Tung Melody_The Changing Situation of Peasants in Contemporary China_marked

TUNG Melody 81200301

SOC5001 – Chinese Peasants

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The Changing Situation of Peasants in Contemporary China

Tung Melody

81200301

Centennial College

SOC5005-01

State, Market and Society in Contemporary China

Dr. Hung Po Wah Eva

29 December, 2013



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Introduction

As soon as Deng Xiaoping came into power in the late 1970s, the PRC started

carrying out a series of reform to move the planned society into a market economy so

that to achieve the ideal of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Since then, China

stepped into the reform era and the reform marked significant changes to the

contemporary society. However, these changes could either bring good news, or curse

to different stakeholders and social groups. In this paper, peasants in contemporary

China are selected as the target group to be discussed. Conspicuously, peasants are the

victims of the reform movement; they are perceived to be the entire losers of it. Their

livelihood went from bad to worse with limited social mobility and social welfare, as

well as serious social exclusion. Ideally, the reform should have brought benefits to

the social group; however, there is a great discrepancy between the perfect picture and

reality, making the group to be entitled as “the underdogs” of the reform. The

predicament of peasants may greatly related to their lack of wealth, prestige and

power.

This paper attempts to illustrate the predicament of social mobility (movement of

the group in social position, mainly occupational, economical, educational, political

and geographical mobility) faced by peasants in China impacted by the changing

institutional and structural environment, particularly the very significant

decollectivization, rural industrialization, and the restrictive hukou system which

intensifies dual structure of the society (the urban workers and agricultural workers,



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i.e. peasants). Weber's multidimensional approach is applied to see the change of

peasants' social status, class status and political status.

Pre-reform era

To begin with, it is better to give a general account of the Chinese peasants in the

pre-reform era. Today, among the 1.3 billion of people, 9 billion are peasants who

engage in agricultural activities, whereas 2.5 billon of them are mingong (民工) who

migrate to urban cities to work. Yet, going back to the pre-reform Mao era, peasants

were crowned as the revolutionaries for supporting China’s industrialization. The

commune system was established, land as private property, was then redistributed

from landlord to peasants. Peasants were assigned into production teams, which were

the basic unit of agricultural production under production brigades. A commune

consisted of 13-15 production brigades to collectivize peasants as the primary labor

force to support the urban development. In the operation of commune system, the

commune as a collective institution and the state representive, and the peasants as

labor force were believed to act in reciprocity that both parties were mutually

beneficial. The commune exercised control to peasants, gave them production orders,

peasants followed the orders and provide productivity. Remuneration and provision of

basic welfare such as primary care and education could be enjoyed by peasants in a

commune.

However, the imaginary and reality were not equal. Peasants suffered a lot in the

commune system and were greatly suppressed and exploited as merely labor force

without humanity. As mentioned, the commune system was established for the sake of



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urban development, and latently, for the sake of the state. The commune system

reinforced the importance of collectivism while neglected individuality, as a result,

individuals’ interests were degraded and even prohibited. They could never enjoy the

agricultural profits as the price of produce was fixed by the state at a very low level

which would be welcome and affordable for state purchase. At the same moment, the

fast pace of urbanization and industrialization demanded much from rural to satisfy

urban danwei’s (單位) needs. The PRC also demanded much from rural to export

agricultural produce as foreign aid. Unreasonably high agricultural quota was set by

the state, regardless of the gap of the expected and actual output caused by different

non-artificial factors such as natural hazards. During the three years difficult period

(1959-1961), China rural areas were suffering severe famine, causing at least 15

million casualties, this did not stop but intensified the exploitation of the peasants in

the commune system to continue be forced to grow grain and reserve a large

proportion of their revenue for the local investment. The system failed to guarantee

the provision of basic welfare to peasants, but deprived their basic human rights to

enjoy economic freedom. Nominally, peasants possessed land as their assets, but

practically, they had no economic capital and these “wealths” were exploited by the

state.

