Family Relations in Contemporary China

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Jankowiak ◽  
Yuezhu Sun
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Chinese Family ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Work Unit ◽  
Entire Family ◽  
Registration System ◽  
Early 21St Century

Across different time periods and regions the Chinese family displays a variety of forms, functions, and relationship dynamics. The pre-1949-era Chinese family was an economic, political, and jural unit. This type of Chinese family was organized in accordance with patrilocal residence and patrilineal descent and based in patriarchal authority. Elderly males, especially fathers, had authority over the entire family. Socialist policies (1949–19?) that created the hukou system (household registration system) resulted in profound rural-urban differences. Urban areas become the centers of industry, commerce, and political governance, whereas rural areas, which, until the 1980s, made up 80 percent of Chinese society, engaged primarily in agriculture. Given these institutional changes, Chinese families began to diverge along urban-rural lines. The rural Chinese family continued to carry on more or less the patriarchal tradition whereby parents arranged marriages, women were the “inferior” gender, and daily life was largely improvised. In contrast, urban areas were divided into self-contained work units (danwei) that strived to combine residence with employment. In the work unit era (1950s–1990s) the urban family was organized in accordance with neolocal residence rules and the de facto practices of bilateral descent, or equally valuing the husband’s and wife’s families. Moreover, males’ authority, especially fathers’, was eliminated. In post-reform China (1980s–early 21st century), owing in part to China’s modernization policies, such as dismantling of the work unit and institution of the one-child policy, the Chinese family was gradually transformed. Research on the transformation is ongoing and, in the early 21st century, is in its initial stages. So far, no firm consensus has been reached. In China, family increasingly serves as an umbrella term for an array of connective relationships. The Chinese family evolves not only across historical periods; like all families, it also goes through different developmental stages, ranging from courtship, to marriage, to parenting, to eldercare. The sections follow the developmental sequence of the Chinese family, covering the time period from pre-reform to early-21st-century China.

Nana Asma’u

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alaine Hutson
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Only Children ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Sokoto Caliphate ◽  
Literary Output

Asma’u bint Shehu Usman dan Fodio (1793–1865) was an Islamic scholar, poet, and educational leader in what is now Northern Nigeria. She is best known as Nana Asma’u. A daughter of Shehu Usman dan Fodio, the founder of the Sokoto Caliphate and sister to one of the Shehu’s successors, Muhammad Bello, Nana Asma’u used her writings to help the Shehu in his quest to break the syncretistic practice of Islam in Hausaland, convert more people to Islam, and help the newly reformed community of faithful Muslims maintain their orthodox religious practice. As one of the longest surviving members of Shehu’s family and of the Degel community, her prolific literary output and enduring presence helped shape the reputation of the Shehu, Muhammad Bello, and early 21st-century scholarship of the Sokoto Caliphate. As a member of a Fulani scholarly family of long standing, Nana Asma’u benefitted from an early childhood education taught by the scholarly Fulani women of her family. She also transformed that tradition of women as the first teachers of Islamic religious knowledge. Nana Asma’u educated not only children but men and women and established the yan-taru (the associates or disciples), a school of women teachers who traveled to rural areas to improve Hausa women’s education. She was a prolific writer of poems in three languages. Her writings continue to be read, memorized, and recited: the yan-taru concept of making education accessible, especially to women, continues into the 21st century and has expanded into the United States.

Political Competition Beyond Ethnic Politics in Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominika Koter
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Ethnic Politics ◽  
Ethnic Mobilization ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Ethnic Networks ◽  
Electoral Mobilization

Ethnic cleavages are present in many elections across the continent, and scholars frequently view ethnic mobilization as the default way in which politicians appeal to African voters. Ethnic electoral patterns already emerged in many countries during the first mass elections around the time of independence and they continue to be visible to this day. The prevalence of ethnic politics has been commonly seen as a result of limited ideological and programmatic debates in African elections and the centrality of ethnic networks in voters’ access to scarce resources. Yet, early-21st-century scholarship increasingly reveals the varied degrees in which ethnicity plays a role in African political contests, raising the question of when do politicians engage in alternative forms of electoral mobilization? And when are voters inclined to vote for candidates outside their ethnic group? Emerging scholarship suggests that it is easier for politicians to pursue programmatic and populist campaigns that do not cater to specific ethnic groups in cities rather than in rural areas where politicians rarely avoid clientelist strategies. Other research also suggests that the nature of social organization and the composition of rural areas can determine whether clientelist strategies are organized along ethnic lines or not.

scholarly journals Are parental dietary patterns associated with children’s overweight and obesity in China?

