• 1 See Chang Kyung-Sup (1999), “Compressed Modernity and Its Discontents: South Korean Society in Tran (...)

1The Great Earthquake of Sichuan Province in China caused shocking levels of human, environmental and property damage in May 2008. The catastrophic outcomes not only attested to the formidable force of nature but also revealed the flawed public system for managing natural disasters and governing communities and citizens for safety. Through the 2008 Summer Olympics, China had wished to boast to the world of its economic achievements attained through reforms over the preceding 30 years. However, in the wake of ongoing massive disasters that have continued into the present, China has fallen into the sad predicament of having its ability to adequately manage social safety doubted internationally. China’s situation brings to mind Korea, which in the mid-1990s happily joined the ranks of advanced nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), but suddenly gained notoriety as an “accident republic” due to the collapse of huge bridges and buildings and several large subway explosions.1 These catastrophic events, concentrated in a few years, proved to be largely the result of human error, and thus became an impetus for new academic interest in risk issues.

• 2 Chang Kyung-Sup (1998), “Risk Components of Compressed Modernity: South Korea as Complex Risk Socie (...)
• 3 There is a growing interest in the risk society perspective among Chinese scholars. Examples of maj (...)

2In an earlier study, I drew upon Ulrich Beck’s discussion on “risk society” in defining South Korea (Korea hereafter) as a complex risk society where risks common to advanced countries, undeveloped countries, and compressively but haphazardly changing countries exist side by side.2 Complex risk society is a theoretical extension of Ulrich Beck’s thesis on risk society, focusing on complex developmental temporalities that are pervasively symptomatic of rapidly but asymmetrically developing political economies. Complex risk society is a societal manifestation of (Korea’s) compressed modernity in respect to its diverse risk components and experiences pertaining to multiple developmental temporalities such as developed, un(der)developed, and transformative stages/states of development. This condition is particularly evident in terms of various physical hazards and ecological threats. In the present study, I would like to point out that China can also be defined as a complex risk society, while showing that China’s risk types are compositionally much more complex than those of Korea. Specifically, 21st century Chinese society has been experiencing many of the various risk syndromes repeatedly experienced by Korean society as it pursues rapid, externally dependent modernization and economic development while failing to overcome structural imbalances between sectors. At the same time, the risk syndromes accompanying reforms to the socialist system, stacked on top of the risk syndromes carried over from the previous socialist era, have rendered China an extremely complex risk society.3

• 4 This situation is interestingly paralleled in the arduous experiences of North Korean refugees in S (...)

3As compared to the radical system transitions of Russia and Eastern Europe, China’s reforms have involved a gradual process of introducing practical, non-socialist economic and social elements aiming at economic development but leaving the socialist regime’s political dictatorship unchanged. China’s relatively more cautious approach has resulted in unexpected explosive and long-term economic growth, realizing unforeseen potentials for economic development in Chinese society. In this unique situation, China’s development is characterized by both risk syndromes linked to socialism and underdevelopment, and risk syndromes associated with the outcomes and processes of post-socialist transitions, varying by sectors and regions. Of highest academic and practical importance are the risk syndromes related to market economic transition. Although the market economy by nature imposes on participants a variety of economic insecurities and life-threatening risks, when this social system is suddenly introduced by political decision as a means of averting economic crisis, the majority of people will commonly experience wide ignorance of the new market economic order, a dearth of proper economic resources, an ideological hiatus of anti-communal competitive orders, and an insensitivity to market ethics as nurtured by their ideology.4 Precipitated by the particularities involved in the process of accommodating a market economy in China, these risks, as well as risks like those Korea experienced as a simultaneously developed, undeveloped, and compressively-but-haphazardly changing nation, become a reality.

• 5 As compared to Harvey’s view that time-space condensation (on the global scale) accompanies the acc (...)
• 6 In addition, the phenomena advanced by main theorists of postcolonialism (such as cultural “hybridi (...)

