Migrating for the Bank: Housing and Chinese Labour Migration to Ethiopia

2015 ◽  
Vol 221 ◽  
pp. 143-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Driessen
Keyword(s):  
Marriage Market ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Mortgage Loans ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
The One ◽  
Bride Price ◽  
The City

AbstractBy shedding light on the concept of the fangnu (mortgage slave), this paper explains why young men from China migrate to Ethiopia. Young, educated, employed and ambitious, the fangnu is a modern type of slave who is said to have sold his freedom to the bank for the purpose of buying a house. For young men coming from a rural background, temporary migration offers a chance to earn the money so badly needed for a down payment or repayments on mortgage loans for their newly bought residential property. I argue that the fangnu is the child of a Chinese society characterized by high social mobility as well as a growing demographic imbalance owing to the one-child policy. In this context, a house – or in urban China, commonly an apartment in a high-rise building – is increasingly seen as a marker of status, especially in the marriage market. Although the Chinese do not demand a bride price, the hunfang (marriage house) has become the norm in urban Chinese society. Unable to rely on the financial support of their kin, young Chinese men from the countryside migrate to earn the starting capital needed to cope with the socio-economic pressures of settling in the city.

scholarly journals THE FUNCTIONS AND SYMBOLISM OF CHINESE MINARETS: A CASE STUDY OF THE HUAISHENG GUANGTA

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-76
Author(s):  
Hamada Muhammed Hagras
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Society ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Religious Minority ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
The One ◽  
And Function ◽  
The City

The Huisheng mosque in Guangzhou is one of China's oldest mosques; its initial construction dates back to 627. The minaret of the mosque is one of the surviving earliest examples of Islamic architecture in China. The Chinese minarets were built with a form of a wooden low-rise Chinese pavilion. In the case of Guangta, it was built by brick directly on the street with such a great height. The unique architectural form of Guangta raises many questions about its location, architecture, and function. The study traces the historical texts of the minaret to clarify its historical functions. It attempts to understand the minaret's meanings, the hidden symbolism, and its historical roles to serve the Muslim community as a religious minority in the city, on the one hand, as well as its cultural contributions on the other hand. There are several methods to achieve its objectives: the historical, the descriptive, and the comparative analytical approach. These approaches proved that the minaret played many roles associated with its form and architecture. In addition to its religious functions, it is entrusted to inform Muslims at prayer times. The minaret was also used as a control tower if the Muslim community in the city was exposed to external or internal threats and served as a lighthouse to facilitate Muslim maritime trade. Further, it carried a religious symbolism as it was a symbol of Islam itself within the local Chinese society that was not ruled by Muslims. 

scholarly journals EFEK KEBIJAKAN SATU ANAK TERHADAP KEHIDUPAN PEREMPUAN DI TIONGKOK: SEBUAH IRONI

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 145
Author(s):  
Wabilia Husnah
Keyword(s):  
Positive Impact ◽  
Chinese Women ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Deng Xiaoping ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
School Work ◽  
One Child Policy ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The One

In the Chinese tradition that is influenced by the Confusianism, women are seen to have lower positions than men. In such a social system, the One-Child policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping since 1979 as a program to control the population, underpin the inferiority perception upon Chinese women. This article aims analyze the effects of the China’s One Child Policy towards Chinese women’s lives. It is important to understand how Chinese Women live after their lives have been affected by this Policy, in a good or a bad way. The results show that One Child Policy has negative impacts on Chinese women’s lives. It does not only lead to discrimination views againts women, but also indirectly violate a Chinese woman’s social, cultural and economic rights. Criminal cases overshadow the Chinese women, ranging from torture, neglect of children, abortion, illegal adoption, human trafficking, kidnapping, and even prostitution. On the other hand, all criminal cases makes women become “rare “ and “special” objects in China. Ironically, the scarcity of women in China actually cause the higher bargaining power of women. Now in their lives, Chinese women can go to school, work, choosing a spouse, or even file for divorce. Women’s social status in Chinese society has increased now. It means that women also obtain the positive impact of One-Child Policy.Keywords: women, confucianism, the one child policyAbstrakDalam tradisi Tiongkok yang dipengaruhi oleh Konfusianisme, perempuan selalu memiliki posisi lebih rendah daripada laki-laki. Dalam sistem sosial seperti ini, Kebijakan Satu Anak yang diperkenalkan oleh Deng Xiaoping sejak 1979 sebagai program untuk mengontrol populasi, turut mendukung inferioritas wanita Tiongkok. Artikel ini mencoba menganalisis efek Kebijakan Satu Anak di Tiongkok kepada kehidupan perempuan. Sangat penting untuk memahami bagaimana perempuan Tiongkok menjalani hidupnya pascakehidupannya telah dipengaruhi oleh kebijakan ini, dengan cara yang baik maupun yang buruk. Artikel ini berkesimpulan bahwa Kebijakan Satu Anak memiliki dampak negatif dalam kehidupan perempuan. Kebijakan ini tidak hanya menyebabkan pandangan diskriminatif terhadap perempuan, namun juga secara tidak langsung melanggar hak asasi dalam kehidupan sosial, kultural, dan ekonomi perempuan Tiongkok. Kasus kriminal pun membayangi perempuan Tiongkok, mulai dari penyiksaan, pengabaian anak perempuan, aborsi, adopsi ilegal, penjualan manusia, penculikan, bahkan prostitusi.Di lain pihak, semua kasus kriminal ini telah membuat perempuan menjadi objek yang “langka” dan “spesial” di Tiongkok. Ironisnya, kelangkaan perempuan di Tiongkok menyebabkan nilai tawar perempuan menjadi lebih tinggi. Sekarang, dalam kehidupan mereka, perempuan Cina bisa pergi ke sekolah, bekerja, memilih pasangan hidup, bahkan menuntut cerai. Status sosial perempuan dalam masyarakat Tiongkok pun sudah meningkat sekarang. Ini berarti, perempuan Tiongkok juga telah mendapatkan efek positif dari Kebijakan Satu Anak.Kata kunci: perempuan, konfusianisme, kebijakan satu anak

