Study on Social Transformation in Contemporary China: From the Perspective of Structural Holes

Abstract

Since 1978, China's reform and opening up have led to the rapid development, the entire society presents a great historic change, which is known as the "China miracle". The market-oriented path selected by contemporary China not only brings the change of the economic operation mode, but also the re-integration of the traditional interest structure. Compared with the former socialist countries and western countries, Chinese social transformation, both in the real structural restriction condition and the development logic, has obvious uniqueness. The process and characteristics of social transformation in contemporary China are studied in the paper. The social transformation of China is mainly embodied in the following changes: from planned economy to market economy, from agricultural (rural) society to industrial (city) society, from closed society to open society, from ethics society to legal society, from state monopoly to social participation, from nationalization to internationalization, and from single culture to multiculturalism, etc.. The social transformation in China on the basis of economic system transformation is not only the change in the social stratification structure, but also the structural change of city population, social culture and other social ideology. Therefore, the social transformation of China is a comprehensive, holistic social structure transformation on various aspects of society, national ideology, culture, political and psychological revolution. The social transformation of China reflects the following characteristics:(1)the combination of mandatory and inductive power, (2) the comprehensive change of social structure, and(3)the flat management in social structure. According to the analysis of the structural holes theory, since structural holes is more advantageous to enhance the competitive advantage of players and the value of the entire network, individuals or organizations in the society must establish "structural holes" as many as possible, which implies extensive connection with individuals or groups who are not directly linked with them. By doing this, the players can obtain information and control advantage, and develop the advantage in the competition. Chinese traditional social relations based on family structure obviously lack the natural advantage of building structural holes, so it is necessary to transform into the social relations based on individual as the center. The structural holes theory indicates that the chance of acquiring new information depends on the weak tie between the player and his local network. Most local information in the network is widely shared, and the new information usually comes from non-repeating contact. The player must communicate with external groups to seek larger development opportunities, but the traditional family structure has hampered the external continuous information exchange, which is difficult to adapt to the development of social transformation, Chinese traditional social relations based on family structure will be resolved gradually. Contemporary social transformation in China provides an opportunity for the change of traditional family structure, and the deconstruction of traditional family structure in turn promotes the transformation of the society, and create conditions of breaking the closed boundaries for the individual and organization in the Chinese social structure. With the deepening of social transformation, great changes have taken place in Chinese traditional family structure and social relations, which is characterized by the performance of family culture, urbanization process and population structure. The formation of structural holes in Chinese social networks is increased by population frequent flow, interpersonal expansion and the conversion from closed lifestyle to open-type lifestyle. This paper shows that the social transformation in China has a great impact on traditional family structure formation, and disintegration and reconstruction of the traditional family structure also change the social relations and social interest distribution. In this paper, the structural holes theory is not used to analyze the operation of social capital as usual, but used to study the social transformation as a new attempt. Therefore, the discussion will contribute to understand the problems faced by social transformation, the direction of the institutionalization and its social base in China from a new perspective.