The Household, Family and Reform

Abstract

One of the most important dimensions of the recent rapid and radical reforms in China has been the new interest in and focus on the household or the family as an economic, political and social unit. From the yellow mud-baked villages of the north to the long, low white terraces or individual one- or two-storey brick houses of the south, or the low-level, old-style grey and white courtyard city houses to the new concrete high-rise flats in the cities, the reforms have wrought fundamental changes in family size, structure and function.