State and Civil Society: The Chinese Perspective

State and Civil Society The Chinese Perspective

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Series on Developing China — Translated Research from China Series Editor: Deng Zhenglai (Fudan University, China)

Published: Vol. 1

China’s Economy: Rural Reform and Agricultural Development edited by Deng Zhenglai

Vol. 2

State and Civil Society: The Chinese Perspective edited by Deng Zhenglai

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SERIES ON DEVELOPING CHINA Tr a n s l a t e d R e s e a r c h f r o m C h i n a

2

State and Civil Society The Chinese Perspective

Editor

Deng Zhenglai Fudan University, China

World Scientific NEW JERSEY

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LONDON

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BEIJING

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TA I P E I

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CHENNAI

8/25/10 3:43 PM

Published by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224 USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601 UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE

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Series on Developing China — Translated Research from China – Vol. 2 STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY The Chinese Perspective Copyright © 2011 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.

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ISBN-13 978-981-4313-57-5 ISBN-10 981-4313-57-2

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Contents

Chief Editor

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List of Contributors

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Series on Developing China — Translated Research from China Editorial Committee

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Preface Paying Attention to Chinese Interpretations Pan Shiwei Introduction Academic Inquiries into the “Chinese Success Story” Deng Zhenglai Chapters Part I Civil Society in China: A Theoretical Reflection The Construction of the Chinese Civil Society Deng Zhenglai, Jing Yuejin “Civil Society” in Modern China Studies: Methodology and Limitations Yang Nianqun v

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Civil Society in China: Concepts, Classification and Institutional Environment Yu Keping

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Graduated Control: Research on State-Society Relationship in Contemporary Mainland China Kang Xiaoguang, Han Heng

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Evolution of Interactive Relationships among Chinese State, Civil Ruling Elites and Commoners before and after the Reform Sun Liping Part II A Historical Research on Civil Society “State and Society” in Modern China: Research Review and Reflection Zhu Ying

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The Ideas of Civil Society in Mainland China and Taiwan, 1986–92 He Baogang

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Public Sphere in Neoteric China: Forms, Functions and Self-Understandings — A Case Study of Shanghai Xu Jilin

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Training Ground for Democracy: Associational Life in China Wang Shaoguang, He Jianyu

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Chinese Rural Township Government: A Sequence of the Expansive Moments of the State in History Wang Mingming

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Part III The Modern Development of Civil Society in China The Wenzhou Model of China’s Civil Society Zhou Jun, Yu Jianxing

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Towards a Corporatist Development of Civil Society in China: Enabling State and Mutual Empowerment between State and Society Edward Gu

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From Major Community Standard to Civil Society: A Rethinking of Traditional China and Its Modernization 405 Qin Hui Index

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Chief Editor

Deng Zhenglai is Distinguished Professor of Fudan University and Dean of Fudan Institute of Advanced Study in Social Sciences (IAS-Fudan), Shanghai, P. R. China. He supervises PhD students in jurisprudence and political theory. He is the editor-in-chief of Fudan Journal of The Humanities and Social Sciences and China Social Sciences Quarterly. He holds honorary professorships at a number of Chinese universities. Deng’s research interests include legal philosophy, political philosophy and an interdisciplinary study in humanities and social sciences. He has published nearly 20 soleauthored books, some 20 translated books and a number of edited books. His works include: State and Society: China’s Civil Society (1997, Sichuan); Research and Reflections: Intellectual Integrity of China’s Social Sciences (1998, Liaoning); Freedom and Order: Hayek on Social Theories (1998, Jiangxi); Hayek on Legal Philosophy (2002, China University of Political Science and Law); China’s Jurisprudence: Where to Go? (2006, Commercial Press).

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List of Contributors

Deng Zhenglai, Distinguished Professor of Political Philosophy, Dean of Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences (IAS-Fudan) and Director of Contemporary China Research Center (CCRC) at Fudan University, Shanghai, P. R. China. His main research fields include: political philosophy, jurisprudence, social theory. Edward Gu (Gu Xin), Professor of Social Policy, School of Government, Peking University, Beijing, P. R. China. His main research fields include: social policy, health policy, labor relations, civil society and state-society relations. Han Heng, Lecturer, School of Public Administration, Zhengzhou University, P. R. China. His main research fields include: trade union and ecoenvironmental science. He Baogang, Professor and Chair in International Studies, School of International and Political Studies, University of Deakin, Australia. His main research fields include: civil society, democratization, and deliberative democracy. He Jianyu, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Government and Public Administration, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His primary research interest is civil society. Jing Yuejin, Professor, Department of Politics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China. His main research fields include: political theory, political sociology and political transformation in contemporary China. xi

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Kang Xiaoguang, Professor, School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Director of NGO Research Institute, Renmin University of China, P. R. China. His main research fields include: poverty, state-society relations, political development and political stability. Qin Hui, Professor, Department of History, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China. His main research fields include: the economic history of traditional China, the history of peasantry, and the history of peasants’ wars. Sun Liping, Professor, Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China. His primary research interest is social modernization. Wang Mingming, Professor of Anthropology, Research Institute of Sociology and Anthropology, Peking University, P. R. China and an advisor of the academic editorial board of Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly. His main research fields include: anthropology and sociology. Wang Shaoguang, Chair Professor, Department of Government and Public Administration, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Chief Editor of the China Review. His main research fields include: political economy, comparative politics, fiscal politics, democratization, and economic and political development in former socialist countries and East Asian countries. Xu Jilin, Professor of History, Simian Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities, East China Normal University, P. R. China. His main research fields include: social democracy, history of political thoughts and studies on the intellectual community in modern China. Yang Nianqun, Professor of History, Institute of Qing History, Renmin University of China, P. R. China. His publications include Localization of Confucianism and Dual Orientations of Intellectual Group’s Personality in Modern China, Mysticism of Buddhism: Logical Starting Point of Da Tong Shu etc. His main research fields include: history, Confucianism and localization. Yu Jianxing, Director of Institute for the Development of Civil Society (ICSD), Zhejiang University, P. R. China. His main research fields include: social policy, local governance and civil organizations. xii

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Yu Keping, Vice Chairman of Central Compilation and Translation Bureau and Director of China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics (CCCPE), Beijing, P. R. China. His main research fields include: comparative politics, political philosophy, globalization, and civil society. Zhou Jun, Lecturer, Institute for the Development of Civil Society (ICSD), Zhejiang University, P. R. China. Her main research fields include: global civil society, state and society relations. Zhu Ying, Professor, Institute of Chinese Modern History, Central China Normal University, P. R. China. His primary research interest is the socioeconomic history of modern China.

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Series on Developing China — Translated Research from China Editorial Committee

Advisors Wang Zhongwei: CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee Qin Shaode: Fudan University

Director Pan Shiwei: CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee

Deputy Directors Deng Zhenglai: Fudan University Chen Xin: Shanghai Century Publishing Company Ltd.

Editorial Committee Members Chen Jiaming: Xiamen University Chen Jiaying: Capital Normal University Chen Sihe: Fudan University Fan Gang: China Reform Foundation Fang Liufang: China University of Political Science and Law Gao Yi: Peking University Guo Qiyong: Wuhan University He Huaihong: Peking University He Qinhua: East China University of Political Science and Law xv

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Hu Jingbei: Tongji University Jiang Yihua: Fudan University Li Qiang: Tsinghua University Lin Shangli: Fudan University Liu Kang: Shanghai Jiao Tong University Liu Qingping: Fudan University Liu Shijun: CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee Ma Min: Huazhong Normal University Mao Shoulong: Renmin University of China Qin Hui: Tsinghua University Qin Yaqing: China Foreign Affairs University Sang Yucheng: Fudan University Shen Dingli: Fudan University Shen Zhihua: East China Normal University Shi Jinchuan: Zhejiang University Shi Yinhong: Renmin University of China Sun Liping: Tsinghua University Sun Zhouxing: Tongji University Tong Shijun: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Wang Hui: Tsinghua University Wang Yuechuan: Peking University Wei Sen: Fudan University Xu Jilin: East China Normal University Xu Xianming: Shandong University Xu Yong: Huazhong Normal University Xu Zhangrun: Tsinghua University Yang Nianqun: Renmin University of China Yao Yang: Peking University Yu Keping: Central Compilation and Translation Bureau Zhang Jun: Fudan University Zhang Shuguang: Academic Committee of Beijing Unirule Institute of Economics Zhang Weiying: Peking University Zhang Wenxian: Jilin University Zhang Xiaojin: Tsinghua University Zhou Guoping: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

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Preface Paying Attention to Chinese Interpretations Pan Shiwei

The name of this series, “A Developing China”, is plain and simple, but giving some thought to its implications yields three levels of meaning. The first is that China is a developing country. Over the course of the modern period, because of the constrictions imposed from the outside by imperialism and the internal corruptions of feudalism, China’s economy, politics, culture and social development all lagged behind, with the result that the country remained underdeveloped for a substantial period of time, becoming, in fact, the world’s largest developing nation. Second, China is still at its primary stage of socialism. Owing to the combination of a number of internal and external factors, China did not evolve along the traditional path of capitalism, choosing instead a non-capitalist form of development, a determination made both by its people and by history. The socialist path, however, can only be experimental in nature, and is marked by considerable uncertainty in the setting of its goals, the design of its institutions, its growth approaches and its operational mechanisms. In all of these things we can see the symptoms of a country still in the process of development. Third is the character of a still developing social science. As far as the understanding and grasp of the rules of China’s development toward modernization is concerned, Chinese social science can only deepen its awareness through a process of constant exploration and trial and error, and can only mature via repeated reflection upon and synthesis of new research. Regarding a move toward a spirit of autonomy, Chinese social science is in pursuit of a comprehensive method arising out of a gradual amalgamation of Western academic learning, Chinese cultural heritage and theoretical innovation of xvii

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Marxism. Based upon the three considerations outlined above, using the idea of “a developing China” to describe and define contemporary China is clearly an apt and precise reading. The gathering speed of China’s development, the growing intensity of its transformation, and the ever more evident achievements of its modernization over the past 30 years have attracted a good deal of interest. Like a huge laboratory, China and its development represent a comprehensive process of transformation combining economic growth, political stability, social growth, cultural maturation, and a high level of diplomatic activity. In terms of economics, China has sustained an annual rate of GDP growth of over nine percent, with GDP having jumped to the third largest in the world, and it has grown into an important contributor of industrial products to the world’s trading system. Politically, this country with a huge population and a vast area has been able to maintain a commendable stability; there has been a firm drive toward putting democracy into action; the rule of law has been implemented with great perseverance and leadership by the Communist Party has been very effectively improved. Socially, the issue of the livelihood of the people has always been at the head of the agenda; the pursuit of social justice and equality has never been set aside and there has been great effort to confine the social costs of development to as small an area as possible; the social welfare system as they have accumulated has been continually improved, and non-governmental organizations for public welfare have flourished. Culturally, the creation and innovation of a mainstream ideology has continued apace and in an environment that is profoundly changing, people’s intellectual and spiritual worlds increasingly show an essential soundness; the provision of the products of public culture grows richer by the day, and the spread of education, literature and the arts, and science has greatly increased. In diplomacy our essential premise has been to maintain an open stance and to pursue an independent, autonomous and peaceful foreign policy; we pay careful attention to relations among the major powers, as well as to links with our neighbors, and we participate actively in all matters global; we strive to contribute as we should to making adjustments to the international political situation and toward economic globalization. All of these factors indicate that China provides a model case in development that is rare in the contemporary world, regardless of whether one considers development in its totality, its

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sustainability, or its depth. As a result, it is only natural that a developing China has attracted increasing curiosity and more favorable opinion. One consequence of China’s rapid development is that people inevitably wish to take their thoughts about this issue one step further, which brings in its wake a whole series of perplexities. Has China’s development been merely the result of a series of fortuitous circumstances, or is it comprised of historical rationality and a certain objective necessity? Has China’s development been an isolated case that cannot be emulated, or can it function as a universal reference for other developing countries? Is China’s development merely an uncomplicated duplication of the developed nations of the West, or is it a unique creation that has at once assimilated such achievements of human civilization as market economics and combined them with indigenous conditions? Has China’s development been nothing more than a series of hasty and muddled practical efforts that have nonetheless brought about significant results, or will it gradually take shape as an exemplary developmental model? Is China’s development only a single charge forward, or will it be able to build on its current momentum to achieve sustained progress over a longer duration? Is China’s development only a matter of material wealth, the pursuit of profit and economic growth, or does it embody unique Chinese views on development, social order, human well-being and the world as a whole? All such questions represent unavoidable and serious challenges to those people objectively observing Chinese development. Any accurate response to these questions cannot be based only on simple common sense, but requires the assistance and support of the humanities and the social sciences. Scholars active in such fields as economics, political science, sociology and law need to take their responsibilities seriously. We can take comfort, however, from the fact that Chinese humanists and social scientists have neither absented themselves from this great and profound transformation nor lost their way during the course of this intensely dramatic restructuring — they have kept apace with the times and of events. The work of Chinese scholars of the humanities and the social sciences over the past decades can be encapsulated within the several categories listed below. First, they have engaged in meaningful analysis of both the real world and the national situation. Whether in the face of the difficult beginning days of China’s reform and opening-up or in regard to the

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specific developmental steps or changes that followed, in order to sort out the principal contradictions of each stage or field, Chinese scholars have all paid close attention to analyzing both the contemporary international environment and the practicalities of the domestic situation. With an issueoriented approach, they illuminated the full dimensions of the bottlenecks during the course of reform such that they gained a full range of information and source materials for policy makers. Second, they have developed specialized planning of the programs and the ways and means of reform. Although the pace of intensity of the Chinese reform and opening-up proceeded according to both its own rhythm and its own program, no one can deny its wide range and comprehensiveness. From economics to politics, from culture to society, hundreds and thousands of important changes took place in succession, and the survival and success rate of all of these reforms was exceptionally high. One of the main reasons for this was the development of carefully thought out as well as highly detailed contingency plans, on which Chinese scholars expended a good deal of painful intellectual labor. Almost every anticipated program required detailed thinking and preparations because of the necessity and urgency of each item on the agenda, tasks implicit in the general goal, key specific points to work on, safeguards, and due attention to each item. It was such pre-planning that differentiated China’s reform from that which took place in the ex-USSR bloc — it was less hasty, random and careless, and more objective, precise, and generally undertaken with more equanimity. Third, they have drawn upon and introduced the experiences of the developed world. Against the background of globalization, the interaction, accommodation, and contesting of an opened China with the rest of the world have become increasingly commonplace, and Chinese scholars are the interactive link between the two. They have been the group most sensitive to global trends, to the propensities of the times, and to the most beneficial elements of these tendencies. In recent years, Chinese scholars have assiduously introduced and promoted the latest news, advanced understandings and freshest concepts from abroad, with the result that Chinese from all walks of life have benefitted greatly from the extension of their perspectives and the updating of their knowledge. Fourth, they have initiated a methodical discourse. The existence of a variety of interests in the current Chinese social structure is a demonstrable

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fact; equally clear is the decisive role of the underlying socialist system in rendering a fundamental consistency of interests, such that there are not any fundamental antagonisms. The smooth implementation of the reform and opening-up of Chinese society, as well as future results, has depended upon the full expression of a variety of views and the effective coordination of a variety of interests. An ever richer public discussion, therefore, has by degrees become a vital factor in determining whether the reform and opening-up will succeed or not. Chinese scholars have played a key role in this and in the face of a wide variety of different problems associated with the developmental process, they have provided the impetus for and participated in discussions large and small. Most of these discussions took place on the scholarly level, but they were often characterized by a strong social or public quality. More often than not this discourse reflects divergent perspectives, or requests from different groups, and eventuates in a more complete conceptualization of specific aspects of the reform. The discussions have also provided numerous ideas about how to solve practical problems, opened up space for practical action and increased people’s ability to make comparisons and choices. Even more importantly, the lively atmosphere created by these discussions has enabled society as a whole to gradually achieve consensus, to gather together the public will, and to unify action. Fifth, they have assessed and taken stock of the achievements of the reform and opening-up, another key link that has been taken very seriously in the developmental process. Implementing reform in China has been, of course, particularly formidable, because modernizing this most populous nation in the world presents far more difficulties than would be the case anywhere else. Reform in China, however, also has had an exploratory quality to it, as there is absolutely no precedent that can be consulted for a country with an essentially socialist system and guiding ideology in connecting with the world economy and achieving a market economy. The Chinese experience is also characterized by its long duration, for to realize the goals of true industrialization, urbanization, commercialization, digitalization, and internationalization from a relatively low production base has to be a long and gradual process. China has had, therefore, to become proficient at taking stock and self-evaluation, diligent at repeated assessment, and bold in continuously correcting error. Chinese scholars have again and again been highly effective in this, enthusiastically encompassing a wide

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terrain, engaging in both theoretical argument and powerful social assessment. These debates have included purely academic retrospective analysis as well as retrospective summing up of experiences carried out in cooperation with the ruling party and the government. These activities have contributed powerfully to the ripening and maturation of the policy makers and implementers of China’s reform and opening-up even as they have ensured the orderliness and accuracy of the actions that have followed on its heels. Sixth, they have enhanced and spread public rationality. China’s reform and opening-up has been of great benefit to the populace as well as being an immense series of activities in which hundreds of millions of people have participated — its characteristics include self-education and self-management. Through the experience of the reform and openingup, people have not only attained material benefits, but have also attained rich and satisfying lives, gained spiritual and political growth, as well as achieved a more civil mentality. As a consequence, Chinese intellectuals have a responsibility to disseminate knowledge of the humanities and the social sciences, enhance public rationality, create a common spiritual home, and satisfy the ever-increasing needs of the popular consciousness. At the same time, the spread of public rationality has also contributed to the ability to handle inter-personal relations, provided a basic code for interaction between individuals and society, and been of great help in the mediation of these relations as well as in resolving social antagonisms. Via the many ways through which they have paved the way for the spread and enhancement of public rationality, Chinese scholars have thus provided valuable lubrication to ease the process of a tense and pressing reform and openingup; they have constantly raised the level of harmony in a society in the process of restructuring. Seventh, they have improved the humanities and the social sciences in China. The Chinese humanities and social sciences in the modern sense got a tortuous start in the 20th century. They did not really flourish until they received a boost during the period of reform and opening-up, which provided an exceptional opportunity for their development. Mainstream Marxist ideology called forth a vitality that kept pace with the times, the resources of Chinese traditional culture were taken up and sorted through from a new perspective, and the high achievements of world civilization received

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unprecedented attention and were introduced to China. All these intellectual resources were gathered together to provide a generous foundation for the development of the humanities and the social sciences. Even more important, the rich variety of achievements of the reform and opening-up provided a plentiful assortment of source materials for the Chinese humanities and social sciences, and the advancing and ever deepening project of socialist modernization allowed them ample space for development. This enabled Chinese scholars to take the initiative to contribute to the establishment of the humanities and the social sciences even as they were taking part in practical affairs. As a result, we have been delighted to observe the ever more profound and healthy interaction between academia and society, theory and practice, with the result that Chinese-style humanities and social sciences composed of the various academic disciplines have gradually come into being. It must be stressed that the prospering of the Chinese humanities and social sciences cannot be separated from the support, understanding and importance attached to them by the Party and the government. The Party and the government earnestly hope that the Chinese humanities and social sciences will be able to play a key role in undertaking the vital tasks of bringing its people to understand the world, transmitting the ideas of civilization, creating theory, counselling the government, educating the people, and being of service to society. It must be said that at the initiation point of the reform and opening-up, based on the urgent needs of the forces of production and the building of modernization, the Chinese Party and government favored the development of modern scientific technique. Following upon the intensification of the process of modernization and after due attention to the organization of the economy, however, political, cultural, social, and environmental construction were all put on the agenda, and the Party and the government’s focus on the humanities and the social sciences became ever more profound. Because of this the important concept of “four things of equal importance”, i.e. philosophy, the social sciences and the natural sciences had the same priority, was clearly set forth. This meant that training of high-caliber philosophers and social scientists received the same weight as the training of natural scientists, that raising the national quality of philosophy and social sciences was as vital as raising the national quality of the natural sciences, and that there was to be no distinction between

