New urban culture and the anxiety of everyday life in contemporary China

This chapter describes the social reality that the new market economy helps to dismantle as either the "traditional socialist system" or simply the "traditional system." This traditional social organization valorizes communality, hierarchy, and ideological homogeneity, all of which contribute to an impoverishment of everyday life. There is no question that in contemporary China a market economy is finally prevailing and with irresistible force is penetrating into every fiber of social life, fueling an explosive capitalist Great Leap Forward far unmatched in modern Chinese history. The complexity of the situation can hardly be understood simply in terms of the marketization of a centrally planned economy in general and ideologically controlled cultural production in particular. The emergent urban culture exhibits many recognizable features of modern metropolises in the West. Everyday urban life as normalcy seems quite successfully instituted and, for good reason, this is celebrated as a genuine cultural revolution in contemporary China.