| Understanding Chinese Society |
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CHST A201
Understanding Chinese Society
| Introduction |  |
CHST A201 Understanding Chinese Society is a one-year, ten-credit, middle-level course. This course will allow you to examine aspects of the world's largest society, one of the oldest, and — in recent years — one that has experienced rapid economic growth and dramatic change.
Understanding Chinese Society is a course that deals with the culture and society of China from the perspectives of anthropology and sociology. China is dealt with very explicitly. Anthropology and sociology as academic disciplines are dealt with only in passing and as a way to focus some of the questions that are asked about the social change in the Chinese society.
The course traces the social changes that have affected all sections of the Chinese society, with particular attention paid to the Chinese peasantry and urban dwellers. Peasants are linked to the land and to rural activities. They have formed the bulk of China's population for more than 3,000 years and, since China became a unified political system, have dominated the cultural complex of Eastern Asia. In the twentieth century, the ability of the Chinese Communist Party to tap the latent political energy of the peasantry in an organized fashion fundamentally changed the course of Chinese history. The study of China's urban population is increasingly important given China's rapid urbanization and its fast-paced economic development. By comparing the rural and urban sectors of the Chinese society, the course will provide evidence that far from being homogenous, Chinese society in its traditional and contemporary forms has been and continues to be highly diversified, and follows sometimes conflicting sets of cultural values and norms.
There are no prerequisites for the course. It is nonetheless strongly recommended that you take a foundation course before proceeding to study CHST A201 Understanding Chinese Society. This may help you to acquire some background knowledge of social science in general and familiarize yourself with distance learning education, which is distinctive and a contrast to learning in a conventional educational setting.
Course aims
This course aims to:
introduce you to the nature of China society, both past and present;
introduce you to the physical environment of China;
introduce you to the main outline of Chinese history, including some main events since the nineteenth century;
help you analyse the political and social revolution in rural China in the first half of the twentieth century;
help you understand the reform of political, economic, and social policies in China since 1979 and the consequences;
help you examine the character of the Chinese family and kinship in its traditional and current forms;
introduce you to the roles and status of women in Chinese society, both past and present;
help you examine the nature of traditional and modern rural social structure and markets for peasant communities;
help you understand the linkage between urban settlements and rural settlements;
introduce you to the way power, stratification, and social mobility operated in traditional Chinese society and continues to do so since the twentieth century;
help you understand the character of education in traditional and contemporary Chinese society;
introduce you to social inequalities in China, how they operate and why they matter, including inequalities in class, gender, ethnicity and region; and
help you to understand continuity and change in Chinese society, including what is different from the past about contemporary China and what is similar.
Course learning outcomes
When you have completed this course, you should be able to:
Examine the nature of Chinese society, and major historical events during the lateQing and the People's Republic of China.
Discuss thecharacter of the Chinese family and kinship, andthe role and status of women in traditional and contemporaryChinese society.
Compare and contrast the nature and development of social groupings in rural and urban areas.
Discuss the way power, education, stratification, and social mobility operated in traditional Chinese society and during the modern era.
Analyse the nature, extent, and causes of social change and socialinequality in contemporary China.
| China: Traditional and contemporary | |
It is a problem to know how to refer to China before and after the major social changes that have characterized Chinese society from the early part of the nineteenth century to the present day.
The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 marked a decisive moment in twentieth-century Chinese history which had long-lasting effects for economic, political, social and cultural change. Following established practice, the period since 1949 is referred to as contemporary China.
Some historians see the establishment of the People's Republic of China as the culmination of events that began in 1839, with the First Opium War that was fought between Britain and China, which resulted in the cession of Hong Kong to the British, and the establishment of treaty ports, which allowed for a permanent foreign presence in China. For some, this marks to beginning of modern Chinese history. China before 1839 is therefore often described as traditional China.
These terms imply a sharp dichotomy between traditional and modern Chinese society, which is both inaccurate, dated, and reflects Western perspectives on Chinese history. In the past few years the term Late Imperial China' has been used as one way to overcome the traditional/modern dichotomy. The historical period to which it refers is, however, imprecise. It covers the last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644–1911), but often extends back to the Ming (1368–1644), and forward from the Qing into the period of the Republic of China (1912–49) that followed.
