Class in China

In the reform era the class structure of Chinese society and the nature of class politics have changed as the source of Party legitimacy has moved from socialist ideology to economic performance under conditions of “market socialism” (the CCP is nowadays a ‘party in power’ rather than a ‘revolutionary party’). A new class of private entrepreneurs unknown under Mao emerged, empowered by their riches and gradually embraced by the Party. Workers and farmers, formerly the bedrock of the CCP regime, have been marginalised by the restructuring of agriculture and industry. Millions have lost their jobs, their access to social welfare and their sense of place in a society that increasingly values a nakedly neoliberal vision of modernization rooted in urbanization and consumption. Economic opportunities have enabled the re-emergence of the middle classes (or ‘middle income stratum’; 中产阶层 rather than 阶级). They have also created a floating population of migrant workers: a new urban underclass with a corresponding cohort of those ‘left behind’ in the hollowed out countryside.

Class politics were one of the defining characteristics of PRC history in the 20th Century. In the transition to market socialism ushered in by Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms many class based terms have disappeared from the official lexicon, but class remains an analytically and substantively important way of approaching Chinese society. New types of class relations between the party and the people and horizontally between different groups are having a fundamental effect on Chinese society. Classification of the population was one of the first steps taken to establish the new regime, and by the early 1950s everyone in China was assigned a class from a granular list of 62 descriptors. People were assigned a class origin (阶级成分) determined by their activities in the three years immediately prior to 1949, and class background (家庭出生) based on their father’s occupation at time of birth. These two pieces of information, a socio-economic position and a political inclination implied by behaviour, were included on peoples’ household registration documents and went a long way to determining one’s fate during successive campaigns against landlords, industrialists, intellectuals, the bourgeoisie, rightists, capitalists and the like, which came to head in the Cultural Revolution. Class consciousness was ideological, political and operationalized through designations that for very large numbers of Chinese people and their offspring were a matter of life and death. People identified as ‘reds’ (peasants, workers, revolutionary soldiers) could do well (to the extent that anyone prospered under Mao), whereas coming from a ‘black’ background (capitalists, landlords, nationalists) was an invitation to be ‘criticized’ and worse during recurrent bouts of ‘class struggle’. By the end of 1956, the means of production were largely socialized. The countryside was arranged in collectives, urban enterprises were under state control and the effective negation of private property culminated during the Great Leap Forward. But that didn’t mean the end of class struggle.

When Mao appealed to the “bourgeoisie” within the Party, ostensibly soliciting feedback from academics, journalists and other intellectuals, he was shocked by the level of criticism and quickly launched the Anti-Rightist campaign to purge them. The pernicious threat of the “bourgeoisie” coloured much of Mao’s subsequent rule. When he identified four major classes (two exploiting, two labouring), he set the quota for class enemies (imperialists, bureaucrat capitalists, Rightists et al) at 5% of the population. Class struggle was central to Mao’s modus operandi, and was often underpinned by strategic thinking to further his own goals vis-à-vis political opponents in the top echelon of the Party leadership. The abandonment of Mao’s Great Leap and Deng Xiaoping’s role in re-introducing the material incentives that led to increases in production and recovery in the devastated countryside planted the seed for his subsequent purge (having been identified as a Capitalist Roader). Party leaders who did not accept Mao’s vision or otherwise incurred the Chairman’s displeasure were labelled class enemies. By the launch of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Mao’s power struggles led him to directly appeal to the masses to attack those in the Party supposedly taking the ‘capitalist road’.

After Mao’s death, ‘black’ class labels were removed and the judgement on Mao contained in the 1981 “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China” came with an attempt to smooth class relations. To wit, workers and intellectuals were said to belong to the same heterogeneous class; the possibility of class conflict under socialism was denied; and it was claimed that ‘the bourgeoisie’ couldn’t possibly exist within the Party. But as Deng’s reforms started to deliver results, and some sectors ‘got rich before others’, these simplifications came under stress, from the obvious advantages that Party cadres (and later their children, the despised富二代) were beginning to enjoy and the exclusion of the large number of private and would-be entrepreneurs. The Party’s response (with a blip around 1989 and accelerating after 1992) was to encourage the development of the middle classes (or strata)—and to embrace private entrepreneurs. This was the major symbol of the changing emphasis of economic activity over class relations, finessed post-hoc by Jiang Zemin’s notion of the Three Represents (the Party represents advanced social and productive forces, advanced culture and the interests of the overwhelming majority).

