M K Whyte
Biographic Data
| ID | 43075 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M K Whyte |
| GIVEN NAMES | M K |
| FAMILY NAME | Whyte |
| SIGNATURE | WHYTE M K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2017-5970 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 87 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 441 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 87 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
The Maoist Roots of China’s Extreme Income Inequality
Getting Ahead in Today’s China
China’s economic development history and Xi Jinping’s “China dream
Since Xi Jinping became leader of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he has promoted the goal of realizing the “China dream,” which centers on the effort to sustain rapid economic growth so that China can join or even surpass the rich countries of the world. Given the slowing of economic growth even before the 2020 coronavirus epidemic, debate has arisen about whether China can achieve this ambitious goal. This paper recounts the author’s perso…
Chapter Thirteen. The Social Contours of Distributive Injustice Feelings in Contemporary China
Confronting puzzles in understanding Chinese family change
I present an overview of selected findings from four major research projects I conducted earlier in my career that were designed to describe and explain the patterns of continuity and change in family patterns in the People’s Republic of China: an examination of rural family patterns carried out through refugee interviewing in Hong Kong in 1972–1974; a parallel examination of urban family patterns carried out through Hong Kong refugee interviews …
China’s Dormant and Active Social Volcanoes
China’s leaders often claim that the rising tide of mass protests in recent years is primarily driven by popular anger over the widening gap between rich and poor. However, in a series of national surveys that I helped direct, it becomes clear the average Chinese citizen is less angry about current income gaps than citizens in many other societies. There also is no clear increase in such anger over time (despite a sustained rise in income inequal…
Challenging Myths About China’s One-Child Policy
China's controversial one-child policy continues to generate controversy and misinformation. This essay challenges several common myths: that Mao Zedong consistently opposed efforts to limit China's population growth; that as a result China's population continued to grow rapidly until after his death, necessitating the switch to mandatory and coercive birth limits; that the launching of the one-child policy in 1980 led to a dramatic decline in Ch…
Soaring Income Gaps
Despite repeated pledges by China's leaders to reduce the gap between rich and poor, income inequality has continued to rise. China's Gini coefficient, a standard measure of income inequality, was higher in 2007 than in the United States, Russia, or most other societies. Why have China's income gaps increased so fast and so far, despite programs designed to promote greater equality? Standard explanations, such as income gaps inevitably rising wit…
Is the social volcano still dormant? Trends in Chinese attitudes toward inequality
China's Post-Socialist Inequality
The country's sharp increase in income inequality is not the result of the rich getting richer while the poor become poorer
Culture Keeping
Book Review| April 01 2012 Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Difference Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Difference. By Heather Jacobson. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008. viii + 212 pp. Notes, index, and bibliography. $49.95 (cloth); $22.95 (paper). Martin K. Whyte Martin K. Whyte Search for other works by this author on: This…
The Paradoxes of Rural- Urban In e quality in Contemporary China
The Impact of China's Market Reforms on the Health of Chinese Citizens
China's post-1978 market reforms were accompanied by a drastic decline in the coverage of the Chinese population by medical insurance as well as by sharp increases in charges for medical treatments, tests, and prescriptions. Since the 1990s, these trends have produced widespread condemnation of the current Chinese medical care system for being too costly and unequal. This article attempts to answer two questions: 1) Why did changes in the healthc…
Social Change in Contemporary China
Popular Attitudes toward Distributive Injustice
Continuity and Change in Urban Chinese Family Life
Filial Obligations in Chinese Families
The Exemplary Society
Revolutionizing the Family
Danwei
Finucane, Ronald C., the Rescue of the Innocents
FINUCANE, Ronald C., THE RESCUE OF THE INNOCENTS: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles." Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 30(1), pp. 159–160
The Flow of Gifts
The Fate of Filial Obligations in Urban China
Cities with Invisible Walls
City versus Countryside in China’s Development
Perhaps the supreme irony of the Chinese revolution is that although China’s peasants were its moving force, most of the fruits of victory were reserved for urbanites. China still has a two-caste system, which generates injustice and resentments and wastes human talent
Love Matches and Arranged Marriages
Data from a probability sample of 586 ever-married women in Chengdu Sichuan in the Peoples Republic of China are used to examine the transition from arranged to free-choice marriages in that society. Retrospective data on mate-choice experiences reveal that the role of parents has declined sharply while young people more and more dominate the process of spouse selection....Multiple regression analyses indicate that wives in...love matches are mor…