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giving free rein to and fully utilizing the talents of philosophers and social scientists and the treatment accorded to natural scientists. In accord with this principle, the Party and government adopted a series of important measures to forward the development of the humanities and the social sciences, making them a crucial constitutive part of overall national strength, with the earnest desire that the humanities and the social sciences will begin to thrive sooner rather than later. Because of the common effort of the Party, the government and the academy, over the course of 30 years following the reform and opening-up, theoretical research has had an important influence on policy formulation and implementation. The launching of the reform program, which began with a highly significant discussion of the idea that “practice is the only criterion for testing the truth”, opened up the movement for the liberation of thought that cast off the fetters of dogmatism. On the occasion of drawing conclusions from 30 years of development, the theoretical structure of the idea of socialism with Chinese characteristics has taken shape. It is possible to say without any exaggeration that no other historical transformation that has lasted as long as 30 years has been able to preserve such a level of enthusiastic anticipation of theoretical guidance, that no other political party has been able to effectively combine organically a steadfast loyalty to its principal ideology and capacity for the innovation of mainstream theory, and that no other country has been able to remain so favorably and enthusiastically disposed to the theoretical enterprise for so long. Theory has played a vital and unmistakable role in the research into and scrutiny of the development of China’s reforms. From this perspective it is thus possible to draw the following inferences: theory has guided practical concerns, practical concerns have changed China, and China has influenced the world. The implementation of this earth-shaking reform and opening-up has, of course, fed back into influencing and changing the development of theory itself. Over the past 30 years, the development of the Chinese humanities and social sciences has followed a path not entirely like that pursued in the West. Careful scrutiny reveals three specific features of how this process has unfolded in China. First, from the developmental perspective there have been efforts of and some preliminary implementation of combining the trinity of basic Marxist principles, the general achievements of human civilization, and Chinese realities. Second, from the perspective

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of basic content, there have been efforts of and some preliminary implementation of pushing forward a combination of the trinity of theoretical exploration, broadening the base of popular knowledge, and policy transformation. Third, from the perspective of those who participate, there has been effective advocacy of and some preliminary implementation of combining scholarly experts, leading cadres, and the general populace. Of course, during the process of merging the three entities listed above, people experienced the adjustments of moving from the unsystematic to the systematic, from lack of proficiency to proficiency, and from lacking initiative to possessing it. The upshot of these efforts has been to edge the contemporary Chinese humanities and social sciences toward a brand new point of departure. The goal of our current series is to introduce the achievements of the last 30 years of the Chinese humanities and social sciences, and their close relationship to China’s reform and opening-up, to the foreign academic and general audience. Any dispassionate review will, of course, reveal that, no matter how fast the Chinese humanities and social sciences have progressed, there are still numerous inadequacies. For example, there has yet to be adequate study of the Chinese model, more attention need to be paid to the development of academic standards, the development of the various disciplines has been uneven, there has not been enough done in regard to rendering research and analytical methods sufficiently diverse and scientific, and much more need to be done with respect to training academic talent.Among the problems, the low degree of internationalization is an especially weak link. A statistical count reveals that in the decade between 1991 and 2001, Chinese scholars of the humanities and the social sciences received 9,000 invitations to lecture abroad, with 19,000 scholars going abroad to study, and 23,000 foreign scholars invited to lecture in China. There was great progress made between 2001 and 2005, with 100,000 Chinese scholars participating in international conferences, 13,000 articles by Chinese scholars being published in foreign journals, and 2,600 cooperative ventures with foreign universities and research organizations. Clearly, then, there has been a demonstrable and stable increase in the rate of interaction between Chinese academia and the rest of the world. The imbalance in the level of “exports” and “imports” in this academic exchange is, however, still a serious problem. Taking scholarly translation

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as an example, between 2000 and 2005 there were approximately 7,000 foreign academic works translated into Chinese, but in the same period of time there were only 800 works whose primary author was a Chinese scholar translated into foreign languages. Taking the internationally influential Social Science Citation Index (SCCI) as another example, in 2007 there were 1,962 journals listed in the SCCI published in over 40 countries, with the United States accounting for almost 60% of them and the top ten countries on the list accounting for more than 90%; there were only about ten journals concerned with Chinese social sciences. Only one of these, however, actually comes from China, China and World Economy, published by Basil Blackwell in the UK on behalf of the China Society of World Economics and the World Economy and Politics Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The inability of Chinese academic research to go far from home stands in sharp contrast to China’s ever-increasing economic and political influence and represents a serious weakness in the development of the Chinese humanities and social sciences. It is in this context that, in order to carry through the strategy of having the Chinese humanities and social sciences “walk out”, the Publicity Department of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party decided to initiate this important “Series on Developing China”. It organized an editorial committee and appointed Fudan University Distinguished Professor Deng Zhenglai, Dean of the Fudan Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences to head the program. By translating outstanding academic articles on the subject of the experience of Chinese development published over the last 30 years, this program aims to introduce a comprehensive set of outstanding world-level scholarly works by Chinese scholars and thereby take steps to move the Chinese humanities and social sciences “toward the world”. The series will be marked by the following characteristics: one, it will hold firm to the principle of “standing firmly in China and moving toward the world”, but also make sure to choose themes that will be influential in the international academic sphere and conform to its demands. We believe that only works in the humanities and the social sciences with true Chinese character, style and manner will be able to really make its way into the world, and that only works with the distinct imprint of the national culture will be truly vital. With this in mind, we have chosen a number of academic

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fields that will perhaps be influential internationally as our point of entry and developed themes like “China’s Economy: Rural Reform and Agricultural Development”, “State and Civil Society: the Chinese Perspective”, “Sino-American Relations: the Chinese Perspective”, and “Globalization and Localization: the Chinese Perspective”. Second, we have organized an authoritative editorial committee, which will uphold strict academic standards and select only the most outstanding papers on relevant topics. The committee is made up of premier Chinese scholars such as Zhang Wenxian, Yu Keping, Zhang Weiying, Wang Hui, Chen Jiaying, Zhou Guoping, Xu Xianming, Ma Min, Lin Shangli, He Qinhua and Sun Liping; it thus embodies a high level of academic expertise that will ensure meticulously fair and objective choice in the works to be published. Third, we have organized a group of high quality translators and will be on guard to guarantee a high level of translation. In addition to this team of translators, we have set up a process that will have experts from each field do a preliminary translation, which will then be checked by the original author, passed on to the English editor and finally to the editor-in-chief for review. The internationalization of Chinese scholarship is a lofty goal; it is also a difficult task, but even more than that, something that will take time. What continues to encourage us to devote ourselves to the task is this firm conviction: the economic and social development — and the related academic progress — that has already taken place in China, is taking place now, and will take place in the future is essentially aligned with trends in the advance of human civilization. We have every reason to believe that by way of our careful, even and painstaking efforts we can make some small contribution toward an understanding of China’s transformation, taking stock of the Chinese experience, researching the Chinese model, spreading Chinese values, and raising the international standing of the Chinese humanities and social sciences. Of course, owing to our lack of experience, such a large-scale undertaking as this translation project will be subject to numerous oversights, even outright errors. As far as that is concerned, we can only hope that our readers all over the world will provide us with critical feedback. Shanghai July 21, 2009 xxvii

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Academic Inquiries into the “Chinese Success Story” Introduction to Series on Developing China Vol. 2: State and Civil Society: The Chinese Perspectives Deng Zhenglai1

1.

Introduction

Since the 1980s, the end of ideological warfare characterized by the Cold War and the Iron Curtain has enabled globalization to manifest itself in two dimensions. Firstly, the transformation to market economy in postsocialist countries accelerated global economic interdependency. Globality as encapsulated in such international organizations as the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF, together with the emergence of global issues and common crises, has an enhanced capacity to weaken national sovereignty. As Robert Reich pointed out, “[t]he transformation we are experiencing now will reshuffle politics and economy in the new age, which will render a series of traditional concepts obsolete, such as national product, technology, company, industry or economy. Within national boundaries will only be left the people that form the country… The centrifugal force of global economy has been trying to weaken the bond that traditionally holds a nation together”.2 As a matter of fact, billions of people, in almost every 1 Distinguished Professor and Dean of Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences, Fudan University. Areas of interests: social theory, jurisprudence and political philosophy. 2 Reich (1994, p. 1). It should be pointed out that Reich’s analysis of globalization is far from simplistic than this quote suggests at a glance. My quote of his opinion is only in its descriptive sense.

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nation the world over, have their daily life affected to a certain degree by the globalization that has been unprecedentedly omnipotent and ubiquitous. The second dimension came from the increasing popularity of globalization among academic researchers in all disciplines. A research report on global issues was published by the Club of Rome in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Meadows et al., 2000; Mesarovic and Pestel, 1987). Since then, “globalization”3 has become one of the most frequently used terms in international social science circle. As one of the new perspectives to examine contemporary issues, it contextualizes current intellectual life. As M. Waters has pointed out, “as much as postmodernism was a concept that belonged to the 1980s, globalization is a concept of the 1990s, a key concept for us to understand the transformation of human society towards the third millennium”.4 It needs to be pointed out immediately that globalization is also by definition one of the most controversial terms. “The variety of vantage points notwithstanding, globalization invariably concerns a dominant theory, in that the past two centuries that were characterized by using geographical boundaries to define social fields have fostered and encouraged imaginations, be it scientific or socio-political. Now this age has come to an end. Global capitalism carries with it a globalization of culture and politics, resulting in the breakdown of the socialization of national boundaries and the institutional principles of cultural knowledge, upon which the selfimage and world picture familiar to all were based” (Beck, 2000a, p. 14). On the other hand, globalization has become a leading topic in every social science field internationally. Any issue of significance, be it economic, political, social, legal or cultural, will be invariably related to it. Besides, its appearance in academic journals has an extensive coverage of different areas of humanities and social sciences, such as global governance, globalization of economy, cultural globalization, global common interest, global justice, global politics and globalization of law (Held et al., 2001, pp. 3–14). 3 For Giddens, “Globalization may not be a term that is especially attractive or glorifying…

However, even in the late 1980s, this term was commonly used in academia and daily life, as it was already ubiquitous by then”. He pointed out that in today’s world, “every man that seeks to understand our future should not ignore it” (Giddens, 2001, p. 2). 4 Waters (1995, p. 1). Sklair also pointed out that “even though conceptually globalization is far from perfected, as a research question and subject, it has already been indisputably consolidated in social science” (Sklair, 1993).

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Obviously, for China and Chinese social science alike, globalization has presented the following issues to be answered: How should globalization be understood? Is it a process of objective inevitability, or subjective variability? Is it a fact or a discourse? For such less developed countries as China, what kind of challenges and opportunities can be identified? For Chinese social science, what does globalization entail? What does it mean for the “Chinese Success Story” that has attracted attention worldwide?

2.

Section 1: World Structure and China as the Subject: A Chinese Perspective on Globalization

How should we seek to interpret globalization, as well as the challenges and opportunities it thus entails? As far as I can see, only through clarification of the following few issues will it be possible to offer answers that are marginally close to “satisfactory”. First, how have we been dragged into globalization? How can we understand the nature of globalization? For China, what is the difference between the current age of globalization and the times preceding it? What is China’s position in the world structure in the current age of globalization? Is the discourse on globalization and its theorization sufficient to warrant solutions for the problems facing China today? In recent studies, I have used such concepts as “world structure” or “global structure” to respond to the issues brought afore by globalization. Hereby these concepts shall be briefly outlined. My thesis can be summarized in the following few themes (cf. Deng, 2006, pp. 2–23; 2009, Pt. 1): Firstly, China was included into the process of globalization through its accession to such international organizations as the WTO, which contains structural inequality that I term as “world structure”. With the advent of globalization and the opening up of China to the outside world, especially after China’s entry into such international organizations as the WTO, China is no longer geographically isolated, in which replacement she becomes a country that is deeply embedded in the world structure. For China, this was the greatest transformation since time immemorial. Before this, China as an independent sovereign power was external to world structure despite 3

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extensive international cooperation or conflicts — which means that China, although part of the world, used to be an outsider to the world game. The reason for me to signify world structure as a world game lies in the distinction between center and periphery that contains a domination of developed countries over developing ones. As Robert W. McChesney (2000, p. 7) pointed out, “The reason for market globalization is that the government of developed countries, especially the US, has superimposed trade agreements and treaties upon the whole world, enabling commercial magnates and the rich to easily dominate other national economies without shouldering relevant responsibilities”. For me, this domination by the developed countries over their developing counterparts is not only manifested in economy as McChesney pointed out, in that it allows peripheralization of China that has become increasingly dependent upon the West through market mechanisms and the optimal allocation of the means of production globally, but also in institutions and cultures. Institutionally, the legal rules or institutions as recognized by China in the world structure are in fact local knowledge based on Western experiences, through which the transplantation of certain values has assumed an unquestionable gesture of unipolarity and inevitability, as captured in the dominator-dominated relationship. On the other hand, culturally, the demise of ideology has engendered a high level of integration both in culture and in the development of science, where the Western countries as dominators export not only technology but also their culture and ideology, which in its turn compresses, suppresses and depresses the development of culture in developing countries, including China. Secondly, different from the previous modernization period, the Western domination over China has changed in nature, which was based on not collusion but promises. The most important element of the so-called “modernization paradigm” in the world structure that was most often neglected by Chinese scholars, lies in the Chinese intellectuals’ collusion to the dominator during this process of domination. Such collusion is manifested in the uncritical or unreflective acceptance of the Western modernization paradigm. Obviously, in order for the world structure to be effective in dominating China, the collusion from China is indispensable. By this, the domination is not structural or compulsory — the Western modernization paradigm remains external to China, in that without China’s collusion, its

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dominant influence over China will cease to work, together with its ability to superimpose its rules and imaginations upon which China’s ideal picture is based. However, in the post-Cold War period, the domination of the world structure becomes effective as soon as it secures the acceptance of rules and institutions from China that has been arranged into this game. It is precisely in the light of this statement that this domination of the world structure can be concluded as structural and compulsory, which was dependent not on force, but China’s promises to abide by its rules and institutions, regardless of China’s collusion. From this it can be seen that the world structure that China joined has to a great extent a binding domination over China that is based not on collusion but promises. Thirdly, the principle of sovereign equality as vouched by international law cannot possibly rescue China, while a “China as the sovereignty” needs to be substituted by a “China as the subject”. To point out this structural inequality in the world structure is of great importance for less developed countries, as it showcases the tension between this factual inequality-based domination and the propaganda of sovereign equality as claimed by Western powers since the 16th century. The aforementioned domination has shown that the contemporary world is at the beginning of a new empire. Certainly, this new empire is dependent not upon war and blood, but information, knowledge, capital and market. More importantly, the purpose of this new empire or the dominators has not been only for extension and protection of their national interests in the world, but to propagate their values or ideal pictures that are clothed as “universally applicable” to other nations, through which to further superimpose their social or political orders. Therefore, in the current world order, apart from its justifiability to defend border integrity, national security, human rights and economic development, the so-called “sovereign equality” (or China as the sovereignty) is not only insufficient, but also limited to a great extent. China as in the world structure is not a peculiarity or departure from the Western polity, but a subject in terms of ideology, with its core on a Chinese weltanschauung and value (or a unified China perspective in the world structure). This shall pave the way for a proactive approach on the part of China to participate in restructuring the world order. In the contemporary world structure, an emphasis on substituting “China as the subject” for “China

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as the sovereignty” serves the fundamental purpose of breaking through the limits set by sovereignty, towards an inter-subject, inter-culturality and inter-civilization at the level of the world structure. This has to a greater degree suggested a legitimation or rule-making of the world structure not by a minority of sovereign powers only, but through inter-subject negotiations and interactions. Fourthly, whether from the perspective of globalization per se or from the nature of Western domination over China in the age of globalization, challenges as brought about in this process also carry with them unprecedented opportunities for China, insofar as an “ideal picture” based on Chinese perspectives can be formulated, which will then enable the transformation of a candidacy of participating in the world order into a capacity of revising these very orders. Through this, it will be possible to shape the dynamics and dimension of the development of world order according to Chinese experiences and perspectives. Globalization extends far beyond the economic globalization as vouched by economists. More importantly, it is a social transformation that is both dependent upon and transcendental to nation-state. Likewise, globalization of law is not a unification of national laws towards “non-national laws”, but a shift towards a diversification of national and non-national laws. Globalization is thus not a process of homogenization, but a coexistence of oneness and diversification, internationalization and localization, integration and fragmentation, aggregation and disaggregation. Globalization is no longer an objective inevitability, but rather a product of globalism, and an issue of counter-hegemony through different perspectives. In other words, in nature globalization is an open process that can be (re)shaped through cultural and political demands and national interests of China. Once this open notion of globalization is appreciated, the subject position of China can be assumed to restructure globalization and its orientation through the epistemological premises of “Chinese ideal picture” or “world ideal picture”. The fundamental significance for China to access the world structure lies in her gaining of candidacy to voice her own concerns over such topics as the justifiability of world structure as well as the so-called universally-applicable values, to the accompaniment of China’s promises to abide by these rules and institutions upon entry. However, a candidacy to voice concerns cannot be equated with the capacity to do so. Formal candidacy alone will not warrant a unique contribution by China 6

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to revising the rules for the future. On the contrary, it will entail either an acceptance of these existing Western rules, or a retreat into the safe harbor to concentrate on the millennia-long Chinese civilization. This is due to the fact that there lacks such idealizations as of identity, a life of good, desirability and a suitable modus operandi of globalization. Obviously, without these idealizations our capacity to revise or participate in revising future rules of the world order shall be severely restricted. For this very reason, endeavors should be made to offer idealizations that are based on Chinese perspectives, before China is actively involved in revising the rules of world structure, as well as in influencing the dynamics and dimension of the future world order.

3.

Section 2: Counter-Hegemony and Internationalization: A Knowledge Reform for Chinese Social Science

Globalization entails challenges and opportunities for China and Chinese social science alike, which can be summarized in the following two aspects: Firstly, construction of and competition in the globalization discourse have provided ample opportunities for Chinese social science to shape the discourse in accordance with Chinese national interests and culturalpolitical demands. As previously mentioned, globalization is as much a fact as a construction of and competition in discourse, which, as far as I can see, have provided opportunities for Chinese social science that is to be shouldered with the task of seeking a globalized platform to express Chinese national interests and cultural-political demands. This judgment is based on two observations of globalization and Chinese social science: First being the interaction between globalization, globalism and the openness of globalism, while the other a Foucauldian notion of social science as “discourse”. First of all, Ulrich Beck proposed an analytical framework to encompass globality, globalism and globalization, through which it can be found that globalization as an objective inevitability was in fact a product of subjective globalism.5 Through this prism, globalism is not only genetically 5 For Beck, globalization in its broad sense is neither an objective fact, nor a subjective construct, but rather an interaction between the objective and the subjective, of which these

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based on neoliberalism, but also a reflective version to critique globalism itself. Fundamentally, globalism in its genetic sense appeared first in developed capitalist world, into which China was dragged by means of accession into such international organizations as the WTO. This globalization coexists with knowledge, privilege, resources and interests of the Western power, which were exported as the neoliberalist glorification of “objective truth”6 to non-Western countries (China included), thus instituting a subjection to the West. As Dahrendorf has pointed out, apart from technology, neoliberalism (relaxation of control, privatization and liberalization) as universally practiced since the 1980s paved the way for globalization. “New technological capacity was first realized in an atmosphere of relaxed controls… [which] permeated first in such powers as the US and the UK and later extended into other countries”.7 Therefore, globalization is not a purely objective economic process, but an international capitalist push through neoliberalist globalism, which is reinforced through globalization. In this institutional arrangement, the neoliberalist Utopian movement of crafting a pure and perfect market has been pursued with political strategies of all sorts, after its being created through a cohort of stakeholders from major financial institutions and enterprises, with senior government officials, politicians and economists who are seeking to justify their actions. However, it was from the subordinate classes in the West as well as the peoples from other societies that the tension between globalization and three levels are differentiated as globality, globalism and globalization (Beck, 2000b, as quoted in Zhang, 2000). 6 It should be pointed out that neoliberalism as in the genetic sense of globalism carries with it a necessary feature of ideology, by instituting a public notion of the “inescapable pressure of market”, through which to disable counteractions as well as discourage political intervention of maintaining status quo. It is in this sense that neoliberalism is ideologue (Habermas, 2002). It was also pointed out that “the interconnectedness of global economy was not a natural consequence but rather the product of such policies as consciously in pursuit of set targets” (Martin, 1998, p. 11). For Paul Smith, “globalization is an ideological construct, declaring a fundamentalist version of capitalism that has yet to come” (Smith, 2001, p. 96). 7 Dahrendorf (1998) as quoted in Zhang (2000). It should be noted that relaxation of controls, privatization and liberalization have become strategic tools by the Western Europe and the US and further advocated as “state ideologies” by neoliberalism (Martin, 1998, p. 150; cf. Scholte, 2003, pp. 39–41).

