Generally speaking, from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, the basic process was that the system reform promoted the change of social structure, that is, the formation of new social forces and their new combination relations. Its specific symbol is the differentiation of social structure and the growth of new social forces.
In the process of social structure differentiation, some nouns that were often used in our social life almost disappeared. Intellectuals are highly differentiated. Intellectuals within the system and intellectuals outside the system are further divided, and intellectuals who have entered the market and intellectuals who have not entered the market, and even their own internal divisions are further divided. Although the concept of workers has not disappeared, whenever the concept of workers is used, modifiers are often added in front of it, such as workers in state-owned enterprises, workers in foreign-funded enterprises, workers in township enterprises, laid-off workers and unemployed workers. If we want to talk about the current economic and social living conditions of farmers in China, we often add poems, such as farmers in the eastern region, farmers in the central and western regions, farmers in rich areas or poor areas, farmers working in agriculture, and farmers who go out to work. The change of these concepts reveals a basic fact, that is, the division of our society is becoming more and more detailed.
At the same time, some new social forces are growing rapidly, such as "private entrepreneurs" and private entrepreneurs formed in the new property rights framework, professional managers appearing in the new corporate governance structure, technical experts and white-collar workers developed from new management business and technology. These new social forces are the products of institutional changes, because the resources and space necessary for their existence and development are provided by institutional changes. Generally speaking, before the mid-1990s, it was the system reform that gave birth to new social forces, and these new social forces sought their own development space by virtue of the new system. However, under the circumstances at that time, the role of these new social forces in actively influencing the system reform was not obvious.
Since the mid-1990s, while the system reform is still going on, the newly formed social forces and their combination relations have gradually taken shape. To put it bluntly, from this time on, who is poor and who is rich has been largely decided. There are four main signs.
First, the boundaries between classes began to form. The most obvious is the separation of different living areas. If the class boundaries formed by residential areas are visible, then the class boundaries formed by lifestyle and culture are invisible. But this invisible boundary can not only be used as a symbol of class boundaries, but also as Bourdieu, a famous French sociologist, said, it is a mechanism of class structure reproduction. Second, the formation of internal identity. The formation of internal identity of classes is related to the boundaries between classes. Because it is from this boundary that people germinate the concepts and consciousness of "we" and "them". 199 1 year, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences conducted a survey on the class consciousness of Shanghai residents, and the conclusion was that "there are class differences, but there is no class consciousness". 1996 a survey conducted in Wuhan shows that the vast majority of citizens have class consciousness, and 3/4 of them think they are in an unequal society. Third, the mobility between classes began to decrease. In the 1980s, including the early 1990s, the mobility between classes was quite frequent. But by the middle and late 1990s, the situation had obviously changed. One of the manifestations of this change is the improvement of social threshold. In the 1980s and early 1990s, only a small amount of capital was needed to enter a commercial field. Now some big real estate developers, some originally borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to enter the real estate field, but today, it is completely impossible. Fourth, the reproduction of social strata. In other words, people used to say that farmer Jpua was a farmer and Jpua was a businessman.
When new social forces developed and basically settled down, the process of system reform began to be more influenced and influenced by these social forces.
Broken society under the same background
However, in this process, the development degree of different stakeholders is different. This difference is manifested in the great difference in the ability of different groups to fight for their own interests. Differences in the ability to strive for benefits, especially the differences between strong groups and weak groups.
In the aspect of strong groups, all parts of the strong groups not only formed a relatively stable alliance, but also possessed considerable social energy, which began to have an important impact on the whole social life. The social energy of this powerful group is mainly manifested in the following aspects. First, the impact on the formulation and implementation of public policies. When the economic austerity policy was implemented in the middle and early 1990s, some real estate developers sponsored a series of economic development seminars, and economists called on the government to implement loose fiscal and monetary policies. This can be seen as a start. Second, the influence on public opinion and the ability to form words. 1After the mid-1990s, the media was more influenced by this powerful group. The dominant discourse made by intellectuals also directly reflects the value and proposition of this group. Third, the dependency relationship between the weak group and the strong group has been formed. Because whether you like it or not, many opportunities for the disadvantaged groups are provided by the strong groups. In recent years, the alliance between capital and local governments has been clearly visible on issues such as demolition and land acquisition. In the discussion of the loss of state-owned assets in 2004, the alliance between scholars and capital with obvious interest orientation surfaced.
Vulnerable groups are obviously in a state of powerlessness when pursuing their own interests. This is first manifested in the lack of interest representatives of vulnerable groups in our political framework. More importantly, in China, the disadvantaged groups actually lack the internationally accepted institutionalized expression of interests.
