Research On Urban Poverty In Contemporary China: A Global Perspective

From its entry into WTO on November 10, 2001, China has begun a new market economy era full of global trade and competition, which will have a deep impact on the urban poverty in China. Study on the issue in the background of economic globalization can provide a more accurate description about the characteristics and development trends of urban poverty in contemporary China and lay a theoretical foundation for us to make anti-urban-poverty policies.Through a detailed theoretical analysis of poverty, the research summarizes a causal model on poverty in market economy and proposes that under the market economy condition, poverty is an inevitable outcome of the interaction between institutional social exclusion and individual's vulnerability. This research holds that although China's entry into WTO, from the long run, will be beneficial to the domestic economic growth and the improvement of employment opportunity and per capita income on the whole, the fierce global market competition, incurred by the economic globalization based on market economy, will strengthen institutional social exclusion on one hand and worsen the individual's vulnerability on the other, which jointly contribute to the urban poverty problem in China and make it a long-term, stratified and districted issue. Based on the above analyses, the research argues that policies on anti-urban-poverty should be designed from two aspects: one is to reduce the institutional social exclusion and the other is to compensate for the individual's vulnerability, especially for the member of social vulnerable group.This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one mainly introduces the research background of urban poverty in contemporary China and the significance of such an issue as well as the research methodology, research contents, research approach and major developments.Chapter two first gives an economics and sociology literature review about poverty, and then puts forward a causal model on poverty as a result of the interaction between institutional social exclusion and the individual's vulnerability, and finally proposes a China-specific causal model on urban poverty in the economic globalization background.Chapter three, through an analysis of macroeconomic data, explains the various phenomena of institutional social exclusion and predicts its increasing momentum from three respects like the lasting industrial structure adjustment and the associated laid-off and unemployment, the institutional reform on work recruitment and income distribution and the resulting wealth gap between the rich and the poor, and also the changes in social welfare policies.Chapter four focuses on an investigation into the poverty-stricken population in Jinan City who lives on the minimum living allowance for urban residents and describes their distribution and their condition of living, and finally makes a concrete analysis of the individual's vulnerability and its various forms.Chapter five is to recommend some policies on anti-urban-poverty in today's China: one aspect is to reduce the institutional social exclusion and the other is to compensate for the individual's vulnerability.The main new developments of this thesis are as follows:1. The first theoretical development is that the thesis breaks the limitation of only emphasizing domestic factors when dealing with urban poverty and employs a global perspective in China's urban poverty research. Based on the existing theoretical results, the thesis puts forward a causal model of urban poverty in the economic globalization background and then probes into the possible forms and characteristics of urban poverty in the future. 2. The second theoretical development is that this research consolidates the macro-institutional and micro-individual factors into one causal model in order to get a comprehensive as well as specific view on urban poverty in China.3. The development on methodology is that this thesis conducts a positive research based on theoretical analysis, and by using the firsthand data gained from questionnaire investigation and macroscopic documents and materials, the thesis accurately describes the research theme, clearly explains its hypotheses, and makes a rational deduction about the trends of urban poverty in China.4. The development in application is that based on a profound theoretical analyses and positive research, the thesis proposes an overall policy framework to fight urban poverty in China, which mainly depends on two aspects: to reduce the institutional social exclusion on one hand and to compensate for the individual's vulnerability on the other.