The uneven pattern of internal development, so strongly weighted
toward the eastern part of the country, doubtless will change little
even with developing interest in exploiting the mineral-rich and
agriculturally productive portions of the vast northwest and southwest
regions. The adverse terrain and climate of most of those regions have
discouraged dense population. For the most part, only ethnic minority
groups have settled there.
The "minority nationalities" are an important element of
Chinese society. In 1987 there were 55 recognized minority groups,
comprising nearly 7 percent of the total population. Because some of the
groups were located in militarily sensitive border areas and in regions
with strategic minerals, the government tried to maintain benevolent
relations with the minorities. But the minorities played only a
superficial role in the major affairs of the nation.
China's ethnically diverse population is the largest in the world,
and the Chinese Communist Party and the government work strenuously to
count, control, and care for their people. In 1982 China conducted its
first population census since 1964. It was by far the most thorough and
accurate census taken under Communist rule and confirmed that China was
a nation of more than 1 billion people, or about one-fifth of the
world's population. The census provided demographers with a wealth of
accurate data on China's age-sex structure, fertility and mortality
rates, and population density and distribution. Useful information also
was gathered on minority ethnic groups, urban population, and marital
status. For the first time since the People's Republic of China was
founded, demographers had reliable information on the size and
composition of the Chinese work force.
Beginning in the mid-1950s, the Chinese government introduced, with
varying degrees of enthusiasm and success, a number of family planning,
or population control, campaigns and programs. The most radical and
controversial was the one-child policy publicly announced in 1979. Under
this policy, which had different guidelines for national minorities,
married couples were officially permitted only one child. Enforcement of
the program, however, varied considerably from place to place, depending
on the vigilance of local population control workers.
Health care has improved dramatically in China since 1949. Major
diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and scarlet fever have been brought
under control. Life expectancy has more than doubled, and infant
mortality has dropped significantly. On the negative side, the incidence
of cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and heart disease has increased to
the extent that these have become the leading causes of death. Economic
reforms initiated in the late 1970s fundamentally altered methods of
providing health care; the collective medical care system was gradually
replaced by a more individual-oriented approach.
More liberalized emigration policies enacted in the 1980s facilitated
the legal departure of increasing numbers of Chinese who joined their
overseas Chinese relatives and friends. The Four Modernizations program,
which required access of Chinese students and scholars, particularly
scientists, to foreign education and research institutions, brought
about increased contact with the outside world, particularly the
industrialized nations. Thus, as China moved toward the twenty-first
century, the diverse resources and immense population that it had
committed to a comprehensive process of modernization became ever more
important in the interdependent world.
The Data Base
The People's Republic conducted censuses in 1953, 1964, and 1982. In
1987 the government announced that the fourth national census would take
place in 1990 and that there would be one every ten years thereafter.
The 1982 census, which reported a total population of 1,008,180,738, is
generally accepted as significantly more reliable, accurate, and
thorough than the previous two. Various international organizations
eagerly assisted the Chinese in conducting the 1982 census, including
the United Nations Fund for Population Activities which donated US$15.6
million for the preparation and execution of the census.
The nation began preparing for the 1982 census in late 1976. Chinese
census workers were sent to the United States and Japan to study modern
census-taking techniques and automation. Computers were installed in
every provincial-level unit except Xizang and were connected to a
central processing system in the Beijing headquarters of the State
Statistical Bureau. Pretests and smallscale trial runs were conducted
and checked for accuracy between 1980 and 1981 in twenty-four
provincial-level units. Census stations were opened in rural production
brigades and urban neighborhoods. Beginning July 1, 1982, each household
sent a representative to a census station to be enumerated. The census
required about a month to complete and employed approximately 5 million
census takers.
The 1982 census collected data in nineteen demographic categories
relating to individuals and households. The thirteen areas concerning
individuals were name, relationship to head of household, sex, age,
nationality, registration status, educational level, profession,
occupation, status of nonworking persons, marital status, number of
children born and still living, and number of births in 1981. The six
items pertaining to households were type (domestic or collective),
serial number, number of persons, number of births in 1981, number of
deaths in 1981, and number of registered persons absent for more than
one year. Information was gathered in a number of important areas for
which previous data were either extremely inaccurate or simply
nonexistent, including fertility, marital status, urban population,
minority ethnic groups, sex composition, age distribution, and
employment and unemployment.
A fundamental anomaly in the 1982 statistics was noted by some
Western analysts. They pointed out that although the birth and death
rates recorded by the census and those recorded through the household
registration system were different, the two systems arrived at similar
population totals. The discrepancies in the vital rates were the result
of the underreporting of both births and deaths to the authorities under
the registration system; families would not report some births because
of the one-child policy and would not report some deaths so as to hold
on to the rations of the deceased. Nevertheless, the 1982 census was a
watershed for both Chinese and world demographics. After an
eighteen-year gap, population specialists were given a wealth of
reliable, up-to-date figures on which to reconstruct past demographic
patterns, measure current population conditions, and predict future
population trends. For example, Chinese and foreign demographers used
the 1982 census age-sex structure as the base population for forecasting
and making assumptions about future fertility trends. The data on
age-specific fertility and mortality rates provided the necessary
base-line information for making population projections. The census data
also were useful for estimating future manpower potential, consumer
needs, and utility, energy, and health-service requirements. The sudden
abundance of demographic data helped population specialists immeasurably
in their efforts to estimate world population. Previously, there had
been no accurate information on these 21 percent of the earth's
inhabitants. Demographers who had been conducting research on global
population without accurate data on the Chinese fifth of the world's
population were particularly thankful for the 1982 census.
Mortality and Fertility
In 1949 crude death rates were probably higher than 30 per 1,000, and
the average life expectancy was only 32 years. Beginning in the early
1950s, mortality steadily declined; it continued to decline through 1978
and remained relatively constant through 1987. One major fluctuation was
reported in a computer reconstruction of China's population trends from
1953 to 1987 produced by the United States Bureau of the Census (see
table 6, Appendix A; data in this table may vary from officially
reported statistics). The computer model showed that the crude death
rate increased dramatically during the famine years associated with the
Great Leap Forward, resulting in approximately 30 million deaths above
the expected level.
According to Chinese government statistics, the crude birth rate
followed five distinct patterns from 1949 to 1982. It remained stable
from 1949 to 1954, varied widely from 1955 to 1965, experienced
fluctuations between 1966 and 1969, dropped sharply in the late 1970s,
and increased from 1980 to 1981. Between 1970 and 1980, the crude birth
rate dropped from 36.9 per 1,000 to 17.6 per 1,000. The government
attributed this dramatic decline in fertility to the wan xi shao
(later marriages, longer intervals between births, and fewer children)
birth control campaign. However, elements of socioeconomic change, such
as increased employment of women in both urban and rural areas and
reduced infant mortality (a greater percentage of surviving children
would tend to reduce demand for additional children), may have played
some role. To the dismay of authorities, the birth rate increased in
both 1981 and 1982 to a level of 21 per 1,000, primarily as a result of
a marked rise in marriages and first births. The rise was an indication
of problems with the one-child policy of 1979. Chinese sources, however,
indicated that the birth rate decreased to 17.8 in 1985 and remained
relatively constant thereafter.
In urban areas, the housing shortage may have been at least partly
responsible for the decreased birth rate. Also, the policy in force
during most of the 1960s and the early 1970s of sending large numbers of
high school graduates to the countryside deprived cities of a
significant proportion of persons of childbearing age and undoubtedly
had some effect on birth rates.
Primarily for economic reasons, rural birth rates tended to decline
less than urban rates. The right to grow and sell agricultural products
for personal profit and the lack of an oldage welfare system were
incentives for rural people to produce many children, especially sons,
for help in the fields and for support in old age. Because of these
conditions, it is unclear to what degree propaganda and education
improvements had been able to erode traditional values favoring large
families.
Density and Distribution
Overall population density in 1986 was about 109 people per square
kilometer. Density was only about one-third that of Japan and less than
that of many other countries in Asia and in Europe. The overall figure,
however, concealed major regional variations and the high person-land
ratio in densely populated areas. In the 11 provinces, special
municipalities, and autonomous regions along the southeast coast,
population density was 320.6 people per square kilometer.
In 1986 about 94 percent of the population lived on approximately 36
percent of the land. Broadly speaking, the population was concentrated
in China Proper, east of the mountains and south of the Great Wall. The
most densely populated areas included the Chang Jiang Valley (of which
the delta region was the most populous), Sichuan Basin, North China
Plain, Zhu Jiang Delta, and the industrial area around the city of
Shenyang in the northeast.
Population is most sparse in the mountainous, desert, and grassland
regions of the northwest and southwest. In Nei Monggol Autonomous
Region, portions are completely uninhabited, and only a few sections
have populations more dense than ten people per square kilometer. The
Nei Monggol, Xinjiang, and Xizang autonomous regions and Gansu and
Qinghai provinces comprise 55 percent of the country's land area but in
1985 contained only 5.7 percent of its population.
<>Population Control
Programs
Initially, China's post-1949 leaders were ideologically disposed to
view a large population as an asset. But the liabilities of a large,
rapidly growing population soon became apparent. For one year, starting
in August 1956, vigorous propaganda support was given to the Ministry of
Public Health's mass birth control efforts. These efforts, however, had
little impact on fertility. After the interval of the Great Leap
Forward, Chinese leaders again saw rapid population growth as an
obstacle to development, and their interest in birth control revived. In
the early 1960s, propaganda, somewhat more muted than during the first
campaign, emphasized the virtues of late marriage. Birth control offices
were set up in the central government and some provinciallevel
governments in 1964. The second campaign was particularly successful in
the cities, where the birth rate was cut in half during the 1963-66
period. The chaos of the Cultural Revolution brought the program to a
halt, however.
In 1972 and 1973 the party mobilized its resources for a nationwide
birth control campaign administered by a group in the State Council. Committees to oversee birth control
activities were established at all administrative levels and in various
collective enterprises. This extensive and seemingly effective network
covered both the rural and the urban population. In urban areas public
security headquarters included population control sections. In rural
areas the country's "barefoot
doctors" distributed information and
contraceptives to people's commun members. By 1973 Mao Zedong was personally
identified with the family planning movement, signifying a greater
leadership commitment to controlled population growth than ever before.
Yet until several years after Mao's death in 1976, the leadership was
reluctant to put forth directly the rationale that population control
was necessary for economic growth and improved living standards.
Population growth targets were set for both administrative units and
individual families. In the mid-1970s the maximum recommended family
size was two children in cities and three or four in the country. Since
1979 the government has advocated a onechild limit for both rural and
urban areas and has generally set a maximum of two children in special
circumstances. As of 1986 the policy for minority nationalities was two
children per couple, three in special circumstances, and no limit for
ethnic groups with very small populations. The overall goal of the
one-child policy was to keep the total population within 1.2 billion
through the year 2000, on the premise that the Four
Modernizations program would be of little value if
population growth was not brought under control.
The one-child policy was a highly ambitious population control
program. Like previous programs of the 1960s and 1970s, the onechild
policy employed a combination of propaganda, social pressure, and in
some cases coercion. The one-child policy was unique, however, in that
it linked reproduction with economic cost or benefit.
Under the one-child program, a sophisticated system rewarded those
who observed the policy and penalized those who did not. Couples with
only one child were given a "one-child certificate" entitling
them to such benefits as cash bonuses, longer maternity leave, better
child care, and preferential housing assignments. In return, they were
required to pledge that they would not have more children. In the
countryside, there was great pressure to adhere to the one-child limit.
Because the rural population accounted for approximately 60 percent of
the total, the effectiveness of the one-child policy in rural areas was
considered the key to the success or failure of the program as a whole.
In rural areas the day-to-day work of family planning was done by
cadres at the team and brigade levels who were responsible for women's
affairs and by health workers. The women's team leader made regular
household visits to keep track of the status of each family under her
jurisdiction and collected information on which women were using
contraceptives, the methods used, and which had become pregnant. She
then reported to the brigade women's leader, who documented the
information and took it to a monthly meeting of the commune
birth-planning committee. According to reports, ceilings or quotas had
to be adhered to; to satisfy these cutoffs, unmarried young people were
persuaded to postpone marriage, couples without children were advised to
"wait their turn," women with unauthorized pregnancies were
pressured to have abortions, and those who already had children were
urged to use contraception or undergo sterilization. Couples with more
than one child were exhorted to be sterilized.
The one-child policy enjoyed much greater success in urban than in
rural areas. Even without state intervention, there were compelling
reasons for urban couples to limit the family to a single child. Raising
a child required a significant portion of family income, and in the
cities a child did not become an economic asset until he or she entered
the work force at age sixteen. Couples with only one child were given
preferential treatment in housing allocation. In addition, because city
dwellers who were employed in state enterprises received pensions after
retirement, the sex of their first child was less important to them than
it was to those in rural areas.
Numerous reports surfaced of coercive measures used to achieve the
desired results of the one-child policy. The alleged methods ranged from
intense psychological pressure to the use of physical force, including
some grisly accounts of forced abortions and infanticide. Chinese
officials admitted that isolated, uncondoned abuses of the program
occurred and that they condemned such acts, but they insisted that the
family planning program was administered on a voluntary basis using
persuasion and economic measures only. International reaction to the
allegations were mixed. The UN Fund for Population Activities and the
International Planned Parenthood Association were generally supportive
of China's family planning program. The United States Agency for
International Development, however, withdrew US$10 million from the Fund
in March 1985 based on allegations that coercion had been used.
Observers suggested that an accurate assessment of the onechild
program would not be possible until all women who came of childbearing
age in the early 1980s passed their fertile years. As of 1987 the
one-child program had achieved mixed results. In general, it was very
successful in almost all urban areas but less successful in rural areas.
The Chinese authorities must have been disturbed by the increase in the
officially reported annual population growth rate (birth rate minus
death rate): from 12 per 1,000, or 1.2 percent in 1980 to 14.1 per
1,000, or 1.4 percent in 1986. If the 1986 rate is maintained to the
year 2000, the population will exceed 1.2 billion.
Rapid fertility reduction associated with the one-child policy has
potentially negative results. For instance, in the future the elderly
might not be able to rely on their children to care for them as they
have in the past, leaving the state to assume the expense, which could
be considerable. Based on United Nations statistics and data provided by
the Chinese government, it was estimated in 1987 that by the year 2000
the population 60 years and older (the retirement age is 60 in urban
areas) would number 127 million, or 10.1 percent of the total
population; the projection for 2025 was 234 million elderly, or 16.4
percent. According to one Western analyst, projections based on the 1982
census show that if the one-child policy were maintained to the year
2000, 25 percent of China's population would be age 65 or older by the
year 2040.
China.
Internal
China has restricted internal movement in various ways. Official
efforts to limit free migration between villages and cities began as
early as 1952 with a series of measures designed to prevent individuals
without special permission from moving to cities to take advantage of
the generally higher living standards there.
The party decreased migration to cities during the 1960s and 1970s
for economic and political reasons. In the early stages of the Cultural
Revolution, large numbers of urban youths were "sent down" to
the countryside for political and ideological reasons. Many relocated
youths were eventually permitted to return to the cities, and by the
mid-1980s most had done so.
The success of the agricultural reforms under Deng Xiaoping in the
late 1970s and early 1980s dramatically increased the food supply in
China's cities, making it possible for more people to come in from rural
areas and survive without food ration cards. Because of the increased
food supply, the authorities temporarily relaxed the enforcement of
migration restrictions. This relaxation, however, was short-lived, and
in May 1984 new measures strengthened residence regulations and
reinstated official control over internal migration. Additionally, in
March 1986 a draft revision of the 1957 migration regulations was
presented to the Standing Committee of the Sixth National People's
Congress calling for stricter population control policies.
Nonetheless, migration from rural areas to urban centers continued.
The problem of too-rapid urbanization was exacerbated by the
agricultural responsibility system, which forced a reallocation of labor
and left many agricultural workers unemployed.
The central government attempted to control movement through the
household registration system and promote development of small cities
and towns, but within this system many people were still able to migrate
primarily for employment or educational purposes. Leaving their place of
official registration for days, months, or even years, unemployed
agricultural workers found jobs in construction, housekeeping, or
commune-run shops or restaurants. This temporary mobility was permitted
by authorities because it simultaneously absorbed a large amount of
surplus rural labor, improved the economies of rural areas, and
satisfied urban requirements for service and other workers. The most
significant aspect of the temporary migration, however, was that it was
viewed as a possible initial step toward the development of small,
rural-oriented urban centers that could bring employment and urban
amenities to rural areas.
Although the temporary migration into the cities was seen as
beneficial, controlling it was a serious concern of the central
government. An April 1985 survey showed that the "floating" or
nonresident population in eight selected areas of Beijing was 662,000,
or 12.5 percent of the total population. The survey also showed that
people entered or left Beijing 880,000 times a day. In an effort to
control this activity, neighborhood committees and work units (danwei)
were required to comply with municipal regulations issued in January
1986. These regulations stipulated that communities and work units keep
records on visitors, that those staying in Beijing for up to three days
must be registered, and that those planning to stay longer must obtain
temporary residence permits from local police stations.
Although some cities were crowded, other areas of China were
underpopulated. For example, China had little success populating the
frontier regions. As early as the 1950s, the government began to
organize and fund migration for land reclamation, industrialization, and
construction in the interior and frontier regions. Land reclamation was
carried out by state farms located largely in Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous
Region and Heilongjiang Province. Large numbers of migrants were sent to
such outlying regions as Nei Monggol Autonomous Region and Qinghai
Province to work in factories and mines and to Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous
Region to develop agriculture and industry. In the late 1950s, and
especially in the 1960s, during the Cultural Revolution, many city
youths were sent to the frontier areas. Much of the resettled population
returned home, however, because of insufficient government support,
harsh climate, and a general inability to adjust to life in the outlying
regions. China's regional population distribution was consequently as
unbalanced in 1986 as it had been in 1953. Nevertheless, efforts were
still underway in 1987 to encourage migration to the frontier regions.
Urbanization
In 1987 China had a total of twenty-nine provincial-level
administrative units directly under the central government in Beijing.
In addition to the twenty-one provinces (sheng), there were
five autonomous regions (zizhiqu) for minority nationalities,
and three special municipalities (shi)--the three largest
cities, Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin. (The establishment of Hainan
Island as a provincial-level unit separate from Guangdong Province was
scheduled to take place in 1988.) A 1979 change in provincial-level
administrative boundaries in the northeast region restored Nei Monggol
Autonomous Region to its original size (it had been reduced by a third
in 1969) at the expense of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning provinces.
Urban areas were further subdivided into lower-level administrative
units beginning with municipalities and extending down to the
neighborhood level.
The pace of urbanization in China from 1949 to 1982 was relatively
slow because of both rapid growth of the rural population and tight
restrictions on rural-urban migration for most of that period. According
to the 1953 and 1982 censuses, the urban population as a percentage of
total population increased from 13.3 to 20.6 percent during that period.
From 1982 to 1986, however, the urban population increased dramatically
to 37 percent of the total population. This large jump resulted from a
combination of factors. One was the migration of large numbers of
surplus agricultural workers, displaced by the agricultural
responsibility system, from rural to urban areas. Another was a 1984
decision to broaden the criteria for classifying an area as a city or
town. During 1984 the number of towns meeting the new urban criteria
increased more than twofold, and the urban town population doubled. In
the mid-1980s demographers expected the proportion of the population
living in cities and towns to be around 50 percent by the turn of the
century. This urban growth was expected to result primarily from the
increase in the number of small- and medium-sized cities and towns
rather than from an expansion of existing large cities.
China's statistics regarding urban population sometimes can be
misleading because of the various criteria used to calculate urban
population. In the 1953 census, urban essentially referred to
settlements with populations of more than 2,500, in which more than 50
percent of the labor force were involved in nonagricultural pursuits.
The 1964 census raised the cut-off to 3,000 and the requirement for
nonagricultural labor to 70 percent. The 1982 census used the 3,000/70
percent minimum but introduced criteria of 2,500 to 3,000 and 85 percent
as well. Also, in calculating urban population, the 1982 census made a
radical change by including the agricultural population residing within
the city boundaries. This explains the dramatic jump in urban population
from the 138.7 million reported for year-end 1981 to the 206.6 million
counted by the 1982 census. In 1984 the urban guidelines were further
loosened, allowing for lower minimum population totals and
nonagricultural percentages. The criteria varied among provinciallevel
units.
Although China's urban population--382 million, or 37 percent of the
total population in the mid-1980s--was relatively low by comparison with
developed nations, the number of people living in urban areas in China
was greater than the total population of any country in the world except
India and the Soviet Union. The four Chinese cities with the largest
populations in 1985 were Shanghai, with 7 million; Beijing, with 5.9
million; Tianjin, with 5.4 million; and Shenyang, with 4.2 million. The
disproportionate distribution of population in large cities occurred as
a result of the government's emphasis after 1949 on the development of
large cities over smaller urban areas. In 1985 the 22 most populous
cities in China had a total population of 47.5 million, or about 12
percent of China's total urban population. The number of cities with
populations of at least 100,000 increased from 200 in 1976 to 342 in
1986 (see table 8, Appendix A).
In 1987 China was committed to a three-part strategy to control urban
growth: strictly limiting the size of big cities (those of 500,000 or
more people); developing medium-sized cities (200,000 to 500,000); and
encouraging the growth of small cities (100,000 to 200,000). The
government also encouraged the development of small market and commune
centers that were not then officially designated as urban places, hoping
that they eventually would be transformed into towns and small cities.
The big and medium-sized cities were viewed as centers of heavy and
light industry, and small cities and towns were looked on as possible
locations for handicraft and workshop activities, using labor provided
mainly from rural overflow.
Emigration and Immigration
Through most of China's history, strict controls prevented large
numbers of people from leaving the country. In modern times, however,
periodically some have been allowed to leave for various reasons. For
example, in the early 1960s, about 100,000 people were allowed to enter
Hong Kong. In the late 1970s, vigilance against illegal migration to
Hong Kong was again relaxed somewhat. Perhaps as many as 200,000 reached
Hong Kong in 1979, but in 1980 authorities on both sides resumed
concerted efforts to reduce the flow.
In 1983 emigration restrictions were eased as a result in part of the
economic open-door policy. In 1984 more than 11,500 business visas were
issued to Chinese citizens, and in 1985 approximately 15,000 Chinese
scholars and students were in the United States alone. Any student who
had the economic resources, from whatever source, could apply for
permission to study abroad. United States consular offices issued more
than 12,500 immigrant visas in 1984, and there were 60,000 Chinese with
approved visa petitions in the immigration queue.
