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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: China Today
- Sprache: Englisch
Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2015
More than three decades of economic growth have led to significant social change in the People�s Republic of China. This timely book examines the emerging structures of class and social stratification: how they are interpreted and managed by the Chinese Communist Party, and how they are understood and lived by people themselves.
David Goodman details the emergence of a dominant class based on political power and wealth that has emerged from the institutions of the Party-state; a well-established middle class that is closely associated with the Party-state and a not-so-well-established entrepreneurial middle class; and several different subordinate classes in both the rural and urban areas. In doing so, he considers several critical issues: the extent to which the social basis of the Chinese political system has changed and the likely consequences; the impact of change on the old working class that was the socio-political mainstay of state socialism before the 1980s; the extent to which the migrant workers on whom much of the economic power of the PRC since the early 1980s has been based are becoming a new working class; and the consequences of China�s growing middle class, especially for politics.
The result is an invaluable guide for students and non-specialists interested in the contours of ongoing social change in China.
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Seitenzahl: 365
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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Table of Contents
China Today series
Title page
Copyright page
Tables
Maps
Chronology
Preface
Abbreviations, Measures and Note on Chinese Names and Transliteration
1: Introduction: Understanding Class in China
Understanding China and Class
Revolutionary Class Analysis
The Bourgeoisie within the Party
Class by Ideology; Class by Occupation
Analysing Class in Contemporary China
2: Social Stratification under Reform
Markers of Change
Rural–urban Relations
Reform and Inequality
Stratification and Class
The Emergent Class Structure
3: The Dominant Class
The Political Elite
The Economic Elite
Power and Wealth
4: The Middle Classes
Considering the Middle Class
Size and Wealth
The Aspirational Middle Class
The Intermediate Middle Classes
5: The Subordinate Classes
Public-sector Workers
Workers in the Non-public Sector
Peasants
6: The Political Economy of Change
Market Transition
Democratization
A New Working Class
Peasant Activism
Inequality and Regime Legitimacy
7: Conclusion: Inequality and Class
Inequality
Class
Bibliography
Index
China Today series
Copyright © David S. G. Goodman 2014
The right of David S. G. Goodman to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2014 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5336-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5337-2(pb)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8730-8 (epub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8729-2 (mobi)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com
Tables
1.1 PRC Class Descriptors, 1950
2.1 Class by consumption in the PRC, 2010
2.2 PRC Class Composition of Workforce (percentage), 1952–2006
2.3 Distribution of hidden income, urban residents, PRC 2008
4.1 Size, wealth and definition of China's middle class
4.2 CASS Institute of Sociology – dimensions of the PRC middle class, 1978–2006
4.3 PRC undergraduate enrolments in higher education
Chronology
Preface
In the late 1960s, at the time I started studying China, there seemed to be little academic challenge in attempting to understand class in research on that country. It was the era of China's Cultural Revolution. Class was either apparently clearly defined, or a function of elite politics, operating within a tight ideological framework. The only interpretation beyond that was the occasional attempt to apply Djilas-type ‘new class’ analysis to the development of the People's Republic of China.
Class in China became more intellectually interesting with ‘reform and openness’ after 1978. Economic growth led to greater social differentiation, the emergence of entrepreneurial classes, the growth of the middle classes, the disempowerment of the state socialist working class and dramatic changes in rural China, including the massive expansion in numbers of migrant workers. It also became possible to undertake fieldwork in China, to interview people and carry out social surveys, rather than base research on state-controlled documentary sources. One result was that research in China led to questions about the applicability and suitability of class analyses that had been derived from the experience of other countries. Starting with research in Hangzhou in 1991, my attempt to understand the social consequences of economic change in China led to a series of related projects.
The Australian Research Council has been a frequent supporter of this research through a series of research grants since 1991, and their contribution is gratefully acknowledged. The inquiry into class and social stratification in China has been greatly assisted by the project to examine The New Rich in Asia, which was the key project of the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University, Western Australia, during the 1990s. Later, at the University of Technology, Sydney, the China Research Centre's project to examine The New Rich in China followed up on the earlier work in considerably greater detail, both conceptually and with the more specific geographical focus. More recently still, during 2009–11, the Seminar on Class at the University of Sydney, which culminated in the China Studies Centre's 2011 workshop on Class and Class Consciousness in China, was a significant learning experience.
