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This paper examines the emergence of the role of "moral doctors" who volunteer in what are called "moral clinics" in Huzhou city. In these moral clinics, the characteristics, experiences, and attributes of older women, in particular, are highly valued and viewed as being essential to the role of the moral doctor. These moral doctors act as moral exemplars and conflict mediators in their local communities. Their moral capital and professionalism, combined with their gender, age, familial and neighborhood attributes, contribute to the accumulation of an affective feminized labor which employs the techniques of care, reason, and moral fortitude to govern the self and others. We unpack these ethical virtues exemplified by moral doctors and nurses in order to show how a female‐centric "ethic of care" can become a set of techniques in governing others. In this paper, we elaborate on the role that these moral doctors perform to support the aims of the moral clinics in terms of fostering pro‐social behavior and moral obligation in local communities. We argue that the performance of this type of "moral work" is both a mechanism of discipline and a process of self‐actualization. We contribute to the current literature on "therapeutic governance" in China by showing how the non‐expert medicalization of social ills by moral doctors is incorporated into the reproduction of social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the group identity is constructed in the process of individualization by reconstructing the public life of square‐dancing groups. The study finds that, on the one hand, groups whose members retired from the work‐unit and whose family structure is waning obtain institutional identities and group membership through external forces. On the other hand, groups play different roles, relying on three types of capital including power, ability, and relationships, and they ultimately reshape the collective identity of the groups with the internally made identity consensus and the externally assimilated identity mechanism. With the social changes in China, the groups have achieved identity construction during the interaction between the state and the individuals. The mutual influence of the reflexive actions of individuals and the support of the state system is also addressed in this paper. Thus, in the interaction between the state and the individual, the basic question of whether free individuals can achieve a universal connection that allows them to maintain public life is answered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the position of the Chinese elite in both national and international contexts. I show that the Chinese elite has converged with the global elite in terms of their incomes, and that many senior Chinese executives are at least as well paid as their counterparts in rich countries. Their insertion into the global elite is further demonstrated by their increasing participation in the World Economic Forum. But this international convergence has been mirrored by national divergence: economic inequality has risen within China, extending the distance between elites and the rest of the population. I show that for top income groups, the relative cost of employing a median wage worker for their personal service has plummeted, increasing their entitlements over labor and thus their capacity to dominate their compatriots. This has been accompanied by a dramatic rise in the reliance of the elite on domestic workers, a traditional symbol of social inequality. Thus the convergence of Chinese elites with their international counterparts has gone hand in hand with both rising economic inequality and rising social inequality within China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic and social transformation of China during the past 40 years is without precedent in human history. While the economic transformation was extensively studied, social transformation was not. In this paper, we use for the first time harmonized household surveys covering the period 1988–2013 to study the changes in the characteristics of the richest 5 percent of China's urban population. We find that it changed from being composed of high government officials, clerical staff, and workers in 1988 to professionals and small and large business owners in 2013. The educational level of the top group increased substantially. Membership in CCP has a positive (albeit small) effect on one's income but is particularly valuable to large business owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is based on original empirical research into the lifestyle migration of European migrants, primarily British, to Thailand and Malaysia, and of Hong Kong Chinese migrants to Mainland China. We combine strong structuration theory (SST) with Heideggerian phenomenology to develop a distinctive approach to the interplay between social structures and the lived experience of migrants. The approach enables a rich engagement with the subjectivities of migrants, an engagement that is powerfully enhanced by close attention to how these inner lives are deeply interwoven with relevant structural contexts. The approach is presented as one that could be fruitfully adopted to explore parallel issues within all types of migration. As is intrinsic to lifestyle migration, commitment to a better quality of life is central to the East Asian migrants, but they seek an uncomplicated, physically enhanced texture of life, framed more by a phenomenology of prosaic well‐being than of self‐realization or transcendence. In spite of possessing economic and status privileges due to their relatively elite position within global structures the reality for a good number of the lifestyle migrants falls short of their prior expectations. They are subject to particular kinds of socio‐structural marginaliszation as a consequence of the character of their migration, and they find themselves relatively isolated and facing a distinct range of challenges. A comparison with research into various groups of migrants to the USA brings into relief the specificities of the socio‐structural positioning of the lifestyle migrants of the study. Those East Asian migrants who express the greatest sense of ease and contentment seem to be those who have responded creatively to the specific challenges of their socio‐structural situation. Often, this appears to have been achieved through understated but active involvements with their new settings and through