In this case, the structure of what I call a broken society began to take shape. I used the concept of broken society in the following different senses. First, in the social hierarchy and hierarchical structure, it means that some people are thrown out of the social structure, and there is no effective integration mechanism between different classes and groups. Second, between regions, the fractured society is characterized by the fracture between urban and rural areas. The urban-rural fracture has both the meaning of social structure and the meaning between regions. Third, the rupture of society will be manifested in many aspects of culture and social life. The essence of the broken society is the coexistence of elements of several eras and the lack of organic connection with each other. But in a more basic sense, a divided society refers to a society with major fault zones. And this main fault zone is the gap between the rich and the poor in our society today. At present, a considerable part of all kinds of differences and oppositions faced by China society have developed along this main fault zone. Fortelli has a famous saying that in a country, only one religion means autocracy, two religions mean civil war, and many religions mean peace and freedom. Therefore, the key question is not whether there are conflicts and contradictions in a society, but whether these conflicts and contradictions develop along a big fault zone.
In this case, the structural tension between superiors and subordinates is obvious. In recent years, due to conflicts of interest, the relationship between the two sides has been further strained. On the internet, people can see more and more ridicule and humiliation of elites. And the elite itself seems to be becoming more and more overbearing. When real estate developers say that we are building houses for the rich, not for the poor, when the boss of Beijing taxi company says that it is our company's business to change cars and what it has to do with consumers, and when some intellectual elites say that ordinary people object to my point of view, it just shows that I am right. We can not only realize the hegemony and arbitrariness of elites, but also realize that the rift between elites and the public is deepening. What will happen if the rift between the public and the elite deepens? In mid-2004, I talked about the formation of upper and lower fragmentation structures. Some people on the Internet also talk about the behavioral characteristics of this structure, which is called upper oligarchy and lower populism. It should be said that this is a trend worthy of vigilance.
Debate on the reform of divided society
In the past two or three years, people have reflected and debated the reform. For such a debate that will have an important impact on the future direction of China, perhaps only in a fractured social background can we get a profound understanding.
Strictly speaking, the debate on reform has always existed. But generally speaking, before the mid-1990s, the whole society had a high sense of reform. At that time, most reforms were echoed by the whole society. On the one hand, this echo is based on dissatisfaction with the old system with many drawbacks, but more importantly, under the circumstances at that time, any "breaking" of the old system seems to mean an "improvement", and even the beneficiaries of the old system seem to have gained another benefit from breaking the old system. As a result, the moral advantage of reform overwhelmed the ideological resistance and the reform was carried out smoothly. The problem is that it happened after the mid-1990s. But what's the problem? Some people think that China's reform has reached a more complicated stage, the difficulty of reform has increased, and the possibility of problems has increased. They prefer to regard the problems in the reform as the result of accidental mistakes.
But although such a statement is understandable, it is hard to convince people. Because it is easy to make mistakes in the face of complex situations, such mistakes should be scattered and the results of mistakes should be random, that is, the beneficiaries and victims change irregularly every time. If all the "mistakes" make the results always favorable to some people and unfavorable to others, people will believe that this is by no means a natural "mistake", but has formed a mechanism for interest groups to distort reform measures. The structural background is that after the mid-1990s, the newly formed social forces and their combination relations have begun to take shape gradually, and are strongly influencing the direction and actual process of reform. Therefore, the reform process is increasingly dominated by some social power groups.
The formation of the distortion mechanism fundamentally changed the process of reform. In real life, we can see such a phenomenon: when a reform measure or a policy is introduced, there will often be great debates in society, especially among academic circles or policy researchers, and some debates will have a strong ideological color, such as reform and conservatism, left and right, etc. However, after the implementation of such measures or policies, people will find that no matter what the orientation of these measures or policies is, there is almost no big difference in the benefit results, who should be beneficial or beneficial and who should be unfavorable or unfavorable. As a result, every reform involving the interests of most people often ends up as a war to plunder interests or wealth. The housing system reform is almost the last reform with mixed advantages and disadvantages. Before and after other reforms, most of them ended in maximizing the interests of vested interests. Among them, the reform of state-owned enterprises, especially the restructuring, can best reflect this feature. During the reform or restructuring of state-owned enterprises, tens of millions of people lost their jobs or retired on this premise, but their compensation was minimal. On the other hand, a large number of state-owned assets have been divided up, and even after the division, there is no so-called "efficiency" that some people expect. It doesn't mean that state-owned enterprises with many drawbacks don't need reform. In fact, before the large-scale reform of state-owned enterprises, people, including ordinary people, had a high awareness of the reform of state-owned enterprises. Even people are not completely unprepared for the privatization of state-owned enterprises. So is it time to pay the price? People's attitudes have changed again? Some defenders who carve up state-owned assets did say so. But this statement is unfair, because there is no reason why the reform of state-owned enterprises must be carried out in such a bad way.
