Beyond Filial Piety

Rethinking Aging and Caregiving in Contemporary East Asian Societies

Jeanne Shea, Katrina Moore, Hong Zhang, Jeanne Shea, Katrina Moore, Hong Zhang

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781789207897
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gerontology
• Index: Social Sciences

Known for a tradition of Confucian filial piety, East Asian societies have some of the oldest and most rapidly aging populations on earth. Today these societies are experiencing unprecedented social challenges to the filial tradition of adult children caring for aging parents at home. Marshalling mixed methods data, this volume explores the complexities of aging and caregiving in contemporary East Asia. Questioning romantic visions of a senior's paradise, chapters examine emerging cultural meanings of and social responses to population aging, including caregiving both for and by the elderly. Themes include traditional ideals versus contemporary realities, the role of the state, patterns of familial and non-familial care, social stratification, and intersections of caregiving and death. Drawing on ethnographic, demographic, policy, archival, and media data, the authors trace both common patterns and diverging trends across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and Korea.

PART I

Aging and Caregiving in Chinese Contexts

1 OLD-AGE SUPPORT IN RURAL CHINA

Case Study of the Jiangxiang Model for Community-Based Filial Piety

Youcai Tang and Jeanne Shea

Introduction to the Problem

WITH CHINA’S RAPID AGING AND profound social transformation, rural old-age support issues have become an issue of substantial concern in both government and academic circles. China is one of the first developing countries in the world to have become an aging society, with over 7 percent of its population aged sixty or older, the benchmark that China and many other developing countries still recognize as the threshold to old age. In China, analysts characterize the situation as “having gotten old before getting rich,” contrasting China’s situation with the trajectories of countries like Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the United States, all of which were high-income countries before becoming aging societies. In Western countries, old-age security in the form of social insurance has largely been a product of industrial development. Although China’s levels of industrialization and urbanization are continually increasing, rural dwellers still constitute a large portion of the population (42 percent) (World Bank 2018), among whom agriculture is still an important income source, although the rural economy has been diversifying over the reform era (1978–present).

In China, not only is the national proportion of the population that is elderly large and rising rapidly, but also rural areas there have both higher proportions of elderly folks and lower levels of economic development. According to China’s 2015 National 1 Percent Population Sample Survey (China National Statistics Bureau [CNSB] 2015), by 2015 China’s elderly population over sixty years old had reached a record 222 million people, accounting for 16.52 percent of the nation’s population. Compared with the national census in 2010, the elderly portion of the population increased by 2.89 percentage points. By 2015, seniors accounted for 18.47 percent of the rural population, 4.27 points higher than for urban areas. At the same time, rural areas are still much poorer than urban areas. In 2016 per capita disposable income (after-tax income) of rural households was just 12,363 yuan (about US$1,825), almost three times less than that of urban households (CNSB 2016).¹ With China’s decentralized system, this makes it difficult to establish a sufficient social security system for rural citizens, especially the elderly. Furthermore, the problem of rural old-age support is projected to deepen with the rising urban-to-rural migration of youth expected in the coming decades.

In this chapter we examine mixed-methods case study data on a famous reform-era innovation in rural old-age support based in Jiangxiang Cun, a village in Jiangsu Province. This “Jiangxiang Model” has been promoted by the national government and Chinese media as an exemplar of creative problem-solving by a village government to address the rural old-age support problem by cultivating local community resources. Our research questions include these: How was the Jiangxiang Model structured and accomplished in terms of types of supports for seniors, related revenue generation, negotiating resource distribution, and instilling filial piety (for definition, see Introduction) as a prioritized community value? How sustainable is it likely to be? What is the probable viability of scaling this model out to other rural locales?