sustaining focused transnational connections and relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cosmopolitanism is the focus of much current debate. This literature, however, is marked by a relative paucity of detailed research that examines the impact of cosmopolitanism as a social force within different societies. In particular, two topics that have received little attention despite their utter importance for current global challenges are the scale and impact of cosmopolitanism in China and the significance of ‘cosmopolitan innovation’. This paper explores both on the basis of evidence from over 70 interviews with parties involved in low-carbon innovation, a field that may be considered to be particularly propitious for cosmopolitan motivation. We argue that there is distinct evidence of cosmopolitanism in China but that this is a relatively fragile and elite development, despite China's increasingly deep integration into global networks and flows. Furthermore, the cosmopolitanism in evidence is a distinctly Chinese version, thereby offering important lessons regarding the nature of cosmopolitanism per se and the reciprocal challenge of China to the existing cosmopolitanism of the global North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines urban China's socio-political control crisis under the impact of economic reforms as an epitome of a more general social crisis. The traditional urban institutional form of socio-political control in the People's Republic of China (PRC), the work unit form of control, is a variant of age-old forms. The latter's reproduction in variant form in the former was premised upon the fact that the PRC's industrialization was carried out by a peasant-based party creating a new working class of rural migrants engaged in non-market production and exchange. The persistence of non-market economic relations ensured this form of control's continued reproduction. Post-1978 market-oriented reforms have undermined this form. As the emergence of new forms has been slow, a socio-political control crisis has arisen, at a time when millions of urban employees are being thrown out of work. In dealing with the crisis, the official trade union, an organic constituent institution of the work unit form of control, plays a prominent part, in being given the tasks of sustaining this decaying form, and preventing and defusing potential social explosion. Yet, the very economic reform programme that has undermined the work unit form of control, is also gravely weakening the union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using in-depth interview data on nominal marriages - legal marriages between a gay man and a lesbian to give the appearance of heterosexuality - this paper develops the concept of performative family to explain the processes through which parents and their adult children negotiate and resolve disagreements in relation to marriage decisions in post-socialist China. We identify three mechanisms - network pressure, a revised discourse of filial piety and resource leverage - through which parents influence their gay offspring's decision to turn to nominal marriage. We also delineate six strategies, namely minimizing network participation, changing expectations, making partial concessions, drawing the line, delaying decisions and ending the marriage, by which gay people in nominal marriages attempt to meet parental expectations while simultaneously retaining a degree of autonomy. Through these interactions, we argue that Chinese parents and their gay adult children implicitly and explicitly collaborate to perform family, emphasizing the importance of formally meeting society's expectations about marriage rather than substantively yielding to its demands. We also argue that the performative family is a pragmatic response to the tension between the persistent centrality of family and marriage and the rising tide of individualism in post-socialist China. We believe that our findings highlight the specific predicament of homosexual people. They also shed light on the more general dynamics of intergenerational negotiation because there is evidence that the mechanisms used by parents to exert influence may well be similar between gay and non-gay people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western theoretical traditions can benefit from systematic engagement with non- Western concepts: This is shown through an analysis of the Chinese concept guanxi. After considering the general nature of guanxi, including its possible association with corrupt practices and its particular cultural characteristics, the paper goes on to identify the elements of its general form which have universal representation. The possibility of conceiving guanxi as a variant form of social capital is explored. This shows the way in which both the expressive and instrumentalized forms of guanxi indicate otherwise neglected aspects of social and economic relationships not always recognized and addressed by analogous terms current in social theory but which are none the less important for its advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of Asian societies has not yet had its share of attention within the framework of comparative sociology as a whole. As one step towards remedying this situation, a one-day conference, called by the British Sociological Association, was held in London, England, at the School of Oriental and African Studies on December 2, 1961, to discuss the position of sociology in Asia. Papers dealing with India, China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Indo-China and Burma were presented at the conference. Coverage was thus fairly comprehensive, though certain areas, including the whole of the Middle East, were left out on this occasion. The aim of speakers present at the conference was to assess the present state of knowledge about societies they were considering, with special reference firstly to sociologists of Asian nationality and secondly to the current contribution of British scholarship. Papers that were presented, while they showed wide variation in the state of sociology in different countries, also showed for Asia as a whole a volume of work being done which western sociologists could ill afford to ignore. Some criticism arose in the discussion of the idea of regional research entrees and of inter-disciplinary teams assembled for area studies. There was discussion also of the alleged problem of translating sociological concepts into Chinese or Japanese.