Many people have contributed either knowingly or unwittingly to my understanding of class and social stratification in China. My greatest intellectual debt has been to Dorothy Solinger, who has been an academic model throughout my career for her thoroughness and her humanity. At Murdoch University, Richard Robison, Gary Rodan and Kevin Hewison stimulated my renewed interest in the topic. Also at Murdoch University, Sally Sargeson and Rachel Murphy were students from whom I learnt more on this topic than I suspect they learnt from me. I have benefited greatly from working with Yingjie Guo and Wanning Sun, both now at the University of Technology, Sydney: scholars of excellence on social and political change in China. Similarly, I owe a considerable debt to Xiaowei Zang, now at City University Hong Kong, not only for his prolific output and research, but also for his friendship and professional cooperation. At Nanjing University, my colleagues Zhou Xiaohong and Zhou Peiqin have been courageous analysts of social change in China, as well as helpful and informative discussants. At both the University of Technology, Sydney (2002–8) and the University of Sydney (since 2008), my work on class and social stratification could not have been so successfully undertaken on a number of projects without my co-researchers Beatriz Carrillo and Minglu Chen. At the University of Sydney, Jeffrey Riegel has been a more than useful sounding board for all things Chinese. In the last five years Kirsty Mattinson, now at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, has been an invaluable companion and guide to class and social change on the ground in China. In addition, I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and Jonathan Skerrett at Polity for their helpful advice on the draft manuscript. None of these people are to be held responsible for the words that follow, though I hope not only that they do not find too much that is disagreeable but also that they recognize their influence.
David S. G. Goodman
University of Sydney and Nanjing University
February 2014
Abbreviations, Measures and Note on Chinese Names and Transliteration
Abbreviations
ACFTUAll China Federation of Trade UnionsBCGBoston Consulting GroupCASSChinese Academy of Social SciencesCCPChinese Communist PartyCHFSChina Household Finance Survey (Texas A&M University and The People's Bank of China)CHIPChinese Households Income Project (CASS Institute of Economics)FBISForeign Broadcast Information Service (USA)GDPGross Domestic ProductNBSNational Bureau of StatisticsNCNANew China News AgencyNPCNational People's CongressPPCCPeople's Political Consultative ConferencePPPPurchasing Power ParityPRCPeople's Republic of ChinaPLAPeople's Liberation ArmyRMBRenminbi (The People's Currency)RMRBRenmin Ribao (The People's Daily)SASACState-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration CommissionSE2Special Economic ZoneSOEState-Owned EnterpriseTVETown and Village EnterpriseWTOWorld Trade OrganizationMeasures
mu亩land area equivalent to 667 sq metres or 0.17 of an acreyuan元dollar RMB: 1 GBP equals approximately 10 Chinese dollars; 1 US$ equals approximately 6 Chinese dollars.Note on Chinese Names and Transliteration
Names in Chinese are usually presented as family name followed by a personal name. That practice is followed here, with two exceptions. The first is where Chinese people have a non-Chinese personal name, in which case the personal name is presented before the family name. The second is where a person with a Chinese name has indicated, usually through publication, that they wish to be known by their personal name followed by their family name.
In most cases, the pinyin (拼音) system of transliteration is used throughout this book for representing Chinese words (and sounds) in English. The exceptions are works that have already been published in an alternative transliteration system, or where words (usually people's names) are only or more usually known in an alternative transliteration system.
1
Introduction
Understanding Class in China
Class has been and remains central to the understanding of social and political change in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made revolution explicitly through mobilizing and acting on behalf of China's workers and peasants. When it came to power in 1949, and established the PRC, it did so in the name of the Chinese working classes. It implemented class-based prescriptions for the new regime's development, and every citizen was officially categorized and provided with a specific class identification to enable this to happen. During the Mao Zedong-dominated period of the PRC's politics from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, which culminated in the Cultural Revolution, these formal class identities became particularly important in determining individual life chances not only for those classified in the early 1950s, but also their children and (eventually) their grandchildren. In late 1978 the CCP determined to adopt a more market-oriented development strategy. As part of that change, those earlier class identities have increasingly come to play a less formal role in determining access to public goods, employment and lifestyle. Nonetheless, throughout the reform era, the social structures that were put in place during the 1950s and 1960s have continued to shape social mobility and individual life chances for successive generations.
