Abstract
This chapter provides a thorough examination of China’s urban/rural dichotomy. Cody discusses historical factors (the household registration system, or hukou) as well as contemporary discourses of urban/rural difference (authenticity, backwardness and self-governance) to illustrate how a pervasive sense of urban superiority took shape across Chinese society. The chapter examines the ambiguous position rural residents find themselves in: they are celebrated as representing the essence of Chinese culture but are perceived as backward and slowing down China’s modernisation project. “China’s Urban/Rural Dichotomy” concludes with an analysis of contemporary food provisioning practices and ideologies, showing how they explicate tense class relations between urban and rural residents.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Because of bad eyesight, Jiang Xinlai had to leave the Army.
- 2.
‘Culture (wenhua 文化)’ in a context such as this refers to formal education and years of schooling.
- 3.
Shifu (师傅) is a Chinese term of address. The first character 师 (shi) means ‘skilled worker’ and the second character 傅 (fu) means ‘tutor.’ While Shifu is used as a respectful term of address for people engaged in skilled trades of low-class (e.g. drivers, cooks and farmers), it is also used to address Buddhist monks, Daoist priests and even artists. Addressing Jiang Xinlai as Jiang Shifu acknowledges his trade and class, yet it also indicates that a certain amount of respect surrounds him.
- 4.
Children originally received the same household registration status as their mother, though after 1998 it could be from either parent.
- 5.
See Woronov 2016 for a detailed anthropological account of vocational education in China.
- 6.
This particular land reform was implemented in 1993 and rolled out in a staggered manner across China.
- 7.
Fei’s notion of the differential mode of association feeds essentialist discourses—such as authenticity—despite being criticised for its failure to consider bureaucratic institutions and behaviours present in China, both today and throughout history (Tan 2016).
- 8.
Reality indicates otherwise and anthropological research challenges this perspective of rural Chinese. Anna Lora-Wainwright (2009), for example, argues that villagers are actively engaging with the market and the many new circumstances and opportunities its expansion has brought about. She argues that far from being backward or laggard, many rural residents are highly innovative and adaptive.
References
A World Without Thieves (Tian Xia Wu Zei 天下无贼). 2004. Xiaogang Feng (Director), China, Media Asia Distribution Ltd.
Bray, David. 2005. Social Space and Governance in Urban China: the Danwei system from origins to reform. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Brødsgaard, Kjeld Erik. 2015. China’s 13th Five-Year Plan. Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 33(2): 97–105.
Chen, Chunlai and Biliang Hu. 2015. China’s New Urbanisation: a nation-building project to rival that of the Great Wall. Policy Forum. www.policyforum.net/chinas-new-urbanisation/. Accessed 27 March 2018.
Domingos, Nuno, José Manuel Sobral & Harry G. West. 2014. Introduction: approaching food and foodways between the country and the city through the work of Raymond Williams. In Food Between the Country and the City: ethnographies of a changing global foodscape, eds. Nuno Domingos, José Manuel Sobral & Harry G. West, 1–18. London: Bloomsbury (eBook).
Durkheim, Emile. 2014. The Division of Labor in Society. Trans. W. D. Halls. New York: Free Press.
Dutton, Michael. 1998. Streetlife China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fei, Xiaotong. 1992. From the Soil: the foundations of Chinese society. Trans. Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng. Berkeley: University of California Press.
First Auto Works (FAW) Besturn. 2011. Bring Love Home (Rang Ai Hui Jia 让爱回家). http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjM3OTg3ODQ0.html. Accessed 9 February 2016.
Griffiths, Michael B. 2013. Consumers and Individuals in China: standing out, fitting in. London: Routledge.
Griffiths, Michael B., Malcolm Chapman & Flemming Christiansen. 2010. Chinese Consumers: the romantic reappraisal. Ethnography 11(3): 331–357.
Guang, Lei. 2003. Rural Taste, Urban Fashions: the cultural politics of rural/urban difference in contemporary China. positions: east asia cultures critique 11(3): 613–646.
Jacka, Tamara, Andrew B. Kipnis and Sally Sargeson. 2013. Contemporary China: society and social change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
King, Franklin H. 2004. Farmers of Forty Centuries: organic farming in China, Korea, and Japan. New York: Dover Publications.
Kipnis, Andrew B. 2013. Urbanisation in Between: rural traces in a rapidly growing and industrialising county city. China Perspectives 3: 5–12.
Kipnis, Andrew B. 2016. From Village to City: social transformation in a Chinese county seat. Berkeley: University of California Press (eBook).
Lindholm, Charles. 2008. Culture and Authenticity. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing (eBook).
Ling, Minhua. 2015. ‘Bad students go to vocational schools!’: education, social reproduction and migrant youth in urban China. The China Journal 73: 108–131.
Lora-Wainwright, Anna. 2009. Of Farming Chemicals and Cancer Deaths: the politics of health in contemporary rural China. Social Anthropology 17(1): 56–73.
Marx, Karl. 1995. Capital. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shanghai Bureau of Statistics. Population & Employment (Renkou Jiuye 人口就业). http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/frontshgl/18665.html. Accessed 14 May 2015.
Shepard, Wade. 2015. Ghost Cities of China: the story of cities without people in the world’s most populated country. London: Zed Books (eBook).
Sørensen, Eva and Peter Triantafillou. 2009. The Politics of Self-Governance. London: Routledge.
Tan, Tongxue. 2016. The Ironies of ‘Political Agriculture’: bureaucratic rationality and moral networks in rural China. In Irony, Cynicism and the Chinese State, eds. Hans Steinmüller and Susanne Brandtstädter, 84–100. London: Routledge (eBook).
Tomba, Luigi. 2014. The Government Next Door: neighborhood politics in urban China. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Veeck, Ann. 2000. The Revitalization of the Marketplace: food markets of Nanjing. In The Consumer Revolution in Urban China, ed. Davis, Deborah S, 107–123. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Wang, Fei-ling. 2005. Organizing through Division and Exclusion: China's hukou system. Stanford: Stanford University Press (eBook).
Weber, Max. 2008. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Digireads.com Publishing.
Whyte, Martin King. 2010. The Paradoxes of Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China. In One Country, Two Societies: rural-urban inequality in contemporary China, ed. Martin King Whyte, 1–25. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Williams, Raymond. 1973. The Country and the City. London: The Hogarth Press (eBook).
Woronov, T. E. 2016. Class Work: vocational schools and China’s urban youth. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Yan, Yunxiang 2012. Food Safety and Social Risk in Contemporary China. The Journal of Asian Studies 71(3): 705–729.
Yang, Guobin. 2013. Contesting Food Safety in the Chinese Media: between hegemony and counter-hegemony. The China Quarterly 214: 337–355.
Yasuda, John. 2018. On Feeding the Masses: an anatomy of regulatory failure in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cody, S. (2019). China’s Urban/Rural Dichotomy. In: Exemplary Agriculture. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3795-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3795-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-3794-9
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-3795-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)