A long tradition in stratification research argues students with higher cultural capital are likely to be treated by their teachers as possessing the "right culture," which positively affects their academic performance. Nevertheless, the literature has paid little attention to the role of students' perception in this process. Using two waves of the China Educational Panel Survey, we investigate how students' cultural capital affects their own understanding of teacher‐student interactions, including its gender difference. Fixed effects regressions show a substantially positive effect of cultural capital on the perceived frequency of teachers praising and calling on students to answer questions across subjects. Nonetheless, we also find the lack of cultural capital is not punished and that the cultural capital's effect varies across its specific components and gender. These findings pave the way for elucidating the entire causal chain of intergenerational social inequality via cultural capital, teacher bias, students' perception, and their educational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutions regulate social life through formal rules and sanctions. These are distinguished from another source of social regulation, the informal incentives and constraints inherent in cultural currents and customary practices. Informal practices may be based not simply on cultural forces, though, but expectations regularised by informal rules and sanctions, which may operate as informal institutions. One approach holds that informal institutions arise out of formal institutional voids. Another holds that informal institutions operate in response to situations in which formal institutions frustrate the interests of individuals and groups who engage informal institutions to augment, compromise, or subvert formal institutions. After developing the concept of informal institution, the article goes on to indicate how an informal relationship pervasive in modern China, guanxi, may be understood as an informal institution. It is shown that by drawing on the case of guanxi the scope of the concept informal institution can be extended and also that our understanding of guanxi is enriched when the concept of informal institution is applied to its analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon fieldwork data collected among young female bar‐goers in China, we examine the gender politics manifested by their leisure activities and argue that these young women are pursuing individualism without feminism. By analyzing the act of bar hopping, we reveal the internal tension of individuation, which urges women to engage in gender labor in order to obtain preferential treatment regarding consumption and a competitive advantage in esthetic femininity. This indicates that the central axis of Chinese women's individualization is a hybrid of neoliberal individuals and essentialist gender roles. It encourages women to see themselves voluntarily as subordinate subjects in market transactions and feminized objects under male scrutiny. The pursuit of individualism without feminism prevents women from overcoming the highly gendered settings of bar scenarios, or imagining the female as a whole group with communal solidarity. The Chinese female individual manifests herself as a hostage of the collusion between the commodification of social life and a conservative gender regime. The case of China brings the individualization thesis out of its original compressed‐modernity framework and indicates that East Asia's quest for modernity must address the compressed conditions of individualism and feminism simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each year, around 10,000 foreigners obtain a U.S. residence visa after investing half a million dollars or more. Who are the millionaires that acquire these visas and what motivates them to leave their home countries? To answer this question, I analyzed an original data set that combines U.S. visa statistics with data on global millionaire populations. The analysis produced three key findings. First, demand for investor visas was led by millionaires from countries that ranked lower in the global hierarchy of citizenship value. Second, most of the visas were acquired by Chinese millionaires, who recorded the world's highest application rate. Third, when the quality of democracy in a country declined, visa applications surged. These findings suggest that investor visas are used by elites in less developed countries to hedge against the risks associated with authoritarian rule. Such elites perceive investor visas as a foothold in a stable and democratic country that can provide an insurance policy or exit option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new generation of elites distinguished by their cultural endowments has emerged in China. Unlike the older generation of elites who signaled status through the display of wealth but shared similar tastes, the new generation of cultured elites has sophisticated, often Western‐oriented "highbrow" tastes in their cultural consumption. By comparing the upbringings and the tastes of interviewees from various backgrounds, this study suggests a widening taste‐chasm between the elites and the underclasses in urban cities. The social process behind this is argued to be the rapid formation of cultural capital in China, in which parental privileges accumulated in the market economy converted into cultural privileges in the new generation of new elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various "rich lists" indicate that China now has one of the highest percentages of super rich people worldwide. However, very little is known about their sociopolitical profiles. Based on the annual Hurun China Rich Lists from 2000 to 2018, we created a new dataset of China's super rich that combines information from various sources. Using a multiple correspondent analysis, we reveal that the social spaces of China's super rich are derived from their political, cultural, and social capital. The Chinese super rich are mainly distinguished by their cultural and political capital, while their social capital is not fully independent from political capital. We also identify a division among the super‐rich who first appeared on the rich list during different periods. These divisions can inform the understanding of the emergence of the super‐rich in an economy that has only recently embraced capitalism and