Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY 219
entrepreneurialism is the predominant, even sole, route to riches, people in middleclass
occupations in firms, factories and companies form the bulk of China’s
emerging ‘new rich’. Even in private entrepreneurial ventures, it would seem that
those from high-status jobs, with valuable skills and managerial experience, enjoy a
considerable advantage over lower-status aspirants to success and wealth. 5 A
significant number of Beijing’s wealthiest inhabitants are taxi drivers, restaurant
owners and other small proprietors on the fringes of social respectability, but it is
still people in high-status jobs and from high-status backgrounds who form the core
of the city’s ‘new rich’.
CLASS, CONNECTIONS AND MAKING MONEY
Thus far, I have considered the ‘new rich’ in urban China in terms of a set of inert
sociological categories. I have shown that the ‘new rich’ are a mixed lot; most of
them work in high-status middle-class occupations, but a significant number are
individual business operators who have benefited from the expanding commercial
activities of the 1980s and 1990s. What I want to show in this section is how the
patterns of advantage and inequality addressed above infuse the lives of the newly
wealthy, shaping their social relations, behaviour and cultural values. In other
words, I hope to show how the cultural construction of the ‘new rich’ is above all a
social process rather than–as the word ‘construction’ may suggest–an individually
based subjective or psychological process.
To illustrate what is meant by a social process, it may be useful to start with a
quote from an interviewee, a senior cadre in his early sixties whose two sons had
both gone into private businesses–one was a wholesale bookseller, the other an
electronics exporter. He contrasted the bookselling son’s prosperity with the stalled
career of his eldest son, also a cadre:
Since ancient times, not just intellectuals but also officials had both wealth
and status. But these days? Look at my eldest son. He’s a department-level
(keji) official and some day might get a promotion… His work is pretty high
status, enough to make most people envious. But don’t think his family gets
much good out of it; I don’t think his wife would be worse off if she married a
worker… So, now you can see, why I wanted [my second son] to try out
going into business. The whole family has benefited… Since he started in
business, we’ve been able to have guests over for dinner whenever we like. His
mother doesn’t have to just worry about the bare necessities when shopping.
He even helped pay for his sister’s wedding, and his nephew’s school fees…
So I guess the whole family is doing well.
What the father did not mention in this interview but what became clear in
discussions with his sons was his instrumental role in helping both sons go into
private business. For the bookselling son, he used his connections with
colleagues to help with the thicket of licences and bureaucratic procedures