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globalism has been escalated. On the one hand, globalization widens the gap in living standard between the great majority of the world population and the minority that have been better-off when incorporated into globalised production and financial networks. On the other hand, this gap, together with other traditional contradictions, has enabled a critical, reflective globalism to challenge globalization and globalism in its genetic sense. An ethical issue was raised: Are the rich that have consumed the majority of world resources and caused pollution en masse capable of fulfilling the aspirations of the poor in seeking development and an improvement of their living conditions (Cox, 2002, p. 20)? In other words, is this ideology and institutional arrangement capable of constructing a desirable and justifiable world order? As far as I can see, it is precisely this latter sense of globalism that provides possible theorizations for Chinese social science to shape the discourse on globalization through Chinese perspectives. Furthermore, for me, social science knowledge is fundamentally a matter of power and legitimation, which means that it is neither reflective and descriptive as claimed by positivists, nor technically regulatory, but more constructive and consolidating, in that these knowledge is capable, by means of institutionalization, of shaping, constructing and embedding into public awareness and regulatory frameworks such an “ideal picture” of social orders (Deng, 2006, pp. 266–267). Prior to this, due to the lack of critical reflection upon neoliberalism that has been lurking beneath globalization, the discourse on globalization and social order thus formulated by Chinese social scientists was essentially an idealization based on Western experiences. For this, as far as this legitimation of social science knowledge is acknowledged, with its critical power restored, it will be possible to shape a new form of global discourse based on the legitimacy of social order, national interests and cultural-political demands in China. Therefore, globalization is a game-playing process to be (re)constructed through cognizance, tradition and interests. It is to a certain extent a process of contingency, reversibility and uncertainty. For this, Chinese social scientists should not be contented with describing globalization, or uncritically accepting the dominance of neoliberalist globalism during this very process of globalization. On the contrary, it should be realized to

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that degree of sophistication that globalization is an open and changeable construct, for which an active strategy to proactively reconstruct or reshape the dynamics and dimension of globalization should be adopted by Chinese social science. Secondly, the advent of globalization has provided historical opportunities for the internationalization and a knowledge reform for Chinese social science. I firmly believe that globalization has brought ample opportunities for Chinese social science to construct a global discourse based on Chinese experiences, which informs a fundamentally critical juncture of knowledge reform for Chinese social science. By this, Chinese social science will not only be internationalized but actively engage the world in substantial discourse and dialogue. From historical perspectives, the centennial development of Chinese social science can be periodised into three stages: (1) “The introduction of Western knowledge into China”, where a modern discipline-based social science system was established by translating the theories, methodologies, disciplinary system and institutional set-up from the West; (2) “The assimilation’ of Western social science theoretical framework”, from the 1990s forward, by means of applying Western social science knowledge and methodology to Chinese issues and copying the Western paradigm on theoretical innovations, especially in the areas of economics; and (3) “The integration into the world”, i.e., adopting international academic norms, standards, disciplinary system and institutional set-up, particularly through academic standardization movement from the late 1990s. With these three stages of development, not only has the theoretical paradigm from the Western social science been introduced into China en masse, but also a comprehensive discipline-based system was set up. So was the case with the reinvigoration of the academic tradition of Chinese social sciences, which went hand in hand with “copying” the Western paradigm on theoretical innovations and assimilating with international academic standards. Undeniably the past three decades has witnessed a substantial development of Chinese social science, which has laid down a solid foundation for its further advancement. In the new millennium, with a deeper understanding of globalization and development for Chinese social science, Chinese government has grabbed this serendipitous opportunity to propose a “walk out” strategy for

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Chinese social science, which may in all probability signify a new age of internationalization. During introduction, assimilation and integration, Chinese social science has replaced an autonomous judgment with a West-centric perspective, under which criterion the research findings thus obtained not only ignore China, but find it difficult to engage the world in substantial discourse and dialogue. On the other hand, the reason for economic miracle in the past three decades has been China’s courage to travel a path that is free from the confinements of Western and traditional models. By comparison, Chinese social science is still deeply entrapped within the ideological circumscription of the ex-USSR and the West, thus incapable of interpreting China’s own experiences. At many times, Chinese scholars were helping Western philosophers to wage a war against Chinese sages. However, “we” as an entity in waging the war are non-existent. Due to the lack of interests in theorizing contemporary Chinese experiences, “we” in fact are either a photocopier or gramophone of Western scholars. In other words, Chinese scholars have gravely ignored an in-depth study and theorization of China’s own issues. I can see that this new age of internationalization is far from a natural continuity of the previous three periods, but has placed higher demand on Chinese social science in establishing a “made in China” academic assessment scheme, through which to develop theories and in-depth studies of China and to engage the Western academia in substantial dialogue, by using a language understandable to the latter (Deng, 2008). For Chinese social science, at least two aspects can be internationalized: (1) Chinese perspectives on globalization, and reconstruction and understanding of world order; and (2) In-depth study of contemporary China (certainly, if humanities are considered as well, the philosophical tradition of China should equally be an aspect for internationalization). As aforementioned, reconstruction of globalization and world order is not only a historical mission, but an important field for Chinese social science to contribute to the world. If the spread of neoliberalism in the post-Cold War period and its subjection to a series of recent challenges can be regarded as unavoidable limits of Western culture in shaping globalization and world order, then the global discourse, with its historicity rooted in Chinese civilization and its contemporaneity in China’s current

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cultural-political demands, can become an important theoretical resource to shape globalization and influence its future development. On the other hand, an in-depth study of contemporary China, especially theorizing the “Chinese success story”, can be the field for Chinese social science to contribute to the world. It is well-known that the recent 30 years of development has told a remarkable “Chinese success story”, beneath which lie the “Chinese experiences” in achieving development without following the Western models. In spite of the existing problems in human rights, democracy and environment due to a single-minded developmentalist impetus, indisputably China is now a country of significance, in terms of tradition, history, civilization, population and modernization. The winding path of development was first built upon the ex-USSR model and later redirected to market economy. The market reform has brought thirty years of sustained growth, which is in itself a remarkable achievement.8 Of these experiences, there exists not only an institutional modus operandi with Chinese characteristics, but also a Chinese living wisdom that can be explained not through imported Western theories but by Chinese perspectives.

4.

Section 3: State and Civil Society as the Analytical Framework for Our Inquiries into the “Chinese Success Story”

The research on civil society in China9 started in the early 1990s, in which China Social Sciences Quarterly played a no small part.10 The general 8 Economists have already pegged their attention to decoding the economic miracle in China. Yifu Lin, for instance, suggested a “backward advantage”. For him, “for developing countries, in general capital is scarce and unaffordable, while labor abundant and cheap, which is conclusive on the mode of labor-intensive industrialization” (Lin, 2002). Hui Qin offered an explanation from the perspective of transaction cost. “The second wave of reform since 1992 has two features. On the one hand, there was no more of Pareto reformism while on the other, the transaction cost of institutional transformation has been collectively lowered through marketization, which is the main reason for the so-called miracle” (Qin, 2008). 9 Geographically, the research I am referring to here only concerns the studies conducted by scholars from mainland China. 10 China Social Sciences Quarterly has played an irreplaceable role in channeling the discussion of civil society in the early 1990s and later period. Cf. Deng and Jing 1992;

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socio-economic context of this emerging field of studies can be seen from the great social and economic transformations China experienced since the reform and opening-up policy in 1978. This reform brought unprecedented changes to China in terms of social structure (where the dichotomy of rural-urban residence was replaced by a more fluid rural-urban exchange), economic forms (where planned economy gave way to market economy) and political reshuffling (where upon the demise of the Gang of Four, a new generation of leaders, led by Deng Xiaoping, came into power that opened up further and deeper democratization in China). In attempts to decode and recode these new social phenomena, Chinese scholars, although they did not use the concept of “civil society” in the 1980s, had already experimented with concepts similar to “civil society”, such as the clanstate thesis by Liang Zhiping, the Grey Market theory by Fan Gang, and a Marxian “state-society” proposition by Lu Yue (He, 1995, pp. 27–29). A distinctive discourse on civil society in mainland China, nonetheless, would have to wait until the early 1990s, where such journals as China Social Sciences Quarterly and China Social Sciences helped in no insignificant way to streamline the discussions and debates on state and civil society (Deng, 1996). Therefore, the background for this civil society research can be seen in two aspects, one being the practical aspects of China’s path to modernity, while the other was the intellectual interest in this issue. As far as China’s modernization is concerned, since the Opium War in 1840, the development of China was inescapably faced with a serious structural challenge, in that as a country that lagged behind the western powers in terms of modernization, China’s taking of this path to modernity was not a natural choice, but rather a state-led political design. In the light of this perspective, the forms of transformations that were alien to the Chinese culture and tradition were introduced to China, to which both state and society would have to respond with certain structural adjustments, so as to accommodate these new changes. Such transformations not only brought unprecedented changes to China’s economic, political and social landscapes, but also presented such unparalleled issues as legitimacy crisis, social disintegration, and widespread anomie. Between the two ends Deng 1993a, 1993b; Xia 1993; Xiao, 1993; Xie, 1993; Jiang, 1993; Zhu, 1994; Shi, 1993; Lu, 1993; Chen, 1993; He, Zengke 1993; Fang, 1993; Tong, 1993, Jing, 1993.

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of a strong state control and laissez-faire, the Chinese state and society oscillated back and forth like a pendulum, which as an issue has remained even until today. On the other hand, there emerged this intellectual interest in studying the state-society relations. The political and economic reform in China opened up new horizons for academic research, in the midst of which scholars from different backgrounds (e.g., political science, history, sociology, and cultural studies, to name just a few) were engaged in heated debates and discussions. A distinctive discourse on the issue gradually took shape, which at a later stage would have serious intellectual and policy implications. It is against this background that we set the theme of this volume as “State and Civil Society: The Chinese Perspectives”. As the second instalment in the Series on Developing China — Translated Research from China, this book aims to present to international readers such issues as of state and civil society, as well as of how our understanding of this issue can be contextualized in the Chinese perspectives. The 13 chapters selected for this volume are grouped into three sections — “theoretical reflection”, “historical research” and “modern development” respectively. Where the “theoretical reflection” section shall provide a nutshell view of academic debates and discussions on this topic, the other two sections shall look into the history of China to examine the concepts, definitions and propositions as discussed in the first section. Moreover, how this civil society discourse can help to elucidate our outstanding of its pertinence to modern China shall be elaborated in the section on “modern development”. It is more than a mere coincidence that the chapter by Deng Zhenglai and Jing Yuejin, titled “The Construction of the Chinese Civil Society”, is selected as the first one to head the “theoretical reflection” section. For one thing, this chapter not only appeared as the first of its kind on this topic in the Chinese intellectual community; nay, it also played a leading role in stimulating the intellectual discussion of civil society in mainland China. Its influence for the discourse on civil society in mainland China, so to speak, extended far beyond its temporal precedence. In this article, Deng and Jing challenge the then prevalent theses of neoauthoritarianism, “authority supremacy” or “democracy priority”. Where neoauthoritarianism celebrated the necessity of an iron-hand by the state in propagating market economy, the “authority supremacy” thesis stressed the importance

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of state presence in leading the whole nation to modernity. Such authoritycentered views were challenged by the “democracy priority” thesis that emphasized the leading role to be played by a democratic polity in emancipating social and productive forces. China’s reform, in the light of this argument, should start first of all from politics. As Deng and Jing point out, whether it be neoauthoritarianism or the “democracy priority” thesis, both theories base their analyses on a top-down approach that is focused on the state role. This approach overlooks the essential dynamics of the society, which should be taken into account. Therefore, opting for a bottom-up perspective, Deng and Jing call for a construction of the Chinese civil society that will allow members of the society to conduct social and economic activities by contractual rules voluntarily and autonomously. This construction shall have to go through two phases, namely formation and maturation. Only through these two phases can it be possible to accomplish the goal of constructing a Chinese civil society. Where Deng and Jing challenge the state-centered views in the Chinese academia,Yang Nianqun, in his chapter titled “ ‘Civil Society’ in Modern China Studies: Methodology and Limitations”, explores the contextual differences in the theoretical discussions on this topic from China to the West, where the former is more focused on the changes of resources allocation, socialization and state function. The Western discourse on civil society, henceforth, is relatively more teleological in seeking to describe and explain the confrontations between civic associations and the state. By way of comparison, the Chinese discussion of civil society is not based on the presumptions of conflict or confrontations between state and society. In its stead, it stresses a positive interaction between the two in achieving mutual appreciation, stability and democratization. This positive interaction between state and society accords with the Chinese history of state and society in a state of “mutual embeddedness”, under which circumstances both “socialization of state” and “nationalization of society” could be seen. The discourse of civil society in China thereby will not be readily intelligible unless and until contextualized within the historical experiences and traditional resources of China. Following Yang Nianqun, Yu Keping’s chapter, “Civil Society in China: Concepts, Classification and Institutional Environment”, seeks to clarify our conceptualizations of civil society, the third sector, institutional

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environments or civil society organizations. He then classifies civic associations in China by the differences in their administrative management and theoretical propositions. His focus none the less is on the institutional environment in China, where the coexistence of contradictory terms can be seen, such as encouragement at the macro-level and restriction at the micro-level, legislations and party policies, redundancy and deficit. These conceptual particularities in the Chinese context should be born in mind should any researcher wish to study state and civil society in China. Different from Yu Keping’s general warning of conceptual nebulae in the study of Chinese civil society, Kang Xiaoguang and Han Heng, upon the basis of their empirical examinations in “Graduated Control: Research on State-Society Relationship in Contemporary Mainland China”, propose a concept of “graduated control” which is believed to possess great theoretical potentialities. By definition, graduated control refers to the control strategies by the state on civic associations, at varying degrees by the nature and type of the public goods offered. The provision of public goods, in the light of this perspective, can be achieved in a non-governmental way, thereby enabling the state to exercise its control over the society under new economic conditions. This undoubtedly is an attempt to construct a Weberian ideal type to capture both theoretical expositions and empirical realities in China. The last chapter in this section, namely “Evolution of the Interactive Relationships among Chinese State, Civil Ruling Elites and Commoners before and after the Reform” by Sun Liping, adopts a structuralist view to study the relationships between different social entities. For him, traditional China was characterized by a three-tier social structure of the state, civil ruling elites and commoners, which was replaced by a two-tier structure of state and commoners when the Chinese Communist Party established their rule in 1949. This structure, following the introduction of market reform in 1978, was gradually and quietly substituted by a three-tier structure, a structure this time consisting of a new middle rung of civil ruling elites. This new space situated itself between the state and commoners as a medium. Sun’s structuralist conceptualization shall help us to have a clearer vision of the social structure in both traditional and modern China. Now, apparently, another horizon that is opened up by Sun’s article is the history of civic associations in China. We can read Sun’s structuralist

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reconstruction of China through either a theoretical or historical perspective. It is a study that is of as many theoretical as historical implications. What follows from Sun’s chapter is a deeper understanding of China’s history, the context of which shall be used to examine the validity of the concepts thereby deployed by different scholars. This is where lies the second section — “a historical research on civil society”. Taking up the argumentation from where Sun leaves it, Zhu Ying’s chapter, “ ‘State and Society’ in Modern China: Research Review and Reflection”, discusses the opportunities and challenges of applying the “state-society” framework to analyzing China’s history. Different from critics who were hostile to these borrowed concepts of “civil society” and “state-society relations”, Zhu Ying argues in favor of using these Western concepts to analyze different historical periods in China, albeit in a cautious manner. Where it opens up new horizons, provides fresh perspectives and enriches research methodologies, this “state-society” analytical framework should nonetheless be subject to rigorous academic scrutiny — in other words, their applicability to China’s history cannot be taken for granted. Different from Zhu Ying who examines the applicability of these concepts to China’s history, He Baogang attempts to trace the very history of these concepts in their use among the Chinese intellectuals. His chapter, “The Ideas of Civil Society in Mainland China and Taiwan, 1986–92”, describes the process of and explains the raison d’être behind the discourse of civil society in mainland China and Taiwan in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For both places, civil society carried with it ample implications, both intellectual and political. In both places, there was a shift in the ideological underpinning of the conception of civil society, namely changing from an antagonist model to a non-antagonist one. Where in mainland China, such antagonism turned into a mutual support model between state and civil society since 1992, in Taiwan, it was changed into a Habermasian version of civil society. He Jianyu examination of the concept of civil society is restricted to a short period of time in rather recent history of China. In contrast, Xu Jilin is far more ambitious in pushing the history under his study back to the imperial age. In his chapter, “Public Sphere in Neoteric China: Forms, Functions and Self-Understandings: A Case Study of Shanghai”, Xu argues that the Chinese notion of public sphere can be traced back to the group

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of aristocrat-intellectuals in late imperial China. Engaging Europe as the comparative example, Xu forcibly asserts that the Chinese public sphere had its inception deeply rooted in the political from the very beginning. The public space, by way of contrast, referred to newspapers, institutes and schools rather than cafes, bars or saloons as in the European case. The threat to its development did not come from capital, power or money as Habermas suggested, but rather from systemization and partisanship. The last two chapters in this section, namely “Training Ground for Democracy: Associational Life in China” by Wang Shaoguang and He Jianyu, and “Chinese Rural Township Government: A Sequence of the Expansive Moments of the State in History” by Wang Mingming, explore the history of civil society in China from different contexts. The urbanityoriented presumption guides Wang and He to focus their attention on the global context of associational revolution in China, as they argue that the mushrooming of civic associations in China in the past decades cannot be readily detached from the global boom of civil society activism. By contrast, Wang Mingming directs his attention inwards to the Chinese history in the past century since 1908. He ably demonstrates that throughout the different regimes in the 20th century (namely the Republic Period, Mao’s Era and Post-Mao Reform), there had been an extension of state power into the countryside. The institutionalization of rural township and town governments, henceforth, was a result of state penetration into the society. The vivacity of Wang and He’s global awareness as well as of Wang Mingming’s countryside-centered analyses leaves open the question of how to envision the modern development of civil society in China. Does it present nothing but a conformation to the “global” experience, or rather, in its rural– urban kaleidoscope, exhibit certain distinctive “Chinese characters” that are readily palpable and analyzable? This is where the very purpose of the third section (“modern development”) lies. The three chapters in this section follows from one to another in a differential scope of study. As Zhou Jun and Yu Jianxing picks up Wenzhou as their case study, Edward Gu argues for a corporatist model for civil society in China, while Qin Hui, both a historian and a sociologist, skilfully combines both perspectives in his examination of China, civil society and modernization. More specifically, using the positive interaction paradigm as proposed by Deng and Jing in the first section, Zhou and Yu, in their article

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titled “The Wenzhou Model of China’s Civil Society”, uses the Wenzhou Chamber of Commerce as the example to demonstrate how a Wenzhou model of civil society can be conceptualized and theoretically characterized. The development of this model not only derives its dynamics from market mechanisms, but also an indispensable portion of government support and buttress. It thereby testifies the mutual support model as suggested by He Baogang in his historical studies in the second section. This mutual support relation between state and society is confirmed by Edward Gu in his theoretical proposition of a “mutual empowerment” model of state-society interactions. By this model, Gu’s chapter, “Toward a Corporatist Development of Civil Society in China”, points out that the state has been instrumental in forging societal corporatism and nurturing the inception of a public sphere comprised of a wide variety of civic associations. Where Zhou andYu emphasize the local particularity in their Wenzhou model, what can be extricated from this model is also the essential element confirmed by various contributors in this volume, such asYang Nianqun, He Baogang and Edward Gu — namely mutual embeddedness between state and society. This positive interaction between state and society points to the very necessity for us to be critically aware of the underlying presumptions of antagonism, individualism and zero-sum contestation as inherent in the Western conception of civil society. This intellectual re-examination culminates in Qin Hui’s study, “From Major Community Standard to Civil Society: A Rethinking of Traditional China and Its Modernization”, which addresses the issues that concern intellectual integrity, critical faculty and cultural awareness as raised in the foregone paragraphs. As Qin argues, traditional China emphasized the integrity of major community, such as clan and big families. Different from the European stress on breaking the fetters of minor community, Chinese path to modernity shall necessarily involve an alliance between civil society and minor community in breaking the fetters of major community. Apparently, the scope of study is gradually enlarged from Zhou and Yu to Gu, and then further to Qin. Moreover, revisiting both the concepts and theoretical frameworks as discussed in the first section, this third part fuses history and contemporaneity in critically examining the modernization path of China. In short, this unique volume provides a comprehensive overview of the “state vs. civil society” discussion in China in the past three decades, which

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include the most outstanding and influential articles on the topic. It seeks to pose important questions, within the context of Chinese national conditions, particularities and histories, to the validity, applicability and viability of the state and civil society paradigm in the Western academia. The discussion of state and civil society includes not only theoretical reflections, but also historical studies and empirical examinations. All the contributors are native Chinese scholars who have experienced China’s dramatic changes by themselves. This book shall present a unique opportunity for international readers to gain the Chinese perspectives, as far as civil society, as well as its relation with the state, is concerned. In the past, research done by Chinese scholars has not been adequately represented in English due to the language barrier. This translated volume shall in no small way supplement the global discourse on state and civil society with the voices from within China. Last but not least, the discussion on state and civil society in China has been fully expanded into different disciplines, on the basis of which monographs, edited books and papers have appeared in such fields as law, sociology, economics, politics, culture and ideology. The 13 chapters thus selected, most representative as they may be, are at best only a small proportion of such discussions in mainland China. Plus, the worth of this volume not only lies in presenting the voices from within China. More importantly, through these chapters and their bibliographies, readers interested in this topic may research further readings that otherwise may be inaccessible. This collection, in short, can be the key for readers to unlock the door to a gold mine of intellectual resources on state and civil society in China.