scholarly journals Remembering the City: Changing Conceptions of Community in Urban China

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1240-1266
Author(s):  
Andrew Manley ◽  
Michael Silk
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
Urban China ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Integrative Research ◽  
Modern Development ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Affective Meanings ◽  
The City ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Adopting complimentary integrative research methodologies, this article examines changing conceptions of community among urban residents within the city of Suzhou, Jiangsu province, China. Through local residents’ past memories, “everyday” experiences of (former) urban communities, and reflections on a particular way of life, we focus upon the subjective/affective meanings and memories attached to processes of urban change. We place emphasis on the manner in which residents make sense of sociospatial transformations in relation to the (re)making of community, local social interaction, and a sense of belonging. Discussion centers on the affective and embodied notions of a particular way of life in (older) communities; sensory performances that were deemed difficult to replicate within modern development zones and the broader field of contemporary Chinese society.

Equal Dreams: The One Child Policy and the Consumption of Education in Urban China

2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Veeck ◽  
Laura Flurry ◽  
Naihua Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Urban China ◽  
One Child Policy ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
The One

scholarly journals Surrogacy in China: Public Opinion, Litigations, and Court Rulings

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (10) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Qian Tang
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Feminist Studies ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Commercial Surrogacy ◽  
One Child Policy ◽  
Chinese Parents ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
The One

Culturally, commercial surrogacy has come to be viewed and criticized as immoral. Thus, many prefer it to be outlawed in China. At the same time, “to carry on the bloodline of the family” and having more children are also culturally celebrated in Chinese society.  The two cultural traditions, together with the implementation and gradual revocation of the one-child policy in the 21st century, have led to a dilemma modern Chinese parents are facing: more and more couples feel morally obligated to have more children after the revocation of the one-child policy but are too old to naturally reproduce. With the vagueness of regulations around commercial surrogacy in China, more couples have resorted to surrogacy in the past decade, which currently functions in a grey market. Within the unregulated market, both moral and legal concerns emerge. Through analysis of public opinion, litigations, as well as court rulings on surrogacy in China, this paper asks the following question: To what extent does the societal attitude in China on surrogacy align with that of litigations and court rulings on surrogacy in China? This paper hopes to provide insight into the Chinese surrogacy markets and responses from different actors within the process of surrogacy, leading to broader questions such as: How can litigations in China on surrogacy be improved? How can we ensure rights of all actors in a transaction concerning surrogacy? Should surrogacy be permissible at all? These are relevant questions relating to the structural violence prevalent in the seemingly peaceful modern China and have an impact on the direction of future feminist studies.