Export of labor to foreign countries also increased. The Soviet
Union, Iraq, and the Federal Republic of Germany requested 500,000
workers, and as of 1986 China had sent 50,000. The signing of the United
States-China Consular Convention in 1983 demonstrated the commitment to
more liberal emigration policies. The two sides agreed to permit travel
for the purpose of family reunification and to facilitate travel for
individuals who claim both Chinese and United States citizenship.
Emigrating from China remained a complicated and lengthy process,
however, mainly because many countries were unwilling or unable to
accept the large numbers of people who wished to emigrate. Other
difficulties included bureaucratic delays and in some cases a reluctance
on the part of Chinese authorities to issue passports and exit permits
to individuals making notable contributions to the modernization effort.
The only significant immigration to China has been by the overseas
Chinese, who in the years since 1949 have been offered various
enticements to return to their homeland. Several million may have done
so since 1949. The largest influx came in 1978-79, when about 160,000 to
250,000 ethnic Chinese fled Vietnam for southern China as relations
between the two countries worsened. Many of these refugees were
reportedly settled in state farms on Hainan Island in the South China
Sea.
China.
Demographic Overview
Approximately 93 percent of China's population is considered Han.
Sharp regional and cultural differences, including major variations in
spoken Chinese, exist among the Han, who are a mingling of many peoples.
All the Han nonetheless use a common written form of Chinese and share
the social organization, values, and cultural characteristics
universally recognized as Chinese.
Officially, China has fifty-six "nationality" groups,
including the Han. The Chinese define a nationality as a group of people
of common origin living in a common area, using a common language, and
having a sense of group identity in economic and social organization and
behavior. Altogether, China has fifteen major linguistic regions
generally coinciding with the geographic distribution of the major
minority nationalities. Members of non-Han groups, referred
to as the "minority nationalities," constitute only about 7
percent of the total population but number more than 70 million people
and are distributed over 60 percent of the land.
Some minority nationalities can be found only in a single region;
others may have settlements in two or more. In general, however, the
minorities are concentrated in the provinces and autonomous regions of
the northwest and the southwest. In Xizang, Xinjiang, and Nei Monggol
autonomous regions, minorities occupy large frontier areas; many are
traditionally nomadic and engage primarily in agriculture or pastoral
pursuits. Minority groups in Yunnan and Guizhou provinces and in the
Guangxi-Zhuang Autonomous Region are more fragmented and inhabit smaller
areas.
According to the 1982 census, approximately 95 percent of Xizang's
civilian population of 1.9 million are Tibetan (Zang nationality). An
internally cohesive group, the Tibetans have proven the most resistant
of the minority groups to the government's integration efforts.
Xinjiang, which is as vast and distant from Beijing as Xizang, is the
minority area next in demographic and political significance. Despite a
large-scale immigration of Han since the 1950s, in 1985 around 60
percent of Xinjiang's 13.4 million population belonged to minority
nationalities. Of these, the most important were 6.1 million Uygurs and
more than 900,000 Kazaks, both Turkic-speaking Central Asian peoples
(see table 9, Appendix A).
Provinces with large concentrations of minorities include Yunnan,
where the Yi and other minority groups comprised an estimated 32 percent
of the population in 1985; Guizhou, home of more than half of the
approximately 4 million Miao; and sparsely populated Qinghai, which
except for the area around the provincial capital of Xining is inhabited
primarily by Tibetans and other minority nationality members, amounting
in 1986 to approximately 37 percent of the total provincial population.
Additionally, in 1986 minority nationalities constituted approximately
16 percent of the population of Nei Monggol Autonomous Region. The
Guangxi-Zhuang Autonomous Region contains almost all of the
approximately 13.5 million members of what is China's largest minority
nationality, the Zhuang; most of them, however, are highly assimilated.
Because many of the minority nationalities are located in politically
sensitive frontier areas, they have acquired an importance greater than
their numbers. Some groups have common ancestry with peoples in
neighboring countries. For example, members of the Shan, Korean, Mongol,
Uygur and Kazak, and Yao nationalities are found not only in China but
also in Burma, Korea, the Mongolian People's Republic, the Soviet Union,
and Thailand, respectively. If the central government failed to maintain
good relations with these groups, China's border security could be
jeopardized. Since 1949 Chinese officials have declared that
the minorities are politically equal to the Han majority and in fact
should be accorded preferential treatment because of their small numbers
and poor economic circumstances. The government has tried to ensure that
the minorities are well represented at national conferences and has
relaxed certain policies that might have impeded their socioeconomic
development.
The minority areas are economically as well as politically important.
China's leaders have suggested that by the turn of the century the focus
of economic development should shift to the northwest. The area is rich
in natural resources, with uranium deposits and abundant oil reserves in
Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region. Much of China's forestland is located
in the border regions of the northeast and southwest, and large numbers
of livestock are raised in the arid and semiarid northwest. Also, the
vast amount of virgin land in minority areas can be used for
resettlement to relieve population pressures in the densely populated
regions of the country.
In the early 1980s, the central government adopted various measures
to provide financial and economic assistance to the minority areas. The
government allotted subsidies totaling approximately -Y6,000 million in
1984 to balance any deficits experienced in autonomous areas inhabited
by minority nationalities. After 1980 the autonomous regions of Nei
Monggol, Xinjiang, Xizang, Guangxi, and Ningxia and the provinces of
Yunnan, Guizhou, and Qinghai were permitted to keep all revenues for
themselves. The draft state budget written in April 1986 allocated a
special grant of -Y800 million to the underdeveloped minority
nationality areas over and above the regular state subsidies. The
standard of living in the minority areas improved dramatically from the
early to the mid-1980s. In Xizang Autonomous Region, annual per capita
income increased from - Y216 in 1983 to -Y317 in 1984 (national per
capita income was -Y663 in 1983 and -Y721 in 1984). The per capita net
income of the minority areas in Yunnan Province increased from -Y118 in
1980 to - Y263 in 1984, for an increase of 81.3 percent. Overall,
however, the minority areas remained relatively undeveloped in 1986.
Policy
Since 1949 government policy toward minorities has been based on the
somewhat contradictory goals of national unity and the protection of
minority equality and identity. The state constitution of 1954 declared
the country to be a "unified, multinational state" and
prohibited "discrimination against or oppression of any nationality
and acts which undermine the unity of the nationalities." All
nationalities were granted equal rights and duties. Policy toward the
ethnic minorities in the 1950s was based on the assumption that they
could and should be integrated into the Han polity by gradual
assimilation, while permitted initially to retain their own cultural
identity and to enjoy a modicum of selfrule . Accordingly, autonomous
regions were established in which minority languages were recognized,
special efforts were mandated to recruit a certain percentage of
minority cadres, and minority culture and religion were ostensibly
protected. The minority areas also benefited from substantial government
investment.
Yet the attention to minority rights took place within the larger
framework of strong central control. Minority nationalities, many with
strong historical and recent separatist or anti-Han tendencies, were
given no rights of self-determination. With the special exception of
Xizang in the 1950s, Beijing administered minority regions as vigorously
as Han areas, and Han cadres filled the most important leadership
positions. Minority nationalities were integrated into the national
political and economic institutions and structures. Party statements
hammered home the idea of the unity of all the nationalities and
downplayed any part of minority history that identified insufficiently
with China Proper. Relations with the minorities were strained because
of traditional Han attitudes of cultural superiority. Central
authorities criticized this "Han chauvinism" but found its
influence difficult to eradicate.
Pressure on the minority peoples to conform were stepped up in the
late 1950s and subsequently during the Cultural Revolution. Ultraleftist
ideology maintained that minority distinctness was an inherently
reactionary barrier to socialist progress. Although in theory the
commitment to minority rights remained, repressive assimilationist
policies were pursued. Minority languages were looked down upon by the
central authorities, and cultural and religious freedom was severely
curtailed or abolished. Minority group members were forced to give up
animal husbandry in order to grow crops that in some cases were
unfamiliar. State subsidies were reduced, and some autonomous areas were
abolished. These policies caused a great deal of resentment, resulting
in a major rebellion in Xizang in 1959 and a smaller one in Xinjiang in
1962, the latter bringing about the flight of some 60,000 Kazak herders
across the border to the Soviet Union. Scattered reports of violence in
minority areas in the 1966-76 decade suggest that discontent was high at
that time also.
After the arrest of the Gang
of Four in 1976, policies toward the ethnic
minorities were moderated regarding language, religion and culture, and
land-use patterns, with the admission that the assimilationist policies
had caused considerable alienation. The new leadership pledged to
implement a bona fide system of autonomy for the ethnic minorities and
placed great emphasis on the need to recruit minority cadres.
Although the minorities accounted for only about 7 percent of China's
population, the minority deputies to the National People's Congress made
up 13.5 percent of all representatives to the congress in 1985, and 5 of
the 22 vice chairmen of its Standing Committee (23 percent) in 1983 were
minority nationals. A Mongol, Ulanhu, was elected vice president of
China in June 1983. Nevertheless, political administration of the
minority areas was the same as that in Han regions, and the minority
nationalities were subject to the dictates of the Chinese Communist
Party. Despite the avowed desire to integrate the minorities into the
political mainstream, the party was not willing to share key
decision-making powers with the ethnic minorities. As of the late 1970s,
the minority nationality cadres accounted for only 3 to 5 percent of all
cadres.
Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese government in the
mid-1980s was pursuing a liberal policy toward the national minorities.
Full autonomy became a constitutional right, and policy stipulated that
Han cadres working in the minority areas learn the local spoken and
written languages. Significant concessions were made to Xizang,
historically the most nationalistic of the minority areas. The number of
Tibetan cadres as a percentage of all cadres in Xizang increased from 50
percent in 1979 to 62 percent in 1985. In Zhejiang Province the
government formally decided to assign only cadres familiar with
nationality policy and sympathetic to minorities to cities, prefectures,
and counties with large numbers of minority people. In Xinjiang the
leaders of the region's fourteen prefectural and city governments and
seventy-seven of all eighty-six rural and urban leaders were of minority
nationality.
China.
Since the founding of the People's Republic, the goal of health
programs has been to provide care to every member of the population and
to make maximum use of limited health-care personnel, equipment, and
financial resources. The emphasis has been on preventive rather than
curative medicine on the premise that preventive medicine is
"active" while curative medicine is "passive." The
health-care system has dramatically improved the health of the people,
as reflected by the remarkable increase in average life expectancy from
about thirty-two years in 1950 to sixty-nine years in 1985.
After 1949 the Ministry of Public Health was responsible for all
health-care activities and established and supervised all facets of
health policy. Along with a system of national, provincial-level, and
local facilities, the ministry regulated a network of industrial and
state enterprise hospitals and other facilities covering the health
needs of workers of those enterprises. In 1981 this additional network
provided approximately 25 percent of the country's total health
services. Health care was provided in both rural and urban areas through
a three-tiered system. In rural areas the first tier was made up of
barefoot doctors working out of village medical centers. They provided
preventive and primary-care services, with an average of two doctors per
1,000 people. At the next level were the township health centers, which
functioned primarily as out-patient clinics for about 10,000 to 30,000
people each. These centers had about ten to thirty beds each, and the
most qualified members of the staff were assistant doctors. The two
lower-level tiers made up the "rural collective health system"
that provided most of the country's medical care. Only the most
seriously ill patients were referred to the third and final tier, the
county hospitals, which served 200,000 to 600,000 people each and were
staffed by senior doctors who held degrees from 5-year medical schools.
Health care in urban areas was provided by paramedical personnel
assigned to factories and neighborhood health stations. If more
professional care was necessary the patient was sent to a district
hospital, and the most serious cases were handled by municipal
hospitals. To ensure a higher level of care, a number of state
enterprises and government agencies sent their employees directly to
district or municipal hospitals, circumventing the paramedical, or
barefoot doctor, stage.
An emphasis on public health and preventive treatment characterized
health policy from the beginning of the 1950s. At that time the party
began to mobilize the population to engage in mass "patriotic
health campaigns" aimed at improving the low level of environmental
sanitation and hygiene and attacking certain diseases. One of the best
examples of this approach was the mass assaults on the "four
pests"--rats, sparrows, flies, and mosquitoes--and on
schistosoma-carrying snails. Particular efforts were devoted in the
health campaigns to improving water quality through such measures as
deep-well construction and human-waste treatment. Only in the larger
cities had human waste been centrally disposed. In the countryside,
where "night soil" has always been collected and applied to
the fields as fertilizer, it was a major source of disease. Since the
1950s, rudimentary treatments such as storage in pits, composting, and
mixture with chemicals have been implemented.
As a result of preventive efforts, such epidemic diseases as cholera,
plague, typhoid, and scarlet fever have almost been eradicated. The mass
mobilization approach proved particularly successful in the fight
against syphilis, which was reportedly eliminated by the 1960s. The
incidence of other infectious and parasitic diseases was reduced and
controlled. Relaxation of certain sanitation and antiepidemic programs
since the 1960s, however, may have resulted in some increased incidence
of disease. In the early 1980s, continuing deficiencies in human-waste
treatment were indicated by the persistence of such diseases as hookworm
and schistosomiasis. Tuberculosis, a major health hazard in 1949,
remained a problem to some extent in the 1980s, as did hepatitis,
malaria, and dysentery. In the late 1980s, the need for health education
and improved sanitation was still apparent, but it was more difficult to
carry out the health-care campaigns because of the breakdown of the
brigade system. By the mid-1980s, China recognized the acquired immune
deficiency syndrome (AIDS) virus as a serious health threat but remained
relatively unaffected by the deadly disease. As of mid-1987 there was
confirmation of only two deaths of Chinese citizens from AIDS, and
monitoring of foreigners had begun. Following a 1987 regional World
Health Organization meeting, the Chinese government announced it would
join the global fight against AIDS, which would involve quarantine
inspection of people entering China from abroad, medical supervision of
people vulnerable to AIDS, and establishment of AIDS laboratories in
coastal cities. Additionally, it was announced that China was
experimenting with the use of traditional medicine to treat AIDS.
In the mid-1980s the leading causes of death in China were similar to
those in the industrialized world: cancer, cerebrovascular disease, and
heart disease. Some of the more prevalent forms of fatal cancers
included cancer of the stomach, esophagus, liver, lung, and
colon-rectum. The frequency of these diseases was greater for men than
for women, and lung cancer mortality was much greater in higher income
areas. The degree of risk for the different kinds of cancers varied
widely by region. For example, nasopharyngeal cancer was found primarily
in south China, while the incidence of esophageal cancer was higher in
the north.
To address concerns over health, the Chinese greatly increased the
number and quality of health-care personnel, although in 1986 serious
shortages still existed. In 1949 only 33,000 nurses and 363,000
physicians were practicing; by 1985 the numbers had risen dramatically
to 637,000 nurses and 1.4 million physicians. Some 436,000 physicians'
assistants were trained in Western medicine and had 2 years of medical
education after junior high school. Official Chinese statistics also
reported that the number of paramedics increased from about 485,400 in
1975 to more than 853,400 in 1982. The number of students in medical and
pharmaceutical colleges in China rose from about 100,000 in 1975 to
approximately 160,000 in 1982.
Efforts were made to improve and expand medical facilities. The
number of hospital beds increased from 1.7 million in 1976 to 2.2
million in 1984, or to 2 beds per 1,000 compared with 4.5 beds per 1,000
in 1981 in the United States. The number of hospitals increased from
63,000 in 1976 to 67,000 in 1984, and the number of specialized
hospitals and scientific research institutions doubled during the same
period.
The availability and quality of health care varied widely from city
to countryside. According to 1982 census data, in rural areas the crude
death rate was 1.6 per 1,000 higher than in urban areas, and life
expectancy was about 4 years lower. The number of senior physicians per
1,000 population was about 10 times greater in urban areas than in rural
ones; state expenditure on medical care was more than -Y26 per capita in
urban areas and less than -Y3 per capita in rural areas. There were also
about twice as many hospital beds in urban areas as in rural areas.
These are aggregate figures, however, and certain rural areas had much
better medical care and nutritional levels than others.
In 1987 economic reforms were causing a fundamental transformation of
the rural health-care system. The decollectivization of agriculture
resulted in a decreased desire on the part of the rural populations to
support the collective welfare system, of which health care was a part.
In 1984 surveys showed that only 40 to 45 percent of the rural
population was covered by an organized cooperative medical system, as
compared with 80 to 90 percent in 1979.
This shift entailed a number of important consequences for rural
health care. The lack of financial resources for the cooperatives
resulted in a decrease in the number of barefoot doctors, which meant
that health education and primary and home care suffered and that in
some villages sanitation and water supplies were checked less
frequently. Also, the failure of the cooperative health-care system
limited the funds available for continuing education for barefoot
doctors, thereby hindering their ability to provide adequate preventive
and curative services. The costs of medical treatment increased,
deterring some patients from obtaining necessary medical attention. If
the patients could not pay for services received, then the financial
responsibility fell on the hospitals and commune health centers, in some
cases creating large debts.
Consequently, in the post-Mao era of modernization, the rural areas
were forced to adapt to a changing health-care environment. Many
barefoot doctors went into private practice, operating on a
fee-for-service basis and charging for medication. But soon farmers
demanded better medical services as their incomes increased, bypassing
the barefoot doctors and going straight to the commune health centers or
county hospitals. A number of barefoot doctors left the medical
profession after discovering that they could earn a better living from
farming, and their services were not replaced. The leaders of brigades,
through which local health care was administered, also found farming to
be more lucrative than their salaried positions, and many of them left
their jobs. Many of the cooperative medical programs collapsed. Farmers
in some brigades established voluntary health-insurance programs but had
difficulty organizing and administering them.
Although the practice of traditional Chinese medicine was strongly
promoted by the Chinese leadership and remained a major component of
health care, Western medicine was gaining increasing acceptance in the
1970s and 1980s. For example, the number of physicians and pharmacists
trained in Western medicine reportedly increased by 225,000 from 1976 to
1981, and the number of physicians' assistants trained in Western
medicine increased by about 50,000. In 1981 there were reportedly
516,000 senior physicians trained in Western medicine and 290,000 senior
physicians trained in traditional Chinese medicine. The goal of China's
medical professionals is to synthesize the best elements of traditional
and Western approaches.
In practice, however, this combination has not always worked
smoothly. In many respects, physicians trained in traditional medicine
and those trained in Western medicine constitute separate groups with
different interests. For instance, physicians trained in Western
medicine have been somewhat reluctant to accept "unscientific"
traditional practices, and traditional practitioners have sought to
preserve authority in their own sphere. Although Chinese medical schools
that provided training in Western medicine also provided some
instruction in traditional medicine, relatively few physicians were
regarded as competent in both areas in the mid- 1980s.
The extent to which traditional and Western treatment methods were
combined and integrated in the major hospitals varied greatly. Some
hospitals and medical schools of purely traditional medicine were
established. In most urban hospitals, the pattern seemed to be to
establish separate departments for traditional and Western treatment. In
the county hospitals, however, traditional medicine received greater
emphasis.
Traditional medicine depends on herbal treatments, acupuncture,
acupressure, moxibustion (the burning of herbs over acupuncture points),
and "cupping" of skin with heated bamboo. Such approaches are
believed to be most effective in treating minor and chronic diseases, in
part because of milder side effects. Traditional treatments may be used
for more serious conditions as well, particularly for such acute
abdominal conditions as appendicitis, pancreatitis, and gallstones;
sometimes traditional treatments are used in combination with Western
treatments. A traditional method of orthopedic treatment, involving less
immobilization than Western methods, continued to be widely used in the
1980s.
Although health care in China developed in very positive ways by the
mid-1980s, it exacerbated the problem of overpopulation. In 1987 China
was faced with a population four times that of the United States and
over three times that of the Soviet Union. Efforts to distribute the
population over a larger portion of the country had failed: only the
minority nationalities seemed able to thrive in the mountainous or
desert-covered frontiers. Birth control programs implemented in the
1970s succeeded in reducing the birth rate, but estimates in the
mid-1980s projected that China's population will surpass the 1.2 billion
mark by the turn of the century, putting still greater pressure on the
land and resources of the nation.
China - Society
China is, like all large states, multiethnic; but one ethnic
group--the Han Chinese --dominates the politics, government, and
economy. This account focuses on the Han, and it considers the minority
peoples only in relation to the Han ethnic group.
Over the centuries a great many peoples who were originally not
Chinese have been assimilated into Chinese society. Entry into Han
society has not demanded religious conversion or formal initiation. It
has depended on command of the Chinese written language and evidence of
adherence to Chinese values and customs. For the most part, what has
distinguished those groups that have been assimilated from those that
have not has been the suitability of their environment for Han
agriculture. People living in areas where Chinese-style agriculture is
feasible have either been displaced or assimilated. The consequence is
that most of China's minorities inhabit extensive tracts of land
unsuited for Han-style agriculture; they are not usually found as
long-term inhabitants of Chinese cities or in close proximity to most
Han villages. Those living on steppes, near desert oases, or in high
mountains, and dependent on pastoral nomadism or shifting cultivation,
have retained their ethnic distinctiveness outside Han society. The
sharpest ethnic boundary has been between the Han and the steppe
pastoralists, a boundary sharpened by centuries of conflict and cycles
of conquest and subjugation. Reminders of these differences are the
absence of dairy products from the otherwise extensive repertoire of Han
cuisine and the distaste most Chinese feel for such typical steppe
specialties as tea laced with butter.
Official policy recognizes the multiethnic nature of the Chinese
state, within which all "nationalities" are formally equal. On
the one hand, it is not state policy to force the assimilation of
minority nationalities, and such nonpolitical expressions of ethnicity
as native costumes and folk dances are encouraged. On the other hand,
China's government is a highly centralized one that recognizes no
legitimate limits to its authority, and minority peoples in far western
Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region, for example, are considered Chinese
citizens just as much as Han farmers on the outskirts of Beijing are.
Official attitudes toward minority peoples are inconsistent, if not
contradictory. Since 1949 policies toward minorities have fluctuated
between tolerance and coercive attempts to impose Han standards.
Tolerant periods have been marked by subsidized material benefits
intended to win loyalty, while coercive periods such as the Cultural
Revolution have attempted to eradicate "superstition" and to
overthrow insufficiently radical or insufficiently nationalistic local
leaders.
What has not varied has been the assumption that it is the central
government that decides what is best for minority peoples and that
national citizenship takes precedence over ethnic identity. In fact,
minority nationality is a legal status in China. The government reserves
for itself the right to determine whether or not a group is a minority
nationality, and the list has been revised several times since the
1950s. In the mid-1980s the state recognized 55 minority nationalities,
some with as few as 1,1000 members. Minority nationalities are
guaranteed special representation in the National People's Congress and
the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Areas where
minorities form the majority of the population may be designated
"autonomous" counties, prefectures, or regions, subject to the
authority of the central government in Beijing rather than to provincial
or subprovincial administrations. It is expected that local
administrations in such regions will be staffed at least in part by
minority nationals and that application of national policies will take
into account local circumstances and special needs. In the early 1980s,
for example, minority peoples were exempted from the strict limitations
on the number of children per family dictated to the Han population.
