Social Transformations in Chinese Societies: The Official Annual of the Hong Kong Sociological Association (Social Transformations in Chinese Societies)

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Social Transformations in Chinese Societies

Social Transformations in Chinese Societies The Oﬃcial Annual of the Hong Kong Sociological Association Editors Bian Yan-jie, Chan Kwok-bun and Cheung Tak-sing

VOLUME 1 2005 Editorial Board Alatas, Syed Farid, National University of Singapore; Cai, He, Zhongshan University; Chan, H.N., Annie, Lingnan University; Chiu, Chiu-hing, Catherine, City University of Hong Kong; Chiu, Hei-yuan, Academia Sinica; Chiu, Wing-kai, Stephen, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Chu, Yin-wah, Cindy, University of Hong Kong; Davis, Deborah, Yale University; Hamilton, Gary, University of Washington; Hook, Brian, Middlesex University; Hsiao, H.H., Michael, Academia Sinica; Kao, Chengshu, Tunghai University; King, Yao-chi, Ambrose, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Lau, Siu-kai, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Lee, James, University of Michigan; Lee, Ming-kwan, Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Lee, Pui-leung, Rance, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Leung, Hon-chu, Hong Kong Baptist University; Leung Sai-wing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Li, Lulu, People’s University; Li, Peilin, Academy of Social Science, Beijing; Li, S., Peter, University of Saskatchewan; Li, Qiang, Tsinghua University; Li, Youmei, Shanghai University; Lin, Nan, Duke University; Madsen, Richard, University of California at San Diego; Mok, Ka-ho, University of Bristol; Pan, Ngai, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Postiglione, Gerard A., University of Hong Kong; Qiu, Haixiong, Zhongshan University; Salaﬀ, Janet, University of Toronto; So, Y.W., Alvin, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Song, Linfei, Jiangsu Academy of Social Science; Thireau, Isabelle, National Center for Scientiﬁc Research, Paris; Vogel, Ezra F., Harvard University; Walder, Andrew G., Stanford University; Wong, M.H., Odalia, Hong Kong Baptist University; Wong, W. P., Thomas, University of Hong Kong; Wright, Tim, University of Sheﬃeld; Zhou, Min, University of California at Los Angeles; Zhou, Xiaohong, Nanjing University.

Social Transformations in Chinese Societies The Oﬃcial Annual of the Hong Kong Sociological Association

Editors

Bian Yan-jie, Chan Kwok-bun and Cheung Tak-sing

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2005

Printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 1871–2673 ISBN 13 978 90 04 14967 0 ISBN 10 90 04 14967 8 © Copyright 2005 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprint Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoﬀ Publishers and VSP. 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 Brill 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. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

From the Editors ........................................................................ Authors’ Biographies ..................................................................

vii viii

Public Trust in a Transitional Democracy: Modeling the Changes in Taiwan, 1990–2003 .................. Tony Tam and Chang Ly-yun

1

Material Rewards to Multiple Capitals Under Market-Socialism in China .................................................. Deborah Davis, Bian Yan-jie and Wang Shaoguang

31

Body Disabled? Rethinking Disability and Social Integration in Hong Kong .................................................. Agnes Ku S. M. and Jenifer Tam P. Y.

59

Observations on the Design and Implementation of Sample Surveys in China .................................................... Donald J. Treiman, William M. Mason, Lu Yao, Pan Yi, Qi Yaqiang and Song Shige

81

Family Customs and Farmland Reallocations in Contemporary Chinese Villages .......................................... 113 Jonathan Unger Chinese NGOs Strive to Survive .............................................. 131 Chan Kin-man, Qiu Haixiong and Zhu Jiangang The Chinese Diaspora and International Migration .............. 161 Zhou Min The Stranger’s Plight, and Delight .......................................... 191 Chan Kwok-bun

contents

vi Book Reviews

The Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921–1969, by Cindy Chu Yik-yi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 213 pp. ISBN 1–4039–6586–2 ...................................... 221 Chu Yin-wah A Research Report of Social Stratiﬁcation in Contemporary China, edited by Lu Xueyi. Beijing: Social Sciences Documentation Publishing House, 2001. 411 pp. ISBN 7–80149–632–9/D.099 .......................................... 224 Liu Xin God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions, edited by Jason Kindopp and Carol Lee Hamrin. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004. vii + 200 pp. ISBN 0–8157–4937–6 .................. 226 Chan Shun-hing Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation, and the Global City, edited by Agnes Ku S. and Pun Ngai. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. xxvi + 261 pp. ISBN 0–415–33209–5 ...................................................... 228 Hung Ho-fung Notice to Contributors .............................................................. 234

FROM THE EDITORS The focus of this Annual is on the examination of social change and social transformations in Hong Kong and other Chinese societies from sociological perspectives. The economic might of Hong Kong and the cultural inﬂuence that it exerts on the Chinese all over the world are so enormous that they have surpassed the magnitude of inﬂuence that Venice once had on the Western world. Since the transfer of sovereignty in 1997, Hong Kong has been undergoing a profound process of social transformation from a British colony to an integrated part of China ruled by a communist party. Under China’s policy of “one country, two systems”, Hong Kong is allowed to run on its own course by adhering to a capitalist system. Its citizens still enjoy their usual ways of life and the rights and freedoms that they once enjoyed under British rule, but the policy is unprecedented in political history. Over the years, issues after issues have emerged to test the limit of Hong Kong’s autonomy vis-à-vis China’s national sovereignty. The massive demonstration in Hong Kong on July 1, 2003 when half a million people protested against a proposed national security law is a case in point. What happened was by no means a local event, but one of universal signiﬁcance, in the sense that whether the “one country, two systems” policy is successful will provide a precedent for the peaceful resolution of international disputes and a model for the coexistence of two systems of diametrically opposed ideologies. At the same time, China is undergoing a social transformation that is unparalled in the history of mankind. As a renowned economist put it, the most spectacular event in the 20th century was not the sudden collapse of the communist bloc, but the dramatic rise of China, which will become a dominant force in the world of the 21st century. The capital, international networks, and management skills of Hong Kong entrepreneurs have played and continue to play a major role in China’s spectacular economic development. In addition, a sizeable number of Hong Kong people now work and live in China, mostly in the Pearl River Delta. Over the years, China and Hong Kong have aﬀected each other to such an extent that one can hardly understand one side without ﬁrst understanding the other. Another phenomenon that captures the world’s attention is the Chinese diaspora, which entered a new stage of development in 1984 when China declared its intention to take back Hong Kong from Britain in 1997. Facing an uncertain future, it was estimated that more than half a million Hong Kong citizens, mostly belonging to the middle class, emigrated to other countries between 1984 and 1997; many of them have come back to Hong Kong as return migrants. Together with the loosening of China’s restriction on migration, emigrants of Chinese ethnicity are now spreading to virtually every corner of the world, carrying with them traces of one of the greatest civilizations that have ever existed. At this historical juncture, an Annual devoted to sociological studies of the great transformations in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Mainland China, and other Chinese societies has a niche in the community of academic journals for the following reasons: 1) the spectacular rise of China is attracting world attention; 2) there are few quality academic journals about China; 3) Hong Kong studies have been largely neglected in these journals; 4) the Chinese overseas, though studied for decades, are by and large under-theorized; and 5) as far as China studies are concerned, our Annual has a distinct advantage over other journals because it looks at China from Hong Kong. For a long time, Hong Kong has been an ideal place for China watchers, not only because of its physical proximity, but also because of the freedom of expression that its citizens enjoy and the cultural similarity that it shares with the Chinese population in the mainland, and the Chinese overseas.

AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES Bian Yan-jie is Head and Professor of the Division of Social Science and Director of the Survey Research Center at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His main areas of research are social stratiﬁcation and mobility, economic sociology, social networks, and contemporary Chinese societies. He is the author of Work and Inequality in Urban China (SUNY Press 1994), co-editor of Social Survey Research in Chinese Societies (Oxford University Press 2001), co-editor of Market Transition and Social Stratiﬁcation ( Joint Publishing House 2002), and co-editor of Social Survey Research in Practice: Chinese Experience and Analysis (Oxford University Press 2004). Currently, he is leading a research team to conduct the General Social Survey of China. Chan Kin-man is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also a Visiting Professor of Sociology at the Sun Yat-sen University of Guangzhou and a founding member of the Research Center for NGOs in South China. His main areas of research are corruption, civil society, and democratization in Hong Kong and China. He is the author of “The Development of NGOs under a Post-Totalitarian Regime: The Case of China” in Civil Life, Globalization, and Political Change in Asia: Organizing Between Family and State, edited by Robert Wellner (Routledge, 2005: 20–41) and co-author of “Social Organizations, Social Capital, and Political and Economic Development” in Sociological Research (Shehuixue Yanjiu) No. 4, July, 1999, 20: 64–74. Chan Kwok-bun is Head and Professor of the Department of Sociology and Director of the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies at the Hong Kong Baptist University. His recent books are Chinese Business Networks: State, Economy and Culture (Prentice Hall and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2000), (with Tong Cheekiong) Alternate Identities: The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand (Times Academic Press and Brill Academic Publishers, 2001), (with Tong Chee-kiong) Past Times: A Social History of Singapore (Times Editions, 2003), Chinese Identities, Ethnicity and Cosmopolitanism (Routledge, 2005), and Migration, Ethnic Relations and Chinese Business (Routledge, 2005). He has published essays in International Migration Review, Diaspora, Canadian Ethnic Studies, Social Science and Medicine, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Global Change, Peace and Security, Revue Europeenne des Migrations Internationales, Revista de Occidente, Asia Paciﬁc Business Review and the Asian Journal of Social Sciences. In the past year, he has begun to publish in the Chinese language in China’s sociological journals such as Society (Shanghai) Shandong Social Science (Shandong) and Zhejiang Academic Journal (Zhejiang). His current research interests are in migration, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and diasporas; ethnic identities and ethnicities; business networks and ethnic capitalism; medical sociology; and family and marriage. Chang Ly-yun is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. Her research interests include organizational sociology, medical sociology (especially the hospital industry, the sociology of mental health, and health inequality), social networks, and gender inequality. She is the author of two monographs and editor of three Chinese books. Her English papers have recently been published in Current Sociology, the International Medical Journal, the International Journal of

Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

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Social Psychiatry, and in edited volumes. She was the principal investigator of “The Organization-Centered Society” project (1996–1999), a large-scale project based on the positional capital approach to explaining inequality and the impersonal trust approach to understanding trust-building. She is currently the principal investigator of the “Taiwan Education Panel Survey” (2001–2007). Deborah Davis, Professor of Sociology at Yale University, specializes in the study of contemporary Chinese society. She joined the Yale faculty in 1978 and has served as Chair of the Department of Sociology, Chair of the Council on East Asian Studies, and Faculty Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. She has also chaired the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies of the ACLS and the National Screening Committee for Fulbright awards in China. Her publications include The Consumer Revolution in Urban China (University of California, 2000), Urban Spaces in Contemporary China (Cambridge University Press, 1995), Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era (University of California Press, 1993), Long Lives (Stanford University Press, 1991), and Chinese Society on the Eve of Tiananmen (Harvard, 1990). She is currently completing a book entitled A Home of Their Own that investigates how the re-privatization of real estate in China has transformed urban property relations and the meaning of citizenship. Another project begun in summer 2004 compares the impact of family wealth and community assets in determining school completion rates among boys and girls in rural China. Agnes Ku S. M. is an Associate Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Her research interests include cultural sociology, civil society, citizenship, Hong Kong studies, gender and disability. Her essays have appeared in Sociological Theory, Theory, Culture and Society, International Sociology, The China Quarterly, and Modern China. She is the editor of Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong—Community, Nation, and the Global City (Routledge, 2004, co-edited with Ngai Pun), and the author of Narratives, Politics, and the Public Sphere—Struggles Over Political Reform in the Final Transitional Years in Hong Kong (1992–1994) (Ashgate 1999). Lu Yao is a fourth year graduate student in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on demography and social stratiﬁcation. She is particularly interested in studying the causes and consequences of internal migration in developing countries and modeling the educational attainment process. The article published in this issue is her ﬁrst publication. William M. Mason is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and in the Department of Statistics, and a Faculty Aﬃliate of the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research interests center on the demography of China and on sexually transmitted diseases. His ongoing research includes the study of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States, and analysis of the social impact of the SARS epidemic in China in 2003. He and the other authors of the paper published in this Annual are in the process of organizing a new national survey in China that will compare diﬀerences in the level of living in general and health disparities in particular of migrants and permanent residents. Pan Yi is a third year graduate student in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a social demographer with a particular interest in health disparities in China.

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Qi Yaqiang is a third year graduate student in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is interested in fertility transition, migration, and institutional analysis. Qiu Haixiong is a Professor of Sociology and a founding member of the Research Center for NGOs in South China at the Sun Yat-sen University of Guangzhou. His main research area is economic sociology, particularly state enterprise reform, and the development of trade associations in China. He is the co-author of “The Social Capital of a Company and its Signiﬁcance” in Chinese Social Sciences, 2, 2000; “When the Lifeboat is Overloaded: Social Support and Enterprise Reform in China” in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 32 (1999) 305–318; and “Social Organizations, Social Capital, and Political and Economic Development” in Sociological Research (Shehuixue Yanjiu) No. 4, July, 1999, 20: 64–74. Song Shige completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004 and is now an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. His main research interests include marriage and the family, children’s development and health, internal migration and migrants’ health, and social stratiﬁcation. Jenifer Tam P. Y. is a Research Assistant in the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She received her bachelor and MPhil degrees from the University of Hong Kong (Department of Sociology). Her thesis was on the youth consumption of Japanese cultural products in Hong Kong, and her research interests include gender and culture. Her current research task focuses on the development of rights discourse in the ﬁelds of gender and disability in Hong Kong. Tony Tam is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica. His recent research interests include the comparative study of institutional trust and educational stratiﬁcation. He has a longstanding interest in gender and labor market inequality, economic sociology, organizational behavior, network analysis, and methodology. He was co-principal investigator of “The Organization-Centered Society” project (1996–1999) and is co-principal investigator of the “Taiwan Education Panel Survey” (2001–2007). Donald J. Treiman is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and a Faculty Aﬃliate of the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. His main research interest is in the study of social inequality, from a comparative perspective. His ongoing research includes a large-scale crossnational comparative study of social mobility and status attainment, and research on inequality over the life course in China based on a national probability sample survey he carried out in 1996. He and the other authors of the paper published here are in the process of organizing a new national survey in China that will compare diﬀerences in the level of living in general and health disparities in particular of migrants and permanent residents. Jonathan Unger, a sociologist, is Director of the Contemporary China Centre at the Australian National University. He edited The China Journal from 1987 to 2005. His research interests include rural social and political change, social stratiﬁcation, family life, education, industrial relations, and associational activity. He has published more than a dozen books about China, including Education Under Mao: Class and Competition in Canton Schools (Columbia University Press, 1982), Chen Village Under Mao and Deng (co-authored with Anita Chan and Richard

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Madsen) (University of California Press, 1992), and, most recently, The Transformation of Rural China (M. E. Sharpe, 2002). In collaboration with Anita Chan, he is currently writing a book on the socio-political history of a state-owned factory from the mid-1930s to the present day, based on intensive interviewing with dozens of employees and retirees. Wang Shaoguang is a Professor of Political Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Chief Editor of the China Review, an interdisciplinary journal on greater China. He obtained his LL.B. at Peking University and his Ph.D. at Cornell University. He taught at Tijiao High School in Wuhan from 1972 to 1977 and Yale University from 1990 to 2000. He has authored, co-authored, and edited 19 books in Chinese and English, and has contributed to numerous edited volumes and journals. His research interests include political economy, comparative politics, ﬁscal politics, democratization, and economic and political development in former socialist and East Asian countries. Zhou Min is a Professor of Sociology and the inaugural Chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her main areas of research are immigration, ethnic and racial relations, ethnic entrepreneurship, and community and urban sociology. She is the author of Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave (Temple University Press, 1992), coauthor of Growing up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 1998), co-editor of Contemporary Asian America (New York University Press, 2000), and co-editor of Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity (Routledge, 2004). Zhu Jiangang is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Research Center for NGOs in South China at the Sun Yat-sen University of Guangzhou. His main areas of research are community studies, NGOs, and social movements. He is author of “Work, Power and Female Identity” in Qinghua Sociological Review, Vol. 1, 2002, “State, Power and Street Space: Introduction to Street Power in Contemporary China” in Chinese Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 26 & Vol. 27, 1999, and “White-collar Work and the Construction of Female Identity: Women in a Multinational Corporation in Guangdong” in Women of South China: Gender in Tradition and Change, edited by Siumi Maria Tam (NYL Sharpe Ince, forthcoming).

PUBLIC TRUST IN A TRANSITIONAL DEMOCRACY: MODELING THE CHANGES IN TAIWAN, 1990–2003 Tony Tam and Chang Ly-yun Abstract Declining public trust in government has been a well-documented fact for advanced democracies in Western Europe, North America, and Japan since the 1960s. Capitalizing on a model-based strategy newly developed for the analysis of ordinal ratings of trust across institutions, respondents, and surveys, we chart the evolution of political trust over a period of 14 years during Taiwan’s rapid democratic transition. Applying a random-eﬀects ordered logistic regression model to a pool of 49 diﬀerent targets of trust in 33 general-purpose surveys, we document a widespread decline in political trust. We also compare the trends across diﬀerent types of institutions: elected and non-elected government, government and non-government, organizational and professional, institutional and generalized others. The pooled ordinal ratings approach produces two major ﬁndings: (1) a remarkable convergence of temporal trends (but not the levels of trust) across very diﬀerent segments of the government, and (2) a decline of public trust that started before 2000 and goes beyond government institutions. Even though deﬁnitively identifying the explanation(s) for the ﬁndings requires additional empirical research, the present ﬁndings do not square well with explanations that emphasize institution-speciﬁc, segment-speciﬁc, or episodic events, factors, or transformations.

Introduction The twentieth century was one of rapid and radical transformations for the Chinese. Both on and oﬀ the Mainland, Chinese societies have undergone tumultuous changes that are variegated but similarly profound. In keeping with one of the most powerful and widespread global trends of the last century, Chinese societies have been confronted with a surging demand for democratization. Democracy is not a mere list of rules and institutions, and the implementation of democratic rules does not guarantee the healthy functioning of governments or the satisfaction of its citizens. The * This research was supported by Academia Sinica through the OrganizationCentered Society Project. We thank Bian Yan-jie and two anonymous referees for every helpful comments. Direct correspondence to Tony Tam (Institute of European and American Studies) or Chang Ly-yun (Institute of Sociology), Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei, 11529, TAIWAN (email: [email protected] or gacloud@gate. sinica.edu.tw). Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

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social underpinnings of a democracy do not automatically come with the establishment of a democratic regime, as de Tocqueville ([1840] 1990) recognized in his analysis of American democracy in the nineteenth century. Surprisingly, social and political theorists have yet to come to a consensus about the social foundations of democracy. An area of intense research is the problem of trust in a democratic society, which has been motivated in part by the ubiquitous and surprisingly long-term decline of public trust in the governments of advanced democracies (Pharr and Putnam 2000; Paxton 2002). This is alarming because public trust in government, or political trust, is widely believed to be crucial for promoting a cooperative society, a prosperous economy, and a democratic government (Levi and Stoker 2000). At a minimum, the decline of political trust may be symptomatic of serious troubles in the working of a democratic system (Putnam 2000). What do we know about political trust in Chinese democracies? By the end of the 1990s, Taiwan has emerged as the most notable democracy in East Asia, both because of its dramatic process of democratization and its political and economic prominence. Within the short span of a decade, Taiwan has shifted from an authoritarian society under martial law to an open society with elected governments at all levels. The island’s ﬁrst presidential election was held in 1996 and the party leadership of Taiwan shifted in 2000 when the decades-long dominance of the Nationalist Party (i.e., the Kuomintang, KMT) ended. The shift was peaceful and orderly—quite diﬀerent from the chaos typical of the socialist model in which a state undergoes a wrenching dual transition to a market economy and a democratic polity. Despite the accumulation of substantial data, particularly in Taiwan, the study of political trust in Chinese societies is only in its infancy (Chang 1997; Chang 2000; Sheng 2003). To spur further research, our objective is to produce a model-based quantitative portrait of the changing public trust in government during the democratic transition of Taiwan. This model-based estimation of political trust will eﬃciently combine information from comparable items included in diverse surveys, apply conventional scaling assumptions and a new methodology to obtain a parsimonious representation of trends with and without control variables, and therefore provide a set of baseline ﬁndings for more comprehensive and rigorous research on institutional trust in the future.

public trust in taiwan

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As we will explain in section two, the problem of trust in government has been one of the most central and actively researched issues in the study of democracy and social change. Section three presents an overview of the political context of the Taiwan case and argues that the case will extend the literature for modern democracies. Section four describes the data and the methodology we developed for analyzing the typical survey data on trust in government and other institutions. Section ﬁve addresses three substantive questions with the data analysis and discusses the basic implications of the results. Section six concludes the study. Background Trust in Government A conceptual clariﬁcation is in order. The theoretical discussion surrounding political trust is potentially confusing because of the ﬂaccid use of the term “trust” in the social sciences. Let us start with what we think trust is not: to be sure, it is not the same as assuming a high probability for what the trusted is likely to do; trust is much more than having conﬁdence in one’s prediction of the likely behavior of the trusted. In short, trust is not a positivistic judgment or a projection of what will happen. For our purposes, trust is a personal action and judgment. Trust always involves a risky bet on another social being (such as a human being or a corporate actor). Trust is risky because it entails a choice to let one’s personal interest depend on the choices of the trusted. Following Deutsch (1962), then, we think that trust as an action is to render the truster vulnerable to being betrayed by a person, group, organization, or an institution. Without this element of vulnerability, no trust is involved. As a matter of fact, rational individuals routinely put themselves at risk for the sake of cooperative relations (Coleman 1990). Without the ubiquitous presence of trust, the economy would stall (Granovetter 1985). Trust as a personal judgment is to evaluate two dimensions of the trusted: (1) a commitment to act in the interest of the truster even when there is opportunity and freedom not to do so; (2) suﬃcient competency to accomplish what the frosted is entrusted to do. By trust in government, or political trust, we mean entrusting the government to act competently and in the interest of the truster

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(which may be personal interests or something as broad and diﬀuse as the public interest). Consequently, a respondent’s expressed trust in government inherently combines the respondent’s assessments of oﬃcials, system designs, and public policies that together deﬁne a government. While oﬃcials, system designs, and public policies may be conceptually distinguished, the respondent’s assessments of these aspects of government are necessarily intertwined. This is analogous to the chicken-and-egg problem of causal ordering. We believe it is futile and theoretically untenable to try to measure the assessments as separate dimensions of trust in government. The two are causally conﬂated; only their joint or combined eﬀects can be meaningfully identiﬁed. Furthermore, it is important to stress that our position is entirely compatible with analytic questions that distinguish between agency and competency, such as, “Was the change of public trust in the legislature over time period T due to a change in (a) the design of the legislative system, (b) the competence of legislators to work with each other, or (c) the extent to which legislators serve the public interest?” These questions are meaningful because changes in agency may be the key driver of changes for some targets of public trust while changes in competency may be the key driver of changes for other targets, and the relative role of the two kinds of changes for trust in a given target may also vary over time. These analytic questions only require the statistical identiﬁcation of agency and competency as sources of changing public trust, not as ontologically separable dimensions of trust per se. Our conception of trust in general, and political trust in particular, does not ignore the diﬀerent causal logics that exist for political and interpersonal trust (Hardin 2000, pp. 32–35), but it does aﬃrm the meaningfulness of speaking of trust beyond simply interpersonal trust. Survey questions on trust in government, institutions, rules, organizations, or groups (Levi and Stoker 2000, pp. 476) are as valid as questions on interpersonal trust. Questions on political trust are not surrogates for questions on conﬁdence in government. Survey questions on political trust solicit the judgments of a respondent about the dual problems of agency and competency that hinge on how a government allocates human and material resources and operates with the respondent’s interest in mind. Survey responses to political trust are social facts, not intractable or artifactual noises.

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Intellectual and Western Contexts The problem of trust in government coincides well with the recent surge of interest in the problem of trust in society at large. At least 25 years ago, sociological theorists started to think seriously about the nature of trust (Luhmann 1979; Barber 1983), which was quickly ushered onto the social science main stage. An inﬂuential network theorist and economic sociologist ﬁrst uses the problem of trust to argue for the causal signiﬁcance of social embeddedness (Granovetter 1985), later a sociological giant joins the bandwagon and brings the problem to bear on a rational choice theory of social control and education (Coleman 1990), and political scientist heavyweights eventually link the problem of trust to economic success, social capital, civil society and democracy (Fukuyama 1995; Putnam 1993, 2000). Even mainstream economists have started to address the issue of trust in their ﬂagship journals (Knack and Keefer 1997; La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny 1997; Glaeser, Laibson, Scheinkman, and Soutter, 2000). Recognizing the strategic payoﬀs of a ﬁrm understanding of trust, the Russell Sage Foundation supports an interdisciplinary group of distinguished sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, and social psychologists to organize work groups and conferences, which have resulted in several books indispensable for research on trust (Braithwaite and Levi 1998; Cook 2001; Hardin 2002, 2004). For political scientists and policy makers alike, one of the biggest and most recurrent concerns of advanced democracies is the ubiquitous and long-term decline of public trust in government during the last half century. In the case of the United States, Americans maintain a high level of traditional support for American democracy and its constitutional system. However, public trust in more speciﬁc institutions has sharply declined for more than three decades. Public trust has also declined for the electoral process and leaders of nearly all major institutions (Nye and Zelikow 1997, pp. 278). This broad erosion of trust is also evident in Western Europe and Japan. “Quite apart from any temporary disenchantment with the present government or dissatisfaction with particular leaders, most citizens in the Trilateral world have become more distrustful of politicians, more skeptical about political parties, and signiﬁcantly less conﬁdent in their parliament and other political institutions” (Pharr, Putnam, and Dalton 2000, pp. 18).

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Many plausible explanations for the decline have been proposed. The decline is often interpreted as a symptom of systemic distress, or even a crisis of democracy occurring throughout the Trilateral countries (Western Europe, North America, and Japan). Since the famous Trilateral Commission report on the state of democracy (Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki 1975), political distrust has intensiﬁed with every passing decade, yet a deﬁnitive explanation remains elusive. The original report was followed by the seminal Lipset and Schneider (1983) study that exempliﬁes the use of massive survey data to address trust in the American context. Then there was the large-scale collaborative eﬀort of European scholars resulting in a ﬁve-volume report entitled Beliefs in Government study (Kaase and Newton 1995). Focusing primarily on the American case, a team of mostly Harvard scholars oﬀers a comprehensive assessment of many single-factor hypotheses as well as available evidence for or against the hypotheses (Nye, Zelikow, and King 1997). Taking a broader comparative approach, another team of scholars makes a second attempt to understand the Trilateral decline of political trust (Pharr and Putnam 2000), with a focus on the role of diminishing government performance. As Kaase and Newton (1995) observe, each period had its popular grand theory or theories about the state and the future prospect of advanced democracy. The grand theories originate from diverse perspectives (Marxist, liberal, and conservative), disciplines (sociology, political science, economics, and philosophy), and intellectual traditions (European and American). This diversity makes it especially remarkable that these theories all are able to oﬀer their own interpretations of the decline in political trust. Unfortunately, the grand “theories are not always explicit about what is cause, what is eﬀect, and what is symptom, but they all see the same sort of features of modern society as cause or eﬀect or symptom . . . in terms of growing mass alienation and anomie, increasing political distrust, political disillusionment, dissatisfaction with democracy, declining political participation, falling membership of established parties, pressure groups, and community groups, an increase in electoral volatility, support for extremist and anti-democratic politics and movements, and a rise of direct political participation, including illegal and violent action” (Kaase and Newton 1995, pp. 37). Similar problems are also evident with the single-factor hypotheses and Nye and Zelikow’s

public trust in taiwan

7

(1997) synthesis for the American case. It is fair to say that both grand theories and single-factor hypotheses, upon close scrutiny, are only superﬁcially appropriate for understanding the decline of political trust. After decades of scholarly attempt, the theories and hypotheses are still fragmented, their integration muddled, and their evidential adequacy ambiguous. In short, the empirical search for a deﬁnitive explanation remains a challenge.1 Taiwan—A Fruit Fly for Democracy Research Against this intellectual background we will focus our empirical study on Taiwan. Taiwan is a prominent Chinese economy and a much publicized example of democratic transition of the Twentieth century. Thus the evolution of political trust in Taiwan is not only of intrinsic interest to scholars of Chinese societies, it should be of value to the study of democratic transition. Political Context What kind of political environment and change does Taiwan represent? Due to the centrality of Taiwan in Sino-American relations, the political history of Taiwan is well-known, widely publicized, and reliable overviews are readily available from general reference book and on the internet. Instead of chronicling the historical details, suﬃce it to remind the reader of the basic government structure and historical milestones that lay the foundations of modern Taiwan. For 50 years, the Nationalist Party ruled Taiwan when it left the Mainland after losing the civil war to the Communist Party. Much of the political and administrative structure of the KMT government in Taiwan was imported directly from the Mainland. In terms of power structure, the government of Taiwan consists of the presidency and ﬁve administrative branches (Yuan): Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Examination, and Control. The Executive Yuan is responsible

1 We do not attempt to extend the major evaluative eﬀorts of Kaase and Newton (1995), Nye et al. (1997), and Pharr and Putnam (2000). A critique and update of these earlier eﬀorts will in itself be a major scholarly project and is therefore beyond the scope of the present article.

8

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for policy and administration, the Legislative Yuan for law making, the Judicial Yuan for administering the court system, the Examination Yuan for managing the civil service, and the Control Yuan for the critical review and investigation of the Executive Yuan for ineﬃciency and misconduct. The president has authority over the ﬁve branches, including the appointment of the premier who heads the Executive Yuan. Under martial law since 1948, the regime was authoritative and repressive, and for decades the society was considered a police state. The ﬁrst critical turn in the democratization of Taiwan occurred in 1986–1987, when the late President Chiang Ching-kuo moved in earnest to create an open society and a democratic political system, lifting restrictions on the press, personal freedoms, and the organization of oppositional political parties. Indeed, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was formed in 1986 and oﬀered a forceful challenge to the KMT in open elections. The second critical turn was to subject legislative positions in the central government to open elections. The Legislative Yuan was ﬁrst elected in the 1940s and played only the nominal role as an independent branch for making laws. Not until 1992 was there a direct election of all seats (there was an open election of 130 supplementary new seats in 1989). Since the implementation of Taiwan’s direct election system, the Legislative Yuan has become increasingly activist and assertive relative to the Executive Yuan. In each subsequent election, the main opposition party—the DPP—won a signiﬁcant share of seats. In 2001, the DPP won 88 seats, whereas the KMT only 66. Two new parties, the People First Party (PFP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) won 45 and 13 seats, respectively, and the DPP was unable in most instances to reach a majority support for its policy positions. The ﬁrst National Assembly was elected in 1947 and was responsible for choosing the president and amending the constitution. The second National Assembly, however, was not elected until 1991. This National Assembly amended the Constitution in 1994, clearing the way for the ﬁrst direct presidential election in 1996. Remarkably, the members of the National Assembly voted in 2000 to end their terms without holding new elections, eﬀectively abolishing the National Assembly until the Legislative Yuan calls for a new session for constitutional amendments as it did in 2004. The vote also granted the Legislative Yuan almost exclusive authority over law-making, which

public trust in taiwan

9

will be complete according to the 2004 blueprint for constitutional amendments that will eliminate the National Assembly for good. By the time this article is in print, the National Assembly currently in session should have completed the constitutional amendments. The most critical turn of all was another momentous political event that took place in 2000. Incumbent advantages notwithstanding, the ruling KMT party lost its grip on power in a bitterly contested presidential election. The DDP candidate Chen Shui-bian won the presidency by a slim margin and without winning an absolute majority. This dramatic outcome was widely hailed as a landmark indicating the completion of Taiwan’s democratic transition,2 and forever changed the political ecology of Taiwan. Confronted by a fast growing economy and vibrant civil society in the 1980s, Taiwan was driven to the crossroads in creating an open, yet stable government. Democratization was the choice, and by 1987 the government ended martial law and opened itself to party competition. The move was understandably cautious on the part of the ruling regime and some segments of the populace. Nevertheless, just ﬁve years after the ending of martial law, Taiwan launched a full-ﬂedged democratization of the central government. By early 2000, the democratic transition was complete. Intellectual Relevance What are the potential payoﬀs of studying the Taiwan case apart from the intrinsic relevance of Taiwan as a major Chinese society outside the Mainland? We consider Taiwan an invaluable case for studying the evolutionary dynamic of political trust during democratic transition. Taiwan is a young democracy. For better or worse, this infant democracy was ushered into adulthood without the luxury of having a childhood as Taiwan peacefully completed a democratic transition within 10 years—a remarkably short period of time by all historical standards. The brevity of this transition oﬀers social scientists a remarkable opportunity, which can be compared to the

2 Historically, an emerging democracy must complete at least two peaceful transfers of power through free elections before the democracy becomes stable and viable (Huntington 1991, pp. 17). Here we speak of democratic transition without assuming long-term success.

10

tony tam and chang ly-yun

opportunity that fruit ﬂies oﬀer biologists. Fruit ﬂies have very short life cycles, hence facilitating the observations of biological changes over the course of the life-cycle and across many generations of evolution. Although a decade is brief in absolute terms, the democratic transition and the macro-context have in face occurred extremely rapidly. Taiwan’s accelerated rate of political change and contextual conditions will prove to be a helpful source of statistical information for separating short-term ﬂuctuations from structural trends. In addition, Taiwan’s democratic transition began after the vision, expertise, and funding for conducting repeated social surveys were well established in academia. In eﬀect, the infrastructure for data collection was already in place before the transition was in motion. Thus Taiwan’s democratic transition is uniquely positioned to provide data and insights into the evolution of political trust over the entire period of its democratic transition. Given that Taiwan’s democratic processes began in the 1990s, one does not have to reach far back into history to verify facts about the changing context. Therefore over the course of this study, we will analyze data spanning the period 1990–2003, a window of observation covering the evolution of a very young democracy. How is the Western literature related to the Taiwan case? We have pointed out that the Western literature on political trust has produced many grand theories and single-factor hypotheses for the long-term and widespread decline in the political trust of the public in the Trilateral countries. However, the literature has yet to produce unambiguous evidence for a general explanation. Thus the Taiwan case cannot be motivated as a test of an established hypothesis, nor is it possible for a single case to resolve the empirical stalemate in the literature. Nonetheless, this literature is relevant to the present case in two ways. First, it presents a variety of major ﬁndings that are at odds with many popular hypotheses for the West, and hence providing the much needed cautionary tales for anyone who tries to apply one of the popular hypotheses to explain the Taiwanese ﬁndings. Second, Taiwan has witnessed an overall rise and decline of political trust that is qualitatively similar to the postwar trends of political trust among the Trilateral democracies, rendering Taiwan a potentially relevant comparative case for the Trilateral phenomenon. In the absence of a strong guiding hypothesis from the Western literature, our approach will be descriptive and inductive, instead of the conventional norm of starting with well-posed hypotheses and

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11

designing the empirical analysis around the testing of hypotheses. Our analytic focus will be the measurement and modeling of the temporal trends of political trust in Taiwan. We will discuss potential interpretations of the ﬁndings in the concluding section but have to leave the task of systematic theory testing to future research. Data and Method Data While data on trust are relatively plentiful in Taiwan, in-depth analyses often require data that are available only in few surveys and limited points in time. To chart the temporal trends of political trust across the entire period of the democratic transition, we have to give up the potential for a variety of in-depth analyses. Nonetheless, the ﬁndings on temporal trends are fundamental, as these trends are important baseline facts with which any credible theory of political trust in Taiwan must reconcile. Data used for analysis in this paper are extracted from 33 surveys conducted by four diﬀerent institutions during the period between 1990 and 2003: (1) Taiwan Social Image Surveys (TSIS), 1990–2003, (2) United News Surveys (UNS), 1990–1996, (3) Taiwan Social Ethics Foundation Surveys (TSEF), 2001–2002, and (4) Taiwan Social Change Surveys (TSCS), 1990–2001. These surveys employed two methods of data collection. Taiwan Social Change Surveys used faceto-face interviews, whereas all the other surveys used telephone interviews. Given the close correspondence between the population of households with telephones and those without, the two target populations are practically the same. The main qualiﬁcation is that telephone interviews tend to under-represent individuals without a regular phone, face-to-face interviews based on household registration tend to under-represent individuals who, for work or other reasons, do not live in the household with which they are registered as residents. Appendix A reports the sources and years of data available for our analysis.3

3 In terms of population coverage, we only include nationally representative surveys. In terms of response rate, a typical face-to-face survey here has a refusal rate of about 10%, whereas a typical CATI survey has a refusal rate of 15%.

12

tony tam and chang ly-yun

To maintain interpretive consistency, we impose two criteria to determine whether a questionnaire item on trust is eligible for our data analysis: (1) The question directly asks respondents about the level they trust a target. (For instance, “To what extent do you trust the Executive Yuan?”) (2) The answers are coded on a four-point Likert scale. (Thus, the categories of trust ratings are collapsed from a six-point scale into a four-point scale in the 1995 and 2000 TSCS.) The only exception is to the ﬁrst criterion and involves the indicator for generalized trust, i.e., trust placed in a generic other in society. In the 2001 and 2002 TSEF, and the 2003 TSIS, the question is standard: “Do you trust most people in society?” The answers range from “strongly trust” to “strongly distrust”. This question ﬁts the ﬁrst criterion very well. However, the question we include from TSCS is of a diﬀerent form: “Do you agree with the statement that ‘people cannot be trusted’ (which may also be translated as ‘people are not trustworthy’)?” The answers range from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. We treat the two items as equivalent after consistently coding higher trust with a higher score. Appendix B presents the detailed list of 49 targets for trust ratings. They are classiﬁed into six categories: (1) non-elected government institutions, such as the Executive Yuan, (2) elected government institutions, such as the Legislative Yuan, (3) the military, (4) nongovernment institutions, (5) professional roles, including professors and judges, and (6) generalized others in society. While categories 1–4 are explicitly institutional targets, survey respondents may think either in terms of the organization or the people who run the organization. Category 5 may be interpreted as institutionalized roles or as natural persons in speciﬁc occupations. Category 6 is explicitly about natural persons. We pooled data for a total of 49 distinct targets of trust ratings available in any of the 33 surveys. Since the data are from diﬀerent surveys conducted by diﬀerent institutions at diﬀerent points in time, some almost equivalent institutional targets are called by slightly diﬀerent names. For instance, medical centers, large hospitals, public hospitals, and health care organizations obviously overlap but do not necessarily inspire equivalent levels of trust. Since the trust data are ordinal and involve so many items, descriptive statistics will be too overwhelming to present. It is therefore more instructive to take a preliminary look at the ratings for two speciﬁc government institutions at selected time points. Figure 1

public trust in taiwan

13

graphically summarizes the percentage distributions. Figure 1A presents the percentage distribution of trust for the Executive Yuan in 1990, 1995, 2001–2003. According to these ﬁgures, political trust has been on the decline from 1990 to 2003, in fact, cross-tabulation shows a sharp increase of distrust since 2001. Only 22% of the respondents indicated distrust in the Executive Yuan in 1990, and the proportion remained at 22% in 1995. But the percentage of distrust rose to 49% in 2001, 48% in 2002, and 49% in 2003. Figure 1B shows a similar decline of trust in the Legislative Yuan during the same period. In fact, distrust for the Legislative Yuan is much higher than that for the Executive Yuan. In 1990, 55% of the respondents expressed distrust of the Legislative Yuan. The percentage dipped to 48% in 1995 but rose to 67% in 2001, 78.5% in 2002, and 75% in 2003. For both institutions, then, a decline in trust is apparent. Analytic Strategy The methodology used in this study is called the pooled ordinal ratings approach to the analysis of survey opinion data. The strategy consist of three components. The ﬁrst is measurement assumptions, the second is the transformation of typical data format of variables extracted from a survey into a format suitable for a model-based analysis, and the third is a statistical framework capable of handling responses drawn from repeated cross-sections and multiple responses (trust ratings for multiple targets) from the same respondent. The methodology we use has been extensively described and illustrated in a companion paper (Chang and Tam forthcoming). Here we will only highlight the measurement assumptions necessary for the interpretation of ﬁndings and the major analytic advantages of the methodology. Measurement assumptions.—To produce a model-based quantitative portrait of the changing public trust in government during the democratic transition of Taiwan, we need a model-based estimation of political trust that can eﬃciently pool (1) information from diverse sources and (2) trust ratings on many institutional targets. However, we must make certain measurement assumptions. Surprisingly, only two conventional assumptions implicit in the descriptive item-by-item analysis of trust data are necessary for our purposes. With the notable exception of Paxton (1999) who utilizes a structural equation modeling

tony tam and chang ly-yun

14

A. The Executive Yuan

80

Strongly Distrust

60

Distrust 40

Trust

20

Str Tr ongly u Di st Tru st str Str ust on gly Di str ust

0 90

95

19

01

19

02

20

03

20

20

Strongly Trust

B. The Legislative Yuan

60 50

Strongly Distrust

40

Distrust

30

Trust

20 10 0 90

19

95

19

01

20

02

20

03

20

Str o Tr ngly ust Tr ust Di str Str ust on gly Di str ust

Strongly Trust

Figure 1. Percentage Distributions of Trust in the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan for Selected Years

public trust in taiwan

15

(SEM) framework, prior studies have assumed that (1) the same ordinal rating on a trust item is statistically comparable over time and across surveys; (2) the same ordinal rating on two diﬀerent items are statistically comparable. These two assumptions are precisely what we need for pooling data across diﬀerent trust items, aggregating categories of trust (e.g. non-elected government institutions versus elected government institutions), scaling the ordinal ratings simultaneously for all items, and comparing trends of diﬀerent categories of trust. The most important payoﬀ from successfully pooling the data and simultaneously scaling the ordinal ratings of diverse items is a coherent framework to statistically model the temporal patterns of levels of trust and compare the patterns for diﬀerent types of trust. The workhorse of our statistical analysis is a random-eﬀects ordered logistic regression model. This model generalizes the conventional ordered logistic regression model by taking into account the potential statistical complications that may arise from the clustering of multiple responses due to the same respondent.4 This is a simple but ﬂexible model-based framework for studying trends. It permits us to go well beyond nearly all previous studies of political trust and oﬀers eight major analytic advantages of power, interpretation, and rigor. Powerful Use of Available Data.—(1) The model-based estimation of political trust eﬃciently combines information across diverse surveys. (2) Our analysis does not only pool data across surveys, but also follows a disciplined approach to pooling data across a wide-range of institutional and non-institutional targets. (3) The method has minimal requisite requirements for data completeness, as the model-based estimation of trends leverages smoothness to interpolate scores for those years without any data on some or all items. Interpretive Ease.—(4) Even though the observed ratings of trust are ordered categories, the model-based analysis produces estimates of an unobserved, continuous variable of trust. Speciﬁcally, the ordered logistic regression model of political trust optimally scales ordinal ratings

4 In technical terms, the ordered logistic model possesses two special features: (1) it allows for respondent-speciﬁc random-eﬀects and (2) it produces standard errors that are robust against a variety of correlation structure among the error components of the responses from the same respondent. To estimate this class of model, the easiest way is to use the ologit command of STATA. Alternatively, specialized software packages, such as LIMDEP, MPlus, and HLM, can also estimate the model and a variety of its extensions.

16

tony tam and chang ly-yun

of trust by assuming that a continuous concept of trust underlies the ordinal ratings. Political trust can then be presented in terms of a standardized metric of interval scale, in stark contrast to most previous empirical studies that analyze trust ratings as categorical variables that make it diﬃcult to precisely characterize temporal trends, quantify diﬀerences, or combine information across institutional targets.5 (5) Parsimonious models of trends: To map out the temporal patterns of trust, we allow for nonlinear trends. Through nonparametric analysis of the temporal patterns, we determine that a quadratic functional form is ﬂexible enough to capture and reveal the trends of diﬀerent types of trust. Thus, our main analysis always includes a quadratic speciﬁcation of the shape of a trend. (6) Due to the aforementioned advantages, the model-based framework leads to much more compact graphical representations of trends that are fundamentally diﬀerent than conventional representations (mostly item-speciﬁc percentage distributions of trust ratings). The formats of results of this paper are very diﬀerent than the formats of those reported in seminal empirical studies of political trust (e.g., Lipset and Schneider 1983; Nye, Zelikow, and King 1997). We no longer have to trade oﬀ between (a) manually aggregating institutional targets into a small number of broadly deﬁned targets and (b) wrestling with a large number of graphs or tables, each devoted to a subset of institutional targets. Nor do we have to follow the conventional practice: subjectively reconcile information across tables, conduct visual synthesis of diﬀerent graphs, and then verbally summarize the overall perception of trends in political trust. Statistical Rigor.—(7) The perception of temporal trends used to be informal and quite subjective. Our framework enhances intersubjectivity by providing statistical tests of (a) the shape of a trend and (b) similarity in the temporal trends of trust in diﬀerent targets. (8) The modeling framework estimates trends with and without control variables, hence greatly facilitating (a) multivariate analysis and (b) the tests of competing hypotheses (Tam 2001, pp. 268–272).

5

Compared to the prevailing approaches to analyzing ordinal trust rating data, the model-based scaling procedure actually simpliﬁes the analysis of ordinal data without losing statistical rigor.

public trust in taiwan

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Two additional notes are worth emphasizing. First, one of the common analytic questions in the analysis of trend is to distinguish age, period, and cohort eﬀects. In our modeling framework, it is straightforward to distinguish period eﬀects from age/cohort eﬀects, but we cannot distinguish age and birth cohort eﬀects using repeated cross-sections without making overly strong identifying assumptions. But for the purposes of this paper, identifying period eﬀects is paramount. With our modeling framework, the separation is easy to implement and will not complicate the presentation of results by proliferating tables or ﬁgures for cohort-speciﬁc trends. So long as we can distinguish age/birth cohort eﬀects from period eﬀect (what we call temporal trends or patterns in this paper), we can address the central substantive questions without any problem. Second, the methodology is equally applicable to the analysis of attitudinal survey data. The method is not speciﬁc to the analysis of trust ratings. It is useful for scaling ordinal ratings of any attitudinal data and for synthesizing data of multiple attitudinal items pooled from multiple surveys over many years (Chang and Tam forthcoming). Results Although it took much preparatory data management and programming to complete the data analysis of a massive amount of information, the essential ﬁndings from our analysis are succinctly summarized in Table 1. Because the substantive results consist of many nonlinear trends estimated for diﬀerent types of public trust, we also produce graphics that oﬀer the most convenient and parsimonious representations of the temporal trends. For most practical purposes, the shape and relative distance are of the most substantive interest to researchers. In this case, the Y-axis represents the level of estimated trust in terms of a standardized metric of interval scale. For instance, a score of 0.5 stands for half a standard deviation of the unobserved level of trust postulated to underline the ordinal ratings of trust. We will organize the results as answers to two kinds of questions. The ﬁrst kind consists of three substantive questions of comparative trends that are of interest to students of political trust. The second kind is a question of robustness: the extent to which the results may be sensitive to the pooling of data across surveys based on diﬀerent

18

tony tam and chang ly-yun

data collection methods and targeting respondents of somewhat diﬀerent characteristics. Comparing Trends What is the temporal pattern of public trust in the non-elected segment of the government? —To most citizens, the non-elected segment of the government in Taiwan is the largest and most relevant to their daily lives, as it is essentially the executive branch that implements government duties and has direct impacts on the well-being of all citizens. Figure 2 presents the results for non-elected government institutions reported in columns 2 (quadratic trend) and 4 (annual ﬁt) of Table 1. By visual inspection, the level of public trust appears to be relatively stable for much of the 1990s before taking a noticeable downward turn by 2001, when there was a transfer of power from the ﬁve-decade long ruling party. However, a simple quadratic curve ﬁts the data very well when compared to the annual ﬁt that does not impose any functional form restriction on the trend. When restricting the analysis to the brief period from 1991–1996 (excluding 1990 and 1997–2003),6 we continue to ﬁnd a statistically signiﬁcant decline, even though the quadratic term is insigniﬁcant. To the credit of our modeling framework, we can even precisely say that the average annual decline over this six-year period is .03 standard deviation of the unobserved metric of trust, and this rate of decline is the same as the rate of decline for trust in generalized others. How consistent is the temporal pattern with the patterns of public trust for other parts of the government?—Figure 3 tells us that the pattern in Figure 2 is not unique to the non-elected institutions of the government and not driven by the unusually low level of trust in 1990. Distinguishing government institutions into non-elected, elected, and the military, the patterns are remarkably similar. All three have the shape of an inverted U, as Taiwan was rapidly undergoing democratic transition. Political trust seems to have risen mildly early in the democratic transition before taking a downward turn afterward. It is especially remarkable that the trends are so similar despite the fact that generally speaking, the public consistently places strong trust

6 To simplify presentation, we omit all results based on a subset of the observed period. The results are available from the authors upon request.

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Table 1. Ordered Logistic Models of Temporal Changes in Political and Other Types of Trust in Taiwan, 1990–2003 (1) Quadratic

(2) Quadratic

Level in 1996 (relative to non-elected govt) Elected Govt –0.225** –0.204** (0.017) (0.017) Military 0.674** 0.661** (0.036) (0.036) Non-govt –0.051** –0.048** (0.014) (0.013) Professional –0.019 –0.023 (0.016) (0.016) Generalized Others –0.301** –0.335** (0.019) (0.019) Trend Non-elected Govt –0.033** –0.028** Linear (0.002) (0.002) Quadratic –0.743** –0.708** (0.058) (0.057) Elected Govt –0.036** –0.030** Linear (0.002) (0.002) Quadratic –1.047** –1.090** (0.064) (0.064) Military –0.111** –0.110** Linear (0.035) (0.035) Quadratic –1.693** –1.694** (0.648) (0.646) Non-govt –0.015** –0.012** Linear (0.001) (0.002) Quadratic –0.209** –0.232** (0.040) (0.040) Professional –0.040** –0.037** Linear (0.002) (0.002) Quadratic –0.079 –0.064 (0.064) (0.064) Generalized Others –0.034** –0.032** Linear (0.002) (0.002) Quadratic –0.125* –0.062 (0.049) (0.049) Controls Whether Included No Yes Latent R-sq

0.062

0.069

(3) Linear

(4) Annual Fit

–0.069** (0.016) 0.794** (0.035) 0.086** (0.010) 0.111** (0.013) –0.202** (0.015)

–0.130** (0.026) 0.734** (0.039) 0.025 (0.024) 0.051* (0.025) –0.262** (0.027)

–0.033** (0.002)

[Yearly Coefs Omitted]

–0.030** (0.002) –1.092** (0.064) –0.110** (0.035) –1.694** (0.646) –0.011** (0.002) –0.233** (0.040) –0.037** (0.002) –0.064 (0.064) –0.032** (0.002) –0.062 (0.049)

–0.030** (0.002) –1.093** (0.064) –0.109** (0.035) –1.693** (0.646) –0.011** (0.002) –0.234** (0.040) –0.037** (0.002) –0.064 (0.064) –0.032** (0.002) –0.062 (0.049)

Yes

Yes

0.068

0.071

Note: * signiﬁcant at 5%; ** signiﬁcant at 1%; standard errors in parentheses; valid N is 191,873 for all models; linear and quadratic coeﬃcients correspond to interaction of a variable with year and year-squared, respectively; all quadratic coeﬃcients have been multiplied by 100 to improve readability; control variables include age group, education, gender, and survey methodology.

