Residency, Class, and Community in the Contemporary Chinese City [1 ed.] 9789004392335, 9789004392328

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Residency, Class, and Community in the Contemporary Chinese City

Rethinking Socialism and Reform in China Series Editors Huaiyin Li (University of Texas, Austin) Chongqing Wu (Sun Yat-sen University) Editorial Board Joel Andreas ( Johns Hopkins University) Xiaoping Cong (University of Houston) Alexander Day (Occidental College) Brian DeMare (Tulane University) Han Xiaorong (Lingnan University) William Hurst (Northwestern University) Li Fangchun (Chongqing University) Jack Qiu (Chinese University of Hong Kong) Yafeng Xia (Long Island University) Yan Hairong (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) Yan Xiaojun (University of Hong Kong)

VOLUME 3

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/rsrc

Residency, Class, and Community in the Contemporary Chinese City Edited by

William Hurst

LEIDEN | BOSTON

This book is a result of the cooperation between Open Times Press and Koninklijke Brill NV. These articles were selected and translated into English from Open Times (Kaifang shidai 开放时代), an academic journal in Chinese. LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2018047365

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2468-3035 isbn 978-90-04-39232-8 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-39233-5 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Series Foreword vii List of Contributors x 1 Introduction: Time to Rethink Key Concepts in Urban Chinese Politics and Society? 1 William Hurst 2 The Stratification of Urban Residential Space and Community Interaction: The Case of Dongshan New Town in Nanjing 5 Li Yuanxing and Chen Junfeng Translated by Matthew A. Hale 3 Changes in Assets Held by the Middle Class during Social Transition: An Analysis Based on Surveys of Urban Residents in the Pearl River Delta from 1986 to 2004 26 Liu Yi Translated by Roderick Graham Flagg 4 The Age of Individualization: Chinese Paradox and Resolution – The Experience of One Metropolis 39 Xiong Wansheng, Li Kuan, and Dai Chunqing Translated by Roderick Graham Flagg 5 Community Economic Structure and the Social Capital of the Individual: Examples among Poor Residents in Guangzhou and Lanzhou 64 Liang Ningxin Translated by Roderick Graham Flagg 6 From Social Capital to Guanxi: A Study of Small and Medium Enterprise Growth in China 85 Zhai Xuewei Translated by Matthew A. Hale 7 Politics in Residence: An Empirical Study of Owners’ Rights Defense and Community Construction in B City 104 Guo Yuhua and Shen Yuan Translated by Zhao Rui

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8 The “Interstitial Production” of Civil Society: Lawsuits Involving “Neighborhood Agency Rights” in Nanyuan 140 Huang Xiaoxing Translated by Matthew A. Hale and Shayan Momin Index of Authors 167 Index of Subjects 168

Series Foreword The history of the People’s Republic of China since its founding in 1949 can be roughly divided into two halves. The first three decades witnessed the country’s transition to, and experiment of, socialism under Mao through collectivization in agriculture, nationalization of industry and commerce, and the creation of a planned economy, and through successive political movements that surged in the Anti-Rightist campaign in 1957, the Socialist Education in the early 1960s, and the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. Since Deng Xiaoping established himself as the paramount leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) around 1980, China has undergone waves of economic reforms, ranging from implementing the Household Responsibility System in agriculture to establishing Special Economic Zones, encouraging direct foreign investments and joint ventures, devolving economic planning power to local authorities and enterprises, experimenting various reforms to incentivize the management of state-owned enterprises (SOE), and finally corporatizing and privatizing the SOEs in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Politically, the reform era also saw significant changes in the inner workings of the party-state, most significantly the introduction of collective leadership and fixed tenure of top leaders, and the establishment of a legal system to accommodate the increasingly sophisticated economy and society, while the CCP strived to retain control of the entire political system. Chinese intellectuals’ reflections on the history and legacies of the Maoist era and their reactions to post-Mao reforms varied over time. In the 1980s, a “reform consensus” (gaige gongshi 改革共识) prevailed among them as well as the general public, who, having witnessed years of chaos and stagnation in the standard of living under Maoism, generally embraced the new economic policies that promised to deliver prosperity; they also welcomed the innovative measures in social, cultural, and political lives that allowed room for personal choice, despite the party-state’s firm rejection to any attempt at further liberalization that would undermine its legitimacy and viability. This consensus, however, soon gave way to a profound divide among the intellectuals in the 1990s and thereafter, as the reforms caused a myriad of problems, most strikingly the massive unemployment of SOE workers, polarization in wealth distribution, widening of regional gaps in development, and rampant corruption of government officials at all levels. Instead of a “complete refutation” (quanmian fouding 全面否定) of the Cultural Revolution or any of the Maoist legacies associated with it, once the precondition for legitimating the reform initiatives

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in the 1980s, the so-called “New Lefts” (xin zuopai 新左派) among the intellectuals, committed to social justice and equity, often turned to the Mao era for inspiration in seeking solutions to the challenges that confronted the nation. In sharp contrast, liberal intellectuals called for further steps in privatizing the SOEs, integrating Chinese economy with the global market, establishing the rule of law, and making the decision-making process transparent and democratic as the true solutions to building a sustainable economy and sound political system. The result was a juxtaposition of Maoist socialism and post-Mao reform in the writings of the politically divided intellectuals, who either called for further steps of liberalization by rewriting the history of Maoist China in a completely dismissive tone or highlighted the downside and failures of the reforms by eulogizing the institutions and experiments of the Mao era. Not all scholars in contemporary China, however, were convinced by the New Lefts’ or liberals’ thinking and readily took sides with either of them. Having lost interest in the ideologically driven writings on post-1949 China, the most innovative researchers in humanities and social sciences made efforts to rediscover the history of socialism and reform in China by shifting attention from macro political or economic systems to the operational realities of such systems at the micro level and investigating the everyday experiences of ordinary Chinese people who lived through the decades of political movements and economic reforms. Their findings shed light on not only how the reforms have made China depart from the Maoist past but also profound continuity between the two eras that accounted for both the successes and setbacks in the nation’s quest for wealth and power. Open Times (kaifang shidai 开放时代), an academic journal based in Guangzhou of southern China, plays a prominent role in this collective endeavor, by organizing thematic discussions on a wide array of topics spanning from the communist revolution before 1949 to the twenty-first century. The journal’s commitment to “bridging the divide” ( fenlie de mihe 分裂的弥合) among the intellectuals, its openness to different and contrasting opinions, its boldness in exploring sensitive and controversial issues in the history of socialism and reform, and its adherence to empirical strength and academic rigor in making arguments, have made Open Times the most popular venue for scholars in different fields to share their findings with the public. This series, a collaboration between Open Times and Brill, puts together the best articles, in English translation, that have been published by the journal since 2003. Beginning in 2016, the series plans to publish two thematic volumes per year. The first two volumes are entitled “Mapping China: Peasants, Migrant Workers and Informal

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Labor” and “Media China.” The ensuing volumes will cover the Communist revolution and land reform, state control and mobilization in the 1950s, power relations in industrial enterprises and agricultural collectives in the Mao era, economic reform and social change, everyday governance and resistance, geopolitics and diplomacy, ethnicity and identity, women and gender, the Internet and mass media, cultural tradition and modernization, among other topics. Li Huaiyin 李怀印 Wu Chongqing 吴重庆 Series Co-editors April 19, 2016

Contributors Chen Junfeng is Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences of Anhui University, master’s tutor. Dr. Chen received his doctoral degree in Sociology from Nanjing University, and has been doing research in urban sociology and residential sociology. He has presided over 11 national, provincial and ministerial research projects, published more than 40 academic papers and 1 academic monograph. Dai Chunqing has received her master’s degree from the School of Social and Public Administration, East China University of Science and Technology. Now she works in Jiaxing Media Group, Zhejiang province, China. Her published research includes articles in Open Times, China Research, and many other Chineselanguage journals. Guo Yuhua is a Professor of Social Anthropology at Tsinghua University, China. Her main research interests include social anthropology, rural social research, and oral history, especially on the relationship between the state and society, protecting rights of peasant workers, and social justice in the process of China’s social transformation. She has published academic works such as Puzzled by Death and Stick to Life: Chinese Folk Funeral Ritual and Idea of Life(1992), Hearkening to the Voice of the Subaltern: How Do We Narrate the Suffering (2011), The Narration of the Peasant: How Can “Suffering” Become History?(2013); and many papers including “Life Circle and Social Security: A Sociological Probe into the Life Course of Workers Out of Work,” “Psychological Collectivization: Cooperative Transformation of Agriculture in Ji Village, Northern Shaanxi, as in the Memory of the Women,” and “Digital Divide and Social Cleavage: Case Studies of ICT Usage among Peasants in Contemporary China,” in The China Quarterly 207, September 2011 (have been awarded the 2011 Gordon White Prize). Huang Xiaoxing is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Work at Sun Yat-sen University, China. He is the author of Community Process and Dilemma of Governance (2016), and has published four papers on Sociological Studies. Dr. Huang has won the first prize of The Outstanding Achievement Award of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Guangdong in 2013. His research interests are community studies, urban studies, and governance.

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William Hurst is associate professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. His research has focused on the politics of law and legal institutions, social protest and contentious politics, political economy, labor politics, and local governance in both urban and rural China and Indonesia. He is the author of The Chinese Worker after Socialism (Cambridge 2009) and Ruling Before the Law: the Politics of Legal Regimes in China and Indonesia (Cambridge 2018). His current and ongoing research examines the politics of land across Mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Li Kuan is an Assistant Professor at Shanghai Administration Institute. He is also a Researcher at the China Urban and Rural Development Research Center and works with the School of Social and Public Administration at East China University Science and Technology part-time as an honorary position. His main research areas are the rural sociology and social governance. His published research includes articles in China Research, Open Times, and many other Chinese-language journals. Li Yuanxing is a Professor at the School of Sociology and Psychology, Central University of Finance and Economics, China. His main research fields are urban and rural community research and rural organization research. First, around the main line of social structure changes in China, his study method of typology is used to systematically comb the historical changes and realistic patterns of urban and rural society in China, and to construct the framework of typology of contemporary China’s urban and rural society; secondly, from the state and social relations, combs the transformation path of China’s governance foundation after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and puts forward the theory of basic transformation of China’s governance and the construction of the framework of urban and rural governance in contemporary China with the theory of governance. Liang Ningxin is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Guangzhou Development, Guangzhou University, China. He received his doctoral degree in Sociology from Sun Yat-sen University. He is particularly interested in Social Inequality and its connections with China’s Transformation, and focusing on social organization and social policy. He has published over 12 peer-reviewed papers, 9 book chapters and 1 book on community development and poverty alleviation in urban

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China. He is also committed to provide researching and consulting services to the government including Guangdong Provincial Government, Guangzhou Municipal and the other local government. Liu Yi is a Professor at the International Economic Institute, Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, and Guest Professor in the Institute for Social and Cultural Research, Macau University of Science and Technology. Dr. Liu’s research areas are population economics, labor economics, and distribution of income He has published many academic papers including: “Index Definition and Empirical Study on Middle Class” (2006), “Changes and Characteristics in Consumption of Middle Class” (2008), “Increasing the Consumption by the Population Growth?” (2009), “Employment Opportunities in Towns under Separation Between Township and Countryside with Multiple Residential Registrations” (2012), “Change and Decomposition of Gini Coefficient of Consumption of Urban Residents” (2013), “Development Vision and Path Choice of Pearl River and Xijiang River Economic Belt” (2017). Shen Yuan is a Professor of Sociology at both Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University. His main research fields include Labor, Economic Life, and Communities. He is the author of Market, State and Society (2007), Chief Editor of Social Transformation and the New Generation of Migrant Workers (2012), Co-author of Community Governance: PTM Model (2017), and the writer of many articles. Xiong Wansheng is Professor at the School of Social and Public Administration, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai. He is also the Director of the China Urban and Rural Development Research Center. His main research areas are the transformation of rural society, and the relationship between Chinese culture and social theory. He has published two books, The Prospects of Farmers’ Cooperation, and The System: A Structural Explanation of the Order of China’s Grain Market. His published research includes articles in Open Times, Sociological Research, Social Science, and many other Chinese-language journals. Zhai Xuewei is a distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at Nanjing University. Dr. Zhai has received the title of Changjiang (the Yangtze River) Scholar issued by the Ministry of Education of China. He got his master’s degree in Sociology from Nankai University in 1988 and received his doctoral

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degree in History in 2002. His research focuses on the Chinese Behavior Patterns and Chinese society. He has published a collection of Selected Works of Zhai Xuewei, including The Principles of Chinese Guanxi (2011), Face, Favor and Reproduction of Power (second edition 2013), Perspectives on Chinese Face: the Formalism of the Psychological Motives and Social Representation (2011), The Chinese Representation in Everyday Life: A Sociological Study of Face and Favor (2016), etc. He has published more than 50 papers in key academic journals in China and abroad.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Time to Rethink Key Concepts in Urban Chinese Politics and Society? William Hurst At least since the founding of the People’s Republic, urban China has been governed by two overarching concepts and systems: hukou (户口) and danwei (单位). The hukou system (also called the “household registration system”), somewhat analogous to the USSR’s system of internal passports, facilitated state control over where urbanites lived and indeed who could reside in cities at all. The danwei (or “work unit”) system further tied urban workers to their places of employment, creating a cellular network of miniature societies geared toward both welfare provision and social control. Added to these was a strong atmosphere of class struggle (阶级斗争) throughout the Maoist period (1949–c.1979). Taken together, these three bulwarks of Chinese urban politics and society proved remarkably resilient and effective through several decades of extreme disruption and change. Since the dawn of reform around 1980, class struggle has taken a backseat, replaced by goals of social stability and economic development, in hopes of achieving a “basically prosperous society” (小康社会). These have endured as guiding principles, even as urban China has experienced new rounds of political repression and relaxation and various wrenching reforms to core economic and social structures, such as housing, healthcare, education, social welfare provision, and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). But the new ideology of market-based developmental authoritarianism, combined with structural change, weakened the older hukou and danwei frameworks. No longer could the state feel confident in its ability to monitor, provide for, and control all urban residents. Waves of migrants from the countryside flooded into cities, cellular structures of welfare provision and hierarchical authority atrophied, and inequality exploded. Something new was needed to protect the power of the Party-state and ensure urbanites’ basic wellbeing. In the meantime, the vast gulf between urban and rural livelihoods and lifestyles became increasingly intolerable to citizens and state alike. The answer has been to press three new agendas: “grid stability maintenance”, “unification of city and countryside” (城乡一体化), and the creation of new urban “communities” (社区). The grid stability maintenance system is

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intended to replace the social control functions of both the hukou and danwei systems, greatly enhancing micro-level surveillance, monitoring, and repression. The unification of city and countryside is meant to reduce urban-rural divides, provide higher incomes and better livelihoods for urbanized peasants, and reduce the salience of sharp cleavages of social class and income inequality. Urban communities, meanwhile, are to assume many of the social welfare (and some of the social control) functions previously performed by work units. They also have provided a significant share of re-employment opportunities for tens of millions of workers laid-off by SOEs between about 1995 and 2008. Urban Chinese politics and society thus look rather different in 2018 than they did in 1978. Not only are cities richer, more modern, more globalized, and significantly more unequal, they are governed by new principles and through new structures. The chapters in this volume address various aspects of this new urban China, centering on residency, community, class and stratification. As a group, they paint a picture of Chinese cities still very much in flux and unsettled, grappling with powerful legacies from the Maoist era (and even before), while at the same time aspiring to be global leaders in their infrastructure, technology, and cosmopolitanism. Each of the seven chapters, though, examines a specific set of issues and challenges in significant detail. Li Yuanxing and Chen Junfeng ask how urban residents have become stratified into new class relationships through new housing patterns in Nanjing. They find that with new forms of housing allocation and new types of housing available, new patterns of stratification and segmentation have appeared in the housing market and across urban society. As new districts became part of the city, life for their residents became more atomized and restricted, rather than more liberated and cosmopolitan. Rather, segregation of the new town’s residents by class produced a less integrated, more polarized and stratified, society. Liu Yi finds, based on a survey of urban residents in the Pearl River Delta, that members of China’s new middle class amassed increasing and increasingly diverse assets, especially in comparison with their proletarian counterparts, between 1986 and 2004. This somewhat unremarkable increase in inequality with market growth is made distinct, however, by the tendency of the new middle class to avoid investments into securities or stocks, sticking mostly with tangible assets and real estate instead. At least some of this trend appears to have been influenced by Chinese government policies and incentives, such that the new class dynamics of the market economy are emerging in idiosyncratically Chinese forms.

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Xiong Wansheng, Li Kuan, and Dai Chunqing examine patterns of economic and social interaction in ‘SH’ – a large metropolis in Eastern China. They find, based on a combination of interviews, historical analysis, and other methods, that individualization has combined with a lack of realization of individual autonomy in an apparent paradox. Chinese urbanites have sought to resolve this paradox, Xiong, Li and Dai contend, by engaging in a variety of “socialization” activities – notably mobilizing networks of weak ties (traditionally known as guanxi) to ward off anomie and embed their lives in a more meaningful social context. Liang Ningxin draws on William Julius Wilson’s ideas of stratification and social capital in urban America to argue that poor residents in Guangzhou and Lanzhou are limited by their class status in their formation and mobilization of social capital. Based on a 2004 survey in these two cities, Liang is able to show convincingly that proletarian class status places effective constraints on social contacts, integration, and mobility. Zhai Xuewei advances an intriguing and important conceptual analysis of social capital versus guanxi, drawing heavily on in-depth ethnographic field research. He argues, essentially, that while social capital can advance opportunity, guanxi is bound up with the articulation and reinforcement of power relations and hierarchies. While some opening of social capital was present in Chinese cities earlier in the Reform Era, guanxi has more recently returned to the fore in ways that have helped reinvigorate unequal relationships and the concentration of wealth, status, and power. Guo Yuhua and Shen Yuan examine patterns of housing and urban community transformation in “B City” to assess how new housing arrangements have adjusted power and status relations as manifested in the right of residency and, effectively, people’s right to the city. Crucially, the new urban community structure has engendered a new system of segmentation and exclusion when it comes to these basic rights, rendering Chinese cities transformed but in important respects no less inequitable than they had been in earlier periods. Finally, Huang Xiaoning looks carefully at the history of the Nanyuan neighborhood in “Z City” to show how changing patterns of state-society relations were manifested in a multi-stage series of disputes over property rights and development from the 1990s into the 2000s. These culminated with formal lawsuits that helped cement a community solidarity in what amounted to an incipient civil society in Nanyuan, one born of the necessity of collective advocacy for maintenance of a relatively more equitable status vis-à-vis the state’s exercise of power in support of general development goals. This process came to constitute a particular kind of “double-movement” that both drew upon and

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breathed new life into older social networks of resistance and contention in urban Chinese society. All together, we can thus observe a picture of Chinese cities that are changing in several important ways, yet retain key elements of distinct characters born of the legacy of the planned economy. The authors in this volume show us how class, residency, and community have been shaken to the core. But, more interestingly, what is taking shape on the other side of the transformation is not what classical theories of urbanization or market development, rooted as they have been mostly in European experiences, would predict. Rather, the role of the state remains central in creating incentives that promote particular kinds and patterns of investment, consumption, housing, social stratification and community mobilization. What remains to be seen, however, are the ways in which grid stability maintenance, unification of city and countryside, and new rounds of community reform will reorient any of the trajectories noted by the authors as of the mid-2010s. The roadmap given by this volume’s chapters will be invaluable for charting where things stood circa 2015, how those patterns and forms of urban life emerged and developed, and what future pathways are open or closed. While no good social science can be predictive in the strictest sense, the reader of this book should be equipped with as clear an understanding as possible of the choices faced today by the Chinese state and its urban citizenry and the implications of particular elections for China’s politics, economy, and society well into the 21st Century. What is absolutely certain is that the old concepts, tools, and perspectives we’d grown accustomed to using for analyzing urban China are of limited utility and the new ones suggested across the coming chapters offer very promising replacements indeed.

Chapter 2

The Stratification of Urban Residential Space and Community Interaction: The Case of Dongshan New Town in Nanjing Li Yuanxing and Chen Junfeng Translated by Matthew A. Hale Abstract In the process of urbanization, the stratification of residential space is a social and geographical phenomenon that is hard to avoid. What are the specific forms of residential stratification in China today? What kind of influences does such stratification have on community interaction and community development? How is residential space optimized? This article uses empirical research to flesh out and analyze these questions.

Keywords social stratification – urban residential space – community interaction

Current research on the stratification of urban residential space mainly focuses on urban residential patterns and the mechanisms of their formation in the process of urbanization, rather than analyzing how such stratification influences interaction among residents from a spatial perspective.* Treating “space-society” as a dialectical, integrated process, this study discusses the stratification of urban residential space in China today, exploring and analyzing its role in the interaction among residents of housing complexes. In order to better understand this phenomenon, this study undertook an investigation of the Dongshan New Town (东山新区) in Nanjing (南京). In 2001, Jiangning County (江宁县) became an urban district of Nanjing, with its county seat, Dongshan Township (东山镇), becoming a “New Town.” In September 2002, Jiangning District (江宁区) established an urban planning *  This article is the mid-term result of a Ministry of Education Planning [research] project (project authorization number 06JA840001).

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leadership team, which, together with planning units entrusted by Jiangning District’s Bureau of Planning (城市规划局), launched the planning work for Dongshan New Urban District. In July 2004, the 2003–2010 plans for Dongshan New Urban District were authorized by Nanjing’s Municipal Bureau of Planning and the Jiangning District Government, and in September 2004, they were designated as the plans for Dongshan New Town. In these plans, the area was expanded from that of Dongshan Township up to the Perimeter Expressway in the north, the East Ring Road in the east, the Second Ring Road in the south, and the western side of three hills, Jiangjun Hill (将军山), Cuiping Hill (翠屏山) and Hanfu Hill (韩府山) in the west. Dongshan New Town is one of the areas in Jiangning that is developing the most quickly and maturely, with the most potential for further development. Its housing industry has developed rapidly, with most of the real estate projects in Jiangning that are currently under construction or into which people have already moved concentrated in Dongshan, making it Jiangning’s residential center. No other area in Jiangning has such a high density of population, concentration of industry, development of space or maturity of residential forms, so Dongshan is significant as a typical case of new residential development. This study investigated 127 gated residential complexes, each over 10,000 square meters in area, classifying them according to four criteria: price (divided into average price per residential unit and the total price for the complex as a whole), type of residential complex (divided into commodity and noncommodity housing), facilities and services (volume of space, amount of greenery, facilities and level of property management, etc.), and the accessibility of natural resources (the compound’s degree of proximity to natural or developed hills and water resources). On the bases of these criteria, the complexes were classified into five grades: high-end, upper-middle, mid-range, lower-middle, and low-end. This study used a combination of stratified sampling and simple random sampling, first classifying the residential compounds into five grades, and then randomly selecting samples from each grade to determine the total samples for investigation. 242 valid questionnaires were returned during the process of investigation. 1

“Gated Communities” and the Enclosure of Residential Areas

There is still no clear definition of a “gated community.” Flanagan describes gated communities in American suburbs as a type of residential association with a gate separating the residential area from the road, limiting the number

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of people entering the area; walls or fences surrounding the area; and the employment of private security guards, security cameras, infrared detectors, etc.1 Applied to residential complexes in China, the concept of gated community is more flexible, its basic characteristics being enclosure and gates, the former referring to the use of natural or artificial barriers to surround the complex, and the latter referring to the use of gates and guards at the entrances to the complex.2 According to these criteria, what Flanagan describes is just a strict or high-end type of gated community. As expressed by the term “gated community,” it uses enclosure and gates to control the accessibility of the residential space and thus become an effective form of social exclusion.3 Most of the residential complexes in Dongshan New Town are gated communities. According to our classification of Dongshan’s residential compounds into five types, we used stratified sampling to selected six high-end compounds, ten upper-middle compounds, ten mid-range compounds, four lower-middle and five low-end compounds, totaling thirty-five. By observing the difficulty of entering or exiting these compounds,4 and through our interviews with guards at the gates and patrolling inside the compounds, we discovered clear differences in degree of accessibility among the residential compounds in Dongshan. Entrance guards are the most basic and direct means for controlling a residential compound. All the residential compounds in this study were equipped with entrance guards, the use of such guards having become a 1  W. Flanagan, Urban Sociology: Images and Structure, Allyn and Bacon (4th edition), 2000, p. 361. 2  Many high-end complexes of Dongshan New Town are equipped with modern security apparatuses, such as alarm system, patrol management system, closed circuit television monitoring system, which, according to Flanagan, also belong to the category of entrance guard. 3  Gated communities and community gates are two different concepts. Community gates are various security apparatuses used to protect homeowners in a housing complex. Actually nowadays, many housing complexes have various types of gates, such as the main entrances to the housing complex, the main entrance to each building, and anti-burglary gates to units, apartments becoming more like cages. All those security apparatuses are undoubtedly the reason for and also a mirror of the alienation between people. Focusing on the spatial differentiation between housing complexes of different grades, this essay does not address the entrance guard within housing complexes in detail. 4  We analyzed the degree of exclusiveness mainly based on our observations of outsiders’ ease of entering or exiting the complex. Through interviews with security guards, we discovered that most of them usually recognized the faces of most of the residents of the compound where they worked, so it is basically definite that those they interrogate are outsiders. Then, the entering and exiting of vehicles is not considered in this study, for it is not closely related to the subject.

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universal practice in Dongshan. This derives both from the security needs of the residents and from the demand for other functions, such as receiving and delivering parcels, conveying information and in some cases, managing the maintenance of facilities.5 In the process of research, we discovered that most of the lower-middle and low-end residential compounds had only one entrance guard working at a time, and most of these were older men who basically just sat in the guardhouses with a desultory attitude. In sharp contrast, the overwhelming majority of entrance guards in the compounds of the midrange grade or above were young men wearing uniforms and equipped with walkie-talkies, etc. Upper-middle grade and high-end compounds often had two entrance guards working at the same time, with one responsible for registering guests, etc., and the other standing sentry at the gate.6 Judging by the situation of housing in Dongshan, although there are significant differences in the form and function of gates among the compounds of different grades, more generally, gated communities have already replaced non-gated residential settlements and become mainstream.7 Gated communities strengthen internal cohesion by physically controlling the flow of people into the space through its enclosure, etc., while by the same token they increase the exclusion of outsiders, implicitly or explicitly treating them as unwelcome. Outsiders who approach a gated community are rigorously questioned regarding their identity, reason for coming and relationship to residents of the compound before they are told to register. There are significant differences in the ways in which the guards of compounds of different grades execute this function. Outsiders approaching high-end compounds must answer such questions and register, in some cases even have to confirm with the homeowner by telephone before a guest may enter. The guards of lowermiddle and low-end compounds, on the other hand, basically do not ask questions, and guests may enter freely. 5  This refers to the possibility of outsiders entering a certain housing complex with the goal of aimlessly walking around, in contrast with those outsiders who come to provide services for the homeowners, such as water delivery, movers, repairs or recycling. The movement of the latter into and out of a complex cannot reflect the complex’s degree of accessibility. 6  In Jiangning’s housing complexes ranked relatively high such as “China Family” and “Shanghai Pearl Gardens,” many interesting phenomena can be discovered from entrance guards. Externally one can observe that their uniforms, equipment and behavior all bear the traces of “militarization.” During the change of shifts, the two guards salute one another, directly indicating the higher status of the housing complex. 7  Prior to the 1990s, Jiangning (including all five of its sub-districts) had fewer gated communities, which were mainly dormitories for [state-owned enterprise work] units. And there were more loosely spread residential settlements or villages without walls.

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As for outsiders’ reasons for entering a compound, they may be roughly divided into “purposeful” and “non-purposeful,” the former mainly being relatives or friends of residents or people providing services for residents, and the latter having neither a relationship with residents nor a clear reason for entering the compound. Allowing such outsiders to enter may promote people’s understanding of the compound, fostering communication and interaction – an expression of the compound’s openness to the outside world. Our investigation revealed that high-end compounds basically did not allow such outsiders to enter, expressing a strong degree of isolation. This is demonstrated in the interviews transcribed below. Interviewee #1 (Entrance Guard for Chinese Home) The entrance guards at this compound are strict: normally people who come cannot just randomly enter, unless they are the relatives or friends of homeowners or people who have contacted the homeowner beforehand. Compounds like this – whether it’s the homeowners or us in property management – place a high value on security. If outsiders enter without permission, or if there’s some problem, it’s we who are held responsible. Interviewee #2 (Resident of Pacific Gardens) The entrance guards for high-end compounds are much stricter. Once a friend and I heard that Venice Impression on Baijia Lake was nice, so we planned to go take a look. At Shuixiuyuan Hotel there’s a gate but we weren’t stopped, but when we tried to go onto the island with Venice Impression, the guard wouldn’t let us – there was no room for negotiation. Since the guards of lower-middle and low-end compounds basically do not interrogate outsiders who enter the compounds, both purposeful and nonpurposeful visitors may enter the compounds rather freely. These two types of compound have a relatively high degree of openness to the outside world, although this openness is not chosen by the residents and even leads to many problems. Interviewee #3 (Resident of External Harbor New Village) The people in our compound are complicated, it’s like the street – there are all kinds of people here. The guards basically don’t stop them, and

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they couldn’t even if they wanted to. Inside the compound there’s food market, repair shops and snack stalls, so a lot of people come to buy food and get things repaired, and it’s hard for the guards to do anything about it – if they did, it would influence business and lead to conflicts. The system of security guard patrols is an important measure of property management adopted by many newly built commodity housing complexes in Dongshan New Town, constituting a new form of professionalized property management in Dongshan. Although such patrols are not as strict as the entrance guards’ control over the gates, it can be seen as a supplement and extension of the function of the entrance guards, since one of the duties of the patrolling guards is surveillance of outsiders after they enter the compound.8 Interviewee #4 (Security Guard for Bright Moon Harbor) A major reason that this company of ours (Bright Moon Property Management Company, Ltd.) is famous here in Nanjing is that we do a good job with patrolling. This compound is divided into several patrolling zones, each zone equipped with a card reader where the person on patrol has to swipe his card every half hour or so in order to prevent slacking off. For example, I’m responsible for patrolling Building #3. If I see any outsiders I’m not familiar with I go up and question them, and if they have no reason to be there or there are problems I ask them to leave. From the perspective of outsiders, it is perhaps better to understand how the excluded view patrolling. Interviewee #5 (Resident of Pacific Gardens) This March, I went to Ruijing Wenhua for fun, and I went over the hill to the north gate, which was still under construction, and there was no guard there, so I just walked in. Before long, a patrol guard ran over to me and asked what I was doing. I said I was just visiting for fun. He then asked which gate I had entered and whether I had registered. When he heard I had “snuck” in, he used his walkie-talkie to call over another guard, who 8  Many residential complexes in Jiangning have security patrol systems that monitor two types of outsiders. One is the interrogation of outsiders who enter the complex without permission. The other is monitoring outsiders who are allowed to enter by the entrance guards, who via the walkie-talkie system asked the security patrol to monitor secretly.

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escorted me to their office, scolded me and kicked me out. Of course, I can’t say they were wrong to do that, but I don’t think I did anything wrong either. I had just heard that it was pretty there so I went to take a look. Where’s the harm in that? As early as one century ago, Georg Simmel analyzed the social function of doors and gates. As he saw it, doors were living whereas walls were dead. Since doors can open, in comparison with immobile walls, closing doors gives people a stronger sense of closure or isolation, as if they were cut off from the entire outside world.9 In the same way, life on the practical level is always either inside or outside of a door, and using a door brings its segregated existence into the world – or brings the world into its segregated existence.10 As a boundary dividing human space, a door both separates and signifies a bond, not only excluding certain people but also linking together individuals’ different lifeworlds. By opening to other people, the door displays the bringing-together of certain groups and their distinction from others. Flanagan’s study discovered that most suburban residential areas in the US were gated communities, the result of different social strata’s struggles for space, and they had become garrison-like private residences that “walled off” the poor – except for those granted permission to enter.11 In suburbs like Jiangning, many upper-middle and high-end residential compounds provide living evidence of Flanagan’s theory, with one compound after another gradually become garrison-like “fortresses.” Flanagan also argues that the proliferation of gated communities “is not only a symbol of the failure of urban policy to create order, but also a symbol of the market’s failure to maintain a reasonable distribution of economic opportunities.” Flanagan calls these failures “systematic,” and the unequal life opportunities resulting from these failures are reflected in the different layouts of gated communities.12 Gated communities guarantee a high level of homogenization among neighbors, but they segregate people from different social strata into different compounds, further solidifying opposition between strata, and making the form of residential segregation even more pronounced.

9  Georg Simmel, Bridge and Door: Collected Essays by Georg Simmel (Shanghai: Sanlian, 1991), 4. 10  Georg Simmel, Fashionable Philosophy (Beijing: Culture and Arts Press, 2001), 223. 11  W. Flanagan, Urban Sociology, 361–362. 12  Ibid., p. 362.

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Public-Mindedness and the Spatial Segregation of Social Interaction

Residential complexes are the main venues of everyday life, constituting the basic space of social interaction. Here, people form relationships through various forms of interaction, the so-called “relationships of interaction.”13 Any actual relationship of interaction must depend on specific spaces in order to take place and develop. In this sense, the enclosure of residential compounds and the chopping-up of public space both directly influence the form and content of human interaction, restricting their public-mindedness. One inherent reason for the spatial differentiation and segregation of residential compounds is the need for defensive control over the space of interaction – a need already considered in the real estate developer’s process of developing products. Interviewee #6 (Department Manager of a Real Estate Company in Jiangning) An unwritten rule of real estate planning is that there are differences within a compound, but the lower quality units are located on relatively noisy corners closer to the road. They say that “planning is unplanned” – there’s no fairness to speak of. Jiangning is a suburb, after all, with a lot of new peasant apartment buildings [to which the state relocates peasants from their former houses as part of rural development policy], so real estate developers build their complexes as far away from the peasant apartment buildings as possible. If peasant apartment buildings are not far from the complex, everyone thinks that negatively effects how the products [i.e. housing units] are rated. If peasant apartment buildings are particularly close to a commodity housing complex, a high wall is erected to separate them. This is like the “dirty water theory”: no matter whether you pour a little dirty water into a bucket of clean water or pour clean water into a bucket of dirty water, the result is still a bucket of dirty water. This [commodity housing being located near peasant apartment buildings] has a negative effect on the maintenance and increase of the commodity housing’s value.

13  Wang Wuzhao, On Social Interaction (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2002), 117.

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Interviewee #7 (A Director of the Sales Department for Tiandi New Town) Peasant apartment buildings built by our company were located outside of [one of our other] complexes, separated by a wall. As far as I understand, not only our company but also other real estate companies usually separate the two as much as possible, and if they can’t separate them, they put all the peasant apartment buildings in a lower quality corner inside the [commodity] housing complex. In the eyes of the developers, peasants and people with low income and social status are regarded as “dirty water” that must be segregated from “clean water,” mainly by “building as far away from them as possible,” “building high walls,” “putting them in lower quality corners,” etc. Turning residential space into defensive “territorial” complexes through such methods of segregation is not only a stratified division of the concrete geographical space of residence (reflecting a combination of state policy and the developers’ strategies for maximizing profit), but also a control over different social groups’ access to space. Through such planning and segregation of residential space, including encroachment on and division of public space outside the housing complexes, the space of interaction is further partitioned, exacerbating the tendency toward enclosure of the space of interaction among residential complexes of different grades and social groups of different strata. Interviewee #8 (A Resident of Tiandi New Town) It’s not that I look down on peasants, but I’ve always had trouble talking to them; we don’t get along. And their quality really is rather low, spitting everywhere and littering, speaking roughly – who would be willing to live together with that sort of people? Besides, it would be impossible for the places where I live and work to coincide with theirs, so there are simply no opportunities for us to cross paths. Basically this complex consists of people like me. It would be hard for peasants to move in. We can’t even see each other, so how could we speak of interaction? Interviewee #9 (A Homeowner of Cuiping International’s Imperial View Tiancheng Complex) Nowadays the planning of residential complexes in Jiangning has a lot of problems. For example, it’s a problem to put bieshu (别墅) complexes [of luxurious free-standing houses] together with gongyu (公寓)

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complexes [of the more common type of apartment buildings], since the residents of each have different needs. The owners of bieshu houses are all people with cars who might place more value on peace and quiet, wanting a quiet, pleasant, safe, relatively secluded living environment free of disturbances, and they don’t want too much noise or movement of people inside the complex that would affect the quality of life. The owners of gongyu units prefer more interaction among neighbors. The partitioned space of interaction was already forged with great care in the process of developing these compounds, but this is often done by developers in response to homeowners’ defensive and reactive psychology about interaction, which indicates concern only about the extreme maintenance of their own space and their immediate environment – like the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude in the USA.14 This is a defensive relationship of interaction often expressed as collective individualism. The existence of the actual space of interaction is an important precondition for human interaction – although in fact, virtual interaction has also been stratified and communalized, as discussed below. Once the physical space of residence has been effectively “purified,” people’s space of interaction is limited and regulated. [Meaningful] interaction first requires actual “encounters,” but as the interviewee said, “We can’t even see each other,” so of course interaction cannot take place. Secondly, after the “encounter,” the two parties have to be able to communicate and “get along.” “Getting along” refers not only to talking but, more importantly, to communication with a certain depth. The main reason people can interact is that they “possess a common set of non-explicit background knowledge as indices for communication.”15 Jürgen Habermas calls this background knowledge a “life-world”: “Those who interact belong to a [shared] life-world, and a life-world is the background for participants’ process of understanding [one another].”16 In contemporary China, society is becoming more diverse by the day and showing signs of “fracture.” In suburban areas like Jiangning, there are a large number of disadvantaged groups such as landless peasants, the unemployed and the under-employed, and “fracturing” can be seen in its most concentrated and extreme form in such suburban areas. People from different social strata, having already become social elements accustomed to living in different eras, must coexist within the same time and space. Thus, the needs 14  Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity (Beijing: Social Science Documents Press, 2003), 71. 15  Yang Shanhua, Contemporary Western Social Theory (Beijing: Peking University Press, 1999), 183. 16  Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action (Chongqing: Chongqing Press, 1994), 371.

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of different social elements coexist at the same time, but these needs actually stem from different eras and contexts. In a fractured society, the differences between the needs of different parts of society sometimes fail to lead to mutual understanding.17 Once the “life-worlds” of different social strata become fractured from one another, people inevitably “have trouble talking to one another.” Interviewee #10 (A Resident of Hillside Condominiums) Of course Baijia Lake is nice – people’s living conditions are good. But I can’t afford the property management fee. If I moved there I couldn’t live, so I’d rather live together with my poor friends. In the end, people speak according to their status, each type of person depends on their type and they can’t compare with others. When others drive cars, what can you do? Here we still ride bicycles and motorized rickshaws; there it’s different. I’m not very willing to interact much with the people of Baijia Lake, for we wouldn’t be able to get along. Interviewee #11 (A Water Delivery Worker Residing at Bright Moon Condo­­miniums) I’ve delivered water here for almost two years, and I know a few homeowners in nicer compounds, but I’ve only delivered water to them a few times, so I only know them to look at. I haven’t had any other interaction with such people beyond that – that wouldn’t really be possible. For one, people are busy, and besides, they have nothing to gain by knowing me. Normally when I’m not working I just interact with acquaintances in my compound. Everyone’s about the same, so when we hang out it doesn’t feel unnatural. Interviewee #12 (A Sanitation Worker Residing at Hillside Condominiums) Who doesn’t want to know a few people who are rich and powerful? The problem is that there’s no way they’ll talk to you if they don’t have to. It’s hard even to enter compounds like Tianyuan Town. When our old house was pulled down for rebuilding, my wife and I decided to buy a place in another compound. Once we went to the sales office for Tianyuan Town,

17  Sun Liping, Fracture: Chinese Society since the 1990s (Beijing: Social Science Documents Press, 2003), 13.

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but the sales representative there saw our clothes and acted impolitely toward us, probably assuming we couldn’t afford to buy a property there. As noted above, residents of low-end and lower-middle grade compounds in Dongshan New Town are often stuck in a passive position with regard to residential space, with a gradual tendency toward marginalization. They are obstructed and squeezed by high-end and upper-middle grade compounds, and even if they are allowed to enter, it is hard for any substantial interaction to take place. When interaction with higher-grade compounds is cut off, their reaction is often “self-segregation.” This concept was originally proposed by American scholars to describe minority ethnic groups’ social and psychological response to social exclusion in the context of racial discrimination, referring to a group’s process of willingly separating itself from mainstream society when members of the group cannot find a satisfactory way of dealing with other groups, so they use this process in an attempt to limit contact with other groups.18 In the low-end and lower-middle grade compounds of Dongshan New Town, people’s interactive relations have an obvious tendency toward “self-segregation,” but they differ from the American model in that their segregation does not derive entirely from their own will, but is often a strategic response to their low status in the stratified structure of residential space, undertaken with the goal of maintaining interaction. This response may derive from their understanding of other people’s attitudes (“There’s no way they’ll talk to you if they don’t have to”), or it may derive from their understanding of their own actual situation (“They have nothing to gain by knowing me”). Behind the discourse of “people speak according to their status” lies a clear awareness of their own social status, and even, to a certain degree, the interactive chasm that exists between groups of different statuses. Once the space of vertical interaction is cut off (whether in reality or merely on the ideational level), people turn inwards, beginning to establish their own interactive sphere among homogeneous groups within their residential compound. This “involution” of interactive space often appears not to be a completely “forced” one, but in some sense, an expression of “the excluded’s exclusion of their excluders.”19 In other words, residents’ need for interaction exists, but it has been repressed. When people live together, it is inevitable that they objectively encounter some shared issues – that is, issues that affect everyone. When residents live together, they have some degree of contact with one another, leading to matters of concern to everyone, such as security and the environment. The 18  David Popenoe, Sociology (Beijing: Remin University Press, 1999), 320. 19  Manuel Castells, The Power of Identity, 6.