Reluctantly, this course uses the term 'traditional China' to refer to the character of Chinese society before the full impact of nineteenth-century change gradually altered its nature. It therefore has no precise temporal referent. It suggests that there was a complex of behaviour, loosely and imprecisely described as 'traditional', that was affected by global and domestic forces that became dramatically obvious after the mid-nineteenth century. The period between 1912 and 1949 is referred to in the course as 'Republican China'. After 1949, in the 'contemporary' period an array of policies had pronounced effects in rural and urban settlements alike, although 'traditional' forms of behaviour survived and had important consequences. The course further subdivides the contemporary period into the Mao years (1949–76) and the reform era (post-1978) in order to emphasise that the Mao and Deng Xiaoping leaderships took divergent approaches to China's socio-economic and political development, which resulted in markedly different consequences for the nature and functioning of the Chinese society.
| Course overview | |
The following table provides an overview of the course and suggests the amount of time to allow for completing each unit. However, we all have our own pace of learning and approaches to study, so this schedule is only a guide. You can adjust it to meet your own personal needs more closely. But, plan your study carefully. The estimated time, on average, that you need to spend on this course is eight hours per week. This estimate includes time for reading the study units, textbook chapters and selected readings, completing the activities and self-tests, reviewing the study material, attending tutorials and day schools, and preparing for your assignments and final examination.
Week Study units Textbook Video programme Assignments 1 Course Guide Chapters 1–2 4 Unit 1 Introducing Chinese society 4 Unit 2 Historical contexts Change in Heaven
(Parts I–II)
The Gate of Heavenly PeaceAssignment 1 4 Unit 3 Family, kinship and the individual Chapters 4–5 4 Unit 4 Women Chapter 5 Change in Heaven (Part II)
Small HappinessAssignment 2 4 Unit 5 Rural Chinese society Chapter 3 All Under Heaven
Red Capitalism4 Unit 6 Urban Chinese society Chapter 3 Red Capitalism Assignment 3 4 Unit 7 Power, stratification and social mobility Chapter 6 4 Unit 8 Education Chapter 7 Assignment 4 4 Unit 9 Social inequality Chapter 8 2 Unit 10 Continuity and change in Chinese society Chapter 9 The Gate of Heavenly Peace Assignment 5 2 Revision Note: The assignment schedule here serves as a guide only. You should refer to the Presentation Schedule for the exact cut-off date of each assignment.
| Course materials | |
The course materials include the following items.
Course Guide
Read this guide first. This gives you an idea of how Understanding Chinese Society is structured and details what you need to do to complete the course successfully.
Study units
Understanding Chinese Society is divided into ten units (as you saw in the table in the 'Course overview' section), each dealing with a particular aspect of the Chinese society. Each unit compares and contrasts the traditional, republican and contemporary periods with the resulting conclusion regarding the social change in China.
The units contain activities and self-tests. The activities stimulate reflection of your own experience and test your understanding of the textbook and the readings; the self-tests enable you to monitor your progress and reinforce your understanding of the material presented in the unit. Together, they will help you achieve the stated objectives of the units and of the course.
Assignment File
Instructions for five assignments are provided in a separate Assignment File. The best four of five assignment grades are counted for assessment purposes.
Presentation Schedule
The Presentation Schedule lists what you should be doing each week. You will need to refer to it many times over the coming weeks, so keep it handy.
Readings
All units, with the exception of Unit 2, are supplemented with a selection of readings, which are intended to complement the discussion of issues as presented in the unit or to introduce a competing interpretation of issues examined.
E-Library E-Reserve readings
You may be instructed to read articles in the E-Library E-Reserve. To read these items, go to the OUHK E-Library and click E-Reserve. Log in, click Accept/Agree on the Copyright Restrictions page, fill in the Course Code box, and click Search.
Textbook
Stockman, N (2000) Understanding Chinese Society, Cambridge: Polity.
Your textbook, by Norman Stockman, came out in 2000. In the United Kingdom the publisher was Polity but in the United States the publisher was Blackwell in Malden, Massachusetts. There are several things about this book that make it quite appropriate for a course like this one.
