ABSTRACT
Since mainland China started its economic reform and adopted an open-door policy in 1978, there has been a huge influx of labour from rural areas into the coastal cities. Classical urban sociologist Louis Wirth stressed the broad implications of the statement ‘ urbanism is a way of life ’. The perspectives of classical urban sociology help us to realize the alienation among people subject to the forces of a monetary economy in a modern metropolis. The breaking of social ties between rural society and the metropolis has been a major topic of classical sociology. The social network school underlines the critical role of the network in social integration and mobility. The main concerns of the ‘factory regime’ concept are workers’ various social relations in direct production activities in the workplace, as well as ‘workplace politics’ that evolved around ‘labour control’.
