Chinese Urban Life under Reform: The Changing Social Contract (Cambridge Modern China Series)

This book provides a rare glimpse into how the Chinese urban population is experiencing the rapid shift from a planned to a market economy. Using a dozen recent national surveys, the authors give voice to workers, civil servants, intellectuals, and women, who report their grievances and joys at home, at work, and in the public sphere. With fresh data on emerging patterns of economic inequality, labor-management relations, popular grievances, political participation, and gender inequality, the book analyzes how the shifting social contract influences ordinary people's lives and China's future direction. This book provides a rare glimpse into how the Chinese urban population is experiencing the rapid shift from a planned to a market economy. With comparitive data from market-based Taiwan, it illuminates the directions in which China might be headed THIS chapter continues our theme of the way in which the shifting social contract has multiple consequences in individual lives.