8The analytical schema of differentiating time and space and separating condensation and compression needs a logical justification.5 In a non-Western historical/social context in which Western modernity is conceived as the core source of civilisational as well as politico-military superiority, the West stands not just as a discrete region but also as a discrete moment in history. Where indigenously conscious efforts at civilisational rebirth were defeated by external forces or frustrated internally, the West often became both a direction for historical change (modernization) and a contemporaneous source of inter-civilisational remaking (Westernization in practice). The more condensed these changes become—that is, the faster modernization proceeds and the most fully Westernization takes place—the more successful the concerned countries tend to be considered (in spite of cultural and emotional irritations as well as political and economic sacrifices experienced by various indigenous groups). However, the very processes of modernization and Westernization endemically induce cultural and political backlashes on the part of adversely affected groups and, in frequent cases, systematically reinforce the traditional/indigenous civilisational components as these are deemed ironically useful for a strategic management of modernization and Westernization. Thereby compression/complication becomes inevitable among various discrete temporal and regional civilisational constituents.6

• 7 Paul Krugman (1994), “The Myth of Asia’s Miracle”, Foreign Affairs, volume 73, number 6, pp. 62-78.

13To contemporary Koreans, their society is particularly problematic as a slap-dash and compressive risk society. Compressive society-type risks stem from the enormous economic and social changes Korea has undergone in a remarkably short period of time. As indicated by Krugman (1994), rapid economic growth in Asia has been achieved in large part by intensifying the mobilization (or exploitation) of labour and natural resources instead of improving the efficiency and safety of the production processes, ushering in a rapid increase of disasters and pollution.7 Korea’s rapid development has been manifested in terms of explosive growth in human activities of production, construction, consumption, and movement which in turn has been accompanied by no less explosive growth in risk factors and experiences. The costs of compressive risk society do not end here. There are dangers attending upon the rapid and ceaseless changes in industrial structures and technologies and public lifestyles. These changes are usually considered to be upgrading or progress, but the particular nature and pace of such changes, if undermanaged or mismanaged, can bring about various problematic consequences. The growth of Korea’s national economy and businesses has been a result of continuous diversification and upgrading of its industrial structure, and the change to citizens’ lives has been characterized by compulsively ceaseless exposure to unfamiliar lifestyles. This has placed South Koreans in the perpetual status of ‘novice’ or ‘learner’ during which accidents tend to accumulate. Moreover, while new production technologies and goods may outshine the old in terms of efficiency and utility, they are often much riskier if handled improperly. The dilemma of remaining a perpetual novice or learner is shared by both the general public and respective expert groups.

• 8 This political trend has continued into the 21^st century. For instance, Lee Myung-Bak won the presi (...)

14Korea’s publicly promoted processes of rapid economic growth and social modernization have helped formed a unique culture of speed efficiency—measuring the effectiveness of economic and social activities in terms of time spent. This culture has spawned rampant practices of corporate, governmental, and civil irresponsibility as to public safety, thereby making Korea a slap-dash risk society. On the national political level, whenever the ruling government sets forth a major policy goal—be it economic growth, infrastructure construction, crime control, or other—there was a keen interest in accomplishing it in the shortest time possible and presenting such speedy accomplishment as evidence of a superior government.8 On the corporate level, in response to explosive economic growth and industrial restructuring, a corporate growth strategy of completing each business project as fast as possible and moving into the next, more profitable projects has prevailed. Such governmental and corporate obsession with speed efficiency has resulted in the collusive aggravation of safety in production lines, construction sites, public spaces and infrastructures, as well as consumer lives. It has repeatedly been revealed that the government, far from enforcing strict rules, has tried to accomplish its national developmental goals by tacitly encouraging private enterprises and public agencies to run at “full” operational speed even if it would mean breaking safety regulations. The business community has had no qualms in complying because it implies quicker profits. In a sense, the developmental state’s obstinate policy line of “growth first, distribution later” has spawned a corresponding, albeit tacit, policy line of growth first, safety later, intensifying symptoms of a slap-dash risk society.

• 9 For instance, Chang Kyung-Sup (1993), “The Peasant Family in Transition from Maoist to Lewisian Rur (...)