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existence of such shared issues, however, is merely a necessary basis for community interaction among residents, not a sufficient condition ensuring such interaction, since individual residents can deal with such issues on their own without resorting to collective action. For example, if the compound’s security is poorly managed, residents normally deal with that by installing reinforced security doors. If the sanitation is poorly managed, people just clean up their own units. In other words, when residents lack public consciousness, they adopt measures to improve their own situation in order to mitigate the negative effects of poor public affairs management. Natural relationships based on location are thus insufficient to form a community, to say nothing of publicmindedness among members of the community. Public-mindedness refers to residents making collective decisions about a community’s public affairs and dealing with them together. Without interaction, shared interests cannot take shape, and without shared interests, there can be no public affairs management. In the past, in urban courtyards shared by multiple households, everyone lived together, knowing everything about each other, interacting frequently and having shared interests, so a strong community consciousness would form through long-term social interaction. In urban life today, however, although resident live in the same area, they do not know each other, and residential space is partitioned, so it is hard to form connections with other residents, leading to the present situation where people have shared space but no community relationships. 3

Stratification and Differences of Interaction among Residents

Interaction consists of practical activities among various interacting subjects, reflecting social connections among people; interaction constructs and expresses people’s social relationships.20 Interaction on the physical level occurs mainly in the work place, the residential area, and other places known as “the third space” (including the places where activities such as tourism, shopping and leisure activities take place). With socioeconomic development and the transformation of people’s ideas about consumption, people’s interactions in the work place and “the third space” are increasing on a daily basis, even receiving more and more attention as the main component of people’s interaction. At the same time, however, we also notice that the issue of interaction among residents of a given area is not only an “old issue” about which 20  Yao Jigang, The World of Interaction: Explorations in Contemporary Theory of Interaction (Beijing: People’s Press, 2002), 13.

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discussion has never ended, but also one in which many “new” characteristics have emerged in the context of China’s recent urbanization and the rapid development and stratification of the housing industry. Relations among neighbors are established through sustained community interaction – they are the result of community interaction. In general, when relations among neighbors in Dongshan New Town become relatively mature, to a certain degree they express the characteristics of “quasi-primary contact” [sic]. This is a concept proposed by American scholar H. Gans, who believed that the interaction among residents of suburbs were more intimate than “secondary contacts,” but more defensive than “primary contacts.” The large-scale social change caused by urbanization has thus neither led to the decline of community nor initiated its disappearance.21,22 Gans’s description of the way of life in American suburbs, however, was based on the USA’s unique social and cultural background, so when we discuss community interaction in Dongshan New Town, we must situate our research within Chinese society – especially within the reality of its rapid social stratification. With regard to interaction on the physical level, the interactions among residents of all Dongshan New Town’s various grades of housing complexes can be divided into non-spontaneous and spontaneous activities. The former are initiated by party-state authorities at the “community” [i.e. housing complex] or sub-district level, mostly consisting of themed activities. For example, Dongshan New Town’s Pacific Community summarized its “cultural work” for the first half of 2003 thus: For the past half year, our community has used all kinds of bulletin boards and blackboard announcements in our community to propagate Socialist Spiritual Civilization (社会主义精神文明), to raise the overall quality of residents, to actively promote a scientific, civilized, healthy way of life, foster the upholding of science, uproot superstition from our community’s cultural atmosphere, fully utilize the community’s cultural facilities, and organize colorful, healthful and meaningful activities involving culture, 21  In contrast with this concept, Louis Wirth’s classic Urbanism as a Way of Life points out that since cities have the characteristics of high population density and heterogeneity, primary contacts in urban communities have been gradually replaced by depersonalized and material secondary contacts, with relations among neighbors disappearing and the traditional basis for integrating people’s lives being destroyed. Wirth’s pessimistic attitude toward urban community development is an important representative of “community disappearance theory.” 22  Jiang Saiqing, “On the Rise and Development of Our Country’s Urban Community Culture,” Truth Seeking 7 (2002).

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sports, the popularization of science, education, entertainment, etc. For example, we organized a “Learning from Comrade Lei Feng” (学雷锋) volunteer activity at Cuiping Primary School; an outdoor karaoke and tree-planting activity for International Women’s Day; a large-scale performance for Children’s Day; a commendation assembly for “Five-Good Households” (五好家庭); a “Hello, China!” themed event; a tug-of-war competition; an event called “We Give Warmth to the Elderly” (我为夕 阳送温暖), etc. The activities were praised by the residents and affirmed by society. Organizing these community activities is an important part of “community work” in Dongshan New Town, but has it really achieved appropriate results? Interviewee #13 (A Resident of Pacific Gardens) As I see it, some activities are done just for show, like a gust of wind blowing through, and afterwards there aren’t any more. The feeling they give me is that they’re just for show. It’s tiring for the organizers, the participants and the audience. At present, the non-spontaneous activities in most of Dongshan New Town’s housing complexes are mainly initiated by the sub-district government (街 道办) or the Residents’ Committee (居委会). Often these activities are organized as “community work.” Although the organizers strive for innovation with regard to the activities’ contents and form, as far as the residents’ interaction is concerned, merely achieving their “praise” is not enough, to say nothing of [the likelihood that] this praise is often merely the organizers’ own appraisal. As the residents see it, these “wind-like” activities are “just for show” and unlikely to make a deep impression on them. Besides, since most of these activities target a highly specific audience, such as “Art Performance for the Elderly” oriented toward the elderly and “Offering Warmth” toward the disadvantaged groups, they have not been organized in Dongshan New Town’s higher-grade residential compounds. Spontaneous activities can be divided into everyday interaction and spontaneously organized activities. The former are of the various interactive behaviors and activities that occur naturally without organization. They are quotidian and scattered. The latter consists of interactive activities organized unofficially by individuals or groups. They are often themed and concentrated [in a single place and time]. Based on our research findings, everyday interactive activities in Dongshan New Town have two general

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characteristics. One is that their frequency is low and their content is limited. The other is the “aging” of everyday interaction: in most housing complexes, everyday interaction among the elderly is more common [than interaction among younger people] and often carried out at a higher level of familiarity. In many public spaces inside housing complexes, often only children and the elderly can be seen. Interviewee #14 (A Resident of Hillside Condominiums) There aren’t any interesting activities in this compound. After work if I don’t have anything to do, I occasionally come here (to the Community Activity Center for the Elderly) to watch people play chess or cards. Other activities are rarely organized, and most of those I’ve attended aren’t very interesting. Interviewee #15 (Resident of Zhang Village New Condominium) There’s an activity room here where you can play mahjong or cards. But nobody goes there, and the compound has few activities. A lot of people know each other only by face. There isn’t much interaction. Everyone’s busy with their own lives. Interviewee #16 (A Resident of Urban Meridian Gardens) There’s an activity room. It’s mostly older people who go there. There’s quite a bit of interaction – people usually say “Hi,” but they don’t know each other well. Interviewee #17 (Owner of a Unit at Chinese Family) There’s not much interaction. Mostly it’s just a few homeowners who eat together at the homeowners’ association building. Now there’s not much interaction among neighbors, not because there aren’t many people living here, but because everyone’s busy and there aren’t many opportunities for face-to-face contact. It can be seen that there is little direct face-to-face interaction in everyday life among the residents of all grades of housing complexes in Dongshan New Town. Frank van Klingeren used a formula to express the self-strengthening effect of interactive activities: “One plus one equals at least three.” In the process

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of interaction, there are completely different positive and negative effects: activities occur because activities occur, and activities fail to occur because there are no activities. In many residential areas, since people and their activities are dispersed both temporally and spatially, individual activities have no opportunity to come together and form larger, more meaningful activities.23 The spatial dispersion of interpersonal interactive activities is expressed in the small number of people active in a residential area’s public space, while their temporal dispersion refers to the short time periods in which people remain [in that public space]. Due to the stratification of housing complexes, people’s interactive space is in turn stratified and segregated along the lines of their complex’s ranking, but for economic reasons, the residents of low-end and lower-middle grade complexes often have no time to bother interacting with other residents. Residents of high-end and upper-middle grade complexes, on the other hand, have a strong sense of time and efficiency, so even if they want to communicate with other residents, they [too] lack the ability for everyday, trivial interaction. When we conducted our survey in Dongshan New Town, we thus discovered that residents often cloistered themselves at home and did not interact with other residents. Spontaneously organized activities were richer at complexes ranked middle grade or above, often with positive effects. Examples include Jiangnan Youth City’s Yuanxiao (元宵, i.e. Lantern Festival) fireworks gala in February 2004, Cuiping International’s New Year’s fireworks gala in 2005, and Meridian Urban Gardens’ “day-trip” activities organized on multiple occasions. Interviewee #18 (Owner of a Unit at Cuiping International, internet alias “Big Desert Wind and Clouds”) Another homeowner and I organized “Cuiping International’s First Fireworks Gala for Welcoming the New Year” on February 9, 2005. On the first day, I received SMS greetings from over 30 neighbors. On the evening of the event, over 200 neighbors at Cuiping International came to Vienna Music Square to watch the fireworks, many of them rushing from the city just for this event. The scene was spectacular. You could fully feel the affection and cultural heritage among the residents of Cuiping International.

23  Jan Gehl, Life between Buildings: Using Public Space (Beijing: China Architectural Industry Press, 1992), 67.

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In contrast with housing complexes ranked upper-middle grade and above, Dongshan New Town’s lower-middle and low-end complexes had fewer spontaneously organized activities. Not only were their cultural activities lacking, but more importantly, there were major discrepancies with regard to shared interests. A typical example is that a lot of problems existed in all grades of residential complexes in Dongshan New Town, such as property management, security and the quality of housing. The residents of complexes ranked lowermiddle grade and below often chose to ignore these problems or dealt with them passively, unless the problems affected them directly, in which case they contacted the relevant personnel. It was hard for them to form a unified conceptualization [of such problems] and act collectively [to deal with them], so they usually dealt with problems and those responsible on an individual basis rather than joining together to change their situation. In stark contrast with this, in complexes ranked upper-middle grade and above, most homeowners had a strong sense of fighting for their rights. They were willing and able to unite through various channels (such as housing complex networks) and form a force capable of challenging the developer or the property management company, acting together as a united force. Case in point: In April 2002, fifteen homeowners in Hundred Families Lake Gardens discovered, upon moving into their new homes, that the “community green area” the developer had promised was about to become a residential building, dashing their expectation of “viewing the lake from home.” The fifteen homeowners approached the developer demanding compensation for [this violation of] their “landscape rights.” After multiple unsuccessful attempts, Mr. Wang gathered other homeowners who wanted compensation and in the name of [demanding compensation for] the violation of their landscape rights, brought a legal case against the developer to the Court of Dongshan New Town. After two trials, the court ruled that the developer must pay the homeowners 70,000 yuan (元) each in compensation. In the high-end and upper-middle grade complexes of Dongshan New Town, homeowners’ spontaneously organized collective rights-defense action is not only common and effective in protecting homeowners’ rights, but has also strengthened interaction and communication among neighbors. This kind of community interaction is becoming an important form of interaction among the homeowners of complexes ranked upper-middle grade and above. With regard to the owners of units in compounds ranked upper-middle grade and above, their interpersonal interaction largely focuses on the sphere of work, so their interaction is not limited to a certain place and the localism of their interaction has decreased, but those with whom they interact the most

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are still those who live relatively nearby.24 Although their everyday interactive activities are not frequent, they have more spontaneously organized activities, and their interaction is more organized and sophisticated. This doubtlessly requires a higher quality of civility and economic level on the part of homeowners. For example, in order for homeowners to attend the fireworks gala mentioned above, each had to pay between 100 and 200 yuan. Even this is something that most residents of lower-middle and low-end complexes would be unable or unwilling to afford. Interaction among residents of lower-middle and low-end complexes is more scattered and less organized. Under conditions where the space of their interaction is squeezed and they have to work hard for a living, even everyday interaction is often reduced to merely nodding [at acquaintances when they run across them]. This reflects not only the differences among types of interaction between residents of different compounds, but also the stratification of the compounds’ social foundations. 4

Conclusion: Community Harmony and the Optimization of Residential Space

The concept of “community” as a basic concept of sociology, according to conventional usage, refers to a group of residents with a shared place, relatively deep relations of social interaction, and a degree of communal consciousness. If effective community interaction cannot be formed, shared interests cannot be formed, and without shared interests there can be no public affairs [management]. Residents’ degree of participation in the community is low, and people neither concern themselves with community affairs nor have a desire for community development. The basis for community is fragmented, so how can one speak of “community harmony?” The stratification of residential space is not only a microcosm of social stratification, but also a symbol of “fractured society.” Since social stratification affects how residential resources are distributed, the goal of sustainably developing residential communities can become a question of the rational distribution of community resources. The development of residential communities should strive for a balance between justice and efficiency. From the perspective of efficiency, the wealthy’s choice of high-end housing complexes and the poor’s choice of low-end complexes doubtless benefits the optimization 24  Cai He and Zhang Yingxiang, Urban Sociology: Theory and Perspectives (Guangzhou: Sun Yat-sen University Press, 2003), 129.

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of resource distribution. When this kind of choice hurts the interests of other residents of a given complex, however, it is unjust and harmful to long-term efficiency. This is especially true when enclosure and “gates” segregate the residential space and cut off [social] interaction, leading to latent conflicts whose social costs may reduce their efficiency to zero or even a negative figure. There is a high probability of conflicts breaking out among groups that live in the same space but are segregated from one another because they have different values and interests. The optimization of urban residential space is thus an unavoidable issue in the process of building harmonious communities. As Kevin Lynch pointed out, a good community should be an open settlement that is accessible, diverse, and adaptable, has a separation of powers, and is tolerant of experimentation.25 By combining Lynch’s observations with [information about] the stratification of residential space in Dongshan New Town recounted above, we can classify the goals for optimizing residential space into the following aspects: (1) Accessibility: The ability of a community’s residents to come into contact with other people, activities, resources, services, information and places, including the quantity and diversity of factors with which they can come into contact. This especially concerns residents in a disadvantaged position, since the most direct consequence of the stratification of residential space in Dongshan New Town is the decrease of their ability to access certain resources, places and activities. (2) Suitability: A community’s suitability refers to whether its space and texture suits the behavioral habits of its residents – the degree to which activities and form match one another in behavioral space and behavioral trajectory.26 The various facilities – especially public and semipublic facilities – in a community not only support but also restrict people’s interactive activities. Suitability both concerns places of interaction and expresses residents’ degree of coordination with regard to the form and content of their activities. (3) Controllability: This has two levels of significance. One is control over the security of the community’s space. The other is the degree to which residents use and come into contact with places and activities, along with their ability to manage and control the creation, adjustment and adaptation of these places. Mainly this means that residents should be able to equally participate in the control and management of a community’s 25  Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Beijing: Huaxia Publishing House, 2001), 84. 26  Ibid., p. 108.

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public affairs (as long as this participation does not have a negative effect on other people). (4) Perceptibility: This refers, first, to the residential space’s ability to be experienced and understood by its residents, and secondly, to people’s (primarily the residents’) degree of acceptance of the space. The style of housing, facilities, boundary, location, environment, and residents – all these constitute the perceptible marks of the residential space for a particular community, and may become further symbolized and enter people’s consciousness, but this spatial perception and its symbolization must be accepted by people, especially most of the residents, in order to become beneficial and a goal for the optimization of [residential] space. Perhaps as Lynch wrote, the distance between our world and a just one can be measured only in light years, but this does not prevent us from striving to achieve harmonious environments of community interaction and to continually approach that goal through equality and efficiency. This should be part of the significance of today’s [party-state campaign to] construct a Socialist Harmonious Society.

Chapter 3

Changes in Assets Held by the Middle Class during Social Transition: An Analysis Based on Surveys of Urban Residents in the Pearl River Delta from 1986 to 2004 Liu Yi Translated by Roderick Graham Flagg Abstract This article uses data from surveys of urban residents in the Pearl River Delta from 1986 to 2004 to describe the stock of assets held by the middle class, how that stock changed, and how these data compare with those of lower-income strata. We find that the new middle class (which constitutes the majority of the middle class) holds significant and increasing assets, thanks to high and stable incomes; that stocks of financial assets are increasing more slowly and there is little investment in negotiable securities, both due to a long term slump in the market and more importantly to the new middle class’s consumption culture; and that asset choices are affected by state policy on distribution and consumption.

Keywords changes in assets – middle class – social transition – Pearl River Delta

1 Introduction* China’s middle class has emerged and become stronger during the country’s social transition and restructuring. The middle class has shown itself to be an important political, ideological and economic force for the maintenance *  This article represents initial findings of the Guangdong Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science Project “Analysis of characteristics of middle class consumption during social transition – the example of the Pearl River Delta” (Project Number 07E07).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004392335_004

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of social stability,1 and therefore has been the subject of increasing academic study. Much of that research has focused on the definition, size, income and social function of the middle class, and how to put the conditions and mechanisms in place for its expansion, etc. However, there is a lack of study of the assets of the middle class. Even a survey focusing specifically on the middle class, The Survey of the Chinese Middle Class (《中国中产阶层调查》),2 which analyzed consumption and discussed leisure choices, did not describe the assets generally held by the middle class. Several years ago, a survey of the incomes, consumption and investments of urban high-income groups across ten provinces (or directly administered cities) provided a simple description of assets held,3 but there is a significant difference between the subjects of that survey and the middle class as discussed here. As shown in academic research into social class, the middle class is defined by the amount of assets held. It was only later that sociologists endued the middle class with greater cultural significance. Assets held are a key difference between the middle and other classes, and these cannot and should not be overlooked when researching the economic behavior and the socioeconomic status and function of the middle class. In fact research into the stock, distribution and changes in assets of any social class, or even the population as a whole, is extremely rare.4 There are two prominent exceptions. One is the “China Urban Household Assets Survey,” in which, in 1990, 1996 and 2002, the Urban Survey Unit of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS, 国家统计局城调总队) sampled residents in certain provinces5 and categorized and compared assets of urban households based on profession, age and level of education. The other was a survey of urban and rural areas carried out in 1995 and 2002 by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

1  Li Qiang, “On the Middle Class and Intermediate Strata,” Journal of Renmin University of China 2 (2001). 2  Zhou Xiaohong, The Survey of the Chinese Middle Class (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2005). 3  Urban High-Income Populations Research Group: “Income, Consumption and Investment among Urban High-Income Groups,” China Statistics 1 (2001); Yan Xianpu, “Observing HighIncome Consumer Groups,” Outlook 17 (2001); Huang Langhui, “Survey and Analysis of Urban High-Income Groups,” International Taxation in China 3 (2002). 4  Li Shi et al., “An Economic Analysis of Unequal Distribution of Assets among Chinese Citizens and Its Causes,” Economic Research Journal 6 (2005). 5  National Bureau of Statistics Urban Survey Unit, “Financial Assets of Chinese Urban Residents,” China Statistics 2 (1997); Huang Langhui et al., “Present State of Assets of Chinese Urban Households,” China Statistics 12 (2002).

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(中国社科院)’ Institute of Economics,6 and it focused on the unequal distribution of assets and its causes. This lack is primarily due to difficulties in obtaining data. Even some large surveys and research projects7 have surrendered in the face of “huge difficulties in obtaining accurate data on individual and household assets” and admitted that “several types of questions in our survey ask about household assets, such as the value of the respondent’s house, how much savings the family has, and total asset value. A significant proportion of respondents refused to answer these, and those answers given were in the majority of cases false. Also, many respondents were simply unable to estimate the monetary value of their household assets. We therefore abandoned assets as an indicator.”8 Even the information gathered in the above cases covers only a single year and is inadequate for analysis of asset changes over time. Given this, this article will attempt to make progress in two directions. First, information on assets in existing state surveys of households is used to formulate a methodology for calculating assets, allowing calculations to be carried out for every year. Second, that methodology is used to calculate and analyze changes and characteristics of household assets in middle class households in the Pearl River Delta (PRD, 珠江三角洲), in order to provide previously lacking data on the middle class and its circumstances during a period of social transition. 2

Data and Methodology

The data originates from routine household surveys carried out by the Guangdong Survey Unit of the National Bureau of Statistics (国家统计局广 东省调查总队).9 This is a systematic long-term survey, with the data collected

6  Li Shi et al., “Allocation of Assets among Chinese Urban Residents,” Economic Research Journal 3 (2000); Li Shi et al., “An Economic Analysis of Unequal Distribution of Assets among Chinese Citizens and Its Causes,” Economic Research Journal 6 (2005). 7  The large scale research project referred to here is the Study of Changes in Social Structure in Contemporary China by the CASS Institute of Sociology, which in 2001 surveyed a sample of 6,240 residents from 73 cities (counties, districts). See Lu Xueyi, Social Mobility in Contemporary China (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2004), 360–372. 8  Li Chunling, Cracks and Splinters: An Analysis of Social Class Differentiation in Contemporary China (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2005), 129. 9  Our thanks to the Guangdong Survey Unit of the National Bureau of Statistics for providing this survey data and allowing its use in this purely academic research.

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compiled and used in the Guangdong (广东) and China statistical yearbooks. It is therefore extremely reliable.10 Residents’ assets can be divided into financial assets and material assets. Financial assets include cash on hand, savings deposits, endowment policies and negotiable securities (such as shares and bonds). Material assets include durable consumer goods (mainly home appliances, vehicles, furniture, etc.) and housing.11 Investments also fall primarily into these two categories. This is particularly the case during a period of social transition, as the economy is also in transition and investments accessible to residents are few and hard to access. Currently, investments by residents in the PRD and even nationwide are in either financial assets or property. Drawing a clear distinction between assets held as property and those held as investments can therefore be difficult, and this article will not attempt to do so. In household surveys in the past, data collected on assets was restricted to cash on hand and property values.12 Therefore, the value of financial assets and durable goods must somehow be calculated. It also needs to be explained that our earliest data are from 1986, in the early years of Reform and OpeningUp (改革开放). Previously, the focus had been on strengthening the country, rather than distributing assets to the citizens. Households held only very limited assets and urban households were effectively “assetless.” In the early 1980s, urban household assets were mainly in the form of bank savings – nationwide in 1985 an average of only 153.30 yuan (元) per urban resident. Academics have therefore concluded that “studying the size or unequal distribution of residents’ assets at the time is of no great value.”13 Calculating accumulation of assets in middle class households in the PRD starting from 1986 will not result in any significant errors.

10  For specific data sampling methods and sample numbers, see Liu Yi, “Methodology for Defining and Measuring Social Classes in China: The Example of the Pearl River Delta,” Open Times 4 (2006). 11  There are differing views in academia on the definition and classification of residents’ assets. One view holds that assets formed by an individual’s economic investments should be included: see Li Yining (ed.), A Positive Analysis of China’s Macro-Economy (Beijing: Peking University Press, 1992), 38. Another view is that human assets (such as health, culture, and education) should also be included within the scope of total assets. See Lian Jianhui, “Asset Choices of Urban Residents and Economic Growth,” Contemporary Economic Research 2 (1998). 12  Housing value is the market price of the respondent’s current home at the time. 13  Li Shi et al., “Allocation of Assets among Chinese Urban Residents,” Economic Research Journal (2000).

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2.1 Calculation of Financial Assets Historical expenditure data was subtracted from income data. The accumulation of the remainder represents the household stock of assets and can be shown thus: F   ( yt  ct ) Where y is actual household income for the year, c is actual household expenditure for the year, and t = 1, 2…, n. This minus cash on hand at the end of the period represents stock of household savings, endowment polices and negotiable securities. 2.2 Calculation of Value of Durable Goods Household durable goods are varied and of different standards. Even if survey data lists the types and numbers of items held, it is hard to accurately convert this into an actual value. Here we calculate historical annual spending on durable goods and factor in depreciation to reach a value for the stock of durable goods held. There are over thirty categories of such goods, including domestic items (furniture, washing machines, electric fans, refrigerators, air conditioners, microwaves, etc.), transportation and communication tools (motorbikes, bicycles, automobiles, mobile telephones, fax machines, etc.), entertainment goods (televisions, video disc players, speakers, cameras, computers, mid or high-end musical instruments, etc.) and jewelry. The depreciation period for automobiles is 15 years and for other durable goods 10 years, except jewelry, which is not depreciated. The method of calculation can be shown thus:

W [(e1t 1  e1t 1 / 10)  (e2t 1  e2t 1 / 15)  e 3t 1 ] In which e1 is all durable goods excluding jewelry and automobiles, e2 is automobiles and e3 is jewelry. t = 1, 2… n. 2.3 Calculation of Housing Value The survey data includes the market value of the home respondents currently used, but only the number and size of any other properties owned. We are aware that as the quality, standard and location of property owned by the middle class differs significantly from that owned by the lower-income strata, the cost per square meter is different. Therefore we take the average cost per square meter of the property respondents live in and calculate an average for each social class, which is then used to calculate the market value of other

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properties owned. The value of first and other properties for each class is then added to give an estimated market value of all properties. This can be shown thus: H = h1 + h2 In which h1 is the market value of the house lived in and h2 the market value of other properties. 2.4 Calculation of Debts Historical borrowings and repayments are combined to give total household debt. This can be shown thus: D  (dit  det ) In which di is borrowings, de is repayments, t = 1, 2, …, n. Our definition of the middle class also requires explanation. We constructed a set of indicators based on income, profession and consumption, and applied this to the data. This showed that the new middle class made up 3.11% of all households in 1986, but 22.51% in 2004, a more than six-fold increase. The old middle class accounted for only 0.2%–0.4% of all households in the latter half of the 1990s, a figure which started to climb steadily from 2000, reaching 1.18% in 2004.14 On the basis of the above research, this article will further analyze the assets held by the middle class. Our analysis of the growth and make-up of the middle class in the PRD finds that the new middle class is the main component of the middle class as a whole, with the old middle class a tiny minority. Similarly, in developed nations modernization sees the new middle class strengthen, while the old middle class continues to shrink. The everincreasing economic power of new middle class households also becomes ever more important in driving economic development. Therefore, our analysis of the economic circumstances of the middle class focuses on the new middle class.

14  We classed all professionals, officials of government and Party bodies and companies, and clerks and managers as the new middle class; and individual urban entrepreneurs as the old middle class. For methods of defining the new and old middle class and detailed results, see Liu Yi, “Methodology for Defining and Measuring Social Classes in China: The Example of the Pearl River Delta,” Open Times 4 (2006).

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Analysis of Changes in Assets Held by the Middle Class

Using the above methodology, the stock of each class of assets held by the new middle class was calculated, and then compared with the assets of the lowerincome strata and the national averages. By the end of 2004 and after twenty years of accumulation, the new middle class in the PRD had average household assets worth 326,000 yuan, 1.4 times those of the lower-income strata and 2.34 times the national average. These differences were particularly pronounced in durable goods (in particular, automobiles) and property. The value of durable goods held by the new middle class was 4.87 times that of those held by the lower-income strata (33.68 times for automobiles), and 5.27 the national average. Value of property was 1.49 times that held by the lower-income strata, and 2.91 times the national average. However the value of financial assets held by the new middle class was 138% less than those held by the lower-income strata, and 91% less than the national average. Meanwhile the average middle class household had debts of over 7,000 yuan, while lower-income stratum households had no debt. 3.1 Changes in Financial Assets Although stock is an important index when analyzing assets, increments to that stock are also very important. Stock reflects accumulation up to a certain year, while increments show how stock has grown in that year. Increment shows the degree to which assets have changed across different periods (years). Therefore description and analysis of assets needs to look at this. Savings deposits are China’s most traditional and most stable form of financial investment, while negotiable securities are a risk investment that only became widespread during the reforms of the 1990s. For a long time, savings deposits were the most popular choice for households, made up the largest part of financial assets, and showed steady growth. Total savings nationwide were 711.98 billion yuan at the end of 1990 and 11,955.54 billion at the end of 2004 – representing annual growth of 22.32%. The figures for the same years for the province of Guangdong are 75.278 billion yuan and 1,619.336 billion yuan – annual growth of 24.51%; and for the PRD 55.271 billion yuan and 1,267.998 billion yuan – annual growth of 25.08%.15 15  Some researchers hold that financial assets reported in household surveys are underestimated for three reasons: One, total saving figures as obtained from the financial system always include some work funds being held privately; two, sampling biases result in a low proportion of high-income households; three, respondents underreport their assets. The last two issues are not unique to household surveys in China, but are common in

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A survey also found the average urban household held financial assets worth 7,869 yuan in 1990, rising to 79,800 yuan by the end of June, 2002 – accumulated growth of 914.11% and annual growth of 21.29%. This included growth in bank savings from 5,941 yuan in 1990 to 51,156 yuan at the end of June, 2002 – accumulated growth of 761.07% and annual growth of 19.65%. Over the same period the value of negotiable securities held rose from 1,532 yuan to 10,943 yuan (accumulated growth of 614.30% and annual growth of 17.80%); of cash on hand from 396 yuan to 2,730 yuan (accumulated growth of 589.39% and annual growth of 17.46%). No endowment policies were held in 1990, but by the end of June 2002 the average household held endowment polices worth 3,094 yuan.16 Nationwide the financial assets held by urban households were increasing steadily, but there were also huge changes in the types of assets held by new middle class households in the PRD. The main changes are described below: First, changes in average savings per person were very unstable, with negative growth in more than half of the 14 years between 1990 and 2004, and in certain years there were very steep falls, causing average savings per person for the new middle class over this period to trend downwards. Second, the trend in holdings of negotiable securities ran contrary to urban residents as a whole. Between 1991 and 1996, holdings of negotiable securities shrank, and from 1997 fluctuated – but primarily rose. Other analysis has found a turning point in nationwide investment in negotiable securities in 1997: In 1992 84.5 billion yuan of negotiable securities were held, rising to 218.863 billion yuan in 1997 and then falling to 151.48 billion yuan in 2002. This is attributed both to residents becoming more informed and rational investors; and to the lack of order in the early days of China’s share markets, the government encouraging share ownership over bonds, and government bonds over corporate bonds.17 If this is the case, how should the contrary behavior of the new middle class in the PRD be explained? Were these investors less rational? Given their education, professional background and culture, they are more rational. That leaves the explanation that as early as 1996 they realized there were problems in the market for negotiable securities (specifically, shares) and gradually withdrew their investments, preferring to invest in bonds from 1997 all countries. See Li Shi et al., “An Economic Analysis of Unequal Distribution of Assets among Chinese Citizens and Its Causes,” Economic Research Journal 6 (2005). 16  National Bureau of Statistics Urban Survey Unit, “Financial Assets of Chinese Urban Residents,” China Statistics 2 (1997); Huang Langhui et al., “Present State of Assets of Chinese Urban Households,” China Statistics 12 (2002). 17  Shen Weiji, and Wang Yuping, “Trends in Residents’ Financial Investments,” China Statistics 7 (2005).

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onwards. As we do not have more detailed data on these investments, further confirmation of this explanation is needed. Third, there was a large growth in endowment policies, with annual average growth of 38.69%. But as this is a newer form of investment few were familiar with it and prior to 1990 average investment per person per year was less than 10 yuan, and less than 30 yuan in 1996. The high annual average growth over the period is down to later rapid increases. And despite that high growth rate, the low starting point means endowment policies do not account for a large part of overall assets. Overall, with stocks of negotiable securities increasing slowly and, in particular, with savings deposits shrinking, the stock and rate of increase of financial assets held by the new middle class did not grow. 3.2 Changes in Stock of Durable Goods In economic terms, material goods are either purchased for consumption or as investments – but mainly for consumption. In either case, durable household goods should be regarded as household assets, and may even make up the larger part of these. Spending on durable household goods in 1986 was 2,180.43 yuan among the new middle class and 510.31 yuan among the lowerincome strata; in 1995, these figures were 3,097.56 yuan and 740.08 yuan respectively; in 2004, 4,692.50 yuan and 1,739.08 yuan. Between 1986 and 2004, these figures grew 115.21% for the middle class and 240.79% for the lower-income strata. Obviously inflation is a factor here, but we can also see that the cost of household durable goods has been falling steadily (particularly for domestic appliances and transportation tools), so it can be said that the stock of durable goods held by residents has been consistently increasing. Economic development and better living standards resulted in huge changes in consumption of durable goods. From aspirations to own watches, bicycles and sewing machines (the “older three things”) of the late 1970s, to the color televisions, refrigerators and washing machines (the “old three things”) of the late 1980s, to the stereos, air conditioners and mobile phones (the “new three things”) of the late 1990s, and to the computers, pianos and automobiles (the “newer three things”) of today – these reflect changing living standards and the increase in household assets. Even stereos, air conditioners and mobile phones are now seen as essentials. We analyzed ownership of the above items to learn how this had changed over time. As early as 1990, color televisions, refrigerators and washing machines were common in new middle class households, and today there are almost 2 color televisions per household. Stereos, air conditioners, mobile phones, computers, pianos and automobiles are no longer unheard of – the average middle class household will have two air conditioning units and mobile phones.

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In 2004, there was no difference between the new middle class and the lower-income strata in ownership of color televisions, refrigerators and washing machines, while there was a difference of a factor of 1.4–1.5 in ownership of stereos, air conditioners and mobile phones. The gap widens with computers, pianos and automobiles – when compared with the lower-income strata the new middle class owns 1.5 times as many computers, 4.33 times as many pianos, and 5.25 times as many automobiles. These are items costing ten thousand yuan, if not tens of thousands, those mentioned earlier are priced in the thousands – the disparity in value of durable goods held is clear. When compared with the highest income urban residents nationwide, ownership of color televisions, refrigerators and washing machines is about equal. The difference appears with stereos, air conditioners and mobile phones, but remains small – the gap in ownership between the new middle class of the PRD and highest income urban residents nationwide is between 1.3 and 1.5 times. With computers, pianos and automobiles the gap is 1.38 times, 1.67 times and 1.91 times respectively. The more expensive the item, the greater the gap between the new middle class and the highest income urban residents nationwide. 3.3 Changes in Property Assets Housing reform in the PRD started in the early 1990s, and housing is now fully commodified. In 2004, 91.4% of new middle class households owned their own home, compared to 88.9% for the lower-income strata – no great difference. More noteworthy is that in 2004, 10.95% of new middle class households owned two or more properties, compared to only 6.04% of lower-income strata households. According to a nationwide survey of urban household assets, there is a positive correlation between property prices and income: the higher the owner’s income, the higher the value of a property. If income is between 4,000 and 8,000 yuan, average property value is 247,000 yuan; while above 8,000 yuan the average property value is 309,000.18 The former is equivalent to the value of a new middle class home in the PRD. Market property prices can differ for homes of similar quality and size, due to differential land rents, which makes consistent comparisons difficult. The new middle class has been spending increasing amounts on buying or building property – annual average increase between 1992 and 2004 was 25.67%. It is undeniable that rapidly increasing house prices are a major factor 18  Huang Langhui et al., Household Property Ownership, http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjfx/ztfx/ csjtccdc/t20020927_36428.htm (accessed September 28, 2002).

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in this. But it is undeniable that the desire of the new middle class to improve their living conditions and environment is a crucial factor, and that some middle class households see property purchases as an investment. The purchase of durable goods or property is naturally linked with economic ability – that is, income. Rising middle class incomes have meant more money to spend on property. In 2004, the new middle class spent 12.85% of per person disposable income on purchasing or building property, a historical high. The same figure for the lower-income strata in 2004 was 4.7% – a difference of 8.15 percentage points. Between 1992 and 2004, the annual average amount spent on property increased faster than disposable income by 14.69 percentage points. This shows an increasing demand for property among the middle class. 4

Main Characteristics of Changes in Middle Class Assets and Causes

4.1 High Asset Levels and Sustained Growth Although the new middle class has slightly lower financial assets than the lower-income strata, higher ownership of material assets such as durable goods and housing, as well as accelerating accumulation of assets (particularly in recent years, with year on year growth in 2003 and 2004 being 154.78% and 45.08% respectively), has meant the stock and increase of assets are higher for the new middle class than for lower-income strata. Increase in assets is primarily founded on the stable and high incomes of the new middle class: annual average disposable income rose from 2,281.05 yuan in 1986 to 28,764.34 yuan in 2004, an increase of 11.6 times and annual average growth of 15.12%, consistently more than 50% over that of lower-income strata, and the total assets of the new middle class are more than 40% higher than those of the lowerincome strata. 4.2 Falling Financial Assets, Little Investment in Negotiable Securities Between 1990 and 2004, bank deposits held by the new middle class fell in 9 years, while holdings of negotiable securities fell in 10 years. When Xiao Zhuoji (萧灼基) listed five types of people who would form China’s middle class, he also remembered to ask the middle class to support the market in negotiable securities, saying that “Personal financial assets in China are already worth over one billion yuan (including savings, negotiable securities and cash), with a minority of people accounting for the bulk of this. The middle class is not just helpful for the economic and social stability of the nation – the development of the stock market will also in large part rely on these people,

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as they have the capability to invest, providing important financial support.”19 It is extremely unfortunate that despite having this capability, the new middle class does not much participate. Even when savings deposits shrink, the funds are not invested in negotiable securities. China’s central bank cut deposit and lending interest rates 7 times between May 1996 and June 1999, and then again in February 2002. This took fixed term savings rates to the lowest level since 1949 and increases in savings deposits slowed greatly. With the rate cuts repeatedly reducing enthusiasm for savings, it was only natural that deposits should grow more slowly. Meanwhile, the management of finances is time-consuming, China’s stock market was in a long term slump and there was a lack of financial advisors – making it hard to persuade the new middle class to dedicate much effort to financial investments. Very few stuck with briefly popular employee share schemes, management share holdings and share option schemes for management and technical staff, due to both a range of problems during privatization processes and slumps on growth enterprise boards. Cases such as TCL where managers became rich through these schemes are rare exceptions. And regardless, it was only the very top executives of certain firms who were able to obtain significant numbers of shares or options, with most middle managers and technical staff receiving “token” amounts. As US economist Paul Samuelson said, the difference a few shares makes to a worker’s life is negligible.20 Nor is it just the ordinary workers – the impact is also negligible for middle managers and skilled workers. With material assets increasing and worth much more than financial assets, which are decreasing, we find that the new middle class is much more concerned with improved quality of life: buying bigger and better homes, using better and more varied domestic durable goods, and holding more cash on hand to fund spontaneous consumption. Meanwhile they invest little in bank savings or negotiable securities, and may even go into debt. This matches entirely with the new middle class culture of enjoyment and consumption we understand (or see in real life.) However the above conclusion arises from an analysis of data from 1990 to 2004, while in 2006 and 2007, China saw a strong bull market. The middle class may, along with the other classes, have been unable to resist the temptation of 19  For this statement of Xiao Zhuoji’s, see Xiao Ya, “Economist Xiao Zhuoji Says Five Types of People Will Become the Middle Class,” Contemporary Economic Research 11 (2001). 20  Qtd. in Qiushi Research Group, “Self-Regulation and Its Limitations in Capitalism: Three Theories on the Historical Progress of Capitalism,” Qiushi 5 (2001).

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a rising market and shifted more assets into negotiable securities. But this is only a conjecture, and further data would be needed to confirm this. 4.3 Changeable Asset Choices So far we have seen no overall tendencies in the middle class to select particular asset classes – rather these choices are driven by state policies on distribution and consumption. Housing is the most commonly held and the most valuable asset. But this is not because the middle class has made this choice independently – rather, it is the outcome of policy arrangements. Housing reform running from the early 1990s to the first years of the 2000s saw state-owned housing sold off to private citizens at prices far below market value, leading to large increases both in stock and rate of growth of this type of asset among the middle class. In 1990, before the commodification of housing, the new middle class owned no property. By 1995, with the start of privatization of housing, this had rocketed to 66.7%. Similarly, automobile ownership is heavily influenced by major changes in state policy – automobile prices have repeatedly fallen in recent years, a policy factor that has led to 21% automobile ownership rates among the new middle class. Besides housing and automobiles, it is hard to see any case in which the new middle class shows similar consensus (and indeed automobile ownership rates are not yet high enough to represent a consensus). The rise and fall in financial assets, particularly bank deposits and negotiable securities, can be attributed to the transfer of large amounts of money to housing purchases, and also can be explained as a lack of stability in asset choices. China’s shift from a planned to a market economy has been accompanied by information imbalances both in the retail and financial markets, making asset selections less stable. Add in the fact that the new middle class wishes to show their individuality and it is unlikely that consensus in asset choices will be seen, and in the short term this appears as instability.

Chapter 4

The Age of Individualization: Chinese Paradox and Resolution – The Experience of One Metropolis Xiong Wansheng, Li Kuan, and Dai Chunqing Translated by Roderick Graham Flagg Abstract This article discusses the paradox the age of individualization has created for China, based on the experiences of SH, an international metropolis in the country’s east. The authors interpret this paradox as one aspect of the problem of social vigor – a lack of individual autonomy. This is an issue particularly apparent in SH, a city at the forefront of the transition in China’s mode of economic growth, and the lack of vigor is particularly keenly felt. So how do the residents of SH deal with this lack of autonomy in daily life? Their experiences are worthy of in-depth consideration. The authors hold that they still rely on guanxi to create room for autonomy – a Chinese solution which differs from that in the West. Of course, this guanxi-based approach differs greatly from the traditional ethics-based approach.

