Transcending Boundaries: Zhejiangcun: The Story of a Migrant Village in Beijing (review)

This book is about Zhejiang Village (Zhejiangcun), which is located in the Fengtai district in the south of Beijing municipality and is the largest migrant settlement in Beijing-and for that matter in any Chinese city. Most of the migrants in Zhe-jiang Village are from Wenzhou Prefecture in Zhejiang Province.¹ Beginning with six families in 1984, the population of Zhejiang Village has grown to more than 100,000 migrants since the late 1990s. The migrant settlement's rapid growth, its success as a center of entrepreneurial activity and clothing production, and its resilience against periodic "cleanup campaigns" by the government have continued to fascinate scholars and journalists in and outside China. At least two English-language books (Solinger 1999; Zhang 2001) and a number of articles (e.g.,Liu and Liang 1997; Ma and Xiang 1998) have been published, drawing heavily on Zhejiang Village. A recently published Chinese-language book (Chen and Liu 2005) again focuses on the processes by which Wenzhou migrants in Zhejiang Village became successful entrepreneurs.

Xiang Biao is among the first scholars to have studied Zhejiang Village systematically and in great depth. He began his research in the early 1990s, while a student in the Department of Sociology at Beijing University. He then obtained a Masters degree from Beijing University and a Ph.D. in social nthropology from the University of Oxford, and has held research appointments at the National University of Singapore and at COMPAS (Centre on Migration, Policy and Society) at Oxford. In 2000, Xiang published Kuayue bianjie de shequ and four years later its translated version, Transcending Boundaries. The latter is one quarter the length of the former, and is therefore an abridged English version rather than a full-length translation of the original book.

This book is structured as a historical account of Zhejiang Village. In the introductory chapter, Xiang outlines the area of study and the conceptual argument that connections (guanxi) and ties (xi) via social and business networks are the key to understanding how migrants have thrived and overcome state-imposed constraints. The next seven chapters are arranged chronologically for the period from 1984 to 1995. Chapter . describes how the pioneering Wenzhou migrants began in 1984 to carve out an economic niche in Zhejiang Village. Xiang argues that it was a continuation of earlier migrations that began during the Cultural Revolution, rather than the reform policies of the late 1970s, as is widely believed, that provided the impetus for Wenzhou migrants to go to Beijing. He shows that by evading state authorities and finding loopholes in the system, migrants were one step ahead of policy and managed to invent opportunities for themselves. Using first-person narratives from the pioneering migrants, Xiang illustrates how migrants learned how to make clothes by buying other clothes and taking them apart, how the openness of business activities benefited all, and how labor from home villages was recruited to boost production.

Chapter 2 focuses on the period 1986-1988, when Wenzhou migrants got "a foot in the door" (p. 47) by renting counter space in state-owned stores to sell clothes. This is another example of how migrants took advantage of loopholes in state policies, which made it possible for shops to circumvent regulations governing economic activity. Similarly, the ineffectiveness of housing registrations allowed migrants to come in large numbers and rent houses from local residents. By 1986, the number of migrants in Zhejiang Village had reached twelve thousand and was almost equal to the number of local residents.

Chapter 3 describes the breakthrough achieved by Wenzhou migrants between 1988 and 1992 with the production of leather jackets not only for the domestic market but also for traders from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Xiang examines new business practices, including the preordering of supplies and subcontracting, which were developed by migrants to make the most of a burgeoning market demand. The openness of the...