The Decline of Social Capital in Urban China

The chapter examines various manifestations of the concept of “social capital” in details by sorting them into three categories: individual, collective, and hybrid. Based on the examination of social capital literature, the chapter defines social capital as moral resources that lubricate cooperation among individuals for economic as well as civic reasons. Then the chapter examines social capital in contemporary urban China. The atomizing effect of market economy destroyed previous stock of social capital, but there are not corrective mechanisms to generate new social capital. Therefore urban China is experiencing the paucity of social capital.