The PRC remains an explicitly class-based political system, informed by the CCP's Marxist–Leninist ideology. Its legitimacy rests to a large extent on the leadership of the CCP and the latter's role as ‘the vanguard both of the Chinese working class and of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation’ (Constitution of the Communist Party of China, 14 November 2012). According to the Preamble to the state Constitution, the PRC is a ‘people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants, which is in essence the dictatorship of the proletariat’ and while ‘the exploiting classes as such have been abolished in our country … class struggle will continue to exist within certain bounds for a long time to come’ (Constitution of the PRC, 14 March 2004).
These class-based perspectives may seem somewhat outdated given the dramatic socio-economic change the PRC has experienced since 1978. Nonetheless, they still not only inform the development of the government's social policy, but also infuse the whole of the educational system and the language of politics and social interaction. Children are socialized from an early age into the language of class through schooling and education. Undoubtedly, in the post-Mao era the social impact of a continued state-sponsored class analysis may sometimes be less than positive and conforming, but even resistance and reaction to the CCP's direction on this topic serves to underline the continued importance of ideas of class as determinants of change.
Certainly there have been significant socio-economic changes with reform, which have had a major impact on China's class structure. To start with, there has been dramatically increased urbanization and income inequality. In the 1970s, the PRC had approximately 80 per cent of its population living as peasants on or off the land, but by 2013 roughly half the total population lived in towns and cities across the country. In the early 1980s, China could be characterized by a high degree of income equality. Inequality was necessarily hidden in many ways but the standard measure of income inequality, the Gini coefficient (where 0 represents total equality and 1 total inequality) was about 0.20 in 1981. In 2013 (when the population was 1,354 million) it stood, by various domestic PRC accounts, at anywhere between 0.47 and 0.61.
During the 1970s Chinese society was described by the CCP, strictly using the conventions of Marxism–Leninism, in terms of two classes and a stratum: workers, peasants and intellectuals. Even outside the PRC and the CCP's ideological framework, the description could not be much broader. There were officials of the Party-state, workers, peasants and a relatively small middle class (though not identified as such within the PRC) of managers, administrators and teachers. The subsequent years resulted in considerably greater social differentiation as part and parcel of spectacular economic growth. The highest-profile new social category to emerge is that of entrepreneurs, though not all are the fabulously wealthy of popular imagination. At the same time, socio-economic change has resulted in the development of the professional middle classes and the expansion of the managerial classes; in size, certainly, but also in kind as some professions (lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, communication specialists, for example) have re-emerged. As industry – and particularly the state sector, which had been developed in the 1950s as the mainstay of the PRC's state socialism – has been restructured, the former public-sector working class has been dramatically affected: reduced in size and politically downgraded. Now there is an additional, new category of industrial worker: the peasant migrant worker who leaves the countryside for short and longer periods of employment. The changes in the workforce and the market have necessarily impacted on the peasantry as well as leading to the emergence of a new urban underclass.
Given the extent and scale of the changes wrought by reform, it is little surprise that Chinese people's sense of class identity often seems to be at odds with the CCP's ideological prescriptions. There has been a tendency not only for people to shy away from the CCP's categories of class analysis, but also to deliberately describe themselves as being of a lower class than a more objective assessment of their wealth, status and position might indicate (Chen 2013; Gao 2013). Then there is the question of the emerging middle class. Until 2002, consistent with Marxist–Leninist ideology the Party-state did not acknowledge any social, economic or political role for a middle class at all. Even though since that year there has been an emerging state-sponsored discourse encouraging the development of the middle class, it often rests uneasily with the CCP's ideological formulations. Yet, according to a national survey undertaken during 2013, 7.2 per cent of China's population saw themselves as upper class, 59.2 per cent as middle class and 33.6 per cent as lower class (Boehler 2013). Though the percentages have varied over time, this survey confirmed a constant trend since the mid-1990s, where a majority of Chinese have indeed reported themselves as middle class (Bian and Lu 1996; Wang and Davis 2010).