Most Han Chinese have no contact with members of minority groups. But
in areas such as the Xizang (also known as Tibet) or Xinjiang autonomous
regions, where large numbers of Han have settled since the assertion of
Chinese central government authority over them in the 1950s, there is
clearly some ethnic tension. The tension stems from Han dominance over
such previously independent or semi-autonomous peoples as the Tibetans
and Uygurs, from Cultural Revolution attacks on religious observances,
and from Han disdain for and lack of sensitivity to minority cultures.
In the autonomous areas the ethnic groups appear to lead largely
separate lives, and most Han in those areas either work as urban-based
administrators and professionals or serve in military installations or
on state farms. Since the late 1970s, the central authorities have made
efforts to conciliate major ethnic minorities by sponsoring the revival
of religious festivals and by increasing the level of subsidies to the
poorest minority regions. Because of these efforts, other moderate
government policies, and the geographic distribution and relatively
small size of minority groups in China, the country has not suffered
widespread or severe ethnic conflict.
China - HAN DIVERSITY AND UNITY
The differences among regional and linguistic subgroups of Han
Chinese are at least as great as those among many European
nationalities. Han Chinese speak seven or eight mutually unintelligible
dialects, each of which has many local subdialects. Cultural differences
(cuisine, costume, and custom) are equally great. Modern Chinese history
provides many examples of conflict, up to the level of small-scale
regional wars, between linguistic and regional groups.
Such diversities, however, have not generated exclusive loyalties,
and distinctions in religion or political affiliation have not
reinforced regional differences. Rather, there has been a consistent
tendency in Chinese thought and practice to downplay intra-Han
distinctions, which are regarded as minor and superficial. What all Han
share is more significant than the ways in which they differ. In
conceptual terms, the boundary between Han and non-Han is absolute and
sharp, while boundaries between subsets of Han are subject to continual
shifts, are dictated by local conditions, and do not produce the
isolation inherent in relations between Han and minority groups.
Han ethnic unity is the result of two ancient and culturally central
Chinese institutions, one of which is the written language. Chinese is
written with ideographs (sometimes called characters) that represent
meanings rather than sounds, and so written Chinese does not reflect the
speech of its author. The disjunction between written and spoken Chinese
means that a newspaper published in Beijing can be read in Shanghai or
Guangzhou, although the residents of the three cities would not
understand each other's speech. It also means that there can be no
specifically Cantonese (Guangzhou dialect) or Hunanese literature
because the local speech of a region cannot be directly or easily
represented in writing. (It is possible to add local color to fiction,
cite colloquialisms, or transcribe folk songs, but it is not commonly
done.) Therefore, local languages have not become a focus for regional
selfconsciousness or nationalism. Educated Chinese tend to regard the
written ideographs as primary, and they regard the seven or eight spoken
Han Chinese dialects as simply variant ways of pronouncing the same
ideographs. This is linguistically inaccurate, but the attitude has
significant political and social consequences. The uniform written
language in 1987 continued to be a powerful force for Han unity.
The other major force contributing to Han ethnic unity has been the
centralized imperial state. The ethnic group takes its name from the Han
dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220). Although the imperial government never
directly controlled the villages, it did have a strong influence on
popular values and culture. The average peasant could not read and was
not familiar with the details of state administration or national
geography, but he was aware of belonging to a group of subcontinental
scope. Being Han, even for illiterate peasants, has meant conscious
identification with a glorious history and a state of immense
proportions. Peasant folklore and folk religion assumed that the
imperial state, with an emperor and an administrative bureaucracy, was
the normal order of society. In the imperial period, the highest
prestige went to scholar-officials, and every schoolboy had the
possibility, at least theoretically, of passing the civil service
examinations and becoming an official.
The prestige of the state and its popular identification with the
highest values of Chinese civilization were not accidents; they were the
final result of a centuries-long program of indoctrination and education
directed by the Confucian scholar-officials. Traditional Chinese society
can be distinguished from other premodern civilizations to the extent
that the state, rather than organized religious groups or ethnic
segments of society, was able to appropriate the symbols of wisdom,
morality, and the common good. The legacy for modern Chinese society has
been a strong centralized government that has the right to impose its
values on the population and against which there is no legitimate right
of dissent or secession.
China - TRADITIONAL SOCIETY AND CULTURE
The leaders who directed the efforts to change Chinese society after
the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 were raised
in the old society and had been marked with its values. Although they
were conscious revolutionaries, they could not wholly escape the culture
into which they had been born. Nationalists as well as revolutionaries,
they had no intention of transforming China into a replica of any
foreign country. They had an ambivalent attitude toward their country's
past and its traditional society, condemning some aspects and praising
others. Furthermore, as practical administrators, China's post-1949
leaders devoted energy and attention to changing some aspects of
traditional society, such as rural land tenure and the content of
education, while leaving other aspects, such as family structure,
largely untouched. Change in Chinese society, therefore, has been less
than total and less consistent than has often been claimed by official
spokesmen. To understand contemporary society, it is necessary to be
familiar with past legacies, particularly in the realm of values and in
areas of social life, such as family organization, where transformation
has not been a high-priority political goal.
China's traditional values were contained in the orthodox version of
Confucianism, which was taught in the academies and tested in the
imperial civil service examinations. These values are distinctive for
their this-worldly emphasis on society and public administration and for
their wide diffusion throughout Chinese society. Confucianism, never a
religion in any accepted sense, is primarily concerned with social
order. Social harmony is to be achieved within the state, whose
administrators consciously select the proper policies and act to educate
both the rulers and the subject masses. Confucianism originated and
developed as the ideology of professional administrators and continued
to bear the impress of its origins.
Imperial-era Confucianists concentrated on this world and had an
agnostic attitude toward the supernatural. They approved of ritual and
ceremony, but primarily for their supposed educational and psychological
effects on those participating. Confucianists tended to regard religious
specialists (who historically were often rivals for authority or
imperial favor) as either misguided or intent on squeezing money from
the credulous masses. The major metaphysical element in Confucian
thought was the belief in an impersonal ultimate natural order that
included the social order. Confucianists asserted that they understood
the inherent pattern for social and political organization and therefore
had the authority to run society and the state.
The Confucianists claimed authority based on their knowledge, which
came from direct mastery of a set of books. These books, the Confucian
Classics, were thought to contain the distilled wisdom of the past and
to apply to all human beings everywhere at all times. The mastery of the
Classics was the highest form of education and the best possible
qualification for holding public office. The way to achieve the ideal
society was to teach the entire people as much of the content of the
Classics as possible. It was assumed that everyone was educable and that
everyone needed educating. The social order may have been natural, but
it was not assumed to be instinctive. Confucianism put great stress on
learning, study, and all aspects of socialization. Confucianists
preferred internalized moral guidance to the external force of law,
which they regarded as a punitive force applied to those unable to learn
morality. Confucianists saw the ideal society as a hierarchy, in which
everyone knew his or her proper place and duties. The existence of a
ruler and of a state were taken for granted, but Confucianists held that
rulers had to demonstrate their fitness to rule by their
"merit." The essential point was that heredity was an
insufficient qualification for legitimate authority. As practical
administrators, Confucianists came to terms with hereditary kings and
emperors but insisted on their right to educate rulers in the principles
of Confucian thought. Traditional Chinese thought thus combined an
ideally rigid and hierarchical social order with an appreciation for
education, individual achievement, and mobility within the rigid
structure.
Diffusion of Values
While ideally everyone would benefit from direct study of the
Classics, this was not a realistic goal in a society composed largely of
illiterate peasants. But Confucianists had a keen appreciation for the
influence of social models and for the socializing and teaching
functions of public rituals and ceremonies. The common people were
thought to be influenced by the examples of their rulers and officials,
as well as by public events. Vehicles of cultural transmission, such as
folk songs, popular drama, and literature and the arts, were the objects
of government and scholarly attention. Many scholars, even if they did
not hold public office, put a great deal of effort into popularizing
Confucian values by lecturing on morality, publicly praising local
examples of proper conduct, and "reforming" local customs,
such as bawdy harvest festivals. In this manner, over hundreds of years,
the values of Confucianism were diffused across China and into scattered
peasant villages and rural culture.
The Confucian Legacy
Traditional values have clearly shaped much of contemporary Chinese
life. The belief in rule by an educated and functionally unspecialized
elite, the value placed on learning and propagating an orthodox ideology
that focuses on society and government, and the stress on hierarchy and
the preeminent role of the state were all carried over from traditional
society. Some of the more radical and extreme policies of the 1950s and
1960s, such as attacks on intellectuals and compulsory manual labor for
bureaucrats, can only be understood as responses to deep-rooted
traditional attitudes. The role of model workers and soldiers, as well
as official concern for the content and form of popular literature and
the arts, also reflects characteristically Chinese themes. In the
mid-1980s a number of Chinese writers and political leaders identified
the lingering hold of "feudal" attitudes, even within the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as a major obstacle to modernization.
They identified such phenomena as authoritarianism, unthinking obedience
to leaders, deprecation of expert knowledge, lack of appreciation for
law, and the failure to apply laws to leaders as "feudal"
legacies that were not addressed in the early years of China's
revolution.
Traditional Social Structure
Throughout the centuries some 80 to 90 percent of the Chinese
population have been farmers. The farmers supported a small number of
specialized craftsmen and traders and also an even smaller number of
land- and office-holding elite families who ran the society. Although
the peasant farmers and their families resembled counterparts in other
societies, the traditional Chinese elite, often referred to in English
as the gentry, had no peers in other societies. The national elite, who
comprised perhaps 1 percent of China's population, had a number of
distinctive features. They were dispersed across the country and often
lived in rural areas, where they were the dominant figures on the local
scene. Although they held land, which they rented to tenant farmers,
they neither possessed large estates like European nobles nor held
hereditary titles. They achieved their highest and most prestigious
titles by their performance on the central government's triennial civil
service examinations. These titles had to be earned by each generation,
and since the examinations had strict numerical quotas, competition was
fierce. Government officials were selected from those who passed the
examinations, which tested for mastery of the Confucian Classics. Elite
families, like everyone else in China, practiced partible inheritance,
dividing the estate equally among all sons. The combination of partible
inheritance and the competition for success in the examinations meant
that rates of mobility into and out of the elite were relatively high
for a traditional agrarian society.
The imperial state was staffed by a small civil bureaucracy. Civil
officials were directly appointed and paid by the emperor and had to
have passed the civil service examinations. Officials, who were supposed
to owe their primary loyalty to the emperor, did not serve in their home
provinces and were generally assigned to different places for each tour
of duty. Although the salary of central officials was low, the positions
offered great opportunities for personal enrichment, which was one
reason that families competed so fiercely to pass the examinations and
then obtain an appointment. For most officials, officeholding was not a
lifetime career. They served one or a few tours and then returned to
their home districts and families, where their wealth, prestige, and
network of official contacts made them dominant figures on the local
scene.
The Examination System
In late imperial China the status of local-level elites was ratified
by contact with the central government, which maintained a monopoly on
society's most prestigious titles. The examination system and associated
methods of recruitment to the central bureaucracy were major mechanisms
by which the central government captured and held the loyalty of
local-level elites. Their loyalty, in turn, ensured the integration of
the Chinese state and countered tendencies toward regional autonomy and
the breakup of the centralized system. The examination system
distributed its prizes according to provincial and prefectural quotas,
which meant that imperial officials were recruited from the whole
country, in numbers roughly proportional to a province's population.
Elites all over China, even in the disadvantaged peripheral regions, had
a chance at succeeding in the examinations and achieving the rewards of
officeholding.
The examination system also served to maintain cultural unity and
consensus on basic values. The uniformity of the content of the
examinations meant that the local elite and ambitious would-be elite all
across China were being indoctrinated with the same values. Even though
only a small fraction (about 5 percent) of those who attempted the
examinations passed them and received titles, the study,
self-indoctrination, and hope of eventual success on a subsequent
examination served to sustain the interest of those who took them. Those
who failed to pass (most of the candidates at any single examination)
did not lose wealth or local social standing; as dedicated believers in
Confucian orthodoxy, they served, without the benefit of state
appointments, as teachers, patrons of the arts, and managers of local
projects, such as irrigation works, schools, or charitable foundations.
In late traditional China, then, education was valued in part because
of its possible payoff in the examination system. The overall result of
the examination system and its associated study was cultural
uniformity--identification of the educated with national rather than
regional goals and values. This self-conscious national identity
underlies the nationalism so important in China's politics in the
twentieth century.
Social Stratification
Traditional thought accepted social stratification as natural and
considered most social groups to be organized on hierarchical
principles. In the ideal Confucian scheme of social stratification,
scholars were at the highest level of society, followed by farmers, then
by artisans, with merchants and soldiers in last place.
In society at large, the highest and most prestigious positions were
those of political generalists, such as members of the emperor's council
or provincial governors. Experts, such as tax specialists or physicians,
ranked below the ruling political generalists. Although commerce has
been a major element of Chinese life since the early imperial period,
and wealthy merchants have been major figures in Chinese cities,
Confucianists disparaged merchants. Commercial success never won
respect, and wealth based on commerce was subject to official taxes,
fees, and even confiscation. Upward mobility by merchants was achieved
by cultivating good relations with powerful officials and educating
their sons in the hope they might become officials. Although dynasties
were founded by military conquest, Confucian ideology derogated military
skill. Common soldiers occupied a low position in society and were
recruited from its lowest ranks. Chinese civilization, however, includes
a significant military tradition, and generals and strategists usually
were held in high esteem.
Most of China's population was composed of peasant farmers, whose
basic role in supporting the rulers and the rest of society was
recognized as a positive one in Confucian ideology. In practical terms,
farming was considered a hard and insecure life and one that was best
left if an opportunity was available.
In Chinese communities the factors generating prestige were
education, abstention from manual labor, wealth expended on the arts and
education, a large family with many sons, and community service and acts
of charity. Another asset was an extensive personal network that
permitted one to grant favors and make introductions and
recommendations. There was no sharp line dividing the elite from the
masses, and social mobility was possible and common.
Stratification and Families
Before 1950 the basic units of social stratification and social
mobility were families. Although wealthy families were often quite
large, with as many as thirty people in three or four generations living
together on a common budget, most families contained five or six people.
In socioeconomic terms, late traditional China was composed of a large
number of small enterprises, perhaps as many as 100 million farms and
small businesses. Each was operated by a family, which acted not only as
a household but also as a commercial enterprise. The family head also
was the trustee of the estate and manager of the family business.
Families could own property, such as land or shops, and pass it on to
the next generation.
About 80 percent of the population were peasant farmers, and land was
the fundamental form of property. Although many peasant families owned
no land, large estates were rare by the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Peasant families might own all of the land they worked, or
own some and rent some from a landowner, or rent all their land.
Regardless of the form of tenure, the farm was managed as a unit, and
the head of household was free to decide what to plant and how to use
the labor of family members. Land could be bought and sold in small
parcels, as well as mortgaged and rented in various forms of short-term
and long-term contracts. The consequence was that in most villages
peasant families occupied different steps on the ladder of
stratification; they did not form a uniformly impoverished mass. At any
time, peasant families were distinguished by the amount of land that
they owned and worked compared with the percentage of their income they
paid in rent. Over time, peasant families rose or fell in small steps as
they bought land or were forced to sell it.
Most non-farm enterprises, commercial or craft, were similarly small
businesses run by families. The basic units were owned by families,
which took a long-term view of their prospects and attempted to shift
resources and family personnel from occupation to occupation to adapt to
economic circumstances. In all cases, the long-term goal of the head of
the family was to ensure the survival and prosperity of the family and
to pass the estate along to the next generation. The most common family
strategy was to diversify the family's economic activities. Such
strategies lay behind the large number of small-scale enterprises that
characterized Chinese society before 1950. Farming and landowning were
secure but not very profitable. Commerce and money-lending brought in
greater returns but also carried greater risks. A successful farm family
might invest in a shop or a food-processing business, while a successful
restaurant owner might buy farmland, worked by a sharecropping peasant
family, as a secure investment. All well-to- do families invested in the
education of sons, with the hope of getting at least one son into a
government job. The consequence was that it was difficult to draw a
class line dividing landlords, merchants, and government workers or
officials.
Social Mobility
Formal education provided the best and most respected avenue of
upward mobility, and by the nineteenth century literacy rates in China
were high for a traditional peasant society. Chances of receiving a good
education were highest for the upper classes in and around coastal
cities and lowest for the farmers of the interior. If schooling was not
available, there were other avenues of mobility. Rural people could move
to cities to seek their fortunes (and in some cases the cities were in
Southeast Asia or the Americas). People could go into business, gamble
on the market for perishable cash crops, try money-lending on a small
scale or, as a long shot, join the army or a bandit group. Late
traditional society offered alternate routes to worldly success and a
number of ways to change one's position in society; but in all routes
except education the chances of failure outweighed those of success.
In many cases, whether in business or banditry, success or failure
depended to a great degree on luck. The combination of population
pressure, the low rate of economic growth, natural disasters, and
endemic war that afflicted the Chinese population in the first half of
the twentieth century meant that many families lost their property, some
starved, and almost all faced the probability of misfortune. From the
perspective of individuals and individual families, it is likely that
from 1850 to 1950 the chances of downward mobility increased and the
ability to plan ahead with confidence decreased.
China - SOCIAL CHANGE
After the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, the
uncertainty and risks facing small-scale socioeconomic units were
replaced by an increase in the scale of organization and
bureaucratization, with a consequent increase in predictability and
personal security. The tens of millions of small enterprises were
replaced by a much smaller number of larger enterprises, which were
organized in a bureaucratic and hierarchical manner. Collectivization of
land and nationalization of most private businesses meant that families
no longer had estates to pass along. Long-term interests for families
resided primarily with the work unit (collective farm, office, or
factory) to which they belonged.
Mobility in most cases consisted of gaining administrative promotions
within such work units. Many of the alternate routes to social mobility
were closed off, and formal education continued to be the primary avenue
of upward mobility. In villages the army offered the only reasonable
alternative to a lifetime spent in the fields, and demobilized soldiers
staffed much of the local administrative structure in rural areas. For
the first time in Chinese history, the peasant masses were brought into
direct contact with the national government and the ruling party, and
national-level politics came to have a direct impact on the lives of
ordinary people. The formerly local, small-scale, and fragmented power
structure was replaced by a national and well-integrated structure,
operating by bureaucratic norms. The unpredictable consequences of
market forces were replaced by administrative allocation and changing
economic policies enforced by the government bureaucracy.
The principal transformation of society took place during the 1950s
in a series of major campaigns carried out by the party. In the
countryside, an initial land reform redistributed some land from those
families with an excess to those with none. This was quickly followed by
a series of reforms that increased the scale of organization, from
seasonal mutual aid teams (groups of jointsupport laborers from
individual farming households), to permanent mutual aid teams, to
voluntary agricultural cooperatives, to compulsory agricultural
cooperatives, and finally to large people's
communes. In each step, which came at roughly
two-year intervals, the size of the unit was increased, and the role of
inherited land or private ownership was decreased. By the early 1960s,
an estimated 90 million family farms had been replaced by about 74,000
communes. During the same period, local governments took over commerce,
and private traders, shops, and markets were replaced by supply and
marketing cooperatives and the commercial bureaus of local government.
In the cities, large industries were nationalized and craft enterprises
were organized into large-scale cooperatives that became branches of
local government. Many small shops and restaurants were closed down, and
those that remained were under municipal management.
In both city and countryside, the 1950s saw a major expansion of the
party and state bureaucracies, and many young people with relatively
scarce secondary or college educations found secure white-collar jobs in
the new organizations. The old society's set of formal
associations--everything from lineages (clans), to irrigation
cooperatives, to urban guilds and associations of persons from the same
place of origin, all of which were private, small-scale, and usually
devoted to a single purpose--were closed down. They were replaced by
government bureaus or state-sponsored mass associations, and their
parochial leaders were replaced by party members. The new institutions
were run by party members and served as channels of information,
communication, and political influence.
The basic pattern of contemporary society was established by 1960,
and all changes since then, including the reforms of the early and
mid-1980s, have represented only modifications and adjustments to the
pattern. The pattern is cellular; most people belong to one large,
all-embracing unit, such as a factory, government office, or village.
The unit is run by party branch, operates (or should operate) under
common administrative rules and procedures, and reflects the current
policies of the party. The consequence has been that most aspects of
social differentiation, stratification, mobility, and tensions are now
played out within an institutional framework. Most of the questions
about any individual's life and prospects can be answered by specifying
the unit--the social cell--with which that individual is associated.
China - SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION
Although much of the social structure of modern China can be
interpreted as reflecting basic drives for security and equality,
qualities in short supply before 1950, not all organizations and units
are alike or equal. There are four major axes of social differentiation
in modern China. To some extent they overlap and reinforce each other,
but each rests on distinct and separate grounds.
The Work Place
Work units (danwei) belong to the state or to collectives.
State-owned units, typically administrative offices, research
institutes, and large factories, offer lifetime security, stable
salaries, and benefits that include pensions and free health care.
Collectives include the entire agricultural sector and many small-scale
factories, repair shops, and village- or township-run factories,
workshops, or service enterprises. Employees on the state payroll enjoy
the best benefits modern China has to offer. The incomes of those in the
collective sector are usually lower and depend on the performance of the
enterprise. They generally lack health benefits or pensions, and the
collective units usually do not provide housing or child-care
facilities. In 1981 collective enterprises employed about 40 percent of
the nonagricultural labor force, and most of the growth of employment
since 1980 has come in this sector. Even though the growth since 1980 of
individual businesses and small private enterprises, such as restaurants
and repair services, has provided some individuals with substantial cash
incomes, employment in the state sector remains most people's first
choice. This reflects the public's recognition of that sector's superior
material benefits as well as the traditional high prestige of government
service.
"Security and equality" have been high priorities in modern
China and have usually been offered within single work units. Because
there is no nationwide insurance or social security system and because
the income of work units varies, the actual level of benefits and the
degree of equality (of incomes, housing, or opportunities for
advancement) depend on the particular work unit with which individuals
are affiliated. Work units are responsible for chronic invalids or old
people without families, as well as for families confronted with the
severe illness or injury of the breadwinner. Equality has always been
sought within work units (so that all factory workers, for example,
received the same basic wage, or members of a collective farm the same
share of the harvest), and distinctions among units have not been
publicly acknowledged. During the Cultural Revolution, however, great
stress was placed on equality in an abstract or general sense and on its
symbolic acting out. Administrators and intellectuals were compelled to
do manual labor, and the uneducated and unskilled were held up as
examples of revolutionary virtue.
