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

Table 8.4 Distribution of friendship ties by class (%) (N=1168)
CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY 221
a month–our ‘new rich’–we find that their friendship networks manifest the same
traits, only more so. That is, most of their friendships (65 per cent) are with
individuals they described as co-workers (tongshi) or as friends in the same
business (tonghang). This compares with half that figure for middle-and lowerincome
respondents. This is not surprising given that many new rich spend such
long hours at work, and the boundary between work and socialising–at
restaurants or clubs, or at home–is extremely blurred.
While interpersonal relations provide many important intangible benefits, such
as emotional support and companionship, they may also provide many important
forms of instrumental assistance in situations such as finding or changing jobs,
solving bureaucratic problems, or getting a child into the right school. For a variety
of reasons, this instrumental dimension of personal social relations seems to be
unusually (though not uniquely) important in China. First, an emphasis on the
importance of maintaining and observing social relations has been an important
part of Chinese culture. Hence, the role of social connections in Chinese life is
unusually visible and surrounded by many explicit and implicit rules of conduct.
Second, the importance of the instrumental uses of social connections has been
accentuated by the tremendous social and economic changes urban China has
undergone in recent decades. Under Mao, the Chinese economy was placed under
a rigid and complex system of central planning: goods, food, housing, jobs,
schooling, all came under the control of bureaucracy. Consequently, making sure
that you got what you wanted often required cultivating and maintaining personal
relations with people who had access to those goods and resources.
Paradoxically, although the economic reforms that Deng Xiaoping has over-seen
since 1978 have done away with much of the central planning and bureaucratic
control of the Maoist period, they have in many ways enhanced the importance of
interpersonal connections in the lives of Chinese people. The introduction of
market reforms and commerce into China has expanded private opportunities and
has removed many controls on social and economic life. But these market forces
have evolved unsteadily and they coexist with many of the institutions and rules of