3.5: Comparative Wealth Distribution: Past/Present and East/West

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Del curso dictado por The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Understanding China, 1700-2000: A Data Analytic Approach, Part 1

36 calificaciones

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Understanding China, 1700-2000: A Data Analytic Approach, Part 1

36 calificaciones

The purpose of this course is to summarize new directions in Chinese history and social science produced by the creation and analysis of big historical datasets based on newly opened Chinese archival holdings, and to organize this knowledge in a framework that encourages learning about China in comparative perspective. Our course demonstrates how a new scholarship of discovery is redefining what is singular about modern China and modern Chinese history. Current understandings of human history and social theory are based largely on Western experience or on non-Western experience seen through a Western lens. This course offers alternative perspectives derived from Chinese experience over the last three centuries. We present specific case studies of this new scholarship of discovery divided into two stand-alone parts, which means that students can take any part without prior or subsequent attendance of the other part. Part 1 (this course) focuses on comparative inequality and opportunity and addresses two related questions ‘Who rises to the top?’ and ‘Who gets what?’. Part 2 (https://www.coursera.org/learn/understanding-china-history-part-2) turns to an arguably even more important question ‘Who are we?’ as seen through the framework of comparative population behavior - mortality, marriage, and reproduction – and their interaction with economic conditions and human values. We do so because mortality and reproduction are fundamental and universal, because they differ historically just as radically between China and the West as patterns of inequality and opportunity, and because these differences demonstrate the mutability of human behavior and values. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/dzUPRyJ4ETk

De la lección

Module 3: Social Mobility and Wealth Distribution in Late Imperial and Contemporary China

3.1: Wealth Distribution in the UK and US, 1700-20007:49

3.2: Population Categories and Wealth Entitlements in China13:29

3.3: Land Distribution in Shuangcheng, 1870-19066:12

3.4: Property Distribution in Contemporary China11:52

3.5: Comparative Wealth Distribution: Past/Present and East/West6:41

Conoce a los instructores

James Z. Lee
Dean and Chair Professor of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences

So the conclusion is that we are looking at is or in someways China is increasing

similar to the West with its raising economic growth, with its raising income

equality as with education we can see very important differences in these

similarities. And just as with the definition of social

status and the pattern of social mobility, education and social mobility,

the distribution of wealth and property have been and are still substantially

different between China and the West. The similarities are that in each

population, you have a population of have a lots.

in the West maybe 1% has 34% of wealth in China it may not be 1% it may be 10%

having 34% of wealth but still there are have a lots.

The difference is largely not so much in the have a lots, but it's in the have

nots. In the west you have 40% of the

population, 40% of the households having zero wealth.

Whereas in China, according to the 2011 China Household Finance Survey, the rate

of urban home ownership for the bottom 25% by household income is nearly 77%,

only 11% lower than the top 25%. Of course the difference is, the top 25%

as a nice urban condo in Beijing the bottom 25% may have a rural farmhouse

somewhere in [UNKNOWN] province, but at least they have property.

In the United States in 2004 the bottom 40% of households possess only 0.2%.

Of total household wealth, in contrast to the top 1%, who own 34%.

So in the West, of course, the number of have nots decreased from 90% to just 40%

but at the same time was not as well recognized.

And it's not just the persistence of this have not population but their increasing

vulnerability to the vagaries of, of the business cycle, because whereas before

modern economic growth these have nots were largely tenant farmers.

People who at least farmed the land, who had a kind of moral economy, that they

shared their resources with other villagers that they had ties to landlords

increasingly with the moving from the moral economy to the a capitalist

industrial economy. These have nots were just thrown on the

on the, on the marketplace without the safety net of the moral economy.

So the agricultural reforms in the beginning of the 19th century increased

rural social stratification, by creating a class of landless who are now totally

depended on actual wages. So they didn't earn money then they

didn't have any resources whatsoever. And this made their lives particularly

vulnerable to short-term economic stress and another major contrasting study

between rural villages in southern Sweden, eastern Belgium, northern Italy,

northeast China, and northeast Japan. Which we will discuss at length and great

detail in part two of this class which will be next year.

We discover that the, the landless. during this process, in Europe became

particularly vulnerable to short-term economic stress.

In some European populations, mortality among, for example, day laborers and

artisans increased by 13%, when real wages declined by 10% while the response

among freeholders and tenants wasn't statistically significant at all.

In fact in southern Sweden, in Scania, the breadbasket of Sweden, a decrease in

real wage by slightly more than half would increase mortality among the

landless by almost 80%, but produced no real significant effect on the landed.

So in other words, what we have in the West where the transition of the world to

this capitalist economy is this increasing vulnerability of the have

nots. So it's the persistence of the have nots

and their increasing vulnerability which is a major social problem in the West.

In China, the vulnerability and the number of have nots has severely

decreased with economic growth. but even though income is becoming

increasingly unequal, with an enormous rural to urban migra, migrants a flow of

145 million. urban citizens having originated from

China's villages, housing wealth remains more equally distributed.

in fact, even the urban migrants, according to the 2011 survey, almost,

over 1 3rd of urban migrants, roughly 19 million of these 145 million households,

have apartments in their hometowns where their home village is.

So most people's basic needs, in other words, are at least minimally satisfied,

and therefore the implications of income inequality.

Are simply not the same because in the West if you have no wages then you're

free to live in a cardboard box. In China if you have no wages you're free

to go home, and that's a very big difference.

So the puzzle, then, that we're going to deal with in week four is how did China

historically and comparatively egalitarian society in terms of the

allocation of landed property, became the paragon the model of agrarian revolution

in the 20th century. Why did the Chinese Communist Revolution

succeed, while other revolutionary moments where wealth distribution were

far more unequal failled. So go back to who got what, why, and its

relationship to regime change. For that we'll turn to week four.

Wealth distribution and regime change. Thank you.

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