Introduction: Culture, Institution, and Social Stratification: Towards a Comparative Study of Chinese Societies

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology From the SelectedWorks of Xiaogang Wu 2009 Introduction: Culture, Institution, and Social Stratification: Towards a Comparative Study of Chinese Societies Xiaogang Wu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Available at: https://works.bepress.com/xiaogang_wu/20/

Institution, Culture, and Social Stratification: Towards a Comparative Study of Chinese Societies Xiaogang Wu Social Science Division Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Clear Water Bay, Kowloon Hong Kong SAR Email: sowu@ust.hk (Word count: 4,395) 1

Institution, Culture, and Social Stratification: Towards a Comparative Study of Changing Chinese Societies Xiaogang Wu Comparative sociology is not a particular branch of sociology; it is sociology itself, in so far as it ceases to be purely descriptive and aspires to account for facts. Introduction Emile Durkheim in The Rules of Sociological Methodology Social stratification research is an intrinsically international and comparative enterprise. Scholars have long been interested in identifying similarities and variations in stratification processes across different nations (Ganzeboom, Treiman and Ultee 1991). While most empirical analyses are focused on a single country with individuals as the unit of analysis, conclusions are often compared across countries; both similar and idiosyncratic features in the pattern of social stratification have been identified among different industrialized countries (Hout and DiPrete 2005), and the idiosyncratic features are often attributed to the unique institutional arrangement of the country (e.g., Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992; Kerckhoff 1995). However, as countries may differ in many dimensions, one cannot ascertain the differences due to the institutional variations that the empirical analyses are focused upon. To overcome these problems, comparative studies increasingly employ a large number of cases (countries) that represent the existing variations and control for spurious factors. Nevertheless, such an analytical strategy suffers from two problems. First, the measurement of variables cannot easily be standardized across varieties of societies. Second, there exists an inherent tension in comparative research between the number of cases on the one hand and a detailed understanding of their institutional and historical 2

contexts on the other (Ragin 1989). To pin down the role of institutional arrangements in the stratification process, researchers would ideally need to employ their substantive insights and rely on comparative studies of societies with large similarities (instead of statistical controls) but differing in some key institutions of particular interest. Institutional factors are often intertwined with cultural factors. The cultural factors are particularly relevant with respect to education, gender inequality, and family resource distribution, intergenerational relationships, and perceptions of opportunity. For instance, Lee, Parish and Willis (1994) found that, despite rapid economic industrialization, most Taiwanese adults continue to provide financial support to their parents, and they concluded that parental socialization through obligation, guilt, and gratitude via the belief in filial piety remains strong for longer than one might assume. Chu, Xie and Yu (2006) modified the theory on the sibship size and educational outcome, and explained the unusual high-order interaction involving sibship size, gender, birth density, and seniority within the context of Taiwan s (Chinese) patriarchal culture, in which families typically favor boys over girls. More often, in a single-society study, institutional and cultural factors are lumped together to explain the unique patterns of inequality and the stratification process (e.g., Ishida 1993). To distinguish institutional effects from cultural influences in shaping stratification patterns, 1 comparisons among East Asian societies are justified on the grounds of the method of difference in comparative analysis (Skocpol and Somers 1980) in the sense that they share similar values and culture but differ in a key aspect in institutional arrangements, leading to different stratification outcomes. Briton, Lee, and Parish (1995) examined female labor force participation in Taiwan and Korea, which 3

share considerable similarity in cultural values but have diverged in dramatic ways in the past two decades of economic development. They highlighted the institutional impact of government policy and foreign loan investment in shaping the nature of labor demand in the two countries. Yu (2006) found a substantial difference in the effects of family demands, occupation, firm size, and employment sector on women s rates of exit from the labor market in Taiwan and Japan, attributable to the distinct institutional arrangements between work and family responsibilities in two societies that share many features because of historical, political, and cultural intermixing. In this context, studies of three Chinese societies in East Asia (mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan) are appealing, given the fact that these societies differ substantially in terms of economic development level, political institutions, educational systems, and labor market regulation while at the same time sharing Chinese culture and values. Despite the increasing economic integration of Greater China over the past two decades, direct comparisons of the three Chinese societies based on quantitative survey data still remain to be seen. 2 Changing Inequalities in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan since 1980 Over the past decades, mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan have been undergoing dramatic economic and social changes. The economic reforms in China have gradually dismantled the socialist planned economy since 1978. China s GDP per capita (Purchasing Power Parity, PPP hereafter) has consistently grown from US$452 in 1980 to US$5,772 in 2004, 3 with an annual growth of about nine percent. The economic growth has been especially phenomenal since 1992, when Deng Xiaoping called for further 4