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisheng Tang ◽  
Tao Bu ◽  
Xuefan Dong
Keyword(s):  
Food Intake ◽  
Dietary Patterns ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Overweight And Obesity ◽  
Nutrition Survey ◽  
Cross Sectional

Abstract Background It is believed that parents have a great influence on their children’s dietary behaviours. However, it is not clear whether parental food patterns are associated with children’s nutritional status in China, which includes a vast territory with rich, diverse cultures. The goal of this project is to systematically study the associations between parental food intake and children’s overweight and obesity in China, according to children’s ages and regional differences. Methods Based on individual food consumption data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) package in 2011, cross-sectional studies have previously been conducted to analyse the association between different categories of food intake of parents and children. The current study extends this research by directly. Results Our analysis results show that parental food intake is highly correlated with children’s food intake, with the estimated coefficients of most food intake categories being greater than 0.5. Furthermore, this association between parental food intake and children’s overweight and obesity is most significant in young children, but it begins to weaken in relation to children aged between 13 and 18. Additionally, the associations between parental food intake and children’s overnutrition are more significant in rural areas than they are in urban areas. Conclusions The association between parental food intake and childhood overweight and obesity is significant, although it varies considerably according to food categories, children’s ages and area differences. These results show promise for intervening in the overnutrition of children by controlling household dietary patterns according to children’s developmental stages and regional differences.

scholarly journals Labor Market Outcomes and Reforms in China

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 75-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Meng
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Life Time ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
Registration System ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Urban Labor ◽  
Urban Labor Markets

Over the past few decades of economic reform, China's labor markets have been transformed to an increasingly market-driven system. China has two segregated economies: the rural and urban. Understanding the shifting nature of this divide is probably the key to understanding the most important labor market reform issues of the last decades and the decades ahead. From 1949, the Chinese economy allowed virtually no labor mobility between the rural and urban sectors. Rural-urban segregation was enforced by a household registration system called “hukou.” Individuals born in rural areas receive “agriculture hukou” while those born in cities are designated as “nonagricultural hukou.” In the countryside, employment and income were linked to the commune-based production system. Collectively owned communes provided very basic coverage for health, education, and pensions. In cities, state-assigned life-time employment, centrally determined wages, and a cradle-to-grave social welfare system were implemented. In the late 1970s, China's economic reforms began, but the timing and pattern of the changes were quite different across rural and urban labor markets. This paper focuses on employment and wages in the urban labor markets, the interaction between the urban and rural labor markets through migration, and future labor market challenges. Despite the remarkable changes that have occurred, inherited institutional impediments still play an important role in the allocation of labor; the hukou system remains in place, and 72 percent of China's population is still identified as rural hukou holders. China must continue to ease its restrictions on rural–urban migration, and must adopt policies to close the widening rural–urban gap in education, or it risks suffering both a shortage of workers in the growing urban areas and a deepening urban–rural economic divide.

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.

scholarly journals 中國人有關安樂死的價值選擇

1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-149
Author(s):  
Qingxiu GUO ◽  
Fengling JING ◽  
Honggang GEN
Keyword(s):  
Family Member ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
Entire Family ◽  
Chinese Values ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Subject

