The concept of the working class and China's social stratification

This paper investigates the emergence and the meaning of the concept of the working class in China. The paper first traces the various meanings and the usage of the Chinese character gong工 (labour) in both ancient and modern China. Given such a background understanding, the paper discusses and compares China’s social stratification in the past and the present, with an emphasis on the continuity as well as the discontinuity of the artisan class in the ancient China and the working class of the present. It is hoped that such a sketch of the conceptual place of the working class in China’s social imaginary could help us better understand the status and the situation of the working class in Chinese society nowadays.