In the mid-1980s many people on the lower fringes of administration
were not on the state payroll, and it was at this broad, lower level
that the distinction between government employees and nongovernment
workers assumed the greatest importance. In the countryside, village
heads were collectivesector workers, as were the teachers in village
primary schools, while workers for township governments (and for all
levels above them) and teachers in middle schools and universities were
state employees. In the armed forces, the rank and file who served a
three- to five-year enlistment at very low pay were considered citizens
serving their military obligation rather than state employees. Officers,
however, were state employees, and that distinction was far more
significant than their rank. The distinction between state and
collective-sector employment was one of the first things considered when
people tried to find jobs for their children or a suitable marriage
partner.
Communist Party Membership
Every unit in China, from the villages through the armed forces, is
run by the party, which has a monopoly on political power. Party members
are in a sense the heirs of the traditional gentry. They are a
power-holding elite, dispersed over the whole country, and serve as
intermediaries between their own communities or units and the nation.
They are recruited from the population at large on universalistic
grounds of "merit," and they claim authority by their mastery
of an ideology that focuses on government and public order. The ideology
is contained in books, and party members are expected to be familiar
with the basic texts, to continue studying them throughout their
careers, and to apply them in concrete situations.
The differences between the traditional elite and the party are
obvious. Party members are supposed to be revolutionaries, be devoted to
changing society rather than restoring it, come from and represent the
peasants and workers, and be willing to submit themselves totally and
unreservedly to the party. On the whole, party members are distinctly
less bookish and more militaryoriented and outwardly egalitarian than
traditional elites. Party members have been preferentially recruited
from the poor peasantry of the interior, from the army, and from the
ranks of industrial workers; intellectuals have usually found it
difficult to enter the party. The party is represented in every village
and every large or medium-sized enterprise in the country. The scope of
its actions and concerns is much greater than that of its traditional
predecessors.
Relatively speaking, there are more party members than there were
traditional gentry. In 1986 the Chinese Communist Party had 44 million
members in 2.6 million local party branches. This meant that about 8
percent of China's adult population belonged to the party. Not all party
members hold state jobs: some hold village and township-level positions,
and many armed forces enlisted personnel join the party during their
service. (Indeed, a chance to join the party has been one of the major
attractions of military service for peasant youth.)
Party members direct all enterprises and institutions and dominate
public life and discussion. Anyone with ambitions to do more than his or
her daily job or work in a narrow professional specialty must join the
party. Membership is selective, and candidates must demonstrate their
zeal, devotion to party principles, and willingness to make a total
commitment to the party. Ideally, membership is a complete way of life,
not a job, and selection for membership depends more on assessment of an
individual's total personality and "moral" character than on
specific qualifications or technical skills. While this could probably
be said of all communist parties, Chinese Communist Party members
certainly mirror China's traditional mandarins, who were political
generalists rather than technical specialists. Party members are the
intermediaries who link enterprises and communities with high-level
structures, and they can belong to more than one organization, such as a
factory and a municipal party body. Party membership is virtually a
requirement for upward mobility or for opportunities to leave one's
original work unit.
Urban-Rural Distinctions
In modern China, legal distinction is made between urban and rural
dwellers, and movement from rural to urban status is difficult. Urban
life is felt to be far preferable, and living standards and
opportunities for such advantages as education are much better in the
cities. This firm and absolute distinction, which had no precedent in
traditional society, is the result of a set of administrative decisions
and policies that have had major, if unintended, consequences for social
organization. Modern Chinese society has been marked by an extraordinary
degree of residential immobility, and internal migration and population
movement have been limited by state control. For most of the period
since 1958, there has been no legal way to move out of villages or from
small cities to large cities. Although people have not inherited estates
and private property, they have inherited rural or urban status, which
has been a major determinant of living standards and life chances.
China's cities grew rapidly in the early and mid-1950s as rural
people moved in to take advantage of the employment opportunities
generated by economic growth and the expansion of heavy industry. The
authorities became alarmed at this influx, both because of the cost of
providing urban services (food supply, waste disposal) and because of
the potential problems of unemployed or semi-employed migrants creating
squatter settlements. Additionally, Chinese leaders held a certain
anti-urban bias and tended to regard China's cities as unproductive.
They accused city residents of living off the countryside and indulging
in luxury consumption. Extolling large, smoking factories, they sought
to engage the population in the manufacture of utilitarian commodities,
like steel or trucks. The authorities demonstrated their bias against
commerce and service trades by closing down many shops and markets.
Since 1958 they have employed household registration and food rationing
systems to control urban growth and general migration .
In the 1980s the distinction between urban and rural status grew
mainly out of the food distribution and rationing system. Rural
registrants were assumed to be growing their own staple foods, and there
was no provision for state allocation of grain to them. The state
monopolized the trade in grain; it collected grain in the countryside as
a tax or as compulsory purchase and used it to supply its functionaries
and the urban population. Urban status entitled one to purchase an
allotment of grain, oil, and various other staple items. These were
rationed, and a ration coupon as well as money was necessary to obtain
grain legally. Ration coupons were good only in their own localities.
The rationing system served several purposes. They included the fair
distribution of scarce goods, prevention of private speculation in
staple foods, and residence control. In addition, the police in cities
kept household registration records and could make unannounced
inspections, usually at night, looking for people who did not have legal
permission to reside in a city. The controls have not been foolproof and
have worked more effectively in times of shortages and strict political
control.
In the 1980s the reasons for the administrative barriers around
cities were fairly straightforward. Incomes and living standards in
China's cities are two to three times higher than in the countryside. In
addition, more urban dwellers have secure state jobs with their
associated benefits. State investment has been concentrated in heavy
industry, mostly urban, and agriculture and the rural sector have been
left to their own devices, after meeting their tax obligations. The
ironic consequence of a rural and peasant-based revolution has been a
system that has acted, intentionally or not, to increase the social and
economic gap between country and city.
Regional Distinctions
Regional distinctions in ways of life and standards of living were
marked in traditional China and continue to have a strong influence on
contemporary Chinese society. China's size, poorly developed
transportation system, and state controls on migration mean that
regional differences in income and in life chances remain large.
Contemporary Chinese commentary, while certainly explicit on the role of
class, has tended to ignore regional variation. This may reflect the
characteristic emphasis on Chinese unity and uniformity, as well as the
difficulty of fitting regional analysis into a Marxist framework.
Nevertheless, both geographical position and a community's position in
administrative and regional hierarchies act to limit income from
sideline occupations, cash crops, village industries, and even such
matters as marriage choices.
Incomes and educational standards in the 1980s were highest in the
productive lower Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) Valley and central
Guangdong Province regions and lowest in the semi-arid highlands of the
northwest and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, as they had been since the
late nineteenth century. The lowest incomes and living standards were in
the peripheral areas inhabited by minority nationalities. Within all
regions, there were distinctions between urban cores, intermediate
areas, and peripheries. Villages on the outskirts of major cities had
more opportunities for production of cash crops such as vegetables, more
opportunities in sideline occupations or subcontracting for urban
factories, and easier access to urban services and amenities. Higher
village incomes were reflected in better housing, higher school
attendance, wellappointed village meeting halls, and a high level of
farm and domestic mechanization. For settlements on the periphery,
however, even if only a short distance from urban centers,
transportation was difficult. Such settlements had changed little in
appearance since the 1950s and devoted most of their land and work force
to growing staple grains. Many children in these villages dropped out of
school before completing primary education, as physical strength and
endurance were more highly regarded than book learning.
There is clearly a degree of overlap in the four fields of social
differentiation (work units, party membership, urban-rural distinctions,
and regional distinctions). The top of the hierarchy is occupied by
those who work in state organizations, belong to the party, live in a
major city, and inhabit a prosperous region. Correspondingly, the least
favored inhabitants are peasants whose villages are located in the
remote parts of poor regions. What is most impressive about social
differentiation in modern China is the extent to which key variables
such as region and rural or urban status are ascribed, and not easily
changed by individual effort. This is the negative side of the security
and stability that attracted China's populace to the party and its
programs.
China - COMMON SOCIAL PATTERNS
The cellular structure of contemporary Chinese society and the
Chinese Communist Party's single-party rule mean that almost all social
organizations share common characteristics. The same general description
(an all-embracing social unit, whose members are assigned to it for life
and which is organized on bureaucratic principles, subordinate to higher
administrative levels, and managed by a branch of the party) applies to
villages, schools, administrative offices, factories, or army units. All
of these are work units.
Work Units
In some ways, Chinese work units (danwei) resemble the
large-scale bureaucratic organizations that employ most people in
economically developed societies. The unit is functionally specialized,
producing a single product or service, and is internally organized into
functional departments, with employees classified and rewarded according
to their work skills. Professional managers run the organization,
enforce internal regulations and work rules, and negotiate with other
work units and administrative superiors.
Chinese work units, however, have many distinctive qualities. Workers
usually belong to the same unit for their entire working life. The
degree of commitment to the unit and the extent to which the unit
affects many aspects of the individual worker's life have no parallel in
other societies. Chinese work units are highly corporate, closed,
permanent, and all-embracing groups. In most cases, people are either
born into their units (villages count as units) or are assigned to them
when they enter the work force.
Units supply their members with much more than a wage. Housing in the
cities is usually controlled and assigned by work units. Consequently,
one's neighbors are often one's workmates. If childcare facilities are
available, they will most often be provided by the work unit. Recreation
facilities will be provided by the work unit. Political study is carried
out with one's workmates. In the cities many people meet prospective
spouses either at work or through the introduction of fellow workers.
For most people, social mobility takes the form of working their way up
within the organization.
If goods are in short supply, they will be rationed through work
units. This was the case with bicycles and sewing machines in the 1970s.
The same can apply to babies. As part of China's planned birth policy,
unit supervisors monitor the fertility of married women and may decide
whose turn it is to have a baby. At the other end of the life cycle,
pensions and funeral expenses are provided by work units. Travel to
another city usually requires the written permission of one's work unit
before a ticket can be purchased or food coupons for one's destination
issued. Every unit is managed by party members, who are responsible for
personnel matters. Outside the farm sector, a written dossier is kept
for every member of a unit. Units are often physically distinct,
occupying walled compounds whose exits are monitored by gatekeepers. The
unit is thus a total community, if not a total institution, and unit
membership is the single most significant aspect of individual identity
in contemporary China.
Since the 1950s the individual's political life too has been centered
in the work unit. Political campaigns have meant endless meetings and
rallies within the unit, and when individuals were to be criticized or
condemned for political deviation or bad class origins, it was done
within the work unit, by fellow workers. In the post-Mao Zedong era,
many people were working side by side with others whom they had publicly
condemned, humiliated, or physically beaten fifteen or twenty years
before. Much of the quality of life within a unit derives from the
long-term nature of membership and human relations and from the
impossibility of leaving. Members seem most often to aim for affable but
somewhat distant ties of "comradeship" with each other,
reserving intimate friendships for a few whom they have known since
childhood or schooldays.
The work-unit system, with its lifetime membership--sometimes
referred to as the "iron rice bowl"--and lack of job mobility,
is unique to contemporary China. It was developed during the 1950s and
early 1960s with little discussion or publicity. Its origins are
obscure; it most likely arose through the efforts of party cadres whose
background was rural and whose experience was largely in the army and in
the disciplined and all-embracing life of party branches.
The special characteristics of the Chinese work unit--such as its
control over the work and lives of its members and its strict
subordination to administrative superiors who control the resources
necessary to its operation--make the unit an insular, closed entity.
Units are subject to various administrative hierarchies; reports go up
and orders come down. The Chinese Communist Party, as a nationwide body,
links all units and, in theory, monopolizes channels of communication
and command. Vertical, command relations seem to work quite effectively,
and the degree of local compliance with the orders of superior bodies is
impressive. Conversely, horizontal relations with other units are often
weak and tenuous, presenting a problem especially for the economy.
Wages and Benefits
Much of any worker's total compensation (wages, benefits, and
official and unofficial perquisites) is determined by membership in a
particular work unit. There is considerable variation in the benefits
associated with different work units. Although the wage structure is
quite egalitarian when compared with those of other countries, wages are
only part of the picture. Many of the limited goods available in China
cannot be bought for money. Rather, they are available only to certain
favored work units. Housing is an obvious example. Many collective
enterprises may have no housing at all or offer only rudimentary
dormitories for young, unmarried workers.
High-level administrative cadres and military officers may earn three
or four times more than ordinary workers; in addition, the government
often grants them superior housing, the unlimited use of official
automobiles and drivers, access to the best medical care in the country,
opportunities for travel and vacations, and the right to purchase rare
consumer goods either at elite shops or through special channels.
Although China is a socialist state, it is not exactly a welfare state.
Pensions, medical benefits, and survivors' benefits are provided through
work units and come out of the unit's budget. The amount and nature of
benefits may vary from unit to unit. The state, through local government
bodies, does provide some minimal welfare benefits, but only to those
with no unit benefits or family members able to support them.
Retirees who have put in twenty-five or thirty years in a state-run
factory or a central government office can expect a steady pension, most
often at about 70 percent of their salary, and often continue to live in
unit housing, especially if they have no grown children with whom they
can live. In many cases, workers have been able to retire and have their
children replace them. In other cases, some large state enterprises have
started smaller sideline or subcontracting enterprises specifically to
provide employment for the grown children of their workers. In contrast,
peasants and those employed in collective enterprises generally receive
no pensions and must depend on family members for support.
Informal Mechanisms of Exchange
In China formal exchanges of everything from goods and services to
information are expected to go through official channels, under the
supervision of bureaucrats. Administrative channels, however, are widely
acknowledged to be inadequate and subject to inordinate delays. People
respond by using and developing informal mechanisms of exchange and
coordination. The most general term for such informal relations is guanxi
(personal connections). Such ties are the affair of individuals rather
than institutions and depend on the mutually beneficial exchange of
favors, services, introductions, and so on. In China such ties are
created or cultivated through invitations to meals and presentation of
gifts.
Personal relations are morally and legally ambiguous, existing in a
gray and ill-defined zone. In some cases, personal connections involve
corruption and favoritism, as when powerful cadres "go through the
back door" to win admission to college or university for their
children or to place their relatives or clients in secure, state-sector
jobs. In other cases, though, the use of such contacts is absolutely
necessary for the survival of enterprises. Most Chinese factories, for
example, employ full-time "purchasing agents," whose task is
to procure essential supplies that are not available through the
cumbersome state allocation system. As the economic reforms of the early
1980s have expanded the scope of market exchanges and the ability of
enterprises to make their own decisions on what to produce, the role of
brokers and agents of all sorts has expanded. In the countryside,
village and township cadres often act as brokers, finding markets for
the commodities produced by specialized farming households and tracking
down scarce inputs, such as fertilizer or fuel or spare parts for
agricultural machinery.
Although the form and operation of guanxi networks clearly
has traditional roots, as well as parallels in overseas Chinese
societies and in Hong Kong and Taiwan, they are not simply inheritances
or holdovers from the traditional past. Personal connections and
informal exchanges are a basic part of modern Chinese society, are
essential to its regular functioning, and are in many ways a response to
the specific political and economic structures of that society. They
thrive in the absence of formal, public, and overt means of exchange and
may be considered a response to scarcity and to blocked official
channels of communication. In modern China, those with the most
extensive networks of personal connections are cadres and party members,
who have both the opportunity to meet people outside their work units
and the power to do favors.
China - RURAL SOCIETY
In past Chinese society, the family provided every individual's
support, livelihood, and long-term security. Today the state guarantees
such security to those with no families to provide for them, and
families and work units share long-term responsibility for the
individual. The role of families has changed, but they remain important,
especially in the countryside. Family members are bound, in law and
custom, to support their aged or disabled members. The state, acting
through work units, provides support and benefits only when families
cannot. Households routinely pool income, and any individual's standard
of living depends on the number of household wage earners and the number
of dependents. In both cities and villages, the highest incomes usually
are earned by households with several wage earners, such as unmarried
adult sons or daughters.
In late traditional society, family size and structural complexity
varied directly with class. Rural landlords and government officials had
the largest families, poor peasants the smallest. The poorest segment of
the population, landless laborers, could not afford to marry and start
families. The need to provide for old age and the general association
between the numbers of sons surviving to adulthood and long-term family
success motivated individuals to create various nonstandard family
forms. Couples who produced no sons, or no children at all, adopted or
purchased infants outright. Families with daughters but no sons tried to
find men willing to marry their daughters and move into their families,
abandoning their original families and sometimes even their original
surnames. Families with daughters but no property to attract a
son-in-law were sometimes forced to sell their daughters as concubines
or prostitutes. The variation in family size and complexity was the
result of variation in class position and of the dual role of the
household as both family and economic enterprise.
In contemporary society, rural families no longer own land or pass it
down to the next generation. They may, however, own and transmit houses.
Rural families pay medical expenses and school fees for their children.
Under the people's commune system in force from 1958 to 1982, the income
of a peasant family depended directly on the number of laborers it
contributed to the collective fields. This, combined with concern over
the level of support for the aged or disabled provided by the collective
unit, encouraged peasants to have many sons. Under the agricultural
reforms that began in the late 1970s, households took on an increased
and more responsible economic role. The labor of family members is still
the primary determinant of income. But rural economic growth and
commercialization increasingly have rewarded managerial and technical
skills and have made unskilled farm labor less desirable. As long as
this economic trend continues in the countryside in the late 1980s,
peasant families are likely to opt for fewer but better educated
children.
The consequence of the general changes in China's economy and the
greater separation of families and economic enterprises has been a
greater standardization of family forms since 1950. In 1987 most
families approximated the middle peasant (a peasant owning some land)
norm of the past. Such a family consisted of five or six people and was
based on marriage between an adult son and an adult woman who moved into
her husband's family. The variant family forms--either the very large
and complex or those based on minor, nonstandard forms of marriage--were
much less common. The state had outlawed concubinage, child betrothal,
and the sale of infants or females, all of which were formerly
practiced, though not common. Increased life expectancy meant that a
greater proportion of infants survived to adulthood and that more adults
lived into their sixties or seventies. More rural families were able to
achieve the traditional goal of a three-generation family in the 1980s.
There were fewer orphans and young or middle-aged widows or widowers.
Far fewer men were forced to retain lifelong single status. Divorce,
although possible, was rare, and families were stable, on-going units.
A number of traditional attitudes toward the family have survived
without being questioned. It is taken for granted that everyone should
marry, and marriage remains part of the definition of normal adult
status. Marriage is expected to be permanent. That marriage requires a
woman to move into her husband's family and to become a daughter-in-law
as well as a wife is still largely accepted. The norm of patrilineal
descent and the assumption that it is sons who bear the primary
responsibility for their aged parents remain. The party and government
have devoted great effort to controlling the number of births and have
attempted to limit the number of children per couple. But the authorities have not attempted to
control population growth by suggesting that some people should not
marry at all.
In the past, kinship principles were extended beyond the domestic
group and were used to form large-scale groups, such as lineages.
Lineages were quite distinct from families; they were essentially
corporate economic-political groups. They controlled land and, in some
areas of China, dominated whole villages and sets of villages and held
title to most of the farmland. Like most other late traditional
associations, lineages were dominated by wealthy and educated elites.
Ordinary peasants paid as much of their crop to their lineage group as
they might have to a landlord. The Communists denounced these
organizations as feudal systems by means of which landlords exploited
others. The lineages were suppressed in the early 1950s and their land
confiscated and redistributed in the land reform. Communal worship of
distant lineage ancestors lost much of its justification with the
dissolution of the lineage estate and was easily suppressed over the
next several years. Domestic ancestor worship, in which members of a
single family worshiped and memorialized their immediate ancestors,
continued at least until 1966 and 1967, in the early stages of the
Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards destroyed altars and ancestral
tablets. In 1987 the party was still condemning ancestor worship as
superstitious but had made little effort to end it.
China - Marriage
Most rural Chinese live in one of some 900,000 villages, which have
an average population of from 1,000 to 2,000 people. Villages have never
been self-contained, self-sufficient units, and the social world of
Chinese peasants has extended beyond their home villages. Almost all new
wives come into a village from other settlements, and daughters marry
out. All villagers have close kinship ties with families in other
villages, and marriage gobetweens shuttle from village to village.
Before 1950 clusters of villages centered on small market towns that
linked them to the wider economy and society. Most peasants were only a
few hours' walk or less from a market town, which provided not only
opportunities to buy and sell but also opportunities for entertainment,
information, social life, and a host of specialized services. The
villages around a market formed a social unit that, although less
immediately visible than the villages, was equally significant.
From the early 1950s on, China's revolutionary government made great
efforts to put the state and its ideology into direct contact with the
villages and to sweep aside the intermediaries and brokers who had
traditionally interpreted central policies and national values for
villagers. The state and the party were generally successful,
establishing unprecedented degrees of political and ideological
integration of villages into the state and of villagelevel awareness of
state policies and political goals.
The unintended consequence of the economic and political policies of
the 1950s and 1960s was to increase the closed, corporate quality of
China's villages and to narrow the social horizons of villagers. Land
reform and the reorganization of villages as subunits of people's
communes meant that villages became collective landholding units and had
clear boundaries between their lands and those of adjacent villages.
Central direction of labor on collective fields made the former
practices of swapping labor between villages impossible. The household
registration and rationing systems confined villagers to their home
settlements and made it impossible for them to seek their fortune
elsewhere. Cooperation with fellow villagers and good relations with
village leaders became even more important than they had been in the
past. The suppression of rural markets, which accompanied the drive for
self-sufficiency in grain production and other economic activities, had
severe social as well as economic consequences. Most peasants had
neither reason nor opportunity for regular trips to town, and their
opportunities for exchange and cooperation with residents of other
villages were diminished. Villages became work units, with all that that
implied.
Decollectivization in the early 1980s resulted in the revival of
rural marketing, and a limited relaxation of controls on outmigration
opened villages and diminished the social boundaries around them. The
social world of peasants expanded, and the larger marketing community
took on more significance as that of the village proper was diminished.
Village membership, once the single most important determinant of an
individual's circumstances, became only one of a number of significant
factors, which also included occupation, personal connections, and
managerial talent.
China - URBAN SOCIETY
There is considerable confusion in both Chinese and foreign sources
over definitions of urban places and hence considerable variation in
estimates of China's urban population. The problem of determining the
size of the urban population reflects inconsistent and changing
administrative categories; the distinction between rural and urban
household registry and between categories of settlements; the practice
of placing suburban or rural districts under the administration of
municipal governments; and the differences in the status accorded to
small towns. In sociological terms, urban refers to an area
characterized by a relatively high degree of specialization in
occupational roles, many special-purpose institutions, and uniform
treatment of people in impersonal settings. In this sense, a Chinese
market town is more urban than a village, and settlements become more
urban as they grow in size and economic complexity. Special
municipalities like Beijing and Shanghai have the highest degree of
division of labor and the most specialized institutions.
