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Rural Family Backgrounds, Higher Education, and Marriage Negotiations in Northwest China*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2016

HELENA OBENDIEK
HELENA OBENDIEK*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Since the early twentieth century, reforms of the social institution of marriage in China have profoundly curtailed the power of the senior generation to influence the marriage decisions of their offspring. Yet the marriage considerations of graduates from economically deprived rural family backgrounds in China's northwestern Gansu Province reveal a definite impact of feelings of social obligation towards the family as well as of a local understanding of marriage market stratification which (also) reflects these obligations. In this rural region, higher education mainly aims at long-term upward mobility into the formal urban sector of the economy. After all, the basic ‘citizenship divide’ between rural and urban residence rights established by the socialist hukou (household registration) system continues to determine rural families’ structural exclusion from access to various urban resources. Feelings of indebtedness for financial and other support received from parents and family members during years of higher education entangle graduates from economically deprived rural family backgrounds in webs of social relations that oblige them to also consider the interests of others when deciding on whom to marry. When choosing a marriage partner they thus often face dilemmas of negotiating material versus emotional interests, as well as collective versus individual ones. While higher education empowers them to reject others’ interference in their marriage decisions, if they do so, they have to cope with feelings of having disappointed all the hopes their supporters invested in them.

Type
Negotiations
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 4: Love, Marriage, and Intimate Citizenship in Contemporary China and India , July 2016 , pp. 1250 - 1276
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

The article is based on research funded by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany.

References

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27 Participation at the exam in Huining County, with a total population of about 530,000 inhabitants today, was comparatively high in the first years after its reintroduction, with more than 1,000 candidates taking part in the exam in the years 1977–1979. The number of exam participants rose to 2,000 in 1989 and 3,000 in 1996. The proportion of candidates passing the exam was as low as 5 per cent in 1979–1981 and oscillated between 15 and 25 per cent from 1982 to 1999. Note that these numbers include secondary vocational institutions; see Huiningxian, difangzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui 会宁县地方志编纂委员会 (2007). 会宁县志1990–2005 (Huining County Gazeteer 1990–2005), Gansu Province Publishing House, Lanzhou, p. 614; Yun, S. 员守勤 (2007). 会宁教育 600 年 (600 Years of Education in Huining), Gansu Press, Baiyin/Gansu, p. 255; Wang, Y. 王渊 (1989), 会宁教育研究 (Huining Education Research), Lanzhou University Press, Lanzhou.

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31 During two short visits to Huining County in 2012 and 2014 I learned that the government had established a basic pension scheme for the rural population. In addition to their eligibility for a minimum livelihood security of 55 yuan per month, rural residents voluntarily pay into a pension fund that is subsidized by the provincial and county government. Moreover, following the promulgation of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Care System by the central government in 2003, a basic medical insurance system has also been introduced for the rural population in Huining County. Rural residents voluntarily pay an annual contribution (which has gradually risen from an initial sum of 20 Yuan to 90 Yuan by 2014) and achieve eligibility for reimbursement for medical costs. As a tiered system, the insurance covers almost all costs for medical treatment in the village or nearby town, but only a certain percentage of the costs of medical services at county level. When seeing a specialist in the city, almost none of the costs are reimbursed.

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33 In the late 1990s and early 2000s, enrolment in higher education expanded rapidly, with enrolment rates quadrupling between 1998 and 2004; see Bai, L. M. (2006). Graduate unemployment: dilemmas and challenges in China's movement to mass higher education, China Quarterly, 185, pp. 130–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This rapid expansion meant that while, for example, in 2006 the number of graduates increased by 22 per cent nationally compared to 2005, reaching a total of 4.13 million, the job market was expected to be able to absorb only 1.66 million new graduates in the same year; see Huang, C. (2006). ‘Bleak future for millions of graduates’, The South China Morning Post, 23Google Scholar November.

34 In 2006 the average annual income in rural Huining County was 1,575 yuan, compared to an average annual per capita net income of 6,096 yuan—more than three times as high—in eastern China's Zhejiang Province. See http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/ProvinceView/164352.htm, [accessed 1 February 2016]. In the year 2000, more than two thirds of the 86 counties in Gansu Province were officially designated as ‘poor’ by the internationally used criteria of 1 US$ per head per day. See ‘China in numbers’ in UNDP China Human Development Report 2005, available at: http://www.cn.undp.org/content/china/en/home/library/human_development/china-human-development-report-2005.html, [accessed 1 February 2016].

35 In 2006 about 20,000 pupils competed in the secondary high school entrance exam in Huining County for about 6,000 places at the five local senior secondary high schools. Since the rapid expansion of university enrolment quota in the late 1990s, about one quarter of the participants qualify for bachelor's programmes at universities (some of them on their second attempt) and another 50 per cent for junior colleges (dazhuan, 大专). Huiningxian, Huining County Gazeteer, p. 614; Yun, 600 Years of Education, p. 225.

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38 Han, H. (2009). ‘Living a single life: the plight and adaptions of the bachelors in Yishala’, in Brandtstädter and Santos, Chinese kinship, pp. 48–66Google Scholar. Davin supports this argument with 1990 and 2000 census data which shows that Chinese men with little or no education have the greatest problem marrying—one third of all illiterate and semi-literate men and almost one tenth of men with only primary education remain unmarried in their late thirties. The situation had become worse by the year 2000, when significantly greater percentages remained unmarried in the 25–29 age group, but only a tiny percentage of men with junior middle education or above remained unmarried. Moreover, Davin's data shows that due to the tendency of Chinese men to be tolerant of marrying ‘down’ in terms of their bride's social and educational status, the deficit of potential brides is worst in the poorest regions; see Davin, ‘Marriage migration’, pp. 89, 91. It is estimated that between 2000 and 2021 there will be a total surplus of more than 23.5 million males unable to find wives two years younger than they are; see Poston, D. L. and Glover, K. S. (2001). Too many males: marriage market implications of gender imbalances in China, Genus, 2, p. 131Google Scholar.

39 On the role uncles and aunts often play in educational support, see also Obendiek, ‘When siblings determine your “fate”’.

40 During research in 2006/7 I conducted interviews with 51 graduates originating from rural Huining County who lived in Huining County, in Lanzhou city or in Beijing. Thirty-eight of these interlocutors were male.

41 It may also be the case that young women sometimes used their parents’ doubts to express pragmatic concerns they would not voice themselves. See Farrer, ‘Love, sex, and commitment’, p. 76.

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44 Yan, Private life under socialism.

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