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Annual Fit

Quadratic Fit for Non-elected Gov

1

Trust

0.5

0

–0.5

–1 2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

Year

Figure 2. Estimated Trend of Public Trust in Non-elected Government Institutions, Annual Fit (Year-speciﬁc Estimates) and Quadratic Functional Form (Source: Models 2 and 4 of Table 1, respectively) Military

Non-elected Government

Elected Government

1

Trust

0.5

0

–0.5

–1 2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

Year

Figure 3. Estimated Trends of Public Trust in the Military, Non-elected, and Elected Government Institutions, Allowing for the Quadratic Functional Form (Source: Model 2 of Table 1)

public trust in taiwan

21

in the military more than in the other institutions of the government. The public rates the non-elected institutions higher than the elected institutions, despite having electoral control over the elected institutions. The qualitative pattern remains the same when analysis is restricted to the brief period from 1991–1996. Is the decline speciﬁc to the government, or is it a general decline of trust throughout society?—Put diﬀerently, it is possible that there is nothing peculiar to decline of public trust in government, as the pattern may hold for all spheres of social life. Figures 4 and 5 provide relevant results for examining this possibility. Figure 4 compares the trend of non-elected government with the trend of non-government institutions. Although the trend of trust in non-government institutions slopes downward, the quadratic term (–.232) is only a small fraction of that of non-elected government institutions (–.708). The curvature is the smallest of all statistically signiﬁcant nonlinear trends in Table 1. Figure 5 compares the trends of generalized trust and trust in professionals (mainly professors and judges) with the trend of trust in elected government institutions. The trends of trust in generalized others and professionals show an unmistakable decline, starting early in the 1990s. In sum, although the inverted-U shape pattern is likely related speciﬁcally to political trust in the elected, non-elected, and military segments of the Taiwan government, the declining trend is shared by most of the public trust we examined. Sensitivity Analysis Are the results dependent on the mix of respondents and survey methods?—As noted above, the data sources employ diﬀerent survey methods and cover a period of rapid social change. First, consider survey methods. Some employ telephone interviews while others use face-to-face interviews. The two survey methods use diﬀerent sampling techniques and by deﬁnition the interviews are conducted in diﬀerent formats. Telephone interviews are somewhat less personal than are face-toface interviews. It is legitimate to ask whether diﬀerent survey methods produce systematic diﬀerences in trust ratings. Second, consider the composition of respondents. From 1990 to 2003, Taiwan has undergone a great deal of demographic changes. Among the changes are an acceleration of higher education expansion, a growing emigration to other countries after the 1995 missile crisis across the Taiwan Strait, an increasing relocation of hundreds of thousands

tony tam and chang ly-yun

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Non-government institutions

Non-elected Government

1

Trust

0.5

0

–0.5

–1 2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

Year

Figure 4. Estimated Trends of Public Trust in Non-government and Non-elected Government Institutions, Allowing for the Quadratic Functional Form (Source: Model 2 of Table 1) Professionals

Elected Government

Generalized Others

1

Trust

0.5

0

–0.5

–1 2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

Year

Figure 5. Estimated Trends of Public Trust in Professionals, Elected Government Institutions, and Generalized Others, Allowing for the Quadratic Functional Form (Source: Model 2 of Table 1)

public trust in taiwan

23

of entrepreneurs, professionals, and even lesser skilled workers to the Mainland, and a massive inﬂux of foreign brides from the Mainland and Southeast Asian countries. It is therefore prudent to check whether the results are seriously dependent on the changing mix of respondents over time and the diﬀerent survey methods used by diﬀerent sources. To investigate both possibilities, we oﬀer a simple test. Models 1 and 2 of Table 1 are estimated without and with control variables (respondent’s gender, education, age, and method of interview). Comparing the numerical estimates is informative of the extent to which the estimated trends are likely dependent on the mix of respondents or survey methods. The numerical results of the two models turn out to be very similar. We may therefore conclude that the estimated trends are robust to respondent composition and survey methods. This ﬁnding is reassuring, even though sensitivity analysis should continue in the future. Implications The basic ﬁndings have successfully synthesized a great deal of diverse information hidden in the complex array of survey data. The results signify a major advance over prior studies with regard to the scale and scope of data coverage and the compact representation of the changing patterns of trust. However, the results invite many possible interpretations. While proposing interpretations is easy, narrowing down the interpretations is much more challenging because so many potentially crucial factors are confounded with each other. Given the paucity of reliable ﬁndings in the current literature on Taiwan’s political trust, we believe a careful comparison of the trends of diﬀerent types of public trust is the prudent and productive starting point. Two major ﬁndings stand out: (1) as ﬁgure 3 demonstrates, there is a remarkable convergence of temporal trends (but not the levels of trust) across very diﬀerent segments of the government, and (2) as ﬁgures 4 and 5 show, even non-government institutions have witnessed a decline of public trust and the onset of the decline is well before 2000.7

7 Apart from trust in institutions, trust in generalized others also declined over much of the 1990s.

24

tony tam and chang ly-yun

Deserving special emphasis are the implications for a credible explanation for the decline of political trust in Taiwan. Our modelbased aggregation of government institutions and mapping of temporal trend shows in ﬁgure 3 a striking convergence of the temporal trends of three very diﬀerent segments of government (elected, nonelected, and military).8 The three institutions receive distinctly diﬀerent levels of trust rating, they are organized under very diﬀerent principles, and they have undergone very diﬀerent challenges, events, and transformations at diﬀerent times within the observation period (data on the military are available for 1991, 1993, 1995, and 1996). In light of these diﬀerences, the convergence is truly remarkable. The convergence (especially between the trends of elected and nonelected government institutions) cannot be explained by any idiosyncratic explanation of the trends for individual segments, such as those based on institution-speciﬁc, segment-speciﬁc, or episodic factors, events, or transformations. If the common trends do not share a common logic, their convergence is purely coincidental. While convergence by chance is always a possibility, it does not seem to be a probable one. The most promising explanation, we believe, is one of those explanatory mechanisms that transcend the boundaries of government institutions, segments, and speciﬁc time periods (especially not tied to events and changes since 2000). An explanatory mechanism is all the more credible if it can also explain the decline of public trust in non-government institutions and in professionals. This is a tall order. We are not aware of any single hypothesis that can interpret all the declining trends without invoking chance as an explanation for the conspicuous convergence. For instance, any hypothesis that puts an emphasis on the change of regime in 2000 does not work well as a credible explanation. As reported earlier, the decline in political trust is evident even before 2000 (based on analysis restricted to the 1990s) and the legislature has always been under the control of the KMT throughout the observation period

8 Greater disaggregation may be warranted in future extensions of the analysis here, provided that for any speciﬁc analysis the analyst makes a well-justiﬁed tradeoﬀ between the details of disaggregation and the availability of comparable data over time. More direct tests of competing hypotheses should also be conducted when we have data containing the necessary contextual information and covering a suﬃciently long period of the democratic transition.

public trust in taiwan

25

of this study (1990–2003). In fact, the decline of trust in the military is evident by 1996. For the same reasons, the ﬁndings cannot be easily reconciled with macroeconomic stories such as the 1997 Asian ﬁnancial crisis, economic decline in the aftermath of the devastating 921 earthquake in 1999, or the loss of market conﬁdence when KMT lost its hold on the presidency and the executive branch since 2000. Conclusion Sociologists have long held that trust is pervasive and essential for social life. Politics and governance are no exception. Trust in government has also caught the attention of political scientists for a long time. Too much trust is dangerous for democracy, which demands a healthy degree of skepticism. Too little trust is costly for democratic governance, which cannot be eﬃcient with every actor suspicious of each other and unwilling to cooperate. Nevertheless, political trust is often used as an indicator of the health of a democracy. In this study, we contribute an empirical analysis of the evolution of political trust during the democratic transition of Taiwan. We adopt a methodological strategy that permits us to go well beyond nearly all previous studies of political trust. Our analysis pools survey data, analyzes ordinal trust data across a wide range of institutional and non-institutional targets, and statistically estimate the temporal trends of political trust. The central analytic task is to obtain a model-based scaling of trust and parametrically model the temporal trends of diﬀerent types of trust in Taiwan over the period from 1990–2003. Our objective is to oﬀer a set of baseline ﬁndings that should inform future theory construction, research design, data collection, and in-depth analysis of specialized issues of political trust. While Taiwanese data are relatively plentiful, we are limited by our focus on charting the temporal trend across the entire period of the democratic transition. This focus prevents us from conducting in-depth analyses that are much more demanding in the completeness of data over time. After all, the objective of this study is not about hypothesis testing. Nevertheless, our model-based scaling of trust ratings, aggregation of institutions, and speciﬁcation of temporal trends have produced two major new ﬁndings: (1) a remarkable convergence of temporal trends but not the levels of trust across very diﬀerent segments of the government, and (2) a broad decline of

26

tony tam and chang ly-yun

public trust that goes beyond government institutions and started before 2000. While future research is needed to determine the explanation for the trends of political trust in Taiwan, the ﬁndings have nontrivial implications for where the true explanation(s) is likely to be found. The implications are similar to what Pharr et al. (2000) draw from the ubiquitous and long-term decline of political trust in the Trilateral countries during the last half century. Pharr et al. (2000) notes the scope (institutional and physical locations) of the decline, relative proximity of the onset of the decline across countries, and the longterm (i.e. continuing, sustained) decline. They think the pattern strongly suggests that the decline cannot be due to any episodic event (riots of the 1960s, the 1973 oil crisis), so-called factors involving proper nouns (such as Nixon, Thatcher), cyclical factors (notably macroeconomic business cycles), or country-speciﬁc experiences. The continuing downward trend is particularly challenging. It signiﬁes a causal process that started a long time ago and actually strengthened over time. A convincing explanation for the Trilateral phenomenon must be able to accommodate this stylized fact. In a similar vein, we suggest that the explanation(s) for the Taiwan case is unlikely to be based on institution-speciﬁc, segment-speciﬁc, or episodic events, factors, or transformations. Since 1990, a relatively general explanatory mechanism is likely the engine of political trust in Taiwan. References Barber, Bernard. (1983). The Logic and Limits of Trust. NJ: Rutgers University Press. Bell, Daniel. (1960). The End of Ideology. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press. —— (1976). The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic Books. Braithwaite, Valerie and Margaret Levi, eds. 1998. Trust and Governance. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Chang, Ly-yun. (1997). “Trust and Distrust in Contemporary Taiwan.” (in Chinese) Pp. 295–332 in Taiwanese Society in 1990s, edited by L. Chang, Y. Lu, and F. Wang. Taipei: Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. —— (2000). “Institutional Trust and Its Behavioral Implications.” (in Chinese) Taiwanese Sociological Review 23:179–222. Chang, Ly-yun, and Tony Tam. 2005. “Discovering the Trends and Structures of Institutional Trust: The Pooled Ordinal Ratings Approach.” (in Chinese) Taiwanese Journal of Sociology 35: 75–126. Coleman, James S. (1990). The Foundation of Social Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cook, Karen, ed. (2001). Trust in Society. New York: Russell Sage. Crook, Stephen, Jan Pakulski, and Malcolm Waters. (1992). Postmodernization: Change in Advanced Industrial Society. London: Sage.

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Crozier, Michel, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki. (1975). The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission. New York: New York University Press. de Tocqueville, Alexis. ([1840]1990). Democracy in America. New York: Vintage. Deutsch, M. (1962). “Cooperation and Trust.” Pp. 275–320 in Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, edited by M. Jones. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Fukuyama, Francis. (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Maxwell Macmillan. —— (1995). Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. London: Hamish Hamilton. Glaeser, Edward L., David I. Laibson, José A. Scheinkman, and Christine L. Soutter. (2000). “Measuring Trust.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 115:811–46. Granovetter, Mark (1985). “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” American Journal of Sociology 91:481–510. Habermas, Jürgen. (1975). The Legitimation Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press. Hardin, Russell. (2000). “The Public Trust.” Pp. 31–51 in Disaﬀected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries?, edited by S. J. Pharr and R. D. Putnam. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. —— (2002). Trust and Trustworthiness. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. —— (2004). Distrust. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Huntington, Samuel P. (1975). “The Democratic Distemper.” Public Interest 41:9–38. —— (1991). The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Kaase, Max and Kenneth Newton, eds. (1995). Beliefs in Government. Vol. 5 of Beliefs in Government, edited by Kenneth Newton. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knack, Stephen and Philip Keefer. (1997). “Does Social Capital Have an Economy Payoﬀ ? A Cross-Country Investigation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112:1251–1288. Kornhauser, William. (1960). The Politics of Mass Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. La Porta, Rafael, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert W. Vishny. (1997). ‘‘Trust in Large Organizations.’’ American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, 87:333–338. Levi, Margaret and Laura Stoker. (2000). “Political Trust and Trustworthiness.” Annual Review of Political Science 3:475–507. Lipset, Seymour M. (1960). Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday. Lipset, Seymour M. and William Schneider. (1983). The Conﬁdence Gap. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Luhmann, Niklas. (1979). Trust and Power: Two Works. New York: John Wiley. Norris, Pippa, ed. (1999). Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. and Philip D. Zelikow. (1997). “Conclusion: Reﬂections, Conjectures, and Puzzles.” Pp. 253–281 in Why People Don’t Trust Government, edited by J. Nye, Jr., P. Zelikow, and D. King. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nye, Joseph S., Jr., Philip D. Zelikow, and David C. King, eds. (1997). Why People Don’t Trust Government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. O’Connor, James. (1973). The Fiscal Crisis of the State. New York: St Martin’s Press. Oﬀe, Claus. (1984). Contradictions of the Welfare State. London: Hutchinson. Paxton, Pamela. (1999). “Is Social Capital Declining in the United States? A Multiple Indicator Assessment.” American Journal of Sociology 105(1): 88–127. —— (2002). “Social Capital and Democracy: An Interdependent Relationship.” American Sociological Review 67:254–277. Pharr, Susan J., Robert D. Putnam, and R. J. Dalton. (2000). “A Quarter-Century of Declining Conﬁdence.” Journal of Democracy 11(2):5–25.

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Pharr, Susan J. and Robert D. Putnam, eds. (2000). Disaﬀected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Putnam Robert D. (1993). Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. —— (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Sheng, Emile Chihjen. (2003). “A Study of Taiwanese Democratic Value and Political Trust: A Comparison Before and After the Alternation of Power.” (in Chinese) Journal of Electorate Studies 10: 115–169. Tam, Tony. (2001). “Three Common Myths in Quantitative Social Research.” Taiwanese Journal of Sociology 26:251–282. Touraine, Alain. (1981). The Voice and the Eye: An Analysis of Social Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Appendix A. Data Sources

1990

TSIS

UNS

CATI/1,174

CATI/ 682 CATI/ 1,150 CATI/ 3,495 CATI/ 1,663

1991 1992

CATI/1,541

1993 1995 1996

CATI/ 978 CATI/ 572 CATI/ 1,513 CATI/ 1,920 CATI/ 1,656 CATI/ 869 CATI/ 702 CATI/ 667

1998 CATI/1,230 CATI/1,161 CATI/1,718 2003 SARS1/907 *SARS2/1,151 8,882

TSCS

Yearly Total

Face/2,476

5,482

Face/1,119 Face/2,325

5,615

Face/1,315

4,406

Face/1,661 Face/1,666 Face/2,041 Face/1,837

4,840 3,961 5,731

Face/1,874 Face/1,767 Face/1,873 CATI/1,072 Face/2,051 CATI/1,068

2000 2001 2002

Total

TSEFS

3,461 1,873 4,353 2,229 3,776

12,880

2,140

22,005

45,907

Note: Taiwan Social Image Surveys (TSIS), United News Surveys (UNS), and Taiwan Social Ethics Foundation Surveys (TSEFS) are periodic telephone interviews of representative samples of the population in Taiwan; Taiwan Social Change Surveys (TSCS) is periodic face-to-face interviews of representative samples based on the national household registration records. While telephone interviews tend to underrepresent individuals without a regular phone, face-to-face interview based on household registration under-represent individuals who, for work or other reasons, do not live in the household with which they are registered as residents.

Elected Elected Elected Elected

Non-elected Non-elected Non-elected Non-elected Non-elected Non-elected Non-elected Non-elected Non-elected Non-elected

Military

Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt

Oﬃce of the President Legislative Yuan National Assembly local councils

Executive Yuan Straits Exchange Foundation Judicial Yuan Examination Yuan Control Yuan courts Bureau of Investigation National Security Forces local governments tax agencies

Military

non-proﬁt organizations religious groups environmental advocacy groups farmer associations public medical centers public hospitals large hospitals private hospitals private clinics

Govt Govt Govt Govt Govt Govt Govt Govt Govt Govt

Govt Govt Govt Govt

Category

Object of Trust

x

x

x

x x

1990

x

x

x

x x

x

x x

x

x

x x x x

x

x x x

1991 1992

x x

x

x x

x

x

x

x x

x

x

x x

x x

1995

x

x

x x

x x

1993

Appendix B. Inventory of Institutions Covered

x x

x

x

x

x

x

x x

x x

x

x

x

x

x x x

x

x

x x

x x x

x

x x

x

x x

x

x

x

x x

1996 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003

public trust in taiwan 29

x

Generalized Others

generalized others

x

x

x

Professional Professional Professional Professional Professional Professional Professional Professional Professional Professional

legal oﬃcers Grand Justice judges lawyers experts professors teachers journalists physicians company CEO

x

x

x

x

x x

x

x

x x x

x x x

x x

x

Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt

x

x x x

1995

x x x

1993

x x

x

x x

x x x

1991 1992

Non-govt

Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt Non-govt

health care organizations newspapers TV stations radio stations magazines Post Oﬃce banks large ﬁrms small & medium ﬁrms

1990

Joint Entrance Examination System Multi-channel School Admission System advertisements product labels stock market

Category

Object of Trust

(cont.)

x

x x x

x

x

x x x

x x x

x

x

x x

x

x

x x

x x

x

x

x x

x x

x x x x x

x

x x x x x

x

x

x

x x

x

x

x x

x

1996 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003

30 tony tam and chang ly-yun

MATERIAL REWARDS TO MULTIPLE CAPITALS UNDER MARKET-SOCIALISM IN CHINA1 Deborah Davis, Bian Yan-jie and Wang Shaoguang Abstract Using data from a yearlong interview project with 400 couples in four Chinese cities, this essay evaluates the material rewards of multiple capitals in an increasingly marketized but still Communist political-economy. Overall we ﬁnd that when controlling for ﬁnancial and human capital, social capital operationalized as extensive social networks, political capital operationalized by positions of political authority rather than Communist party membership, and public sector employment independently improve a household’s material standard of living. Thus in contrast to previous work that focused on variation in individual wages or self-reported income, we document a reward structure of multiple capitals where public sector employment and social network resources provide material advantages beyond those generated by human capital or higher incomes. We also ﬁnd signiﬁcant inter-city variation that demonstrates the inadequacy of treating contemporary China as a single opportunity structure.

Introduction The return of capitalist institutions and the re-legitimation of private entrepreneurship in Eastern Europe and China during the 1980s fundamentally altered the reward structure in these previously socialist-redistributive economies. During the socialist era standardized wage schedules had compressed income diﬀerentials and subsidized housing and social services muted diﬀerentials in standard of living (Whyte and Parish 1984). Professionals and managers earned higher wages than blue-collar employees, but because many essential goods

1 An early draft of this paper was presented at the University of Toronto, January 8, and Yale University, January 17, 2002. The authors wish to thank Hui Niu for her assistance in preparing data ﬁles, Yu Li for his extensive help with all phases of data management and statistical analysis, and Bonnie Erickson and Pierre-Francois Landry for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Financial support for both data collection and analysis was provided by a grant from the United States-China Cooperative Research Program of the Henry Luce Foundation to the authors, and RGC grants to Bian Yan-jie from Hong Kong’s Universities Grants Committee (HKUST6052/98H, HKUST6007/00H) provided partial research assistant support for data analyses.

Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

32

deborah davis, bian yan-jie and wang shaoguang

and services were redistributed through the work place, the administrative rank of the employer often determined standards of living as directly as individual wages (Walder 1986, 1992; Logan and Bian 1993; Bian 1994). In addition, the politicized reward structure and the political monopoly of the Communist party gave party oﬃcials and even rank and ﬁle party members advantages independent of their income and workplace resources (Walder 1995; Oberschall 1996; Burawoy 1997; Lee 1999; Davis 2000a; Walder, Li, and Treiman 2000; Bian, Shu, and Logan 2001). During the ﬁrst decade of market reforms in Eastern Europe and China, some scholars hypothesized that greater reliance on markets would eliminate the positive return on political capital and even reduce income inequality between manual workers and political cadres (Szelényi 1988; Nee 1989). These “early optimists” assumed that the demise of state planning and the growth of markets would both spur economic growth and eliminate the ﬁnancial advantages of membership in the Communist party or managerial posts in government oﬃces and party agencies. Subsequent analysis, however, refuted such optimistic predictions and documented that under market reform income inequality steadily increased and, more surprisingly, that the “newly capitalist” economies rewarded past and current political positions independent of an individual’s education or seniority (RonaTas 1994; Wang and So 1994; Bian and Logan 1996; Parish and Michelson 1996; Xie and Hannum 1996; Silverman and Yanowitch 1997; Cook 1998; Gerber and Hout 1998; Khan and Riskin 1998; Maurer-Fazio, Rawski, and Zhang 1999; Zhou 2000). There are several explanations for the persistent ﬁnancial returns to political positions and Communist party membership even as the reward structures became more monetized and marketized. For example, some researchers found that political capital whether realized in current political positions or in dense social networks among previous members of the nomenclature systematically advantaged current and former Communist cadres because oﬃcials controlled the process of marketization to the personal beneﬁt of themselves and their families. In short, marketization allowed former oﬃcials to convert one form of capital into another (Hankiss 1990; Staniszkis 1991; RónaTas 1994; Mateju and Lim 1995; Parish and Michelson 1996; Szelényi and Kostello 1996; Walder 1996). Recently, Eyal, Szelényi, and Townley (1998) have argued that the key is continuity of reward structure. Based primarily on the

material rewards to multiple capitals

33

experience of Hungary, they hypothesize that former nomenclatura in Eastern Europe reaped disproportionate ﬁnancial gain after the demise of state socialism because both Communist bureaucracies and capitalist markets reward technical and cultural knowledge. Thus Eyal, Szelenyi, and Townley are neither surprised by the continuity between socialist and post-socialist reward structures nor willing to attribute the continuity primarily to corruption or asset stripping. However, in the case of urban China, where the Communist party still maintains an eﬀective political monopoly even as it sanctions wide ranging de-collectivization and privatization of the economy, the key questions are less about conversion of diﬀerent capitals in diﬀerent political regimes and more about estimating the relative importance of current political capital independent of the gains derived from such non-political capitals as advanced education, ﬁnancial assets, or extensive social networks. For example, do those who hold oﬃcial positions and can therefore draw on institutionalized political capital enjoy any distinctive material advantages over those without political authority? Is it the case that increased commodiﬁcation and privatization of the means of production have created an urban society where individuals and households without political position can rely on their non-political capitals to enjoy all the material success of the Chinese market-socialism? Is it possible, for example, that social capital accumulated through networks of personal connections or expert knowledge provides an alternative to political position? In this essay, using measures of household income, consumption scale, and size of home, we demonstrate that in the Chinese market-socialist economy of the late 1990s there is no single story about market rewards for human capital, or for any other single asset. Rather what we ﬁnd is that the best way to specify the underlying dynamics of the system is through a model of multiple capitals that explicitly and simultaneously compares the relative impact of ﬁnancial, human, social, and political capitals and measures of both self-reported income and material standard of living to calibrate the rewards of the new political-economy. Multiple Capitals as an Analytic Framework Bourdieu’s analytic framework of multiple capitals builds on the assumption that the social structure of an advanced capitalist society

34

deborah davis, bian yan-jie and wang shaoguang

is not simply a hierarchy determined by income and property ownership. Rather, it is a muddy “social space” in which multiple forms of capital deﬁne hierarchically and horizontally distinctive class positions. Although any asset, resource, or good that society values could be a capital (Bourdieu 1985), Bourdieu (1984: Figures 5 and 14) gives particular emphasis to the ways in which unequal distribution of cultural capital creates class speciﬁc consumption patterns and family habitus. In our analysis of urban China, we work within this paradigm by assuming that distinctive patterns of consumption identify socially recognized positions of advantage (or disadvantage) and that non-monetary capitals have an independent eﬀect, but we do not privilege cultural capital. Furthermore, in contrast to Bourdieu who theorized within the experiences of an urban, democratic capitalist economy, we work within the context of a low income, still Communist society. Thus while Bourdieu’s work on multiple capitals provides one analytic point of reference, we simultaneously draw from sociologists who deal more explicitly with political capital and variation at the level of macro-economic structures.2 One key referent is sociologist David Grusky who in his theory of multiple capitals generalizeable to all forms of human society includes political capital as a basic building block of stratiﬁcation systems across human history (2000:3–9). For Grusky each stratiﬁcation system values assets diﬀerentially and each therefore can be deﬁned by its principal form(s) of capital. Feudalism privileges economic capitals of land and labor, caste systems value honoriﬁc and cultural capitals of ethnic and religious purity, early industrial capitalist societies value ownership of productive properties, and advanced industrialism disproportionately rewards human capital of education and expertise. By contrast stratiﬁcation in state socialist systems is grounded in possession of political capital in forms of party and workplace authority. For Grusky, therefore, political capital, even when it is not the deﬁning capital, is always a potential source of diﬀerentiation and advantage. The empirical questions therefore are not whether or not political capital is relevant, but rather how a society deﬁnes political capital and to what extent political capital—alone or bun2

In Distinction, Bourdieu does devote one chapter to “political space” (1984: 397–465). However he restricts his discussion to an individual’s of sense of political eﬃcacy as expressed in patterns of response and non-responses to public opinion polls. In short, political capital is essentially reduced to another form of cultural capital.

material rewards to multiple capitals

35

dled with other capitals—shapes the distribution of societal rewards. To date, whether one builds on Bourdieu or Grusky, the impact of political capital has generally been assessed in comparison to economic and human capitals. Nevertheless, despite Grusky’s identiﬁcation of social capital as one of the distinct bundles, there has been almost no sustained comparison between the independent impact of social and political capitals. Yet in the case of contemporary urban China, this comparison is essential if we are to understand the dynamics by which individuals mobilize assets embedded in networks as well as those that ﬂow from high incomes, superior education, or positions of authority. Our emphasis on social and political capitals is also grounded in the speciﬁc circumstances of China’s experiment with market-socialism where both oﬃcial and unoﬃcial rules of the game have been in constant ﬂux for almost twenty years. To prosper in such an uncertain environment, residents must cultivate and maintain large, diverse, and resourceful networks not only strive to increase their income. For network theorists, essential resources and opportunities are embedded in the networks of social relations and can be obtained through diverse networks of strong and weak ties (Granovetter 1973, 1985; Lin 1982), through “structural holes” of sparse networks (Burt 1992), or in the Chinese context through guanxi networks of intimate and reciprocal connections (Fei 1949/1992; Fried 1953/1969; King 1985; Yang 1994; Bian 1997). Recently Lin (2001) has put social networks in the center of a theory of social capital, arguing that social capitalization is a process of network accessibility and mobilization of resources for instrumental and expressive gains. We argue that such a process is of particular signiﬁcance when a society is experiencing rapid structural and cultural changes and when bureaucratic politics and market institutions interplay in a co-evolutionary manner (see also Bian and Logan 1996; Parish and Michelson 1996; Zhou 2000). To get ahead in such a society, one must cultivate and maintain large, diverse personal networks to compensate for the normative and structural uncertainty and to gain access to goods and services that are not fully commoditized. Therefore, we contend that any explanatory model that seeks to capture the multi-dimensional processes of stratiﬁcation in contemporary urban China must incorporate measures of both social networks and political capital (see Lin [1999] for a review on stratiﬁcation research from a network perspective in western countries).

36

deborah davis, bian yan-jie and wang shaoguang The Four City Study of Urban Consumers

We now turn to analysis of data from a yearlong interview project with 400 urban couples conducted in four Chinese cities in 1998. We begin by describing the distribution of multiple capitals among the households and then estimate a series of regression models about the impacts of occupation, political authority, education, experience, and social capital embedded in social connections and mobilized resources. The couples in our study resided in four of China’s largest metropolitan areas: Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and Wuhan. Because of our interest in distinguishing the impact of political, human and social capitals among the managerial strata who no longer needed to work within the nomenclature, we drew a sample that over-represented households headed by managers and professionals. In each city the initial sample of 100 households included 20 households headed by oﬃcials above section level in government or party agencies, 20 households headed by managers above section chief, 20 households headed by professionals, 20 households headed by industrial or service workers, and 20 households of migrant labor from rural and other urban areas. In four neighborhoods of each city, the households were chosen by random selection from household registries that listed the occupation of the household head. Each household was visited four times at approximately 3-month intervals between January 1998 and January 1999 and both spouses were interviewed separately about their social activities and purchases for their family and home. In addition to these home interviews, each husband and wife was asked to complete two daily logs of social interactions: the ﬁrst during the spring festival (Chinese New Year) of 1998 and the second in May 1998. It was from the ﬁrst log that we created our measures of social network capital at the household level. The goal of this intensive and extensive series of household interviews was not to create a representative sample of all urban households, but rather to collect a detailed portrait of how households headed by diﬀerent segments of the managerial elite deﬁned their life style in distinction to each other and in comparison to their bluecollar neighbors and the self-employed. To capture some of the regional variation of contemporary China, we selected two cities which by 1998 had leapt ahead in terms of income and living standards—Shenzhen, a special economic developmental zone adjacent to Hong Kong and Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtze river—

material rewards to multiple capitals

37

and two that were closer to the national average—Tianjin in North China and Wuhan in the Central-south.3 Because the household registries used to draw the sample did not always provide an accurate listing of current employment and because the rapid growth of the non-state sector over the decade of the 1990s created higher levels of job mobility than household registries could capture, we relied on respondents’ descriptions of their 1998 job to reassign respondents to occupational categories. The results are 8 categories that correspond more accurately to coherent job conditions than the titles in the household registers (see Table 1). Table 1. Occupational Status of Husbands and Wives Husbands (N=385)

Service (N=44) Production (N=68) Small business owners/ Self-employed (N=38) Large business owners (N=7) Adm. Staﬀ (N=37) Professionals (N=88) Enterprise Managers (N=69) Government/party Oﬃcials (N=34)

%

(% in Private Sector)

11% 17%

(7%) (9%)

10%

(100%)

2% 10% 23%

(100%) (3%) (2%)

18%

(19%)

9%

(0%)

Wives (N=372)

Service (N=59) Production (N=67) Small business owners/ Self-employed (N=34) Large business owners (N=4) Adm. Staﬀ (N=65) Professionals (N=111) Enterprise Mangers (N=24) Government/party Oﬃcials (N=8)

%

(% in Private Sector)

16% 18%

(12%) (14%)

9%

(100%)

1% 17% 30%

(100%) (5%) (5%)

6.5%

(17%)

2%

(0%)

Service jobs: occupants of these jobs were unskilled or semi-skilled employees who provided a direct service such as retail clerks, repairman, cooks, janitors, and drivers. Production jobs: occupants of these jobs were blue collar manual laborers who worked in production. Small business owners/Self-employed: occupants of these jobs were self-employed service or production workers who did not employ others, and some were owners of household business who had few capital assets and also hired less than eight employees. In most Chinese surveys they are described as getihu. Large business owners: occupants of these jobs were owners of substantial capital assets, ran private businesses, and hired more than eight workers as wage labor. Administrative staﬀ: occupants of these jobs were oﬃce staﬀ and others who performed routine white collar tasks. Professionals: occupants of these jobs had specialized secondary or post-secondary jobs and performed non-routine white collar jobs but did not have supervisory positions above section chief. Enterprise Managers: occupants of these jobs held supervisory positions above section chief in an industrial or proﬁt making enterprise. Government or Party Oﬃcials: occupants of these jobs held supervisory positions above section chief in government or party agencies.

3 In 1998, per capita GDP in Shenzhen was 33,282 yuan, in Shanghai 28,240. By contrast in Tianjin it was 14,808 and Wuhan 13,957.

38

deborah davis, bian yan-jie and wang shaoguang

In line with the initial research design to focus on households headed by managers, professionals, and oﬃcials, male respondents were concentrated (49.5%) in managerial and professional positions; female respondents (all of whom were wives of male subjects) were well represented among professionals (30%) but less likely than men to be managers or oﬃcials (8.5%). However husbands and wives were equally as likely to be manual employees or to be small business owners/self-employed, and we therefore have substantial and coherent clusters of professional-managerial and working class households and a smaller cluster of small business owner/self-employed families. We examine several indicators of living standard that allow us to assess the relative return on various bundles of capitals. We look ﬁrst at income and then at a range of consumer items that by 1998 were sold widely throughout urban China but still represented an above average standard of living.4 Our third indicator is the size of the family residence as measured in square meters of usable space. Key Variables and Measures 1. Income was measured four times in our yearlong project and each time we exercised a diﬀerent measurement device in order to gain comparative validation and learn about over-time reliability in income reporting. In this analysis of multiple capitals we use the log of household income reported for 1997 as our sole measure of family income; other measures from our study are about incomes of household members.5

4 Through 1999, less than half of urban households owned each of the seven items that constituted our scale of consumption: 45% owned a hot water heater, 24% an air conditioner, 22% a VCR, 7% a phone, and 6% a personal computer. So few families owned a car or microwave that national surveys did not include them. Statistical Yearbook of China 2000, p. 318. 5 Fifty-six households failed to report total household 1997 yearly income. However, because we had reports of family members’ individual income through several interviews, we were able to estimate a household income value for each of these “missing” cases and merge these predicted values into the household income variable. Our estimation formula is: Predicted household income = 1115.418 + 0.670 * (husband income) + 0.448 * (wife income) + 14806.731 * (husband as manager) + 4.318 * (husband age square) – 5352.524 * (husband work in government) + 12993.115 * (Shanghai city) + 17298.744 * (Shenzhen city). Run on 354 households with valid information on household income and predictor variables, this equation resulted in an adjusted R square of 75.4%.

material rewards to multiple capitals

39

2. Household consumption is measured by a scale that indicates ownership or use of seven consumer items that prior to economic reform were rarely available for purchase and therefore indicated an elite life style. By 1998 all these items could be purchased in the four cities but were expensive and owned by only a minority. The seven items used to create the scale were ownership or personal use of home phone, car or taxi to work, home air-conditioner, home hot water heater, home VCR, home microwave, and home computer. 3. Size of home is the total space, measured in square meters, of the homes of households in our study. 4. Occupational class is, as described above, our chief sampling criterion and also a primary independent variable. Of the eight class categories we constructed from our data, government/party oﬃcial is used as the reference category in all multivariate analyses that follow.6 Because 100% of our oﬃcials were party members, it is appropriate to consider position as a government or party administrator/ manager to be a proxy for cadre status. 5. Human capital is deﬁned as completion of polytechnic or university degree. Although we collected much more elaborated data on education, this dichotomous variable gives us the explanatory rigor and simplicity needed in our analysis. When used as a household variable it ranges from 2 when both spouses are graduates to 0 when neither is a graduate. For the individual model it is a dichotomized variable where 1=graduate and 0=otherwise. 6. Political capital is measured by (1) membership in the Communist party and (2) current tenure and managerial/administrative post in a government or party agency. While positions of party and government authority are occupied by those with a long tenure in the Communist party, a large proportion of party members are never promoted into such positions and these ordinary party members’ political capital is simply the inﬂuence and connection that are rendered by their aﬃliation with the Communist party. 7. Social capital is an index constructed using the network measurement device of “position generator.” In original form, Lin (1999;

6

For a general sociological readership, we label “family business owners” ( getihu) as “small business owners” and label “private businesses owners” as “large business owners.” In the Chinese context, the former is oﬃcially recognized when they hire no more than eight employees, and the latter is registered as such when they pay wages to a labor force of eight or more workers.

40

deborah davis, bian yan-jie and wang shaoguang

Lin and Dumin 1986) relied on inventories of occupational positions in which individuals had kin or social contacts as a proxy for social resources they could subsequently access and mobilize in society. For urban China, we make two modiﬁcations in Lin’s original position generator index. First, to capture the dual character of resource allocations in the increasingly marketized urban economy, we weighed both ownership-type (state, collective, or private) and occupational diversity and prestige. Second, we restricted the time frame to one period of particular cultural signiﬁcance by asking respondents to name occupations only of those with whom they had contact during the Spring Festival of 1998. Speciﬁcally, respondents were asked to keep a log of all people (relatives, friends, other contacts) who came to greet them or telephoned to greet them on each of the ﬁrst ﬁve days of the Spring Festival. They then were asked to note whether any of these greeters came from a list of 20 occupations and 12 workplace sectors.7 Separately, these occupations and workplace sectors are ranged according to their prestige scores obtained from averaging respondents’ ratings of each of these positions. Thus, households vary in the occupational composition and workplace-sector composition of their greeters in terms of (1) number of occupations which their greeters are from and (2) total prestige scores of these occupations, and (3) number of workplace sectors in which their greeters work and (4) total prestige scores of these workplace sectors. Through a factor analysis, these four variables were used to construct an index (a factor score) that denotes the volume of occupational and workplace-sector resources each household may access and mobilize through their Spring Festival greeters. While detailed procedures used to calculate this social capital index are available elsewhere (Bian and Li 2000), in this study

7 The 20 occupations are: scientists, legal workers, sales and marketing managers, administrative clerks, cooks, physicians, nurses, drivers, accountants, police oﬃcers, engineers, elementary school teachers, middle school teachers, college and university teachers, industrial workers, government oﬃcials, party and mass-organization leaders, enterprise and public organization leaders, waiters and waitresses, and domestic workers. The 12 workplace sectors are: government agencies, state enterprises, state nonproﬁt organizations, collective enterprises, collective nonproﬁt organizations, household businesses, private companies, foreign ﬁrms, international joint ventures, share holding companies, domestic joint ventures, and private nonproﬁt organizations. See a detailed analysis of these position generators in Bian, Breiger, Davis, and Galaskiewicz (2005).

material rewards to multiple capitals

41

we use this index as a measure of social capital of the household on the assumption that all members of the household beneﬁt from having access to a wide range of contacts with potential of providing varying resources. Conversely we assume that households where visits and exchanges were with people from only a small subset of occupations or whose contacts were concentrated in low prestige occupations or sectors would be less able to access or mobilize as large networks of social capital. Inequalities by Occupational Class Table 2 describes mean values of or household distributions on the three dependent variables—household income, consumption scale, and house size—and key independent variables by the husband’s occupation. We have carried out the same analyses by using the wife’s occupation as the grouping criterion (not shown), but because the lower age of mandatory retirement for women and less variation among occupations of wives, we use husband’s occupation to identify the occupational class background of each household. In terms of yearly household income, families headed by managers stood at the top of the income ladder with average incomes of 64,800 yuan. With average incomes of 39,600, households headed by government and party oﬃcials stood far below managers and rather close to professionals and managers. Moreover, the absolute income advantage in mean income between managers and oﬃcials is twice as large as the diﬀerence between oﬃcials and lowest paid production workers (Table 2, line 1). Thus when viewed simply from the perspective of reported income, it appears that holding supervisory positions in government or party agencies provided no ﬁnancial advantage over the incumbents of professional or managerial positions in the urban economy of the late nineties. However, when we compare ownership of a range of luxury goods (Table 2, line 3), households headed by government and party oﬃcials emerge as equally privileged as the higher income managers and more comfortable than the wealthier business owners. When one compares size of home (Table 2, line 4) oﬃcials greatly surpass managers and are second only to the larger business owners.

42

deborah davis, bian yan-jie and wang shaoguang

Table 2. Distribution of Household and Individual Capitals by Husband’s Occupation Variables

Sample Service Production Small Large Admin. Professional Manager Government/ Statistics worker worker business business staﬀ party

owner/ owner Selfemployed Number of Households

N

Household 1997 Yearly Income Mean (in 1000 yuan) % Households in City’s Income % Top Quartile (a) Consumption Scale (0–7) (b) Mean

oﬃcial

44

68

38

7

37

88

69

34

27.1

27.0

23.7

52.8

31.3

35.6

64.8

39.6

10%

11%

19%

33%

16%

23%

51%

32%

3.15

3.10

2.21

4.57

4.05

4.32

4.79

4.79

Home Size in Squared Meter

Mean

34.9

36.7

30.8

73.4

50.4

49.3

48.1

59.1

% Households in City’s Home Size Top Quartile (a)

%

5%

7%

11%

43%

22%

32%

30%

44%

Husband’s Age

Mean

42.0

42.8

38.3

41.0

42.1

47.4

45.2

48.8

%

11%

9%

3%

14%

57%

77%

61%

91%

% Husbands with % Party Membership

20%

19%

8%

0%

43%

34%

62%

100%

% Husbands Work % in Private Sector

7%

9%

3%

2%

19%

0%

Household’s Social Capital Volume (c)

Mean

23.6

21.9

16.8

35.1

27.5

30.5

35.3

35.8

Household Size

Mean

3.3

3.1

3.7

3.7

3.4

3.4

3.5

3.6

% Husbands with College Diploma

100% 100%

(a) Incomes compared among households in the same city. (b) Ownership or use of any of these seven items gave one point on the scale: phone, car or taxi to work, home air-conditioner, home hot water heater, home VCR, home microwave, home computer. (c) An adjusted factor score whose values range from 1 to 100.

Income Inequality: A Multivariate Analysis Results from multiple regressions, as shown in Table 3, further reﬁne the story about income inequality and specify the relative contributions of diﬀerent assets in determining yearly income of households and husbands. Log-transformed income allows for assessing relative inequality between occupations and Model 1 shows, after controlling for city diﬀerences, households headed by small artisan business

material rewards to multiple capitals

43

owners ( getihu), service or production workers have signiﬁcantly lower incomes than for those headed by government oﬃcials. In relative terms, these households’ yearly income is about 59% to 56% (e–.528 to e–.575) lower than for households headed by government oﬃcials. City diﬀerences in household income are great as well: while Shenzhen’s household income is 28% (e.25) higher than Shanghai’s, households in Tianjin’s and Wuhan’s are only 44% (e–.827 and e–.823 respectively) of Shanghai’s. On the whole, income varies signiﬁcantly among diﬀerent occupations, and enormously among the four cities. Table 3. Unstandardized Coeﬃcients Estimated from OLS Regression for Log-Transformed Household’s, Husband’s, and Wife’s Yearly Incomes Dependent Variables (Ln) Household (Ln) Household (Ln) Husband (Ln) Wife And Yearly Income Yearly Income Yearly Income Yearly Income Models 1 2 3 4 Predictor Variables City dummy (Shanghai omitted) Tianjin Wuhan Shenzhen

–0.827*** –0.823*** 0.250**

–0.808*** –0.813*** 0.212*

–0.716*** –0.917*** 0.201

–0.472*** –0.785*** 0.327**

0.132 –0.528*** 0.214! –0.242! –0.178 –0.575*** –0.555***

0.026 –0.592** 0.255* –0.086 –0.151 –0.303! –0.308*

–0.387 –0.496 0.195 –0.125 –0.106 –0.516** –0.351

0.207 –0.305 0.232 –0.286 –0.138 –0.583! –0.498!

Husband/wife’s characteristics Age Age squared College diploma (=1) Party membership (=1) Work in private sector (=1)

0.013 0.000 0.272*** –0.043 0.373**

–0.018 0.000 0.199* –0.143 0.340*

–0.010 0.000 0.420*** –0.093 –0.029

Household’s characteristics Social capital volume Family size

–0.001 0.052!

Husband/wife’s occupation (government oﬃcial omitted) Large business owner Small business owner Enterprise manager Administrative staﬀ Professional Service worker Production worker

Constant Adjusted R square Number of cases

10.791*** .483 376

9.782*** .519 376

0.004 0.015 10.222*** 0.380 376

0.004 –0.028 9.875*** 0.334 342

! p=<.10 * p=<.05 ** p=<.01 *** p=<.001 for two-tailed tests. For models 1–3, husband’s occupation and characteristics are used as predictors. For model 4, wife’s occupation and characteristics are used as predictors.

44

deborah davis, bian yan-jie and wang shaoguang

After incorporating additional variables that capture the contribution of individual resources of the husband’s occupation, city diﬀerences remain signiﬁcant. Equally important, however, the full model conﬁrms that political capital, whether measured by party membership or by employment as an oﬃcial, generates no signiﬁcant income advantage for households headed by white-collar husbands. Rather, the highest incomes are reported by the households headed by enterprise managers. That is, regardless if the men work in the state or private sector, enterprise managers enjoy annual incomes 29% (e.255) higher than those of oﬃcials. But it is also true that once we check for occupation, the households headed by a college-educated husband in the private sector are the most ﬁnancially advantaged. Speciﬁcally, a husband’s college education raises household income 31% (e.272) higher than if the husband does not have a college education, and when the husband also works in the private sector, his household income will have an additional increase by 45% (e.373) than if the husband does not hold a private job. Thus in line with previous work on income inequality in post-reform urban China, we ﬁnd that when all else is equal, households headed by oﬃcials (the omitted reference group) do not have signiﬁcantly higher incomes than those headed by large business owners, professionals, or administrative staﬀ, but that they do have signiﬁcantly higher incomes than those headed by artisan business owners or manual workers in manufacturing or service jobs. Thus overall the key cleavage in household incomes is between white-collar and blue-collar jobs. In terms of the impact of social network resources, we found that, contrary to our initial expectations, social capital conferred no direct income advantage.8 In contrast to most previous analyses of income inequality in urban China, we focus on the income of the household rather than the 8 Moreover, when we tested for the conditionality of social capital as argued by others (see Portes 1998; Lin 2001), we also found no signiﬁcant result. That is, when we added to Model 2 of Table 3 both two-way and three-way interaction terms involving social capital, party membership, and college education, no interaction term is signiﬁcant. However, one noteworthy ﬁnding from this analysis is that most interaction terms are positive, but unfortunately the small coeﬃcients cannot overcome the large standard errors resulting from our relatively small sample size. What this preponderance of positive signs suggests is that social capital eﬀect, if any, might be higher for those households headed by husbands with a college diploma or a party membership, than for those households headed by husbands without either of these human and political capitals.

material rewards to multiple capitals

45

individual because we assume that households are the critical unit of consumption and that it is in the family habitus that individuals sustain their identities and social status. We also assume, as has been elaborated in the earlier discussion of the position generator index, that the household is central in the acquisition and activation of social capital. However to put our work in direct dialogue with previous studies that analyzed individual income, we also present estimates for husbands’ individual incomes although the adjusted R square for the household model is higher than that for husband’s models (see Table 3). Overall the husband model conﬁrms the patterns as revealed in the full household model, although in accord with the rank order in table 2 income diﬀerentials are not statistically signiﬁcant between government oﬃcials and most other occupational groups. All else being equal, male service workers are the only group that earns signiﬁcantly less than government oﬃcials. In the wife model, there is no signiﬁcant income variation by occupation. Rather the key to higher earnings for women is a college education: all else being equal, a college-educated woman will earn a 52% (e.420) higher income than her female counterpart without a college diploma. Inequalities of Consumption and Residential Space In multivariate analysis of income we followed the usual convention to rely on self-reported income as the primary index for assessing inequalities and advantage.9 And like others, we found that political capital oﬀered no consistent advantage. However in the case of urban China, exclusive reliance on self-reported income is a problematic metric not only because many respondents are reluctant to divulge their total incomes to an interviewer, but in China after 1949 access to many goods and services varied by occupational rank of the employee or the administrative rank of the employer (Walder 1992; Bian 1994).10 Thus in order to capture accurately the variation in

9 Nee and Cao (1999) identify 15 studies published between 1988 and 1999 on China and Eastern Europe, all but one—Szelényi’s 1988 article, use income as the primary dependent variable and party membership and education as the primary independent variables. 10 Other sociologists, most notably Zhou, Tuma, and Moen (1997) have questioned the validity of using income diﬀerences alone to assess the degree and dynamic

46

deborah davis, bian yan-jie and wang shaoguang

living standards—and by extension the class habitus of diﬀerent occupational segments of urban society—we turn from analysis of income to access to consumer items and living space. By focusing on consumption and the size of the home rather than self-reported income we gain in two dimensions. First, respondents rarely under-report their use or ownership of these goods and services and, second, all these items can be purchased on the market and thus are reliable indicators of purchasing power and advantage in a consumer society. Building on the results of the multivariate analysis of income, we examine ﬁrst whether managers and oﬃcials enjoy advantages over blue collar and service employees and second, the degree to which political and social capitals provide advantages independent of income eﬀects. To the extent that income determines consumption and size of home, we conclude that economic capital deﬁnes life styles. To the extent that non-income factors are signiﬁcant, we ﬁnd support for the argument that political and social capitals create material advantages independent of income. Determinants of Household Consumption Levels In Model 1 of Table 4 we estimate the impact of city and occupation, and as in our analysis of income, we ﬁnd that when we control for occupation of the husband, Shenzhen residents no longer enjoy a signiﬁcant advantage over Shanghai residents (our omitted group) but Shanghai households continue to enjoy a higher standard than those in Tianjin and Wuhan. Controlling for city, the disadvantage of the small business owners and manual production and service workers parallels that found in the analysis of income. However in contrast to determinants of income, where the large business owners and enterprise managers earned far more than party and government oﬃcials (the omitted group), when we look at ownership of consumer goods the oﬃcials emerge the winners against all other occupations, suggesting that in contemporary China political capital

of social stratiﬁcation, but in their own analysis income is privileged and using event history analysis of job shifts, they found that as of 1994 marketization had had relatively little eﬀect and they therefore concluded that there was “no evidence that stratiﬁcation mechanism in the reform era diﬀered from those in earlier eras’ (1997: 359).

material rewards to multiple capitals

47

has direct eﬀect on material awards that is independent of income. Model 2, where we add indicators of the key assets as well as household size, explicitly weighs the relative contribution of each “household capital” and tempers the initial claim for oﬃcial advantage across the board. Also noteworthy is that once we include husband and household characteristics, city variation decreases as it did not when we modeled income diﬀerences. Table 4. Unstandardized Coeﬃcients Estimated from OLS Regression for Log-Transformed Household Consumption Scale and House Size Dependent Variables

(Ln) Household Model 1

Consumption Model 2

(Ln) House Size Model 1 Model 2

Predictor Variables City dummy (Shanghai omitted) Tianjin Wuhan Shenzhen

–0.254*** –0.145* 0.085

–0.088 0.034 0.144*

0.299*** 0.784*** 0.939***

Husband’s occupation (government official omitted) Large business owner Small business owner Enterprise manager Administrative staﬀ Professional Service worker Production worker

–0.035 –0.691*** –0.027 –0.185! –0.097 –0.492*** –0.438***

0.218 –0.126 0.035 –0.057 –0.005 –0.209! –0.163

0.149 –0.663*** –0.166 –0.310* –0.140! –0.698*** –0.528***

Husband’s characteristics Age Age squared College diploma (=1) Party membership (=1) Work in private sector (=1)

0.098*** –0.001*** 0.095! –0.019 –0.184*

Household’s characteristics Household income Social capital volume Family size

0.003** –0.001

Constant R square with only household income as predictor Adjusted R square for model as shown Number of households

–2.545***

3.408***

.243 0.266 376

0.649* 0.191 –0.039 –0.077 –0.011 –0.229 –0.071 0.073*** –0.001** 0.202** –0.022 –0.316**

0.170***

1.808***

0.492*** 1.001*** 0.977***

0.391 376

! p=<.10 * p=<.05 ** p=<.01 *** p=<.001 for two-tailed tests.

0.225*** 0.004** 0.042! –1.405* .074

.399 376

.516 376

48

deborah davis, bian yan-jie and wang shaoguang

Controlling for income and all else, Model 2 indicates that in contrast to what we found when we modeled income, there are strong positive, but curvilinear eﬀects of seniority and negative eﬀects of being in the private sector. College education again gives a signiﬁcant positive advantage, but here social capital volume also adds an independent advantage. Family size, which had given a small boost to income, however, becomes insigniﬁcant. The husband’s Party membership as before has no eﬀect. We ﬁrst draw attention to the curvilinear return on age. We use age as a proxy for seniority on the job, a key asset in redistributive economies that allocate material rewards by years of job experience (Davis-Friedman 1985) but one which should be insigniﬁcant when all these consumer items are for sale. Yet, we ﬁnd that when all else is equal, households increase their ownership of the seven high-end consumer items by 10% (e.098) with every year of husbands’ age until approximately age ﬁfty. Figure 1 displays the tendency for consumer and housing gains to rise until age ﬁfty and then decline thereafter. We next focus on the negative coeﬃcients for husband’s work in the private sector which departs dramatically from the estimates in the income model where private sector employment signiﬁcantly boosted income, even among men with a college education. Here by contrast, one ﬁnds that all else being equal, households headed by a husband working in the private sector have a lower score on the consumption scale than those working the public sector. We interpret these coeﬃcients as conﬁrmation of our hypothesis that in China’s partially marketized urban economy, non-market channels continue to aﬀect the material standard of living. Finally, we note the inverse impact of household size and social capital between the models for income and consumption. In the model predicting household income, larger households had signiﬁcantly higher income, but the volume of their social capital as measured by the network of visitors and greeters during New Years had no signiﬁcant impact. In contrast when one looks at predictors for higher levels of household consumption, number of family members—and thus number of wage earners or dependents—becomes irrelevant whereas social capital signiﬁcantly boosts consumption even after holding constant all other sources of advantage. Thus once again our data conﬁrm an independent and positive return for non-economic capitals when one looks at rewards other than income or wages. Yearly income improves the likelihood of a

C O N S U M P T I O N

H O U S E H O L D

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

30

35

40

45

Figure 1.

Age

50

House Size (Meter square)

55

60

Household Consumption Scale (7 items)

65

70

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

S I Z E

H O U S E

material rewards to multiple capitals 49

50

deborah davis, bian yan-jie and wang shaoguang

family’s ability to enjoy a high level of consumption, but households headed by men with blue collar and service jobs are disadvantaged beyond the impact of lower incomes. Moreover when all else is equal, party and government oﬃcials (our omitted group), those working in the public sector, and those with higher levels of social capital have a signiﬁcant advantage. Thus in contrast to models that rely exclusively on self-reported income, a model that uses consumption levels as the dependent variable documents independent eﬀects for occupational class position, social and political capital. However, we also stress that party membership without a position of leadership fails to create either an income or consumption advantage. For political capital to signiﬁcantly improve the material standard of living, the party member must be in a supervisory position. Determinants of Residential Space In 1949 the new Communist government nationalized all urban land, and over the next three decades all new housing was publicly built and collectively owned (Wang and Murie 1999). A small minority remained homeowners, but the majority became public tenants, most of whom rented apartments built by enterprises or municipal real estate bureaus. Shelter was considered a welfare beneﬁt and was distributed primarily on the basis of workplace seniority. Rents were so low that they did not cover even maintenance. In 1979 as part of market reforms, the Chinese leadership ideologically embraced the beneﬁts of commercializing urban real estate and reducing the welfare obligations on employers (Lee 1995). However the ﬁrst outcome of reforms between 1979 and 1992 was the largest, public building boom in post-1949 Chinese history. In little more than a decade, the majority of non-migrant households moved into new rental accommodations and average per capita space nearly doubled (Davis 2003). Nevertheless, despite acceleration of market reform in other sectors, 80% of all new construction during the ﬁrst 12 years of market reform was rented as a workplace beneﬁt at below cost rates and the pathway to a new or larger home continued to be through enterprise housing oﬃces (Davis 1993; Bian et al. 1997). In the ﬁve years immediately prior to our interviews, city oﬃcials committed themselves to a rapid privatization of publicly owned apartments to sitting tenants and commercial builders began to gain parity with public

material rewards to multiple capitals

51

investments. But even when buildings were built by international developers for proﬁt, they oﬀered steep discounts to local oﬃcials and their families, and when sitting tenants bought their public ﬂats they too enjoyed compensation for job seniority and rank that reduced their payments to less than thirty percent of market rates. During the year we gathered data, all four cities were in the midst of further privatizing urban residential space. However for the majority of our respondents who had moved to their current home prior to the full marketization, the pathway to their homes—whether rented or purchased—was decisively shaped by non-ﬁnancial factors. Nevertheless, the market value of their homes by December of 1998 represented far and away their most valuable ﬁnancial assets. Model 1 and 2 for house size in Table 4, summarizes the relative impact of the various capitals on the size of current residence. Raw square footage is of course not a perfect measure of the quality and value of an urban residence, but during our year of ﬁeldwork, we found very few exceptions to the assumption that “bigger was better.” Overall the determinants of the size of the house were similar to those for predicting higher levels of consumption. City diﬀerences are important, but in contrast to all other models, when we look at house size Shanghai falls behind all three cities and Wuhan draws even with Shenzhen. In terms of occupation, we ﬁnd a particularly strong advantage for large business owners, an advantage that corresponds to the fact that none of these households had access to public apartments but all lived in the commercial, private sector dominated by large luxury ﬂats. When we check for city, occupation, and income and estimate the impact of the other key capitals, the outcomes parallel those in the analysis of the consumption index. Age has a curvilinear eﬀect on house size. Based on the positive coeﬃcient of age and the negative coeﬃcient of age square from Table 4, column 4, Figure 1 shows that house size increases with age but after the age of about 55 it decreases. Education increases house size considerably; as compared to a family whose husband has no college degree, the family whose husband has a college degree lives in a house that is 22% larger (e.202). Party membership independent of position as an oﬃcial has no eﬀect, while human and social capitals provide signiﬁcant advantage. Private sector employment creates an even greater disadvantage than for other forms of consumption and household size has a modest eﬀect in the expected, positive, direction. Thus in analysis

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of the determinants of the size of a family’s home, we ﬁnd again that when one uses consumption rather than self-reported income to measure inequality, political and social capitals create material advantages and distinctively shape the contemporary urban society in ways that models that argue for the decisive impact of one asset— for example human capital as represented by advanced education— cannot. Importance of Social Capital The positive returns to social capital in the consumption and house size models provide strong empirical evidence for the importance of social network resources in creating a household’s lifestyle. Statistically signiﬁcant in both equations (coeﬃcients of .003 and .004 respectively), our social capital variable is an adjusted factor score, ranging from 1 to 100. Thus, an increase of ten points on this scale of social capital is a small increment margin, but one that would generate an increase of household consumption by 3% (e.003 × 10) and an increase of house size by 4% (e.004 × 10). An increment of 50 points in social capital, or a contrast between an industrial worker’s family having a social capital volume of 30 points and a manager’s family having 80 social capital points, will increase household consumption by 16% (e.003 × 50) and house size by 22% (e.004 × 50). Thus, overall social capital creates a strong positive advantage in creating living standards in Chinese cities. How would social networks and social capital increase a household’s consumption level or home size beyond the limit of household income when these items are purchased on the market? We believe there are several underlying processes. Obviously in a market economy with serious problems of information asymmetries a diverse social network would channel useful and suﬃcient information more timely and more eﬃciently (Granovetter 1973; Burt 2001; Lin 2001), allowing consumers to purchase items they wanted when they prove to be a best buy. In a persistent guanxi culture of China (Yang 1994), it is also possible that one receives ﬁnancial assistance from relatives and friends for purposes of purchasing homes or durable household items. Our data do not allow us to distinguish which of these underlying processes are at work, but they do point to a signiﬁcant dimension of our analysis: income alone is not the sole

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predictor of a Chinese household’s material well-being; social as well as political capitals are also decisive. Overall, the consumption and house size models have good explanatory power, evident in the high adjusted R square values (a reduced or explained variation of 39.1% for consumption and that of 51.6% for house size). Household income alone reduces variation in consumption by 24.3% and in house size by 7.4%; all else is due to non-income predictors, including occupational positions, human capital, and social capital. Discussion: Market Transition and Multiple Capitals in Urban China During the high tide of state planning, urban China was one of the most egalitarian societies in the world and income and life styles diﬀerentials were muted (Whyte and Parish 1984; Walder 1986; Davis 2000b). During the ﬁrst decade of market reforms in the 1980s, this pattern of relative income equality persisted, and in at least one city (Tianjin) income inequality decreased when initial wage increases went ﬁrst to those with lowest wages and enterprise level bonuses were distributed according to egalitarian principles (Walder 1990). As marketization intensiﬁed during the 1990s and administrative control over income weakened, positive ﬁnancial returns to political capital—both to party membership and oﬃcial posts—appeared to decline or disappear and individuals reported more control over their job choices and wages. Thus it seemed logical to presume that as markets matured, human capital would drive patterns of urban inequality and socioeconomic stratiﬁcation. However our comparison of determinants of income and consumption patterns cautions against adopting explanatory models that rely exclusively on reports of individual earnings or income or that ignore the role of institutionalized or socially networked resources. We also want to stress that positive returns on institutionalized and social assets are not primarily evidence to support arguments about the importance of path dependence (Stark 1986; Parish and Michelson 1996; Buroway 1997). Rather these data conﬁrm the independent returns on political and social capital in the contemporary period. Going beyond self-reported income to examine variation in living standards or patterns of sociability, we found that institutional capitals

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accessed via political position, job seniority, or public sector jobs provided substantial advantages. In addition when we simultaneously checked for the impact of social capital accessed by personal social networks, the return on political capital remained signiﬁcant and oﬃcials emerged as a class with a distinctive life style. Because analysis of pre-reform urban China could not control for the same range of capitals as we have, it is not possible to measure the degree of change. Nor is there yet an established literature on how marketization in the context of a still strong Leninist party creates or sustains occupationally speciﬁc habitus of life style. With the exception of ethnographic accounts such as those by C. K. Lee (1999, 2000) that emphasize the multiple losses of production workers, social scientists have only begun to investigate distinctive class positions in the hybrid political-economy of market-socialist production and consumption. The new urban economy of the late 1990s transformed the wage structure for urban residents to the advantage of enterprise managers and the disadvantage of production workers and local oﬃcials (Groves et al. 1995; Maurer-Fazio 1999; Sheehan 2000). Aggregate trends also document declining wages in the state sector in contrast to those working in the private sector. However, looking beyond aggregate income diﬀerences, the story becomes more complex. After checking for human, political, and social capitals, private sector employment becomes a liability, and a current post as a party or government oﬃcial still confers some advantages. Our data also document signiﬁcant inter-city variation that speaks not only to the importance of regional variations in wealth but also to the ways in which returns on diﬀerent bundles of capital can be regionalized. Thus generalization about urban China, not to mention all of China, may misrepresent or mis-specify the social consequences of market transitions. To capture these more complex outcomes, outcomes that identify the social segmentation of urban reality, researchers need to build explanatory models that include the full range of capitals. In an increasingly marketized but still Communist political-economy, a model of multiple capitals most accurately captures the complexity of the reward structure.

