China's Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 344 pages
• Published by: Cornell University Press October 1997
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0801484766
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0801484766
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1.1 pounds

From Library Journal
Gates (senior research associate at the Center for Far East Asian Studies, Stanford Univ., and the author of Chinese Working Class Lives: Getting By in Taiwan, Cornell Univ., 1987) deals here with the continuities that underlie the changing surface of Chinese life from the late imperial period to modern times. The book attempts to provide a view of the social, economic, and political principles that identify a people as Chinese. Gates identifies two modes of organization in Chinese society. The first is the petty capitalist, characterized by a set of attitudes developed by family businesspeople and carried over into Chinese firms that were run on the principle "the buyer should buy as cheap, and the seller sell as dear, as possible," with the gain going into the pockets of both parties. The second is the tributary mode of state-centered initiatives. Using these categories, Gates explores some of the contradictions in Chinese life, such as a strong kinship system that nonetheless permits infanticide. This book is recommended only for academic libraries with strong Chinese collections.
Dennis L. Noble, Sequim, Wash.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
"Gates is a Marxist anthropologist with chutzpah. Best known for her compelling portrayal of contemporary working-class Taiwanese, she considerably broadens and deepens her analysis of China's socioeconomy in this work."--Choice

This monumental work reveals the continuities that underlie the changing surface of Chinese life from late imperial days to modern times. With a perspective that encompasses a thousand years of Chinese history, China's Motor provides a view of the social, economic, and political principles that have prompted people in widely varying circumstances to act, believe, and behave in ways that are labeled as Chinese.

This original reinterpretation of Chinese culture, as meticulous in detail as it is vast in scope, will revise not only the study of China but also the very terms of social analysis.