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Kho, Tung‐Yi (2019) In search of the Good Life in Contemporary China : Stories from ShenZhen. PhD thesis. SOAS University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/32462 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. IN SEARCH OF THE GOOD LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA: STORIES FROM SHENZHEN TUNG-YI KHO Dissertation submitted for the degree of PhD 2019 Department of Anthropology and Sociology SOAS, University of London 1 Abstract What makes a good life? And, specifically, what makes a good life in China today? The question is relevant because in the course of the past thirty-plus years, China sustained a historically unprecedented economic growth rate that averaged roughly 10% annually, lifting over 800 million of its population out of poverty. In line with these developments, urbanization proceeded apace throughout the country, precipitated by large-scale rural-urban migration. With an estimated 440 million rural-urban migrants in the 30 years since 1979, China’s urban population exceeded its rural population for the first time in 2011 and has only continued to increase since. Such radical economic and demographic transformation of what has historically been an agrarian civilisation has led to talk of a civilisation-switch that has widely been celebrated as a monumental success. But have these coeval meta-level processes of modernization, implied by economic progress, development, and urbanisation, yielded the good life? While asking about the good life has been the perennial quest of philosophy, this inquiry is based on a grounded empirical investigation. Essentially, my project has deployed the methods of anthropology to furnish an answer to what is a philosophical question. My study was based on ethnographic research conducted in Shenzhen, South China, over two extended stints totaling some twenty-four months. The city, which is in the Pearl River Delta region (zhujiangsanjiao 珠江三角), was the field-site of choice for my ethnography because it was the country’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and also its most successful. My interlocutors were all rural-migrants who had left home for Shenzhen in search of the supposedly good life. Did they find it? My research sought to find out, in the process, shedding light on the nature of modernity and our prospects of attaining the good life within it. 3 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgments 5 Chapter 1: China, Modernity, and the West 6 Chapter 2: A Tale of Two Cities and the Good Life 36 Chapter 3: Descartes Meets Confucius in Shenzhen 67 Chapter 4: Wai and the Wholesale Fashion Market 95 Chapter 5: Yan and daigou (parallel-trading) across HK-SZ 124 Chapter 6: Madam Chao and the Homewares Shop 150 Chapter 7: Shenzhen’s Urban Centre and Margins 179 Chapter 8: Epilogue 209 Bibliography 226 4 Acknowledgements I wish to express my deep gratitude to Stephen P. Hughes for being such a sturdy pillar of support as mentor and friend these past several years at SOAS. The road up until this point has been personally difficult and I cannot imagine the journey being possible without his kind counsel and unwavering help. I would like to thank members of staff who have previously commented on my manuscripts and chapters in the past: Kit Davis, Caroline Orsella, Kevin Latham, Edward Simpson, and Jakob Klein, I am grateful to members of my cohort for their camaraderie, and input at the pre and post-fieldwork seminars: Alyaa Ebbiary, Camelia Dewan, Edoardo Siani, Chen Ze, Petra Matijevic, Xu Chenjia, Leo Pang, Karen Bhujel, and Yun Miao. To my friends in Hong Kong, I am extremely grateful for your companionship throughout these years. Special thanks to Lau Kin Chi, who has been inimitable in granting all manner of help and providing an intellectual space to pursue alternative ideas. Also members of the HK research team: Erebus Wong, Sit Tsui, Lau Kin Ching, Lai Seung, Alice Chow, Jin Peiyin, Yan Xiao Hui. Thanks to my Chinese supervisor and friends at Renmin University in Beijing: Prof. Wen Tiejun, Kathy Zhang, Lia Wei, Zhang Junna, Yan Haixia. And to my interlocutors in Shenzhen, I owe a big debt of gratitude for opening your lives to me and showing me an alternative way to live: Wai, Yan, Lena, Mr Ma, Madam Chao, the neighbourhood Chinese doctor, Ah Hua, and Mr Liao. Last but not least, I owe an unquantifiable debt to Dheen, Ela, and Ona, who have not only patiently waited upon me while I completed this process but endured multiple re-locations: from Oregon to Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Thailand, and now, Sydney. It is my wish that there will be greater stability in the near future and that we will have more time to spend together as a family from here onwards. If there has been one lesson from this experience, it is that family constitutes the cornerstone of the good life. I would like to thank my parents for providing me the necessary financial resources to complete my studies. 5 Chapter 1 China, Modernity, and the West 1.0 The good life in China This project grapples with the question of what makes a good life in China today. While inquiring into the good life has been the perennial quest of philosophy, this project has sought clarity on the question not by way of philosophical introspection but through a grounded empirical investigation. My study was based on ethnographic field-research conducted in Shenzhen, South China, over two extended stints totaling some twenty-four months (2011- 2012, 2014-2015), supplemented by follow-up visits approximately every two months lasting until 2017. Shenzhen, which is in the Pearl River Delta region (zhujiangsanjiao 珠江三角), was my choice as the field-site for the ethnography because it was the country’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and, unarguably, also the most successful. My interlocutors were all rural-migrants to Shenzhen and I had come to know of them in the course of my settling into life in the city. What is a good life? And, of particular relevance due to the shifting global political- economic equations of our times, what is a good life in China today? As we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st C, much is made in the popular media and intellectual circles about the place of China, and by extension, Asia, in the world. The impact that China is having on the Asian continent and on the world as a whole has been so significant over the past three over decades, especially since its reforms and opening-up (gaige kaifang), that some have heralded the arrival of the “Chinese Century” (Pieke 2014; Stiglitz 2014) or, if not, the “Asian Century” (Asian Development Bank 2012). Such a prospect of Asian dominance was also anticipated by Frank (1998), who referred to the impending period as the “Asian Age”. These designations are analogous to the characterisation of the 20th and the 19th centuries as America’s and Britain’s respectively. Unsurprisingly, labelling the present 21st century as “Chinese” or “Asian” has to do with the projected global dominance of China in the fields of politics and culture if current economic trends continue. In keeping with the modern interstate system first instituted by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, our polities continue to be constituted as nominally sovereign nation-state units that are interlinked within a world-system (Wallerstein 1974). Within this system, the national economy categorically remains an autonomous unit of fundamental significance in determining a nation’s place within the world-system (Greenfeld 1993). Accordingly, in highlighting the arrival of the Chinese Century, Stiglitz (2014) was drawing attention to the 6 fact that the Chinese economy had surpassed that of the United States and was entering 2015 as the world’s largest economic power. With the economy growing at a sustained average of 10% per annum since market reforms began over thirty years ago, China has seen more than 800 million of its population lifted out of poverty (World Bank 2017).1 Furthermore, President Xi Jinping reiterated at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, the Party’s two centenary goals: first, of China becoming “a moderately prosperous society in all respects” by the 2021 centenary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and, second, of China becoming a “modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious” by the time of the centenary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2049.2 The logical implication of these commitments, of course, is that existing national policies of poverty alleviation will continue and even intensify into the foreseeable future. Since these accomplishments and visionary declarations are highly impressive in and of themselves, it is not unreasonable to infer that the Chinese are well on their way to attaining the good life, if they have not already. Indeed, optimism, hope, and exuberance would seem like rather reasonable reactions when examining macro-level indices of China’s economic performance. But are these overwhelmingly positive macro-indicators synonymous with the realization of the good life in China? While they are undoubtedly impressive, it would not be amiss to ask how such macro-indicators translate into life on the ground.