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BODY DISABLED? RETHINKING DISABILITY AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION IN HONG KONG* Agnes S. M. Ku and Jenifer P. Y. Tam Abstract This article aims to decipher the changing meanings of impairment and disability in Hong Kong in comparative light. It examines the ideological and institutionalised underpinnings embedded in government policy and NGO services from the early colonial days to the present time, through the interplay between culture and institution, between the state and society, and between the local context and international inﬂuences. To a large extent, a thin conception of social integration is at work within a conﬁned dichotomous framework of “separation from” versus “integration into” the mainstream. Apart from the issue of segregation versus integration, what concerns us here is the speciﬁc mode of social integration. The issue of integration is bound up with the questions of inclusion (versus assimilation), social structure, normality, marginality, productivity/performance, equality and diversity that need to be further unpacked. The domains of special education and employment, among others, are quite illustrative of such mixed and changing conceptions and practices in rehabilitation services by the government and the NGOs.

Introduction In Hong Kong, disability has remained an underdeveloped area of study in sociology or any other social science disciplines. This article presents a preliminary eﬀort to review the institutionalized meanings of impairment and disability in our society from a sociological perspective. It will look into their changing ideological and social underpinnings as they are embedded in government policy and NGO services from the early colonial days to the present time, through the interplay between ideology and institution, between the state and society, and between the local context and international inﬂuences. In this article, we seek to argue that notwithstanding the rise of a social model of disability in academic discussion since the late 1970s, much of the current policy and practice in Hong Kong is still underpinned by a thin conception of social integration within a conﬁned

* This article is generated from a research project that is supported by the Research Grants Council in Hong Kong. Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

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dichotomous framework of “separation from” versus “integration into” the mainstream. This reﬂects an essentially individualistic model that stresses a strategy of personal detachment from or adjustment to the existing (hegemonic) norm that privileges the mainstream. Apart from the issue of segregation versus integration, what concerns us here is the speciﬁc mode of social integration that is at work—is it assimilation or inclusion? Since the 1990s, more eﬀorts have been made to create greater opportunities for social integration and economic participation for the disabled persons under the worldwide idea of anti-discrimination. While they point to a new mode of thinking that is more akin to the social model of disability, the idea of anti-discrimination has its origin in the civil rights tradition in the US that emphasizes individual rights. As we will show, the issue of integration remains bound up with the questions of social structure, normality, marginality, productivity/performance, equality and diversity that need to be further unpacked. The domains of special education and employment, among others, are quite illustrative of such mixed and changing conceptions and practices in rehabilitation services by the government and the NGOs. The article is divided into four sections. The ﬁrst section will brieﬂy review the theoretical shift from the conventional medical model to the social model of disability in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s as well as the recent debates generated around the latter. It will also discuss the anti-discrimination approach that informs recent policy development in the world. The second section will take on the discussion in the context of Hong Kong in some comparative light. It will decipher the ideological underpinnings underneath the discourse of social integration that began to arise around the 1970s. The third and fourth sections will look speciﬁcally into the two domains of employment and education respectively, with implications for a fuller sociological explanation of the question of disability and social integration that takes into account various social and cultural factors pertinent to speciﬁc social settings. The Social Model of Disability as a Basis of Critique From a sociological point of view, any clear dividing line between the biological and the social has always remained artiﬁcial. In the 1970s and 1980s, the ascendancy of the disabled people’s movement

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in the UK gave birth to a new social model of disability, which marked a critical departure from the previous medical or individualistic approach to disability. The conventional model of disability was premised on a medical conception that, given its individualistic assumption, considered disability as a question of individual pathology or tragedy. It saw disabled people as “the problem,” and placed responsibility on them to adapt to ﬁt in within mainstream society. This model obliterated any causal link between social barriers and disability. In reaction to this approach, the Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation (UPIAS), founded by Finkelstein and Hunt in 1974, deﬁned disability as being socially caused and it spearheaded a collective struggle to change the social environment: Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society. Disabled people are therefore an oppressed group in society (UPIAS, 1976).

Sociologist Mike Oliver took up the ideas of UPIAS and encapsulated them in “the social model of disability.” The social model deﬁnes disability as an outcome of social oppression and exclusion (Campbell and Oliver 1996). Within this school of thought, Finkelstein (1980) oﬀers a historical materialist analysis of the interplay of the market economy with technological development, whereas Oliver (1990) focuses on the ideological and cultural production of disablement through such processes as medicalization and professionalization. Although impairment is seen as a prerequisite of disability (Finkelstein, 2001), at the heart of the social model is a conceptual uncoupling of any causal relationship between impairment and disability.1 With the rise of the social model, the debates shift to a socio-political approach that reconceptualizes disability as a complex form of social oppression. This social model shifts the analytical focus from the individuals and their impairments to the disabling environments and discriminatory social attitudes (Barnes 1991; Barton 1989; Oliver 1986, 1990). This opens up the question of transformation of social structures, institutions and cultures. 1 “Impairment is the functional limitation within the individual caused by physical, mental or sensory impairment. Disability is the loss or limitation of opportunities to take part in the normal life of the community on an equal level with others due to physical and social barriers” (Barnes, 1991, p. 2).

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The social model carries radical and emancipatory implications. It suggests that the naturalistic category “disability” is an artiﬁcial and exclusionary social construction of people with physical impairments. It advocates that responsibility for that exclusion lies in the normalizing society that maintains a rigid distinction between the normal body and the defective body in modern society (Foucault, 1991). This has far-reaching implications for an inclusionary, nonassimilationist approach to social integration, an issue that we will return to in later discussion. In recent years, the social model has nonetheless been criticized—by postmodernist and feminist (disabled) scholars alike—for playing down the signiﬁcance of the real disabling eﬀects of certain impairments (Crow 1996; Hughes and Paterson 1997; Hughes 2000), and for creating totalizing narratives that exclude important dimensions of disabled people’s lives and knowledge (Corker and Shakespeare 2002). While these criticisms are all well justiﬁed, a social model that destabilizes the deep-rooted assumption in the conventional medical model still continues to inform academic theorizing and movement strategies in signiﬁcant ways (Thomas 2004; Corker and Shakespeare 2002). In the UK, at the same time that the disabled people’s movement gathered momentum among the activists, a small group of politicians began to table the equal opportunities initiatives on the political agenda in several Labor-controlled city councils (Leach 1996). Over the last several decades, development in policy formulation has seen a shift from the approach of segregation to such new ideas as social integration, equal opportunities and anti-discrimination. The US, with a long drawn-out campaign for civil rights commencing in the 1960s, has emerged as a leader in the anti-discrimination approach to disability policy with the adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), which was modeled loosely on the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964. It has made signiﬁcant impact in anti-discrimination legislations in diﬀerent parts of the globe, though the actual implementation of the laws varies from place to place (Lightfoot 2002). In the UK, for instance, the anti-discrimination approach to disability began to ﬁnd its way in the UK Parliament by the AllParty Disablement Group in the 1980s. Several attempts to introduce such legislation nonetheless failed repeatedly throughout the 1980s until 1995 when the Disability Discrimination Act was ﬁnally passed, which was followed by the setting up of the National Disability Council (later replaced by the Disability Rights Commission in 1999).

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The Act shows recognition of the legal rights of the disabled including the right of non-discrimination in employment, and the right of access to goods, facilities and services. To a certain extent, the new legislations signal the achievement of the social model of disability in admitting to the role of the social and physical environment in policy making (Drake 1999). However, as Hahn (2001) points out, the legislative approach adopted in the US judicial system basically conceives issues of civil rights within the conventional, individualistic framework of functional limitations rather than a “minority group” paradigm of disability.2 In this regard, unless the civil rights approach is consolidated with a multi-leveled analysis that can bring to light the structural, institutional and ideological implications of (a non-totalistic version of ) the social model, its eﬀectiveness is still an open question. It is nonetheless not the aim of this article to look into such debates; rather, we seek to show that in Hong Kong, despite the new discursive developments in policy terms, the disability question has been underpinned largely by an individualistic or quasi-individualistic approach that emphasizes personal adaptation or individual empowerment. The social model, despite its deﬁciencies, therefore remains critically relevant as a theoretical basis of critique. Ideologies and State-Society Relations in Hong Kong: Introducing a Discourse of “Integrating into the Mainstream” in Policy Thinking From a sociological point of view, policy thinking is a product of the interplay between ideological and institutional forces on various levels of state-society relations. In Hong Kong, prior to the Second World War, the colonial government mainly relied on the voluntary sector for educational and welfare provision in society under a laissezfaire policy, whereas the missionary and welfare groups were oriented

2 As Hahn (2001) explains, the minority group model “examines the parallels between people with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups” (p. 74) and it can be employed “to promote political mobilization that might eventually contribute to the growth of a disability constituency that could supplement the quest for civil rights with the exercise of signiﬁcant political inﬂuence in the democratic process” (p. 74).

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to a residual approach in taking care of the educational and welfare needs of the disabled people. In the post-war decades, especially after the mass riots in the mid 1960s, the government was awakened to the need to provide more social services and expand education for the general populace so as to increase its legitimacy as well as stabilize the society. It was against this background, as well as under the sway of local activism and increasing international concerns about the disability issue, that the government began to expand educational and welfare services for the disabled people. The 1970s, in particular, marked some milestone development toward the idea of social integration in policy thinking. However, such changes took place within a limited institutional and ideological framework of charity welfare and paternalism. The 1990s further witnessed the rise, both locally and globally, of a discourse of civil society that provided new parameters for deﬁning state-society relations around such ideas as rights, equality and democracy (Ku 2004). This, amongst other factors, helped bring about new developments in law, social policy and NGO initiatives in the area of disability to some extent, while the institutional and cultural legacies continued to make their impact. In the following discussion, we will see how policy thinking on disability in Hong Kong shows a stitching together of diﬀerent patches of ideas under the old conception of personal deﬁciency and the new international discourse of equality within a bureaucratic political structure that allows for little policy access among the disabled groups and individuals. On the institutional level, the idea of policy access is concerned with the degree to which the policymaking machineries provide opportunities for advocacy organizations, activists and stakeholders to exert inﬂuence on government policies in speciﬁc areas (Mazur and Stetson 1995). The question that concerns us here is, does the institutional structure provide the disabled with opportunities to contribute their policy inputs? The situation in Hong Kong can be characterized as ultra low policy access in comparative lights. For long, the political structure of Hong Kong had been one of bureaucratic dominance by government oﬃcials within a colonial, elitist and capitalist system (Lau, 1983; Ku 2001). Until today, economic concerns, eﬃciency considerations and professionalism have dominated policy thinking, while the legislature remains only partially democratically elected without full accountability to the people. This is contrasted to places like Britain where democratic politics entail a much higher degree

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of public accountability under the competing inﬂuences of the Labor Party and the Conservative Party, and to Australia where policy entrepreneurs include people who are themselves disabled3 (Lightfoot 2002). Activism by disabled groups (e.g. Hong Kong Blind Union and Rehabilitation Alliance Hong Kong) has indeed played a prominent role in campaigning for neglected rights and in pioneering new projects and developments on some issues, but activism of this kind is comparatively much weaker in Hong Kong than in the UK or the US. As a corollary, policy thinking on disability remains circumscribed within a paternalistic system by a group of administrative and professional bureaucrats who are habituated to economic and eﬃciency concerns, who are little informed by the social model in the West, and who probably have little awareness about the needs and life experiences of the disabled people. Thus despite attempts at social reforms, which were primarily driven by international inﬂuences, the eﬀorts of individual legislators and limited activism, the government has largely adopted a kind of “take it or leave it” approach which allows for little participation among the disabled people, their family, and the community (Hung 1994). On the ideological level, the policy discourse around disability has undergone some changes over the years. It shifted from a welfare medical model of segregation in the early days to a limited community-based conception of social integration by the 1970s and further developed to incorporate a human rights emphasis on equality and anti-discrimination around the 1990s. Nevertheless, as we shall see below, the policy discourse has been entrenched within a hegemonic conception of normality that privileges the “non-defective” body in the mainstream in diﬀerent degrees. The earlier welfare and medical discourse treated physical handicaps or impairments as one or more conditions inherent in an individual’s body that limit his or her participation in the normal activities

3 In Australia, policy entrepreneurs at the federal level were almost entirely responsible for all aspects of the adoption of the anti-discrimination legislation. The development of the legislation grew out of a broader governmental interest in employment reforms and international moves towards national anti-discrimination legislation under the Labor government of the 1980s. While disability groups were virtually uninvolved in the process of pushing for anti-discrimination legislation, some of the federal-level policy entrepreneurs were people with disabilities themselves who had been active in the movement.

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of society. Taking social norms as given, it did not identify the social causes of disability in the larger social and cultural environment that deﬁnes and constructs disability as such. That is, it failed to see how disability is in part a result of the creation of social barriers and disadvantages for people with certain impairments. A version of this way of thinking stresses the society’s obligation to facilitate the disabled citizens to adjust to the society through certain rehabilitation programs. In Hong Kong, this way of thinking was very much shown in the early philanthropic activities of the missionary groups in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which had remained the main provider of rehabilitation services in society before the 1970s. These early rehabilitation services were primarily medical in nature (with some elementary educational and relief services),4 and the overriding principle was sheltered protection with an emphasis on assisting and protecting the disabled from being exploited and harmed (Hung 1994). The years after the second world war saw the beginning of some scattered initiatives by the government under the Special Welfare Section of the Social Welfare Department established in 1953, which reﬂected a similar approach to rehabilitation services. The services included such remedial measures as relief camps in the 1950s (followed by the establishment of the rehabilitation centers since the 1960s), and clubs that substituted proper schools in teaching simple reading, writing, and arithmetic skills and proper social behavior. The 1960s saw the development of a budding idea of community approach in social policy towards the disabled people. In rhetorical terms, the government showed a growing recognition of the importance of getting the disabled in touch with the community as a key step to rehabilitation. Services were expanded in diﬀerent areas including special education, additional day care, residential centers, sheltered workshops as well as social and recreation clubs. However, until the 1970s, the disabled were practically isolated from the rest of the community (Goodstadt 1977). Underlying the residual and

4 Medical rehabilitation services were provided in hospitals and clinics for patients in need. The ﬁrst home for the blind was established in 1863 by the Canossian sisters; the ﬁrst school for the deaf was built by local missionaries in 1935. A camp was set up to provide temporary accommodation and relief for the disabled three years later.

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limited measures was the principal idea of individual adjustment and training, through the provision of health and social programs, rather than social integration or social transformation. For example, in 1974, the government worked out the speciﬁc goals of rehabilitation as follows: to apply treatment to help individuals to adjust to their disabilities, provide vocational training to encourage them to make the fullest possible use of the residual skills, and help their restoration to society through appropriate training or placement in remunerative employment. The idea of residual skills reﬂects an essentialist conception that sees the disabled people as inherently having limited capabilities rather than as having diﬀerent abilities and disabilities. The decades since the 1970s marked the rise of new ideas and discourses regarding disability in the midst of a rising international movement for the disabled people, which was crystallized ﬁrst in the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons (1976). This began to bring about a policy change from segregation to social integration in some societies in the late 1970s. In Hong Kong, the impact of such international inﬂuence was registered in the publication of the ﬁrst policy paper on rehabilitation. It came to fruition under the joint eﬀorts of the government and NGOs, such as the Joint Council for the Physically and Mentally Disabled within the Hong Kong Council of Social Service. The White Paper of 1977 contained an explicit reference to the idea of social integration in the title as its major objective: “Integrating the Disabled into the Community: A United Eﬀort.” On the whole, the objectives of the policy paper showed a broadened conception of rehabilitation that included physical, mental, and social development and community integration, and services were expanded along the lines. Since then, rehabilitation policy has been separated from other areas of social welfare, and is recognized as a speciﬁc concern that requires the concerted eﬀorts of diﬀerent government departments and multi-disciplinary professionals (Ngai 1995). On the surface, under the new idea of social integration, the disabled people were no longer considered as passive recipients of welfare but potential contributors to the community, with a recognition of the value of their physical, mental and social strengths, and their potentials for community integration. However, on a deeper level of ideological analysis, the idea of social integration remained bounded within a prevailing discourse of normality that was entrenched within the existing institutional structure. The deﬁnition of disability was

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premised on a dichotomized model of the normal body versus the defective body with the aim of “restoring a disabled person, whether the disability is congenital or sustained through sickness or injuries in civil, industrial accidents or war, to a condition in which he is able, as early as possible, to lead a normal life’” (Green Paper 1976: 1), or providing “such comprehensive rehabilitation services as are necessary to enable disabled persons to develop their physical, mental, and social capabilities to the fullest extent which their disabilities permit” (White Paper 1977). The use of the word “disabilities” in the clause of “which their disabilities permit” seems to be suggestive of an essentialistic deﬁnition of disability which takes a “defective” physical body as a pre-given condition. (Conversely, the word of “abilities” would suggest diﬀerential abilities rather than bodily deﬁciencies.) Moreover, without questioning or rethinking what the “normal” is, and without suggesting ways of changing the existing institutional structures, the new policy discourse still fell short of envisioning a transformed system that could accommodate bodily diﬀerences on an equal footing. During the 1980s, it was along the line of preparation for or transition to social integration into the mainstream that certain pilot schemes and new services were introduced, for example, community residence service and activity centre. The 1990s marked a further discursive development from the idea of social integration toward equal opportunities and anti-discrimination worldwide. In Hong Kong, both international inﬂuences and local politics were at work in bringing about a similar shift in policy development. Locally, the society underwent a process of increasing politicization in the context of the “1997” issue during the political transition. The debate on the issues of rights and equality escalated as a result of the June Fourth Incident in 1989, followed by the passage of the Bill of Rights Ordinance in 1991 and the enactment of three anti-discrimination ordinances (including disability) as well as the establishment of the Equal Opportunities Commission a few years later. The latter was the outcome of the eﬀorts of individual legislators (e.g. Wu Hung Yuk) amidst a more favorable political climate.5

5 More speciﬁcally, the anti-discrimination against disability bill was included in response to a series of incidents showing community prejudice against the disabled in the early years of the nineties. Examples included the local residents’ resistance against the establishment of a hostel for the severely mentally handicapped in the Tung Tau Estate, and of the Laguna City Day Activity Centre for the ex-mentally ill patients in Lam Tin.

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On the international front, a discourse of civil and human rights was on the rise that encapsulated the disability issue and other social issues within the new discourse. For example, the United Nations declared the years 1982–93 as the United Nations Decade of Disabled Persons. The World Program of Action Concerning the Disabled Persons stipulated the concrete objectives to promote the well-being of people with disabilities which were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1992: “to promote eﬀective measures for the prevention of disability, for rehabilitation and for the realization of the goals of full participation and equalization of opportunities.” Following the same rhetoric, the Hong Kong government published the Green Paper on “Equal Opportunities and Full Participation: A Better Tomorrow For All” in 1992, and the White Paper under the same title in 1995. As compared to the 1970s, the themes in the new policy paper were further broadened to include the ideas of full participation and equal opportunities. Rehabilitation exhausted a more comprehensive scope of services to cover new issues such as access and transport, public education, sports and cultural activities. A concept of communitybased rehabilitation was highlighted with particular reference to the idea of equalization of opportunities. The White Paper, for example, recognized that mobility and adequate access are necessary for achieving the objectives of equalization of opportunities and full participation, and that people with disabilities should be given equal opportunities to enjoy and exercise the same basic rights as other members of the community. The idea of social integration is signiﬁcantly reﬁned to include recognition of the need to create a more barrier-free and discrimination-free environment. This, however, shows more the eﬀects of a rising discourse of anti-discrimination rather than a renewed conception of disability that understands it as an outcome of social exclusion and oppression. In large measure, an individualistic assumption that stresses physical impairment as well as personal adjustment and changes remains at the heart of policy thinking: rehabilitation was deﬁned as “a goal-oriented and time-limited process aimed at enabling an impaired person to reach an optimum mental, physical and/or social functional level, thus providing her or him with the tools to change her or his own life” (Green Paper 1992: 7). Underlying the policy paper is a concept of normalization that seeks to provide the disabled people with the opportunities to obtain and maintain an existence as close to normal as possible (see Stratfrod and Tse 1989).

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Over the past two decades of development, the aims of rehabilitation, while being broadened to include the ideas of equal opportunities and full participation, have been delineated within a hegemonic discourse of the normal body as opposed to the defective or abnormal body. As we can see from the brief account of development in education and employment services below, much of the rehabilitation policy and practice is underpinned by a thin conception of social integration within a conﬁned dichotomous framework of “separation from” versus “integration into” the mainstream. A deeper look into the developments and pilot projects in these two speciﬁc areas can also point towards ways of substantiating a sociological theory of disability that takes into account more speciﬁc social factors such as the role of ideas, the way of government, institutional restraints, civil society initiatives, constraints and opportunities under the market economy, everyday experiences in schooling and employment, and varied forms of abilities and disabilities. Special Education: Normal versus Defective Bodies? Prior to the Second World War, the missionary and welfare groups were oriented to a residual approach in taking care of the educational needs of the sensory impaired (for example, the blind and the deaf ). In the early years after the War, the government made some initiatives on educational services for the disabled children, but the overall policy framework remained residual and welfare-oriented (e.g. recreational centres, training centres and social clubs) under the Social Welfare Department. The 1960s saw the government making more eﬀorts in special education, for example, the setting up of the Special School Section under the Education Department in 1960, and the publication of the Hillgard Report on education and mental handicaps in 1962. The ﬁrst government policy paper on disability in 1977 began to stress the need of rehabilitation. The adoption of compulsory education in 1978 further broadened the scope of children with learning diﬃculties (such as the mentally handicapped). However, over the years, the policy had been one of segregation rather than integration, with a separate educational system running alongside mainstream schooling.6 6

For long, the British had nurtured an ideology of segregation and the devel-

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It was not until the late 1980s and early 1990s, with increasing recognition of the principle of integrative education worldwide, that new initiatives were launched in the direction of integration. In 1989, some special schools pioneered themselves to serve as resource centers for integrator schools, which exposed the inadequacies of the special education measures centrally managed by the Education Department (Kwok and Xiao 2000). In the early 1990s, the government began to adopt the recommendation of mainstreaming. That is, children with disabilities should study in regular schools with special assistance for them, instead of having them segregated in a special school. The Green Paper on Rehabilitation (1992), for example, stressed the idea of mainstreaming, while acknowledging the importance of special classes in ordinary schools and special schools for those disabled children who could not beneﬁt from mainstreaming education (Kwok and Xiao 2000).7 The policy of mainstreaming underlines an idea of social integration that nonetheless shows much limitation in practice and in conception. Parents indeed welcomed the idea and had been quietly creating their own informal process of integration before the implementation of a pilot project in 1997. Yet in practice, the local educational setting has not been ready for eﬀective integration in mainstream schooling. Few guidelines for classroom management or training are provided in the schools. Other problems include large teacher-student ratio, inadequate training, low priority on the policy agenda by the government, a rigid curriculum, and persistent segregation of special education from the mainstream (Crawford and Bray 1994; Lo 1998). Furthermore, owing to fears about discrimination, parents remain hesitant about informing the school about their children’s special needs in the admission process, as a result of which the school are wholly unprepared to deal with these students (Wong et al. 1999). On the conceptual level, the idea of integration currently used by the Department of Education is premised upon an understanding that is aimed at “ﬁtting special needs children into existing structures,

opment of special education in its own society (Rieser 2001), which made a parallel impact in Hong Kong between the 1950s and the 1980s. 7 On top of the disabled, the scope of special education was broadened to include also the maladjusted, gifted children, and children who are unmotivated or have learning diﬃculties.

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rather than changing the school environment and culture so that it can accommodate all children” (Wong et al. 1999: 772). This shows not only a thin discourse of social integration that has prevailed in much policy thinking and institutional practice. According to Lewis (1999), it also reﬂects the dominance of a medical (individualistic) model of disability underpinning educational provision for disabled students in society. The assumption is that students perform poorly because of disability, personal deﬁcit or weakness. The medical model locates the problem of disability within the individual, as arising from the functional limitations or psychological losses that are assumed to stem from the disability. The local policy is still largely framed upon this model, seeing that individual deﬁciencies can be arrested by means of segregation, welfare, social services and rehabilitation. This results in the creation of more and more special settings, as well as increasing number of special categories for the disabled students (Lewis 1999). Lewis attributes the lack of alternative discourse of disability to the problem of top-down bureaucracy in Hong Kong. Though various advisory bodies are formed in the policy formulation process, people with disabilities are largely left outside the institutional channels. These channels are instead dominated by prominent community ﬁgures, the helping professions, and charity linked personnel. As a result, the government fails to have access to the ﬁrst hand account of the problems encountered by the disabled people (as well as their parents) in their everyday lives. In 1997, the Education Department carried out a two-year pilot project of “Integration of Pupils with Special Needs in Ordinary Schools.” About nine or ten schools participated. The participating schools were encouraged to adopt a “whole-school” approach under which parents, regular and resource teachers worked together to facilitate the integration of children with special needs into mainstream education. They were also given the ﬂexibility to use a variety of pedagogies, as well as modify the curriculum and assessment methods. In comparison, schools that declined that invitation were nonetheless much greater in number. These schools were concerned about such problems as incompatibility between disabled and mainstream students, heavy workload of teachers, and adverse impact on school performance. By 2003–04, an encouraging sign was shown that the number of ordinary schools practicing the whole-school approach increased to 136 (Education and Manpower Bureau 2003). Still, from the point of view of “inclusive education,” (Lo 1998), the question

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remains as to how far the scheme is primarily recommending integration of the disabled to the ordinary schooling environment, as compared to a more radical view that seeks to reform the mainstream educational structure to accommodate students with diﬀerential (dis-)abilities and needs, and to sensitize students to the life experiences of people with disabilities. The idea of inclusive education was originated in some Western countries. In the UK, for instance, the Integration Alliance8 has changed its name to the Alliance for Inclusive Education, which came from a growing understanding of the major diﬀerences between integration and inclusion: The former is a matter of location; placing a disabled child in a mainstream setting, usually with some additional support to access what was being oﬀered in the school, changing the child to ﬁt in with the social and academic life of the school. The latter is about valuing all children irrespective of their type or degree of impairment; of restructuring the institution to remove barriers so teaching and learning take place so all children can be valued for who they are, participate, interact and develop their potential (Rieser, 2001: 132).

Apparently, the notion of integrative education carries an assimilationist ideology that overlooks the social causes of disability. In contrast, the idea of inclusive education is more in line with the social model of disability that locates the problem squarely in the normalizing social system itself. Inclusive education, as Aspis suggests, requires a recognition that “learning is enhanced when individuals of diﬀerent abilities, skills and aspirations can work together in a joint enterpise” (2001, p. 129). It requires that we review and transform, if not abolish altogether, the current assessment and examination system with all its preconceived assumption of competence, merit and qualiﬁcation. Work—Enclave Employment versus Competitive Market? Under capitalism, the disabled are often perceived as unproductive and uncompetitive members of society. With the rise of industrialism,

8 The Integration Alliance was set up following a conference in 1989 by disabled adults, parents of disabled children and professionals and others who allied themselves to get rid of segregated education for all children.

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as factories became the sites of production, technological and architectural designs were standardized to suit nondisabled workers. As a result, “patterns of aversion and avoidance toward disabled persons were embedded in the construction of commodities, landscapes, and buildings that would remain for centuries” (Hahn 1997: 177). This is not to mention how the mechanization of production often caused accidents and injuries that swelled the ranks of the disabled minority. With regard to employment, most of the disabled people are therefore placed in a double-bind: they have inadequate resources because they are unemployed or underemployed, and they are unemployed or underemployed because they lack the resources that would enable them to make full contributions to society (Wendell 1997). In Hong Kong, under the ideology of individual bodily defects, the early approach to work for the disabled people, as in education, was one of segregation. Sheltered workshop, which was ﬁrst established in 1949, provided an enclosed work environment for people with disabilities. It might be a protective measure that shielded the disabled people from the competitive labor market outside, but the practice could also be exploitative if it retained the productive workers at sub-standard wages (Nelson 1971). In the 1970s, with a growing emphasis on community integration, the idea of open employment was given some recognition. This refers to the ideal situation that people with disabilities are employed in the same work setting as the able-bodied.9 In congruence with this new idea, the policy discourse aﬃrmed the abilities and potentials of the disabled people in a very positive note: “Most disabled persons have more abilities than disabilities. With suitable training and education, many of them will be able to secure and maintain remunerative employment in the open commercial and industrial and in the Civil Service” (White Paper 1977). As part of the changing development, the responsibility for job placement services for people with disabilities was shifted from the Social Welfare Department to the Labor Department in 1980. The outcomes of sheltered workshop nonetheless remained far from satisfactory in facilitating open employment of the disabled. In

9 Supported employment is aimed to complement open and sheltered employment with a view to promoting the employment prospects of the disabled persons and enabling them to work in an integrated open setting with the availability of assistance or advice.

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1987, an alternative idea of supported employment was introduced to Hong Kong by Dr Katherine Liberty and Dr Alan Hilton from the States, who were invited to provide rehabilitation training in the community (Ngai 1997).10 Supported employment is anchored on “real work for real wages,” which departs from the conventional sheltered workshop. In 1988, the government formulated a new rehabilitation program, and in 1989 St. James Settlement, a local NGO, took the lead in launching a pilot project of a mobile cleaning crew.11 In principle, the practice of supported or open employment for the disabled is ability driven, shifting the focus from disability to ability, from segregation to integration, and from welfare to market (Chor 1996; Strachan 1996). The advocacy groups and some of the disabled people themselves have played a signiﬁcant role in pioneering new initiatives in this direction. The case of people with visual impairments is instructive in this regard. During the 1950s and the 1960s, employment for people with visual impairments concentrated on some simple assembly work such as the making of rattan baskets and the polishing of buttons in sheltered work employment. More structured vocational training courses began to be launched in the 1970s such as piano-tuning, massage training and telephony, with the aim of preparing them for employment in the open market. The ﬁrst vocational training centre for the visually impaired was established by the Hong Kong Society for the Blind in 1978. Over time, more sophisticated products such as woodwork, machine sewing and paper boxes were produced, and other forms of disabilities were employed in the production line. With increasing mechanization and automation of certain production process, the disabled workers became more competitive in the open market, earning much more than those in the conventional sheltered workshops. This shows that people with disabilities can become productive in “gainful employment,” so long as they receive adequate support to develop their capabilities (Chan 1996). In their eﬀorts to work toward integration into the mainstream, the NGOs further incorporate the concepts of market and productivity

10 The idea of supported employment was born in the States in the 1970s arising from the failures of the existing rehabilitation programs. 11 The government did not put much eﬀort into the implementation of the supported employment policy until 1994, after the NGOs and the disabled representatives questioned the Governor on the lack of government attention to the issue.

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into the operation of sheltered workshops (Leung 1996). Since the late 1980s, new employment initiatives in the form of small enterprise or service team run and managed by people with disabilities themselves are explored. Examples include 7–11 Convenience Store (Rehabilitation Alliance Hong Kong), Hot Dog Store (Hong Kong Blind Union, previously the Hong Kong Association of the Blind), Deaf Cafeteria (Hong Kong Society for the Deaf ), and Richmond Welbiz Limited (Richmond Fellowship). The theme of self-empowerment is promoted: people with disabilities, as individuals who enjoy equal rights in employment, are capable of empowering themselves through running their own business. These initiatives aim at ensuring the equal participation of the disabled people in productive and gainful employment in the open market, in line with the goals of equal opportunities and full participation as being increasingly stressed since the 1990s. In 2003, the Social Welfare Department followed suit in launching the project of “Enhancing Employment of People with Disabilities through Small Enterprise”. On the whole, the new initiatives have oﬀered alternatives to sheltered and competitive employment in providing supported employment that incorporates a market element and simulates the business model. NGOs and the self-help groups have played a pioneering role in launching pilot projects that seek to open up more employment opportunities for the disabled, and the government is now beginning to make more eﬀorts in this direction. The new initiatives open up a bunch of issues relating to the speciﬁc question of work such as labor (as opposed to welfare), productivity, job allocation, employment relations, proﬁtability, social mobility, skills and capital, which challenge us to further rethink the relationship between social integration and economic participation. Generally speaking, such small, local projects have a more equitable involvement of disabled people at all levels than exist in sheltered employment (McAnaney 1994). However, many of them rely on inadequate short-term funding and have to struggle for commercial viability (Smith 1996). To a certain extent, the new initiatives do bring about a greater involvement of the disabled in the community and higher self-esteem of the disabled persons (Lau 1994). However, most of the initiatives have been developed for speciﬁc disabled groups, such as those with mental health problems, and are not usually available to the others. As a matter of fact, most of the disabled people remain within an “enclave” mode of employment relations. As a report in 1995 shows,

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the majority of employers were not keen on recruiting people with disabilities, since they were concerned with problems such as lower ﬂexibility in job assignments as well as more time required for supervision.12 Often the employment barriers could be physical, procedural and attitudinal (Smith 1996). It thus remains to be studied how far and in what ways disabled persons experience prejudice and barriers in the work setting; how the abilities and talents of the disabled people could be further recognized and developed in a nondiscriminatory environment; to what extent and under what conditions the employees in society are willing to hire people with diﬀerent kinds of disabilities to work in their companies, and to balance proﬁt with the promotion of employment opportunities for the disabled and careful job assignment. Concluding Remarks This article is intended to be a preliminary eﬀort to review the development of rehabilitation services in Hong Kong with regard to the issues of normality and disability, social integration and marginality, and equality and diﬀerence. While the eﬀorts to integrate the disabled into the society have increased over the years, as seen in the domains of education and work, the idea of social integration is largely taken as a given which essentially refers to integration into the mainstream or the established systems. The social model of disability challenges us to rethink the deﬁnition of disability as well as the social structures and processes that constitute part of the causes. In recent years, new theories and perspectives have brought to our attention the diverse life experiences and knowledge of the disabled people, pointing us towards more complex and intricate ways of conceptualizing the relations between impairment and disability, and the intersection between disability and other axes of inequality such as gender, race, and class (Corker and Shakespeare 2002). Moreover, if we are to look at the question in a more far-reaching way, we will come to see how we all are being “disabled” in diﬀerent forms in society (for example, aging). Recognizing this helps us to see that

12 The report is by the Employment and Disability Research Group, Department of Social Work & Social Administration, the University of Hong Kong (1995).

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disabled people are really part of “us” (Wendell 1997). Disability is perhaps not entirely a social construction, but neither is it simply a physical given. The wider social and cultural environment certainly has a great impact on how people deﬁne and experience diﬀerent forms of disability in society. Primary Sources Education and Manpower Bureau. 2003. “Information Sheet: Special Education.” Hong Kong: Education and Manpower Bureau. Retrieved June 1, 2004. (http://www.emb.gov.hk/FileManager/EN/Content_156/Sped03.pdf ). Employment and Disability Research Group. 1995. Report on “Employment for People with a Disability in Hong Kong: Opportunities and Obstacles.” Department of Social Work & Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong. Hong Kong Government. (1976). Green Paper on The Future Development of Rehabilitation Services in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Government Printer. —— (1977). White Paper on Integrating the Disabled Into the Community: A United Eﬀort. Hong Kong: Government Printer. —— (1992). Green Paper On Equal Opportunities And Full Participation: A Better Tomorrow For All. Hong Kong: Government Printer. —— (1995). White Paper on Rehabilitation: Equal Opportunities And Full Participation: A Better Tomorrow For All. Hong Kong: Government Printer.

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Lo, Leslie N. K. (1998). “Critical Issues in the Development of Special Education in Hong Kong.” Pp. 21–38 in Helping Students with Learning Diﬃculties, edited by David W. Chan. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. McAnaney, D. (1994). “The Development of Social Enterprises in Ireland.” In Mental Health at Work, edited by M. Floyd, M. Povall and G. Watson. London: Jessica Kingsley. Nelson, Nathan. (1971). Workshops for the Handicapped in the United States. Springﬁeld, IL: Charles Thomas. Ngai Ling Kam Har. (1997). “Mubiao Weiben di Fuzhu Jiuye Fuwu” (Goal-Oriented Employment Assistance Service) In Choy Yuen-Ling and Yeung Tak-Wah, eds., Xianggong Ruozhi Chengren Fuwu: Huigu ji Zhanwang (Services for the Mentally Disabled Adult in Hong Kong: Retrospect and Prospect). Hong Kong: Zhonghua Shuju, Ltd., Pp. 81–94. Ngai, Marian Y. M. (1995). “A Study of Supported Employment for Persons with Mental Handicap.” MA Thesis, Department of Public & Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong. Oliver, M. (1986). “Social Policy and Disability: Some Theoretical Issues.” Disability, Handicap and Society, 1: 5–19. ——. 1990. The Politics of Disablement. London: Macmillan. Rieser, Richard. (2001). “The Struggle for Inclusion: The Growth of a Movement.” Pp. 132–148 in Disability, Politics and the Struggle for Change, edited by Len Barton. London: David Fulton Publishers. Smith, Brenda. (1996). “Working Choices.” Pp. 145–150 in Beyond Disability—Towards an Enabling Society, edited by Gerald Hales. London: Sage. Strachan, Ian. (1996). “Measures Promoting Employment of People with Disabilities in Hong Kong.” Pp. 9–12 in Proceedings of the Japan-Hong Kong Conference on Employment of Persons with a Disability, edited by Joseph Kwok. Hong Kong: Joint Council for the Physically and Mentally Disabled, Hong Kong Council of Social Service. Strartford, Brian and Tse, John W. L. (1989). “Principles of Normalization.” Pp. 27–82 in A Way of Life: Living with Mental Retardation, edited by Brian Stratford and John W. L. Lee. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Association For Scientiﬁc Study of Mental Handicap. Thomas, Carol. (2004). “How is Disability Understood? An Examination of Sociological Approaches.” Disability and Society, 19 (6): 569–583. Wendell, Susan. (1997). “Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability.” Pp. 260–278 in The Disability Studies Reader, edited by Lennard J. Davis. New York: Routledge. Wong, Donna, Veronica Pearson, Frances Ip and Eva Lo. (1999). “A Slippery Road to Equality: Hong Kong’s Experience of Unplanned Integrated Education.” Disability and Society, 14 (6): 771–789.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF SAMPLE SURVEYS IN CHINA* Donald J. Treiman, William M. Mason, Lu Yao, Pan Yi, Qi Yaqiang and Song Shige Abstract Surveys in China conventionally sample from local area residential registers, which until recently have been of suﬃcient accuracy to function as de facto population registers. Due to a combination of large scale internal migration and massive replacement of housing in urban areas, a large fraction of the population currently does not live where registered. Consequently, recent surveys whose sampling procedures rely exclusively on residential registers provide a biased representation of the population due to exclusion of unregistered local residents. We report conclusions from, and observations related to, a pilot study designed to test the feasibility and eﬀectiveness of a sampling method that does not depend on residential registers. In the pilot study we (1) purposely selected small areas; (2) enumerated the small areas; (3) randomly sampled individuals from the enumeration lists; and (4) interviewed sampled individuals. This approach substantially reduced the under-enumeration problem. As implemented, however, its point of departure required previously selected small areas. We describe an extension designed to achieve full coverage of the population of China through sampling of small areas as the penultimate stage of a multistage design.

Introduction Early in the post-Mao era in China, sample surveys became important sources of information for understanding Chinese society (Lavely, Lee, and Wang 1990). Initially conducted under the auspices of ministerial level government organizations, by the late 1980s sample surveys were beginning to be carried out by Chinese and foreign scholars, often working together. In the early 1980s, low rates of internal geographic mobility and a government capable of mobilizing down to the lowest administrative level meant that surveys, when

* This research was supported by U.S. NICHD grants 1R03HD40826 and R244HD41022. The ﬁrst two authors share equal responsibility for this paper. A version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, 2 April 2005, Philadelphia. We thank the anonymous referees for their thoughtful comments. Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

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well designed, could achieve nearly complete coverage of the population, with response rates well over 90 percent. However, changes in Chinese society concomitant with and in consequence of the move toward a market economy have made it more diﬃcult to conduct surveys than in the recent past, and have rendered results based on many contemporary surveys much more problematic. This article reviews these developments. We ﬁrst consider how increased internal geographic mobility has undercut the sampling method most often used in Chinese surveys. We then draw lessons and related observations from a recently completed pilot study for a national probability sample survey of Chinese adults. This multipurpose study was explicitly designed to test a sampling strategy that is new in the Chinese context. Because the pilot study used purposely selected small areas as ﬁrst-stage units, the sampling design was incomplete. We thus end by describing an extension of the sampling strategy that is designed to achieve unbiased, full coverage of the population of China. Elevated Internal Migration Rates and Sample Surveys Since 1955 China has had an internal passport (hukou) system in which individuals are initially registered in their mother’s locales. In rural areas, hukou locale is deﬁned as a “village committee” (cunweihui ). In urban areas, hukou locale is deﬁned as a “neighborhood committee” ( juweihui ). Individuals are also assigned to agricultural or non-agricultural status, again following the mother’s registration status. Except under special circumstances, mainly the achievement of secondary technical or tertiary schooling, it was and is extremely diﬃcult to change from agricultural to non-agricultural status (Wu and Treiman 2004a). Even within the rural and urban sectors, changing registration from one place to another is not automatic and is sometimes diﬃcult. The sampling method conventionally used in past Chinese surveys, apart from any sampling process involving higher level aggregates, was to (i) select village and neighborhood committees, (ii) within each area, sample households from hukou lists—which functioned as de facto population registers—maintained by the village and neighborhood committees, and (iii) randomly select adults in chosen households. This method worked well when internal migration was limited,

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since almost everyone lived where they were registered and also lived in family units. More recently, it has become less satisfactory. Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing to the present, massive numbers of people have migrated to seek or take jobs, mainly but not entirely from rural to urban areas (Goldstein and Goldstein 1991; Davin 1999; Liang 2001; Liang and Ma 2004). Much of this migration currently is not, and has not been, state sanctioned. Except under limited circumstances, migrants are not permitted to change their place of registration (Yang 1993; Chan, Ta, and Yang 1999; Wang, Zuo, and Ruan 2002; Wu and Treiman 2004a). The problem is substantial. Some estimates put the current stock of informal migrants (those who have changed residence without changing registration), known in China as the “ﬂoating population”, as high as 144 million people, which amounts to approximately 12 percent of the population and an even larger fraction of the adult population (Liang and Ma 2004). Owing to the diﬃculty of tracing individuals who are not currently in residence at their place of registration, it follows that survey samples based on hukou lists are based on a subset of the population. Furthermore, this subset, which consists primarily of geographically stable individuals, is by deﬁnition anything but random. It is true that internal migrants in China are encouraged to register as “temporary residents” at their place of destination (Chang and Zhang 1999; Solinger 1999a). Might it be possible to create registration-based sampling frames that achieve complete population coverage by augmenting permanent hukou lists with registers of temporary residents? Available evidence suggests otherwise. Apparently, a majority of migrants fail to register as temporary residents. For example, the Ministry of Public Security estimated that, in 1997, 62 percent of temporary migrants throughout China had failed to register (Chan and Zhang 1999). This is likely due both to variability in the vigor of local authorities and the reticence of informal migrants themselves, especially short-term migrants (see also Solinger 1999b; U.S. Consulate Guangzhou 2001).1 Furthermore, it is probable that those who do 1 Many cities do not have an established system for the registration of temporary residents and, for those that do, it cannot be assumed that the registers are up-to-date. In cities with established temporary migrant registration systems, migrants are thought to be reluctant to register, because they may be required to pay “fees” and may be monitored by local governments after registration.

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register as temporary residents are a nonrandom subset of migrants. In sum, contemporary surveys whose sampling frames rely on lists of permanent and temporary residents will achieve incomplete and biased coverage of the population due to the under-sampling of migrants. A second problem with the use of hukou lists is that urban China has experienced a massive building boom. Twenty-three percent of the urban population enumerated in the 2000 census lived in buildings constructed since 1996.2 Because many people (the percentage is unknown) who move to new housing in the same city fail to change their registration from their old to their new neighborhood, these movers are excluded from hukou-based samples unless they can be traced, which is diﬃcult and expensive. Third, even apart from the failure of individuals to record their movements between neighborhoods, it can no longer be assumed that hukou lists are kept up-to-date with former administrative vigor. The sheer level of internal migration may be overwhelming, other forms of social control besides hukou registration probably have relaxed, and the anonymity that comes with increased size may also play a role. In particular, neighborhood committees have begun to be replaced by “community committees” (sheweihui ) composed of several neighborhood committees or, in high rise buildings, by “residents’ committees” ( yezhuweiyuanhui ). With larger aggregations, it may be more diﬃcult to keep the hukou lists up to date. Fourth, based on our pilot study and discussions with others who have recently conducted surveys, it appears that, especially for residents’ committees in high-rise buildings, researchers are beginning to experience denial of access to hukou lists. In sum, sample designs that rely on registration lists miss a substantial, nonrandom portion of the population and encounter related problems as well. It is unlikely that this conclusion will require modiﬁcation in the near future. Pilot Study If hukou lists are incomplete, on what basis can a probability sample of the population be drawn? In societies without population regis2 Estimates from the 2000 Census of China are from computations made by the authors from a 1:1,000 micro-data sample of households and individuals.

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tration systems, the problem of sampling from a population can be addressed through the use of enumeration in small areas. For example, in the United States, national probability samples typically are created by using information from the most recent census to sample small areas known as block groups, which are subsets of census tracts. These areas typically contain several hundred households. When block groups have been selected for a particular survey, team members enumerate all households within the chosen block groups. The result of the canvassing is a complete list of the local area households, from which a sample of households is drawn at random. An interviewer then visits each sampled household, makes a list of eligible respondents, and on the spot samples one or more respondents to be interviewed.3 Interviews are conducted either at the time of the ﬁrst visit or during a return visit. Although the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics employs enumeration in its decennial censuses and presumably in its mini-censuses, the use of enumeration in sample surveys conducted by academics or market research ﬁrms in China is unusual. For this reason, and given the inadequacy of samples based on hukou lists, we mounted a pilot study to determine the feasibility of enumerating small areas in (especially urban and peri-urban) China. The success of such a project could not be taken for granted, for several reasons: 1. Due to the large number of informal migrants, many neighborhoods in urban China have become extremely crowded, with apartment units subdivided and extra rooms built in courtyards, on rooftops, and in storage areas, to rent out to migrants. Enumeration in such areas is diﬃcult. 2. Many people live in nonstandard spaces, such as sleeping spaces in shops, lofts over workshops, and tents and temporary dormitory buildings on construction sites. Enumeration in these places is also diﬃcult. 3. The number of restricted-access residential sites is on the rise. Examples include high-rise apartment buildings, gated communities, and factory, construction-site, and other dormitories. 4. Anecdotally, there is increasing suspicion of strangers, especially strangers asking questions. 3 To insure the integrity of the probability sampling process, eligible respondents are randomly sampled using Kish-table or comparable procedures (Kish 1995).

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In early 2003 we were poised to go into the ﬁeld with a small survey designed to assess the practical diﬃculties of population enumeration for sample surveys in China. When the SARS epidemic ﬂared, it became necessary to delay the study. We altered the design and content of the survey to allow study of social responses to the epidemic, while retaining the original intent to study the feasibility of enumeration. Then, in Fall 2003 and Spring 2004, we conducted a small survey (N = 1,059).4 We purposively chose two instances of six types of residential areas, for a total of 12 places.5 An earlier pretest had suggested the need to consider various types of residential areas in order to address the full range of problems we were likely to encounter during enumeration. We identiﬁed the types of areas as (i) urban-fringe villages with workshops staﬀed mainly by migrants; (ii) urban-fringe “bedroom villages” housing migrants who work in cities; (iii) rural-to-urban transitional areas, possibly with overlapping civil jurisdictions; (iv) factory dormitories; (v) low-income urban areas; and (vi) middle-to-high-income urban areas. To minimize costs, all interviews were conducted in small areas in or close to four large cities: Beijing and Guangzhou (high SARS areas) and Chengdu and Suzhou (low SARS areas). Table 1 shows the distribution of respondents over places. We aimed for approximately 100 respondents in each place and achieved that goal except in mediumto-high SES places, a result that will receive attention later in the discussion. We next describe the derivation of the sample. Complete enumeration of a small area is equivalent to conducting a perfect census of that area, and consists of knocking on every door and interviewing at least one household member about all those who live there, as well as probing for sub-households. It is diﬃcult because it requires gaining access to semi-public interior spaces (apartment hallways, courtyards, etc.) and because it requires returning at a later time in cases where no household member is at home. Short of that gold standard, a range of ﬁeldwork techniques can be cate-

4 The ﬁeldwork was carried out by a team from the Department of Sociology, Qinghua University, Beijing, headed by Professor Qiang Li. 5 The design is quasi-experimental, with the distinction between high- and lowSARS areas regarded as the “treatment variable.” For each of the six neighborhood types, we chose one neighborhood from a high-SARS area and one neighborhood from a low-SARS area. Mason et al. (2005) report the results of an analysis of social responses to the SARS epidemic.

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Table 1. Distribution of Sampled Places Type of place Rural (urban fringe) Bedroom village In-migrant village Factory dormitory Urban Rural-to-urban transitional Low SES Medium-to-high SES

High SARS

N

Beijing Guangzhou Guangzhou

97 101 101

Suzhou Chengdu Chengdu

Beijing

102

Suzhou

98

Chengdu Suzhou

97 58

Guangzhou Beijing

98 6

Low SARS

N 102 99 100

Source: 2003–2004 Pilot Study for a National Probability Survey of China (N = 1,059).

gorized as enumeration. The easiest and least invasive, counting doors without otherwise attempting to gain information on the number of inhabitants behind the doors (e.g., Landry and Shen 2005), is probably least accurate. The primary disadvantage of this approach is that it assigns a constant number of eligible respondents to each address. We sought to overcome this limitation. We reasoned that the properties of complete enumeration are well known, and that what remained to be discovered, in the Chinese context, is whether accurate estimates of the number of eligible respondents at each address can be obtained without actually knocking on each door. Toward that end, we used local informants who accompanied enumerators during neighborhood traversals, providing information for each doorway, with enumerators knocking on doors or interviewing neighbors only as needed. To arrive at the sample, the steps were as follows. We ﬁrst purposely identiﬁed village and neighborhood committees in which to carry out the enumeration. Suitable units were selected in consultation with local authorities. Upon beginning ﬁeld work, our enumerators immediately discovered that several of the selected areas were too large to be enumerated by available staﬀ, with populations estimated to be well over 1,000. In these instances the ﬁeldwork team restricted enumeration to an area within the local administrative unit. We will return to the issue of determining the size of the area to be enumerated. Second, at each selected place, enumerators sketched a map that identiﬁed the boundaries and main roads of the area. With the

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assistance of a locally knowledgeable person (usually a village or neighborhood committee oﬃcial), enumerators walked through the area drawing successively more detailed maps. The second level of detail identiﬁed small streets and alleyways within sectors deﬁned by main roads. A third level displayed individual buildings in each small area. Additional maps were sketched for each large building, showing the layout of apartments within the building. Figures 1a and 1b provide examples of the maps. As enumerators moved through an area, each address, or other household identiﬁer if no household address was available, was recorded on an enumeration roster, together with an estimate of the number of eligible adults (people ages 20–60) residing in the household. To obtain estimates of the number of eligible adults in each household, enumerators ﬁrst asked their local informants. If the informants did not know, enumerators sought information from the residents themselves or, when they were not available, from neighbors. For high-rise apartment buildings and in other instances where it was not possible to obtain informed estimates, it was assumed that households included two eligible adults.6 In addition to recording the number of eligible residents in each household, the enumerator noted for each household the lowest and highest sequence number in the cumulative sum of the number of eligible adults. Figure 2 is intended to clarify this point (ﬁgure 2a is the original, in Chinese; Figure 2b is the English translation). In that ﬁgure, note that the ﬁrst household has four eligible adults, and thus the cumulative sum is recorded as having lowest sequence number 1 and highest sequence number 4; the second household has two eligible adults, and thus the cumulative sum has lowest sequence number 5 and highest sequence number 6. How the cumulative sums were used to draw the sample is described below. Enumeration of households requires a deﬁnition of what constitutes a household. For our purposes, a “household” is a living space with a doorway opening into a common or public area. Thus, for

6 As we demonstrate below, these estimates introduced error because the number of adults per household varies substantially. In addition, this procedure made it necessary to plan for post-weighting the data to correct for errors in estimates. A truly complete enumeration procedure, in which enumerators visit each household to determine the number of eligible residents, would obviate the need for postsurvey weighting.