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.針對在中國長期爭論的安樂死問題，作者採用發放封閉式調查問卷的方法，對中國河北省保定市南市區和郊區的400名工人、農民、幹部和醫務工作者進行了調查，通過對調查結果的全面分析可以看出，主張安樂死的人以農民所佔比例最小，以醫務人員所佔比例最大；文化程度越高，對安樂死的支持比例越大；多數人主張由醫生、家屬共同決定安樂死的實施；而安樂死的執行大部分人認為應由醫生或第三者進行；而且多數人主張實施安樂死必須立法。本文以該調查結果為基礎，進一步對中國大陸人對於安樂死的態度、看法及價值選擇情況進行了分析與探討，說明了中國傳統文化對大陸人安樂死態度的深刻影響。This essay analyzes the major outcomes of a survey that we conducted on 400 Chinese individuals of different ages, occupations and levels of education. Our method was to send to every subject a specifically designed form in which the subject faces three types of cases: the terminally ill cancer patient, the persistent-vegetative-state patient, and the severely defected newborn. The subject was required to make a choice among (1) offering treatment at any cost, (2) giving comfort treatment only, and (3) performing euthanasia. Although the survey was made in 1987, new evidence shows that its outcomes remain an accurate index of the Chinese values regarding the matter of euthanasia.The survey indicates that a great proportion of Chinese peasants do not support performing euthanasia in the given three cases. 45.5 percent of the peasant subjects advocate treatment at any cost. Only 27 percent of them accept euthanasia. In contrast, many more workers, government employees, and medical professionals living in urban areas support euthanasia. This contrast, from our perspective, demonstrates the significant influence of traditional Chinese values on life and death in the rural areas of China. According to the popular traditional values, life in this world is sacred and death should be avoided at any cost. Although such ideas have been significantly discredited in the urban areas, they are still heavily influential in the rural areas.However, given that only 44 peasants participated in our survey, we do not believe that, based on this survey, we can draw a general conclusion about what percent of the Chinese peasants support or oppose euthanasia. We need more detailed investigation regarding this issue.The most interesting outcome of this survey is that only about 26 percent of the subjects think that the patient him/herself should decide whether or not to accept euthanasia. 55 percent of the subjects believe that the matter should be decided by the family and the physician. The Western reader might be shocked by this outcome. After all, what is at stake is the matter of life or death of the patient. However, this outcome is no surprise for us. Whereas individualism (with strong emphasis on self-determination) is a basic feature of Western society, familism (with a clear orientation of family-determination) characterizes everyday Chinese lives. Familism, as the foundational ideology and value of Chinese people, has gone through the history of Chinese society for about three thousand years. The Chinese individual takes it for granted that one’s family is an automatic unit apart from the rest of society. Everyone is born to a family, is brought up in a family, and lives one's life inseparably from the family. Hence the medical problems of one family member are usually taken as the problems of the entire family. According to Chinese values, when one family member falls ill, the entire family should be involved in making decisions and taking actions in the best interests of that member.Why not allow the individual patient to make an exclusive decision on the matter of euthanasia for him/herself? Chinese people are afraid that, if this is allowed, patients may very well demand euthanasia primarily for the sake of reducing the economic and spiritual burden of their families in taking care of them. Most Chinese believe that the best decision on euthanasia can only be made by the family in consideration of the physician's information and/or suggestion. This is why 55 percent of the subjects in this survey supported the united determination made by the family and physician.Does this imply that the family and physician are allowed to accept euthanasia on behalf of the patient without consulting the patient even when the patient is competent? The answer is definitely no. The family would not accept euthanasia for a family member unless the member clearly demands it. In reality, Chinese euthanasia practices occur only upon the frequent and strong requests of the patients. However, given the possibility of abuse, it should be made very clear that morality requires that euthanasia may not be performed on any competent patient unless it is demanded by the patient. In China, it should be a unanimous decision made by the family, the physician, and the patient (if competent).DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 39 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

scholarly journals Settlement Strategies of Caucasian Expatriate Communities in Volgograd Region: Final Third of the XXth Century – Early XXIst Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 131-147
Author(s):  
Sergey Sushchiy
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The North ◽  
Volgograd Region ◽  
Settlement Strategies ◽  
Natural Dynamics ◽  
Demographic Growth ◽  
The Early 21St Century

The purpose of this article is to study the geographic and demographic dynamics and the main settlement strategies of the leading Caucasian expatriate communities of Volgograd region. The study has found that the accelerated demographic growth of Caucasian communities of the region in the last third of the 20th century and in the early 21st century was primarily determined not by its natural dynamics, but by the arrival of migrants. The educational and labor migration of people born in the Caucasus into the region in the 1950s – 1960s formed small ethnic groups consisting mainly of men and their significant part concentrated in cities. The main reasons for the accelerated growth of regional expatriate communities of the peoples of the Southern Caucasus at the end of the Soviet period became social, economic problems and the growth of interethnic tension in the republics of Transcaucasia. The same factors contributed to a rapid demographic growth of these communities in the 1990s. The central driver of the quantitative growth of the number of North Caucasian expatriate communities in the 1970s – 1980s was the development of livestock husbandry in arid rural areas of the region. This economic niche significantly changed the settlement parameters, social and demographic characteristics of the North Caucasian communities. With a rapid increase of the number of communities, their level of urbanization significantly reduced, but at the same time the gender imbalance changed. The early 21st century for the majority of the Caucasian expatriate communities in the region became a time of quantitative stabilization and optimization of the already existing settlement areas.

