Le mariage en Chine

Family, money, power. More than love and chance intervene in the play of influences on marriage in People's China. Whereas for a long time ideological biases and lack of testimonies concealed social reality, Chinese sources hâve become more numerous in récent years. They shed light on life and society, on the family and on marriage. The information brought together in this book, often taken from the Chinese press, shows clearly that, in China more than in other countries, marriage is a central institution, at the crossroads of individual hopes, social and public pressures. In the communist version of the classic marriage play, the principal actors are, as in the past, the parents and the more or less indiffèrent middlemen. The spouses remain secondary figures, but new rôles hâve been added for political cadres and bureaucrats who control housing and résidence permits. Through the study of marriage and family life, a preliminary social balance sheet of communism can be drawn up. It is full of nuances, and often paradoxical. The continuity will surprise those who thought that the political, social and économie turmoil that China has been going through for a half a century would make obsolète a millenary custom. Today, the families' économie interest and cultural traditions often meet. Tradition is firmly embedded in a réceptive soil. The authorities make do, and accept to défend a social ethics of which they are neither the only authors nor the only masters.