References Beck, U. (2000a). The Desirable Growth of Democracy in Globalization. In Globalization and Politics, Beck, U. and J. Habermas (eds.). Translated by Wang, Xuedong; Chai, Fangguo. Beijing: Central Compilation and Translation Press. Beck, U. (2000b). What is Globalization? London: Polity. Chen, Jiaming (1993). The Hegelian Civil Society and Its Relation with Other Countries. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(3). Cox, R. (2002). Different Perspectives on Globalization. In The Discourse on Globalization, Wu, S. (ed.). Shanghai: DSX Joint Press.

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Academic Inquiries into the “Chinese Success Story” Dahrendorf, R. (1998). Globalization. In Re-Inventing Europe: A Cosmopolitan Vision, Beck, U. and E. Grande (eds.). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Deng, Zhenglai (1993a). Civil Society and State. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(3). Deng, Zhenglai (1993b). Study of Civil Society in Taiwan. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(4). Deng, Zhenglai (1996). State and Society. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1996(5). Deng, Z. (2006). China Jurisprudence: Where to Go? (zhongguo faxue xiang hechu qu). Beijing: Commercial Press. Deng, Z. (2008). Advanced Study and the Development of Chinese Social Science (27 Dec 2008). Wenhui Bao. Deng, Z. (2009). Whose Globalization? Which Jurisprudence? (shui zhi quanqiuhua? hezhong fazhexue?). Beijing: Commercial Press. Deng, Zhenglai and Jing Yuejin (1996). The Construction of the Chinese Civil Society. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1992(1). Fang, Chaohui (1993). Civil Society and Legitimacy of Capitalist Nations. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(3). Giddens, A. (2001). Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives. Translated by Zhou, Hongyun. Nanchang: Jiangxi People’s Publishing House. Habermas, J. (2002). Habermas on Globalism, Neoliberalism and Modernity. Translated by Shen, Hongwen. International Theoretical Frontiers (guowai lilun dongtai) 1. He, Baogang (1995). The Ideas of Civil Society in Mainland China and Taiwan, 1986–92. Issues & Studies, 1995 (June). He, Zengke (1993). Civil Society and Cultural Leadership. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(3). Held, D. and A. G. McGrew, et al. (2001). Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Translated by Yang, Xuedong. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press. Jiang, Qing (1993). Confucianism. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(3). Jing, Yuejin (1993). The Symposium on “Civil Society and China’s Modernization”. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(4). Lin, Y. (2002). Backward Advantage and Disadvantages (houfa youshi yu houfa lieshi) (8 July 2002). News Weekly (xinwen zhoukan), pp. 68–69. Lu, Pinyue (1994). China’s History and the Construction of Civil Society. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1994(3). Martin, H. P. and H. Schumann (1998). The Global Trap: Globalization and the Assault on Prosperity and Democracy. Translated by Zhang, Shipeng. Beijing: Central Compilation and Translation Press. McChesney, R. W. (2000). Introduction. In Neoliberalism and the Global Order. Chomsky, N. (ed.). Translated by Xu, Haiming and Ji, Haihong. Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Press. Meadows, D. H. and D. L. Meadows, et al. (2000). The Limits to Growth. Translated by Li, Tao. Beijing: Mechanical Industry Press.

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Deng Zhenglai Mesarovic, M. D. and E. Pestel (1987). Mankind at the Turning Point: The Second Report to the Club of Rome. Translated by Lin, Changyi. Beijing: China Peace Press. Qin, H. (2008). The Origin and Prospect of the Miracle of China (zhongguo qiji de xingcheng yu weilai) (21 Feb 2008). South Weekend (nanfang zhoumo). Reich, R. (1994). Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st-Century Capitalism. Translated by Xu, Dizhou. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House. Scholte, J. A. (2003). Globalization. Translated by Wang, Yanli. Changchun: Jilin People’s Press. Shi, Xuehua (1993). Modernization and Chinese Civil Society. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(2). Sklair, L. (1993). Several Sociological Concepts on Globalization. China Social Sciences Quarterly (HK), p. 5. Smith, P. (2001). One World: Globality and Generality. In Symptoms of Globalization. Tong, Shijun (1993). Civil Society in the Post-Marxist Perspective. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(4). Waters, M. (1995). Globalization. London: Routledge. Xia, Weizhong (1993). Civil Society to China: A Dream Hard to Fulfil in the Short Term. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(4). Xiao, Gongqin (1993). Civil Society and China’s Modernization: Three Barriers. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(4). Xie, Weihe (1993). The Mobility of Social Resources and Social Stratification. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(3). Zhang, S. (2000). What is Globalization? Europe (ouzhou), p. 1. Zhu, Ying (1994). Several Preliminary Suggestions on the Chinese Civil Society. China Social Sciences Quarterly, 1993(2).

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PART I Civil Society in China: A Theoretical Reflection

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The Construction of the Chinese Civil Society1

Chapter

1

Deng Zhenglai, Jing Yuejin2

Abstract A true dilemma for Chinese modernization is that between state and society there is no robust structure that favors the development of modernization. More specifically, the society does not form an independent and autonomous structural sphere. It is a must, therefore, that “Neoconservatism”, the “authority supremacy thesis” or the “democracy priority thesis” be replaced with the “dichotomy of state and society”. In other words, the earlier “top-down” perspective needs to be replaced with a “bottom-up” one so that the Chinese civil society can be built. The Chinese civil society refers to a private area where social members conduct social and economic activities following contractual rules voluntarily and autonomously. The construction of the Chinese civil society can be divided into two phases: formation and maturation. The relationship between state and civil society is positive interaction. As a process caught in social and political reorganization, the construction of the Chinese civil society is bound to be a long-term process, where unless with the appearance of a dual structure of state-civil society, as well as their mutual positive interaction, this mission shall remain unfulfilled. Keywords: Chinese civil society; the Positive Interaction Thesis. 1 The article was originally published in the first issue of China Social Sciences Quarterly

in October 1992. The English version was translated by Professor David Kelly from the Australia National University and published in Chinese Social Sciences Year Book in 1993, and included in International Political Science Abstracts, USA. 2 Deng Zhenglai, Dean of Fudan Institute for Advanced Study in Social Sciences (IASFudan) and Director of Contemporary China Research Center (CCRC) at Fudan University, Shanghai, P. R. China. Jing Yuejin, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China.

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1.

Introduction

1.1. Chinese modernization has encountered a severe structural challenge ever since the Opium War. As a country where modernization lagged behind the West and driven by external forces, China had to make a certain degree of adjustment in terms of political and social structures so that the development of modernization could be conceived and pushed forward. And in this process of adjustment, one of the central problems to tackle is to reform the traditional political structure and the form of authority, in a way such that they can be legitimated on the new base of social support, and then changed into a modernization-oriented political center.

1.2. This challenge composes, to a certain extent, a dilemma with which Chinese modernization is faced. Theoretically, the successful transformation as abovementioned has to meet two basic requirements: firstly, the loss of governmental authority in previous structure should be minimized so that certain social order can be maintained and governmental access to social resources safeguarded, or in other words, social disorder resulting from political crisis should be avoided to stabilize political and social conditions that are necessary for the progress of modernization. Secondly, in order to ensure a true modernization orientation on the part of this authority, governmental authority in transition should be prevented from receding into traditional forms due to social disorder or the absence of external social monitor. Looking back into history, regrettably it can be seen that these two basic requirements composed the two opposing poles in the practice of Chinese modernization. Political changes resulted in the legitimacy crisis of political authority, which in turn caused social disintegration, wide-scale anomie and divided nations. As a reaction to and compensation for this disorder, political structure would usually return to its traditional forms, where military power and traditional symbols, either reformed or otherwise, will be deployed to tackle with the legitimacy crisis. Such deployment shall 26

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result in the abortion of the newly launched political reform. Certainly, as can be seen in the post-1949 period, these two historical poles dangling between high political centralization and planned economy evolved into such vicious circles as “relaxation leading to disorder, disorder to recentralization while recentralization to political stagnation” as far as the matrix of central-local government relationship is concerned and the “[bureaucratic] downsizing — swelling — re-downsizing — re-swelling” with regard to institutional reforms.

1.3. Since 1978, many debates and arguments related to the path of Chinese modernization, especially those discussions about the political and economic reforms, can be deemed as theoretical attempts beseeching contemporary solutions for this historical challenge. “Neo-authoritarianism” was wary of social disorder during reform, for which reason this school by emphasizing the importance of authority insisted that a powerful political authority would be needed as a guide of modernization in the process of changing from ancient regime to modern commodity economy and democracy, so that social integration could be safeguarded, social order maintained and social and political wellbeing provided for the development of market economy. Neo-conservatism derived from this basis (which differs from neo-authoritarianism in both substance and degree) expressed more clearly that social and cultural sources to buttress this authority should be sought in traditional culture (Liu and Li, 1989). Opposing neo-authoritarianism, the “democracy priority thesis” emphasized that previous political centralization hindered the progress of Chinese modernization, for which reason the reform in China must start from politics and that unless with the progress and consolidation of democracy, China’s economic modernization would fail (Liu and Li, 1989).

1.4. However, the focus of our attention and interest is: What cognitive style shall we take to examine this dilemma of Chinese modernization in the 1990s? 27

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A resort to intellectual rigor and rationality reveals that to exit the dilemma, cognitive change will be necessary in the first place. We should not focus on the transformation of political authority, for the fundamental of this dilemma lies in the absence of a state-society configuration appropriate for the development of modernization. Specifically, a structured sphere of independence and autonomy has not taken shape yet in society. Regardless of the over-centralization of state power or the drastic loss of political authority, they are both related to the relationship between state and society (external structure), in addition to its own cause (internal structure). Therefore, when it comes to identifying the fundamental issues for modernization, the “dualism of state and society” has to replace the “authority supremacy thesis”. If Chinese modernization wants to exit the historical vicious circle and the dilemma, the problem about the relationship between state and society must be settled both theoretically and practically. This is a huge but inevitable challenge.

1.5. In order to attract theorists to this significant issue, and also to find a better practical solution to the issue of the state-society relationship, after careful deliberation and reflection on our current context and historical experiences since China’s reform and opening-up policy, we believe that it will be necessary to build a theory of the Chinese civil society. As a strategic vision of Chinese modernization, the ultimate purpose of this theory is to, from a top-down perspective, construct a robust Chinese civil society, during which process we hope to establish the dual structure of state and civil society, as well as to enable positive interactions between the two. Only by doing so can we avoid the historical repetitions and push forward Chinese economic and political reforms, eventually availing China’s modernization. The implications of building the Chinese civil society can be seen in the following few aspects: After the disintegration of planned economy, where upon the state gives up managing the economy by administrative means, civil society could actively assume the responsibility of cultivating the market and 28

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developing commodity economy, and also nurturing a great number of independent market entities engaged in commercial activities. In other words, after the state partially abstained from social life and economy, civil society could fill in the “vacuum” on the one hand while build an economic base for its own construction on the other. When China needs to centralize power during its transition from traditional to modern society, civil society as an independent force will become the “last resort” to prevent such authority descending into tyranny. Moreover, in daily routines civil society can also keep state power in check. In the process in which the reform and opening-up will be carried further in politics, civil society can create amenable social conditions for democracy through developing market economy and cultivating a plurality of autonomous associations and organizations. The contractual rules, autonomous capability and interest structure developed within civil society shall insure and monitor social stability. On account of the depoliticization of social and economic life, the repercussion of political changes on social elements will be greatly reduced. Meanwhile, the diversification of the interest structure will also reduce the probability of social turmoil. The concrete strategies of building the Chinese civil society include adopting an approach of rational gradualism, or “two-phase development”. The first phase is formation, in which members of state and civil society should be upheld together. While the state is pushing forward a top-down reform, the change in governance should be accelerated by a proactive and gradual retreat from society and economy. Social members should take full advantage of the favorable conditions and opportunities to push forward the bottom-up building of civil society in a conscious and rational manner. Activities within this phase are concentrated in economy. The second phase is maturation, during which social members, upon self-development and self-improvement, shall gradually enter “the public sphere”,3 participate in and influence state decision-making, so as to avail positive interaction with the state.

3 See Section 2.2 of this chapter.

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1.6. The intellectual and theoretical appreciation of Chinese modernization so far has been focused on the top-down process. Though neo-authoritarianism and the democracy priority thesis differ in their choice of path for Chinese modernization, their cognitive styles are the same, in that they both adopt the “top-down” approach.4 Considering the historical features of Chinese society and the sui generis way of launching the Chinese modernization, such cognitive style is understandable. But it must be pointed out that if the top-down approach in researching China’s modernization is regrettable, then in today’s China where the reform and opening-up have been carried out energetically, it will not only be a regret but also a grave mistake to cling on to this top-down paradigm while overlooking the significance of the role that social actors have played in the bottom-up process of modernization. To build the Chinese civil society also requires the disenchantment of several misconceptions. One is the idea that civil society belongs to the bourgeois class in nature. Advocating civil society thus equals advocating bourgeois interests per se, or even preaching capitalism. This mistake is to simplistically equate civil society with bourgeoisie. In fact, the rise of the bourgeois class is merely a Western type of civil society. Historically, civil society as a counterpart of modernity has a universal applicability, to which China is no exception. Another misconception is that the emphasis on the independence and autonomy of civil society is to abolish the state and to advocate anarchism. This idea confuses the necessity of state interference and its reasonable limitations. On the contrary, the emphasis does not negate the role of the state. It merely attempts to demarcate the boundary of state interference. The third and last misconception is that civil society is an enemy of the state, which is derived from the cultural tradition of populace rebelling against state officials. Just as above-mentioned, civil society can keep in check the encroaching power of the state without confronting the latter. It can strike a balance in the dual structure between state and society. 4 Certain proponents of the democracy priority thesis argued that considerations should

be given to the highest level of politics in a given state. They called for constitutional amendments, parliamentarianism and multi-party politics, all as constituents of a topdown democratization. By comparison, neo-authoritarianism and neo-conservatism explicitly upheld “benevolently wise authority”, “authority with a modernization mentality”, or “modernization-oriented authority”.

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All of the abovementioned misconceptions will affect the development of a robust civil society from a variety of aspects. It is in this sense that they are worthwhile of our attention.

2.

What Is the Chinese Civil Society

2.1. The formation of modern civil society in the West is closely related to the appearance of “modern state” or what is termed as “nation-state”. In the light of the complex variety of social developments across countries, civil society will have its meaning, composition, function and nature varied by such contexts as historical periods, cultural backgrounds and national differences.5 Civil society is not a natural and unchangeable entity, but a historical phenomenon. Neither is it a universally homogenous model, but a social phenomenon contextualized in local particularities. We thereby should put them into particular historical contexts for examination. On the other hand, civil societies do share certain common features, such as the base of market economy, contractual relations and the protection of civil rights and civil liberties. A full appreciation of the nature of civil society, therefore, depends on the combination of its shared features and individualities.

2.2. According to Chinese history and status quo, the Chinese civil society is both a private area where social members abide by contractual norms voluntarily and autonomously in their social and economic conducts, and a non-official public area where the masses participate in the management 5 Western scholars differ in their description of civil society. For example, scholars of the

natural law school argued that civil society is a state of civilization in contrast with a state of nature. Hegel criticized such viewpoint and pointed out the historicity of civil society. He suggested that civil society is a phase of logical consequence of social life and will be transcended by the state. Marx explored civil society on the basis of economic relationship and equated it with capitalist society. For Tocqueville, civil society is a public sphere free of state interference and a curb on state tyranny.

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of public affairs. Its specific connotations can be seen in the following few aspects: The Chinese civil society is made up of independent and autonomous individuals, groups, organizations and interest groups, excluding governmental staff, the ruling Party organizations, military staff and police officers who have “political identity” and a duty to execute governmental functions.6 Peasants self-sufficiently relying on lands are also excluded. In the Chinese civil society, entrepreneurs and intellectuals are the backbone, for a few reasons. Entrepreneurs are the chief force for the building, development and improvement of market economy. That they intuitively seek their own interests while equally treating others will incentivize them to advocate the spirit of contractual equality. Their deep understanding of the significance of negative freedom (exemption from the encroachment of power and the harassment of social disorder) shall drive them to stabilize social order and maintain civil society. The fact that as staple taxpayers they are resourceful both financially and materially makes them an important stakeholder group to influence state decision-making. The economic strength and status thus possessed endow them the leadership in organizing and sponsoring all forms of groups, organizations and interest groups. Chinese intellectuals generally have the awareness of modernity and knowledge on modernization. Regarding social stratification, certain intellectuals changed their roles, chose to do business and then became a backbone in the development of a robust economy. Those who were not involved in economy played irreplaceable roles in education, enlightenment and academic research. All in all, Chinese intellectuals have been the source of knowledge and energy for the progress and development of the Chinese civil society. It should be pointed out that even though Chinese peasants are still not totally detached from lands, the boom of township and village enterprises (TVEs) brought about by the reform and opening-up policy cultivated a great number of township entrepreneurs and workers who also bore the identity of peasants. Along with the development of the rural commodity economy, they would become an indispensable force in the Chinese civil society. 6 The concept of role should be clarified here. In a society, an individual can play many

different roles. When a governmental official is not carrying out duty ex officio, he or she will become a member of civil society as well.

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The inner connection of the Chinese civil society is neither the traditional blood relationship nor the hierarchical administrative relationship, but contractual relationship conceived during market transactions. Let us make no mistake about it, within civil society, any party that wants to take will have to give. In other words, the obtainment of certain right is accompanied by the acknowledgement of duty thereof. The establishment of this contractual relationship is first of all an approbation of the fundamental human and property rights of every member within civil society. For one thing, prior to a contractual relation, presumably members must possess certain rights and resources of their own. Otherwise morally they will have no reason or possibility to transfer some of their rights. In addition, once established, contractual principles will have binding effects upon every member, who then within the contractual boundaries can compete for his own interests in a rational manner and enjoy full independence and autonomy in his own life. All kinds of organizations, groups and individuals that make up the Chinese civil society have independent legal personality. Their activities and internal management are both highly autonomous. The state must respect this independent autonomy and protect it by laws. Generally speaking, the state should not interfere with the operation and activity of each group or organization, but from this it cannot be concluded that they are totally independent and autonomous. When conflicts or disputes occur within civil society which cannot be settled, state interference, arbitration and mediation will become necessary.7 It is in this sense that the independence and autonomy of civil society are only matters of relativity, which can be termed as “independence without autonomy”. The independence of civil society is correlated with its maturity: the more mature a civil society is, the more independence and autonomy it will have. In the Chinese civil society, each member should not join a particular group or organization under coercion except out of their own judgment and volition. Voluntariness should be one of the important features of the Chinese civil society, which is premised on a deep appreciation of civil liberty. The importance of forming an association voluntarily is that it cultivates in people a sense of responsibility and self-management. 7As for the necessity of state interference in civil society, please refer to Section 3.4 in this

chapter.

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The Chinese civil society is a composition of the public and private spheres. The private sphere means an economy that is free of excessive administrative interference. Market economy is not only the place where is members of civil society spent an active life, but also the base on which civil society dwells and thrives. Without market economy there would be no civil society. The non-official public sphere refers to the variety of spaces that despite their externality to politics allow for civil society exercising influences upon state legislation and decision-making. For example, opinions and ideas can be communicated on TV, radio, newspapers, periodicals, books and other forms of media. They can also be exchanged spontaneously in saloons, seminars and meetings. Through these activities, an opinion with wide social recognition can be formed, which is called “public opinion”. It is not subject to interpretations by the state or the government. Also, it will exert certain influence on the latter.

2.3. The conceptualization and definition of the Chinese civil society are based on the dichotomy of state and civil society. Civil society and modern state are bound to be in a historical process of both separation and interdependence. In this process, the depoliticization and secularization of social and economic life is a powerful motive behind the formation of civil society. The eventual riddance of political control on the part of civil society stands for the maturity and awakening of civil society. The division of state and civil society results in the establishment of the dual structure: the institutional setting as political arrangement is to be controlled by the state, while the rest, like the private and non-official public spheres, will become civil society.

2.4. In order to fully understand the idea of the Chinese civil society, it is necessary to distinguish it from various civil social organizations in Chinese history.8 For purposes of discussion, we will preferably call it 8 Many scholars in Hong Kong and Taiwan have translated “civil society” as minjian shehui

in Chinese. Although this chapter is not intended to discuss the accuracy of this translation,

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“folk society”, which mainly refers to the various forms of peasants organizations (sometimes with the involvement of gentry, merchants or officials) that were off centralized control, including organizations that were close to or remote from the government, like cooperatives that stressed mutual help, gangs, rebellious organizations and religious societies. These folk societies were not based on market economy, for which reason they did not rely on rational contractual norms to adjust interpersonal relationship. Instead, they relied on blood or sworn relationship, as well as fraternal loyalty. In addition, they did not have the independent and autonomous spirit borne of market economy. The Chinese civil society pursues a structural reform of the relationship between state and society for the purpose of marketization and democratization. By contrast, for the traditional folk society, the supportive conditions upon which it relied upon prescribed an impossible escape from tradition and history for the sake of modernization. Functionally, the biggest difference between civil society and folk society is that the former pursues positive interaction with the state on the basis of independence and autonomy, while the latter was never differentiated from the state, not even to mention a positive interaction with the latter. Therefore, the traditional folk society and civil society are two completely different historical phenomena.

