Social Problems in Contemporary Chinese Society

Social problems in socialist China? If this query had been raised during Maoist times a decade or more ago, the likely answer, both inside China and in the West by those in a position to know, would have been "No," or "No serious ones that we know about." Now, in the 1980s ask the same question of any knowledgeable person—Chinese or not, official, social scientist, tourist, or ordinary citizen—and the answer invariably is an emphatic "Yes," followed by a long list of "urgent social problems" topped almost always by the population problem. In recent years and months, ample evidence of serious Chinese concern with the study and resolution of a variety of social problems facing contemporary Chinese society can be found in their media, government policy directives, and scholarly journals. Indeed, it is the emergence of the systematic study of social problems, particularly as a branch of sociology (itself a nascent but growing discipline), that makes it possible to compile this and other specialized volumes on the topic.