Contemporary Chinese Social Order Study

Social order, as the foundation of existence and development of human society, is an important research theme of social science. At present, with China entering into its key period of social transformation and more social order problems emerging, it has become the hot spot of society, which people always pay attention to.As a combined product of human requirement and social development, social order results from human actions and efforts based on social spontaneity. In more than 30 years since reform and opening up, great changes have taken place in China's society. Nowadays, China has moved into a period with frequent social conflicts, but it has basically succeeded in transforming in structures of economy, politics, culture, and social class and stratum, etc, and a new social order shape with Chinese characteristics has been taken initially. Studying and analyzing contemporary Chinese social order built in practice of the reform and opening up, is not only helpful in summarizing practice of promoting harmonious development of economy and society and deepening our understanding of the nature of social order, but also can help us improve our theoretical level and provide feasible theoretical guidance for building social order of harmonious socialist with Chinese characteristics.Contemporary Chinese social order, will be explored in the paper from micro to macro level, based on researching approaches of"element– structure– state". Specifically speaking, such approaches include following thoughts: under the guidance of Marxism, based on the practice of China's reform and opening up and dialectical analysis and summaries on existing theories of social order, with deep and specific understanding of Marxist social basic contradiction and related theories by introducing space and time variables, the paper attempts to build a dialectical theory of social order by integrating current social order theories, and then use it to analyze and study conditions of contemporary Chinese social order, including its formation, present situation, existing problems and reasons, and developing trend, etc. The paper's structure will be laid out by logic of"what - why– how"on the basis of literature review and construction of the social order theory. The dissertation includes five parts, that is, introduction and four chapters. Main contents of each part are as follows.In Introduction, backgrounds and significance of selecting such a topic will firstly be discussed. And then, a survey of relative literatures, especially existing research paradigm and theoretical results, will be summarized and analyzed. What's more, the introduction will discuss and explain research thoughts and methods, structural frame, the key and difficult points, and parts of innovation and deficiencies.Chapter One will mainly discuss concepts of social order and related, and make an attempt to build theoretical frame that the whole paper depends on, on the basis of summarizing and analyzing the development path of social order theory and exploring connotation of social order behind Marxist theory of social basic contradiction. Firstly, concepts of order, social order and related, the elements and types of social order, will be analyzed in the chapter, to provide necessary concept categories for the dissertation. Then, based on analyzing on research paradigm of social order in the introduction, the chapter will attempt to analyze the development path of the theories of western and Chinese traditional social order, to provide the necessary research paradigm for the paper, according to deep understanding of their development processes and thoughts. Finally, after attempts of finding out connotation of social order behind Marxist theory of social basic contradiction and combining concept categories and research paradigm discussed above, this chapter will put forward the theory of social order that the paper establishes on, that is, social order, as combination of process and result, is an orderly phase that its elements work and interact in structural form, governed by social basic contradiction.The second chapter will mainly concentrate on analyzing conditions of contemporary Chinese social order,by using the theory proposed in the first chapter, including its backgrounds, formation process, main characteristics, great influences and valuable experiences, etc. This chapter will not only discuss domestic and international backgrounds of contemporary Chinese social order and its significant influences on the world, but also focus on exploring the order's forming process from the angle of the ways that its elements work and interact, in accordance with structural transformation in economy, politics, culture, and social class and stratum. Meanwhile, compared contemporary Chinese social order with that before 1978, the chapter will figure out some distinctive features in the structure of contemporary Chinese social order, such as marketization in economic life, rationalization in political life, diversification in cultural life, and normalization in social mobility, etc. In addition, some valuable experiences, in the forming of contemporary Chinese social order, will also be summarized in this chapter, from the following aspects: its objective, force, way, process and the core of leadership, etc..Chapter Three will mainly focus on problems and causes of contemporary Chinese social order. The problems existing in contemporary Chinese social order will be discussed in the following perspectives, that is, its elements (actors, social authority and social norms), modes of action among such elements (top-down mode, down-top mode, comprehensive mode), and effects of action (expected effect and actual effect), and reasons which give rise to such problems will be analyzed from the angles of economy, political mechanism, culture and ideology, and structure of social class and stratum.Chapter Four will discuss the developing trend of contemporary Chinese social order. This chapter will firstly put forward the basic requirements that the harmonious social order should meet, the basic principles that should be adhered to in constructing a mechanism of harmonious social order, based on which some advice will be put forward on how to build a mechanism of harmonious social order. Then, this chapter will look forward to the coming trend of China's social order, which can be more scientific, more liberty and fairer. Finally, this chapter will present some proposals on how to create beneficial conditions for the harmonious development of China's society, from the following macroscopic aspects, that is, economy, politics, culture and education, structure of social class and stratum.