Date: Tuesday 17 May 2022
Time: 5.00pm-6.00pm AEST
Location: Online event
Class in China – A series of webinars on the Peasants, the Middle Class and the Dominant Class
The Dominant Class after 1978: Elite Persistence and the Ironies of Social Change
This webinar examines the development of the dominant class since 1978. The introduction of first ‘opening up and reform’ and then a socialist market economy since that date might reasonably be expected to lead to a class structure dominated by wealth. An examination of the social backgrounds of the political and economic elites suggests that while a community of interest may have developed between the two, the PRC remains far from a system dominated by capitalists. It is the existence and operation of the Party-state that remains the defining feature of China’s political economy and its dominant class. At the same time, somewhat ironically, the dominant class of 2021 would seem to be determined through the intersections of politics, wealth, and social capital with roots not only in the PRC’s political system; the economic restructurings of the late 1980s, the mid-1990s, the late 1990s and the early 2000s; but also from the pre-1949 political economy.
About the speakers:
David S G Goodman is Professor of Chinese Politics and Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia; and an Emeritus Professor at both Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China; and the University of Technology, Sydney. Recent publications include Class in Contemporary China (Polity, 2014), the Handbook of the Politics of China (Edward Elgar, 2015) and (with Shigetsu Sonoda) China Impact: Threat Perception in the Asia-Pacific Region (Tokyo University Press, 2019).
Kam Louie FHKAH FAHA (Chair) Before serving as Dean of Arts at Hong Kong University, Kam was Professor of Chinese at UQ and ANU. He has also taught at Nanjing, Auckland and Murdoch Universities. He has studied at USyd, CUHK and Peking University, and held professorial fellowships at the Center for Chinese Studies, Taipei and NTU, Singapore. He is currently Honorary Professor at HKU and UNSW. He served on government committees such as the Australia-China Council, and on leaderships roles such as President of the Hong Kong Academy of Humanities and Head of the Asian Studies Section at the Australian Humanities Academy.
Publications include Inheriting Tradition: Interpretations of the Classical Philosophers in Communist China (Oxford UP), The Literature of China in the Twentieth Century (co-authored), (Columbia UP) and Theorising Chinese Masculinity (Cambridge UP). He was also Chief Editor of Asian Studies Review (1998 – 2006).
Class and the Communist Party of China, 1921-1978 : Revolution and Social Change
Class and the Communist Party of China, 1978-2021 : Reform and Market Socialism
20% Discount Available – enter the code FLR40 at checkout*
Hb: 978-1-032-18532-3 | £96.00Pb: 978-1-032-18529-3 | £27.99
* Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or discount and only applies to books purchased directly via our website.