Meanwhile, the commune system was upheld by the still existing, stringently

institutionalized hukou (戶口) system (PRC Regulations on Household Registration)

which strictly controlled the geographical mobility and hence other social mobility of

peasants. It also created a dual structural society which stratified the binary opposition

between urban and rural people, so that to favor and rationalize the deprivation of



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peasants in rural areas. The hukou system discriminated peasants from urban workers

by issuing two types of hukou registration: agriculture hukou and urban hukou.

Everyone was assigned either on of these hukou at birth on the basis of the mother's

registration status. The hukou recorded one’s place of residence and the type of

employment activity. It was not only to locate individuals' presumed regular

residence, to confine the geographical mobility of people, but also as an identification

of one’s social status to determine his/her entitlements to state-provided goods and

services, such as welfare provision. It redefined the rural-urban and state-society

relations which gave identity to persons and dichotomized their social positions.

Peasants, who apparently owned agricultural hukou, were then posited to a lower and

exploitable social class. This very strict institutional strategy restrained the suffering

peasants in the commune system. They could but stay in the production team and

continued sacrificing over-exploited labor force to cater the rapid and urban-centered

industrialization. Some peasants might undergo rural-urban migration via illegitimate

procedure, who were named mangliu (盲流). These vagrant, blind-floating

populations who held agricultural hukou were excluded by the urban environment and

could never enjoy the welfare in urban areas. Though they had a little degree of

geographical mobility, they were never socially mobile. The state decided the

allocation of resources according to the hukou status strictly, “without registration,

one cannot establish eligibility for food, clothing or shelter, obtain employment, go to

school, marry or enlist in the army.” (Banister, 1987). Peasants were cut off from

many urban privileges which could be enjoyed by danwei status in urban cities. In this



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respect, they were comparatively uncivilized and their cultural capital was deprived

and were unable to get access to knowledge.

Under these circumstances, peasants in the pre-reform era were said to be in

subordination to the overstressing on state/urban interests; the capital reservation to

state’s investment instead of current consumption of peasants; and the profit shift

from peasant households to production team. This triple subordination shows the very

unfair treatment to peasants. So, in the pre-reform era, peasants, though were treated

as the primary labor force of the state. Owing to the deficient social capitals, their

social mobility was very limited. They could not change their occupation as

agricultural workers once they were assigned into production team; they could not

receive education as they were over-exploited and could receive limited or no

education; they could not increase their income and change their economic status

because of the procurement prices; but they could express political views as they

belonged to the “five red categories” during the Cultural Revolution.

Reform era

The agricultural practice had operated in decades and resulted in sluggish growth

of agricultural output. Deng realized the procurement system under the commune

system was too rigid and the price of agricultural produce was too low. The

unfavorable daily living hampered peasants’ working incentive, showing the

inefficiency of the system to organize production. The agricultural reform in the late

70s ideally aimed to raise procurement prices and grant more economic freedom to

peasant households. Two major components of the reform were the introduction of



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production responsibility system and rural industrialization to replace the obsolete

commune system, which greatly changed the social structure and hierarchy in China.

Below describes the content and aims of the reform:

Production responsibility system (生產責任制)

There were two stages under this system, baochan daohu (包産到戶) and

household responsibility system (家庭責任/承包制). For the former one, there was a

relaxation on the procurement quota of agricultural produce. Each peasant household

was allocated a piece of land and only a portion of its output was required to be

handed to the team and the peasant could get an agreed amount of work points. The

relaxation allowed peasants to keep extra output for self-consumption which

apparently granted them some economic capital and they were said to enjoy some

economic freedom. While for the later system, or dabaogan (大包幹) which started

from the early 80s, there was a further relaxation in peasants' economic activity. The

decollectivization no longer demanded peasants to produce as much as to satisfy the

rapid urban development, which allowed them to engage in household agriculture.

Peasant household could therefore make their own production decisions on what/how

to grow and distribute their agricultural produce, which turned the agricultural activity

to be marketized and the produce were purchasable in market. Since then, the selling

price of grains started soaring instead of always suppressed by the state. Peasants

were said to gain de facto ownership of land as their economic capital and control in

this stage, but the system required them to pay agricultural tax and contribute to the

village collective so that to support village construction, such as roads, schools,



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clinics, etc. still unlike the urban situation, where such infrastructures were provided

by the state.

