The Foreign Service Journal, May 2005

the Hu administration’s preoccupation with consolidating power and building authority during the drawn-out tran- sition from Jiang Zemin’s rule. At the same time, the two sides have tacitly acknowl- edged the mutual need to avoid bilateral crises and focus on common interests. Multiplying channels of regular communication and high-level leadership exchanges between political and military counterparts have also helped lessen suspicion and prevent misun- derstanding. The granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations status to the People’s Republic of China in 2001 helped push American domestic and congressional concern about Chinese human rights abuses out of the domes- tic political limelight. Yet behind the scenes, the U.S. continues to monitor and express concern about rights deficiencies through new mechanisms, including con- gressional commissions. This “blaming and shaming” approach, focused narrowly on China’s lack of political democracy, continues to blind us to major opportuni- ties to promote social progress there. Instead, to achieve our goals, U.S. policy needs to take full account of dramatic recent changes within Chinese society, and the Beijing government’s efforts to adapt to them. Joining the Global Society China’s economic reform program has aimed to improve efficiency and sustain rapid growth in order to compete in the global economy. Globalization, in turn, is reshaping China, involving the PRC in a new level of transnational integration in all spheres — with the dif- fusion of new technologies, especially in communica- tions; an unprecedented rate of socioeconomic change; and the application of international norms. Given the central dynamic of this process — the spread of individual choice among competing alterna- tives, as the role of government is downsized — con- sumer experience in the market of goods and services inevitably leads to a desire to choose among identities, values, lifestyles and political loyalties, as well. The extension of the global economic market thus gives birth to demands for social, cultural and, eventually, political pluralism. Moreover, transnational social and cultural ties bring new resources to social groups and make possible new types of activities. How well, and how quickly, the PRC adapts to these realities is the key variable. Economic growth in China has already produced a much more pluralistic society. In early 2002, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published the first official documentation of this change, providing a por- trait of an “embryonic modern social structure” and classifying Chinese society into 10 occupational strata. Workers and farmers — the traditional constituency of the Chinese Communist Party — were placed near the bottom of the social ladder, while the first four strata (state administrators, managers, private business own- ers and professional personnel) were praised as “repre- sentatives of advanced productive forces.” This wholesale transformation under way in the social structure is perhaps the least understood “side effect” of China’s economic development, as the country’s homoge- nous rural society becomes a much more diverse urban society. Between 2000 and 2010 alone, 300 million peo- ple will have moved to cities of all sizes — the greatest migration in world history. A decade later, it is projected, China will be an urban society (with more than 50 per- cent of the population living in cities) for the first time. The emerging middle class (per China’s official defini- tion, those with assets valued from US$18,137 to $36,275) already exceeds 240 million people, and is pro- jected to include more than 500 million people by 2020. F O C U S 40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 5 Dr. Carol Lee Hamrin is a Chinese affairs consultant who serves as a senior associate with the Global China Center in Charlottesville, Va., and as a research professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. She became the senior China research specialist at the Department of State, where she served for 25 years, earning the esteemed Secretary of State’s Career Achievement Award. In 2003, she received the Center for Public Justice Leadership Award for outstanding public service. Her publication credits include: God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions (The Brookings Institution Press, 2004), co-edited with Jason Kindopp; Decision-Making in Deng’s China: Perspective from Insiders (East Gate Books, M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1995), co-edited with Suisheng Zhao; and China and the Challenge of the Future: Changing Political Patterns (Westview Press, Inc. 1990). She has also published many journal articles and book chapters, including “The Floating Island: Change of Paradigm on the Taiwan Question,” co-written with Zheng Wang, in the May 2004 Journal of Contemporary China.