China’s demographic prospects to 2040 and their implications: an overview

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-91
Author(s):  
Nicholas Eberstadt
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Population Aging ◽  
Chinese Family ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Marriage Squeeze ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
Working Age ◽  
Inferior Status ◽  
Wild Cards ◽  
The One

China’s population prospects over the decades ahead are largely shaped by pro-longed sub-replacement childbearing, likely to have been in effect for half a century by 2040. China’s population is on track to peak in the coming decade and to decline at an accelerating pace thereafter. Between 2015 and 2040, China’s population aged 50 and older is on course to increase by roughly one-quarter of a billion people; the under-50 population is set to decline by a roughly comparable magnitude. China is set to experience an extraordinarily rapid surge of population aging, with especially explosive population growth for the 65-plus group, even as its working-age population (conventionally defined as the age 15–64 group) progressively shrinks. Additionally, a number of demographic changes underway now constitute “wild cards” for China’s future: including (1) the impending “marriage squeeze” due to abnormal sex ratios at birth from the one-child policy era; (2) the problem of mass urbanisation under a system that consigns migrants in urban areas to an officially inferior status; and (3) the revolutionary changes in the Chinese family structure, which portend a dramatic departure from previous arrangements on which Chinese society and economy depended.

China’s One Child Policy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin K. Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Family Planning ◽  
Poor Country ◽  
Fertility Rate ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Chinese Families ◽  
One Child Policy ◽  
Child Policy ◽  
The One ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

For centuries, China has had the world’s largest population, although it will soon lose that title to India. When Mao Zedong and his colleagues seized national power in 1949, they were not sure how many Chinese there were (the first modern census was not conducted until 1953), and Mao initially argued that having a large and rapidly increasing population was a blessing for China, rather than a curse. However, the challenges of managing such a large and poor country soon changed the official view, and during some intervals in the 1950s and 1960s, China carried out voluntary family planning campaigns to try to reduce the birth rate. However, those campaigns were largely ineffective, with the only notable decline in fertility during those decades produced by the Great Leap Forward–induced mass famine of 1959–1961, not family planning efforts. As of 1970 the projected number of babies the average Chinese mother would have in her lifetime (termed the total fertility rate [TFR]) was still close to six. (China’s cities, where less than 20 percent of the population lived at the time, is an exception to these generalizations, with the 1960s family planning campaign playing some role in reducing the urban TFR in 1970 to 3.2.) Early in the 1970s, when Mao was still in charge (he died in 1976), China made a dramatic shift from voluntary family planning to mandatory birth limits under the slogan, “later (marriage ages), longer (birth intervals), and fewer” (births—no more than two babies for urban families and three for rural families). The “later, longer, fewer” campaign was enforced very strictly, using many of the coercive measures that later became notorious during the one-child campaign, and China’s fertility rate fell dramatically, to less than three per mother by the end of the decade. Despite this success, in 1980 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched an even more demanding and coercive campaign that attempted for the next thirty-five years to limit Chinese families to having only one child. The fertility rate actually went up in the early 1980s but then began to decline again, reaching subreplacement fertility (TFR = 2.1) by the early 1990s. Most experts estimate that China’s TFR fluctuated in the 1.4 to 1.6 range between 2000 and 2015, although some analysts have calculated higher figures, and others lower. The CCP in late 2015 decided to end the one-child limit, with Chinese families since January 1, 2016 allowed to have two children (but no more, at least as of 2019). Debates about the controversial one-child policy have spawned a large literature that examines many issues, including the reasons the CCP launched this campaign, how effective it was in reducing birth rates further, what human rights abuses resulted, how child-rearing and children have been affected, and in what ways Chinese society and the people of China have benefited or have been harmed by the demographic distortions produced by mandatory, state-enforced birth limits.

The Gender of Communication: Changing Expectations of Mothers and Daughters in Urban China

2010 ◽  
Vol 204 ◽  
pp. 980-1000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet Evans
Keyword(s):  
Urban China ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Emotional Communication ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Mothers And Daughters ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

AbstractIn the flow of the material, cultural and moral influences shaping contemporary Chinese society, individual desires for emotional communication are reconstituting the meaning of the subject, self and responsibility. This article draws on fieldwork conducted in Beijing between 2000 and 2004 to discuss the gendered dimensions of this process through an analysis of the implications of the “communicative intimacy” sought by mothers and daughters in their mutual relationship. What could be termed a “feminization of intimacy” is the effect of two distinct but linked processes: on the one hand, a market-supported naturalization of women's roles, and on the other, the changing subjective articulation of women's needs, desires and expectations of family and personal relationships. I argue that across these two processes, the celebration of a communicative intimacy does not signify the emergence of more equal family or gender relationships, as recent theories about the individualization and cultural democratization of daily life in Western societies have argued. As families and kin groups, communities and neighbourhoods are physically, spatially and socially broken up, and as gender differences in employment and income increase, media and “expert” encouragement to mothers to become the all-round confidantes, educators and moral guides of their children affirms women's responsibilities in the domestic sphere. Expectations of mother–daughter communication reshape the meaning – and experience – of the individual subject in the changing character of the urban family at the same time as they reinforce ideas about women's gendered attributes and the responsibilities associated with them.

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