Contemporary Chinese Society - appunti

"Abecame very rapidly a place where money and wealth were the most respected things"

发展Development Market Entrepreneurshipbased on 3 pillars: (market-oriented reforms),(people should be able to use his own resources in order to make bigger and better things),Technology. Until 1989 and Tiananmen events, this does not entail a liberalization in the Westernmeaning of the term. This does not entail any political change.

清除精神污染:Anti spiritual pollution campaign ideological campaign targeting the mostdangerous aspects of Western ideology. This is very similar to the approach of the reformists in中学为体，西学为用,the end of the 19th century with using the Chinese thought and knowledgeas basis and the Western one as instrument.

rural Areas:Changes are welcomed especially in one of the modernization was that ofagriculture, this consists of a change in rules. People were given back the possibility to cultivatelands on their own based on family unit a plot of

land and to sell a part of their products to the Household Responsibility System market -> (rapid change in the 1980s)

Chinese countryside is currently experiencing a return to the family farming system, with “The enormous implications for the lives and fortunes of some 80 per cent of the country’s population. Little of this could have been foreseen in 1979, when the rural reform really got under way”

The legal right of people investing money in agricultural activity should be protected and agriculture production should not be managed by the state so closely, peasants could invest savings in production and crops that give more economic benefit to them: extending the period for which land is contracted to over 15 years, more if production is of development nature; peasants should be encouraged to invest and become shareholders all manner of enterprises; the 中共中央关于一九八四年 legal rights and interests of investors must be protected by the State ->农村工作的通知

中共中央 年一号1984 Document No.1

1984 urban and industrialized areas

Big change in (starting from the coasts and the river Yangtze areas): companies allowed to retain part of the profits; managers alone in charge for plants administration; more flexibility in managing Human Resources (people can be fired).

In the first part of the 1980s, this produced good results and especially people in the countryside were every enthusiastic, not only per capita income started growing and also the gap in per capita income between the countryside and urban areas was decreasing.

Negative aspect: the old system of guarantees "the iron bowl" based on 2 pillars, the 公社 单位 communes and the working units in the cities which were also providing directly welfare services to the people working, is collapsing rapidly. The communes are abolished in 1983 and there are reforms of working units. As a result all the system of guarantees does not exist anymore, people do not have safety.

they can either succeed or is very hard to make a living.inflation.In the second half of the 1980s, there is also the problem of It gets to 20% or more andwave of strikesthis creates a lot of dissatisfaction also in the cities -> huge leading to thestudents movement (dissatisfaction towards corruption).Development after Tiananmen: an imbalanced pathDeng Xiaoping’s South China TourCritical event: in Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghaikey areas where the reforms were launched (January 8 - February 21, 1992)He advocates that there is no contradiction with the reforms and the previous path that Chinatook in the Maoist era, between revolution and reforms.Revolution and reformation are both means to liberate productive forces, to make the countryable to produce more material well-being and material improvement in the condition of life ofpeople.It is necessary to hold on to the “one central task, two basic points” principle; planning andmarket forces aren’tun'indicatore principale della disuguaglianza economica è l'indice di Gini. L'indice di Gini misura la distribuzione del reddito o della ricchezza all'interno di una determinata popolazione. Un valore di 0 indica una perfetta uguaglianza, mentre un valore di 1 indica una perfetta disuguaglianza. Nel caso della Cina, l'indice di Gini è aumentato significativamente negli ultimi decenni, raggiungendo livelli molto elevati. Ciò significa che la distribuzione del reddito e della ricchezza nel paese è molto disuguale, con una piccola percentuale di persone che possiede la maggior parte delle risorse. Questa disuguaglianza economica ha diverse cause, tra cui la rapida industrializzazione e l'urbanizzazione, che hanno portato a un divario sempre più ampio tra le aree urbane e rurali. Inoltre, il sistema politico autoritario della Cina ha favorito l'accumulazione di ricchezza da parte di una piccola élite al potere. Tuttavia, negli ultimi anni, il governo cinese ha adottato alcune misure per ridurre la disuguaglianza economica, come l'introduzione di politiche di redistribuzione del reddito e l'aumento dei salari minimi. Nonostante questi sforzi, la disuguaglianza economica rimane ancora un problema significativo in Cina.

