A Chinese-Style Kill Line? | by Yang Haiyan

Treść źródłowa

Today’s article is introduced by Dorothy J. Solinger, Professor Emerita at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the leading scholars of urban poverty, migrant exclusion and welfare change in reform-era China. Her long-standing work on laid-off workers, the urban poor and the politics of social provision, including her groundbreaking 2022 book Poverty and Pacification: The Chinese State Abandons the Old Working Class, makes her particularly well placed to introduce Yang Haiyan’s essay on the risk of a Chinese-style “kill line”—a rare and timely discussion of a politically sensitive subject, in a debate overwhelmingly dominated by the US case. Our thanks to Yang Haiyan for granting us permission to share this article. — JacobYang Haiyan’s piece offers an interesting comparison between the ways people descend into severe poverty in the US and in China. Its chief focus is those living on the brink of destitution, vulnerable to crossing a “kill line” if hit by a sudden large expense such as illness, job loss, or even a car breakdown. In the United States, the group closest to this condition is often described as ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed. However, these individuals cannot easily be compared to the urban poor in China. For one thing, Yang refers to Black people in the US, whereas poverty in China is not racially-based. Those in China apt to drop into indigence are also unlikely to be employed or even to possess assets. Instead of being tenants who might be evicted, they live in tiny apartments allocated to them before the 1990s. Neither ar…