Keywords paradox of individualization – autonomy – relationality

It is easy to be struck by a powerful sense of recognition when reading Ulrich Beck’s Individualization and Risk Society – it seems Beck is talking about China.* That recognition indicates that the relationship between Chinese and Western society has reached a new stage: the sharing of social structures and cultural ideas, as well as an international and environmental context. Beck’s theory of *  This research received funding from the Ministry of Education’s project 10YJA840048 “The Organizational Basis of National Food Security and Its Optimization.” All research referred to in the article was existing research carried out by East China University of Science and Technology’s China Urban-Rural Development Research Center between 2010 and 2020. We express our thanks to the participants, including Ma Liuhui, Wang Yang, Yuan Zhonghua, Yang Jun, Shi Meijing, Dao Chunqing, Huang Zhonghuai, Xi Jianwu, Ye Min and Cao Dongbo.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004392335_005

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individualization uses structural language to make concrete a philosophical view of the dialectic consequences of freedom for the person. With individual freedom, the individual comes increasingly to feel the burden of freedom, becoming isolated and losing agency. But this is not what is new about Beck’s theory – what is new is the definition of individualization as “disembedding without reembedding.”1 This draws a clear line between Beck and earlier social theorists. Beck is a post-modernist, or, as he would prefer, he is situated in what he has defined as a “second modernity.” It would be a grave error to apply Beck’s theory of individualization directly to the Chinese reality. We may agree that the feudal era exchange of land for service is the starting point of the logic of individualization, but there are huge differences between this starting point when comparing the West and China. We can mark the English Glorious Revolution of 1688 as the start of the dissolution of feudalism in the West – less than 400 years ago. In China, the equivalent starting point is the end of the Spring and Autumn Period (春秋时 代) – perhaps over 2,500 years ago. In the West, the feudal era was brought to an end by the rise of capitalism, the market economy and the nation state. In China, what ended the Well-Field System (井田制), a type of feudalism, was the “Asiatic mode of production”: a system of small household farmers in a centralized state, or as Feng Youlan (冯友兰) put it, a culture derived from the “householdization of production.”2 Individualization can mean both the individualization of production and the individualization of life, as it means bidding a farewell to both communal production and communal life. Here, individualization of production means the de-organization of the mode of production, whereas individualization of life means the breakdown of community life. When Europeans emerged from feudalism traditional community life broke down, but they entered a more organized mode of production. When the Chinese emerged from feudalism the traditional organizations of communal production broke down, but new village communities were formed. Individualization in the two cultures took very divergent routes – but this does not mean they cannot today face the same plight. Since Reform and Opening Up (改革开放), China has seen a new wave of individualization, with significant changes in interpersonal relations. If we say that the change 2,500 years ago was the decentralization of agricultural production, the change in recent decades has been one of globalization, markets and large-scale movements in population. Although China is not yet one of 1  Ulrich Beck, Individualization, trans. Li Rongshan et al. (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2011), 31. 2  Feng Youlan, New Discourses on Events (Beijing: Joint Publishing, 2007).

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the welfare states of which Beck speaks, the attitudes he describes of “living for yourself” and individualism without personality are starting to rise here. Contemporary scholars are well aware of the new wave of individualization and have studied it. For He Xuefeng (贺雪峰) and his researchers, the Jianghan Plain (江汉平原) is “atomized” and the Northeast (东北) is “fragmented,” while southern China is still home to many “cohesive” village societies.3 Yan Yunxiang (阎云翔) formally used Beck’s concept of individualization to describe the changes he observed in villages in the Northeast.4 These two researchers emphasize opposing factors: He Xuefeng highlights the ability of the market economy to break up traditional organizations and institutions, while Yan Yunxiang over-stresses the ability of the state, particularly the “socialist” state during the process of individualization. That one phenomenon should give rise to two opposing explanations, both of which have been very influential, is, in itself, interesting. Also of interest is that while Beck, He Xuefeng and Yan Yunxiang write of a distressing process of individualization, Li Youmei (李友 梅) writes of it as a glorious budding of autonomy.5 So how can we identify the characteristics of individualization in Chinese society? Or, another side of the same question: what contribution to the understanding of individualization in human society can the Chinese experience of this process make? Beck, He Xuefeng and Yan Yunxiang all overlook two obvious and fundamental facts: First, individualization since Reform and Opening Up has meant a return to traditional modes of production and living; second, systemic forces, at the heart of which lies a centralized government, have a lasting role in the process of individualization. Part of the reason such significant and well-known historical traditions were overlooked is an overemphasis on experiences since the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Historically, the experiences of any one person are fleeting, no matter how significant at the time. If a broader historical view is taken, perhaps we can hold that the characteristics of Chinese individualization that is worth exploring are a long period of individualized production and its centralized bureaucracy. To a large extent, individualization in contemporary Chinese society is the re-emergence of that Asiatic mode of production and the modes of living associated with it. 3  He Xuefeng, What Villages, What Problems? (Beijing: Law Press, 2008). 4  Yan Yunxiang, Individualization in Chinese Society (Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2012); Changes in Private Life: Love, Family and Intimacy in a Chinese Village, 1949– 1999 (Shanghai: Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, 2009). 5  Li Youmei et al., Changes in Chinese Social Life (Beijing: Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, 2008); From Dispersal to Order: Changes in Chinese Society in “Institutions and Life” (Beijing: Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, 2012).

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The most pressing sociological topic during the age of individualization is how to resolve the paradox that individualization brings – a paradox that has different implications in Europe and China. Beck holds that the most fundamental question is how a society in the age of individualization coheres.6 In principle the authors agree with Beck, but believe that his further explanation needs to be adjusted for China. Beck goes on to say that, “The key question, therefore – to which this book also knows no answer – is how the bubbling, contradictory process of individualization and denationalization can be cast into new democratic forms of organization.”7 The authors feel that this question is also very important in China – but is far from being the most important. In China the most important question is that of social vigor. Or perhaps we should say that the core of the paradox of individualization is the loss of autonomy, and so the crucial question arising is: how, in an age of individualization, to maintain and increase the autonomy of subjects, and hence maintain and increase social vigor. The powerful autonomy with which the Chinese approach systems and institutions was fostered through an era of individualized production – but they have not generally been tested by an era of individualized living. Will the systems and institutions that once permitted autonomous livelihoods collapse and disappear as the corrosive agent of individualization seeps deeper? Will we see “inadequately autonomous subjects?” The authors hold that the city of SH is an excellent starting point for attempts to answer this question, which is by no means unique to China. The city has certainly undergone a lengthy period of individualized production and has a more thorough experience of marketization than the majority of cities in China. After the foundation of the People’s Republic the city’s villages were under closer state control than most, with more advanced collectives and welfare provision. For this reason, its experience of the individualization of living may be more thorough. What kind of interpersonal relationships will exist in a region like this after two sustained periods of individualization? What can China learn here? 1

Moderate and Orderly Individualized Living

The atomization of the village societies of the Jianghan Plain, as described by He Xuefeng, is troubling, as it brings chaos and disorder. And as described by Yan Yunxiang, the individualization of interpersonal relations in the 6  Beck, Individualization, 20. 7  Ibid., 33.

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North-East village of Xiajia (下岬村) is almost a form of depravity, as it produces “individuals with no social ethics,” though Yan regarded this change as inevitable. But in the Jiangnan (江南) region, we will see another form of individualization or atomization. The Chinese all agree that the people of this region are cold and calculating but of moderate temperament. Relations are based on a principle of “reasonableness” and mutual respect. When compared with other regions, interpersonal relations in SH show two related characteristics: weak horizontal links and strong vertical relationships. 1.1 Weak Horizontal Links To outsiders, SH residents seem to be too “rational” – that is, they are overly cold and calculating. This is not praise, and the city government has gone so far as to come up with the slogan: “Be a loveable SH-er.” Generally, those living in cities are less reliant on social networks than those in villages, and as a city deeply affected by marketization and Westernization, SH’s social networks are very urban. But we found that even in SH’s villages, social dealings are also very “rational,” with weak sense of lineage and local belonging. One characteristic of the area is weaker affinity for patriarchal clans. Ancestral halls are very rare, as are genealogy registers. In over a decade in SH the authors learned of registers only for the Ni (倪) clan of Chongming (崇明) district and the Feng (封) clan of Song district – any other registers have been imported when families moved to the city. Ancestral graves were destroyed during several rounds of land reallocation since the foundation of the People’s Republic. In the township of Nanqiao (南桥镇), Fengxian District (奉贤区), one local described how ancestral graves were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (文革). His great-grandfather’s grave was destroyed, and his family used the gravestone as building material, the coffin to make furniture; nobody seemed upset. His ashes were placed in a container and buried by the river, but were later lost during civil engineering works. Visits to brothers and sisters or older relatives are uncommon. Even in cases where siblings live close together and parents are still alive, the family many not spend the Chinese New Year together. There are next to no New Year visits – when today’s middle-aged and elderly folk were children the tradition of New Year visits persisted, but today’s young folk never experienced this. Relatives only visit each other when necessary – and as they rarely do each other favors, this usually means death memorial days or weddings and funerals. It is notable that memorial days are taken more seriously here than on the Central Plains (to tend to those of older generations. This is a particular feature of the area, and over the course of a person’s life, four death anniversaries will be observed – those of each of one’s own parents and parents-in-law. This can

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become onerous, ato tend to those of older generations. This is a particular feature of the area, and over the course of a person’s life, four death anniversaries will be observed – those of each of one’s own parents and parents-in-law. This can become onerous, and recently some have stopped the practice. These occasions often involve a family meal, to be organized by the parents if still alive. If they are deceased the brothers and sisters take turns. It is worth noting that weddings and funerals here are quite traditional, and it is rare to see the contrived wedding parties that happen elsewhere. With blood relations weakening, marriage becomes more important. China’s family planning policy was implemented earlier and more effectively here, starting in the 1970s. It is already rare for someone in their 40s to have a sibling. When two only children marry they become the focus of great attention from both sets of parents, and it is quite common for the couple and all four parents to spend Chinese New Year together. Perhaps we can summarize by saying that blood ties here have two centers: deceased parents, and living children. Relations between the adults in between these generations are weaker. There is almost no belief in the god Guangong (Guanyu 关羽) in SH, yet despite the expectations of many outsiders, friendships are very important to people from SH. When asked who they could borrow money from, friends will be mentioned as well as family. But of course, only those able and willing to make friends will have friends, and so stable friendships are not universal. The sense of village identity among rural residents in SH is also weak. This is particularly the case to the south of the city, where hamlets are more scattered. The following situation was noted during research in the JS district: a landlord, born in the village and in his 50s, was responsible for dredging a section of the river, yet was unable to say where the border with the next cluster of houses was. Meanwhile, it is rare for villagers to have a sense of shared interests, and village collectives are only of concern if holding large assets. For this reason, it is easier to merge villages than dissolve them when reorganizing grassroots government. The number of Villagers Committees (村民委员会) in SH has fallen from 2,771 in 2000 to 1,739 in 2010, with the bulk of the fall due to mergers, with only 200 being dissolved. Merging a village combines two sets of assets for joint use, while dissolving a village sees assets divided among villagers and the collective terminated – that is, the former is a process between collectives, the latter a process between a collective and individuals and between different individuals. Concerns about interests are greater in the latter case, and so this is much more difficult. In places such as Anhui (安徽), an approach of “merging villages but not assets” is taken. In SH village, assets are usually much larger than in Anhui, yet collectives are directly and smoothly merged.

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Elsewhere, this can prove difficult. In places such as Anhui (安徽), an approach of merging villages means bringing together many villagers under the employment of a particular work unit – there is little entrepreneurship. Incomes are therefore determined by vertical forces – the bureaucracy of the business or government employer. Residents of SH are relatively more inclined to obey managers and follow rules. When carrying out research in rural areas, we often felt the locals were happy to regard village cadres as their boss, and it was extremely rare to see a rapid turnover of cadres during village elections – when cadres leave their post it is usually due to promotion. Village cadres have significantly higher incomes than villagers – a village secretary earns over 130,000 yuan a year, a village head over 100,000, and these figures represent just the government-approved legitimate “white income.” This compares to average annual disposable income for rural SH residents of only 15,600 yuan in 2011. The acceptance of such a huge disparity has to be regarded as a feature of the local culture. In work units, SH residents obey managers, and SH firms are well regarded on the market, with many villages running schemes to attract investors to start companies and become taxpayers. This is partly because companies here are known to be good at quality control, and this benefits their reputation. In day-to-day life the rule of law is stronger and government behavior more rule-based. It is rare for anyone to deny that SH is China’s most orderly city. Violence between residents is rare. When disputes arise residents are always willing to discuss the matter, and if no resolution is found, they refer to authority – the police, a boss, or if necessary the court or other avenues of appeal, such as petitioning. When studying how disputes between villagers in two village sections in Nanqiao were resolved, we were surprised that neither of the section heads could recall a fight between villagers. In terms of individualization, there is a link between rule following and the lack of horizontal links. Those who are isolated cannot easily break the rules – it is hard to sustain unconventional behavior without accomplices. This is not to say that SH is free of corruption, but any corruption may be collective – a work unit or group making a collective decision to allocate resources unfairly. 2

A Paradox of Individualization: The Crisis of Autonomy

As the need to transform the mode of economic growth becomes more pressing, the question of social vigor has received more attention. The need for a resolution to this question is urgent in SH, which leads the country in economic development. A classic formulation of the question is “Why has SH not produced a Jack Ma (马云)?” In discussions on the 12th Five Year Plan, SH’s

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policy-makers proposed a transition to innovation-driven development, again drawing more attention to the matter of social vigor. If there is indeed a lack of social vigor in SH, then that lack is in part a consequence of the process of individualization. 2.1 A Crisis of Entrepreneurship Generally, large companies come into being when small companies grow, while small companies start life as individual and family operations. China was once dominated by small agricultural operations and “small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale.”8 But in SH, that hotbed of entrepreneurship is small and has almost dried up. Since 2006, with agricultural subsidies rising, more local holders of rural hukou (户口) have preferred to return to farming, requesting that Villagers’ Committees assist by allocating them some land. In eight case studies we found these people hope to grow either staple foodstuffs or fruit – which can basically be classed as light agriculture. The recent development of the Internet makes entrepreneurship easier. But the leap from being a small company to a large company requires funding and a witerprises in places such as Zhejiang (浙江) is linked with developed social networks. This is just what SH lacks, as evidenced by the lack of illegal banking cases in the city. As for hard work, this is something that must be taught in the home – schools can teach children how to study hard, but not how to labor, as teachers cannot ensure children do housework or other tasks. The question is: how many parents make children do this? The local education system puts many children from rural and petty bourgeoisie families through school and onwards into factories. Schools have become production lines for white-collar workers, and the higher the student promotion rate, the more developed that production line. The government has strived to increase entrepreneurship among recent university graduates and provided some funding, with some results. However, the recent popularity of civil service jobs shows how hard it is to foster entrepreneurship. We have to ask, what sustains someone who starts their own business? Why bother to forge your own way? If that sustenance comes from society, how is it provided? One real outcome of individualization is the breakdown of various deeplyrooted psychological motivations.

8  Lenin, “‘Left-wing’ communism: An infantile disorder,” in Complete Works of Lenin, Vol. 39 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1986), 4.

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2.2 Reversed Local-Incomer Relations The Chinese say that even a powerful dragon will lose to a local snake – meaning it is hard to survive, much less succeed, away from your own territory, and therefore it is necessary to follow local customs. But in the agricultural areas on the outskirts of SH – those areas where there is still agriculture – the balance of power between locals and incomers is reversing. During research in villages on SH’s outskirts, we heard of at least four cases of disputes between locals and incomers, all of which were won by the incomers, in tears, to beg leniency. There were many locals nearby, but they did not even gather to watch, preferring to keep their distance. The farmer was even happy for her to go home to collect the money, seemingly unconcerned she would find reinforcements ant, in tears, to beg leniency. There were many locals nearby, but they did not even gather to watch, preferring to keep their distance. The farmer was even happy for her to go home to collect the money, seemingly unconcerned she would find reinforcements and beat him. In the end, we and village cadres persuaded the farmer to accept a smaller fine of 100 yuan, rather than 1,000. It is worth noting that many locals in agricultural areas admit they are scared of incomers. So is this to say that there are serious public order issues on the outskirts of SH? This is not the case. It is rare to see a village where every household has installed a heavy security gate. Their fears are not for their property, and it is not simply a fear of criminals – it is that in the one-on-one confrontations with ordinary incomers, which are inevitable in everyday life, they do not have the upper hand. Ask the locals why they are scared and the answer is that the incomers “stick together” and “move around.” That psychological fear is no doubt due to the fact the villages are home to aging populations, but also to the fact the locals cannot stick together. The locals are not good at fighting and arguing, but not because of physical weakness – rather because they stand alone and unaided. When the locals feel they have, by their own definition, been mistreated, they turn to the Villagers’ Committees rather than to family and friends. However, the committee itself may have no way to intervene, or not be able to do so promptly – and so the balance of power gradually reverses. 2.3 Decline of Organizational Cohesion Beck holds that in the age of individualization, many concepts have become “zombie categories” – here he names family, class and neighborhood. In China the definition of “class” has always differed from that in Europe, and it remains to be seen if the concept of “family” will become “zombified.” But there is one word that has, as Beck describes, lost its original meaning: collective. The

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farm collectives, work collectives and class collectives we used to speak of are deceased, existing only in name, with the cohesion of various forms of organizations declining. The decline is not that it is no longer possible to bring people together through some form of contract – it is that there is no way to ensure the behaviors contracted for are carried out. As mentioned above, in an individualized society, vertical relations are more strongly developed. This brings to mind Japanese society as described by Chie Nakane in her representative work, Interpersonal Relations in a Vertical Society.9 If we say that Chinese society is ethics-based and Western society is organization-based, then in Chie Nakane’s Japan, the organization is ethics. The described “verticalization” of interpersonal relations means consistently putting the interests of the organization in which you are located first. In China, during this process, we do not see that organizational ethics develop – in fact, it continues to collapse. This absurdity arises because verticalization has been imposed by highly centralized authority and, by nature, has no respect for the integrity or autonomy of any grassroots organizational unit. Thus, more verticalization means more crises for organizational cohesion. As mentioned above, rural residents on the outskirts of SH receive a great deal of welfare from the government. However, this is not necessarily distributed by the most local government bodies – so vertical social relationships are built, but the authority of those local government bodies is eroded. Nationally, upper levels of government are more trusted than those at the grassroots, with the verticalization of interpersonal relationships running parallel to the erosion of trust in grassroots government. Village cadres in SH have two forms of salary: a basic salary and a salary only paid after evaluations by superiors. The latter accounts for 60% or more of the total and can easily be worth 100,000 yuan or more. The high proportion of salary which is conditional on performance is to ensure village cadres perform the tasks handed down to them. However, the outcome is to increase the income gap and psychological distances between the cadres and the locals. Hence centralization of power also leads to erosion of grassroots organizations. Another example is that at university, students can freely choose courses, and students in one class or dormitory may not attend the same lectures. Students can take problems directly to members of the staff, and scholarships or Party membership can be applied for without reference to a class head. Some schools even prevent class heads from serving for more than one year, significantly reducing their authority. It is hard to bring an entire class together for group activities nowadays, even to the 9  Chie Nakane, Interpersonal Relations in a Vertical Society, trans. Lin Xianzong (Taipei: Taiwan Buffalo Publishing House, 1994).

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point that the male students in a class may not know all the female students, and vice versa, and class heads may misspell students’ names. Communities and schools are the most fundamental methods of socialization, and those who emerge from such loose institutions will be hard to control. They will lack the Western spirit of sticking to agreements, but also lack the traditional Chinese value of social feeling and be unwilling to do their best for leaders and bosses who have shown their appreciation. Managers in companies often feel the new generation of young workers is hard to manage – in particular they are more inclined towards frequent and casual changes of job. On visits to six firms in Fengxian in SH and Kunshan (昆山) in Jiangsu (江苏), we found that, paradoxically, more people are changing jobs in these economically uncertain times. In order to ensure employees work as agreed, piecework payment is now common. This is a system of payment based entirely on quantification of successes and failures, with no hope that workers will work without reward for the good of the company. Such firms can achieve high levels of output, but not high quality, as high quality work requires a high level of personal responsibility, which cannot be measured. In government and in state-run institutions, control over subordinates is constantly decreasing and systems similar to piecework are appearing: salaries are paid in part each time a task is completed. In universities, traditional teaching and research sections and even faculties are breaking down, with teachers liaising directly with the university’s academic or administrative departments. But schools and universities are only able to check teachers complete their workload – not the quality of their teaching. It is the teacher’s own colleagues who know them best, but they have neither the responsibility nor authority to monitor them. Mentorship systems within teaching and research sections and faculties have been lost, and in many universities new PhD graduates are sent directly to lecture, with teaching now an isolated process, rather than a group one. The ability of teachers to do their jobs has been reduced by this individualized method of education. 3

The Systemic/Institutional Basis of Individualized Living10

3.1 Replacement of Family Businesses with Salaried Employment If the breakdown of collective production is said to be the direct cause of today’s individualization of living, then the breakdown of individualized 10  While Beck emphasizes the institutional basis of individualization, we place systems and institutions side by side here, as in any country, individualization must be a matter of

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production should be seen as a deeper basis for the individualization of China’s society. The proportion of people in SH engaged in family farming or running their own businesses is far lower than that in other regions. Once salaried employment is found, there are managers to smooth relationships with superiors, subordinates and colleagues – it is no longer necessary to manage these relationships yourself. And the dominance of salaried employment means a great weakening of the economic role of relationships with friends and family. According to data from the end of 2010 in the China Statistical Yearbook (《中国统计年鉴》), it can be seen that the process of replacement of work in family businesses with salaried employment is most complete in SH. The percentage of income coming from labor for SH residents is decreasing, with other sources of income increasing. For rural residents on the city’s outskirts, this process is new but is off to a strong start. Ever since 1949, the institution of the family business has been well developed on SH’s outskirts.11 Fertile land and the opportunities for other work mean that only small plots of land are held, and there are more famers working their own land closer to the city than elsewhere. Under a more natural market economy, low levels of industrialization can result in land use rights becoming more fragmented, rather than concentrated. But will further industrialization result in land use rights becoming more concentrated? Developed nations have taken measures to ensure this happens, but in East Asia this process has been extremely slow and given rise to “two-sector stagnation.”12 Additionally, systems as well as institutions. It is hard to reduce an institution to individual actions, but much harder to do so for a system. Systems include, at a minimum: modern communication systems, modern energy systems, transportation systems, and the administrative systems of centralized power – and what these have in common is that they are unrelated to political institutions. Without these systemic factors, the so-called second modernity could not have occurred. Beck only notices the social level of society, but society is already a social-technological system. This was something both Habermas and Luhmann had a better and more perceptive understanding of. However, great length and a full review of social systems theory would be required to determine how to distinguish systems from institutions. Here, the authors simply point out we cannot talk only of institutions but not of systems. The task of defining them is left for the future. 11  See Jiangsu Education Industry Federation, “Record of a survey of Agriculture in Jiangsu, Huhai Region,” 1924. For analysis of this source see Chang Yelang, Research into Chinese Land Systems (Beijing: China University of Political Science and Law Press, 2004), 243. In 1949 and 1950 the East China Military Commission also carried out an in-depth survey of agricultural production in East China. Its conclusion on SH was: “Land ownership is more dispersed than the average village.” See East China Military Commission Land Reform Committee, “Survey of Villages Outside Major Cities in Shandong and East China,” 1951. 12  J. V. Braun, “Globalization and Its Challenges for Smallholders,” in Globalization and Smallholders, ed. Zhong Puning et al. (Beijing: China Agriculture Press, 2005). On “two-sector

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there is a close relationship between the decline of rural family operations and increasing collective-state institutional arrangements. Although the Household Contract Responsibility System (家庭联产承包责任制) was implemented in SH, the collective had tight control of the land, and only about two-thirds of arable land was allocated to households. Given collective ownership of land and the high taxation of the time, it was common, by the 1990s, for farmers to want to abandon their land. A second round of contract extensions in 1999 gave them the opportunity to do so, and many tried to get out of the contracts, some successfully. After tax reforms and subsidy increases, many returned to their villages and attempted to reclaim their land, with many disputes arising. In 2003, SH and the south of Jiangsu were first to implement the “three concentrations”: industry was to be concentrated in industrial parks, land concentrated in large-scale agricultural operations, and rural residents concentrated in cities. The outskirts of SH thus saw an increase in efforts to concentrate land. Fengxian saw large-scale “cooperatives,” the Song and JS districts had “family farms” and “village farms.” A new concept appeared: the “big farmer,” referring to those with large areas of land – 30 mu (亩) or more, if staple crops were being planted. It needs to be pointed out that large-scale land transfers in SH are generally arranged by the Villagers’ Committees, which must approve contracts by affixing the committee seal. There is competition among villagers as to who will become a “big farmer,” and it is the committee that has the final say. In 2007, SH’s Song district started to promote the family farm model, increasing the scale of staple crop production and professionalization of farming. There were 597 such farms in 2007; by 2011 there were 1,114. The percentage of farmland accounted for by these farms has consistently risen, from 55.4% in 2007 to 76.4% in 2011. Average farm size among large farmers reached 116 mu, with small farmers having an average of only 1 mu. According to a sample survey by the district Bureau of Statistics (统计局), the average large vegetable farmer had 67 mu of land, compared to 2.1 mu for small farmers.13 The district of JS started to promote larger scale operations in 2006. By 2009 it had 819 farmers planting staple crops on more than 30 mu of land each, with an average farm size of 270 mu. The percentage of rice growing land on large farms accounted for 76% of the total, while there were 24,488 small farms with an average of

stagnation” see Yujiro Hayami and Yoshihisa Godo, Agricultural Economics, trans. Shen Jinhu (Beijing: China Agriculture Press, 2003). 13  Data from the Song district Bureau of Statistics, SH.

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2.86 mu of land.14 These huge gaps tells us that small farmers are much less likely to be commercial operations, and in fact an increasing number of them no longer sell their crops. According to our field study in the township of Zhujing (朱泾镇) in JS, those who continue to sell their products do so mainly at local markets, rather than into large supply chains. The local government has set up specific areas in markets for farmers to sell their own produce. Besides small farmers pulling out of commercial production, we also see incomers to SH replacing locals as workers on large farms. This is more apparent in vegetable rather than rice farming, as vegetable farming requires more labor and is less suitable for salaried employment. Currently, SH is home to 250,000 migrant farm workers, who produce the bulk of local vegetables. A glance at related data shows that the percentage of SH residents engaged in individual entrepreneurship is shockingly low. There is less than a 4% difference in urbaned in individual entrepreneurship is actually lower – although a business may actually have been registered by a local, it may later have been leased out, with the owner receiving a steady rental income. One township official responsible for collecting taxed in individual entrepreneurship is actually lower – although a business may actually have been registered by a local, it may later have been leased out, with the owner receiving a steady rental income. One township official responsible for collecting tax from individual entrepreneurs said that although three in ten such businesses are registered by locals, no more than one in ten is actually run by a local. However, this refers to businesses with on-street premises. Among 203 households selected from 6 village groups in JS and Fengxian, 15 had their own companies or were individual entrepreneurs (registered or not). That ratio is not low. But only 4 had shops or workshops – others worked in decorating, deliveries, or at home. 3.2 Full and Centralized Safeguards Provided by the System/Institutions If a population provides help and protection for its members in times of disaster and adversity, we cannot say it is individualized. But in SH, marketization and population flow have made this problematic, and the state and collectives have immediately jumped in. SH has China’s best social welfare system. These were mainly set up from the 1990s onwards, as the economy became more market-oriented, and this can almost be regarded as society’s way of preserving itself.15 However, it must 14  Data from the JS district Bureau of Agriculture, SH, “Agricultural support policy oversight platform,” http://www.jsqnw.gov.cn/fczc/. 15  Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, trans. Feng Gang and Liu Yangyi (Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s Publishing House, 2007).

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be pointed out that this resulted mainly in the smoother commodification of labor, rather than the reverse. This is the same throughout China and overseas. If forms of welfare and subsidies specific to certain sectors are ignored and only those for life in general are considered, the following examples can be given: There are five primary welfare mechanisms: The first, “urban welfare,” is the SH basic urban social security system, formed in 1993 and applicable to all urban work units and employees within the city. Currently, this includes old age pensions, healthcare, unemployment benefits, and pregnancy and work injuries. The second, “township welfare,” targets SH’s smaller townships and was founded in 2003. This covers township employers and those employees with local hukou, and other staff approved by the city government. This covers the same five types of welfare as the “urban welfare” system. The third, “rural welfare,” is a socialized pension scheme founded in 1996 and aimed at rural residents with local hukou. This relies on contributions from the employees themselves, with some subsidies and mutual assistance, with contributions registered on a personal account. The fourth, “general welfare,” is a system for incoming workers – primarily rural migrants – founded in 2002. This covers workplace (or accidental) injuries, hospital care and old age subsidies, and also a subsidy for emergency outpatient care. The fifth, “basic welfare,” provides for a minimum standard of living and was founded in 1993 and extended from urban to rural residents in 1994, forming an integrated urbanrural basic welfare system. There are also a range of specific welfare and assistance systems, including basic welfare for the elderly with no means of support; welfare for family members of those killed at work; basic healthcare for urban severely disabled residents with no means of support; relief and aid for those who worked outside of SH but returned to retire; basic healthcare for school students and infants; healthcare for university students; assistance with training and finding work; a minimum wage; enterprise annuities; healthcare for new rural cooperatives; an assistance and management system for vagrants; emergency assistance systems; at-home care for the elderly; charitable organizations; affordable rental housing; jobs for the disabled; pensions for urban residents; and so on. It needs to be pointed out that if the Villagers’ Committee determined who received these benefits, then the unity of the collective would be strengthened. But this is not the case. For example, during relocation processes there are two methods of determining who gets a place on the “urban welfare” rolls – in one method, anyone whose land is affected gets a place, and in the other, places are allocated by the collective. The first is currently more common, for the second may lead to more conflict. Many other forms of welfare are also allocated under

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rules set by higher levels of government – for example, Villagers’ Committees have no say in who gets basic welfare or at-home elderly care. So the system and institutions not only protect the individuals, but also reach the individuals directly without passing over the traditional grassroots organizations. With increasing numbers of incomers, maintenance of public order and safety became an issue. During the time of the People’s Communes (人民公 社), there were Commune Discipline Patrols (公社纠察), while as village and township enterprises were developing Joint Defense Teams (联防队) were formed – one of the first villages to do so in SH was in the township of Zhelin, Fengxian, where there were more such enterprises. Those teams exercised strong and effective management of mobile populations, thanks to SH’s 1991 rules on the taking in and returning to their native place of indigent migrants and other local and even grassroots regulations. Some incomers who lived in SH at that time still recall the Joint Defense Teams with some trepidation. SH, along with the rest of the country, did away with rules on handling of indigent migrants in 2003, leaving the Joint Defense Teams without their main means of punishment, but regular patrols still had security benefits. The patrols institutionalized a tradition of neighborhoods looking out for each other, but it could also be said that it made that tradition unnecessary. SH is only 6,340 square kilometers in size, but government power is highly concentrated. One township is 114 square kilometers in size and has a permanent population of 120,000 and a migrant population of 240,000. It has two neighborhoods, two communities, 17 Villagers’ Committees, 45 residents committees, 53 public servants, 187 permanent employees, 167 temporary employees, 270 community cadres, 613 village cadres and village-level employees, and 2,132 staff in various teams – a total of 3,423 people, giving a broadly defined cadre to citizen ratio (all public employees: long-term residents) of 1:105. Difficulties in obtaining accurate national data means we cannot say if this is high or low – but it is noteworthy that on walking down the street you constantly see people in various types of uniform. During the “4050 Project” and the “10,000 Jobs Plan”16 these social management positions were popular, and, since 2011, an increasing number of incomers have been seen in these positions – possibly because locals are unwilling to do what is often physical work, and perhaps as 16  The “4050 Project” was a SH government measure, launched in 2001, to get struggling groups into employment, with the creation of jobs tailored to women over 40 and men over 50 left unemployed or underemployed during the restructuring of State Owned Enterprises. The “10,000 Jobs Plan” started in 2004 and within two years saw the “purchase” of 200,000 posts for laid-off workers who were having difficulty finding employment. The two projects are closely related.

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a result of the exhaustion of local sources of labor. Urban and social management now makes intensive extensive use of technology, funding and labor, and it is hard not to recall how difficult it was to bring about order. 3.3 The Socialized Mechanisms of Individualized Living There are complex social and cultural mechanisms involved in the decline of horizontal links and the development of vertical relationships, which are constantly being recreated in venues throughout society. The one most worthy of mention is the education system, where the verticalization of interpersonal relations is constantly institutionalized. The harm done to interpersonal relationships by a test-orientated education system is not due to the test, but to the ranking of students by the teacher, which prevents natural relationships between the students. When assessing the extent to which education has become test-oriented in a certain region or school, or in comparison to another type of education, it is possible to look to the degree to which teachers organize students’ time. The more control teachers have over students’ time, the more test-oriented it is – and in this sense, SH’s education system ranks very highly. The evidence for this is simple: stand outside any classroom door or window and listen to the noise from inside. SH’s elementary schools can be classed as private, community public schools, and schools for children of migrant workers. Only the last of these reminds us of the schools of our own childhoods – the games may be played in circles, under close teacher supervision, and with no gender differences – but at least they are playing real games. Teachers need close control of students’ time in order to ensure students perform well on tests – particularly the common regional examinations. Students’ scores affect the schools reputation, its tuition fees, the performance record of the teachers and head teacher, and the expectations of parents. The increase in test-oriented education has its institutional root in a centralized education system – the common examinations were launched by the education authorities and certificate-issuing bodies. When we think back to our own childhoods, such exams were extremely rare. Culturally, parents do not allow children to pursue their own interests and characteristics. Socially, if a child is allowed to play, he or she will find nobody to play with – and if play has to be organized by the parents, the children may as well be sent to the same after-school classes or extra-curricular activity. The last decade or more has disproven what was once commonly said: that increasing the university intake would mean less test-oriented education. SH’s university intake is among the country’s highest, but a recent survey across Beijing, Xi’an (西安), Hefei (合

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肥), Guangzhou (广州) and SH found that SH’s children spent the least time

outside and the most time doing homework.17 When education is very test-oriented, children become isolated from each other and teachers’ instructions must be obeyed. In the so-called “best” private schools, every classroom has a “star chart,” with class monitors adding or removing stars from next to a student’s name depending on their behavior – a form of soft power applied now that teachers can no longer administer corporal punishment. But rather than attempting to intrinsically help the students become better, as Yuan Liaofan (袁了凡) did with the Chart of Credits and Wrongs (“功过格”) in the Ming Dynasty (明朝),18 it is a crude and quantified application of power, aimed at the simple training of the child. 4 A Guanxi-based Return to Autonomy In an individualizing society, social consensus breaks down and interpersonal cohesion weakens. The result is that while personal freedom expands, the ability to act on that freedom – that is, autonomy – recedes. And this is what is known as the paradox of individualization. As Bauman puts it: “To cut a long story short: there is a growing gap between individuality as fate and individuality as practical capacity for self-assertion (as ‘individuation,’ the term selected by Beck to distinguish the self-sustained and self-propelled individual from a merely ‘individualized’ individual, that is, a human being who has no choice but to act as if the individuation had not been attained); and bridging that gap is, most crucially, not part of that capacity.”19 How to rebuild the autonomy of the agent (and individual)? Finding the road to an answer may be difficult, but we can never give up – and the path that road takes will largely be determined by local culture. We do not all share the same vision of Utopia. Beck attempted to find a possibility for the individualized to cohere once more. His view of the problem can be summarized as institutionalized freedom leading to the weakening of the individual ability to gain autonomy, and hence to further institutionalization of freedom. Beck sought a democratic solution to restructuring the age of individualization: “In de Tocqueville, one finds this sentence, which is hardly less shocking to many people today: ‘The Americans battled individualism, the fruit of equality, with freedom, and they 17  Wu Didi, “Shanghai children get the least outdoor activity, becoming more housebound,” in Wenweipo, May 21, 2012, Section 22. 18  Yuan Liaofan and He Xie, Life’s Treasury (Beijing: China Zhigong Press, 2011). 19  Bauman, “Individually, together,” preface to Beck, Individualization 24.

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have vanquished it.’ Applied to the present debate, this implies that the symptoms of the ‘me generation’ cannot be opposed with less freedom; they must be opposed with more freedom, but political freedom. Freedom, if seized and actively filled out, fosters commitments in the public space.”20 De Tocqueville set democracy and freedom in opposition to each other, holding that democracy could lead to centralization of power or even autocracy, as well as leading to freedom – but not both. Freedom as de Tocqueville understood it was linked to an aristocratic republic – but what is to be done in democratic times, when there is no aristocracy? His hope was that “private citizens, by combining together, may constitute bodies of great wealth, influence, and strength, corresponding to the persons of an aristocracy.”21 Beck, strongly influenced by de Tocqueville, similarly places hopes for “greater freedom” in free association, and as de Tocqueville did a century and more ago, turns to America for many examples of this. Beck is entirely clear that the youth of Europe are ever less willing to join class-based political parties dominated by their elders. But even turning to America he is unable to find as many associations with clear public goals as de Tocqueville did.22 But he did find that “Young people have finally discovered something for themselves, something to make adults panic: fun, fun sports, fun music, fun consumption, fun life.” Beck unexpectedly holds that these activities, which even the participants themselves would regard as apolitical, are actually “behaving in a very political way.” Subsequently he demands the elimination of four traditional hypotheses on political organization: the equation of commitment with membership; the assumption of self-sacrifice; the dignity of silent service; and the idea of the heroic helper who needs no assistance himself. That is to say, if we abandon the idea that new youth organizations will feature loyalty to the group, a spirit of sacrifice or a sense of social responsibility, then there is nothing to stop us regarding these new gatherings of youth as new and free political associations.23 And so Beck’s so-called “recreation of politics” happens entirely within his own head. There is a range of problems with this particular Utopia. In the eyes of the “adults,” the new “Utopia” Beck describes ignores the differences between private and public life, seeming almost a little frivolous. Many new groups are what Bauman described as “‘communities’ only as fragile and short-lived, 20  Beck, Individualization, 180. 21  De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2, trans. Dong Guoliang (Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2011), 875. 22  For the best-known discussion of this, see Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2011). 23  Quotes are from Chapter 12, “Freedom’s Children” of Beck, Individualization.

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scattered and wandering emotions.”24 Their capability to recreate politics is therefore weak. And Beck faces more difficulties than the suspicion he is in desperate search of a cure. We can think of the difference between freedom and equality, and how that difference appears in a democracy or a republic. Can that difference be flattened out? We will not discuss this in depth here, merely pointing out that Beck constructs a mechanical view of freedom, in which the individual’s freedom is inherent in or granted by institutions, imagining a circumstance in which the individual’s life and the institution are the same. But as Michel Corzier tells us with the title of his book You Can’t Change a Society by Decree, there is always huge tension between the macro-system and the daily life of the people. And so Li Youmei and others have put forward an interpretation, offering guidance that “life is not entirely determined by institutions” – that is, autonomy is entirely capable of surviving in the gaps that institutions are unable to close off. A more serious problem is that it may not be just Beck’s “institutions” that lead to individualization. Scott Lash was explicit that institutions, as Beck understands them, ignore the dimension of technology, even as systems of interweaving technology are going ever further beyond our ability to comprehend them and may have transcended the category of political freedom. Beck quotes de Tocqueville at length, but he never deals directly with de Tocqueville’s prescient warnings of the problems with centralized power presented in On Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the French Revolution. Beck proposes a new political freedom, but ignores its links with systems of centralized power and complex technologies. In reality, these political and technological systems are inevitably and directly a part of our lives and have an impact on the creation of space for autonomy. Does autonomy exist within systems/institutions, or in the gaps left by systems/institutions? There is no question – it exists in both. Is the expansion of autonomy an individual act, or an organized act? Again, this is no real question – autonomy must combine the efforts of the individual with organized action. Beck described the new generation’s attitude to life as follows: “Freedom’s children practice a seeking, experimenting morality that ties together things that seem mutually exclusive: egoism and altruism, self-realization and active compassion, self-realization as active compassion.”25 “While in the old values system the ego always had to be subordinated to patterns of the collective (also always designed by individuals), these new orientations towards the ‘we’ create something like a co-operative or altruistic individualism. Thinking of oneself and living for others at the same time, once considered a contradiction in 24  Bauman, “Individually, together,” preface to Beck, Individualization, 26. 25  Beck, Individualization, 183.

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terms, is revealed as an internal, substantive connection. Living alone means living socially.”26 Reading this gives rise to a sense of recognition. For the Chinese, interpersonal relations are neither individualism nor collectivism, the Chinese always have a strong sense of the bigger picture, but at the same time it is a picture they are at the center of. The remaining question is how to combine egoism and altruism? Is the route to doing this one of the group, or of guanxi? Beck’s prescription for Western society was clearly one of the group – he hoped these highly individualized groups would be able to show compassion, and if this simply was not possible they would be defined as a new form of political action. In China the authors are more inclined to take a guanxi approach – relationality – to reconstruct the autonomy of the individual. Relationality might not be found in the dictionary, but it came naturally into use – and perhaps even misuse27 among academics. Regardless, the coining of a new term shows a new social fact has been broadly recognized. If we must look for its academic origins, a close relative of the word could be Liang Shuming’s concept of an “ethical basis” – which today has seen huge changes. Blood relations, the heart of the five Confucian relationships, are weakening, but the Chinese continue to work to build their own guanxi networks, networks which still display the expanding “ripples” described by Fei Xiaotong (费孝通).28 The autonomy of the Chinese is closely linked with these three terms: the self, guanxi, and diverse rules. Wang Hejian (汪和建) paid particular attention to the first two of these, the last comes from the work of Zhang Jing (张静) and Xiong Wansheng (熊万胜).29 Guanxi is the most important social foundation of autonomy for the Chinese, but systemic changes – the market economy, urbanization, high mobility, the rise of virtual worlds, population control, feminism, education (particularly exam-oriented education), social welfare, modern transportation systems – are undermining 26  Ibid., 186. 27  Lu Pinyue, “The cultural environment and market order of ‘relationality’ – A cultural perspective on China’s market economy,” Academic Research 7 (2002); Fang Zhaohui, “Chinese cultural patterns and Confucianism: The example of etiquette,” in Fudan Journal (Philosophy and Social Sciences) 1 (2010); Qin Yaqing, “Relationality and process construction: Implanting Chinese ideas into international relations theory,” Social Sciences in China 3 (2009). 28  Fei Xiaotong, Population Control in Rural China (Beijing: Beijing Peking University Press, 1998). 29  Wang Hejian, “The logic of egoistic action: Understanding the real social constructs of the ‘new traditionalism’ and the Chinese work unit,” Chinese Journal of Sociology 3 (2006); Zhang Jing, “Uncertain land use rules: A legal sociological interpretive framework,” Social Sciences in China 1 (2003); Xiong Wansheng, “Instability of smallholder land rights,” Sociological Studies 1 (2009).