One deceptively obvious reason for these differences is linguistic. Ideas about class and classes are rendered in a number of different ways in Chinese, of which two are most commonly used. One is 阶级 (jieji), which refers usually to class in the particular construction which comes from the CCP's Marxist–Leninist ideology rather than more generally. Thus, workers, peasants and capitalists are all described as classes in this way. The other is 阶层 (jieceng), which linguistically denotes stratum or strata. Thus, the (emergent) middle class is most usually now described as 中产阶层 (zhongchan jieceng) – literarily, the middle propertied stratum. When used in these ways, though, the distinction between class and stratum is merely a convenient fiction. Lu Xueyi, the prime architect of the current structure of class that dominates academic enquiry and government policymaking, made it clear that jieceng was adopted after 2002 to refer to class as it might be understood elsewhere in the world in order to make a distinction between the contemporary situation, on the one hand, and on the other, class as interpreted by both Marx and Mao Zedong, and specifically as applied in China's revolutionary era before 1949, and under state socialism before 1978 (Lu Xueyi 2005: 419).
As Li Chunling, one of China's leading sociologists (from the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)) has pointed out, the understanding of class in China varies with the observer (Li Chunling 2010), and this too is a marker of the social and political change that has emerged with reform since 1978. The various different perspectives on class of the public, consumers, Party-state ideologists, government policymakers and academic sociologists have commonalities, overlap and are necessarily related. All the same they are not identical and the result is considerable complexity within the PRC in the understanding and function of class that reflects the social processes involved. Class as socio-economic structure, class as performance (the rehearsal of identity), and class as ideological formulation are all involved in the development of China's political economy.
Understanding China and Class
The PRC is clearly undergoing substantial social change, yet the precise nature of these changes, let alone the consequences for the political economy, are far from clear. There are commentators ready to describe the emergence of capitalism in the PRC and the consequent challenge to the regime from the activities of the newly emergent (since the 1980s) class of capitalists (Nee and Opper 2012). There are others who, while acknowledging the emergence of capitalist practices in economic development, still highlight the role of cadres and former officials, and their social capital and political connections as the basis of a system of bureaucratic capitalism in which officials are embourgeoised, and entrepreneurs are bureaucratized (Huang 2013; So 2013). Still others emphasize the extent to which the structures of state socialism remain in place despite the marketization of the economy. While the PRC may no longer be state socialist, these authors highlight not only the roles of bureaucrats and technocrats as the key economic decision-makers, through a redistributive rather than a market-based economy, but also the ways in which they and their families (rather than the entrepreneurial classes) are the primary beneficiaries of the PRC's development (Szelényi 2008).
The extent to which the social basis of the Chinese political system has changed, and the likely consequences of those changes, depends on an examination of possible trends within and among various classes and not just changes in the ruling class. In particular, this includes not only the impact of change on the old urban working class, but also the extent to which the migrant workers – on whom much of the economic power of the PRC since the early 1980s has been based – are forming a new working class. And while the precise definition of the middle class in the Chinese context is for the moment a matter of some conjecture, it would seem possible from the analysis of expanding middle classes elsewhere that they too might be agents of political change, if not necessarily for the advocacy of liberal democracy (Robison and Goodman 1992).
The aim of the analysis presented here is not simply to aid the understanding of social and political change in China, but also to contribute to the wider understanding of class and its role in social change. Any account of class must necessarily highlight the discontinuities apparently represented by both 1949, when the PRC was established, and 1978, when the decision was taken (if tentatively at first) to move away from the earlier policies of state socialism and towards a socialist market economy. At the same time, it is also clear that there are continuities in Chinese society through both 1949 and 1978. Although the establishment of the People's Republic came justifiably clothed in the rhetoric of revolution, in practice 1949 also institutionalized not only the rule of the new revolutionary elite but also to some extent the continuation of the social structure as it existed immediately before 1949. While the changes of late 1978 started a process that liberated those regarded as remnant class enemies from the old (pre-1949) society, economic growth and social change has in the longer term privileged still further many of those who became privileged in elite and essentially middle-class positions during the PRC's first thirty years. Indeed, one key determinant of class profiles would seem to be a high degree of path dependence, to which education, wealth, political power and social status all contribute.
