TIPOS DE PRUEBAS

This section describes how the impact of the market reform has changed life in the neighbourhood as well as the state’s response to the diminished neighbourhood support. As noted in Chapter 1, since the mid-1980s, the gradual phasing out of the work unit-based system due to the replacement of lifetime employment by the contract worker system, bankruptcy of the state-owned enterprises, massive lay-offs and the emergence of job opportunities in the private sector, led to increased population mobility when people left their

57 neighbourhood to seek their fortune elsewhere. Upon the disintegration of the work unit- based system that used to hold the residents together, the state lost its influence over the life arrangements of individuals and their place of residence (Dai, 2008; Heberer and Gobel, 2011). The younger generation no longer has to accept the jobs assigned by the state and they can compete for jobs through different channels in the market economy (Whyte, 2010). The individuals have no need to ask permission from their work units to get married, attend university or travel as they did during the socialist era (Ren, 2013). They enjoy more freedom to choose their lifestyles.

The housing reform, the private property market boom and the urban redevelopment projects have created a different scenario of the urban neighbourhood life. As highlighted in an earlier section, increasing housing supply and changes of career were some of the factors behind the increasing residential mobility. Moreover, affected by the redevelopment projects in the Chinese cities, a substantial number of people have been resettled in the suburban housing blocks developed since 1985 (Li, 2004). After the housing reform in 1998, residents were allowed to sell their flats in the housing market, transfer them to their children or sublet them, which prompted further residential mobility (Chen, J., 2009). These new developments further transformed the social landscape of the neighbourhood from homogeneity of residents belonging to the same work unit to heterogeneity, with people coming from diverse backgrounds (Gui, Ma and Mühlhahn, 2009; Heberer and Gobel, 2011). When residents come from mixed backgrounds and do not know each other, this does not give rise to neighbourly bonds like those built up over the years in work unit-based neighbourhoods (Lu, 2006). The study of Hohhut, capital of Inner Mongolia by Jankowiak (2008) revealed that the neighbourly relationship tended to be more intimate in homogenous working class neighbourhood than those in diversified and higher status areas. In the study of mutuality in Guangzhou, Chan (1993) observed that urban growth and high residential mobility affect the social cohesion among the residents in the neighbourhood. Those who move into a diversified neighbourhood have no commonality and this makes them less motivated to establish relationship with each other (Jankowiak, 2008). This was also elaborated by Dai (2008) that the widening inequality in an increasingly stratified society makes people share less commonality in life experience. The residents find less need or purpose to communicate

58 with each other. The lack of the essential components of building a sense of belonging to the community, such as long periods of residence in a stable neighbourhood and high levels of interaction among the residents, renders it more difficult to foster the spirit of mutual help and collective responsibility today.

Owing to the growing individualism in the Chinese society, people are more concerned about protecting their privacy and do not have much interest in the well-being of other people (Luova, 2011). When the society becomes richer and people having different occupations, socio-economic status, or place of origin, live in the same neighbourhood, individuals value their privacy, contrary to the emphasis on collective interest in the past (Dai, 2008). Moreover, they either spend their time on work and social life outside their neighbourhood or in their self-contained accommodation units, and collective living is thus basically non- existent, as noted by Read (2000). The massive construction of shopping malls and the emergence of new leisure pursuits such as art shows, movies or sports events have fundamentally changed the way urban dwellers spend their time (Wu and Gaubatz, 2013). The values such as obedience to authority and collective responsibility emphasised during the pre-reform era have gradually faded away. Individuals attach more importance to personal achievement, enjoyment of leisure, personal responsibility and privacy. The disintegration of the work unit-based system and the process of urbanisation have changed the neighbourhood social interaction from collective responsibility to one characterised by distance and respect for privacy (Jankowiak, 2008). The rights and responsibilities that neighbouring residents can provide with the expectation of mutual help are primarily absent when there is a lack of familiarity among residents and a sense of belonging in the neighbourhood. To a certain extent, the research findings in the next paragraph can illustrate that the conventional neighbourhood support is no longer a reliable and effective means of help when needs arise.