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the ability of the Chinese to build guanxi, something which is perhaps more apparent in the lower strata of society. This does not mean it is not possible to use guanxi to recreate autonomy – just that the question of how to recreate autonomy is pressing. Several issues must be clarified when using relationality to consider the construction of autonomy. First, is the heart of relationality the individual person, or the individual household? The authors hold that the hub of individuality for us may still be the household. Beck found that in many large German cities more than 50% of households consisted of one person. In France, a president who had been married three times was replaced with one who was never married. China is also seeing rising divorce rates, but what many have not noticed is that rates of remarrying are also on the rise. In particular in SH, there are more remarriages than divorces – a trend that has been sustained for years. Perhaps this shows that the city where people enjoy the most personal freedom is also the one where the difficulties of personal freedom are most keenly felt. Second, does a focus on relationality inevitably mean turning away from common values such as freedom and equality? It needs to be made clear that the “guanxi” that can be constructed today differs from the guanxi of traditional society – guanxi today is increasingly founded on the free choices of free people. Guanxi in traditional society was based on given relations of blood and place, while today we should encourage free connections that break these patterns. Or as Liang Shuming advocated, “adopt groups and organizations, in a Chinese way.”30 That is, use the group, but respect China’s own traditions. If there is any difference here between the focus on self-forming groups and Beck’s emphasis, it is another confirmation of the egocentrism of the Chinese. The existence of groups for the majority of Chinese is perhaps at root just a way to build guanxi, rather than a source of belonging. Chinese people may be members of many groups at once, but never belong to one specifically (although there may be a preference). If we regard groups and organizations as a route to linking the individual with the overall functions of the system, then we must admit there are many gaps between social life and the system as a whole. Third, does a focus on relationality mean space for autonomy is created only in the gaps, and we can abandon any evaluation of systems or institutions? The law is no more than feelings, and feelings are no more than natural. The problem now is that there is too much room for personal feeling in our systems and 30  Liang Shuming, The Character of Chinese Culture (Beijing: CITIC Publishing House, 2011), 174.

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institutions;31 and that the systems and institutions ignore the public’s need for spontaneous association. And so the systems, institutions and our lives all need to change. Many people consider the self-forming groups of Chinese from a Western context, and so see mass protests, consumer activists,32 and so on. Rarely is the following noted: at dusk on the public squares of any Chinese city, we see hundreds of people dancing to music in perfect time, despite perhaps not knowing each other. What is this? The authors regard this as one form of organization in private life. This combines with the performative actions of private life online, creating a rising tide of the communalization of living. This was already present in village life over a decade ago. In SH, such public living developed even earlier. “Cultural activities on public squares became popular in SH from 1993, as a continuation and development of traditional public cultural events such as temple fairs, lantern fairs and park fairs. This is an overall expression of company culture, campus culture, family culture and barracks culture, and has become a major feature of SH’s urban community culture.”33 In 2010, there were over 12,000 mainly female public arts groups, although the actual number is likely much higher – there are also male groups, and more importantly, these statistics are incomplete. In one township on the outskirts of SH, there are 146 registered arts groups – and many unregistered. The government, grassroots organizations and NGOs are all involved with these self-organized groups, providing services and creating ways in which the participants’ lives link with systems and institutions. It is worth watching to see what direction future changes take. Fourth, what is the historical rationale for a guanxi based construction of individual autonomy? Xiong Wansheng once offered a mathematical proof that there are always some exchanges that cannot be completed on the market, but must be realized using guanxi.34 In history, guanxi-based lifestyles arise from the individualization (or household-ization) of production. Only during individualized production do people naturally and voluntarily build closer 31  Hu Wei, Government Processes, (Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s Publishing House, 1998). 32  From Yan Yunxiang, “Contradictory images of the individual, disputed individualization processes,” in He Meide and Lu Na, “Me” China: The Rise of the Individual in Modern Chinese Society (Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2011). 33  Li Taicheng (ed.), Record of Art and Culture in Shanghai, chapter 6, “Mass Culture” (Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press, 2001). 34  Xiong Wansheng, “Interconnectivity between interpersonal and division of labor networks: A transformation and evidence for the weak interconnectivity topic,” Journal of Huazhong University of Science and Technology 4 (2003).

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links with other people, resulting in the simultaneous development of individualization and social interconnectivity. Rapid industrialization saw large numbers of rural farmers become employed workers, with all aspects of state policy encouraging large-scale concentrated production, and individualized production started to seem backwards. At the same time, the informal economy boomed, seeming to show that the socialization of production predicted by Marx would not proceed smoothly, but would, instead, hit some kind of limit. The concept of “small-scale socialized production” was put forward, offering a theoretical description of this limit, holding that socialized production did not have to be on a large scale.35 For Scott Lash and John Urry, Western society has also seen, since the 1960s, a type of disorganized capitalism36 with the scale of economic organization shrinking, bureaucracies breaking down, and new forms of interpersonal relations developing. But Beck did not see the significance of the individualization of production, instead, he simply hoped those lonely souls would be able to find each other. The authors hold firmly to the view that the autonomy of the individual is only necessary and only possible when he or she must make a living independently and autonomously. There will be no new individualized production in the agricultural sector, but large amounts of existing individualized production will be retained. Currently the number of individual entrepreneurs in China is constantly increasing – from 2,571 in 2000 to 37.5647 million at the end of 2011.37 More worthy of our notice is the trend to individualized production in virtual spaces. The virtual world is a new venue both for living and producing. As of the end of 2011 there were over 16 million personal online shops, a figure that was growing at 20% annually.38 The ecommerce sector in SH is one of China’s most developed. Small-scale production has not passed its sell-by-date, and that view that it has a sell-by-date now looks old.

35  Yang Jianhua, “Socialized small-scale production: The internal logic of modernization in Zhejiang,” (Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2008). 36  Scott Lash and John Urry, The End of Organized Capitalism, trans. Zheng Gengsheng, Yuan Zhitian, et al. (Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 2001). 37  State Administration of Industry and Commerce, “2011 Market actors statistics,” http:// www.saic.gov.cn/zwgk/tjzl/zhtj/bgt/201204/t20120426_125839.html. 38  China Ecommerce Research Centre, “2011 China ecommerce market monitoring report,” http://www.100ec.cn/zt/2010bgdz/.

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Epilogue: Starting from “Me”

Before Liang Shuming’s father died, he asked his son if the world would get better. Liang Shuming seems to have been an optimist, and if he gave an answer I believe he would have referred to human feeling. This was the view expressed in Feelings and Life, which Liang regarded as his most important book.39 If we can do well for ourselves, and from there do well for others and even the planet, then there is hope for China. Or in the view of this article, if the autonomy of the Chinese people can be given full play, there is hope for China. Liang identified two great strengths of the Chinese national spirit: a sense of ethics and ambition.40 He devoted his life to building organizations that would help people realize their ambitions. The Chinese people have no common religious faith, and so their lives are dedicated to self-realization in the secular world. The I Ching says: As heaven never stops turning, the great man never stops improving. If systems, in search of stability, ignore or restrict the autonomy of countless “me’s” China will face simultaneous problems of social order and social vigor. Conversely, many people look to the West and learn that sense of reliance on systems and institutions, unwittingly importing a cognitive scheme that blames everyone but themselves, over-emphasizing the restrictions that systems and institutions place on us while not examining and fixing these tendencies. It is incorrect to expect everything to be given to you, but relying only on yourself leads to cynicism. What is necessary is to start from “me” and create a new balance with the systems and institutions. In terms of constructing social theory, if we wish to affirm the “me,” we must have a theory of that “me.” But social theory only has the Western concepts of “I” and “me” [translator’s note: The Chinese text on this occasion gives “I” and “me” in English, to contrast with the Chinese “我”], or agency as relative to structures and cultures. There is no “me” full of the Chinese concepts of spirit, of jing, qi and shen [精气神]. Where is the Chinese “me”?

39  Liang Shuming Feelings and Life (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2011). 40  Liang Shuming, The Character of Chinese Culture, 172.

Chapter 5

Community Economic Structure and the Social Capital of the Individual: Examples among Poor Residents in Guangzhou and Lanzhou Liang Ningxin Translated by Roderick Graham Flagg Abstract The source of social capital for the individual is an important issue that needs further discussion. The author argues that social capital for the individual is determined not only by the individual’s social class status, as is proposed by the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts, but also by the socioeconomic structure of the community in which the individual lives, according to W. J. Wilson’s theory of social isolation. The author’s argument is supported by a 2004 Urban Poverty Survey involving 716 poor residents in 18 communities in Guangzhou and Lanzhou. The data obtained from this survey demonstrates that while individual social capital is mainly determined by the individual’s class status, the socioeconomic structure of the community in which the individual lives also plays a significant role. In other words, the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts and the theory of social isolation both provide effective explanations of the source of social capital for the individual, and the two theories complement each other. The relationship between the production of urban residential space and the reproduction of social relations are also discussed.

Keywords social capital – community economic structure – individuals

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004392335_006

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Social* capital has become a new theoretical model for sociological research since the 1990s.1 Since social capital theory2 focuses on social interactions and their outcomes and has distinct theoretical and practical value, it has been adopted by academics and international bodies such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. The theory has become a useful explanatory concept and analytical starting point for international research into poverty and welfare reform.3 A series of World Bank studies into poverty4 all found that the social capital of the poor has a clear distribution effect on the welfare of the household – and a much larger effect than that of human or material capital. In recent years, the social capital paradigm has also been

*  This research was financed by the National Philosophy and Social Science Foundation as part of the “Vulnerable Urban Populations and Social Welfare: Theory, Policy and Practice” project (02BSH039), and Guangzhou Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science project “Community Development and Urban Poverty: The Examples of Guangzhou and Lanzhou” (08Y48). The author is grateful for guidance from Professor Cai He of the School of Sociology at Sun Yat-Sen University; and for revision suggestions by professors Qiu Haoxiong and Zhang Yingxiang, and anonymous reviewers. All errors are, of course, the author’s own. 1  Bian Yanjie, “Social Networks and the Job-Hunting Process,” Reform and Opening Up and Chinese Society, ed. Lin Yimin (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1999), 110–114; Bian Yanjie, “Social Capital: Exploring a New Type of Explanatory Model,” Social Capital and Social Development, eds. Li Huibin et al. (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2000), 20–42; Robinson L. and Flora J., “The Social Capital Paradigm: Bridging across Disciplines,” American Journal of Agriculture Economics, 85, no. 5 (2003): 1187–1193. 2  Social capital is a common term but has multiple theories, with fields such as sociology, economics and political science having different definitions and emphases. Some hold that social capital has become a new model for sociological research. See Social Capital and Social Development, eds. Li Huibin et al. (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2000), 1–12, 20–42. 3  Imelda Nalukenge, “Social Capital: The Missing Link in Poverty Alleviation Programs in Developing Countries,” 2002, http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/SocialCapital.pdf. 4  Narayan D. and Pritchett L, “Cents and Sociability: Household Income and Social Capital in Rural Tanzania,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 47, no. 4 (1999); Grootaert C, “Local Institutions, Household Welfare and Poverty in Indonesia,” Local Level Institutions Study (LLIS) Working Paper 6 (1999), The World Bank: Washington D.C.; Grootaert C, GiTaik Oh and Anand Swamy, “Social Capital and Development Outcomes in Burkina Faso,” LLIS Working Paper 7 (1999), The World Bank: Washington D.C.; Grootaert C. and Narayan D, “Local Institutions, Poverty and Household Welfare in Bolivia,” LLIS Working Paper 9 (2000), The World Bank: Washington D.C.; Grootaert C, “Does Social Capital Help the Poor?” LLIS Working Paper 10 (2001), The World Bank: Washington D.C.

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applied in research into urban poverty in China,5 with studies6 all showing that both poor residents and laid-off workers in search of work use social networks to acquire information, obtain basic subsistence and for reputational guarantees. A review of Chinese and international research into social capital shows there has been much study of the role of the social capital of the individual, but less study of the sources of social capital, and how those sources are created. In mainstream research both in China and overseas, it is rare for researchers to look into the theoretical issues surrounding sources of social capital. Even if this topic is touched upon, it is primarily to look at the significance of the individual’s existing socioeconomic status for social capital,7 rather than the link between an individual’s social capital and socioeconomic changes in the community in which he or she lives. In the World Bank research mentioned above, Deepa Narayan et al. noted that the effectiveness of a household’s social capital is restricted by the particular community environment, but the mechanisms of this were not further explored. In fact, even in studies of poverty and social capital by international bodies such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank and by academics, issues of the creation and source of individual social capital and how that social capital is linked to the community are overlooked. China has produced some research on the links between communities and poor residents,8 but not covering the link between the individual’s social capital 5  Tang Jun, Zhu Yaoyin, and Ren Zhenxing, “Social Security and Social Support Networks of Poor Households: A Shanghai Case Study,” Social Science Research 5 (2009); Zhou Changcheng and Chen Yun, “Poverty: A social capital explanation,” Academia Bimestris 2 (2003); Hu Yajie, “Self-Help and Other-Help for the Urban Poor: From the Perspective of Raising the Social Capital of the Urban Poor,” Youth Studies 12 (2003). 6  Tang Jun, Zhu Yaoyin, and Ren Zhenxing, “Social Security and Social Support Networks of Poor Households: A Shanghai Case Study”; Feng Xiaotian, Zhao Yandong, “The Relationship between Social and Human Capital and Opportunities for Reemployment for Laid-Off Workers,” Theory Monthly 8 (1998); Qiu Haixiong, Chen Jianmin, Ren Yan, “The Changing Structure of Social Support: From One to Many,” Sociological Studies 4 (1998); Zhao Yandong, “Social capital and reemployment of laid-off workers,” Doctoral thesis, CASS Institute of Sociology, 2001; Zhang Minjie, “Vulnerable Populations and Social Support during Socioeconomic Development,” Zhejiang Academic Journal 3 (2003). 7  Bian Yanjie, “The Sources and Functions of Social Capital of Urban Residents: Network View and Survey Findings,” Social Sciences in China 3 (2004); Zhang Wenhong, “Class and Social Networks Research: Theoretical Models and Findings,” Sociological Theory and Practice, Vol. 1, eds. Li Peilin and Tan Fangmin (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2005), 180–227. 8  Hu Yajie, “Self-Help and Other-Help for the Urban Poor: From the Perspective of Raising the Social Capital of the Urban Poor,” Youth Studies 12 (2003); Yang Tuan and Ge Daoshun, “Public services: Research and Application of Social Policy to Eliminate Marginalization,” Jiangsu Social Sciences 3 (2002); Tang Jun et al., Report on Chinese Urban Poverty and Its Alleviation (Beijing: Huaxia Publishing Company, 2003), 165–171.

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and the community he or she lives in. Therefore, the role of the community in creating opportunities for the individual, particularly those in vulnerable groups, has not received the attention it deserves. This paper will therefore discuss theoretical explanations of the sources of social capital, based on measurement of the social capital possessed by poor residents of Guangzhou (广州) and Lanzhou (兰州). Our questions are: 1) How to measure the individual’s social capital? 2) How to explain differences in stock of social capital across individuals and specifically, what effect does socioeconomic change in the community have on the social capital of the individual? 1

Explanation of Individual Social Capital and Its Differences: Theoretical Review and Hypotheses for Research

Concepts of social capital and its measurement are complex. Since Bourdieu and Coleman, the more representative ideas of social capital all agree that social capital is the links produced when an actor interacts with society, and the ability to acquire scarce resources (power, status, wealth, money, knowledge, opportunity, information, etc.) via these links. Actors can obtain these resources via two types of social link: by entry into a social group or organization, with the individual establishing a stable membership of the group or organization to obtain scarce resources; or via interpersonal networks formed during ordinary interactions.9 1.1 The Social Capital of the Poor and Its Measurement In line with the actual circumstances of China’s urban poor (urban residents receiving welfare payments designed to ensure a minimum standard of living), we categorize the links the poor establish with other individuals and organizations into three types: the individual’s ordinary social relationships; the individual’s links within the community; and the individual’s links with bodies and groups external to the community. The individual’s ordinary social relationships refer to the informal links arising in everyday life, with friends and family. Such links are essential under any circumstances, providing both emotional and material support for the individual. But as ordinary social exchanges are limited by the individual’s socioeconomic status, for the poor these links are to an extent limited to similar types of people, and so the resources obtained via these links are limited 9  Bian Yanjie, Qiu Haoxiong, “Social Capital of Enterprises and Its Efficacy,” Social Sciences in China 2 (2000).

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and inadequate. In times of crises, this social capital, produced through interpersonal interaction, can provide the poor with “prompt and substantive support,” but there may also be negative effects.10 The individual’s links within the community refers to links with community organizations and neighbors. The poor have closer links with the community than other residents, mostly with neighborhood committees, other residents and community organizations. These are “horizontal” links aimed at obtaining scarce resources from the locality and community organizations. Under the planned economy, urban residents did have links with the community, but apart from those with the work unit community, these were loose and indirect and community was more a matter of residential area. As the work unit system declined, the significance of the community became more apparent. And for the poor, as workers lost their jobs and households fell into poverty, the community came to play a greater role in the provision of welfare11 and consequently the links between the urban poor and the community strengthened. It can be said that these close links between the individual and the community are a product of the communitization of the interests of the poor. For the poor, participation in the community is an important way of connecting with community organizations and other residents. The more various community activities are taken part in, the wider the links with neighborhood committee officials and residents are, and so the chance of obtaining resources is improved. Links between the poor and the community (including community organizations and neighbors) are real and allow the poor to obtain scarce resources held by the community – and as such these links are a form of social capital. The individual’s links with bodies and groups external to the community refer to links with state, market and social organizations. The aim of these links is the obtaining of resources from these organizations. Such links were rare during the time of the work unit system, but with the establishment of the state welfare system and the arrival of “free space” and “free resources” – in Sun Liping (孙立平)’s terms, the individual has more opportunity to obtain resources from government, market and social organizations. For example, 10  Grootaert C., “Local Institutions, Household Welfare and Poverty in Indonesia,” Local Level Institutions Study (LLIS) Working Paper 6 (1999), The World Bank: Washington D.C.; Woolcock, M. and Narayan D., “Social Capital: Implications for Development Theory, Research and Policy,” World Bank Research Observer 15 (2000): 225–249. 11  Under the applicable laws and regulations, all information gathering and initial appraisals for the distribution of resources for poor residents, such as minimum living standard welfare payment, tax waivers and assistance with finding employment, are entrusted by the government to neighborhood committees.

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assistance can be obtained from charities; public support and actual economic support can be obtained from news organizations. In other words, the more an individual interacts and builds links with these organizations external to the community, the greater the possibility of obtaining scarce resources from them. These three types of links describe the possible types and sources of social capital an individual can hold. Through these three types of links the individual can obtain resources from individuals, the community, and outside the community. The three types of social capital obtained match those defined by the World Bank: bonding social capital, bridging social capital, and linking social capital.12 Theoretical Explanations of Differences in Social Capital across Individuals Bian Yanjie (边燕杰) offered two explanations of differences in social capital across individuals, a social class status explanation and an occupational contacts association, holding that such differences could be accounted for by class status factors and the outward or inward-facing nature of occupational contacts13 – in fact an implementation of the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts.14 But Bian’s explanation of differences in social capital across individuals is not applicable to the poor. Our research found that 77.8% of the heads of poor households were, at the time of the survey, in some form of unemployment. Meanwhile, when the work unit system changed, the colleague networks of the poor declined, due to changes in the nature of employment. Also, and most importantly, Bian’s explanation did not note the impact of changes in community structure on the residents – and particularly on poor residents. We hold that as the interests of the poor are tied up with the community, and the community is playing an increasingly important role in the lives of the poor, those structural changes may affect the social capital held by poor residents. This article holds that there are two possible and complementary explanations for the sources of social capital for poor residents: social class status and changes in the structure of the community. 1.2

12  The World Bank, “World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty,” 2001, pp. 127– 128, http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty/report/index.htm. 13  Bian Yanjie, “The Sources and Functions of Social Capital of Urban Residents: Network Views and Survey Findings.” 14  Zhang Wenhong, “Class and Social Networks Research: Theoretical Models and Findings,” Sociological Theory and Experience, Vol. 1, eds. Li Peilin and Tan Fangmin (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2005), 180–227.

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First, the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts and social capital: the social class status explanation. According to this theory, the individual resources a member of society possesses – wealth, status, social standing – create the opportunities and constraints for that individual’s social contact. Those of a lower social class status have more constraints and restrictions on their contacts and so have smaller and more homogenous social networks; social capital is therefore reduced both in quantity and variety.15 This theory implies the following hypothesis: in actual social contacts, people will interact more with their own community and with members of social classes close to their own. Those in the same or similar social position have common social experiences and roles and similar characteristics and attitudes, and this facilitates social interactions.16 Laumann termed this the principle of homogeneity or similarity in social contact.17 Generally, measurements of an individual’s socioeconomic status include occupation, education and household income, and subjective sense of identity. Here we look at the impact of education, household income and occupation on an individual’s social capital. In earlier research into individual social networks, education and economic circumstances of the household have formed constraints on the individual’s contacts with others and with organizations. When it comes to interactions, more educated individuals often interact with those of similar educational level, and under the influence of such cohorts are often more involved in voluntary and organized activities.18 When it comes to size of social networks, Lowenthal et al. found that income and education have a major impact on the size of the individual’s social network, with poverty and low levels of education resulting in fewer active social contacts and interactions, and smaller social networks.19 Research into chronic poverty in Tanzania found that those in households struck by poverty struggle to maintain existing networks and develop equal relationships with friends and neighbors, and found it difficult 15  Zhang Wenhong, “Class Differences in Social Networks and Capital of Urban Residents,” Sociological Studies 4 (2005). 16  Peter Blau, Inequality and Heterogeneity, trans. Wang Chunguang and Xie Shengzan (Beijing: China Social Sciences Publishing House, 1991), 56–57. 17  Zhang Wenhong, “Class and Social Networks Research: Theoretical Models and Findings,” Sociological Theory and Experience, Vol. 1, eds. Li Peilin and Tan Fangmin (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2005), 184. 18  Stoll, Michael A., “Race, Neighborhood Poverty, and Participation in Voluntary Associations,” Sociological Forum, 16, no. 3 (2001): 529–557. 19  Zhang Wenhong, “Class and Social Networks Research: Theoretical Models and Findings,” Sociological Theory and Experience,” Vol. 1, Eds. Li Peilin and Tan Fangmin (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2005), 194.

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to participate in activities in and out of the community, due to lacking the necessary funds, time or capabilities.20 From this we can predict that the higher an individual’s level of education, the more social capital he or she may possess (Hypothesis 1); and the more affluent a household is, the more social capital it may possess (Hypothesis 2). The individual’s occupation also affects social contacts. Bian Yanjie’s research showed that the social contacts of both Chinese workers and the bureaucratic elite are restricted to their own social class.21 Goldthorpe found22 that the working class interacts more often with their relatives, while senior professionals, in comparison, participate in a wider variety of organizations. Occupation affects social capital by influencing social contacts, the make-up of social networks and participation in organizations. During China’s reforms, it may be that those employed at resource-rich workplaces, such as government bodies, state institutions and state-owned enterprises, can obtain more resources and have more opportunities for social contacts than those who are unemployed or employed at resource-poor workplaces, such as informal or private-sector employers. Also, those who have held supervisory (team leader) or higher posts may have more opportunities for social contacts than others. Therefore, we hold that the nature of the individual’s occupation and employer may have a certain impact on the obtaining of social capital. We therefore make the following hypotheses: Household heads who have previously worked for resource-rich employers such as government bodies or state institutions may have more social capital than those working for informal employers (Hypothesis 3). Heads of households currently working for formal employers such as government bodies or state institutions have more social capital than heads of households who are unemployed (Hypothesis 4). Heads of households who have previously held management positions may have more social capital than heads of households who have not (Hypothesis 5). Second, social isolation theory and social capital: the socioeconomic change explanation: In The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy, William J. Wilson raised the topic of social isolation, holding that structural weaknesses in communities makes residents isolated: “lacking 20  Cleaver F, “The Inequality of Social Capital and the Reproduction of Chronic Poverty,” World Development 33, no. 6 (2005): 893–906. 21  Bian Yanjie, “The Sources and Functions of Social Capital of Urban Residents: Network View and Survey Findings,” Social Sciences in China 3 (2004). 22  Zhang Wenhong, “Class and Social Networks Research: Theoretical Models and Findings,” Sociological Theory and Experience, Vol. 1, eds. Li Peilin and Tan Fangmin (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2005), 220–221.

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links or sustained interactions with the individuals and organizations which represent mainstream society,”23 the inner city poor have fewer life opportunities. If we use the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts to interpret this, we find the following hypothesis implied by Wilson’s theoretical language: structural weaknesses in communities create constraints on the social contacts of residents, resulting in isolation both from social networks and participation in organizations, affecting social capital. Much empirical research carried out overseas24 has found that the structural community factors – socioeconomic status of the community, population stability, form of property ownership – have significant effects on the size and make-up of the social networks of residents, thus affecting social capital. V. Cattell’s case studies of two London estates25 found that community socioeconomic factors including the history of their development, employment, community infrastructure, housing design, opportunities and venues for meetings, opportunities to participate in community organizations and the reputation of the community all affected the social networks of individual residents and the resources embedded with them – that is, social capital. In socioeconomic terms, scholars of the Chicago school such as Shaw, McKay and W. J. Wilson hold that the make-up of the population in inner city areas suffering high unemployment and economic deprivation is often more homogenous, meaning residents in poor communities have smaller networks, with members of those networks being of similar socioeconomic

23  Wilson W. J., The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: Uni. of Chicago Press, 1987), 60. 24  Rankin, B. H. and Quane, J. M. “Neighborhood Poverty and the Social Isolation of Inner-City African American,” Social Forces, 79, no. 1 (2000): 139–164; Ross, Catherine E.; Reynolds J. R. and Karlyn J. Geis, “The Contingent Meaning of Neighborhood Stability for Residents’ Psychological Well-being,” American Sociological Review; Aug. 2000; 65, 4; 581– 597; Sampson R. J. and Groves W. B., “Community structure and crime: Testing Social Disorganization Theory,” The American Journal of Sociology 94, no. 4 (1989): 774–802; Farrell, Susan J, Tim Aubry and Daniel Coulombe, “Neighborhoods and Neighbors: Do They Contribute to Personal Well-Being,” Journal of Community Psychology 32, no. 1 (2004): 9–25: Bowles, S. and Herbert Gintis; “Social capital and community management,” in Escaping the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Social Capital and System Analysis, trans. and ed. Cao Rongxiang, (Shanghai: Joint Publishing, 2001), 129–151; Robinson D. and Wilkinson D., “Sense of Community in a Remote Mining Town: Validating a Neighborhood Cohesion Scale,” American Journal of Community Psychology, 1995, 23, 137–148. 25  Vicky Cattell, “Poor People, Poor Places, and Poor Health: The Mediating Role of Social Networks and Social Capital,” Social Science & Medicine, 2001, 52: 1501–1516.

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status.26 J. Hurlbert et al.27 found in their research into social networks of slum residents tend to be small. B. Rankin et al.28 showed that residents in poorer communities have fewer day-to-day interactions with higher-status (in terms of education or employment) friends and more with friends reliant on welfare, leading to isolated social networks. Also, when compared to communities of higher socioeconomic status, poor communities lack middle-class support and there is less community organization, with the community resources often found in better-off communities absent. This makes it harder for residents to benefit through participation in organizations, causing isolation from organizations.29 It can be seen that poor structural characteristics of a community place constraints on the social contacts of residents. We can therefore predict: The poorer a community is, the less capital its residents will possess (Hypothesis 6). 2

Data and Measurement

2.1 Sources of Data Research data originates with the Basic Circumstances of Urban Residents survey, carried out between May and October of 2004 in Lanzhou and Guangzhou. That survey was part of Professor Cai He (蔡禾)’s project, Vulnerable Urban Populations and Social Welfare: Theory, Policy and Practice, funded by the National Philosophy and Social Science Foundation (02BSH039). The sample of household heads was obtained by stratified random sampling. First two or three districts with a high proportion of residents receiving minimum living standard welfare payments were chosen in each city, and then one neighborhood was chosen from each district, on the same criteria. Two or three communities were chosen from each neighborhood, with all male or female household heads aged 18 to 70 receiving minimum living standard welfare payments potential survey subjects. Through random visits and sample screening, 718 successful samples were obtained from 18 community residents 26  Sampson R. J. and Groves W. B, “Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social Disorganization Theory,” The American Journal of Sociology 94, no. 4 (1989): 774–802. 27  Hurlbert J, Beggs J. and Haines V., “Social Networks and Social Capital in Extreme Environments,” in Nan Lin, K. Coo k and R. Burt (eds.), Social Capital: Theory and Research, New York; Aldine De Gruyter, 2001. 28  Rankin, B. H. and Quane, J. M. “Neighborhood Poverty and the Social Isolation of InnerCity African American,” Social Forces, 79, no. 1 (2000): 139–164. 29  Wilson W. J., The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago: Uni. of Chicago Press, 1987), 55–58.

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committees in the two cities: 353 from 9 committees in Guangzhou and 365 from 9 in Lanzhou. Alongside the survey of poor residents, interviews were also carried out through the residents’ committees. 2.2 Measurement of Social Capital of Heads of Poor Households In accordance with the definition of social capital and World Bank practice, and in line with the actual circumstances in Chinese cities, we designed the following three indices to measure the social capital possessed by the heads of poor households. It must be explained that as the first researchers to apply the World’ Bank’s definition of social capital, these measurements are no more than an initial attempt and reliability needs to be confirmed through further research. First: Compared with two years ago, how has frequency of interactions with the relatives, friends and schoolmates of the head of the household or spouse changed? These informal links are the most direct source of social support for poor residents, and are formed during day-to-day social exchanges. Our hypothesis is that more frequent links mean a greater chance of obtaining “prompt and substantive support,” including emotional and financial support, from friends and relatives in times of crisis. Second: Compared with two years ago, how has frequency of interactions of the head of the household with neighbors and officials from the neighborhood or residents committees changed? The hypothesis for this index is that with the interests of poor residents becoming more closely linked with the community, more frequent links of this type mean closer links with the community and more resources being obtained from the community, which helps reduce household poverty. Third: The head of the household’s links outside of the community. Primarily, this queried whether or not the head of the household had engaged in the following activities in the last two years: Participating in public welfare activities arranged by an organization external to the community; telling reporters about the circumstances of the community; telling Deputies to National People’s Congress (人大代表) or members of the China People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC, 中国人民政治协商会议) about the circumstances of the community; telling government representatives of any level about issues with implementation of the minimum living standard policy; or contacting a charity for assistance. The more frequently such behaviors occur, the more frequently the head of the households interact with the government and various social organizations and the better chances are of obtaining resources from these individuals and organizations – allowing for relief of or even an end to household poverty.

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The data from the first index was converted to ordinal variables: Fewer interactions = 1; no change = 2; more interactions = 3. The higher the value, the more likely such links exist. With the third variable we converted the Yes/ No category variable to a count variable, using SPSS to calculate the number of times heads of households participated in these activities (Yes = 1). 2.3 Explanation of Variables 2.3.1 Socioeconomic Circumstances of the Community Some academics hold that the best single measure of the socioeconomic circumstances of a community is the poverty rate.30 In this article, the community poverty rate is used to measure socioeconomic change, with the community poverty rate referring to the percentage of households under the current community residents’ committee receiving minimum living standard welfare payments. This figure is obtained by combining data obtained from residents and committee officials.31 Overall, the average poverty rate across the 18 neighborhoods studied was 5.58% (6% in Guangzhou and 5.2% in Lanzhou).32 2.3.2 Occupational Status The occupational status of the individual refers to employment in the past and at the time of the survey, the nature of the employer, and whether or not the individual has at some point held a management position. Based on Wei Angde (魏昂得)’s classification of work units, the authors place household heads in one of four categories, based on the availability of resources to past and present employers: Those working for government bodies and state institutions; those working for state-owned enterprises; those working for private firms or 30  Rankin, B. H. and Quane, J. M. “Neighborhood Poverty and the Social Isolation of InnerCity African American,” Social Forces 79, no. 1 (2000): 139–164. 31  To avoid the tendency to underestimate poverty rate due to reasons such as funding restrictions, we made the following adjustments: First, in the early and late stages of visits, the actual numbers of households receiving aid within the community were obtained from the neighborhood committee, as well the estimates of the number of households who should have been receiving aid but were not. In Guangzhou, we also included the number of households with Guangzhou Poor Household Certificates in our calculations. Second, some households were asked to estimate how many households in the vicinity (within the same and nearby buildings) should have been receiving assistance but were not, and these figures were combined with those from the neighborhood committee and fed back. Finally a senior neighborhood committee official provided a final figure, which we believe is quite accurate. 32  As the local governments in Guangzhou and Lanzhou have different budgets, different scopes of financial assistance and different definitions of poverty, this data cannot be used to conclude that there is more poverty in Guangzhou than in Lanzhou.

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self-employed; and those currently laid off or unemployed. The latter category is the reference value (recorded as 0, similarly below). This categorization implies the following hypothesis: China’s market reforms have led to differential allocation of resources across different groups, with that difference affecting social exchanges and therefore the individual’s social capital. Meanwhile, we also used whether or not the individual had held a management position at his or her longest employer as a measure of past occupational status. The reference value here is that the individual has not held such a position. 2.3.3 Financial Circumstances of the Household For households already receiving minimum living standard welfare, total income is of no value as an index of financial circumstances. However, the year in which these welfare payments were awarded may be a good indicator. Up to (and including) 1999, these payments were disbursed by local governments to the most needy, but only to the extent the available budget allowed. From 2000, funds were made available for all those in need. Although there were a very small number of cases of relief disbursed out of personal relationship, we can basically conclude that those who received this payment in or earlier than 1999 were genuine cases of poverty, and these households may be worse off than those who received the payments from 2000 onwards. Therefore we use the year the household obtained minimum living standard welfare payments as a proxy variable for financial circumstances. The reference value is 1999 or earlier. 2.3.4 Level of Education Education level was classified as three-year college or above; senior middle school (including technical and vocational schools); and junior middle school or below. Junior middle school or below is the reference value. 3

Results and Interpretation

3.1 Social Capital of Poor Households A factor analysis after use of Varimax showed that the above three indices accounted for 66.619% of variance, showing the indices chosen have good explanatory value. Social capital factor scores of poor households were standardized, with an average of 0 and standard deviation of 1, giving highest and lowest values of 3.81287 and −1.4389 respectively. For ease of understanding and description,

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we raised the score of every household by 2.4389, meaning the lowest score became 1, the standard deviation did not change, and the average was now 2.4389. After this process, 8.6% of poor households among the 714 valid responses had the lowest score, 1; 0.3% had the highest score of 6.25. If individual social capital scores are grouped, clear differences can be seen, with a strong tendency to low scores. The lowest group (1–2.99) accounted for 69.4%; the middle group (3–3.99) 27.7%; and the highest group (> 4) only 2.9%. Social capital scores for the heads of poor households show a similar pattern, but due to restrictions of length this will not be discussed here. For ease of data simplification and theoretical explanation, we merged the three indices in factor analysis, with the factors obtained being social capital factors of poor households. The results showed that the index making the largest contribution (the factor’s load) to the social capital of poor household was the head of the household’s links outside the community, followed by ordinary social relationships, and finally links with the community. Community Economic Changes and the Social Capital of Poor Residents In this section, we use past research into the impact of individual and socialstructure variables on the individual’s social capital to evaluate the explanatory value of the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts and the theory of social isolation for social capital. Specifically, we first introduce variables reflecting changes in community economic circumstances into the model in order to obtain, while controlling for individual economic factors, a baseline effect of changes in community economic structure on the social capital of the individual, and thus a baseline efficiency for social isolation explanations of social capital; we next simultaneously introduce community and individual variables to the model, to explore the explanatory power of the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts. The related data is a cumulative logit model obtained by using individual social capital score group as a dependent variable and individual status and community socioeconomic structure (poverty) rate factors as independent variables. A hypothesis test (likelihood ratio test) and model diagnostics (goodness of fit test, see Pearson and deviance tests)33 found the model was significant (P ≤ 0.05) and the model fit was good with no need to introduce interaction terms. The goodness of fit results of the research model show: 3.2

33  Zhang Wentong, SPSS11 Statistical Analysis Course (Advanced) (Beijing: Beijing Hope Electronic Press, 2002), 100–106.

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First: community economic changes have significant explanatory value for differences in individual social capital. Model 1 shows that when the individual’s socioeconomic status is not considered, the likelihood of the social capital score of the individual dropping one level (to the middle or lowest group) increases by 7% (1-e-0.073 = 0.07) when community poverty rates increase by 1%, with high statistical significance (P ≤ 0.05). In Model 2, when individual socioeconomic status factors are added and controlled for, a 1% increase in the community poverty rate increases the chance of the social capital score of the individual dropping one level (to the middle or lowest group) by 3% (1-e-0.026 = 0.0259), with continued statistical significance (P ≤ 0.05). In other words, for the heads of poor households, in our research at least, changes in community socioeconomic circumstances have a significant impact on social capital, regardless of whether or not individual socioeconomic circumstances are considered and controlled for – proving Hypothesis 6. This is to say that social isolation theory has significant explanatory power of the source of social capital for poor residents. Second, individual socioeconomic factors are significant for explaining individual social capital. In terms of household economic circumstances, when other individual socioeconomic factors and community economic changes are controlled for, the likelihood of individuals who received basic living standard welfare payments, after 2000, dropping one or more social capital score groupings (to the middle or lowest level) is only 61.5% that of individuals who received those payments in 1999 or earlier – a statistically significant result (P ≤ 0.05). This shows the social capital score of those who received the payments later to be higher (see Model 2). In other words, individuals who are members of better-off households have more social capital, proving Hypothesis 2. In terms of the impact on social capital scores of previous employment of the head of the household, when other individual socioeconomic factors and community economic changes are controlled for, individuals who have worked long-term for government, state or private employers are only 36.2% (e-1.014 = 0.362, P ≤ 0.05) and 50.2% (P ≤ 0.05) as likely to drop a social capital score grouping as those in occasional work or employed informally, respectively. Similarly, in terms of the head of the household’s current employment, the possibility of individuals working for private employers dropping a social capital score grouping was only 50.9% (e-0.675 = 0.509) that of unemployed individuals (P ≤ 0.05). In other words, when other individual socioeconomic factors and community economic changes are controlled for, both the current and previous employment of the head of the household have a significant impact on the social capital of the individual, proving Hypotheses 3 and 4.

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However, when other individual socioeconomic factors and community economic changes are controlled for, whether or not the head of the household has held a supervisory position does not have a significant impact on social capital scores, disproving Hypothesis 5. According to the data a very small percentage (2.8%) of heads of poor households have held such positions, and further questioning finds that these are usually junior positions such as team leader, giving access to only limited resources. When that position is lost, links with colleagues decline, and so naturally there is no significant impact on social capital scores. Also, when other individual socioeconomic factors and community economic changes are controlled for, heads of households with senior middle school education or higher are 84.9% as likely as those of junior middle school graduates (the reference value) to drop a social capital score grouping, but this was not statistically significant. In other words, there is no significant impact of the education level of the head of the household on social capital scores and Hypothesis 1 is disproved. Our explanation for this is that the level of education may have an indirect impact on acquisition of social capital, perhaps acting through intermediate variables such as degree of social activity or age. In fact, if a more educated individual does not interact with others and organizations, the chance of obtaining external resources will be lower and social capital scores may not be high. Third, the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts is the main theoretical explanation for the source of the social capital of the individual. When compared with the baseline Model 1, and when accounting for the impact of individual socioeconomic status factors (Model 2), the explanatory power of the poverty rate, a variable of community socioeconomic change, over individual social capital, drops 4 percentage points. This shows that when accounting for the impact of individual socioeconomic status factors, community economic factors are of less value in explaining individual social capital than in the baseline model. Also, when accounting for the impact of individual socioeconomic status factors, standardization34 of relevant significant variables affecting social capital scores in Model 2 found that the poverty rate explains only about 15% of variance in social capital scores (Beta = 0.146, P ≤ 0.05), with a negative impact. More of the variance in social capital is explained by individual socioeconomic factors such as current work, type of employer, and household economic circumstances. This shows that when accounting for the impact of individual socioeconomic status factors, community economic factors are less valuable for explaining individual social capital 34  On standardization of variables, see Guo Zhigang, Social Statistics Analysis: Use of SPSS (Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 2001), 202.

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than individual economic factors. This means that while the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts is the main theoretical explanation of individual sources of social capital, the economic structure of the community in which the individual lives also has significant explanatory value. 4

Results and Discussion

4.1 Conclusion We have reached the following basic conclusions: First, changes in community economic structure are of significant explanatory value for individual social capital. The research shows that before including individual socioeconomic factors and after controlling for these factors, changes in the economic circumstances of the individual’s community are of significant explanatory value for the individual’s acquisition of social capital: the poorer the community, the less social capital the individual acquires. This shows community economic changes have a significant impact on the social capital of the heads of poor households. Second, the social capital of the individual is mainly affected by the individual’s existing status and structural factors. When controlling for individual socioeconomic status and community economic changes, existing structural variables such as the type of current or past employer and household economic circumstances explain more variance in individual social capital. And when controlling for other individual socioeconomic status factors, the community poverty, a community economic change factor, was of significant explanatory value for individual social capital – but of significantly less explanatory value than the existing individual socioeconomic factors described above. In other words, the social capital of the individual is primarily determined by the individual’s existing status and structural factors. Third, the theory of social isolation and the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts are two complementary explanations of social capital. The research finds that social capital is mainly affected by existing status and structural factors, which constitute the opportunities and constraints of social contacts – the main factor explaining individual social capital. But the theory of social isolation does, to an extent, explain the sources of social capital. The research shows that community economic change is of significant value in explaining individual social capital, but less so than the individual’s existing status and structural factors. In other words, the theory of social isolation and the theory of opportunities and constraints of social contacts are two complementary explanations of social capital.

