With a population of now over 1.3 billion people, any change in China’s social environment is bound to have dramatic impact. The China Society Yearbook (2006) provides analysis of and commentary on social issues in contemporary China, broken down into chapters on different aspects of China’s social development, including change in social structure, population growth, employment, standard of living and education. The Yearbook provides detailed insight into the vast changes in Chinese society since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China and the Mao period, the effects of the country’s ongoing reform and liberalization process on its social makeup, the main aims of the 11th Five-Year Plan, and the daunting problems that China’s economic and social planners face as their country’s economy adapts to a free market system, while raising the standard of living and generating employment for its burgeoning work force.

Also included are in-depth comparisons of the country’s different social groups, including its 120 million migrant workers, as well as descriptions of social development in different areas of China’s vast hinterland, where economic development varies greatly from that of the economically and socially upwardly-mobile coastal crescent. Compiled and edited by top sociologists of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), this collection of current research and analysis represents some of the most pioneering and influential articles by social science scholars in the People’s Republic of China.