Firstly, it deals with Chinese society in a very comprehensive manner from the recent perspective. Secondly, it is thematically organized, just like the present course, not chronologically. We don't have a chapter on a theme in imperial China and then another one on the same theme in the Republic or People's Republic of China (PRC). This does not mean there is no attention to chronology in either the textbook or the course. There is no suggestion either in the textbook or in this course that China has undergone no change over all the centuries of its existence. Indeed, the linking of a single theme in a single chapter allows the author to pinpoint the main changes that have occurred over the centuries of China's history, as well as draw attention to some continuities.
Thirdly, the book deals both with the distant or 'traditional' past and the modern era. Actually, there is quite a bit more about the twentieth century in this book than about any other. The balance between traditional and modern China is a bit more slanted towards the modern in the textbook than it is in our course. But there is quite enough about the aspects of traditional Chinese society in the textbook that it is a very appropriate textbook for this course.
Fourthly, this book is written in a reasonably simple style. Stockman got the idea of writing it by teaching a course called 'Chinese Society' over ten years. Stockman calls it 'a short course on an immense subject' (p. vi) and we could say the same thing about the present course Understanding Chinese Society. The book is not only designed for students. Stockman says that he owes a lot of inspiration to the students who took his course. 'The book could not have been written without those students, their enthusiasm and never-ending questions' (p. vi). So we hope that you will respond to it in a way that makes you learn readily about Chinese society, both of the past and the present.
Finally, the great value of this book lies in the fact that it is not a product of original research, but rather a synthesis of existing published research on various aspects of Chinese society. As a result, we get a well-informed and extremely well-researched narrative about the continuity and change in the Chinese society from the traditional to contemporary periods. Each chapter ends with a short list of key readings on the topic. Those students who wish to further their knowledge of Chinese society would surely take note of Stockman's suggestions.
China continues to change. Leaders come and leaders go. New policies are proposed and old ones fall by the wayside. New studies appear with astonishing and overwhelming rapidity. It is often difficult to keep up with all the information that is available. New technological possibilities, not least the Internet, compound our difficulties. It is important to keep abreast of new developments and try and integrate them into your understandings of China and its changes. You can read newspapers and magazines for current developments. Hong Kong is well served by newspapers and magazines in both English and Chinese. Scholarly journals, such as The China Quarterly (UK), Journal of Asian Studies (US), Pacific Affairs (Canada) and The China Journal (Australia) have excellent book review sections that can inform you of new studies. In Hong Kong, The China Review has recently changed its format from an annual publication to a periodical scholarly journal that continues to inform you of current developments. In this way you can become more current than the texts you are reading. In reading any book about China — including the commentaries for this course — note when it was written and the limitations that its publication date places on the interpretations that it may contain!
Video programmes
As we live in the world of multimedia, where the visual presentations are increasingly more appealing than the written word, the course also includes a number of video programmes, which have been selected for their quality and relevance to particular course units. Many of these programmes are concerned with the events in the Mao period and early reform era and, as such, serve as a starting point of comparison between the past and the current developments in the Chinese society. There all together five video programmes. All can be found in the OUHK library. Unfortunately, because of copyright, they cannot be broadcast on the Open for Learning programme.
All Under Heaven: Life in the Chinese Village
(60 minutes, in English)
This video programme was made by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon. Hinton is an American who grew up in China, and the daughter of William Hinton (the author of a number of books on China, including Fanshen). The video examines the changes taking place in Long Bow (which Hinton has known since the early 1970s), a village of 2000 inhabitants located southwest of Beijing, from the perspective of the early 1980s. It focuses on the debate about the advantages and disadvantages of the introduction of the household responsibility system. Long Bow serves as an example of a prosperous village, where the cooperative not only mechanized agricultural production, but also established a number of sideline industries, which added to the wealth of the village. The compulsory introduction of the household responsibility system was not necessarily welcomed by all villagers there (note, for example, comments by the elderly and the village head). Try to identify the arguments for and against the introduction of the individual contract system, and in what ways peasants adapted themselves to the new economic necessities.
