ABSTRACT
Utilising the combination modes thesis, it is proposed that patrilineal kinship organisation was not challenged fully by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which maintained the lineage/ family/household as a economic unit of production impeding the transformation to an egalitarian mode of kinship. Daughters as in the Malaysian case study, were the most dispensable members of the household as they would be lost eventually in marriage. While age and sex stratification existed within the lineage family, the focus of the individual centered on the collectivity. Wolf and Johnson argue that the CCP emphasised production drives and that the 1934 Marriage Law, women's associations and other reforms to emancipate women were de-emphasised in reality. The Chinese government administration was not anti-family, rather it attempted to weaken the power of the landlord stratum without destroying the social and economic functions of the domestic unit such as production, consumption and care of the elderly.
