The Government Control of the Behavior of the People Living in Chinese Cities - Literature review Example

The government control of the behaviour of the people living in Chinese cities Name: Course: College: Tutor: Date: The changing Chinese regime China class structure has been changing since the post reforms movement in the year 1978. The creation of a market mixed economy has resulted in a different cradle of the people living in the various towns with the erosion of the institutionalization that is found in the various areas in the Chinese towns. The social hierarchy that was evidenced in the Mao era is slowly being replaced by the social classes that have dominated the Chinese towns. According to Jian, 1443, the Chinese towns are currently being divided into two eras that is the economic class success and on the other hand the towns are divided along the political lines. This means that the differentiation in social classes in the urban centers is seen as the core of classes in China contrary to the social hierarchy. According to Jian 1443, the market reforms resulted in the remaining of the few individuals in the urban centers. The Professionals in the urban area is seen as being made up of the state owned enterprise managers and the technical professionals. The low class people occupy a very insignificant portion of the urban centers. Therefore the classes in the urban China according to Jian 1445 are seen as being determined by the market-socialisation network. The low class unemployed people are smoothly being pushed way from the major town and the cities that make up the urban centers. This is because the socialization and networking that occurs in the urban centers is mostly between the people from the similar social classes. There are basically two points of researching in the urban centers in the urban centers is the focus on the Danwei system as well as the study on the neighborhoods. Danwei system of administration Gui et al, 404, indicates that the foundation of the transformation of the urban societies in China was the breakdown of the Danwei system of administration. The Danwei system was not only a means of redistributing resources in the urban centers but was also a major tool for the political government in China. It was the basic unit of organization of the grassroots government and ultimately one of the tools that the government used in the control of the society. In the Danwei system people depended on the work units for survival and also for the participation economically in the society. Gui et al, 404, says that order and sanction was maintained through the top down hierarchy that was found in the Danwei system. Disengagement from the Danwei system meant that the individuals lost the basic needs in life such as health care, education and other social benefits. Ultimately the government was controlling the individuals through the Danwei system of administration. There arose reforms in the year 1997 of the Danwei system of administration. This reforms gave rise to the neighborhood system of administration (Gui et al,. 404). This is because the neighborhood space in the Danwei system was marginalized. The main aim of putting up the neighborhood system was the integration of the workplace and the living space of the different individuals. The neighborhood system made the individuals to be work based rather to be environment based (Bray. 4). Unlike the Danwei system where the different individuals dwelt mostly in their localities, here people interacted in the form of work availability. The committees of the residential people managed the affairs of the people who were outside the community. The system of administration has been transformed in the grassroots in terms of the political and the social structures ( Bray 540) Gui et al, 404 indicate that there are several indicators of social change in the society. There was a rise of reforms that focused on the decentralization and the separation of power in the creation of new enterprises. There were changes that economically took place that transformed the society physically, socially and economically. The rise of the private company owners diversified the separation of the work space as well as living space. The private sector was also able to develop the different housing units to accommodate individuals with the different incomes level. The home ownership in the community was therefore shifted from the Danwei community members to the new entrants in the society. The private property management companies are the ones given power in the community. Gui et al, 405, indicates that the autonomy given to the society by the state was only limited. This is because the societal freedom was only up to a set boundary by the state. State preference was seen as being essential to the development of the urban centers in China. This means that the government was in more than one way responsible for the control of the behaviours of population of the Chinese cities. This is seen in the new arrangements of the state to the communities and the society at large. The state preference method of governance meant that through the community based system the state was able to control the society. This was viewed as a way of controlling the society rather than being able to fully look into the achievement of some fundamental ends. The state preference was deeply rooted such that the market based economies did little to alter the already set priorities. The breakdown of the Danwei system of governance lead to the rise of what many people viewed as the autonomy in the urbanization in China. Neighborhood space The society preference saw the rise of the neighborhood space. Bray 6, say that the state has had a way of getting into the people though the administration in the manner of the state. The residents committee is the place where the state meets the society. Rather than being autonomous units, the resident committees are viewed as the arm of the government that reaches down to the individuals in a particular country. The main functions of the resident committees are the civil affairs and social affairs. Bray 7, says the leaders of the committees were known as cadre. The state engagement implies that the state controlled the urbanization of the organization. The resident committees act on the aim of balancing between the governments upper levels in a cost