In answering these questions, we show how the Jiangxiang Model involves reviving collective agriculture and enterprise in a new configuration in order to generate substantial public revenue to provide material support for seniors. In addition to such collective revenue generation, village leadership used central planning mechanisms to socially engineer intergenerational income distribution, and to provide free housing options for seniors not far from their children’s homes, as well as incentives for intergenerational living. Driven by the charisma of the local Communist Party secretary, all of this was aimed at generating favorable conditions for continuing certain forms of filial piety like affective bonds, warm interactions, and family harmony. The moral authority of the aging village party secretary and the village reputation for being a model filial socialist village has been used to generate additional collective revenue through values-based tourism, further underscoring the continuing relevance of filiality. There are serious questions about the local sustainability of, as well as the broader scalability of, this model, given the heavy role that the charismatic authority and managerial acumen of one individual have played in its implementation.

In the pages that follow we begin with a review of typical issues of rural old-age support in China, followed by a theoretical framing. Then we examine how Jiangxiang’s scheme was structured and accomplished, looking at the benefits provided to seniors and the mechanisms used for related resource production, negotiating elder-focused distribution, and building a village culture that prioritizes filial piety as a community value. Finally, we analyze how sustainable this mode of old-age support is likely to be in the village itself, and the probable viability of scaling this model out to other rural locations.

Theoretical Significance

This chapter connects with Ikels’s (2004) remarks about the “role of state policy” in supporting, shaping, or even undercutting “the practice of filial piety” (12). Ikels wrote that earlier East Asian emphasis on the filial duty to obey parents and produce descendants has been “nearly completely overshadowed by the emphasis on supporting elderly parents” (12) as obedience to the state, gender equity, population control, and rapid modernization became priorities in China. Ikels noted the importance of “housing policy [in] family decisions about the relative merits of coresidence” with aged parents (14). In addition, she observed that “governmental decisions about whether, when, and how much they will encourage the development of programs and services that facilitate or complement family caregiving can be absolutely critical in determining how successfully families manage their filial responsibilities” (14). Likewise, in the case we will describe, village government is using local policy and programs to both support and transform filial practices of resident families through reform-era neo-collectivist resource production, civil engineering, redistribution, and redefinition of community values and their manifestations.

This chapter also connects with scholarly literature on post-socialism and the interplay, continuity, and discontinuity of market and collectivist ideologies and practices in post-socialist societies (Petrovici 2015). In China’s case we have a society that characterizes itself as based on market socialism or “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Although China continues to describe itself as socialist, as early as the 1980s and 1990s many non-socialist states and territories including Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan had far more redistributive systems of social welfare than China proper. While the overarching narrative of reform-era China has embraced the positives of market reform, there is also a storyline about the negative side effects, and losses with rising individualism and decline in collectivism. While stories abound of villages that avoided penury by secretly contracting land to individual households during Maoist times, this chapter relays a different, less common story about a village that bucked the de-collectivization trend and did a partial re-collectivization to good effect. It also relates to literature on the interplay between welfare states and the modern capitalist economies within which they are embedded (Polese, Morris, and Kovacs 2015) and on the promotion of the role of community in supporting social welfare efforts (Muehlbach 2012). It also engages the theme of regional inequality in old-age support in countries such as China with decentralized social welfare systems (Liu and Sun 2016). It echoes Sokolovsky’s (2009) point that, rather than a choice of family or state, analysts should focus on how the family, community, and state interact with each other around eldercare. Likewise, it is not a case of either the market or collectivist efforts as superior, but of how the two coexisting forces may be used together to best support seniors under different circumstances.

Finally, the analysis connects with Weber’s (1968) classic research on charisma and institution building and its relation to social transformation. According to Eisenstadt (1968: xxxii), Weber saw the path of social transformation as “greatly dependent not only on the objective forces of the market or of production but on a charismatic reformulation of the meaning of economic activities.” Weber found charismatic leaders and the new answers to social problems that they offered to be pivotal at times of uncertainty when people were seeking new patterns of meaning and order (xxxii). This chapter also joins research on the role of Communist Party secretaries in navigating the transition from Mao to market, and the tensions between national policies and local conditions in reform-era China (Huang 1989).