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Figure 1a. Sketch Map of Area

Figure 1b. Sketch Map of Building

89

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Figure 2a. Page from Enumeration Roster, In-migrant Village

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Map Household no. on map No. age Cum. Selected Disposition of No. (descriptive information) 20–60 sum random interview number 1 2 3 1. xxx household (under) construction

4

1–4

2. xxx household —rental space

2 10

5–6 7–16

3. xxx household (—rental space 2nd ﬂoor, #6 #5 #4 3rd ﬂoor, #1 #2 #3

3 12) 2 2 2 2 2 2

17–19

3 2 3 2

32–34 35–36 37–39 40–41

4 5 2 2 2

42–45 46–50 51–52 53–54 55–56

4. xxx, 3rd —rental, —rental, —rental,

ﬂoor 1st ﬂoor 2nd ﬂoor #2 2nd ﬂoor #2

5. 7th group, #57 (xxx) —entrance —2nd ﬂoor (left #1 to right) #2 #3

1 4

x x

14

x

35

No one

54

x

x x

20–21 22–23 24–25 26–27 28–29 30–31

“xxx” indicates name of household head, omitted to protect conﬁdentiality.

Figure 2b. Page from Enumeration Roster, In-migrant Village (English translation of Figure 2a)

example, a room rented out to a migrant that opened into a family’s living space would be regarded as part of the family household. A room opening onto a courtyard or passageway would be regarded as a separate household. This deﬁnition was relatively easy for enumerators to apply in a consistent way. However, enumerators often could not gain access to public or common areas onto which separate households opened. Examples include hallways in high-rise buildings and courtyards behind locked gates. In such cases, the number of households was determined by asking knowledgeable local people.

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Once completed, we treated the enumeration roster as a census of all eligible individuals in the area. For example, the enumeration roster in Figure 2 lists 56 eligible adults who satisﬁed our selection criteria (ages 20–60). Using the enumeration rosters, for each of the 12 purposively selected places we drew random samples of somewhat more than 100 individuals in order to compensate for unoccupied units, never-at-homes, no one in the household meeting the age criteria, refusals, etc.—the exact number varied by site, depending on the judgment of the enumerators as to how diﬃcult it would be to contact people. In the Chengdu factory enclave it took only 106 attempts to complete about 100 interviews. At the other extreme, the low SES neighborhood in Guangzhou, it took 180 attempts to complete about 100 interviews, due to large numbers of never-athomes, lack of eligible respondents, and refusals. Sampling was performed by the ﬁeldwork supervisor, using a random number table to choose the individuals to be interviewed. For example, on the enumeration page shown in Figure 2, random numbers 1, 4, 14, 35, and 54 were drawn. Interviewers were then assigned to interview two individuals in the ﬁrst household (whose cumulative sum includes sequence numbers 1 and 4), one person in the rental space for the second household, which included 10 individuals (because 14 falls into the range of the cumulative sum 7–16), and so on. When interviewers visited households, they knew the number of assigned interviews to be obtained at each household, but they did not know which individuals within a household were to be interviewed. For this task, at each household with sampled individuals, interviewers created a complete household roster. Then, using Kishtable procedures (Kish 1995), the required number of speciﬁc individuals to be interviewed was randomly selected—most often one person but sometimes more than one person (see, for example, household 1 on the roster page shown in Figure 2). The selected individuals were then either interviewed on the spot or appointments were made to return for the interviews. For each of the 12 purposively selected places our goal was to complete 100 interviews. We did so in all but the middle-to-highincome areas, which consisted entirely of restricted-access buildings. As Table 1 demonstrates, in Beijing our interviewers had extreme diﬃculty gaining access, and obtained only six interviews.7 In Suzhou 7

Our medium-to-high SES site in Beijing is a high-rise apartment complex man-

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they were more successful, but still obtained only 58 interviews.8 Despite the best attempts of our enumerators and interviewers to secure the cooperation of building managers, or to enter buildings surreptitiously, we failed to achieve minimally acceptable completion rates. Because high-rise and restricted-access buildings are becoming increasingly common in urban China, unless reliable ways are found to enter such buildings, and to secure interviews in accordance with sampling procedures, it will become impossible to conduct adequate surveys of the urban population of China through use of face-toface interviews. Although the six-category place classiﬁcation used in our pilot study is not standard and does not span the entire rural-urban range, it is nonetheless instructive to consider variation in social composition across the place types for what this can reveal about the problems surveys are increasingly likely to encounter in China. Table 2 presents distributions of various characteristics of the pilot study respondents. In some areas, substantial fractions of the population lack any kind of local registration: 38 percent in in-migrant villages; 33 percent in dormitories, and 13 percent in low SES urban neighborhoods. All of these people would be missed in surveys based on local registration lists, even those that sample from the list of people with temporary residence permits. Table 2 also shows that, even in the restricted age range of 20–60, the mean age of respondents in migrant communities is substantially lower than in communities with high proportions of permanent residents. In general, on an international comparative basis, communities with high proportions of migrants tend to be younger than those with low proportions of migrants (Massey et al. 1993).

aged by a single company, which refused to allow interviewers to enter the designated building. The company did allow our ﬁeldwork team to place requests for interviews in 50 mailboxes, which resulted in one positive response. The company also phoned 50 respondents on behalf of the ﬁeldworkers, which resulted in an additional ﬁve agreements to be interviewed. It is likely that had the interviewers been able to knock on doors, the response rate would have been somewhat higher. Moreover, had we used experienced professional interviewers, rather than inexperienced students, the probability of gaining permission to knock on doors would likely have been substantially greater. 8 In both Suzhou and Beijing, many apartments were found to be vacant. In addition, a substantial fraction of respondents was never at home.

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Table 2. Selected Characteristics of Respondents in Various Community Types InBedroom migrant village village

Rural to Low Medium/ Factory/ urban SES high SES dormitory transitional urban urban

Registration Status (%) Permanent local registration Temporary local registration Temporary residence permit No local registration or permit

26.1

22.0

9.0

39.0

72.8

87.5

9.6

1.0

2.0

0.5

0.0

4.7

62.8

39.0

56.2

57.0

13.8

6.2

1.5

38.0

32.8

3.5

13.3

1.6

Other Sociodemographic Characteristics % with agricultural hukou % female Mean age Mean years of schooling % with at least some upper middle school % employed % unemployed % self-employed without employeesa % small entrepreneur (getihu)a % communist party member N

63.8 43.7 28.9

69.5 46.0 32.9

76.1 60.2 29.6

83.5 47.5 35.3

18.0 47.2 38.4

4.7 53.1 40.3

10.7

8.5

9.4

7.8

11.1

12.6

58.3 77.4 9.6

27.0 82.0 9.5

34.3 97.0 2.5

14.0 81.5 6.0

58.0 70.8 12.3

73.4 76.6 4.7

3.4

11.1

0.0

37.8

5.2

3.5

5.7

18.1

1.0

16.1

16.9

5.3

5.5

1.0

2.5

2.0

10.8

25.0

199

200

201

200

195

64

Notes : a Among the employed. Source: See Table 1.

Perhaps consistent with the pattern of layoﬀs from stagnating state factories in urban China (Lee 2000), the low SES urban areas in the pilot study have the highest unemployment rates, approximately 12 percent of respondents. Bedroom villages and in-migrant villages, which have high proportions of migrants, also have unemployment rates that are nearly as high. It is possible that urban fringe migrant

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concentrations and low SES urban areas have high unemployment for diﬀerent reasons. Finally, the rural-to-urban transition areas in our sample are economically and socially marginal. On the fringes of Beijing and Suzhou cities, these are areas where settled rural villages have been overwhelmed by newcomers. These places are neither bedroom villages for migrants nor places with established workshops employing migrants. Rather, they appear to be places occupied by people without stable jobs. Eighty-six percent of respondents in the two rural-to-urban transition locales are migrants who took up residence after age 14, and 70 percent of the migrants arrived in the ﬁve years previous to the survey. Only 42 percent of the employed are employees, whereas 54 percent are self-employed workers without employees or very small scale entrepreneurs (getihu); the remaining four percent are still employed in agriculture. Reports from our ﬁeld workers suggest that these may be areas of illegal or semi-legal activity. Certainly, the Beijing locale was a “tough” place, with a self-appointed local boss who challenged the enumerators and tried to discourage their activity. Lessons and Related Observations Experience gained during the ﬁeldwork phase of our pilot study may be informative for others attempting surveys in urban China, including the urban fringe still administratively deﬁned as rural. We next discuss lessons and related observations derived from our pilot study. Even imperfect enumeration is superior to reliance on registration lists We estimate that 17 percent of respondents in the pilot study would have been missed had we relied on registration lists for those with permanent residence as well as those with temporary residence permits. In factory dormitories and high in-migration villages, this ﬁgure rises to one-third or more. In the 2000 census, 30 per cent of urban residents were informal migrants. Landry and Shen (2005), reporting on a Beijing area survey in which enumerators counted doors, report an even higher estimate. Forty-ﬁve percent of respondents in that survey would have been missed had the survey team relied on registration lists—20 percent had changed residence within Beijing, and 25 percent were unregistered in-migrants to Beijing. Thus, even for surveys of representative samples of the urban population, but

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especially for surveys concerned with migrants, exclusive reliance on registration lists will result in substantial under-representation of important segments of the population. Enumeration of addresses or doors is not adequate Some data-collection agencies in China have begun to count addresses or doors rather than knocking on doors to ascertain the number of eligible respondents. This procedure introduces error because the number of adults per family household varies substantially. To illustrate the point, Table 3 displays distributions of the number of adults per household for the pilot study data and for a sample drawn from the 2000 census. Although the averages in Table 3 are about the same for family households in the pilot study and the census samples (2.3 and 2.2 eligible adults per family household, respectively), and both are close to the mean of two eligible adults per family household that we assumed when no information was available, the dispersion around these averages cannot be ignored. Two-adult households constitute 59 percent of the family households in the pilot study. Family households with one or three adults are 30 percent of the distribution. Remaining numbers of adults per family household constitute 11 percent of the distribution in the pilot study. Thus, if our enumerators had simply counted doors, and had they known which doors led to family and which to collective households, our estimates would have been incorrect for 41 percent of the family households. The census sample suggests a similar conclusion for family households. This magnitude of potential error may be a lower-bound estimate, since some of the time it is not obvious whether behind a door there is a family or a collective household. For collective households (dormitories, rooms shared by migrants, and other collective living arrangements), the problem is even more severe, because the distribution of household size is more variable, and because no speciﬁc number of adults constitutes even as much as one-third of the distribution. Because the distributions in Table 3 are unimodal but skewed to the right, counting doors is likely to under-represent people living in households with large numbers of eligible adults, and to over-represent people living in households with small numbers of eligible adults. A further problem with the practice of counting doors is that there often are doors behind doors, behind which are sepa-

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Table 3. Percentage Distribution of Number of Adults Age 20–60 Per Household, for Family and Collective Households, 2003–2004 Pilot Study and 2000 Census Number of residents age 20–60

Pilot Study

2000 Census of China

Family

Collective

Family

Collective

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 or more

0.1 14.7 58.8 15.2 7.8 2.3 0.5 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.0

0.0 9.8 27.9 18.8 13.5 7.8 7.8 7.8 2.5 0.4 3.7

0.0 15.4 63.7 12.4 6.5 1.5 0.4 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0

0.0 18.6 27.2 17.5 13.0 9.9 4.4 3.2 2.5 1.1 2.6

Total Mean Standard deviation

99.9% 2.3 1.0

100.0% 3.9 2.8

100.0% 2.2 .9

100.0% 3.4 2.7

N (Households)

815

244

307,187

7,099

Sources: Pilot Study—see Table 1; 2000 Census of China—0.1 percent sample.

rate households that are completely invisible unless inquiry is made. In addition, sometimes the residential unit for which a doorway is visible is vacant, and the distribution of vacancies may not be random. Hybrid estimation of the number of eligible respondents per household performs only moderately better than door-counting If the hybrid enumeration strategy we used in the pilot study is superior to door-counting or random guesses, then, in a regression of the actual number of eligible adults per household on the estimated number of eligible adults per household, the coeﬃcient should be positive and statistically signiﬁcant. That is what we found using the 868 households for which the required cover-sheet information was available (byx = .41, t = 12, R2 = 0.14). The eﬀectiveness of the hybrid enumeration strategy we used depends on the quality of the local informant’s knowledge. We have no evidence to suggest that the

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local informants who assisted during the enumeration were anything but among the most knowledgeable available individuals. For this reason, the 14 percent improvement over doorway-counting (or chance) indicated by the R2 may not be a lower bound. The evidence thus suggests that to obtain accurate information on the number of eligible respondents residing in each household, it is necessary to conduct a complete census of each local area. This needs to be done by conducting a mini-interview with a knowledgeable member of each household, with the enumerator recording the age, sex, and, if necessary, other identifying information for each eligible member of the household, and also aggressively inquiring about the possibility of sub-households within the household space. Obtaining cooperation where needed from local authorities, and then taking the time to enumerate thoroughly, will substantially increase the cost of conducting surveys that are representative of the population of China. Cost expectations based on past surveys are no longer valid, and must be revised upward. Criteria for the determination of households must be clear, precise, and exhaustive Enumerators must have clear rules to follow. Also, the quality of any realized sample depends in part on the precision and exhaustiveness of the criteria that enumerators are instructed to apply. As noted, our practice was to deﬁne as separate households those places that open into public space, but to include rooms rented to tenants that open into the living space of another household as part of that household. Members of primary families in households often neglect to report on people living in rented spaces, including rooms that open directly onto public spaces. Because this tendency results in under-counts of the number of household members as well as the number of households, enumerators and interviewers need to be trained to probe for renters, servants, and others who are not immediate family members. Unconventional living spaces must be enumerated In urban China, many people sleep in the shops where they work, in rooms behind restaurants, entryways to residential and commercial buildings, rooms in large commercial buildings, small houses on the edge of university campuses, lofts above garment workshops, rail-

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way stations, factory dormitories, and in temporary dormitories erected on construction sites. For example, two surveys of migrants in Shanghai each found that about half of those surveyed lived at their work site (Roberts 1997: 274; Wang et al. 2002). In rural areas, unconventional dwelling arrangements include road construction crews living in tents, staﬀ of power plants and dams, and boatmen and ﬁshermen living on their boats. If these areas are not enumerated, an unknown but nontrivial faction of the population will be missed. Thus, enumerators must be alert to the possibility of unconventional living arrangements, especially when enumerating areas that are not obviously residential. In these areas, enumerators will need to ﬁnd knowledgeable individuals. For example, when enumerating commercial or industrial buildings, enumerators should attempt to locate building managers to inquire whether any people sleep in those buildings. It is important to adequately identify enumerated households so that interviewers can ﬁnd the households chosen for interviewing In China, many houses have no obvious, standardized location identiﬁers. It helps to provide interviewers with as many of the following as is practical and appropriate: an address, where one exists; a location description; the name of the householder; a photograph of the doorway to the household; and coordinates supplied by handheld GPS (Global Positioning System) instruments. In the Chinese context, for practical reasons, samples of individuals may be preferable to samples of households Conditional on the adequacy of the enumeration roster, the procedure we used generates unbiased probability samples of individuals rather than of households that contain such individuals.9 An alternative procedure used in some studies (e.g., the Indonesian Family Life Survey (Frankenberg et al. 1995)) is to sample households and then to collect information on each member of the household. With post-survey weighting it is possible to obtain unbiased probability samples of people using this procedure.

9 The caveat of footnote 6 applies to this assertion. Had we been able to carry out a complete enumeration, no post-survey weighting would have been necessary.

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Sampling households is most practical in situations in which it is possible to separately interview each eligible member of the household, or in which households consist of members of a single family who are so knowledgeable about each other that a single individual can serve as household informant. Interviewing everybody in the household is relatively impractical in contemporary urban China, where people are often not at home, and where the cost of securing interviews with each adult is thus prohibitively expensive. The use of key informants in Chinese surveys is also problematic where households include non-family members, because whoever is interviewed is unlikely to be adequately informed about the characteristics of all other adults in the household. In our data, almost all collective households, but only a small fraction of family households (two percent), include individuals who are not related to the household head. A tabulation from the 2000 census shows that about six percent of family households include non-family members. The census ﬁgure may be an underestimate, due to the way in which the census allocated individuals who had lived less than six months in a place (see the discussion below). Cooperation from local authorities is helpful; the value of cooperation from higher authorities seems less clear Cooperation of local authorities may improve access to restrictedaccess buildings and modulate harassment by police and local residents. The use of local guides often helps. In our experience, residents often became suspicious of strangers walking through the area drawing maps of buildings and notiﬁed either the police or local “bosses,” who challenged our enumerators to explain their purpose and tried to get them to desist. Oﬃcial permission from local oﬃcials can be an eﬀective counter to such challenges. It may not secure interviews, but it will protect enumerators and interviewers. Higher-level administrative approval no longer guarantees lowerlevel cooperation. In the past, it was possible to secure the approval of a state ministry, which would then transmit the approval “down the line” to successively smaller units. Now, approval by a higher level of administration does not imply cooperation by local authorities. In one case, we had secured written approval from the township-level authority, which promised that a local policeman would be made available to accompany the enumerators without further

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charge. When our enumerators tried to work out arrangements at the local level, they were refused with the question, “Who is going to pay for him [the policeman]?” In urban areas, and rural areas near cities, it is no longer feasible to sample administrative units below the street committee level Several changes in the administration of urban China make it impractical to specify a sampling stage below the street committee level ( jiedao). First, in some parts of urban China, neighborhood committees have been replaced by community committees, and there is no longer a consistently deﬁned unit below the street committee level. Second, in many rural-to-urban transitional areas, not all households within the area are regarded as part of the administrative unit. For example, in our pilot study we encountered situations in urban fringe areas in which long-time residents were regarded as under the purview of the village administration but newly-arrived migrants were not. It appeared that such individuals were under no local jurisdiction below the township level, in a manner akin to unincorporated areas of counties in the United States. Third, there appear to be areas (e.g., construction sites, camps for highway repair crews, power plants, and factories) in both urban and rural China that are similarly unincorporated, in the sense that they are not part of a speciﬁed village, but where people live nonetheless. All of China is covered by township-level units, but not all of China is included in village/neighborhood committees. Speciﬁcally, all of urban China is divided into street committees but not all territory within street committees is covered by neighborhood committees. Commercial buildings, factories, hospitals, universities, and other institutions, as well as roadways and parks, are excluded. In a similar way, dams, power plants, rural factories, but also national parks and mountainous areas, are not necessarily included in the jurisdictions of speciﬁc villages. Township-level and even lower-level units are too large to enumerate There are approximately 51,000 township-level units in China. With an average population of 25,000 and an average number of households that is above 7,000, township-level units are too large to be enumerated by the typical survey organization. Thus, township-level units must be subdivided in a way that preserves the principle that each individual has a known probability of selection into a sample.

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The same point holds at lower levels. Thus, for example, community committees may contain several thousand households. Furthermore, although until recently village and neighborhood committees had populations averaging about 1,000 (State Statistical Bureau 1996: 45–47), the locales selected for the pilot study tended to have larger populations. To put these ﬁgures in perspective, the National Bureau of Statistics deﬁnes its enumeration districts as areas that take an enumerator one week to fully enumerate and interview. On average, enumeration districts contain approximately 100 households and 300 people. A major unsolved problem is that of reliably and eﬃciently gaining access to restricted-access buildings As noted above, in 2000 nearly a quarter of the urban population of China lived in recently constructed housing, mainly high-rise apartment buildings. These buildings often restrict entry to residents and those invited by residents. Unlike the United States, where restricted access buildings and gated communities are uncommon, in China it appears that a large fraction of new high-rise apartment buildings, even those for people with relatively modest incomes, employ uniformed doormen to guard the entrance.10 Moreover, as experienced in our pilot study, building management companies explicitly guard the privacy of their tenants against intruders, including academic researchers. Similar access problems occur for large factory or construction-site dormitories. The diﬃculty of enumerating and interviewing within restricted-access buildings has become a major threat to the representativeness of general population surveys conducted in China.

10 About four percent of U.S. housing units are in restricted-access communities and about ﬁve percent are in restricted-access multi-unit buildings; but these two categories overlap, and somewhat less than nine percent of households have any kind of restricted entry (U.S. Census Bureau 2005: Table 2–8). Moreover, given that the probability of living in restricted-access housing is positively correlated with socioeconomic status and that household size is negatively correlated with socioeconomic status, the proportion of the population living in restricted-access housing is probably even smaller.

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The willingness of urban residents to cooperate with interviewers cannot be taken for granted On the basis of discussions with others who have conducted surveys in China over the past two decades, and relative to our own past surveys, refusal rates appear to have increased in urban areas. In the pilot study, refusal rates ranged from zero in the factory dormitories to 17 per cent in the low SES neighborhood in Guangzhou.11 Refusals may be due to a combination of fear of crime, which makes people unwilling to open the door to strangers; an acceleration of urban life that is now more stimulating and option-ﬁlled than formerly; and an increased sense of personal autonomy coupled with a reduction in anxieties about oﬀending authorities (Shambaugh 1993; Lau 2001). Moreover, although monetary payments are often used as incentives in Chinese surveys, the rising level of income inequality makes it diﬃcult to provide large enough incentives to secure the cooperation of the new high income population without exceeding research budgets. Furthermore, graded incentives, calibrated to the presumed income of the respondents, are diﬃcult to administer. Small area population estimates become increasingly out-of-date on a cycle driven by (decennial) censuses As the time since the last census increases, population estimates for small areas become less accurate due to population change. If that is true universally, it is especially true for China, due to the rapid economic growth of the nation, which has resulted in the upgrading of many villages to towns and of many towns to cities (Goldstein 1990). Moreover, areas of high in-migration tend to shift rapidly over time due to the development of new factories and workplaces as well as other changes in local conditions, such as the forced removal of migrants from certain areas (Fan 1996). In the pilot study, which was conducted no more than three-and-a-half years after the 2000 census, in the bedroom villages, in-migrant villages, and factory areas in our sample, more than half of all respondents arrived

11 We had no refusals in either of our factory dormitories, although in one case there were some non-responses because dormitory rooms were occupied entirely by under-age respondents or because no occupant of the room was ever home. In the other case, respondents were called into an oﬃce for the interview during working hours and apparently were instructed by management to cooperate.

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in 2001 or later, and hence would not have been included in the census counts. Had departures balanced new arrivals, the net change would have been small. But no way of estimating the net change is currently available. Although local authorities provide annual updates of the total size of the population, it is unclear how accurate such estimates are and, in any event, they do not generally include breakdowns by sociodemographic characteristics, and migrant status in particular. The 2000 census substantially undercounted migrants Demographic analyses (Lavely 2001; Anderson 2004) suggest that the 2000 census substantially undercounted the migrant population. It is likely that many migrants were not located by census takers. In addition, the undercount was a function of an administrative decision regarding who should be counted as a migrant. Quite apart from the cyclical decay in small area estimates that depend on the decennial census, the undercount of migrants in the decennial census is problematic for those attempting to draw probability samples of the population. We return to this point after explicating the procedure used in the 2000 census. In the census, migrants are those living in a place (village or neighborhood) other than where they are permanently registered. For 2000, an administrative decision was made to count as local residents only those migrants who had been living in the place they were enumerated for more than six months or who had left the place where their hukou was held more than six months before the census.12 In our pilot study we found that 70 percent of informal migrants had arrived in the previous six months. Estimates from surveys of migrants conducted in Beijing and Shanghai in the 1990s ( Joint Publications Research Service 1993; Wang and Zuo 1996; Roberts and Wei 1999) suggest that as many as half of all migrants had arrived less than six months earlier, which would double the

12 Individuals who had been absent for less than six months from the places where they were registered were supposed to be counted as residents of those places. But it is probable that many such people were not counted, especially in situations in which the entire family moved away. Of course, even if they were completely enumerated, the result would be to undercount the de facto urban population and to overcount the de facto rural population.

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number of migrants (deﬁned as all those spending at least four nights a week in a place other than where they are permanently registered) in Beijing and Shanghai relative to the 2000 census estimates. If a roughly comparable ratio holds for other cities, then, to return to the implication of the migrant undercount, reliance on the 2000 census to establish a survey sampling frame will result in an under-representation of migrants and of cities with large proportions of migrants. Outline for a Complete Sampling Design Because the pilot study focused on enumeration per se, it was unnecessary to use probability sampling methods to select local areas to be enumerated. We found in the pilot study that a form of enumeration is feasible, and that it detects individuals who do not appear in local hukou lists. There remains, however, the practical question of how to sample local areas when hukou lists are not used. We next provide an outline for a complete sampling design that includes enumeration and is responsive to those key diﬃculties discussed above that aﬀect enumeration. We propose a design for a national probability sample survey in China that combines (i) census-based sampling down to townshiplevel units with (ii) the sampling of areal polygons within townshiplevel units, and is followed by (iii) complete enumeration of individuals within each selected areal polygon, and (iv) probability sampling of individuals from the enumeration list. Despite the undercount in the 2000 census, and the elapsed time since 2000, there is no viable alternative to that census for establishing a sampling frame for surveys to be carried out before data from the next decennial census become available. Use of the census aﬀords advantages not otherwise available: it becomes possible to gain eﬃciency by incorporating stratiﬁcation into the sample design, and unique and valuable contextual (e.g., township-level) data can be merged with individual data in the completed sample. We expand on these points later in the discussion. In the proposed design, the ﬁrst-stage sample is drawn by sampling counties and county-level urban units with probability proportional to size, using updated estimates of population size if available. Within each ﬁrst-stage sample, a second-stage sample can be drawn in two steps: ﬁrst contact the statistical oﬃce of every selected county-level

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unit to obtain up-to-date administrative estimates of the population size of each township-level unit; and then use this information to sample township-level units with probability proportional to size. County- and township-level data ﬁles, with GIS information, are now commercially available. For each sampled second-stage unit, (i) on a map or satellite photo for that unit impose a grid composed of squares small enough to be completely enumerated (e.g., 90 meter squares); (ii) randomly sample the squares or, if information regarding population density can be obtained, sample them with probability proportional to density; (iii) enumerate all individuals or all eligible respondents. GIS maps and satellite photos with adequate resolution (step (i)) are now available. Step (ii) can be carried out using GIS software. Step (iii) depends on the use of handheld GPS navigators to locate and delineate the actual squares to be enumerated. For a Beijing study, Landry and Shen (2005) successfully implemented the use of GPS technology for the location of squares or polygons to be enumerated. The sampling of very small areas deﬁned by geographic coordinates solves problems that would be intractable if survey designers attempted to delimit and then sample the areas administered by village, neighborhood, and community committees. First, the geographic coordinates approach sidesteps practical issues raised by post-2000 local area administrative, boundary, and population density changes (see the discussion above). If necessary, post-weighting can be carried out to correct for diﬀerences in the number of inhabitants in the enumerated polygons. Second, the geographic coordinates approach creates a systematic basis for sampling sub-areas within townships and street committees, which are the lowest level administrative units that are relatively time-invariant during the inter-censal decade. Third, it permits the speciﬁcation of sub-areas small enough to be completely enumerated within a short period of time. The proposed design is for a sample of the entire population of China. This is in deliberate contrast to the common practice of restricting a sample to urban or rural China. Partitioning the population in this way is inadvisable when the intent is to allow inferences that are applicable to the entire population. Rural-only and urban-only samples will typically be biased on factors related to the outcomes of analytic interest. Because there has been so much migration in recent years, a sample restricted to the urban population will represent the urban-origin population (since there is hardly any urban-

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to-rural migration) but will not represent the rural-origin population. It is perhaps a universal fact that rural-to-urban migrants do not represent the entire rural-origin population; they are to some degree “selected” on characteristics that diﬀerentiate them from those who stay behind (Fan 1999; Yang and Guo 1999; Li and Zahniser 2002; Liang and Ma 2004; Wu and Treiman 2004a). Thus, with urbanonly or rural-only samples, analyses of migration, social mobility, socioeconomic attainment, life-course transitions, health, or analyses of diﬀerences between urban-origin and rural-origin individuals, are likely to yield incorrect and misleading results (Wu and Treiman 2004b). The proposed design is intentionally clustered and stratiﬁed. Surveys based on simple random samples are everywhere prohibitively costly. They are also impractical because equivalent eﬃciency can be obtained through a combination of clustering and stratiﬁcation. Most surveys in China use clustered sampling because that reduces ﬁeld costs. However, because the Chinese population is heterogeneous, clustering is ineﬃcient relative to simple random samples. That is, clustered samples in China tend to produce standard errors equivalent to those yielded by smaller random samples. Stratiﬁcation on variables likely to be associated with variables of analytic interest can substantially reduce and even eliminate the ineﬃciency induced by clustering (Kalton, Brick, and Lê 2005). Treiman et al. (1996) exemplify these observations in a series of sampling experiments based on a one percent sample of the 1990 Census of China. Of course, stratiﬁcation is also important for its original purpose, which is to insure sample representation on key dimensions. The proposed design is fully hierarchical in a useful way, because it is based on civil divisions down to the township/street committee level, and coordinate-deﬁned small areas are sampled within townships or street committees. Consequently, it is possible to merge census-derived information about social, demographic, and economic contexts at the county and township levels with individual-level data. The resulting ﬁle is uniquely rich, and permits the use of hierarchical modeling. This is a clear advantage of combining the civil division-based and geographic coordinate-based sampling approaches. The purely geographic coordinate-based approach does not reliably provide for the nesting of small enumeration areas within low-level administrative units, and is not intended for that purpose.

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Long before we contemplated conducting the pilot study described here we began to discuss, with experienced researchers in China and elsewhere, the possibility that enumeration could be incorporated into the design for a major sample survey of the population of China, as a way of contending with inadequacies of hukou lists. The consensus among those we consulted was that enumeration would not succeed. It was claimed that oﬃcials would not cooperate, the populace would be suspicious and troublesome, and that ﬁeldworkers would “get in trouble,” be warned oﬀ, or put in jail. Recent evidence suggests otherwise. As Landry and Shen (2005) have shown, selection of small areas followed by the counting of doorways is feasible; this is a form of enumeration. As we have reported here, it is possible to take the enumeration a step further, using the hybrid estimation procedure we have described. Thus, either of these forms of enumeration is possible, and moreover, the evidence indicates that both procedures ﬁnd substantial percentages of people who tell interviewers that they are not locally registered. These people will not be included in the hukou lists that apply to the enumerated areas. Although the hybrid enumeration approach we piloted is better than doorway counting in the listing of local populations, the performance improvement is not major. This result strongly suggests the need for complete enumeration of small areas. Is this practical? It could be argued that decennial census enumerators perform eﬀectively because they are government employees empowered by law to make inquiries. Academic and private sector ﬁeldworkers, because they have no public mandate, must depend on the cooperation of oﬃcialdom, their own skills, the forbearance of the local populace, and the organizational skills of the survey groups that employ them. The experience of our ﬁeldworkers during the pilot study suggests that, despite the legal advantage census enumerators have over academic and private sector enumerators, there is no fundamental obstacle to complete enumeration. The hybrid approach we employed in the pilot study included knocking on doors. Furthermore, although the estimates of household composition provided by local informants are not highly accurate on a household-byhousehold basis, these informants, who typically are local oﬃcials,

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can accompany enumerators on their rounds to counter potential objections to the enumeration process. Based on our ﬁeldwork experience, we conclude that nothing less than a complete census of households in small areas will produce a sampling frame of suﬃcient accuracy to permit a true probability sample of individuals to be drawn. Complete enumeration will raise survey costs, but is not otherwise unfeasible. The unanticipated level of new residential construction reported in the 2000 census, in combination with the unexpected prominence of restricted-access buildings in the urban and urban-fringe areas in which our pilot study was carried out, suggest that a profound change in the social organization of privacy is taking place. This change has major, not well understood, implications for the ways in which social surveys in China will need to be conducted. References Anderson, Barbara A. (2004). “Undercount in China’s 2000 Census in Comparative Perspective.” PSC Research Report No. 04–565. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Population Studies Center, September. Chan, Kam Wing, and Li Ziang. (1999). “The Hukou System and Rural-Urban Migration in China: Processes and Changes.” The China Quarterly 160:818–855. Chan, Kam Wing, Liu Ta, and Yunyan Yang. (1999). “Hukou and Non-hukou Migration in China: Comparisons and Contrasts.” International Journal of Population Geography 5:425–548. Davin, Delia. (1999). Internal Migration in Contemporary China. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Fan, C. Cindy. (1996). “Economic Opportunities and Internal Migration: A Case Study of Guangdong Province, China.” Professional Geographer 48:28–45. —— (1999). “Migration in a Socialist Transitional Economy: Heterogeneity, Socioeconomic and Spatial Characteristics of Migrants in China and Guangdong Province.” International Migration Review 33:954–987. Frankenberg, Elizabeth, Lynn A. Karoly, Paul Gertler, Sulistinah Ahmad, I. G. N. Agung, Sri Jarijati Hatmadji, and Paramita Sudharto. (1995). The 1993 Indonesian Family Life Survey: Overview and Field Report. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corp. Goldstein, Sidney. (1990). “Urbanization in China, 1982–87: Eﬀects of Migration and Reclassiﬁcation.” Population and Development Review 16:673–701. Goldstein, Alice, and Sidney Goldstein. (1991). “Temporary Migrants in Shanghai Households, 1984.” Demography 28:275–291. Goodkind, Daniel, and Loraine A. West. (2002). “China’s Floating Population: Deﬁnitions, Data and Recent Findings.” Urban Studies 39:2237–2250. Joint Publications Research Service ( JPRS). (1993). “Beijing’s Mobile Population: Current Status, Policy.” Renko Yu Jingji 79 (August 25). JPRS-CAR-93–091, December 29:44–47. [In Chinese.] Kalton, Graham, J. Michael Brick, and Than Lê. (2005). “Estimating Components of Design Eﬀects for Use in Sample Design. Pp. 95–121 in Household Sample Surveys in Developing and Transition Countries. United Nations, Department of Economic and

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Social Aﬀairs, Statistics Division. [Electronic version: ST/ESA/STAT/SER.F/ 96/WWW March 2005; accessed 25 April 2005 at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/ hhsurveys/pdf/Chapter_6.pdf ] Kish, Leslie. (1995). Survey Sampling. New York: John Wiley. Landry, Pierre F., and Mingming Shen. (2005). “Reaching Migrants in Survey Research: the Use of the Global Positioning System to Reduce Coverage Bias in China.” Political Analysis 13:1–22. Lau, Raymond W. K. (2001). “Socio-Political Control in Urban China: Changes and Crisis.” British Journal of Sociology 52:605–620. Lavely, William. (2001). “First Impressions from the 2000 Census of China.” Population and Development Review 27:755–769. Lavely, William, James Lee, and Wang Feng. (1990). “Chinese Demography: The State of the Field.” The Journal of Asian Studies 49:807–834. Lee, Hong Yung. (2000). “Xiagang, the Chinese Style of Laying Oﬀ Workers.” Asian Survey 40:914–937. Li, Haizheng, and Steven Zahniser. (2002). “The Determinants of Temporary Ruralto-Urban Migration in China.” Urban Studies 39:2219–2235. Liang, Zai. (2001). “The Age of Migration in China.” Population and Development Review 27:499–524. Liang, Zai, and Zhongdong Ma. (2004). “China’s Floating Population: New Evidence from the 2000 Census.” Population and Development Review 30:467–488. Mason, William M., Donald J. Treiman, Yaqiang Qi, Yao Lu, Yi Pan, Shige Song, and Wei Wang. (2005). “Behavioral Responses to China’s 2002–2003 SARS Epidemic.” Paper prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Philadelphia, 30 March–3 April. Massey, Douglas S., Joaquin Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor. (1993). “Theories of International Migration: a Review and Appraisal.” Population and Development Review 19:431–466. Roberts, Kenneth D. (1997). “China’s Tidal Wave of Migrant Labor: What Can We Learn from Mexican Undocumented Migration to the United States?” International Migration Review 31:249–293. Roberts, Kenneth D. and Jinsheng Wei. (1999). “The Floating Population of Shanghai in the Mid-1990s.” Asian and Paciﬁc Migration Journal 8:473–510. Shambaugh, David. (1993). “Losing Control: The Erosion of State Authority in China.” Current History 92:253–259. Solinger, Dorothy J. (1999a). Contesting Citizenship in Urban China. Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (1999b). “Citizenship Issues in China’s Internal Migration: Comparisons with Germany and Japan.” Political Science Quarterly 114:455–478. State Statistical Bureau. (1996). Zhongguo Nongcun Tongji Nianjian 1996 (Rural Statistical Yearbook of China 1996). Beijing: Zhongguo Tongji Chubanshe. [In Chinese.] Treiman, Donald J., William Cumberland, Xilai Shi, Zhongdong Ma, and Shaoling Zhu. (1996). “A Sample Design for the Chinese Life History Survey.” Appendix D.1.a of the documentation for the survey, “Life Histories and Social Change in Contemporary China.” [Downloadable from the UCLA Social Science Data Archive: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/da/index/framei.htm: click on “index,” click on “Asia-China,” click on “Life Histories and Social Change in Contemporary China, (1996),” click on “CLHS Site (non-UCLA researchers click here),” click on “app_d_public.pdf.”] U.S. Census Bureau, Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division. (2005). American Housing Survey National Tables: 2001 (last revised February 18 2005). [http:// www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahs01_2000wts/ahs01_2000wts.html] (Accessed 15 March 2005.) U.S. Consulate Guangzhou. (2001). “Township and Village Enterprises in Guangdong:

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FAMILY CUSTOMS AND FARMLAND REALLOCATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINESE VILLAGES* Jonathan Unger Abstract This paper discusses why currently, in much of the Chinese countryside, the division of the paternal household takes place at the point of each son’s marriage, why elderly parents tend to live with their youngest married son, and why popular rural attitudes toward private property today are, in unexpected ways, dramatically diﬀerent from both traditional times and the revolutionary period. The paper shows why, to resolve the ﬁnancial diﬃculties posed by the family life cycle, most farming communities in China secretly participate in periodic free redistributions of farmland between households.

Introduction Today, a rural Chinese household’s property, including its landholdings, is almost always divided up at the time when each of the older sons marries. Frequently it is the youngest son who stays on in the parents’ home and inherits what remains of the parents’ personal portion of the property. Is this a traditional phenomenon, or is it a new practice? Related to this question is the farmers’ attitude towards property rights. Before 1949 farmers had a strong sense of property rights and a ﬁrm attachment to their own plots of land. In contrast, today farmers in many parts of China prefer agricultural land not to be privately owned. In fact, they prefer it to be periodically reallocated between neighbouring families, giving land free of charge to households that have grown in membership and taking land from families that

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 40th Anniversary Conference of the Universities Services Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, held in January, 2004. Thanks are due to Professor Kuan Hsin-chi and Jean Hung of the USC for organizing the conference. Thanks are also due to Graeme Smith for conducting interview research on my behalf in rural China in December 2004, and to James Kung for providing several oﬃcial Chinese documents as well as his data from an unpublished paper. Anita Chan and two anonymous journal referees provided valuable suggestions on the paper’s ﬁnal version. Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

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have shrunk. Why is there such a preference for land reallocations among China’s farmers? This paper will examine how these two issues are connected, and how problems have been posed by inheritance patterns and by the government’s policy toward reallocations of land. The Division of Households Let us examine the ﬁrst of these sets of practices. Is the division of a farm family’s property at the time of each son’s marriage a “newborn” custom? And traditionally, did rural parents most often live together with the youngest son after his marriage, not with the eldest son? When I asked interviewees in villages in a number of Chinese provinces about this, most insisted that in traditional times it had been the eldest son who, after his marriage, had normally stayed on with the parents until they passed away: that this had been in accord with Confucian teachings of giving precedence to the eldest son. And when I examined books that provide an overall view of pre-revolution family life, a similar generalization cropped up. Lloyd Eastman, for instance, in his book Family, Field and Ancestors, wrote that “It was customary . . . for just the eldest son to continue to reside in the family home and look after the aging parents: younger sons had to move out soon after they took a wife” (Eastman 1988: 17). But if we look instead at studies of speciﬁc pre-revolution Chinese villages, it becomes evident that, in fact, village households most frequently followed the opposite course. In Fei Xiaotong’s home village in Jiangsu province, it was most often the younger son who stayed on in the family home and who inherited what his parents had retained of the family estate (Fei 1947: 66–7). Similarly, in Martin Yang’s well-known study of his own ancestral village in Shandong province, parents most often chose the youngest son to live with and, when so, normally speciﬁed that their remaining property should go to him after their deaths. Alternatively, some parents preferred to live independently or, in their old age, resided or ate with each of the sons in turn for periods of a month or more (Yang 1945: 83; Hsu 1948: 114–5; Fei 1947: 74). In a village in Guangdong province, research in the late 1970s by Sulamith Potter and Jack Potter on pre-revolutionary family life found, similarly, that the prop-

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ertied families “gave each son in turn a house and a share of the land” after the son and his bride had shared the paternal home for some years, and that “The parents remained in their own house with the youngest son or lived alone, being cared for by the sons jointly” (Potter and Potter 1990: 20). In Taiwan, village studies also reveal that the most common forms were either to live with the youngest son or, as an alternative, to rotate residence or meals among the sons’ households (Gallin 1966: 144; Chen 1972: 70; Pasternak 1972: 70). None of the available village studies from either prerevolution China or from Taiwan refer to parents most commonly residing with the eldest son. Nevertheless, there is a tendency in China studies to assume otherwise and, like Lloyd Eastman, to fall back on the Confucian notions of what ought to have been: which is, of course, parental prioritization of the eldest son.1 The practices today are the same as the range of preferences that are found in the studies about pre-revolution villages and Taiwanese villages. My visits to villages in a number of provinces in China revealed that parents who live in stem families with one of their sons most frequently live with the younger son, or alternatively live entirely independently, or live or eat with each married son in turn. Other recent researchers in Chinese villages have found similar living arrangements (e.g., Wang 2004; Jing 2004; Zhang 2004). What is diﬀerent today is that the division of the paternal household, including its land and other property, most often takes place at the point of marriage. In pre-revolution times, most rural households apparently did not split into separate families by dividing their assets at the ﬁrst point of a son’s marriage. Rather, the household often held together as a single economic and social unit for some years after the eldest son’s wedding (see, e.g., Harrell 1982: 159–170; Cohen 1970, 1976).2 Households sometimes remained intact until the younger sons themselves married and the separate conjugal

1

In some parts of China, this prioritization was indeed seen in a symbolic way: a small extra share of the inheritance was given to the eldest, though usually a relatively small amount, often on the grounds that the eldest son would have special duties in the ancestral ceremonies (Fei: 66; Hsu: 114–5). 2 Harrell (1982: 170) notes that “brothers tend to stay together longer, despite the inevitable tensions between fang within a jia, as long as it remains economically advantageous for them to do so.”

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interests of the brothers and their wives began eroding the household’s unity. Why, then, today do the elder sons most frequently split oﬀ from their paternal family at the point of their wedding? Certainly, the shift arose within the collective period, as is evident from a number of studies of Chinese villages (e.g., Chan, Madsen and Unger 1992: 194; Parish and Whyte 1978: 220; Selden 1993: 145). Before the revolution, when the family had productive assets including land, the drawbacks of cutting the family property into smaller portions had provided a disincentive to split up the household immediately. But under the collectives there was no longer land or a household economy to hold a family together. Instead, the main source of income was in work points, earned by each individual, and thus the economic deterrent to dividing the household had disappeared. During the 1960s and 1970s, the bride-to-be often began to have a say during the wedding negotiations, and a young woman frequently insisted that she and her groom should have a separate house as a precondition for the marriage. If at all possible, she did not want to live cheek-by-jowl with her mother-in-law in the same small home, especially when there also were unmarried siblings crowding it. As a result, weddings often needed to be delayed until the groom’s parents could aﬀord to build a new dwelling for the young couple. When de-collectivization occurred in the early 1980s, this remained the precondition of most brides before they would consent to marry. My own interviewing, as well as several published village studies, suggest, though, that households today sometimes delay division when they are engaged in non-farm enterprises that would suﬀer from a division (Harrell 1993: 100–1; Selden 1993: 150; Judd 1994: 188). But among families that are engaged entirely in farming, there almost invariably occurs a progressive division of the household and its assets at the point of each of the elder sons’ marriages. Notably, the sons and daughters who have married during recent years were born before the state’s eﬀorts to reduce the birth rate became rigorous, and thus the families tended to have several children. My interviews in villages suggest that when these children were young, the parents tended to make a greater emotional investment in their youngest son compared to their other children, in the supposition that they might well be spending the rest of their lives in the same household as the youngest. A few interviewees recited what they said were traditional sayings to the eﬀect that the eldest son

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gets the parents’ respect, or the parents’ trust, but that the youngest gets the aﬀection. (It should be noted, though, that I have too few examples from interviews to make any ﬁrm generalizations about the extent to which this feeling prevails today or whether it was generally true in the past.)3 When ﬁelds were distributed to households at the time of decollectivization in the early 1980s, the former production teams retained legal ownership of the land and each of the households was given the right to use the ﬁelds apportioned to it over the long term. In most of China’s villages this land was parcelled out on a per capita basis (Unger 1985), so that a family with, say, 7 members, comprising two parents, three sons and two daughters, was allocated seven portions of land. As the two daughters subsequently married out into another village, they took with them a dowry, and this was their sole share of family property. Their allocated land remained with the family. The heads of families were advised that they could pass on the household’s land to their sons. In doing so, families quickly began to resume pre-revolutionary practices. Just as in pre-revolution times, when the family’s assets are divided, the property is normally divided equally among the sons. But the parents also often decide to retain a portion of land for themselves, and if so the son with whom they live in old age is to inherit this extra portion. Or the youngest son may directly receive a small extra portion of land from the outset on the grounds that he will have to support his parents more than the other sons will. In such a case this may be considered an equitable arrangement by all concerned. But in my visits to villages during the late 1980s and 1990s, it also became apparent that in a minority of villages and indeed whole counties a diﬀerent version of property division was occurring. In these particular villages, as each of the elder sons married and moved out, each took with him only the portion that had been allocated to the family in his name at the time of de-collectivization. Let us look again at that family of seven, comprising two parents, three sons and two daughters. In such villages, the elder brothers took

3 Researchers rarely appear to have broached the topic, and the only reference that I could discover refers to Taiwan. Discussing a household she lived in as a guest, Margery Wolf (1968: 43) includes a phrase whose import is contrary to what informants in rural China told me: she refers to “the eldest and therefore the favored son”.

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with them only their own individual parcel of one-seventh of the family land. This left ﬁve-sevenths of the land with the parents and youngest son. The youngest son was in line to inherit all of this when the parents pass away: that is, he would end up with ﬁve times as much land as one of his elder brothers. Giving only a sliver of land to the elder sons in this fashion does not seem to be a common practice across China, but in my ﬁeldwork interviewing I did discover it to prevail in villages as far-ﬂung as Yunnan, Hunan and Qinghai provinces. In villages that depend entirely upon agriculture, such an inheritance pattern spells poverty for the elder brothers’ families— unless the former production team takes moves to reallocate land. Even in the majority of villages, where the elder brothers received a relatively equal portion of land, severe problems of maldistribution soon arose for another reason. This was clear in a visit to a relatively poor village in Yunnan province in 1988. There, the families that contained several teenagers at the time of de-collectivization in 1982 initially did well. They often had enough hands available not only to work their allotted ﬁelds but also to handle various economic activities outside agriculture. But in the half decade since then, shifts in the life cycle of families had altered their economic circumstances. One villager whom I interviewed related that in 1982 he had received ﬁve portions of land for himself, his wife, and his three teenage sons (he had no daughters), but these ﬁelds now had to support, in addition, the son’s wives and children: eleven people in all. They were barely scraping by. He was anxious for the village to enact a readjustment of ﬁelds. Compare this case with that of a middle-aged couple from the same village with three recently grown children—one son and two daughters—who similarly received ﬁve portions of land at the time of de-collectivization. As the daughters married and moved away, the single son and his parents were now left with a large ﬁve-portion block of property which, if land readjustments were not carried out by the village, the son would alone inherit. Yet the son fretted that his future prospects were shaky, since he himself now had two sons, and when they grew up the ﬁelds allotted to him would not be enough to support their wives and children. Almost all families that rely strictly on farming have had to face the problem that, whatever their current circumstances, their prosperity would rise and fall as they moved over time from one phase of their family’s demographic cycle to the next.

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Reallocating Farm Land Under pressure from farming families, thus, across China the former production teams quietly began readjusting landholdings to compensate for changes in family size. In fact, in most of them during the 1980s and 1990s, despite the central government’s opposition, the agricultural land was reallocated between households periodically—in some villages every year or two, and in some once every ﬁve or six or seven years. A 1997 sample survey by the Ministry of Agriculture of 271 villages reported that 80 percent had readjusted landholdings, and 66 percent of the villages had done so more than once (Wang 1998).4 The periodic land reallocations have, each time, recreated a near-equal per capita land distribution. Such land reallocations did not occur in pre-revolution times. How then, across China, have most farmers developed such a set of preferences? The experiences of the collective period obviously accustomed farmers to a new set of premises. Under the collectives, households had been assigned small plots (ziliudi ) on which to grow vegetables for their own consumption, and the size of these plots expanded and contracted as families added and lost members. In addition, families under the collectives had obtained grain “on loan” while their children were young, and then, years later, the cost of the grain was deducted from the family’s work-point wages as the children became teenagers who could begin to augment the family’s earnings. Villagers who had become accustomed to their production teams making these economic adjustments in order to balance out the family cycle were favourable to continuing such readjustments after de-collectivization, albeit in a diﬀerent form, as being in their family’s long-term interests. The above survey ﬁnding —that 89 percent of China’s farmers have participated in land reallocations—is an extraordinary ﬁgure.

4 A survey in 1995 showed 72 percent of 215 sampled villages had redistributed the land, and a majority had done so two or more times (Brandt et al. 2002). Another survey of one hundred villages in 2003 found 86 percent of the surveyed households have participated in such land reallocations (personal communication from Prof. James Kung, of the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology). I am indebted to Prof. Kung for sharing this information with me and for permitting me to publish the figure in this paper.

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The government, as will be seen, is opposed to these land transfers, and China’s news media have never publicized the practice. Yet across rural China, in the vast majority of the villages, farmers independently have arrived at the same solution to a major pressing economic problem facing their families, and have insisted on carrying it out. Surveys have conﬁrmed that most farmers want this. In fact, in a 1994 questionnaire survey of 800 farm families in eight counties, only 14 percent of the respondents declared that they preferred permanent land ownership rights to be held by each household. Fully 65 percent favoured taking land away from households that lost a member through death or through a daughter marrying out, and redistributing the plots to families that had grown in size through new births and incoming brides. Notably, only 19 percent of the respondents were opposed to such periodic land redistributions. Even 43 percent of the wealthiest households, looking forward in time, preferred periodic land readjustments, compared to only 24 percent who were opposed. It is similarly notable that village households with a high share of oﬀ-farm income preferred such readjustments, by a margin of 55 percent to 18 percent, perhaps in recognition of the possibility that some day they too might need to return to full-time farming (Kung and Liu 1997: 45–48).5 Interestingly, this logic is not unique to post-socialist China. It independently developed in large parts of Tsarist Russia, and by custom, farming families there similarly were periodically allocated larger or smaller shares in their village’s land as the size of their household increased and decreased over time. This was done by villagewide custom, without Tsarist government involvement (Chayanov 1966). At one time or another in the quarter century since de-collectivization and China’s return to individual household farming, in a clear majority of China’s villages all of the plots of land held by families have been completely redistributed. In a 2003 survey (Kung,

5 This was especially the case among households with high levels of non-farm income who resided in districts that were still largely agricultural. In districts which had largely turned to non-agricultural pursuits, a majority of the farmers felt secure enough of their future prospects to answer in the negative to the question about taking back land from families that had lost members (Kung and Liu 1997: 59).

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unpublished), it was found that 60 percent of the sampled rural households had experienced full land redistributions. In most of the villages that I know about through my own ﬁeldwork, to ensure equity and a lack of corruption during such redistributions the households have picked lots out of a box to determine who received which ﬁelds. But such complete redistributions of land normally occur when land has not been reallocated for a number of years. When a village redistributes land more frequently, as in some of the villages that I have visited, the readjustments of ﬁelds among households usually only involve plots of land at the edges of a family’s holdings, and have only aﬀected those households who had experienced a gain or loss of a family member since the last land transfer. All of the rest of each family’s ﬁelds remained untouched. In these land transfers, since families know what particular plots are likely to be taken away, a problem arises concerning how to retain the long-term fertility of this land. In several of the villages where I enquired, a system has been put in place to discourage households from running down the plots’ quality. On the eve of such a reallocation, which normally occurred during the depth of winter when the land lies fallow between crop seasons, the team head and a chosen few of the most respected farmers would go to inspect the fertility of each plot, and the lower its fertility, the larger the amount of land that is taken in compensation.6 The periodic land adjustments have caused families to strategize in other ways, though. Among other things, it has inﬂuenced the timing of weddings. An interviewee told me that his village had decided to reallocate land soon, and his son was trying to quicken the date of his wedding so that his in-coming bride would receive a share of land. The parents of marriageable daughters take an opposite strategy. In a study of a village in Sichuan, when land reallocations are imminent the families with daughters who are engaged to be married try to postpone the wedding, so that her parents will

6

Two researchers elsewhere in China similarly have found pressures exerted against households who fail to adequately fertilize their contracted plots. They observe: “We heard of an incident in which a few households refused to include one family in the reallocation exercise on grounds that its plots were sloppily farmed during its tenure. In a small community such as a hamlet, this kind of information is not diﬃcult to acquire, as villagers can easily tell how well their neighbors have worked their land” (Kung and Cai 2000: 288).

