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Socioterritorial Fractures in China: the Unachievable “Harmonious Society”?

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Socioterritorial Fractures in China: the Unachievable “Harmonious Society”? China Perspectives 2007/3 | 2007 Creating a Harmonious Society Socioterritorial Fractures in China: The Unachievable “Harmonious Society”? Guillaume Giroir Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/2073 DOI : 10.4000/chinaperspectives.2073 ISSN : 1996-4617 Éditeur Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine Édition imprimée Date de publication : 15 septembre 2007 ISSN : 2070-3449 Référence électronique Guillaume Giroir, « Socioterritorial Fractures in China: The Unachievable “Harmonious Society”? », China Perspectives [En ligne], 2007/3 | 2007, mis en ligne le 01 septembre 2010, consulté le 28 octobre 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/2073 ; DOI : 10.4000/ chinaperspectives.2073 © All rights reserved Special feature s e Socioterritorial Fractures v i a t c n i in China: The Unachievable e h p s c “Harmonious Society”? r e p GUILLAUME GIROIR This article offers an inventory of the social and territorial fractures in Hu Jintao’s China. It shows the unarguable but ambiguous emergence of a middle class, the successes and failures in the battle against poverty and the spectacular enrichment of a wealthy few. It asks whether the Confucian ideal of a “harmonious society,” which the authorities have been promoting since the early 2000s, is compatible with a market economy. With an eye to the future, it outlines two possible scenarios on how socioterritorial fractures in China may evolve. he need for a “more harmonious society” was raised 1978, Chinese society has effectively ceased to be founded for the first time in 2002 at the Sixteenth Congress on egalitarianism; spatial disparities are to be seen on the T of the Communist Party of China (CPC). In 2004, same scale as in many other developing countries. In a polit - the Plenum of the Party’s Central Committee called for “the ical system still officially claiming to be communist, the building of a harmonious society” ( Goujian shehuizhuyi hexie theme of inequality has become a major issue in society: it shehui 构建社会主义和谐社会 ). During the sixth plena - has reached an “alarming level,” ((2) as judged by both the ry session of the Sixteenth Central Committee of the CPC, authorities and public opinion. Some officials anticipate a in October 2006, President Hu Jintao raised the building of crisis some time after 2010 if the process is not reversed. ((3) a “harmonious society” to a “more important position” in the In fact, the “process of social stratification” ( shehui cengci - work of the Party. The idea, a “harmonious society,” is invest - hua ) in post-Maoist China supplies the material for an evolv - ed with a wide range of meaning, encompassing the reduction ing branch of research in the social sciences. Inasmuch as of the gap between rich and poor, greater employment, the various social categories do occupy different territories, improvements in fairness and justice, an end to corruption, the social stratification also reflects territorial fragmentation. maintenance of public order and the protection of the environ - Our aim here is to draw up an inventory of this much-debat - ment. In March 2007, Jia Qinglin, the Chairman of the ed question while showing the difficulty involved in adopting Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, went to a scientific approach to these fractures and to their dynam - far as to rehabilitate the role of religion as a factor in promot - ic, so varied are the present assessments and so governed by ing social harmony. ((1) Various senior political leaders are now political considerations. We shall seek to reveal the strate - recommending to draw inspiration from Confucian, Buddhist gies and the myths created by the authorities in order to play or Taoist wisdom in order to achieve that objective. down the existing social and spatial disparities. Our analysis The present study will concentrate on the question of dispar - ities and social and territorial fractures. It will show that the real socioterritorial revolution that China has been experi - 1. Xinhua News Agency , 5 March 2007. encing since 1978 flatly contradicts this ideal of a “harmo - 2. Xinhua , 26 December 2006. nious society” that President Hu has placed on his agenda. 3. Straits Times , 23 August 2005, citing the official newspaper China Daily quoting in its turn from a survey carried out by the Institute of Labour and Wage Studies, a Since the policy of reforms and opening was launched in think tank attached to the Ministry of Labour and Social Security. 