market reforms in his famous tour to southern China. Starting from that year, the market economy had been fully legitimized by the Chinese Communist Party s ideology and played an increasingly significant role in China s economic growth. The success of economic reforms and open-door polices is partly from the inflow of capital investments from Hong Kong and Taiwan, where the economy took off in the 1960s and 1970s. As a renowned showcase of laissez-faire capitalism, Hong Kong successfully transformed itself from an entrepôt to a manufacturing center and then to a regional hub of business services. The GDP per capita increased from US$7,402 in 1980 to US$31,668 in 2004, placing Hong Kong among the advanced developed economies. Unlike in other newly industrialized economies (NIEs), intervention by the Hong Kong government into the economy has been kept to a minimum to help create a favorable business environment (Friedman 1982). In contrast, the state played a significant role in economic development in Taiwan, another little dragon in Asia (So 2001). Since the 1950s, with US loans and grants, the government has adopted a series of economic plans to help guide and promote economic growth and industrialization. The 1960s witnessed rapid growth in labor-intensive export industries, followed by the development of capital-intensive sectors, such as shipbuilding, chemicals, and petrochemicals in the 1970s. Since the 1980s, the priority was to promote the service sector and high-technology industries, and economic development in the 1990s focused on a continuing privatization of government enterprises, the opening of the Taiwan market to foreigners, and high investment in the technological sector. The GDP per capita increased from US$3,282 in 1980 to US$21,775 in 2004 (Executive Yuan, ROC. 2008). 5

Figure 1 plots the annual rate of GDP per capita in the three regions from 1980 to 2004. With some exceptions (1989 for China, 1998 for Hong Kong, and 2001 for Taiwan), all three economies have experienced high to moderate rates of growth over the past decades, and mainland China has performed particularly well since the 1990s. The transformation of the economic structure in Hong Kong and Taiwan has greatly facilitated the migration of manufacturing industries to the mainland. Despite some degree of convergence, the three regions continue to differ in many aspects of economic and social development. [Figure 1 about Here] Table 1 presents selected statistics on the three Chinese societies. First, in terms of GDP per capita, Hong Kong is ranked the highest and mainland China is ranked the lowest, with Taiwan in the middle. Second, both the Hong Kong and Taiwanese economies are dominated by tertiary/service industries that employ the majority of workers, whereas the mainland economy is still dominated by secondary/manufacturing industries, with the majority of the labor force working in the agricultural sector. Finally, despite the recent expansion in education in both mainland China and Hong Kong since the 1990s, access to higher education is still limited in both regions compared with Taiwan. For instance, among those aged 15 or above, only 7.2 percent in the Mainland and 15.8 percent in Hong Kong, in contrast to 32.7 percent in Taiwan, have received tertiary education. [Table 1 about Here] Past research has shown that economic development and industrialization, coupled with educational expansion, have important consequences on social inequality 6

and the process of social stratification (Treiman 1970). While the paths of economic growth and the level of development in Hong Kong and Mainland China may not be comparable to each other in many aspects, both have been accompanied by a rapid increase in income inequality (Chow and Papanek 1981; Khan and Riskin 2005), as shown in Table 2. This defies the typical inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and income distribution observed in many countries, namely, a growth in the income level first leads to an increase and then, beyond a certain point, to a decrease in income inequality (Kuznets 1955). The Gini coefficient, a common measure of income inequality, rose from 0.451 in 1981 to 0.535 in 2006 in Hong Kong (Census and Statistics Department 2007), placing the city among the most unequal societies in the world in terms of income distribution (Wu 2007). China s income distribution is no better. The Gini coefficient increased from 0.295 in 1980 to 0.449 in 2005 for the nation as a whole. Income inequality between the urban and rural populations, institutionalized by the household registration system (Wu and Treiman 2007), was particularly prominent: the urban-rural ratio of income per capita, after a slight decline in the early 1980s, increased dramatically since then, from 2.5 in 1990 to 3.1 in 2000 and 3.2 in 2005. With reference to the past socialist egalitarianism, this sharp increase in income inequality has caused widespread social discontent that concerns policy makers (Wu forthcoming). [Table 2 about Here] Taiwan, on the other hand, serves as a good model of an economy being able to maintain equitable income distribution in the course of rapid growth. For most time in the 1980s and 1990s, the Gini coefficient remained at a minimum level of around 0.3 (Su 2008). Even in recent years when income inequality has increased, the Gini coefficient 7