can help predict their evolution in an increasingly glocalized system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A call for greater recognition of the value of Mannheim's work on generations was made by Pilcher (1994). This paper will describe the ways in which one case study employed the generational perspective in an effort to understand the main trends of thought and behaviour amongst a specific social group, i.e. the 'reform generation' of young intellectuals in 1980s China. The application of Mannheim's concept to the delineation of this social generation and how it was distinctive from its immediate predecessor will be described. The idea of a social generation being more than a group of similarly aged people will be explored with respect to the empirical work carried out in the Chinese context. The subsequent identification of possible sources of internal subdivisions will also be discussed and how sample members were classified in terms of intra-generational units. The possible links between these specific groups within a generation and the process of social change will also be raised. The value of some of Mannheim's key concepts will be assessed as they were applied in the case study and the main difficulties which arise in practice will be considered. The identity and particular self-consciousness of the 1980s generation emerged during the fieldwork and there were indications of their distinctive social characteristics such as self-confidence and acceptance of the notion of playing a leading role in Chinese society which will be discussed. Whilst this article does not set out to explain the outbreak of the 1989 student- led democracy movement, it should contribute to our understanding of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how parents' social position influences their children's educational achievement in China. In 1977, the government instituted a three-tiered examination system to choose students for junior high school, senior high school, and the university. The carefully laid out rules prevent much of the corruption which undermined the system of the early 1970s. But the system perpetuates and accentuates inequality by selecting a disproportionate number of students from the intellectual and cadre families. Given the close family units and differences in social stratifications in China, social background influences educational achievements in ways similar and yet different from the west. It is not so much the economic advantage but the encouragement and coaching of the educated parents that give these children the edge. These children do better in the examination than those from the peasant/worker families and, in turn, the examination system gives them further privileges and opportunities, widening the gap between them and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's social credit system is an unusually explicit case where technology is used by multiple actors to turn human behavior into a test object on behalf of the state's goal of modifying the larger social environment, making it an intriguing setting for thinking about the new sociology of testing. This article considers how China's search for a usable "credit" score to both allocate financial resources and explicitly measure a citizen's trustworthiness creates an emergent experimental system of governance similar to, yet not quite captured by, the kinds of experimental processes observed in literature on the platform as a form of market‐based governance. As a site where "seeing like a state" and "seeing like a market" converge, the social credit system is a vantage point for observing the changing relationship between moral and economic domains in an era of digital platforms. The article highlights the experimental quality of the system and its emerging system of governance structured around reward and punishment and argues that strategic ambiguity, institutionalized through the affordances of digital platforms, is an important part of the design of this large‐scale social experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new generation of modernity theorists have forecast the democratization of gender relations within intimate relationships in late‐modern times. Chinese society has undergone rapid and dramatic changes in its unique trajectory of political, social and economic reform. Using China as an example of a region which has been largely ignored in contemporary social theory, this article enters the debate to contest the extent to which conjugal relationships are democratized in line with modernity. We further test the assertion that modern marriages are characterized by increased self‐disclosure and communication between partners. Data from a national survey on Chinese families is analysed in relation to the level of self‐disclosure between husbands and wives; gender division of housework; household decision‐making; and home ownership. We highlight the impact of gender, cohort and location (urban, rural or migrant) on experiences of modernity and draw attention to the material, social and cultural factors which continue to shape conjugal relations in contemporary Chinese society. Based on our findings, we contest the argument that disclosing intimacy between intimate partners is a defining characteristic of modern relationships, and suggest that other social factors may condition degrees of self‐disclosure in marriage. Similarly, we question the extent to which heterosexual conjugal equality is attained: the cultural practices and values of patrilineal family organization, together with material circumstances, continue to influence marital relations in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the first nationally representative evidence on the relationship between religion and subjective well-being for the case of China. Research on Western societies tends to find a positive association between being religious and level of well-being. China provides an interesting critical case as the religious population is growing rapidly and the religious and socioeconomic environments are profoundly different from Western societies, implying different mechanisms might be at work. We hypothesize to find a positive association between religion and well-being in China too, but argue social capital, for which strong evidence is often found in Western societies, is unlikely to be an important mechanism because religion in China is generally