Shortage And Injustice: Sociological Analysis About The Phenomenon Of "Spring Festival" Transportation

The phenomenon of "Spring Festival "transportation began to appear in the early days of New China. In the 50 years of development history "Spring Festival "transportation has witnessed the changes in China’s social system and transformation of social structure, while also reflecting the negative effects in the socio-economic development process.In this paper,using institutionalism and social structure theory perspective, starting from the historical background of China’s Spring Festival, the reality of the situation and the institutional system,based on qualitative research methods,through the literature analysis and the interviews with the organizers of" Spring Festival"transportation (the railway sector, the relevant government department staff), ticket buyers (passengers), scalpers ("cattle ") and so on the different type,different class of people,from the "Spring Festival "transportation of "Hard-to-get a ticket" production path, structural difficulties, the formal system of negative externalities and informal institution embedded such aspects of the thorough analysis, then probe how to realize justice in the allocation of social resources in the system change process.By exploring the contributing factors and generated path of "Hard-to-get a ticket" found that correspondding with the course of the evolution of China’s population movement, the phenomenon of "Spring Festival "transportation also changes:before the reform, China’s railway development is lagging behind, the capacity is extremely scarce.But at that time, around the Spring Festival rail capacity remain relatively balanced supply and demand; Since the reform and opening, in the context of socio-economic development and institutional reform, China increased population movements, the construction and development speed of the railway is far behind the pace of socio-economic development.Conflict between supply and demand is sharping and the phenomenon of "hard-to-get a ticket"gradually produce, highlight and aggravate; Under the common function of factors such as economic and social transformation, the government management ideas change, population change, railway operation and management pattern change, "Hard-to-get a ticket" has become a cyclical problem unique to China today, even in the rapid expansion of high-speed rail transportation network today, still could not escape the paradox of supply and demand after the upgrade capacity. The intention of the emergence of high-speed rail is to alleviate the shortage of rail capacity, and improve the transport capacity. But in a rail market of insufficient competition, not only are not effectively achieve this goal, but makes choice of a lot of low-income groups for more tickets reduce, and then push it into a more crowded, more limited choice of space.This objectively further intensifies the "Hard-to-get a ticket"situation.Certainly, the cause of the insufficiency of "Spring Festival" transportation capacity is various, but in its essence, nothing more than the following two main areas:brisk demands and insufficient transport capacity. China’s social nearly decades of social transformation brought height liquidity, this objectively lead to railway passenger transport demand in a relatively short time period blowout occurred. The surge in demand, by contrast, the supply on railway has long lagging behind, the construction of the railway transport capacity at a low level long wandering. This lag reason is various, but low efficiency and non-fully competitive effect which in the railway market monopoly system produces are undoubtedly long-standing profound causes leading to the evils. No doubt, the tension between the social mobility of the system change and railway transport capacity objectively exist in China. On the other hand, compared with other transport way, railway passenger transport showed obvious comparative advantage, the public’s preferences for railway passenger transport in the corresponding is also an objective existence. However, due to construction lags, it causes objectively performance of the railway transport capacity in a period of time as a scarce resource, which is enlarged passenger rail supply market, "Hard- to-get a ticket," the unbalanced effects. A self-evident fact is that China in recent decades to the system changes profoundly affected the rail passenger market supply and demand balance, which is the structural difficulties of the insufficiency of transportation capacity.System is human’s rational choice behavior of rules or regulations, which includes not only the system itself continuously evolved and the internal logic of change, also reflects value pursuit and ethical implications in the process of the innovation. Therefore, railway ticket system in design intent on pursuing system performance goals, and at the same time, also pay attention to the social care system itself contains, reflect the ethical and moral concern and social equity and justice.In the social transformation process, the system itself was alienated in the implementation and then produces negative externalities which affect fair distribution of the train tickets resources. For a long time, in order to maintain the identity of census register-professional stratification system, the country through the system construction gave administrative-system support, thus a strict system segment formed between members in the whole society. In the problem of "Spring Festival "transportation train ticket allocation also not exceptional, the system segment also plays a key role, presupposing the differences between departments and the public, all levels people and between time and space, and formed department segment, identity segment and time-space segment. At the same time, in the actual operation process, because the defects of the system itself, twisted execution, society and culture factors, railway passenger ticket system presents the phenomenon of failure and alienation, causing problems like unfair between ticket quota and scheduling, reserve tickets and tickets priority against the original intention, group and contract booking system infinite abused, and adverse selection of convenience outlets.The huge public grievances and social crisis about "Hard- to-get a ticket" of "Spring Festival" transportation are not only for insufficiency of transportation, more is pointing to the unfair distribution. In China, the acquaintance society, human feelings, the face, the relations, the department interests, power rent-seeking and other informal system have wide universality and binding. They can always with its strong "foundation" and many years of "inertia" continue to affect the utility of the formal system and reform perfect, which make the phenomenon of "Hard-to-get a ticket" of the "Spring Festival" transportation "further highlight. One noteworthy change is that in the market economy and the tool rationality"colonial"daily life world today, informal institution embedded logic had had a subtle change, namely the transformation from the traditional relationship embedded giving priority to human feelings and the face to modern interests embedded giving priority to exchange of interests and power rent-seeking. The relationship embedded more is to maintain interpersonal relationship, build an effective social support system for individual to access to social resources in the survival and development process; and the interests embedded is more points of interest demands, which is not only make the traditional relationship embedded vulgar and utilitarian, but even make it closer combination with power, leading to power rent-seeking more invisible, complicated and generalized.The study found that the problem of spring transfer "Hard-to-get a ticket" is not a simple problem of insufficient traffic capacity, but the social problems of interaction between the formal system and informal system in the process of the old system to the new changes in the social transition. Institutional change has led to differentiation of social structure and structural differentiation has brought changes in social relations. While in the different social structures and social networks the changes in social relations had exacerbated the differences of the ability of individuals to obtain social resources. And such differences or prejudice has prejudiced to the legitimate rights when they enjoyed tickets of public goods. On the one hand, it is the result of structural difficulties that contradiction between institutional barriers and rigid requirements, path dependence and the lagging development. On the other hand, it is a result of embedding inequitable distribution that the scarce resource of administrative monopoly, the formal system and informal system of alienation. So they led less variation with the double injustice:lack of capacity caused unfair social allocation of resources, at the same time inequitable distribution of resources continued to increase transportation capacity. In the background of social transformation and structural changes, we need to continue to reduce the informal system weakening effect on the formal system and continued to improve the formal system of regulation of the informal system from the system construction, standardized operation and other aspects. Through the protection of individual rights, the purpose is to achieve social justice of allocation of resource.