This programme also visualizes the changes brought about by the economic reforms initiated in the late 1970s. Notice the new material prosperity of the peasants, the revival of the traditional customs (e.g., very elaborate burial ceremonies), traditional opera, the rise of new rural markets, the re-emergence of corruption, and the new social attitudes of the young people.
Change in Heaven
(two parts, 60 minutes, in English with Chinese subtitles.)
This is a two-part documentary which examines the process leading to the victory of the Communists in China and the first years of the People's Republic of China. The historical consultant was Hugh Baker. It employs both an archival footage and interviews with people who personally experienced various historical events, such as the Long March or the Great Leap Forward.
Part I looks at the Yan'an years. The narrative starts in 1936, when the Communist forces set up their base in Yan'an after completing a 6,000 mile march which lasted for one year. You can see rare documentary films from the period, depicting not only life in Yan'an, but also the Sino-Japanese War, Madame Chiang Kai-shek's visit to the United States and the civil war in China. The film briefly discusses the Communists' strategy vis-à-vis the Nationalists, and analyses the reasons for their victory. It also highlights the contribution of Mao Zedong, Zhu De and Deng Xiaoping to the defeat of the Nationalist forces. The film ends with a short discussion of the land reform in China.
Part II scrutinizes the first years of the People's Republic of China: the difficult co-operation with the Soviet Union and the major challenges to 'socialist modernization'. It reflects upon the changes that the Chinese revolution brought about for the status of women. In particular, the role of the Marriage Law (1950) is discussed, with an emphasis on its revolutionary character and its impact on social change in China. The film ends with a vivid depiction of the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Great Leap Forward.
Red Capitalism
(60 minutes, in English)
This video programme, made in the early 1990s, takes us to South China's Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen, and (briefly) to Guangzhou. It looks at the new occupational opportunities opened up by the foreign investments, new choices of entertainment and new social attitudes brought about by the economic reforms. The programme also surveys the negative consequences of the speedy industrialization of Southern China: the decline in agricultural activities and the death of the old village traditions; the rise of corruption and crime; the lack of safety in the small factories; and the exploitation of migrant workers. It ends with a short discussion of the economic linkages between Hong Kong and China. Please note the boundless optimism about China's economic future, which pre-dated the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s.
Small Happiness
(55 minutes, in English)
This is another programme authored by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon. This time, the authors asked women from Long Bow to tell the stories of their lifetime. We are, thus, acquainted with some vivid descriptions of the women's fate before the 'liberation', as well as with the difficulties women continued to face after the establishment of the PRC. This is a starting point for discussion on the persistence of old attitudes of male dominance in China and their challenge to the social reforms intended by the Communist regime.
The programme also looks at the women's situation in the early 1980s, shortly after the introduction of the economic reforms in rural China, paying particular attention to the impact of the rural industry on the occupational choices of young women in the countryside. Please note the arguments criticizing the Chinese central government's policy of birth control, which sandwiched women between the official requirement of giving birth to fewer children and the continued expectations of their families to bear as many children as possible.
The Gate of Heavenly Peace
(three hours, two parts, in English)
The programme was produced in 1995 by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon, who spent six years investigating the story of the 1989 protests. It explores the events surrounding the Beijing Spring (April–June 1989), and their consequences, including the June fourth massacre. Its most impressive achievement is the portrayal of the Beijing Spring from the perspective of the participants (including students, workers and intellectuals) and the very good use of archival material as well as expert advisors. The documentary depicts the struggle between the hardliners within the government and the moderates among protesters, with the former eventually marginalizing the latter. It also reveals how the actions of radical factions among protesters undermined moderates in the government, and how moderate voices were gradually silenced by extremism and emotionalism on both sides. From the reconstruction of what key players in the events of 1989 said and did, some of their number found such revelations inconvenient, to say the least.
| Working through the course | |
The strategy recommended for working through Understanding Chinese Society is outlined in the following study steps.
Study steps
Turn to the units one by one. The units direct your work and refer you to the other course materials whenever needed.
Read the introduction and objectives. Use the objectives to guide your study throughout the unit. They spell out what you should be able to do as a result of working with the materials, and they have been used as the basis for developing the assignments and final examination.
