Since the late 1970s, China has transformed from an inefficient centrally planned backwater to a fast-growing market-orientated economy. While economic reform has enabled average living standards to improve immensely, the benefits have been shared disproportionately depending on demographic factors such as location, age, gender, and social class.

This new four-volume collection from Routledge addresses some of the pertinent questions raised by the difference in ordinary people’s experience of China’s economic modernization. In particular: what are the socio-cultural transformations accompanying China’s economic transition? What are the experiences and responses of people who have gone through these social changes? What are the theoretical implications for social scientists who study social and economic development?

Social Transformation in China answers these questions by collecting essential and cutting-edge scholarship to reflect and capture experiences of socio-cultural transformations in China. Topics covered include: issues around work, the restructuring of state enterprises, unemployment, changes in welfare provisions, migration and women workers’ experiences; the family, love and marriage, the one-child policy, and ageing; the cultural domain, including works on media and consumption; the emergence of civil society.

Given China’s ever-growing economic influence, and sheer population size, there is an increasing demand from the rest of the world to understand Chinese society and its rapid economic modernization. By collecting the work of leading figures on China from disciplines such as Sociology, Anthropology, Social Policy, Cultural Studies, and Political Sciences, this set will not only appeal to researchers and students in Chinese Studies but also more widely to academics and policymakers who are concerned with the social impact of economic development.