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Systemic Changes, Urban Community Rebuilding and the Social Capital of Residents: Further Interpretation and Discussion Our research shows that the social capital of the individual is affected not only by the individual’s existing status and structural factors, but also by structural changes in the individual’s community. How to explain this? We believe discussion should start from the link between production of urban community spaces and the reproduction of social relations. According to Lefebvre, social relations are not reproduced only in social interactions, but also in spaces as a whole.35 We hold that during urban reform in China, changes in the allocation of housing and income have led to a completely different way of production of urban space and reproduction of social relations in China – resulting in a different way of producing social capital. Between the founding of the People’s Republic and the mid to late-1990s, urban space in China was produced in line with the logic of the planned economy, molded by the work unit housing and welfare model and egalitarianism. Under the work unit system, the work unit provided welfare such as housing, and was, as well, responsible for production. The work unit obtained funds for housing from its government superiors and provided housing complexes for workers and their families as needed. Workers had no choice in where they lived, and employees of different grades lived sideby-side. This meant that the basic unit of urban space was the work unit apartment complex. Meanwhile, the social structure was divided by sector and profession (for example, communities of cadres, company employees or intellectuals) but not by class.36 Apartment buildings belonging to different work units were scattered throughout the city, with employees of different grades living side-by-side. The structure of residential space meant no clear social stratification. Different types of residents could interact in everyday life, professionally, and within the community (effectively all interactions were within the work unit, apart from in older areas), creating social relations characterized by locality and profession, across a range of classes, thus obtaining relatively high levels of social capital. But these mixed spaces and the social structure were shattered by reforms of urban housing and income allocation. 4.2

35  Cai He, Zhang Yangxiang, Urban Sociology (Guangzhou: Sun Yat-sen University Press, 2003), 168–172. 36  Xu Xueqiang, Hu Huaying, “A Factorial Ecology Analysis of Social Space Structure in Guangzhou,” Journal of Geographical Sciences 4 (1989); Huang Zhihong, Evolution of Structural Models of Urban Residential Spaces (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2006), 337–346.

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As those reforms progressed from the 1990s, residents acquired the right to freely choose where to live. Responding to market signals (house prices), they started to divide into clearly class-based communities, creating a sudden differentiation of urban residential spaces and social structures. Similarly, the poor gradually gathered in particular areas, with a clear market-led localization of poverty (or “ghettoization”) starting to be seen,37 characterized by small pockets of poverty distributed across the cities.38 In other words, market logic led to commercialized housing and income changes causing the rebuilding of urban residential spaces and social structure. That change had, for the poor residents in our research, a range of negative impacts on types of social relations and construction of social capital. One aspect of this was difficulties in forming local and professional networks. The poor gather in deprived and declining communities and the local economy worsens; without the support of the middle classes it is hard to develop the services on which the poor rely; meanwhile, older and less-educated residents struggle to get jobs and build the social networks that grow from professional interactions. Also, the type of housing (apartment blocks) and the loss of public spaces mean the steady loss of local networks. Second, daily interactions become homogenous. Communities become less varied, resulting in a narrower range of interactions – poor residents mostly interact with those of similar circumstances and with friends and relatives. Both type and number of links is limited, and the types of support available in more mixed communities – economic support, information – are harder to acquire. Third, it is hard to form effective organizations. Without participation by the middle classes, it is hard to form organizations that work for the community’s interests and win wider social support, causing the community to further decline. Also, this concentration of poverty leaves both rich and poor socially isolated, making it hard to get the attention of individuals and organizations outside of the community and to acquire resources. Meanwhile, our research finds that links outside the community are an important source of social capital for the poor. This segregation leads to severe social exclusion issues, with poor residents having little and poor quality social capital, making the reproduction of poverty hard to avoid. An analysis of the relationship between changes in social structure and the social capital of residents would be helpful for our consideration of traditional 37  Chen Yong, “Trends in localization of Urban Poverty and Their Effects,” Urban Problems 6 (2000). 38  Chen Guo, Gu Chaolin, and Wu Fulong, “Survey and Analysis of Poor Urban Spaces in Nanjing,” Geographical Science 4 (2004).

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poverty reduction policy targets and measures. Internationally, such policies are divided between those focused on people, and on community development. The biggest difference between these two approaches is the objectives of the policy and the measures taken: People-focused policies (such as transfer payments to households or individuals) are targeted at individuals or households, while policies targeted at poor areas or communities aim to improve local and community transport and develop the community in order to benefit the poor.39 The American experience show the two approaches are compatible, but that policies aimed at relieving poverty through local and community development have become more prominent. Returning to China, there is almost a complete lack of policies aimed at providing better opportunities for vulnerable populations through community development. The government has not taken measures to avoid the formation of poor communities arising from the market, and instead is creating new poor communities with policies. In the 1990s, and in particular in recent years, local governments have built large swathes of low-rent, low-price or resettlement housing to provide accommodation for those too poor to obtain housing on the open market.40 While the intent of these policies is good, it has created new residential segregation. This is particularly surprising when looking at the attempts to reduce segregation and increase integration made in the West since the 1970s (for example Holland’s Major Cities Policy).41 It can be expected that if we continue to build concentrated and homogenous housing, with little

39  James H. Spencer, “People, Places, and Policy: A Politically Relevant Framework for Efforts to Reduce Concentrated Poverty,” The Policy Studies Journal 32, no. 4 (2004). 40  For example, in Guangzhou, recent years have seen the construction of over 2.1 million square meters of welfare housing to provide accommodation for almost 50,000 poor households; also rental subsidies have been used to help 17,000 poor households find accommodation. Statistics show that between 1986 and 2007 a total of 700,000 households benefited from housing welfare. In 2009 and 2010 the construction of 4.08 million square meters of welfare housing were planned, to provide homes for 77,177 poor households registered as having housing difficulties (www.cnss.cn/xwzx/zfbz/zcss/200901/t200 90107_204134.html; www.house.focus.cn/showarticle/3266/565053.html). These projects were initially (in the 1990s) concentrated in the districts of Tangxia, Datang and Tongdewei, and more recently in places such as Jinshadi. According to longitudinal surveys of the urban poor in Guangzhou carried out by the authors from 2003 and 2009, the poor have become concentrated in the three housing clusters built for resettlement of low-income groups in the 1990s, with poverty rates significantly higher than elsewhere. 41  Reinout Kleinhans, “Social Implications of Housing Diversification in Urban Renewal: A review of Recent Literature,” Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 19 (2004): 367–390; Kempen, R. Van and H. Priemus, “Undivided Cities in the Netherlands: Present Situation and Political Rhetoric,” Housing Studies, 14, no. 5 (1999): 641–657.

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in the way of infrastructure and employment, we too will, in the near future, have slums to deal with. Therefore, we suggest that future poverty reduction policies focus on building infrastructure in existing poor communities, relieving poverty through community development and expanding community participation. Meanwhile, while continuing to strive to provide housing for low-income groups, the state should reflect on the inadequacies of concentrating these groups in specific areas and learn from international experience, moving quickly to reduce social segregation in housing and prevent the reproduction of poor communities. 4.3 Research Failings There are obvious inadequacies with this research. One is that this article deals with only poor, rather than ordinary, residents. Further research is needed to examine whether or not the same factors affect the social capital of other groups. Second, due to restrictions of length, only factors of community economic change were considered, and other community structural variables were not looked at. Third, the number of communities sampled was small, which reduces wider applicability. These issues should be addressed in future research.

Chapter 6

From Social Capital to Guanxi: A Study of Small and Medium Enterprise Growth in China Zhai Xuewei Translated by Matthew A. Hale Abstract The rise of research on social networks and social capital in sociology has led many Chinese sociologists to use these concepts to research phenomena in Chinese society that actually belong to the category of guanxi (关系). A question here is whether social capital and guanxi are concerned with the same sphere and direction of thought. This article uses case studies of small and medium-sized enterprises in China to argue that guanxi is oriented differently from social capital. Guanxi is used primarily to express clientelism, the operation of power, and expedient relations between agents and structure, with individual characteristics. Social capital, on the other hand, is concerned with investment of and returns on information, trust, cooperation and resources, with social and institutional characteristics. To conflate these two is to hide from view many important issues in the study of guanxi.

Keywords social capital – guanxi – small and medium enterprises

Since the 1980s, the concepts of “social networks” and “social capital” have gradually attracted widespread attention in the fields of sociology, economics, political studies and management studies. Although the issues researched by these theories are not completely clear and there is much room for debate regarding the direction and operation of related concepts,1 since these theories deal with valuable social resources absorbed or shared by members of society 1  Li Huibin and Yang Xuedong, eds., Social Capital and Social Development (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2000); Partha Dasgupta and Ismail Serageldin, eds., Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective (Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2005).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004392335_007

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in social networks, they have attracted the attention of scholars researching Chinese society and led some Chinese scholars to begin using such concepts to research the Chinese phenomenon of guanxi [i.e. personal connections or relationships]. As everyone knows, guanxi has been an extremely important social phenomenon in both traditional and modern Chinese society, but academia did not take note of this phenomenon until the late 1980s. The situation demonstrated by the temporal coincidence of the two types of research is that at first Chinese and overseas scholars sought out their own frameworks for studying guanxi; but with the rise of social capital studies, the latter gradually eclipsed guanxi studies, creating a situation of using social capital and social networks to study guanxi. Obviously, this implies an assumption: since the two objects of discussion are largely equivalent, or since the meaning of social capital includes guanxi studies, this implies that guanxi is not merely a Chinese phenomenon and can be completely explained using the universal theory of social capital. Elsewhere I have discussed whether guanxi is a Chinese phenomenon.2 Here I use a case study of small and medium Chinese enterprises in order to demonstrate that the issues related to the terms social capital and guanxi are not equivalent, so discussing them together not only obscures some important issues in theory, but also in practice leads to problems regarding the modernity and legitimacy of guanxi operations. A good approach is to look at the difference between social capital and guanxi from the perspective of enterprise development, since there is considerable overlap between these two concepts at the level of social life significance, and research on the development of enterprises must address the operation of social capital, but the development of small and medium Chinese enterprises may also involve guanxi – at least at the level of experience. What must be clarified is that the goal of this article is not to determine how many enterprises operate through guanxi and how many operate through social capital, and even not to determine whether this case study is representative in terms of empirical research. What I am attempting is to use a case study to clarify and explore the differences, linkages and possible transformations between these two concepts. Before presenting and discussing the case study, we must first take a look at the respective meanings of social capital and guanxi.

2  Zhai Xuewei, “Multiple Positions and Theoretical Reconstruction in Guanxi Studies,” Jiangsu Social Sciences, 3 (2007); Zhai Xuewei, “Is it Guanxi or Social Capital?” Society 1 (2009).

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What is Social Capital, after All?

In order to clarify whether social capital is guanxi, we can examine this at two levels. First is how social capital is defined. Second are the foundations and their conditions whereby a society creates social capital or guanxi. Let us first take a look at the meaning of social capital. Ismail Serageldin and Partha Dasgupta once summarized: The most famous and in a sense strictest definition of social capital is that given by Robert Putnam. Putnam regarded social capital as a series of “horizontal bonds” formed among people with effects on community productive abilities. These bonds include “networks of citizen sanctions” and social norms. This concept is founded on two assumptions: the first is that networks and norms are mutually linked on the basis of experience; the second is that they have important economic effects. According to this definition, the main characteristic of social capital is that it promotes cooperation and coordination of interests among members of an association.3 This definition is, to a certain degree, related to those definitions proposed by the earlier sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman. According to Bourdieu: Social capital is an actual or potential aggregate. Those resources are inseparable from the possession of certain enduring networks – institutionalized and publicly recognized networks in which everyone knows each other. In other words, these networks are tied to a certain system of membership that provides support for each member from a perspective of collectively possessed capital, providing “proof” of winning prestige – prestige that can be understood in multiple ways. These relationships may exist only in actual situations, only in helping to maintain the material and/or symbolic transactions of these relationships. This capital may obtain institutionalization and security in society through a common name (such as the name of a family, a tribe, a school or a political party). In such a situation, the exchange of capital is more or less guaranteed,

3  Dasgupta and Serageldin, Social Capital, 57.

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and thus maintained and consolidated. This guarantee and maintenance is founded on unbreakable material and symbolic transactions.4 Bourdieu’s definition provides a preliminary approach to the formation of social capital, the key being its emphasis on institutionalization and membership. Although he also addressed familial groups, many later definitions [of social capital] have not discussed issues related to familial networks, for if families are not distinguished from other groups, the difference between social capital and guanxi is easily obscured.5 James Coleman’s contribution to this concept mainly lies in continuing Bourdieu’s notion of collectively possessed capital, noting that social capital treats social-structural resources as individual property.6 This in turn led Alejandro Portes and Nan Lin to argue that on the level of practice, social capital consists of resources embedded in social networks that agents acquire and utilize through their activities.7 The reason an agent can acquire resources seems to correlate directly with the individual’s status and investment. In this respect, what Western scholars have focused on has been the relationship between agents’ status, on the one hand, and their information and trust, on the other. For example, positional differences among the information channels of individuals or organizations lead to differences of information, and differences in their degree of prestige create differences in their degree of trust, thus systematically generating differences of investment and returns. Yet no matter how many definitions of social capital are proposed by various theories, all have their social foundations and conditions. This is related to the definition proposed by Dasgupta and Serageldin: based on the social and political environment necessary for the development of social capital, including structures and institutions of levies such as governmental and political institutions, legal regulations, legislative systems, as well as civil and political liberties, they formed the following summary: The three concepts related to social capital have gradually expanded the content of the concept. The first concept includes most informal and local horizontal 4  Pierre Bourdieu, Cultural Capital and Social Alchemy, trans. Bao Yaming (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 1997), 202. 5  Thomas Brown, “An Overview of Social Capital Theory,” in Li Huibin and Yang Xuedong, eds., Social Capital and Social Development. 6  James Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory, trans. Deng Fang (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 1990), 333. 7  Alejandro Portes, “Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Immigration: A Conceptual Overview,” in Alejandro Portes, ed., The Economic Sociology of Immigration: Essays on Networks, Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1995); Lin Nan, Social Capital: Theory of Social Structure and Action, trans. Zhang Lei (Shanghai People’s Press, 2005), 24.

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organizations. The second adds hierarchical organizations. The third, based on the first two, adds formal state structures such as governments and legal regulations. All three concepts possess several common characteristics: (a) All are related to the economic, social and political spheres, and all include the idea of mutual interaction between social relationships and economic effects. (b) All concern both relations among economic agents and the paths whereby these agents’ formal and informal organizations can increase the efficiency of economic activities. (c) All imply that appropriate social relationships and institutions have externalities, and that since individuals cannot possess these externalities, agents tend to limit their investment in social capital, giving rise to the function of public support. All three concepts acknowledge not only that potential social relationships increase the level of development, but also that these relationships may have negative effects, depending on the type of relationship (horizontal or hierarchical), existing norms and values, and broader juridical and political contexts.8 This summary shows us not only the positive aspect of social capital but also its negative side. The latter, however, does not refer to the negative effects of “developing guanxi,” for here “negative” refers to problems related to the goals of groups, organizations, communities or social networks. Thus, social capital can also facilitate resistance to social institutions, for example, gang crime networks. According to the overwhelming majority of scholars, the definition of social capital itself includes positive contributions to social and economic development; otherwise, it is called the decline of social capital. As Jonathan H. Turner puts it, social capital consists of “those factors in a society that strengthen economic development through creating and maintaining social relationships and modes of organization.”9 The definitions of social capital tell us that if you want social capital to function, or, in other words, if you want social capital to promote economic development, then you need a society’s organizations and institutions to provide an informal framework for sharing information, coordinating action and collective decision-making, and this framework must be linked to the characteristics of civil society. To put this in negative terms, if a society’s information is uncertain, non-transparent or lacking open channels of transmission; or if a society lacks trust and requires the repeated confirmation of information, thus impeding the coordination of action; or if inconsistencies in the state’s macro 8  Dasgupta and Serageldin, Social Capital, 58. 9  Jonathan H. Turner, “The Formation of Social Capital,” in Dasgupta and Serageldin, 123.

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and micro environments impair collective decision-making, then social capital cannot function, or, in other words, such a society lacks social capital. 2

What, Then, is “Guanxi”?

The reason that guanxi is easily conflated with social capital is that if you look at it from the level of definition alone, guanxi is also a kind of social network, and the individuals positioned within it also have the opportunity to obtain and utilize resources embedded within social networks. However, such simplistic definitions lose sight of each social network’s composition and the social conditions in which it functions, i.e. its social environment and group characteristics. In discussions about social capital we repeatedly see that concepts such as citizenship, social norms, institutionalization and membership restrictions play important roles. The relational (guanxi) characteristics of social capital are those of organized relationships,10 formed on the basis of certain common interests or goals. Participants often express enthusiasm for group activities, institutionalizing them and concerning themselves with the good of the community, and as soon as such a group forms, it informally supervises and serves the society’s economy. Perhaps it is precisely these two characteristics that channel social capital toward promoting the development of a society’s economy or politics. Guanxi, on the other hand, does not have this sort of meaning or social conditions. When Chinese scholars first began examining the characteristics of guanxi, some were inclined to regard its operation as the practice and extension of Confucian thought throughout Chinese society. They believed that Confucian concepts such as humaneness, propriety, ritual and ethics were all explications of guanxi and its norms that had profoundly shaped Chinese society and culture for thousands of years.11 Many other scholars observed that guanxi possesses characteristics of peasant economy that reflect China’s agrarian culture, i.e. the dominant role of the family in production and consumption, leading to the development of concepts centered on the extended

10  Paul F. Whiteley, “The Origins of Social Capital,” in Li Huibin and Yang Xuedong. 11  Hwang Kwang-Kuo, “On the Localization of Social Psychology,” in Hwang Kwang-Kuo, Face: Chinese Power Games (Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2004); Ambrose King, “Individual and Group in Confucian Thought: An Interpretation from the Perspective of Guanxi,” in Ambrose King, Chinese Culture and Society (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1993).

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family or lineage.12 In general, scholars have thus argued that the prominent role of guanxi in Chinese society derives from either the influence of Confucian values or the prominent role of familial or place-based relationships in rural Chinese society.13 A problem with both of these approaches, however, is that Confucianism teaches people to value propriety over self-interest, and the family is a unit of life that is supposed to follow Confucian teachings lest it dissolve. Thus neither approach, on its own, can explain why guanxi tends to become instrumentalized or oriented toward self-interest. Expressions such as “using guanxi,” “developing guanxi,” “making back-door deals” and “the art of guanxi” all refer to shortcuts for achieving individual self-interest. Could it be that these are all modern adaptations of guanxi rather than deriving from traditional Chinese society? What I want to express is that a thing is actually another thing: proverbs such as “it’s easy to become an official if you have connections in the court” (“朝中有人好做官”) and “if you obtain a position, even your chickens and dogs can also rise to power” (“一人得道，鸡犬升天”) imply that guanxi has long played a similar role. Insisting on the use of Confucian thought to explain Chinese people’s guanxi activities, therefore, seems far-fetched, but neither do we have reason to claim that the utilitarian traits derive from the serious lack of social resources during China’s era of planned economy.14 Large amounts of research regarding the thirty years of Reform and Opening-Up (改革开放) demonstrate that even when social resources are relatively plentiful, guanxi is still commonplace. Apparently, the utilitarian characteristics of guanxi have led Chinese sociologists to basically abandon the relationship between guanxi and Confucian thought [on the one hand] and the form of Chinese society [on the other], instead using the concept of social capital to explain guanxi phenomena. As soon as one uses social capital to explain guanxi, however, regardless of whether this is theoretically reasonable, this brings another problem: scholars unconsciously justify the idea that guanxi is utilitarian, i.e. that “developing guanxi” is proper, that it is a basic characteristic that society’s normal functioning should possess. Another objection is that even if guanxi operations involve many anti-institutional or improper aspects, this is not unique to China: Western societies also “use guanxi” – indeed, they do so to a serious degree. Such approaches show that 12  Francis L. K. Hsu, Clan, Caste and Club: A Comparative Study of Chinese, Hindu and American Ways of Life, trans. Hwang Kwang-Kuo (Taipei: SMC Publishing, 2002); Kuo-Shu Yang, “Chinese Social Orientation: Concepts of Social Interaction,” in Kuo-Shu Yang, Chinese Psychology and Behavior: Localized Research (Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2004). 13  Fei Xiaotong, From the Soil: Foundations of Chinese Society (Beijing: Sanlian Press, 1985). 14  Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, Gifts, Favors and Banquets (Cornell University Press, 1994).

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using Confucian thought to explain guanxi does not have a direct causal relationship on the cultural level, and they also treat guanxi as a universal phenomenon. The question, however, is whether guanxi phenomena in Western societies are social capital. I think that most studies of social capital have shown precisely that guanxi is guanxi rather than social capital, and some studies have even argued that guanxi inhibits the development of social capital, as in problems related to the lack of trust.15 Using Confucian thought to introduce the guanxi that Chinese people value, therefore, or using social capital to introduce how Chinese people “develop guanxi” does not fit with the meaning of guanxi itself. Although we have various opinions on guanxi, we agree that the meaning and operation of guanxi is limited by Confucian thought and agrarian society. These foundations and conditions show us that guanxi is merely influenced by Confucian thought rather than being its extension or practice. Although the characteristics of China’s agrarian and familial structures are worth serious consideration, this does not mean that they simply function in accordance with Confucian thought. In general, guanxi involves individuals using opportunistic methods to carry out mutually beneficial activities within existing tightly-knit social networks – methods that derive less from the characteristics of the networks to which the individuals belong, and more from power in social structures. The most important characteristics of power in guanxi networks derive primarily from the uncertainty of boundaries, involving complex sociocultural backgrounds,16 enabling it to effectively combine the sense of duty (as in Confucian thought) with intimacy (based on kinship and locality) in Chinese people’s relationships,17 specifically manifested in practice as the characteristics of renqing [人情, i.e. affective relations or favors] – as in a sociality based on sympathy or affective concerns.18 These traits of Chinese interpersonal relations can be classified into a series of elements. They are partly reflected in the concept of “the differential mode of association” proposed by Fei Xiaotong (费孝通). However, this does not mean that the differential mode of association can accurately express guanxi among Chinese people. The biggest problem with the differential mode of association is the egoism 15  Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, trans. Li Wanrong (Hohhot: Yuanfang Press, 1998). 16  Zhai Xuewei, Everyday Authority in Chinese Society (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2004). 17  Zhai Xuewei, “Multiple Positions and Theoretical Reconstruction in Guanxi Studies.” 18  Zhai Xuewei, “Traits of Chinese Interpersonal Relations,” Sociological Research, (4) 1993; Zhai Xuewei, “Renqing, Face and the Reproduction of Power,” Sociological Research, (5) 2004.

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that it implies, contradicting the value orientation of Confucian thought and family life.19 Summarizing the aforementioned approaches, I argue that guanxi is characterized by individualism, and that this makes it inclined toward opportunism. If one were to compare guanxi with social capital, the traits of guanxi could be thus contrasted with those of social capital: natural networks of life, rather than constructed networks of goals; long-term interaction, rather than institutionalized interaction; bonds on an individual level, rather than bonds between individuals and organizations or groups and bonds between organizations/groups; blurry boundaries of self, rather than clear boundaries of self; affective (renqing) interaction, rather than normalized interaction; and powerbased control over and exchange of resources, rather than structural and institutionalized control over and exchange of resources. Below I use the growth of small and medium-sized private enterprises that have developed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangzi River (长江) since China’s Reform and Opening-Up as cases for understanding and comparing several important traits of guanxi and social capital. 3

Case Studies of the Growth of Small and Medium Enterprises

During China’s planned economy era, almost all activities related to private business were prohibited. Since the 1980s, private enterprises began to emerge and then grew geometrically, with the number of small and medium-sized enterprises surpassing forty-two million in 2008, their output accounting for 67.71 percent of China’s total industrial output value and their fiscal contribution accounting for 58.72 percent of industrial taxes paid to the state.20 Data show that the emergence of private enterprises in China was closely related to entrepreneurs’ social connections at the time. Social researchers have discovered that nearly half of the entrepreneurs have connections based on kinship or friendship with cadres in the government or state-owned work units.21 Obviously, the possession of such connections makes their entrepreneurialism more secure. In order to further understand how such connections function in 19  Zhai Xuewei, “Is it Guanxi or Social Capital?” 20  “China’s Small and Medium Enterprises Surpass 42 Million, Becoming Main Force of Economic Growth,” Xinhua Online, November 11, 2008: . 21  Shi Xiuyin, “The Social Network Foundation of Chinese Entrepreneurs’ Success,” Management World (6) 1998; Li Lulu, “The Personal Background of Private Enterprise Owners and Entrepreneurial ‘Success’,” Chinese Social Science (2) 1997.

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the growth of enterprises, I personally undertook a rather in-depth case study of an enterprise in Changzhou (常州), also using other data acquired from interviews and documents to observe various ways in which guanxi and social capital operate. First let me introduce the basic situation of this study. In the early 1980s, “Boss Y” tested into a school of chemical engineering in “C Municipality,” Jiangsu (江苏). After graduating, he moved to Zhuhai (珠海), Guangdong (广东), where he began his entrepreneurial career. First he established a small company there that focused on the import and export of materials related to the chemical industry. Over ten years of hard work earned him enough money to move to Canada, where he became a citizen. In the early 2000s, a former classmate from the chemical engineering school in C Municipality told him that the municipality was launching the development of a new technology zone, a project courting capital from abroad. Since they had both studied chemical engineering together, the classmate proposed that they open a chemical plant there. Although Boss Y already lived abroad, he was still interested in returning to China to start an enterprise, so he agreed. In 2001, he and that classmate who had provided the information became partners investing in the construction of a chemical plant and the establishment of X Chemical Industry Company, Ltd. However, by the time I prepared to research this company in 2008, it had already closed. It was not because of internal problems concerning production or sales, but the enterprise’s geographical location (in a certain township), which was too close to C Municipality. The new urban development plan prohibited chemical industry projects, so the plant was ordered to close. Later, Boss Y adjusted his strategy and changed the company’s name in 2008, founding a new company and moving into a chemical industry park in C Municipality’s National High-Tech Development Zone. He is now the company’s CEO. Observing this change, I asked Boss Y why he persisted in trying to do business in C Municipality, despite such a major setback. He replied that he attended school there in his youth, so he had a classmate there who could provide information and support, whereas it would be impossible to invest elsewhere without social connections. I asked his classmate why he had invited Boss Y to come back several years before, and he said that since Reform and Opening-Up, every region had been encouraging people with friends and relatives abroad to invite them back for investment, stimulating the development of their hometowns and thereby benefitting both the people and the state. If anyone managed to attract external capital or physical economy, the local government would grant a reward. This was something beneficial to China, the locality and the individual, so his classmate responded enthusiastically. As they predicted, his classmate not only brought foreign investment

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and obtained a reward from the local government but also became the company’s vice-CEO. Perhaps it was also because of his social connections locally that the enterprise could obtain a place in the new chemical industry park. Regaining a place to develop, however, did not necessarily mean that the company could actually develop according to plan. Boss Y told me that during the stage of attracting investment, there was no need to “develop guanxi” [i.e. establish new connections or foster existing ones]. This problem emerged after an agreement was signed with the local government. After that, there were a whole slew of formalities to deal with at various government offices. As a foreign-invested enterprise, it was necessary to obtain authorization from the Bureau of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (外经贸局), as well as to register as a company and obtain a license to operate a business from the Bureau of Industry and Commerce Administration (工商行政管理局). In order to apply for these documents, moreover, it was first necessary to obtain approval from other government offices dealing with environmental protection, security, fire hazards, taxes, etc. The land to be used by the factory, furthermore, had been purchased by the government from peasants, so it was also necessary to fill out paperwork at the Township Land Management Office (乡 镇国土资源管理所). The construction of factory buildings, finally, had to be approved by the Bureau of Urban Planning (城市规划局) and the Bureau of Construction (建设局). I asked why the issue of “developing guanxi” emerged at this stage. Boss Y said, if it were a large-scale enterprise coming to invest, it would usually be unnecessary to worry much about developing guanxi. They are famous enterprises; even if the local government wanted to invite them they might not come, so when they actually come, of course they are treated well. Small and medium-sized enterprises are different, however. There are many such enterprises, so if one does not come, another will take its place; it is not a big deal whether one comes or not. If guanxi is not handled properly, therefore, the most common outcome is that the time to complete formalities is delayed, or some office creates obstacles to the completion of formalities. Office directors and staff can find all sorts of excuses to delay things. For example, they can ask you to provide supplementary documents or to consult experts, or various unforeseen problems will emerge during the construction process. I asked Boss Y to give an example and after a moment’s reflection, he said: For example, after completing all the formalities, during the construction of the factory buildings, the local government told me that they would take care of the drainage pipes, that in order to protect the environment

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the government had to extend its pipes to our factory and then link them to our pipes. For this I waited half a year, already forcing me to wait longer than anticipated before we could begin operation, but even then the government turned around and said it couldn’t afford to do it. This led to a lack of trust, and besides, their work plan and management were a mess. For instance, since they were not connecting the pipes for me, I was not in a rush to pay them for the land. I went to the township’s mayor and Party secretary asking when the pipes would be connected, and they said I first had to pay an advance [to help fund the pipe construction]. If I wanted to speed up the process, I had to treat them to dinner. But that dinner turned out to be in vain, because the township mayor was relocated elsewhere, and the new mayor felt that our company’s investment would not be considered an achievement on his record, so he created even more obstacles. There were lots of things like this. We tried to use holidays as opportunities to give them gifts or money, but in order to put these in their hands, we needed intermediaries (relatives, friends, acquaintances). These people had to meet them beforehand and acquire some information before they could be asked to actually get anything done. I asked whether taking care of such formalities became easier after using guanxi, and he said that almost every step of the process required using guanxi. He chose to invest here because the district chief was one of his classmates, another of his classmates was working in the Bureau of Environmental Protection (环保局), and other directors of his company also had classmates and friends in various government offices. He would not have invested here without such connections. Again he emphasized that only a few large-scale, famous enterprises did not require guanxi because causing problems for such enterprises would hurt the officials’ records of achievement, so it was these ordinary enterprises that were picked on. I asked, “Looking back, do you think it was worth it?” He answered: It’s hard for me to assess things now, since I haven’t yet seen any substantial rewards. It’s hard to say whether we’ll become listed on the stock market or bought out by a bigger company, for example, but our assets are expanding and we’re creating jobs and paying taxes. It also depends on whether state policy changes. If it does, if they tell you to move you have to move. My business license says I can operate for twelve years, but if the government tells you to relocate you have to relocate. They can

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tell the banks not to grant loans. Villagers also come and raise a ruckus, claiming that problems in the village were caused by the chemical industry, demanding we pay compensation to the Villagers’ Committee (村民 委员会), so now every year we pay 300,000 yuan (元). Hearing so many complaints, I finally asked him to summarize exactly how he had benefitted from his investment after all. He responded that he had not personally acquired any gains to speak of, but that the state and the locality had benefitted in three ways: (1) Local officials had chalked up achievements on their professional records, caused the local economy to prosper, and solved the region’s employment problem. (2) The local government made a lot of money by selling land, increasing the local tax revenue. (3) Many individuals and departments of the local government were treated to many dinners and received gifts and money during the New Year. 4

From Social Capital to Guanxi

From this case, we can clearly observe that the functioning of social capital mainly referred to the stage in which the local government sought to attract investment. In order to develop the local economy, the government used its own official publicity to attract investment from domestic and foreign enterprises, while at the same time using the social networks of local people (informal social connections), such as relatives, friends and classmates as network intermediaries, inviting their friends and relatives to come invest, with the latter being highly effective. Particularly worth noting is that the operation of social capital as such was directed at those famous or large-scale enterprises that could successfully avoid complicated issues of guanxi at the local level in China. Local officials provided them with all kinds of effective services, purely out of concern for their own records of achievement as state officials, tax revenue, job creation, etc. Even if large-scale or famous enterprises have social capital, however, [they] do not have as firm a grip on the broader political and economic environment and conditions – besides the quality of officials and citizens and the cultural environment, more important is that changes in policy [may] require plans to be adjusted or abandoned, thus lowering the local government’s trust. For example, the seizure of land from peasants and plans for investment are short-sighted, so the project may be cancelled and have to

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start all over again, thus forcing a project that has already been agreed to and launched to relocate because of a change in policy, causing unnecessary losses for the company. Of course, if the government maintains its original faith in the company, but if the original plan is not planned out carefully, it will cause unnecessary losses for the local residents. Reportedly, even sharper contradictions emerged with a large-scale chemical enterprise in Nanjing (南京). As Serageldin and Dasgupta noted, “Not only do potential social relationships increase the level of development, they may also have negative effects, the outcome depending on the quality of relationships (horizontal or hierarchical), existing norms and values, and the broader legal and political context.” Considering the reality of Chinese economic development, major adjustments and changes in state policy make it hard to coordinate between the state’s macro and micro environments so that collective decision-making becomes impossible, showing the negative side of social capital operation. Yet we also see that the growth of Chinese enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, have their own problems in addition to those faced by large-scale enterprises. These problems concern not social capital but what Chinese people call guanxi. Based on my research on enterprises in various parts of China, the characteristics of such guanxi-related issues could be summarized as follows: (1) Enterprises can get preferential treatment from the government only through guanxi. Government offices at every level have the power to authorize and provide monetary support for good private enterprises with regard to state supervision, operating permits, land use and construction. Although the government ought to use this power according to the relevant laws, policies and regulations, guanxi gives certain enterprises an advantage over others that are the same in other ways. I have even observed situations where state-owned enterprises went up for auction or construction projects invited public bidding, but because of the operation of guanxi beforehand, these auctions or bidding processes became mere formalities, since people with connections would obtain the assets or the projects at a reasonable price, while those without connections could not, even if they had plenty of capital. (2) The survival and development of an enterprise requires the establishment of a guanxi network. In present-day China, there is already a broad variety of ways to start a private enterprise, but no matter how a person becomes a boss, if he wants his enterprise to grow, he usually has to maintain good personal relations with many different government offices. In

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the cases I researched, for example, it was necessary to establish guanxi with relevant personnel in all levels of the government, the Bureau of Public Security (公安局), the courthouse, the Bureau of Industry and Commerce Administration, the Administration of Taxation (税务局), the Bureau of Finance (财政局), the Bureau of Land and Resources (国 土资源局) and the Bureau of Environmental Protection. These guanxi connections, however, refer not to formal relations but to the development of friendly relationships with people in positions of responsibility. Especially when an enterprise violated some regulation and had to pay a fine, the presence of guanxi could enable those fines to be decreased or forgiven. Such relationships are usually maintained through meals, entertainment and gift giving. (3) The professionalization of guanxi. The complexity of Chinese guanxi has led to the creation of some rather specialized institutions, such as Beijing offices, auditing offices, consulting firms, public relations firms, marketing firms and so on. Their responsibilities include providing guidance or acting as guanxi-development agents for clients having trouble with developing guanxi on their own. When some companies hire employees, they choose people with friends or relatives in key government offices or people skilled at socializing. For example in my case study, the company’s vice-CEO had to be more skilled at developing guanxi with various branches of the local government, and those he could not play up to himself had to be introduced by an intermediary. In some cases a high tolerance for alcohol became a condition for employment. In this outline, three points are central. One is that the importance of guanxi for entrepreneurs lies in recognizing that it is a mistake to regard the passing of inspections, the approval of applications or the granting of support as basic duties that should be carried out by relevant offices. The understanding in China is that these activities signal the successful practice of guanxi, a sort of gift-giving. Secondly, reciprocity can easily develop into an extra-institutional interest-based community of personal networks. The boss I researched often used the phrase “we’re all good friends” to express his relationship with the others – one in which good fortune should be shared and hardship borne together. Third is that in many situations, the establishment of guanxi requires orchestration by intermediaries. Comparing the ways in which guanxi and social capital operate, I think the biggest difference is that the shared information, coordinated action and collective decision-making required by social capital (observed during the stage of attracting investment) are not displayed in guanxi. In the operation of

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guanxi, information is not shared but controlled, and to some extent it is used to distinguish between the presence or absence of guanxi. Trust, moreover, is often trust among insiders. The Chinese saying “public affairs are performed in a public manner” (公事公办) refers to interaction among strangers, in which service is far inferior to that offered to familiar acquaintances. Delays and obstacles to the completion of paperwork make it hard to carry out coordinated action, often requiring people to search for possibilities to speed up the process outside of institutional channels. And collective decisionmaking is restricted not only by state policy at various levels, but also by individual factors, as when an official is transferred to another post or fails to benefit from helping a company. I argue, therefore, that the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises in a regional economy is a process of transition from social capital to guanxi. If such enterprises depend purely on the operation of social capital, it is hard for them to survive, but if they make this transition appropriately, they can develop. I have pointed out elsewhere that the state of scholarship on guanxi and social capital is: social capital develops in response to Western civil society as a product of association, cooperation, trust, reciprocity and information channels, whereas guanxi develops in response to Chinese society centered on the family as a product of relationships based on kinship, locality, and by extension colleagues, classmates and coworkers. The difference is that the former exists more in the form of associations, while the latter exists more in the form of relationships between individuals. This background determines that associations are formed voluntarily, so individual pursuits relate to individual ambitions, aspirations, interests, etc. Individuals can join, participate or withdraw. These characteristics are linked to individualist values. The family, on the other hand, is not formed voluntarily. It is linked to dependence for basic livelihood, honor, and immediate interests. Individuals cannot join or withdraw from the family, although they can flee it. Since social capital is produced by civil society, its logic is public-minded, so these goal-oriented investments are equally beneficial to individuals, groups and society as a whole, but some of those who do not invest or who are unqualified do not benefit, so there is an appeal to fairness. The logic of guanxi is self-interest, not in opposition to the public interest, fairness or rules, but always with self-interest in the primary position, so it has the characteristics of opportunism. Many customs, structures and institutions maintain its operation, which in turn facilitates its endorsement by society and the establishment of related systems such as “back-door deals,” “special authorization” and “setting priorities.” Of course, the flexible maneuvering of opportunism cannot be achieved through tightly structured institutions

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but requires factors such as personal relationships, feelings, negotiations.22 Regarding opportunism, American political scientist Jon Elster proposes the important point that opportunism makes people stick together and plays a role in strengthening moral integration and social cohesion, and especially in raising efficiency, but it is easily associated with corruption because it leads to rent-seeking behavior and violates norms of fairness.23 Although I have attempted to differentiate between guanxi and social capital, we should also recognize that since both operate through social networks, each can transform into the other. For example, the use of guilds or hometown associations to invest in society’s economic development is a transformation of guanxi into social capital, while the use of state projects for society’s economic development to benefit friends and relatives in one’s own network is a transformation of social capital into guanxi. 5 Conclusion Some studies of social capital among Chinese enterprises discuss such issues as information, trust, the transfer of resources without considering guanxi, or they conflate guanxi with social capital, observing only superficial issues or those limited to the framework of social capital. Yet we must not rashly claim that the guanxi-related practices displayed in the narrative above all amount to bribery or rent-seeking. In the cognitive system of Chinese society, guanxi might be said to fall somewhere between social capital and bribery. For example, treating someone to dinner or giving a gift does not signify bribery, but it does signify an effort to go outside of institutional channels to obtain more information or preferential treatment. Once we grasp the complex relationship among guanxi, institutions and accommodation, such a conclusion becomes impossible. Preferential support from the government, for instance, is something offered under appropriate conditions that do not violate the rules of the game. The ambiguity of state policies and regulations make such accommodation possible, reducing many issues to a matter of “boot loading”24 – initiation or guidance subject to individual value orientations such as altruism or public-mindedness vs. self-interest. In sum, observing 22  Zhai Xuewei, “Is it Guanxi or Social Capital?” 23  Jon Elster, The Cement of Society: A Survey of Social Order, trans. Gao Pengcheng (Beijing: Renmin University Press, 2009), 282. 24  Paul F. Whiteley, “The Origins of Social Capital,” in Li Huibin and Yang Xuedong.

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guanxi from the perspective of social capital, the operational characteristic of guanxi is that it cannot rise to the level of an organization or institution. The exchange of renqing [i.e. affective relations or favors] in social institutions and markets is more a derivative by-product of their operation, its significance being the ability of individuals in social networks to augment their individual gains and long-term relations of reciprocity by occupying advantageous positions. In Chinese society, such individual advantages are considered acceptable, necessary or at least tolerable, although we oppose them in slogans and institutions. This means that Chinese people do not regard such behavior as corruption, but there is a limit to this tolerance, beyond which they do regard it as such. In a positive sense, on the other hand, as soon as the “boot loader” of guanxi expectations breaks through the individual level, the resources of networks among individuals become linked to organizations, institutions and the public interest, so guanxi transforms into social capital. Cases of the latter appeared repeatedly in my interviews with the Zhejiang Chamber of Commerce (浙江商会) in Nanjing – something to be examined in a separate study. If we look closely at the mechanisms of transformation between guanxi and social capital among Chinese entrepreneurs, I think a reasonable path of transformation lies in two aspects. One is the value orientation of the individual. On this topic, the British scholar Paul Whiteley argues that on the individual level, social capital derives from: (a) character traits, such as family socialization; (b) individual beliefs and moral codes; and (c) individual imagination, such as cultural identity. These traits give rise to values that incline an individual toward willingness to serve others or devote oneself to a group.25 The other aspect is the division of Chinese social relationships into two types of different but closely related social networks: active and passive networks of guanxi. The former consists of those in which Chinese people have a relatively fixed position, such as [networks of] kin, classmates, coworkers, but whose meanings are much more complex than those in other societies, since Chinese society traditionally had no other ways for people to form relationships. These are the guanxi networks theorized by Confucianism and studied by anthropologists. Passive networks of guanxi are those purposely established for specific interests, such as those that entrepreneurs have to establish in order to survive and develop. In Chinese society, however, the establishment of passive guanxi often depends on the richness of one’s active networks, which is why kin, friends, classmates, etc., are so important. In modern society, moreover, it is entirely possible that networks such as hometown associations may 25  Ibid., p. 53.