Distinctive Features
Legal status as an urban dweller in China is prized. As a result of
various state policies and practices, contemporary Chinese urban society
has a distinctive character, and life in Chinese cities differs in many
ways from that in cities in otherwise comparable developing societies.
The most consequential policies have been the household registration
system, the legal barriers to migration, the fostering of the
allembracing work unit, and the restriction of commerce and markets,
including the housing market. In many ways, the weight of official
control and supervision is felt more in the cities, whose administrators
are concerned with controlling the population and do so through a dual
administrative hierarchy. The two principles on which these control
structures are based are locality and occupation. Household registers
are maintained by the police, whose presence is much stronger in the
cities than in the countryside. Cities are subdivided into districts,
wards, and finally into small units of some fifteen to thirty
households, such as all those in one apartment building or on a small
lane. For those employed in large organizations, the work unit either is
coterminous with the residential unit or takes precedence over it; for
those employed in small collective enterprises or neighborhood shops,
the residential committee is their unit of registration and provides a
range of services.
The control of housing by work units and local governments and the
absence of a housing market have led to a high degree of residential
stability. Most urban residents have spent decades in the same house or
apartment. For this reason, urban neighborhoods are closely knit, which
in turn contributes to the generally low level of crime in Chinese
cities.
Since the early 1950s, the party leadership has consistently made
rapid industrialization a primary goal and, to this end, has generally
favored investment in heavy industry over consumption. For cities, these
policies have meant an expansion of factories and industrial employment,
along with a very low level of spending in such
"nonproductive" areas as housing or urban transit systems. The
emphasis on production, and heavy industry and the discouragement of
consumption and exchange, along with state takeovers of commerce and the
service sector, led to cities having many factories but no peddlers,
snack stalls, or entertainment districts. In the 1950s and early 1960s,
major efforts were made to bring women into the paid labor force. This
served the goals of increasing production and achieving sexual equality
through equal participation in productive labor, a classic Marxist
remedy for sexual inequality. By 1987 almost all young and middle-aged
women in the cities worked outside the home.
Chinese cities, in contrast to those in many developing countries,
contain a high proportion of workers in factories and offices and a low
proportion of workers in the service sector. Workers enjoy a high level
of job security but receive low wages. Between 1963 and 1977 most wages
were frozen, and promotions and raises were very rare. Even with the
restoration of material incentives in the late 1970s, two general wage
raises in the 1980s, and increased opportunities for bonuses and
promotions, wages remained low and increased primarily with seniority.
As in most parts of the world, one reason that so many Chinese urban
women are in the work force is that one income is not enough to support
a family.
In the 1980s it was possible to purchase such consumer durables as
television sets and bicycles on the market, but housing remained scarce
and subject to allocation by work units or municipal housing bureaus.
Although housing was poor and crowded, Chinese neighborhoods had
improved greatly over the slum conditions that existed before 1950. Most
people were gainfully employed at secure if low-paying jobs; the
municipal government provided a minimal level of services and utilities
(water and sanitation); the streets were fairly clean and orderly; and
the crime rate was low.
<>Housing
Cities, by definition, are places with a high degree of occupational
specialization and division of labor. They are places offering their
inhabitants a range of occupational choice and also, to the degree that
some occupations are seen as better than others, competition for the
better occupations. Cities also provide the training for specialized
occupations, either in schools or on the job.
In China there is a cultural pattern stressing individual achievement
and upward mobility. These are best attained through formal education
and are bound up with the mutual expectations and obligations of parents
and children. There is also a social structure in which a single,
bureaucratic framework defines desirable positions, that is, managerial
or professional jobs in the state sector or secure jobs in state
factories. Banned migration, lifetime employment, egalitarian wage
structures, and the insular nature of work units were intended by the
state, at least in part, to curtail individual competition.
Nevertheless, some jobs are still seen as preferable to others, and it
is urbanites and their children who have the greatest opportunities to
compete for scarce jobs. The question for most families is how
individuals are selected and allocated to those positions. The lifetime
tenure of most jobs and the firm control of job allocation by the party
make these central issues for parents in the favored groups and for
local authorities and party organizations.
Between the early 1950s and mid-1980s, policies on recruitment of
personnel and their allocation to desirable jobs changed several times.
As the costs and drawbacks of each method became apparent, pressure
mounted to change the policy. In the early and mid-1950s, the problem
was not acute. State offices were expanding rapidly, and there were more
positions than people qualified to fill them. Peasants moved into cities
and found employment in the expanding industrial sector. Most of those
who staffed the new bureaucratic sectors were young and would not begin
to retire until the 1980s and 1990s. Those who graduated from secondary
schools or universities, however, or were discharged from the armed
forces in the late 1950s and early 1960s found few jobs of the sort they
were qualified for or had expected to hold.
Attempts to manage the competition for secure jobs were among the
many causes of the radical, utopian policies of the period from 1962 to
1976. Among these, the administrative barriers erected between cities
and countryside and the confinement of peasants and their children to
their villages served to diminish competition and perhaps to lower
unrealistic expectations. Wage freezes and the rationing of both staples
and scarce consumer goods in cities attempted to diminish stratification
and hence competition. The focusing of attention on the sufferings and
egalitarian communal traditions of the past, which was so prominent in
Maoist rhetoric and replaced the future orientation of the 1950s, in
part diverted attention from frustrations with the present. Tensions
were most acute within the education system, which served, as it does in
most societies, to sort children and select those who would go on to
managerial and professional jobs. It was for this reason that the
Cultural Revolution focused so negatively on the education system.
Because of the rising competition in the schools and for the jobs to
which schooling could lead, it became increasingly evident that those
who did best in school were the children of the "bourgeoisie"
and urban professional groups rather than the children of workers and
peasants.
Cultural Revolution-era policies responded with public deprecation of
schooling and expertise, including closing of all schools for a year or
more and of universities for nearly a decade, exaltation of on-the-job
training and of political motivation over expertise, and preferential
treatment for workers and peasant youth. Educated urban youth, most of
whom came from "bourgeois" families, were persuaded or coerced
to settle in the countryside, often in remote frontier districts.
Because there were no jobs in the cities, the party expected urban youth
to apply their education in the countryside as primary school teachers,
production team accountants, or barefoot doctors; many did manual labor.
The policy was intensely unpopular, not only with urban parents and
youth but also with peasants and was dropped soon after the fall of the
Gang of Four in late 1976. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, many
of the youth who had been sent down to the countryside managed to make
their way back to the cities, where they had neither jobs nor ration
books. By the mid1980s most of them had found jobs in the newly expanded
service sector.
In terms of creating jobs and mollifying urban parents, the 1980s
policies on urban employment have been quite successful. The jobs in
many cases are not the sort that educated young people or their parents
would choose, but they are considerably better than a lifelong
assignment to remote frontier areas.
The Maoist policies on education and job assignment were successful
in preventing a great many urban "bourgeois" parents from
passing their favored social status on to their children. This reform,
however, came at great cost to the economy and to the prestige and
authority of the party itself.
China - Examinations, Hereditary Transmission of Jobs, and Connections
Traditional Chinese society was male-centered. Sons were preferred to
daughters, and women were expected to be subordinate to fathers,
husbands, and sons. A young woman had little voice in the decision on
her marriage partner (neither did a young man). When married, it was she
who left her natal family and community and went to live in a family and
community of strangers where she was subordinate to her mother-in-law.
Far fewer women were educated than men, and sketchy but consistent
demographic evidence would seem to show that female infants and children
had higher death rates and less chance of surviving to adulthood than
males. In extreme cases, female infants were the victims of infanticide,
and daughters were sold, as chattels, to brothels or to wealthy
families. Bound feet, which were customary even for peasant women,
symbolized the painful constraints of the female role.
Protests and concerted efforts to alter women's place in society
began in China's coastal cities in the early years of the twentieth
century. By the 1920s formal acceptance of female equality was common
among urban intellectuals. Increasing numbers of girls attended schools,
and young secondary school and college students approved of marriages
based on free choice. Footbinding declined rapidly in the second decade
of the century, the object of a nationwide campaign led by intellectuals
who associated it with national backwardness.
Nevertheless, while party leaders condemned the oppression and
subordination of women as one more aspect of the traditional society
they were intent on changing, they did not accord feminist issues very
high priority. In the villages, party members were interested in winning
the loyalty and cooperation of poor and lower-middle-class male
peasants, who could be expected to resist public criticism of their
treatment of their wives and daughters. Many party members were poor and
lower-middle-class peasants from the interior, and their attitudes
toward women reflected their background. The party saw the liberation of
women as depending, in a standard Marxist way, on their participation in
the labor force outside the household.
The position of women in contemporary society has changed from the
past, and public verbal assent to propositions about the equality of the
sexes and of sons and daughters seems universal. Women attend schools
and universities, serve in the People's Liberation Army, and join the
party. Almost all urban women and the majority of rural women work
outside the home. But women remain disadvantaged in many ways, economic
and social, and there seems no prospect for substantive change.
The greatest change in women's status has been their movement into
the paid labor force. The jobs they held in the 1980s, though, were
generally lower paying and less desirable than those of men. Industries
staffed largely by women, such as the textiles industry, paid lower
wages than those staffed by men, such as the steel or mining industries.
Women were disproportionately represented in collective enterprises,
which paid lower wages and offered fewer benefits than state-owned
industries. In the countryside, the work of males was consistently
better rewarded than that of women, and most skilled and desirable jobs,
such as driving trucks or repairing machines, were held by men. In
addition, Chinese women suffered the familiar double burden of full-time
wage work and most of the household chores as well.
As there come to be both more opportunities and more explicit
competition for them in both city and countryside, there are some hints
of women's being excluded from the competition. In the countryside, a
disproportionate number of girls drop out of primary school because
parents do not see the point of educating a daughter who will marry and
leave the family and because they need her labor in the home. There are
fewer female students in key rural and urban secondary schools and
universities. As economic growth in rural areas generates new and
potentially lucrative jobs, there is a tendency in at least some areas
for women to be relegated to agricultural labor, which is poorly
rewarded. There have been reports in the Chinese press of outright
discrimination against women in hiring for urban jobs and of enterprises
requiring female applicants to score higher than males on examinations
for hiring.
On the whole, in the 1980s women were better off than their
counterparts 50 or a 100 years before, and they had full legal equality
with men. In practice, their opportunities and rewards were not entirely
equal, and they tended to get less desirable jobs and to retain the
burden of domestic chores in addition to fulltime jobs.
China - RELIGION
Traditionally, China's Confucian elite disparaged religion and
religious practitioners, and the state suppressed or controlled
organized religious groups. The social status of Buddhist monks and
Taoist priests was low, and ordinary people did not generally look up to
them as models. In the past, religion was diffused throughout the
society, a matter as much of practice as of belief, and had a weak
institutional structure. Essentially the same pattern continues in
contemporary society, except that the ruling elite is even less
religious and there are even fewer religious practitioners.
The attitude of the party has been that religion is a relic of the
past, evidence of prescientific thinking, and something that will fade
away as people become educated and acquire a scientific view of the
world. On the whole, religion has not been a major issue. Cadres and
party members, in ways very similar to those of Confucian elites, tend
to regard many religious practitioners as charlatans out to take
advantage of credulous people, who need protection. In the 1950s many
Buddhist monks were returned to secular life, and monasteries and
temples lost their lands in the land reform. Foreign missionaries were
expelled, often after being accused of spying, and Chinese Christians,
who made up only a very small proportion of the population, were the
objects of suspicion because of their foreign contacts. Chinese
Christian organizations were established, one for Protestants and one
for Roman Catholics, which stressed that their members were loyal to the
state and party. Seminaries were established to train
"patriotic" Chinese clergy, and the Chinese Catholic Church
rejected the authority of the Vatican, ordaining its own priests and
installing its own bishops. The issue in all cases, whether involving
Christians, Buddhists, or members of underground Chinese sects, was not
so much doctrine or theology as recognition of the primacy of loyalty to
the state and party. Folk religion was dismissed as superstition.
Temples were for the most part converted to other uses, and public
celebration of communal festivals stopped, but the state did not put
much energy into suppressing folk religion.
During the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, in 1966 and 1967,
Red Guards destroyed temples, statues, and domestic ancestral tablets as
part of their violent assault on the "four olds" (old ideas,
culture, customs, and habits). Public observances of ritual essentially
halted during the Cultural Revolution decade. After 1978, the year
marking the return to power of the Deng Xiaoping reformers, the party
and state were more tolerant of the public expression of religion as
long as it remained within carefully defined limits. Some showcase temples
were restored and opened as historical sites, and some Buddhist and even
Taoist practitioners were permitted to wear their robes, train a few
successors, and perform rituals in the reopened temples. These actions
on the part of the state can be interpreted as a confident regime's
recognition of China's traditional past, in the same way that the shrine
at the home of Confucius in Shandong Province has been refurbished and
opened to the public. Confucian and Buddhist doctrines are not seen as a
threat, and the motive is primarily one of nationalistic identification
with China's past civilization.
Similar tolerance and even mild encouragement is accorded to Chinese
Christians, whose churches were reopened starting in the late 1970s. As
of 1987 missionaries were not permitted in China, and some Chinese
Catholic clergy were imprisoned for refusing to recognize the authority
of China's "patriotic" Catholic Church and its bishops.
The most important result of state toleration of religion has been
improved relations with China's Islamic and Tibetan Buddhist minority
populations. State patronage of Islam and Buddhism also plays a part in
China's foreign relations. Much of traditional ritual and religion
survives or has been revived, especially in the countryside. In the
mid-1980s the official press condemned such activities as wasteful and
reminded rural party members that they should neither participate in nor
lead such events, but it did not make the subject a major issue.
Families could worship their ancestors or traditional gods in the
privacy of their homes but had to make all ritual paraphernalia (incense
sticks, ancestral tablets, and so forth) themselves, as it was no longer
sold in shops. The scale of public celebrations was muted, and full-time
professional clergy played no role. Folk religious festivals were
revived in some localities, and there was occasional rebuilding of
temples and ancestral halls. In rural areas, funerals were the ritual
having the least change, although observances were carried out only by
family members and kin, with no professional clergy in attendance. Such
modest, mostly household-based folk religious activity was largely
irrelevant to the concerns of the authorities, who ignored or tolerated
it.
China - TRENDS AND TENSIONS
By the mid-1980s the pace of social change in China was increasing,
and, more than in any decade since the 1950s, fundamental changes in the
structure of society seemed possible. The ultimate direction of social
changes remained unclear, but social trends and tensions that could
generate social change were evident. These trends were toward greater
specialization and division of labor and toward new, more open and
loosely structured forms of association. The uniform pattern of
organization of work units in agriculture, industry, public
administration, and the military was beginning to shift to an
organization structured to reflect its purpose. Education and technical
qualification were becoming more significant for attaining high status
in villages, industries, the government, or the armed forces.
Opportunities for desirable jobs remained limited, however, and
competition for those jobs or for housing, urban residence, or college
admission was keen.
The primary tension in Chinese society resulted from the value
political leaders and ordinary citizens placed on both the social values
of security and equality and the goals of economic growth and
modernization. China remained a society in which all desired goods were
in short supply, from arable land to secure nonmanual jobs, to a seat on
a city bus. Crowding was normal and pervasive. Competition and open
social strife were restrained by the public belief that scarce goods
were being distributed as equitably as possible and that no individual
or group was being deprived of livelihood or a fair share. In the
mid-1980s Chinese authorities feared that social disorder might result
from popular discontent over price increases or the conspicuous wealth
of small segments of the population, such as free-market traders. The
press frequently condemned the expressions of jealousy and envy that
some people directed at those who were prospering by taking advantage of
the opportunities the reformed economy offered. The rise in living
standards in the 1980s may have contributed to rising expectations that
could not be met without considerably more economic growth.
The tension between security and economic growth was reflected in the
people's attitudes toward the work unit and the degree of control it
exercised over their lives. There was no apparent reason why even a
socialist, planned economy had to organize its work force into closed,
insular, and sometimes nearly hereditary units. People generally liked
the security and benefits provided by their units but disliked many
other aspects of "unit life," such as the prohibition on
changing jobs. Limited surveys in cities indicated that most people were
assigned to work units arbitrarily, without regard to their wishes or
skills, and felt little loyalty toward or identification with their work
units. People adapted to unit life but reserved loyalties for their
families at the one extreme and for the nation and "the
people" at the other.
Rural reforms had essentially abolished the work unit in the
countryside, along with its close control over people's activities.
State and party control over the rural economy and society persisted,
but individuals were accorded more autonomy, and most rural people
seemed to welcome the end of production teams and production brigades.
The success of these rural reforms made modification or even abolition
of work units in the urban and state sectors a possibility.
By the mid-1980s the Chinese press and academic journals were
discussing recruitment and movement of employees among work units.
Although the discussion initially focused on scientists and technicians,
whose talents were often wasted in units where they could not make full
use of them, the questions raised were of general import. Such blocked
mobility was recognized by China's leadership as an impediment to
economic growth, and a "rational" flow of labor was listed as
a goal for reform of the economy and the science and technology system.
But few concrete steps had been taken to promote labor mobility,
although government resolutions granted scientists and technicians the
right to transfer to another unit, subject to the approval of their
original work unit. The issue was politically sensitive, as it touched
on the powers and perquisites of the party and of managers. Managers
often refused permission to leave the unit, even to those scientists and
engineers who had the formal right to apply for a transfer.
Similarly, foreign-funded joint ventures, on which China's government
placed its hopes for technology transfer, found it impossible to hire
the engineers and technicians they needed for high-technology work.
There may have been personnel at other enterprises in the same city
eager to work for the new firm, but there was no way to transfer them.
In 1986 the State Council, in a move that had little immediate effect
but considerable potential, decreed that henceforth state enterprises
would hire people on contracts good for only a few years and that these
contract employees would be free to seek other jobs when their contracts
expired. The contract system did not apply, as of late 1986, to workers
already employed in state enterprises, but it did indicate the direction
in which at least some leaders wished to go.
The fundamental issues of scarcity, equity, and opportunity lay
behind problems of balance and exchange among work units, among the
larger systems of units such as those under one industry ministry, or
between city and country. One of the major goals of the economic reform
program in the mid-1980s was to break down barriers to the exchange of
information, personnel, and goods and services that separated units,
industrial systems, and geographic regions. National-level leaders
decried the waste of scarce resources inherent in the attempts of
industries or administrative divisions to be self-sufficient in as many
areas as possible, in their duplication of research and production, and
in their tendencies to hoard raw materials and skilled workers. Attempts
to break down administrative barriers (such as bans on the sale of
industrial products from other administrative divisions or the refusal
of municipal authorities to permit factories subordinate to national
ministries to collaborate with those subordinate to the municipality)
were often frustrated by the efforts of those organizations that
perceived themselves as advantageously placed to maintain the barriers
and their unduly large share of the limited goods. Economic growth and
development, which accelerated in the 1980s, was giving rise to an
increasingly differentiated economic and occupational structure, within
which some individuals and enterprises succeeded quite well.
Economic reforms in rural areas generated a great income spread among
households, and some geographically favored areas, such as central
Guangdong and southern Jiangsu provinces, experienced more rapid
economic growth than the interior or mountainous areas. The official
position was that while some households were getting rich first, no one
was worse off and that the economy as a whole was growing. Press
commentary, however, indicated a fairly high level of official concern
over public perceptions of growing inequality. The problem confronting
China's leaders was to promote economic growth while retaining public
confidence in society's fundamental equity and fair allocation of
burdens and rewards.
The major question was whether the basic pattern of Chinese society,
a cellular structure of equivalent units coordinated by the ruling
party, would continue with modifications, or whether its costs were such
that it would be replaced by a different and less uniform system. In the
late 1980s, either alternative seemed possible. The outcome would depend
on both political forces and economic pressures. In either case,
balancing individual security with opportunity would remain the
fundamental task of those who direct Chinese society.
China - Education and Culture
To provide for its population, China has a vast and varied school
system. There are preschools, kindergartens, schools for the deaf and
blind, key schools (similar to college preparatory schools), primary
schools, secondary schools (comprising junior and senior middle schools,
secondary agricultural and vocational schools, regular secondary
schools, secondary teachers' schools, secondary technical schools, and
secondary professional schools), and various institutions of higher
learning (consisting of regular colleges and universities, professional
colleges, and short-term vocational universities). In terms of access to
education, China's system represented a pyramid; because of the scarcity
of resources allotted to higher education, student numbers decreased
sharply at the higher levels. Although there were dramatic advances in
primary education after 1949, achievements in secondary and higher
education were not as great.
Although the government has authority over the education system, the
Chinese Communist Party has played a role in managing education since
1949. The party established broad education policies and under Deng
Xiaoping, tied improvements in the quality of education to its
modernization plan. The party also monitored the government's
implementation of its policies at the local level and within educational
institutions through its party committees. Party members within
educational institutions, who often have a leading management role, are
responsible for steering their schools in the direction mandated by
party policy.
New Directions
The May 1985 National Conference on Education recognized five
fundamental areas for reform to be discussed in connection with
implementing the party Central Committee's "Draft Decision on
Reforming the Education System." The reforms were intended to
produce "more able people"; to make the localities responsible
for developing "basic education" and systematically implement
a nine-year compulsory education program; to improve secondary education
develop vocational and technical education; to reform and the
graduate-assignment system of institutions of higher education and to
expand their management and decision-making powers; and to give
administrators the necessary encouragement and authority to ensure
smooth progress in educational reform.
The National Conference on Education paved the way for the abolition
of the Ministry of Education and the establishment of the State
Education Commission, both of which occurred in June 1985. Created to
coordinate education policy, the commission assumed roles previously
played by the State Planning Commission and the Ministry of Education.
As a State Council commission, the new State Education Commission had
greater status than the old Ministry of Education had had and was in
charge of all education organizations except military ones. Although the
State Education Commission assumed a central role in the administration
of education, the reform decentralized much of the power previously
wielded by the Ministry of Education and its constituent offices and
bureaus, which had established curriculum and admissions policies in
response to the State Planning Commission's requirements.
The State Education Commission, with its expanded administrative
scope and power, was responsible for formulating guiding principles for
education, establishing regulations, planning the progress of
educational projects, coordinating the educational programs of different
departments, and standardization educational reforms. Simplification of
administration and delegation of authority were made the bases for
improving the education system. This devolution of management to the
autonomous regions, provinces, and special municipalities meant local
governments had more decision-making power and were able to develop
basic education. State-owned enterprises, mass organizations, and
individuals were encouraged to pool funds to accomplish education
reform. Local authorities used state appropriations and a percentage of
local reserve financial resources (basically township financial
revenues) to finance educational projects.
