Wu Qi: You talked about examples of transnational mobility like studying abroad or marriage, which for the most part is about horizontal mobility, but you also mentioned various vertical processes like social differentiation, class, and equality, which are in a dialectical relationship with horizontal mobility. Can you unpack this dialectical relationship a bit, and explain in concrete terms how this makes things worse, particularly in the specific context of China? In other words, is vertical class mobility something you are concerned with?

Xiang Biao: The relationship between horizontal spacial mobility and vertical hierarchies is probably more complicated than the way we usually depict it. In the early period of reform and opening, the system was already hierarchical; there were those inside the system and those outside the system, and there were differences between officials, cadres, peasants, etc., there is no doubt about all this. But for the vast majority of people, the resources they possessed were more or less equal, and there was a strong sense of equality. With reform and opening, social differentiation increased, and there are four points that stand out.

First is that, for the moment, most people have experienced upward mobility, because the overall size of the economy is still expanding. We can also divide this process into two stages. One is straightforward upward mobility, which came with the agricultural reforms from the 1980s through the mid-1990s. During this period, everyone’s standard of living moved directly upward, and the reforms received a lot of popular support. Second, the period from the 1990s down to the present, which the sociologist Sun Liping described as a “fracturing,” where a gap appeared between those who have money and those who don’t. But people were generally okay with that, as everyone’s life was still improving. A couple of new growth engines, like Internet technology and the service industry, developed rapidly, and everyone had the feeling that a rising tide lifts all boats. For example, when Didi, China’s Uber, and bicycle-sharing services first came on the market, they spent a lot of money to win over consumers, and the common people had the happy feeling of “following along.”

The second point that stands out is that China’s social differentiation is a participatory competition involving everyone. This is related to the legacy of the early period of socialism. At the beginning of reform and opening, everyone had more or less the same resources, and reform and opening was inclusive, which meant that a billion people were pushed into market competition at more or less the same time. Everyone felt that they had the right to benefit in this process, and all tried to stay a step ahead of their neighbor and were afraid of being left behind, which created a strong mentality of not wanting to miss the bus. Every opportunity that slipped by might well be the last opportunity. This kind of mass participatory differentiation is unlike the rigid hierarchy we find in India, nor is it like what modern Western scholarship focuses on as the main problems of the day: exclusion, expulsion, marginalization, and direct oppression. Chinese people don’t have this feeling. They feel like they have to run fast, but if they fall behind, it is their responsibility. They don’t feel that they have been excluded. In some ways, it might have been healthier if they had been excluded, because this might have produced a new sense of self, which would come with a new set of actions. People might resist, or they might carve out a new path. But precisely because they feel like they are still in the game, and can still keep playing, they actively participate, and this is the second point.

Third, vertical differentiation is tied together with horizontal mobility. Once the masses participate in competitive mobility, some strive for international mobility in order to gain extra advantages. Those at the top send their capital abroad to preserve their position; those in the middle and at the bottom, like peasants, may go to Singapore or Japan for work; the urban middle classes send their children abroad to study.

We already talked about the fourth point, which is that this differentiation is not reflected in how we talk, or in cultural matters. Although we all know that there are inequalities between the rich and the poor, everyone nonetheless watches the same entertainment and speaks the same way.

Only when people have different ways of expressing themselves and different lifestyles does the meaning of inequality come into focus, at which point it is easier to come up with remedies or means to resist. Britain is like this. The British working class has a strong identity and does not want to hang around with intellectuals. Some people say they are shooting themselves in the foot, and keeping their children from ascending to the middle class. But because they have a clear understanding of their own distinctive lifestyle and develop their own artistic expression, they have the strength to contest the higher class, and they often hold their own and protect their interests through public policy. This is an interesting strategy: I want to protect myself, which does not mean that I want to surpass you, but rather test myself against you. Of course, such a strategy has limited effectiveness in practice now, largely because of globalization and the emergence of a global elite, which means that the working class has a hard time identifying its enemy, and at the same time the economic production and foundation of the working class are too diminished.

Wu Qi: Are all of these characteristics related to the timing of reform and opening? Because the most important developed countries have entered a new stage in the development of capitalism, which some scholars call late capitalism, while China remains in the primary stage of socialism, and at the same time, the explosion in technology and entertainment has been global and has spread throughout the world rapidly, creating the overlapping complexity of vertical and horizontal mobility. Do you feel like this is unique to China? In other words, is this something new in history?

Xiang Biao: I’m not sure whether this is something new in history. But what has happened in China, where a huge population is trying to change its destiny, is not something that happens often. The global perspective you mentioned is important. In terms of technology, information, and entertainment, we truly have entered the age of the global village; in terms of the economy and the distribution of wealth, the world is a battlefield; in terms of politics and ideology, it’s fragmented and antagonistic. We might see this as an extension of the “Pacific paradox.”

Wu Qi: You mentioned in your lecture at Tsinghua that there is a gap between China’s rise as an economic fact and as social consciousness. Can we understand this gap by looking at the idea of “social reproduction?”

Xiang Biao: We might say that China’s economic growth was truly an expression of materialism because we basically relied on material production to realize rapid growth, and the price we paid for that was that we paid little attention to “social reproduction.” I’ll give you an example. I met a taxi driver who works two shifts, and I asked him if he wasn’t tired, and how his health was. He said: “Health? Health comes later.” Here we see the price paid by ignoring “social reproduction” and pursuing high-speed growth. Many people tell me I’m too idealistic, and that if people were not pushing for rapid growth, then the material needs of young people would not be met, and there would be lots of unemployment, lots of poverty, and many more problems. This seems truer than it is. Given the overall economic production of present-day China, if we were to carry out a thorough redistribution, we could solve all of these problems, because we have enough for everyone to live well. But now it is like we have chosen our path, and have to grow faster and become stronger, precisely because we have no desire to go through some radical redistribution. But if we want those who are doing well to do still better, and at the same time pull up those who are trailing behind, this is really quite difficult, and at some future point, we might have to take the path of redistribution.

This in turn relates to the idea of “possession.” “This is money that I have made with my own two hands, so how dare you redistribute it?!” Here, anthropology has something to say. We talked about the collective life we knew when we were young. At that time, the idea of possession was quite weak and people understood the need to share. The idea of “possession” slowly flourished during reform and opening, when everyone became preoccupied with personal gains and losses. At present, “possession” has become an important life goal, something that is worth studying, because the idea is not particularly strong in the Chinese tradition. The most important resource surely used to be the land, and land rights were divided into surface and subsoil rights, land ownership changed hands a lot, most of the time the landlords did not own that much land, wealth only lasted for three generations which meant it alternated among various families, and lineages had ritual fields set aside to help the poor. In the expression we now use for “possession”—zhanyou*—there is a certain antagonism between zhan, which means seizing or occupying, and you, which means to have and to use. If you live in your house, you “have” it; if you buy a lot of houses and charge expensive rent and make a lot of money, then you have “seized” it. You is legitimate and zhan is frowned upon, but the two are now mixed up.