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contribute significantly to society’s public interest. In any case, if we ignore the operational characteristics of guanxi by using social capital to express guanxi, either the characteristics of guanxi will be hidden from view, or, without undergoing transformation, they will be rationalized as the healthy functioning of capital.

Chapter 7

Politics in Residence: An Empirical Study of Owners’ Rights Defense and Community Construction in B City Guo Yuhua and Shen Yuan Translated by Zhao Rui Abstract Taking community construction in B city as a basic social fact, and focusing on people’s residential patterns and actions related to the right of residence, this paper explores the formation and evolution of urban communities as well as their complicated interactions with the state, market and society. The paper proposes that since residency is the most essential foundation for survival and livelihood, the maintenance of the legal right of occupancy and to build upon property means the protection of the right of survival as a kind of human right, as well as the pursuit of social equality and justice making these issues a top political priority for citizens.

Keywords social transformation – public life – citizens’ actions

Since the mid-1990s, with the rapid advance of China’s urbanization and deepening reform of the urban housing system, the housing pattern of urban residents, especially residents in metropoles, has diversified, leading to diverse types of urban communities.* With somewhat different subjects and rights, these communities face varied problems in residence. There are thus differences in the strategies of action and community governance systems resulting in response. Residents, who are subjects with rights, always express *  This study has won financial support from the project of China’s Society and Development Research Center of Peking University, and the title of the project is “Community Construction and Rights Relationship in the Transformation Period of China’s Society (Project No.: 2007JJD840179), which is funded as a Major Subject from the Ministry of Education.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004392335_008 .

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their own interests via various types of urban actions as a way of coping with the complex relations between the market and state. Accordingly, urban actions with a focus on residence issues have become a major dimension of urban social life in the transformation period. In recent years, numerous sociological studies have focused on these issues from various perspectives.1 From the standpoint of practical sociology, i.e. the emphasis of social facts as a kind of dynamic practice process, this study values “residence” in social transformation in China and examines the “politics of residence” to analyze the complicated relations between the state, market and society, as well as its intrinsic mechanisms and logic. In this sense, this study carries out a sociological survey and evaluation of the economic, social and political consequences of China’s housing commercialization from the perspective of the microcommunity. Additionally, this study introduces fresh theoretical perspectives on the subject of citizens’ rights from a behavioral sociology perspective, and attempts to transcend the many past studies that dwell on the “social movement mode” so as to reveal the essence of urban residents’ right to community construction and defense. This study combines analysis of a questionnaire with ethnography of communities, involving observation, in-depth interviews, a symposium and the building of various residents’ forums, owners’ seminars, owners’ annual meetings, and community clinics in cooperation with community organizations. In this way, the fieldwork has been deepened and broadened. On this basis, this study continues the strategy that features a combination of structural analysis and mechanism analysis, especially with a focus on the revelation of process, mechanism, logic and strategy in the process-event analysis method,2 and thus grasps the macro structure and institutional background behind the appearance via structure-system analysis.

1  See Xia Jianzhong in details: Herald of China’s Citizen Society: Take Proprietors Committee as an Example, Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy, 2003 (3); Chen Yingfang: Action and Institutional Restriction: Middle Class in Urban Actions, Sociological Study, 2006 (4); Xu Qin: Power Redistribution of Society in Transformation: Interpretation of Urban Proprietors’ Dilemma in Rights Maintenance, Academia Bimestris, 2007 (2). 2  Sun Liping: Process-Event Analysis and the Practice Pattern of Contemporary State-Peasant Relationship in China, Department of Sociology of Tsinghua University (Chief Editor): Sociological Review of Tsinghua University: Special Edition, Xiamen: Lujiang Publishing House (2000).

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Process of Urbanization and Evolution of Residence Patterns

The “residence pattern” mainly includes two basic aspects of urban Chinese housing – space style and property structure. The so-called space style of the residence pattern refers to the relationship between the external style and space, which is closely related with the long-lasting cultural tradition of a city. The usual mention of the “exotic mansions in Tianjin” and “quadruples (四合 院) in Beijing” in recently used slang defines respectively the features of residences in the two metropoles (Tianjin and Beijing) in terms of the external style of residence. The change of the style of residence can not only directly mirror the profundity of changes to a city but can also trigger very intense struggles. Take Beijing as an example. Since Reform and Opening-Up (改革开放), social transformation and urbanization have completely destroyed the traditional residence style that symbolized a profound cultural tradition. According to relevant reports, the number of residential lanes has been reduced from over 3,000 to less than 1,300, most of which are dilapidated.3 The traditional quadruples and sub-district communities have been bisected by ring roads and overshadowed by high-rise buildings composed of steel bars, cement and glass. Such an urbanization process, under the guise of so-called urban modernization, inevitably annoys the cultural protectionist, due to the destruction of cultural traditions. The past decade has witnessed unceasing struggles over “protection of urban relics.” In this respect, the “Battle for Protection of Dinghai (定海) Ancient City” in Zhejiang and the “Battle for Protection of Lanes” are very typical cases.4 We call the above “struggles of cultural orientation,” which are different from another kind of struggle we will describe – “struggles of rights orientation.” As a matter of fact, the former does not only take place in China. Similar cases are not rare in the urban “upgrading” of many countries in Europe, involved in the process of modernization and urbanization. The large-scale modifications of Paris by Ottoman, and the resulting complaints and struggles, described in the works of David Harvey, are a case in point.5 Actually, regardless of the society, as long as urbanization and urban upgrading take place in such a manner featuring creative damage, struggles of cultural orientation 3  Zhang Jianfeng: Endangered Lanes in Beijing, China Economic Times (Nov. 9, 2005), column 15. 4  Zhang Youyi: Dinghai, a Vanishing Ancient City, Legal Daily (March 18, 2007); Wu Ang: Defense of Lanes, SDX Life Weekly (Nov. 15, 2002). 5  David Harvey: Records of Paris City: Birth of Modern Polis, Trans. Huang Yuwen, Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press (2010).

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will inevitably occur in an effort to sustain cultural traditions and preserve the past residence style, life style, and hence social identity, under new conditions. Thus, “struggles for cultural orientation” are prevalent in modernization and urbanization processes. Another level of the residence pattern is the property ownership structure, which, in our view, forms the more radical level. The origin and definition of housing property represents the different statuses of residents and thus reflects the various relationships among residents, the state and the market, thereby defining the specific position of residents in the social structure. In the initial stage of the era of Reform and Opening, ownership of urban housing was relatively unitary, consistent with political economy of the time that can be characterized as totalitarian. Except for a few private houses, most of the housing was publically owned by local governments or work units. In the work units or local governments, special housing management departments were established for the rehabilitation and modification of housing. Most residents enjoyed houses distributed by the work units or local governments. At this stage, residents with fixed occupations reflected the status of “worker belonging to the work unit,” while those without fixed occupations or who were unemployed held the status of “sub-district persons.” Both types were subject to the close jurisdiction of various state authorities. Reform and Opening has brought different, multi-layered housing ownership styles to urban areas. In general, combining these property types can spice an integral system: one end is the residual style of the old housing system, the multi-unit, publically owned properties, and the other is the highly privatized housing market of the new system that includes commercially available housing.6 Between the two types are various transitional types, from modified housing, economically affordable housing, double-limit housing (limit on price and habitable area) to cheap-rental housing. This wide-ranging system reflects the different relationships between residents and the state, residents and markets, and between residents. In terms of commercial housing, the residents purchasing such units can immediately obtain new status, as owners of the property purchased. The promulgation of the Property Law (《物权法》) in 2007 has legally established state protections for the property rights of housing owners and endowed these owners with the right to protect their personal property under the law. That said, the right-obligation relationship between owners and state has been defined

6  Such private property remains incomplete, since it merely refers to the ownership of the buildings above ground, excluding land ownership.

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on the basis of property. Similar cases in the system include legal categories such as affordable housing and double-limit housing which were designed for a specific type of resident and were launched after the state policy of intervention in the market and price controls. These housing systems belong to incomplete commercial housing patterns. Since property is the defining element of such housing, owners experiencing damage to their property inevitably launch defense movements, which we call here “struggles of rights orientation.” In such a struggle, the movement is not designed to preserve some kind of cultural value but to protect the housing property from violation. Due to the young age of the national laws and regulations affecting the protection of private property rights, they have yet to strike roots in daily life. Therefore, in practice, the protection of owners’ property remains yet to be perfected. On the contrary, frequently seen are the defiance and arbitrary violation of owners’ property rights by the authorities or market players in collusion with the authorities, resulting in intense conflicts between owners and developers, property companies, or even local governments. As an emerging social group, urban owners have been involved in struggles for rights, and they thus are the focus of this study. As stated above, we propose “residence style” as a basic category and define it from two aspects: the structural style of the urban residence, connected with the traditional culture, usually triggers urban struggles for cultural orientation when it is threatened; the property ownership structure of the urban residence, connected with the property of residents, usually triggers urban struggles for right orientation in times of violation. It is true that in some conditions, these two types of struggle are interconnected. For instance, the destruction and modification of the old town of Beijing simultaneously triggered two such struggles. 1.1 Urban Community: Diverse Residence Types Essentially, the urban community is characterized by a group of complex social relations, often with the same property structure or similar spatial use pattern, with its social border relying on regional features. In terms of the combination of property and space, the urban community of Beijing can be divided into the following nine categories generally: 1.1.1 Traditional Blocks For the traditional residence pattern that is composed of three spatial elements, including quadruples, lanes and blocks, the property ownership style

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has been in confusion, combining both public and private elements. After Reform and Opening, and with the implementation of the private housing policy and housing reform policy, most previously-nationalized private houses have been redis­tributed back to the original owners and state-constructed, state-owned houses have mostly been sold to residents. Thus, private prop­erty has expanded. In terms of the structure of residences the traditional blocks at present can be mainly classified into three categories: the first type is located in the zone featuring commercial prosperity, e.g. Qianmen – Dashilan (前门 – 大栅栏), Guloudajie – Nanbeiluoguxiang and Shichahai – Yandaixiejie (鼓楼 大街 – 南北锣鼓巷一带和什刹海 – 烟袋斜街), where most residences have been commercialized, with the original residents (landlords) cohabitating with external, business-oriented households of various sizes; the second type is located in the “quiet and magnificent zone,” with the quadruples resold after modification from their original use as mansions for dignitaries; the third type is located in the areas without the above qualifications, where the lanes and quadruples, in decline as the traditional gathering zone of the marginalized in urban areas, become sites for the cohabitation of original residents and immi­ grant workers. In this way, the residence pattern features the coexistence of the wealthy and ordinary people, and the mix of traditional houses and commercial buildings. 1.1.2 Residential Commercial Housing An immediate product of the housing reform policy was the building of houses by qualified real estate development companies. Residents purchase commercial housing according to the market price and own the property. Such residential areas are usually under maintenance and operation by the property company. Downtown Beijing, at present, boasts about 3,000–4,000 commercially run residential communities that form the major residence pattern of urban residents. 1.1.3 Modified Housing Also known as the “purchased public housing,” this refers to the alreadycompleted public housing purchased, at cost or at a standard price, by urban workers according to the regulations of the urban housing system reform conducted by the central government and local governments above the county level. For housing purchased at cost, the ownership belongs to the owner; for the housing purchased at the standard price, the owner initially has part ownership with full ownership awarded generally after 5 years. This modified housing leads the transition to housing commercialization in China.

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1.1.4 Dormitory Units This category includes “courtyards,” “living zones” or “campuses,” etc., formed as a result of the concentrated residence of employees of enterprises and public institutions, such as factories and schools. The courtyard unit, a result of the combination of residence and working place, is the product of a certain historical period. Such communities are well equipped with various publicgood facilities, such as food stations, non-staple food stores, dining halls, barber shops, swimming pools, cinemas, schools for children of employees, infirmaries and boiler rooms, with the residential quarter enclosed within the grounds of the school or factory and available only for use by employees of the work unit. The work unit community does not belong to the geo-society but is an extension of a functional organization in urban areas.7 1.1.5 Affordable Housing Affordable housing refers to the housing built by real estate developers, funded by construction units organized by urban governments within the national plan, and sold at very little profit to low-income urban households. As a type of commercial housing with social guarantee characteristics, its main features are its economy and applicability. At present, the affordable housing has three major characteristics: First, it is developed and built in a uniform manner, with the government providing the special land use; second, a portion of the commercial housing planned by real estate development enterprises is changed to include such a common residential project; third, it is sold to the employees of the construction unit through self-construction and joint construction.8 1.1.6 Double-Limit Housing (Limit on Price and Residential Areas) Known as “ordinary commercial housing with limits on price and residential areas,” this type of housing is also called “double-limit” commercial housing. It is a nondescript concept on housing, created first in Beijing when the cost of housing soared and affordable housing was in short supply. The initial doublelimit housing limited the land and housing prices, and then added limitations to the groups purchasing houses in formulating the policies of distribution. At present, to purchase such housing three major qualifications need to be met: One should have the residential registration of the city; priority is given to mid-and-low-income households; and priority is also given to the land use 7  Li Guoqing: Trait of Community Type and Neighborhood Relationship: Take Beijing as an Example, Journal of Jiangsu Administration Institute, 2007 (2). 8  General Office of Beijing People’s Municipal Government: Regulations on Acceleration of Construction of Economically Affordable Housing (Trial), 1998 (document no. 54).

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and relocation of households due to key projects, such as disaster relief, environmental rehabilitation, cultural protection and renovation for elements at risks, rectification of city-inlaid villages, Olympic project and the supporting facilities. In terms of the application conditions and procedures, there is no significant difference between double-limit housing and affordable housing in the sales path. 1.1.7 Cheap-Rental Housing This refers to housing featuring social guarantee provided by the government in the form of rental subsidies or real-house rental for urban households meeting the minimum living guarantee standard who are unable to afford commercial housing. The cheap-rental housing is distributed mainly in the form of rental subsidies supported by the real-house rental and rental reduction and exemption. Designed for rental instead of sales, such cheap-rental housing boasts its tangible welfare. Different from affordable housing and double-limit housing that are mostly newly built, the cheap-rental housing is characterized by its diverse sources, including newly built housing, unoccupied housing, renovated housing, old public housing, etc. 1.1.8 Housing for Relocation This category refers to housing distributed to relocated households or to tenants whose original houses are demolished due to reasons such as changes in urban planning and land development. According to the relevant laws and policies, the housing for relocation and settlement is generally divided into two types: one is commercial housing, frequently the mid and low-cost commercial housing built for relocated residents due to major municipal projects; the other is mid and low-cost commercial housing provided or purchased by the relocation company via other channels, generally due to reasons such as real estate development. In general, housing for relocation and settlement is known as the “housing for moving back.” 1.1.9 City-Inlaid Villages Also known as “villages in urban areas,” this refers to the residential zone evolved from original villages in which peasants still lived after being turned into “residents” due to the requisition of all or most of the farmland in the urbanizing process of the rural villages. The land in the “city-inlaid villages” can be generally divided into three types in terms of ownership status.9 The 9  See Fang Zhongjing in details: Deliberations on Land Rights of “City-inlaid Villages, China Innovations Network, http://www.chinainnovations.org/Item.aspx?id=22588.

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first is the completed requisition and demolition of villages for residential quarters, which means the complete national requisition of land and the end of the peasants’ collective ownership of land. In this case, the villages have been completely surrounded by cities with the peasants being turned into residents while still reserving their traditional rural habits. In the broad sense, this is the so-called “village within the city,” generally speaking, which has been integrated into cities after modifications. The second is the cancellation of villages for residential quarters in progress, which involves the requisition of most of the land, with part of land ownership belonging to the state and part collective without the original peasants’ status changing to that of residents. The third is the cancellation of villages for residential quarters that are yet to be implemented but that are already included into the urban framework, with the land completely owned by the collective. The latter two types of village are the “city-inlaid villages” in the narrow sense, or the so-called “city-inlaid villages” with modifications. The nine above-mentioned housing types largely reflect the major residence patterns of the residents in Beijing. Different residence patterns construct various types of urban communities. In commercially available housing, the transformation from residential quarter to community means the transformation of atomized strange groups (when the owners freshly enter) into a new type of social relationship. The focus then becomes how to enhance the interactions and communication between the owners and gradually cultivate and promote the qualifications of communities. However, in the modified housing residential quarter and dormitory units, most of the early households, made up of those who come from the same work unit, have an established business relationship that helps develop the geographical relationship. Therefore, it can be said that the neighborhood in the work unit community is actually an extension of the work unit relationship. In housing for relocation, since the owners are the residents living on the same street or lane of the old town, or they are the villagers of a specific village or the neighboring village, most of them are familiar with each other, unlike residents of commercial housing, affordable housing and double-limit housing who have not had prior interactions. The primary concern is how to adapt to a new type of residence pattern. Those residing in cheap-rental housing, where the population is predominated by impoverished groups in the urban areas, constitute the typical “underground” community in the urban society. Cityinlaid villages, due to a lack of uniform planning and management, results in environmental pollution, a mixed population flow and poor public security, represent the slum with Chinese characteristics. What is noteworthy is that

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in practical life, some urban communities with complex structure take on different combinations of residence patterns. Community Management Picture: Field of Interactions among Various Forces The changes in residence patterns have not only directly influenced the type of urban communities, but also accordingly shaped the management mode of community. According to a survey on various kinds of urban communities, in the micro sense of residence, the interactions among three forces influence the basic elements of the community management picture. The three forces are as follows: residents committees and community service centers as the terminal of national force, as well as their superior authorities, sub-district offices, district governments and housing and construction committees; developers and property companies representing the market force; and proprietors and proprietors’ committees representing the emerging social force. The complex interactivity among the three authorities and organizations determines the basic pattern of current urban community management. 1.2

1.2.1 Presence of National Authorities Before reform, the urban community management in China was mainly performed by the sub-district offices and residents’ committees. With the advance of housing system reform, a large number of newly built commercial residential quarters boomed beyond the traditional sub-district communities and work unit communities, becoming known generally as the “new-type community.”10 As a kind of typical gated community,11 the residential quarter of commercial housing is a privatized property domain guarded by enclosures, fences, security guards and monitoring systems. But how can the state presence be established in such a gated community? Obviously, it is impossible for the state to carry out strict regulations on such communities as it does in the planned economy system, and the state can only perform indirect management by means of law and policies, establishing rules for games. For example, Property Law (2007) and Property Management Regulations (《物 业管理条例》, 2003) endow competent authorities for real estate administration (construction committee system), streets (residents’ committee) and the 10  Xia Jianzhong: Study of New-type Community Autonomous Organization in Beijing: Brief Analysis of Proprietors Committee of CY Park in Beijing, Beijing Social Sciences, 2003 (2). 11  Blakely J. Edward and Snyder M Gail, Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States, Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1997.

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township governments with authority for the instruction and supervision of the establishment of the proprietors’ committees.12 In this way, the extension of the state presence to community is achieved. Meanwhile, the community service center and community work station achieve their goal of management through providing various services at the ground level, which is also the major form of the penetration of the state governance into communities. 1.2.2 Complete Involvement of Market Forces When the uniform construction of houses by the state and work units gives way to development and operation by real estate companies, market forces will be drawn into the communities completely. Arguably, the emergence of commercial residential development has given rise to a kind of enterprise to provide professional services, namely the property management company. In the planned economy system, since most houses for urban residents are public property belonging to the state and its work units, and the corresponding housing management and maintenance are specially performed by the housing management authorities and logistics department of units, the demand for the market services finds no place. After the commercialization reform of housing, residential commercial housing has become the private property of proprietor. Therefore, in order to maintain and increase property values and provide a good quality of life for residents, the demand for professional services is in place naturally and property companies have emerged in response to set up their longstanding presences in the residential quarters. Additionally, the implementation of the early property management system necessitated the existence of property management companies for the newly built residential quarters. This has strengthened its advantage of inherent monopoly. Theoretically, after selling their houses, developers should voluntarily withdraw from the residential quarters. However, since developers and property companies engage in a kind of “parent-child system,” developers have a continued presence in the residential quarters, with some who specially reserve housing units and properties to maintain their influence and benefit from speculative holdings.

12  What is noteworthy is that according to law, the original filing is a kind of informatory filing, which is, however, converted into a review-based filing in practical operation. This has caused frequent conflicts and contradictions between proprietors and governments, with exceptional difficulty in the establishment of proprietors committee.

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1.2.3 Rise of Emerging Social Forces The conversion of housing from aspect of public welfare to commodity symbolizes the birth of a new social group – proprietor group. The so-called proprietors are those with the ownership of housing. As a new type of status, the proprietor is usually called a “man of property”13 or a member of the housing class.14 As the beneficiary of Reform and Opening, the proprietor group falls within the typical middle class stratum and accordingly forms the significant foundation for China’s social stability. With the promulgation and execution of the Property Management Regulations (2003) and Property Law (2007), the legal status of proprietors has won official confirmation and been endowed with corresponding rights and obligations. For proprietors, a fundamental right is to establish proprietors’ committees to supervise property companies and carry out the autonomy of communities. With the establishment of proprietors’ committees and implementation of maintenance actions and movements for autonomy, the proprietors’ groups has begun to loom large as an emerging social force and become an integral part of the urban social structure in China. As Benjamin L. Read puts it, over two decades after the reform of the housing system in China, the profound political consequences have only begun to show with the recent emergence of the proprietors’ committees of the newly built residential quarters.15 It is the emergence of a large number of proprietors’ committees that has sent the proprietors’ rights maintenance movements into a boom, and brought a profound change in the politics of the grassroots communities in urban areas, a dynamic that has been called a “revolution of [the] man of property” by some theorists.16 Through the analysis of the above three basic forces, it can be seen that after housing commercialization reform, urban communities in China have transformed the original single power subject into plural governance subjects, i.e. the state governance force typical of streets, residents committees, and construction committees, market control force typical of the real estate companies and property companies, and the social control force typical of the 13  Shi Yuntong: Struggles of Men of Property and Social Production: Study of Type of Proprietors Rights Maintenance in B City, Dissertation for Graduation of Tsinghua University (June, 2008). 14  Shen Yuan: Towards Citizenship: Proprietors’ Rights Maintenance as a Kind of Citizen Action; Shen Yuan: Market, Class and Society: Key Subject of Sociology in Transformation, Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press (2007). 15  L. B. Read, “Democratizing the Neighborhood? New Private Housing and Homeowner Self-organization in Urban China,” The China Journal, January 49 (2003), pp. 31–59. 16  Zou Shubin: Urban Proprietors’ Rights Maintenance Movement: Features and Effects, Journal of Shenzhen University (Edition of Human and Social Sciences), 2005 (5).

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proprietors’ committees. In terms of the interaction relationship and their different combinations, the three kinds of different governance authorities and forces form varied patterns of urban community management. 2

Politics in Daily Life

The evolution of the urban residence pattern, the proprietor group formed on the basis of the private ownership of commercial housing, as well as the urban actions undertaken for the maintenance of the right of residence launched by various groups – all these reflect the politics of daily life in the transformation period in the most direct way. The daily necessities – clothing, food, housing and travel, form the basic content of the physical life. The private residential space should belong to the private life domain. In the background of the current system, however, residence is increasingly painted with political colors. Rather than merely a tiny practice of personal daily life, residence and its relevant activities typically evolve directly into a political action. In the final analysis, different residence patterns reflect the varied systematic identities, social statuses and sources of resources of residents, behind which lies the basic issue of rights, which boils down to the relations between market, state and citizens. 2.1 Daily Life and Public Life Residence forms not only a basic content but also the physical foundation for daily life, and it is also the most important physical aspect of habitation and survival. Among the indispensable physical entities in people’s daily life, housing forms the largest and most valuable entity, providing the most effective shelter for people or even serving as a lifetime companion. Therefore, housing naturally serves as the necessary spatial vehicle for people to lead their lives, cultivate their families and construct their homeland. As Arendt pointed out, the presence of every person is reflected in the two life domains – the private life and public life.17 The former is the domain to satisfy the demands of personal life and is driven by desire: domestic life and the affairs specific to individuals and merely concerning personal life fall within the private domain; the latter is the public action domain, featuring the pursuit of public benefits and the maintenance of public interests. That is to say, daily life is led on the basis of domestic life and forms the main part of private 17  Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition, Trans. Lan Qianwei, et al., Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House (1999), p. 18.

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life domain. Such private life domain itself, however, has its potential to be transformed to the public domain. As a general rule, domestic life is non-political and public life political, with politics shown in the publicity, and citizens’ concerns about public life are reflected in their actions, i.e. thoughts, words and behaviors. As a matter of fact, public life space is designed for the personal display of each person by means of public thoughts, speeches and positive actions.18 Citizens’ rational, free discussions and public speeches on public affairs form the conditions and symbols of the presence of the public domain. For each person, the long-term influence and cultivation of public life enhances and develops their civility shaping daily life and routines. Everyday life has generally become the major source for people to boycott the colonization of systems. As Habermas put it, “the colonization of the systems of the world we live in” is a major rational crisis facing the modern society.19 In contemporary western society, only through rebuilding the world of the daily life can the modern society develop in a more correct direction. For Chinese society, the early regime of the P. R. C. was an omnipotent government that attempted to have total control of society, with residents’ daily necessities being provided and managed by the state. Urban and rural areas, via, respectively, the work unit system and collectivized agriculture under the People’s Communes (人民公社), achieved a high-level domination of the urban and rural societies. This suggests that China rarely had a real private life domain from its very beginning. With the subsequent series of political movements, the daily life of residents was further politicalized and filled with hype and ideology, which reached its peak in the Cultural Revolution. At that time, daily life in a real sense, voluntarily organized by people themselves, no longer existed at all; political voices had penetrated into the most secret domain of domestic life. After Reform and Opening, only with the emergence of the “free flow of resources” and “space of free activities,”20 has Chinese folk society started to grow slowly, and daily life organized voluntarily by residents has gradually gained larger space. However, although such living space has been spontaneously released by the state in the marketization reform, the state has never relinquished its control and domination of it. Obviously, at least in the urban grassroots structure after reform, 18  Same as above, pp. 38–45. 19  Habermas: Theory of Communication Behavior, Trans. Hong Peiyu, et al., Chongqing Publishing House (1994), p. 205. 20  Sun Liping: Free-Flowed Resources and Free Activity Space: Discussion about Changes of China’s Social Structure, Exploration and Competition, 1993 (1).

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there emerged some sign of the self-development of society on the one hand, and the ever-increasing strengthening of the grassroots state regime construction on the other hand. This suggests that either before or after reform, peoples’ daily life in the background of Chinese society has long been filled with the penetration, construction and domination of state power, which has changed the daily residential life into a kind of state affair such that it is the major content of state governance. Actually, it is not strange that daily life is taken as a significant content of state governance. But the key lies in what has happened to the form of state governance and logic of daily life before or after reform. In the macro sense, it has been pointed out by some theorists that the past three decades of China’s reform and opening have witnessed a transformation from overall domination to technical governance,21 and from direct governance to indirect governance, as well as a governance system featuring the separation of governance for officials from that for civilians.22 For urban grassroots communities, a general trend since the reform calls for the transformation from administration to residence autonomy. In our view, the politicization and evolution of domestic life in the transformation period take on many forms, among which the newly built residential quarters emerging after the commercialization reform of housing is a major type. It represents the emergence of a new type of public space in a centralized way and means the transformation of the basic social relationship structure.23 In such a new type of public space, the proprietors organize the general meeting and elect the members of the proprietors’ committees who participate voluntarily in public affairs involving their public interests. And the participation in the discussion about public affairs and the existence of the place for discussion are exactly the main features of civil society. Therefore, the civil society identity of the proprietors’ committee should not be challenged. In its present development stage, we can at least call it the “public domain of the residence community.”24 What is noteworthy is that this emerging public domain 21  Qu Jingdong, Zhou Feizhou and Ying Xing: From “Overall Domination” to “Technical Governance”: Sociological Analysis Based on China’s 30 Years of Experience in Reform, Chinese Social Sciences, 2009 (6). 22  Cao Zhenghan: Governance System and Stability Mechanism of Top-Bottom Power Distribution in China, Sociological Study, 2011 (1). 23  Zhang Jing: Social Foundation for the Cultivation of Urban Public Space: Take a Community Dispute in Shanghai As an Example, Journal of Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, 2006 (2). 24  Xia Jianzhong: Herald of China’s Citizen Society: Take Proprietors Committee as an Example, Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy, 2003 (3).

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is totally different from the public character of the old work unit courtyard: the latter follows the logic of the work unit politics and the personal and domestic life in the work unit system can hardly transcend the established rules in the working background; it is the public park of the bourgeoisie that forms the public domain featuring the residential quarters selected by the housing purchasers in the free residence period.25 It is true that such a public park does not mean that it can become a purely ideal land naturally, since it will still witness the frequent shadows of the market and state governance that can bring major uncertainties and profound influence to the public life of the proprietors. In fact, behind it lies the fundamental characteristic of daily life in Chinese society. It is true that up to this day the transformation from the administration type to the residence autonomy type has yet to be completed; on the contrary, with increasingly frequent occurrences of various conflicts and contradictions between interests and group incidents in Chinese society, the state has further strengthened control of grassroots society to achieve the goal of the maintenance of social stability. From the perspective of the Central Government, the promulgation and execution of a series of laws and regulations such as the Law of Residents Committee Organization (《居民委员会组织法》, 1989), Property Management Regulations (2003) and the Property Law (2007) have endowed urban grassroots communities with broad space for autonomy at the institutional level which facilitates the proprietors to achieve their effective governance though the democratically elected residents’ committee and proprietors’ committee. Such a system-based right, however, is usually subject to the squeeze and domination from the institutional power in practical operation; performance evaluation indicators, such as “one-vote vetoing” and “zeroindicator,” have become the sword of Damocles hanging over the grassroots governments that have to give priority to maintaining stability. This has exposed the autonomous life of the so-called proprietors and residents to the monitoring and regulation of power, or even to frequent direct intervention and limitation of power. In this sense, for common proprietors, so-called daily residential life is no longer merely a simple personal issue but a kind of public life requiring continuous engagement with state power that leads to mutual conflicts, struggles and competitions. In other words, such daily residential life has constituted a unique form of political life in the background of Chinese society.

25  Mai Di: Residential Quarter Politics in Free Residence Period, 21st Century Business Herald, February 13, 2003.

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2.2 Social Transformation and the Politics of Residence When residence and life become a kind of state affair and the basic content of state governance, the term “residence” gains political connotations, i.e. the “politics of residence.” a political form, different from the official state politics, has close natural links with the state itself. According to Skocpol, the state, as a kind of organization system, is an autonomous subject of action and pursues its own interests and preferences.26 The state’s strategy and actions not only serve as the major sources of the politics of residence, but also directly shape the pattern of the politics of residence. With all-round penetration of the housing system reform, China’s urban society is undergoing a profound “residence reform.” For a moment, the sentence “residence changes China and democracy starts from communities” has become very familiar among people. But how can residence change and shape people’s lives? From the most direct perspective, compared with the residence pattern before reform, the internal structure of housing or the external environment of the residential quarter has experienced significant changes, with the residence demand and residence quality unprecedentedly satisfied. That the physical conditions of residence are satisfied has resulted in increasing demands for the quality of spiritual life. Such conversion from personal physical life to public mental life is based on the fact that residents become the masters of their housing, i.e. housing becomes a kind of private property providing access to public life. As Arendt put it: “The occupation of property means the control of the necessities for the individual life, which qualifies a person as a free person potentially; the private property preconditions access to public life.”27 Only when a person wins his or her own property may he or she develop dependent and autonomous awareness of expression and care more about his or her own interests and participate in the public discussion. Meanwhile, it should be noted that the residential space will be up for grabs among private individuals when it is subject to the free selection of the market rather than the close control of the state before.28 Quite different from the public housing of the work unit in the planned economy system, the newly built residential quarter after the housing commercialization reform is just a kind of community of interests with private property as the core and public property as the bond. It not only serves as the ordinary and commonplace 26  Skocpol, Theda: States and Social Revolutions, Trans. by He Junzhi and Wang Xuedong, Shanghai: Century Publishing Group (2007), pp. 30–32. 27  Same as Note 17, p. 49. 28  Wang Min’an: Significance of Residential Space: Space Politics of Family, Sina, http:// book.sina.com.cn/excerpt/sz/rw/2009-03-11/0122252253.shtml.

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center for daily life, but also provides the battlefield and training pitch, where various interests, contradictions, conflicts, struggles and competitions emerge, and individuals will get involved in public affairs and interests intentionally or unintentionally, with private interest and public interest closely linked. This suggests that the significance of housing extends far beyond its residential function and becomes gradually the breeding ground for civil society in China. 2.2.1

Different Residence Pictures and Status Politics: Formation of Housing Status Group Before reform, the residence pattern of the China’s urban society took two basic forms: the coexistence of traditional sub-district communities and work unit residential zones, with the latter reigning supreme. The sub-district communities, mostly the traditional communities of private housing existing before 1949, were under the management of the sub-district offices and the residents’ committees in the planned economy; the work unit communities, built on large scale in the socialist industrialization period after 1949, showed a high-degree overlap of places for residence and work. The former reflects the continuity and infiltration of the sub-district power and the latter the spatialization of the work unit power. The resulting residence pattern shows the state’s purpose of control of society via the work unit and its supporting authority – the sub-district system. In addition to traditional private housing and work unit housing, the housing system reform was followed by a large number of other housing types, which helped form a diverse development trend. Different residence patterns show various policies of the state. For instance, as a product of completely marketized operation, commercial residential housing is mainly targeted at the groups with higher incomes; affordable housing and double-limit housing not only reflects the marketized operation to some degree but also shows certain features of government guarantee, mainly aimed at urban groups with moderate and lower incomes; cheap-rental housing, the immediate product of the government housing guarantee system, is mainly targeted at impoverished groups in urban areas; housing for relocation and settlement is a direct result of the urban upgrading instituted by the state in the urbanization process; and city-inlaid villages are the concentrated reflection of China’s urban-rural dual system in the residence space in the social transformation period. These different residence patterns suggest the re-planning and construction of people’s residential life by the state via a series of policies that helps form varied residential groups as well as different politics of status. Housing has become the significant symbol of the stratification of contemporary urban society.

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2.2.2

Different Property Characteristics: Different Relationship between Residents and State Before and after the housing system reform, housing property in China underwent the transformation from welfare benefit to commodity, from public property to private property, and from work unit distribution to individual purchase. In the planned economy system, the public ownership of housing property was implemented in China with completed housing distributed uniformly by the state and work unit to employees, who were charged low rent. Meanwhile, the maintenance and management of housing was performed by the housing management authorities and the logistics department. In such a system, housing was owned by the state, with employees merely as tenants and housing management authorities excising the management on behalf of the state. So the management relationship is reflected between the state and residents. After the housing commercialization reform, housing constitutes the largest amount of private property owned by urban residents in general, creating a class of private home-owners for the first time after 1949.29 The establishment of the private housing property system means the formation of a new type of the legal, contractual relationship between the state and residents, who, as the subject of rights, have corresponding independence and autonomy. Meanwhile, professional property companies have introduced for the management and maintenance of houses; the relationship between the housing management party and residents was converted from the former management relationship to the equal relationship between contractual subjects in market conditions. However, it should be noted that due to the relatively lagging state of relevant property laws and regulations and the strong monopoly of the interest groups in the current state, property management still has, to some extent, greatly inherited the characteristics of the housing management system in the planned economy, having failed to achieve the effective conversion of market roles. In other words, the property management field after housing reform is neither a kind of administrative operation nor a purely market/legal operation; instead, it is a kind of composite “political economic operation.”30 Additionally, the phrasal characters of China’s housing system reform have caused the differentiation of the property pattern in the general trend of the housing privatization. Even in the case of private property, there exist distinctly complete properties, partial properties and limited ­properties, 29  Xia Jianzhong: Empirical Study of Autonomous Organizations of New-type Urban Residents, Academia Bimestris, 2005 (3). 30  Zhang Lei: Proprietors’ Rights Maintenance: Causes and Mobilization Mechanism, Sociological Study, 2005 (1).

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which causes different relationship of rights between residents and the state; moreover, with the upsurge of the cost of housing, people generally feel straitened in owning their own house. So, the housing featuring welfare and guarantee has emerged in response, thereby rebuilding the unique pattern of public housing property in market economy conditions. 2.2.3

Different Resident Organizations: Multiple System Arrangements for Residential Life The housing commercialization reform has not only greatly improved the living environment and conditions of urban residents, but also generated new living forms for residents, i.e. midwifed the proprietors’ committee – the real folk autonomous organization in Chinese society, which has injected fresh vigor into China’s grassroots urban communities and helped form the autonomy of the grassroots level featuring the coexistence of the residents’ committees and the proprietors’ committees. Grassroots autonomous organizations are quite different in terms of the rights basis and the nature of autonomy. The former is generated on the basis of residents’ right of occupancy, and guaranteed by the Law of Urban Residents Committee Organization (1989), but most of them are coopted by local governments at the grassroots in practical operation, with residents’ autonomy greatly weakened. And the latter, originating from residents’ ownership of housing property, is guaranteed by the laws such as Property Law (2007) and Property Management Regulations (2003) and produced via democratic election. Therefore, it takes on the striking feature of democratic autonomy. Meanwhile, it should be noted that the emergence of the proprietors’ committees also means a profound change to the residents’ committees. On the one hand, to facilitate the autonomy of the proprietors’ committees, the proprietors participate enthusiastically in the elections held by the residents’ committees, not only making the election process more law-abiding, but also drives the return of the residents’ committees to the real autonomous organization. On the other hand, the development and expansion of the proprietors’ committees has actually squeezed the living space of the residents’ committees, reduced their authority of control, and made the government pay more attention to the quality and pay of the personnel in residents’ committees. Besides, despite the fact that the residents’ and the proprietors’ committees are spurred by the government, the government shows greatly different attitude towards and understanding about them. A government official in charge of residents’ committees vividly compared residents’ committees to “one’s own children” and the proprietors committees to “adopted children.” Therefore, it is obvious that there is a far cry as to the government’s systematic arrangements and to what degree the government gives

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support and shelter to and shows reliance on them. A striking case is that for the establishment and reelection of the residents’ committee, the government does not only set up a special guidance office but also gives special financial assurance; in contrast, the proprietors’ committee cannot win such grace in their establishment and reelection: without any financial support and guarantee, though elected after difficulties and travails, it always experiences hard birth due to the absence of government assistance. Overall, residence and daily life are generally seen as private and nonpolitical matters, but here we place more emphasis on their political perspective before and after the social transformation. In our system, the daily life of residents is always influenced, in varying degrees, by political elements. The housing commercialization process failed to change this situation thoroughly, although after all, it has introduced a housing property by the proprietors’ group. The rights maintenance actions launched by the residential quarters of commercial housing and their proprietors’ group are constructing and cultivating the micro foundation of the civil society made up of the middle class. 3

Rights Maintenance: The Transformation of Living Space from the Private to the Public

With housing commercialization, work unit-based housing was replaced by privatized housing. Residency interests, representing the largest proportion of people’s lives, along with social differentiation, have loomed increasingly large. fostering remarkably complex interactions among state, market and society in China’s social transformation. Residential space, as a kind of private living space, not only has a political connotation thanks to the aforementioned politics of identity, but it also leads to the awakening of citizens’ rights consciousness and the formation of the public life due to interests protection and interests appeal. And citizens’ awareness and organized actions will inevitably constitute the significant part of the political life. In general, the social struggles of urban movements centering on housing interests include the following types:31 The first is the struggle of peasants deprived of their land through urban sprawl, referring to the actions and manners of the peasants whose interests are hurt due to land requisition and relocation in the urbanization process. 31  See Bi Xiangyang for types of urban actions: From “Common Persons” To “Citizens”: Urban Movements in Contemporary Beijing, Dissertation for Graduation of Tsinghua University (2006), pp. 40–54.

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It is because of the requisition of farmland and land for housing that these peasants, already residents as they are, have lost their major interests, with many deprived of their sources for subsistence. The struggles are mostly individualized and decentralized and take on various forms such as appeals, litigation, and negotiation, and even severe actions like fasts, suicides and physical conflicts, with the former two being most common. These different forms have the same purpose, however. Either constant litigation or typically long years of appeals invariably end up with no real solutions. The second is the relocated households’ individualized, normalized, and collectivized struggles, including the actions taken by relocated households on the rights such as ownership of housing property, subject of property, equal transaction, amount of compensation, sustainable livelihoods, and interest expression in the process of urban construction and the rehabilitation of dilapidated buildings in old towns. A large number of relocated households suffered great losses of interests in the reconstruction of many cities, with many becoming orphaned, homeless or deprived of livelihoods. Their struggles take on various forms: individualized appeal, litigations, street protests, or more increasingly decentralized collective network actions, such as the collective appeal, public letters with joint signatures, or even the joint litigation or denouncement of up to ten thousand people. Whichever form they have adopted, most ended up with the knowledge that the knot lies in the systematic problem such as the violation of laws and constitution by the depriving party, the involvement of administrative power in jurisdiction, and no guarantee of citizens’ rights. For this part, their rights maintenance actions have extended beyond the specific individual interests to the fundamental citizenship rights such as the right to own property and to engage in litigation. The third are the various struggles of private homeowners for private property, which can be included in the above-mentioned category. The reason for separate mention of this type is that private homeowners have clear-cut consciousness of property and law. This group mainly includes two groups for the struggle: housing owners of standard rental and those of operational rental. Each were heads of households who owned housing property in downtown Beijing before 1949 as well as the citizens deprived of private ownership rights for unclear reasons and thus fell prey to historical problems over the past five decades. According to the official definition, standard rental housing refers to private rental housing in the urban areas leased and occupied by the individuals before the Cultural Revolution, taken over by the housing management authority early in the Cultural Revolution, and returned to households after the Cultural Revolution according to related policy and required adherence

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to the government’s uniform rental standards. Landlords must follow the uniform rental standards determined by the housing authorities.32 Compared with the “standard rental,” “operational rental” proves more complex, with socalled “operational rental” meaning uniform rental by the state government. Since the socialist transformation in the 1950s, the state government has issued documents several times, stipulating that private housing property transformation is done in the form of the operational rental by the state. That is to say, the uniform rental, distribution for use, renovation, and maintenance are all under the charge of the state, and then reasonable profits are given to the housing owners.33 The two kinds of private housing owners have suffered the deprivation and occupation of the housing property and a series of violations, such as the absence of compensation or the unreasonable compensation for relocation. And their struggles reveal the process from individual to collective actions, a rational process featuring the acquisition and use of law and struggle according to law. The methods mainly involve appeal to the authorities concerned, complaint and negotiation, application for administrative reconsideration and promotion of policy change, judicial litigation and application for association and parade, etc. These actions have spurred some positive results. For instance, the housing owners of standard rental won the houses not occupied for use as well as the land use certification, though most of the housing owners of the operational rental remain in a long-drawn-out deadlock in their rights maintenance. The fourth is cultural intellectuals’ actions to protect cultural heritage. With deep love for local architectural culture, intellectual elites have participated in the protection of old towns in a unique manner. Also, full of sympathy for relocated residents, they maintain rights for themselves and help these residents maintain their cultural capital. As a unique group in contemporary urban 32  In the early Cultural Revolution, private housing owners “voluntarily” handed their private houses over to public hands according to the policies on the eradication of private ownership. At that time, the Beijing Municipal Government took over almost all the private housing property in Beijing, a total of more than 510,000 units according to a statistical report, representing over 1/3 of the total in Beijing before the founding of the P.R.C. Among them, there were over 82,000 occupied by all organs, enterprises and public institutions and employees. See Note 31, pp. 232–237. 33  The specific way is: the housing for rental with 15 rooms or the total area of above 225m2 must be for the operational rental by the state, with the owners gaining 20%~40% of the rental while reserving some area for personal use. See Note 31, pp. 272–278; Jiang Yun: Practice of Rights in Property Definition: Take Rights Maintenance Activities of OperationalRental Housing Owners as an Individual Case, Thesis for Graduation of Tsinghua University, (2006), pp. 1–8.