Continuity and Change in Urban Chinese Family Life
Cross-Cultural Codes Dealing with the Relative Status of Women
The purpose of this article is to present a set of codes dealing with the status of women relative to men, along with ratings for each code on 93 cultures. The codes were developed in order to investigate how women's status varies in preindustrial societies, and why women do better in some societies than in others. In the larger study for which these codes were developed (Whyte I978), they were used to test a wide variety of hypotheses dealing wi…
Challenging Myths About China’s One-Child Policy
China's controversial one-child policy continues to generate controversy and misinformation. This essay challenges several common myths: that Mao Zedong consistently opposed efforts to limit China's population growth; that as a result China's population continued to grow rapidly until after his death, necessitating the switch to mandatory and coercive birth limits; that the launching of the one-child policy in 1980 led to a dramatic decline in Ch…
The Fate of Filial Obligations in Urban China
Bureaucracy and Modernization in China
The Chinese critique of bureaucratic forms of organization is delineated, and the alternative Maoist organizational ideal is sketched. The adequacy of this Maoist alternative as part of a modernizing strategy is considered, both on logical and on (limited) empirical grounds. The Maoist conception seems to be neither a general solution to the organizational problems of developing societies nor totally inappropriate or utopian
Popular Response to China's Fertility Transition
China has both the world's largest population (1.008 billion, according to the census carried out in that country in 1982) and perhaps the most strict and systematic family planning program.Concerted family planning efforts began in the People's Republic of China during the mid-1950s but were periodically disrupted by political campaigns, particularly the "Great Leap Forward" in 1958-60 and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-69.Since 1970, however, …
Dependency Theory and Taiwan
The Case of Taiwan represents a challenge to two predictions from dependency theory: that foreign economic penetration leads to slow economic growth and also to heightened inequality. Since the early 1950s Taiwan has received massive foreign aid and investment, but it has also had one of the highest sustained rates of growth in the world, while income inequality on the island has decreased substantially. An examinatin of this deviant case is purs…
The Chinese Family and Economic Development
Is the social volcano still dormant? Trends in Chinese attitudes toward inequality
China’s Dormant and Active Social Volcanoes
China’s leaders often claim that the rising tide of mass protests in recent years is primarily driven by popular anger over the widening gap between rich and poor. However, in a series of national surveys that I helped direct, it becomes clear the average Chinese citizen is less angry about current income gaps than citizens in many other societies. There also is no clear increase in such anger over time (despite a sustained rise in income inequal…
City versus Countryside in China’s Development
Perhaps the supreme irony of the Chinese revolution is that although China’s peasants were its moving force, most of the fruits of victory were reserved for urbanites. China still has a two-caste system, which generates injustice and resentments and wastes human talent
Cross-Cultural Studies of Women and the Male Bias Problem
This paper considers whether a prevailing male bias in ethnographic work makes cross-cultural research on the position of women invalid. The method used is an examination of the correlations of a gender of ethnog rapher (and gender of coder) measures with a large number of women's status variables drawn from a larger study. The results show that the num ber of significant correlations is not more than would be expected by chance. It is argued tha…
The Impact of China's Market Reforms on the Health of Chinese Citizens
China's post-1978 market reforms were accompanied by a drastic decline in the coverage of the Chinese population by medical insurance as well as by sharp increases in charges for medical treatments, tests, and prescriptions. Since the 1990s, these trends have produced widespread condemnation of the current Chinese medical care system for being too costly and unequal. This article attempts to answer two questions: 1) Why did changes in the healthc…
Getting Ahead in Today’s China
Confronting puzzles in understanding Chinese family change
I present an overview of selected findings from four major research projects I conducted earlier in my career that were designed to describe and explain the patterns of continuity and change in family patterns in the People’s Republic of China: an examination of rural family patterns carried out through refugee interviewing in Hong Kong in 1972–1974; a parallel examination of urban family patterns carried out through Hong Kong refugee interviews …
Dating, Mating, and Marriage
Social Structure of World Regions
The sociological study of Mainland China since 1949 confronts a number of obstacles, but at the same time the nature of the society and the distinctiveness of its program for social change may hold valuable lessons for scholars studying a number of important sociological problems. The number of sociologists actively engaged in the study of Maoist China is small and society is vast, relatively inaccessible, less than a generation old, and still in…
Popular Attitudes toward Distributive Injustice
