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China SOCIAL CHANGE
After the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, the
uncertainty and risks facing small-scale socioeconomic units were
replaced by an increase in the scale of organization and
bureaucratization, with a consequent increase in predictability and
personal security. The tens of millions of small enterprises were
replaced by a much smaller number of larger enterprises, which were
organized in a bureaucratic and hierarchical manner.
Collectivization of land and nationalization of most private
businesses meant that families no longer had estates to pass along.
Long-term interests for families resided primarily with the work
unit (collective farm, office, or factory) to which they belonged.
Mobility in most cases consisted of gaining administrative
promotions within such work units. Many of the alternate routes to
social mobility were closed off, and formal education continued to
be the primary avenue of upward mobility. In villages the army
offered the only reasonable alternative to a lifetime spent in the
fields, and demobilized soldiers staffed much of the local
administrative structure in rural areas. For the first time in
Chinese history, the peasant masses were brought into direct
contact with the national government and the ruling party, and
national-level politics came to have a direct impact on the lives
of ordinary people. The formerly local, small-scale, and fragmented
power structure was replaced by a national and well-integrated
structure, operating by bureaucratic norms. The unpredictable
consequences of market forces were replaced by administrative
allocation and changing economic policies enforced by the
government bureaucracy.
The principal transformation of society took place during the
1950s in a series of major campaigns carried out by the party. In
the countryside, an initial land reform redistributed some land
from those families with an excess to those with none. This was
quickly followed by a series of reforms that increased the scale of
organization, from seasonal mutual aid teams (groups of jointsupport laborers from individual farming households), to permanent
mutual aid teams, to voluntary agricultural cooperatives, to
compulsory agricultural cooperatives, and finally to large
people's communes (see Glossary).
In each step, which came at roughly two-year intervals,
the size of the unit was increased, and the role of
inherited land or private ownership was decreased. By the early
1960s, an estimated 90 million family farms had been replaced by
about 74,000 communes. During the same period, local governments
took over commerce, and private traders, shops, and markets were
replaced by supply and marketing cooperatives and the commercial
bureaus of local government. In the cities, large industries were
nationalized and craft enterprises were organized into large-scale
cooperatives that became branches of local government. Many small
shops and restaurants were closed down, and those that remained
were under municipal management.
In both city and countryside, the 1950s saw a major expansion
of the party and state bureaucracies, and many young people with
relatively scarce secondary or college educations found secure
white-collar jobs in the new organizations. The old society's set
of formal
associations--everything from lineages (clans), to irrigation
cooperatives, to urban guilds and associations of persons from the
same place of origin, all of which were private, small-scale, and
usually devoted to a single purpose--were closed down. They were
replaced by government bureaus or state-sponsored mass
associations, and their parochial leaders were replaced by party
members. The new institutions were run by party members and served
as channels of information, communication, and political influence.
The basic pattern of contemporary society was established by
1960, and all changes since then, including the reforms of the
early and mid-1980s, have represented only modifications and
adjustments to the pattern. The pattern is cellular; most people
belong to one large, all-embracing unit, such as a factory,
government office, or village. The unit is run by party branch,
operates (or should operate) under common administrative rules and
procedures, and reflects the current policies of the party. The
consequence has been that most aspects of social differentiation,
stratification, mobility, and tensions are now played out within an
institutional framework. Most of the questions about any
individual's life and prospects can be answered by specifying the
unit--the social cell--with which that individual is associated.
Data as of July 1987
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