3.

The Chinese Civil Society and the State

3.1. After 1949, China gradually established a highly centralized political system that fits planned economy. Unavoidably, this system resulted in the unity of state and society. Before reform, this unity featured the loss of independence on the part of society, as we can see from the following three aspects. Firstly, the state carried out collectivization by administrative means in rural areas and socialist nationalization of urban industry and trade, thereby absorbing all economic components into the framework of planned economy. This resulted in making economy dependent on politics it should be duly acknowledged that this translation is also one of the reasons for us to distinguish civil society from folk society.

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and thus eradicating the conditions for the growth of civil society. Secondly, with such guiding principles as “politics first”, “the political in command” and “class struggle”, and by such means as of political propaganda, study, discussion, debate, class struggles, self-criticism, reporting and organizational rectification, the state controlled social opinions ideologically and practiced a high level of political mobilization, making the state dominate all social fields and resulting in a highly politicized social life. Through institutionalization, the state absorbed individuals into the administrative framework, making individuals “an institutionalized being” while extinguishing their independent personalities. This unity of state and society robbed society not just of its natural independence, but also hindered the development of economy, deforming the state, limiting state functions and barricading the progress of democracy. Since China’s reform and opening-up in 1978, along with the partial retreat of administrative power from social life and economy, the gradual depoliticization of social life and the rapid development of commodity economy, the dichotomy between state and civil society started taking shape, and the Chinese civil society also began to emerge. Under such circumstances, the relation between the Chinese civil society and the state has already become a major issue that demands attention from theoreticians.

3.2. The issues concerning the relation between state and civil society have always been controversial theoretically. Opinions on civil society, as well as relevant theoretical models vary considerably according to opinion-holders’ temporality.9 Theoretically, of these differing ideas and opinions, roughly two major schools can be seen, namely the school of “state over society” and that of “society over state”. The former emphasizes the role of the state in structuring the society while denying the other way round. In the relation between the two, the society is believed to be attached to the state. The latter 9 John Keane did a historical study on the relation between state and civil society. By examin-

ing the various theoretical attempts to differentiate non-public spheres from public spheres, he classified five categories, namely Security State, Constitutional State, Minimum State, Universal State and Democratic State (Keane, 1988, 31).

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school, on the contrary, argues that society precedes state, and that the state is a political organization built for security and interests, or in other words, merely a tool to achieve social welfare. For society, the state is a “necessary evil”. State interference, as well as the size of government, should therefore be minimized.

3.3. Along with the “revival” of civil society theories in recent years, new paradigms emerged in the discussion of the state-society relation. What is worth mentioning is the “rebellion theory” and the “harbor theory”. The “rebellion theory” simplifies the state as a political party or a government, and preferentially regards the state-society relation as hostile or even confrontational. This theory stresses the resistance of civil society against the state through mobilizing populace against officers, from which can be seen its emphasis on the entirety, consistence and homogeneity of civil society. For this school, such consistency means also “belligerence” or “rebelliousness” on the part of civil society in encountering the state. The “harbor theory” maintains that it is meaningless to try seizing or sharing governmental power. For those living under a centralized system, the best strategy is to invest their energy in economy, religion, culture and other important activities while ignoring the tyrannical state (Konrad, 1984). For this, civil society is regarded as a “harbor” in a centralized system. When people are all in the harbor, the tyrannical state will be vacated and become an empty entity. This theory stresses passive evasion when dealing with the state-society relation.

3.4. According to the history and status quo of China’s social development, we suggest a “Positive Interaction Theory (BIT)” to examine the state-society relation. The role the state plays in relation to civil society includes the following two aspects. Firstly, the state acknowledges the independence of civil society and provides it with institutionalized legal protection so that it has a legitimate active space. Secondly, the state interferes with civil society only 37

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when necessary. This interference can be divided into two levels. The first is abstract legislation, which provides universal rules for the activities of civil society, while the other level is to arbitrate or mediate interest conflicts that civil society itself cannot reconcile. It should be pointed out that civil society is neither a paradise on the earth nor a single piece. In itself there are complicated relations that involve different interests groups with varying orientations. Competition for resources and profits can be fierce and cruel. Probably there will exist marked inequality in property ownership, freedom of choice and income distribution. Moreover, civil society represents more of particular interests, and it often fails to protect universal social interests, so that there is a necessity for state interference and mediation. However, while recognizing the necessity of state interference and mediation, we have to define the rational limits of such interference with the principle that state interference and mediation should be carried out by legal and economic means rather than political mobilization. The state interferes and mediates where civil society cannot manage in accordance with contractual principles, such as macro-management and those areas that concern universal social interests. The effect of civil society on the state is also reflected in two aspects. In its passive sense, civil society can check and balance the state, in that while defending its independence and autonomy, civil society struggles for and defends its freedom from excessive state interference and encroachment. It is in this sense that civil society is the last resort that keeps authority from descending into tyranny. In its active sense, the development of civil society cultivates diversified interest groups that will seek political expression of their interests in different ways and at certain stages of development. This type of desire and activity powerfully incentivizes the process of democratization. In this sense, civil society lays a solid social foundation for democracy. On the other hand, before the establishment of democracy, civil society can influence major state decisions through various non-official channels so that democratic decision-making can be achieved.

3.5. It is obvious that the positive state-society interaction is a mutual, appropriate check-and-balance relationship. Through this interaction, both sides 38

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can make up for each other’s deficiencies so that universal interests under state control can be balanced with particular interests in civil society in a manner appropriate for further social development. Certainly, this positive interaction proposition is merely an ideal type. In reality there exists no such pure form as described, but rather varied transformations of it. For example, the state may interfere with civil society in the name of general interest through various approaches, as can be seen in the example of the “welfare state” model popular in Western countries. On the other hand, civil society will also try various means to advance particular interests even at the sacrifice of general interests, resulting in the loss of social justice. Therefore, to approach this ideal type in a closest manner will be our purpose, since the perfection of the positive interaction between state and society shall avail social maturity and robustness.

4.

The Building of the Chinese Civil Society

4.1. In order to craft the further development of the Chinese civil society, it is necessary to explore the constituents of the Chinese civil society. These constituents include mainly state, society and external elements. Firstly, the top-down state element. Since 1978, the reform and opening-up policy made objectively significant contribution to the formation of the Chinese civil society. For example, within 30 years after the liberation in 1949, especially during the decade-long Cultural Revolution, “ultra leftism” flooded the whole nation. The great discussion of the standards of truth in 1978 launched a top-down movement of thought liberation, providing an ideological basis for the state to transfer its emphasis of work from “class struggle” into economic development, the historical transition of which provided the basis for advancing political reforms in China. Relaxation of government control over enterprises, as well as the change in governance, has to a certain extent resulted in the depoliticization of the entire social and economic life, wherefrom can be seen the partial retreat of state from social life and economy. 39

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In view of the painful lessons learnt from the Cultural Revolution, the nation started emphasizing the construction of a legal system. The legislative function of the state advanced a great deal since the reform and openingup, where a multitude of laws and regulations was made. Among them, the Administrative Procedure Law, the Civil Law, and the Enterprise Law, among others, were especially significant in regulating the state-enterprise and state-society relations. As these laws were reinforced during application, their significance for the construction of civil society also increased. Where the planned economy under excessive administrative interference that lasted for 30 years failed to uphold the nation, the state was forced to move on to commodity economy, enabling the prospering of individuals, private and township enterprises, as well as the appearing of market economy, which laid a foundation for civil society. With the development of market economy, especially the pressure to energize major and medium enterprises, the state started experimenting with shareholding ownership, which enabled the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to be freed from state controls to a certain extent. The gradual change of state functions in economy left space for the development of civil society. In order to drive reform and opening-up further, as well as to introduce technology and funds, the state not only opened up a number of port cities, but also sought to attract foreign direct investments (FDIs) with favorable policies, creating foreign-funded enterprises with various sizes, which formed an emerging and relatively independent economy. In order to ensure the economic interests of individuals and enterprises as well as to assure the FDIs, the state made various policies and laws to ensure their rights and interests. In this sense, the state defined a boundary between state and civil society by means of institutional arrangement. The “anti-rightist” movement persecuting intellectuals in the 1950s and the decade-long “Cultural Revolution” were cruel attacks on intellectuals who were independent and modernization-oriented. This caused devastation to education in China and created a fracture zone in terms of China’s intellectual recruitment. In 1977, the state resumed the system of university entrance examination and recruited large numbers of intellectuals with modern knowledge and awareness of modernization. They were the backbone of civil society, in that they provided an intellectual basis for the formation and development of civil society.

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Secondly, the bottom-up social elements. This refers to innovative activities launched or implemented voluntarily by social members of the state. This was a vigorous social force in the process of Chinese modernization. For example, driven by the desire to reduce poverty, peasants in Fengyang County, Anhui Province took spontaneous actions to break the stagnant collectivization and initiated the household contract responsibility system, taking the first step of rural economic reform. The popularization of the household contract responsibility system nationwide gradually freed peasants from administrative directives, thereby availing freedom, autonomy and profits. The self-employed and private enterprises in Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province suffered severe strikes during the “ultra leftism” period but were never exterminated. Instead, they prospered after the reform and openingup in 1978. Their acquisition of legitimacy triggered the mushrooming of private enterprises and self-employed associate ventures in other cities and towns in the whole nation. In the process of thought liberation, a great number of civil associations sprang up, especially intellectual groups engaged in the study of local culture. Since then, independent associations of other categories started to emerge. During the disintegration of the old system, certain original constituents started transferring to new positions. A lot of governmental staff quit their “iron bowls” for freelance jobs that could sustain their lives. The range of enterprises that were taken, as well as the sheer number of this group, was very impressive, and they created an increasingly large amount of social wealth. More importantly, the occupational change from within the system to without, termed as “cross-system flow of population”, brought about changes in mentality, ideologies and conducts. Such values as independence, competition, mutual help, risk, credit and compromise took root, and the recognition of individual independence increased day by day. Thirdly, the outer-inner external elements. This refers to the important influence the international society had on China since the reform and opening-up. After China’s reform and opening-up, a large amount of FDIs flowed into China and engendered a great number of foreign-funded enterprises. Apart from their non-politicization, these foreign funds accelerated the

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process of the depoliticization of enterprises they joined or permeated, thereby forming a group of independent enterprise legal persons that were free of administrative interference. In order to merge into the international society and achieve corresponding international recognition, the state started to emphasize a conformation to international standards. These standards and codes during international interactions could be easily internalized, or in other words, transplanted unto domestic soil. The protection of intellectual property rights and the concern for ecosystem were important examples. It is predictable that with the deepening of reform, this influence will be further strengthened. The list of the abovementioned three major constituents is far from exhaustive, but it demonstrates sufficiently that with the state gradually retiring from social life and economy, the boom of market economy, the establishment of contractual relation and the growth of civil society forces, the Chinese civil society has already started to take shape. Through the making of laws and policies, the dichotomy of state and society is gradually taking shape as well.

4.2. Under such circumstance, how to change the “forming” civil society into an “automating” one, or in other words, to move from passive formation to proactive constructing, is a significant and difficult historical mission for us.

4.3. In order to ensure the smooth development of the Chinese civil society, when we are proactively constructing the Chinese civil society, two extremities should be avoided. First, before civil society reaches maturity, it should operate according to contractual principles and becomes a stable force in maintaining social order, and before civil society gains independence from the state and then overcomes its own dependence and reliance on the former due to the fact that its economic liberation preceded democracy, civil society should avoid over-participation in politics. Secondly, the construction of civil society should not be modeled after the traditional folk 42

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society paradigm, which can easily lead to a return to the single-minded “civil rebellion against government” approach, thus barricading the positive interaction between state and society, as well as hindering the progress of democratization.

4.4. For this reason, we advocate the “two-phase development” for the construction of the Chinese civil society.

4.5. The major task in the first phase of constructing the Chinese civil society is to build the preliminary form of civil society and formulate the dual structure between state and civil society. This target can be achieved economically with the management mechanism as the main method. For example, various kinds of economic organizations through acquiring independent legal person status are thus freed from administrative or consanguine relations. Through the growth of market, contractual relations can be cultivated and established. Commodity economy can help to foster independent and autonomous personality as well as cultivating objective economic interest structure and behavioral norms. Certainly, the building of civil society can also be achieved through voluntary groups and associations and other autonomous organizations. The significance of cultivating a national awareness of civil society to the building of the Chinese civil society can never be over-emphasized. Without conscious and concerted efforts on the part of social members, the construction of the Chinese civil society will be unimaginable. The major problems to be solved in this phase are to acquire the free space off state control and the premise of independence and autonomy. If these two problems are not solved, the dual structure between the Chinese civil society and state can never be achieved and attempts to mediate such relations through regulations will fail. It should be pointed out that the acquisition of independent autonomy and freedom is especially important for the construction of the Chinese civil society, as the formation of the Chinese civil society differs fundamentally from the rise of Western civil society. The former is driven by the state, not 43

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individuals. For instance, the appearance and development of independent enterprises relied on state policies for a certain period, thus manifesting dependence on the state. The Western civil society, by comparison, was driven by private capitals rather than by the state, and it naturally was more independent and autonomous.

4.6. The major task in the second phase of constructing the Chinese civil society is to improve civil society on the basis of the achievements in the first phase, and to exert positive influence on state decision-making through various channels, which means active participation in politics. This is the expansion of the Chinese civil society from private to public spheres, which indicates that in addition to obtaining an independent identity, it also acquires a participant identity, which will help to avail a positive interaction between state and society. Apparently, if civil society only plays the role of negative check-andbalance without positive participation in politics, such civil society will be incomplete functionally, and the positive interaction based on dichotomy will not be achieved. Therefore, the civil society that China needs to build should have not only economic freedom, but also rights to participate in state decision-making. Seen from another perspective, one of the ultimate targets of Chinese modernization is to achieve political democratization which will be unrealistic without civil society as its cornerstone and without the participation of multiple interest groups as one of its structural arrangements. In other words, only when the public are willing to unite themselves by voluntary groups and exert influences on public life through various channels can democracy emerge. It is in this sense that we regard civil society as a precondition of democracy.

4.7. The crucial issue here is the mechanism through which civil society can take advantage of its participation right and exert influence on state decisions. This is of essential importance for a country where democratization is not yet institutionalized. In terms of politics, public participation relies on legally recognized rights, such as the rights to know, freedom of speech, 44

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and freedom of association. But the establishment of these rights does not solve the problem of equal entry into political processes. Therefore, in order to make sure different interest groups can equally carry their particular interests into the political processes and then effectively influence state decisions, a set of institutional procedures and regulations has to be set up to protect the above-mentioned rights. Henceforth, apart from active participation on the part of civil society in the second phase, the cultivation and establishment of such systemic procedure and regulations should be made one of the primary tasks.

4.8. It should be emphasized that the two phases are not neatly separated from each other. Instead, they are connected organically to each other and follow overlapping paths of gradual development with varying emphases. We do not assert that civil society plays the participation roles only when reaching the second phase. Actually it might appear in the first phase, depending on whether civil society has acquired an identity independent of the state, whether it has become a self-stabilizing entity, and also whether civil society has legitimately acquired the control of non-official public sphere.

5.

Conclusion

The building of the Chinese civil society will be a long-term process, from the formation of the dichotomy of state-society to the positive interaction between state and society. Our suggestion of constructing the Chinese civil society is to encourage the whole nation to consciously participate in the construction, creating conditions and bases for positive interaction between civil society and state, so as to reduce blind fervor, temperamental convulsions and irrationality. It is also an arduous process for the construction of China’s civil society. The difficulty comes from the following two aspects. First, China has a long history of despotism and power centralization, where the development of independent societies had always been confined or even smothered by the imperial unity and centralization. More importantly, because the state lacked modernity, certain independent forces that emerged failed to form 45

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civil society in a modern sense. Modern China did not leave us a rich heritage. The weakness of the bourgeois class and the fall of the gentry class seemed to foretell a difficult delivery of civil society in modern China. After 1949, the establishment of highly centralized political system extremized the imbalanced state-society relation. Understandably it can be difficult to build civil society in a nation with such historical backgrounds. Secondly, it is not easy to define the boundary between state and civil society in practice. The history of other countries shows that the boundary varied with time and by nations. Correspondingly, it is easy to propose an ideal type theoretically, but in practice there is no model to follow. For the interaction between state and society and their respective roles vary considerably from one country to another. Therefore, it is not easy to find an appropriate standard for defining the rationality of state interference or advocating the autonomy of civil society. Thirdly, when advocating the building of civil society, more attention might be unconsciously paid to its rationality, strengths and functions while the potential problems are overlooked. As stated in Section 3.4 in this chapter, there exist various kinds of conflicts in civil society, which elicits the necessity of state interference. It is also worth pointing out that such conflicts and contradictions will lead to the collapse of civil society if they are not dealt with properly. The purpose of pointing out that it is a long-term and difficult enterprise to build the Chinese civil society is to encourage further endeavors and cautious deliberations. Chinese modernization needs concerted efforts of the nation and active participation of the people. Only in the multiple interactions of top-down, bottom-up, inner-outer and outer-inner constituents can Chinese modernization exit the dilemma and the vicious circle, so as to mobilize sufficient social resources for modernization. Here lies the purpose of this chapter.

References Keane, John (1988). Democracy and Civil Society. London: Verso. Konard, George (1984). Anti-Politics. London: Harcourt. Liu, J. and L. Li (eds.) (1989). Neo-Authoritarianism. Beijing: Beijing Economy Institute Press.

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“Civil Society” in Modern China Studies: Methodology and Limitations

Chapter

2

Yang Nianqun1

Abstract This article tries to examine the use of two terms, namely “public space” and “civil society” by Chinese scholars. Through analyzing the different contexts, be it cultural, historical or political, between China and the West, this article cautions against unreflective use of the two terms. Moreover, the background of “civil society” research in China differs from that of the West, for which reason it is necessary to bear these differences when applying these terms. Keywords: Civil society; public space; democracy priority theory.

1.

Introduction

The academic circle of Western Sinology generally applied the concepts of “civil society” and “public sphere” as tools to analyze modern Chinese society. Presumably this was influenced by two main factors. The first was the change of theoretical discourse after the global socialist crisis in 1989. Western scholars focused their discourse on the antagonistic interaction between state and society. Taking Trade Union Solidarno´sc´ (Poland) as an individual case, these scholars believed that the demise of Eastern Europe communist regimes was attributed primarily to the formation of “civil society” and its final rise as a social force capable of contending with state 1Yang Nianqun, Institute of Qing History, Renmin University of China, Beijing, P. R. China.

