economy, and social life.In politics,the PRC hukou system established stability, authoritarianism, and Elite Class. In economics, the hukou system has allowed the PRC to circumvent the Lewis Transition (also known as Lewis turning point, made in 1968 by Lewis, describes with the growth of rural economic , cheap labor after being fully absorbed, their wages will rise significantly. Lewis displayed with this theory of industrialization and urbanization are the best means to combat rural poverty) and hence to enjoy rapid economic growth and technological sophistication in a dual economy with the existence of massive surplus labor, however, the hukou system has created tremendous irrationalities, imbalances, and waste in the Chinese economy and barriers to further development of the Chinese market. At the same time, the PRC hukou system has generated a regionally uneven development and spatial inequality, such as the capita income gap, legal minimum wages, the amount of Welfare Pay. The PRC hukou system made a horizontal stratification in social life: Chinese culture, social stratification, and social norms and values have all d...
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... new resources to finally overcome the wide cleavage between rural and urban that has characterized Chinese society since the 1950s, only a sketchy overview pf some the initiatives will be presented.
Conclusion
Unlike population registration systems in many other countries, the PRC hukou system was designed not merely to provide population statistics and identify personal status, but also directly to regulate population distribution and serve many other important objectives desired by the state. In fact, the hukou system is one of the major tools of social control employed by the state. Its functions go far beyond simply controlling population mobility. Through nearly fifty-year’s development, the PRC hukou system constituted rural-urban inequality in contemporary China, which has been bringing profound influences on Chinese politics, economics, and social life.
Most critiques of The Good Earth are preoccupied with the authentic quality of the novel, and while the Western critiques praise it as a novel based on facts, the Chinese hold a different view. Kang Younghill, a Chinese man, in reference to the image Pearl Buck created of China, stated that "it is discouraging to find that the novel works toward confusion, not clarification" (Kang 368). This statement illuminates Kang's feelings that the details, which Buck had presented as factual in the novel, were contrary to the actual life of the Chinese. Yet researches have shown that Buck was rightly informed and presented her information correctly. One detail that she paid special attention to was the family structure within the rural Chinese family, which she presented in the form of the Wang Lung household. The family structure demonstrated by Buck is not restricted to the Wang Lung family, but was a part of every rural Chinese home in the early 1900s. Every member's experiences within the family structure are determined by the role and expectations placed on them by the society, and Buck was careful to include these experiences in Wang Lung's family.
New York: Norton, 1999. Print. The. Fairbank, John King, and Edwin O. Reischauer. China: Tradition and Transformation.
Deng Xiaoping felt that the quickest way to build a better China was to improve living conditions immediately, to give people the level of morale they need for further development. At that time, he realized that China’s economic need to reform; he found very effective ways to reform the China’s economic. His goals were to open up the China’s market to the outside world, breaking down the collective farms, getting rid of state-run enterprises and providing more jobs for people in the industry. He found that the most important thing was the modernization of agriculture because 80% of the population derived their living primarily from agricultural production. The new contract responsibility system allowed farmers to rent land for individual farming families. Farmers had to sell a certain percentage of their crops to the State with the State’s price, and they could sell the remaining for their own profits. This system had helped the rural income to be doubled (Benson, 47). It marked a successful modernization of agricultural.
It is clear that China’s one child policy has affected Chinese society in multiple ways. The policy has resulted in corruption in the Chinese government, an abuse of women’s rights, female feticide, and an imbalance in the gender ratio, and potential problems with China’s elderly and younger populations. The Chinese government decided to implement a one child policy in order to counter the effects of rapid population growth. The question to ask is if the benefits of population control really do outweigh the problems the policy has created in Chinese society. It will be interesting to see if the policy continues to affect Chinese culture in the future, and how the changes that have been recently made play out.
Li, K., & Mengyan, F. (2013). A historical survey on modernization of Chinese culture. Asian Social Science, 9(4), 129-132. doi:10.5539/ass.v9n4p129
Sitting close to the edge of being a “developing” and a “developed” country, China is a difficult country to define neatly. It is a country with an ancient and traditional culture trying to position itself higher within the international community. Plus it is also a communist country that has come to embrace its own form of capitalism to fuel its economy. China’s economic boon has been beneficial to many people within the country. But not to all people within China evenly.
