Showing papers in "China Journal in 2002"
TL;DR: Li et al. as discussed by the authors showed that the initial land allocations to families were typically based on household size, household labour supply, or both, and the central government's policy was that these allocations were supposed to be for 15 years.
Abstract: China's rural economic reforms radically altered land tenure in rural China. With the granting of land use rights and residual income rights to farming households between 1979 and 1983, agriculture shifted from a collective-based to a familybased system. Land was not privatized, however. Ownership remained "collective", with local officials, typically at the village level, exercising a major influence over the allocation of land and the way households could use land. The initial land allocations to families were typically based on household size, household labour supply, or both. The central government's policy was that these allocations were supposed to be for 15 years. In some villages, land use contracts have been respected; in other villages, however, local leaders have periodically redistributed land among households and have intervened throughout the reform period to determine how farmers are able to use the land. The initial reforms triggered an unprecedented acceleration of agricultural growth in China. From 1979 to 1984, the gross value of agricultural output increased in real terms at an annual rate of 7.6 per cent, and grain production rose by 4.9 per cent annually.' Empirical studies attribute a significant part of this increase to enhanced incentives, as farmers were able to keep the output and
287Â citations
TL;DR: Why certain villages have adopted this arrangement and others have not, and which factors village officials take into account when deciding whether to use public funding or, alternatively, to leave it up to community institutions to raise funds for public services are examined.
Abstract: In a significant number of Chinese villages, officials rely on community institutions such as temple and lineage groups to fund and manage public services. This phenomenon is fairly widespread, as I discovered during six months of fieldwork in Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan and Zhejiang provinces between 1999 and 2001,' yet it has rarely been described or analysed. Preliminary results from a separate survey of 316 villages that I conducted in 2001 in Shanxi, Hebei, Jiangxi and Fujian indicated that lineage or religious organizations in 54 of these villages-that is, in 17 per cent of the villages-have organized public projects. Sixty-two villages reported that at least one public project in the past five years had not been organized by village officials. This paper will examine why certain villages have adopted this arrangement and others have not, and which factors village officials take into account when deciding whether to use public funding or, alternatively, to leave it up to community institutions to raise funds for public services. Four case studies of villages in Fujian and Jiangxi are used to illustrate the various strategies that officials adopt.
144Â citations
TL;DR: O'Brien et al. as mentioned in this paper presented an earlier version of this paper which was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Chicago on 23 March 2001 and was supported by fellowships from the Committee for Scholarly Communication with China and the National Security Education Program.
Abstract: I would like to thank Kevin O'Brien, Hong Yung Lee, David Wank, Ben Goldfrank, Laura Henry, Loren Landau, Kun-Chin Lin and Ben Read for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I also am grateful for the very helpful criticisms and suggestions offered by Jon Unger, Anita Chan and an anonymous reviewer. Of course, any mistakes herein are mine alone. I owe special thanks to the people in Yantai who facilitated my research. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Chicago on 23 March 2001. Research for this article was supported by fellowships from the Committee for Scholarly Communication with China and the National Security Education Program.
98Â citations
TL;DR: For example, this article pointed out that China's social problems seem to come as much from the failure to establish a viable capitalist social order as from the success in introducing a capitalist free market.
Abstract: Since the start of the reform era in the late 1970s, China has seen the gradual but unmistakable emergence of a host of phenomena that mark a capitalist society: the commodification of labour, privatization of the means of production, the rise of an entrepreneurial class, and so on. These social and economic changes have hastened the collapse of the "communist" moral order of the Maoist era and with it the personality structure that was an integral part of that order. Quite alarmingly, two decades have passed and no new moral order has arisen to fill the gap left by the demise of the old order. Especially conspicuous is the almost total lack of a new type of person whose values and motivations can help sustain China's emerging capitalist society as the Maoist type of person did the old "communist" order. It is of course debatable whether the introduction of a capitalist market economy in China is a good thing, but there is no denying that the advent of the free market without the simultaneous emergence of a sustaining moral order is a recipe for social problems of gigantic proportions. Nothing better represents such problems than the sheer scale of corruption and the ineffectiveness of all measures to keep it in check. Whatever the intrinsic flaws of capitalism as a social system, China's social problems seem to come as much from the failure to establish a viable capitalist social order as from the success in introducing a capitalist free market.
90Â citations
TL;DR: Peasants Without the Party: Grass-roots Movements in Twentieth-Century China, by Lucien Bianco as discussed by the authors, and Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Abstract: Peasants Without the Party: Grass-roots Movements in Twentieth-Century China, by Lucien Bianco. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2001. xxvii + 309 pp. US$64.95 (hardcover), US$26.95 (paperback). Model Rebels: The Rise and Fall of China's Richest Village, by Bruce Gilley. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. xvi + 219 pp. US$15.95 (paperback). Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China, by Elizabeth J. Perry. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2001. xxxii + 341 pp. US$27.95 (paperback).
