Sociological Studies is compiled by the Institute of Sociology, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The Journal is devoted to the study of sociology and has become one of the leading professional academic journals in social science.
The important speech of President Xi Jinping on May 17, 2016 has set higher standards for the development of China’s social sciences and pointed out a clearer direction for future development. Sociology in China is at its golden time in history. Hence, we need to ponder carefully over constructing and developing the subject, academic and discourse system of sociology from a more strategic and broader vision. We also need to learn from the fine tradition of sinicization and theorization by our predecessors and continue to raise our cultural self-consciousness and subject level in investigating the practical reality of China, drawing lessons from the Chinese experiences and answering questions about China. Furthermore, we need to enhance the uniting force and promoting a sense of responsibility among sociologists, play an active role in introducing the Chinese sociology to the world and facilitate the recognition and understanding of China by the international community.
President Xi Jinping’s speech at the symposium on philosophy and social sciences lays stress on the historical responsibility and great significance of contemporary Chinese social sciences. Starting with the historical responsibility of Chinese sociology, this paper offers an elaboration on the Chinese style of the “problem-oriented” research in Chinese sociology, and then proceeds with a detailed analysis of five prominent topics selected from the major problems confronting the social development in contemporary China. The five topics include the middle-income trap, the transformation of social structures, innovation-driven development, social justice, and innovative social governance. The author stresses the need for sociologists to pay close attention to and engage in research on these major problems and to develop Chinese theories to resolve issues peculiar to China.
In the context of the migration of agricultural labor force, the aging of the rural population and the increasingly hollowing villages, the agricultural transformation and agricultural modernization are practically reasonable. On the one hand, capital to the countryside develops rapidly; on the other hand, it also encounters a variety of problems. This paper investigates capital to the countryside in the structure of capital from outside and local society, finding that in the process of capital to the countryside, although capital from outside encounters many problems in operation and management brought by the particularity of agricultural industry, these problems can be solved partly by local social resources. The real challenge hard to overcome is the poor interaction between capital from outside and local society. It is caused by the industrial and commercial capital coming from outside, so it is difficult to be overcome in a short period of time, and capital from outside and the rural society will continue to interact with and shape each other
This paper provides a development-oriented comprehensive understanding of the intergovernmental distributional relationships as well as the relationship between government and market since the tax-sharing reform (TSR). Particular attention is paid to the tradeoff between efficiency and fairness of the current taxation system and its effect on economic and social development. The TSR establishes the intergovernmental distribution on the boundaries of the government and the market and builds the governance incentive frameworks based on the sharing of the main taxes. The effort to enforce taxation brings the steady and fast growth of government revenue, providing the necessary financial resources for public finance transformation and economic development of the market. The transfer system narrows the regional inequality but causes the entire fiscal spending to rely excessively on projects. The value-added tax enhances fiscal capacity but fails to control the income distribution. Acknowledging local interests promotes investment but makes the government spending favor infrastructure over social development. Public finance is supposed to play a stricter role in allocation among individuals, enterprises, and government as well as intergovernmental transfers. Reallocating administrative and financial rights between the central and local governments, and establishing intergovernmental boundaries, as well as government-market boundaries on the spending side through the fiscal reform are effective measures to promote good governance and build an all-around moderately prosperous society.
This paper examines the concept of “chaxu geju” (the differential mode of association 差序格局) as conceived by Fei Xiaotong, a leading Chinese sociologist and social anthropologist in the 1940s. Despite its application in empirical studies as a key theoretical framework by Chinese sociologists during the last two decades, little research has been done in the intellectual context of this concept. Through extensive historical research, this paper reveals the complexities surrounding Fei’s concept, which drew upon diverse intellectual currents of the era in both China and the West. Among other ideas, the concept of “folk society” of Robert Redfield, reinterpretations of Confucianism and Daoism, as well as studies of the kinship system in anthropology were all influential in forming Fei’s concept. Such work should clarify misunderstandings in recent scholarly circles, demonstrating that Fei’s failure to adequately interpret and integrate his sources has led to logical contradictions in his work, and hence difficulties in further theorization.
It is an emerging trend in China’s rural-urban migration that rural laborers migrate with their spouse and children rather than migrating alone. Due to the lack of representative national samples for the migrant population, previous studies failed to estimate the prevalence of different types of household arrangements during migration. Based on data collected by the China Family Panel Studies, this paper describes the distribution of various types of family migration, including the husband migrating alone, the wife migrating alone, the couple migrating to different destinations and the couple migrating to the same destination. This study also explores how different decisions on migration made between the couples are associated with their social demographic characteristics and the structure of their original families in the rural areas under three hypothesized decision-making scenarios.
Based on the data from a 2010 survey on the migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, this paper analyzes the effects of different types of enclave participation on the earnings of migrant workers by using the endogenous switching regression model to overcome the error of estimation caused by self-selection. This paper draws the following conclusions. Firstly, the enclave participation, in general, has a significant positive influence on migrant workers’ earnings. Secondly, from the perspective of self-selection effect, it presents a bidirectional strengthening feature which means that both the enclave participators and non-enclave participators choose the type of jobs that they think will benefit more. Thirdly, by comparing the phases of the first job and present job, this paper finds that different types of enclave would have different effects on earnings according to different phases of occupational development.
