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This powerful book brings to life the human dimension of the social and economic divides in urban China. Leading scholars explore the increasing rigidity of class and social boundaries and analyze of the process of polarization and its outcomes by focusing on two new "castes" in contemporary China-the extravagantly wealthy and the profoundly poor.
List of contents
Introduction: State Policies, Castes, and Agency
Dorothy J. Solinger
Part I: Polarization: Scope, Causes, Manifestations
1 China's Uphill Battle Against Inequality
Wang Feng
2 Convergence and Divergence Among the Rich and the Poor
Li Zhang
Part II: Portraits of the Urban Poor
3 Banish the Impoverished Past: The Predicament of the Abandoned Urban Poor
Dorothy J. Solinger
4 The Passionate Poor: Foxconn Workers Invited as Volunteers
Mun Young Cho
5 On the Rough Edge of Prosperity: Informal Migrant Recyclers in Beijing
Joshua Goldstein
Part III: The Upper Reaches of the Urban Rich
6 China's Party Kings: Shanghai Club Cultures and Status Consumption, 1920s-2010s
Andrew David Field and James Farrer
7 Corruption, Anti-Corruption, and the Dynamics of Class: Formation in Post-Mao China
John Osburg
Urban Polarities: Inequality, Social Mobility, and the Role of the State
David S. G. Goodman
About the Contributors
About the author
Dorothy J. Solinger is professor emerita of political science at the University of California, Irvine.
Summary
This powerful book brings to life the human dimension of the social and economic divides in urban China. Leading scholars explore the increasing rigidity of class and social boundaries and analyze of the process of polarization and its outcomes by focusing on two new "castes" in contemporary China-the extravagantly wealthy and the profoundly poor.