Compulsory Education Law
The Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education, which took effect July 1,
1986, established requirements and deadlines for attaining universal
education tailored to local conditions and guaranteed school-age
children the right to receive education. People's congresses at various
local levels were, within certain guidelines and according to local
conditions, to decide the steps, methods, and deadlines for implementing
nine-year compulsory education in accordance with the guidelines
formulated by the central authorities. The program sought to bring rural
areas, which had four to six years of compulsory schooling, into line
with their urban counterparts. Education departments were exhorted to
train millions of skilled workers for all trades and professions and to
offer guidelines, curricula, and methods to comply with the reform
program and modernization needs.
Provincial-level authorities were to develop plans, enact decrees and
rules, distribute funds to counties, and administer directly a few key
secondary schools. County authorities were to distribute funds to each
township government, which were to make up any deficiencies. County
authorities were to supervise education and teaching and to manage their
own senior middle schools, teachers' schools, teachers' in-service
training schools, agricultural vocational schools, and exemplary primary
and junior middle schools. The remaining schools were to be managed
separately by the county and township authorities.
The compulsory education law divided China into three categories:
cities and economically developed areas in coastal provinces and a small
number of developed areas in the hinterland; towns and villages with
medium development; and economically backward areas. By November 1985
the first category--the larger cities and approximately 20 percent of
the counties (mainly in the more developed coastal and southeastern
areas of China) had achieved universal 9-year education. By 1990 cities,
economically developed areas in coastal provincial-level units, and a
small number of developed interior areas (approximately 25 percent of
China's population) and areas where junior middle schools were already
popularized were targeted to have universal junior-middle- school
education. Education planners envisioned that by the mid-1990s all
workers and staff in coastal areas, inland cities, and moderately
developed areas (with a combined population of 300 million to 400
million people) would have either compulsory 9-year or vocational
education and that 5 percent of the people in these areas would have a
college education--building a solid intellectual foundation for China.
Further, the planners expected that secondary education and university
entrants would also increase by the year 2000.
The second category targeted under the 9-year compulsory education
law consisted of towns and villages with medium-level development
(around 50 percent of China's population), where universal education was
expected to reach the junior-middle-school level by 1995. Technical and
higher education was projected to develop at the same rate.
The third category, economically backward (rural) areas (around 25
percent of China's population) were to popularize basic education
without a timetable and at various levels according to local economic
development, though the state would "do its best" to support
educational development. The state also would assist education in
minority nationality areas. In the past, rural areas, which lacked a
standardized and universal primary education system, had produced
generations of illiterates; only 60 percent of their primary school
graduates had met established standards.
As a further example of the government's commitment to nine-year
compulsory education, in January 1986 the State Council drafted a bill
passed at the Fourteenth Session of the Standing Committee of the Sixth
National People's Congress that made it illegal for any organization or
individual to employ youths before they had completed their nine years
of schooling. The bill also authorized free education and subsidies for
students whose families had financial difficulties.
Key Schools
"Key schools," shut down during the Cultural Revolution,
reappeared in the late 1970s and, in the early 1980s, became an integral
part of the effort to revive the lapsed education system. Because
educational resources were scarce, selected ("key")
institutions--usually those with records of past educational
accomplishment--were given priority in the assignment of teachers,
equipment, and funds. They also were allowed to recruit the best
students for special training to compete for admission to top schools at
the next level. Key schools constituted only a small percentage of all
regular senior middle schools and funneled the best students into the
best secondary schools, largely on the basis of entrance scores. In 1980
the greatest resources were allocated to the key schools that would
produce the greatest number of college entrants.
In early 1987 efforts had begun to develop the key school from a
preparatory school into a vehicle for diffusing improved curricula,
materials, and teaching practices to local schools. Moreover, the
appropriateness of a key school's role in the nine-year basic education
plan was questioned by some officials because key schools favored urban
areas and the children of more affluent and better educated parents. In
1985 entrance examinations and the key-school system had already been
abolished in Changchun, Shenyang, Shenzhen, Xiamen, and other cities,
and education departments in Shanghai and Tianjin were moving to
establish a student recommendation system and eliminate key schools. In
1986 the Shanghai Educational Bureau abolished the key junior-middle-
school system to ensure "an overall level of education."
China - PRIMARY EDUCATION
Primary Schools
The development of primary education in so vast a country as China
was a formidable accomplishment. In contrast to the 20- percent
enrollment rate before 1949, in 1985 about 96 percent of
primary-school-age children were enrolled in approximately 832,300
primary schools (see table 10, Appendix A). This enrollment figure
compared favorably with the record figures of the late 1960s and early
1970s, when enrollment standards were more egalitarian. In 1985 the
World Bank estimated that enrollments in primary schools would decrease
from 136 million in 1983 to 95 million in the late 1990s and that the
decreased enrollment would reduce the number of teachers needed.
Qualified teachers, however, would continue to be in demand.
Under the Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education, primary schools were
to be tuition-free and reasonably located for the convenience of
children attending them; students would attend primary schools in their
neighborhoods or villages. Parents paid a small fee per term for books
and other expenses such as transportation, food, and heating.
Previously, fees were not considered a deterrent to attendance, although
some parents felt even these minor costs were more than they could
afford. Under the education reform, students from poor families received
stipends, and state enterprises, institutions, and other sectors of
society were encouraged to establish their own schools. A major concern
was that scarce resources be conserved without causing enrollment to
fall and without weakening of the better schools. In particular, local
governments were warned not to pursue middle-school education blindly
while primary school education was still developing, or to wrest money,
teaching staff, and materials from primary schools.
Children usually entered primary school at seven years of age for six
days a week. The two-semester school year consisted of 9.5 months, with
a long vacation in July and August. Urban primary schools typically
divided the school week into twenty-four to twenty-seven classes of
forty-five minutes each, but in the rural areas the norm was half-day
schooling, more flexible schedules, and itinerant teachers. Most primary
schools had a five-year course, except in such cities as Beijing and
Shanghai, which had reintroduced six-year primary schools and accepted
children at six and one-half years rather than seven. The primary-school
curriculum consisted of Chinese, mathematics, physical education, music,
drawing, and elementary instruction in nature, history, and geography,
combined with practical work experiences around the school compound. A
general knowledge of politics and moral training, which stressed love of
the motherland, love of the party, and love of the people (and
previously love of Chairman Mao), was another part of the curriculum. A
foreign language, often English, was introduced in about the third
grade. Chinese and mathematics accounted for about 60 percent of the
scheduled class time; natural science and social science accounted for
about 8 percent. Putonghua (common spoken language, see
Glossary) was taught in regular schools and pinyin romanization in lower
grades and kindergarten. The State Education Commission required that
all primary schools offer courses on communist ideology and morality.
Beginning in the fourth grade, students usually had to perform
productive labor two weeks per semester to relate classwork with
production experience in workshops or on farms and subordinate it to
academic study. Most schools had after-hour activities at least one day
per week--often organized by the Young Pioneers--to involve students in
recreation and community service.
By 1980 the percentage of students enrolled in primary schools was
high, but the schools reported high dropout rates and regional
enrollment gaps (most enrollees were concentrated in the cities). Only
one in four counties had universal primary education. On the average,
10-percent of the students dropped out between each grade. During the
1979-83 period, the government acknowledged the "9-6-3" rule,
that is, that nine of ten children began primary school, six completed
it, and three graduated with good performance. This meant that only
about 60 percent of primary students actually completed their five year
program of study and graduated, and only about 30 percent were regarded
as having primary-level competence. Statistics in the mid-1980s showed
that more rural girls than boys dropped out of school.
Within the framework of the Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education and
the general trend toward vocational and technical skills, attempts were
made to accommodate and correct the gap between urban and rural
education. Urban and key schools almost invariably operated on a six day
full-time schedule to prepare students for further education and
high-level jobs. Rural schools generally operated on a flexible schedule
geared to the needs of the agricultural seasons and sought to prepare
students for adult life and manual labor in lower-skilled jobs. They
also offered a more limited curriculum, often only Chinese, mathematics,
and morals. To promote attendance and allow the class schedule and
academic year to be completed, agricultural seasons were taken into
account. School holidays were moved, school days shortened, and
full-time, half-time, and spare-time classes offered in the slack
agricultural seasons. Sometimes itinerant teachers were hired for
mountain villages and served one village in the morning, another village
in the afternoon.
Rural parents were generally well aware that their children had
limited opportunities to further their education. Some parents saw
little use in having their children attend even primary school,
especially after the establishment of the agricultural responsibility
system. Under that system, parents preferred that their children work to
increase family income--and withdrew them from school--for both long and
short periods of time.
Preschool Education
Preschool education, which began at age three and one-half, was
another target of education reform in 1985. Preschool facilities were to
be established in buildings made available by public enterprises,
production teams, municipal authorities, local groups, and families. The
government announced that it depended on individual organizations to
sponsor their own preschool education and that preschool education was
to become a part of the welfare services of various government
organizations, institutes, and state- and collectively operated
enterprises. Costs for preschool education varied according to services
rendered. Officials also called for more preschool teachers with more
appropriate training.
Special Education
The 1985 National Conference on Education also recognized the
importance of special education, in the form of programs for gifted
children and for slow learners. Gifted children were allowed to skip
grades. Slow learners were encouraged to reach minimum standards,
although those who did not maintain the pace seldom reached the next
stage. For the most part, children with severe learning problems and
those with handicaps and psychological needs were the responsibilities
of their families. Extra provisions were made for blind and severely
hearing-impaired children, although in 1984 special schools enrolled
fewer than 2 percent of all eligible children in those categories. The
China Welfare Fund, established in 1984, received state funding and had
the right to solicit donations within China and from abroad, but special
education remained a low government priority.
China - SECONDARY EDUCATION
Middle Schools
Secondary education in China has a complicated history. In the early
1960s, education planners followed a policy called "walking on two
legs," which established both regular academic schools and separate
technical schools for vocational training. The rapid expansion of
secondary education during the Cultural Revolution created serious
problems; because resources were spread too thinly, educational quality
declined. Further, this expansion was limited to regular secondary
schools; technical schools were closed during the Cultural Revolution
because they were viewed as an attempt to provide inferior education to
children of worker and peasant families. In the late 1970s, government
and party representatives criticized what they termed the
"unitary" approach of the 1960s, arguing that it ignored the
need for two kinds of graduates: those with an academic education
(college preparatory) and those with specialized technical education
(vocational). Beginning in 1976 with the renewed emphasis on technical
training, technical schools reopened, and their enrollments increased
(as did those of key schools, also criticized during the Cultural
Revolution). In the drive to spread vocational and technical education,
regular secondary-school enrollments fell. By 1986 universal secondary
education was part of the nine year compulsory education law that made
primary education (six years) and junior-middle-school education (three
years) mandatory. The desire to consolidate existing schools and to
improve the quality of key middle schools was, however, under the
education reform, more important than expanding enrollment.
Chinese secondary schools are called middle schools and are divided
into junior and senior levels. In 1985 more than 104,000 middle schools
(both regular and vocational) enrolled about 51 million students.
Junior, or lower, middle schools offered a three year course of study,
which students began at twelve years of age. Senior, or upper, middle
schools offered a two or three year course, which students began at age
fifteen.
The regular secondary-school year usually had two semesters, totaling
nine months. In some rural areas, schools operated on a shift schedule
to accommodate agricultural cycles. The academic curriculum consisted of
Chinese, mathematics, physics, chemistry, geology, foreign language,
history, geography, politics, physiology, music, fine arts, and physical
education. Some middle schools also offered vocational subjects. There
were thirty or thirty-one periods a week in addition to self-study and
extracurricular activity. Thirty-eight percent of the curriculum at a
junior middle school was in Chinese and mathematics, 16 percent in a
foreign language. Fifty percent of the teaching at a senior middle
school was in natural sciences and mathematics, 30 percent in Chinese
and a foreign language.
Rural secondary education has undergone several transformations since
1980, when county-level administrative units closed some schools and
took over certain schools run by the people's communes. In 1982 the
communes were eliminated. In 1985 educational reform legislation
officially placed rural secondary schools under local administration.
There was a high dropout rate among rural students in general and among
secondary students in particular, largely because of parental attitudes.
All students, however, especially males, were encouraged to attend
secondary school if it would lead to entrance to a college or university
(still regarded as prestigious) and escape from village life.
In China a senior-middle-school graduate is considered an educated
person, although middle schools are viewed as a training ground for
colleges and universities. And, while middle-school students are offered
the prospect of higher education, they are also confronted with the fact
that university admission is limited. Middle schools are evaluated in
terms of their success in sending graduates on for higher education,
although efforts persist to educate young people to take a place in
society as valued and skilled members of the work force.
Vocational and Technical Schools
Both regular and vocational secondary schools sought to serve
modernization needs. A number of technical and
"skilled-worker" training schools reopened after the Cultural
Revolution, and an effort was made to provide exposure to vocational
subjects in general secondary schools (by offering courses in industry,
services, business, and agriculture). By 1985 there were almost 3
million vocational and technical students.
Under the educational reform tenets, polytechnic colleges were to
give priority to admitting secondary vocational and technical school
graduates and providing on-the-job training for qualified workers.
Education reformers continued to press for the conversion of about 50
percent of upper secondary education into vocational education, which
traditionally had been weak in the rural areas. Regular senior middle
schools were to be converted into vocational middle schools, and
vocational training classes were to be established in some senior middle
schools. Diversion of students from academic to technical education was
intended to alleviate skill shortages and to reduce the competition for
university enrollment. Although enrollment in technical schools of
various kinds had not yet increased enough to compensate for decreasing
enrollments in regular senior middle schools, the proportion of
vocational and technical students to total senior-middle-school students
increased from about 5 percent in 1978 to almost 36 percent in 1985,
although development was uneven. Further, to encourage greater numbers
of junior-middle-school graduates to enter technical schools, vocational
and technical school graduates were given priority in job assignments,
while other job seekers had to take technical tests.
In 1987 there were four kinds of secondary vocational and technical
schools: technical schools that offered a four year, post-junior middle
course and two- to three-year post-senior middle training in such fields
as commerce, legal work, fine arts, and forestry; workers' training
schools that accepted students whose senior-middle-school education
consisted of two years of training in such trades as carpentry and
welding; vocational technical schools that accepted either junior-or
senior-middle-school students for one- to three-year courses in cooking,
tailoring, photography, and other services; and agricultural middle
schools that offered basic subjects and agricultural science.
These technical schools had several hundred different programs. Their
narrow specializations had advantages in that they offered in-depth
training , reducing the need for on-the-job training and thereby
lowering learning time and costs. Moreover, students were more motivated
to study if there were links between training and future jobs. Much of
the training could be done at existing enterprises, where staff and
equipment was available at little additional cost.
There were some disadvantages to this system, however. Under the Four
Modernizations, technically trained generalists were needed more than
highly specialized technicians. Also, highly specialized equipment and
staff were underused, and there was an overall shortage of specialized
facilities to conduct training. In addition, large expenses were
incurred in providing the necessary facilities and staff, and the trend
in some government technical agencies was toward more general technical
and vocational education.
Further, the dropout rate continued to have a negative effect on the
labor pool as upper-secondary-school technical students dropped out and
as the percentage of lower-secondary-school graduates entering the labor
market without job training increased. Occupational rigidity and the
geographic immobility of the population, particularly in rural areas,
further limited educational choices.
Although there were 668,000 new polytechnic school enrollments in
1985, the Seventh Five-Year Plan called for annual increases of 2
million mid-level skilled workers and 400,000 senior technicians,
indicating that enrollment levels were still far from sufficient. To
improve the situation, in July 1986 officials from the State Education
Commission, State Planning Commission, and Ministry of Labor and
Personnel convened a national conference on developing China's technical
and vocational education. It was decided that technical and vocational
education in rural areas should accommodate local conditions and be
conducted on a short-term basis. Where conditions permitted, emphasis
would be placed on organizing technical schools and short-term training
classes. To alleviate the shortage of teachers, vocational and technical
teachers' colleges were to be reformed and other colleges and
universities were to be mobilized for assistance. The State Council
decision to improve training for workers who had passed technical
examinations (as opposed to unskilled workers) was intended to reinforce
the development of vocational and technical schools.
China - HIGHER EDUCATION
Background
Higher education reflects the changes in political policies that have
occurred in contemporary China. Since 1949 emphasis has continually been
placed on political re-education, and in periods of political upheaval,
such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, ideology has
been stressed over professional or technical competence. During the
early stages of the Cultural Revolution, tens of thousands of college
students joined Red Guard organizations, effectively closing down the
higher education system. In general, when universities reopened in the
early 1970s, enrollments were reduced from pre-Cultural Revolution
levels, and admission was restricted to individuals who had been
recommended by their work unit (danwei) possessed good
political credentials, and had distinguished themselves in manual labor.
In the absence of stringent and reasonably objective entrance
examinations, political connections became increasingly important in
securing the recommendations and political dossiers necessary to qualify
for university admission. As a result, the decline in educational
quality was profound. Deng Xiaoping reportedly wrote Mao Zedong in 1975
that university graduates were "not even capable of reading a
book" in their own fields when they left the university. University
faculty and administrators, moreover, were demoralized by what they
faced.
Efforts made in 1975 to improve educational quality were
unsuccessful. By 1980 it appeared doubtful that the politically oriented
admission criteria had accomplished even the purpose of increasing
enrollment of worker and peasant children. Successful candidates for
university entrance were usually children of cadres and officials who
used personal connections that allowed them to "enter through the
back door." Students from officials' families would accept the
requisite minimum two year work assignment in the countryside, often in
a suburban location that allowed them to remain close to their families.
Village cadres, anxious to please the parent-official, gladly
recommended these youths for university placement after the labor
requirement had been met. The child of an official family was then on
his or her way to a university without having academic ability, a record
of political activism, or a distinguished work record.
After 1976 steps were taken to improve educational quality by
establishing order and stability, and calling for an end to political
contention on university campuses, and expanding university enrollments.
This pressure to maintain quality and minimize expenditures led to
efforts both to run existing institutions more efficiently and to
develop other college and university programs. As a result, labor
colleges for training agro-technicians and factory-run colleges for
providing technical education for workers were established. In addition,
eighty-eight institutions and key universities were provided with
special funding, top students and faculty members, and other support,
and they recruited the most academically qualified students without
regard to family background or political activism.
Educational Investment
Many of the problems that had hindered higher educational development
in the past continued in 1987. Funding remained a major problem because
science and technology study and research and study abroad were
expensive. Because education was competing with other modernization
programs, capital was critically short. Another concern was whether or
not the Chinese economy was sufficiently advanced to make efficient use
of the highly trained technical personnel it planned to educate. For
example, some observers believed that it would be more realistic to
train a literate work force of low-level technicians instead of than
research scientists. Moreover, it was feared that using an examination
to recruit the most able students might advance people who were merely
good at taking examinations. Educational reforms also made some people
uncomfortable by criticizing the traditional practice of rote
memorization and promoting innovative teaching and study methods.
The prestige associated with higher education caused a demand for it.
But many qualified youths were unable to attend colleges and
universities because China could not finance enough university places
for them. To help meet the demand and to educate a highly trained,
specialized work force, China established alternate forms of higher
education--such as spare-time, part-time, and radio and television
universities.
China cannot afford a heavy investment, either ideologically or
financially, in the education of a few students. Since 1978 China's
leaders have modified the policy of concentrating education resources at
the university level, which, although designed to facilitate
modernization, conflicted directly with the party's principles. The
policies that produced an educated elite also siphoned off resources
that might have been used to accomplish the compulsory nine year
education more speedily and to equalize educational opportunities in the
city and the countryside. The policy of key schools has been modified
over the years. Nevertheless, China's leaders believe an educated elite
is necessary to reach modernization goals.
China - Education - Modernization Goals in the 1980s
The commitment to the Four Modernizations required great advances in
science and technology. Under the modernization program, higher
education was to be the cornerstone for training and research. Because
modernization depended on a vastly increased and improved capability to
train scientists and engineers for needed breakthroughs, the renewed
concern for higher education and academic quality--and the central role
that the sciences were expected to play in the Four
Modernizations--highlighted the need for scientific research and
training. This concern can be traced to the critical personnel shortages
and qualitative deficiencies in the sciences resulting from the
unproductive years of the Cultural Revolution, when higher education was
shut down. In response to the need for scientific training, the Sixth
Plenum of the Twelfth National Party Congress Central Committee, held in
September 1986, adopted a resolution on the guiding principles for
building a socialist society that strongly emphasized the importance of
education and science.
Reformers realized, however, that the higher education system was far
from meeting modernization goals and that additional changes were
needed. The Provisional Regulations Concerning the Management of
Institutions of Higher Learning, promulgated by the State Council in
1986, initiated vast changes in administration and adjusted educational
opportunity, direction, and content. With the increased independence
accorded under the education reform, universities and colleges were able
to choose their own teaching plans and curricula; to accept projects
from or cooperate with other socialist establishments for scientific
research and technical development in setting up "combines"
involving teaching, scientific research, and production; to suggest
appointments and removals of vice presidents and other staff members; to
take charge of the distribution of capital construction investment and
funds allocated by the state; and to be responsible for the development
of international exchanges by using their own funds.
The changes also allowed the universities to accept financial aid
from work units and decide how this money was to be used without asking
for more money from departments in charge of education. Further, higher
education institutions and work units could sign contracts for the
training of students.
Higher education institutions also were assigned a greater role in
running interregional and interdepartmental schools. Within their
state-approved budgets, universities secured more freedom to allocate
funds as they saw fit and to use income from tuition and technical and
advisory services for their own development, including collective
welfare and bonuses.
There also was a renewed interest in television, radio, and
correspondence classes. Some of the courses, particularly in the
college-run factories, were serious, full-time enterprises, with a
two-to three-year curriculum.
Entrance Examinations and Admission Criteria
National examinations to select students for higher education (and
positions of leadership) were an important part of China's culture, and,
traditionally, entrance to a higher education institution was considered
prestigious. Although the examination system for admission to colleges
and universities has undergone many changes since the Cultural
Revolution, it remains the basis for recruiting academically able
students. When higher education institutions were reopened in early
1970s, candidates for entrance examinations had to be
senior-middle-school graduates or the equivalent, generally below
twenty-six years of age. Work experience requirements were eliminated,
but workers and staff members needed permission from their enterprises
to take the examinations.
Each provincial-level unit was assigned a quota of students to be
admitted to key universities, a second quota of students for regular
universities within that administrative division, and a third quota of
students from other provinces, autonomous regions, and special
municipalities who would be admitted to institutions operated at the
provincial level. Provincial-level administrative units selected
students with outstanding records to take the examinations.