The distribution of wealth is the way in which wealth is measured between two extremes: value zero (perfectly equal distribution of wealth, where each member has the same amount) and value one (perfectly unequal society, where wealth is possessed only by one individual). This index is also used to measure income disparity between the same two extremes.

At the top of the wealth distribution index is Brazil, while at the bottom is Norway, close to Italy. In China, there has been an increase in the unequal distribution of income after the reforms and opening-up, up to the present day. China is close to the United States and Central America, such as Mexico.

There is a huge phenomenon of migration throughout the country, with people moving from rural areas to cities. This is the largest migration in human history in a short period of time. In 2010, around 200 million people were living outside their official residence.

People wanted a better future.

Life in China during the period of rapid industrialization and urbanization was characterized by a massive migration of people from rural areas to cities. This migration was tolerated by the leadership due to the high demand for labor in factories in the East. However, it was not legalized, as this would have required providing people with welfare services such as education, healthcare, pension funds, and housing, which are typically associated with hukou (household registration) in a city.

As a result, an entire generation of migrants lived without access to these services and social rights for many years. The living conditions in the cities were extremely difficult, with low incomes, no health insurance, and a lack of government assistance. People in the countryside demanded more accountability and responsiveness from the government, as they felt deprived of social rights.

Wen Jiabao, who had witnessed the Tiananmen Square protests, was sympathetic to the demands of the migrants. During his tenure as prime minister from 2002 to 2012, he listened to their calls for greater responsiveness and worked towards addressing their grievances.

reports about his works was about widening access to social rights. 科学发展观, scientific outlook on development

Hu-Wen leadership was about this idea of it was not really about science but to have a more balanced development able to balance economic growth with social well-being, it was about employment, healthcare, education, elderly care, housing and so on (学有所教，劳有所得，病有所医，老有所养，住有所居 access to education, employment, healthcare, elderly care and housing)

Strengthening of the environment protection system framed ideologically though the concept of 生态文明 Ecological Civilization -> strengthening the access to social rights of people

Reform in the health insurance system: after the end of communes the welfare system collapsed and the effects lasted until the first years of 2000s, in rural areas 1 out of 10 people were insured in 2003, the situation changed in 2008 when most of people were insured although it was a very basic

insurance.There were reforms also in other aspects of the welfare system, government was given more attention to the welfare system in the first decade of the 2000s.In China most funds for welfare come from local governments which often find it hard to meet 分灶吃饭 targets established by the central government. This is linked to the "meals prepared at separate stoves" slogan of the program of fiscal decentralization that began in the 1980s, the burden for welfare expenditures is 70% reliant on local government.The wealthier ones were able to provide healthcare services but this is not the case in Central and Western China. incentivesLocal authorities have to partner with civil society organizations to improve their responsiveness to demands of welfare services provision.From the 1990s and throughout the first decade fo the 2000s, there is an important shift in civil society in China from radical demands of political change to a proactive role in/for good governance. Make the

Keywords of civil society engagement: accountability (government authorities should be held accountable for their actions according to the law and in front of the people), inclusiveness (the idea that development should be inclusive and it should be able to take care also of those who were left behind and the most vulnerable ones), and responsiveness (capacity to respond in an effective way to the demands arising from the society).

This, in the long run, strengthens the authoritarian nature of the Chinese system. Civil society, in many cases, played a role in enhancing the government's capacity to respond to social crisis and social needs. The access to different rights was unevenly guaranteed by Chinese authorities: social rights were in the agenda of the party and the state, and access kept increasing throughout civil rights the first de