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authority. All studies on this aspect were implicitly contextualized in ideological clashes, which is not within the scope of discussion herein. The second factor was specific to modern China studies. Influenced by Jürgen Habermas the German sociologist, certain scholars focused their studies on the politicization process of elites and commoners in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican Period, which indicated that the academic discourse in the Western Sinology community was going through another profound transformation. At the end of the 1970s, the American Sinology circle experienced a change from such binary model as the “Western Challenge — China’s Response Paradigm” and “tradition-modernity” to “sinocentrism” and started to focus on reevaluating the realignment and regrouping of local elements during the development of modern Chinese history. Nevertheless, they failed to develop a reliable model alternative to the previous theories, as well as to describe the “internal dynamics” of Chinese local conditions. Even “sinocentrism” as proposed systematically in Paul A. Cohen (1974), only constructed a simplistic “coastal-inland” framework to evidence the “internal dynamics”. Meanwhile, it was widely acknowledged that a more normative sociological theory — the “civil society” thesis became seemingly a tool more feasible and powerful to study such issues as the changing concepts of social space and the relation between elites and commoners. This thesis is of particular significance to deepening the cognitive clarity of “sinocentrism”. However, before the late 1980s, most Western historians were only influenced by the secondhand introductory materials about Jürgen Habermas’s thesis on “civil society”. The concept of “civil society” formally came into the studies of modern Chinese history in the Englishspeaking academia after Tomas Burger translated Jürgen Habermas’s masterpiece — “Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit” into English in 1989. In the American Sinology circle, the first monograph using the “civil society” theory to research on modern China was Chinese Elites and Political Change: Zhejiang in the Early Twentieth Century, written by R. Keith Schoppa. In Schoppa’s opinion, in the 1900s the infiltration of local elites into state power was reflected in their wide participation in public affairs. Along with this process, there was a popularization trend which transferred official duties to private organs. R. Keith Schoppa used “political development” to summarize this transference. The so-called “political

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development” arose in a social system which was constrained by certain form of combination between individuals, teams, systems and local political units. The level of development could be summed up as its interdependence and complicated relations among constituents of the system. To put it simply, the process of political development was one of upgrading political structure from its embryonic stage to a complicated combination one, evolving into different institutionalized structures based on initial consanguinity, family status and the relationship between clients and brokers. Most important of all, in the first decade of the 20th century, political development did not have a high level of consistency in space and time. It did not originate from the same resources across provincial or regional boundaries or within the same province or region. This heterogeneous characteristic could be effectively analyzed only by dividing a province into “ecological areas” based on economic patterns, as the development of different elite groups indicated the discrepancies between local and provincial politics (Schoppa, 1982, p. 6). Based on the criteria of population density, regional location, and prosperity of postal service and property system, R. Keith Schoppa divided Zhejiang Province into four areas which were differentiated from “center” to “periphery”. The center covered the most developed areas, while other areas were cumulatively divided by a descending order from primary to secondary areas. This hierarchy had tremendous impact on elite mobility and political development (Schoppa, 1982, p. 28). Regional politics revealed that private affairs were gradually taken into public responsibilities. The center areas in the late Qing Dynasty had strong integrating effects on the development of political organizations. Evidence suggested that it was possible to explain the goal and significance of autonomous organizations and interest groups in the new context of politics, society and economy, which could be termed as the emergence of “public sphere” (Schoppa, 1982, p. 187). In the study of regional politics, R. Keith Schoppa was the first to have used the “civil society” theory to review the role that the pattern and direction of intellectual mobility played in chartering political changes in the late Qing Dynasty. This was particularly the case with the change in the intellectuals’ role and the interactive relations among grassroots organizations in the “state-society” binary framework. Despite a “localized” perspective, he incorporated the variable of “political development” into regional political

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network of “center-periphery” and dedicated a whole chapter to analyzing the radiating effects of center. Based on his conclusion that peripheral intellectual elites would self-consciously return to their hometown to engage in local modernization, the “center-periphery” dichotomy had essentially become a geographical indicator of the “radicalist-conservative” confrontation. Thus, it is seemingly possible to find traits of the “tradition-modernity” model in his analysis. After R. Keith Schoppa, the concept of “civil society” was gradually introduced as an interpretative instrument in the studies on modern Chinese history. This was to a large extent reflected in two aspects. First of all, the American Sinology circle put more emphasis on finding comparably analogous “political terms”. For instance, highlighting the frequency of such terms as “gong lun (public opinion)” and “gong wu (public affairs)”, it was believed that the meaning of the Chinese character “gong ( )” was comparable to the Western term “public”.2 This implied that there evolved a local autonomous tradition that was actually corroding state power. With the use and change of concepts like “public”, “state-owned” and “private”, these elites started to compete for their own ascendancy in legal and judicial areas. Both official and non-official elites were invariably seeking political legitimacy. Such historical terms as “public”, “official” and “private” were defined with legitimacy implications in the new era, thus becoming new parameters for addressing social and political issues (Rowe, 1990). Secondly, certain scholars more often than not identified the scope of “public sphere” through power transfer from state to society. In fact, since Philip Kuhn et al. initiated their studies on “localism”, the research on society’s penetration into state power in the late Qing Dynasty had been started and later systemized by Mary Backus Rankin (1993) and William T. Rowe (1990, 1993). Mary Backus Rankin categorized the political vocabulary of the late Qing Dynasty into three groups, namely “official”, “public” and “private”, with “public” as a medium between “state” and “private”. There was a spatial extension of the “public”, according to the following criteria: Flourishing of autonomous organizations and property rights, changes in 2 William T. Rowe indicated that America and Britain also had substantial discrepancies

on the meaning of “public”. For instance, in Britain, “public school” is used for private educational system off governmental control, while in America, “public” is more consistent to connote governmental behavior, which is different from Britain (Rowe, 1993).

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communication with free expression of public opinions, and legal protection of rights, systems and actions with structural limitations on state power. Certain general assumptions also played crucial roles. For instance, it was assumed that there existed conflicts of interest between government and individuals, which gave rise to such belief in limiting state, power (Rankin, 1993, p. 159). Mary Backus Rankin concluded that the Donglin Party and the Fushe Society, active in the late Qing Dynasty and early 17th century, had the sign of “public sphere”, which was quite similar to the rise of its Western counterpart. In the Qing Dynasty, there were three factors indicating that “public sphere” had become a force confronting the state power. Firstly, due to the weakening of state power and the collapse of the punitive taxation-oriented Lijia (Tithing) Household Registration System in the late Ming Dynasty, local elites regained power in managing local affairs, thus had their local position enhanced. Secondly, the improvement of literacy rate provided more employment channels. Thirdly, the gentry-merchant elites came into being (Rankin, 1993). William T. Rowe intended to demystify the so-called “Weberian Myth” by analyzing the urban structure of modern Hankou. He concluded that the urban structure of Hankou, like water conservancy facilities and street maintenance, reflected the divisions between state, the public and the private. The function of the “public” had substituted the effect of the “private”. The “Weberian Myth” is a feature model about Chinese urban development proposed in Weber’s well-known monograph, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism. The key point of this work was to define Chinese and Western cities in terms of political and economic functions. By highlighting the differences between Chinese urban areas and rural areas, the model overlooked the importance of market centers at the sub-county level as well as the potential difference in social conditions between counties, provinces and empires. Weber also believed that Chinese urban areas had been in a dormant state since the Song Dynasty and until the invasion by the West in the 19th century, thus overlooking the internal dynamics of the Chinese social structure. The later Chinese historians mainly amended Weber’s conclusion in three aspects, emphasizing the primary role of economic factors than that of politics (Rowe, 1984, pp. 7–8). In William T. Rowe’s view, Jürgen Habermas established the discourse of “civil society” mainly from a historical point of view. William T. Rowe

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admitted that the existence of “public sphere” is a historical and unchangeable phenomenon, based on which he was convinced that China had started a “second commercial revolution” in the late Ming Dynasty and early Qing dynasty (Rowe, 1993). Secondly, William T. Rowe avoided taking the “civil society” study as an ideological instrument, but focused on the so-called “de facto public sphere” (Dirlik, 1993). As William T. Rowe pointed out, history evidenced that critical space was enabled owing to Hankou’s prosperous long-distance trade, large-scale trading firms, fiscal system and organized commercial network, continuous local urbanization and development of urban culture (including teahouses similar to Western European bar and café), rapid expansion of the printing industry and the rise of secular pop culture. As the urban service system and social welfare had improved significantly in Hankou in the 19th century, William T. Rowe believed “public sphere” as a social category can certainly be applied to summarize these phenomena. For one thing, to a certain extent this was a direct consequence of the piecemeal withdrawal of state power under social demands. In the face of new social demands and the complicity of a metropolis, the society might respond more flexibly than the government. Primarily official administration could play at best a secondary role when encountering the emergent societal activism (Rowe, 1989). William T. Rowe made optimistic estimate on grassroots autonomy in his study on Hankou, which aroused great controversy. For instance, he thought the changes in the composition of the Hankou population and mixed inhabitation of both natives and non-natives were the foundation for autonomy. However, Frederic Wakeman, Jr. had the opposite opinion, in that the conclusion that Hankou was representative of Chinese endogenous urban autonomy and community identification was indefensible. For one thing, Hankou’s commercial guilds were most of the time controlled by nonnatives. For instance, one of Hankou’s biggest commercial guilds actually was established by non-natives with support from Shanghai compradors. Taking another example, the management of the salt industry’s profit was not under the control of an autonomous and independent merchant community. According to Frederic Wakeman, Jr., the so-called autonomy of “Hankou merchants” was actually a product of state monopoly and a “broker of bureaucratic merchant”. Therefore, it can present certain difficulties

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in how to distinguish commercial bureaus within official administration from autonomous grassroots commercial organizations (Wakeman, 1993). Critics on the “civil society” theory suggested that conventional neighborhood or community activities could not be regarded as similar to “modern communitarianism”. Personnel and activity funds provided by trading firms could evidence as new and unconventional autonomous activities. Different from Mary Backus Rankin and William T. Rowe who focused on looking for similarities between the political vocabulary inside modern Chinese structure and its Western counterpart, Philip Huang believed the binary “state-society” as an ideal concept that was abstracted from the early experiences of modern West is not suitable for China. Jürgen Habermas also admitted that the “public sphere of Buergertum” is a very abstract theoretical model. Philip Huang suggested that we could use a tripartite analysis to examine the society of the late Qing Dynasty (Huang, 1993). Firstly, the relation between state and society should be understood from the changes in both aspects. Thus, Philip Huang tried to build a value-neutral category — “the third realm” to describe the possibility of an existing Buergertum. This category had unique characteristics different from state and social spheres and operated on its own accord. Metaphorically, it resembled the child–parent relation. With emphasis on parental guidance, the importance of the child’s own growth might be neglected. The assumption of “the third realm” was actually derived from Philip Huang’s study on Chinese law. He divided the judicial system of the Qing Dynasty into three parts: a formal legal system consisting of statute laws and official courts, an informal legal regime including unwritten laws based on consanguinity and community arbitration, and the third realm which fell in between the above two systems. The personnel of administrative organizations were positioned between state and community, thus influencing both sides. The third realm was increasingly institutionalized, part of which turned into bureaucratization and was incorporated into modern statecraft, while other parts were absorbed into socialization. All these polarizations could be deemed as symbols for the emergence of modern society. In summary, to use “civil society” in the studies on modern China featured state’s derivative rights from traditions and their limitations. Based on the aforementioned perspectives, the discussions, materials and the

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“state-society” interactive framework differ essentially from the “public sphere” thesis as proposed by Jürgen Habermas. Probably this dissimilarity to the Habermasian theory can be an alternative approach to interpreting the particular case of Chinese history. Next, we will analyze and evaluate these perspectives briefly.

2.

Limitations of the “Civil Society” Concept as the Basis for Academic Discourse

As discussed above, it has been noticed that although the introduction of “civil society” and “public sphere” has pro forma significance, their interpretation nevertheless departed from the original thesis of Jürgen Habermas. According to Philip Huang, the two Habermasian concepts — “civil society” and “public sphere” were proposed on the premise of a dichotomy between state and society, which as merely a summarization of modern Western experiences were not able to explain Chinese historical conditions. Huang’s perspective was quite refreshing. Therefore, in this context, the Habermasian approach is seemingly not valid to examine the Chinese history. However, while Huang proposed an alternative theory of the third realm between state and society, he was apparently modeling after the Habermasian “public sphere”. These conflicts are closely related to different understandings of the Chinese society. In the course of Chinese history, the relationship between “state” and “society” maintained a delicate balance. The grassroots xiang-li organizational structure in social sphere in Chinese history has its record dated back to the pre-Qin periods. For instance, there were vivid descriptions about xiang-li organizations in the chapter on Situ (Judge), a kind of Diguan (Local Officials) in The Chou Rituals, as well as in the chapter on politics in Guanzi. But the structure of grassroots society did not mature till the Tang and Song Dynasties. After xiang-li organizations were established, they gained independence from the “state”. Although the state could intervene with social life by administrative means, local gentries took charge of essential functions and formed an operational space different from state organizations. This can be misleading to the extent that autonomous space in Chinese history was believed to have existed that approximates such Western concepts as “public sphere” 54

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or “the third realm”. In fact, in China, “state” and “society” did not have concrete boundaries but instead have substantial connections. For instance, the state controlled gentry’s mobility through imperial civil examinations, which presents a monitoring network involving high-ranking officials and low-level gentry. The fact that local gentry’s identity and educational background would have to conform to these official standards largely weakened their independence, not to mention a distinct “public sphere”. Even in the late Qing Dynasty, when the identity of the “gentry” class was demised by a rising gentry-merchant class, it was still difficult to measure to which extent the traditional “society” had changed. The “civil society” theorists used many examples to prove that public sphere existed in China, such as night-watchers, fire brigade, and charity organizations. However, the majority of these were at best a transformation or extension of grassroots organizations in the old “society”. In Jürgen Habermas’s definition, “public sphere” has two characteristics: It is a place to express public opinion and the expression is conducted freely. However, the formation of public sphere was often corroded by two processes, namely the state’s penetration into social sphere and the authority’s socialization plan (Huang, 1993). Under such circumstances, “public sphere” would experience a structural transformation possible in two ways, namely “socialization of state” and “nationalization of society”, both of which tended to blur the boundaries between state and society. Without such boundaries, a “public sphere of Buergertum” would not be possible (Huang, 1993). As for Chinese history, the penetration of state into society was limited due to territorial varsity and cultural resistance. After the Southern Song Dynasty, the control of grassroots society gradually turned indirect, where a greater reliance was placed upon such bodies as clan, local rule and regulations applicable for the inhabitants in a given territory. As Gu Yanwu concluded in Daily Records, it was partly due to the draconian laws in Legalism. Therefore, the “socialization plan of state authority” should occupy a central role in imperial governance. Huang noticed that the activities of gentry and merchant elites were concentrated in local and rural areas, while not at the state level and in urban areas. This varied from the Habermas’s thesis that the “public sphere” of Buergertum was centralized at the state level and in urban areas. Generally, although sinologists understood

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the independent character of township administrations in the Chinese society, they were often mistaken in regarding the following organizations as characteristic of pre-modern civil society, including trade guilds, townsmen associations, clans, community groups, god-worship societies (Bai Shen Hui), scholars’ societies (Xi Zi Hui), charity organizations and secret societies. These organizations were regarded as institutions independent of state control. As a matter of fact, they could be part of the “socialization plan of state authority”. In examining these organizations, the question we should ask is: beneath “public sphere”, had the private sphere expanded? How independent was the private sphere? These are important hallmarks to identify the modernity of grassroots organizations. There was a strong sense of collective identity in China. Scholars, if overlooking the assumption of individualism and private property, could be mistaken in applying such concepts as “public sphere”. Another issue that needs to be clarified is the integrating role played by the state in the development of “public sphere” during the late Qing Dynasty. This issue itself seems like a paradox. For one thing, the early modern European-style democracy in the West was developed under high-level social integration and statecraft. By comparison, modern China lacked an effective administrative framework for the development of public sphere on the one hand, while on the other, it squeezed social resources through state power. Under such circumstances, the state could confine the expansion of political freedom. Prasenjit Duara described the influence of “statecraft” and “democratization” on rural administrative organizations from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republican Period. He demonstrated that the “symbolic traditional value” of various organizations could be retained, such as the ritual activities by the Society of Baiquanzha (Baiquan Zhahui), which remained an effective means to unify local communities (Duara, 1994, p. 5). As Chinese statecraft was implemented successively from the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republican Period, the state could easily coordinate with social organizations by modeling after Western regulations and institutions. For instance, by the late Qing Dynasty a plethora of “corporations” appeared with non-traditional administrative characteristics. These corporations, such as educational, lawyers’ and bankers’ organizations, operated as affiliates to the state. The state controlled them in the same manner as it controlled local elites. Active scholars in introducing the “civil

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society” concept (e.g., Mary Backus Rankin) has already noticed that state monitor, other than open public discussions, was the core feature of civil society in the late Qing Dynasty. The relationship between officials and elites in handling local public affairs were not confrontational but interactive. The elites did not try to monitor state power (Rankin, 1993, p. 159). Although in time of rising “localism”, certain gentry called themselves as administrators of xiang (township) or li (community), it did not suggest that they accepted the overall state ideology. Apparently, traditional identification had changed. For instance, Zeng Guofan was also a marshall. His official title nonetheless was still shilang (minister). From this, it can be seen that local symbols could not be readily detached from statecraft efforts. Apart from the separation between state and society, there had been mutual coordination between them toward the goal of democratization, which should not be overlooked in examining the complexity of the Chinese history. The final question we should consider is whether the external similarity between organizational functions and political descriptions really indicates convergence of cultures. As analyzed previously, the power transfer from state to social elites may not necessarily indicate that the society had an essential nature of “public sphere” similar to the West. The Chinese-style “public sphere” kept a close relation with the state. As a Japanese scholar had summarized, “in traditional China, civil society existed neither as a dependent entity dominated by state power alone nor as a self-improving space independent of the state. We may regard civil society and state power as a mutually-connected continuum” (Yuzo, 1994). This concentric structure entailed that the boundary between state and society may have little significance. If we temporarily set functional operation aside and review the issue from a cultural perspective, we will find demarcation tension between “public sphere” and “private sphere”. On the one hand, the concept of “only [selfishly] private, no public” was popular among the Chinese intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty. Among others, Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Chen Duxiu did fiercely criticize the “selfishness” in Chinese personality and tried to redefine the relation between group and individual so as to enable a new mentality for the Chinese people. On the other hand, as modern theorists have noticed, the lack of “individualism” and respect for private rights

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posed an age-old problem to achieve an integrated Chinese personality. The Chinese concept of man being an integral part of nature could help to eliminate tension and discrepancy in terms of theoretical interpretation, which should be the key to our understanding of whether “public sphere” existed in China. Some sociologists have pointed out that the concepts of “private” and “public” had been interpreted with such great ambiguity in modern times due to the elusiveness in the connotations of “private” and “public”. Thus, the scope of “private” and “public” might be distorted under particular conditions. Take the understanding of “one’s private ends” for example. Although for Chinese the “private” is emphasized at times, they do not simply defend individualistic privacy. Instead, this notion of “private sphere” will have to be understood in the context of family, clan and neighborhood. In other words, the “private sphere” needs to be contextualized in a collective identity. The “private” is seldom construed in individualistic sense. To a great extent, the “private” has the character of the “public”. As Fei Xiaotong commented in his “differential mode of association”, “the difference between the public and private is only relative” (King, 1994). This “public” is connected with “clan” and “official affairs”. In this view, Ambrose King believed that if the “private” and the “public” were only relative to each other, it would be difficult to establish the “boundary” between them (King, 1994). Therefore, the confrontation and integration of the “private” and the “public” is an age-old proposition, as certain concepts such as “public affairs” and “public business” were reinvigorated to examine China. These concepts, despite their frequent appearance in daily life, were at best the reproduction of “public sphere”, which did not incorporate an element of Western individualism. It differed fundamentally from the Western “public sphere” which stresses protection and respect for individual privacy. Jürgen Habermas particularly used a chapter to explore “the relationship between the autonomy of public sphere and that of private sphere” in his recent work — On the Internal Relation between the Rule of Law and Democracy. As he suggested, “Law cannot exist without private autonomy of legal person. As a result, given the lack of protection for basic rights of citizens, there is no way to institutionalize certain conditions, under which the populace as citizens can exercise their public autonomy. Thus, private

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and public autonomy serve as a premise for each other” (Habermas, 1994). What Jürgen Habermas stressed was the private autonomy under the condition of “public sphere”, whereas the Chinese traditional “public sphere” took the “private” autonomy as a premise. The Chinese history at large did not lack the concept of “public”. There were many examples of local autonomy both in urban and rural areas. Nevertheless, superficial resemblance cannot blind us to the facts of distinctive cultural patterns and notions. In China, “public sphere” had penetrated into “private sphere”. China’s ontological view of nature can be the background for us to understand the “public-private” distinction. For instance, such differences as between imperial power and civil rights, as well as those between father and son in a family are all included in the notion of “public sphere”. As Mizoguchi Yuzo commented, from Japanese private-public point of view, the “father–son relation” was a private issue and was separated from government, state and society in the public sphere. Henceforth, it could not be regarded as “public”. Obviously, under the Confucian influence to eradicate privacy and individualism, the “public” could subjugate all the “private” traits in traditional China. It made individualistic autonomous rights unable to fit in with the Chinese conception of “public sphere”. But in Japan, although the demarcation between “public sphere” and “private sphere” was feudalistic, there was a possibility for private space to expand.

3.