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remain entitled to a land portion for their as-yet-unmarried daughter (Ruf 1998: 129). State Intervention to Thwart the Farmers’ Preference In light of the solid preference for periodic reallocations of landholdings among Chinese farmers today, it is ironic that the government in Beijing, which still touts itself as socialist, instituted regulations starting in 1993–94 to put a stop to the reallocations.7 Beijing decreed that land tenure should be frozen for a period of at least 30 years without any further readjustments. The government was following the advice of economists in the government’s think-tanks, who had been strongly inﬂuenced, in turn, by Western economists. The Chinese economists and their Western mentors were enamoured of the notion of “property rights” and “security of tenure” and did not deign to notice or care about what the farmers themselves wanted.8 Even earlier, in 1987, the central government had begun to experiment with a local program to put a halt to land redistributions. It selected a hilly county in Guizhou province to carry out a ban on reallocations for a period of 20 years. Generally, it is more diﬃcult in mountainous countryside to achieve agreement among farmers on how to reallocate ﬁelds, since each parcel of hill land diﬀers in complex ways from every other, unlike, say, the north China plains. The government could therefore expect reduced support for land redistribution at the Guizhou experimental site. A subsequent survey

7 The ﬁrst of these decrees (zhongfa), titled “Zhonggong zhongyang, guowuyuan guanyu dangqian nongye he nongcun jingji fazhan de ruogan zhengce cuoshi” (Certain Policy Measures taken by the Party Centre and State Council regarding Contemporary Agriculture and the Development of Village Economies), was issued on 5 November 1993. 8 As one observer notes, “It is not entirely coincidental that Chinese policy advisors’ support for stronger individual property rights reﬂected the agendas for the major multilateral lending and development agencies. After all, for more than a decade advisors from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Washingtonbased Rural Development Institute (RDI) had been providing Chinese research institutes . . . with training on land and natural resource legislation, consultancy partnerships, and research contracts. . . . The desire to demonstrate farmers’ preference for secure long-term contracts has patently inﬂuenced RDI’s research agenda in China, even to the extent that when survey results failed to verify that point, the organization’s spokespeople continued to assert that Chinese farmers want ‘ownership-like rights’” (Sargeson 2004: 642).

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revealed that fully 60 percent of farmers recalled they had initially favoured the ban, and only 16 percent had been opposed. But over the following decade, many of their families came under demographic pressures, and some had to resort to renting land from neighbours even though they could ill-aﬀord to do so. Attitudes in this Guizhou county changed considerably. By 1999, 49 percent of the farmers reported in a survey that they now preferred a system of periodic land reallocations, and only 32 percent still preferred the freeze on land reallocations (Kung 2002: 798). Elsewhere in China, where there had been less reason than in hilly Guizhou for farmers to countenance a freeze, there was quiet resistance from below to the 1993 decree banning reallocations. The grassroots team heads, who were attuned to the farmers’ needs, normally ignored the 30-year directive, and continued periodically to readjust landholdings in line with changes in the size of households. But in the late 1990s, the central government began to enforce its 30-year decree more rigorously,9 with penalties against village oﬃcials who were caught permitting reallocations. The early results of this bore out the worries of farmers about the consequences of being at the wrong point in the family cycle. In a village in Qinghai province in 2000, I visited a young family that was barely subsisting on gruel and neighbours’ charity. The husband had lived with his widowed mother and brother on three portions of land until his marriage in 1997, when he took his one portion with him. This was not enough land to support himself, his wife and their two babies, and with land reallocations blocked through the intervention of local oﬃcials, the family members were visibly malnourished and inadequately clothed. This type of suﬀering must have been particularly widespread in the minority of villages where the elder sons, at their weddings, inherit only their own single sliver of the family’s landholdings. In such villages, the readjustments of land are truly vital to the elder sons and their families. In March 2003, a new Village Land Contract Law solidiﬁed in concrete the central government line: it stipulated that all of the former teams’ contracts for cultivable land [i.e., distributions of

9 This was in keeping with a new decree issued by the Party Central Committee at the 3rd plenum of the Party’s 15th congress (Zhongguo gongchandang di 15 jie zhongyang weiyuanhui di san ci quanti huiyi tongguo), on 14 October 1998.

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agricultural land to households] must be for 30 years and could not be violated (Articles 22 and 26). Despite this law, pressures were growing within villages for land readjustments, as the numbers of young families who suﬀer from inadequate landholdings annually mounted. As of the mid-2000s, there is evidence that substantial numbers of villages are disobeying Beijing. But this requires strict community consensus and cohesion. If even a single one of the households that loses land in a periodic readjustment complains to higher authorities, the team’s violation of the new law is exposed. This current situation can be observed in a county in Anhui province, where Graeme Smith has been conducting a year’s ﬁeldwork on the political economy of China’s agricultural extension services. In December 2004, he investigated land reallocations there in behalf of this paper.10 He discovered that many teams had been readjusting land allocations every two or three years (and some teams every year) during the 1980s and early 1990s, but after the central government began clamping down they reduced the frequency. One of the teams he is studying has now adopted a 7-year periodic readjustment. It would be holding a meeting of all of the team’s adults during the 2005 Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), when all of the team members who had been working away from the village would be returning home. Inasmuch as seven years have passed since the last adjustment, major changes in families’ composition had occurred, and villagers therefore expected that the meeting would decide secretly to redistribute all of the landholdings. Other villages in the same county have adopted diﬀerent strategies. In a nearby village with few local oﬀ-farm opportunities, there was a strong sentiment to readjust land much more frequently to account for changes in household population, despite the dangers of being caught. In yet another village in the same rural township, with only half as much land per capita, most income today derives from oﬀ-farm work, and agriculture has become far less important to families. There, households were content to let the land remain permanently in the same families’ hands.

10 I am indebted to Graeme Smith, a Doctoral student at the Australian National University, for enquiring about the land readjustments during his daily visits to villages.

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In those villages where some of the households have felt a need for readjustments, farmers who will neither gain nor lose materially from land redistribution have told Smith that they favour it, citing fairness as their main reason. It is this type of sentiment that presumably helps to build the level of community cohesion necessary for the secret land swaps. In the decades since de-collectivization in the early 1980s and the return to family farming, there have been relatively few ways in which farmers still continue to cooperate closely as a group: these secret land readjustments are among the most signiﬁcant. In my visits to villages during the 1980s and early 1990s, I discovered that the village heads often took the lead in organizing the periodic land adjustments, and that all of the teams in a village therefore simultaneously carried out the land readjustments. As the central government began to crack down, though, many village heads felt caught between the farmers’ desires to redistribute ﬁelds and the prohibition decreed from above. The village heads began to take a neutral non-active stance, neither taking a lead nor interfering with what the teams decided to do. Possibly as a result, Smith has found that in some of the villages he is currently studying, diﬀerent teams are following diﬀerent courses and independently decide to readjust landholdings in diﬀerent years. Overall, to the extent that the central government’s pressures have induced many teams to space out the frequency of their land reallocations to a half a decade or more each time, pressures have built to carry out more intense, full-scale redistributions when the teams ﬁnally do so. This aﬀects security of tenure more severely than do more frequent reallocations, which tend to aﬀect only small plots at the edges of family landholdings. The consequences of the government’s pressures contradict the government’s intended policy objectives. Potential Future Scenarios for Landholdings and Family Residence Patterns The impetus to redistribute land reﬂects a particular type of agricultural economy faced by Chinese farmers. Most are faced by a shortage of land, and realize that they will suﬀer because of this when they are at the wrong stage of their family cycle. The system of land readjustments, based on a precedent from the collective era,

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is an ingenious solution. It is remarkable that, without any central directives or publicized suggestions, the vast bulk of the farmers across China have arrived at this same solution to their problem—and have persisted in carrying it out despite prohibitions from above. But this impetus to redistribute land periodically is likely to decline in areas where the importance of agriculture to the household economy diminishes. We have observed this already in one of the villages in Anhui province that Smith has examined. Elsewhere, in villages in China’s coastal provinces and villages located close to cities, where farming is no longer the core enterprise of most village households, there is evidence that most households no longer wish to go through the bother of carrying out land reallocations.11 In such villages, many families have moved entirely out of agriculture and only want to retain a small plot on which to grow their own vegetables. In some villages, so few today want to remain in agriculture that their teams have leased out large stretches of land to farmers from other parts of China (e.g., Unger and Chan 1999: 61). Even in some of the villages in the poorer hinterlands, a new phenomenon has emerged in which some people no longer want land. The reason is that urban restrictions on migrant workers have eased up in very recent years, and as a consequence an increasing number of young villagers who have urban jobs have made plans to stay in the cities permanently. They include not just young unmarried people, but also newly married couples and their children.12 As they stop returning to live in the countryside, ﬁelds get freed up. It can be expected that in some villages the shortage of land that underlies the land reallocations will disappear. This new trend of migration, with one or more sons permanently absent from the village, also has an obvious eﬀect on the question of which son stays on in the parent’s home after marriage. The question is also being resolved by the government’s program, starting in the late 1970s/early 1980s, to curtail the numbers of chil-

11 A recent study, based on analysing land reallocation behaviour in 10 provinces in China for the period 1986–1999, conﬁrms that the overall level of land reallocation has dropped sharply over time in those districts where an increasing share of villagers are employed in oﬀ-farm work (Kung, Lin and Shen, forthcoming). 12 This became clear in my own ﬁeldwork experience when interviewing migrant workers at a large factory in Fuzhou. Some were married, were with their spouses, and did not plan to return from the city to farming. (Also see Zhang 2005.)

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dren in each family. Whereas a one-child family prevails in the cities, much of the countryside eﬀectively has had a somewhat more lenient policy. In some rural districts, the local policy has restricted families to one son, with permission to have an extra child when a baby girl is born. In other parts of the countryside, a family was oﬃcially restricted to two children regardless of gender. In such villages, to the extent that government policies are adhered to, only a quarter of all families give birth to two sons. In reality, across rural China the limitations on birth numbers have been violated; but nonetheless, as the babies born in the early 1980s have come of marriage age in the early 2000s, they generally were raised in relatively small families and, more likely than not, are the only son in their family (Zhang 2005). So long as China oﬃcially adheres to a strict familyplanning policy, most couples as of today do not face the issue of which son will reside in the family home, nor the issue of how to divide the family’s property among sons when they marry. Another social phenomenon is also at work. As studies of prosperous villages have begun to reveal, there has been a growing tendency there for all the sons to move out of the parents’ home. This reﬂects a growing ability among the young to determine the shape of their own lives, and they are prioritizing their own relationship as a couple over their obligations to the older generation (Yan 2000; Yan 2003; Yan 1996: 197; Murphy 2002: 63; Pang, de Brauw and Rozelle 2005). As Ellen Judd notes in her village study Gender and Power in Rural North China (1994), “Household division facilitates the enhanced personal autonomy that is now a legitimate goal to pursue in China, and that is notably pursued by younger people” (179). It is normally only among the poorer households and in poorer villages, which cannot aﬀord the high construction costs of this extra house-building, that the stem-family system still heavily prevails, with the younger (or only) son and his wife staying on with his parents. If larger parts of rural China become progressively more prosperous, then the custom of continuing to live with the younger/only son after his marriage is probably slowly on its way out. If parents have indeed emotionally favoured the younger son, will this fade away as young rural parents today realize that, even when they have more than one son, all of them will leave the household after their weddings? In such villages, in future, will it become the custom among the families with more than one son that when the parents become elderly and frail and can no longer fend for themselves, they

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will move residence periodically to live in each of their sons’ households in turn? Will future inheritance patterns reﬂect this? Does the decline in the numbers of children in families, brought about by China’s rural family-planning requirements of the past two decades, mean that increasing numbers of married daughters in future will need to take their elderly parents into their homes? Will inheritance patterns also begin to reﬂect this? Will diﬀerent patterns prevail in diﬀerent parts of the country? Especially in non-prosperous villages, when a couple has two or more sons will more traditional mores continue to be observed? In such villages, will the younger son and his wife normally still stay with his elderly parents in the same household (and in the process gain what remains of their inheritance)? Will we ﬁnd that, disproportionately, it is the elder son who leaves both home and village and emigrates permanently to a city? Only time will tell. References Brandt, Loren, Jikun Huang, Guo Li, and Scott Rozelle. (2002). “Land Rights in China: Facts, Fictions and Issues”, The China Journal 47: 67-97. Chan, Anita, Richard Madsen and Jonathan Unger. (1992). Chen Village under Mao and Deng. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Chayanov, Alexander V. The Theory of Peasant Society, republished in 1966. Homewood, Ill.: R.D. Irwin Publishers. Chen Chung-Min. (1977). Upper Camp: A Study of a Chinese Mixed-Cropping Village. Nankang, Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica Monograph Series B, No. 7. Cohen, Myron L. (1970). “Developmental Process in the Chinese Family Group”, in Maurice Freedman, ed., Family and Kinship in Chinese Society, edited by Maurice Freedman. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. —— (1976). House United, House Divided: The Chinese Family in Taiwan. New York: Columbia University Press. Eastman, Lloyd E. (1988). Family, Field and Ancestors: Constancy and Change in China’s Social and Economic History, 1550–1949. New York: Oxford University Press. Fei Hsiao-t’ung. (1947). Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley. London: Kegan Paul. Gallin, Bernard. (1966). Hsin Hsing, Taiwan: A Chinese Village in Change. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Harrell, Stevan. (1982). Ploughshare Village: Culture and Context in Taiwan. Seattle WA: University of Washington Press. —— (1993). “Geography, Demography, and Family Composition in Three Southwestern Villages.” Pp. 77–103 in Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era, edited by Deborah Davis and Stevan Harrell. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Hsu, Francis L.K. (1948). Under the Ancestor’s Shadow: Kinship, Personality, and Social Mobility in Village China. New York: Doubleday [this is a 1967 reprint]. Jing, Jun. (2004). “Meal Rotation and Filial Piety”. Pp. 53–63 in Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia, edited by Charlotte Ikels. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.

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Judd, Ellen R. (1994). Gender and Power in Rural North China. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Kung, James Kaising. (1995). “Equal Entitlement Versus Tenure Security under a Regime of Collective Property Rights: Peasants’ Preference for Institutions in PostReform Chinese Agriculture.” Journal of Comparative Economics 21 (1): 82–111. —— (2002). “Choice of Land Tenure in China: The Case of a County with QuasiPrivate Property Rights.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 50 (4): 793–817. Kung, James K. and Yong-shun Cai. (2000). “Property Rights and Fertilizing Practices in Rural China: Evidence from Northern Jiangsu.” Modern China 26 (3): 276–308. Kung, James K., Justin Y. Lin, and Shen Minggao (forthcoming). “Structural Change and the Evolution of Property Rights in Rural China.” Economic Development and Cultural Change (forthcoming). Kung, James and Shouying Liu. (1997). “Farmers’ Preferences Regarding Ownership and Land Tenure in Post-Mao China: Unexpected Evidence from Eight Counties.” The China Journal 38: 33–63. Murphy, Rachel. (2002). How Migrant Labor is Changing Rural China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pang, Lihua, Alan de Brauw and Scott Rozelle. (2004). “Working until Your Drop: The Elderly of Rural China.” The China Journal 52: 73–94. Parish, William L. and Martin K. Whyte. (1978). Village and Family in Contemporary China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pasternak, Burton. (1972). Kinship and Community in Two Chinese Villages. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Potter, Sulamith Heins, and Jack M. Potter. (1990). China’s Peasants: The Anthropology of a Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press. Ruf, Gregory. (1998). Cadres and Kin: Making a Socialist Village in West China, 1921–1991. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Sargeson, Sally. (2004). “Full Circle? Rural Land Reforms in Globalizing China”, Critical Asian Studies 36: 637–656. Selden, Mark. (1993). “Family Strategies and Structures in Rural North China.” Pp. 139–165 in Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era, edited by Deborah Davis and Stevan Harrell. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. Unger, Jonathan. (1985). “The Decollectivization of the Chinese Countryside: A Survey of Twenty-eight Villages.” Paciﬁc Aﬀairs 58: 585–606. —— (2002). The Transformation of Rural China. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Unger, Jonathan and Anita Chan. (1999). “Inheritors of the Boom: Private Enterprise and the Role of Local Government in a Rural South China Township.” The China Journal 42: 45–74. Wang, Danyu. (2004). “Ritualistic Coresidence and the Weakening of Filial Practice in Rural China”. Pp. 16–33 in Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia, edited by Charlotte Ikels. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Wang, Huimin. (1988). “Dangqian nongcun tudi chengbao jingying guanli de xianzhuang ji wenti” (The Current Circumstances and Problems facing the Administration and Management of Village Land Contracts), Zhongguo nongcun guancha 5 (Rural Chinese Observations). Wolf, Margery. (1968). The House of Lim: A Study of a Chinese Farm Family. New York: Meredith. Yan, Yunxiang. (1996). The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. —— (2002). “Courtship, Love and Permarital Sex in a North China Village.” The China Journal 48: 29–53. —— (2003). Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy amd Family Change in a Chinese Village 1949–1999. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Yang, Martin C. (1945). A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Zhang, Hong. (2004). “Living Alone and the Rural Elderly: Strategy and Agency in Post-Mao Rural China”. Pp. 63–87 in Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia, edited by Charlotte Ikels. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. —— (2005). “Bracing for an Uncertain Future: A Case Study of New Coping Strategies of Rural Parents under China’s Birth Control Policy.” The China Journal 54: 53–76.

CHINESE NGOS STRIVE TO SURVIVE* Chan Kin-man, Qiu Haixiong and Zhu Jiangang Abstract This paper discusses the emergence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in China, in particular “grassroots groups” without formal oﬃcial aﬃliations, and the strategies that these groups adopt to survive under an authoritarian regime. It is a puzzle to many observers of China that Chinese NGOs are able to ﬂourish under China’s rather restrictive laws and policies on civic associations. Our study found that on the ideological level, the proponents of NGOs in China ﬁrst carefully chose the Chinese translation of “civil society” to avoid conﬂict with socialist ideology, and later emphasized the functions of NGOs as a “third sector” that produces “social capital” and attains “good governance” for society. The political and particularly the confrontational dimensions of civil society have been deliberately avoided. On the legal level, some unregistered groups have resorted to business registration or to becoming “patronized groups” as a means of acquiring quasi-legal protection. On the political level, these grassroots groups need to cooperate with local state authorities by providing valuable services to the community, and at times by enhancing the political prospects of local oﬃcials. On the organizational level, grassroots groups rely on volunteers and Internet technology to reduce costs, share program costs among volunteers, and acquire funds from foreign foundations. These eﬀorts have resulted in the proliferation of NGOs and, under certain constraints and risks, the emergence of civil society in China.

Introduction—“Associational Revolution” under Corporatist Control This paper aims to solve the puzzle of how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are able to ﬂourish under China’s rather restrictive laws and policies on civic associations. An analysis of the Regulation on the Registration and Management of Social Organizations that was promulgated in 1989 and amended in 1998 shows that NGOs in China are only allowed to grow according to the parameters speciﬁed by the regime. The Chinese government has been engineering new statesociety relations within the framework of “corporatism” (Schmitter

* This research is supported by the second phrase of Project 985—Public Administration and Social Development Research Fund of Sun Yat-sen University and the South China Research Fund at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

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1974; Unger and Chan 1995; Chan 1999). This is a system of interest representation in which a limited number of constituent units are created and recognized by the state as monopolizing representatives of their respective sectors. The aim of this system is to create consensus and cooperation within and across the diﬀerent sectors, and to facilitate rule that is based on interest representation. The 1998 Regulation stipulates that only one “social organization” (shehui tuanti ) or civic group of the same kind is allowed to register within an administrative region. This provision has largely curbed the growth of “registered” civic groups in China. In addition, the Regulation also stipulates the practice of “dual supervision” over civic groups. Each organization needs to ﬁnd a related state unit (government department or oﬃcial social organization) to be its “business supervisory unit” ( yewu zhuguan danwei ), and must register with the civil aﬀairs departments at diﬀerent levels. These supervisory units have political responsibility for inspecting the activities and ﬁnances of civic groups, and thus government units have little incentive to sponsor such applications, except when there are material interests or personal connections involved. This has become the most common reason for civic groups failing to register with the authorities. Under this corporatist arrangement, the state is able to regulate the development of civic groups in line with state policy (Kang 2001: 4). Statistics show that more than half of such registered groups are businesses or professional in nature, such as the trade associations that are supported by the state.1 The practice of dual supervision also provides opportunities for the supervisory units to intervene in the selection of leaders in these social organizations. Studies show that most of the leading positions in these organizations are occupied by the leading ﬁgures in their supervisory units. The secretaries of these organizations are usually oﬃcials who have transferred from these supervisory departments. White’s study showed that 77% of social organizations had party or state oﬃcials as key leaders (1996: 135). In our 1997 survey, which was conducted in Guangzhou, we found that in about 50% of the social organizations the board of directors was wholly made up of government oﬃcials, in some 30% the board was partly made up of government oﬃcials, and in only 20% of cases was the board of

1

See China Civil Aﬀairs Statistical Yearbook, 2001.

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directors made up entirely of ordinary members (Chan and Qiu 1999). Many of these groups are called “GONGOs”, which stands for government-organized non-governmental organization (White et al. 1996: 112). The past two decades have seen ebbs and ﬂows in political control over civic groups in China. The enactment of the regulation on social organization in 1989 was a direct consequence of the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in the same year. The number of civic groups was dramatically curtailed from around 200,000 in 1989 to 110,000 in 1991 following a rectiﬁcation exercise (Wang & He, 2004: 503). The Falun Gong incident in 1999 also triggered fears that any powerful networks or organizations, no matter how non-political they ﬁrst appeared, could pose a threat to the regime when mobilized. In fact, the government issued an internal circular as early as 1992 that clearly discouraged the establishment of alumni clubs.2 Immediately after the Falun Gong incident, civic groups, including friendship and hobby groups, were rigorously inspected by the government. The recent “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine has also alerted the Chinese authorities that civic groups could be used by foreign forces to organize social movements and support political opposition to the regime.3 As a result, a new round of rectiﬁcation of civic groups, particularly related to their foreign connections, has quietly been carried out. Notwithstanding this unfavorable environment, researchers believe that the number of civic groups in China has increased phenomenally in the last few years, an observation that contradicts the oﬃcial records. Over the years, the number of registered civic groups has ﬂuctuated dramatically, but no signiﬁcant increase has been recorded. According to the Statistical Yearbook of Civil Aﬀairs, there were less than 110,000 registered groups in 1991, a number that increased to its highest point of more than 180,000 in 1996 but gradually declined

2 “Memorandum on How the Problem of Alumni Clubs Should Be Handled during the Inspections of Social Organizations” Ministry of Civil Aﬀairs, No. 120, 1992. 3 It was reported by The Guardian that activists in the revolution were funded and trained in the tactics of political organization and nonviolent resistance by a coalition of Western pollsters and professional consultants that were in turn funded by a range of Western government and non-government agencies. See en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Orange Revolution.

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to less than 130,000 in 2001. In 2003, the number was slightly above 140,000, which is far below the 200,000 that existed before the enactment of the regulation on social organizations in 1989. The real growth, however, occurred in the area of quasi-legal and illegal groups. The oﬃcial statistics also do not cover the local chapters of the eight categories of “mass organizations”, such as the Federation of Women, that are members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress and of the 25 “social organizations” that are exempt from registration with the Ministry of Civil Aﬀairs, such as the China Writers’ Association. Moreover, social organizations below the county level, especially those that operate within enterprises, government agencies, schools, and communities, are also excluded (Wang & He, 2004). More importantly, a great number of civic groups, often termed “grassroots groups,” that operate without formal registration due to the restrictive legal requirements have emerged. Wang and He estimated that these civic groups may number as many as 30,000–50,000 nationwide (2004: 510) and that the number of unregistered “private non-enterprise units”4 may be as high as 200,000– 300,000 (Zhao, 2003). These unregistered civic groups, and in particular the grassroots groups that are active at community level, include book discussion clubs, choral societies, hiking clubs, amateur sports clubs, literary circles, religious groups, hobby groups, elderly associations, friendship groups, students’ associations, disease support groups, and the like (Wang and He, 2004: 524). There are also advocacy groups and environmental groups, which face barriers to registration. Some even operate as “virtual organizations” through the Internet. Among these groups, some are genuine NGOs that have a truly non-governmental governance structure, are non-proﬁt in nature, and have social development as their mission, with members participating on a voluntary basis. The fundamental questions are how these NGOs survive and contrive to grow in China, how they break through the ideological and legal barriers, how they manage to operate under the close surveillance of local state authorities, and where they obtain resources when they are not allowed to solicit donations openly. Relying mainly on

4 Private non-enterprise units refers to not-for-proﬁt organizations without membership, such as social service agencies, museums, and schools.

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cases that were collected in two consultant reports5 that were supervised by the authors of this paper, we illustrate how scholars and practitioners of NGOs in China intentionally or unintentionally create a space for themselves by breaking the ideological, legal, political, and organizational barriers to their existence by various innovative means. Breaking Ideological Barriers—Constructing Discourse on Civil Society The idea of civil society was not directly transplanted into Chinese soil given the term’s cultural and political baggage. There was a historical context under which the idea was explored, twisted and ﬁnally adopted by an authoritarian regime that once attempted to eradicate private space, not to mention autonomous organizations, in the society. To be speciﬁc, it was the economic reform since early 1980s that created a need for the Chinese state to allow some forms of association to ﬁll in the gaps in the process of social integration. First, the economic reforms required state enterprises to be market oriented and more independent from government departments or planning commissions. In order to enhance the competitiveness of these enterprises, Chinese government encouraged the establishment of trade associations and research societies with close ties to industries to promote market exploration, technological advancement, and other common concerns. Secondly, the economic reform created a large group of enterprises, professionals, and workers in the private sector who were not subject to political control or welfare provision in state work units. New forms of organizations, like associations of private enterprises and lawyers’ associations, were therefore needed to serve as bridges to the state, so when necessary these organizations could seek government support (e.g. applying for visas for business trips) while the

5 Volunteerism in Guangzhou is a report that was published by the Research Center for NGOs in South China at Sun Yat-sen University in 2003. The research was sponsored by Partnerships for Community Development of Hong Kong. Global Vision and Civic Education of Shanghai Youth Groups was a report that was published by the Social Development Center of Fudan University in 2004. The research was sponsored by Oxfam Hong Kong and was supervised by the ﬁrst author of this paper.

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state could also exercise control over them (e.g. requiring the associations to regulate their members). Thirdly, the reform created many social problems like unemployment, inequality, and increased pollution, but at the same time greatly reduced the state’s welfare commitment to workers. Charity and social services groups were needed to provide remedial measures. Fourthly, the emergence of more leisure time due to reduction of work days and people’s withdrawal from politics encouraged the development of hobbies and other cultural pursuits. Since the state enterprises were then supposed to focus on production and no longer could carter these social and cultural needs as in the past, the state thus tolerated the formation of many informal hobby and friendship groups (Chan, 1999: 263–265; Chan, 2005: 23). To the Chinese government, the liberalization of associational life in the past twenty years means the enhancement of the development of market socialism through the gradual replacement of the government units that perform certain economic and welfare functions. In this context, the associations are seen as “intermediate organizations” or “bridges” between the state and new social and economic forces. These organizations should be ﬂexible, creative, equipped with advanced knowledge in their respective ﬁelds, and always cooperative with if not supplement to the state. It is very diﬀerent from the western idea of NGO which is deﬁned as an unoﬃcial, not-for-proﬁt, autonomous and voluntary organization that aims at enhancing social and economic development. An oﬃcial conference that was held in 1993 suggested that a new form of social administration should be created within the Chinese socialist market economy.6 Under this form of social administration, “social organizations” (shehui tuanti ), such as business, professional, and social service organizations were then expected to play a more active role when the regime decided to streamline the departments that oversaw state enterprises to further curtail the welfare packages that are provided to the people through these enterprises (Chan, 1999).

6 The Conference on the Development of Social Organizations and Related Economic Issues under a Socialist Market Economy was held by the Institute of Chinese Social Organizations and the Chinese Science and Technology Development Foundation on October 22–24, 1993. A summary of the conference proceedings was collected in Collection of Documents on Registration and Administration of Social Organizations (in Chinese, unpublished).

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However, although acknowledging their function, the Chinese state was also alert to the fact that these social organizations might turn into an autonomous and even subversive force to challenge the Chinese Communist Party. Particularly after the Tiananmen Square Incident in 1989, many overseas scholars borrowed the concept of “civil society” to interpret the development of these groups, whereas some exiled dissidents expressed the hope that China would follow the path of Eastern Europe by bringing down the communist regime through a vibrant civil society (Strand, 1990; Whyte, 1992; Ma, 1994; White, Howell & Shang, 1996). Given the intricate political dynamics, Chinese scholars are exceedingly cautious about constructing a discourse on civil society. According to Ma’s survey (1994: 183), the ﬁrst Chinese publication on the subject appeared in 1986 when an article by Shen Yue in Tianjin Social Science unearthed the concept of “townspeople’s rights” (shimin quanli ) from the classical writings of Marx (Shen, 1986). The term refers to the right of equal exchange of commodities that is available to all townspeople, both bourgeoisie and proletariat. The term, according to Shen, had been mistranslated into “bourgeois rights” (zichangjieji quanli ) in Chinese and these rights were thus regarded as a kind of improper privilege. Following this line of argument, Shen (1990) argues in another article that the term “burgerliche Gesellschaft” that was used by Marx and Engels had also been mistranslated into Chinese as “bourgeois society” (zichanjieji shehui ). The correct translation, according to Shen, should be “townspeople’s society” (shimin shehui ), which implies the universality of civil rights for diﬀerent classes, which is a concept that is remarkably similar to the idea of civil society. Fully aware of the political eﬀect of choosing the correct translation for the term “civil society”,7 Deng Zhenglai (1992, 1993 1995), one of the foremost thinkers in this subject, also adopts the term shimin shehui in advocating for the construction of civil society in China. Ma (1994: 192) argues that the concept and theory of civil society that were borrowed by most Chinese scholars in this period focused on the making of a modern citizenry that consisted of

7 Deng (1993) in his “Study on the Discourse of Civil Society in Taiwan” points out that the translation of “civil society” as minjian shehui in Taiwan is to emphasize the confrontation between the state and society to achieve social mobilization by making the state alienated from the people.

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law-abiding and civil members of society, and that the existence of this entity did not exclude the active involvement of the state. In the late 1990s, the emphasis on the co-operation of civil society and the state was taken to a new level by Chinese scholars. Although the translation of “civic groups” gradually changed from “social organizations” (shehui tuanti ) and “intermediate organizations” (zhongjian tuanti ) (Wang, Zhe & Sun, 1993) to “people’s organizations” (minjian zuzhi ), which resembles the idea of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), three important concepts were introduced to frame the development of these organizations: “social capital,” “third sector,” and “good governance”. The publication of Making Democracy Work by Robert D. Putnam in 1993 provided a new vocabulary with which to discuss the functions of civic groups in the West and in China. Distancing himself from the liberal tradition of civil society that stresses individual rights and pits civil society against the state, Putnam employs the term “civic community” to denote the republican notion of civil society. In Putnam’s eyes, civic community that is composed of civic groups, and particularly non-political groups, is pertinent to the production of “social capital”. Adopting Coleman’s idea (1990), Putnam conceptualizes social capital as a productive structure of social relationships that consists of networks, trust, and norms of reciprocity. Putnam’s study of Italy demonstrates that the social capital that is embedded in the civic community is a key factor in making the north of Italy much more the socially and economically developed than the south. This ground-breaking work provides a framework with which certain Chinese scholars have been able to explicate the meaning of civic groups beyond the much politicized framework of civil society (Chan & Qiu, 1999; Sun, 2001a; Yu, 2003; Liang, 2004a; Wang & He, 2004). Chan and Qiu (1999) published the ﬁrst article of this type to argue how civic groups might contribute to the production of public goods, and why state control over civic groups should be lifted to encourage the creation of social capital. Wang and He (2004), however, argue that Chinese associations can still produce social capital, even if they do not enjoy the level of autonomy that is enjoyed by NGOs in the West. The commonality of these theses is that civic groups can be functional to social development without necessarily posing a threat to the state. Another pair of concepts—the third sector and good governance— also provides ideological space for the development of associational

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life in China. The third sector, according to Theodore Levitt (1973) refers to the “residuum” of the ﬁrst and second sectors (the private and public sectors): “it is composed of a bewildering variety of organizations and institutions with diﬀering degrees of visibility, power, and activeness. Although they vary in scope and speciﬁc purposes, their general purposes are broadly similar—to do things business and government are either not doing, not doing well, or not doing often enough” (1973: 49). The existence of the third sector, which comprises non-proﬁt organizations, reﬂects the failure of the business and government sectors to deal with many of the problems that they have created or are widely assumed to somehow solve, or that have never been assumed to be the responsibility of any speciﬁed sector. The idea of the third sector is generated from a critique of market and government failure and the desire for a responsive society. Having experienced the ineﬃciency, abuse of power, and corruption of state socialism during the Cultural Revolution and the inequality, deterioration of the social order, pollution, and other social evils of market socialism during the reform era, Chinese scholars naturally have found the idea of the third sector appealing. In addition to the many articles that have appeared in academic journals (Xu, 1999; Xie, 2000; He, 2000; Xue, 2000; Zhang and Feng, 2000; Xiong, 2001), a series of books was published in 2001 that discusses the fund-raising mechanism, incentive system, monitoring system, legal environment, and other aspects of the third sector in China (Sun, 2001; Guo, 2001; Zhou, 2001; Zhang, 2001; Wang, 2001). Closely related to the concept of the third sector is the idea of “good governance” (shanzhi ). Governance is the process of decisionmaking and the process by which decisions are implemented. However, good governance requires more than the active role of the government. According to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Paciﬁc, good governance has eight major characteristics. It is participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, eﬀective and eﬃcient, equitable and inclusive, and follows the rule of law. It assures that corruption is minimized, the views of minorities are taken into account, and that the voices of the most vulnerable in society are heard in decision-making. It is also responsive to the present and future needs of society. In this regard, civic groups or the third sector play an important role in the process of decision-making and implementation by encouraging participation, building consensus, monitoring the government, and

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expressing the needs of the community, particularly the needs of minority groups. He (2001a, 2001b), Yu (2001), Yu and Wang (2001) all use the concept of good governance to discuss how civic groups might contribute to the social and economic development of China in the new era. The foregoing discussion shows that although many Western scholars and exiled dissidents have adopted the framework of civil society to view the development of civic groups in China, many Chinese scholars have striven to construct a discourse that selectively stresses the functional dimension of civic groups in enhancing the social and economic development of society. Be it social capital, the third sector, or good governance, civic groups are seen as a supplement to or a partner of the state, and the subversive dimension of civil society has been deliberately avoided. These concepts are widely discussed in conferences and training workshops for NGOs and have become a discourse justifying the existence of civic groups in China. Scholars in this ﬁeld, including some of the authors of this paper, are also consulted during enactment of laws related to social organizations and foundations in recent years. According to a report by Liao Wang Dong Fang Weekly ( June 15, 2004), the Chinese authorities began to diﬀerentiate the concept of NGO from anti-government organization. In Document No. 1 issued by the CCP’s Central Committee in 2004, the contribution of NGOs in soothing the “three rural problems” was duly recognized. In June 2004, the Oﬃce for Alleviating Poverty under State Council held a meeting with some NGO leaders to explore a larger role of NGOs in ﬁghting poverty. In May 2004, during a closing speech at the World Poverty Alleviation Conference, Premier Wen Jiabao openly remarked that Chinese government would co-operate with international and indigenous NGOs in easing poverty. The direct reference to NGOs in oﬃcial language and the growing opportunities for NGOs to cooperate with the government indicate a breakthrough on the ideological front. It is partly due to the discourse constructed by Chinese intellectuals as well as China’s further integration with the rest of the world that emphasizes cooperation with the third sector in solving social problems.

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Breaking Legal Barriers—Patronized Groups and Commercial Registration As has been discussed, the stringent regulation of civic groups has created tremendous barriers for many NGOs in registering with the authorities, and certain requirements for registration are particularly unfavorable to small-scale grassroots groups. For example, at least 50 individual or 30 organizational members are required, the group should have premises in which to hold activities, full-time staﬀ should be employed, and an activity fund of 30,000 yuan is required for association at the local level and 50,000 yuan for association at the national level. Unable to fulﬁll these terms, many groups fail to register, and are forced to operate without legal protection. However, some choose to become “patronized groups” or to register as commercial entities to acquire a quasi-legal status to continue their operations. “Patronized” ( guakao)8 groups are groups that are sheltered by government units, state or private enterprises, mass organizations, or registered social organizations. Various factors lead to the formation of patronized groups. Some NGOs limit their scope of activities within government units or social organizations, so that it is natural and legal for them to become subsidiaries of these umbrella organizations. Other NGOs may simply ﬁnd themselves unable to meet the requirements for registration with the Civil Aﬀairs Department, for instance when similar registered organizations already exist in the same administrative region. Still others may deliberately seek to avoid the strict registration requirements and regular inspections of the government. In some cases, groups organize activities that are so far beyond the scope of their patron organizations that they could be deemed to be violating the regulations (Chan, 2005). Gao (2001) states that many “breathing exercise” (qigong) groups have taken this form to develop their networks in the past twenty years. However, as long as these groups serve the purposes of the patron organizations or at least do not bring them any trouble, their activities will

8 In Chinese, gua means “attached to” and kao means “dependent”. Guakao organizations thus refer to groups that are attached to or dependent on other umbrella organizations for protection. As this is a kind of patronage relationship, guakao organizations can thus be translated as “patronized groups”.

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be protected by this quasi-legal status. In addition to enterprises, Gao maintains that universities are one of the most common patrons of such NGOs. An example of these patronized groups is Lighthouse of Guangzhou. The group was established in 2000 with a mission to bring new knowledge to children in impoverished areas of rural China. The Lighthouse motto is “direction leads life”, which signiﬁes the importance of giving children direction in their lives through education. Each summer, Lighthouse mobilizes more than three hundreds university students in Guangzhou as volunteers to oﬀer summer classes for rural students in such subjects as English, science, and computer technology. There are also tutorial groups for children to learn from the volunteers through personal interaction. As the services that Lighthouse oﬀer cover more than one region in Guangdong, the group attempted to register with the Civil Aﬀairs authority at the provincial level. The application was immediately rejected, as the group failed to ﬁnd a government unit at the provincial level to be its sponsor. Without legal status, Lighthouse encountered many diﬃculties when organizing activities. At ﬁrst, they relied on two social service groups from Sun Yat-sen University and Huanan Polytechnic University when applying for the use of public areas. They also sought support from the Communist Youth League through personal connections. Although Lighthouse has been able to expand its membership and services without legal status, for the sake of avoiding trouble in organizing activities and raising funds the group decided to become a “project” under the Research Center for NGOs in South China at Sun Yat-sen University in 2005. Another example is an environmental group called Green Earth Volunteers (GEV), which was founded in 1997. The group organizes many environmental projects, such as tree planting. They also organize weekly discussion sessions on environmental issues. As there are similar environmental groups in China, they may not be qualiﬁed to register with the Civil Aﬀairs Department. Moreover, the founders prefer an informal style of organization and are conﬁdent that their existence is supported by a large number of people in the community, they decided not to seek registration (Knup 1997; Sun 2000). However, in 2003, this group ﬁnally became a patronized group under the Society for Chinese Culture Study, which is an association without much connection with environmental protection.

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Still another example is the Women’s Legal Studies and Service Center at the Law School of Peking University. The Center was established in 1995 by a group of professors, students, and lawyers in the Law School. By 2000, the Center had provided more than 6,000 legal counseling sessions to the public and represented more than 260 underprivileged women in legal actions free of charge. Guo Jianmei, Director of this Center, expressed in a report that the Center had faced many diﬃculties, especially pressure from the government due to a lack of understanding of NGOs, insuﬃcient legal and policy support, and a lack of local funding (Guo 2001). Although patronized groups are immune from direct inspection by the Civil Aﬀairs Department, they may face even more stringent scrutiny from their patron organizations. For example, one famous university has promulgated an internal regulation on the administration of student bodies that requires these bodies to apply for permission from the university authorities before any activities are held, and for activities that involve more than one organization either inside or outside the university, permission has to be sought from higher-level authorities. In such cases, patronized groups enjoy even less autonomy than some registered groups (Gao 2001). To avoid the problem of ﬁnding a patron organization, some NGOs have resorted to registering as commercial entities. Starting as a private research institute on labor issues in 2001, the Institute of Contemporary Observations (ICO) in Shenzhen has become one of the most inﬂuential labor NGOs in China. Until 2004, the institute had more than 30 full-time staﬀ and oﬀered a variety of services. The institute promotes labor rights through a hotline that gives legal advice to workers and a community college for migrant workers. The institute has also carried out many consulting projects to assist transnational corporations in the Pearl River Delta to comply with corporate social responsibility requirements. Dr. Liu Kaiming, the founder of the institute, expressed in an NGO forum at Sun Yat-sen University that the institute chose to register as a business entity not because he was unable to ﬁnd a patron in the government, but because he did not want the institute to operate under the close scrutiny of the government in accordance with the regulation of social organizations. According to one study, it is also preferable to the local authorities for some civil groups to register as businesses, as this enables the state to extract more revenue through

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taxes. When an organization is charging fees, such as the community college for migrant workers that was established by the ICO, it also appears to be less “political” in the eyes of the government (Berger, 2004: 29–30). It is sometimes diﬃcult to diﬀerentiate civic from commercial activities. In Shanghai, the Nomad Outdoor Club, together with the Shanghai Aodao Business Consulting Company, has provided a great variety of activities for lovers of the outdoors since 2001. The club is registered under the Shanghai Hiking Association as a patronized group, but the founder and some of the core members of the club established the company to run its activities in a business model. The proﬁts that are made by this ﬁrm are used to sustain the operation of the club, such as paying the salaries of full-time staﬀ. The club at present has more than 50,000 members, each of whom pays a 365-yuan membership fee. Additional charges are made for activities such as diving, rock climbing, hiking, and the like. In addition to being a hobby group, the Nomad Outdoor Club has also set up a charity group to promote environmental concern by mobilizing members to clean up the Huangpu River and other hiking trails. The group also encourages its members to get involved in charity by donating books, blood, and marrow. The club is good at mixing outdoor activities with charity. For example, the club mobilized members to bring books to a village school in a remote area of Anhui by foot. In conjunction with a newspaper, the club also mobilized its members to walk 18 days along the Huangpu River to promote environmental protection. Thus, notwithstanding the stringent laws on civic groups, many Chinese NGOs strive to operate without legal status or acquire quasilegal protection by becoming patronized groups or commercial entities. But to ﬁnd a patron organization that is supportive of an NGO is not a simple task. Even if an NGO does manage to ﬁnd a patron, this patronage itself does not provide complete protection for the NGO when its activities go beyond certain boundaries. Blurring the non-proﬁt and commercial models may also create other problems. The ICO was criticized for its mismanagement and “mission drift” and for possible ﬁnancial misconduct, which ﬁnally led to Berkeley University withdrawing its sponsorship from the community college (China Development Brief, 2005).

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Breaking Political Barriers—Cooperation with Local Government Although many Chinese NGOs choose to become patronized groups or business entities, this quasi-legal status can never oﬀer them suﬃcient protection unless they know how to cooperate with local government. NGOs that know how to manage this political relation, on the contrary, may be able to survive even without legal status. In handling the relationship with local authorities, NGOs should avoid bringing political trouble to local leaders. To further claim their “legitimacy” or “right to exist”, NGOs need to provide valuable services to the community that will eventually enhance the political career of local leaders. To avoid bringing trouble to local government, NGOs usually operate in the “safe zone” on projects such as poverty alleviation, gender issues, and education. When working in sensitive areas such as labor, NGOs need to be careful not to overstep the tacit boundaries that have been laid down by the government. For example, the community college that was established by the ICO aimed to educate migrant workers about labor rights and organization in the factories of trans-national corporations. The ICO was very cautious in emphasizing that the outcome of such training would not lead to the establishment of independent trade unions, which is prohibited by the state (Berger, 2004: 27). To further justify their existence, NGOs need to provide valuable services to the community in the eyes of local leaders. For example, traditional groups such as the “ﬂower clubs” (huahui ) in Beijing, and the “incense clubs” (xianghui ) and “temple clubs” (miaohui ) in rural areas are formidable forces in promoting social integration in certain communities. These indigenous religious groups were quite active even after the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, but were forced to stop their activities during the Cultural Revolution from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. There has been a remarkable revival of these groups since the economic reform. They collect donations from the residents in their communities to organize religious activities, help the needy, and improve the local school environment. Seldom do these groups register with the authorities, but through traditional rituals and sometimes by displaying souvenirs sent from, and photos taken with, local oﬃcials during public ceremonies, their status is “legitimized.” Moreover, as local governments always invite

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these organizations to help make important festivals a success, their activities often extend well beyond their localities (Gao 2001). In urban areas, many volunteer associations that have been established under oﬃcial residents’ committees are in fact NGOs that operate quite independently. One example is a youth volunteer group in Shanghai that is named Grassroots Community (Re Ai Jia Yuan). The group promotes a sense of belonging to the community, helps the needy in the community, promotes the spirit of mutual assistance, and has formed a network with other NGOs to beneﬁt the public. In 1995, a group of law students at Fudan University volunteered for the ﬁrst time in Shanghai to provide free legal advice services to residents. This became an unforgettable experience to some volunteers, and in a reunion in 2000 they decided to establish a civic association to continue the service. Very soon, they ran into diﬃculties in registering with the authorities unless they got some big names, suﬃcient funding, and staﬀ. Finally, they were forced to remain as a student body (the Legal Aid Center of Fudan University), to provide legal advice, even though they were already graduates, some of whom were working in foreign ﬁrms. To establish itself in the community, Grassroots Community ﬁrst needed to solicit support, inevitably through guanxi, from the oﬃcial residents’ committee. Learning that they were just a group of young professionals who claimed to follow Leifeng’s model by providing free legal advice to people, the head of the residents’ committee felt more at ease. Coincidentally, the Elderly Committee was asked to promote laws on the rights of the aged in the community and was desperately in need of legal expertise, and so the volunteer group was able to ﬁnd a foothold. Later, in a Lunar Year event, the volunteer group was able to further secure their status in the community by donating gifts to the elderly in front of oﬃcials from diﬀerent departments. Nevertheless, despite the importance of their service to the community, the group was warned by local authorities not to represent the residents in litigation, particularly as they provided legal education on the rights of residents that are related to urban redevelopment. In 2004, Grassroots Community became a registered social organization under the supervision of the Communist Youth League providing not just legal advice to residents in Shanghai, but also programs that promote environmental protection and public spiritedness. At present, the group has 56 members and more than 100 stable volunteers (Zhu, 2004). In a nutshell, the group’s acclaimed

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status was built upon the expertise and valuable services that indigenous groups and grassroots state organs gravely lack. The valuable services that NGOs provide to the community may sometimes serve to build up the credentials of local oﬃcials and enhance their career development. The eﬀorts of the ICO eﬀorts in corporate social responsibility in a way have helped trans-national corporations to respond to the pressure from Western consumers to meet labor standards and ensure environmental protection. If transnational corporations do not follow corporate social responsibility standards (e.g., SA8000), then they may loose their consumers. As a result, the ICO not only helps trans-national corporations to maintain their business, but also serves to attract foreign investment to the Pearl River Delta. As international investment is crucial to the local government for taxation and status at the central level, the existence of the ICO serves the interests of local oﬃcials as long as it does not create more labor disputes (Berger, 2004: 31). The Green Hope Volunteer Network is an active environmental group in Guangzhou with more than 200 members. The group has launched many educational programs through a mobile educational station that is called the Small Tiger Truck. Together with Greenpeace, Green Hope has raised the safety issue of genetically modiﬁed food in China. Knowing that it would be diﬃcult to register with the authorities, Green Hope chose to become a patronized group under the Green Hope Association, which is the educational arm of the Guangzhou Environmental Protection Bureau, through personal connections. The reason that Green Hope is acceptable in the eyes of oﬃcials somehow relates to the environmental protection laws in China. According to the founder of the group, who is also one of the authors of this paper, the law is quite progressive in that it allows environmental NGOs to undertake a great variety of activities, and thus the authorities would feel embarrassed to crack down on groups that promote a cause that is embraced by the state itself. As environmental education is also a major task that the local environmental authorities need to carry out, Green Hope in a way has assisted the authorities in carrying out this task. For example, one of the most successful events organized by Green Hope was to invite Liang Congjie, the esteemed leader of the environmental movement from Friends of Nature in Beijing, together with his mobile educational center, to visit Guangzhou. The event attracted media coverage in the local newspapers and made Guangzhou appear as a “green

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community” that valued environmental protection. Without the connections of these NGOs, the local authorities would not have been able to entice Liang to Guangzhou. To ensure the tolerance of local authorities, grassroots organizations need to be careful not to overstep the boundaries that are laid down by the state, and should in particular avoid sensitive issues such as the creation of independent trade unions or resistance to urban redevelopment. Although many environmental groups in China are active in organizing signature campaigns and other collective action against environmentally unfriendly projects such as the construction of dams, their actions are non-violent and are usually low proﬁle. However, not all grassroots organizations are willing to stay in the safety zone or are able to be on such good terms with the local government. The Chinese government cracked down in 1998 on Corruption Monitor, an NGO that was based in Henan province, after it failed to register with the Civil Aﬀairs Department as a national NGO for the promotion of clean government. The group was denounced by the government for having illegally organized cross-regional activities. The existence of the group was also deemed unnecessary by the authorities, as “the state had already established a sound system to monitor the problem of corruption.”9 In coastal regions such as Guangdong, the authorities have cracked down on NGOs such as the Male Migrant Workers Association and the Female Migrant Workers’ Association. An internal document shows that by August 1994, 27 workers’ associations or committees had been established by workers and retired employees in state-owned enterprises in 14 provinces. With the mission of ﬁghting for “work, survival, and food”, these NGOs demanded that the authorities pay their overdue salaries and pensions.10 Religious groups such as the underground Christian churches and the Falun Gong are also under constant surveillance, and their members may from time-to-time be forced to receive “thought education”.

9

“ ‘Corrupt Behaviors Monitor’ Was Banned”, Ming Pao, Nov. 1, 1998. “Report on Properly Handling the Voluntary Organizations Established by Some Employees in Enterprises,” released by the Ministry of Public Security and originating from the Oﬃce of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the Oﬃce of the State Council, No. 34, 1994. 10

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Breaking Organizational Barriers—“Resource Driven” and Foreign Funding In a survey of registered social organizations, we found that the most pressing issue that is faced by these associations is ﬁnancial problems. Having secured their legal status, only 7% of the organizations that responded stated that they needed more autonomy, and only 10% claimed that they needed more legal or policy support. However, 50% of these associations expressed that they needed more funds from the state, and some 70% indicated that they were in a diﬃcult ﬁnancial situation (Chan & Qiu, 1999). In the same survey, we also found that around 60% of these organizations received subsidies from the state, but that the amount was moderate. On average, direct state subsidies constituted 29.6% of their revenue and other subsidies (such as through state enterprises) constituted 7.4% of revenue, which is below the global average (Wellner, 2005). Only a few organizations were able to provide services of commercial value or to establish their own economic entities. The percentage of social organizations that collected more than half of their revenue through service charges or from the proﬁts of their enterprises was only 3.5% and 5.9%, respectively. On average, service charges and economic entities accounted for 5.9% and 6.4% of revenue, respectively. Social organizations also ﬁnd it diﬃcult to raise funds from donations. Only 4.7% of the registered social organizations in the survey could rely solely on donations. These were mainly foundations, charity groups, and religious bodies. On average, donations accounted for 13% of the revenue of the surveyed social organizations, and membership fees were the most important source of revenue, accounting on average for 31.8% of revenue (Chan, 2005). As government funding has become increasingly inadequate, these organizations have to seek funds from their communities and from overseas. Although some NGOs have turned themselves into semioﬃcial organizations to seek ﬁnancial or political resources from the government, some oﬃcial and semi-oﬃcial organizations, on the contrary, have attempted to become more non-governmental to solicit donations from Hong Kong and overseas. The status of some civic groups may well be a result of such a strategic decision. We term this phenomenon being “resource driven”. Whether these social groups will choose to maintain a closer relationship with the state depends

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on the importance of political versus ﬁnancial resources, and the importance of the state versus the local community and overseas foundations in obtaining more resources. These strategic decisions are also constrained by the nature and localities of the social groups concerned. Many foreign foundations may prefer to support certain types of NGOs that are located in Beijing or the major coastal cities. In term of resources, grassroots organizations are more ﬁnancially independent from the state than registered social organizations. As the state encourages the establishment of business associations, many grassroots groups do not receive any state subsidies, either because they are not related to economic development or because they have no legal status.11 Without legal status, grassroots groups also ﬁnd it diﬃcult to obtain donations, as they are not eligible to open independent bank accounts. A tiny percentage of these NGOs is able to generate revenue through services. The ICO is able to support its 30 full-time staﬀ by providing consulting services to trans-national corporations to help them to meet standards of corporate social responsibility. By charging fees during activities, the Nomad Outdoor club in Shanghai is also able to keep its organization running well without any subsidies from the government. The YMCA and YWCA in Guangzhou derive some revenue from renting out part of their properties. However, not all grassroots groups possess these skills or attributes, nor do most of them collect membership fees as the registered groups do,12 and more often than not they are quite helpless in securing resources to keep their operations going. One grassroots leader told us, “we don’t have a stable source of revenue. It’s just like worrying about the next meal right after ﬁnishing one.” Eventually, such groups either resort to cost-cutting by relying heavily on volunteers and Internet technology, or to soliciting overseas funding. Many NGOs do not have the resources to hire full-time staﬀ and need to rely on volunteers to run their operations. The units under the executive committee of Lighthouse, which include human resources (recruiting and training volunteers), education, and “branding” (promoting the organization), are completely operated by volunteers.

11 Except that patronized groups, such as university student bodies, may receive subsidies from the Committee of the Communist Youth League or other university authorities. 12 For example, in the 22 Guangzhou volunteer groups that we studied, only 1 group collected a regular membership fee.

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Although it has one full-time staﬀ member, Green Hope also relies on volunteers to run several working groups that focus on the internet, media relations, public education, and research. The “AA system”, or splitting the cost between members or volunteers, is a way for many NGOs to reduce their ﬁnancial burden. Even if some NGOs have funding enough to employ a few full-time staﬀ, they very often do not have any spare money for program fees, and thus volunteers share the costs when they organize activities. For example, Green Earth Volunteers organizes activities that are carried out by volunteers who generally pay their own way to participate in such projects as planting trees in the Engebie Desert. Green Hope volunteers also have to pay their own costs when participating in conferences or environmental activities. The Internet is widely used by grassroots organizations. For example, Lighthouse (www.lighthouse.org.cn), Green Hope (www.foodsafety.org.cn), and a virtual environment group called Green Web (www.greenweb.org.cn) in Guangzhou all maintain their own websites, as the Internet is both an inexpensive and eﬃcient medium of communication. The bulletin board system (BBS) of these websites are frequently used for information dissemination and discussions among members to create a more egalitarian form of organization. Wang and He’s study (2005) shows that some virtual association life can be transformed from cyberspace into formal or informal associations in the real world with minimal cost. Net-mates are now quite common to hold hobby activities together beyond cyberspace such as traveling, sport, reading and even debate. Indeed, since printing materials are closely monitored by the government, the Internet has become a formidable means in China to construct a public sphere for discussing public aﬀairs and a platform for social mobilization. Wang and He (2005: 533–535) estimate that there were 15 million regular BBS users and 100,000 BBS forums in China by 2004. SMTH BBS (www.smth.org), a famous university-based BBS, has 150,000 member IDs. It oﬀers over 300 boards, covering almost every area of university life. Tianya Virtual Club (www.tianyaclub.com), a BBS with more than 1 million registered IDs, owns a board Guantian Teahouse which is a virtual tea bar for those who are interested in political debate. Constitutionalism, citizenship, and democratization were hot topics in their gatherings. Thus, the implication of internet use goes far beyond the purpose of saving organizational costs. It has already exhibited a great potential in breaking political barriers.