50Â citations
TL;DR: A highly critical report was jointly submitted to the United Nations in 1998 by the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet the Womens Commission for Refugee Women and Children an the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The conflict over the political status of Tibet has damaged Chinas relations with the West. Serious accusations have been made about human rights abuses and religious persecution. One of the most consistent of the charges has been that the Chinese government practices coercive family planning in Tibet by imposing strict birth limits and forcing women to undergo abortions and sterilizations. A highly critical report was jointly submitted to the United Nations in 1998 by the International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet the Womens Commission for Refugee Women and Children an the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy. Based mainly on refugee accounts it paints a horrific picture of repressive birth control in Tibet including forced abortions sterilizations and huge fines and penalties. An example of the many charges is: The Mission interviewed a male health worker who had fled Chushul in 1997. He described policies that included the summoning of women between the ages of 15 and 49 for sterilization. He reports that in October 1994 every woman who had already had two children was summoned for sterilization (about 300) but due to lack of personnel only 84 could be sterilized at that time. A woman who disobeyed the summons was subject to a fine. For office workers the fine was deducted from the paychecks. Farm women who could not pay lost their land. These charges are vigorously denied by the Chinese government and Chinese researchers. Are such reports then accurate depictions of life in contemporary Tibet? Is the Chinese government really forcing Tibetans to undergo unwanted abortions and sterilizations to achieve state-set birth limits and if not what is the reproductive life to Tibetan villagers really like? We designed and conducted a study to fill this gap in knowledge by examining reproduction child mortality and contraception on site among a large sample of women living in diverse areas of Tibet. (excerpt)
36Â citations
TL;DR: The increasing importance of intimacy in courtship is a major finding of recent research on changing patterns of rural courtship in northeast China as discussed by the authors, confirming a continuation of the trends generalized by Parish and Whyte in their 1978 study in rural southern China particularly the shift from arranged marriages to free choice.
Abstract: The increasing importance of intimacy in courtship is a major finding of my recent research on changing patterns of rural courtship in northeast China. While confirming a continuation of the trends generalized by Parish and Whyte in their 1978 study in rural southern China particularly the shift from arranged marriages to free choice my study reveals some important developments in the direction of intimacy emotionality and individuality that set the present apart from the patterns found in the 1970s. Since the early 1980s fiances have been able to explore new ways of emotional expression to cultivate intense attachments to one another and increasingly to engage in premarital sex. The focus of change has shifted in short from the young peoples pursuit of greater autonomy during the 1950s and 1970s to this new generations experience during the 1980s and 1990s of love and intimacy which in turn has profoundly influenced the rise of individuality among rural youth. In the following pages I will briefly introduce the field site and the changing patterns of spouse selection and courtship from 1949 to 1999. Next I will examine the increasing availability of social space over the past five decades and will explore three aspects of the newly developed intimacy in courtship: the emphasis on emotional expressivity and communicational skills new images of an ideal spouse and the phenomenon of post-engagement dating that involves premarital sex in many cases. I conclude the article with a discussion of the implications of the increasing intimacy in courtship. (excerpt)
33Â citations
TL;DR: The evolution of Taiwan's class structure over the past half century has never been fully explored as mentioned in this paper, and a few Taiwanese sociologists, using a status attainment model, have found that socioeconomic status is highly correlated with educational attainment and occupational status.
Abstract: The evolution of Taiwan's class structure over the past half century has never been fully explored. A few Taiwanese sociologists, using a status attainment model,' have found that socio-economic status is highly correlated with educational attainment and occupational status.2 They have also found that the class structure is ethnically skewed, with mainlanders occupying a higher socioeconomic status than native Taiwanese.3 Mainlanders domiante the bureaucratic elite while native Taiwanese have been highly successful in establishing small and medium-sized manufacturing businesses. Models of social mobility only describe recent patterns and do not reveal the initial circumstances of groups in
19Â citations
15Â citations
TL;DR: For instance, this article pointed out that "increasingly intense discussion about international relations has been taking place among Chinese scholars and those beyond Chinese borders, particularly with the rise in China's power over the past decade."
Abstract: International Relations (IR) first emerged as an autonomous academic discipline in the PRC in the early 1980s. Over the past two decades, it has grown, in spite of severe political inhibitions and ideological constraints, into a vigorous field. China can now boast one of the largest IR epistemic communities in the world in terms of numbers of students, faculties, research centres, policy analysts and practitioners. Increasingly intense discussion about international relations has been taking place among Chinese scholars and those beyond Chinese borders, particularly with the rise in China's power over the past decade.'
13Â citations
TL;DR: Lee and Feng as discussed by the authors argued that population growth in early modern England was controlled by preventive checks rather than positive ones, since the English neither married universally nor as young as possible, but exercised "moral restraint".
Abstract: One Quarter of Humanity, by James Lee and Wang Feng, is an important work that challenges common views about China's population growth over the last 300 years. Thomas Robert Malthus, in his 1798 polemic An Essay on the Principle of Population, argued that where the resources needed to sustain life are plentiful, population tends to grow exponentially; but where the means of subsistence are limited, population growth will necessarily be curtailed by either of two principal mechanisms: the "positive check" of increased mortality or the "preventive check" of lower fertility. Shortly thereafter the first English census was taken, allowing Malthus to check and refine his theory against empirical data. He became convinced that population growth in early modern England was controlled by preventive checks rather than positive ones, since the English neither married universally nor as young as possible, but exercised "moral restraint". This restraint lowered fertility and suppressed population growth below the absolute maximum that the available means of subsistence could support. This pattern, he argued, was distinctive of England and other Western countries; population growth in the rest of the world, he reasoned, was affected predominantly by positive checks, and life there was more miserable as a result. China, he considered, was "more populous, in proportion to its means of subsistence, than any other country in the world".'