From State Socialism to State Developmentalism; The Changing Pattern of Classes and Class Conflict in China

Abstract

His paper discusses the formation of a new state-mediated class-divided society in China. It argues that due to the economic reforms in the post-1978 era, a mixed economy is formed, laying the economic foundation of a class-divided society. Over the past two decades, a capitalist class, an old middle class, and a new middle class have emerged side by side with poor peasantry and urban workers. Like other class-divided society experiencing rapid development, the post-1978 Chinese society is going through rapid class differentiation, class polarization, and class conflict. Nevertheless, unlike other class-divided society, the Chinese state has played a decisive role in mediating these class relations, leading to the embourgeoisiement of cadres and the patronization of capitalists, the semi-proletarianization and the segmentation of the working class, the Depoliticization of the new middle class, and the professionalization of cadres. Although the fusion of political capital, economic capital, and social/network capital has produced an all-powerful cadre-capitalist class which has become the target of attack by other classes, the mediation of the state has also led to the incorporation of class organizations into the state bureaucracy and the institutionalization of class conflict.