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The huge demonstrations against Japan in April 2005 have showed the power of e-politics in the most digitally connected cities like Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. In addition to minimizing their costs, many NGOs are eager to seek ﬁnancial support from overseas, and many foreign foundations are active in China today, such as the Ford Foundation of the United States; the Ebert Foundation of Germany; the Japan Foundation; the Asia Foundation; the Luce, MacArthur, Rockefeller, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ling Nan Foundation of the United States; and Oxfam and Partnerships for Community Development of Hong Kong. These foundations have sponsored hundreds of projects in more than 20 provinces in China (Ding 1999: 56). Oxfam, for example, provided some start-up funds to help establish the ICO, and the ICO community college was sponsored by the U.S. government through Berkeley University. The Grassroots Community of Shanghai received funding from the Swedish government to hire a full-time assistant. Green Hope was supported by Oxfam and Partnerships for Community Development in Hong Kong. In Beijing, foreign foundations contributed 1.32 million RMB (around USD 160,000) or 52% of the total revenue of Friends of Nature up until 1999. As of 1999, the Global Village (GECIB) had received a total of USD 390,474 from the Ford Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, and other NGOs and enterprises (Sun 2000). Hong Kong is also a major source of funding. For instance, one-third of the donations that were received by the China Youth Development Foundation for Project Hope came from overseas, with 90% coming from Hong Kong ﬁrms, businesspeople, and individuals. Zhang (1995b: 527) estimates that for many national foundations, donations from overseas account for 60% of their total ﬁnancial resources. However, no systematic study has been conducted to estimate the extent of foreign funding in grassroots organizations. Foreign donations cover a wide range of social and economic development projects, particularly in the areas of women’s development, environmental protection, public health, poverty alleviation, and education. For example, the establishment of the legal aid center at the Law School of Peking University was supported by the Ford Foundation. The Women’s Hotline that is run by the NPO Beijing Red Maple Women Counseling Service Center is supported by the Global Fund for Women and the Ford Foundation, and the training of on-line counselors is supported by the United Nations’

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Development Program and the Turner Foundation. This hotline has provided on-line counseling services to more than 40,000 callers since 1992 (Wang X., 2001). Foreign NGOs such as Save the Children Fund, Oxfam, and World Vision International concentrate their donations in the Western region of China in poverty alleviation, environmental protection, community development, education, and health projects that set up successful models of development, enhance the transmission of technology, and train local talent (Deng 2001). The Ford Foundation, the Asia Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation also support many academic activities, such as conferences that are held by the Chinese Association of American Studies. Up to the mid-1990s, the Ford Foundation had contributed a cumulative total of USD 50,000 to the Chinese Association of American Studies in support of its academic publications (Zhang 1995a: 103–4). Green Hope of Guangzhou has also been supported by Partnerships for Community Development in organizing capacity-building courses for NGO leaders in the past two years. This shows that foreign donations have contributed signiﬁcantly to the establishment and maintenance of NGOs in China, and have helped to train local talent for NGOs. Cooperation with foreign governments and NGOs has also helped Chinese NGOs to be more transparent.13 The continuous interaction with foreign NGOs has provided Chinese NGOs with many opportunities to learn from their experiences, systems, and mobilization strategies (Gu and Gan 2001). This foreign inﬂuence on the development of Chinese NGOs may, however, create tensions with the state on some occasions. The Chinese state has been controlling this sector through strict legal and administrative measures, but is unable to do it through ﬁnancial means. Foreign subsidies to these NGOs will be welcome as long as they do not fundamentally disrupt the corporatist arrangements. The Chinese government has witnessed the global mobilization of the Falun Gong and Tibet’s Independent Movement, and will deﬁnitely keep a close watch on NGOs that receive foreign assistance.

13 The China Youth Development Foundation changed its internal audit system as a result of criticisms that it received from Hong Kong newspapers and collaborators. For example, one sponsor from Hong Kong demanded a ﬁeld visit to the school to which the sponsor had contributed. After a detailed comparison of the school with the agreed blueprint, the sponsor requested a partial refund due to the reduction of the school’s size. See Chan (2005).

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chan kin-man, qiu haixiong and zhu jiangang Conclusion—Civil Society in the Making

The foregoing discussions demonstrate how Chinese NGOs have overcome constraints at the ideological, legal, political, and organizational levels. Ideologically, proponents of Chinese NGOs carefully chose the Chinese phrase for “civil society” to avoid conﬂict with socialist ideology, and later emphasized the functions of NGOs as the “third sector” that produces “social capital” and attains “good governance” for society. The confrontational dimension of civil society has been deliberately avoided. At the legal level, some unregistered groups have resorted to business registration or have become “patronized groups” to acquire quasi-legal protection. At the political level, grassroots groups need to cooperate with local state authorities by not stepping out of the safe zone, and by providing valuable services to the community and enhancing the political prospects of local oﬃcials. At the organizational level, these groups rely on volunteers and Internet technology to reduce costs, and also share program costs among volunteers and acquire funds from foreign foundations. Particularly since the late 1990s, many NGOs have become more successful in breaking these barriers, which is gradually leading to what Wang and He have termed “associational revolution” in China. Admirable as these eﬀorts may appear, their strategies have also led to many unresolved issues. Although a few publications have used the terms “NGO” and “civil society” recently (Yu & Wang, 2001; Cao & Luo, 2003; Liang, 2004b; Zhu, 2004), the function of civil society to protect civil liberties by taming state power has not been adequately addressed due to ideological constraints. Although many NGO leaders understand the importance of monitoring the government through collective eﬀorts, without a language to supports this type of action in everyday life their choice of strategies to fulﬁll this mission is inevitably limited. The quasi-legal status that is acquired through becoming a patronized group does not provide suﬃcient protection, especially as many patronized groups organize activities beyond the boundaries that are covered by their patrons. Registering as an economic entity may also involve moral hazard for NGOs, because company law does not guarantee the governance structure and auditing system that are appropriate for non-proﬁt organizations. Maintaining good relations with local authorities may also imply that the scope of action of NGOs is completely deﬁned

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by the state, and NGOs in such situations need to be very innovative in stretching the tacit boundary that is agreed by the two parties. Insuﬃcient resources have led to under-staﬃng in NGOs both in terms of quantity and quality. There is a saying in the NGO sector that the best people go to government, the second best to enterprises, and the worst to NGOs. Relying on volunteers may solve the problem of the brain drain for the moment, but it is not a sustainable solution. Relying on overseas funding runs the risk of NGOs being constrained by foreign foundations in the choice of mission and model of work. It also heightens fears in the Chinese government that NGOs may turn into a subversive force in the future. Given these constraints, the impact of Chinese NGOs on the political and accountability structure of the state is greatly conﬁned. At the First National Conference on the Management of Social Organizations, which was held in September 1992, a state councilor proclaimed that “small government, big society” was the goal of political reform.14 We ﬁnd, however, the goal of this reform unclear and the pace exceedingly slow. No corporatist mechanism has been established so far to systematically channel the voice of NGOs to the government’s decision-making process. Only a tiny portion of the civic associations, particularly those business organizations, have the privilege to be consulted during law-making process.15 “Small government, big society” apparently does not imply the way power is to be shared. It is more about how the economy should be run and public services should be provided. Even in the latter conception of “big society”, no bold steps such as channeling substantial resources to the third sector have been taken by the state to materialize the goal. But some NGOs, particularly those in the area of environmental protection, took this political goal seriously by being actively engaged in opposing some unwelcome public construction projects, very often through non-institutional means like media and internet.

14 The speech was given by State Councilor Chen Junsheng, and was included in Collection of Documents on Registration and Administration of Social Organizations (in Chinese, unpublished). 15 The Guangzhou Private Entrepreneurs’ Association was actively involved in lobbying the legal penal in the Guangzhou People’s Congress and the Finance and Economic Committee of the municipal government to enact a regulation for the management of private enterprises so that their members would not be treated arbitrarily by government authorities.

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In response to the rising public pressure, the government has recently suspended a dam construction project in Nujiang and ordered a more thorough assessment. This incident demonstrates the potential of how the emerging civil society may hold the government more accountable in the future. The NGOs’ intentional actions in circumventing the constraining structure reveals also the changing state-society relations in China under globalization. Renee Hsia and Lynn White III (2002: 333) argue that the increased toleration of foreign and indigenous civic groups is a result of the Chinese government’s desire to achieve greater legitimacy on the international front and at home. Beijing leaders are aware that regimes are often judged by their ability to provide for the needs of their citizens, particularly when the present regime adopted the “people-centered” ( yi ren wei ben) party line. They thus countenanced a growth of civic groups and foreign support to help tackle the social needs generated by its economic reforms. If the Chinese leaders continue to value this source of legitimacy and when China is further integrated with the rest of the globe, we envisage a larger space for the development of civil society in China. References Berger, Oscar. (2004). Balance is the Name of the Game: The Legitimacy Seeking of a Chinese Civil Organization and the Existence of a Civil Society in China. (Unpublished manuscript, Department of Political Science, Lund University). Cao, Rongxiang & Luo, Xuequn. (2003). “She Hui Zi Ben Yu Gong Min She Hui: Yi Zhong n Zhi Du Fen Xi ” (Social Capital and Civil Society: Institutional Analysis) Ma Ke Si Zhu Yi Yu Xian Shi (Marxism and Practice) No. 2. Chan, Kin-man. (1999). “Intermediate Organizations and Civil Society: The Case of Guangzhou.” In China Review (1999), edited by Chong-chor Lau & Xiao Geng, 259–284. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. —— (2005). “The Development of NGOs under a Post-Totalitarian Regime: The Case of China” Civil Life, Globalization, and Political Change in Asia: Organizing Between Family and State. Edited by Robert Wellner. NY: Routledge. 20–41. Chan, Kin-man & Qiu, Haixiong. (1999). “She Tuan She Hui Zi Ben Yu Zheng Jing Fa Zhan” (Social Organizations, Social Capital, and Political and Economic Development.) She Hui Xue Yan Jiu (Sociological Research) No. 4, July 20: 64–74. China Development Brief. (2005). “Labour Rights Groups will Stumble if Pushed to Run Too Soon.” Vol. IX, No. 3, Apr. Coleman, James. (1990). Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Deng, Guosheng. (2001). “New Environment for Development of NGOs in China.” In www.usc.cuhk.edu.hk. Deng, Zhenglai. (1993). “Tai Wan Min Jian She Hui Yu Shi De Yan Jiu” (Study on the Discourse of Civil Society in Taiwan) Zhong Guo She Hui Ke Xue Ji Kan (Chinese Social Science Quarterly) Vol. 4 (No. 5) 88–102.

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THE CHINESE DIASPORA AND INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION* Zhou Min Abstract International migration among Chinese people is centuries old. Long before European colonists set foot on the Asian continent, the Chinese moved across sea and land, seasonally or permanently, to other parts of Asia and the rest of the world to pursue opportunities and alternative means of livelihood. It is estimated that there are more than 33 million overseas Chinese (huaqiao) and people of Chinese ancestry (huayi ) living outside mainland China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and Taiwan. Chinese-ancestry people spread in 151 countries across the globe with about 80% in Asia and 15% in the Americas. This article aims to examine how the century-old Chinese Diaspora and its emerging migrant networks interact with broader structural factors—colonization, or decolonization, nation-state building, and changes of political regimes—to aﬀect Chinese immigration. I argue that distinct streams of emigration from China, and remigration from the Chinese Disapora, are contingent upon history and that the economy, diasporic communities, and migration networks interact with the state at origin as well as destination to shape the direction and nature of international migration. So the challenge for China and other immigrant-receiving countries may be how to negotiate and manage migration, but the power of the state is severely constrained not only by the economy, but also by migration networks and ethnic institutions.

Introduction International migration among Chinese people is centuries old. Long before European colonists set foot on the Asian continent, the Chinese moved across sea and land, seasonally or permanently, to other parts of Asia and the rest of the world to pursue opportunities and alternative means of livelihood. History has witnessed various streams and distinct patterns of emigration from China to the outside world

* This research was partially funded by grants from the UCLA Academic Senate, Center for International Business Education and Research, and Asian American Studies Center. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Conference on Migration and Development, Princeton University May 4–6, 2000. The author thanks Sara Curran, Charles Hirschman, Roger Waldinger, Guotu Zhuang, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments. She also thanks Amy Chai, Chiaki Inutake, and Ly Phung Lam for their research assistance. Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

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and then from the Chinese diasporic communities to other countries (Ma and Cartier 2003; Zuang 1998). It is estimated that there are more than 33 million overseas Chinese (huaqiao) and people of Chinese ancestry (huayi ) living outside mainland China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and Taiwan. Chinese-ancestry people spread in more than 150 countries across the globe with nearly 80% in Asia (approximately 75% in Southeast Asia) and about 14% in the Americas (Dudley et al. 1994; Ma 2003; Qiu 2002). Countries with the highest number of Chinese-ancestry populations, as of the mid-1990s, were Indonesia (7.3 million), Thailand (6.4 million), Malaysia (5.5 million), Singapore (2.3 million), and the United States (2.7 million) (Ma 2003).1 Such an expansive Chinese Diaspora is captured in an old saying, “There are Chinese people wherever the ocean waves touch.” This article aims to addresses a key issue from a sociological perspective based on a review of the existing literature: How do the century-old Chinese trade diaspora and its emerging migrant networks interact with broader structural factors—colonization, or decolonization, nation-state building, and changes of political regimes—alter the courses and patterns of Chinese immigration? I also discuss the implications of contemporary Chinese immigration for developments in countries of origin and destination. I argue that distinct streams of emigration from China, and remigration from the Chinese Disapora, are contingent upon history and that the economy, diasporic communities, and migration networks interact with the state at origin as well as destination to shape the direction and nature of international migration. The Chinese Trade Diaspora and HUASHANG-Dominated Intra-Asian Migration In China, emigration patterns have changed in time and space. The Chinese and the Chinese state have responded to, and inﬂuence,

1 Most recently, based on the author’s own calculation from The World Factbook, 2005 (published by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on line: http://www. cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/), countries with the highest number of Chineseancestry populations are Thailand (9.2 million), Indonesia (8 million), Malaysia (5.8 million), Singapore (3.4 million), and the United States (2.9 million).

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migration diﬀerently also in time and space. It is thus important to place migration in the historical context tracing the century-old Chinese trade Diaspora and the development of migration networks that have emerged from it. Large-scale international migration across the Asian continent and the globe did not occurr until the mid-19th century. In the earlier times, however, Chinese people always moved from their places of birth to other places in search of means and opportunities for survival and betterment, but they did so only selectively and seasonally. In most cases, the movements destined to neighboring towns and cities. Between the 12th and the 16th century, few people ventured oﬀ shore and traveled long distance from home. The only signiﬁcant group that went overseas in large numbers was the Chinese (Liao 2002). Huashange (traders, merchants, and artisans) dominant patterns of earlier Chinese emigration, particularly to Southeast Asia prior to the mid 1850s (Wang 1991). In this section, I focus on examining how Chinese maritime commerce shaped migration to and from China and how the resulting Chinese trade diaspora in Southeast Asia aﬀected patterns of international migration in general and intra-Asian migration in particular. Pre-19th-Century Maritime Commerce International migration of the time prior to the 19th century largely centered on the Chinese Empire through tribute missions to China and trading tropical goods to and Chinese manufactured goods from China. As early as the Tang Dynasty (618–907), which was the largest, richest, most sophisticated state in the world at that time, maritime trade was already well developed and thrived, and Chinese who ventured overseas were referred to as Tangren, or Tang people (Zhuang 1989 & 2001). During the 1100s, the Chinese further strengthened and extended their trade routes on the waters of the South China Sea onto Southeast Asia, a region that the Chinese historically referred to as Nanyang (Southern Ocean).2 During that period, the Chinese Empire had formal trade with neighboring Korea, Burma, Siam, Vietnam, and Ryukyu (Okinawa) Kingdom, while local oﬃcials and private traders conducted informal trade with foreign merchants

2 More precisely, Nanyang refers to the region immediately to the south of China, including the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya and Borneo, Siam, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (Pan 1999: 16).

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through key Southeast Asian port-states, such as Ayudhya, Malacca, and Brunei (Reid 1996). The Philippines and Borneo were then chieftains struggling to turn their territories into states (Pan 1999). Overseas trade had its heyday in China’s maritime age of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279), during which porcelain, textiles and lacquer production ﬂourished and printing and publishing technologies were well developed. Historical documents depicting Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean from the perspective of Chinese trading ports were recorded in books (Liao 2002; Pan 1999; Zeng 1998; Zhuang 2001). Trade continued to ﬂourish and expand into Russia and Persia under the rule of the Mongols who conquered China and turned the dynasty into Yuan (1279–1368). The Mongols promoted trade with the Arabs and allowed Islam to take root in China, while sponsoring expeditions to Japan, Java, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma, but failed to press Japan and Java to recognize its suzerainty while succeeded in the others (Pan 1999). After the fall of the Yuen Dynasty, the succeeding Ming Empire (1368–1644) banned all private overseas trade in an attempt to exert tighter control on maritime commerce and curb foreign inﬂuences. Meanwhile, the Ming emperor aggressively sought to incorporate Southeast Asian states into its tribute system, which deﬁned the hierarchical relations of imperial China with neighboring states and kingdoms. Long before the arrival of the Europeans in the 1600s, the Chinese dominated trade in most of the Southeast Asian region, or Nanyang. In Nanyang, the Chinese trade Diaspora turned many Southeast Asian port-cities into entrepots, through which Chinese silk, porcelains, and other manufactured goods were exchanged. Unlike present-day trade, early trade often required that merchants physically travel from one place to another or migrate to settle temporarily (Zhuang 2001). The Chinese traders, or huashang, who took a voyage overseas would temporarily stay in one place and then move onto the next to conduct their economic activities due to backward communications and transportation technologies. Consequently, circular migration from China to Nanyang became regular. Merchants and traders took their workers abroad with them to work on the trade for a short period of time and then returned home preparing for the next journey. When the Dutch and English arrived in the region in 1600, they found large and distinct Chinese resident communities in key port cities in Nanyang, such as Brunei, Malacca, Western Java, Batavia, Manila, southern Siam, Phom Penh. Thus, pre-colonial Chinese emigration

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was intertwined with trade and was dominated by huashang (merchants and traders) and their seasonal workers who were mostly their own relatives or village folks (Wang 1991). Of those who settled in the foreign land, they acted as middleman minorities, turning their areas of settlement into bustling market places and their economic activities into dominance of internal and international trade (Zhuang 2001). In the process, they planted the seeds for subsequent Chinese trade and emigration. The Role of the Imperial Chinese State The imperial Chinese state has long been ambivalent toward international migration. Sometimes it allows migrants to go overseas but discourages their return, other times it favors out-migration with a keen interest in migrant remittances, and still other times it closes its door and prohibits international migration altogether (Zhuang 1989 & 1999). Whether at times of prosperity or depression, the Chinese state has played and has continued to play a paramount role in shaping patterns of international migration and the development of the Chinese Diaspora. In early Ming Dynasty, private trade and any trade outside the tribute system (e.g., trade with Japan) was banned, making it diﬃcult for merchants to move to and from China freely. Later on, the imperial state relaxed restrictive policies on private and localized maritime commerce, but banned overseas residence (Zeng 1998). The succeeding imperial Qing government (1644–1911) inherited the hostile attitude toward emigration and made overseas travel and residence a capital crime punishable by beheading (Liao 2002; Zeng 1998; Zhuang 1989 & 1999). Trade with foreigners was restricted only to the port of Guangzhou. So as early as the late 14th century when restrictive trade policies were implemented, merchants and traders developed innovative strategies and tactics to bypass government regulations, which were later institutionalized to facilitate migration and the formation of diasporic communities overseas. For example, the Ming emperor restricted overseas trade with Japan. The imperial government’s eﬀort to crush illegal trade between the two countries drove the Chinese seasonal traders, mostly Fujianese merchants, to seek permanent refuge in Japan’s port cities, notably Nagasaki. This Chinese settlement, in turn, established new routes between Fujian, Taiwan, and Manila (Kyo 1999; Zeng 1998).

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Most of the bans on private trade abroad were revoked in 1727. In 1754, the imperial Qing government declared for the ﬁrst time that law-abiding emigrants could safely return home and have their properties protected (Reid 1997). Even with the ban, however, overseas and overland private trade in South and Southeast China boomed and showed little sign of slowing down. An ancient Chinese saying, “the mountain is high and the emperor is far away,” accurately described the attitude of local oﬃcials and traders in Guangdong and Fujian provinces. By the early 15th century, Chinese commercial communities had already made a strong presence and ﬂourished in Java and Sumatra. In 1567, the Ming government legalized informal trade, which gave rise to new Southeast Asian port-cities, such as Manila of the Philippines, Hoi An of the southern Vietnamese state, Phom Penh of Cambodia, Patani of Malaya, the pepper port in West Java, the Dutch port of Batavia (Pan 1999; Purcel 1965; Reid 1996). The relaxation of the emigration policy led to a booming overseas junk trade already rapidly developing and a tremendous outﬂow of traders, miners, planters, shipbuilders, mariners, and adventures of all kinds (Reid 1997 & 1999). Meanwhile, the imperial government took aggression over its neighboring states at the peak of China’s prosperity and peace. China incorporated Korea into the tribute system in the 1630s and invaded Burma in 1766 and Vietnam in 1788. It was recorded that, in the last decade of the 18th century, tribute missions from Korea and Southeast Asia visited the Chinese Emperor for two to four times a year (Reid 1997). Intra-Asian trade and tribute missions to China reached their peak in 1790, despite Western colonialism, and continued to remain high until the decline of the Chinese Empire in the mid-1840s. Trade and tribute missions, in turn, stimulated emigration from, rather than immigration into, China. During the period of what the historian Anthony Reid called a “Chinese Century” (1740–1840), nearly one million Chinese settled in Southeast Asia, representing three percent of the region’s population (Reid 1996; Trocki 1997). The Chinese population in Bangka was estimated at around 30,000 in the mid1700s (Andaya 1997). In Batavia, it accounted for about 10% of the population in the early 1810s (Abeyasekere 1983, p. 296). Siam, Java, Borneo each had about 100,000 Chinese, representing between 46% to 65% of the total population in the early 1820s (Blythe 1969). Diasporic communities took root overseas as a result. Merchants and

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traders, who were both sojourners and settlers, dominated these communities (Reid 1996). For example, almost all of the 11,500 seamen who were engaged in Bangkok’s maritime trade were of Chinese descent (Reid 1999). But not all early Chinese emigrants were merchants or traders. As settling merchants and traders started to invest in agriculture and mining and other land-based ventures, they brought in workers from their ancestral villages to work on these new ventures. During the period, most of the emigrants were Chaozhounese (Teochiu) from southeast Guangdong Province and Fujianese from coastal regions of Fujian Province. These pioneer emigrants were primarily involved in cash-crop farming, developing such goods as sugar, pepper, gambier, and rubber, as well as in tin and gold mining. Much of the products were developed by the Chinese merchant class and produced mainly for the China and international markets (Trocki 1997; Wickberg 1999a). The diasporic communities served to strengthen both formal and informal trade connections and facilitate sequent emigration from China. The Fall of the Chinese Empire: Semi-Colonialism and HUAGONG Migration European colonists landed on Southeast Asian continental and island states in the early 16th century.3 The Spanish occupied the central Philippine archipelago in 1521, captured Manila in 1571, and extended their control to Cebu and other islands in the Philippines (Brown 1999). The Dutch East Indies Company turned the scattered forts and trading posts in the archipelago into a colonial empire (Cribb 1999). But it was not until the 19th century that Western colonization and expansion peaked. The Dutch took over Indonesia in 1799. The British occupied and ruled territories on the Malaya Peninsula, including Singapore in 1819. In the early 1840s, the British defeated China in two opium wars, forcing China to open its ports and turn over Hong Kong to British control, and hence making China a semicolonial state (Li, M. 2002; Zeng 1998). Afterward, the French annexed Cochinchina (three provinces in the southernmost part of

3 The Portuguese reached China by sea in 1514 and were believed to be the ﬁrst Europeans to do so (Pan 1999: 365).

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Vietnam) in 1864 and the whole of Vietnam in 1885, and formed the Union Indochinoise by 1883 that included Cambodia and later Laos (Smith, R. 1999). Japan, during the same period, rose from a long national seclusion and began to aggressively pursue industrialization and modernization. In 1894, Japan defeated China in the sino-Japanese War and ceded the island of Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula in South Manchuria (Storry 1999). Colonial expansion of the West allowed Western private enterprises to exploit the newly occupied colonies to intensively develop plantation agriculture and mining, extract petroleum and other natural resources, and expand the market in the region. European colonists began to import huagong (Chinese contract labor), often referred to as coolies, from China and neighboring states to work on plantations, mines, and infrastructure building (Wang 1991). The changing region’s geopolitics signiﬁcantly altered the nature and courses migration. Next, I describe the historical context and the two distinct streams of Chinese emigration—contract labor from China to European colonies in Southeast Asia and to the Americas— that emerged from it. The Century of Defeat and Humiliation What succeeded “the Chinese Century” of stability and prosperity (1740–1840) was a century of defeat and humiliation for the Chinese. The two Opium Wars (1840–42 with Britain and 1856–60 with Britain and France) and internal turmoil fatally shook the foundation of the Chinese Empire and contributed to its eventual collapse. The ﬁrst Opium War was ignited in 1839 when the imperial government conﬁscated opium warehouses in Guangzhou (Canton). Britain responded by sending an expedition of warships to the city in February 1840 and won a quick victory over China. The war ended with the Treaty of Nanjing (Nanking) on August 29, 1842. The Treaty of Nanjing, along with a supplementary one signed the following year, forced China to pay a large indemnity, open ﬁve ports (Guangzhou to the South, Fuzhou and Xiamen to the Southeast, Ninbo and Shanghai to the East) to British trade and residence, and cede Hong Kong to Britain. The unequal treaties also gave British citizens in China the right to be tried in British courts and imposed on China that any rights granted to one foreign power must also be given to other foreign powers.

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The second Opium War further undermined the power of the Chinese Empire. In October 1856, Guangzhou police boarded the British ship Arrow and charged its crew with smuggling. Eager to gain more trading rights in China, the British used the incident to launch another oﬀensive, precipitating the Second Opium War. British forces, aided by the French, won another quick military battle in 1857 and forced China to sign the Treaty of Tianjin (Tientsin). The Treaty of Tianjin stipulated that China opened additional trading ports, allowed foreign emissaries to reside in the capital Beijing, admitted Christian missionaries into China, and opened travel to the Chinese interior. When China refused to ratify the treaty, force resumed. In 1860, British and French troops occupied Beijing and burned the imperial Summer Palace. The Chinese government was once again forced to ratify the treaty. Later negotiations also make China legalize the importation of opium (Pan 1999; The World Book 1990). During the same period when China clashed with, and was defeated by, foreign powers, the Taiping Rebellion in the South and a series of peasant uprisings elsewhere in the country greatly weakened the power of the state and accelerated the Empire’s decline. The Taiping Rebellion (1851–64), led by the Kejia (Hakka) “God Worshipper” Hong Xiuquan (Hung Hsiu-ch’uan), was a popular uprising in early modern Chinese history. The Rebellion aimed at overthrowing the imperial Qing (Manchu) regime and building an egalitarian society. Originating from Guangxi Province, Hong proclaimed himself the king of the Heavenly Kingdom, led his forces through Hunan and Hebei provinces and along the Yangtze River, and ﬁnally captured Nanjing in 1853. Hong declared Nanjing as the capital of the Heavenly Kingdom and instituted an authoritarian government with Christian beliefs and an ancient Chinese egalitarian ideal (dividing land equally among the people). In 1864, a new imperial army partially aided by foreign powers put down the rebellion.4 Hong committed suicide at the fall of Nanjing. The 11-year revolt, which cost the lives of approximately 20 million people, almost toppled the Qing Dynasty (Pan 1999).

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The foreign powers wanted the Qing Dynasty to survive so that the terms of unequal treaties could remain in eﬀect (see World Book 1990, Vol. 3, p. 503).

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Just at the time of its rapid decline, the Chinese Empire was also aggressively challenged and defeated by a rising Asian power— Japan—in the mid-1890s. When Japan launched a war with China (1894–95), China had little strength to resist but to recognize Japan’s control over Korea and gave the island of Taiwan to the Japanese. Afterward, Britain, France, Germany, and Russia forced the crumbling Chinese Empire to grant more trading rights and territory. It appeared likely that China would eventually be divided up into colonies by Japan and Western powers. However, a growing nationalism among the Chinese and rivalry among foreign powers prevented full colonization (Pan 1999). Rebels from the rank-and-ﬁle as well as from the government formed secret societies to resist foreign, particularly Christian, inﬂuence and subjugation. The best-known being the Boxers, whose rebellion in 1900 aimed at attacking western missionaries and killing “east-ocean devils” ( Japanese), “westocean devils” (other westerners), and Chinese Christians. The Boxer Rebellion was soon suppressed by an allied force of eight foreign nations. Afterwards, a segment of the Qing government promoted Meiji-type reform to rebuild the regime, its economy, and a westernstyle army. But reform came too late and the last dynasty fell in 1911. Turmoil, chaos, and extreme poverty, which were exacerbated by war and peasant uprisings, continued after the downfall of the Qing Dynasty. The new republic ruled by the Nationalist Party was too weak to unify the nation and lead it out of distress and semi-colonialism. In 1921, the Communist Party was established to challenge the power of the new regime. Warlord rivalries and civil wars became more widespread than ever before. In 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria (three provinces in China’s Northeast), driving China into a lengthy Sino-Japanese war lasting through the end of World War II. The Sino-Japanese war split the short-lived coalition between the Nationalists and Communists and drove nation into greater turbulence, misery, and devastation. The demise of the Chinese Empire into a semi-colonial state coincided with rapid colonization of the West and Japan in the Asian Paciﬁc region, which had a profound impact on Chinese emigration. In particular, Western expansion into China and Southeast Asia broke Chinese dominance in intra-Asian trade by transforming Asia’s export economy and making inter-Asian (East-West) trade an arm of the world market of manufactured goods, food products, and

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industrial raw materials. On the one hand, the new East-West trade opportunities beyond Asia turned Chinese merchants and traders, who had dominated intra-Asian trade for centuries, into agents or partners of the European traders and colonists. These merchants and traders later played an important role in contract labor recruitment (Zhuang 2001). On the other hand, agricultural and industrial developments in new colonies opened new opportunities for Chinese diasporic communities to expand beyond trade into the plantation economy and mining, hence creating a tremendous demand for labor (Pan 1999). China’s vast population became a source of labor supply with unlimited potential and its century-old migration networks were in place to facilitate labor migration. On the home front, foreign aggression and internal rebellions disrupted normal life and routine sources of livelihood, forcing people out of their homeland in search of better alternatives. China had a strong tradition of out-migration as a common household strategy to combat famine, poverty, and turmoil: Zhousui (walk the water) was a common pattern in coastal regions and Chuang Guandong (rush through the east gate of the walled city) was common among northern Chinese (Li, L. 1997: 35–36). It is intuitive to think that, when a war was fought, an uprising broke out, or a dynasty fell, people ﬂed. For example, the Mongol conquest of China in 1279 led to a huge exodus of Chinese to Vietnam, Cambodia, Siam, and Indonesia. The transition from Chinese Ming to Manchurian Qing Dynasty in 1644 also promoted outﬂows of refugees to port cities in Southeast Asia, where the Chinese had traded (Pan 1999). However, refugees frequently ﬂed distress and turbulence from one place to another, mostly rural to urban. Inter-regional migration within the country was common but few ventured across several provinces, and still fewer moved from the hinterland to the coast and oﬀ shore to another country. In fact, international migrants and refugees did not always ﬂow from the most economically distressed and politically chaotic areas (Goldstone 1997). Few international migrants were from Nanjing where the Heavenly Kingdom sank, Beijing where the Qing Dynasty fell, Henan where farmland was depleted and the region impoverished by the untamed Yellow River, or the war-torn Japanese-occupied Manchuria. In the colonial era, Chinese emigration almost entirely originated from two major provinces—Fujian in the Southeast and Guangdong in the South (Zhuang 2001; Zeng 1998). A small proportion was from areas bordering Vietnam in Guangxi Province

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and from areas bordering Burma and Laos in Yunan Province. Laborers to Korea and Japan during the 1920s and 1930s were mostly recruited by the Japanese colonial government from Shandong Province on the East Coast (Pan 1999). Huagong (Chinese Labor) to Southeast Asia In the century between the mid-1840s and World War II, there were two distinct streams of Chinese emigration: network-driven free migration, or huashang dominated migration, which was more or less a continuation of the pre-colonial pattern, and contract labor, or huagong-dominated migration (Wang 1991). The latter, also referred to as the coolie trade, was more voluminous. Most Chinese contract laborers worked for Western colonists, but some worked for other overseas Chinese who owned plantations and mines in Western colonies (Zhuang 2001). Pre-colonial and colonial emigration shared some remarkable similarities in origins and destinations. First, colonial emigration was dialect-group based and traced its origins to the same regions as the heyday maritime trade. Similar origins indicated an intrinsic linkage between emigration and earlier trade disaporas. As I have just mentioned, most of the early Chinese migrants were from Guangdong and Fujian. According to surveys conducted in the mid-1950s, there were approximately 20 million overseas Chinese around the world, 12 million living in Southeast Asia. Among the Southeast Asian Chinese, 68% (8.2 million) were of Guangdong origin, and 32% (3.7 million) of Fujian origin. These emigrants were not evenly distributed in destination states (Zhu 1994). In the Philippines, the Chinese population was almost entirely Fujianese in 1800, and a hundred years later, between 85% to 90% of the people of Chinese descent were Fujianese and the rest were Cantonese (See Wickberg 1999a & 1999b). In Cambodia, Cantonese dominated the Chinese community in earlier days but later were overwhelmed by the Chaozhounese (Wickberg 1999b). In Malaysia, Hakkas were the dominant dialect group among the Chinese. In contrast, almost all (99%) of the Chinese immigrants in North and South America and West Indies of the period were from Guangdong (Pan 1999). Within a particular province, emigrants tended to come from just a few places. For example, most of the emigrants who went to Southeast Asia were from eastern Guangdong—Chaozhou-Shantou (Swatow)— in particular, while most of the emigrants who went to the Philippines

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and the Americas were mostly from Southwest Guangdong—the Sze Yap region. In Thailand (Siam before 1939), 95% of the Chinese immigrants or Sino-Thais could trace their origin to the ChaozhouShantou region (Burusratanaphand 1995; Chan and Tong 2001). In the Philippines, almost all Cantonese settling there were from the Sze Yap region. In the United States, close to 75% of the Chinese immigrants in San Francisco in the Chinese Exclusion era were from Taishan (Toishan—a part of Sze Yap). Secondly, colonial emigration disproportionately headed for South East Asia where diasporic communities were established. Relatively small but highly ﬂuctuated numbers of contract labor went to Hawaii, the continental United States, West Indies, and the Americas. It was estimated that between 1801–1850, 63% of all emigrating Chinese went to Southeast Asia destinations, compared to 6% to Hawaii and the United States, 5% to West Indies, and 8% to Cuba and Peru.5 The next 25 years (1851–1875) saw record-high numbers of Chinese immigration to Hawaii, the United States, and Canada (17%), Cuba (11%), and Peru (9%) (Stewart 1951). But the volume pouring into Southeast Asia was still quite substantial: about 27% of the Chinese emigrants went to the Malay Peninsula, 20% to East Indies, 4% to the Philippines. Between 1876 and 1900, the period of Chinese exclusion in America, those heading for the Malay Peninsula rose to 48% and, for East Indies, to 43%, while those heading for Hawaii, the United States, and Canada dropped to less than 3% (Zhu 1994). A sizeable portion of the Southeast Asia-bound migrants worked for coethnic-owned plantations, mines and other businesses. Thirdly, circular migration continued to be distinctive because of high rates of return migration. Emigrant Chinese, merchants, traders, and workers alike, were predominantly sojourning males. The patriarchal family system facilitated the formation of the bachelor society abroad since sons, regardless of birth order, could claim an equal share of patrimony upon return, but daughters were forbidden to leave home. The male sojourner typically left his family behind, or returned home to get married and then left his bride behind to take

5 The total number of emigrants leaving China between 1801 and 1850 was 320,000. Most went to Southeast Asian, less than 6% to the United States, and 9% to Cuba and Peru.

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care of his parents and raise his children. He routinely sent remittances home and hoped to return in the not-so-distant future. Merchants and traders, who usually spent a considerable amount of time in an overseas location that served as a temporary home, traveled frequently between home and places of business. But workers, especially those worked on plantations and mines and lived in camps or near work sites, were more constrained; many could not aﬀord to make frequent home visits. Nonetheless, the overall return rates were considerably high. In Thailand, for example, the return rate was 57% between 1882 and 1905, 78% between 1906 and 1917; and 68% between 1918 and 1945, and then dropped to 40% between 1946 and 1955 (Skinner 1957). Huashang vs. Huagong Emigration Huagong migration during the second half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century highlighted the signiﬁcance of the historical relationship between the century-old Chinese trade diaspora and emigration. Chinese emigration in the colonial period, however, was also distinct from that during the pre-colonial era in several remarkable respects. First, even though emigrants originated roughly from the same regions (i.e., Guangdong and Fujian provinces), they were a more diverse group containing a substantially higher proportion of contract laborers working for Western colonists rather than for the Chinese. In pre-colonial era, a typical worker was a relatively or a village folk working for his coethnic merchant or trader who ran a shop, a farm, or a mine. In colonial era, a typical worker is a “coolie” (bitter strength or hard labor) or an indentured worker. Moreover, even though emigrants headed primarily for the same destinations as the pre-colonial era, they were more responsive to labor demand in destinations. In pre-colonial era, trade and local investment by the Chinese created demand for labor that was easily accessible from home and home villages. So workers followed the trade diaspora. In colonial era, large-scale development in the plantation economy, mining, and infrastructural construction demanded a large amount of labor in one destination and little in another. So even in destinations where Chinese diasporic communities were well established, contract labor was unevenly distributed. For example, the Philippines, East Indies, and Malay Peninsular attracted over 95% of all contract labor to Southeast Asia. At the peak years

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(1851–1875), 350,000 laborers arrived in British colonies in the Malay Peninsular, 250,000 in the Dutch East Indies, and 45,000 to the Spanish ruled Philippines (Zhu 1994). Vietnam also attracted a considerably large number; between 1923 and 1951, 1.2 millions Chinese arrived in Vietnam to work as contract labor (but 850,000 returned to China).6 In contrast, few contract laborers went to French-ruled Cambodia and Laos. Thirdly, the means of labor export were distinct.7 In the past, merchants and traders themselves established home-village-based networks to sponsor migration. In colonial era, labor migration was facilitated by two other means—the credit ticket system and labor contracts. Merchants and traders acted as labor brokers and agents to recruit prospective workers not only from their villages but also from similar dialect groups in the region. Most of the coolies were poor and uneducated and could not aﬀord the journey. They either got money advanced to them by their labor brokers (relatives or overseas Chinese) or signed labor contracts to have their journey fees repaid from their wages earned at destination. So only those with direct connections to century-old diasporic communities or to labor migrant networks were likely to leave. Fourthly, colonial labor migration was highly organized and controlled and was shipped oﬀ in large numbers from selected ports at origin. For example, Chinese labor migrants to Malaysia were assembled in Macao and then shipped overseas. So in the Malay Penisular, they were often referred to as Macaos by the locals even though they were Chaoshanese, Fujianese, Hakkas, Cantonese, and Hainanese (Blythe 1969). The British labor recruitment agencies also ran operations in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Shantou in consultation with Chinese authorities (Pan 1999). Those headed for Hawaii and the Americas during the same period were primarily assembled in Hong Kong and then got on ships across the Paciﬁc. Fifthly, even though coolies arrived in destinations where longstanding Chinese communities exist, many had to stay in plantations

6 His number probably included the refugees who walked across the border to Vietnam after the Communist takeover in 1949. 7 The credit ticket system and labor contracts were also the main means of labor migration to South Paciﬁc, Hawaii, the United States, and the Americas.

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and work camps and were quite isolated from oversea Chinese communities. Some workers were so poor that they were not even able to send money home, much less to go home to ﬁnd someone to marry for continuing the family name. Intermarriage with indigenous women thus became increasingly common in certain destinations. Many descendents of these intermarriages, (mestizos in the Philippines, jeks in Thailand, peranakan in Indonesia, and babas or nyonya in Malay Penisular, and sino-Viets in Vietnam) were assimilated in the local cultures while others remained Chinese and became accepted into the overseas Chinese communities (Pan 1999). In sum, during the colonial period, China was the largest laborexport country in Asia. Nearly two-thirds of Chinese emigrants went to Asian destinations and most were contract laborers. Most contract labor to Southeast Asia returned home after their contracts ended but some stayed and integrated into the local Chinese communities. Countries in Southeast Asia that simultaneously received and sent migrants were those ruled by Western colonists. For example, the Dutch East Indies received over 300,000 Chinese labor migrants, while the colonial government sponsored 30,000 migrants from Java to the sparsely populated outer islands during the same period (Zhu 1994). The Philippines under Spanish rule received over 65,000 Chinese laborers between 1850 and 1900 and had continued to receive Chinese immigrants even after the country changed its colonial masters in 1898 and implemented restrictive and antiChinese immigration legislation. Meanwhile, thousands of Filipino labor were shipped to Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast to replace Chinese and Japanese labor—45,000 arrived on the West Coast in the 1920s (Melendy 1977). During World War II, emigration from China ebbed, and intra-Asian migration took a crucial turn since then. Large-scale emigration from China to Southeast Asia testiﬁed to the weakness of the Chinese state as well as the resilience of the century-old trade disapora. Even though China was not colonized by any single nation, it had only limited control over contract labor demanded by Western colonists in Southeast Asia and the Americas and had no power to set the terms of labor contracts for protecting its nationals from harsh exploitation and mistreatment. The apathy and incompetence of the Chinese government indirectly strengthened the cohesion and organization of disasporic Chinese communities overseas. These communities were initially established to provide

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aid to the sojourning workers, to protect them from competing or threatening forces from outside, such as anti-Chinese sentiment, violence, and legislation, and to enhance proﬁt-making and economic opportunities for ethnic elite groups. It was the overseas Chinese elite in diasporic communities that played a more active role in labor migration than the state. Developments in the Post-World War II Era and Chinese Immigration De-colonization, Nation-State Building, and Restrictive Immigration From the late Ming Dynasty to the end of World War II, it was estimated that more than 10 million Chinese emigrated from China to various parts of the world, with about two-thirds settling in Southeast Asia (Qiu 2002). World War II shattered colonial powers over Asia even though Western colonists attempted to regain colonial mastery. The Japanese lost the war along with their “Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” and all its colonies, the British gave up the Indian subcontinent but resumed their control over Malaya and Hong Kong, the French regained control over Indo-China, and the Dutch struggled to take back the East Indies with British support (Azuma 1999; Cribb 1999). However, inspired by Marxist ideologies, former colonies in Asia witnessed grassroots nationalist movements demanding independence. The United States also opposed European colonialism in the region. Within one decade after the war, nearly all the Western colonies in Southeast Asia—the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos—collapsed (Brown 1999; Cribb 1999). With colonists gone, indigenous nationalist and socialist fractions in many newly independent nations competed for power and struggled to rebuild their countries while exercising stricter control over its borders, which had a profoundly negative eﬀect on Chinese immigration. The slow-down of Chinese immigration during the three decades following World War II was also attributed to developments in East Asia. In China, the surrender and departure of the Japanese in 1945 left China deeply divided between the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After the United States failed to mediate and build the two-Party coalition, civil war broke out. The CCP forces fought well with ﬁrm discipline

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and broad-base support from the peasants and the urban working class, while the KMT armies had no will to war. The crumbling economy with record-high inﬂation and rife corruption in the KMT government and army alienated any social class, even the capitalists of Shanghai, and exacerbated the KMT’s chance to win the war (Fitzgerald 1965 & 1999). In 1949, the Communists won over China, despite massive U.S. arms supplies to the KMT and the KMT’s full control of the air and vastly superior numbers. The KMT retreated to Taiwan with about two million soldiers, oﬃcers, and their families, hence starting a bitter standoﬀ and controversy over “one China two systems” (the People’s Republic of China v. Chinese Taiwan) versus “one Chinese ethnicity two nation-states” (the People’s Republic of China v. the Republic of China). Soon after the founding of the People’s Republic of China (the PRC), China was forced into the Korea War and, subsequently, the lengthy cold war, which completely isolate China from the West and from the Chinese diasporic communities until the late 1970s. Migration to and from China was strictly prohibited by the state. Illegal border crossing became a crime and any overseas connections were condemned as espionage and treason subject to punishment in camp labor or jail. While Hong Kong remained a British colony, Taiwan was returned to the KMT-ruled Republic of China (ROC) after the Japanese defeat in World War II. When the KMT was driven by the CCP to Taiwan, the ruling KMT consistently rejected demands for independence. With massive U.S. aid and military protection, the KMT government successfully implemented a series of critical programs, including the land reform, industrialization, and a nine-year statesponsored educational system, and rapidly rebuilt Taiwan into a modern industrializing nation. But the fear of a Communist takeover loomed large. During the 1950s, a substantially large group of mainlanders re-migrated to the United States. Since the 1960, the children of mainlanders and islanders, growing up in Taiwan and beneﬁted from the reformed second educational system, have begun to arrive in the United States to seek higher education, making Taiwanese students one of the largest groups of international students in the United States for almost three decades. Most students of the 1960s and 1970s stayed in the U.S. upon completion of their higher education. The ouster of the ROC from the United Nations in 1972 and the normalization of Sino-U.S. diplomatic relations in 1978 set oﬀ high volumes of brain drain and capital drain from the island

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to the United States, Canada, and Australia. In some sense, Taiwan has been a skilled labor-export region with the United State as its primary destination. Economic Developments and Contemporary Trends of Intra-Asian and International Migration Nation-state building in Southeast and East Asia since the end of World War II has signiﬁcantly realigned the region’s political economy. On the one hand, nation states protect their sovereignty by erecting entry and exit barriers and instituting control over population ﬂows internally and internationally (Hugo 1998). On the other hand, nation states consciously pursue parallel goals of agricultural reform and industrial development (Abella 1992). After two decades of wartime recuperation, many Asian nations have rapidly risen to integrate themselves not merely into the world economy centered in Western developed economies, but also into newly formed Asian core. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was founded in 1967, allying Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines into an integral system for economic development. Brunei joined in 1984, Vietnam in 1995, and Myanmar (Burma until 1989) and Laos in 1997 (Turnbull 1999). Japan emerged as Asia’s industrial and ﬁnancial superpower in the 1970s, and South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore won their reputation as the “Four Little Tigers in Asia” for their impressive economic growth and prosperity a decade later. Meanwhile, Malaysia and Thailand caught up in rapid pace and rose to NIC status. The new Asian alliance, led by Japan and composed of Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and ASEAN countries, signiﬁcantly challenged the single-core world system and brought about unprecedented economic growth in the region. The development of the regional interdependent alliance through trade and investment has set oﬀ massive state-sponsored intra-Asian labor migration since the late early 1980s. Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Brunei became typical labor-import nationsstates,8 while the Philippines, Indonesia, and China became major 8

Hong Kong became a special administrative district of China when it was returned China in 1997. Since it is operated under the “one China two systems” policy, it is thus treated as a nation state but only in an analytical sense. Taiwan is also treated analytically as a nation state here despite controversy over its sovereignty.

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labor-export nations (Hugo 1998; Matin et al. 1995; Tyner 2000). South Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand have witnessed equally signiﬁcant labor inﬂows and outﬂows due to domestic labor market segmentation (Hugo 1998; Martin et al. 1995). As a major labor-import nation, Japan had the largest pool of foreign workers in absolute numbers. But as a proportion of the total employed labor force in Japan, foreign workers amounted only to 2%, which was slightly lower than that in South Korea (but Japan’s economy was 13 times larger) (Martin et al. 1995). In contrast, foreign workers comprised 5% of the employed labor force in Taiwan, 13% in Hong Kong, and 18% in Singapore (Hugo 1998). The prospect of high wages made Hong Kong and Taiwan attractive to workers from other Asian countries. But Hong Kong and Taiwan diﬀered from each other from other labor-short Asian countries such as Japan, South Korean and Singapore, in the type, number, and origin of workers they allowed to enter. In most cases, the labor importation is a post-1980 phenomenon. In the 1980s, the rapid growth in labor-intensive manufacturing, such as apparel, toys, and home electronics, and construction, coupled with low fertility, created a severe labor shortage in Hong Kong (Skeldon 1995). Hong Kong started to import foreign workers almost at the same time as the accelerated exodus of the middle class to Australia and North America due to uncertainties surrounding the 1997 return of the colony to Chinese sovereignty. Two streams of migrant workers were highly noticeable. One stream responded to labor demands from labor-intensive domestic services, manufacturing, and construction. Filipinos formed the largest group of foreign workers, accounting for 37% of the total, and most of the Filipino workers were educated and professional females but worked uniformly as domestic maids (Ng and Lee 1998). Recently, the trend of Indonesia women replacing Filipino women in domestic services became more and more obvious. The other stream was skilled labor ﬁlling in technical and managerial jobs left vacant to the middle class exodus. Almost a third of foreign workers in Hong Kong were educated professionals from Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia (Skeldon 1995). More recently, highly skilled professionals from mainland China and mainland Chinese students attainting advanced training and degrees abroad have also become increasingly visible.

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Taiwan, despite strict immigration legislation and control, received migrant workers from other Asian countries, mainly low-skilled workers from Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Filipino and Indonesia females typically worked as domestic maids while other male workers worked in construction (Tsay 1995). In the 1970s and early 1980s, Taiwan also experienced the exodus of the middle class and capital outﬂow to the United States, as well as Australia and Canada, due political uncertainty resulting from the ousting of Taiwan from the United Nations and the normalization of China-U.S. diplomatic relations. But the trend of US-bound migration reversed during the mid-1980s and 1990s. Many migrants returned to the island and transnational migration became a new trend, easing the brain drain problem. Several demographic and economic trends occurred concurrently in Taiwan that aﬀected migration patterns despite strict control on immigration: decreasing fertility, economic restructuring from labor-intensive manufacturing to capital-intensive high-tech and ﬁnancial services, and public investment in highway construction (Tsay 1995). These trends prompted huge demand for domestic workers and construction workers. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, Taiwan imported workers mainly from Malaysia and the Philippines to work on manufacturing and construction, who accounted for more than 70% of the foreign labor force (Tsay 1995). In Taiwan, no permits were issued to services, except for nursing aid and private household maids (13,007 maids in Taiwan). Since China implemented the open-door reform policy in 1979, Taiwan also invested heavily in the mainland and trans-Straight commerce ﬂourished. Oﬀshore ﬁshing employed a lot of Chinese workers but these workers were not allowed to come to shore (Lee 1998). Singapore is a city-state. Its small land area (641 square kilometers) and population size necessitate a carefully managed development strategy and globalization (Chew and Chew 1995). As the city-state rapidly rose to the status of an NIC in the 1970s, it began to suﬀer from rising cost of labor, severe labor shortage, and nearzero population growth, like most other Asian NICs. Importation of foreign labor, both high and low skilled, thus became top government policy priority. The government allowed two categories of guest labor into the country: work permits and professional passes. Those holding work permits were barred from bringing in dependents or, for female migrants, giving birth in Singapore, and their contract

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terms were strictly enforced. Those holding professional passes were more favorably received. Between 1985 and 1994, the number of foreign workers admitted into the country increased from 100,000 to 300,000. As a proportion of the total employed work force, foreign worker comprised 18% in 1994, up from 8% in 1985. Most of the foreign workers were recruited from Malaysia and Thailand, with a smaller number from the Philippines (Chew and Chew 1995). In the 1990s, the immigration of highly skilled workers from mainland China and Taiwan has become signiﬁcant and increasingly visible (Liu 2000 & 2005). Compared to the Philippines and Indonesia, the two major laborexport countries, China did not seem to have large-scale labor migration. Because of the lengthy Cold War that cut China oﬀ from the rest of the world, migration to and from China was insigniﬁcant relative to its vast size, but potential labor export was very large given the huge domestic labor force (Arnold and Shah 1986; Goldstone 1997). Beginning in the late 1970s and at the peak of the Asian boom in the 1980s, China launched nation-wide economic development programs, ﬁrst agricultural reform, then market reform, and then industrial restructuring aiming at export manufacturing and the privatization of state enterprises. The Chinese drive for modernization and industrialization, coupled with its population potential and the century-old “bamboo network” (Weidenbaum and Hughes 1996), has tipped the balance in the regional politico-economic alignment. These developments and trends have heralded a new era of the “Paciﬁc Century” (Forbes 1999), which has witnessed tremendous changes in the pace, extent, direction, and nature of human movements. Much of the labor migration to other parts of Asia from China in the late 1970s and the 1980s was more or less clandestine, fueled by century-old diasporic networks, to a lesser extent, the governments student exchange programs. The Chinese government continued, and was under pressure from the West and neighboring countries, to exert tight control over emigration. Because of lack of state sponsorship, Chinese workers in Korea and Japan were largely irregulars, who entered as students or visitors and overstayed their visas. Relatively few Chinese workers were present in other Asian NICs. International migration from China to North America, however, has become massive as the United States and Canada relaxed their respective immigration policies. Because of accelerated Chinese immigration, the ethnic Chinese population in the United States

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increased exponentially from 237,292 in 1960 to 1,645,472 in 1990, and to nearly 2.9 million (including some 450,000 mixed-race persons) in 2000, making up more than one per cent of the total US population (Zhou et al., forthcoming). In Canada, the ethnic Chinese population surged from 58,197 in 1961 to 633,933 in 1991, and to more than one million in 2001, forming the largest non-European ethnic group in the country and comprising of three per cent of the total Canadian population (Li, P. 1998). In fact, Chinese has become the third most commonly used language in Canada, next only to English and French (Zhou et al., forthcoming). New patterns of intraAsian migration and trans-Atlantic migration have in turn prompted a new challenge for Asian nations—managing migration (Martin et al. 1995). Illegal or Clandestine Chinese Immigration Much of intra-Asian migration is of recent vintage and is typically short-term and circular labor migration with few possibilities for longterm settlement integration (Battistella 1995). Both sending and receiving nation states play a paramount role in negotiating and managing labor ﬂows. However, globalization and integration of the national economy into the world system can undermine the state’s capacity to control emigrant and immigrant ﬂows. In the process of regulating labor migration, however, both sending and receiving states create loopholes for illegal or clandestine migration. China is a case in point. Emigration from China was strictly controlled between 1950 and 1980 (Zhuang 2001). Since China opened its door to the outside world and implemented economic reform in the late 1970s, China experienced unprecedented economic growth. In its drive to build a market economy, China unintentionally encouraged internal migration and international migration (Chan 1994) but lacked a sophisticated system of state-sponsored and state-managed migration, as many Asian sending countries had developed. Starting in the late 1980s, accelerated in the 1990s, and continued onto the turn of the 21 century, Chinese immigrants have become highly visible in Asian NICs as well as in Australia, Canada, the United States, and many European countries, and a sizeable proportion of them, at as high as 10%, are undocumented immigrants either overstayed their visas or had been smuggled into the countries of destination (Chin 1999; Li, M. 2002; Myers 1997; Smith, P. 1997).