scholarly journals Drifting Peasant Workers: The Reflection of the Hukou System within the Chinese Cinematic Network

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Huimin Deng
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Registration System ◽  
Peasant Workers ◽  
Chinese Migrant Workers ◽  
Urban Working

Migrating from rural areas to urban areas, Chinese farmers become part of the urban working class. The migration have attracted both urban cinema and independent documentary to represent the integration of farmers into urban space. However, whether the figures of peasant workers in urban areas can be simply treated as the urban working class is problematic. Here I introduce the theories of textuality and intertextuality to explore the audiovisual representation of Chinese migrant workers within Chinese urban cinema and Chinese independent documentary at the turn of the 21st century, searching for the communal sign representation and social signification of peasant images within urban context. As a result, peasant workers are depicted as drifters between urban areas and rural areas because they are marginalized by local workers, urban elites, and urban governors due to the household registration system. Their identity, cultural manifestation, and social status are shaped by the rural-urban mediation, if not conflict.

scholarly journals Urban-rural disparity in cancer mortality and changing trend in Tianjin, China, during 1999 and 2016

BMC Cancer ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenlong Zheng ◽  
Hui Zhang ◽  
Dezheng Wang ◽  
Chong Wang ◽  
Shuang Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Cancer Mortality ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Registration System ◽  
Total Cancer ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Changing Trend ◽  
Urban And Rural Areas ◽  
Increasing Trends ◽  
Standardized Mortality Rate

Abstract Objective Compare the urban-rural disparity in cancer mortality and changing trend during the past 18 years in Tianjin, China. Methods Cancer death data were obtained from Tianjin All Cause of Death Registration System (CDRS), which covers the whole population of Tianjin. We calculated and compared the constituent ratio of cancer deaths, age-standardized mortality rate(ASR)and changing trends between urban and rural areas. Results From 1999 to 2016, a total of 245,744 cancer deaths were reported, accounting 21.7% of all deaths in Tianjin. The ASR of total cancer mortality was higher in urban areas than in rural areas. A total of 33,739 persons were avoided dying of cancers in rural area compared to the urban death level from 1999 to 2016, which was 40.1% compare to the current level of rural areas. But the gap between urban and rural areas became narrowed gradually. The urban-rural ratios (urban/rural) of total cancer mortality changed from 1.76 (125.7/71.5)[95%CI,1.67,1.84] in 1999 to 1.11 (99.6/90.0)[95%CI,1.06,1.15] in 2016. The ASR of lung, liver and esophagus cancer became higher in rural areas than in urban areas in 2016. Conclusion Cancer transition was obviously occurred in Tianjin and showed different speeds and big gap between urban and rural areas. Much more attention was needed to pay in rural areas which still have increasing trends in most cancers mortality recently.

Immigration to American Cities, 1925–2017

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Brooks
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
National Debate ◽  
American Children ◽  
American Cities

The Immigration Act of 1924 was in large part the result of a deep political and cultural divide in America between heavily immigrant cities and far less diverse small towns and rural areas. The 1924 legislation, together with growing residential segregation, midcentury federal urban policy, and postwar suburbanization, undermined scores of ethnic enclaves in American cities between 1925 and the 1960s. The deportation of Mexicans and their American children during the Great Depression, the incarceration of West Coast Japanese Americans during World War II, and the wartime and postwar shift of so many jobs to suburban and Sunbelt areas also reshaped many US cities in these years. The Immigration Act of 1965, which enabled the immigration of large numbers of people from Asia, Latin America, and, eventually, Africa, helped to revitalize many depressed urban areas and inner-ring suburbs. In cities and suburbs across the country, the response to the new immigration since 1965 has ranged from welcoming to hostile. The national debate over immigration in the early 21st century reflects both familiar and newer cultural, linguistic, religious, racial, and regional rifts. However, urban areas with a history of immigrant incorporation remain the most politically supportive of such people, just as they were a century ago.

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