Farmers in Chunhua County, Shaanxi Province sell apples to fruit dealers for transport to cities across the country. Photo: PROVIDED TO CSST

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The family, as an important carrier of Chinese social culture and traditional ethics, has played a foundational role in shaping social life and the development of the Chinese nation. Familialism is the cultural foundation for social interactions among Chinese people and has been for thousands of years. Research on rural familialism and the evolution of this concept has become a significant research topic for rural vitalization and social and cultural changes.

Transformation of values

During the late 20th century, the reform and opening up, along with marketization, led to a rise in individualism, legitimizing the pursuit of personal interests. As a result, familialism has gradually narrowed its scope and modernized rural families prioritize private lives centered on nuclear families. Within this trend, the family remains the basic unit for rural households to cope with the pressures of modernity. 

Throughout this transformation, two models of familialism have emerged: “downward familialism,” which heavily favors reserving resources for the next generation, and “new familialism,” which includes the process of individualization, greater personal rights, and more personal agency within family life. In this model, however, when individuals encounter significant obstacles in life, the family remains the only reliable resource for problem-solving, reinforcing intergenerational dependence and inheritance within families, and restoring important social functions to family life. Extant research often focuses on internal family dynamics, with less attention paid to the social implications of cultural transformation. Under the influence of marketization and familialism, Chinese farmers have undergone noticeable value transformations in both family and social interactions.

Generally speaking, familialism encompasses a cultural and ethical view that integrates family lifestyles, member relationships, and values. It emphasizes the family’s central role in economic, political, and social life, where the family serves as the basic unit of economic production, the organizational foundation of political life, and a regulatory mechanism for social relationships and value beliefs. 

To understand familialism more deeply, its historic and cultural context must first be understood. First, Confucian ethics played a crucial role in traditional society, significantly shaping Chinese family and social life. Second, in rural communities, kinship networks and nuclear families still maintain a dynamic balance, competing and cooperating, with structural differences across different rural regions. Third, after the reform and opening up, rural society in China experienced rapid and profound market transformations, deeply affecting the traditional family culture and weakening the influence of patriarchal authority.

Case study

In the late 1980s, an apple cultivating town in Chunhua County, within Shaanxi Province’s Guanzhong region, experienced a unique developmental opportunity as their fruit was marketed throughout the country. However, when the market became saturated, profits declined year-on-year, and farmers gradually abandoned the agricultural sector. Under the influence of commodified agriculture, local farms and orchards became deeply embedded in the market process, resulting in profound changes to social interactions and family life of local farmers.

Market forces disrupted traditional village social orders as farmers gained independence but shifted their dependencies from interpersonal relationships to material ties. The local culture of old interpersonal relationships and community solidarity gradually weakened as competitive individualism rose and locals adapted to new circumstances. Mutual reciprocity became unstable as the moral obligation of “mutual responsibility” often hinged on private family interests. When these interests could be secured independently, or were perceived as threatened by others, reciprocity and altruism quickly dissipated. As the apple industry flourished, profits increased, allowing farmers to resolve many production and life issues through market transactions, leading to a break from traditional bonds and a rational evaluation of personal gains and losses.

While marketization seems to have directly caused the collapse of the reciprocity system, the root cause was the disintegration of social ties and moral customs inherited from past generations. The rise of open market transactions enhanced mutual benefits among farmers, curbing speculative behaviors and fostering new contractual forms of cooperation. Market mechanisms inspired new collaborations as individual farmers strove to meet developmental goals.

However, as the local industry transitioned from prosperity to decline, cooperation solely based on market transactions was limited. In pursuit of personal gain, individuals prioritized competition over collaboration, often overlooking the potential benefits of long-term partnerships. The traditional culture of cooperation eroded under the pressure of competitive market dynamics, giving way to a competitive discourse centered on individuals and their nuclear families. In daily life, competitive narratives overshadowed the need for cooperation; and while contractual relationships emerged, they did not fully develop. The result was a decline in reciprocal social ties alongside underdeveloped modern contractual arrangements.