Class in China is best understood in terms of the intergenerational transfer of compound inequalities of wealth, status and power, rather than solely in terms of ideas of class and stratification drawn from the experience of socio-economic development elsewhere. This is not to argue for a Chinese exceptionalism, but rather to highlight the ways in which class and the conceptualization of class in and applied to China since the early twentieth century have met some of the intellectual and political challenges that are a necessary part of class analysis, particularly for and when applied to active revolutionaries and ruling Communist Parties. From its very beginnings, the CCP has discussed (and experimented with) how to identify and how to manage the relationship between socio-economic structure and identity, class and class consciousness. In addition, China's experience raises questions about (before 1949) the role of the peasantry in revolution, especially in less economically developed countries; and (after 1949 and the establishment of the PRC) the question of whether ownership of the means of production is as important as control and management as a defining relationship to the means of production (for the ruling class). More recently, the increasing socio-economic complexity that has resulted from economic development raises questions about class structure, and especially the role of the middle classes.
Class everywhere highlights difference and inequality, and is probably more important as a mobilizing concept than a precise or reliable analytical tool. This mobilizatory aspect of the concept of class is clearly apparent in practical politics, especially for parties that are part of, or draw on, the Marxist tradition. It is also apparent in the business world where class differences not only assist producers and marketeers in their search for target audiences, but form an essential part of advertising to consumers (Silverstein et al. 2012). For social scientists, class also draws attention to the fundamental inequalities that constitute society: of power, wealth, social standing, lifestyle, culture and opportunity (Crompton 2006: 658). But it does more than that. It also draws attention to the relationships and interactions between different kinds of inequality, especially in terms of the development and influence of sources of power and authority in society (Savage 1995: 25). This is the meaning and crucial significance of compound inequality: where different kinds of inequality reinforce privilege or disadvantage.
The CCP's understanding of class, and the history of its development, is then the obvious place to start the examination of class in contemporary China, not least because it provides a guide to the language and practice of class in China. It also demonstrates the ways in which the CCP's experience interacted with the development of class analysis more generally in the twentieth century. It is a history dominated by Mao Zedong, who first provided the CCP with a method of class analysis that facilitated successful revolution, and then pushed his analysis to such a level of near self-destruction that after his death (in 1976) and the decision to change the PRC's development strategy (in 1978) there was an official concern to ensure such politics never recurred. It is also a history probably best understood in terms of the changes in the CCP's ideological formulation of the relationship between socio-economic conditions and political consciousness in the shaping of class identity. In Marx's class analysis an individual's socio-economic position is seen as determining their political behaviour, and a class as a social group is expected to behave in line with its economic interest. But class action is not guaranteed. The capitalist class may well act to protect its interests. The working class (of whom much is expected, for it is their ‘historical mission’ to overthrow the capitalists) on the other hand will need to acquire a high degree of class consciousness in order to act. For the CCP before 1957, the emphasis was on socio-economic conditions leading to political consciousness. During 1957–76, class essentially came to be seen almost entirely in terms of political correctness, struggle and the transformative power of consciousness, sidelining for much of the time considerations of socio-economic conditions. Since 1976, the CCP has essentially come to approach ‘class as socio-economic conditions’ and ‘class as political consciousness’ as two separate matters.
Revolutionary Class Analysis
The CCP had been established in 1921 by Chinese intellectuals seeking to create an agenda of radical change and impressed by the Russian Revolution. A key problem, though, was the relative absence of industrialization and its associated proletariat, or indeed any significant social base that could be mobilized as such. The CCP had, in Jerome Chen's words, ‘accepted the historical mission, the revolutionary character, and the internationalism of the proletariat as defined by Marx’ (Jerome Chen 1973: 84), but socio-economic conditions in China essentially left them wondering how to proceed.
