Center for the Study of Democracy

This paper examines the causes of a new underclass in China. The paper has three main objectives. The first objective is to demonstrate that economic reforms are the force that brought about this poverty and marginalization--in their several forms--that now so bedevil the Party rulers, and to examine the background and nature of the associated problems. The next objective is to show how "weapons of the state" have been forged or enhanced by the turn to marketization and the affluence this afforded the state, and how these tools are being put to use to quiet the discontented. And last, the paper offers a few policy suggestions--possibilities that either have not yet been attempted, or that have not yet yielded optimal effects.