Conclusion and Projection

Applying the concepts of “civil society” and “public sphere” to modern China studies is an experiment to interpret the development of Chinese history according to the Western empirical framework. It is too early to make an overall evaluation, as further studies need to be carried out. However, those scholars who have applied the “civil society” theory to studying Chinese issues have realized that the key to in-depth study lies in a deeper consciousness of the differences between Chinese and Western contexts. As Richard Madsen maintained, the Western context of “civil society” is rationalitic. It was used to legitimate and institutionalize political orders. China and other Asian countries should look for an “Asian-style” public 59

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sphere. Habermas suggested that café played a critical role in the British public sphere of Buergertum in the 18th century, which nonetheless cannot be used to examine the role of Chinese teahouses (Madsen, 1993). American social philosopher Criag Calhoun believed that it is important to clearly distinguish the two concepts — “public sphere” and “civil society”, which are interconnected but not equivalent to each other (Liang, 1994, pp. 424–427). Fortunately, many researchers have started to apply the concepts cautiously. One is to avoid overemphasizing the inherent differences of Chinese history in the Western discourse. For instance, William Theodore de Bary even attempted to unearth the liberalist traditions in Chinese history. The other is to avoid taking longitudinal concerns due to the constraint of political discourse, thus making the study a product of ideological “teleology”. Studies on Chinese history are at the crossroads. For one thing, institutional analyses were applied, from the concept of “civil society” to local structure. On the other hand, efforts have been made to avoid overgeneralizations from the studies on Chinese history. Therefore, the conclusions can be paradoxical as far as the differences between Chinese and Western “individualism”, “civil law”, “property rights”, and “public management” are concerned. For instance, “individualism”, social contract and natural rights as well as the stability of “private sphere”, were the essential conditions for the birth of a “civil society”. Without these features, how is it possible to prove that the autonomous organizations in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican Period were not a revival of traditional forms but in essence resembled the Western “public sphere”? The background of “civil society” study in Chinese mainland differs from that in the West. The former has more practical concerns. They do not seek to describe the balancing and confrontations of social associations and civil organizations against state power for “teleological” purposes like their Western counterparts. Neither do they attempt to avoid abstract philosophical discussions and a due concern of political contexts. They strive to establish a theory about the unique development of modern China with reference to the practical problems China met since its reform. The study of Chinese “civil society” focuses on the changes of resource allocation, socialization, and state functions during the reform and establishment of market economy since 1992. It thus makes an in-depth analysis and critique

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of “neo-authoritarianism” and the “democracy priority theory” at the end of the 1980s (Deng, 1993). According to the Chinese “civil society” theory, the relation between “state” and “society” is not as intensively confrontational as its Western counterpart, but presents a positive interaction which can only be achieved by dual achievement of political democratization and political stabilization. The change from authoritarianism into democracy is contingent upon the joint establishment of and social consensus on a political system by associations, groups and organizations (Deng, 1993). This consensus entails neither taking the reestablishment of new authority as a necessity nor using an extreme method of violent confrontation to expand “public sphere”. Rather, it is intended to find a possibility for a positive interaction between state power and social organizations. Theoretically, the Chinese civil society study stresses positive interactions between “state” and “society”, which is comparatively compliant with the historical conditions that “state” and “society” were in a state of mutual embeddedness. Under the historical backgrounds of “socialization of state” and “nationalization of society”, the birth of “public sphere” in modern China was difficult to have the character to confront the state. Nevertheless, the establishment of the Chinese “civil society” theory still needs to find justifications and resources from specific historical examples. The objective of such studies should be extended far beyond the confines of theoretical discourse, but also with strong practical concerns.

References Cohen, Paul A (1974). Between Tradition and Modernity; Wang T’ao and Reform in Late Ch’ing China. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Deng, Zhenglai (1993). Study on Civil Society in Taiwan. Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly, November. Dirlik, Arif (1993). Civil Society/Public Sphere in Modern China; As Critical Concepts Versus Heralds of Bourgeois Modernity. Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly, March. Duara, Prasenjit (1994). Culture, Power and State — Rural Area in Northern China from 1900 to 1942, translated by Fuming Wang. Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Press. Habermas, Jürgen (1994). On the Internal Relation between the Rule of Law and Democracy. Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly, Autumn. Huang, Philip CC (1993). Public Sphere/Civil Society in China? The Third Realm Between State and Society. Modern China, 19(2).

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Yang Nianqun King, Ambrose (1994). Chinese Notions about “Public” and “Private”. Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly, 2. Liang,Yuansheng (1994). End of Historiography and the Final Chinahand — Recent Modern Chinese History Studies from Perspective of Modern American Thought. The Scholar, 5, 424–427. Madsen, Richard (1993). The Public Sphere, Civil Society and Moral Community; A Research Agenda for Contemporary China Studies. Modern China, 19(2). Rankin, Mary Backus (1993). Some Observations on a Chinese Public Sphere. Modern China, 19(2). Rowe, William T (1989). Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City. 1796–1895. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rowe, William T (1990). The Public Sphere in Modern China. Modern China, 16(3). Rowe, William T (1993). The Problem of Civil Society in Late Imperial China”. Modern China, 19(2). Schoppa, R Keith (1982). Chinese Elites and Political Change; Zhejiang Province in the Early Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. (1993). The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture. Modern China, 19(2). Yuzo, Mizoguchi (1994). Contrast between Chinese and Japanese Notions of “PublicPrivate”. Twenty-First Century, 2.

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Civil Society in China: Concepts, Classification and Institutional Environment1

Chapter

3

Yu Keping2

Abstract The article provides a clarification and definition of such concepts as civil society, the third sector, institutional environment, civil society organizations (CSOs or minjian zuzhi), non-government organizations (NGOs), non-profit organizations (NPOs), intermediate organizations (zhongjie zuzhi), social associations or mass groups (qunzhong tuanti), etc. And then the author offers suggestions in the classification of civil organizations in China in terms of academic research and administrative management. The author put his focus upon analysis of the main characteristics of the current institutional environment of Chinese civil society.As the author points out, the institutional environment of civil society in contemporary China is characterized by the coexistence of encouragement at the macro-level and restriction at the micro-level; registration at different levels and dual management; dual management and multiple management; government regulations and Party policies; institutional redundancy and institutional deficiencies; and the co-existence of actual space and institutional space. Keywords: China’s civil society; civil organizations; institutional environment. 1 This is the final report on the project “The Institutional Environment of China’s Civil

Society” ( ) prepared by Yu Keping under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. The main members of the research team areYu Keping, He Zengke, Xu Xiuli, Jia Xijin, Zhou Hongyun, Wang Yongbing, and Yan Jian. The author is grateful to them for their contribution to the report. 2Yu Keping, China Center for Comparative Politics & Economics (CCCPE), Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, Beijing, P. R. China.

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1.

Introduction

This chapter is organized in the following way: Section 2 begins by explaining several key concepts pertaining to civil society and its institutional environment as well as the general environment of China’s civil society. Section 3 mainly focuses on the classification of civil society in China from both the perspectives of scholarly research and administrative management. Section 4 analyzes the prominent characteristics of the current institutional environment of civil society in China. Section 5 summarizes the general characteristics of civil society in China and makes some predictions about its further development.

2.

Concepts and General Observations

Although civil society was very lively in Modern China (1840–1919), the Chinese government and academic world view it as a new phenomenon. China’s civil society is still in the formative stage and quite immature, and its basic characteristics and functions have not yet been fully developed. Similarly, there are numerous ambiguities in the understanding of China’s civil society, manifested most dramatically in the lack of consensus on how some key categories and concepts are to be interpreted. Disagreements are natural, but if key concepts are too ambiguous, deep discussion will be difficult and, more important, the formulation of reasonable policies and regulations will be hindered. Therefore, before discussing the overall institutional environment of China’s civil society, it is necessary to state clearly how key concepts are to be interpreted.

2.1.

Civil society

The English term “civil society” is translated into Chinese by three different terms: shimin shehui ( ), gongmin shehui ( ) and minjian shehui ( ). Although the uses of these terms overlap, their meanings are not completely identical; there are subtle differences among them. The term shimin shehui is the one most widely used and is the standard

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translation for “civil society”. Its origin lies in Chinese translations of the classical texts of Marxism. However, in its traditional usage, it has a negative connotation to some degree, and in fact many people equate it with the term “bourgeois society”. Moreover, it is easy to misinterpret it to mean “urban residents”. The earliest use of minjian shehui to translate “civil society” was by scholars in Taiwan. This usage was embraced by mainland historians and widely adopted in research on non-governmental organizations in Modern China. It has a neutral connotation, but many government officials and scholars feel it conveys the sense of being marginalized. The term gongmin shehui was adopted as a translation for “civil society” after the beginning of reform and opening up. It has a positive connotation and emphasizes the political science aspect of the term, i.e., both citizens’ participation in public affairs and citizens’ restraints on state power. More and more young scholars prefer this term. We define civil society as being comprised of all civil organizations and civil relations that are outside the state, the government system, the market and the commercial system. It is a civil public sphere outside the spheres of government and the market economy. It is constituted of all kinds of civil organizations not affiliated with the government or businesses, including organizations for safeguarding citizens’ rights, all kinds of trade associations, public interest organizations, community organizations, interest groups, collegial groups, mutual assistance organizations, recreational groups, voluntary organizations and associations spontaneously created by citizens. Therefore, we can view them as the third sector intermediary between the government and enterprises.

2.2.

Civil organizations

Civil society is a public sphere that is relatively independent from the political state. It is constituted of all kinds of civil organizations. However, the current understanding of civil organizations in China’s academic world is even more confused than the understanding of civil society. Both scholarly articles and government documents use a variety of names for civil society organizations (CSOs), such as non-governmental organization (NGO), non-profit organization (NPO), civil organization, civil group,

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intermediary organization, mass association, people’s association, social association, the third sector organization and voluntary organization. There are no substantive differences between the organizations denoted by these various names. However, based on a strict interpretation of their meaning, these concepts should be distinguishable because they stress different aspects of civil society. The term “NGO” is a widely-used concept in nowadays China. Its strength is that it emphasizes the unofficial nature of civil society organizations and indicates that they are not part of the system of government organizations and are therefore clearly different from government organizations. But in the Chinese context, this concept can engender two opposite ambiguities. The first is to suggest that only important and formally constituted civil organizations fall within the category of civil society because the earliest use of the term in China was to apply to international NGOs recognized in the UN Charter. International NGOs have standing and have been formally approved by governments, so a large number of informal organizations in society would probably not be counted as NGOs in many people’s eyes. The second ambiguity is to suggest that the non-governmental nature of NGOs means that they are completely unrelated to the government or even opposed to the government. But what is intriguing about Chinese NGOs is the fact that most of them all have intimate relations with the government, and many of them can be called governmental non-government organizations (GONGOs). The term “non-profit organization” highlights the difference between civil society organizations (CSOs) and market organizations such as enterprises and corporations, but they blur the fact that for civil society organizations to survive and fulfill their mission they need to charge for the services they provide and engage in for-profit activities. CSOs should be free of the profit motive theoretically, but many civil organizations do not get necessary financial assistance from governments or corporations, so they are forced to generate income from their activities in order to survive and develop. The services they provide are not free in China. Thus it is very difficult to determine which kind of activities is “non-profit”. Therefore, using non-profit as the standard to define CSOs will raise new problems, such as how to define the “non-profit”. “Intermediary organization” is one of the most widely used terms in China, and it is preferred by government administrative agencies because 66

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the term is used frequently in administrative regulations. The term makes it clear from the start that civil society organizations have an intermediary position between the government and enterprises. However, this term glosses over other important features of such organizations, especially their non-profit nature. In actuality, most organizations with an intermediary nature are for-profit bodies, and they are much more closely associated with market society than civil society. As China’s market economy develops, the service industry is booming. Many of the organizations in service industry, although were viewed as “intermediary organizations” by the government administrative agencies, are not at all parts of civil society, such as law offices, accounting offices, marriage affairs agencies, public notary offices, human resources centers, real estate assessment offices, quality and technical oversight bodies, household services agencies, business advisory bodies and commercial agent bodies. They are all intermediary organizations, but they operate purely for profit. The terms “mass organization” or “people’s organization” are specific political terms in China’s current system. Such organizations are directly led by the Communist Party of China and include trade unions, the Communist Youth League, women’s federations as well as a small number of specialized organizations such as the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, the China Federation of Writers and Artists, and the China Association for Science and Technology. The salient feature of these organizations is that they have a strong political and administrative flavor. They have national and local bodies paralleled to government administrative divisions; and their leading bodies parallel those of government bodies; their quota of staff was officially assigned by the government; and they perform certain administrative functions as well. In terms of their functions and nature, these organizations actually are more like government organizations than non-governmental organizations. The terms “mass organization” and “people’s organization” are sometimes used in a general sense to pertain to all non-governmental social organizations, but the notion about their functions as well as connections with the governments has already been deeply implanted in people’s minds. In addition, in the current discourse of Chinese politics, the terms “the masses” and “the people” are commonly used in a political sense that signifies the recognition of a majority of citizens by the Party or the government. Obviously, this connotation makes it difficult for these terms to embrace the full significance of civil society organizations. 67

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The limitations of the terms of “third sector organization” and “volunteer organization” are relatively clear. The first is a technical term introduced from aboard only in recent years. A lot of people cannot understand the term because they do not know what the third sector is. In the economic sphere, it is easy to confuse it with the tertiary sector in service industries. The term “volunteer organization” emphasizes the voluntary nature of civil society organizations, but voluntary participation is not an exclusive characteristic of “volunteer organization”: many political party organizations stress that their members’ participation in them is also “voluntary”. Obviously, using these terms to denote “civil society organizations” is not altogether satisfactory. CSOs are also frequently called “social associations”, “citizens’ groups”, “citizens’ organizations” and “civil organizations”. These terms relatively clearly indicate the civil nature of CSOs, which distinguishes them from government agencies and commercial organizations. Relatively speaking, their connotation is relatively clear and precise. The term “social association” emphasizes the social nature of civil society organizations. The terms “citizens’ group” and “citizens’ organization” emphasize the political nature of civil society organizations because the term “citizen” is a political concept defined by a country’s constitution. The term “civil organization” (minjian zuzhi, ) emphasizes the societal basis of civil society organizations, and its connotation can be extended to encapsulate the important content of all the above-discussed terms, so it is a relatively satisfactory concept to denote CSOs. Therefore we propose that when discussing CSOs, the term “civil organization” be used wherever possible to avoid the unnecessary disputes and confusions caused by the use of different terms discussed above. Then, what are the bodies that this chapter calls “civil organizations”? Civil organizations, which are the main elements of civil society, are nonprofit groups that are constituted of citizen volunteers who seek the common interests. They have four prominent characteristics. First, they are unofficial; that is, they take a civil form and they do not represent the position of the government or the state. Second, they are non-profit; that is, they do not take making a profit as the main purpose of their existence; instead, they usually take providing public benefits and services as their main purpose. Third, they are relatively independent; that is, they have their own organizational

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and management mechanisms and independent sources of funding, and are relatively independent from the government politically, administratively and financially. Fourth, they are voluntary. Those who participate in specific civil society organizations do so entirely based on their own free will. These characteristics of CSOs clearly make them different from government bodies and business groups. In addition, they are non-political and nonreligious; that is, they do not take obtaining political power as an important objective and do not engage in religious activities. Therefore, political and religious organizations cannot be classified as civil organizations.3

2.3. The institutional environment An institution is a series of regulations or norms that influence human activities. Douglas C. North, an important representative of New Institutionalism, says, “Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights)” (North, 1991, p. 97, pp. 201–202) Institutional regulations are ready-made norms of behavior that are relatively stable and long lasting. The behavioral regulations that constitute institutions include both written and unwritten norms. They include statutory regulations that authoritative bodies endorse and enforce as well as so-called implicit regulations, which are informal rules that have not been promulgated by any authoritative body yet implicitly restrict people’s actions. A political institution is a series of regulations that restricts people’s political activities, in other words, it is the rule of conduct that structure human political life. In general, a political institution is established by the state and embodies the basic interests and value orientation of the political authorities who use it to control the political activities of the citizens. Therefore, a political institution is more fundamental, restrictive and coercive than other institutions, and when in conflict with other social systems, the other institutions usually give way to it. 3 Scholars are of different opinions on whether political parties and religious organizations

should count as civil organizations. On the basis of conditions in China, we adopt the definition of civil organizations given by Laster M. Salamon and others and do not count them as civil organizations. See Salamon (1994).

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To establish civil associations and activities of civil associations are commonly thought of as typical political activities, so they must be structured by relevant state institutions. We call all formal and informal rules the state uses to regulate or control the activities of civil organizations the institutional environment of civil society. This environment has five aspects: (1) Constitution, which provides the fundamental legal framework and legitimacy for civil society; (2) Ordinary laws, that is, the comprehensive and special laws concerning civil organizations; (3) Administrative regulations, decrees and rules with which the central and local governments regulate civil organizations; (4) Party policy regulations, i.e., policies, principles, rules and measures of political parties in power concerning civil organizations; and (5) Informal institutions that are all kinds of implicit regulations diffused throughout society and the government that influence the activities and functions of civil organizations, including the attitude of party and government leaders at all levels toward civil organizations. Since civil society exists in specific institutional environment, the latter must exert direct or indirect influence on the development of civil society. As the principal component of civil society, the civil organizations are structured by all kinds of formal or informal regulations, which in turn mold the shape and characteristics of civil society and its role in social and political life as well. By differentiating and analyzing the influences on civil society into a number of institutional factors, we can discover the overall impact China’s current institutional environment has on its civil society. We can identify the following important factors of the institutional environment: Determinants of the nature and orientation of civil organizations; rules for establishing and registering them; classifications of civil organizations and measures for supervising them; supervision, control and guidance of them; financial policies for them, including subsidy, taxation and auditing policies; ways and means to intervene in their affairs; measures to support them; policies to encourage them; restrictions on and penalties against them, including licensing, qualifications, franchising and revocation; and the Party’s leadership of them.

3.

Classification of Civil Organizations

Clearly defining the nature and position of civil organizations is a basic requirement to the relevant laws and regulations and it is also a prerequisite 70

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for formulating corresponding policies, but the relevant laws and regulations currently in effect lag far behind to clearly define the nature and position of civil organizations in China. In party or government documents as well as the relevant laws and regulations, social associations are generally viewed as bridges or links between the Party or government and the citizens. While underscoring the societal, voluntary and non-profit aspects of civil organizations, does not mention that they have nothing to do with the government. Perhaps this arises from misinterpreting “non-governmental” as “having no relationship with government” or as “being entirely independent of government and not subject to governmental guidance”. In fact, what “non-governmental” means here is that they are not part of the Party or government systems and are relatively independent of Party and government organs, and it is absolutely absurd to equate “non-governmental” with “no relations whatever with the government”. Civil organizations can also be established by the government and receive government guidance or funding. The “Regulations Concerning the Registration and Supervision of Social Associations” determines the nature and position of civil organizations as follows: “What these regulations call social associations are non-profit social organizations whose members are Chinese citizens who join them voluntarily, whose purpose is to carry out the common will of their members, and whose activities fall within the scope of their charters”. The “Interim Regulations Concerning the Registration and Supervision of Privately-Run Non-enterprise Entities” defines the position of privately-run non-enterprise entities as follows: “What these regulations call privatelyrun non-enterprise entities are social organizations that undertake non-profit social service activities without government funding support, which are set up by enterprise-operated institutions, social associations, other social forces and individual citizens”. The “Regulations Concerning the Supervision of Foundations” defines foundations as follows: “What these regulations call foundations are non-profit legal persons constituted in accordance with the provisions of these regulations who use property donated by natural persons, legal persons or other organizations to carry out public welfare undertakings”. These definitions and those of other related laws have some inherent shortcomings. First, their definition of the position of civil organizations is vague. Some scholars argue that according to the above regulations, the difference

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between social associations and privately-run non-enterprise entities is that the former are organizations established by their members for their mutual benefit while the latter are organizations which aim at providing public goods and is not based on membership. This analysis obviously blurs their distinctions because some kinds of civil organizations are both mutually beneficial social associations and public goods associations as well, such as China Charity and the Red Cross of China. Also, many industry associations are classed as social associations, but they are not voluntarily formed by citizens, instead they are established by the government to exert specific functions. The above definitions also make it difficult to properly differentiate privately-run non-enterprise entities from foundations. Many privately-run non-enterprise entities are also “non-profit legal persons” that use “property donated by natural persons, legal persons or other organizations” to carry out public goods activities. In addition, according to the stipulation of relevant laws, citizen self-governing organizations on the grassroots levels, such as Villager Committees and Residential Committees, are non-governmental organizations, but they are not included in the above classification. Second, the specifications of civil organizations are mutually contradictory on numerous points. According to the above definitions, trade unions, the Communist Youth League and Women’s Federations are all viewed as social associations, but the Civil Servants Law clearly states that cadres in these three kinds of associations fall within the state civil servant supervision system. According to the above regulations, social associations should be citizens’ voluntary organizations; they should not be bureaucratic like government bodies, and their leaders should not have administrative grades. However, Party and government policies also specify that many social associations and their leaders, such as the China Science and Technology Association, the Chinese Writers Association, the China Law Society and the Chinese Public Administration Society, receive the treatment accorded administrative grades. Third, the specifications make it difficult to classify civil organizations. According to the current supervision laws and regulations, civil organizations are divided into social associations, privately-run non-enterprise entities and foundations. However, there are some kinds of civil organizations that do not fall into any of these categories as well as overlapping exist among these categories. For example, in reality, a large number of civil

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organizations have never registered with Civil Affairs departments, instead they have registered with Departments of Industry and Commerce as enterprise organizations. According to the law, all organizations that registered with departments of industry and commerce are not civil organizations but enterprise organizations. Another example is citizens’ self-governing organizations, such as Villager Committees and Residential Committees. They are widespread and playing a very important role in society, yet they are difficult to classify on the basis of the above criteria. In China, there is no unified ways of classifying civil organizations. Three different ways coexist in classifying civil organizations in China: The official classifications used by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the classifications used by the United Nations or foreign research bodies and the various classification schemes proposed by Chinese scholars. The Ministry of Civil Affairs, which is the official authorities responsible for civil organizations, classifies the civil organizations under its jurisdiction into three types. The first type is comprised of social associations, i.e., “non-profit social organizations voluntarily organized by Chinese citizens to achieve the common objectives of their members by engaging in activities in accordance with their charters”. The second type is comprised of so-called “Civilian-Run Non-enterprise Units”, i.e., “social organizations without governmental funding organized by enterprises, institutions, social associations, other social forces and individual citizens for the purpose of engaging in not-for-profit social service activities”. The third type is comprised of foundations dedicated to the public good, i.e., “non-profit legal persons that use funds contributed by natural or legal persons or other organizations to carry out undertakings for the public good”.4 The Ministry of Civil Affairs also classifies the numerous social associations into four types. The first type consists of academic groups, such as associations in the various natural and social sciences and in interdisciplinary fields. 4 Quoted from State Council publications: Shehui Tuanti Dengji Guanli Tiaoli

(“Regulations Concerning the Registration and Supervision of Social Associations”); Minban Fei Qiye Danwei Dengji Guanli Zanxing Tiaoli (“Interim Regulations Concerning the Registration and Supervision of Run Non-business Bodies”); and Jijinhui Guanli Tiaoli (“Regulations Concerning the Supervision of Foundations”). See the document library of the official website of the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People’s Republic of China: http://www.mca.gov.cn/wjylzx.

