Luigi Tomba

Residential Space and Collective Interest Formation in Beijing's Housing Disputes

This article investigates the interest structure that leads to collective conflicts over the protection of private property in middle-class residential compounds in Beijing. The departure from a work-unit dominated social landscape means that work and residence are now de-linked and the new private residential compounds create communities of consumers, not of producers. Individual status is formed in the context of local socialization patterns in the neighbourhoods at least as much as in the workplace. Based on fieldwork in Beijings residential compounds in 2002 and 2003, this article highlights the importance of spatial factors in determining the formation of collective interests and argues that the enclosed residential spaces of the gated communities are providing both a catalyst for the autonomous mobilization of collective resources and new social units for the Chinese state to govern an increasingly complex society.

Awakening the God of Earth. Land, Place and Class in Urbanizing Guangdong

Contents: Preface Introduction 1. The Socio-political Challenge of Economic Change: Peasants and Workers in the Transformation of Urban China Beatriz Carrillo and David S G Goodman 2. Status Groups and Classes in a Chinese Village: From the Mao Era through Ost-Mao Industrialization Jonathan Unger 3. Awakening the God of Earth: Land, Place and Class in Urbanizing Guangdong Luigi Tomba 4. The Making and Re-making of the Working Class in South China Parry Leung and Alvin So 5. Chinese Migrant Workers: Factors Constraining the Emergence of Class Consciousness Anita Chan and Kaxton Siu 6. Industrial Restructuring and Class Transformation in China Joel Andreas 7. Working-class Cultural Spaces: Comparing the Old and the New Jack Linchuan Qiu and Hongzhe Wang Bibliography

The China story yearbook 2015: pollution

Overview Environmental pollution poses serious challenges for China, including to its economy as well as public health. The China Story Yearbook 2015: Pollution looks at how China’s Communist Party-state addresses these problems and how Chinese citizens have coped with and expressed their concerns about living with chronic, worsening pollution. This Yearbook also explores the broader ramifications of pollution in the People’s Republic for culture, society law and social activism, as well as the Internet, language, thought, and approaches to history. It looks at how it affects economic and political developments, urban change, and China’s regional and global posture. The Chinese Communist Party, led by ‘Chairman of Everything’ Xi Jinping, meanwhile, has subjected mainland society to increasingly repressive control in its new determination to rid the country of Western ‘spiritual pollutants’ while achieving cultural purification through ‘propaganda and ideological work’.

China's Challenges in the Twenty-First Century. Joseph Y. S. Cheng

Publishers details for: Chinas Challenges in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Joseph Y. S. Cheng, Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2003. xviii + 862 pages. US

Creating an Urban Middle Class: Social Engineering in Beijing

38.00 (paperback).