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China's Durable Inequality: Legacies of Revolution and Pitfalls of Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Mark Selden  and
C.K. Lee
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Since the early 1980s, China has been hailed as the poster child of post-socialist transition, shifting its revolutionary course via a reform that has generated the world's most dynamic growth in GNP and trade over a quarter of a century and elevated it to the forefront of nations attracting foreign investment. Often eclipsed in this glowing picture of reform are enduring, indeed exacerbated, structures of inequality and the vibrant forms of popular resistance these have spawned. So too are the inequalities of the revolutionary era, including both persisting historical legacies and new forms of inequality. This article seeks to provide a framework both for assessing structures of Chinese inequality in successive epochs of revolution and reform and for gauging the changing relationship between social movements and structures of inequality. Three key questions drive the analysis: What are the legacies of the Chinese Revolution for the pursuit of social equality? How has reform restructured patterns of inequality? What is the relationship between the social upheavals that took place during both periods and changing patterns of inequality?

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , January 2007 , e16
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2007

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