Soaring Income Gaps
Despite repeated pledges by China's leaders to reduce the gap between rich and poor, income inequality has continued to rise. China's Gini coefficient, a standard measure of income inequality, was higher in 2007 than in the United States, Russia, or most other societies. Why have China's income gaps increased so fast and so far, despite programs designed to promote greater equality? Standard explanations, such as income gaps inevitably rising wit…
Revolutionary Social Change and Patrilocal Residence in China
The degree to which the patrilocal form of residence of the Chinese peasant family has been altered by the revolutionary changes initiated by the Chinese communists since 1949 is examined. The source of information is intensive and semi-structured interviews conducted in Hong Kong in 1973-1974 with former residents of 63 different villages in Kwangtung the province adjacent to the British colony. The interviews were basically ethnographic in natu…
Village and Family in Contemporary China
Corrective Labor Camps in China
Research Article| March 01 1973 Corrective Labor Camps in China Martin King Whyte Martin King Whyte Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Far Eastern Survey (1944) 13 (3): 253–269. https://doi.org/10.2307/2643036 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mart…
The East Asian Region
Choosing mates-the American way
Rural Russia Today
Corrective Labor Camps in China
Research Article| March 01 1973 Corrective Labor Camps in China Martin King Whyte Martin King Whyte Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Far Eastern Survey (1944) 13 (3): 253–269. https://doi.org/10.2307/2643036 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mart…
Bureaucracy and Modernization in China
The Chinese critique of bureaucratic forms of organization is delineated, and the alternative Maoist organizational ideal is sketched. The adequacy of this Maoist alternative as part of a modernizing strategy is considered, both on logical and on (limited) empirical grounds. The Maoist conception seems to be neither a general solution to the organizational problems of developing societies nor totally inappropriate or utopian
Small Groups and Political Rituals in China
Small Groups and Political Rituals in China
Rural Protest
Rebels and Bureaucrats
Family Role Differentiation and Women's Subsistence Contribution
Small Groups and Political Rituals in China
Political Culture and Group Conflict in Communist China
Social Structure of World Regions
The sociological study of Mainland China since 1949 confronts a number of obstacles, but at the same time the nature of the society and the distinctiveness of its program for social change may hold valuable lessons for scholars studying a number of important sociological problems. The number of sociologists actively engaged in the study of Maoist China is small and society is vast, relatively inaccessible, less than a generation old, and still in…
Cross-Cultural Studies of Women and the Male Bias Problem
This paper considers whether a prevailing male bias in ethnographic work makes cross-cultural research on the position of women invalid. The method used is an examination of the correlations of a gender of ethnog rapher (and gender of coder) measures with a large number of women's status variables drawn from a larger study. The results show that the num ber of significant correlations is not more than would be expected by chance. It is argued tha…
Cross-Cultural Codes Dealing with the Relative Status of Women
The purpose of this article is to present a set of codes dealing with the status of women relative to men, along with ratings for each code on 93 cultures. The codes were developed in order to investigate how women's status varies in preindustrial societies, and why women do better in some societies than in others. In the larger study for which these codes were developed (Whyte I978), they were used to test a wide variety of hypotheses dealing wi…
Village and Family Life in Contemporary China
The Status of Women in Preindustrial Societies
Revolutionary Social Change and Patrilocal Residence in China
The degree to which the patrilocal form of residence of the Chinese peasant family has been altered by the revolutionary changes initiated by the Chinese communists since 1949 is examined. The source of information is intensive and semi-structured interviews conducted in Hong Kong in 1973-1974 with former residents of 63 different villages in Kwangtung the province adjacent to the British colony. The interviews were basically ethnographic in natu…
The Status of Women in Preindustrial Societies
Village and Family in Contemporary China
Ethnology
The Origins of the Economy
Women's Status, Feminist Consciousness, and Studies about African Women
Village and Family in Contemporary China
After 1949 the Chinese Communists carried out land reform, the collectivization of agriculture, and the formation of people's communes. The new economic and political organizations that emerged have made peasant life more comfortable and secure, but many economic and status differentials and traditional customs remain resistant to change. Focusing on rural Kwangtung province, William L. Parish and Martin King Whyte examine the rural work-incentiv…
The Status of Women in Preindustrial Society
Sociology and Socialism in Contemporary China
Village and Family in Contemporary China
Political science (57 works) · Sociology (54 works) · China (53 works) · Law (38 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (33 works) · History (28 works) · Geography (24 works) · Law (24 works) · Economics (23 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (22 works)