Review: The Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification.

The Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification. By Li Yi. University Press of America. 2005. 258 pages. $39 paper.

The Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification is an extremely ambitious work. Li Yi clearly has two things in mind when writing this book. First, Yi sees a huge gap in the existing literature – while in recent years there has been burgeoning interest in social stratification in China, very few systematic attempts have been made in the English literature. Second, Yi is inspired by the work of Charles Tilly, Immanuel Wallerstein and Mao Zedong. Mao published “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” in as early as 1926. Eighty years later, Yi seeks to continue this work and provide a full picture of the evolution of social stratification in China. Wallerstein’s analysis of global capitalist economy on a macroscopic level and Tilly’s call for “big structures, large processes, [and] huge comparisons” are the theoretical models Yi seeks to follow. So, the book in front of us sets it apart from most others – it provides a historical sociology of social stratification in China and it is intended to cover 2,000 years of Chinese history.

The merits of The Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification lie in two areas. First, for those who are not China experts, this book can serve as a good introduction. Divided into eight chapters, the book first tries to justify its theoretical premise and methodological approach, and then devotes five chapters to the discussion of Chinese social stratification in five historical periods: pre-1949, 1949–1959, 1959–1979, 1979–1993, and post-1993. Chapter 7 concentrates on three main aspects of the Chinese social stratification system, namely the national university entrance examination, [End Page 2193] the household registration system and the work unit. The last chapter is a summary of social stratification in post-1949 China, and offers Yi’s prediction of the stratification system’s prospect. The book is jargon-free, and readers can easily find the information that they need. Second, Yi’s effort to provide a historical sociology of Chinese social stratification should be endorsed. Thanks to Victor Nee, Andrew Walder and other scholars’ pioneering work, social stratification in China has become a growth industry in sociology, as can be seen by the increasing number of articles engaging this issue published in major sociology journals. While more and more disciplinarily bounded, under close scrutiny, the field has been dominated by regression analysis and most existing studies only look at one historical period – a historical vision is lacking. Prominent sociologists, including Pierre Bourdieu (1992), Anthony Giddens (1979) and Charles Tilly (1981), have cogently argued that all sociology should be historical. A sound understanding of China’s current social system cannot be achieved without the grasp of its past.

Unfortunately, despite its merits, The Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification is ultimately disappointing. First, readers expecting a deep historical account of Chinese social stratification will be disappointed by the little space devoted to Chinese social stratification before 1949. Although Yi claims to offer an account covering 2,000 years of history, there is only one chapter about pre-1949 China, which makes the book imbalanced, and while often interesting, this chapter is essentially oversimplified and lacks originality. Surprisingly, as a Chinese social scientist, Yi relies very heavily on English literature in this chapter. While I have no doubt of Yi’s knowledge of Chinese history, this chapter does not make clear that Yi has any first-hand data or has extensively read literature in Chinese (or even in English). Ultimately, the book’s historical vision is severely handicapped by its thin historical approach.

Second, the book fails to live up to its announced overall objective of offering a historical sociology of social stratification in China. Although Yi discusses several historical sociologists’ work in Chapter 1, the methodology of historical sociology is not integrated into his discussion of Chinese social stratification. Indeed, Yi does not even mention Tilly or Wallerstein’ name in the following chapters. What we read in these chapters is basically an archival study and essentially descriptive account, largely resorting to various China Statistical Yearbooks. Aside from being the first systematic analysis of Chinese social stratification from a historical perspective, there is no sign of contribution to historical sociology as a general field of study. The whole book is based on secondary data, but it is often confusing where the data are from. The book is full of assertions without disclosing the sources, while most of these assertions have been made before.

Third, as stated in the introductory chapter, the book’s “major objective is to build an empirical model of Chinese social stratification.”(1) Yi [End Page 2194] appears to be very confident about his model, as he names it “Li Yi Model” throughout the book. The model states that “from 1959 to 1979 Chinese social stratification took on a clear-cut, three-class structure” (55, Figure 3-1), with cadres on the top, workers in the middle and peasants on the bottom of the social and economic scale, and by 2005, a large number of the peasants had become peasant workers, while non-state sectors, particularly a capitalist class, had quickly emerged (Figure 8-1). The model, however, is almost common knowledge and no new insights are offered here. What is more, Yi fails to provide a theoretical mechanism accounting for this structural change.

It should be clarified that a truly historical approach to Chinese social stratification will be wholeheartedly applauded. While systematic studies are still meager, there indeed are some great books on social stratification in post-1949 China and China’s economic and political history. Xueguang Zhou’s The State and the Life Chances in Urban China (2004) and R. Bin Wong’s China Transformed (1997) are two examples in the two categories respectively. I hope this book will herald a new intellectual enterprise.