CHINA STUDIESdecision as disloyalty, but instead in most instanc-
es encouraged and invited these foreign-based
Chinese sociologists to visit China to assist in the
development of the discipline there and to under-
take collaborative research projects. These young,
foreign-trained sociologists are able to come and
go and to navigate the complex political and bu-
reaucratic terrain surrounding sociological research
within China much more easily than their non-
Chinese counterparts. Furthermore, the relatively
smaller number of Chinese sociologists trained
abroad who have returned to the PRC usually have
found their new skills and contacts valued and
rewarded, rather than treated with envy and suspi-
cion. Many of these individuals are moving up
rapidly into positions of responsibility and leader-
ship within Chinese research institutes and univer-
sities, where they are generally able to keep re-
search projects moving ahead despite bureaucratic
obstacles. As a result of these trends, an increasing
share of the new sociological research initiatives
and publications that are having an impact on
China studies in the West involve sociologists from
China, whether currently based abroad or with-
in China.
The changing sources of funding for research
on Chinese society also are having an impact.
Whereas in the past most research by Chinese
social scientists was funded by the Chinese govern-
ment and was responsive to state priorities and
concerns, in the reform era Chinese sociologists
and others in China face increasing constraints on
government funding of research. New competitive
peer review procedures are being introduced to
determine who gets scarce research funds, and
Chinese authorities encourage research institutes
and researchers to find ways to raise or obtain
funds on their own to support their research. In
this altered environment a variety of Western and
international sources of funding—from United
Nations agencies, the World Bank, the Ford Foun-
dation, foreign nongovernmental organizations,
etc.—have become important in financing research
that Chinese sociologists otherwise could not car-
ry out. This changed funding picture thus rein-
forces other trends that are strengthening the
links between sociology within China and abroad.
While the topics pursued within the sociologi-
cal study of China in the 1990s were varied, the
dominant focus was still on the process of market
reforms. Some of the impetus for this focus came
from a comparison with developments in the for-
mer Soviet Union and its satellites. Sociologists
have joined others in trying to understand why to
date the dismantling of central planning and the
introduction of market reforms have generally
been much more successful in China than in East-
ern Europe (see, for example, Rozman 1992;
Walder 1996a). The bulk of this research, howev-
er, looks not at the causes, but at the social conse-
quences of the reforms, and here the concerns are
varied and wide-ranging. For example, spirited
debates have arisen about whether or in what
respects the reforms are contributing to increased
inequality within China, and about whether prereform
political elites are largely monopolizing the gains
produced by the reforms or are being displaced
increasingly by new elites (see, for example, Nee
1996; Xie and Hannum 1996; Walder 1996b; Bian
and Logan 1996; Zhou, Tuma, and Moen 1996;
Buckley 1997). Sociologists and others are also
examining the new entrepreneurial class arising
within China as a result of market reforms to
determine what sorts of social origins they have,
and researchers on this topic debate whether these
entrepreneurs are a force for political change or
are, instead, co-opted and controlled as a result of
their dependence upon the state (see, for exam-
ple, Unger 1996; Nevitt 1999). Research on the
latter theme is part of a larger exploration of
whether China’s reforms are leading to the devel-
opment of institutions of a ‘‘civil society’’ that
might eventually lead to the democratization of
China’s political system (see Whyte 1992; White
1993). Within research on Chinese stratification
there is also a growing body of work considering
whether, on balance, the reforms have been harm-
ful or beneficial in terms of the quest for gender
equality (see Bauer et al. 1992; Croll 1994; Lee
1998; Entwisle and Henderson forthcoming). An-
other major focus of research concerns changes in
Chinese family life, with the investigation of topics
such as rising divorce and premarital sex rates and
whether such trends indicate that Chinese family
patterns are increasingly ‘‘converging’’ toward the
patterns found in other societies (e.g. Xu and
Whyte 1990; Davis and Harrell 1993; Logan, Bian,
and Bian forthcoming). Still another major focus
is on tracing the impact of particular reform
changes—for example, the relaxation of migra-
tion restrictions that have allowed tens of mil-
lions of rural migrants to flood into China’s cities,
the attempt to revive labor markets as a way of