was still low compared with most other countries. The Gini coefficient in Taiwan was 0.339 in 2003 (see Table 2). The discussion of recent trends in income inequality in Hong Kong and Taiwan has centered on a debate about the M-shaped society and stagnant social mobility. 4 While some writers argue that, in the context of economic recession and industrial restructuring, both Hong Kong and Taiwan are increasingly polarized, fitting the scenario of the M-shaped societies, others contended that little statistical evidence suggests such an ongoing trend, namely, ordinary people s living standards are on the decline and social mobility is blocked (Lui 2007a, 2007b; Yip and Fu 2007; Yip, Law, and Fu 2007). On the other hand, the emerging middle class in China has also been a hot topic of research in recent years (Li 2009). More interestingly, the trend of the M-shaped society, true or not, is usually associated with the economic restructuring that took place in the 1990s, when the manufacturing industries in Hong Kong and subsequently in Taiwan migrated to Mainland China (Chiu and Lee 1997; Chiu and Lui 2004; Su 2008). As Figures 2a and 2b show, since the later 1980s, both Hong Kong and Taiwan have witnessed their manufacturing sectors shrinking and their service sectors expanding in terms of the share of both GDP output and employment, whereas in Mainland China, the expansion of the service sector and the decline of the agricultural sector were taking place at the same time, while the manufacturing sector remained largely stable. [Figures 2a and 2b about Here] Such structural transformations have important implications for changing patterns of inequality and mobility opportunities in the three societies. This special issue brings together five papers on Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to address related 8

questions on urban poverty, the transformation of the class structure, class mobility and education, and changes in attitude/values about rising inequality. Chinese Inequality in Comparative Perspectives Sociological studies of inequality in China have flourished over the past few decades (Bian 2002). More attention has been paid to the unique pattern of inequality shaped by Chinese socialist institutions such as the hukou system that created the rural-urban divide and the danwei segmentation in the urban sector (Walder 1986; Bian 1994; Wu 2002; Wu and Treiman 2007). Given the emergence of new classes, such as private entrepreneurs/capitalists, the self-employed, and wage employees in the private sector, sociologists have recently revived their interests in class (jieji) issues (under the term of strata (jieceng), with the middle class being a focal point of observation and research. Class is a core concept in sociology. Thung-hong Lin and Xiaogang Wu s article brings class analysis back to the analyses of economic inequality, social mobility, and changes in social structure in contemporary China. They propose an extended neo- Marxian class schema, taking into account unique Chinese institutions such as hukou, danwei, and the cadre-worker distinction in delineating class boundaries. Based on the class schema, they examine the transformation of the class structure and class inequality in China since the economic reforms, and they find that the Chinese class structure has shifted to a trajectory of proletarianization, particularly since 1992. Class has become the main source of income inequality in China. On the top of Lin and Wu s overall description of Chinese inequality, Wang Feng, Tsui-o Tai and Youjuan Wang s paper focuses on a new aspect of China s economic and 9

social polarization in the 1990s: the emergence of urban poverty, mostly caused by unemployment or under-employment. Wang and his associates report that the emergence of poverty in urban China, as in many other societies, is following a pattern that may well make poverty a permanent feature of the social scene in China, particularly among specific groups of individuals and households, which will create a new underclass and durable inequality in the society. An important policy implication of their findings is that eradicating poverty requires increased educational access, adequate health care, decent housing conditions and good paying jobs, which all go beyond the minimum livelihood guarantee programs formulated in recent years by the Chinese government. In Hong Kong, poverty alleviation has been on a priority of the government since July 1, 2003, when more than half a million Hong Kong citizens took part in a historic demonstration to express their dissatisfaction with the government. The government has set up a new Commission on Poverty to tackle the problem, and inter-generational transfer of poverty has been listed on the top of the Commission s policy agenda (Tang 2005). As education is known as an important means for individuals to rise above poverty levels, how a family s economic resources affect children s school performance and educational outcome has become a central issue for academics and the community. Greater access to higher levels of education could have long-term impact on the evolution of the social structure in Hong Kong (Wu 2007). Nevertheless, the public s concerns about increasing income disparity are not only limited to the miserable living conditions of the poor; there are also concerns about decreasing opportunities for upward social mobility for the majority. Recent discussions on the arrival of an M-shaped society and a shrinking middle class in many Asian 10