However, it should be noted that at the beginning, the distortion of reform mainly occurred in the process of policy implementation. In China, there is usually a big deviation between policy formulation and implementation. Before the reform, the procedural degree of economic and social life was low, and social mobilization became the main way of social and economic life. Governments at all levels mainly put forward some principled objectives and requirements, and the actual work effect mainly depends on the implementation of the executive departments. In the process of reform, it has become an important way to promote reform, and the degree of policy formulation and deviation has further increased. These methods have been inherited and become a habit. When the interest groups in society began to form, especially when some levels of government or government departments themselves became the main interests, these practices began to become the mechanism of distorting reform. At that time, the ability of social interest groups or individual government departments to directly influence policy formulation was still very small. In recent years, with the further development of interest groups, their influence on policy formulation has been significantly enhanced. In the formulation of some important policies, we can often see the influence and role of these interest groups. In the real estate field in recent years, this phenomenon is quite obvious. At the same time, with the interests of government departments becoming the main body, departmental interests have also begun to become an important factor affecting decision-making and even legislation.
Deepen the reform and establish the interest balance mechanism under the condition of market economy.
The change of social structure has put forward new topics for our society. With the increasing activity of social structural forces, it is necessary to deepen reform, adjust direction and promote the construction of a harmonious society.
The first is to optimize the social structure. The first is to expand the proportion of the middle class in the social structure. In recent years, in the process of reform in China, the orientation of expanding the scale of middle-income class has become increasingly clear. But objectively speaking, the development of the middle class in China is quite slow. The middle class is hard to find except in economically developed areas, especially in big cities. Fundamentally speaking, the development of the middle class is related to the level of economic development, but at the same time, another reason that cannot be ignored is that the upper class occupies too many resources, which greatly limits the development space of the middle class. At present, it is especially necessary to prevent the middle class from becoming a scapegoat to adjust the gap between the rich and the poor. The second is to protect the living ecology of ordinary people, especially the lower class. The natural trend of market resources concentration, the government's support for large enterprises that can participate in international competition, the inclination of bank credit policy and the heavy tax burden of small and medium-sized enterprises make the living environment of small enterprises and self-employed households worse and worse. The one-sided pursuit of order and beautiful management in cities has hurt the living ecology of many lower-class people. The conflict between urban management and vendors in recent years is the external manifestation of this situation. Measures such as building a city without stalls, prohibiting melon farmers from selling watermelons in cities, prohibiting fruit farmers from selling peaches, and clearing all residential areas that hinder the appearance of the city show indifference to people's livelihood. In an increasingly divided society, we should give the weak a way out. Thirdly, it is a mechanism to protect social mobility, so that the lower class can see hope, and with hope, they will not despair.
The second is to establish an interest balance mechanism under the conditions of market economy. What causes the gap between the rich and the poor in China to widen sharply? There have been many discussions about its direct causes, such as income distribution system, personal income tax, corruption, division of state-owned assets and so on. But the question is, why do these different factors aggravate social inequality? Why do these factors have such a huge impact on the polarization between the rich and the poor in such a short time? Under what background are these systems or factors themselves formed? In fact, as long as we look back carefully, we can find that behind all these factors, there are huge differences in the ability of different groups to express and pursue their own interests. In other words, the disparity between the rich and the poor is the result of the unbalanced ability of different groups to express and pursue their own interests. Therefore, we should face up to the reality that we have established the basic framework of market economy, and now we need to establish an indispensable interest balance mechanism for market economy. First, acknowledge the reality of highly divided social interests, acknowledge the legitimacy of different social groups to pursue their own interests and protect their rights, and make institutional arrangements for different groups to express their own interests and exert pressure to pursue their own interests. Second, channels of communication and consultation have been established among several major social stakeholders, especially the institutionalized interest consultation mechanism between employers and employees. Third, clarify the role of the state or government in the interest balance mechanism, that is, the role of the state as a rulemaker and a conflict arbitrator. Fourth, form an institutionalized mechanism to solve social conflicts of interest.
The third is to build a government with transcendence. Social development and the improvement of government autonomy are two indispensable aspects of a healthy society. On the one hand, the construction of a harmonious society represents the efforts to rebuild the autonomy and transcendence of the government. A harmonious society is a society in which interests are relatively balanced and social fairness and justice can be basically maintained. Recently, a series of measures taken by governments at all levels in building a harmonious society have embodied this effort. What needs to be faced squarely is that in the process of market transformation, we begin to face a series of new problems and factors, some of which will hinder or even weaken the government's transcendence and autonomy. For example, some government departments have become stakeholders in the market, leading to the marketization and enterprise of government behavior. Some local governments or government departments define their own behavior orientation according to enterprise goals, arrange their own activities, unilaterally pursue economic benefits and ignore other functions undertaken by the government. In some places, government agencies even directly participate in profitable business activities; When some government departments pursue interests, it leads to the distortion of government positioning and functions, forming what people call the phenomenon of public power departmentalization, government departments' interests and the legalization of departmental interests; Some powerful groups have great influence on the formulation and implementation of government policies; The government is snobbish and so on. Some of our existing problems are closely related to the decline of government transcendence, such as leaning towards powerful groups in policy formulation and implementation; In terms of labor relations, it is biased towards employers; Neglect public services that can benefit a wide range of social groups; Social fairness and justice are damaged and so on. Therefore, rebuilding the autonomy and transcendence of the government is a problem that must be solved in building a harmonious society.