Family and Community in the People’s Republic

Abstract

In the West, we are still grasping for models to help disentangle Chinese fact from fiction. Though abandoned in some circles, one model is that of the authoritarian state which can produce organizational and behavioral change on command. Even if the state consigns few people to labor camps, it has such a monopoly of jobs and economic resources that everyone must comply. Another model which tempts us is that of the ideologically-mobilized state with mass consciousness transformed through study combined with group criticism and self-criticism. So transformed, behavior moves in directions desired by official ideals because people have already internalized these ideals in their own person. We know that both these models are too simplistic. They are too monolithic, assuming a uniformity of living conditions which are surely absent in China just as they are absent in our own country. This absence of uniformity, and the need to consider concrete living conditions, is no better illustrated than in comparisons between Chinese rural and urban life.