Social Change in China - It is Everywhere

Due to a heavy workload at Tsinghua's MBA Program, it's been a long time since my last post. As things are getting a bit more relaxed now, I would like to share a paragraph on social change in China with you (it is part of a paper that Willi Steinmark and I composed for a course here):

Chinese society today is in the midst of a process of rapid change – when compared to Chairman Mao Zedong’s era, it is in mere turmoil. The Chinese Communist Party is currently facing social challenges which before 1978 not even the most progressive of its members would have believed to come true.

From a macroeconomic perspective, one of the most astonishing facts about Chinese society is its high level of income inequality. This year, the country’s Gini coefficient has reached a level of 0.447, making Chinese total income even more unequally distributed than US income[1] (United Nations Development Programme 2005, p. 55). When compared to Europe, this development becomes even more apparent: Most European nations are today characterized by Gini coefficient values between 0.25 and 0.35. China’s Gini coefficient becomes even more tangible when one looks at the different buckets of income distribution: When society is ranked by income, in 2004 the top one percent earned 6.1 percent of total income, the top five percent earned nearly 20 percent and the top ten percent made up for 32 percent of total income in China. (People’s Daily, 2004a)

When it comes to rural-urban differences, current data should also be a cause for concern: Based on the first half of 2006, average annual income of the rural population is 1,797 RMB, while it is 5,997 RMB in urban areas (Li, 2006). Nevertheless, income inequality within cities is even higher: according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 60 percent of urban residents live off incomes lower than the national average (People’s Daily, 2006).

Driven by income differences between cities and the rural area, millions of migrant workers leave their rural homes each year seeking for jobs and wealth in the cities. Today, there are said to be over 130 million migrant workers in the country’s more than 450 cities (China Daily, 2004). As jobs are not abundant in China’s cities for low-skilled workers today, rural migrants are often forced to seek other ways to earn their living: 60% of all street markets in China are said to be run by people from out-of-town (Ferdinand, 1996, p.6)[2]. Disillusioned by urban reality, a large number of migrants engage in criminal activities. One estimate of the early 1990s says that approximately 80% of all criminal offences in Beijing were committed by migrants or vagrants (Id., p. 7).

Possibly caused by the rising level of income inequality or not, Chinese society today goes through other severe aspects of change: crime, drug consumption and sexual uproar.

Even though current crime statistics seem to be relatively stable, the last three decades have seen a sharp increase in criminal cases throughout China. While the country reported about 750,000 criminal cases in 1983 (New York Times, 1983), this number has increased to 2,13 million in the first half year of 2005, leading to a total number of over 4 million criminal offences throughout the year (YNET, 2005).

When it comes to drug consumption, the development is even more severe : While in 1983, the Public Security Bureau arrested only ten people for drug-related crimes and seized 5 grams of drugs for the whole country, between 1991 and 1999 the police confiscated over 40 tons of heroin alone. In 1991, China had 14,800 registered drug addicts – in the year 2000, this number had risen to over 650,000 (People’s Daily, 2000 and Ferdinand, 1996, p. 484).

Another aspect of the growing emancipatory tendencies of the Chinese people is sexuality. People’s Daily is talking about a “sexual revolution” (People’s Daily, 2003) and the data confirm this definition: While in 1989, only 15,5% of Beijing residents said to have had sexual relationships before marriage, this number has grown to 70% in 2006 (Beech, 2006). Among China’s urban population, the average age of first sexual experience has dropped significantly: While people in the age group of 31 to 40 on average lost their virginity at 24.1 years, today’s 14-20 year olds report this figure to be 17.4 years – a drop of almost 7 years within two decades (Id.).

China is moving...

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[1] The Gini Coefficient is a standardized measure of income distribution within a country and was developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini. Its value ranges from 0 (total equality) to 1 (total inequality).

[2] Ferdinand, P. (1996). Social Change and the Chinese Communist Party: Domestic Problems of Rule. Journal of International Affairs, 49, No. 2.