From the Revolutionary Family to the Materialistic Family: Keywords for a Contemporary Social History of China

Abstract

This article uses the method of focusing on certain critical keywords and ideas that achieved dominance in Chinese daily life after 1949 in order to track significant changes in conceptions of Chinese marriage and family. I hold that the model for Chinese marriage and family in the last 60 years has been shifting from kinship-dependent relations to a materialist orientation. This era is divided into two periods: the first stage begins from 1949, the year when the new China was born, and concludes in 1976, when the Cultural Revolution came to an end; and the second stage begins from the 1980s, when China embarked on a new open policy towards the outside world, and continues into the present. During the first stage, kinship-dependent relations were destroyed by a series of political movements and came to be replaced by a certain model of revolutionary relationships. Over the course of the second stage, 'a materialistic orientation' has come to characterise familial relations, and finds further reinforcement from the wider society and economy.

Making transnational intimacies: intergenerational relationships in Chinese-Western families in Beijing

“…This has had a deep impact on family life: 'In contrast to Mao's era when life was largely organized around the 'great socialist collectivity' responsible for production and people's welfare, the family was restored as the basic economic entity and left to itself to take care of the welfare of its members in an increasingly unequal society based upon the 'law of the jungle' and fierce competition' (Liu 2011: 414). Capitalism has widened economic inequalities, creating a strong desire for consumption-based middle-class lifestyles, alongside a persistent struggle to 'make it' in a hypercompetitive society (Min 2013). Young urban Chinese may make choices about their intimate lives in a strongly financialised dating market, in which good looks and material wealth become assets to be traded for personal fulfilment and stability (Davin 2005;Lafortune 2013;Wang and Nehring 2014).…”