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Total emigration from China was roughly 180,000 annually in the 1990s. Illegal immigration from China was estimated to grow by a factor of 6 in the early 1990s, and by a factor of 10 between 1995 and 2005, which would translate into a net of 200,000 to 300,000 annually (Goldstone 1997). If Asia absorbed a quarter of this outﬂow, that would put tremendous pressure on the Asian NICs. For the Chinese, the most preferred destinations are developed countries in the West. In Asia, South Korea and Japan are currently major destinations. But other countries may be aﬀected by the multiple routing of human smuggling. For example, one tactic is “high seas transfer” (Smith, P. 1997: 8). Hong Kong and Macau have traditionally served as intrepots for Chinese immigration. Thailand and Cambodia have recently emerged both as destinations and staging posts to other countries, mainly Australia, the United States, and Europe (Smith, P. 1997). Latin America, particularly Mexico, has also served as staging post for illegal entry into the United States. Several factors contribute to the rapidly rising and highly publicizing undocumented Chinese immigration, which are linked to China’s large-scale economic reform and structural changes in the new political economy. First, the erosion of the welfare state along with the dissolution of food rationing and state-provided welfare beneﬁts, such as housing, did away with the incentive to stay in one place. When this powerful link was broken, workers felt free to consider migration, both internally and internationally, as an alternative means of livelihood (Goldstone 1997). Secondly, economic development weakened the political and economic power of the central government, but strengthened the power of provincial and local oﬃcials. Corruption at the local level then made it easier for well-connected and resourceful individuals and smuggling syndicates to function eﬀectively. Thirdly, the century-old diasporic communities all over world, once reconnected to the ancestral homeland, could touch oﬀ a chain migration initiated by family- or friend-sponsored tourist, student, or business visas, and could help meet the survival needs of illegal immigrants. Fourthly, Chinese syndicates and organized crime gangs could exploit loose border to ship their human cargo to diﬀerent destination points, either from China or from the Chinese diasporic communities, via other countries with loose border controls, such as Russia’s eastern region and other Eastern European countries (Smith, P. 1997). Governments in countries of destination all have strict regulations to control the ﬂow of migrant workers, but vary in their attitude

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and ways of dealing with illegal immigration. For example, some Asian countries believe that illegal emigration from China is China’s long-term plan for “non-violent absorption” of the region (Smith, P. 1997: 14). Taiwan considers illegal Chinese immigration a national security concern. Singapore fears that the continued pressure from human rights groups and democratization can cause a breakdown of order and control, driving millions of refugees overseas (Smith, P. 1997). But in reality, the capacity for repatriation and control hinges on the state’s capacity for enforcement, unemployment and access to migrant networks in sending countries, and state labor-export policies (Pillai 1998). Often it may not be in the best interest of the receiving countries since the demand of the labor of illegal migrants is high. Thus, while receiving countries are inherently constrained in providing eﬀective means of curbing illegal immigration given the size of the economy, labor market segmentation, and informal migrant networks, sending countries are also constrained since repatriation worsens domestic unemployment and reduces remittances and foreign exchange incomes (Lee 1998). Conclusion The above analysis based on the existing literature suggests that intraAsian and international migration from China has been deeply aﬀected by the century-old Chinese Diaspora and a wide range of geopolitical, economic, and social factors, such as colonization, or decolonization, nation-state building, changes of political regimes, and economic development programs. During the pre-colonial era, the dominance of the Chinese Empire and the proliferation of Chinese trade to Southeast Asia determined much of the intra-Asian migration, primarily via tribute missions and maritime trade routes. Although people moved from one place or island to another beyond their kingdom/chieftain boundaries in order to search for new land, ﬁshing waters, and better living, they rarely ventured too far oﬀ shore in large numbers. It was the Chinese, merchants, traders, and their workers in particular, who developed trade entrepots in port cities all over Southeast Asia, leading to the establishment of overseas Chinese communities and institutions. Ironically, the power of the state in controlling trade and emigration gave rise to sophisticated migration networks and linkages between home villages and the

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Chinese Diaspora, which resulted in a unique pattern of emigration from China and permanent settlement at various destinations in Southeast Asia. Western colonization overturned the dominance of Chinese trade and capsized the geopolitical centrality of the Chinese Empire in the region. With intricate networks of the century-old trade diaspora already in place, Chinese merchants and traders turned agents of labor recruitment, who managed to bypass the state to facilitate mass labor emigration from China to Western colonies in and beyond Asia. Post-World War II nation-state building and economic development realigned the geopolitical order in East and Southeast Asia and the Cold War severed China’s ties to most parts of the world. During this time, newly founded nation-states aggressively pursued development and modernization strategies while also setting entry and exit barriers, erecting tight border control, and enacting strict emigration/immigration policies. As international migration became institutionalized bilaterally at the government level, diasporic communities, informal networks, and migrant syndicates also emerged or revived in origin and destination states. These informal networks and institutions sometimes worked in tandem with the state to facilitate migration in responding to economic changes, but sometimes functioned quite independently to facilitate migration without much state sponsorship or intervention. Also, when preexisting coethnic communities were well established at countries of destination, individual movers could easily reactivate long-standing ethnic or kinship connections to evade sending and receiving state regulations and migrate on their own. Once migration is set in motion, migrants, networks, and diasporic communities undercut the power of the state to structure and manage international migration (Massey et al. 1994). When China opened its door to the outside world and implemented economic reforms, tremendous pressures for international migration built up rapidly. As the patterns of contemporary intraAsian and international migration from China have shown, one of the direct, but unintended, consequences of China’s economic reform is network-driven migration along with clandestine migration. And illegal migration has a tendency to grow out of state control and adjustment mechanisms of the free market. In the next 10 or 20 years ahead, contemporary patterns of intra-Asian and international migration will likely to persist with one exception: China, with its largest population and the most expansive (and best developed) dias-

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poric communities in the world, is potentially a huge labor-export country. As it has become increasingly integrated into the world system, as its marketization has continued to undermine the power of the state, and as the Chinese people have reconnected with their overseas diasporas, Chinese emigration, both legal and illegal may deﬁne a new “Chinese Century,” which can be many times the scale of what the historian Anthony Reid once termed the “Chinese Century” of 1740–1840 (Reid 1996). More precisely, the potential for emigration from China is already a Tsunami on the horizon (Goldstone 1997; Qiu 2002). This is a mixed blessing for China, Asia, and the world. So the challenge for China and other immigrant-receiving countries may be how to negotiate and manage migration, but the power of the state is severely constrained not only by the economy, but also by migration networks and ethnic institutions. References Abella, Manolo I. (1992). “Contemporary Labor Migration from Asia: Policies and Perspectives of Sending Countries.” Pp. 263–278 in Mary M. Kritz, Lin Lean Lim, and Hania Zlotnik, eds., International Migration Systems: A Global Approach. New York: Oxford University Press. Abeyasekere, S. (1983). “Slaves in Batavia: Insights from a Slave Register.” Pp. 286–314 in Anthony Reid, ed., Slavery, Bondage, and Dependency in Southeast Asia. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Andaya, Barbara Watson. (1997). “Adapting to Political and Economic Change: Palembang in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.” Pp. 187– 215 in Anthony Reid, ed., The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies: Responses to Modernity in the Diverse States of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750–1900. London MacMillan Press. Arnold, Fred and Nasra M. Shah. (1986). “Asia’s Labor Pipeline: An Overview.” Pp. 3–16 in Fred Arnold and Nasra M. Shah (eds.). Asian Labor Migration, Pipeline to the Middle East. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Azuma, Eniichiro (1999). “Brief Historical Overview of Japanese Emigration, 1868– 1998.” Pp. 6–8 in International Nikkei Research Project, First-Year Report, 1998–99. Los Angeles: Japanese American Museum. Blythe, Wilfred. (1969). The Impact of Chinese Secret Societies in Malaya: A Historical Study. London: Oxford University Press. Brown, Ian. (1999). “History [of the Philippines].” Pp. 1011–1015 in The Far East and Australia, 1999. 13th Edition. London: Europe Publications Limited. Burusratanaphand, Walwipha. (1995). “Chinese Identity in Thailand.” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 23 (1): 43–56. Chan, Kam Wing. (1994). Cities with Invisible Walls: Reinterpreting Urbanization in Post1949 China. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Chan, Kwok Bun and Tong Chee Kiong (eds.). (2001). Alternate Identities: The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand. Leiden and Singapore: Brill and Times Academic Press. Chew, Soon-Beng and Rosalind Chew. (1995). “Immigration and Foreign Labor in Singapore.” ASEAN Economic Bulletin 12 (2): 191–200. Chin, Ko-lin. (1999). Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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Cribb, Robert. (1999). “History [of Indonesia].” Pp. 415–420 in The Far East and Australi, 1999. 13th Edition. London: Europe Publications Limited. Dudley, Poston, Jr., Michael Xinxiang Mao, and Mei-yu Yu. (1994). “The Global Distribution of the Overseas Chinese around 1990.” Population and Development Review 20 (3): 631–645. Fitzgerald, C. P. (1965). The Third China: The Chinese in South-East Asia. London: Angus & Robertson. —— (1999). “The History of China up to 1966.” Pp. 230–234 in The Far East and Australia, 1999. 13th Edition. London: Europe Publications Limited. Forbes, Dean. (1999). “Toward the ‘Paciﬁc Century’: Integration and Disintegration in the Paciﬁc Basin.” Pp. 35–43 in The Far East and Australia, 1999. 13th Edition. London: Europe Publications Limited. Goldstone, Jack A. (1997). “A Tsunami on the Horizon? The Potential for International Migration from the People’s Republic of China.” Pp. 48–75 in Paul J. Smith, ed., Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Traﬃcking and the Challenge to America’s Immigration Tradition. Washington D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Hugo, Craeme G. (1998). “The Demographic Underpinnings of Current and Future International Migrations in Asia.” Asian and Paciﬁc Migration Journal 7 (1): 1–25. Kyo, Syukushin. (1999). “Japan.” Pp. 332–339 in Lynn Pan, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lee, Joseph S. (1998). “The Impact of the Asian Financial Crisis on Foreign Workers in Japan.” Asian and Paciﬁc Migration Journal 7 (2–3): 145–169. Li, Ling. (1997). “Mass Migration within China and the Implications for Chinese Emigration.” Pp. 23–47 in Paul J. Smith, ed., Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Traﬃcking and the Challenge to America’s Immigration Tradition. Washington D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Li, Minghuan. (2002). Ouzhou Huaqiao Huarenshi (A History of Chinese Immigrants in Europe). Beijing: Zhongguo Huaqiao Chubanshe. Li, Peter. (1998). Chinese in Canada. Toronto: Oxford University Press. Liao, Da-ke. (2002). Fujian Haiwai Jiaotongshi (A History of Overseas Transportation for Fujian) Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin Chubanshe. Liu, Hong. (2000). Zhongguo Dongnanyaxue (China’s Studies of Southeast Asia). Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe. —— (2005). “New Migrants and the Revival of Overseas Chinese Nationalism.” Journal of Contemporary China 14 (43): 291–316. Ma, Laurence J. C. (2003). “Space, Place and Transnationalism in the Chinese Diaspora.” Pp. 1–49 in Laurence J. C. Ma and Carolyn Cartier (eds.). The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility, and Identity. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleﬁeld Publishers. Ma, Laurence J. C. and Carolyn Cartier (eds.). (2003). The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility, and Identity. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleﬁeld Publishers. Martin, Philip L., Andrew Mason, and Ching-Lung Tsay. 1995. “Overview.” ASCEAN Economic Bulletin 12 (12): 117–135. Massey, Douglass S., Joaquin Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor. (1994). “An Evaluation of International Migration Theory: The North American Case.” Population and Development Review 20 (4): 699–751. Melendy, H. B. (1977). Asians in America: Filipinos, Koreans, and East Indians. Boston: Twayne. Myers III, Willard H. (1997). “Of Qinqing, Qinshu, Guanxi, and Shetou: The Dynamic Element of Chinese Irregular Population Movement.” Pp. 93–126 in Paul J. Smith, ed., Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Traﬃcking and the Challenge to America’s Immigration Tradition. Washington D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Ng, Sek-hong and Grace O. M. Lee. (1998). “Hong Kong Labor Market in the

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Aftermath of the Crisis: Implications for Foreign Workers.” Asian and Paciﬁc Migration Journal 7 (2–3): 171–186. Pan, Lynn. (1999) (ed.). The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pillai, Patrick. (1998). “The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Migrant Labor in Malaysia: Policy Implications.” Asian and Paciﬁc Migration Journal 7 (2–3): 255– 280. Purcel, V. (1965). The Chinese in Southeast Asia. London: Oxford University Press. Qiu, Li-Ben. (2002). “Guoji Renkou Qianyi yu Huaqiao Huaren Yanjiu”, in Hao Zhi-Yuan, ed., Haiwai Huaren Yanjiu Lunwenji zhubian (An Anthology of Studies on Overseas Chinese). Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Chubanshe, Pp. 40–56. Reid, Anthony. (1996). Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese. St. Leonard, NSW: Allen & Unwin for Asian Studies Association of Australia. —— (1997). “Introduction.” Pp. 1–26 in Anthony Reid, ed., The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies: Responses to Modernity in the Diverse States of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750 –1900. London MacMillan Press. —— (1999). “Chinese and Southeast Asian Interactions.” Pp. 50–52 in Lynn Pan, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. See, Chinben. (1960). “Chinese Clanship in the Philippines.” Journal of Asian Studies 12 (1): 224–46. Skeldon, Ronald. (1995). “Labor Migration to Hong Kong.” ASCEAN Economic Bulletin 12 (12): 201–218. Skinner, G. William. (1957). Chinese Society in Thailand. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Smith, Paul J. (1997). “Chinese Migrant Traﬃcking: A Global Challenge.” Pp. 1–22 in Paul J. Smith, ed., Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Traﬃcking and the Challenge to America’s Immigration Tradition. Washington D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Smith, Ralph. (1999). “History [of Viet Nam].” Pp. 1167–1170 in The Far East and Australia, 1999. 13th Edition. London: Europe Publications Limited. Stewart, W. (1951). Chinese Bondage in Peru: A History of the Chinese Coolie in Peru, 1849 –1874. Durham: NC: Duke University Press. Storry, Richard. (1999). “History [of Japan] up to 1952.” Pp. 462–465 in The Far East and Australia, 1999. 13th Edition. London: Europe Publications Limited. The World Book, Inc. (1990). The World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago: The World Book Inc. Trocki, Carl A. (1997). “Chinese Pioneering in Eighteenth-Century Southeast Asia.” Pp. 27–84 in Anthony Reid, ed., The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies: Responses to Modernity in the Diverse States of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750–1900. London MacMillan Press. Tsay, Ching-lung. (1995). “Taiwan.” ASCEAN Economic Bulletin 12 (12): 175–190. Turnbull, C. Mary. (1999). “History [of Singapore].” Pp. 1053–1058 in The Far East and Australia, 1999. 13th Edition. London: Europe Publications Limited. Tyner, James A. (2000). “Global Cities and Circuits of Global Labor: The Case of Manila, Philippines.” Professional Geographer 52 (1): 61–74. Wang, G. W. (1991). China and the Chinese Overseas. Singapore: Times Academic Press. Weidenbaum, Murray and Samuel Hughes 1996. The Bamboo Network: How Expatriate Chinese Entrepreneurs Are Creating a New Economic Superpower in Asia. New York: Martin Kessler Books. Wickberg, Edgar. (1999a). “Localism and the Organization of Overseas Chinese Migration in the Nineteenth Century.” Pp. 35–55 in Gary G. Hamilton, ed., Cosmopolitan Capitalists: Hong Kong and the Chinese Diaspora at the End of the 20th Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press. —— (1999b). “The Philippines.” Pp. 187–199 in Lynn Pan, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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THE STRANGER’S PLIGHT, AND DELIGHT* Chan Kwok-bun In moral space, the stranger is someone of whom one cares little and is prompted to care even less. Were there no strangers, one may say, they would need to be invented. Z. Bauman, Postmodern Ethics Oxford: Blackwell, 1993 Abstract Georg Simmel’s and Alfred Schuetz’s stranger and Robert Park’s marginal man have captured the imagination of many social theorists writing about the modern man or woman’s encounters in urban areas the world over. Inspired by Simmel, Schuetz, Park, and the Chicago school of sociology, and following their footsteps closely, this essay draws upon the sociology of race and ethnic relations on the one hand and biographical experiences on the other to meditate on a range of subjects such as identity, homelessness, prejudice and discrimination, coping with the problems of living and adaptation, ethnic solidarity, and immigrant entrepreneurship, before it oﬀers the concept of hybridity as a critique of multiculturalism. Strangers in strange lands certainly have their many moments of inner turmoil, which is their plight, but their double consciousness or mental duality also suggests that they are gifted because they must resolve for themselves the existential conﬂicts between self and other, us and them, and come out in one piece, or they will disintegrate and perish. Embedded in the idea of sympathy and the method of comparisons, the concept of hybridity is invoked in a desperate attempt to invent a language for humankind in a world quickly being torn apart by ethnocentrism, wars, violence and terrorism. The language of sympathy and open-mindedness must be found rapidly or the pain of the speechless will be prolonged.

At the 1987 Association of Social Anthropologists Annual Conference, Edmund Leach (1989: 45) declared: There can be no future for tribal ethnography of a purportedly objective kind. Ethnographers must admit the reﬂexivity of their activities; they must become autobiographical. But with this changed orientation, ethnographers should be able to contribute to the better understanding of historical ethnography. * Chan Kwok-bun is past President (2002–2004) of the Hong Kong Sociological Association. This essay is a revised version of his presidential address delivered at the annual meeting of the Association at Lingnan University on 6 December, 2003. Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

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The Association’s 1989 annual conference, held at the University of York, took up a theme that was the same as the ensuing title of a book, Anthropology and Autobiography, which was edited by Judith Okely and Helen Gallaway (1992). Contributors were invited to address themselves to three themes: the anthropologist as ﬁeldworker, the anthropologist as an individual member of a speciﬁc culture, and the anthropologist as writer (Okely and Gallaway, 1992: xi). The 1986 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association devoted itself to the theme of the interplay between social structure and human lives. Edited by Matilda White Riley (1988a; 1988b), two books were published out of the papers presented at the meeting. In the second book (1988b), eight sociologists gave autobiographical accounts of their experiences, “using their own very diﬀerent lives as foils.” In a lead article, Robert Merton (1988: 12) lamented the surprisingly small number of intellectual autobiographies by sociologists. Yet autobiographers “are the ultimate participants in a dualparticipant-observer role, having privileged access––in some respects, monopolistic access—to their own inner experience. Biographers of self can introspect and retrospect in ways that others cannot do for them.” (Merton, 1988: 18) Merton’s concept of sociological autobiography “utilizes sociological perspectives, ideas, concepts, ﬁndings, and analytical procedures to construct and to interpret the narrative text that purports to tell one’s own history within the context of the larger history of one’s times.” To Merton, two key attributes characterize a sociological autobiography. First, the constructed personal text delineates a dynamic interaction between social structure and human agent, between role-sets and intellectual development––which has implications for the sociologist’s theoretical commitments, choice of research problems, and choice of research sites for investigations. Second, the text relates the sociologist’s “intellectual development both to changing social and cognitive micro-environments close at hand and to the encompassing macro-environments provided by the larger society and culture.” (Merton, 1988: 20) In introspection and retrospection, sociological autobiographers locate their own “runs of experience and foci of interest” at the historical moment of their entry into the ﬁeld. The text is constructed with an “attentive sociological eye” to the interplay of history, social structure, culture, and the individual. Hence, it focuses on intellectual development and not achievement.

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C. Wright Mills, in his 1959 book The Sociological Imagination, wrote passionately about our personal and intellectual lives being inescapably intertwined; he also drew our attention to the fact of social structure impacting on the personal milieu, of public issues engendering personal troubles. Thus, the “self-designated” role of the sociologist is to disentangle the relationships between biography, history, and social structure. Sociologists often ﬁnd themselves in a historical moment and in a social web. While being appalled by the “bigness” and the oppressive power of various establishment institutions, Mills also has a unique vision of the character and personality of humans reacting and adapting to the environment (Gerth and Mills, 1953). Drawing upon the spirit of individualism and pragmatism of John Dewey and William James, coping and adaptation on the part of the individual is a recurrent theme of Mills’s writings, though not a dominant one (Mills, 1964). The Chinese diaspora is an old, global experience. My own experiential and mental life is a close witness to and an active participant in this diaspora. In understanding the diaspora, I get to understand myself better, bit by bit. Jean-Paul Sartre (1981; 1987) wrote a two-volume study of Gustave Flaubert. The symbolic interactionist Norman Denzin (1989: 64) suggests that Sartre does a biographical analysis of Flaubert to ﬁnd a part of himself in Flaubert: “Why Flaubert? For three reasons. The ﬁrst, very personal . . . in 1943, reading his correspondence. . . . I felt I had a score to settle with Flaubert and ought to get to know him better.” (Denzin, 1989: 64–65). Sartre analyzes Flaubert to analyze himself. Many Places, Many Ways of Seeing A friend of mine, Frank Wong, a Chinese Canadian (or should I say Canadian Chinese?) whom I met in Singapore several years ago, was in Hong Kong recently. He has always wanted to see China with me. It didn’t work out the previous year, and the desire had continued and intensiﬁed. As we were both born in the same place, now called Jiangmen, I thought that it would be a good idea for us to go back to our hometown together, and I would bring along my two teenage children, who were born in Montreal, Canada and grew up in Singapore. While I have been back to my birthplace quite a few times, each time renewing and reinvigorating myself, it would

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be my friend’s ﬁrst homecoming since his family brought him to Hong Kong in 1949 (I left China as a refugee and arrived in Hong Kong a year later). It would also be my children’s ﬁrst opportunity to see the house that their grandfather built. I have a friend who works in the Jiangmen local government who drove us around, a smart, cheerful, and friendly young woman. It didn’t take us long to ﬁnd the house in which my friend was born and spent the ﬁrst few years of his life. Unfortunately the house was locked, but he was not disappointed. He knocked and knocked his head on the wall beside the front door and shouted “I am back! I am back!” The white paint on the wall peeled oﬀ and stuck to his forehead. For a moment, home was literally imprinted on him. He was muttering to himself that he desired to see the bed that he had once slept on as a child, and was wondering if it would be a good idea to take it all the way back to Canada. A lot was said, but a lot was unspeakable because he could not ﬁnd the language. My two teenage children were luckier. They managed to go inside their grandfather’s house, now divided up by several families. We chatted with the dwellers there, took pictures with them, chatted a bit more, and exchanged addresses with one family. It was all very warm, very comfortable. I watched their faces. My son seemed touched by the moment, feeling a curious sense of linkage with a past he knew so little, oh so little, about. My daughter displayed quite a diﬀerent mood. She was apparently enjoying the present, looking around, happy, curious, imagining how big and how beautiful the house once was. The two children probably also felt a slight sense of pride about their family, their grandparents, about a way of life that once was but perhaps never again will be. My friend and my children are of two diﬀerent generations and thus have two very diﬀerent experiences of home, house, and place. For my friend, the experience must have pulled his heartstrings and shaken him. It was no wonder he said he wanted to come back to his hometown again next year, and the year after. For my children, this experience was one of the many possible experiences to come when they need to confront their own identities as a modern man and a modern woman. The precise eﬀect of this experience probably won’t be felt until three or four decades from now. By then, they will have me to thank . . . or maybe not, who knows? Yet, alongside these varied reactions to the homecoming experience is a keen awareness that there is also a home elsewhere, out-

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side of China. In China, one knows there is a place elsewhere also called home to which one will soon return. For my friend, it is Vancouver. For my children, it could be Montreal, where they were born, or Singapore, where they grew up, or Hong Kong, where they recently completed the ﬁnal years of their high school, or Toronto, where they are attending university. Deeply embedded in their psyches, at least in the case of my old friend, is a sense of doubleness. While in Vancouver, he thinks of China, and vice versa. This is no divided self in a psychiatric, pathological sense as in schizophrenia or split personality. Rather, this “elsewhere-ness” could be a real source of psychological and spiritual strength. Shuttling back and forth between two societies, two cultures, two ways of being and of seeing things, he is in psychological and intellectual motion. In traveling, my friend and my children have gained insights into things and transformed themselves. Always making comparisons, people like them know that there are always diﬀerent ways of doing one thing. What is done in one way can be done in another way. The sociologist insists these people often invoke options or alternatives—they enjoy an enormous latitude of personal freedom. They are freer from the prejudice of the group than others. One would want to argue that it is this kind of mental agility, this dual structure of feelings, this doubleness, that makes the millions of Chinese overseas modern, attractive, desirable, and useful to the world. Because they are not locked into a singular tradition, one heritage, they can aﬀord to “look sideways”, to have a side view, to discover alternatives. In a quickly changing world, this personal capacity to think otherwise, indeed the root of intelligence, is perhaps traceable to the fact that one has more than one home, and has emotional ties to more than one place. Doubleness is the mother of objectivity, of creativity, because the intellectual horizon is now wider, deeper, and longer. To think, one must be in motion. To theorize, one must travel, between places. Victimhood and Freedom I was born a refugee in 1950 when my family, along with hundreds of thousands of other Chinese, was making its way from China to Hong Kong. My father, a self-made man and a major landlord in his village, lost everything practically overnight. As a child growing

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up in Hong Kong, I experienced poverty, but not refugeehood in the sense of feeling myself to be far from “home” and an outsider, an outcast, in society subject to discrimination and hostility, probably because I was too young, or because there were so many others like us in Hong Kong. We were all in the same boat. Also, my family had remained largely intact, though a couple of years later, in 1952, my father sent my two eldest brothers to his kin in Vietnam. In 1969 I left Hong Kong and went to Canada to study. While I was a university student in Canada I did not spend much time thinking or writing about the life of a “stranger” and his or her encounters with society. I was interested in sociological theory, social thought, and philosophy on the one hand, and literature, drama, and creative writing on the other—or, to put it another way, ideas and emotions and their role in human conduct and society. My interest was abstract and theoretical. The more tangible aspect of it was simply that I wanted to acquire the tools of my trade, to learn the theories and ideas that would help me become a sociologist. As a foreign student in a cold, unfamiliar, faraway land, who lived among other Chinese students in a kind of ghetto, I led a stranger’s life; but I was not aware of it at the time, and I certainly was not interested in examining the plight of the stranger in an intellectual manner. I cannot recall having written, as a student, a single essay even remotely related to the subject, although classical sociologists have taught me a lot about alienation, anomie, selfestrangement, and exploitation (by the self and others). Simmel’s (1908) classic essay, “The Stranger”, Schuetz’s (1943) essay of the same title, and the works of Park (1928) and Stonequist (1937) on the marginal man portray the inner turmoil of a stranger in a foreign land with an understanding, sympathy, imagination and, may I add, elegance rarely seen in sociological writings. As a student in Canada, I was not bothered by my marginal status. You cannot be upset by what is outside of your consciousness. I ﬁrst began to think about what it meant to be a stranger when I began to teach sociology in 1978 and was doing ﬁeldwork on Asians in Canada. My respondents and informants conﬁded in me, giving details of racial discrimination and the anguish that it caused them. I became interested in the stigma attached to racial characteristics, which, whether real or imaginary, are manifestations of “diﬀerence” and “otherness”. I also became curious about how people coped with the damaged sense of self that resulted from dis-

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crimination. This personal concern led quite naturally to a series of studies of Chinatowns (Chan, 1991). Feeling themselves to be strangers, migrants tend to gravitate toward each other, to form their own close-knit communities as an institutional defense against the hostility of others. In that sense Chinatowns are a self-defense strategy— migrants band together, keeping their distance from the outside world to avoid its racism. Working with groups as diverse as miners and elderly women, community leaders and refugees, I pieced together a sociology of social response to racial discrimination, which is certainly one central aspect of being a migrant and a stranger. During the early eighties, I turned my attention to the subject of the forced migration of the “boat people” escaping from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos to Canada, among whom counted my two brothers who were then married with teenage children, altogether six of them between the two families. Still single, I oﬃcially became their sponsor in 1980. I did ﬁeldwork in Southeast Asian refugee camps in Hong Kong, a place of ﬁrst asylum, as well as in various Indochinese communities and neighborhoods of Montreal, Canada, a place of settlement. I studied forced migration from many angles, from the prison-like atmosphere and chronic stress, which might last for years, of the holding camps, to the loss, grief, and mourning for family, status, and place that occurred in the country of settlement (Chan and Indra, 1987). My focus was on the condition of refugeehood and, more precisely, on how forced migration changed the refugees, for better or for worse. Their stories made it all too clear that many of these people felt cut loose from their moorings, in the inner and the outer world. They were strangers everywhere, some of them even to themselves, as Kristeva (1991) tries to tell us. To survive their predicament, some individuals organized themselves into groups, associations, and communities, both formal and informal. Families got together for meals regularly, or early migrants formed associations to help out the more recent migrants. Out of these informal connections, social networks, solidarity, and the spirit of mutual aid arose. Like the Chinatowns, the social organization of refugees was established partly in self-defense, and partly as a way to hold onto a sense of continuity, identity, and meaning. The sociology of refugee camps, like the sociology of other examples of “total institutions” (Goﬀman, 1961) such as concentration camps, prisons, and mental hospitals, concerns itself with an analysis of how social structure constrains, controls, and victimizes individuals and

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groups. Conventional sociology holds that the direction of causality and inﬂuence is from social structure to human lives, which is graphically captured by Berger’s (1963) notions of “man in society” and “society in man”––man, bounded and bonded to society, experiences his freedom being undermined. This boundedness and bondage of man to society and social structure thus prompts sociologists to view refugees as victims of a prison-like regime, whose experience with the condition in camps has been variously characterized as one of helplessness, meaninglessness, and alienation. Incidentally, this label of refugees as powerless victims (and therefore as clients to be helped by various relief organizations) is a long-standing and pervasive one that is shared by countries of ﬁrst asylum and resettlement as well as by the donor countries. In a deep and powerful way, the label justiﬁes and legitimizes the very existence of the massive and sophisticated refugee relief industry! The irony of the matter is quite clear. Refugees as victims serve to sustain the morality of the humanism and humanitarianism of the international relief industry as helpers; yet a slight variant of this same image, which views refugees as burden or costs (rather than as assets), forever taxing the resources of nation states, lies at the roots of global restrictionism. Perception of the seemingly unending “burden” of refugees literally casts them into beings no one wants to adopt. As such, refugees, being stateless, unwanted and oscillating between freedom and delirium, ﬁnd themselves forever “in orbit”, “in limbo”, and “mid-way to nowhere”. The state of refugeehood is similar to Victor Frankl’s (1984) characterization of the condition of concentration camp inmates as “provisional existence”. Frankl quoted the poet Rilke: “wie viel ist aufzuleiden!” (how much suﬀering there is to get through!). Rilke spoke of “getting through suﬀering” as one would speak of “getting through work”, which could be rather violent in nature. Yet another distinctly diﬀerent approach to studies of refugee camp life is to reverse the direction of causality and inﬂuence exempliﬁed in the conventional sociological view of social structure constraining human lives. In this second approach, the relevant sociological questions are: how do individuals and groups, through the development and adoption of strategies of adaptation, go about making sense of and coping with the stressful condition of camp life (e.g. overcrowding, lack of privacy, reduction to nonentity, uncertainty of resettlement, oﬃcialdom, etc.)? Do individuals and groups, being diﬀerently located in the power structure of the camps, have diﬀerential access to cop-

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ing resources? In posing questions this way, the sociologist is attempting a radical reframing and rethinking of refugees, not as victims, but as purposive, goal-directed, and active agents of change who, while fully aware of man’s boundedness to society, are also, as Berger (1963) tells us, capable of developing insights into the external controlling forces of oppression through which “liberation”, intervention and, eventually, change can be obtained. Berger (1963) writes about the imperfection of social control, the joy of sociological insight into such imperfection, and the promise of emancipation and change, thus underscoring the deceptive simplicity of the concept of “society as drama” and the ecstasy experienced in “stepping out” of the system of oppression, ﬁrst in thought, then in action. Refreshing as it is, this line of thinking about the dialectic of society and man inevitably guides the sociologist toward a recasting of refugees as copers, survivors, or even “warriors”, relentlessly creating “culture” among themselves in their adaptation to the physical, interpersonal, and social environments. Inside sociology, one ﬁnds this strand of theoretical insights into the “eccentricity” of humanity in symbolic interactionism; outside sociology, one ﬁnds it in the psychological reactance theory of Brehm and Brehm (1981), in Seligman’s concept of learned optimism (1990), in the writings of Bettelheim (1943) and Eitinger (1964) on the survivors of Nazi concentration camps, and in Frankl’s (1984) logotherapy and his concept of “search for meaning”. Most recently, in the ﬁeld of psychology, particularly in clinical and experimental studies of stress and coping (Chan, 1977), Antonovsky’s (1979) concepts of resistance resources and sense of coherence, Rotter’s (1966) notion of the internal locus of control, Kobasa’s (1979) concept of psychological hardiness, and White’s (1974) concepts of strategies of adaptation and competence together point to the possible existence of a folkloric hero who manages to weather the seemingly insurmountable storm and stress of life and emerges stronger and more resilient than before. As Richmond (1988: 16) points out, a static sociological view of constraints is: derived from the “given” nature of structural properties which the individual is unable to change and which limit the range of options. Giddens’s concept of “structuration”, however, replaces a static view of social structures as completely external to the individual, with one which emphasizes the process by which social structures one created and changed through the exercise of “freedom of action”.

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Giddens’s (1984) notion of creating and changing social structures concurs with the view of classical anthropologists that human beings relentlessly create “culture” and insert it between themselves and the environment in the evolutionary process of adaptation. As Richmond (1988: 18) puts it, “crises can be perceived as a threat, a loss or a challenge”. Again quoting Giddens (1984: 173), Richmond (1988: 17) points out that sources of constraint are also means of enablement: “they open up certain possibilities at the same time as they restrict or deny others”. Nevertheless, in reversing our thinking on the direction of inﬂuence (social structure aﬀecting human lives), we are best cautioned against the pitfalls of an over-reaction to or negation of “sociological determinism”: that is, the temptation of falling into the other extreme, the trap of “psychological determinism”. Between the two extremes of “social structure aﬀecting individuals” and “individuals aﬀecting social structure”, adaptation can be graphically seen as a series of negotiating moves that slide back and forth within a coping continuum. As Richmond argues (1988: 17), “all human behavior is constrained. Choices are not unlimited but are determined by the structuration process. However, degrees of freedom may vary. Individual and group autonomy and potency are situationally determined.” Such a theory of personal motivation and social action successfully recognizes the apparent paradox of the human condition while also capturing and nurturing the healthy tension between the sociological and the psychological approaches to refugees and race relation studies. Hence, we no longer talk in terms of freedom as either/or; instead, the researcher takes the notion of “degrees of freedom” seriously and literally which, in the case of a particular refugee or minority at a particular time in a particular place, is determined by the negotiated relations with society. The task of the sociologist is to disentangle the complexity of such negotiations. This attempt to examine humans negotiating with the social structure has obvious methodological implications. Among other things, it suggests that sociologists, whenever possible, observe closely, intimately, and systematically how minorities go about “doing things together” (Becker, 1986; Ben-Yehuda et al., 1989) in a cooperative fashion to “make a diﬀerence” for themselves. Survival is more often than not a collective and collectivized game. Once the sociologist has embraced this fundamental premise, his job is to gain access to the social organization and the process of collective adaptation with

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life stress. This often translates into what anthropologists call ﬁeldwork, or what symbolic interactionists call participant-observation. In simple terms, the researcher is there to listen, observe, record, and reﬂect on how the respondents go about making sense of, negotiating, and gaining control over their everyday lives. Structure and Culture Two things that characterize the ethnic Chinese overseas are their subjection to discrimination and their over-representation, relative to the local people in the host society, in self-employment. In an attempt to link the two phenomena, the sociologist may want to draw upon strands of theoretical and empirical literature on the sociology of race and ethnic relations on the one hand and on economic sociology on the other hand. The sociology of race and ethnic relations has an abundance of deep social theory to make sense of a stranger’s encounters with prejudice and discrimination, and his or her strategies of coping with and adaptation to diﬀerential treatment. At both the personal and collective levels, one such coping strategy is to create self-employment in ethnic enterprises; as such, research on ethnic or immigrant entrepreneurship emerges out of the interface between the sociology of race and ethnic relations and economic sociology. It seems that as strangers in a foreign land, immigrants and refugees respond to racism and the inevitable hardships of settling in a new country with ethnic solidarity. In this sense, ethnic consciousness and cohesiveness may well be the unintended consequence of discrimination. One may want to argue that ethnic networks are a response to the hardships immigrants face: once established, such networks are conducive to the growth and development of ethnic or immigrant businesses, but there seems to be an involuntary, even unwanted, element to ethnic entrepreneurship, as well as to ethnic capitalism. Many ethnic businessmen are “reluctant merchants” who have realized that their access to the political and professional landscapes of mainstream society is blocked. Unable to participate in the host-society capitalism, minorities create their own, an ethnic capitalism. Thus, the economic sociology of immigrant entrepreneurship needs to be placed within the larger context of prevailing race and ethnic relations. Understood in that sense, there is an urgent need to re-think theoretical attempts to attribute Chinese business success to Chinese

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culture, the so-called “supply side” of ethnic entrepreneurship, be it cultural values, familism, ethnicity, and so on—by advocating an added sensitivity to the structure and context of prevailing race and ethnic relations, the so-called “demand side” of ethnic business (Chan and Ong, 1995). Such a corrective typically proceeds by identifying the many myths and misconceptions of Chinese businesses. One may want to cast oneself in a revisionist mood—that of deconstructing, de-mystifying, or de-glamorizing the layman’s romance with ethnic Chinese enterprise. Ethnicity, if indeed useful to business, is typically “made” in the host society rather than imported wholesale from the place of departure. Culture or, for that matter, identity, is rarely transplanted as is; instead, it is produced and reproduced, constructed and deconstructed, in the exploitation of structural advantages as well as in the adaptation to contextual constraints. Identity is often identity in context, in situation—a sort of situated, contextualized identity, or positionality. Emergent immigrant culture is culture adapted. Ethnic entrepreneurship should thus be seen as a collective, social response to structure and context. The ﬁeld of ethnic entrepreneurship perhaps requires an opening out and opening up of the little black box of culture. Our analytical gaze should be at the Chinese businessmen’s modes of daily interactions with their milieu, the other, the non-Chinese, the larger, much larger world out there, way beyond the narrow conﬁnes of family, clan, lineage, ethnic group, community, or what the journalists call “tribes”. As it happens, the many myths and misperceptions of Chinese businesses will fall, one by one. Rarely a cultural or a structural explanation of any social object suﬃces by itself. In fact, Waldinger, way back in 1984, more than twenty years ago, put forward an interactive explanation based on a series of industry case studies in New York––an outgrowth of a desire to integrate or fuse culture with structure, ethnic resources with opportunity structure, “supply” with “demand.” In this approach, the demand for ethnic business and the supply of skills and resources interact to produce ethnic entrepreneurship, thus pointing to the artiﬁciality of an either/or explanation of whether culture or structure shapes the trajectory of economic achievement. Culture and structure are often in a continuous dialectical interplay, thus nullifying any methodological attempt to make a sharp division between the two. History articulates the dialectic of culture and structure. Without over-emphasizing it, there is a need to learn to think about

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collective social life dialectically. Of course, such a view is not new. Identity is about adaptation to life and to living. Indeed, our analytical focus should be on the entrepreneur’s strategies as business conduct, or what Giddens (1976) calls the “dialectic of control.” This gaze at the exterior has the promise of liberating us from the black box of culture. At the very least, culture should be seen as a small culture. Dialectical thinking requires the researcher to be concerned with doing, not being. Ethnic entrepreneurship should always be seen as a social, collective response to structural constraints. Metaphorically, Chinese entrepreneurship is like a “toolbox,” ever resourceful, always replenishing itself––tools are pulled out, one at a time, depending on the requirements of the situation, but without necessarily abandoning the other tools. Three Moments of Consciousness At present, my stream of consciousness moves through three moments. The ﬁrst moment begins with the Chinese migration to Canada, as immigrants and refugees quickly ﬁnd themselves being subjected to prejudice and discrimination in both historical and contemporary contexts. A study of the Chinese experience in Canada often turns out to be a study of racism (Chan 1991). A study of the history of Canada would, I argue, lead the historian into a shocked discovery of many ugly narratives of racism and its costs. The kind of racism that the Chinese have experienced is systemic and institutional, a kind that has gone beyond the triviality of one person ill-treating another person. On an intimate level, the sociologist is deeply involved in documenting the costs of racism and segregation for the individuals and, as it happens, identiﬁes with their suﬀering. This ﬁrst moment is a moment of the pathos of race and ethnic relations produced by international migration and immigration when strangers attempt to partake in the ﬁerce game of ethnic competition for scarce resources. This game, this human drama, is all too familiar in the sociological literature. It is a story told over and over again. In the face of discrimination, the ethnic Chinese of Canada respond by digging deep into the social support resources that are embedded in their social networks made up of families, kin, friends, neighbors, and an assortment of voluntary associations––many, though not all, of which are located in Chinatowns across Canada. This is the

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second moment of my thought. At this moment, we have heard stories of the Chinese coping with racism by segregation, withdrawal and avoidance as self-defense, individually, and collectively. If Chinatowns are indeed sociological examples of institutionalization of isolation and alienation, then such attempts at social organization are at best an outcome of the dialectic of the action of the individual or the group and forces of history and social structure. The kind of sociology that I am putting together here is not one of strangers as helpless victims of racism, taking their suﬀering lying down, but of strangers learning to do things together, putting their emergent ethnicity to good use, and strategically exploiting their sense of agency in a dialectic of control. This second moment is about human survival, about ordinary people asserting themselves in extraordinary times. It is not about going under, but about getting through suﬀering, about overcoming, against all odds—by no means a familiar theme in sociology. The third moment of my thought arrives when I knock at the door of the economic sociology that pertains to ethnic or immigrant entrepreneurship. The human drama of survival is now enacted in the form of ethnic enterprises as strategies of adaptation to blocked opportunity in the host society. Contrary to culturalist articulations of the Chinese propensity for entrepreneurship, not all successful businessmen are Chinese and not all Chinese are successful businessmen. Culture, if of any explanatory utility at all, must be a trimmed-down fellow. Immigrant entrepreneurship indeed has many faces. One face, a familiar one, is that of glamour, ethnic pride and triumph in a society hostile to its newcomers, its racial others, while the other face, its dark side, a less unfamiliar one, is that of immigrant businessmen subjecting themselves to self-exploitation (long hours of menial labor, low wages, and poor health) and the rather ugly exploitation of their own families, kin and co-ethnics. Ethnic capitalism is capitalism nevertheless, the dark, exploitative side of which remains under-explored in the sociological literature. Eager to escape from racism in the mainstream labor market and desiring autonomy, the ethnic Chinese resort to internal exploitation to create and sustain their own enterprise. I still remember what I was told by a Chinese businessman while I was doing interviews in Montreal some twenty years ago. The owner of a successful Chinese food company, he lamented that his children did not show interest in inheriting the business that he cre-

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ated. Yet his Canadian-born children, though determined to escape from the stigma of conﬁnement to the ethnic sub-economy, experienced prejudice in the primary labor market and were thus at best ambivalent about integration into Canadian society. Though eager to bid farewell to their prescribed ethnicity, they were frustrated at discriminatory treatment by society at large. The net result is one of double alienation, from one’s own ethnic group and from the society beyond it. Indeed, it is a classic moment of sociological marginality and inner turmoil: the individual is at the margin of two communities, but in neither site would he ﬁnd personal comfort because he rejects one community, his own, and is rejected by the other community into which he is anxious to seek entry. He is caught in between. His anguish is simultaneously private and public. In the past decade or so, I have found myself meditating more and more often on the subject of identity and ethnicity concerning the Chinese in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Canada, the Asians in the Asia-Paciﬁc, and the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians in Quebec, Canada. Such analyses of identity and ethnicity are central to sociology; they require me to re-think many of my former ideas about identity and the self. As it happens, I have discovered that there is a new kind of migrant, one who “makes up” a way of life out of moving between a place of departure and a place of arrival, who builds and maintains ties in both places, and who sets the stage for transnationality and cosmopolitanism (Chan 2002). Traveling in a global circuit, such migrants negotiate political, geographic, social, and psychological boundaries, exploiting the resources of both places. At the same time, their very existence poses questions about such concepts as “nationalism” and “patriotism”. I have also found that contemporary migrants do not necessarily have to choose between the two classical options that nation states have presented them with for decades—either rigidly adhering to past traditions and becoming ossiﬁed, or assimilating and losing themselves in the new culture of the host society. Instead, many migrants have managed to hang onto both cultures—that of departure and that of arrival—and alternate between them (Tong and Chan, 2001). Some migrants have gone even further, transforming their biculturality or doubleness into cosmopolitanism. What happens when strangers meet? There are many possibilities, each one representing a particular way of theorizing identity and its relation to the self and the other. Identity is an elusive thing. It has

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a knack of transforming and slipping away, even as the writer thinks he or she has grasped it. Despite this slipperiness, I ﬁnd the possibility of identity renewing and re-inventing itself to be exciting. I (2004) recently wrote an essay about this excitement in the form of a critique of multiculturalism, a popular idea in the West. In Canada, the idea of multiculturalism was constructed in reaction to another idea, that of assimilation. Assimilation had been central to the discourse among U.S. intellectual and political elites during the 1950s and 1960s, and was traceable to the works of Park (1950), who was often misquoted and misunderstood, and Gordon (1964). The assimilationist school of ethnic and racial relations, in the context of American society, stressed Anglo-conformity or Americanization. Using the title of a play by the Jewish immigrant Israel Zangwill (1909), sociologists conjured up the powerful image of a melting pot, a cauldron within which cultures and beliefs of all shapes and colors would melt, and the end result would be something new and unprecedented. The melting pot image oﬀered hope for solidarity in a society troubled by racial and ethnic conﬂicts. The assimilationist vision of immigrant societies found its way into the writings of Cornell anthropologist William Skinner (1957a; 1957b; 1964; 1973) who argued that the Chinese immigrants in Thailand, to all intents and purposes, would become Thai by the fourth or ﬁfth generation (Tong and Chan 2001). Deeply intertwined with the possibility of a cultural hegemony of one ethnic or racial group over all others and of cultural universalism, this Anglo-conformity idea was met with a fair share of opposition and resistance in Canada. The Canadian sociologist John Porter (1965) oﬀered another image as an alternative to the melting pot metaphor, that of a vertical mosaic: diﬀerent groups co-exist, side by side (as well as above or below each other), in a condition of tolerance, which is allegedly a deﬁning characteristic of Canadians and their society. Multiculturalism revived an older discourse among political theorists on pluralism in a pluralistic society (Li 1999). Pluralism, unlike singularity, allows for or even promotes the idea that diﬀerent kinds of things have value, and thus the right to exist and ﬂourish alongside each other. Individuals, groups, and communities of various ethnic, racial, or religious backgrounds can maintain, in private, their own personal cultural life in a society that otherwise demands conformity in its public institutions. Yet multiculturalism not only rele-

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gates pluralism to the private sphere, it also conﬁnes it there, in the domain where only the personal pursuits of the individual matter. This intentional divide between the public and the private is central to the theory of the multicultural society as constructed by sociologists and anthropologists. A multicultural society is diﬀerent from a plural society. In the public domain there is a single or unitary culture based on equality between individuals in law, politics, economics, and education that transmits the values of a civic, public culture from one generation to another. In contrast, the private domain is where folk culture and community life prevail, where diversity is safeguarded, and where moral education, primary socialization, and the inculcation of religious beliefs occur. The private sphere is composed of ethnic associations and societies, as well as family and kin networks that stretch as far back as one’s ancestral land or “homeland”. The private domain is the site of a moral community, the anchor of a spiritual home, the source of personal and ethnic identity. Family and community are where people have the right to be separate and diﬀerent from the larger society, where people can “let their hair down” and be themselves. To Talcott Parsons (1956; 1975), the strain of trying to abide by abstract moral principles and function in the competitive public arena is only psychologically possible if individuals have the option of a retreat and a refuge, a place for “pattern maintenance and tension management”. Family domesticity thus oﬀers the “psychological gold”, stabilizing the adult who has to make it in the world out there, which is a jungle or a rat race. Adult life is possible only if private intimacy and domesticity console and compensate, providing a “haven in a heartless world”. The public and the private then support each other, making each other viable. This public/private divide is not merely an academic question. Many modern men and women try to conduct their lives as if it were true: while at work, they behave as if their family life does not matter, and while at home they pretend they do not worry about their work, enacting the myth of the separation of public and private, ignoring the spillover of one into the other. Social theory and everyday life may collude to deﬁne and ﬁx “reality”. Yet the family is not entirely private. The individual often mediates between the family and society: as individuals internalize the values of a society so that they can participate in it, they transmit the society’s values to their families. In this way society’s values are

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passed from one generation to another so that the society can continue. In the process the “outside” society is in full view; the public is clearly implicated in the private. Muddled as an idea and ﬂawed as a public policy, multiculturalism in Canada advocates conformity to a unitary culture in the public place and tolerance of diverse cultures in the private place. This tolerance of cultural heterogeneity in the sphere of the intimate is often upheld as a deﬁning characteristic of many multicultural societies. Yet multiculturalism is not without its criticisms. For one, multiculturalism is at odds with the desire of the children and grandchildren of Chinese immigrants in Canada to adapt themselves to their host society, thus transforming themselves and the larger society. A multicultural policy that continues to hark back to the past turns a blind eye to the ﬁerce generational and gender politics within the Chinese family. Migration sets in motion feminine and adolescent demands for modernity and democracy. While youth and women work on their biculturalism and integration into Canadian society, and are therefore primarily forward-looking and future-oriented, the family, as an abstract entity and as an ideology intent on maintaining tradition and heritage, looks backward to the past. The Chinese immigrant family is thus a site of feminine and adolescent discontent, a battleground of generational and gender politics. Women and children quarrel with multiculturalism because, ﬁrstly, it privatizes and isolates the family, keeping family politics hidden from the public eye; and, secondly, because it perpetuates conservatism rather than revisionism, and authoritarianism rather than democracy, because the retention of a heritage is articulated as synonymous with the multicultural ethos itself. Neither does multicultural policy square well with a more progressive social theory of self, identity, and culture that is cognizant of the duality of the psychological make-up of human beings: that one looks backward and forward, committed to preserving roots of the past and exploring routes to the future. As such, the Canadian multicultural policy suﬀers in a twofold way: empirically and theoretically. A possible way out is to pursue a Hegelian dialectic that sees culture as the aftermath of a collision of dissimilar cultures, a kind of forced entanglement of things diﬀerent. We need a new urban social theory that sees integration, fusion, and hybridization––not assimilation, not cultural pluralism––as possible and desirable outcomes. This is a completely diﬀerent vision of society altogether,

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a kind of utopia. We need a public policy that sees a distinct promise of the city in designing institutions and public spaces that promote hybridism in the mind, an inner deliberation, a mental turmoil––which is not afraid of confronting modern life’s many moments of contradiction, irony, and paradox. The Importance of Being Sympathetic Globalization is the buzzword now. Everybody uses it, but it can mean diﬀerent things to diﬀerent people. To me, globalization refers to the compression of time and space that is also a compression of the world; the world is actually a lot smaller than it used to be because transport and communications have speeded things up, making us all “closer” and getting in each other’s way all the time. Globalization also refers to a heightened sensitivity to what the sociologists and anthropologists call “the other”, to those who are very diﬀerent from us––or who seem to be. Nevertheless, globalization sensitizes us to our interconnectedness, that we have a shared fate. I think that is something very important to know and emphasize. In world cities like Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Munich, London, and New York, encounters with people who are very diﬀerent from each other have become part and parcel of everyday life, and so has this sensitivity that we now call “globalization”. In the face of this daily contact with those who are diﬀerent, and this sense of connectedness, what should my personal conduct be? The American psychologist and philosopher William James (1992) wrote about the human blindness to the feelings of creatures and people diﬀerent from ourselves. He said that we are too absorbed in our own “vital secrets”, our own interests. We are too preoccupied, or even intoxicated, with ourselves to take any interest in others around us. Your pain and suﬀering are excluded from my consciousness, as mine are from yours. This blindness really refers to the walls that we build between self and other, so that we make sure we don’t look into each other’s eyes and hearts. Susan Sontag’s (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others explores in a hurting way our indiﬀerence to the suﬀering and pain of others. If this ﬁgurative blindness is a malady, then I think that its remedy is sympathy (Wispe, 1968) for the other, which begins in empathy––in feeling the pain of another person, or even another animal.

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It is at this point that it becomes imperative to act, to alleviate the pain. When your sorrow is understood and felt as my sorrow, I can be truly compassionate. A closely related idea to sympathy is that of “deference”, or deferring to someone’s diﬀerence (Hall, 1990). In English, the word “defer” has a double meaning. First, to defer is to delay or postpone certain actions, in this case as in exercising self-restraint. The second meaning is to give way or yield, and this too is a guide for behavior, to defer to others who are diﬀerent from me. I must treat them with respect. I must be considerate. I must consider their feelings, as well as my own. “Considerate” has a profound meaning here. If I am being considerate, I am not being impulsive or arrogant. I am tentative, instead of always being in a rush to act, to do things. To be considerate means to wait: to wait for one’s turn to act, to speak. Yet waiting is a hard game to play in a rushed, rushed world. Another idea of importance is that of hybridity. By hybridity, I mean a kind of mutual entanglement of self and other, a two-way exchange that results in a fusion of belief and lifestyle so that the divide between two creatures, or two cultures, is spanned. Hybridity is a bridge; it is also the opposite of purity. Children know that if they mix blue with yellow they will get something new––green. Mixing two cultures as diﬀerent as yellow and blue can result in something new, and also beautiful, as green is beautiful. Hybridization, at its best, results in green: two cultures intermix, and produce something new. In the process of becoming green, so to speak, the individual (who used to identify with yellow or blue) mixes with another culture, half forgetting himself or herself. By the same token, the culture itself, which has absorbed the diﬀerent color, is changed. This kind of cultural change is thus a process of remembering and of forgetting what we used to be. Following but also freely interpreting an incisive essay by Femminella (1980) on the dialectic of culture contact, let us designate the culture of the place of departure (homeland) as A and the culture of the place of arrival (host society) as B. There are, among others, two possible outcomes of encounters between A and B. The ﬁrst outcome, hybridization, can be represented as: A ↔ B = AB or Ab or Ba.