83 N o 2007/3 Special feature s e will take two standpoints. The first, a wide-angle view, will however, moderate growth was accompanied by the swift v i a t show the process whereby sociospatial polarisation has widening of inequality: the Gini coefficient increased from c n ((6) i intensified since 1978. The following three parts will take a 0.338 to 0.444 by 1995. e h p close look at the uncertain outlines and blurred identity of Over recent years, the Gini coefficient has been rising fast. s c r the three main social categories, dealing successively with It has become a political issue of acute sensitivity, with e the middle class, the poor and the rich, placing each class in authorities and experts providing sharply divergent interpre - p its own territory. tations. In March 2001, the Prime Minister Zhu Rongji drew upon a survey carried out in 1999 in asserting that the A Dynamic of Unprecedented Gini coefficient was still only 0.39, that is to say “close to Socioterritorial Fragmentation international levels.” The official figure is far from reassuring when we know that the level of 0.4 is internationally accept - Our aim is not to tackle in detail the vast question of social ed as a warning sign regarding social inequality. inequality in China since 1978, but rather to show how In reality, the figures provided by China’s National Bureau China has for three decades been experiencing an acceler - of Statistics, undoubtedly an official body, show that the 0.4 ated, indeed unprecedented, process of social polarisation level has already been exceeded: the coefficient rose from and territorial fragmentation. ((4) The use of the term shehui 0.386 in 1998 to 0.458 in 2000. In fact, a few days before cengcihua 社会层次化 (the process of social stratifica - Zhu Rongji’s intervention, the Xinhua news agency had put tion) in China’s scientific literature and later in official the Gini coefficient at 0.458 and described it as “above the speeches, indicates how disparities are widening in China. international warning threshold”. Most analysts estimate that The growing incidence of this form of social and spatial dis - the Gini coefficient is today around 0.5. But some studies, continuity is found at every level: between regions, within such as that by He Qinglian, taking into account salaries, the regions themselves, or between country people and city additional earnings and illegal income (tax fiddles, monop - dwellers. oly payoffs), put it as high as 0.6, that is to say, at the Brazilian level. ((7) It is recalled by some that at the time when A Gini coefficient at the Brazilian level? Mao and the Communists took power in the 1920s the Gini coefficient was around 0.5 and, making due allowance for Many analyses refer to variations in the Gini coefficient to changing times, they establish a parallel with that explosive show how social inequality is intensifying in China. The Gini social situation today. coefficient is one of the most commonly used indicators for measuring social inequality. 0 corresponds to perfect equality Generalised socioterritorial polarisation and 1 corresponds to perfect inequality. Like any measure - ment tool, it has its limitations: thus, a country with an aver - Whatever the exact level of the Gini coefficient may be, the age Gini coefficient may have millions of people living in the yawning disparities are easily verifiable at every level of most extreme poverty; furthermore, it is a static measurement Chinese society and right across Chinese territory. tool that takes no account of the dynamic of increasing The gaps between and within regions are still wide. In gener - incomes; the Gini coefficient also has the disadvantage of al terms, one can hardly fail to observe how, in China, levels being based on official income statistics. Despite these imperfections, it does give an approximate and relatively true picture of the level of inequity within a given society. 4. Bian Yanjie, “Social Stratification and Social Mobility,” Annual Review of Sociology , vol. Before 1978, China’s Gini coefficient was very low, lower 28, 2002, pp. 91-116. G. Guiheux, “Les nouvelles classes sociales chinoises. Comment penser les inégalités?” in François Godement and Sophie Boisseau du Rocher (dir.), Asie . than that of other developing countries: it was 0.16 in the Entre pragmatisme et attentisme , Paris, La Documentation française, 2006, pp. 17-32. cities and 0.24 in the countryside. In most of the developing I. Thireau, “Stratification sociale,” in T. Sanjuan et al ., Dictionnaire de la Chine contem - poraine , Paris: A. Colin, 2006. Wan Guanghua and Zhang Xiaobo, “Rising Inequality in world, the coefficients varied between 0.37 and 0.43 (cities) China,” Journal of Comparative Economics , 34, 2006, pp. 651-653. ((5) and between 0.34 and 0.40 (countryside). The post- 5. Zhao Renwei, Li Shi, “Increasing Income Inequality and its Cause in China”, Journal of Maoist period has had three distinct phases in terms of Gini Economic Research, N° 9, 1997. coefficient. From 1978 to 1984, it reflected average growth 6. B. Gustafsson, Li Shi, “Effects of the Transition on the Distribution of Income in China. A Study Decomposing the Gini Coefficient for 1988 and 1999,” , Economics of Transition , of inequality: the Gini coefficient grew slowly, rising from 9, 2001, pp.
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