Urban Poverty in China

The authors of this book argue that urban poverty in China is not the result of institutional legacies but, rather, is driven by the decline of the state-owned sector and economic restructuring, changes in the welfare system, and both urbanization and rural–urban migration. The first chapter provides an overview of the scale of urban poverty in China as well as an elaboration of the three factors that have pushed it. Despite a low standard of living, urban poverty has traditionally been low given the government’s effective control over resource allocation; however, following reforms in the mid-1990s, the current policy is now the classic trickle-down: “Let a few people become rich first.” Social stratification has increased during a period of rapid economic growth. Chapter 2 goes into the social and spatial distribution of poverty among different social groups and living places, arguing that vulnerabilities from the state enterprise system were carried over into the market system “…to produce a double-jeopardy vulnerability.” Chapter 3 describes different urban poverty groups, including the unemployed, laid-off workers, poor workers and retirees from failing/failed enterprises and poor rural migrants, with data that has been collected through interviews. Here, the authors argue that these groups are not the traditional groups of urban poor (the “three noes” – no relatives/dependants, no working capacity and no income). Chapter 4 focuses on the spatiality of urban poverty – not only the spatial distribution of poverty and the urban poor, but also to understand how poverty is created in particular neighbourhoods in relation to wider state development strategies and public policies. The final chapter takes a property rights perspective and argues that urban poverty is generated by a set of entitlement failures related to land issues as well as the commodification of service.