benefit analysis in their dealings. The resident committee’s lack of independence mean that the state still had an upper hand in the ways in which the society can be state controlled indirectly. The agendas from the government were propelled by into the state owned enterprises. The neighborhood space in the society that has been controlled by the state has resulted in the community having autonomous individuals who view the community as being a residential way of administration and have low interest in the community based movement. In 1997, there was sanctioning of the state owned enterprises (Chen, 237) this is because the different individuals were tired of the ways in which the government controlled the living hoods of the people. This lead to the growth of the enterprises that were either single owned or they were mixed enterprises on the shareholders with the mixed ownership of both the government and the private individuals. The state carries out the restructuring program so as to rid itself of the financial burdens in the economy. The restructuring in the government led to the changes in the labour contracts in that termination was now easy in the wake of changed ownership. There was also a significant change in the employments opportunities. The high status jobs were specifically meant for the individuals that had acquired high levels of education. There was labour shortage for the people who had little or no training. There were grievances in the labour force that made them to even commit suicide by falling from the top of buildings (Wang & Zheng, 388). The majority of the labour workers were laid off and sometimes they were forced to retire early. Income inequalities According to Lin and Yu, 1, there is need for the regulation of the income levels of the control so as to curb the rising disparities between the different employees. China as a country has not been able to full look into the different levels of income of the employees and be able to sufficiently equalize them. This is because there is a lot of informal sectors in the urban cities, the citizens in the countryside form a large portion of surplus labour and there is little that has been to ensure that the organizations have compliance to the state legislatures. The state is seen here as propelling the kind of life that its citizens live in the urban centers. This is because the kind of wages that the individuals live in dictate how they behave. If the government does not control the different players in the organization it then means that the individuals are not able to live freely since socialization is limited. The lack of income equality also limits the power that a community has in the formulation of policies that help in the administration of the urban centers as well as its residents (Jansen& Wu, 4). The policy on the minimum wage for example has not been sufficiently looked at. This is because the migrants from the rural areas may be deceived by the low wages making them to take the jobs available as they compare them with the minimal job wage in the villages. There is need for the state to intervene so that the policy can be favourable to all the citizens. Privatization of the housing communities The housing in the urban centers in China has been really changing in the recent times. In Shanghai, there has been a rise of the urban population due to the concentration of the urban workers in specific areas of the town. This has come up in the era of privatization of housing in the urban centers. This is seen in the case of the wake of privatization of the housing in the communities in China. According to Chen et al,. 14, initially the housing project in China was managed by the government in the period before 1978. Here the housing was viewed as a need rather than a want. The housing was provided by the government in line with the socialist ideology of social welfare. However in the cause of the rural to urban migration with the rise in the market economies the different individuals increase fueled the rise in the housing rates. Housing reforms In the period after the year 1978, it was marked with the major reforms in the housing department in China. The economy was transferred from a planned economy into a market economy. This made it possible for the government to implement changes in: commoditization of the housing goods, the privatization of the housing sector, the monetization of the housing consumption and the socialization of the housing reforms (Lin & Yu 2) The urbanization policy that took place in the period after 1990s affected more than 90% of the urban population which was living in the public housing units. In 1998, the government cut off completely the provision in the urban centers for housing through the housing units. The move was marked with the rise in the price of houses, the housing affordability was acute and consequently there was a lot of social instability in the social lives of the individual employees ( Chen et al,. 15-16). The government is seen as having dictated the behaviour of the people in the urban centers. This is because even in the post –reform era that began in 2007, the government is simply a partner in the housing sector. This has left the urban population with struggles in the search of proper housing units. References Bian, Yanjie. “Occupation, class, and social networks in urban China,” Social Forces 83, no.4 (Jun 2005) 1443-1468. Bray, David. “Building 'community': new strategies of governance in urban China,” Economy and Society 35, no.4 (Nov 2006) 530-549. Bray, David, 2005. Social space and governance in urban China: the danwei system from origins to reform, Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. Chen et al,. 2013. The future of public Housing: Ongoing Trends in the East and the West. Doi.10.1007/978-3-642-41622-4-2 Chen, Feng, “Industrial restructuring and workers' resistance in China,” Modern China 29, no.2 (Apr 2003): 237-262. Gui, Yong; Ma, Weihong; Muhlhahn, Klaus. “Grassroots transformation in contemporary China,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 39, no.3 (Aug 2009) 400-423. Jansen, Wim; Wu, Xiaogang. “Income inequality in urban China, 1978-2005,” Chinese Sociological Review 45, no.1 (Fall 2012): 3-27. Lin, C, Yun Myeong-su 2014. Minimum Wages and Income inequality in Urban China. https://www.gate.cnrs.fr/IMG/pdf/Paper-Carl-Lin.pdf. Read More