16As China’s complex developmental temporalities are characterized not only by diverse stages of economic affluence but also by unique sequences of systemic transition (i.e., from state socialism to market capitalism), its risk components and structures are correspondingly complex. China’s past as a socialist system and its so-called “gradual” approach to system reform have generated various particular risk factors beneath the country’s apparently impressive achievement in economic development. The upkeep of various socialist institutions and practices in a market-capitalist era has inevitably been accompanied by the risk components of such institutions and practices and the additional risk elements embedded in the complicated coexistence of two mutually contradictory political economic systems. It has been observed that some of China’s pre-reform socioeconomic conditions have rather been conducive to its explosive post-socialist industrialization and economic growth, but there are corresponding risks accompanying such unexpected developmental uses of Chinese socialism.9

• 10 The state leadership, thinking that Chinese enterprises still lack the independent ability to devel (...)
• 11 Even during the socialist period, China was subjected to such risks. Above all, China was not immun (...)

19On the other hand, China is already experiencing multiple risk syndromes similar to those that have affected Korea and other industrialized societies. Just like Korea, China has reaped full advantage from the “benefits of late development” including the advanced sciences and technologies of the West, but China’s developmental catching-up has further been accelerated on the basis of its own capacity for knowledge processing and production.10 However, dependence on advanced technologies from abroad results in more serious consequences than just exposing Chinese people to accompanying risk factors. China’s aggressive adoption of advanced overseas technologies to meet immediate economic needs often disturbs or critically damages the social, cultural, and ecological conditions of local communities, without a clear prospect for sustainable alternative development however.11 The aggressive pursuit of dependent industrial development has led to an explosion of risks accompanying high-efficiency industrial technologies, their first victims being grassroots workers and peasants.

• 12 For example, according to the aggregate data of the PRC’s National Bureau of Statistics, the number (...)

20China’s post-socialist economic growth, no less dramatic than Korea’s, has brought with it various symptoms of compressive risk society similar to those experienced by Koreans. From village/township enterprises (xiangzhenqiye) that led industrialization in the early reform period, to successful joint ventures now encompassing both coastal and inland areas, China’s new enterprises have pursued swift labor-intensive industrialization by harnessing the nation’s huge labour force, with an immediate success in “extensive economic growth”. Gaps between different sectors and regions notwithstanding, China’s economic growth has subjected most Chinese citizens to radical changes in the contents and densities of economic and social activities. The usual neglect of qualitative improvement in the production process in an extensively growing economy makes it impossible to fundamentally reduce risk factors and thereby subjects people to potential and actual physical dangers in proportion to rapid economic growth. Thus Chinese people must accept increasing numbers and types of unfamiliar risk factors as a part of their daily lives. National development as manifested in terms of an unprecedented growth of people’s production, construction, consumption and movement activities is inevitably marred by a no less dramatic growth of physical risks.12

• 13 Ulrich Beck (1999), World Risk Society, Cambridge: Polity.
• 14 Chinese people’s pride and sense of relief after a successful Olympics was immediately rocked by th (...)

23An especially serious manifestation of China as a slap-dash risk society is the so-called “counterfeit economy”, i.e., the manufacture and distribution of a flood of knock-offs and bogus commodities churned out at an unfathomable pace. Such counterfeit commodities are shoddily produced and use harmful materials that pose safety threats not only to Chinese people but to consumers all over the world. China as “the world’s factory” has also served as a prime manufacturer of physical and social risks for the global community and thereby become a key axis of the “world risk society”.13 At the root of this economic trend is a cohesive system of corruption linking politico-bureaucratic power with corporate interests under China’s developmentalist political rule.14 Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic “black cat, white cat” has produced a critical side-effect of nurturing the governmental, entrepreneurial, and civilian common ethos of placing economic outcomes above all other social values, with the counterfeit economy serving as one of the most discomforting black cats.

• 15 See Eduard B. Vermeer (1998), “Industrial Pollution in China and Remedial Policies,” China Quarterl (...)
• 16 See Lee Gang-Won (2007), Desert China: Changes in China’s Land Use and Desertification (in Chinese) (...)
• 17 See Louis Putterman (1995), “The Role of Ownership and Property Rights in China’s Economic Transiti (...)