Work through the unit. The content of the unit itself has been arranged to provide an order for you to follow, but you may choose to rearrange the study components to suit your own best study procedures.
Review the objectives for the unit. Make sure that you have achieved them. If you are in any doubt, review the course material and consult your tutor.
Prepare and submit the assignments according to the cut-off dates specified in the Presentation Schedule.
As soon as you have mailed your assignment, and while waiting for its return, begin your work on the next unit. Proceed unit by unit through the course. Use the timetable to pace your study and keep you on schedule.
When you get your work back from your tutor, review it carefully, paying particular attention to your tutor's comments and queries. If you have any questions or problems, phone your tutor.
Upon completion of Unit 10, review the course and prepare for the final examination.
| How to approach the readings | |
Much of your time in CHST A201 Understanding Chinese Society will be spent studying the texts and supplementary readings. As you read, you might find it useful to note briefly the points that stand out as being particularly significant and record the numbers of the pages where they appear.
The following tips should aid your comprehension and evaluation of the readings:
Organize your time. It is best to read each chapter, section, or article in a single sitting.
Be an active reader. The required texts are yours to mark up or write in as you choose. Use a pencil or felt marker to underscore main points. Put question marks beside difficult or confusing passages. Put exclamation marks beside important passages. Write short comments and express your opinions in the margin as you progress. If you prefer to leave your book unmarked, you can make notes on 'post-it notes' -- sticky-backed paper that comes in pads of various sizes and colours available at most stationery stores.
Read critically. Develop the ability to evaluate what you read. Are the author's arguments logical? Is the supporting evidence valid? Are there alternatives to the author's explanations and conclusions?
- Take notes. If you make notes on an article or chapter right after finishing it, you reap a number of advantages.
‧ Note-taking allows you an immediate review of what you've just read. (You'll find that this review helps you recall information.)
‧ It gives you an opportunity to reassess your flagged or marginal comments.
‧ It allows you a second shot at deciphering any dense or confusing passages.
A problem of note-taking is that your notes can become as long as, or longer than, what you've read. Learn to digest material, then briefly capture the central points and make a skeletal outline.Review your notes! Whether or not you make separate notes on your readings, review your flags, underlines and marginalia. Study closely those passages you consider significant or difficult.
Read to learn. Do not read simply to write an adequate essay. Read to learn about China. The assigned essays obviously cannot cover all of the material that you will read for the course. They can only indicate the degree of comprehension each student has of the material that has been read. Your object should not be merely to gain ten university credits. It should also be to learn about a fascinating, if complex, society and culture.
Optional readings
All units for this course include suggestions for further reading, over and above the essential reading required. If you have a particular interest in some aspect of the course, you will find useful references in the 'Suggested readings' section.
| Your course tutor | |
You will be assigned a course tutor who is an expert in the content of this course. She or he will mark your assignments and comment on them, keep a close watch on your progress, and provide you with whatever assistance you need. Your tutor is the appropriate person to contact if:
you do not understand some aspect of the unit commentary
you have undue difficulty with any of the assigned readings
you are uncertain about the nature of a self-test question or an assignment
you have a question or problem arising from your tutor's comments or grading on one of your assignments.
Your tutor will let you know when she or he is available to receive telephone calls. During these hours, you are welcome to call to discuss an assignment or to talk over any questions you may have about the course. You, too, probably have regular times when you are most free to discuss your course. It is helpful if you provide your tutor with a copy of your study schedule so that she or he can reach you at those times.
You can also use the email facilities to communicate with the tutor. This course is supported by the Online Learning Environment (OLE). You can post your queries about the course materials or issues discussed by the course units on the Discussion Board of the OLE. Your queries will be answered shortly either by your tutor or the Course Coordinator.
| Tutorials | |
To assist you in this course, a number of tutorials will be organized. You will be notified of their dates, times and location, together with the name and phone number of your tutor, as soon as you are allocated a tutorial group.
Each tutorial session will cover a certain block of study units. You can ask the tutor any questions relating to the study of course materials. Your tutor will also guide you to important themes of the course materials and will try to make sure you understand the units you have just studied.