Additionally, preselection examinations were organized by the provinces,
autonomous regions, and special municipalities for potential students
(from three to five times the number of places allotted). These
candidates were actively encouraged to take the examination to ensure
that a sufficient number of good applicants would be available. Cadres
with at least two years of work experience were recruited for selected
departments in a small number of universities on an experimental basis.
Preferential admission treatment (in spite of lower test scores) was
given to minority candidates, students from disadvantaged areas, and
those who agreed in advance to work in less developed regions after
graduation.
In December 1977, when uniform national examinations were reinstated,
5.7 million students took the examinations, although university
placement was available for only the 278,000 applicants with the highest
scores. In July 1984, about 1.6 million candidates (30,000 fewer than in
1983) took the entrance examinations for the 430,000 places in China's
more than 900 colleges and universities. Of the 1.6 million examinees,
more than 1 million took the test for placement in science and
engineering colleges; 415,000 for places in liberal arts colleges;
88,000 for placement in foreign language institutions; and 15,000 for
placement in sports universities and schools. More than 100,000 of the
candidates were from national minority groups. A year later, there were
approximately 1.8 million students taking the three day college entrance
examination to compete for 560,000 places. Liberal arts candidates were
tested on politics, Chinese, mathematics, foreign languages, history,
and geography. Science and engineering candidates were tested on
politics, Chinese, mathematics, chemistry, and biology. Entrance
examinations also were given in 1985 for professional and technical
schools, which sought to enroll 550,000 new students.
Other innovations in enrollment practices, included allowing colleges
and universities to admit students with good academic records but
relatively low entrance-examination scores. Some colleges were allowed
to try an experimental student recommendation system--fixed at 2 percent
of the total enrollment for regular colleges and 5 percent for teachers'
colleges--instead of the traditional entrance examination. A minimum
national examination score was established for admission to specific
departments at specially designated colleges and universities, and the
minimum score for admission to other universities was set by
provinciallevel authorities. Key universities established separate
classes for minorities. When several applicants attained the minimum
test score, the school had the option of making a selection, a policy
that gave university faculty and administrators a certain amount of
discretion but still protected admission according to academic ability.
In addition to the written examination, university applicants had to
pass a physical examination and a political screening. Less than 2
percent of the students who passed the written test were eliminated for
reasons of poor health. The number disqualified for political reasons
was known, but publicly the party maintained that the number was very
small and that it sought to ensure that only the most able students
actually entered colleges and universities.
By 1985 the number of institutions of higher learning had again
increased--to slightly more than 1,000. The State Education Commission
and the Ministry of Finance issued a joint declaration for nationwide
unified enrollment of adult students--not the regular secondary-school
graduates but the members of the work force who qualified for admission
by taking a test. The State Education Commission established unified
questions and time and evaluation criteria for the test and authorized
provinces, autonomous regions, and special municipalities to administer
the test, grade the papers in a uniform manner, and determine the
minimum points required for admission. The various schools were to
enroll students according to the results. Adult students needed to have
the educational equivalent of senior-middle- school graduates, and those
applying for release or partial release from work to study were to be
under forty years of age. Staff members and workers were to apply to
study job-related subjects with review by and approval of their
respective work units. If employers paid for the college courses, the
workers had to take entrance examinations. In 1985 colleges enrolled
33,000 employees from various enterprises and companies, approximately 6
percent of the total college enrollment.
In 1985 state quotas for university places were set, allowing both
for students sponsored by institutions and for those paying their own
expenses. This policy was a change from the previous system in which all
students were enrolled according to guidelines established in Beijing.
All students except those at teachers' colleges, those who had financial
difficulties, and those who were to work under adverse conditions after
graduation had to pay for their own tuition, accommodations, and
miscellaneous expenses.
Changes in Enrollment and Assignment Policies
The student enrollment and graduate assignment system also was
changed to reflect more closely the personnel needs of modernization. By
1986 the state was responsible for drafting the enrollment plan, which
took into account future personnel demands, the need to recruit students
from outlying regions, and the needs of trades and professions with
adverse working conditions. Moreover, a certain number of graduates to
be trained for the People's Liberation Army were included in the state
enrollment plan. In most cases, enrollment in higher education
institutions at the employers' request was extended as a supplement to
the state student enrollment plan. Employers were to pay a percentage of
training fees, and students were to fulfill contractual obligations to
the employers after graduation. The small number of students who
attended colleges and universities at their own expense could be
enrolled in addition to those in the state plan.
Accompanying the changes in enrollment practices were reforms,
adopted in 1986, in the faculty appointment system, which ended the "iron
rice bowl" employment system and gave colleges
and universities freedom to decide what departments, majors, and numbers
of teachers they needed. Teachers in institutions of higher learning
were hired on a renewable contract basis, usually for two to four years
at a time. The teaching positions available on basis were teaching
assistant, lecturer, associate professor, and professor. The system was
tested in eight major universities in Beijing and Shanghai before it was
instituted nationwide at the end of 1985. University presidents headed
groups in charge of appointing professors, lecturers, and teaching
assistants according to their academic levels and teaching abilities,
and a more rational wage system, geared to different job levels, was
inaugurated. Universities and colleges with surplus professors and
researchers were advised to grant them appropriate academic titles and
encourage them to work for their current pay in schools of higher
learning where they were needed. The new system was to be extended to
schools of all kinds and other education departments within two years.
Under the 1985 reforms, all graduates were assigned jobs by the
state; a central government placement agency told the schools where to
send graduates. By 1985 Qinghua University and a few other universities
were experimenting with a system that allowed graduates to accept job
offers or to look for their own positions. For example, of 1,900 Qinghua
University graduates in 1985, 1,200 went on to graduate school, 48
looked for their own jobs, and the remainder were assigned jobs by the
school after consultation with the students. The college students and
postgraduates scheduled to graduate in 1986 were assigned primarily to
work in forestry, education, textiles, and the armaments industry.
Graduates still were needed in civil engineering, computer science,
finance, and English.
Scholarship and Loan System
In July 1986 the State Council announced that the stipend system for
university and college students would be replaced with a new scholarship
and loan system. The new system, to be tested in selected institutions
during the 1986-87 academic year, was designed to help students who
could not cover their own living expenses but who studied hard, obeyed
state laws, and observed discipline codes. Students eligible for
financial aid were to apply to the schools and the China Industrial and
Commercial Bank for low-interest loans. Three categories of students
eligible for aid were established: top students encouraged to attain
all-around excellence; students specializing in education, agriculture,
forestry, sports, and marine navigation; and students willing to work in
poor, remote, and border regions or under harsh conditions, such as in
mining and engineering. In addition, free tuition and board were to be
offered at teachers' colleges, and the graduates were required to teach
at least five years in primary and middle schools. After graduation, a
student's loans were to be paid off by his or her employer in a lump
sum, and the money was to be repaid to the employer by the student
through five years of payroll deductions.
Study Abroad
In addition to loans, another means of raising educational quality,
particularly in science, was to send students abroad to study. A large
number of Chinese students studied in the Soviet Union before
educational links and other cooperative programs with the Soviet Union
were severed in the late 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, China continued
to send a small number of students abroad, primarily to European
universities. In October 1978 Chinese students began to arrive in the
United States; their numbers accelerated after normalization of
relations between the two countries in January 1979, a policy consistent
with modernization needs. Although figures vary, more than 36,000
students, including 7,000 self-supporting students (those who paid their
own way, received scholarships from host institutions, or received help
from relatives and "foreign friends"), studied in 14 countries
between 1978 and 1984. Of this total, 78 percent were technical
personnel sent abroad for advanced study. As of mid-1986 there were
15,000 Chinese scholars and graduates in American universities, compared
with the total of 19,000 scholars sent between 1979 and 1983.
Chinese students sent to the United States generally were not typical
undergraduates or graduate students but were mid-career scientists,
often thirty-five to forty-five years of age, seeking advanced training
in their areas of specialization. Often they were individuals of
exceptional ability who occupied responsible positions in Chinese
universities and research institutions. Fewer than 15 percent of the
earliest arrivals were degree candidates. Nearly all the visiting
scholars were in scientific fields.
China - TEACHERS
Role in Modernization
Because only 4 percent of the nation's middle-school graduates are
admitted to universities, China has found it necessary to develop other
ways of meeting the demand for education. Adult education has become
increasingly important in helping China meet its modernization goals.
Adult, or "nonformal," education is an alternative form of
higher education that encompasses radio, television, and correspondence
universities, spare-time and part-time universities, factory-run
universities for staff and workers, and county-run universities for
peasants, many operating primarily during students' off-work hours.
These alternative forms of education are economical. They seek to
educate both the "delayed generation"--those who lost
educational opportunities during the Cultural Revolution--and to raise
the cultural, scientific, and general education levels of workers on the
job.
Alternative Forms
Schools have been established by government departments, businesses,
trade unions, academic societies, democratic
parties, and other organizations. In 1984 about 70
percent of China's factories and enterprises supported their own
part-time classes, which often were referred to as workers' colleges. In
Beijing alone, more than ninety adult-education schools with night
schools enrolled tens of thousands of students. More than 20,000 of
these students graduated annually from evening universities, workers'
colleges, television universities, and correspondence schools--more than
twice the number graduating from regular colleges and universities. The
government spent -Y200 to -Y500 per adult education student and at least -1,000 per
regular university student. In 1984 approximately 1.3 million students
enrolled in television, correspondence, and evening universities, about
a 30-percent increase over 1983.
Spare-time education for workers and peasants and literacy classes
for the entire adult population were other components of basic
education. Spare-time education included a very broad range of
educational activities at all levels. Most spare-time schools were
sponsored by factories and run for their own workers; they provided
fairly elementary education, as well as courses to upgrade technical
skills. Most were on-the-job training and retraining courses, a normal
part of any industrial system. These schools continually received
publicity in the domestic media as a symbol of social justice, but it
was unclear whether they received adequate resources to achieve this
end.
China's educational television system began in 1960 but was suspended
during the Cultural Revolution in 1966. In 1979 the Central Radio and
Television University was established in Beijing with branches in
twenty-eight provincial-level universities. Many Central Radio and
Television University students are recent seniormiddle -school graduates
who scored just below the cut-off point for admission to conventional
colleges and universities. Full-time (who take four courses) and
part-time students (two courses) have at least two years' work
experience, and they return to their jobs after graduation. Spare-time
students (one course) study after work. Students whose work units grant
them permission to study in a television university are paid their
normal wages; expenses for most of their books and other educational
materials are paid for by the state. A typical Central Radio and
Television University student spends up to six hours a day over a
three-year period watching lectures on videotapes produced by some of
the best teachers in China. These lectures are augmented by face-to-face
tutoring by local instructors and approximately four hours of homework
each evening. The major problem with the system is that there are too
few television sets.
In 1987 the Central Television and Radio University had its programs
produced, transmitted and financed by the Ministry of Radio, Cinema, and
Television. The State Education Commission developed its curriculum and
distributed its printed support materials. Curriculum included both
basic, general-purpose courses in science and technology and more
specialized courses. Programs in English-language instruction were
particularly popular. The Central Television and Radio University
offered more than 1,000 classes in Beijing and its suburbs and 14 majors
in 2- to 3-year courses through 56 working centers. Students who passed
final examinations were given certificates entitling them to the same
level of remuneration as graduates of regular, full-time colleges and
universities. The state gave certain allowances to students awaiting
jobs during their training period.
Literacy and Language Reform
The continuing campaigns to eradicate illiteracy also were a part of
basic education. Chinese government statistics indicated that of a total
population of nearly 1.1 billion in 1985, about 230 million people were
illiterate or semiliterate. The difficulty of mastering written Chinese
makes raising the literacy rate particularly difficult. In general,
language reform was intended to make written and spoken Chinese easier
to learn, which in turn would foster both literacy and linguistic unity
and serve as a foundation for a simpler written language. In 1951 the
party issued a directive that inaugurated a three-part plan for language
reform. The plan sought to establish universal comprehension of a
standardized common language, simplify written characters, and
introduce, where possible, romanized forms based on the Latin alphabet.
In 1956 putonghua was introduced as the language of instruction
in schools and in the national broadcast media, and by 1977 it was in
use throughout China, particularly in the government and party, and in
education. Although in 1987 the government continued to endorse the goal
of universalizing putonghua, hundreds of regional and local
dialects continued to be spoken, complicating interregional
communication.
A second language reform required the simplification of ideographs
because ideographs with fewer strokes are easier to learn. In 1964 the
Committee for Reforming the Chinese Written Language released an
official list of 2,238 simplified characters most basic to the language.
Simplification made literacy easier, although people taught only in
simplified characters were cut off from the wealth of Chinese literature
written in traditional characters. Any idea of replacing ideographic
script with romanized script was soon abandoned, however by government
and education leaders.
A third area of change involved the proposal to use the pinyin
romanization system more widely. Pinyin (first approved by the National
People's Congress in 1958) was encouraged primarily to facilitate the
spread of putonghua in regions where other dialects and
languages are spoken. By the mid-1980s, however, the use of pinyin was
not as widespread as the use of putonghua.
Retaining literacy was as much a problem as acquiring it,
particularly among the rural population. Literacy rates declined between
1966 and 1976. Political disorder may have contributed to the decline,
but the basic problem was that the many Chinese ideographs can be
mastered only through rote learning and are often forgotten because of
disuse.
China - POLICY TOWARD INTELLECTUALS
Background
The current status of Chinese intellectuals reflects traditions
established in the imperial period. For most of this period, government
officials were selected from among the literati on the basis of the
Confucian civil service examination system. Intellectuals were both
participants in and critics of the government. As Confucian scholars,
they were torn between their loyalty to the emperor and their obligation
to "correct wrong thinking" when they perceived it. Then, as
now, most intellectual and government leaders subscribed to the premise
that ideological change was a prerequisite for political change.
Historically, Chinese intellectuals rarely formed groups to oppose the
established government. Rather, individual intellectuals or groups of
intellectuals allied themselves with cliques within the government to
lend support to the policies of that clique.
With the abolition of the civil service examination system in 1905
and the end of the last imperial dynasty in 1911, intellectuals no
longer had a vehicle for direct participation in the government.
Although the absence of a strong national government would have been
expected to provide a favorable situation for maximum intellectual
independence, other inhibiting factors--such as the concentration of
intellectuals in foreigncontrolled treaty ports, isolated from the
mainstream of Chinese society, or in universities dependent on
government or missionary financing--remained. Probably the greatest
obstacle to the development of an intellectual community free of outside
control was the rising tide of nationalism coupled with the fear of
being accused of selling out to foreign interests. In 1927 the newly
established Guomindang government in Nanjing attempted to establish an
intellectual orthodoxy based on the ideas of Sun Yat-sen, but
intellectuals continued to operate with a certain degree of freedom in
universities and treaty ports. Following the Japanese invasion and
occupation of large parts of China in 1937, the Guomindang government
tightened control over every aspect of life, causing a large number of
dissident intellectuals to seek refuge in Communist-administered areas
or in Hong Kong.
When the People's Republic of China was established in 1949,
intellectuals came under strict government control. Educated overseas
Chinese were invited to return home, and those intellectuals who
remained in China were urged to contribute their technical expertise to
rebuilding the country. Intellectuals were expected to serve the party
and the state. Independent thinking was stifled, and political dissent
was not tolerated.
In mid-1956 the Chinese Communist Party felt secure enough to launch
the Hundred Flowers Campaign soliciting criticism under the classical
"double hundred" slogan "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let
the hundred schools of thought contend." "Let a hundred
flowers bloom" applied to the development of the arts, and
"let the hundred schools of thought contend" encouraged the
development of science. The initiation of this campaign was followed by
the publication in early 1957 of Mao Zedong's essay "On the Correct
Handling of Contradictions among the People," in which he drew a
distinction between "constructive criticisms among the people"
and "hateful and destructive criticism between the enemy and
ourselves." In August 1957, when it was clear to the leadership
that widespread criticism of the party and party cadres had gotten out
of hand, the Anti-Rightist Campaign was launched to suppress all
divergent thought and firmly reestablish orthodox ideology. Writers who
had answered the party's invitation to offer criticisms and alternative
solutions to China's problems were abruptly silenced, and many were sent
to reform camps or internal exile. By the early 1960s, however, a few
intellectuals within the party were bold enough to again propose policy
alternatives, within stringent limits.
When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, party functionaries
assumed positions of leadership at most research institutes and
universities, and many schools were closed or converted to
"soldiers', workers', and peasants' universities."
Intellectuals, denounced as the "stinking ninth category,"
either were purged or had their work heavily edited for political
"purity", which severely hampered most serious research and
scholarship.
Following the fall of Lin Biao, Minister of National Defense and
Mao's heir apparent, in 1971, the atmosphere for intellectuals began to
improve. Under the aegis of Zhou Enlai and later Deng Xiaoping, many
intellectuals were restored to their former positions and warily resumed
their pre-Cultural Revolution duties. In January 1975 Zhou Enlai set out
his ambitious Four Modernizations program and solicited the support of
China's intellectuals in turning China into a modern industrialized
nation by the end of the century.
Post-Mao Development
The Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress Central
Committee in December 1978 officially made the Four Modernizations basic
national policy and reemphasized the importance of intellectuals in
achieving them. The policy of "seeking truth from facts" was
stressed, and scholars and researchers were given freer rein to pursue
scientific research. Most mainstream intellectuals were content to avoid
political involvement and to take on the role of scholar- specialists
within their spheres of competence, with the understanding that as long
as they observed the four cardinal principles--upholding socialism, the
dictatorship of the proletariat, the leadership of the party, and
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought--they would be permitted to conduct
their research with minimal bureaucratic interference. This was
accomplished more easily in the natural sciences, which are generally
recognized as apolitical, than in the social sciences, humanities, and
the arts.
The first serious challenge to the more tolerant policy toward
intellectuals came in 1980, as conservative ideologues in the military
and the party stepped up their calls to combat "bourgeois
liberalization," a loosely defined appellation for any writing or
activity believed to stretch the limits of the four cardinal principles.
By early 1981 opposition to "bourgeois liberalization" was
focused on Bai Hua, a writer with the Political Department of what was
then the Wuhan Military Region. Bai had long been a strong advocate for
relaxation of cultural and social policy, but what especially alarmed
the guardians of cultural orthodoxy was his screenplay "Bitter
Love," which depicted the frustrated patriotism of an old painter
who faces misunderstanding and ill-treatment when he returns to China
from the United States. When the screenplay first appeared in a
nationally circulated literary magazine in the fall of 1979, it caused
little stir. The motion picture version however, which was shown to
selected officials, drew strong censure. A commentary in the April 18,
1981, issue of Jiefangjun Bao (Liberation Army Daily) accused
Bai Hua of violating the four cardinal principles and described the
screenplay as an example of "bourgeois liberalism." The
commentary was reprinted in the next month's issue of Jiefangjun
Wenyi (Liberation Army Literature and Art), along with other
articles critical of "Bitter Love." Over the next few months
the criticism was taken up by most civilian newspapers, and acting
minister of culture, Zhou Weizhi, singled out "Bitter Love"
for attack in a speech delivered to the Twentieth Session of the Fifth
National People's Congress Standing Committee in September. Finally, Bai
Hua yielded to the ostracism and wrote a letter of self-criticism
addressed to Jiefangjun Bao and Wenyibao (Literary
Gazette), in which he apologized for a "lack of balance" in
"Bitter Love" and for failing to recognize the power of the
party and the people to overcome obstacles in Chinese society. Bai Hua
was out of public view for the next year but remained active, writing
four short stories in the period. In January 1983 he was invited by the
Ministry of Culture to participate in a Shanghai conference on film
scripts, and in May of that year the Beijing People's Art Theater
presented his new historical play, "The King of Wu's Golden Spear
and the King of Yue's Sword," thought by many to be a veiled
criticism of Mao Zedong and perhaps even of Deng Xiaoping. Although the
"Bitter Love" controversy caused considerable anxiety in the
intellectual community, it is as noteworthy for what it did not do as
for what it did do. Unlike previous campaigns in which writers and all
of their works were condemned, criticism in this case focused on one
work, "Bitter Love." Neither Bai Hua's other works nor his
political difficulties in the 1950s and 1960s were part of the
discussion. In fact, as if to emphasize the limited nature of the
campaign, at its height in May 1981 Bai was given a national prize for
poetry by the Chinese Writers' Association.
After a mild respite in 1982 and most of 1983, "antibourgeois
liberalism" returned in full force in the short-lived campaign
against "spiritual pollution" launched by a speech given by
Deng Xiaoping at the Second Plenum of the Twelfth National Party
Congress Central Committee in October 1983. In the speech, Deng
inveighed against advocates of abstract theories of human nature,
"bourgeois humanitarianism," "bourgeois liberalism,"
and socialist alienation, as well as the growing fascination in China
with "decadent elements" from Western culture. Conservatives,
led by Political Bureau member Hu Qiaomu and party Propaganda Department
head Deng Liqun, used the campaign in an effort to oppose those aspects
of society that they disliked. The campaign soon was out of control and
extended to areas beyond the scope that Deng Xiaoping had intended,
raising fears at home and abroad of another Cultural Revolution.
Because of the campaign against spiritual pollution, intellectuals
(including scientists and managerial and technical personnel) and party
and government cadres were hesitant to take any action that could expose
them to criticism. Peasants, whose production had greatly increased
under the responsibility system adopted in 1981, felt uncertain about
the future course of central policy. Because of this, many of them
returned their specialized certificates and contracts to local
authorities, sold their equipment, and lowered production targets. Many
ordinary citizens, especially the young, resented the sudden
interference in their private lives. Foreign businessmen and government
leaders expressed serious reservations about the investment climate and
China's policy of opening to the world.
Because of these adverse results, the central leadership reevaluated
the campaign and limited it to theoretical, literary, and artistic
circles and did not permit it to extend to science and technology, the
economy, or rural areas. All ideological, theoretical, literary, and
artistic issues were to be settled through discussion, criticism, and
self-criticism, without resorting to labeling or attacks. By January
1984 the campaign against spiritual pollution had died out, and
attention was once more turned to reducing leftist influence in
government and society.
Following the campaign's failure, and perhaps because of it, the
position and security of intellectuals improved significantly. In 1984
the party and government turned their attention to promoting urban
economic reforms. A more positive approach to academic and cultural
pursuits was reflected in periodic exhortations in the official press
calling on the people to support and encourage the building of
"socialist spiritual civilization," a term used to denote
general intellectual activity, including ethics and morality, science,
and culture.
