Social structure of China

The social structure of China has a very long history, going from the feudal society of imperial times to the industrializing and urbanizing society of today.

Further information: Rectification of Names

The teaching of Confucius (551 BCE – 479 BCE) taught of five basic relationships in life:

Father to son

Elder brother to younger brother

Husband to wife

Friend to Friend

Ruler to subject

The Early Imperial Period

From the Qin to the late Qing (221 BC-AD 1840), the Chinese government divided Chinese people into four classes: landlord, peasant, craftsmen, and merchant.[citation needed] Landlords and peasants constituted the two major classes, while merchant and craftsmen were collected into the two minor. Theoretically, except for the position of the Emperor, nothing was hereditary.

During the 361 years of civil war after the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD), there was a partial restoration of feudalism when wealthy and powerful families emerged with large amounts of land and huge numbers of semi-serfs. They dominated important civilian and military positions of the government, making the positions available to members of their own families and clans. After the Tang dynasty's yellow emergence, the government extended the Imperial examination system as an attempt to eradicate this feudalism.

Social structure in modern China

1911 to 1949

After 1911, China entered the Warlord Era. During this time, industrialization was slow to non-existent;[citation needed] between the years 1920 and 1949, the industrial sector had only increased by less than three million members, mainly women and children working in cotton mills. The main changes in social structure were military.

In 1924, the Soviet Union helped Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) rebuild the Nationalist (Guomindang, GMT, KMT) military force, most notably through the training school at Whampoa Military AcademyHuangpu|, a small town near Guangzhou. Many military leaders of the following decades were Huangpu graduateis, including Lin Biao, who later rose to fame with Mao.

After the allied forces of the Guomindang and the Communists reunified China, Jiang Jieshi, with the help of underworld forces such as the Green Gang, attacked the Communists. This had the effect of suppressing labor unions.

1949 to 1976

After 1949, the revolutionaries became the ruling class. The Communist Party cadres became the new upper class.[citation needed] The misuse and manipulation of the ration system by members of the cadre class threatened to change them into a new class of privileged bureaucrats and technicians, mere descendants of the pre-revolutionary ruling class of cadre technocrats and selected representatives of the old proletariat. Whereas in the past, their position had been accessed primarily through acceptance to the best schools, now cadre status came to give them access to materials and options not fairly distributed amongst all. Housing had always been in demand in China, particularly in the larger cities, and cadres were protected from the intense competition for living space.

In the countryside, the landlord class was eliminated during the land reform.[citation needed] In 1959, there were ten million state cadres, thirty-five million state workers, and two hundred million peasants. Chinese society was typical of agrarian societies because the peasant class composed the majority of the population.

Following the implementation of land reforms, Mao instituted a process of collectivization in response to the a few selling of land by peasants to the new generation of rich land owners. Afraid of creating a new landlord class, Mao instituted a system of communes where land was supposed to be worked equally by peasants. His idea was to capitalize on the sheer number of peasants and effectively produce a surplus harvest that would help industrialization. This was known as the Great Leap Forward, which was a failure that resulted in the deaths of twenty to thirty million peasants.

Just as farmers were put into communes, state workers were placed in large work units called danweis. Since urban education reform was growing at a rate much faster than in rural areas, more and more workers were high school graduates.[citation needed] The slowing down of state industries and the increasing number of qualified middle class candidates contributed to the fact it became more and more difficult to obtain a position as a state worker.

At this time, the hukou system was implemented, which divided the population into urban and rural residents. This was done to make distribution of state services through danweis and communes easier and to better organize the population in preparation for a possible invasion from the Soviet Union. The hukou system makes it illegal to migrate from the countryside to the city.

During the Cultural Revolution, the composition of society changed again. Schools were closed and many youth were sent down to the countryside, putatively to learn from the peasants. Concern for peasants was reflected in the rural medical and educational services known as barefoot doctors and barefoot teachers. The life expectancy of peasants increased from less than forty years before 1949 to more than sixty years in the 1970s.[citation needed] At the same time, peasants were still the most illiterate, most powerless, and poorest social class.

Further reading

Ch'u T'ung-tsu, Han Social Structure (Washington U. Press, 1972)

References

Notes

^ Robert Mortimer Marsh, Mandarins: The Circulation of Elites in China, 1600-1900, Ayer (June, 1980), hardcover, ISBN 0405-12981-5

^ The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 13, 30

Sources

The original content was provided by Li Yi author of The Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification. It closely parallels the content of that book which is copyrighted by University Press of America.

Sources:

1) China Cadre Statistics Fifty Years, 1949–1998, 1. 2) China Labor Statistical Yearbook 1998, 9. 1. China Cadre Statistics 50 Years, 1949–1998, 1. 2. China Labor Statistical Yearbook, 1998, 9. Note: 1. The figures of cadre from 1966 to 1970 are estimated. 2. From 1958 to 1977, the figure of peasant worker was up and down around 20 million. However, all the China's official statistics began to count them only from 1978. From 1979 to 1993, the number of cadres increased from 18 million to 37 million.

Sources: 1. China Cadre Statistics 50 Year, 1949–1998, 1. 2. China Statistical Yearbook 2002, 120-121. 3. China Labor Statistical Yearbook 1998, 17.

Sources: 1. China Cadre Statistics 50 Year, 1949–1998, 1. 2. China Statistical Yearbook 2004, 126-127 and 150. 3. People's Daily Overseas Edition, 10/11/2002, 1. Note: The numbers of cadre in 2002 and 2003 are estimated.

Further reading

Duara, Prasenjit, State Involution: A Study of Local Finances in North China, 1911-1935, in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 132–161, Cambridge University Press

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