The debate on class inevitably preoccupied the CCP for much of its early life as it sought to develop an adequate strategy for the Chinese revolution. There was intense elite conflict within the leadership of the CCP, which was as much about personality as about the identification of the proletariat, the relationship with the Nationalist Party (also supported and developed with the help of the Soviet Union) and different approaches to revolution. For the most part, until the mid-1930s, the leadership of the CCP was made up of individuals who had either returned from or who worked closely with the Soviet Union, and their interpretation of class was bound up with that experience. Their main focus was to work with the small Chinese working class, mainly in Shanghai and the areas of and surrounding colonial concessions, and they rejected the view that the proletariat was only a metaphor for the progressive forces in a Marxist view of history, as others did. While recognizing that the peasantry was the majority of the working population, they were for the most part unable to see much revolutionary potential in them.
There were, however, others in the CCP who thought differently. One of these was Mao Zedong who had been involved in successful peasant mobilizations in the mid-1920s in his native Hunan Province. He too embraced the commitment to the proletariat throughout his life. Officially published collections of his articles and speeches even after the foundation of the PRC still began with the admonition: ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’ At the same time, from 1926 onwards, he came to argue that the ‘principal aspect of the principal contradiction’ in Chinese society – the social polarization that would lead to revolutionary change – was between peasants and landowners.
There is unfortunately little reliable information available about land distribution during the Republican Era (1911–49). Research from extant contemporary surveys suggests a dramatic economic inequality. Of the rural households, 4 per cent were landlords who owned 39 per cent of the land. Another 6 per cent of households were rich peasants who hired labour to help them farm the 17 per cent of the land that they owned, while 22 per cent of rural households were owner-farmer middle peasants who owned 30 per cent of the land. Additionally, 36 per cent of rural households were poor peasants who owned 14 per cent of the land; and 24 per cent of rural households were tenant farmers, with 8 per cent of rural households being agricultural labourers. These figures provide only the most approximate of guides and there were, in any case, intense local variations. Tenancy was greater in the south than in the north of the country, and there were areas of the north where there were few, if any, landlords; and, where there were landlords, they were often absentee landlords (Esherick 1981).
In Mao's view, the peasantry had the majority and the potential to make the revolution, but it would still be led by the proletariat – not only because the proletariat too were oppressed by capitalism, but also because they were politically organized through the CCP, and represented the most advanced and productive force politically, combined with the fact that many of those now in the proletariat were displaced peasants. This last notion was part of the key to the second radically different element in Mao's approach to class analysis. From the 1920s on, he argued that an individual's objective socio-economic class nature could be modified through changed consciousness arising from a learning experience, usually ideological education and training or participation in revolutionary struggle (Schram 1981: 409). Mao was not so much arguing that peasants could become workers (though this type of thinking about class transformation did at times also become manifest), but rather that the peasantry could assume the political attitudes, and potential for revolution, of the proletariat.
Mao's interpretation of class, then, from an early stage in the development of the Chinese Communist Revolution, combined both objective socio-economic conditions and the possibility of these being restructured through conscious actions. At the same time it was anything but a simple analysis based on a straightforward polarization. Mao always detailed the complexities of the social structure, not least in order to provide policy prescriptions and political direction. Class was always first and foremost a political tool, and not just a description of a perceived economic reality. In addition to poor peasants and rich landlords, there was a large range of other classes. He recognized that in urban areas there was a small but growing working class, as well as a class of local native entrepreneurs (as opposed to foreign entrepreneurs, who were also numerous) who might be regarded as a ‘national bourgeoisie’ in terms of their political support for change, at least in a nationalistic direction. In the rural areas, Mao saw that in between the landed local elite and the poor peasantry there were several categories of relative wealth, landowning or landlessness, power and influence, all of which could, under the appropriate circumstances, be mobilized to revolutionary goals. In addition, a wide range of other social categories existed, each of which also had to be taken into account as the CCP developed its strategy in the field, and some of which might conceivably prove to have considerable revolutionary potential. These included artisans, street sellers, bureaucrats, monks, bandits, vagabonds and compradors in the service of foreign capital.
In crude terms, Mao's method was to target the rich and the powerful through the mobilization, and with the support of the poor and powerless, but without alienating the slightly less rich and powerful whose support was also necessary to sustain economic development. This was an iterative process so that the targets of particular campaigns were not only always changing but were also sometimes those who had benefited in earlier campaigns. To achieve success under these circumstances required a fine appreciation of both socio-economic and political distinctions, as well as a high degree of organization and a well-trained cadre force.
