Introduction

Social Issues in China:

Gender, Ethnicity, Labor, and the Environment

 Zhidong Hao and Sheying Chen, editors

 One of the great ironies of world politics belongs to China. Having carried out a revolution to reform societal ills, it has ended up with broadly the same problems as the West: gender inequities, ethnic conflict, labor disputes, and environmental decline.

Now, in tandem with its recent economic development, movements toward social justice are poised to further transform the nation.

Social Issues in China offers a fascinating multilayered study of wide-scale problems and the actors and activists involved in their possible solutions. Divided equally among gender, labor, ethnicity, and the environment (with some matters compounded by questions of age and geography), chapters illuminate tensions between public policy--some recent, others centuries old--and public participation by intellectuals and various disadvantaged groups. A constant throughout these pages is the potential for change in a nation's political, social, and cultural institutions, toward a more responsive society, a more responsible government, and improved quality of life for its people. Among the featured concerns:

• Rural Chinese women's political participation: problems and prospects
• Domestic labor, gendered intergenerational contracts, and shared elder care in rural South China
• Interpreting the ethnicization of social conflict in China
• Language, learning, and identity: problematizing education in Tibet
• Trade union membership and workplace relations
• The struggle for survival and impact: case studies of  NGOs involved in gender, ethnicity, labor, and environmental issues

A volume with global implications, Social Issues in China gives sociologists, political scientists,  psychologists, educators, and public policymakers a profound lens for understanding social problems and social change processes--in its title country, and in general.