Under the influence of the highly competitive apple industry market characteristics, when disputes escalated into conflicts, neighborhood relations deteriorated sharply, even close friendships were strained by disagreements over professional interests. The complex and risky market environment forced farmers to narrow their social circles to core families, further reinforcing traditional familialism in economic practices. As community values waned, the growth of new familialism encouraged farmers to prioritize their core family interests, limiting the scope and depth of social interactions. Although market mechanisms had the potential to widen social networks, under the influence of familialism, others in the market were often viewed as untrustworthy tools for economic exchange, thereby constraining the potential social advancements brought by the market.

In the early years of the reform and opening up, developmentalist values began to impact traditional rural society, as some individuals were successful in apple cultivation and used their earnings to improve their living conditions. This naturally drew the attention of village members, who looked on with envy, prompting many to imitate their business models and engage in similar agricultural activities. Essentially, the cultural standards of developmentalism infiltrated the village’s social evaluation system, gradually becoming dominant.

In an acquaintance society, individuals who publicly exhibited selfish motives quickly faced criticism, and were reprimanded for “not knowing how to interact” as they encroached upon the interests or offended others. This could lead to social ostracism or even defamation, creating significant public pressure for rural residents. How was this pressure alleviated over time? Why do locals now acknowledge the legitimacy of personal self-interest? By leveraging the family structure, individuals justified their competitive profit-seeking activities, which allowed for a degree of understanding of their motives and significantly reduced the accompanying moral censure.

New dynamics

Under the influence of developmental discourses and market mechanisms, traditional familialism’s “downward” resource allocation methods have intensified. While the interests of the older generation may appear compromised, their living standards have improved through market mechanisms, leading to a modern family value system that emphasizes coordinated and enhanced benefits. Existing academic research in China has highlighted the significant trend of downward resource allocation within rural families—while also emphasizing direct intergenerational cooperation among three generations.

In traditional rural society, resources are limited, and for farmers the primary goal is to ensure the continuation of their lineage, followed by the pursuit of family honor. However, in the contemporary context of marketization and modernization, as resources become more abundant, the pursuit of wealth has been amplified. Consequently, farmers are increasingly allocating more resources towards childrearing, focusing not only on lineage continuation but also on helping their children advance beyond rural life, thus contributing to the overall development of the family.

Intense social competition driven by marketization and individualization has led to overly high expectations for family members’ development, imposing greater pressure on the younger generation. Overly ambitious goals can strain familial relationships, potentially triggering moral crises, such as parents pressuring children into marriage or structural problems many migrant parents face while trying to enroll their children in urban schools. Achieving developmental goals relies heavily on the accumulation of wealth, and the relatively low income in rural areas compels family members to leave their hometowns, thereby increasing the physical distance between them. This makes it challenging to maintain close family relationships, and under developmental pressure, familial interactions may face crises.

The advancement of market mechanisms has liberated traditional rural society from many coercive and restrictive demands regarding familial relationships, allowing for limited freedom and individuality among family members. In the pursuit of developmental goals, elderly family members and their children collaborate, directing economic resources toward the grandchildren to support the family’s overall objectives. Although “downward familialism” may seem to tear down traditional moral structures, from the viewpoint of family members, the coordination and symbiosis of interests between elders and younger generations creates a new equilibrium within the family’s value framework.

Conclusion

Rural society, dominated by the familialism culture, highly prioritizes the core family’s interests and has entrenched a habitual culture of comparison. Farmers hope that their families or family members are “successful” by measures of social comparison and strive to be the “better people.” Parents must work hard and constantly sacrifice for their children so that children are on the right path to success. Under the influence of familialism, people actively pursue comparative advantages over other families, so in social interactions, they tend to treat each other as competitors to surpass, rather than community members to support. Comparison between neighboring families has a more profound impact on farmers. Those who can attain these social markings of family success are considered worthy of respect, while those who cannot are often considered failures.

Interactions between farmers are filled with instrumental utilization and value comparison. Social interactions have become a serious social and psychological burden for farmers. The psychological and social distance between farmers continues to widen, and rural society has therefore encountered a crisis of moral indifference. The widening psychological and social chasm between farmers makes it difficult to cultivate social trust in the countryside, which obstructs social cooperation and, consequently, stalls economic development.

Tian Yipeng (professor) and Kou Kailiang are from the School of Philosophy and Sociology at Jilin University.

Edited by YANG XUE