The uppercase A or B designates which label has greater signiﬁcance to the migrant. In this option, the airtight compartmentalization of

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the identity juggler is removed if migrants can relax about their culture of departure (A) while striving not to be overly critical about the culture of the place of arrival (B). This kind of mental agility and tolerance can open up many fascinating, exciting possibilities. Hybridization takes place in many world cities. Immigrants live in the midst of neighbors who are initially unlike them in many fundamental ways. A process of mutual entanglement of self and other occurs as the foreigners and the locals learn to work through their diﬀerences; they share a common identity after having been coresidents for years, and this engenders a shared sense of history and community. Adaptation is about dialectic and transformation, and the inﬂuence that passes between A and B is reciprocal. Migrants transform themselves while also transforming their milieu. It is a ﬁrst-order theoretical challenge to ﬁgure out what exactly happens in the hybridizing process. Are there stages in the process? Is there resistance to hybridism? Are there pains and pleasures? Is there a dark side? How rhetorical is such a discourse? Can we demonstrate all of this empirically? What methodology is at our disposal, or do we need to invent one, by hybridizing various research methods? I suspect that there is plenty of selective remembering and forgetting of one’s ﬁrst culture along with a desire to pick and choose among the identity options on oﬀer while in the place of arrival. When one is faced with something new and unfamiliar, one is simultaneously fascinated and repelled. Immigrants of the new millennium are likely to be sojourners on the world stage many times over, since their mobility is often experimental and open-ended—a kind of emergent ethnicity. This possibility may lead to another possibility, innovation, which can be represented as: A ↔ B = AB or Ab or Ba → C.

In this symbolism, the entanglement and collision of cultures within a person’s mind may take the form of trauma. It may cause existential pain, a dialectic of opposites, and even degenerate into pathology, or it may give birth to C, a new culture, something that charms, enchants, and excites the modern soul. An inner hybridity initially creates turmoil within the individual; the psychological entanglement of what is familiar and what is profoundly diﬀerent, of self and other, may give birth to something ﬂuid, something new. Its very ﬂuidity, its ﬂow—its ability to cross

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boundaries, break apart, and then re-integrate—is positive, indeed a sign of hope in a world that seems profoundly divided by uncrossable divides, into opposing camps of “us” and “them”. Despite the anguish of being a stranger, and despite the sense of personal marginality that may always be the stranger’s fate, the beginnings of hybridization within the new migrant seem to oﬀer a solution to the dangers of polarity. However, the language of hybridity does not yet exist. We are searching for it so that we will not remain speechless in a world of isms: fundamentalism, essentialism, patriotism, and nationalism. Yet despite the isms, the world in which we live is already a hybrid world. If we sustain our gaze at the other long enough, then we will realize that we are more similar than we appear on the surface. Almost forty years ago I took my ﬁrst sociology course in Canada. In the very ﬁrst class the professor said that the aim of sociology was to cure ethnocentrism––that was its mission. Ethnocentrism, as we all know, is still a present-day phenomenon, imprisoning every one of us. To insist on ethnocentrism is to insist on violence and terrorism, and that is why we must ﬁnd an alternative language, the language of hybridity, of peace. Sympathy or deference is an attitude, but it is not innate, it is not something that we are born with. It is acquired. It has to be learned. We must learn to ﬁght our mental blindness. Confucius told us that we must reﬂect, be self-reﬂexive, three times a day. He said we must ask, “do I do to others what I don’t want done to myself ?” Asking this question three times a day penetrates into the core of the idea of moral education, which is similar to what the Chicago philosopher Nussbaum (1997) calls self-cultivation. It is an acquired capacity for understanding and for sympathy with those who are diﬀerent, or those we believe to be diﬀerent from us. Acquiring this capacity for sympathy may well be what being modern is all about. Why Should We Bother to Compare? A Note on Method Allow me now to ask a methodological question: why should one bother to make comparisons at all? The anthropological answer is that comparisons enable one to discover and be fascinated by the richness of the variability of human experience. Men and women under a particular set of circumstances make their own adaptations

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to their environments to live, to survive. The one who is comparing two peoples or cultures quickly realizes that what is done in one way in one place has been done in another way in another place, or that there are many ways of doing the same thing. Such a realization of the availability of options, of alternatives, though profound, would not happen unless one “steps out” (Chan and Chiang, 1994) of pre-existing boundaries and ventures abroad. When one travels, physically or cognitively, one theorizes and develops insights into the comparability of things. This deceptively simple truth points to three things. First, a people’s sense of uniqueness, authenticity, or originality is real but should also be suspended or at least approached tentatively or provisionally. Second is the discovery of the ironic unity of diﬀerence and sameness in the sense that two apparently diﬀerent peoples or cultures are in fact more similar than they seem, that they have more in common than they think. An insistence in one culture on the uniqueness of the self evaporates quickly upon encountering many similar others in another culture. Such knowledge is perhaps the precursor of an attitude of humility, an opposite to that of arrogance, superiority, and ethnocentrism. The two peoples are simultaneously diﬀerent and similar. If they allow themselves to be open-minded enough (Adler, 2005), then they may even one day discover that they once borrowed from each other, in a sort of entanglement of self and other, mixing, blending, and aﬀecting each other. Third is an insight into the very artiﬁciality of the human condition. What was formerly held as sacred, inevitable, and unchangeable could soon be found during comparisons to be artiﬁcial, manmade, and changeable. What is made can be unmade and remade. This realization of the “makeability” of things (Berger, 1963), of the world, is perhaps the cognitive precursor to emancipation from one’s bondage to one’s culture, one’s habitual ways of doing things long taken for granted. Comparisons cast doubt on the taken-for-grantedness of everyday life. As a method, comparison debunks the myth of the status quo by unmasking the sacredness of things. Comparisons are liberating. A comparative attitude in scholarly pursuits is almost always subversive because it is reconstructive and deconstructive. A throwback to comparison allows us to keep ﬁrmly in mind the porosity, permeability, and indeed artiﬁciality of cultural boundaries and, for that matter, any boundaries. Somehow, we have collectively forgotten that boundaries and borders are where strangers meet and gradually get

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acquainted with and inﬂuence each other, knowingly or not. Borders divide and connect simultaneously. People on the two sides of a border live separate lives, but they also encounter each other. It is this doubleness of borders that must be kept in mind, ﬁrmly. It is at the periphery, not in the centre, where cultural contact and change take place. Once we know and keep telling ourselves that, we will not be as quick to insist on the foreignness and strangeness of others. Strangers are created by the human mind, which feeds on a primitive human fear of the unfamiliar and the unknown. Comparison tackles this fear head on (Chan and Yeh, 2004). Whenever and wherever this fear prevails, the comparison of self and other, black and white, North and South, East and West will position itself to reclaim and renew its mandate, its scholarly license. Winding down Now, let me wind down and go all the way back to my narrative of my friend, Frank, from Canada, my two children, and our homecoming visit. As far as I know, Frank has not been back to our hometown again, like thousands and thousands of Chinese overseas (and for matter, members of the world’s many diasporas) who have promised to themselves, rather solemnly, that they will return. Next year, and maybe after, they murmur quietly to themselves. Meanwhile, Frank gets on with his life in Vancouver, coping and adapting in his adopted country. Life has a wonderful way of ﬁlling itself up with things, most of which are distractions and diversions. Born in China in the early ﬁfties, growing up in Hong Kong, and then having gone overseas to study and work, Chinese of my generation, Frank included, had an obsession, perhaps a romance, with China. The country had somehow managed to get under our skin, got into our heart, and penetrated into our consciousness, aﬀecting and controlling our thoughts and feelings from within. It is diﬃcult to escape from something that is already inside you. You just have to carry it wherever you go, like it or not. Having wandered elsewhere for decades, Chinese like myself and Frank shuttle––physically, emotionally, and intellectually––between China and whatever places, engendering within ourselves a bipolar sense of psychological homes: China (and always China) and anywhere else. As it happens, we are strangers both in China and in other places because somehow we

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have all been transﬁgured, transﬁxed, and become strange to each other. I am a Chinese sociologist, perhaps Chinese ﬁrst and sociologist second, thinking and writing not about China per se, but about my relations with China and with being Chinese. This life-long bondage to Chineseness can become a kind of aﬄiction. Born outside China, my two children are one generation removed. Though still in their teens, they have been to Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China, in that order, and are now back in Canada doing their university studies. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they dream, swear, write love letters, and quarrel in English, largely due to an expatriate international school education circuit that they have been through in their childhood and adolescence. My son’s high school graduation thesis was about the social history of the hip-hop movement. He is dating a second-generation immigrant from India. To him, mixed marriage is a desirable option. My daughter’s thesis was about foreign domestic workers, mainly Thais and Filipinas, in Hong Kong. Majoring in English literature and philosophy at the university, my son wants to carve out a career in writing about underground music in the West. Already speaking Putonghua and French, my daughter is learning to speak Italian, wants to study for a year in a university in Italy, and has decided to pursue a career in dealing with modern art forms, Western and Asian. To both children, China is a mere option, a possibility. To them, returning to Asia to live and work is no longer as much a compulsion as it is to people of my generation. These children have long developed a sense of multiple homes, multiple cultures, multiple ethnicities, and multiple identities, some imaginary, others already sampled, tried out, tested, or even rejected. Their ﬁeld is now thrown wide-open, no longer as dichotomous, either-or, bipolar or bicultural as mine. In a deep sense, they are liberated. They are free, like butterﬂies, like birds. Quoting Rushdie (1991: 394), they embrace change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. They sing many “a love-song to our mongrel selves.” In a late-modern world still largely bent on inventing and reinventing tradition, purity, isms, and heritage, Ilcan (2004: 248) reminds us “that strangeness has become a permanent condition and that contemporary life can neither be fostered nor continued without it”. Bauman (1993: 159–60) insists that “strangehood, so to speak, must be preserved and cultivated if modern life is to go on . . . Were there no strangers, one may say, they would need to be invented.”

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“Strangehood” will not go away and, being a Durkhemian social fact, cannot be wished way by simply closing our eyes to it. Strangers are pushed away and into a ﬁeld of distance (Ilcan, 2004). They are shunned, avoided, cast away, not seen, not heard, and not listened to. They are lonely and alone, and condemned to be so. This is my children’s fate. Their ordeal is to, again quoting Bauman, “survive a colonization of the ﬁeld of mismeetings and civil inattention”. Yes, there will be many mismeetings, not meetings of the minds and the hearts––which is their plight. However, they are less haunted than I am by “the illusion of a return to the past” (Hall, 1992: 310). As Hall points out, these children, no longer uniﬁed in the old sense and belonging at one and the same time to several “homes” (and to no one particular “home”), they have invented cultures of hybridity. They are irrevocably translated. Rushdie (1991) tells us the word translation “comes etymologically from the Latin for ‘bearing across’”. Belonging to several worlds at once and having been borne across the world, they are the translated men (Rushdie, 1991), who are near cousins of Park’s marginal man or Simmel’s stranger. The world of the future is in ﬂux. There will be promises and misgivings, opportunities and traps. Doing lots of self-questioning and self-reﬂexivity, one cannot help but feel “something of the intellectual and moral ambivalence that is a central element of the experience of (post-) modernity” (McLennen, 1992: 354). Even the best things in life are a mixed bag. I am now living and working in Hong Kong once again, having come full circle, so to speak. At this point sociology has become, at least for me, more than an occupation; it is a way of understanding the various life and work experiences of many diﬀerent peoples—through thinking, reading, and writing, continuously over almost four decades. These writings, including my two recent books, Chinese Identities, Ethnicity and Cosmopolitanism (2005), and Migration, Ethnic Relations and Chinese Business (2005), represent my personal, sometimes admittedly self-indulgent, attempt to make sense of the plight and delight of “strangers”––among whom I count myself. Through writing, sociology and living have merged and become one. Meanwhile, the migrant and the sociologist continue to ask: who am I? What am I? What can I be?

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References Adler, Jonathan E. (2005). “Cross-Cultural Education, Open-Mindedness, and Time,” Working Paper no. 35, David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, 17pp. Antonvosky, Anton. (1979). Health, Stress, and Coping, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Bauman, Z. (1993). Postmodern Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell. Becker, Howard (1986). Doing Things Together. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Ben-Yehuda et al. (1989). “Howard S. Becker: A Portrait of an Intellectual’s Sociological Imagination”, Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 59, No. 4, 467–489. Berger, Peter L. (1963). Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. Bettelheim, Bruno. (1943). “Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations”, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 38, No. 4 (October), 417–452. Brehm, S. S. & Brehm, J. W. (1981). Psychological Reactance: A Theory of Freedom and Control, N.Y.: Academic Press. Chan, Kwok-bun. (2005). Chinese Identities, Ethnicity and Cosmopolitanism. London: Routledge. —— (2005). Migration, Ethnic Relations and Chinese Business. London: Routledge. —— (2004). “From Multiculturalism to Hybridity: The Chinese in Canada”, in John Rex and Gurharpal Singh (eds.), Governance in Multicultural Societies. Aldershot: Ashgate, 227–244. —— (2002). “Both Sides Now: Culture Contact, Hybridization, and Cosmopolitanism” in Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen (eds.), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 191–208. —— (1991). Smoke and Fire: The Chinese in Montreal, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. —— (1977) “Individual Diﬀerences in Reactions to Stress and their Personality and Situational Determinants: Some Implications for Community Mental Health”, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 11, 89–103. Chan, Kwok-bun and Claire Chiang. (1994). Stepping Out: The Making of Chinese Entrepreneurs, Singapore: Prentice Hall. Chan, Kwok-bun and Doreen Indra (eds.) (1987). Uprooting, Loss and Adaptation: The Resettlement of Indochinese Refugees in Canada, Ottawa: The Canadian Public Health Association. Chan, Kwok-bun and Ong Jin-hui. (1995). “The Many Faces of Immigrant Entrepreneurship”, in Robin Cohen (ed.), Cambridge Survey of World Migration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 523–531. Chan, Kwok-bun and Emilie Y. Y. Yeh. (2004). “Preface” in Chan, Kwok-bun and Emilie Y. Y. Yeh (eds.) East-West Studies: Now and Beyond. Hong Kong: David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies and Wing Lung Bank International Institute for Business Development, Hong Kong Baptist University, 1–3. Denzin, Norman K. (1989). Interpretive Biography, Newbury Park: Sage, 64. Eitinger, L. (1964). Concentration Camp Survivors in Norway and Israel. London: Allen and Unwin. Femminella, Francis X. (1980). “Societal Ramiﬁcations of Ethnicity in the Suburbs”, in S. La Gumina (ed.), Ethnicity and Suburbia: The Long Island Experience, Garden City, NY: Nassau Community College, 9–14. Frankl, Victor E. (1984). Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, 3rd edition. Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mills. (1953). Character and Social Structure, New York: Harcourt, Brace.

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Giddens, Anthony. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. —— (1976). New Rules of Sociological Method, N.Y.: Basic Books. Goﬀman, Erving. (1961). Asylums, New York: Doubleday. Gordon, Milton. (1964). Assimilation in American Life, New York: Oxford University Press. Hall, Stuart. (1990). “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, in Rutherford, Jonathan (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture and Diﬀerence, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 222–37. —— (1992). “The Question of Cultural Identity”, in Stuart Hall, David Held and Tony McGraw (eds.) Modernity and its Futures. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ilcan, Suzan. (2004). “The Marginal Other: Modern Figures and Ethical Dialogues”, in Post-Modernism and the Ethical Subject, Barbara Gabriel and Susan Ilcan (eds.), Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 227–53. James, William. (1992). “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”, in Meyers, Gerard E. (ed.), William James Writings 1878–1899, Library of America, 841–60. Kobasa, S. C. (1979). “Stressful Life Events, Personality, and Health: An Inquiry into Hardiness”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 37, 1–11. Kristeva, Julia. (1991). Strangers to Ourselves, translated by Roudiez, Leon S., New York: Columbia University Press. Leach, Edmund. (1989). “Tribal Ethnography: Past, Present and Future” in E. Tonkin, M. McDonald and M. Chapman (eds.) History and Ethnicity, London: Routledge. Li, Peter S. (1999). “The Multiculturalism Debate” in Peter S. Li (ed.), Race and Race Relations in Canada (2nd ed.), Toronto: Oxford University Press. McLennan, Gregor. (1992). “The Enlightenment Project Revisited” in Stuart Hall, David Held and Tony McGraw (eds.) Modernity and its Futures. Cambridge: Polity Press. Merton, Robert K. (1988). “Some Thoughts on the Concept of Sociological Autobiography”, in W. R. Matilda (ed.), Sociological Lives, Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 17–22. Mills, C. Wright. (1964). Sociology and Pragmatism: The Higher Learning in America, New York: Oxford University Press. —— (1959). The Sociological Imagination, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nussbaum, M. C. (1997). Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Okely, Judith and Helen Gallaway. (1992). “Preface” in Judith Okely and Helen Gallaway (eds.) Anthropology and Autobiography, London: Routledge, xi–xiv. Park, Robert E. (1950). Race and Culture, Indiana: the Free Press. —— (1928). “Human Migration and the Marginal Man”, American Journal of Sociology 33, 881–92. Parsons, Talcott. (1975). “Some Theoretical Considerations on the Nature and Trend of Change of Ethnicity” in N. Glazer and D. P. Moynihan (eds.), Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, Boston: Harvard University Press, 53–83. Parsons, Talcott and R. F. Bales. (1956). Family: Socialization and Interaction Process, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Porter, John. (1965). The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada, Toronto: Toronto University Press. Richmond, Anthony. (1988). “Sociological Theories of International Migration: The Case of Refugees”, in Special Issue on “The Sociology of Involuntary Migration”, Current Sociology, Vol. 36, No. 2, Summer, 7–25. Riley, Matilda W. (ed.) (1988a). Social Structures and Human lives: Social Change and the Life Course, Newbury Park: Sage Publications. —— (ed.) (1988b). Sociological Lives, Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Rotter, J. B. (1966). “Generalized Expectancies for Internal versus External Control of Reinforcement”, Psychological Monograph: General & Applied (No. 1, Whole No. 609), 1–28.

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Rushdie, Salman. (1991). Imaginary Homelands, London: Granta Books. Sartre, Jean-Paul. (1981). [1971] The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, Vol. 1, 1821–1857, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —— (1987) [1971]. The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, Vol. 2, 1821–1857, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schuetz, Alfred. (1943–1944). “The Stranger, An Essay in Social Psychology”, American Journal of Sociology 49, 499–507. Seligman, Martin E. P. (1990). Learned Optimism, N.Y.: Alfred A Knopf Inc. Simmel, Georg. (1908). “The Stranger”, G. Simmel, Soziologie, Leipzig: Duncker and Humbolt. Skinner, G. W. (1973). “Change and Persistence in Chinese Cultures Overseas: A Comparison of Thailand and Java” in J. T. McAlister (ed.), Southeast Asia: The Politics of National Integration, New York: Random House, 399–415. —— (1964). “The Thailand Chinese: Assimilation in a Changing Society,” lecture presented at the Thai Council of Asian Society, Asia, 2:80–92. —— (1957a). Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. —— (1957b). “Chinese Assimilation and Thai Politics”, Journal of Asian Studies 16:238. Sontag, Susan. (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Stonequist, Everett V. (1937). The Marginal Man: A Study in Personality and Culture Conﬂict, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Tong, Chee Kiong and Chan Kwok-bun. (2001). “Rethinking Assimilation and Ethnicity: The Chinese of Thailand” in Tong Chee Kiong and Chan Kwok-bun (eds.), Alternate Identities: The Chinese of Contemporary Thailand, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, and Singapore: Times Academic Press. Waldinger, R. (1984). “Immigrant Enterprise in the New York Garment Industry”, Social Problems, 32(1), 60–71. White, Robert W. (1974). “Strategies of Adaptation: An Attempt at Systematic Description”, in George V. Coelho, David A. Hamburg and John E. Adams (eds.), Coping and Adaptation, N.Y.: Basic Books, 47–68. Wispe, Lauren G. (1968). “Sympathy and Empathy”, in Sills, David (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 15, New York: The Macmillan Company, 441–7. Zangwill, Israel. (1909) (1917). The Melting Pot, New York: MacMillan.

BOOK REVIEWS The Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921–1969, by Cindy Chu Yikyi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 213 pp. ISBN 1–4039– 6586–2. This is a highly ambitious book. As the author explains in the Introduction, she intends to tackle three main themes through an in-depth study of the Maryknoll Sisters’ missionary and secular services in Hong Kong from 1921 to 1969. The ﬁrst concerns cultural adaptation. In the words of the author, it is above all “a study of cross-cultural relations. It describes how a community of largely American women adapted to a Chinese society, and through the passage of time grew and matured with the local people (p. 2).” Of particular signiﬁcance are the ways in which these Maryknoll Sisters have striven to learn the local language and customs, faced up to social reality, and accordingly undergone transformations in their vision of an ideal society as well as their self-perception and identity. The second concerns gender relations. The author intends to show how the Sisters’ missionary and secular works have provided a valuable opportunity for them to realize their potentials as professionals and also to create greater possibilities for other women in Hong Kong. The third is political. Through describing the Maryknoll Sisters’ interactions with other religious and nonreligious groups as well as the government, the author intends to show the complexity of state-church-society relationships in Hong Kong. She argues speciﬁcally against the view that the colonial state has stayed aloof, but suggests instead that it has been benevolent, oppressive, manipulative, and even incompetent depending on the circumstances in question. In so doing, the author has placed her study squarely within the tradition pioneered by John K. Fairbank’s The Missionary Enterprise in China and America, Daniel H. Bays’ edited volume Christianity in China, and Patricia R. Hill’s The World Their Households on the one hand and Beatrice Leung and Shun-hing Chan’s Changing Church and State Relations in Hong Kong, S. K. Lau’s Society and Politics in Hong Kong, Tak-Wing Ngo’s Hong Kong History, as well as Manuel Castells et al.’s The Shek Kip Mei Syndrome on the other hand. The book has eight chapters. The Introduction highlights the Western scholarly research on foreign missionaries in China, local studies of Christianity and the Maryknoll Sisters, as well as prevalent scholarship on the statesociety relationships in Hong Kong. Chapters Two to Seven record faithfully the missionary, educational, medical, and social services provided by the Maryknoll Sisters during diﬀerent periods of time from 1921 to 1969 and within diﬀerent neighborhoods, such as Kowloon Tong, Tung Tau Tsuen, Wan Chai, Wong Tai Sin, as well as Kwun Tong. The Conclusion Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

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has in part brought the study up to date by highlighting the Maryknoll Sisters’ changing missions and services up to the 1990s and in part pulled together her arguments around two major themes: “Cross-Cultural Exchanges” and “Liberation of the Maryknoll Women”. A major value of the study lies in its details. The author has provided meticulous description of the types and levels of services delivered by the Sisters during diﬀerent periods of time and at diﬀerent localities. To name a few examples, the book contains information on the number of catechetical classes delivered, titles of the women’s seminars, the number of students graduating from various Maryknoll schools and patients treated in the clinics, negotiations in the building and expansion of the schools and hospitals, as well as the number and professional qualiﬁcations of Sisters served in Hong Kong. Through these details, we learn about the changing social conditions in Hong Kong and how these Sisters have striven to serve the community’s changing needs with faith and foresight. Another endearing quality of the book is that it has been peppered with delightful excerpts, either from letters/diaries of the Sisters or from transcriptions of their recollections. They provide vivid descriptions of the Stanley camp during the Japanese occupation, the sensitive social-political conditions in post-war Hong Kong, the threat of Communist instigation, the dire poverty and emerging communal spirits in the resettlement areas during the 1950s, the strike of disasters like typhoon and squatter ﬁre, as well as snapshots of the lives of a few individuals helped by the Sisters. The author is not exaggerating when she claims that the Maryknoll archives (and indeed this book) are a valuable source of social history of Hong Kong. In appreciating the value of this book, it is perhaps necessary to point to a few areas that I have found wanting. In the ﬁrst place, the stories have been told exclusively from the perspective of the Maryknoll Sisters. While nobody can doubt the importance of recording the Sisters’ stories, an exclusive concern with their perspective renders the argument incomplete and one-sided when it comes to the Sisters’ dealings with the government, other religious and non-religious institutions, as well as recipients of their services. The state-church-society relationships must be treated more dialectically. This deﬁciency has in part resulted from the methodology adopted, namely, relying primarily on the Maryknoll Mission Archives located in Maryknoll, New York, while supplementing them with materials collected by the Hong Kong Catholic Diocesan Archives, Hong Kong Public Records Oﬃce, other local library collections, as well as interviewing thirty-four Maryknoll Sisters. A more balanced account might beneﬁt from paying more attention to records and documents of relevant government departments as well as other religious and non-religious organizations. It might also be worthwhile to interview retired government oﬃcials, alumni of various Maryknoll schools, and recipients of services provided by the Sisters. In the second place, despite the author’s intention to intervene in the local debate on state-church-society relationships, she has nowhere developed a sustained argument on the topic. Under what circumstances has

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the Hong Kong government stayed aloof, benevolent, oppressive, manipulative, or incompetent? To what extent has popular indignation changed the government’s policy? With the religious institutions taking up increasing responsibilities in social service provision, has the state-church relationships been transformed? More pertinently, how have the Maryknoll Sisters and other religious institutions’ involvement in social service provision shaped the Hong Kong government’s social welfare policy? Answers to some of these questions are embedded in the narrative and readers can pick up a few hints here and there. Nonetheless, it would have been more satisfying if the author had addressed these issues explicitly in the concluding chapter. The author has managed to examine the issues of “cross-cultural relations” and “gender relations” in the conclusion under the headings of “CrossCultural Exchange” and “Liberation of the Maryknoll Women”. Valuable as the exercise is, I think the two sections, which total no more than four pages, are far too brief ! Insofar as “Cross-Cultural Exchange” is concerned, the author has focused primarily on the Sisters’ learning of Cantonese and celebration of Chinese festivals. However, how have their views about ﬁlial piety, ancestor worship, salvation, social justice, community, and indeed space, privacy, and cleanliness been reinforced or transformed? What tensions did they feel as they reﬂected upon their status as “Americans” serving Chinese people in the context of a British colony? These issues have surfaced in the narrative and some of them might be explored in greater depth so as to broaden our understanding of the cross-cultural exchanges. Similarly, in the case of the “Liberation of the Maryknoll Women”, the author has emphasized primarily the opportunities for these Maryknoll Sisters to be independent and take on more responsibilities on the one hand and the Sisters’ endeavor in providing seminars for women on the other (p. 105). However, liberation can mean a lot of things and it pertains not only to acts but also beliefs. How have the practical experiences of the Maryknoll Sisters transformed their gender perception? What are the Sisters’ views concerning gender hierarchy within the Church and the society at large? What values have they tried to transmit through the women’s seminars? These are important issues that I think the author could have explored more thoroughly through interviews with the Sisters as well as qualitative analysis of the Sisters’ educational endeavors. Thus said, it remains the case that this book has presented a highly readable and in many ways thorough account of the experiences of the Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong. It is a book of interest and value to students of Hong Kong’s social history, especially that of Christianity and social service provision, at the graduate level or above. University of Hong Kong

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book reviews A Research Report of Social Stratiﬁcation in Contemporary China, edited by Lu Xueyi. Beijing: Social Sciences Documentation Publishing House, 2001. 411 pp. ISBN 7–80149–632–9/D.099

Social stratiﬁcation in contemporary China has received much attention both inside and outside this country. However, few of the existing publications have accomplished what Xueyi Lu and his research team have accomplished by developing a typological framework to outline the overall structure of social stratiﬁcation and its characteristics in contemporary China. A Research Report of Social Stratiﬁcation in Contemporary China, edited by Lu, is a collection of work done by Lu and his research team members. It consists of three parts. The ﬁrst part presents an analytical framework and an overall picture of social stratiﬁcation in contemporary China. The second part consists of four monographs, each describing the characteristics of a major social class in contemporary China, namely, the worker, the peasant, the owner of private enterprises, and the middle class. The last part is regional analysis. It consists of ﬁve chapters, each describing the structure and the characteristics of social stratiﬁcation of four cities and one county in China, by applying the framework developed in the ﬁrst part. Lu and his colleagues developed their analytical framework by aggregating all kinds of occupations into 10 social strata, and futher classifying these strata into 5 social classes. The key criteria of classiﬁcation are the individual’s situations of the possession of organizational, economic, and cultural resources. Organizational resources refer to the ability to control social resources (both human and material resources) by virtue of the power generated from state or CCP organizations; economic resources refer to the ownership of public materials of the means of production, and the rights of using or management of these materials either owned by oneself or at one’s disposal; cultural resources refer to the possession of knowledge and skills that are socially recognized. They argue that, in contemporary China, the possession of the three kinds of resources determine an individual’s socio-economic status and an interest group’s location in the social stratiﬁcation order. Among all these resources, organizational resources are the most important and decisive, because CCP and the government control the greatest amount of the most crucial resources in the society. Based on the possession of the three kinds of resources mentioned above, Lu et al. classify all occupations into 10 social strata, from top to bottom, as follows: (1) Government oﬃcials and public administrators who own organizational resources, constituting about 2.1% of the labor force (0.5% at county level but 1% to 5% in diﬀerent urban communities). (2) Managers who own cultural and/or organizational resources, constituting about 1.5% of the labor force. They are mainly residents in urban communities. The percentages vary from 0.9% to 9.3% across regions with diﬀerent levels of economic development. (3) Owners of private enterprises who have employed at least 8 workers. They own economic resources. This stratum accounts

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for 0.6% of the labor force, with 3% in the developed areas and only about 0.3% or less in the undeveloped regions. (4) Professionals who own cultural resources, accounting for around 5.1% of the labor force. But this percentage varies sharply from 1.5%–3% at the county level to 10–20% in urban communities. (5) Clerical staﬀ, who own a small amount of cultural or organizational resources, constituting about 4.8% of the labor force, with 2–6% at the county level, and 20–15% in cites. (6) Getihu (the selfemployed, and employers of small business, employing less than 8 workers) who own small quantity of economic resources, accounting for about 4.2% of the labor force. (7) Salespersons and service workers who own a small amount of the three kinds of resources, constituting about 12% of the labor force, varying from 13–17% in cities and 1.6–3.2% at the county level. (8) Manufacturing workers who own a little of the three kinds of resources, accounting for about 22.6% of the labor force, and around 30% of them are nongmingong (labors employed in the city but with rural household registrations). (9) Peasants who own a little of the three kinds of resources, accounting for 44% of the labor force. (10) The urban and rural unemployed who own nothing of the three kinds of resources. This stratum occupies 3.1% of the labor force. The ﬁve-class order is also constructed on the basis of the quantity of the three kinds of resources that an individual possesses. (1) The upper class includes high-ranking cadres, managers of large ﬁrms, higher-grade professionals, and private owners of large ﬁrms. (2) The upper-middle class consists of middle and lower ranking cadres, middle-level administrators of large ﬁrms, managers of ﬁrms of medium or small size, middle-grade professionals, and private owners of medium ﬁrms. (3) The middle class consists of lower-grade professionals, private owners of small business, clerical staﬀ, and getihu. (4) The lower-middle class includes the self-employed, salespersons and service workers, manufacturing workers, and peasants. (5) The lower class refers to the workers and peasants who are in poor conditions, those who do not have a stable job, and the unemployed. Based on the data gathered through random-sampling surveys from three cities and one county in 1999, Lu et al. further analyse the ten social strata belonging to 5 social classes by examining the distribution of income, the pattern of consumption, class identiﬁcation, and the political attitude among the respondents. The statistical ﬁndings show that the stratiﬁcations along the economic, political and social dimensions are highly consistent. Government cadres and public administrators, managers of public ﬁrms, owners of private enterprises, and professionals scored higher on income, pattern of consumption, possession of properties, political power, and level of education; clerical staﬀ and getihu on the middle; salepersons, service and manufacturing workers on the lower; peasants and the unemployed on the bottom. However, the subjective class identiﬁcation does not coincide with the objective class situation, as people are more likely to identify themselves with the middle class. The statistical results also suggest that the upper class

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tends to have an optimistic attitude towards the reform in China and their future, which is in striking contrast with members of the lower class, who are inclined to have a feeling of relative deprivation and a pessimistic perception of their future life. Lu et al. try to show that the overall structure of social stratiﬁcation in contemporary China is pyramidal rather than olivary. However, regional diﬀerences are conspicuous. It tends to become olivary in the city but remains pyramidal at the county level. The overall structure of social stratiﬁcation is now in the process of transformation from a pyramid-shaped to an olive-shaped structure. They conclude that, compared with the situation before market reform, a more rational and modern structure of social stratiﬁcation is in the making, characterized by the rapid growth of the middle class, more social mobility, and the mechanism of social mobility is more rational. A distinct feature of Lu et al.’s report is its eﬀort to form a theoretical framework of social stratiﬁcation in contemporary China. However, it is obvious that they look at social inequality from the viewpoint of a gradational stratiﬁcation instead of the class-conﬂict perspective. In all their reports it seems that the authors deliberately avoid a Marxist concept of class, which may be more applicable to the situation in contemporary China, even though they borrow E. O. Wright’s concept of “organization assets” and consider it the most crucial factor in the social stratiﬁcation of contemporary China. Lu and his team have conducted a series of surveys in diﬀerent cities and counties all over China. The data are rich, but they do not make good use of these data. For example, when they portray the overall structure of social stratiﬁcation in China, they do not combine the datasets gathered from diﬀerent regions into a single one, that is, an integrated national dataset. Thus, the overall structure of social stratiﬁcation they try to present cannot be taken as accurately reﬂecting the real condition of social inequality in Contemporary China. Fudan University

Liu Xin

God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions, edited by Jason Kindopp and Carol Lee Hamrin. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004. vii + 200 pp. ISBN 0–8157–4937–6. This book is a collection of conference papers presented in February 2002. According to the editors, the book seeks “to take initial steps towards a grounded dialogue on advancing religious freedom in China” (p. 12). The authors are from Hong Kong, mainland China and the United States, with backgrounds in academia, government, and human rights advocacy. The book is divided into three sections. In the ﬁrst section, “State policy: control of religion”, Daniel Bays and Mickey Spiegel provide their

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analyses of the state domination of religion in China from a historical perspective and a contemporary viewpoint respectively. Chan Kim-kwong discusses the implications for religion and future political change in China following the country joining the World Trade Organization. In the second section, “Church-state interaction”, Jean-Paul Wiest and Richard Madsen focus on the Catholic Church in China from, respectively, historical and contemporary perspectives, whereas Xu Yihua and Jason Kindopp focus on the Protestant churches. In the third section, “Religion in US-China relations”, Liu Peng and Carol Hamrin discuss the diﬀerent attitudes of China and the United States towards religious issues, and provide practical suggestions to improve church-state relations and advance religious freedom in Chinese society. For those interested in religious issues, such as Christianity and churchstate relations in China, this book contains abundant material and useful information for reﬂection and discussion. However, most of the chapters discuss the big picture of church-state relations rather than provide in-depth analyses of issues. Rather than provide new research ﬁndings or breakthroughs in theory or methodology, some chapters on the Christian churches in historical and contemporary China appear to be rewrites of existing materials. Another weakness of the book is a lack of statistical data in some chapters to defend certain claims about trends or changes. Despite the shortfalls, the book has certain merits that make it outstanding when compared with others on the same topic. First, the book has eﬀectively combined three independent themes into a coherent whole, namely, USChina relations, church-state relations and religious freedom, showing how these themes are mutually related and yet aﬀect one another. Second, the two essays contributed by Liu Peng and Carol Hamrin are particuarly important and inspiring. Commenting from their vantage points in China and the United States respectively, Liu and Hamrin discuss how the two countries misunderstood and inappropriately dealt with religions issues, and the two researchers provide practical suggestions on how to improve USChina relations and religious freedom in China. The two chapters mutually supplement and balance each other. This book also will have implications for future research on church-state relations in China. I suggest two areas for future investigation. The ﬁrst is the potential inﬂuence of faith-based organizations in China, particularly their contribution to the third sector and the building of civil society in contemporary China. As suggested by Hamrin, faith-based organizations in the third sector could improve the rights and conditions of believers in the wider community and Chinese religious networks could help open up the market for values and ideas (pp. 178–181). Jason Kindopp also suggests that faith-based organizations, as part of civil society, could defy state repression and challenge the party-state’s system of religious control (pp. 129–133). These observations and assertions need more in-depth empirical studies and analyses. The second area needing further research is on state-society relations in contemporary Chinese society. Together with Anthony Lam, I published

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an article a few years ago to discuss how the theoretical approach of statesociety relations is able to provide new understanding on how church-state relations in China changed from the 1950s to the 1990s, particularly regarding the transition from the model of corporatism to civil society.1 Most of the analyses in God and Caesar in China have been consistent with our arguments. However, many questions remain unanswered. For example, the building of civil society requires that social actors appreciate the values of freedom and democracy. The majority of members in the Catholic Church or Protestant churches until today are basically Christian conservatives, fundamentalists or evangelicals. Believers who defy state repression of their religious freedoms do not naturally possess a wider appreciation of the universal values of human rights and social responsibility. It seems the values of church members need to become more liberal and socially conscious before it would be possible to say that Christians in China are a potential social force for building civil society. Second, the assertion of civil identity and an understanding of civil rights by social actors is one crucial aspect when looking for contributing factors for building civil society. Some authors in the book noticed that Chinese Christians have begun to claim back church properties conﬁscated by the government and to take legal action against local governments for the illegal persecution of clergy, particularly in the house-churches. If these cases show that Christians have begun to assert their civil identity and to exercise their civil rights, then we could expect that the Christian community in China might become a strong social force helping to build civil society. As such, research on state-society relations in China could not only advance our understanding of church-state relations, but also have practical implications for the promotion of religious freedom in Chinese society in the future. Hong Kong Baptist University

Chan Shun-hing

1 Chan Shun-hing and Lam Sui-ki, Anthony. (2000). “The Transformation and Development of Church-state Relations in Contemporary China: A Case Study of the Catholic Church.” (Chinese language) Hong Kong Journal of Sociology 1:103–129.

Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation, and the Global City, edited by Agnes Ku S. and Pun Ngai. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. xxvi + 261 pp. ISBN 0–415–33209–5. On July 1, 2003, half a million of Hong Kong citizens poured to the streets, not to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the resumption of China’s sovereignty over the city, but to protest against the government’s anti-subversion legislation, which outlaws any activities deemed to be a threat to China’s national security, ambiguously deﬁned. After that day, democratic aspiration of the ex-colony soared up and in the year that followed, a wide

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range of long established or newly founded political groups stepped forward to campaign empathetically for direct election of Hong Kong’s chief executive as well as the whole body of the Legislative Council. The demand for new political rights triggered the demand for new social rights. In the New Year Day demonstration of 2004, labor and welfare groups added the demands for the implementation of minimum wage standard and the termination of the crunch on social welfare expenditures to the demand for democratization. The proliferation of activisms for new political and social rights concluded, nonetheless, in an anti-climax in the middle of 2004, when the Chinese government mobilized its media mouthpieces and its big business allies in Hong Kong to launch a propaganda campaign and make it clear that only those who were regarded as “patriotic” would be permitted to govern Hong Kong, that “one country, two systems” meant that the “one country” principle overrode the “two systems” principle, and that the political reforms which Hong Kong people had been asking for would turn Hong Kong into an “independent or semi-independent political entity,” and were therefore unpatriotic. Pro-Beijing tycoons sneaked in their own messages in the propaganda campaign and asserted that rapid democratization would amplify the inﬂuence of the lower class over the government, hence giving rise to “welfarism” and undermining Hong Kong’s competitiveness as a global city. Many Hong Kong citizens are stunned to ﬁnd that advocacy for speedier implementation of universal suﬀrage is equated with the advocacy for Hong Kong independence, as it has been stipulated in the Basic Law of Hong Kong that universal suﬀrage will be the ultimate goal of Hong Kong’s political development under “one country, two systems.” This turn of events has brought a setback to the pro-democracy movement, as the dwindling turnouts of more recent demonstrations show. Maybe it is time for concerned intellectuals in Hong Kong (local social scientists have become a crucial component of the leading force in the prodemocracy mobilization since 2003) to sit back and reﬂect upon the trajectory of Hong Kong’s embattled social and political reforms since their very inception in the 1980s. But preexisting theories about Hong Kong’s socio-political change falls far short of the task of facilitating this intellectual reﬂection. While the “utilitarian familism” paradigm had long turned obsolete after the coming of age of a new generation of Hong Kongers who clearly deviated from the theory’s portrayal of the Hong Kong society as a collection of refuge seekers avoiding the turmoil in China, the “new middle class” thesis, which predicts that the new middle class would become the locomotive of Hong Kong’s political and social reform, has been disproved by the fact that Hong Kong’s new middle class are no less diverse than the whole population at large in their political proclivity. The collection Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation, and the Global City edited by Agnes Ku and Ngai Pun is a timely contribution which oﬀers us a fresh new framework to understand the historical trajectory of Hong Kong’s social and political change. The volume is composed of twelve

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essays focusing on diﬀerent aspects of the politics of citizenship in Hong Kong. In the volume, the chapters complement one another nicely and converge to substantiate an overarching theme. To the authors, citizenship is a “manifold construct regarding membership, rights, participation, and belonging” (3). This manifold construct is not static, but has been constantly reconstructed by the state and contested by multiple collectivities (such as women, new immigrants, welfare recipients, and homosexuals) emerging from within the civil society and striving to make the regime of citizenship more democratic, egalitarian and inclusionary. The politics of citizenship can be viewed as a principal axis around which the conﬂictual interaction between state and society unfolded in Hong Kong’s history of more than 150 years. According to the volume (particularly the chapters by Ho, Ip, and Chan), during most of the colonial period, what the colonial state in Hong Kong attempted to construct was a de-nationalized and colonial citizenship. A “model citizen” in the colony was supposed to be an “urban-civic subject,” who did not have any aﬀective bonds with China and was law-abiding, industrious, masculinely competitive, polite, and hygienic. On the other hand, Hong Kong citizens were stripped of most political and social rights enjoyed by the colonizers back home, that is, they were denied the right to elect their government and the entitlement to most social welfare beneﬁts. Under this citizenship regime, Hong Kong citizens were reduced to pure economic animals. Limited administrative and social reforms in the 1970s did not constitute a departure from this regime, as these reforms, seen by the authors as a mere knee-jerk reaction to the riots of 1966 and 1967, did little other than “continuing to delimit political development, . . . stressing law and order, local belonging, economic rationality, governing eﬀectiveness and material welfare” (5). It was not until the 1980s that a diﬀerent regime of colonial citizenship began to emerge. At one level, the colonizers, expecting their departure after 1997, started the belated political reform as a way to pursue their own “honorable exit” from the colony (Chapter by Ku). At another level, the global rise of neo-liberalism urged Hong Kong’s ruling elite to try remaking Hong Kong into a competitive global city. This global-city-making project led to the production of “enterprising individuals” and the cutback on the already minimal welfare beneﬁts oﬀered by the colonial state. As Hong Kong was never a welfare state like most European countries used to be, the rise of the ideology of “enterprising individuals” was no more than a continuation, or consolidation, of the idea of civic, urban, economistic, and self-reliant subject under colonial citizenship. At the third level, the 1980s and the 1990s saw the beginning of a new project to turn Hong Kong citizens into Chinese citizens through various forms of “patriotic education” (Tse’s chapter). This new project, however, was counterpoised by the departing British’s project of solidifying the Hong Kong identity and hence the boundary between Hong Kong citizens and mainland Chinese as outsiders. This operation helped us resist the nationalist calling from the

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North, but it also created an essentialist Hong Kong identity that excluded a wide range of ethnic and social groups, predominantly the new immigrants and the underclass in the city (chapters by Leung, Sautman and Pu/Wu). The above changes in the colonial regime of citizenship became the focus of socio-political conﬂict up till today. In the last part of the book, the authors outline the multiplicity of social forces which never cease to challenge the dominant citizen regime, be it the colonial citizenship model fostered by the British or the post-colonial, nationalist model introduced by Beijing. These social forces include political movements calling for radical expansion of political rights and legal autonomy (Ku’s chapter), feminist groups (Leung’s chapter), homosexual rights groups (Wong’s chapter), and the underprivileged class struggling to create a cooperative and empowering economic space independent from the dominant neo-liberal order (Hui’s chapter). While most chapters of the volume focus on Hong Kong, the foreword by Bryan Turner, who deciphers the politics of citizenship in the western world in the context of globalization, and the last chapter by Alvin So, who compares the politics of citizenship in the Chinese Triangle of Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong, magniﬁcently broaden the book’s horizon by putting the discussion in comparative, regional and global perspectives. Overall, the volume is much more than just another exercise to apply a cutting-edge concept from western academia to reiterate the scholarly discussion of local issues in an old-wine, new-bottle manner. It is more an ambitious attempt to oﬀer us a brand new framework to re-interpret Hong Kong’s social and political development from the early colonial to the postcolonial period. This eﬀort is a success. Most previous grand frameworks in understanding Hong Kong politics and society attain analytic coherence and clarity at the cost of oversimplifying the diverse and dynamic social reality. For example, the utilitarian familism thesis in the 1970s reduces the Hong Kong society into a collection of faceless, homogenous utilitarianistic families. The class analysis in the 1980s reduces the society into broad groups of economically deﬁned strata. It is diﬃcult to imagine how these frameworks could address the recent thorny issues surrounding gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc. in such an increasingly pluralistic society as Hong Kong. In contrast, politics of citizenship as an analytic framework allows us to take this multiplicity of issues into account without compromising the framework’s clarity and coherence. Of course, it is unfair to expect a nascent intellectual project crafted collectively by a group of diverse scholars to be ﬂawless. By providing a nuanced account of the politics of citizenship internal to Hong Kong, the authors somewhat reify the British colonizers as a unitary force. Like all other colonizing projects, the British colonial project in Hong Kong was ever full of contradictions and ambiguities. Overlooking these subtleties would render our analysis incomplete at best and distorted at worst.

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For example, the authors of this collection argue that the citizenship regime fomented by the colonial state was short of any essential changes up to the 1980s. But when looking closely into the history of Hong Kong’s colonial discourse, one would easily ﬁnd signs of progressive change in the 1970s. In the aftermath of the left-wing insurgency in the late 1960s and at the zenith of Fabian socialism under the Labor government back in Britain, many British intellectuals and politicians expressed their deep resentment upon the miserable living and working conditions of the vast majority of population in Hong Kong, and advocated that the British government should either leave the colony or introduce various political and social rights to the colony’s residents (the most inﬂuential publication reﬂecting this disposition is Hong Kong: A Case to Answer published in 1974 by Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in Britain). The social reforms introduced in the 1970s by Maclehose, a colonial governor with a Labor Party connection, were more than knee-jerk reaction to the riots as the authors (and most other scholars) see. At least at the level of policy discourse, the Maclehose reform did manifest a changing paradigm of welfare. In a speech outlining the grand 10-year public housing project, Maclehose claimed that “the inadequacy and scarcity of housing and all that this implies, and the harsh situations that result from it . . . oﬀends alike our humanity, our civic pride and our political good sense” (address to the Legislative Council, October 18, 1972). Though still far from the conception of social rights in its full sense, the tone of the speech was greatly diﬀerent from the functionalist orientation expressed in the Commissioner for Resettlement Report of 1955, which claimed that the public housing project was initiated just because “the community can no longer aﬀord to carry the ﬁre risk, health risk, and threat to public order and prestige which the squatter areas represent” (Commissioner for Resettlement 1955: 46). Even though the citizenship regime in the 1970s did not alter much in practice, the subtle alteration at the discursive level was signiﬁcant in its own right, as it opened a loophole and provided the ammunition for the social activists from below to defend or to ask for expansion of people’s social rights. It is noteworthy that the Public Housing Ordinance, instituted in the 1970s and insinuated with the socialist notion of social ownership, enabled a group of social activists to sabotage through legal means a privatization drive of the Housing Authority in 2004. After all, British colonialism was not just an one-sidedly negative force in the development of political and social rights in Hong Kong. All in all, Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong not only addresses the issue of citizenship in Hong Kong, but also meticulously produces a powerful, new, and grand framework for us to re-interpret Hong Kong’s socio-political development over the last 150 years. This latest tour de force in the ﬁeld of Hong Kong Studies is indispensable to social scientists interested in the past and concerned about the future of Hong Kong, particularly at a time when the city is at a crossroad between subjugating to a nationalist-

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authoritarian regime of Chinese citizenship and upholding the aspiration of creating a democratic, egalitarian and autonomous Hong Kong citizenship that the “one country, two systems” originally portends. Indiana University-Bloomington

Hung Ho-fung

NOTICE TO CONTRIBUTORS Editorial Procedures Social Transformations in Chinese Societies (STCS) is the oﬃcial annual of the Hong Kong Sociological Association. All manuscripts considered appropriate for this annual are reviewed anonymously by at least two outside reviewers. The review process usually takes three months. Manuscripts accepted for publication are subject to nonsubstantive, stylistic editing. A copy of the edited manuscript will be sent to the corresponding author for proofreading. It should be corrected and returned to Brill Academic Publishers within seven days. Once the ﬁnal version of the manuscript has been accepted, authors are requested not to make further changes to the manuscript. Manuscript Submission Authors should submit their manuscript to one of the following editors. BIAN Yan-jie, Division of Social Science, School of Humanities and Social Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong. [Email: [email protected]] CHAN Kwok-bun, Department of Sociology, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong. [Email: [email protected]] CHEUNG Tak-sing, Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong. [Email: [email protected]] The package should include: (1) a cover letter giving the address, e-mail address, telephone, and fax numbers of the corresponding author, the title of and the word count for the manuscript, and a statement that the manuscript has not been previously published and that it is not under consideration for publication in any other journal or book; (2) three copies of the manuscript; and (3) a copy of the manuscript on computer diskette. Social Transformations in Chinese Societies, Volume 1 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2005

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The acceptance of a manuscript by the STCS implies an understanding by the author(s) that the STCS will have the sole publication rights over the manuscript. Authors are responsible for securing permission to reproduce all copyrighted tables, ﬁgures, illustrations, etc., before they are submitted to the STCS. Manuscript Preparation Manuscript pages must be printed double-spaced in a clear typeface on 21 × 29.7 cm paper, with 3.5 cm margins and justiﬁed to the left margin. The length of an English manuscript should not be more than 10,000 words. Manuscripts should meet the format guidelines that are speciﬁed in the Notice to Contributors published in the February and August issues of the American Sociological Review or the ASA Style Guide (2d ed., 1997). Your manuscript can have up to eight separate sections. (1) The title page should include the full title of the article, the author or authors’ name(s) and institutional aﬃliation(s). (2) An abstract of 150–200 words. This should be printed on a separate page headed by the title. (3) Begin the text on a new page headed by the title. Omit author name(s). STCS uses anonymous peer reviewers to evaluate manuscripts, so please keep the text of your manuscript anonymous. For example, if you cite your own work, write “Chan (1999) concluded . . .,” but not “I concluded (Chan 1999) . . .” 1. The hierarchy of headings and subheadings should be clear. 2. Citations in the text give the last name of the author(s) and year of publication. Include page number(s) whenever you quote directly from a work or refer to speciﬁc passages. In the following examples of text citations, ellipses (. . .) indicate manuscript text. – If an author’s name is in the text, then follow it with the year in parentheses: . . . Chan (1999). If an author’s name is not in the text, then enclose the last name and year in parentheses: . . . (Chan 1999). – Page(s) cited follow the year of publication after a colon: . . . (Chan 1999: 239–40).

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Periodicals: Portes, Alejandro. 2000. “The Hidden Abode: Sociology as Analysis of the Unexpected.” American Sociological Review 65:1–18. Collections: Coleman, James S. 1994. “A Rational Choice Perspective on Economic Sociology.” Pp. 166–80 in The Handbook of Economic Sociology, edited by Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (6) Tables should be numbered consecutively throughout the text and printed on separate sheets. Insert a note in the text to indicate table placement (e.g., “Table 1 about here”). Each table must include a descriptive title and headings for all columns and rows. (7) Figures should be numbered consecutively throughout the text and printed on separate sheets. Insert a note in the text to indicate ﬁgure placement (e.g., “Figure 1 about here”). Each ﬁgure must include a title or caption and be submitted on diskette or in camera-ready form. (8) Appendices should be lettered and attached at the end of the manuscript. Each appendix must include a descriptive title.

Social Transformations in Chinese Societies: The Official Annual of the Hong Kong Sociological Association (Social Transformations in Chinese Societies)

Handbook of European Societies: Social Transformations in the 21st Century

Handbook of European Societies: Social Transformations in the 21st Century

The Social Archaeology of Austrailian Indigenous Societies

Inclusion and Exclusion in European Societies (Routledge European Sociological Association Studies in European Societies, 5)

The Market in Chinese Social Policy

Commerce and Capitalism in Chinese Societies: The Organisation of Chinese Economics

Chinese Media, Global Contexts (Asia's Transformations)

State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies (Religion and the Social Order) (Religion and the Social Order)

Death, Dying And Bereavement: The Hong Kong Chinese Experience

Death, Dying And Bereavement: The Hong Kong Chinese Experience

Naked In Hong Kong

Rethinking European Welfare: Transformations of European Social Policy (Published in association with The Open University)

Remaking the Chinese State: Strategies, Society and Security (Asia's Transformations)

Sunrise in Hong Kong

Forgotten Souls: A Social History of the Hong Kong Cemetery

The Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921-1969: In Love with the Chinese

The Book of Transformations

The Chinese in America

Phase Transformations in Materials

Exploring 'Unseen' Social Capital in Community Participation: Everyday Lives of Poor Mainland Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong

The Book of Transformations

Citizenship in Diverse Societies

Societies in Text

Transformations of the State?

The Book of Transformations

Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation and the Global City (Asia's Transformations)

Exploring 'Unseen' Social Capital in Community Participation: Everyday Lives of Poor Mainland Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong (Publications)

Strangers in African societies

The Chinese in America

The Field of Social Investment (American Sociological Association Rose Monographs)

Social Transformations in Chinese Societies: The Official Annual of the Hong Kong Sociological Association (Social Transformations in Chinese Societies)

Handbook of European Societies: Social Transformations in the 21st Century

Handbook of European Societies: Social Transformations in the 21st Century

The Social Archaeology of Austrailian Indigenous Societies

Inclusion and Exclusion in European Societies (Routledge European Sociological Association Studies in European Societies, 5)

The Market in Chinese Social Policy

Commerce and Capitalism in Chinese Societies: The Organisation of Chinese Economics

Chinese Media, Global Contexts (Asia's Transformations)

State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies (Religion and the Social Order) (Religion and the Social Order)

Death, Dying And Bereavement: The Hong Kong Chinese Experience

Death, Dying And Bereavement: The Hong Kong Chinese Experience

Naked In Hong Kong

Rethinking European Welfare: Transformations of European Social Policy (Published in association with The Open University)

Remaking the Chinese State: Strategies, Society and Security (Asia's Transformations)

Sunrise in Hong Kong

Forgotten Souls: A Social History of the Hong Kong Cemetery

The Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921-1969: In Love with the Chinese

The Book of Transformations

The Chinese in America

Phase Transformations in Materials

Exploring 'Unseen' Social Capital in Community Participation: Everyday Lives of Poor Mainland Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong

The Book of Transformations

Citizenship in Diverse Societies

Societies in Text

Transformations of the State?

The Book of Transformations

Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation and the Global City (Asia's Transformations)

Exploring 'Unseen' Social Capital in Community Participation: Everyday Lives of Poor Mainland Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong (Publications)

Strangers in African societies

The Chinese in America

The Field of Social Investment (American Sociological Association Rose Monographs)

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