Throughout history poverty has been an enduring cause of revolutions and social upheaval. It is no exaggeration to say that the ultimate cause of all major rebellions and revolutions in early 20th-century China – as massive and brutal as they were – was poverty. Chinese sayings such as “Poverty leads to the desire for change” (qiong ze si bian) or “It's the poor people who carry out revolution” (qiongren nao geming) epitomize this fact. Yet historical studies of poverty in China have not been up to the level that this important aspect of life requires. Janet Y. Chen's book on the urban poor in 20th-century China up to the first years of the Communist takeover is therefore an overdue and much welcomed addition to the field.
The book is arranged chronologically. It starts with the late-Qing reform policies concerning the poor and vagrants, and continues on to the struggles of the government with, and intellectual debates over, poverty in the early Republican era. This is followed by a consideration of the issues of poor-relief institutions and straw huts/shantytowns in the Nanjing decade and the daunting challenges of the tremendous numbers of refugees during the Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese civil war. The book ends with an epilogue in which the policies and measures adopted by the newly established PRC government toward the urban poor (particularly, vagrants) are discussed. Geographically, the book focuses on Beijing and Shanghai with a brief reference to Tianjin (pp. 25–27).
In large measure the book deals with two broad and integrated themes: the changing views of poverty and the changing self-identity of the poor; in both categories new concepts led to concrete measures and actions by both the state and society. Although the Chinese have long considered poverty a political issue (as Guanzi put it, poverty on the streets is “the fault of the chief minister”), Chen demonstrates how through the debate and discourse of late-Qing/early-Republican reformists poverty became a “social problem” that demanded a solution. The trend, however, did not always favour support for the poor; rather, sympathy was often overshadowed by the stigmatization of urban vagrants and squatters as “parasites feeding on society,” “living ghosts,” “dregs of society,” and so on. Even the Communists were caught in the dilemma of coping with the “parasitic population” who, ideologically, might well have been in the category of “the proletariat” that the revolution supposedly intended to liberate (pp. 214–16). Over the decades examined, relief centres organized by different institutions shared a primarily penal focus, aiming to reform the “habitually lazy” or “criminally inclined” by putting them to work (pp. 68, 140, and 175).
On a different theme, Chen tells us of the increasing political awareness, if not “class consciousness,” of the urban poor in fighting for their rights and welfare. Shanghai's hut dwellers and street peddlers fought fiercely against the city's “clean-up” programmes, confronting both the mighty foreign authorities and the returning Nationalist government after the war. Hut dwellers skilfully used nationalism, often imitating elite language, to generate sympathy and create legitimacy in their fight for property rights. The poor formed their own civic organizations, hired lawyers, and petitioned the municipal authorities for a solution in their favour, indicating both political awareness and sophistication in wielding the notion of modern civil rights (pp. 120–26). Squatters, mostly from rural Subei, claimed they were not tramps or beggars but refugees who deserved or were even entitled to government aid. Native place associations were heavily involved. The appeal in Beijing, “We are refugees, not poor people” (pp. 179–80), indicates that in the social milieu of viewing the poor as “guilty of indigence,” some of “the poor” justified their entreaties by rejecting their categorization as “the poor” and presenting themselves as victims of war, and thus not “parasites feeding on society.”
All across the world, urban poverty has been a prominent social phenomenon since at least the Industrial Revolution, and it remains one today. In the case of China, especially during the period covered by this book, poverty in the cities was essentially a spill-over of misery in the villages. Therefore, discussions of urban poverty can hardly be complete without touching on the issue of rural–urban disparities. In a broad sense, the book's proposition on urban poverty in China can provide a good reference point for contemporary political and scholarly debate on urban poverty worldwide – for example, William J. Wilson's “truly disadvantaged” versus Oscar Lewis's “culture of poverty” and the classic question of whether the poor are deserving or undeserving of state aid and social charity. Chen has chosen not to extend her discussion to these questions, but readers may well see the implications of her work.
Chen's research, which starts from her doctoral dissertation, is solid and her narrative lucid. She used extensive archival materials, government documents, and sociological works to piece together a meticulously detailed picture of the evolving struggles and contentions of the poor and the politics surrounding them. Chen also demonstrates a sound knowledge of existing scholarship on urban poverty in China and adeptly engages it. Hers is an indispensable work for modern Chinese urban history, social history, and the study of poverty.