26Due to the selectively prioritized execution of post-socialist reform in consideration of the dissimilar potentials of market economic development between industries and regions, various socialist institutions and practices and their risk factors have continued to influence people’s lives. The dire realities of heavily industrialized inland areas—the greatest hurdle in economic reform—were dealt with by arbitrary support, by public funds, of state and collective enterprises that possessed neither organisational efficiency nor market competitiveness. In this difficult situation, it was practically impossible to fundamentally rectify various risk factors embedded in state-socialist heavy industries, including hazardous working environments and ecological destructions in particular.15 Under the excessive expansion of urban spaces and rampant conversion of farmlands into non-agricultural uses, on the other hand, regional governments and local communities have tried to develop new areas for agriculture in ecologically hazardous manners reminiscent of the socialist era. In particular, the widespread desertification of Northern China is a crucially costly outcome, haunting not only Chinese people but also their East Asian neighbours.16 Also, the unique farming system that allows Chinese peasants to individually cultivate collectively owned farmlands is suspected to be ecologically disruptive as it tacitly encourages excessive abuse of soil at the expense of its own preservation.17

• 18 For an in-depth critical study regarding the political deterioration of the developmental(ist) stat (...)
• 19 See Xiabo Lu (2000), “Booty Socialism, Bureau-preneurs, and the State in Transition: Organizational (...)

28The market economy harbours fundamental risks, but it also has the potential to filter out risk factors through autonomous adjustment functions. If a product is found to be dangerous, consumption stops; if a workplace exposes workers to hazards, it will not attract a high-quality workforce; and if a corporate activity harms the ecological environment, a variety of related groups will shun the company or demand it compensate for the damage incurred. Yet from the initial stages of its development, post-Mao China’s market economy has been subjected to powerful intervention and sponsorship from the so-called “developmental state” both at central and local levels. If corporate activities posing serious risk problems are artificially concealed to achieve the political goal of the developmental state—namely, rapid economic growth at the national and local levels—and the market’s risk adjustment functions are paralyzed, China’s current downward spiral as a risk society will continue unabated.18 Aside from these growth-related politics, China’s countless companies merely switched their name tag from state to privately or jointly owned enterprises while remaining subject to state interference and the interests of one-party state offices and cadres in everything from shareholding and management structure to production and sales activities. For this reason, it is difficult to expect that the state will properly monitor and control companies’ risk-taking. For these reasons, many companies that inflict social harm and are punished are often found to have colluded with state officials and cadres. This brand of corruption is routinely justified, ostensibly citing the objectives of the development-oriented state at the local and central levels.19

• 20 Emile Durkheim ([1933]1997), The Division of Labor in Society, New York: Free Press.

29The societal pitfalls of the (presently existing) development-oriented states do not stop there. Emile Durkheim, who understood the division of labour in modern liberal industrial society (market economy) as a tacit, collective contractual relationship, proposed the concept of the “non-contractual basis of the contract” in order to explain that social constituents have a reciprocal duty to comply with autonomous norms beyond the force of laws or contractual arrangements.20 For Durkheim, this provides a normative basis for an “organic solidarity” in industrial society—a social infrastructure that helps to fundamentally reduce (what economists call) “transaction costs” and ultimately serves as the cultural foundation for a liberal state. The development states in China and Korea, despite or in part because of their remarkable effectiveness in nurturing rapid economic growth, seem to have structurally hindered a historical process of establishing this social infrastructure. Their development of an alliance with or sponsoring of strategically chosen industries and enterprises and, in fact, their indiscriminate regulatory generosity for corporate interests and activities frequently betray ordinary citizens when the latter, as workers, consumers, and local residents, need to expect and trust the former’s responsible behaviours in everyday economic activities and livelihood.

• 21 Unfortunately, this problem is known to have been particularly serious in Korean-owned companies in (...)
• 22 A serious problem in this respect is the lack of corporate interest, given the leniency of the stat (...)

30Aside from the politically produced obstacle to setting up the sociocultural foundation for a sustainable market economy, there are additional system transition risks stemming from former socialist citizens’ unfamiliarity with, maladjustments to, and moral rejections of the suddenly imposed orders of the market economy. China’s new market economy may serve as a tremendous material opportunity for some astute individuals and groups, but it cannot but be a source of social chaos and anxiety for ordinary citizens as novices to the new economic system. This is particularly and symbolically manifest in widespread labour disputes, industrial accidents, and physical and mental injuries experienced by Chinese workers in foreign capitalist enterprises in the so-called Special Economic Zones that are bent upon a ruthless implementation of supposedly free market principles. But Chinese-owned/managed enterprises are no exception.21 In fact, they could be worse because of a lack of long-term experience in managing labour relations and safety regulations. 22

• 23 For instance, coal mine accidents have kept claiming human lives at internationally unparalleled le (...)