societies are symptomatic of growing fears of a major transformation in opportunity structures. Scholars suggest that the fall in the economic growth rate and the maturation of the economy have reversed the trend of a loosened social structure, making social mobility difficult. Tak-lok Lui s analysis based on a survey conducted in 2006 shows no sign of a drastic decline in the openness of Hong Kong s social structure. People are still able to climb up the social ladder. He further points out that the sources of growing anxiety seem not to be the decrease in opportunities for mobility but in the unevenness of new opportunities shaped by Hong Kong s economic re-structuring and socio-economic integration with Mainland China. In the study of intergenerational class mobility, education plays an important role. Formal schooling can help children from disadvantaged backgrounds to change their fate. In Chinese societies influenced by Confucian traditions, education may be particularly valued in status attainment and social mobility (Ho 1967). While there have been no comparative studies to test this claim empirically, some evidence suggests that the processes of educational and occupational attainment in Chinese societies might differ from those established in western societies (e.g., Chu, Xie and Yu 2006). In occupational attainment and career mobility, a common belief is that Chinese employers may put more emphasis on educational credentials than on abilities/skills. Ruey-Ming Tsay, Hsiu-Jen Yeh and Chih-Chia Chuang examine the effect of human capital on the career mobility of Taiwanese workers in the private sector. Unlike the traditional measure of human capital of years of school in status attainment models or social mobility analysis, Tsai et al. decompose human capital into education, on-the-job training, first job with managerial experience, and firm tenure. More specifically, they take into account the concept of 11

mismatch and use the years of over-education to test the symbolic effect of education credentials on promotions within organizations. Their findings remind us of similar studies done in Japan (Ishida, Spileman and Su 1997) and China (Zhao and Zhou 2004). Education, inequality, and job mobility are important issues closely related everyone s life experiences. People s perceptions and subjective feelings might not necessarily be consistent with the objective reality of a society. For example, Tai-lok Lui s analysis suggests that, while no evidence indicates a decrease in mobility opportunity, there is still a growing anxiety among members of Hong Kong s middle class. Lui suggests that this is from the unevenness of new opportunities shaped by Hong Kong s socio-economic integration with China. Martin Whyte and Maocan Guo directly address the subjective dimension of rising inequality in China. While many analysts and Chinese government officials have assumed that the sharply increasing income inequality will lead to widespread discontent and anger, which would pose challenges to social and political stability, Whyte and Guo s analyses show that Chinese people s concerns about unfairness and inequality are not particularly strong compared with people in many other countries. More surprisingly, it is not generally the case that the most disadvantaged citizens (e. g., farmers) are angry about current patterns of inequality. These counterintuitive findings may be explained by a core belief shared by Chinese citizens that talent, education, and hard work are the key routes to economic success. The importance of subjective factors in shaping inequality attitudes is discussed in Xiaogang Wu s recent paper in China Quarterly (forthcoming), which compares income inequality and distributive justice in two Chinese societies with distinct institutional legacies: reforming socialist China and laissez-faire capitalist Hong Kong. Wu argues 12

that whether an income gap is large or not is subject to the normative/value judgments of the public. Both culture and institutions therefore play important roles in legitimizing income inequality. His analyses of survey data collected in Mainland China in 2005 and Hong Kong in 2006 reveal that both societies have a very high rate of normative acceptance of income inequality, compared with other countries with available data, although respondents in China appear to be less tolerant of income inequality than do respondents in Hong Kong. Furthermore, both Mainland and Hong Kong respondents are surprisingly optimistic about opportunities for social mobility and this is positively associated with their sense of the fairness of income distribution. The results from this comparative study provide further evidence to support Whyte and Guo s observations and argument. To conclude, modern social stratification research been traditionally relied on the analysis of high-quality survey data that are representative of the general population. Sociologists in the Greater China region are now fortunate to have access to large-scale survey data for their social inquiries. Indeed, all five articles included in this issue are exclusively based on analyses of data from probability sampling surveys, some of which were designed for international comparative projects (e.g., Taiwan Social Change Survey [TSCS] and China General Social Survey [CGSS]). Even if the themes of these papers might not be directly comparable to each other, they are certain to stimulate research interests in similar topics in other societies. Our understanding of economic and social changes in the region will thus be enriched and we will have additional empirical sources for further theorization on institutions, culture and social stratification across and within cultures. 13