Methods

This is a mixed-methods oral history case study carried out in Jiangxiang Village from 2008–17. Methods used include village records review, a questionnaire-based survey of villagers, key informant interviews with village leaders, years of participant observation in the village, and home visits and interviews with villagers and village seniors. The first author, Tang, is a sociologist and a native of China with reading proficiency in English. The second author, Shea, is an anthropologist and an American fluent in Chinese. The research progressed through years of follow-up research, involving archival, qualitative, and quantitative data. Shea is interested in rural “models” for senior support, and conducted participant observation and interviews in the village in summer 2014.

All study participants were informed of our intentions to conduct scholarly research and publish about their village. As an oral history case study, the name and location of the village were kept true to life. The real name of the party secretary was used as a public figure wishing to be credited, in accordance with the American Anthropological Association (AAA 2012) code of ethics. No real names are used for ordinary villagers or anyone not wishing to be named. For human subjects purposes, the research was approved by the IRB of the University of Vermont.

Validity was strengthened through building strong long-term rapport and data triangulation. Data was collected from multiple different villagers, including a variety of local leaders and ordinary residents, at many different points in time over a decade. Multiple data collection methods were used. This allowed us to compare what was recorded in village records, what people reported in surveys, what people said in casual conversations and interviews, and what people said and did in different participant observation situations.

Following data collection, the authors discussed the data in relation to this volume, and the first author wrote a draft in Chinese. The second author translated the draft and revised and added to the manuscript, orienting the argument toward our intended audience, and adding national context, historical background, additional theory, and references.

Old-Age Support in Rural China: Historical Background and Patterns of Social Change

Similar to the situation today, during the planned economy era of Maoist China (1949–76) prior to the market reforms, in rural areas self-reliance through work and familial assistance were the primary ways of getting by in old age. Similar to today, accessing governmental old-age support was much more difficult in rural as compared with urban areas, with far leaner provisions if that support was available at all. Urban areas had both non-means-based support for the aged via government employers and state-owned enterprises called “work units” and needs-based elder support via neighborhood-based street committees for those who had never been employed and who had no family and no capacity for self-support. In contrast, rural areas only had means-tested support for older adults (Wu et al. 2005). Each village was organized into an agricultural commune or collective composed of production teams, rather than work units. There were no retirement or pensions for rural dwellers who simply stopped working to then be supported by their families when they could work no more. Primary reliance on familial support and care was broadly feasible then due to “restricted geographic mobility, large families living in close proximity, relatively flexible work demands, and low consumption norms” (Shea 2019: 336). For those few childless infirm elders with no work ability, no family support, and no financial resources (known as the “three no’s seniors”), the village collective was expected under the central-government’s “five guarantees” policy to find a way to provide basic food, clothing, shelter, health care, and burial expenses (Lu et al. 2017; State Council of the People’s Republic of China, Information Office [SCPRCIO] 2004; Urio 2010). Rudimentary health care was provided through cooperative medical services to which all villagers of any age or means had access.

During this period, the main mode of resource production to support rural seniors without adequate familial support was collective agriculture. All land was owned by the state and all goods and revenue produced through villagers’ labor were owned by the village collective, with a portion set aside to support “three no’s” seniors. While perverse incentives, policy missteps, and political turmoil contributed to low productivity and very lean times, a minimal level of subsistence was offered for a large portion of the Maoist period excepting famine times to extremely needy rural elders who passed the strict means testing.

The market reforms starting in 1978 two years after Mao’s death brought both rapid economic development and increasing insecurity for rural seniors. Under the new nationwide household responsibility system, the rur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Text and Transliteration
• Introduction
• PART I. Aging and Caregiving in Chinese Contexts
• PART II. Aging and Caregiving in Japanese Contexts
• PART III. Aging and Caregiving in Korean Contexts
• Conclusion. Contemporary Trends in and Future Directions for Aging and Caregiving in East Asian Societies
• Index