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movements, they appeal for the protection of traditional architectural culture via joint petitions, contact with media and relevant authoritative experts, and even submitted a letter to the World Heritage Committee. The fifth is the rights maintenance actions of various kinds of proprietors and the autonomous activities of communities, mainly referring to the rights maintenance action launched by proprietors of the residential quarters of the newly built commercial housing with the purpose of protecting legal property and service quality. The causes include the following: contradictions between proprietors and developers, for instance on issues over housing size, quality, unauthorized change of planning, property certification and after-sale services; contradictions between proprietors and early-service property companies involving issues over property cost, quality of property service, change of property, property of public space, among others; contradictions between proprietors and the government – usually intertwined with the contradictions between proprietors and developers, and with those between proprietors and property companies, with the government showing partiality to developers and property companies, neglecting duty or intervening in proprietors’ autonomy with administrative power, among others. Proprietors’ social struggle for their own rights and interests in various manners constitutes a significant phenomenon in China’s urban social transformation, and has also become a positive attempt to form new social organizations, community identity and community autonomy with a view to protecting common interests. In the above-mentioned various maintenance actions, we focus on the longstanding households’ resistance to relocation, rights maintenance actions of various proprietors in the residential quarters of commercial housing, and the establishment and efforts of communities’ autonomy and the proprietors’ organization. Residence and residential space originally fall within the private life domain and the activities focusing on residence interests are not political actions; as Arendt noted in The Human Condition, however, action is placed at the core of “the human condition” compared with labor and work. Only actions, as the real core of politics, can become the bulwark against political terror and politically unscrupulous behaviors, as well as being the only human activity mode that embodies the human political nature. Actions show our utmost potential, possibility and uniqueness; only through actions can we be felt and engage in the affairs beyond our own private interests. According to Arendt, actions constitute the topmost form of human nature, and life without action is “nothing but a state of desolation, no longer a kind of human life since humans do not live among people anymore.”34 From Arendt, we know that a 34  Same as Note 17, pp. 3–16.

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positive life is one of human presence in a real sense and only those with the rights of actions and speech are free people. The political connotation of rights maintenance actions also lies in their public features. According to Arendt, actions are rooted in human diversity and uniqueness. Through the display of “word” and “deed” we can enter a “polis” of the human world. The “polis” and actions are mutually intertwined and interdependent. As the place for actions and mutual talks, the “polis” is a free domain, the one for a “real human,” with word and deed constituting the capacity to create such a “polis.” In the eyes of Arendt, the problem of totalitarianism lies in political dissolution rather than the political expansion. Those showing inaction or following such a trend in the face of natural, political or economic “rules” are giving up the possibility for freedom.35 Precisely because an absence of political freedom coincides with a lack of real public life does the city of Athens wins Arendt’s praise as its special significance lies in the fact that “Athens has become a people’s organization due to the collective actions and speeches of the people in Athens.”36 For residential rights, the politics of status still remains negative and exists as the result of an arrangement in social fiber; only the expressions and actions for rights are taken as positive life and also real politics. The public nature of political life lies in the fact that citizens’ participation relies on political freedom. The social nature of the residents’ and proprietors’ rights maintenance actions and their proper expression based on laws suggest the political essence of these struggles. 3.1 Priority of Action over Structure As an important theoretical concept in the study of collective action and social movements, “political opportunity structure” is designed to explain the conditions, opportunities, and motivation of collective actions through structural analysis. In the specific systematic background and social environment in China, however, the “opportunity structure” and action space of rights maintenance can hardly appear. As we found in the study, the participants in collective actions for rights maintenance face “dual impossibility”:37 atomized, lonely and vulnerable individuals on the one hand and highly obligatory and intense structural pressure on the other. Either individual or collective actions, either “legal struggles” or “struggles according to law,” the rights 35  See Hannah Arendt: Human Condition, Chapter 1 and 2. 36  Same as Note 17, Cited from Xu Ben: Why Do Humans Memorize? Changchun: Jilin Publishing Group (2008), p. 57. 37  Same as Note 31, p. 82.

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­ aintenance participants are playing a losing game with the rule makers. With m interest gamed played with systematic voice and various strategies, they may plunge aggressive capital and power into behaviors outside the frame of law or even in the public violation of law via rights maintenance; or they may highlight the disparities in the system in the form of documentation and through legal channels. In practice, the rights maintenance, however, ends up mostly aborted. Does that mean the participants are inevitably the losers in the systematic structure? In practice with seemingly little effect, the actions are of greater significance, with the initiative continuously striving for the border of the structure, expanding in the narrow gap, and opening up the gaps in the heavy oppression. Meanwhile, the subjectivities of the participants are also generated and shaped in struggles. And for various struggle subjects, the formation of the awareness of subjectivity is unique. Alain Touraine’s Sociologie De L’Action and resulting theories on social movements have shed light on this dynamic. He noted in the Le Retour De L’Acteur: Sociology, established with a mode featuring specific analysis on social life with ever more focus on the conditions and forms of the integration of the social system, has strengthened the correspondence of the systematic analysis with the analysis of the participants, and thus it firmly dwells on the two mutually complementary concepts, institution and socialization. In reality, however, when social action participants do not perfectly correspond with society anymore and instead clash with it, the society is again plunged abruptly into crisis.38 Touraine stressed the necessity of avoiding falling pretty to two kinds of illusions: one is the withdrawal of social action participants from the social system through analyzing them; the other is the depiction of a system with the lack of any active participant. The former takes socialization as a market, and the latter is the extreme form of the theory of function.39 Touraine criticized classic sociology naturally defined to study society, questioning the actions of equaling order with operation and modernity with social organization, and believed the consequence is that social actions will find no place. The more one studies society, the more he will overlook various kinds of social action participants. The action participants can only be believed as those with certain attributes according to the position they are in within the social system: their actions are explained according to the correspondence between mutual roles,

38  Alain Touraine: Le Retour De L’Acteur, Trans. Shu Shiwei, Xu Ganlin, and Cai Yigang, Taipei: Wheat Farm Press (2002), pp. 89–91. 39  Same as above, p. 92.

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or expressed with reference to the degree of the integration of various values, regulations, and organizational forms of society.40 In sum, Touraine’s call for the return of participants is based on his strong complaint against the phenomenon featuring the mere sight of society instead of individuals, with such social study placing action participants in the negative position of the social fiber. The struggles focusing on residential interests are seldom tinged with political elements. Such struggle for interests, however, will inevitably arouse participants’ awareness of rights, as well as their perception of the distance between system documentation and system operation. The process of actions will drive home to them their own social position or may change the structural position. The make-or-break struggles will invariably leave some marks via the community relationship and memory, bringing social effects that are more long-lasting than the struggles themselves. And in this sense, the participants and their actions are shaping the grassroots life of China’s contemporary urban areas. Take the “litigation of up to 10,000 people” as an example. One of its major characteristics is the orientation of behaviorism. Faced with violations of their own interests and rights, the relocated households vigorously took action in the form of groups, raising their voices and safeguarding their legal interests and rights through legal channels and laws. Such collective rights maintenance actions have extended beyond “daily struggles” and “verbal struggles” and resorted to the typical “public struggles.” It is true that to achieve this lies in the many insisting on the rational form featuring the law-based rights maintenance. This is so, regardless of administrative litigation or collective denouncement.41 Such public, collective, law-based struggles have become the major strategy to construct the legality of struggles, and have also opened up a space of struggles in the spatial structure that did not exist before. With solidarity in the struggles and the promotion of policy changes with actions, the rights maintenance actions of private homeowners of the “standard rental” provide a standard case of law-based struggles. One of their features is the pursuit of their own rights and interests along the track of the legal system; for example, they have sought to modify relevant regulations via administrative reconsideration. That some private homeowners won some success also has something to do with the specificity of the power structure. Compared with 40  Same as above, pp. 101–103. 41  Same as Note 31, p. 314; Shi Yunqing: Creation of Opportunity Space: Take Administrative Litigation of Relocated Residents Group in B City as an Example, Sociological Study, 2007 (2).

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other cities, Beijing has its special character; it is featured by the coexistence of the central government and the local government, with distance and different stakes held by government authorities at different levels, which sometimes provides some scope for their rights maintenance actions. Therefore, a kind of “political space for struggles” has formed: In such struggles, the participants make full use of different levels in the national system as well as the structural relationships between different authorities to maximize the achievement of their own rights. And the “political space for struggles” is also reflected in the participants’ use of the tension between the struggle oppression and social stability maintenance. This suggests that it is in Beijing, a place with centralized power, that large-scale urban actions have arisen.42 Equipped with the law as a weapon, the action participants even strive to promote changes in laws and regulations with actions, which reflects their strategic consideration and also citizen orientation. And this also suggests a kind of special “political opportunity structure” for the rights maintenance actions.43 The process of the actions have led to or may lead to changes or adjustments in corresponding policies and even laws and regulations; organized actions contain the strength to change the structure and bring major changes in social production and the social system. 3.2 From Property Maintenance to Achievement of Citizens’ Rights The political connotation of residence also shows the extension from the appeal for physical interests, property and services to the appeal for citizens’ rights. According to related studies, the maintenance and struggles for housing property by the proprietors of the residential quarters of newly built commercial housing are part of a process of practice towards citizenship. If observing the practical patterns defined by the property from the sociological perspective, it is found that property is not only an abstract symbol of the occupation relationship and other relationships but a practical, dynamic and circulating process of definition. As Shen Yuan (沈原) noted, when the proprietors define their own property in terms of spatiality and sociality, they begin to construct the “citizenship” category, in the sense used by Marshall, at two levels: one level involves civil rights, mainly in the form of rights maintenance featuring 42  Same as Note 31, p. 370. 43  Chen Peng: Struggles for Legal Rights of Urban Proprietors in Contemporary China: An Analysis Frame on Proprietors’ Rights Maintenance Activities, Sociological Study, 2010 (1); Liu Yuewen: Transmutation of Society: Take A Proprietor Association in B City as an Example, Thesis for Graduation of Tsinghua University (2010).

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proprietors’ occupation of property and the entry of effective contracts as well as the adoption of the judiciary trial, which is formed on the basis of the property pattern; the other level involves political rights, mainly in the form of democratic mechanisms allowing for community autonomy, created by proprietors in the election of the proprietors’ committee according to democratic procedures at the community level.44 In analysis and study, to promote the proprietors’ rights maintenance actions to the level of citizen movements constitutes an important theoretical proposition that features the transformation from property to citizenship, and the significance of the proposition is self-evident. Performing in-depth analysis of the connotation of the concept of proprietors’ rights maintenance at the academic level is to answer the question: what rights are the proprietors maintaining? According to studies, the rights maintained by the proprietors mainly relate to three basic levels in the theoretical category: building-specific ownership (property), autonomy of communities (right of governance) and citizenship (human rights). The three basic levels not only represent the three kinds of basic patterns of the proprietors’ rights maintenance but also take on its three development stages. This is a dynamic process of gradual growth and sublimation. Meanwhile, the systematic arrangement based on the existing study of the proprietors’ rights maintenance helps further clarify different theoretical areas, as well as their contributions and limits, and the in-depth study of the proprietors’ rights maintenance may include them in the three frames, “formation of citizens,” “formation of the middle class” and “formation of society.”45 In the practice of rights maintenance, the participants’ awareness of rights is established in some mobilizations and through gradually formed social network. The awareness of rights varies with rights defense groups, ranging from the specific land use rights, housing property, right to use and benefit from public space to the awareness of citizenship status and rights, such as the more general right of expression and unity. The rights maintenance participants not only struggle for their own legal rights and interests but also learn in the process how to define the border of private rights and that of public rights and how to make proper and rational expression of citizens, such as through appeals and litigations by relocated households, including private housing owners. Additionally, the practice of rights maintenance helps the participants learn how to adapt themselves to the self-organized social organization and public life established 44  Same as Note 14; T. H. Marshall and Tom Bottomore, Citizenship and Social Class, London: Pluto Press, 1992, p. 8. 45  Chen Peng: From “Property” to “Citizenship”: Study of Present Urban Rights Maintenance of Proprietors in China, Opening Times, 2009 (4).

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on the basis of mutual rights. Especially in the proprietors’ rights maintenance actions in newly built residential areas, it is the major direction of actions to establish proprietor organizations and pose a counterbalance with government organizations and market organizations. Take the rights maintenance of operational-rental owners as an example. Via the recall of history and the use of the official voice, they combine their own hardships with the Party’s slogans and drive the officials concerned to a dilemma; they can also command domination in the existing system through finding contradictions and gaps between policies, laws and regulations; for instance, the introduction of the corruption issue links the problem of the operational rental housing with administrative legality; they can also unite cultural elites and media to draw more public concern with the operationalrental housing; at last, they can submit the documents involved in the housing property issue for the review of violation of constitutionality.46 In comparison, the government authorities concerned usually deter the owners of the operational-rental housing with lingering fear for class struggle by means of political intimidation; increase the costs of rights maintenance of the operational-rental housing by means of delay or evasion; make the original conditions of the property of the operational-rental housing hard to be resumed via advantage of information monopoly; eliminate the negative influence the rights maintenance activities has on the image of government through monitoring media and intervene in the judicial independence of court, which deprived the operational-rental housing owners of the right of litigation in an invisible way and strengthen its presence in the legal system; adopt soft governance skills of morality and ethics to deprive the operational-rental housing owners of their resistance consciousness; continuously blur the nature of the operational-rental housing via selective use of systems. In the process of this race, the nature of property has been continuously blurred and cleared. This is a game requiring wisdom, dependent on the strength, resources, strategies, and various logics of all stakeholders. In this game of interests, the execution of the defining standards of property has become, rather, the selection of defining standards. In the process, what is followed is the principle of political competition, not that of law.47 It is in such an intricate and complex rights maintenance process that the quality of the operational-rental housing owners wins sustainable growth. Arguably, they have undergone four kinds of transformations: from individual actions to collective 46  See footnote 31, pp. 278–283. 47  Jiang Yun: Practice of Rights in Property Definition: Take Rights Maintenance Activities of Operational-Rental Housing Owners as an Individual Case, p. 63.

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ones; from the request for housing and land to that of property; from the pursuit of individual property to that of collective benefits; from legal illiterates to citizens who learn, understand and use law.48 Honored by media as “the first heroic action launched voluntarily by the common people in Beijing to safeguard the dignity of the constitution and protect property since the revision of the constitution,” A certain “Mr. Huang”’s action can be another case demonstrating the transformation from property to citizenship. Despite Mr. Huang’s house succumbing to the second forced relocation, the first forced relocation was deterred by constitution and residents’ collective actions, possibly setting a precedent in the relocation history of contemporary cities. Since this incident occurred immediately after the adoption of the constitution amendment, it is of more extraordinary significance. It was given much attention in the news media and was reported in some media that the personnel of the Tiananmen National Flag Culture Collection Center (天安门国旗文化收藏中心) said they planned to collect the national flag hung before the door of Mr. Huang’s home in the museum since it was the first flag to maintain the dignity of law since the publication of the law on protection of private property, despite the loss of this flag in the forced relocation two weeks later. In that case, the main reason for the failure of the first forced relocation does not lie in the constitutional power but in Mr. Huang’s singing Jingdong Drum Music (京东大鼓), the artistic power of which influenced the on-spot masses and even the personnel implementing the forced relocation, thus forming a spontaneous collective action. In the following relatively quiet two weeks, there were more ceremonious struggles between the two parties: the sentence, “citizens’ legal private property must not be violated,” quoted from the constitution was magnified and written in the blackboard hung at the door of Mr. Huang’s house. On the early morning of April 10, the authorities concerned also put up a slogan reading “Perform Relocation as Early as Possible with the View of the Big Picture” on the wall opposite to his house.49 And later, after the forced relocation of Mr. Huang’s house, this slogan was anonymously added to with eight red Chinese characters: “Safeguard Constitution and Protect Private Property.” In general, economic interests, political rights and cultural rights are not irrelevant, and the maintenance of economic interests will inevitably lead to appeals for political and cultural rights.

48  Same as Note 31, p. 298; Same as above, p. 64. 49  Same as Note 31, p. 172.

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3.3 Transformation of Status from Residents and Proprietors to Citizens Based on knowledge about the effects of participants’ initiative on the social fiber, Touraine advocated a kind of critical sociology: to see the violence behind the existing order, suppression from the consensus, the irrationality of modernity, and the private interests from the core of various universal principles.50 To avoid simplifying the analysis of social activities as merely discussion about the position of the participants in the system, Touraine believed that behavioral sociology should take all cases as a result of various relationships between the participants positioned according to cultural aims and social conflicts.51 It is on this basis that Touraine pointed out clearly that the private life or broader cultural field as a whole gradually enters the political domain, and the “private life” is more a kind of public affair than ever, a kind of domain of social actions, and the major subjects of various emerging social conflicts.52 The formation of the social action concept is based on knowledge about the following facts: participants do not only respond to practical cases, but also open up a new picture in practice.53 On the basis of the revelation of the totalitarian essence of the state, which works to devastate all the social life and completely stifle society, Touraine stresses the capacity of the social production itself. In our view today, this is the dual motivation in both politics and the academy to call for the return of the participants. As active participants, proprietors and residents experienced the transformation from passive recipients to subjects in the process of rights maintenance, with their subjectivity formed and shaped by struggle; this is also the process of the production of citizen awareness and civil society. The “10,000-people litigation” has existed for 16 consecutive years, and it can be used as a typical case of the production of citizens. Faced with the violation and deprivation of their legal rights, a group of common citizens carried out their rights maintenance actions with rationality, wisdom, and especially great courage: “They do not become cynical in the long-drawn-out complaint and [resulting] series of obstructions and blows. Behind this attitude is their love for and loyalty to the country. The energy they have burned and the pressures they have suffered have far extended the scope of personal interests, and their courage and selfdiscipline reflect the great dignity as citizens and the unbending faith in laws.”54 50  Same as Note 38, p. 105. 51  Same as Note 38, p. 113. 52  Same as Note 38, p. 120. 53  Same as Note 38, p. 140. 54  Guo Yukuan: Image of Citizens of Best Capital, South Reviews, 2003 (24) (Year-end Special Edition: 2003 List of “For Public Interests”).

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In addition to some deterrence of the illegal activities in the relocation, the “10,000-people litigation” and the later “10,000-people tip-off” actions, more importantly, have trained a group of brave, rational, law-abiding, and rights-conscious modern citizens in the process of rights maintenance. Unlike ordinary struggles, the “10,000-people litigation” follows the route of law in its struggle. Besides, in the process of struggles, these citizens have defined their own legal rights and interests and also pointed out the illegal behavior of the other party according to laws such as the constitution. This case alone can represent the top level of the urban actions in contemporary China.55 The citizens’ courage, rationality and wisdom were not previously extant but were cultivated gradually in the process of the struggle. From common proprietors and residents to citizens, two aspects are shown clearly: First, in the whole process of the struggles for rights, “law” has become the center all along. In the most fundamental sense, proprietors’ rights maintenance has become the process featuring their learning, understanding, using, and guarding of the law, showing a strong sense of legal rights, the valuable courage of citizens, and democratic and autonomous training. And this suggests the transformation of proprietors from traditionally understood common persons to citizens in the modern sense in terms of behavior and ideology. For that matter, the urban proprietors’ struggles for rights in contemporary China can be understood as the process where proprietors transform themselves into citizens or may even become a class by means of law.56 The struggles following the route of law constitute “the institutional space of struggles,” and it is just the gaps and contradictions between laws, laws and policies, and law documents and legal practices that are identified and used by the participants as the supporting point of struggles. They maintain their rights via legal struggles and plunge the other side’s behavior into an illegal situation. The relevant systems have formed a kind of place for social struggles, which constitutes the key and subtleness in the “rights maintenance via law” action. For instance, some participants performing the rights maintenance in the form of litigation add weight to their own litigation capacity through recourse to external force beyond law and change the initial strength comparison between the two parties. Such litigation strategy has become the major driver for the success of litigation. The possibility of the planning of this strategy lies in the tension between the administrative logic and the judicial logic 55  Same as Note 31, P360; Shi Yunqing: Creation of Opportunity Space: Take Administrative Litigation of Relocated Residents Group in B City as an Example. 56  Chen Peng: Struggles for Legal Rights of Urban Proprietors in Contemporary China: An Analysis Frame on Proprietors’ Rights Maintenance Activities.

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shown in China’s judicial trial system. In this process, the litigants are not only the negative receivers of the judicial system, but also the positive actors to construct, influence and shape the judicial trial system.57 The attempt to affect the legal practice, and policy formulation and adjustment via actions has not only promoted China’s construction of law-based governance in the process of rights maintenance, but also made numerous tempered common citizens grow into citizens with legal knowledge and awareness of rights. The second is the formation of public life and social production. Since the existence of citizens cannot be separated from the publicity and citizens’ social organizations, the problem concerning “society” forms the subject and route of the observation and discussion on proprietors’ rights maintenance and autonomy of community, as well as the perspective for the study of the adherence to the state-market-society mutual connection and counterbalance; and the analysis of “society” is done in a concrete, real and historical way. That is to say, the social production is not integral and quickly accomplished, but takes on the striking features of decentralization, discontinuity, long-termism, hesitation and vagueness, so this is a place full of troubles and challenges.58 In terms of the effects of proprietors’ rights maintenance, the weakness and ineffectiveness of individual actions are known to all. The mobilization for common interests and appeals, as an essential choice, serves as the catalyst of solidarity. As afore-mentioned, one of the major effects of actions lies in the cultivation of citizens in a real sense, and in other words, only through practical experience can the foundation required for civil society be built. Meanwhile, the process of actions is also that of continuous exploration of the border of system and the growing space of organization. In China’s existing political system, systematic frame and specific historical background, the development of independent “citizen society” faces pressure and threats from those in power and the market, and the limitations of the proprietor stratum also restrain the development of the “society” in a sociological sense in China. The new community autonomous organizations, proprietors’ committees, are mostly generated for effective rights maintenance. The practice of such new social organizations has begun, despite the fact that the newly built commercial housing residential quarters equipped with the proprietors’ committees account for less than 20%, that the proprietors’ organizations in some residential quarters dissolved 57  Sun Zhenning: Weight Adding Logic: Study of Strategies of Proprietors’ Rights Maintenance via Litigation in B City, Dissertation for Graduation of Tsinghua University (2009), p. 141. 58  Guo Yuhua, Shi Yuntong: Marxism and Society: Burawoy’s Revelation of “Sociological Marxism,” Opening Times, 2008 (3).

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after the failure or even success of the rights maintenance, and that there are dilemmas concerning the legal status of proprietors’ committees, the relationship among proprietors, the residents’ committees under the government, the property management companies and the developers as market organizations. The citizens with social organizations and public life are the citizens in real sense. The 6-year-long efforts made by Application Committee of Beijing Proprietors Commission (hereinafter referred to as ACBPC) can be used as a good example of the exploration of organization. For years, the ACBPC has organized workshops and seminars on community autonomy, functions of proprietors’ committees, the proprietor representative assembly system, property of the public supporting facilities and early property service, etc. In addition, they hold annual meetings of proprietors’ committees and provide proprietors and proprietors’ committees with consultations in all aspects concerning community construction. These activities are of great significance. They have helped many proprietors, expanded the influence of the AVBPC in practice and avoided being completely incorporated by the government. Also, to some degree, they have found the future direction for growth. These elites of communities began to experience the transition from the formation of enlightening awareness and community concept to formulating instructions on actions. They have realized the importance of actions, as well as the senselessness of creating an ever-better system for common proprietors without entry into the operation process. The study of proprietors’ organizations suggests that the socalled three routes of the development of citizens’ social organizations, namely marketization, government incorporation and independent society, are a relatively common phenomenon. Arguably, in the system background specific to China, each social organization faces the choice of three routes more or less.59 Return to the participants themselves! According to Touraine, both participants’ awareness and the environment they live in cannot replace the actions per se, which are the core of sociological analysis. Touraine offers two major innovative concepts. The first is historicity, which originally refers to the historical nature of the social phenomena. Touraine, however, believed it to be the combination of modes in culture, knowledge, economy and ethics, according to which a collective can set the relationship between it and the environment – the integrity of society does not follow its own rules anymore, or any process of long-term evolution, but rather is shaped by the character of productive capacity itself. That is to say, historicity is not 59  Liu Yuewen: Transmutation of Society: Take a Proprietor Association in B City as an Example, p. 82.

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a set of values firmly set in the social core; it represents a set of instruments and a group of cultural orientations, and also helps implement social actions. The second is system, which no longer means that which is built but who perform such building – it is a mechanism, precisely through which the cultural orientation is transformed into social actions. In this sense, all the systems are related to politics.60 Touraine’s version of “subject” means the process of construction from individuals (or collective) to participants, and it is formed via participation in a kind of freedom filled, confirmed and re-explained by life practice; and all the more, it has injected into the freedom the seemingly cultural heritage or all the existing elements of the established social regulations.61 For this reason, democracy “must be defined with the politics of subject.”62 The achievement of democratic life must be based and conditioned on the democratic practice of the subjects’ daily life.63 As stated above, from the perspectives of the political nature of action and the sociology of action, residence represents the most significant foundation for survival and content of life. To safeguard the legal right of residence and ownership of housing property is to protect the human right as a right for survival. For this reason, the maintenance of the legal right of residence and the pursuit of social fairness mean the political priority for citizens. The achievement of social rights (social and economic rights, social welfare and rights guarantee) forms the nature of politics: people pursue life of good quality through the actions of protecting their legal right of residence. And in the process of this practice, people will find the close link between the pursuit of such physical interests and grassroots democracy, community autonomy and social production. The practice of rights maintenance focusing on residence will end in politics, with the process and logic presented as: Actions make citizens, struggles cultivate society, and rights maintenance changes China as a whole.

60  Same as Note 38, pp. 162–163. 61  Alain Touraine, What Is Democracy? Trans. David Macey, Westview Press, 1997, pp. 1–15. 62  Alain Touraine, “A Sociology of the Subject,” in Jon Clark and Marco Diani (eds.), Alain Touraine, London: Routledge Press, 1996, p. 329. 63  Qiu Yanliang: Introduction: Subject of Hope: Touraine’s Social Movement Theory and Transmutation of Taiwan Society; Alain Touraine: Le Retour De L’Acteur, p. 39.

Chapter 8

The “Interstitial Production” of Civil Society: Lawsuits Involving “Neighborhood Agency Rights” in Nanyuan Huang Xiaoxing Translated by Matthew A. Hale and Shayan Momin Abstract In the context of transition, the existing scholarship on civil society mainly focuses on three aspects: civil society – community (organization), mutually beneficial interaction between the state and society (relations), and politics – citizenship (rights). Such scholarship takes Western relations between the state and civil society as its starting point for studying the production of independent civil society, either trying to prove whether independent civil society exists or, using normative research, to argue that it ought to exist. In contrast, this article adopts a practical logic to demonstrate that the production of civil society is a reconstruction of new relations between the state and civil society – a production that emerges from interstices within previously dominant networks. Focusing on neighborhoods, this article uses quantitative research methods combining in-depth interviews with content analysis to analyze medium-scale units that reflect social change on a broader scale. According to the logic of “interstitial production,” the state and civil society must transform tactical relations into more stable juridical relations in order to better establish a harmonious society.

Keywords civil society – interstitial production – tactical relations – juridical relations – harmonious relations

Since the 1990s, Chinese society has undergone dramatic changes, with Reform and Opening-Up (改革开放) rapidly transforming China’s socioeconomic system and reorganizing its social structure.* The state’s system of *  This article shows early research results from the Guangdong Provincial Social Studies and Philosophy Planned Youth Project “Marxist Community Theory and Social Management © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004392335_009

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basic-level governance has transformed from the danwei [单位, work unit] system, in which the state controlled all resources, into a neighborhood, through a gradual increase of extra-institutional resources, of the market’s ability to regulate those resources,1 and of society’s independence. In this context, while the state slowly retreats from basic-level control, it must also strengthen social integration; in order to return power to the people, governance must be strengthened. This contradiction unique to such a period of transition creates (actually or conceptually) a situation of unfamiliarity for both the state and the residents, leading to problems concerning social integration and the emergence of “anomie.” In this light, research on how civil society is produced and how new relations between the state and society are established becomes an issue of rather practical significance at both theoretical and practical levels. The production of civil society becomes an “enlightening” issue regarding contemporary Chinese society.2 It is important to think about how to rebuild relations between the state and civil society in order to solve social problems during the present stage.3 The relationship between the state and civil society is a classic problem of political sociology, the social structure’s basic web of relations, of which the state’s social governance is one aspect, and the formation and development of social forces is another. In the past, scholarship on the production of civil society has for the most part been limited to the Western path and stopped at the level of norms, and scholarship on the production of civil society during China’s present stage has mainly followed that based on Western civil society, analyzing the continual re-institutionalization of state – society relations and the formation of new social structures in three dimensions: organization, relations, and rights. This article places the production of civil society within neighborhoods, using a set of stories about “neighborhood agency rights” to show the interaction between state and civil society at the neighborhood level. By using policy resources, residents turn laws, policies and regulations on paper into the construction of actual rights – a typical example of the production of civil society. The theoretical question that this article attempts to answer is: how is civil Innovation Research,” (project number GD11YMK01), Guangzhou 2010 City University Research Youth Project “Guangzhou Community Work In The Context Of Government Purchase Services” (project number: 10B059), 2010 State Social Science Foundation Major Project “Social Consciousness Trends and Laws in the Context of Reform and Opening” (project number 10zd&048). 1  Li Hanlin, Danwei Society of China: Arguments, Reflections and Research (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2004). 2  Shen Yuan, “Producing Society,” Chinese Journal of Sociology 2 (2007). 3  Zhao Dingxin, Social and Political Movements (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2006).

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society produced? The specific research questions are: how are legal regulations on paper turned into actual neighborhood agency rights? What kind of lesson does such production of civil society offer for social governance? How should the government respond in order to promote mutually beneficial interaction between the state and civil society? Nanyuan (南苑) is a [state-subsidized] residential complex for the needy in Z Municipality. The complex, regarded as a “slum,” was built in 1993 with the goal of providing housing for local low-income groups and is now home to over 6,000 low-income households.4 In the early stage of the neighborhood’s formation, the establishment and development of the homeowners’ committee were “the same in form, different in content” – controlled by the government and the property management company. This article analyzes numerous legal documents from Nanyuan homeowners’ neighborhood agency rights struggle, and relies on in-depth interviews with participants in the story in order to obtain detailed, reliable, first-hand materials. This article’s central idea is that new relations of mutually beneficial interaction between the state and civil society are produced from the interstices of existing webs of relationships. Policies and regulations are resources for the production of civil society, but only when the tactical state-society relationship created by the transition period’s uncertainty transforms into a stable, juridical relationship can the state and civil society interact in a way that is mutually beneficial, and only then can social governance develop in an orderly manner. 1

Organization, Relations, and Rights: Three Paths of Civil Society Production

Contemporary scholarship on the production of civil society in China can be summarized into three paths or currents: First, civil society – community (social organization, the public sphere): the production of civil society from below. Academic application of the civil society concept to China stems from changes in the global situation in the 1980s and changes in China’s social structure brought by Reform and Opening-Up. The state began to adjust its relationship with the market and society, fostering the market and gradually liberating society [from state control]. Mayfair Yang studied collective publishing enterprises, describing a kind of community that could transform into a key component of civil society in the sphere

4  Nanyuan is a large housing district built in the 1990s in Z Municipality. In accordance with academic practice, all names are pseudonyms.

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of industrial production, partly belonging to the state and partly to society.5 Zhao Wenci (赵文词) argues that the development of civil law since the 1970s has been increasingly “citizenized,” and that civil society is emerging in contemporary China.6 Civil society is composed of groups and organizations independent from the state. Zhu Jiangang (朱健刚) argues that three types of civil society organizations are emerging in China: government-organized nongovernmental organizations (GONGOs) undergoing transition, grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and state NGOs undergoing localization. These organizations play the roles of providing social services, initiating discussion of public issues, and carrying out social innovation and experimentation. They thus display popular forces in building a harmonious society and imply the possibility of building civil society among the Chinese people.7 Thomas Heberer uses neighborhood residents’ committees and homeowners’ committees as quasi-autonomous organizations to discuss the situation of political participation from the masses to citizens, using neighborhoods as an example representing the situation of civil society.8 Xia Jianzhong (夏建中) argues that homeowners’ committees as autonomous organizations already possess the basic characteristics of civil society, becoming the embryonic form of the first true civil society in Chinese history.9 These assessments of civil society all use physical communities, public spheres and social organizations to illustrate the production of civil society in China. They are empirical assessments of the existence of civil society. Although these examples are partial, at least they show that civil society exists to varying degrees. Of course, the era of civil society in all its aspects has not yet arrived; the conditions for building civil society have not yet completely materialized. Civil society is an awkward dilemma: wanting to slough off state intervention and yet depending on state support, hoping for equal dialogue with the state and yet unable to interact normally due to lack of mechanisms, to say nothing of institutionalized cooperation.10 5  M. Yang, “Between State and Society: The Construction of Corporateness in a Chinese Socialist Factory,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 22 (1989). 6  Zhao Wenci, “Public Sphere, Civil Society and Moral Community,” in Huang Zongzhi, ed. Debate on China Study Paradigms (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2003). 7  Zhu Jiangang, “Growth and Innovation of Civil Society in Contemporary China,” Exploration and Free Views 6 (2007). 8  Thomas Heberer and Gunter Schubert, From the Masses to Citizens: Political Participation in China, Trans. Zhang Wenhong (Central Compilation &Translation Press, 2009). 9  Xia Jianzhong, “The First Signs of the Civil Society of China: The Committee of Owners as an Example,” Journal of Chinese Humanities 3 (2003). 10  Jia Xijin, “A Report of the Civil Society Index of China,” in Gao Bingzhong and Yuan Ruijun, eds., Blue Book on Civil Society Development in China (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2008).

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The second is the theory of mutually beneficial interaction between the state and society (relations): production of civil society that is simultaneously spontaneous and hierarchical. Pioneer scholars of Chinese civil society Deng Zhenglai (邓正来) and Jing Yuejin (景跃进) argue that China’s reform process requires two basic conditions. First, the reform process must not excessively undermine the existing socioeconomic structure as a foundational authority, since this authority is necessary for the government to mobilize resources and ensure that reform is carried forward. Second, it must be ensured that this authority is oriented toward modernization in order to avoid, in the process of transition, a turn back to tradition due to the lack of external social order.11 Considering China’s characteristics as a strong state, Chinese civil society must be built under conditions of mutually beneficial interaction with the state.12 This has become a quasi-consensus, to some extent: the development of Chinese civil society must be achieved through support from and cooperation with the state. Mutually beneficial interaction between the state and society is a normative value assessment that does not clearly delineate the structure of such interaction. Under the influence of various factors, the building of Chinese civil society displays its own characteristics that are continually reconstructed through civil society’s relationship with the state and the market. Karl Polanyi associates “active society” with market authoritarianism,13 but most Chinese scholars consider the state to be paramount. China’s market was incubated by the state: in the name of market reforms, the state has attempted to establish a market economy with socialist characteristics.14 This has made the state biased toward the market during the early stage of reform, repressing society and leading to market authoritarianism in a sense. Under these conditions, the relationship between the state and civil society has gone from one in which the state directly faced atomized individuals to one where the market faces atomized individuals and is expected to solve individualized problems, while the state has withdrawn from the private sphere and stands by as an observer. State support for the market has brought with it unhealthy relations between the market and individuals, creating a relation of “commensalism” between

11  Deng Zhenglai and Jing Yuejin, “The Construction of Chinese Citizen Society,” Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly 1 (1992). 12  Ibid. 13  Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Trans. Feng Gang and Liu Yang (Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s Publishing House, 2007). 14  Michael Burawoy, “For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi,” Politics and Society 2 (2003).

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the state and the market.15 Some scholars argue that the state should change its direction from fostering the market to fostering society and helping society to defend against the market’s corrosion.16 The third is politics – citizenship (rights): top-down institutional rights and regulations, on the one hand, and bottom-up demands, on the other. J. L. Cohen and A. Arago argue that rights begin when individuals and groups in emerging spheres of civil society articulate their rights as demands. Rights and the public sphere are intertwined. Basic rights are seen as the organizational principles of modern civil society.17 From the perspective of independent civil society communities and social actors, rights are created and protected from below. From the perspective of a social system, however, rights are top-down institutional regulations and principles of separation. Just as Michael Burawoy reconstructed Marxism through the concept of “society,” Shen Yuan (沈原) critically draws on this perspective, using the concept of “citizenship” or “citizen rights” to reconstruct the theory of civil society. Shen argues that citizenship must first be produced, turning people into citizens, before society can be produced.18 Such analysis also draws on theoretical sources such as E. P. Thompson’s “making of the working class” and Margaret R. Somers’s “proletarian public sphere,” linking class mobilization and society. American sinologist Dorothy J. Solinger analyzes the development of citizenship after workers from the countryside enter the city, arguing that although they form a certain independent social space, creating a different kind of citizenship, this sort of civil society force is helpless and weak.19 Ultimately, the building and shaping of citizenship must return to the making of state policy. Citizenship status signifies the integration of rights and duties, a readjustment of the relationship between the state and civil society, and an accord between top-down structural regulations and bottom-up demands. In China’s strong state political system, the birth of citizenship is of course 15  Liu Jianping, “Problem Awareness and New Paradigms at the Turn of the Century,” Contemporary China History Studies 2 (2001). 16  Wang Xing, “Disregulation and Social Production: Real Estate Industry as an Example,” Chinese Journal of Sociology 5 (2008). 17  Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, “Political Theory and Civil Society,” Trans. Shi Hexing, in Deng Zhenlai and J. C. Alexander, eds., State and Civil Society (Beijing: Central Compilation &Translation Press, 1998). 18  Shen Yuan, “Producing Society,” Chinese Journal of Sociology 2 (2007). 19  Dorothy J. Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market, trans. Wang Chuanguang and Shan Liqing (Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s Publishing House, 2009).

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completely different from the Western path, and likewise a civil society formed with a different kind of citizenship as its mechanism must be quite different from Western [civil society], rather than being produced by the “citizens’ courage” described by writers such as Shen Yuan. The problem with these three paths is that they were all developed under the assumption of Western juridical type of relations between the state and civil society, with independent, autonomous civil society as their ultimate goal, and most of this scholarship stops at normative research, treating civil society as a kind of ideal demand. Upon returning to empirical reality, the tactical interaction among the state, the market and civil society gives us a different picture of civil society. The concept of civil society has a double value in that it is both explanatory and useful for the actual construction of society. Its constructive value is that of tactical design on the level of social construction, and its explanatory value belongs to conceptual postulation on the level of knowledge. When academic questions run into institutional dead ends, one can only hope that individuals manage to become organized into society, becoming institutionalized “individuals,” and only then can they become the antithesis of the state – a platform where civil society can display its potential in contemporary China – but this kind of “individual” disappears in the totalitarian system, leaving only subservient “individuals.”20 This is a normative value assessment of civil society, but in the concrete context of transition, how are individuals brought back into relation with the state and the market through institutionalized society? How are these relations reconstructed? In the Chinese context, what characteristics are displayed by the development of civil society? The neighborhood is a small unit of society, an appropriate unit for research that, to some degree, reflects the structural transition of relations between the state and civil society. In a neighborhood, the homeowners’ committee is seen as a representative of civil society’s autonomous forces. In its democracy and autonomy, and in the new public space it fosters, the founding of a homeowners’ committee signifies the fundamental transition of society’s structure at a basic level.21 The founding and development of a homeowners’ committee is, however, extremely difficult, showing that it is impossible for legal texts about autonomy to transform automatically into social realities, which must 20  Xu Jilin, “From Establishing Paradigms to Arguing Cases,” The State and Society, ed. Zhang Jing (Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s Publishing House, 2009). 21  Zhang Jing, “Social Foundation for Public Space: A Case Study of a Community Dispute,” Social Transformation and Community Development: Symposium of Community Construction, ed. Shanghai Federation of Social Science Associations (Shanghai: Shanghai University Press, 2001).