non-congregational. Instead, we argue that the private and subjective dimension of religion matters for well-being in China by helping adherents have an improved sense of social status relative to the non-religious in the context of rapid social change and growing inequality. Our results generally support these predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hosting mega sport events, especially the Olympics, demands an extensive engagement with global civil society given the voluntary, highly mediated exposure of host cities and nations to the world. The philosophy of Olympism requires ethical authority in demonstrating 'fitness' to host the Games, so demanding intensive strategic image management. Offensive and defensive mobilization of image-dependent 'species of power' in the field of sport (in a Bourdieusian sense) in conducting 'wars of position and movement' (following Gramsci) within global civil society are, then, crucial features of competitive manoeuvres around staging major sport events. The main empirical focus of this article is on the case of the Sydney 2000 ('Millennial') Games, in illustrating the socio-political dynamics of bidding and hosting in the context of a major civil societal matter of concern - Australia's continuing failure to achieve reconciliation with, and equality for, its indigenous peoples. Ironically, though, it was in the domain of human rights that Sydney had an advantage over its closest competitor in the 1993 bidding process - China. The strategies deployed to secure the consent of Australian Aborigines to the Games are addressed in analysing the means by which the Sydney 2000 Games avoided major disruption and international criticism. A second, briefer case analysis is then presented of the disputation concerning Beijing's successful bid for the 2008 Olympics, which saw them influentially described by one (US) political activist as the 'Genocide Games' and the subject of international protests surrounding the Torch Relay. It is concluded that the contrasting levels of public, mediated discord in these two Olympiads in which human rights were key issues related, significantly though not exclusively, to the Chinese authorities' difficulties in 'winning consent' through strategic incorporation of the most conspicuous, non-state oppositional forces within Western-dominated global civil society in its most immediate, unruly, and mediatized form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using household census data from Hong Kong in 1971, 1976, 1981, and 1986, we constructed new individual data sets for four separate cohorts of youth. The new data include family background variables, and permit us to study the selectivity in education over time. The question of how background and gender affect educational attainment is addressed in two complementary ways. We first use linear regressions on the number of school years completed, and then logistic regressions to calculate the likelihood of making particular school transitions. Consistent with prior research in the USA, Hungary, and the Philippines, these two methods yield results which are apparently contradictory. The linear effect of family background and gender on attainment diminished over time, suggesting a more open educational system. However, the effect of these same variables on the odds of making transitions actually increased at the higher levels. During the fifteen-year period we examine, Hong Kong attempted to expand the educational opportunities for its youth. Few nations have provided free and compulsory secondary schooling so shortly after having instituted universal primary education. One might expect rapid educational expansion to lead to a more open educational system as well. In fact, while the system did become much more open at the primary and secondary levels, it also became more selective at the higher educational levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authority relations identified by the terms patriarchy, patrimonialism, and filial piety represent very different complexes of action in imperial China and Western Europe. Two sets of comparisons (developmental and configurational) demonstrate these differences in the institutional patterning of authority between China and Europe. The author argues, on the one hand, that in Western society legitimate domination is seen as the intentional, directional, and consequential arts of individuals acting within the boundaries of their jurisdictions. In China, on the other hand, it is seen as an aspect of specific sets of social roles, and hence as impersonal, non-intentional, and harmony-seeking. Some of the implications of these differences for social institutions are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information related to the use of formal written law in the U.S. and the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.). In the U.S., the rules are expected to be followed both by citizens and by agents of the state. Citizens not abiding by these rules face legal consequences. However, in the P.R.C., citizens are rarely punished according to law. Americans have been trained as attorneys to handle cases pertaining to the written law, whereas, no lawyers in the P.R.C. have been assigned for such cases. The use of law and individual freedom from social control by state agents are apparently dependent on each other and any kinds of modifications in one cannot come about without influencing the other.

This article traces the social anthropology of China. Since the 1930s a number of Chinese, British and American anthropologists have tried to study Chinese society. The anthropologists working on Chinese themes since about 1950 have wanted to catch some of the things which a miniaturizing method must let slip. Had China not gone Communist they might still today have been piling up samples of local communities, the ethnographic map of China would have had many more flags in it, but the anthropologists would probably have been no nearer that understanding of Chinese society. The most suitable unit of study is the village, both because most Chinese lived in villages and because it is possible for one or two field workers to make a fairly detailed study in a year or so. The best way to begin the study of Chinese social structure is to select a very small social area, examine it meticulously, compare it with other specimens studied in the same manner, and then proceed to draw generalizations.