In the last two decades of the twentieth century, following the worldwide collapse of communism, China ascended from being one of the most egalitarian societies in the world to one of the more unequal. Wang Feng documents the process of rising inequality in urban China during this period, and explores the underlying structural forces that define China's emerging social landscape.
By treating social categories created under socialism, such as cities and work organizations, as explicit forces generating inequality, the author reveals a pattern that embodies both enlarging inequality between social categories and persistent equality within them. This pattern is traced to China's post-socialist political economy and to a long-existing cultural tradition that places a premium on harmony and group solidarity. China's great reversal from equality to inequality is a powerful example of how social categories, not individual traits and preferences, structure and maintain inequality.

The Chinese economy's return to commodification and privatization has greatly diversified China's institutional landscape. With the migration of more than 140 million villagers to cities and rapid urbanization of rural settlements, it is no longer possible to presume that the nation can be divided into strictly urban or rural classifications.
Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China draws on a wide variety of recent national surveys and detailed case studies to capture the diversity of postsocialist China and identify the contradictory dynamics forging contemporary social stratification. Focusing on economic inequality, social stratification, power relations, and everyday life chances, the volume provides an overview of postsocialist class order and contributes to current debates over the forces driving global inequalities. This book will be a must read for those interested in social inequality, stratification, class formation, postsocialist transformations, and China and Asian studies.

As the most populous country in the world, China’s demographic challenges have always been too many people for ecological system, resources, and the environment. However, by the early 1990s, fertility rate in China had dropped below the replacement level, and China’s low fertility has now attracted the world’s attention.This book is among the first studies to raise and examine questions on low fertility in China, believing that China has entered a new era featured by low birth rate and ageing population. Utilizing advanced research methods and models on low fertility to analyze China’s census data, this book explores the issues from various perspectives. Methodologies employed in past population studies, policy making concerning fertility rate, underreporting of births and fertility rate estimates, fertility level of the migrant population, current population pattern, long-term population trends, population dynamics, and many other thought-provoking problems are covered. Finally, the book revisits China’s population issues in the context of globalization. The 21st century has seen the new challenge of persistent population decrease and ageing worldwide, which, along with economic globalization, demands a new understanding of the changes in population pattern and their consequences. Researchers and students in China’s demographic and social studies will be attracted by the insightful analysis and rich materials provided in the book. Population policy makers will also benefit from it.