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instead be produced in some way or another.22 This is the crux of research on civil society today, i.e., how legal texts transform into the construction of reality. Civil society “organization” signifies the establishment and development of institutional and non-institutional organizations; “relations” denotes the relationship between the internal neighborhood community and external structures of social control; “rights” refers to the replacement and realization of neighborhood agency rights. “Neighborhood agency rights” refers to the right to manage and control public space by organizations or individuals representing a neighborhood’s homeowners and residents, with the rights nominally belonging to all “homeowners.” Article 75 of China’s Property Law (物权法) stipulates that homeowners can organize a homeowners’ assembly to elect a homeowners’ committee. Article 78 stipulates that decisions made by a homeowners’ assembly or committee are binding with regard to homeowners.23 The Property Management Regulations (《物业管理条例》) specify the specific rights and duties of the homeowners’ committee and assembly, including the selection and dismissal of property management companies, the duties of homeowners’ representatives regarding property management, etc. – these are all the important contents of neighborhood agency rights. Through democratic elections among homeowners, the homeowners’ committee becomes the legal and autonomous organization responsible for neighborhood agency rights. Neighborhood agency rights are institutionally regulated from above, and in the process of neighborhood homeowner mobilization, they also represent the birth and development of a social force that combines civil society rights with organization. Institutional regulations do not automatically become social facts, however, and homeowners’ committees encounter many obstacles in the process of their formation, especially from developers and property management companies, so very few actually come to fruition. This article argues that the production of civil society is the creation and establishment of a new type of relationship between the state and civil society, in which the state continually adjusts its mode of social governance, making basic-level society able to govern itself and develop. It is the result of interaction between macro structures (social legislation, society’s public spirit) and micro mobilizations (economic interests, communities of friendship), expressing a community among people, as well as indicating the reshaping 22  Zhang Lei and Liu Limin, “Property Management as a New Public Space: The Tension between an Over-powered State and an Underprivileged Society in China,” Chinese Journal of Sociology 1 (2005). 23  Property Law of the People’s Republic of China, promulgated in 2007.

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of relations between civil society and the state. The establishment of these new relations appears in written policies and rules, but these do not automatically transform into reality. On this point, I draw on Michael Mann’s work regarding the origins of social power: civil society is not born from repression by the state or the market, but is produced within the interstices of the former’s webs of domination.24 Although Mann’s analysis was not directly applied to the production of civil society, we find the concepts that he adopted from Karl Marx’s theoretical perspective throughout his entire book very enlightening. When summarizing Marx’s account of the alternation of social patterns, Mann proposed the concept of “interstitial emergence,” its basis being that the sources of social power are not homogeneous and that society consists of heterogeneous intersecting webs formed through multiple social interactions. The four main sources of social power – ideological, economic, military and political – reflect the control over society by various organizational means, with the combination of the strongest organizational means forming broad institutional networks possessing stable, fixed forms that combine deeply-rooted power with authoritative and diffuse power. However, these organizational means have never become fully institutionalized as dominant structures – there are interstices, and these become the precondition for another dominant structure to sprout up, develop and eventually lead to the reorganization of society. According to this perspective, the state, the market (political, economic, military and ideological), etc., form dominant networks in relation to civil society that forcefully permeate civil society, so the formation and development of the latter can only seek out interstices within the former dominant networks in which to produce itself. “Emergence” and “production” have different logics, the former putting more emphasis on spontaneity, as if “channels form as soon as water arrives,” whereas the latter places more value on the active utilization of interstices, pushing forward their own development. The “interstitial production” of civil society thus refers to the masses of citizens seeking out interstices in the dominant networks of the state and the market, promoting the growth of their community and forming new processes of mutually beneficial interaction with the state and the market.

24  Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: Vol.1 A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

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Dominant Networks of Neighborhood Governance: The State, the Market, and Neighborhood Organizations

After Reform and Opening-Up, the urban system of basic-level governance changed from the danwei system to the neighborhood system, and the neighborhood became the primary context that people encounter outside of the family. Neighborhood governance became the space of state corporatism and the government’s unit of governance, rather than a place of residential self-governance.25 In the large-scale commoditization of housing, the state’s promotion of market company management of neighborhood properties constitutes a transition from the governance of neighborhoods by the state alone to dual governance by both state and market. 2.1 The State: The Autonomy of Government Bureaus In Nanyuan, the state corporatist structure of neighborhood governance achieves full expression. Since Nanyuan is a [state-subsidized] complex providing housing for the needy, state involvement is especially pronounced. The Office of Housing Construction (住建办) is the complex’s plurality shareholder, owning 33.3% of Nanyuan’s assets, so it enjoys the plurality of voting rights and can thus control most of the neighborhood affairs. At an early stage of Nanyuan’s development, the Office of Housing Construction singlehandedly carried out the establishment of the complex’s property management and the committee of homeowners.26 The property management and the homeowners’ committees manifes­ ted the management of housing for the needy by government bureaus such as the Bureau of Housing Management (房管局), displaying state corporatist neighborhood governance together with the [neighborhood] residents’ committee, the sub-district government, etc. This governance structure has its conflicts, however: the Office of Housing Construction is a municipallevel unit with a higher administrative ranking than that of the sub-district and residents’ committee. Although Nanyuan is [supposed to be] managed at the local level, the supervision of property management by the sub-district 25  Yang Min, “Community as State Governance Unit: A Case Study on Residents’ Community Participation and Cognition in the Process of Community Building Campaign,” Sociological Studies 4 (2007). 26  During the first meeting of the homeowners committee, Lin Hu, who was not a resident of Nanyuan, was the chairman of the committee. This was done under the guidance of the Housing Construction Office and the management company. The committee was founded because Nanxin Property Management Company wanted to participate in the “Outstanding” rating in Guangdong Province’s property management assessment (1996–2004).

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and the residents’ committee is basically ineffective. For example, when the manager (civil servant) of Tongyuan Property Management Company mentioned his interaction with members of Nanyuan’s two residents’ committees and the sub-district office, he said he was acting according to “the rules” and used the word “vexation” to describe the discord between the two parties:27 We respected them and acted according to the rules, there was no need to cause mutual vexation…. The sub-district kept prattling on to us. We basically just ignored them, for they couldn’t do anything. If we need anything, we don’t need to approach them. At first, I approached the subdistrict director thinking I had to respect him. I tried to get things done through him, but later he asked us to come back with a report, so we just ignored him and directly approached the [Chinese Communist] Party Office and turned the matter over to them. No matter what they want to do, you can just ignore them. Field notes WYGS-2008-P

The different interests of different bureaus turn each government bureau into an independent actor in the neighborhood. Government bureaus are not a monolithic bloc. The Office of Housing Construction overrides the sub-district and the residents’ committee, replacing the latter’s social role of supervision and control. The Office of Housing Construction concerns many residential areas, however, so it cannot focus all its attention on any given neighborhood, thus generating interstices in its control over neighborhoods. At a later phase in the neighborhood development process, the sub-district and the residents’ committee played more the role of mediators and obeyers rather than having stronger ability to take initiative. The autonomy of various government bureaus in the neighborhood was an important resource that allowed, during this later period, civil society forces to be produced and basic-level organizations to be hidden from view. 2.2 The Market: The Supporting Role of the Property Company Neighborhoods providing housing for the needy, such as Nanyuan, were built on farmland cut off from infrastructure provided by the municipal government at the time, so it was necessary to create their own infrastructure and introduce a modernized system of property management on the basis of the existing management system. Nanyuan’s first property company was actually a “cousin” of the Housing Construction Office, the only difference being that the 27  Here there is mutual intolerance and embarrassment.

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former was a marketized enterprise and the latter was a government unit, with no conflict of interest between the two. At first glance, Nanyuan’s management was consistent with the property management of other commodity housing complexes, and its mode of operation was the same as that of other property companies, charging for service according to the standard set by the Bureau of Commodity Prices. Due to its aforementioned relationship with the Housing Construction Office, however, the property management company was actually controlled by the Housing Construction Office rather than the market. Since this management system was decided from above, the Housing Construction Office and the homeowners’ committee were inseparable from the property company and at first Nanyuan’s management system was not marketized, or, one could say, it was marketized under government guidance and control. This was the manifestation of the dominant network of state-market alliance in Nanyuan. After Nanxin Property Company was forced to withdraw, a property company belonging to the Housing Construction Office called Tongyuan moved into Nanyuan and more directly administrated the compound’s property management, displaying the state’s use of market forms to govern neighborhoods. 2.3 Neighborhood Organizations Neighborhood organizations are the main part of neighborhood structures. Residents’ committees, sub-district offices and property companies are all rather active organizations in their neighborhoods. Due to Nanyuan’s unique characteristics, municipal-level units such as the Housing Construction Office and the Bureau of Housing Management also participated actively in the neighborhood and were regarded as a part of the neighborhood organizations. Interaction among these organizations gradually brought residents from micro-level life to intermediate-level neighborhood life. In 1999, after three neighborhoods providing housing for the needy were paid off and put to use, a homeowners’ committee was founded during the same period, and nearly all the committee members came from government work units, with the Housing Construction Office actually promoting the development of the homeowners’ committee. The first planning and establishment of the homeowners’ committee was proposed by the Housing Construction Office, and this was actually carried out by the property company, with Lin Hui (林辉) appointed as the committee’s first director. However, the committee did not inspire good will among the residents. When it was founded in 1999 and an assembly of all homeowner representatives was called, over thirty residents attended and expressed doubts about the representativeness of the committee chaired by Lin Hui. Between 1999 and 2004, contradictions between the

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homeowners, on the one hand, and the committee and the property company, on the other, became the main source of conflict in the neighborhood. Through interaction with government bureaus, the homeowners tried to retrieve neighborhood agency rights, and this became a process of the growth of civil society forces and the formation of a neighborhood community. In the process of interaction between the government and the homeowners, the tactics of social governance were continually adjusted and homeowners’ autonomous neighborhood agency rights were gradually realized in legal documents and the actual neighborhood, displaying interaction among the state, the market and neighborhood organizations. In the early phase of Nanyuan’s development, the property company and the homeowners’ committee managed Nanyuan under the guidance of the Housing Construction Office, and neighborhood governance transformed the previous one-dimensional governance by the government into formally diversified governance, but in reality this was merely a dual governance by the government and the company, with the government playing the dominant role. State corporatist neighborhood governance was thus expressed as a continuation of the pre-existing mode of social governance. This was inconsistent with the stipulation of higher-level legal documents: the Property Law and the Property Management Regulations both already re-adjusted the rules of neighborhood governance and perfected the regulations regarding neighborhood agency rights. These regulations attempted to realize neighborhood homeowner autonomy, seeking mutually beneficial interaction between the state and civil society at the level of the neighborhood, though at first they did not succeed. In the dominant network combining the government and the property company, Nanyuan’s neighborhood agency rights – in an actual sense – were gradually produced in the interstices and displayed in the story narrated below. 3

The Process of “Interstitial Production”: State Policy as a Resource

The residential committee was an extension of the sub-district office and the homeowners’ committee director was the director of the Housing Construction Office. Nanyuan’s property company was formed through the reorganization of companies under the Bureau of Land and Resources (国土 局) and the Bureau of Housing Management, all of which had countless connections to the Bureau of Housing Management. In Nanyuan, a web of governance with the state as primary actor and the market in a supplementary role managed the neighborhood efficiently during the initial phase. Neighborhood

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agency rights were in the hands of the Housing Construction Office and the property company, and the web of neighborhood governance was rather closeknit. In this structure of governance, how was the demand for autonomous social forces and neighborhood agency rights produced? 3.1 The Origin: A Property Dispute Rewinding back to May of 1999, the residents of Building A, a high-rise building, finally acquired the keys they had desired for so long, but they were perplexed to discover that the management office required each household to sign a Nanyuan Homeowners’ Pledge (《南苑业主公约》) and an agreement with the property management which stipulated that each resident household must pay 1.5 yuan per square meter each month as a management fee, although the neighboring complex of commodity housing required only 1.2 yuan per square meter for its management fee. Why would a complex providing housing for the needy demand such a high property management fee? Even stranger, throughout the following several months after people moved in, the management fee continually increased from 1.5 yuan per square meter to 1.7 yuan per square meter, then to 1.9 yuan per square meter. This led to widespread discontent among the residents. At the same time, neighborhood quality problems emerged, generating a high level of concern among residents. The expensive property management fee stimulated everyone to action. In November of 1999, Mr. and Mrs. Lao Weiming (劳伟明), Mr. Guo, et al., gathered materials related to property fees, such as the rate of payment designated by the government at the time and the fees of other compounds in the area, writing a summary of these materials on a piece of paper and leaving a blank space in the margin for everyone to sign their names and write their objections. After signing, this paper – which they called a Big Character Poster (“大字报”) – was posted in the hallway of the building’s first floor. This poster represented a new beginning, with “the neighborhood becoming the main space of power and social experimentation, the organizational basis for most struggles, which were often triggered by some special problem.”28 Here, the special problem was the inappropriately expensive property fee for a compound supposed to provide housing for the needy. 3.2 Foundation: The Making of a Proletarian Public Sphere The Big Character Poster turned Lao Weiming into a neighborhood celebrity. More and more people congregated in the hallway to discuss property fees until the place of discussion moved to Building A’s downstairs area. With their 28  Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots (London: Edward Arnold Ltd., 1983), 215.

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initiative, the number of people congregating in the area quickly increased. They came from other parts of the neighborhood for discussions centered on property fees and also addressing other public affairs such as security and sanitation. The area downstairs from Building A became a launching point for public discourse where residents could freely discuss problems concerning the neighborhood. The parking lot and guard station downstairs from Nanyuan Building A became a space of neighborhood mobilization where a Banyan Tree Head gradually began to take shape.29 The Banyan Tree Head debates were open-ended. They had shared interests and shared enemies, and this drove them to form a community centered on space. The Banyan Tree Head gradually brought together multiple parts of the neighborhood, both relying on their own neighborhood space and breaking through spatial limitations, moving toward a broader neighborhood space. The Banyan Tree Head successfully shaped physical space into a neighborhood public sphere, taking on the role of neighborhood mobilization. Z Municipality’s traditional culture and physical space were joined together, becoming an important characteristic of the formation of this neighborhood’s public sphere, as well as an important foundation for the formation of a proletarian civil society. Margaret R. Somers argues that the public sphere manifests a participatory space involving contestation, and that this is the basis for the formation of citizenship.30 The formation of civil society is embedded in multilayered processes of social practice, expressed as formation in the public sphere, and in turn the state and society continually re-delineate their own rights. Property Contention: The Use of Legal Regulations between the Provincial and Municipal Levels In late 2000, the Nanxin Company decided to “kill a chicken to scare the monkeys,” taking Lao Weiming, Chen Zhiqiang (陈志强) and others to court one by one, demanding that they complete their payments of property management fees. This was the first case of conflict between the property company and the homeowners, and it brought out the legal histories of Nanyuan residents, 3.3

29  The Banyan Tree Head is a metaphor used to describe the downstairs area of Building A, where residents meet to chat and discuss community issues. The metaphor represents local culture. The Banyan tree represents Guangzhou people’s habits: they all chat under the Banyan tree. There used to be many Banyan trees in Guangzhou’s narrow alleys, so people would chat “under the Banyan corner.” (LWM-2009-05-13-KFC). 30  Margaret R. Somers, “Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere: Law, Community, and Political Culture in the Transition to Democracy,” American Sociological Review 58, no. 5 (1993).

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management companies and other units, which became increasingly embedded within those struggles.31 In the first series of hearings, the court ruled against the homeowners, ordering them to pay the management fee at a rate of 1.5 yuan per square meter. The homeowners became aware that they needed to learn how to use the weapon of the law. After soliciting opinions from various sources, they came up with this strategy: use the Guangdong Province Property Management Ordinances (《广东省物业管理条例》; put into effect on October 1, 1998; henceforth the Provincial Ordinances), etc., to fight against the municipal-level regulations. In practice, among government regulations at different levels there are contractions and event “fights,” mainly regarding the following three points of doubt: First, citing Article 21 of the Provincial Ordinances, the homeowners claimed that Nanxin’s case was without standing. According to Article 21, only once a construction project and affiliated facilities pass comprehensive inspections can the construction company transfer management rights to the homeowner’s committee. Without undergoing comprehensive inspections, the construction company cannot transfer management rights to the homeowners’ committee and must continue to pay any associated management fees. Lao Weiming and Chen Zhiqiang insisted that the buildings had not passed comprehensive inspections. As such, they did not meet the necessary conditions to be responsible for paying management fees. In this argument, the homeowners are the aggrieved party due to a lack of comprehensive inspections and cannot be held responsible for management fees. In their view, Nanxin should sue the developers, not the homeowners. Suing the developers would involve the government. Second, in accordance with Provincial Ordinances in the Notice on Publishing the Guidance Price of Property Management Service Charges in Guangdong Province (《关于公布广东省物业管理服务收费政府指导价的通知》) issued by Guangdong Bureau of Commodity Prices [1997] No. 24 and Guangdong Bureau of Commodity Prices [1999] No. 90, residential complexes for the needy should receive preferential management fees. But two articles found in documents filed by the municipal Bureau of Commodity Prices in 1998 and 1999 – Article No. 198 (1998)32 and No. 191 (1999) – define residential complexes for the needy as first- or -second-grade complexes with management fees of 31  The legal proceedings mentioned below are actually a series of cases, not just an individual case. Due to the length of the proceedings, I have just used one representative case as an example. 32  Before 1999, the communities themselves, using standards from the Bureau of Commodity Prices, calculated all management fees.

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1.9 or 1.7 yuan/m2. The homeowners argue that this does not take the homeowners’ financial situation into consideration, nor does it carry out a provision that says the government will only collect 70 percent of the management fee in complexes for the needy.33 Therefore, in accordance with these Provincial Ordinances, fees for “high-rise” complexes for the needy cannot exceed 0.80 yuan/m2.34 Third, they detailed Nanxin’s problems in management and public security and concluded that the overall quality of Nanxin’s management was below acceptable standards. Additionally, using “help the needy” as a discursive tool, they claimed that Nanyuan cannot use market-oriented standards in collecting property management fees. In response to the first two points, the court ruled that the homes were purchased before the implementation of the Provincial Ordinances, and that the Ordinances cannot be retroactively applied; owing to insufficient evidence, the court did not support Chen Zhiqiang and Lao Weiming’s claim that the buildings had not gone through comprehensive inspections, and that a third party must bear the responsibility of paying the property management fees. The court upheld the lawfulness of the agreement signed between the homeowners’ committee and property management and ruled that the remaining management fee must be paid to Nanxin within seven days. Facing a state corporatist governance structure formed through government and market forces, the homeowners started to search for interstitial gaps that existed between the autonomy of provincial and municipal governments and increasingly saw policy as a resource they could use to secure their rights. This marked the beginning of the gradual growth of Nanyuan’s autonomy. Additionally, during the long litigation process, the Banyan Tree Head also continued to expand and attract more and more community homeowners.

33  In No. 90 document “On the Publication of Guangdong Province Management and Service Charges Government Guidance,” issued by Guangdong Bureau of Commodity Prices, welfare housing is primarily residential, and fee collection should be 70% of the standard. 34  Article 8 of No. 24 document, issued by Guangdong Bureau of Commodity Prices, stipulates that the collection of management fees should be considered with the financial situation of the homeowners in mind. Categories of welfare housing include residential housing (0.20 yuan/m2), ordinary multi-story complexes (0.30 yuan/m2), and ordinary high-rise complexes (0.80 yuan/m2). The homeowners believe the management fee should not exceed 0.80 yuan/m2.

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Questioning Prices: From the Property Company to the Bureau of Commodity Prices From 1999 to 2000, the management company repeatedly issued open letters and notices stating that the management “always adheres to governmentset prices.” The peculiar thing about these notices and letters is they refrain from any mention of the homeowners’ committee, and that they only affirm unconditional compliance with government prices in order to ensure the formal legality of the management company’s behavior. The homeowners believed that they would be able to secure victory if they identified flaws in the legal proceedings, and thought the most important task going forward was to call into question and overturn the management fees set by the Bureau of Commodity Prices. With the support of the neighborhood, Chen Zhiqiang, Huang Xiongzhan (黄雄展), Huang Rui (黄蕊), Lao Weiming, and others filed an administrative lawsuit against the Bureau of Commodity Prices after losing their case against the management company, seeking to overturn Article 198 issued by the municipal Bureau of Commodity Prices. They followed the aforementioned litigation strategy – asking the Bureau of Commodity Prices to implement the Provincial Ordinances and other related Provincial Ordinances. In the preliminary hearing, the Bureau of Commodity Prices held that the starting point for Nanyuan’s construction was higher than normal, making Nanyuan’s buildings tall enough to be considered “top-grade high-rise residences,” and any fees should be calculated using those standards. The Bureau claimed they had already considered the need to reduce the burden for homeowners in a housing complex for the needy, so they lowered the management fee from 2.58 yuan/m2 to 1.90 yuan/m2.35 Thus, the Bureau of Commodity Prices claimed that they did not ignore the homeowners’ economic situation. In addition, the Bureau claims that Article 198 had never been implemented and there was no violation of the legitimate rights and interests of the plaintiffs. As the regulation had never been implemented, the Bureau argued that the plaintiff’s case had already exceeded the statute of limitations. From May 1999 onwards, the management fee was calculated at a rate of 1.50 yuan/m2. The 1.90 yuan/m2 rate was never implemented. 3.4

35  The Bureau of Commodity Prices believes that because Nanyuan has a high-grade Otis factory elevator, fire alarms (including visual monitoring systems), and its own electrical transformer, power generator, high and low voltage electricity, automatic water, secure gates, a wall mosaic, aluminum alloy windows, and other decorations, the environment of the community is relatively good.

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In the opinion of the court, before the homeowners’ committee was formed, the property management fee put forth by the management company was within the scope of government-guided pricing and was submitted to the Bureau of Commodity Prices at the county-level or above for approval. In accordance with the application submitted by the Housing Construction Office, the Bureau of Commodity Prices issued a formal reply. This was considered to be a nonbinding, administrative “guiding behavior,” so the homeowners lost. But in a sense, this nonbinding clause had a big impact on the homeowners and became part of the legal discourse used by the property company. After the initial judgments, the Bureau of Commodity Prices adjusted Nanyuan’s pricing once again. Implementing part of the rules in Guangdong Prices No.24 document, the Bureau agreed to accept 70% of the 1.95 yuan/m2 rate, effectively reducing the rate to 1.36 yuan/m2.36 This subsidy to the community can be understood as an appeasement. But the homeowners did not accept the decision of the preliminary trial. They believed 1.36 yuan/m2 was still beyond the means of Nanyuan’s residents. On June 6th and 7th, 2001, they filed three administrative complaints, demanding the repeal of three Bureau of Commodity Prices Provincial Ordinances: articles 198 (1998), 191 (1999), and 8 (2000). Similarly, the court did not fully respond to all of their examples and evidence. Citing the Executive Written Ruling (《行政裁定书》) of the first trial, the court dismissed the homeowners’ complaint on the grounds that the defendant (the municipal Bureau of Commodity Prices) issued a Reply under an application from a third party (the municipal Housing Construction Office). In the court’s eyes, this was an administrative guidance act and had no coercive power. The first decision was an interpretation of the administrative guidance price, while the second decision is based on the judgment that the administrative government cannot interfere with community affairs after the establishment of the homeowners’ committee.37 After a series of lawsuits with the Bureau of Commodity Prices (including preliminary and final trials), the Bureau of Commodity Prices gave the right to set prices back to the homeowners’ committee. They invoked “autonomy 36  Zheng Guanghuai believes that “appeasement” is a practice that uses policy to resolve problems, rather than solving the problem in accordance with relevant public laws and regulations. For “material appeasement” and safeguarding individual rights, see Zheng Guanghuai: “Labors’ Rights and ‘propitiatory state’: A Case Study of Migrant Workers in Pearl River Delta,” Open Times 5 (2010). The decision of the Bureau of Commodity Prices to lower the management fee can be regarded as material appeasement. 37  According to the law, whether before or after the homeowners’ committee is established, the price established by administrative action is not applicable.

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[of will]” in their decision and exempted themselves from legal responsibility.38 The Bureau of Commodity Prices was eager to extricate itself from the situation, and actively gave up their discursive power to intervene in community affairs. But the opinions of the court, the Bureau of Commodity Prices, and the Housing Construction Office dealt a great blow to the community residents. In the first series of cases, the Provincial Ordinances of the government were binding. Why, then, were they not binding in the second series of cases? After this series of cases, on December 30th, 2001, the Bureau of Commodity Prices issued a statement halting the use of Article 8 and nullifying the price index set by the Bureau of Commodity Prices in Z Municipality’s Price Letter filed in 2001 (document no. 245). They formally acknowledged that the management fee should be determined through negotiations between the homeowners’ committee and the management company. This is perhaps a weak compromise won through the persistent actions of the community homeowners, compelling the management company, homeowners’ committee, and the Housing Construction Office to reconsider management problems facing housing for the needy. “Neighborhood Agency Rights”: From the Bureau of Commodity Prices to Homeowners’ Committee The Bureau of Commodity Prices gave the right to set prices back to the homeowners’ committee, quickly turning the homeowners’ committee into a focal point of the community. The management contract between the homeowners’ committee and Nanxin was an important part in their decision. After the first defeat, Chen Zhiqiang, Lao Weiming and others quickly found the contract signee, Xu Huazhuo (徐华卓), and asked him to answer questions about the contract. But Xu Huazhuo and Lin Hui refused to answer them. The various community governance organizations – the Bureau of Housing Management, Housing Construction Office, homeowners” committee and property management company – have all taken one position, leaving the homeowners physically and mentally exhausted and at a loss about what to do next. During this time, disputes over property continued to arouse widespread concern in the community. This increased the influence of the “Banyan Head Tree.” As their discussions with Xu Huazhuo collapsed, the homeowners 3.5

38  The parties shall enjoy the right to voluntarily enter into a contract, and no individual may unlawfully interfere with this contract. The principle of “autonomy [of will]” means the parties are free to choose the legal principles with which to settle disputes. This is the most common method of determining applicable law in a contract. See Baidu: http:// baike.baidu.com/view/183028.htm.

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decided to take Xu Huazhuo and other homeowners’ committee members to court and demanded the overturn of the July 1, 2001 management contract. According to Provincial Ordinances with respect to property management rights, Article 5 states “property owners have a legal right to manage common and public affairs and undertake corresponding obligations,” and “the primary rights of the homeowners are … (4) deciding on major issues affecting the interests of the homeowners, (5) supervising the management of homeowners’ committee and relevant Provincial Ordinances of Civil Law (《民法通则》).” The homeowners believed that Xu Huazhuo deprived them of their right to vote, to supervise and to understand their situation by signing the “Nanyuan Management Entrustment Contract.” They believed the contract was signed illegally in the name of the homeowners’ committee and that Xu Huazhuo overstepped his own rights and administrative guidance by specifying a nonstandard fee standard and signing the contract, thus violating the rights and interests of the homeowners by twisting their arm to pay the management fee in the contract. Xu Huazhuo argued that he consulted with the majority of homeowners, the Housing Construction Office, and other related departments as well as notifying the homeowners before signing the contract. He exhibited the “Nanxin Homeowners’ Committee 4th Meeting Decisions” and “Meeting Minutes,” which contained the following words: “make greater efforts to decide on the first draft of the Management Entrustment Contract in July 2000”; “the first draft of the Management Entrustment Contract is to be agreed upon by the municipal Housing Construction Office, the homeowners’ committee and the management company in July, and it requires the support of over half of the homeowners for approval.” The aforementioned July 1st date was not consistent with the materials Xu Huazhuo showed: after the draft was agreed upon the contract was immediately signed and did not go through the homeowners for discussion. The court held that Lao Weiming, Chen Zhiqiang and others did not have the authority to sue Xu Zhuohua and other members of the homeowners’ committee because the Nanyuan residents had not entrusted them to file the lawsuit.39 Additionally, in accordance with previous materials filed by the Bureau of Housing Management, the Bureau of Housing Management agreed on October 23, 1999 to allow the formation of the first Nanyuan homeowners’ committee. The establishment of the committee was to be approved by the Bureau of Housing Management after the committee was selected by 39  The case against the homeowners’ committee was called The Case of Nine Men and Women by the homeowners.

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Nanyuan homeowners. Therefore, the homeowners’ committee has the right to represent Nanyuan residents, and the contract signed between the Nanxin management company and the homeowners’ committee is binding. The court was reluctant to interfere with the homeowners’ committee, which they saw as an autonomous neighborhood organization. In order to prove the homeowners’ committee violated certain rules, the homeowners used evidence that the committee did not hold homeowners’ meetings in accordance with the law.40 Homeowners also enlisted the help of the media to bring attention to their case.41 But this evidence cannot necessarily overturn the committee’s legitimacy. Under the influence of the Bureau of Housing Management and the property management company, the homeowners’ committee prioritized legitimacy over questions of representation, which resembles government behavior. Scholars think representation is not as important as legality for interest groups, and this can be seen clearly in Nanyuan’s case.42 Even though the representational rights of the neighborhood were in the hands of the homeowners’ committee, the management company and the Bureau of Housing Management, when faced with incredible pressure from external institutions, the entire community was behind the Banyan Tree Head, which represented the opinions of the majority of the community homeowners. The failure of the lawsuits exacerbated the conflict between the management and the residents; then, the ensuing mass disturbances further exacerbated the conflict between the neighborhood and the management company. Revoking “Agreement”: The Jurisdiction of the Bureau of Housing Management The lawsuits were all closely linked and the number of individuals involved in the litigation process was increasing. The legitimacy for the homeowners’ committee came from an official “Reply” written by Z municipality’s Bureau of Land and Resources and Bureau of Housing Management. Therefore, suing the Bureau of Housing Management, requesting repeal of the Reply, 3.6

40  The contents of the testimony are as follows: “We were elected by Suixin Property Management Company in September, 1999 to be representatives in a homeowners committee. At that time, some representatives wanted, in accordance with Guangdong Province Property Management Regulations articles 6, 7, and 8, for representatives of the committee to be elected through a general assembly of the homeowners. However, until today, there has been no general assembly with more than half of homeowners with voting rights, so there has been no decision from the general assembly.” 41  “Homeowners Suing Bureau of Commodity Prices,” Beijing New Daily, August 2, 2001. 42  Zhang Jing, Corporatism (Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2005), 119.

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became the focal point for all lawsuits. Once this link was broken, the legal authority of the homeowners’ committee would be revoked, and all of the problems would be solved. From this, it can be seen that all of the lawsuits and petitions form a chain of legal proceedings. The owners are constantly looking for a weak point in the chain. Once they find the weak point, they can destroy the entire chain. Chen Ying (陈颖)’s lawsuit against the Bureau of Housing Management filed in September 2002 is a representative case. As the plaintiff, Chen Ying asked the court to repeal a clause in the Reply as well as order the defendant to bear all costs associated with the lawsuit. He believed that the Reply was wrongful and affected his personal interests. Furthermore, he claimed that Nanyuan never found a majority of homeowners with voting rights to attend the homeowners’ committee meetings and provided the court with signed statements from some of the homeowners, illustrating that the Committee elections were in violation of statutory procedures and requirements. And he also claimed that “the examination of the ballot in the committee’s elections,” claimed by the Bureau of Housing Management in the Reply, was a trumped-up one, which violated Provincial Ordinances. In court, Chen Zhiqiang and others insisted on the validity of the evidence presented in the petition. They hold that as competent administrative authorities, the Bureau of Land and Resources and the Bureau of Housing Management should know clearly about the legitimate procedure of establishing a homeowners committee as laid out in Provincial Ordinances. But the defendant, in the Reply, used the language of “agreement” to confirm the establishment of the first homeowners’ committee. They argued that the contract signed between Nanxin and the committee continued to damage the homeowners’ legitimate interests. Therefore, they requested the repeal of the first article of the Reply. The Bureau of Housing Management argued that the Reply is merely part of the record – it is a guiding behavior without any administrative force and is out of the scope of the cases accepted by the People’s Court. Additionally, they argued that the Reply is only valid for two years and already expired. Therefore, the lawsuit has no practical significance. Secondly, the Bureau of Housing Management argued that homeowners themselves initiated the founding of the homeowners’ committee. As long as the committee follows proper procedure and the Provincial Ordinances, the Reply should not affect the establishment of the committee. According to the Bureau of Housing Management, the relationship between Nanxin and the committee is autonomous and has nothing to do with the Bureau of Housing Management.

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In the end, the court held that Chen Ying’s lawsuit did not exceed the litigation period, that the “Reply” did indeed affect the plaintiff’s interests and that the case was within the scope of the People’s Court. The Bureau of Housing Management, acting as the property management administrative department, filed internal reports of the homeowners’ committee member list, giving power to the Reply, but showed that it lacked the power to agree to the establishment of the homeowners’ committee. As the Reply has no legal basis to this, the court decided to repeal the first article in the Reply filed by the Land and Housing Bureau on October 23, 1999. On the neighborhood level, this lawsuit provided a new discursive weapon and a foundation for community residents to stage their resistance. Over three years, community owners slowly hacked away at the Nanyuan property management problem. They made clear distinctions between the signed 1995–2000 contract, the instructions from the Bureau of Commodity Prices, and the establishment of the homeowners’ committee. In some sense, this is the sole victory of this first stage of resistance. At the institutional level, after this lawsuit, the Bureau of Housing Management never used the words “agree” or “decision” again. Though this does not directly deal with the relationship between the government and community residents, it nevertheless serves to equalize their relationship on paper and became a discursive element in civil society. 4

Conclusion: The “Interstitial Production” of Civil Society and Its Lessons for Social Governance

Neighborhood organizations and autonomy are important parts of civil society. This article narrates the story of how Nanyuan residents fought for community management rights and analyzes how “interstitial production” of civil society emerges from within dominant structures of state corporatism. This article uses a series of cases to show the tension between the state, market, and civil society and reveal the internal power relations within the community. In the past, the production of civil society was divided into three parts: organizations, relationships, and rights. In Western academic discourse, scholars looking for evidence of an independent civil society in China reach tragic conclusions. This article argues that the production of civil society in China does not stress “independence”; rather, it represents a new kind of mutually beneficial interaction between civil society and the state. Since the nineties, China has introduced a series of laws and regulations with the goal of

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improving the relationship between civil society and the state. But the regulations themselves do not determine reality – the essence of the relationship between civil society and the state is formed through a process of continuous interaction. This article points out the logic of the “interstitial production” of civil society and shows that new interactions between state and civil society emerge from “gaps” in dominant structures. This new type of relationship is not easily achieved, nor can it replace older relations in a short period of time. The economic concerns of the Nanyuan residents slowly transformed into demands for neighborhood management rights. Internal interactions turned into community solidarity. These are all clues in understanding the production of civil society. The story of Nanyuan’s neighborhood agency rights runs from its founding to the end of 2002. The creation of the public sphere and the separation of state and society by litigation are the focal points of the story. The formation of civil society mainly depends on an active community subject searching for gaps in existing structures, and civil society’s “interstitial” sites emerge through this process. In the story, these kinds of gaps exist in the web of relations found in legal provisions between the provincial and city governments, government departments and the property company, and the homeowner’s committee and the property company. In the interactions between the state and civil society, specific government departments with strong autonomy and their own departmental interests represent the state. Civil society is not unified either – it is represented by the initiative of different community residents. These intersections have created a complex relationship between the state and civil society, which also hints at the complexity of the production of civil society. The lawsuits also sought out another aspect in the relationship between the state and civil society. Neighborhood residents do not expect to be completely free from state control, but instead seek cooperation with the state. Lawsuits are not considered “deviant behavior” – they are contained within the framework of the law as formulated by the state. Neighborhood residents use their legal power to protect the rights of the individual. They hope that their action will restrict the actions of the state, but at the same time they hope to receive protection from the state.43 In addition to lawsuits, residents also petitioned different departments seeking their approval, which is much more relaxed process than filing a lawsuit, though in the same way, petitions and lawsuits adopt the same kind of logic. They are both looking for gaps between the autonomy of government departments to secure victory. Though in 2002 we do not yet see 43  Chen Peng, “Urban Homeowners’ Legal Resistance in Contemporary China: An Analytical Framework of Homeowners’ Rights Defense,” Sociological Studies 1 (2010).

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a large-scale civil society, the revoking of “agreement,” the adjustment of fees by the Bureau of Commodity Prices, and the subsequent change in the neighborhood agency rights of Nanyuan can be seen as an impressive short-term victory within a dominant state corporatist political structure. The logic of civil society’s “interstitial production” has two important aspects that reveal the tactics of both civil society and the state. First, the state appears in the community through various departments with different responsibilities. In the early days of the community, the Housing Construction Office and other departments played a greater role in community property management. This is reflected in the relationship between the property management company and government departments, in which the government was seen as primarily in charge of the property management with the market in an auxiliary role. On the other hand, facing high property management fees and a lack of community supervision and the right to intervene in community affairs, homeowners tried a series of strategic actions to secure neighborhood agency rights. The most significant characteristic of the “interstitial production” of civil society lies in the effective interplay between the state and civil society. The two sides continually adjust their strategies, follow clues, and develop new methods through trial-and-error. In the subsequent development of the community, the government allowed neighborhood agency rights to be decided by a neighborhood committee elected by the homeowners. This is a result of the “interstitial” production of civil society. This strategic relationship is not necessarily stable or good-natured, however. The beginning of the Nanyuan community shows the interaction between the community, state, and market as well as their differing positions. Rather than reflecting an attitude of cooperation, this interaction was imbalanced from the beginning. Putting their relationship into balance consumed a lot of time and resources. The goal of social construction is to create a society that is fair, just, and suitable for living. A balanced relationship between the state, the market, and the community is a sign of a healthy society. In social construction, we do not see the government as the root of certain problems, nor do we think the government is necessarily able to solve every problem. Instead, we think of the government as a part of society. Similarly, the market is neither the source of all good things nor the root of all evil. The market is a powerful engine that needs a certain amount of space and supervision before it can run properly.44 44  Amitai Etzioni, “The Road to the Good Society,” Seeking for a Harmonious Society: Selected Readings of Western Theories of Social Construction, eds. Zheng Li and Tong Yali (Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2010).

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Furthermore, civil society is also something that needs careful cultivation and guidance from the state. The most important thing is that these three main bodies of social governance need to transform the existing strategic relationship into a more stable legal relationship that takes the law as a common starting point and clarifies the respective rules and obligations of the market, society and the state. In this sense, strengthening the authority of the political subject and perfecting a socialist civil society can exist in dialectical unity. This will, in turn, promote the participation of citizens in social governance, and promote positive interaction between civil society and the state.

Index of Authors Arendt, Hannah 116, 121, 127–8

Polanyi, Karl 52n15, 144

Bian Yanjie 65–7, 69, 71 Bourdieu, Pierre 67, 87–8 Burawoy, Michael 137n58, 144–5

Read, Benjamin L. 115

Etzioni, Amitai 165n

Shen Yuan 3, 115n14, 131, 141, 145–6 Simmel, Georg 11 Skocpol, Theda 120 Solinger, Dorothy J. 145 Sun Liping 15n17, 68, 105n2, 117n20

Fei Xiaotong 59, 91–2 Fukuyama, Francis 92n15

Thompson, E. P. 145  Touraine, Alain 129–30, 135, 138–9

Gramsci, Antonio 144n14

Wirth, Louis 18n21

Habermas, Jürgen 14, 50n10, 117 Harvey, David 106

Xiao Zhouji 36–7

Castells, Manuel 14n14, 16n19, 153n

Lefebvre, Henri 81 Li Hanlin 141n1 Li Qiang 27n1 Mann, Michael 148

Zhang Guanghuai 158n36 Zhang Jing 59, 118n23, 146n20, 161n42 Zhang Wenhong 66n7, 70–1, 143n8

Index of Subjects City City Government 43, 53, 164 City Life 2, 45, 60–1, 106 City Planning 51, 125, 130–1 “Inner city” and urban poverty 72–3, 75, 82–3, 110 “Right to the City” (and urban benefits) 3, 53, 104, 110, 116, 134, 145 Villages within cities (“city-inlaid villages”) 111–2, 121 vs Countryside 1–2, 4, 42–3, 50, 111, 145 Class Class and Inequality 2–3, 47–8, 64, 69–71, 73, 81–2 Class Struggle 1, 133 Middle class 2, 26–9, 31, 33–8, 73, 82, 105n1, 115, 122, 124, 132, 136 Urban Working Class 3, 53, 64–7, 69–70, 73, 145 Community Community and Civil Society 140–3, 146n21, 154, 158–9, 163–5 Community Cadres 54 Community Development 5, 18n21, 22–5, 65–7, 80–3, 104–5, 113–4, 118, 138 Community Management 113–4, 116, 147, 149n25, 163, 165 Community Mobilization 4, 130, 137, 139, 163 Community Solidarity 3, 5, 17–9, 23, 40, 61, 64, 66–9, 74, 77–8, 90, 99, 127, 137, 148, 158–9, 164–5 Community Structure 3–4, 54, 64, 66–7, 69–73, 75, 77, 80–3, 90, 104–5, 113–4, 120, 132, 138

Gated Communities 6–8, 113–4 Work Unit Community 110, 112, 120 Contentious Politics See Protest Danwei 1–2, 8n7, 45, 53, 59n29, 68–9, 75, 81, 93, 107, 110, 112–4, 117, 119–22, 124, 141, 149, 151 Household Registration See Hukou Hukou 1–2, 46, 53, 110 Mao Zedong VIII–IX, 1–2, 7 Protest 4, 61, 89, 125, 127, 133, 154–6, 163–4 Reform Housing Reform 35, 38, 81–2, 104, 109, 113–5, 120–3 Land Reform 50n11 Reform & Opening/Reform Era VII–IX, 1, 3–4, 29, 32, 40–1, 71, 76, 91, 93–4, 106–9, 113, 115, 117–8, 140–2, 144, 149 Tax Reform 51 Urban Reforms 81–2 Welfare Reform 65 Residency 2–4, 11, 104–6, 112–3, 116, 120–1, 124, 139 Residents’ Committee 19, 74–5, 113, 119, 121, 123–4, 138, 143, 149–51 Work Unit See Danwei Urbanization 2, 4–5, 18, 43, 53, 59, 94, 104, 106–8, 111, 121, 124–5