By 1934 the CCP was facing annihilation. Various attempts to foment urban revolution had failed. Those who had championed rural mobilization had established rural soviet areas, of which the most famous was the Jiangxi Soviet (in Southeast China) where Mao Zedong (and others) were based. But by 1934 it was under threat from the forces of Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party Government. It was abandoned and the CCP set out on what became the Long March, heading first to West China and then eventually managing to re-establish itself in Yan'an in North China. Along the way, in January 1935, the CCP turned to Mao Zedong, his analysis of the Chinese revolution and a strategy for change based on peasant mobilization.
Japan's invasion in 1937 provided the opportunity for Mao's approach to class and class mobilization to be put into operation on a far larger scale than had previously been the case, as CCP areas of resistance and influence expanded. In the process it enabled the CCP to increase its extractive capacity – money and food from the rich, soldiers from the peasantry. Policies and programmes were developed in the effective CCP capital of Yan'an and then disseminated to other CCP-governed areas, especially those in North China. By 1945 and Japan's defeat, the CCP was in control of a substantial portion of North China and well placed to challenge the Nationalist Party for control of China, which was subsequently resolved in their favour through the 1946–9 Civil War.
This ultimate success meant that Mao and his ideas achieved a considerable and almost unassailable authority within the CCP. It also meant that the CCP's descriptors of class not only became extremely refined but were ready to be fully implemented when the PRC was established in 1949. On the eve of the declaration of the PRC (June 1949) Mao Zedong had, in general terms, described the new Chinese state that was about to come into existence as ‘a people's democratic dictatorship’ led by four classes: the workers, the peasants, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. Political leadership would go to the workers, with the support of the peasants. The petty bourgeoisie were a kind of service class; while the national bourgeoisie (local native entrepreneurs as opposed to foreign entrepreneurs) were allowed to be part of ‘the people’ but were warned that, because they remained exploiters, they could, if their behaviour warranted it, find themselves redefined as enemies of the state (Mao 1949).
Starting in 1950 and over a period of essentially three years, every citizen was assigned a class descriptor that appeared on their household registration documents. These descriptors were from a fairly detailed schedule (Oksenberg 1974; White 1976: 2), which Mao Zedong had played a leading role in preparing (Schram 1984: 52). Some of the sixty-two class descriptors are detailed in table 1.1 (Kraus 1981: 185). Regulations assigned two class labels to each individual: class origin (jieji chengfen阶级成分) and class background (jiating chushen家庭出身). Class origin was determined by a person's activities during 1946–9; class background by the father's activities when the individual in question was born. As is readily observable, these class descriptors exemplified the dual perspectives that had driven Mao's understanding of class for many years: socio-economic position and political attitudes as implied by behaviour.
Table 1.1 PRC Class Descriptors, 1950
A. Non-economic class designationsRevolutionary cadreRevolutionary soldierDependent of revolutionary martyrMilitary officer for an illegitimate authorityB. Urban class designationsWorkerEnterprise workerTransport workerHandicraft workerSailorPedicab workerIdlerPetty bourgeois Urban pauperPeddlerSmall shop-ownerSmall factory-ownerOffice employeeLiberal professionalCapitalist Commercial capitalistIndustrial capitalistComprador capitalistC. Rural class designationsHired agricultural labourerPoor peasantMiddle peasant Old middle peasantNew middle peasantwell-to-do middle peasantRich peasantSmall land lessorLandlord Enlightened landlordOverseas Chinese landlordLandlord who is concurrently an industrialist or a merchantSub-landlordHidden landlordBankrupt landlordDespotic landlordThe original intention was that class origin and class background should be kept quite separate but in the event differences started to blur, especially as individuals began to realize the implications of registering under one class or another. The CCP apparently also originally intended that once the new classifications had been used to establish social control and socialize property relations, they might die away and certainly not be inherited. In the event, it rapidly became clear that class background as identified at this time was to become the main determinant of every aspect of an individual's and their family's life chances. Access to education, careers and marriage partners was determined to a large extent by these class descriptors. In particular, those from the ‘red’ class backgrounds, people who had fought or died on the CCP side in the revolution, or who were from worker or poor peasant backgrounds, were highly favoured, while those from the ‘black’ class backgrounds associated with the rich or resistance to the CCP were discriminated against, and often scapegoated in later political campaigns (Kraus 1981). Without a doubt, the application of class descriptors in the early 1950s provided every Chinese citizen with a new and coherent understanding of politics that lasted for decades (Unger 1984: 130). Although ‘bad’ class labels were removed from personal records early in the reform era (January 1979) and all class descriptors increasingly slipped from use, they were still required on applications to enter higher education, public service or the CCP. In 1984, a new national standard system for identifying class background based on these same class descriptors – Regulation GB 4765-84 – was developed and remained operational until 2004.