Since their occupation was not bounded by the waived commune system, they

could search for other employments, which led to rural-urban migration, giving rise to

migrant peasant-workers in urban areas. Their occupational mobilities were relaxed.

Rural industrialization

Followed by the production responsibility system, the more significant part of

the reform is the rural industrialization, which greatly altered the rural social order in

the institutional environment.

As mentioned, the downfall of the commune system stopped the non-stop

production in the teams. The surplus of rural labor favored the introduction of

township and village enterprises (TVEs, 鄉鎮企業), referring to ventures owned by

local party at township or village level, and also those individually owned enterprises,

re-location of Hong Kong factories and decentralization of industries were good

examples. The industrialization of the countryside created off-farm employment

opportunities to rural peasants, they could then participate in alternative economic

activities, particularly in the industrial sector in their own “soil”. In the early 80s,

migratory flows were rather intra-provincial, the slogan “leaving the land without

leaving the countryside” portrays the situation of migrant peasant-workers in this

stage. Geographical mobility was still very limited.

Relaxation of the hukou system – migrant peasant-workers



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Since the early 80s, there was an increasing demand as well as supply of labor,

the labor market became more compatible with marketization. Labor force became

transactable in market. In 1984, the CCP relaxed the hukou migration restrictions,

letting peasants to migrate into urban cities[EH1], promoting massive rural-urban

migration. Such peasants, i.e. migrant peasant-workers, left their agricultural

engagement in rural place and entered to the urban areas to earn a living. However,

peasants still suffered a lot after the reform.

Though peasants could eventually gain a bit social mobility, mainly geographic

mobility and upward occupational mobility from being an agricultural worker to

industrial laborer, their social status was still strictly confined by the hukou system,

the institutionalized exclusion. Hukou system, as mentioned, gave individuals social

identity and intensified the bifurcated social order. As peasants were always holding

agricultural hukou but not urban hukou, even though they migrated into urban, they

were still discriminated by the environment and could not enjoy social benefits,

especially social welfare such as medical insurance, housing subsidies, pensions,

educational opportunities, etc. Which inferred their loss of social capital (loss of

social connections and subordination to urban hukou), economic capital (left their

land), cultural capital (isolated from urban lifestyle and limited education), and

political capital (almost no political resources) once they left the countryside and

migrated into urban areas. The reform was seemingly imposing higher pressure for

the migrant peasants. They, from the very beginning, had been marginalized and

excluded by the society, the lacking capitals indicated their immobile social status,

class status, political status, etc. Most migrant peasant-workers still could not move



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up to higher positions or change their jobs. Til now, they are still apt to earn lower

wages than the urban hukou holders (Han, Huang & Han, 2001). Radical protests of

the suicidal cases in China factories, such as Foxconn, illustrate well the exploited

situation of migrant peasant-workers.

The above is just the case of the migrant peasant-workers. Back to peasants who

were staying in rural side, their scenario was even worse. Their lacking power, the no-

comprehensive system and the corrupted cadres in townships and villages made the

reform very unsuccessful that the multi dimension of capitals of peasants continually

deprived. The very famous report “Will the Boat Sink the Water? The Life of

China's Peasants” by Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao (2004) depicted the very poor

situation of rural peasants in the dystopia of the reform era. The following paragraphs

will futher the discussion of how peasants lose in the reforms and what are the most

important issues now facing them.

The “three rural problems” (三農問題)

The three rural problems, the peasants is awlfully impoverished; the rural

countryside is desperately poor; and agriculture is in great peril (農民真苦，農村真

窮，農業真危險), are the most obvious problems that the peasants are facing in the

present days. This issue was first proposed by a local official in Hubei, Li Changping.