Writers and other intellectuals were heartened by a speech delivered
by Hu Qili, secretary of the party Secretariat, to the Fourth National
Writers' Congress (December 29, 1984, to January 5, 1985). In the
speech, Hu decried the political excesses that produced derogatory
labels and decrees about what writers should and should not write and
called literary freedom "a vital part of socialist
literature." But as writers began to test the limits of the free
expression called for by Hu Qili, they were reminded of their
"social responsibilities," a thinly veiled warning for them to
use self-censorship and to remain within the limits of free expression.
These limits, still poorly defined, were tested once again when Song
Longxian, a young researcher at Nanjing University, using the pseudonym
Ma Ding, published an article entitled "Ten Changes in Contemporary
Chinese Economic Research" in the November 2, 1985, issue of the
trade union paper Gongren Ribao (Workers' Daily). The article
urged a pragmatic approach to economic theory and sharply attacked much
previous economic research. A somewhat toned-downed version was
republished in a subsequent issue of Beijing Review, a weekly
magazine for foreign readers, and immediately became the center of a
controversy continuing well into 1986. Ma Ding's supporters, however,
far outnumbered his critics and included some important government
officials. In May 1986 the editor of Gongren Ribao, writing in
another economic journal, summed up the controversy. He termed the
criticism of the article of far greater significance than the article
itself and commended the "related departments" for handling
the "Ma Ding incident very prudently" and "relatively
satisfactorily," but he expressed the hope that "more people
in our country, particularly leaders," would join in
"providing powerful protection to the theoretical workers who are
brave enough to explore."
In 1986 there were numerous calls for a new Hundred Flowers Campaign,
and there were indications that these calls were being orchestrated from
the top. At a May 1986 conference to commemorate the thirtieth
anniversary of the original Hundred Flowers Campaign, Zhu Houze, new
head of the party's Propaganda Department, sounded the keynote when he
said, "Only through the comparison and contention of different
viewpoints and ideas can people gradually arrive at a truthful
understanding. . . ." Qin Jianxian, editor of Shijie Jingji
Daobao (World Economic Journal), carried this theme further when he
called for "unprecedented shocks to political, economic, and social
life as well as to people's ideas, spiritual state, lifestyle, and
thinking methods." In a July 1986 interview with Beijing Review,
Wang Meng, the newly appointed minister of culture, held out great
expectations for a new Hundred Flowers Campaign that he said "could
arouse the enthusiasm of writers and artists and give them the leeway to
display their individual artistic character." During the summer of
1986, expectations were raised for a resolution to come out of the Sixth
Plenum of the Twelfth National Party Congress Central Committee in
September, a resolution that General Secretary Hu Yaobang promised would
have a "profound influence on the development of spiritual
civilization." The actual document, however, was a watered-down
compromise that fell far short of expectations. It became clear that
intellectual policy is not a matter to be easily resolved in the
short-term but requires lengthy debate.
China - Traditional Literature
Classics
China has a wealth of classical literature, both poetry and prose,
dating from the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770-221 B.C.) and including the
Classics attributed to Confucius. Among the most important classics in
Chinese literature is the Yijing (Book of Changes), a manual of
divination based on eight trigrams attributed to the mythical emperor Fu
Xi. (By Confucius' time these eight trigrams had been multiplied to
sixty-four hexagrams.) The Yijing is still used by adherents of
folk religion. The Shijing (Classic of Poetry) is made up of
305 poems divided into 160 folk songs; 74 minor festal songs,
traditionally sung at court festivities; 31 major festal songs, sung at
more solemn court ceremonies; and 40 hymns and eulogies, sung at
sacrifices to gods and ancestral spirits of the royal house. The Shujing
(Classic of Documents) is a collection of documents and speeches alleged
to have been written by rulers and officials of the early Zhou period
and before. It contains the best examples of early Chinese prose. The Liji
(Record of Rites), a restoration of the original Lijing
(Classic of Rites), lost in the third century B.C., describes ancient
rites and court ceremonies. The Chun Qiu (Spring and Autumn) is
a historical record of the principality of Lu, Confucius' native state,
from 722 to 479 B.C. It is a log of concise entries probably compiled by
Confucius himself. The Lunyu (Analects) is a book of pithy
sayings attributed to Confucius and recorded by his disciples.
Early Prose
The proponents of the Hundred Schools of Thought in the Warring
States and Spring and Autumn periods made important contributions to
Chinese prose style. The writings of Mo Zi (Mo Di, 470-391 B.C.?),
Mencius (Meng Zi; 372-289 B.C.), and Zhuang Zi (369-286 B.C.) contain
well-reasoned, carefully developed discourses and show a marked
improvement in organization and style over what went before. Mo Zi is
known for extensively and effectively using methodological reasoning in
his polemic prose. Mencius contributed elegant diction and, along with
Zhuang Zi, is known for his extensive use of comparisons, anecdotes, and
allegories. By the third century B.C., these writers had developed a
simple, concise prose noted for its economy of words, which served as a
model of literary form for over 2,000 years.
Early Poetry
Among the earliest and most influential poetic anthologies was the Chuci
(Songs of Chu), made up primarily of poems ascribed to the semilegendary
Qu Yuan (ca. 340-278 B.C.) and his follower Song Yu (fourth century
B.C.). The songs in this collection are more lyrical and romantic and
represent a different tradition from the earlier Shijing.
During the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), this form evolved into the fu,
a poem usually in rhymed verse except for introductory and concluding
passages that are in prose, often in the form of questions and answers.
The era of disunity that followed the Han period saw the rise of
romantic nature poetry heavily influenced by Taoism.
Classical poetry reached its zenith during the Tang dynasty (A.D.
618-907). The early Tang period was best known for its lushi
(regulated verse), an eight-line poem with five or seven words in each
line; zi (verse following strict rules of prosody); and jueju
(truncated verse), a four-line poem with five or seven words in each
line. The two best-known poets of the period were Li Bai (701-762) and
Du Fu (712-770). Li Bai was known for the romanticism of his poetry; Du
Fu was seen as a Confucian moralist with a strict sense of duty toward
society.
Later Tang poets developed greater realism and social criticism and
refined the art of narration. One of the best known of the later Tang
poets was Bai Juyi (772-846), whose poems were an inspired and critical
comment on the society of his time.
Subsequent writers of classical poetry lived under the shadow of
their great Tang predecessors, and although there were many fine poets
in subsequent dynasties, none reached the level of this period. As the
classical style of poetry became more stultified, a more flexible poetic
medium, the ci, arrived on the scene. The ci, a poetic
form based on the tunes of popular songs, some of Central Asian origin,
was developed to its fullest by the poets of the Song dynasty
(960-1279).
As the ci gradually became more literary and artificial
after Song times, the san qu, a freer form, based on new
popular songs, developed. The use of san qu songs in drama
marked an important step in the development of vernacular literature.
Later Prose
The Tang period also saw a rejection of the ornate, artificial style
of prose developed in the previous period and the emergence of a simple,
direct, and forceful prose based on Han and pre-Han writing. The primary
proponent of this neoclassical style of prose, which heavily influenced
prose writing for the next 800 years, was Han Yu (768-824), a master
essayist and strong advocate of a return to Confucian orthodoxy.
Vernacular fiction became popular after the fourteenth century,
although it was never esteemed in court circles. Covering a broader
range of subject matter and longer and less highly structured than
literary fiction, vernacular fiction includes a number of masterpieces.
The greatest is the eighteenth-century domestic novel Hong Lou Meng
(Dream of the Red Chamber). A semiautobiographical work by a scion of a
declining gentry family, Hong Lou Meng has been acknowledged by
students of Chinese fiction to be the masterwork of its type.
Modern Prose
In the New Culture Movement (1917-23), literary writing style was
largely replaced by the vernacular in all areas of literature. This was
brought about mainly by Lu Xun (1881-1936), China's first major stylist
in vernacular prose (other than the novel), and the literary reformers
Hu Shi (1891-1962) and Chen Duxiu (1880-1942).
The late 1920s and 1930s were years of creativity in Chinese fiction,
and literary journals and societies espousing various artistic theories
proliferated. Among the major writers of the period were Guo Moruo
(1892-1978), a poet, historian, essayist, and critic; Mao Dun
(1896-1981), the first of the novelists to emerge from the League of
Left-Wing Writers and one whose work reflected the revolutionary
struggle and disillusionment of the late 1920s; and Ba Jin (b. 1904), a
novelist whose work was influenced by Ivan Turgenev and other Russian
writers. In the 1930s Ba Jin produced a trilogy that depicted the
struggle of modern youth against the ageold dominance of the Confucian
family system. Comparison often is made between Jia (Family),
one of the novels in the trilogy, and Hong Lou Meng. Another
writer of the period was the gifted satirist and novelist Lao She
(1899-1966). Many of these writers became important as administrators of
artistic and literary policy after 1949. Most of those still alive
during the Cultural Revolution were either purged or forced to submit to
public humiliation.
The League of Left-Wing Writers was founded in 1930 and included Lu
Xun in its leadership. By 1932 it had adopted the Soviet doctrine of
socialist realism, that is, the insistence that art must concentrate on
contemporary events in a realistic way, exposing the ills of
nonsocialist society and promoting the glorious future under communism.
After 1949 socialist realism, based on Mao's famous 1942 "Yan'an
Talks on Literature and Art," became the uniform style of Chinese
authors whose works were published. Conflict, however, soon developed
between the government and the writers. The ability to satirize and
expose the evils in contemporary society that had made writers useful to
the Chinese Communist Party before its accession to power was no longer
welcomed. Even more unwelcome to the party was the persistence among
writers of what was deplored as "petty bourgeois idealism,"
"humanitarianism," and an insistence on freedom to choose
subject matter.
At the time of the Great Leap Forward, the government increased its
insistence on the use of socialist realism and combined with it
so-called revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism. Authors
were permitted to write about contemporary China, as well as other times
during China's modern period--as long as it was accomplished with the
desired socialist revolutionary realism. Nonetheless, the political
restrictions discouraged many writers. Although authors were encouraged
to write, production of literature fell off to the point that in 1962
only forty-two novels were published.
During the Cultural Revolution, the repression and intimidation led
by Mao's fourth wife, Jiang Qing, succeeded in drying up all cultural
activity except a few "model" operas and heroic stories.
Although it has since been learned that some writers continued to
produce in secret, during that period no significant literary work was
published.
China - Literature in the Post-Mao Period
Drama
Traditional drama, often called "Chinese opera," grew out
of the zaju (variety plays) of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and
continues to exist in 368 different forms, the best known of which is
Beijing Opera, which assumed its present form in the midnineteenth
century and was extremely popular in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) court.
In Beijing Opera, traditional Chinese string and percussion instruments
provide a strong rhythmic accompaniment to the acting. The acting is
based on allusion: gestures, footwork, and other body movements express
such actions as riding a horse, rowing a boat, or opening a door. Spoken
dialogue is divided into recitative and Beijing colloquial speech, the
former employed by serious characters and the latter by young females
and clowns. Character roles are strictly defined. The traditional
repertoire of Beijing Opera includes more than 1,000 works, mostly taken
from historical novels about political and military struggles.
In the early years of the People's Republic, the development of
Beijing Opera was encouraged; many new operas on historical and modern
themes were written, and earlier operas continued to be performed. As a
popular art form, opera has usually been the first of the arts to
reflect changes in Chinese policy. In the mid-1950s, for example, it was
the first to benefit under the Hundred Flowers Campaign. Similarly, the
attack in November 1965 on Beijing deputy mayor Wu Han and his
historical play, "Hai Rui's Dismissal from Office," signaled
the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural
Revolution, most opera troupes were disbanded, performers and
scriptwriters were persecuted, and all operas except the eight
"model operas" approved by Jiang Qing and her associates were
banned. After the fall of the Gang of Four in 1976, Beijing Opera
enjoyed a revival and continued to be a very popular form of
entertainment both in theaters and on television.
In traditional Chinese theater, no plays were performed in the
vernacular or without singing. But at the turn of the twentieth century,
Chinese students returning from abroad began to experiment with Western
plays. Following the May Fourth Movement of 1919, a number of Western
plays were staged in China, and Chinese playwrights began to imitate
this form. The most notable of the new-style playwrights was Cao Yu (b.
1910). His major works-- "Thunderstorm," "Sunrise,"
"Wilderness," and "Peking Man"--written between 1934
and 1940, have been widely read in China.
In the 1930s, theatrical productions performed by traveling Red Army
cultural troupes in Communist-controlled areas were consciously used to
promote party goals and political philosophy. By the 1940s theater was
well-established in the Communistcontrolled areas.
In the early years of the People's Republic, Western-style theater
was presented mainly in the form of "socialist realism."
During the Cultural Revolution, however, Western-style plays were
condemned as "dead drama" and "poisonous weeds" and
were not performed.
Following the Cultural Revolution, Western-style theater experienced
a revival. Many new works appeared, and revised and banned plays from
China and abroad were reinstated in the national repertoire. Many of the
new plays strained at the limits of creative freedom and were
alternately commended and condemned, depending on the political
atmosphere. One of the most outspoken of the new breed of playwrights
was Sha Yexin. His controversial play "The Imposter," which
dealt harshly with the favoritism and perquisites accorded party
members, was first produced in 1979. In early 1980 the play was roundly
criticized by Secretary General Hu Yaobang--the first public
intervention in the arts since the Cultural Revolution. In the campaign
against bourgeois liberalism in 1981 and the antispiritual pollution
campaign in 1983, Sha and his works were again criticized. Through it
all Sha continued to write for the stage and to defend himself and his
works in the press. In late 1985 Sha Yexin was accepted into the Chinese
Communist Party and appointed head of the Shanghai People's Art Theater,
where he continued to produce controversial plays.
China - Music
In imperial times, painting and calligraphy were the most highly
appreciated arts in court circles and were produced almost exclusively
by amateurs--aristocrats and scholar-officials--who alone had the
leisure to perfect the technique and sensibility necessary for great
brushwork. Calligraphy was thought to be the highest and purest form of
painting. The implements were the brush pen, made of animal hair, and
black inks made from pine soot and animal glue. In ancient times,
writing, as well as painting, was done on silk. But after the invention
of paper in the first century A.D., silk was gradually replaced by the
new and cheaper material. Original writings by famous calligraphers have
been greatly valued throughout China's history and are mounted on
scrolls and hung on walls in the same way that paintings are.
Painting in the traditional style involves essentially the same
techniques as calligraphy and is done with a brush dipped in black or
colored ink; oils are not used. As with calligraphy, the most popular
materials on which paintings are made are paper and silk. The finished
work is then mounted on scrolls, which can be hung or rolled up.
Traditional painting also is done in albums and on walls, lacquerwork,
and other media.
Beginning in the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907), the primary subject
matter of painting was the landscape, known as shanshui (mountain-water)
painting. In these landscapes, usually monochromatic and sparse, the
purpose was not to reproduce exactly the appearance of nature but rather
to grasp an emotion or atmosphere so as to catch the "rhythm"
of nature. In Song dynasty (960-1279) times, landscapes of more subtle
expression appeared; immeasurable distances were conveyed through the
use of blurred outlines, mountain contours disappearing into the mist,
and impressionistic treatment of natural phenomena. Emphasis was placed
on the spiritual qualities of the painting and on the ability of the
artist to reveal the inner harmony of man and nature, as perceived
according to Taoist and Buddhist concepts.
Beginning in the thirteenth century, there developed a tradition of
painting simple subjects--a branch with fruit, a few flowers, or one or
two horses. Narrative painting, with a wider color range and a much
busier composition than the Song painting, was immensely popular at the
time of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).
During the Ming period, the first books illustrated with colored
woodcuts appeared. As the techniques of color printing were perfected,
illustrated manuals on the art of painting began to be published. Jieziyuan
Huazhuan (Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden), a five-volume work
first published in 1679, has been in use as a technical textbook for
artists and students ever since.
Beginning with the New Culture Movement, Chinese artists started to
adopt Western techniques. It also was during this time that oil painting
was introduced to China.
In the early years of the People's Republic, artists were encouraged
to employ socialist realism. Some Soviet socialist realism was imported
without modification, and painters were assigned subjects and expected
to mass-produce paintings. This regimen was considerably relaxed in
1953, and after the Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1956-57, traditional
Chinese painting experienced a significant revival. Along with these
developments in professional art circles, there was a proliferation of
peasant art depicting everyday life in the rural areas on wall murals
and in open-air painting exhibitions.
During the Cultural Revolution, art schools were closed, and
publication of art journals and major art exhibitions ceased.
Nevertheless, amateur art continued to flourish throughout this period.
Following the Cultural Revolution, art schools and professional
organizations were reinstated. Exchanges were set up with groups of
foreign artists, and Chinese artists began to experiment with new
subjects and techniques.
China - Contemporary Performing Arts
Background
Publishing in China dates from the invention of woodblock printing
around the eighth century A.D. and was greatly expanded with the
invention of movable clay type in the eleventh century. From the tenth
to the twelfth century, Kaifeng, Meishan, Hangzhou, and Jianyang were
major printing centers. In the nineteenth century, China acquired
movable lead type and photogravure printing plates and entered the age
of modern book and magazine printing. The largest of the early
publishing houses were the Commercial Press (Shangwu Yinshuguan),
established in 1897, and the China Publishing House (Zhonghua Shuju),
established in 1912, both of which were still operating in 1987.
Following the May Fourth Movement of 1919, publishers, especially those
associated with various groups of intellectuals, proliferated. During
the Chinese civil war, New China Booksellers (Xinhua Shudian) published
a large amount of Marxist literature and educational materials in the
communist-controlled areas. On the eve of the establishment of the
People's Republic in 1949, there were over 700 New China Booksellers
offices.
Between 1949 and 1952, the New China Booksellers offices scattered
throughout the country were nationalized and given responsibility
publishing, printing, and distribution. Also, several small private
publishers were brought under joint stateprivate ownership, and by 1956
all private publishers had been nationalized. After a brief flourishing
during the Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1956-57, the publishing industry
came under strong political pressure in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of
1957. The industry had not fully recovered from this campaign when it
was plunged into the Cultural Revolution, a period in which publishing
was severely curtailed and limited mainly to political tracts supporting
various campaigns. Following the Cultural Revolution, publishing again
flourished in unprecedented ways. In 1982 the China National Publishing
Administration, the umbrella organization of Chinese publishers, was
placed under the Ministry of Culture, but actual management of the
industry was directed through four systems of administration: direct
state administration; administration by committees or organizations of
the State Council or the party Central Committee; armed forces
administration; and administration by provinces, autonomous regions, or
special municipalities.
In 1984 statistics showed that 17 of the country's 418 publishing
establishments were in Shanghai, whereas Beijing was home to 160
publishers. In 1985 plans were announced to foster the growth of the
publishing industry in Chongqing, Xi'an, Wuhan, and Shenyang to take
some of the workload from Beijing and Shanghai.
Different publishers were assigned to specific kinds of publications.
For example, the People's Publishing House was responsible for
publishing works on politics, philosophy, and the social sciences; the
People's Literature Publishing House produced ancient and modern Chinese
and foreign literature and literary history and theory; the China
Publishing House had the principal responsibility for collating and
publishing Chinese classical literary, historical, and philosophical
works; and the Commercial Press was the principal publisher of
Chinese-to-foreign-language reference works and translations of foreign
works in the social sciences. Other publishers dealt with works in
specialized fields of science.
In addition to the routine method of distributing books to bookstores
in major cities, other methods of distribution were devised to meet the
special needs of readers in urban and rural areas throughout the
country. Mobile bookshops made regular visits to factories, mines, rural
villages, and People's Liberation Army units, and service was provided
in those locations through which individuals could request books.
Arrangements were made with the libraries of educational institutions
and enterprises to supply them with the books that they required, and
books specifically applicable to certain industries were systematically
recommended and provided to the departments concerned. Also, book fairs
and exhibits frequently were provided at meetings and in public parks on
holidays and other special occasions.
Newspapers
In 1987 China had two news agencies, the Xinhua (New China) News
Agency and the China News Service (Zhongguo Xinwenshe). Xinhua was the
major source of news and photographs for central and local newspapers.
The party's newspapers Renmin Ribao (People's Daily) and Guangming
Ribao (Enlightenment Daily), and the People's Liberation Army's Jiefangjun
Bao (Liberation Army Daily) continued to have the largest
circulation. In addition to these major party and army organs, most
professional and scientific organizations published newspapers or
journals containing specialized information in fields as varied as
astronomy and entomology. Local morning and evening newspapers
concentrating on news and feature stories about local people and events
were extremely popular, selling out each day shortly after they arrived
at the newsstands. In June 1981 the English-language China Daily
began publication. This newspaper, which was provided for foreigners
living or traveling in China but which also was read by a large number
of Chinese literate in English, offered international news and sports
from the major foreign wire services as well as interesting domestic
news and feature articles. Cankao Xiaoxi (Reference News), an
official news organ that carried foreign news items in Chinese
translation, was available to cadres and their families. In 1980 it
enjoyed a circulation of 11 million, but, with the subsequent
proliferation of other news sources, its circulation dropped to 4
million in 1985, causing the subscription policy to be changed to make
it available to all Chinese. Another source of foreign reporting was Cankao
Ziliao (Reference Information), a more restricted Chinese reprint
of foreign reportage available only to middle- and upper-level cadres.
Both of these publications often included foreign reports critical of
China.
China - Libraries and Archives
The country's main library, the National Library of China, housed a
rich collection of books, periodicals, newspapers, maps, prints,
photographs, manuscripts, microforms, tape recordings, and inscriptions
on bronze, stone, bones, and tortoiseshells. In 1987 a new National
Library building, one of the world's largest library structures, was
completed in the western suburbs.
The Shanghai Municipal Library, one of the largest public libraries
in the country, contained over 7 million volumes, nearly 1 million of
which were in foreign languages. The Beijing University Library took
over the collections of the Yanjing University Library in 1950 and by
the mid-1980s--with more than 3 million volumes, one-fourth of them in
foreign languages--was one of the best university libraries in the
country.
On the basis of the General Rules for Archives published in 1983,
historical archives were being expanded at the provincial and county
levels. Two of the most important archives were the Number One
Historical Archives of China, located in Beijing containing the archives
of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the Number Two Historical Archives
of China, located in Nanjing containing the archives of the Guomindang
period. A number of foreign scholars have been granted access to these
archives. In 1987 public and research libraries still faced serious
space, management, and service problems. Even with the special efforts
being made to solve these problems, it was clear that they would not be
quickly resolved.
In the late 1980s, China was experiencing an active educational and
cultural life. Students were staying in school longer, educational
standards were being raised, and facilities were being improved.
Intellectuals were encouraged to develop their expertise, especially in
the scientific and technical spheres, and a wide variety of traditional
and foreign literary and art forms were allowed to flourish. This
situation was likely to continue as long as it served the interest of
economic modernization and posed no threat to the political
establishment.