Through interviews with city residents, Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish provide a unique survey of urban life in the last decade of Mao Zedong's rule. They conclude that changes in society produced under communism were truly revolutionary and that, in the decade under scrutiny, the Chinese avoided ostensibly universal evils of urbanism with considerable success. At the same time, however, they find that this successful effort spawned new and equally serious urban problems bureaucratic rigidity, low production, and more."

This book provides a rare glimpse into how the Chinese urban population is experiencing the rapid shift from a planned to a market economy. Using a dozen recent national surveys, the authors give voice to workers, civil servants, intellectuals, and women, who report their grievances and joys at home, at work, and in the public sphere. With fresh data on emerging patterns of economic inequality, labor-management relations, popular grievances, political participation, and gender inequality, the book analyzes how the shifting social contract influences ordinary people's lives and China's future...