Articles

The social bases of a committed labor force: how guanxi works in the Chinese factories?

Existing research points out that social relations are crucial in governing employment relations and eliciting commitment but fails to clarify how they work in different contexts. Using an employer-employee ne...

Authors: Yan Zhu

Competition for attention in the Chinese bureaucracy

Researchers of the Chinese bureaucracy generally believe that policy promotion depends on the power of the party committees because they have absolute authority in China. This intuitive argument, however, lack...

Authors: Hong Lian

Staying connected with ICT tools: tracking youth respondents in a Chinese context

Young people have been perceived as a group that benefits most directly from China’s education aspirations and modernization campaign. Given their high social and spatial mobility related to education and care...

Authors: Jing Song, Gina Lai, Odalia Wong and Xiaotian Feng

Social class differences in consumption propensity in contemporary China – from survival-oriented consumption to development-oriented consumption

This article employs data from the 2013 China Social Survey to analyse class differences in propensities to consume in contemporary China. Results suggest that the average propensity to consume (i.e. APC) amon...

Authors: Yi Zhang

The evolvement of family intergenerational relationship in transition: mechanism, logic, and tension

Based on diversified intergenerational living arrangements in urban China, this paper studies the characterization and formation mechanism of intergenerational family relationships in the Chinese society. The ...

Authors: Jinqun Shi

Reconstructing the concept of face in cultural sociology: in Goffman’s footsteps, following the Chinese case

Few readers notice that in a celebrated essay, Goffman, in a footnote, acknowledges the Chinese source of his concept of face. Around the time that Goffman published “On Face-work,” Merton urged that theory de...

Authors: Xiaoying Qi

The hard work of feeding the baby: breastfeeding and intensive mothering in contemporary urban China

Drawing upon the concept of culture as a “tool kit” from which social actors draw pragmatically, this paper explores the relationship between cultural definitions of good mothering and breastfeeding among midd...

Authors: Amy Hanser and Jialin Li

When a joke is more than a joke: humor as a form of networked practice in the Chinese cyber public sphere

Received wisdom views political humor, viz. egao, in the Chinese cyber public sphere as a form of resistance. This study creates and tests a framework that best conceptualizes how different functions of egao a...

Authors: Mathew Yates and Reza Hasmath

Dependent or breadwinner? Vietnamese brides reshaping gender roles at the China-Vietnam border

Within cross-border marriages, foreign brides’ economic contributions to their families are often underestimated due to the fact that they are always believed to be passport and economic “dependents.” However,...

Authors: Pengli Huang

Bridal photos and diamond rings: the inequality of romantic consumption in China

Although sociological insights into the relationship between consumption and class are mostly borne out by current research in the Chinese context, it is important to consider the implications of applying such...

Authors: Wanning Sun

Surveying happiness in China: comparing measures of subjective well-being

The objectives of this study are to investigate (1) whether subjective well-being (SWB) measures in surveys on China are interchangeable and (2) whether these measures work together as a construct. To accompli...

Authors: Becky Hsu, Weiwei Zhang and Christine Kim

Institutions and individual strategies: how did job seekers respond to the changing employment environment in urban China?

By using qualitative data collected in three representative Chinese cities and quantitative data from a countrywide survey, in this study, we synthesized the conventionally competing arguments from the state-c...

Authors: Jing Shen and Wei Xu

The level of decentralization and property rights protection––a sociological analysis of property rights

Economists have used the mechanism of interjurisdictional competition to explain how decentralization affects the degree of property rights protection. This fails however to account for another significant que...

Authors: Zhenghan Cao and Guoqiang Feng

The recent trend of ethnic intermarriage in China: an analysis based on the census data

Interethnic marriage is a key field in ethnic relations study. A high level of interethnic marriage only occurs in a multiethnic society in which the political system, economic structure, laws, and cultural en...

Authors: Zhixiang Jian

Intergenerational emotion and solidarity in transitional China: comparisons of two kinds of “ken lao” families in Shanghai

The phenomenon of ken lao embodies the structural tension and intergenerational ambivalence in transitional Chinese families. Two kinds of families in Shanghai that rely on parents are compared, including attitud...

Authors: Wenrong Liu

What determines “giving birth to a son”: the social transformation of how institution and culture affect women’s fertility choices

Since the implementation of China’s one-child family planning policy in 1980, the fertility culture and governmental institutions have become two important factors that determine women’s fertility selection. I...

Authors: Wu Ying, Yang Yiyin, Wei Xiaojiang and Chen En

Domestic migration, home rentals, and crime rates in China

Although it is commonly believed that immigration leads to a high crime rate, this relationship is far from conclusive. This paper contributes to this line of research by exploring the case of China, a country...

Authors: Jianxin Cheng, Junqiang Liu and Jun Wang

Income inequality and privatisation: a multilevel analysis comparing prefectural size of private sectors in Western China

In 2000, the Chinese government initiated a campaign to develop Western China and reduce local and regional inequality. Privatisation has been a central component of the campaign. This article studies the rela...

Authors: Nan Zou Bakkeli

Property rights and the formation of interfirm networks: a network analysis of the interlocking directorates in China’s listed companies

Interfirm networks are one of the core modes of corporate governance. However, its formation mechanism is not clearly and adequately delineated. This article highlights the significance of property rights to t...

Authors: Lei Ma

Precarious knowledge workers in China’s social transformation—a study of editors in the Chinese publishing industry

Contributing to contemporary studies on knowledge workers, this paper aims to conceptualize the four critical challenges for editors in the Chinese publishing industry under the framework of political economy....

Authors: Jianhua Yao

The allocation mechanism of authority and accountability in Chinese government hierarchies: A case study of the “Earmarked Project System”

Based on basic organizational theories, this paper revisits studies about intergovernmental relationships in China and proposes a systematic explanation framework from the perspective of the allocation mechani...

Authors: Puyuan Shi and Mengwei Ni

Occupational interactions and income level: a social capital study using the first-order difference method

This study aims to explore the impact of social resources within the workplace on individuals' income level among Chinese urban residents, using data provided by JSNET2009. To adequately address the endogeneit...

Authors: Weifeng Liu, Yunsong Chen and Yanjie Bian

The social context of ageing and intergenerational relationships in Chinese families

Authors: Stevi Jackson and Jieyu Liu

Are mothers of sons more traditional? The influence of having son(s) and daughter(s) on parents’ gender ideology

Gender and gender ideology have gained increasing attention from researchers in contemporary social sciences. In recent years, some research evidence also indicates that children can affect parents’ social val...

Authors: Xiaodong Sun and Kaisheng Lai

Regional segregation or industrial monopoly? Dual labor market segmentation and income inequality in China

Using data from the 2010 China Family Panel Study and county- and industry-level statistics, we estimate cross-classified multilevel models to examine the determinants of the income gap among Chinese workers. ...

Authors: Yaqiang Qi and Tongxin Liang