31Besides the painful plight of ordinary Chinese people as market system novices, they also suffer from a dire lack of the resources needed to be competitive. Market-oriented reform necessitates the rapid and continuous introduction of new industries and technologies to meet the demands of domestic and overseas market conditions, but does not necessarily presuppose or assist ordinary citizens’ securing of basic resources for new economic activities. The majority of those expected to “know the ropes” used to be socialist proletariat with no private assets, whose work experience instantly loses economic value when the development potential of their work units is suddenly negated. (This is less likely to be a problem for farmers who are still guaranteed the individual right to cultivate collectively owned land, growing similar crops as in the past.) Many of those suddenly reborn into uncompetitive elements as “production inputs” in the capitalist market economy are forced to pursue, as a strategy for overcoming such handicaps, economic activities with various risk-ridden contents or procedures.23 The willingness to expose themselves to hazardous working conditions becomes a decisive factor to be competitive on the market. This is particularly evident among “illegal” migrant workers in megacities (dubbed mangliu). It is paradoxical that the Chinese government perceives them as a risk factor at the societal level.

• 24 See Friederike Fleischer (2007), “To Choose a House Means to Choose a Lifestyle: The Consumption of (...)
• 25 In the midst of the melamine powdered milk scandal, some Chinese were rushing to Hong Kong to buy s (...)
• 26 The Special Food Supply Center (Tebieshifintigongzhongxin) established and operated by the state si (...)

33Above all, the rapidly growing material gaps between rich and poor under the expansion of market-based economic activities and the weakening of socialist welfare benefits have also engendered notably dissimilar statuses in risk exposure and control. In the early years of reform, growth in income inequality was not severe and the main material disparity was derived from the desire of the relatively rich to make up for the “foregone consumption” of the socialist era. However, as the deepening of reform pushed income equality above the level of many capitalist developing economies, class disparity began to be characterized no less by ‘the quality of consumption’ than by ‘the quantity of consumption’, with safety becoming an increasingly essential component of the quality of consumed commodities. Safe houses and residential environments, safe foods and water, safe cars, and a host of other supposedly safe commodities have made their spotlighted debut in the market. Such commoditization of safety has been intensified in proportion to the widening income inequality.24 At the same time, a flood of fake and hazardous goods have made product safety a crucial concern for Chinese people at all income levels. Unfortunately, poor people whose income level does not allow avoidance of this risk-ridden commodity market cannot but experience grave frustration and alienation.25 With regard to food in particular, the revelation that there exist special institutions for providing safe products exclusively for party and government leaders generated grave repercussions in public sentiments.26 A crucial implication of such behaviour on the part of China’s core national elite is the growing probability that safety will have to be secured as a market commodity by financially capable consumers rather than as a public good for all citizens.

• 27 Consumer movements can play an important role as a response to such structures of inequality, but C (...)

34Among the political and social orders most fundamental to China’s reform period, three are closely entangled with the social structure of risk: the authoritarian state-citizen relationship; exclusionary citizenship and discriminatory economic activities among different social groups; and spatial differentials and segmentations of reform measures and processes. First, the relationship between the authoritarian state and citizens refers to the safety threats faced by ordinary citizens as the monopolistic power of the one-party state is abused to the exclusive benefits of one-party state offices and cadres at various levels and their crony clients in business. These threats mainly take the form of mortal safety-related accidents and corporate wrongdoings against a backdrop of routinized corruption. With respect to risks knowingly or unknowingly produced by those enterprises still largely undifferentiated from the one-party state (or its cadres) or newly established in the interests of power elites, it can hardly be expected that the dictatorial state will aggressively enforce safety monitoring and control from the standpoint of all ordinary citizens.27 Also, the development-based political conversion of the national and local state leaderships often induces them to close their eyes to various risk factors produced by enterprises with heavy shares in national and local economic growth as a sort of industrial policy in effect. The reality that power inequalities lead to risk inequalities no doubt presents a serious obstacle to the long-term durability of the one-party state’s monopoly over political and social power.