The problems gained social attention in the late 90s, which are said to be caused by

three facets:

The obstacle to collective petitioning: the impoverished peasants



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After the reform, despite peasants are having de facto ownership of land, they are

responsible for paying an amount of agricultural tax and to support rural-based

investment. The exorbitant financial exactions like the unpredictable, arbitrary, heavy

tax burden and the “three unrulies” (unreasonable fee collections, fines and various

cost-sharing charges/fund-raising) and unreasonable governance by the township

cadres impose grievances of rural peasants. Though they are granted the right to

complain, or shangfang (上訪), they face numerous obstacles and can even be killed

during the protests, for example, Ding Zuoming in the book mentioned before.

Dual social structure: the poor countryside

The hukou system, is seen as the first criminal of the unequal, discriminative

dual structural society in China. The dichotomized social order between rural and

urban areas degrades peasants' social status, and therefore deprives their social capital

and mobility. If the agricultural hukou holders want to convert to urban hukou, there

are only two channels: first, to gain outstanding performance in the gaokao (高考)

public examination, then enter university in urban places; second, to participate in the

Liberation Army; an addition channel is a marrying an urban male, which is less

practical.

This is the split of rural and urban society caused by the hukou-driven dual rural-

urban relations. With the relaxation of the hukou system, some of the problems seem

to be solved, part of the peasants able to have upward social mobility. However,

peasants are living in a self-sustained/financed society which they could hardly gain

support from the state like the urban citizens. The resources in rural has long been



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exploited since the pre-reform Mao era, after reform, indeed the countryside needs to

recover, which requires state's support. However, the economic reform still stresses on

developing urban areas, to maintain living standard, peasants must invest the villages

by themselves, yet, the agricultural tax levied by cadres is seldom used properly.

Fundamental value: the perilous agriculture

Chinese have long been accused for their immoral behaviour[EH2], which is

manifested in Fei Xiaotong's differential mode of association. The invasion of TVEs

which are invested by economic men poses danger to rural agriculture. Many factories

are disclosed to manufacturing fake and unqualified agricultural produce, such as the

bleached rice, toxic vegetables, dead cottons, etc. This significantly hampered

consumers' (both local and foreign) confidence to the agricultural market. Peasants

are forced to sell their products under price and causes dumping. The profit gain is

less than their loss.

In addition, since China has entered the WTO, to go into the track of the world

market, the agricultural produce must be sold at higher price in the world market.

Facing more and more competitors, China's agricultural produces are losing their

competitveness. And the protectionalism implemented by other countries also restrict

the selling of such products. In 2002, such barrier caused a loss of US$17 billion

(Zhang, 2006). Agriculture is a risky investment.

To conclude, there is always an invisible but obvious discrepancy between the

ideal thinking and real situation. The PRC's discourse is always optimistic and

cheerful, however, reality proofs again and again that, the peasants, are the entire



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losers of the economic reform and marketization. Indeed, the very root problem is the

never egalitarian hukou system. So long as the society is set in a dual structure, so

long as the imbalanced stratification between agricultural hukou holders and urban

hukou holders still exists, peasants are still suffering from more than the three rural

problems, and can hardly gain upward social mobility. De facto peasants

representative or units are suggested to be established so that to bargain for the access

to social benefits.Yet, the state-society relation is too complicated, these problems be

deal with a tender and delicate manner, otherwise, China will recommit the same error

as Mao did, and cause even bigger loss.

References

Batisse, Cecile, Li, Qin, Zhu, Nong. (2009). The flow of “peasant-workers” in China

since the economic reform: a longtitudinal and spatial analysis. pp. 4.

Han, Ke-Qing, Han, Wen-Jui, Huang, Chien-Chung. (2011). Social Mobility of

Migrant Peasant Workers in China. Sociology Mind, 1(4), 206-211.

Melody,

Very clearly written and organized and you do show a good understanding of the interplay

among the hukou system, the process of decollectivization and agricultural problems in the

rural countryside. More emphasis, however, could still be given to the importance of market.

Students tend to think that a comparison between pre-reform and reform era already speak

of the importance of the market, but bear in mind that it is only implied but not made the

focus. Try therefore to spell it out more explicitly.

Marks: 72 / 100



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