Journal of International Development

J. Int. Dev. 22, 825–826 (2010)

BOOK REVIEW

HEATHER XIAOQUAN ZHANG, BIN WU, and RICHARD SANDERS (eds). Margin-

alization in China, Perspectives on Transition and Globalization. (Aldershot, Hampshire:

Ashgate, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7546-4427-9, £60.00, pp. 266 xiii).

This is a strong piece of work exploring the shadowy aspects of China’s economic success in recentyears. Eighteen members of a team drawn from Britain, North America and China itself, specialisingin economics, development economics, geography, government, political economy, housing studies,international relations and Chinese studies explore marginalisation in very many aspects. Variousauthors theorise about the concept of marginalisation itself in order to stress the extent to whichChina’s adoption of a neo-liberal economic strategy since Deng’s reforms has served to push to themargins or leave on the margins certain groups. These groups had been a part of the mainstream statedominated economy, or at least benefited equally from the egalitarian policies. Such policieswere grounded in either social welfare strategies or those of income support. As these groups weremade redundant through economic reforms and as social welfare policies were dismantled, parts ofthe society became marginal. While it is possible to some extent to equate marginalisation withpoverty, the authors have to recognise that the focus of their research is on the idea of relativepoverty, i.e. those who have not been able to keep up with the very substantial progress that manyhundreds of millions have made in China’s new leap forward.

The areas covered most extensively in this book are the Chinese countryside; the relative, severepoverty which still affects 80 million rural population; the laid off workers from the state-ownedenterprises; the difficulties of the rural migrant workers in China’s transitional cities; the fate ofChina’s overseas contract workers; the case of township and village coal mines and the fortune ofChina’s textile workers, with increasing global competition. The effect of marginalisation is treatednot merely in terms of income but also especially health and social welfare provision. The book alsoconsiders both the institutional responses of the Chinese government and the role of NGOs,supported internationally in alleviating hardship. The main weight of the methodology is economic,designed to present empirically, as exactly as possible, the conditions of the marginalised. This isdone through an exhaustive review of literature in both English and Chinese, international and localChinese statistics and numerous field research projects, complemented with interviews.

This application of multiple methods across the whole panorama of China gives a reliable,nuanced picture of the situation in China at present. As the two editors of the Introduction, Xiaoquanand Sanders, say, their aim is to challenge the development paradigm of the last 28 years of transitionby making a critical evaluation of the ideology of modernisation which is driving the Chineseregime. They wish to challenge whether modernisation must, somehow inevitably, bring margin-alisation, i.e. relative poverty for significant sections of the population, particularly in terms of healthand social welfare. In other words, it is precisely in the area of development models, as economicmodels, that the authors are most critical. They do not try to enter wider political domains of partyorganisation, centralisation of government or corruption or lack of the rule of law or democracy.Instead, they challenge whether rapid economic development as such must require real hardship forlarge numbers of people. They appear to have been able to undertake critical fieldwork investigatione.g. rural agricultural projects, or health care provision in transitional cities, or the work of NGOs ineducation and training, without coming into conflict with official Chinese authorities. Indeed, theygive a picture of considerable efforts of the Government to alleviate poverty and social protest in

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

rural areas and official efforts to counter redundancy and unemployment with at least a minimum ofsubsistence support. Surprising results of the research are that in the agricultural sector governmentpolicies significantly anticipated peasant grievances (e.g. subsidies, training), because these havebeen treated as a major political priority, while in the textile sector, despite the challenges theChinese are raising for employment in competitor developing countries and in developed countriesalike, global liberalisation continues to have a huge effect in reducing employment in this sector inChina, with consequent great hardship.

The book’s methodology can be seen from one of the chapters on health by an editor XiaoquanZhang, with Li Zhang. She looks at the marginalisation of migrant workers in Chinese towns andcities from the health and well being perspective. They perceive the legacy of the hukou system (ofobtaining full permission to change residence within China before one enjoys all the rights of equalcitizenship) as disadvantaging the vast numbers who move to the cities with a mere temporaryresidency. This has alleviated poverty in rural areas, but a vast sector of Chinese society is nowespecially vulnerable to ill-health, although they are an important part of the economy. She arguesthat, within this wider unsatisfactory institutional context, one needs to understand health as anessential livelihood component. In other words healthcare is an essential part of human capital, buthas to be understood in the context of administrative deficiencies in responding to massive internalmigration, and alongside a defective official understanding of the nature of human capital.

This is consistent with the approach adopted by Katherine Morton’s work on NGOs. This involvesan empirical study of how these NGOs can be quite successful in both educational and remote ruralvillage development projects, which involve dealing with both Government officials and interna-tional aid bodies. This impressive fieldwork is, however, also complemented by the aim ofproblematising official confidence in modernisation and progress ideology coming from the West.The context of the focus on the mobilising effects of local Chinese NGO activities is that these alsoprovide a motor for debate within Chinese intellectual and officials circles about the grip which anideology overly concentrated on material growth has acquired.

This is not to say that the book goes too soft on the sufferings of those swept aside in China’sdramatic economic march forward. The chapter on Chinese overseas contract workers (Bin Wu)paints a dramatic picture of the vulnerability of this sector, economically important for the incomethey send home, vulnerably positioned between the overseas employer and the home recruitingagent. Those who lose their jobs in state owned enterprises (Jun Tang, Mingzhu Dong and MarkDuda) and those who are made redundant from textile work (Markus Eberhardt and John Thoburn)suffer a huge loss of status and welfare in the absence of the comprehensive system which existedunder Mao. The chapters try to address the small institutional responses made, but outside theagricultural sector (John Q. Tian), where the Government clearly recognises the political dangers,institutional responses have been piecemeal, whatever the rhetoric. The chapter on marginalisation inthe countryside draws upon Chinese sources not published in China to give a picture of the extent andcharacter of rural dissatisfaction. However, this picture is nuanced by showing how the situation hasunintentionally been made worse by the Central Government trying to discipline local governmentfinancial practices, thereby also restricting the prospects of local relief.

Space prevents further discussion of the detail of this professional and constructive work. Thebook provides a very realistic picture of the extent of hardship caused by modernisation in China. Itwill be accessible to students, but it will also contribute to debate among specialists in developmenttheory with respect to China. Coming from an economic and human geography angle it will informand assist debate about the social aspects of economic growth within China.

JING GUInstitute of Development Studies (IDS), Brighton, UK

Published online in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jid.1542

Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 22, 825–826 (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/jid

826 Book Review