In the short term, classification was an essential part of the process by which the CCP established social order with the establishment of the new regime. It was followed remarkably quickly by the socialization of the means of production. In rural China, land reform was followed by campaigns to bring the peasantry first into lower-stage cooperatives, and then higher-stage collectives, a process completed by the end of 1956. In urban areas, also by the end of 1956, most enterprises had been brought under state control.
Land reform was designed less to redistribute wealth than to eradicate the power and influence of the local ruling class and to establish the new regime's structures of social control. Certainly there was land redistribution. Landlordism and landlessness were both abolished. The poorest 20 per cent of the rural population doubled their Republican-era income, and two thirds of the peasantry became middle peasants (Selden 1988: 9). At the same time, politics dominated these acts. More land was redistributed (700 million mu亩) than had been owned by landlords (Esherick 1981); and land reform was itself a political performance. Work teams organized villagers to attend struggle meetings to denounce the local landlord or landlords. Landlords had to be found by the Party-state even where the pattern of landholding might be otherwise, with cadres often being allocated quotas to identify local ‘landlords’ (Huang 1995: 105).
The urban environment was politically and organizationally complex in 1949, not least because much of the economy in the coastal provinces had been dominated by foreign investment and involvement. The Party-state developed its reach into enterprises in a two-pronged offensive, empowering workers under CCP leadership at factory level, and bringing factory owners and entrepreneurs under closer control through national political campaigns, in which it appealed to the patriotism of the capitalist class on the one hand and was prepared to use more force on the other (Andreas 2012: 108). At first, the Party-state worked in cooperation with private owners to establish economic stability but, starting in 1952, the urban equivalent of land reform known as the ‘Five Anti’ Campaign (against bribery, tax evasion, fraud, theft of government property and the stealing of state secrets) led to struggle sessions, confessions of economic crimes and ultimately the collectivization of businesses. By the end of 1956, almost the entire urban population was assigned to a state-regulated work-unit (danwei单位) so that housing, welfare (including education for children) and security were provided at the point of employment. By this stage, almost all economic activities were either under direct or indirect state control as (respectively) state-owned enterprises or collectives, and from 1955 on there was a wage system for state staff and workers with twenty-six grades of officials, seventeen grades of technician and eight grades of workers (Korzec and Whyte 1981).
The Bourgeoisie within the Party
Success in implementing the socialization of both industry and agriculture left the CCP willing to accept by the end of 1956 that class conflict might have been largely resolved in China. Since there no longer was private property, it was reasonable to assume that the principal contradiction (between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat) had been resolved and that class conflict would be no more. In a report to the Eighth CCP Congress in September 1956, Deng Xiaoping (then General-Secretary of the CCP) hailed the homogenization of a single working class that united everyone. (Deng 1956: 213–14).
The optimism expressed by the CCP's leaders, including Mao Zedong, especially over the end of social contradictions and class conflict, was to prove short-lived. Mao's appeal to the professional middle classes – scientists, technicians and intellectuals – who would be necessary to the next stages of the PRC's development to (constructively) criticize the work of the government and the Party, now that the future of socialism in China had been ensured, backfired dramatically. Although he first suggested that it would be possible to ‘Let a hundred schools of thought contend, a hundred flowers bloom,’ reactions from other CCP leaders, critics of the CCP and the Party-state, and Mao's subsequent reaction to the critics, radicalized Mao and his interpretation of class under socialism. After the professional middle classes expressed their (to him, hyper) critical views of the Communist Party-state, he announced that ‘Class struggle is by no means over … The proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook, and so does the bourgeoisie. In this respect, the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, is not really settled’ (Mao 1957a: 385).