• 28 See Chang Kyung-Sup (2003), “Politics of Partial Marketization: State and Class Relations in Post-M (...)
• 29 See Dorothy J. Solinger (1999), Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, (...)
• 30 This is in line with the fate of unregistered foreign workers who cannot go to a hospital even when (...)

35Second, the market economy system of the reform period has not replaced the socioeconomic discrimination structure of the earlier socialist period, but has instead added additional discriminatory components, engendering an extremely complex structure of socioeconomic discrimination. This complexity is directly manifest in the risk society dimension as well. The earlier rigid framework of socioeconomic separation and discrimination between peasants and urban workers has been further compounded into a highly multifarious class structure composed of peasants, workers of collective rural enterprises (xiangzhenqiye), rural-to-urban temporary migrant workers (nongmingong or mingong), urban workers of state and collective enterprises, private enterprises, and various types of joint venture enterprises, self-employed entrepreneurs (getihu), retired or unemployed persons, and so forth.28 This complex array of Chinese citizens are diversely subjected to multilayered discriminations and exclusions in economic activities, social security entitlements, and risk protections.29 Particularly problematic are mingong and unemployed urbanites, who are compelled to accept for sheer survival such low-wage and high-risk jobs as are avoided by others, but are often excluded from regular institutional assistances even when their risk exposure leads to a serious need for urgent rescue and long-term treatment.30 Besides, due to the largely insufficient and deformed structure of the state-arranged social security system, peasants and self-employed persons are much less likely to be properly protected from various risk factors than ordinary urban workers.

• 31 See Lee Gang-Won (2007), Desert China: Changes in China’s Land Use and Desertification (in Chinese) (...)
• 32 Actual examples include increase in mines unaccompanied by sufficient risk management and in dam co (...)

36Finally, reflecting its huge territory, population size, and magnitude and complexity of the economic and social system, China’s reform has proceeded with remarkable spatial differentials and segmentations. Accordingly, there are significant spatial differences in the variety and distribution of risks as well. Reform has been executed with wide spatial segmentations between urban and rural areas, between coastal and inland areas, and so on, with corresponding spatial segmentations in the generation and experience of risk factors. Urban and rural areas have been subjected to significant differences in general industrial, ecological and everyday life disasters. Besides, accelerated urbanization has caused pervasive ecological destructions and industrial pollutions in the quickly expanded new urban areas and their vicinities, whereas the consequently exacerbated shortage of farmlands has induced disastrously hasty land development for cropping and animal husbandry, leading to the rapid desertification of Northern China.31 The inland-coast risk differentials mostly fall on rural-urban differentials because urbanization in the reform period has been concentrated in coastal areas. In addition, the structural economic depression and harsh natural environments of the Western and Northeastern regions are not only responsible for many immediate risk factors but also help accumulate the additional risk factors involved, on the one hand, by the aggressive voluntary development efforts of the concerned local governments and communities and, on the other hand, the will of the central leadership to develop them according to the strategic needs of China as a whole.32

• 33 South China Morning Post, 28 September 2008.

39Finally, just as the quality of Korea as a complex risk society has been considered an essential manifestation of compressed modernity, China’s complex risk structure can be seen as a key reflection of its compressed modernity. In fact, China as a complex risk society more complex than Korea seems to constitute a compressed modernity more compressed than Korea’s. This of course reflects its historical particularity of transitioning from a socialist to a market system. From Russia (as the political originator of socialism) to China, socialism was once upheld as an alternative paradigm of modernity. Now, China is trying a transition to the (ultimately capitalist) market economy, which is a competiting paradigm of modernity to socialism. However, the historical reality currently experienced by China is an extremely compressed modernity in which systemic elements of both socialism and capitalism coexist and the institutions, ideologies, social relations, and in which organizations show, depending on situational conditions, both advanced and backward qualities and both rapid changes and strong inertia. A Hong Kong media source, by remarking “the contaminated powdered milk scandal halved China’s great historical achievement of spacewalk”, pointed to the paradox that China attracted the whole world’s attention in a diametrically contrasting way in terms of achieving the world’s third spacewalk by Shenzhou 7 and the melamin-added powdered milk peddled worldwide.33 This paradox is an expression of compressed modernity and reveals the essential nature of China as a complex risk society.