China
Throughout the past 150 years China’s political economy has not fundamentally
changed, contraire to the belief that China operates in a Socialist or Capitalist society.
However, both the tributary mode of production and the petty capitalist mode of
production have been present, existing in an ambivalent relationship. Within the PCMP
large lineages have had a major impact on Chinese society. Although the revolution took
the land from lineages and redistributed it in a “land to the tiller” program, the
government is again encouraging PCMP. It can be argued that with the same importance
placed on family and the characteristic division of land there has been no change
significant enough, including the liberation of women and population policies, for large
lineages not to take back their place in Chinese society.
Now as in the past, the idea that both the dead and the living have a mutual
dependence on each other is very strong. The ideal five generation family is rarely
achieved due to the equal division of property between sons. Out of these broken
families, lineages are formed as a way to acquire property and for ancestral worship. Not
only do lineages provide a way to hold on to ancestors, they also prosper and become the
central organization of that village which both benefits and hinders the people as well as
the government. Lineages acquiring land from poor broken families use their kin to act
as workers which in turn is good for the kin because, as kin, there is an obligation for
good treatment. Within the lineage the selection of perspective students to become state
employees is large, bringing prestige, political connections, and opportunities for
mobility to the lineage. However lineages also create a hierarchal situation in which
there are very few rich families and many poor families. Because lineages are run
through patrilineal descent women can never belong to a lineage and historically have
been oppressed.
In pre-revolutionary days, women were thought to be a “small happiness” in that
they are special as children but are not capable of continuing the family or performing
hard labor like males do. Women’s subordination was enforced through the act of foot
binding. Small bound feet were thought to be attractive but in reality it was a handicap
installed to maintain women’s inferiority. Since the revolution which outlawed foot
binding, women have been given more rights. They have been educated for better health,
introduced to birth-control, and given some property rights. However, along with this
newly acquired “freedom” another law has been imposed on women, due to the large
population in China. In 1970 a law was enacted limiting Chinese families to one child.
With this law came and increased amount of child murders due to the inevitability of
producing female children. Male children are preferred as they are stronger for manual
labor reasons and more importantly can carry on the family name. This population
policy only increases the stratification between genders. It is the state that, unable to risk
gender equality and unwilling to give up the household as a convenient administrative
unit for the control of labor and means of production encourages the reproduction of a
tributary system. Indeed, without massive affirmative action for women, Chinese
households will continue to prefer sons and evade one child restrictions, attempting to
recreate patrilinial families because the contemporary state, like that of imperial china,
channels across to the means of production more through men than through women.
The central government benefited from lineages as petty capitalist modes of
production, encouraging lineages as a way to organize the agricultural production which
provided the vast bulk of tribute. As well as being very self-sufficient; working out their
problems mostly within the lineage and the lineage members acting as an agency for
public works, lineages work as a system of tribute. The idea of filial piety and tribute
given from the young to the old was something that the government encouraged and
wanted to maintain. Although today the government does not stress filial piety as much,
they do not reject it. Officials struggled and consistently supported the elements of
Chinese kinship, which upheld tributary production, and distribution of society’s
resources. Within the new government the tributary mode of production and the petty
capitalist mode of production are still present.
Indeed, the family ideal of generational depth still exists in Chinese society today.
Although the revolution has liberalized women, the population standards that have been
imposed have done much to maintain the stratification of gender. With an existing
tributary mode of production encouraging a petty capitalist mode of production, assuredly
large lineages will again have a major part in Chinese society.
A Fine essay, well-written and well-organized. Yet I wonder how much effect
the one child policy will have: with only one, and maybe even two sons, a father may not
feel much necessity of putting land in trust. But in any event, starting lineages from
scratch, as they always were in the past, takes a long time, 100-150 years just to see if its
going to really take. I hope we’re around to see if your prediction comes to pass!