Chinese Urban Life under Reform: The Changing Social Contract. By Wenfang Tang and William L. Parish. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 308pp. £15.99. ISBN 0-521-77865-4.]

Extract

As state enterprise reform in China gathers pace, this book provides a timely description of urban life between the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the transformations wrought by the emergence of a market economy. The authors, a political scientist and a sociologist, explore two central issues: the systemic consequences of socialist and market social contracts, and the winners and losers in the politics of transition.