A middle class society is an aspiration for China. China’s modernization, the major pre-occupation for successive regimes since the mid-19th Century, has come to be tied to the development of a certain conception of the “middle class lifestyle” embodied by people who possess certain characteristics, behaviours and norms, many of them tied up with consumption and urbanization. Those who don’t fit the norm—typically migrants—are cajoled to become “civilized” (文明) or ostracized for their inferior “quality” (素质). The modernizing narrative is ubiquitous and to “be modern” is tied to the other pillar propping up the CCP regime, nationalism, via the “Chinese Dream” of prosperity and power. Certain types of economic behaviour—notably consumption—have been reified as acts of patriotism (notwithstanding the recent anti-corruption campaign against excessive consumption among party officials). Much is expected of the Chinese middle classes (by the Party as much as Chinese businesses and multinationals), and much is being provided for their benefit. The middle classes are seen as a force for “stability” (the regime’s major pre-occupation in the reform era), and the engine for upgrading China’s economic model, particularly via consumption (viz the expansion of higher education, tourism, online shopping, home buying, the automobile market etc.) When the middle classes are unhappy, governments listen: compare the fate of urban home-owner’s protests and demonstrations against chemical factory construction in well-off urban areas with those of dispossessed farmers or unpaid workers.

A New History of Laughter in China







The demise of “guardian democracy”

When erstwhile Kuomintang presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu, 67, was asked to comment on the suicide of a troubled young man protesting at the national curriculum last summer, her response was sympathetic and in character. “It’s a terrible shame,” she said, adding that “kids don’t know any better” (小孩子不懂事 ).

The phrase, implying that younger generations don’t understand worldly affairs, is commonly used in Taiwan as a platitude by the supposedly older and wiser to comment on upsets and misguided life choices. It is usually a benign, sometimes indulgent, dismissal of the naive or uninformed opinions of younger people, the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head. In Taiwan, it is also an attitude that has long been deeply embedded in the political culture. But it is no longer sustainable, with significant implications for the forthcoming presidential and legislative elections and the future shape of Taiwanese politics and cross-strait relations.

The notion that wise elders should take care of decision-making, in the family and in politics, has a long history across many cultures. In various guises, it is manifest in “Confucian heritage” societies, in Lee Kuan Yew’s “Asian values” and in the Chinese Communist Party’s longstanding paternalism. It underpinned KMT one-party rule, a time when Taiwanese, like their contemporary mainland counterparts, were upbraided for lacking “quality” (素質) and “civilisation” (文明), and thus not to be trusted with democratic responsibilities. Taiwan’s transition to a flourishing democracy is a constant rebuttal to the self-serving narratives of conservative, change-resistant elites: Taiwanese have proven there is nothing inherent in Chinese or Confucian cultural heritage that disqualifies them from having a fully functioning, vibrant democracy. Continue reading at SCMP.

Taiwan 2016 elections are not about China

It is not news that, in Taiwan, the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, Tsai Ing-wen, is heading for victory on January 16. She has enjoyed a double-digit lead across all polls throughout the year, and recently crossed the psychological 50-point mark, ahead of her rivals, Eric Chu of the Kuomintang and James Soong of the People First Party. Seasoned Taiwan watchers know to take media polls with a pinch of salt. But the consensus across the political spectrum is that Tsai is a lock, barring something unforeseen.

Unexpected things do happen in Taiwanese elections. In 2000, the then independent Soong was ahead in the polls until the KMT broke a corruption scandal about him. Chen Shui-bian sustained gunshot wounds while campaigning on the eve of his re-election in 2004, which might have swung the vote in his favour. More recently, no one foresaw that Ma Ying-jeou would have a face-to-face meeting with President Xi Jinping (習近平).

If the latter surprise was intended to give the KMT’s election chances a boost, it didn’t work, despite the appealing optics of “the handshake” for the world’s media and the boost it might provide for perceptions outside Taiwan of Ma’s “legacy”. (In Taiwan, the meeting was greeted with anger or apathy.)

The 2016 presidential election is all about Ma and the KMT; Tsai’s big lead does not necessarily reflect huge enthusiasm for the DPP. The KMT’s expected loss in the coming election would reflect widespread discontent with Ma and his party, particularly the outcomes and trajectory of his economic policies. In the past 7½ years that Ma has been in power, the cost of living in Taiwan has steadily risen while wages have barely moved. House prices have increased by 45 per cent, and the price of a Taipei home is now about 16 times the average annual income (it is 7.5 times in Taiwan as a whole). Full article at SCMP

Assessing Ma’s presidency

Six weeks out from Election Day in Taiwan, the DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen has an unassailable lead in the polls, and the only uncertainty is whether her party, the DPP, will win a legislative majority, and if so, by how large a margin. The ruling KMT is reeling; damaged by an unpopular outgoing president, rifts in the party, an indecisive last minute candidate and a series of policy flops and scandals. Whatever the intention behind last month’s hastily arranged meeting in Singapore between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan’s Ma Ying-jeou, it has failed to invigorate the KMT or change its fortunes in the polls. For readers with a passing interest in Taiwan, this may come as a surprise. After all, Ma has overseen a period of unprecedented calm and productive relations with Taiwan’s biggest existential threat, China.

