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The China Research Center Annual Lecture 2014: "The Paradox of Communists Effectively Promoting Capitalism”

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Professor Whyte places Chinese attitudes towards inequality in comparative perspective, both with other post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe and selected capitalist countries.  Using comparisons of modal responses from three China surveys and surveys from selected East European and advanced capitalist countries, Professor Whyte considers possible reasons why the average Chinese citizen in all of his surveys has more positive attitudes toward current inequalities than the citizens of the comparison countries. 

Martin K. Whyte has been a Professor of Sociology at Harvard since 2000. Previously, he taught at the University of Michigan and George Washington University. His research and teaching specialties are comparative sociology, sociology of the family, sociology of development, the sociological study of contemporary China, and the study of post-communist transitions.

Within sociology, Whyte’s primary interest has been in historical and comparative questions—why particular societies are organized the way they are and how differences across societies affect the nature of people’s lives. Whyte is a member of the American Sociological Association, the Association for Asian Studies, the Sociological Research Association, the Population Association of America, and the National Committee for U.S. China Relations.

His recent books are The Myth of the Social Volcano: Perceptions of Inequality and Distributive Injustice in Contemporary China (Stanford, 2010), and One Country, Two Societies: Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China (Harvard, 2010).

Organized by the China Research Center

Co-sponsored By: The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs; The School of History, Technology and Society; and the Center of International Strategy, Technology, and Policy

 

 

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  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Vince Pedicino
  • Created:03/11/2014
  • Modified By:Fletcher Moore
  • Modified:04/13/2017