Rediscovering chinese society in the socialist era: Using The past to serve the present (original) (raw)
Related papers
Changing patterns of Chinese civil society
Routledge eBooks, 2017
Whilst the Chinese Communist Party is one of the most powerful political institutions in the world, it is also one of the least understood, due to the party's secrecy and tight control over the archives, the press and the Internet. Having governed the People's Republic of China for nearly 70 years though, much interest remains in how this quintessentially Leninist party governs onefifth of the world and runs the world's second-largest economy. The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party gives a comprehensive and multifaceted picture of the party's traditions and values-as well as its efforts to stay relevant in the twenty-first century. It uses a wealth of contemporary data and qualitative analysis to explore the intriguing relationship between the party on the one hand, and the government, the legal and judicial establishment and the armed forces, on the other. Tracing the influence of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, as well as Mao Zedong, on contemporary leaders ranging from Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, the sections cover: The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Politics, Asian Politics, Political Parties and International Relations.
2018
In this concise and well-researched book, Chen Hon-Fai offers a fascinating new conspectus of the discipline's history and current situation. The role of the state and transnational networks in shaping Chinese sociology are carefully analyzed. So too are the attempts of several pioneering individuals to indigenize the discipline. Everywhere, the turbulent politics of China affects the sociological scene. A stimulating contribution to the study of sociology as a global phenomenon, Chen Hon-Fai's probing new book is highly recommended.
International Journal of China Studies, 2010
China is a country in great transformation. Over the last three decades the highly remarkable economic performance of the once low-income and inward-looking state of China has attracted increasing interest from academics and policymakers. China’s astounding transformation is reflected not only in her economy, but also in her social changes in the past few decades, and this inevitably is also going to have implications for the country’s domestic sociopolitical development. For instance, the country’s breakneck economic transformation and the accompanying income and wealth disparities could be engendering increasingly volatile intergroup relations that would result in intensified resource contest which in turn may see groups coalesce along socioracial and ascriptive lines and thus further polarized by such divides, aggravated by transnational influences brought about by the selfsame globalization that has ironically contributed to her very economic “miracle” in the first place. Adapting Green’s change process model (2008) and Reeler’s threefold theory of social change (2007) to the China context, this paper investigates how various dimensions of social change have been engendered by the three decades of Chinese economic reform and how these various facets of social change are impacting on the coming direction and trajectory of the country’s socioeconomic and political transformation, how the interplay of State policy and societal response within the context of the exigencies engendered by the country’s continued odyssey of development, modernization and reform is shaping the future of the civil society, and how from both the theoretical and empirical perspectives the complex polity-economy-society nexus involved in the transformation of modern China are having wider ramifications for the country’s future. https://www.dropbox.com/s/tz4o1sfo9nu0l2p/IJCS-V1N2-final-yeoh-socialtransformation.pdf
Living with Reform: China Since 1989
London: Zed Books, 2006
China is huge. China is growing more powerful. Yet China remains a great mystery to most people in the West. This contemporary history, based on the latest scholarly research, offers a balanced perspective of the continuing legacy of Maoism in the lives not only of China's leaders but China's working people. It outlines the ambitious economic reforms taken since the 1980s and shows the complex responses to the consequences of reform in China today. Cheek shows the domestic concerns and social forces that shape the foreign policy of one of the worlds great powers. His analysis will equip the reader to judge media reports independently and to consider the experience and values not only of the Chinese government but China's workers, women, and minorities.
The End of the ‘Educated Youth Era’ in Chinese Social Science
Reading the China Dream, 2021
Social science research in China in the 2000s is much better funded, more professionally organized, but also narrower and less lively than in the 1980s. This essay, originally published in Chinese in 2015, traces these changes to the life experiences of the "educated youth"-- the 20 million urban youth who were sent to the countryside for extended periods in the 1960s and 1970s and returned to cities in the 1980s. Some of them played a leading role in the development of social research in China after the Cultural Revolution. Their life trajectories are deeply intertwined with contemporary Chinese politics, economy and thought. This English version is translated and introduced by David Ownby.
Journal of Modern Chinese History, 2016
Among the most promising developments in the study of contemporary China has been the booming migration of historians across the 1949 divide to pioneer the new and dynamic field of the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Only a few years ago post-1949 China was regarded as the exclusive terrain of social scientists (political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, and psychologists). Now, lured by an array of previously inaccessible primary sources, a growing number of historians have embarked on the study of the PRC. 1 To date, the main focus of their research has been on grassroots society in the pre-Great Leap Forward period, but we can anticipate both temporal and sectoral expansion as the field matures. 2 An outstanding example of work being produced by historians of the PRC with the aid of heretofore untapped archival and other sources is Zhang Jishun's Yuanqu de dushi (A city displaced: Shanghai in the 1950s). 3 The core chapters of Professor Zhang's book are case studies of (1) the transformation of Shanghai neighborhoods, (2) the role of the urban underclass in the PRC's first general election, (3) the conversion of newspapers from private to public media, (4) the accommodation of educated elites to the new political order, and (5) the influence of cinema on the formation of a mass urban culture. While the Shanghai Municipal Archives provide the bulk of Professor Zhang's primary sources, she supplements these official materials with interviews, newspaper accounts, visual media, and other sources. The result is a more personal and human view of the effects of the Communist revolution on China's largest and most cosmopolitan city than previous scholarship had afforded. Understood from the vantage point of Shanghai residents who lived through the initial years of the PRC, including workers and shantytown dwellers as well as journalists and intellectuals, Professor Zhang's illuminating account demonstrates that 1949 marked not only a moment of rupture and new beginnings but also a continuation of many earlier practices. Moreover, different members of Shanghai society-even two brothers with virtually identical family and educational backgrounds such as Huang Jiade and Huang Jiayin-could interpret and respond to revolutionary initiatives in surprisingly different ways. 1 See http://prchistory.org/ for evidence of this trend. 2 Kirby, "Continuity and Change in Modern China," was a seminal work, stressing similarities between the PRC and the Republic of China prior to the mainland's departure from the German/Soviet model of economic planning with Mao's launch of the Great Leap Forward. While Kirby examined state industrial policy, more recent work has focused on local society.