Attendance at tutorials is voluntary, but I strongly recommend that you come. They give you a chance to meet your tutor and fellow students and to discuss the ideas which you have been reading about. The tutor will give you guidance in solving problems relating to your study. There is no doubt that you will gain a lot by attending tutorials.
| Course assessment | |
Your result for this course will be determined on the best four of five assignment grades (50% of the total marks) and the examination (the other 50% of the total marks). It should always be emphasized that you must pass both the assignment and the examination components to attain a pass in this course.
Assignments
There will be five assignments. These assignments require you to write an essay of 2,000 words, usually devoted to a certain topic of the course. Take the word limits seriously. Among the skills of good essay writing are concise expression and good judgement about appropriate levels of detail.
Final examination
The examination will be of three hours and the paper will feature five questions, from which you will be requested to answer three. All questions carry equal weight. A Specimen Examination paper will be provided prior to the examination so that you will have an idea of the types of questions you may come across in the examination.
| A note on romanization | |
One of the problems facing the beginning student of Chinese society is that of names. Chinese personal names and the names of places and things are written in Chinese characters, which are not phonetic. There is therefore the problem of transforming them into ways that can be used in writing essays in English — that is, into the Roman characters which form the basis of written English.
If you are not literate in Chinese, Chinese names will be unfamiliar. You may be unaware, for example, that Chinese names begin with the family name and that given names come last — quite the opposite of the conventions in virtually all societies that speak English (and in fact most European languages). You may also be unaware of the meaning that place names may convey. (Beijing literally translated is 'Northern Capital'; Yunnan 'South of the Clouds'.) In the context of Hong Kong ('Fragrant Harbour,') you are likely to be fully literate in Chinese but speak Cantonese. You may never have thought about how to render Chinese names into a standard romanized form! It does raise some intriguing and difficult problems, for the standard form of the presentation of Chinese names in an English-language text is typically based on the pronunciation of Chinese as it is spoken in northern China. An added difficulty is that there is no single accepted way to render Chinese characters into their romanized equivalents.
There are two systems that are commonly in use. One was devised in the nineteenth century by two distinguished British scholars of Chinese and is referred to as the 'Wade-Giles system' (or sometimes simply the Wade system). It is a system that was 'standard' for a long time and was frequently used in the books and papers published until the late 1970s. It is a very logical system, but one that has some idiosyncratic elements. It does not use b, d, g, q, u, v, x or z and it uses an apostrophe to denote aspirated sounds (the difference, for example, between the b as written in bat and p as in pat; the b was written p, and the p was written p'; similarly the t of time and the d of dime were written as t' and t respectively). As long as the system is understood, it is self-evident. The problem was that all too few people understood why a b sound was written with a p and a p sound with a p'. Often the apostrophes were left out, and no one knew whether the sound was a p or a b! In the end, the system didn't really help those who could not speak Chinese to pronounce Chinese names correctly.
In the 1950s, the new Chinese government popularized a system of romanization which, it was hoped, would more accurately reflect the sounds of Chinese. In a sense it does. Gone are the confusing apostrophes! But the system was devised for all languages using the Roman script, not just for English. There are certain sounds present in Chinese that sound unusual to those who are used to spoken English. Inevitably, therefore, certain arbitrary decisions were taken to represent Chinese sounds, which can lead to difficulties. The new system uses a q, an x, and a z which are not necessarily pronounced as you might expect them to be from your knowledge of English. The Chinese system, called pinyin (in Chinese hanyu pinyin or 'phonetic spelling of the Chinese language') has already replaced the older Wade-Giles system in Chinese publications and throughout most of the scholarly world. It has been used since 1979 in all Chinese publications in foreign languages using the Roman script.
The pinyin system is used throughout this course.
One more note: I understand that for the majority of you English is a second language and, even though the course team has put enormous effort to render the course units as readable as possible, you might on occasions fail to understand some key terms. At the same time, I have no doubts that you know a lot about the Chinese society and came across lots of terms in your everyday life, but know them in Chinese, not in English. To make your life easier and your study more satisfying, each unit of the course will feature a list of key terms used at the end of the unit with Chinese translations provided. The words translated will be identified in the unit using bold.
Good luck with your study!