Table 1: Comparative Statistics of Three Chinese Societies, 2006 Mainland China Hong Kong Taiwan Population 1,314,480,000 6,909,500 22,790,000 GDP per capita (PPP, US$) 5,772 31,668 21,446 Economic Structure % Primary 11.7 0.1 1.6 Secondary 48.9 8.7 26.8 Tertiary 39.4 91.2 71.5 Employment structure %* Primary 42.6 0.3 5.5 Secondary 25.2 18.4 36.6 Tertiary 32.2 86.3 57.9 Education % Secondary 59.7 51.7 48.2 Tertiary 7.2 15.8 32.7 Gini coefficient** 0.449 0.533 0.339 Data sources: http://www.stats.gov.cn/ http://www.cepd.gov.tw/ http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/economy-of-hong-kong http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/ Notes: * Hong Kong data are for 2004; ** China data are for 2005. 14

Year Table 2: Growth in GDP per Capita and Income Inequality, 1980-2006 China Hong Kong Taiwan GDP per capita US$ Gini GDP per capita US$ Gini GDP per capita US$ 1980/1981/1983 452 0.295 8472 0.451 4617 0.287 1985/1986/1988 877 0.331 13038 0.453 8102 0.301 1990/1991/1993 1411 0.357 20764 0.476 12543 0.314 1995/1996/1998 2535 0.290 26076 0.518 17416 0.320 2000/2001/2003 4002 0.390 27818 0.525 20701 0.339 2004/2006/2004 5772 0.449-0.535 - - Data sources: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gin_ind-economy-gini-index http://www.wider.unu.edu/research/database/en_gb/wiid/ Gini 15

20 GDP per capita growth rate 15 10 5 0 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004-5 Year -10 China Hong Kong Taiwan Figure 1. Annual Growth Rate of GDP per Capita, 1980-2004 Source: http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt62/pwt62_form.php 16

50.0 Secondary Industry 100.0 Tertiary Industry 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 90.0 80.0 70.0 60.0 50.0 15.0 10.0 5.0 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 year 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 China Taiwan Hong Kong 40.0 30.0 20.0 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 year 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 China Taiwan Hong Kong Figure 2a. Economic Structure Change, 1980-2006 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0 25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0 Secondary Sector 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 year 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 China Hong Kong Taiwan 90.0 80.0 70.0 60.0 50.0 40.0 30.0 20.0 10.0 Tertiary Sector 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 year 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 China Hong Kong Taiwan Figure 2b. Employment Structure Change, 1980-2006 Data sources: China Statistical Yearbook 2007 http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/showtableexcel2.jsp?tableid=036 Taiwan Statistical Data Book, 2008 17

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Notes The author is thankful to the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (HKUST6424/05H and GRF 644208) and the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (CCK07/08.HSS03) for financial support and to Miss Gloria He Guangye for research assistance. Please direct all correspondence to Xiaogang Wu (sowu@ust.hk), Social Science Division, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR. 1 Cultural factors are rarely addressed directly in cross-national comparative studies of social stratification because they are difficult to measure at the empirical level. Rather, they serve as the context to understand the variant patterns observed among different countries. 2 To this author s knowledge, there have been two major comparative projects on Chinese societies: the first was the East Asian Middle Classes (EAMC) project directed by Michael Hsin-Huang Hsiao of Academia Sinica (Hsiao 1999). The other was the Social Indicator Survey directed by Lau Siu-Kai et al of Chinese University of Hong Kong (Lau et. al. 2003). Most studies did not include the Chinese mainland, however. 3 All data on GDP per capita (PPP) are extracted from http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt62/pwt62_form.php 4 The notion of the M-shaped society, originally proposed by the Japanese business strategist Kenichi Ohmae (2006), refers to the changing social structure in which the middle class gradually disappeared: a very few members of the middle class can climb up the ladder, while some others gradually sink to the lower classes. 21