ABSTRACT
It is common knowledge that China has been undergoing rapid changes since the beginning of its economic reforms in the 1980s. These changes are mostly the result of the close link between the economic system and the social organization. The long period of a centralized planned economic system has caused China to exhibit many characteristics of a redistribution society. In contrast to the society with a market economy, the redistribution society dismisses the basic market principles and ignores the role of the market in the process of preliminary distribution of social resources. Instead, in an effort to achieve a justified social goal, this sort of society emphasizes the role of the state in controlling all social production resources, and advocates highly centralized production and distribution procedures. Since China completed its socialist reform in 1956, the Chinese economic system has been developed as the planned economic model, with the result that the state directly controls the country’s economic activities and dynamics. The social structure has also been changed along with the economic system. As a result, governments at all levels directly run all kinds of industries, practically control all socio-economic resources, and undertake all social responsibilities. The power of the government has increasingly penetrated into society. The overwhelming presence of state power has become one of the most important features of the economic redistribution system in China. Within this system, there has been little or no space for the development of civil society.