Forrest and Yip (2007) conducted a study in three types of neighbourhoods: old neighbourhoods, work unit-based neighbourhoods and a newly developed neighbourhood with high-rise apartments, in Guangzhou in 2003 to explore how market reform transformed the patterns of local social interaction. This study revealed that only 33%, 21% and 15% of

59 the residents from old neighbourhoods, work unit-based neighbourhoods and the newly developed neighbourhoods respectively indicated that they helped a neighbour in some way over the past six months, while only a minority from all these neighbourhoods regarded neighbours as a potential source of assistance in case of emergency. This shows that the frequency of neighbourly help remains low even in the old neighbourhoods. Another research on neighbourly relationship was done by the China Youth Daily in 2011 (People’s Daily [overseas version], 2011). This study found that 81% of the 4,509 interviewees expressed that neighbourly relationship had become more aloof compared with the situation ten years ago. 41% of them indicated that they did not know their neighbours well and among them, 12.7% said that they did not know their neighbours at all. The findings of the above study also showed that should they encounter life problems, only 18.5% would seek help from their neighbours first. These two studies show that to a certain extent, the old Chinese proverb, ‘the next-door neighbours are more reliable than relatives living far away’ becomes less applicable in the present-day neighbourly life. To most people, the present- day neighbours are practically strangers. When residents are not familiar with one another and their focus of life is no longer in the neighbourhood, there seems to be no basis for the existence of neighbourly rights and responsibilities. Relying on personal responsibility to solve one’s problem is valued and emphasised in the market economy, and it has replaced the collective responsibility as a means of help.

As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the neighbourhood constitutes an important source of social and instrumental support for older people. Understandably, the growing number of older people in empty-nest households means more support in daily routines is likely needed and the presence of neighbourly help can be a supplementary source of support. Based on the 2011 baseline survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) drawing samples from 1,225 older people aged 60 or over from 148 urban communities, the leisure amenities in the neighbourhood enable older people to meet neighbours, establish their social network or derive social support which is conducive to reducing the depressive symptoms (Liu, Li and Zhang, 2016). In this regard, Yip, Leung and Huang (2013) noted that facing the neighbourhood changes, it is necessary to strengthen or create a new network as a source of support for older people. To respond to

60 the consequences of a rapidly ageing society, the government in 2005 issued the ‘Opinions on promoting the development of community-based voluntary services in response to new situations’, emphasising the role of volunteers in meeting the increasing service demands from the ageing population (Xu and Chow, 2011). In 2014, the Chinese Voluntary Service Joint Association initiated a nationwide volunteer programme on linlishouwang (neighbourly watch and mutual help) to raise concerns about the marginalised population in the neighbourhood, and the older people in empty-nest households is one of the target groups (People’s Daily, 2014b). To strengthen the residents’ identification with their neighbourhood, the local government widely publicised special emblems, flags or slogans like ‘The neighbourhood is our family’ and ‘The family depends on everyone’ in the neighbourhood (Heberer and Gobel, 2011). Nevertheless, the promotion of the self-sacrificing volunteer spirit seems to have failed to notice the changes in urban life that make neighbourly responsibility or the spirit of mutual help hard to maintain. Thus, how effective this strategy to mobilise the community resources to support older people is to be seen since the urban neighbourhood has undergone tremendous changes that are not conducive to sustaining this long practice of mutual help.

Other than the concern about the effectiveness of reviving the spirit of mutual help in the neighbourhood, one has to know if older people still value the neighbourly relationship as a source of help, given that neighbourhood is no longer the focus of life for most of the residents, even for older people. The previous section also shows that older people turn to be more independent in their living arrangement and expand their social network outside the family sphere. Little is known about how they perceive the neighbours’ help in their daily life, which requires exploration so as to gain an understanding on how to support them better.