| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
SONODA Shigeto Professor, Faculty of Literature, Chuo University, 文学部, 教授 (10206683)
OHSHIBA Kazutsugu Associate Professor, Faculty of International Agriculture and Food Studies, Tokyo University of Agriculture, 国際食料情報学部, 助教授 (40194138)
NAKAMURA Norihiro Professor, Faculty of Law and Letters, Ehime University, 法文学部, 教授 (10192676)
YAN Shan-ping Associate Professor, Faculty of Economics, Momoyama Gakuin University, 経済学部, 助教授 (00248056)
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| Research Abstract |
What has been occurring in China since the implementation of the reform and "opening" policies that began in the late 1970's demonstrates that China has experienced an unprecedented social transformation process, the impact of which can be considered as large as its socialist revolution in 1949. In order to scrutinize China's realty of social changes and interpret them according to State-Society relations theory, we have conducted intensive research activities over the past three years, including theoretical analysis through monthly discussion meetings and individual surveys conducted by each investigator focusing on such themes as migrant labor, labor market, female migrants, emerging middle class, urban communities and Buddhist reconstruction, etc. In particular, we successfully organized an international symposium to assess the present stage of China's state-society relations in November 1997 in Shizuoka, which, as the first attempt of this kind in Japan, provided an opportunity to
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formulate common framework for the analysis among all members of the project.
As results of the project, we have reached the following tentative conclusions ; 1) Eye-catching phenomenon witnessed in China's present social scene should not be regarded as the sign of a completed shift in social structure from a traditional dichotomy to a trichotomy. These changes remain superficial, intermediate and transitional. The best way to characterize the present process of China's social transformation is "symbiotic and/or amphibious between the state and society." 2) Labor markets for rural immigrant labor has yet to be completed. Entry to various urban labor is segmented by different social backgrounds such as hukou (family registration) status. 3) Rural immigrants in China do not follow the general pattern of poor, land-lost peasant immigration into urban sectors found in the South-East Asian countries. The Chinese phenomenon of rural immigration should be considered as economically rational behavior based upon given conditions in terms of their motivation and socioeconomic impact on home villages. 4)As an emerging social strata in changing China, new "middle class", defined as workers in the foreign and private business sectors, are rather conservative, far from exhibiting dissident inclination. Coupled with the old "middle class" of institutional elites of the party cadres, middle class in contemporary China as a whole has been paying more attention to the education of the next generation. In this regard, middle class fostered by the regime demonstrates the co-existence between the state and society, not the opposition of the society against the state. Less
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