Upon entering office in 2008, Ma had four overarching aims. First, to stabilize cross-strait relations that effectively came to a halt at the (semi-)official level during his predecessor Chen Shui-bian’s tenure. Second, to revive Taiwan’s economic fortunes through closer integration with the Chinese economy. Third, to balance the imperative of economic incentives with the maintenance of “national dignity.” Fourth, to roll back the “de-Sinicization” elements of Chen Shui-bian’s “Taiwanization” program by emphasizing Taiwan’s Chinese cultural heritage and situating Taiwan within the framework of the greater Chinese nation. Read the full piece at The National Interest.

The Cultural Logic of Politics in China & Taiwan

When Duke political scientist, Professor Tianjian Shi sadly passed away late in 2010, he left behind a manuscript already accepted by Cambridge University Press. Through the efforts of the series editor, Andy Nathan, with help from reviewers Dorothy Solinger and Doh Chull Shin, that manuscript has been finalized and brought to publication. It is a fittingly ambitious and accomplished bequest to the fields of comparative politics and China Studies, to which Professor Shi contributed so much. Theoretically sophisticated and empirically rigorous (there are 32 pages of appendices), this book will provoke great interest—and, as all ambitious books should—much contention and avenues for further research.

Shi argues that since many social scientists assume that people are instrumentally rational to varying degrees, when they find that similar social-structures in different cultural contexts produce different outcomes, they tend to explain it in terms of variance in access to information, for instance through censorship and control of the media. Thus when people in China are observed to have a relatively high degree of trust in government, particularly central government, this finding has often been attributed to the effects of an authoritarian information regime that reduces access to the information needed to make ‘rational’ decisions. Shi rejects this interpretation and instead advances a sophisticated yet forceful case for ‘bringing culture back in’. Specifically, he argues that rationality is culturally embedded, and that a culturally defined normative rationality shapes people’s choices in social and political life.

The crux of Shi’s thesis is that rather than a universal, materialist concept of reality, individual interest calculations are based on ‘socially shared ideas about acceptable and expected behaviour’ (p.2). To counter the charge that culture is not an independent cause of behaviours but rather an effect or proxy for structural or institutional factors, Shi invokes the case of China and Taiwan, two societies that share elements of Confucian cultural heritage, but which have developed very different political structures and institutions. Shi argues that the momentous processes of modernization in China and democratization in Taiwan did not cause significant cultural shifts in these societies. Indeed he cites survey data to the effect that these changes reinforced peoples’ commitment to traditional cultural norms, which in turn are associated with greater trust in government, a lower likelihood of confronting the regime and an inclination to define democracy as government by benevolent guardians. Given the resilience, flourishing even, of the CCP and KMT under these changing conditions, it is an interesting argument. Full review in China Quarterly here.

Western Perspectives on the PRC

In the western imagination China has long been something ‘exotic’, a tendency that preceded the earliest contact and was reinforced by the (usually tall) tales of early travellers. This exoticism takes many forms and has given rise to many stereotypes, sometimes ‘positive’ (for instance in the recurring European taste for Chinoiserie) but mostly ‘negative’, such as the racist ‘Yellow Peril’ discourse (see my review of Fu Manchu and Sinophobia). Sometimes the ‘exotic’ construction encompasses admiration for ‘China’s difference’ (notably China’s, mainly imagined, ‘mysticism’), but more often than not it has signified contempt, with difference equating to ‘inferiority’.

With Jonathan Spence, Colin Mackerras is a leading western authority on China’s place in the western imagination. His Western Images of China (Oxford University Press, 1989) is a classic in the field and among other contributions, convincingly demonstrate how ‘our’ image of China says as much about ‘us’ as it does about ‘them’.

Mackerras’ latest book is concerned with western (predominantly American) ‘perceptions’ of China since 1949. How does the west (again mainly the US) ‘perceive China’ on a variety of issues (politics, foreign relations, economics, human rights, democratization, Tibet etc.) over time? Or more accurately given the book’s approach, how do some ‘representative’ western media (like Time magazine) and various western political and intellectual ‘elites’ frame China? This is a big question, requiring the systematic study of a wide corpus of empirical material, which is available in increasingly massive abundance. It is also an important question. On one level, the priming of mass attitudes toward China can have a significant effect on the experience of individual Chinese (often for the worse). At the other end of the spectrum, popular attitudes toward China can also influence foreign policy. For instance, all else being equal, a public that has been primed by years of negative and hostile coverage of China would be more likely to vote for a candidate who takes a hard-line on the country. Chinese leaders clearly care about how China is perceived around the world—otherwise they wouldn’t have launched their concerted effort (‘soft power push’, ‘charm offensive’) to try to balance critical western media narratives about China’s rise. Full review in China Quarterly here.