Programs such as collectivization and land reformation were essentially a microcosm of Mao's impact on China. Under the policy of collectivization, the government promoted cooperative farming and redistributed the land on the principle that the product of labor could be better distributed if the la...
Throughout, 1900- 1950 there were a number of changes and continuities in China. From the fall of the dynasties to the rise of the Communist Party, these changes shaped China’s government and society. Although, many political changes were made multiple continuities were held constant such as, consistent rebellions and the lack of democracy.
The Great Cultural Revolution, the biggest power struggle in modern Chinese history, caused some profound impacts in Chinese society. Started by the Chinese Communist Chairman Mao and lasting for ten years (1966-1976) as a means of purging dissents within the party, the movement fundamentally overthrew long-established social order, ideology, and education. “Class struggle” was the term used most often during this movement, and it caused some serious consequences. The division of classes by pure social statuses or specific classifications, namely the Five Red Categories and the Five Categories, was founded and the long class struggle had thus begun. It has exerted profound and significant impacts on the Chinese society, now and then.
China, like anywhere else in the world, is not immune to the problems of inequality. Even though China has seen great economic growth over the past 20 years, the level of inequality has risen. The hukou system can be seen as a factor in creating inequality between citizens in China. This essay will look at the different types of inequalities that are faced by the Chinese people. There are many different types of inequalities in China, such as income, gender, ethnic, education and welfare inequalities, however this essay will look at the hukou, income and gender inequality that the Chinese people have to deal with in their everyday lives, as well as looking at what the Chinese people think about the rise in inequality.
The first period of Chinese compulsory education (between 1986 and 2007) had a big problem-----it was not free. In 1986, China passed the Law on Compulsory Education of the People 's Republic of China, which symbols that China began to execute compulsory education. However, at the beginning, the compulsory education is “compulsory education with Chinese characteristics”, (Xiao, 2012, 1) which means that the compulsory education is just compulsory and the governments didn’t pay the tuition. It is a big problem. People in rich cities didn’t have too much trouble because they had money. But the tuition was a big burden for families in poor villages or towns. A survey of a village in Hunan in 2001 referred that the government only paid 22.3% of the tuition for children in compulsory education, which means children’ parents needed to pay another 77.7% tuition.
The Trickle-down theory, a well-known theory in fashion industry, has significant meaning in 19th to 20th century Europe. The American economist and sociologist, Veblen, published The theory of the Leisure Class by 1899, in which he discussed the split between the leisure class and the industrial class in the US critically. He concluded that leisure class treats dress as a sign of their status and possessions, furthermore, ‘Dress must not only be conspicuously expensive and inconvenient; it must at the same time be up to date’(Veblen 1994), by saying that, he refers to upper class was tend to create new fashion trend which was the top of the trickle-down theory. In the 20th century, Simmel, the German sociologist and philosopher, developed this theory further from a more sympathetic perspective. He drew much attention to sameness and difference amongst both classes in his book Fashion (Simmel 1973). The upper class gets self-satisfied and the proof of its priority by distinguishing itself from others, and working class follows the fashion trend which led by upper class in order to feel like he or she is ‘belonging to’ higher class. These opinions which were discussed by Veblen and Simmel were coined by a journalist in the mid-20th century, as ‘Trickle- down Theory’. During mid-18th to early 20th century, the trickle-down theory described the process of how fashion flows, and explains that fashion is a cultural and sociological phenomenon which includes the discourse of identity and uniformity, agency and structuralism. This phenomenon was not limited by geography, at the same period, in the other side of the world, similar situation happened in China which is a typical East Asian country....
Retrieved March 21, 2001, from the World Wide Web: http://english.peopledaily.com. Chinatown Online is a wonderful site with an abundance of information about China. http://www.chinatown-online.com/. Henslin, J. M. (1999). The Species of the Species. Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach (4th ed.).
In a word, overpopulation is the most serious social problem in China now, and great efforts are needed to be made in order to solve it.
and Culture of China-US Relations.." CHINA US Focus Urbanization Chinas New Driving Force Comments. N.p., 30 Mar. 2013. Web. 11 Apr. 2014. .