Russian and Chinese Reform: Results from Comparative Research in Shanghai and St. Petersburg

Abstract

Elena Danilova — Head of the Department for the Analysis of Social Transformations, Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences. Address: Bldg. 5, 24/35, Krzhizhanovskii St., Moscow, 117218, Russian Federation. E-mail: endanilova@gmail.com

Mikhail Chernysh — Head of the Department for Social Mobility Studies, Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences. Address: Bldg. 5, 24/35, Krzhizhanovskogo St., Moscow, 117218, Russian Federation. E-mail: mfche@yandex.ru

The authors analyze data from a comparative survey of urban citizens in Shanghai and St. Petersburg. The primary question of this article is whether Chinese economic success owes to what most sociologists tend to discuss these days: how are economic reforms and institutional transformations related to the cultural environment and actual practices? Are these changes legitimate with respect to certain cultures? To what extent are the mechanisms of distribution and norms, enhanced through the corresponding change of societal organization, perceived by people as just? A notion of cultural legitimacy with respect to reforms is being introduced to which the corresponding measures are perceived as socially just in the long-run, i.e. whether these reforms are implemented in correspondence with basic cultural values and the interests of the majority of people and democratic change. By analyzing the comparative data the authors interpret the reform impact in both societies in terms of people’s perceptions; factors which bolster social promotion; mechanisms of distribution; ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and the attitudes towards emerging social inequality.