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The second type consists of trade organizations (hangyexing tuanti), whose members are enterprises in the same field. The third type consists of professional organizations, whose members have similar skills and special funds and are engaged in the same work. The fourth type consists of federations (such as trade unions) which are associations of groups or people (Wu, 1996, p. 6). Some scholars point out that the way government regulatory agencies categorize social organizations is easy to implement, but it is overly simple and not conducive to thorough analysis. They advocate using international standards until a comprehensive and mature standard for classifying Chinese social organizations is developed. One choice would be to use the United Nations’ International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC), which divides NPOs into three major categories and fifteen sub-categories. The category of education has primary education, secondary education, higher education and adult and other education as sub-categories; the category for health and social work has human health activities, veterinary activities and social work activities as sub-categories; and the category of other community, social and personal service activities has sewage and refuse disposal, sanitation and similar activities; activities of membership organizations; recreational, cultural and sporting activities; and other service activities as sub-categories. Another choice would be to use the classification standards of research institutes in Western countries. The School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University basically uses International Classification of Nonprofit Organizations (ICNPO) developed at the Johns Hopkins University Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. It divides China’s civil organizations into 12 major categories and 27 subcategories. The major categories are: Culture and recreation; education and research; health; social services; environment; development and housing; law, advocacy and politics, philanthropic intermediaries and volunteerism promotion; international; religion; business and professional associations; and not elsewhere classified (Deng, 2001, pp. 5–6). In recent years, as research on civil organizations has deepened, Chinese scholars have developed a number of classification schemes. For example, classifying social associations on the basis of their statutory purpose into organizations that mutually benefit their members, operational organizations and organizations whose members work for the public good;

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classifying them based on the kind of relation they have to the government into organizations that are government or privately run or have aspects of both; classifying them based on their form of management into organizations that are professionally or non-professionally managed and those for which management responsibility is not clear; classifying them based on whether they have members or not; classifying them based on whether their organizational structure is tight like a pyramid or loose like a net; and classifying them based on whether they serve the public good or the mutual benefit of their members. In order to unify the classification of civil organizations, some scholars classify them based on both the subject and functions of civil organizations, and therefore divide all of China’s nationwide social associations into 17 functional categories. (Wang Ming, 2001, p. 17; Wang Ying, 1993, p. 70; CPC Research Group on Hangzhou’s Civil Organizations, 2003; Wan, 2004; Wang Ying and Sun Bingyao, 2002, pp. 4–5). There are many kinds of civil organizations, and they all have their own distinctive characteristics. People can classify them on the basis of various characteristics and the choice of these characteristics will generate different criteria of classification. For example, on the basis of their legal status, civil organizations can be classified as legal or illegal; from the nature of their objectives, they can be classified as dedicated to the public good or not; from the nature of their activities, they can be classified as professional or general organizations; from the scope of their activities, they can be classified as national or local organizations; and from sources of their operating expenses, they can be classified as being subsidized by government funds or social contributions or as self-supporting. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are numerous typologies and methods for classifying them. However, classification itself is not the main objective; our aim is to better understand or supervise the various kinds of civil organizations. Research and supervision of civil organizations are closely connected, but they are distinct and have important differences, including differences in the typology they use. Accordingly, we propose methods of classification for academic research and government respectively. First, from the perspective of academic research, civil organizations can no doubt be classified by various criteria, such as their status, function or locality, but what should be most important are their basic characteristics. Based on the important characteristics of existing civil organizations, they

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can be divided into the following types: (1) Trade organizations, i.e., trade, professional and management associations, such as the associations associated with the various industries; (2) Charitable organizations, whose main functions are to provide disaster relief and aid the poor, such as the Red Cross, charities, disabled persons’ federations, and the Soong Ching Ling Foundation; (3) Academic groups, organizations of scholars in the same field, such as the Chinese Physical Society, Chinese Chemical Society, Chinese Association of Political Science and Chinese Atheistic Research Society; (4) Political groups, i.e., all kinds of citizens’ organizations that safeguard the political rights of citizens, such as trade unions, the Communist Youth League, women’s federations, villagers’ committees, residential committees, and other kinds of organizations devoted to safeguarding citizen’s rights; (5) Community organizations, which are engaged in neighborhood supervision and service, such as homeowners’ committees, community welfare centers, community retirees’ associations, community legal assistance centers and neighborhood public security committees; (6) Social service organizations, i.e., civil organizations that provide social welfare services and public welfare services, such as public welfare organizations engaged in environmental protection and in culture, education, sports and health activities; (7) Citizens’ mutual assistance organizations, i.e., organizations voluntarily entered into by citizens to protect their interests, such as urban and rural mutual assistance associations, relief centers, rural agricultural associations and rural cooperative organizations; (8) Common interest organizations, citizens’ organizations based upon common good, leisure interests and career, such as sports clubs, countrymen associations, alumni associations, poetry groups and so on; (9) Non-profit consulting service organizations, including most privately operated non-commercial bodies. Secondly, looking at the classification of civil organizations from the perspective of government supervision, there are at least three criteria that should be considered: Their legal status, their incentive orientation, and the nature of their activities. The first two criteria concern civil organizations’ institutional treatment in such areas as taxation, registration and supervision, and the third concerns the suitability of supervision. Based on this line of thought, we believe that civil organizations should be classified in the following three ways. First, on the basis of their legal status, civil organizations can be divided into legal person groups and non-legal-person groups. Legal

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person groups have independent existence as legal persons and as such they have more rights and responsibilities than groups that do not. They should be subject to stricter approval, registration and supervision, and they should receive greater government support in such areas as finance and taxation. Second, on the basis of their purpose, civil organizations can be divided into public welfare groups and non-public-welfare groups. The main purpose of public welfare groups is to increase the common good of society, and the government should give more support and financial assistance to such groups. Third, on the basis of supervision requirements, civil organizations can be classified as follows: (1) Mass organizations, i.e., mass groups unique to China’s political situation and directly under the leadership of the CPC, such as trade unions, the Communist Youth League, women’s federations, writers’ associations, science and technology associations, literary federations and disabled persons’ federations; (2) Self-governing groups, i.e., self-governing citizens’political organizations, such as Villagers’Committees and Residential Committees; (3) Business and professional groups, i.e., all kinds of organizations and associations in a particular industry or profession, including organizations having regulatory functions and selfpolicing organizations, such as the China National Council of Light Industry and China Consumers’ Association; (4) Academic groups, i.e., all kinds of associations in the fields of natural and social sciences and interdisciplinary studies; (5) Community groups, i.e., organizations of community residents that provide community supervision and services; (6) Social associations, i.e., all other kinds of social organizations besides the above; (7) Public welfare and charities foundations, i.e., organizations that finance public welfare and charities undertakings.

4.

Characteristics of the Institutional Environment of China’s Civil Society

As I mentioned above, the institutional environment constraining and regulating the growth of China’s civil society is constituted mainly of the following five elements: The Constitution, ordinary laws, administrative statutes, Party policies and other informal regulations. These five elements

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mutually complement each other and form a relatively complete network that decisively influences the growth of China’s civil society. A comprehensive analysis of the formal and informal institutional environment constraining China’s civil society reveals the following general characteristics.

4.1.

Macro encouragement and micro restrictions

Overall, since reform and opening up, China’s macro institutional environment has been beneficial to the growth of civil society. This is a basic reason why China’s civil society has been able to spring up in such a short time. First, the Constitution and the CPC’s principal policies basically take a positive attitude toward civil organizations. This lays a legal foundation for the existence of China’s civil society. The Constitution promulgated in 1982 confirmed the freedom of association as one of the basic rights of Chinese citizens. Since reform and opening up, a whole series of important principles and policies formulated by the CPC, such as promoting the socialist market economy, carrying out rural and urban structural reform, promoting villagers’ self-governance and other kinds of grassroots level democracy, establishing “socialist rule of law” and political civilization, encouraging the separation of Party and government and the separation of government and business, and raising the Party’s governing capacity, have objectively created legal and institutional space for the development of civil organizations. In addition, economic restructuring focused on the “rural land contract responsibility system” (lianchan chengbao zerenzhi) and establishing the market economy created realistic conditions for fostering civil organizations. After the 1980s, China began to institute market-oriented economic restructuring. It gradually abandoned the former planned economy in favor of the socialist market economy, and it changed the original unitary system of ownership by collectives and the state to a diverse system of state, collective and private ownership by single owners, partnerships and foreign owners. These changes greatly expanded productive forces, raised people’s standard of living and are the deep economic roots of the vigorous development of civil organizations. Further, since the 1980s, numerous important changes occurred in China’s political system that directly or indirectly facilitated the development of civil society. For example, the government continually paid greater attention to the legal system and the 78

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rule of law, and citizens’ freedom of assembly began to take on substantive meaning. The government delegated many of its powers. It delegated operational, decision-making and human resources powers to enterprises, and it delegated most of its economic powers to society. It also gradually relaxed supervision over citizens, and there was an unprecedented increase in citizens’ freedom of action. Finally, the government began to transform its functions. In most areas of production, business, civil affairs, culture, arts and academics the government no longer exercised direct supervision functions and transferred these functions to civil organizations such as nongovernmental industry associations, professional associations and volunteer groups (Yu, 2002, pp. 196–198). It can be said that China’s macro institutional environment is generally encouraging to civil society, but its micro institutional environment is generally restrictive. First, the basic orientation of laws and regulations of government departments that directly affect civil organizations is to control and restrict those organizations. For example, most of the laws and regulations promulgated individually or in conjunction with other departments by civil affairs departments from the central to local levels are supervisory in nature, and very few of them have encouraging clauses. Second, the supervision of civil organizations by government regulatory departments focuses on issues of entry, and they erect obstacles to the establishment and registration of civil organizations. For example, there are strict regulations concerning the names, structure, location, staff size, spending, charter and the Regulatory Bodies (zhuguan bumen) of civil organizations. Third, civil organizations are subject to duplicate supervision. The law stipulates that all civil organizations must submit not only to the oversight of government civil affairs departments but also to the leadership of agencies responsible for their area of professional activities, and that these agencies generally have the primary responsibility for supervision. Fourth, the spending, scope and content of civil organizations’ activities is strictly limited. For example, laws and regulations concerning supervision stipulate that civil organizations can operate only within designated localities and only engage in the activities approved when they register; otherwise their activities are considered illegal. Fifth, the government exercises macro control over civil organizations similar to its macro control of the economy. When civil organizations expand quickly in a short period of time or an

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unusual domestic political development occurs, the CPC Central Committee, the State Council and various government departments issue documents or policies requiring civil organizations be investigated and put in order. For example, in 1984, 1989, 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued several important documents to exert macro control on the development of civil organizations.

4.2.

Hierarchical registration and dual supervision

Until now, China has not yet passed a formal law concerning civil organizations, and at present the “Regulations Concerning the Registration and Supervision of Social Associations” and the “Regulations Concerning the Supervision of Civilian Run Non-Enterprise Units” are the most important laws concerning social associations. These two regulations establish the basic framework for government supervision of civil organizations, namely the model of hierarchical registration and dual supervision. The basic content to this kind of supervisory system is that all civil organizations must simultaneously accept dual leadership from the Registering Department (i.e., the civil affairs department at their corresponding level) and the Regulatory Bodies (i.e., the government department responsible for their realm of activities). The Registering Department is responsible for approving and registering civil organizations and the Regulatory Body is responsible for routine supervision. “Hierarchical registration” ( fenji dengji) means at and above the county level, civil affairs departments of the people’s government are responsible for approval, registration, annual inspections, modification, dissolution and oversight of civil organizations at their respective level. According to this system, civil organizations that operate nationwide are approved and registered by the Ministry of Civil Affairs; organizations that operate locally are approved by local government civil affairs departments at all levels from the county level up. Civil organizations that operate across administrative boundaries are approved the civil affairs departments of the next higher level of government. Specifically, As the statutory bodies for approving and registering civil organizations, civil affairs departments (i.e., the Registering Department) at all levels have some common responsibilities as follows: to examine and approve civil organizations that have been 80

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approved by the Regulatory Bodies; to carry out statutory procedures of registration, annual inspection, modification and dissolution for civil organizations in their locality that have received approval; to formulate supervisory principles, policies, regulations and oversight procedures for social associations and civilian run non-enterprise units; to take responsibility for the registration and annual inspection of domestic civil organizations (including civilian run non-enterprise units and social associations of Hong Kong and Taiwan people in Chinese mainland), social associations of foreigners in China, and agencies of international social associations in China; to guide the activities of civil organizations, study and propose plans for the development of civil organizations, standards for membership dues and measures for financial management; oversee the activities of civil organizations and investigate civil organizations’ illegal activities and illegal organizations that have not registered yet operate under the guise of social associations (State Council, 1998). The Regulations stipulate that the Regulatory Bodies (zhuguan bumen), who are responsible for routine supervision of civil organizations, are the relevant departments affiliated with the State Council and the relevant departments of the local people’s governments from the county level up, as well as organizations empowered by the State Council and local people’s governments. Based on the present “dual supervision system” of civil organizations, the main functions of the Regulatory Bodies are: To approve and appoint the main leaders, including president, vice president, members of the executive council and secretary-general of the civil organizations under their supervision; approve their major activities; oversee their daily work; provide professional guidance for their activities; and audit their finances. In addition to the hierarchical approval and registration, the hierarchical principles also apply to Regulatory Bodies. In other words, For different administrative divisions and administrative levels of civil organizations, the corresponding Regulatory Bodies will be different. As far as a specific civil organization is concerned, the administrative level of its Regulatory Body principally is accordance with the administrative level of its Registering Department. For example, the Regulatory Body for national civil organizations must be a ministry or commission at the central level, while the civil organizations that operate within a province must look for a provincial-level Party or government body as their Regulatory

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Bodies. Therefore, in today’s China, the “dual supervision system” and the “hierarchical registration system” of civil organizations are mutually complementary.

4.3.

Dual supervision and multiple supervision

The system of dual supervision leads inevitably to multiple supervision. The provision of “dual supervision” requires every civil organization must accept dual leadership from a Registering Department (i.e., the civil affairs department at their corresponding level) and a Regulatory Body (i.e., the government department responsible for their realm of activities). The Regulations provides only general rules. Party and government bodies at and above the county level as well as those bodies appointed by governments at and above the county level may all become functioning Regulatory Bodies for civil organizations. An inevitable consequence is therefore the proliferation of the Regulatory Bodies. Evidences show that all kinds of functional departments of the Party and government frequently become the Regulatory Bodies of civil organizations under their jurisdiction. For example, the organization departments of Party committees at all levels are generally the Regulatory Bodies of Party Research Societies at the same level; the United Front Departments (tongzhan bu) are the Regulatory Bodies for United Front Research Societies at the same level; government cultural offices and bureaus are the Regulatory Bodies for all kinds of unofficial cultural groups; sports bureaus or sports commissions are the Regulatory Bodies for all kinds of unofficial sports groups; and science and technology commissions, offices and bureaus are the Regulatory Bodies for all kinds of mass science and technology groups. Not only do functional departments of the Party and government become “mothers-in-law” to all kinds of civil organizations within the scope of their authority, but in fact for various reasons many civil organizations have to look everywhere for an appropriate “mother-in-law” (i.e., the Regulatory Bodies) while many “mothers-in-law” have little relationship with the fields in which the civil organizations they supervise operate. For example, a government cultural bureau might become the Regulatory Body of a people’s fitness association while a government sports committee might become the Regulatory Body of a people’s arts association, and a government science commission might become the Regulatory Body of 82

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a training center while an education commission might become the Regulatory Body of a civil science and technology service center. Civil organizations with relatively abundant resources, especially some well-funded industry supervisions organizations, not only have to accept leadership from their Regulatory Bodies, but also have to accept direct or indirect leadership from other important and powerful Party and government bodies, so there will be several “mothers-in-law” supervising them at the same time.

4.4.

Government laws and regulations and Party policies

Government laws and regulations and Party policies are mutually complementary, and both are authoritative standards for the supervision of civil organizations, and together they constitute the basic institutional environment of China’s civil society. This is an important characteristic of the institutional environment of China’s civil society. Every Party leading body and government organ of power from the central to the local levels, all have responsibilities for supervising civil organizations. Party committees and governments at every level have the duty to strengthen their leadership on civil organizations. The basic purpose of government supervision is to improve and strengthen the Party’s leadership on civil organizations. Government regulation concerning civil organizations relies principally on state law or administrative regulations, and Party regulation concerning civil organizations mainly takes the form of Party policies. These policies could be the formal documents, directives, notices, regulations, measures, opinions, rules, standards and decisions of the CPC Central Committee and local Party committees at every level; they also could take the form of informal instructions, directives, speeches and writings of Party leaders at every level. Party policies concerning the supervision of civil organizations are similar to government laws and regulations in that they also constitute a system. Vertically, Party committees from the CPC Central Committee to local committees all have a series of policy documents concerning the regulation and supervision of civil organizations, and horizontally, Party committee departments, such as the general offices, organization departments, publicity departments and united front departments, all have the power to formulate supervisory policies within the scope of their responsibilities. 83

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In recent years, these leading Party committee departments have issued a stream of policy documents in the spirit of the CPC Central Committee’s documents, and such policy documents have provided important guidelines for the supervision of civil organizations. Government laws and regulations and Party policies together constitute the basic institutional environment of China’s civil society. They have different emphases and complement each other. In general, the main function of government laws and regulations concerns carrying out ordinary approval, registration and oversight, and the main role of Party policies concerns carrying out macro control, particularly to make decisions of principle at important moments to encourage, guide or constrain civil organizations. As pointed out above, in light of the importance of rural economic mutual assistance organizations in raising the rural standard of living, the CPC Central Committee announced a number of policies to encourage and support such organizations in a series of documents in recent years, while in light of the indiscriminate and uncontrolled development of social associations and, the CPC Central Committee or its general office issued documents in 1984, 1989, 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004 to control and regulate the development of civil organizations. (See Legal Affairs Office of the CPC Central Committee General Office et al., 1997 and 2001; Shandong Province Bureau for Supervising Civil Organizations, 2005) The coexistence of government laws and regulations and Party policies concerning the supervision of civil organizations to a certain extent reflects the unique relationship in the current Chinese political situation between the Party and the government, between law and policy, and between the rule of leaders and the rule of law. On the one hand, establishing the rule of law in China is an objective of the CPC which have been both written into CPC’s Constitution and the Chinese Constitution as a goal of China’s political development. Party organizations and leaders at all levels must operate within the scope of the Constitution and the law. The rule of leaders is gradually being supplanted by the rule of law, and Party policies are gradually giving way to laws and they are becoming supervisory tools subordinate to the law in the country’s political life. China still has a long way to go to achieve the objective of rule of law. The rule of leaders still plays a very important role in the social and political life in the country, and policy plays a more important role than law in many circumstances.

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4.5.

Institutional redundancy and institutional deficiencies

The coexistence of institutional redundancy and institutional deficiencies is a mark of the institutional environment of China’s civil society. On the one hand, many regulations concerning civil organizations are redundant, overlapping or trifling. For example, the regulations concerning the supervision of many civil organizations include not only the State Council’s “Regulations Concerning the Registration and Supervision of Social Associations” and the Ministry of Civil Affairs’ rules and regulations for implementation, but also supervisory rules promulgated jointly by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and other ministries and commissions or independently by such ministries and commissions. Some local governments also formulate numerous implementation measures for supervising civil organizations. Not only do provincial-level governments or regulatory bodies have their own provisions as well as rules and regulations for implementation, but regional, municipal and county governments also have their own measures and official opinions. Not only do Registration Departments and Regulatory Bodies formulate numerous laws, regulations and rules, but Party committees and governments at all levels also occasionally issue important regulative documents and policy measures as circumstances require. There are too many such rules and regulations, and they create an institutional redundancy in the process of supervising civil society. Institutional redundancy is primarily manifested in overlapping functions of the Registration Departments (i.e., the civil affairs regulatory bodies in government) and the Regulatory Bodies in the supervision of the same civil organization. The Regulations currently in effect stipulate that the Registration Departments have three oversight responsibilities: (1) To be responsible for registering the formation, modification and dissolution of social associations and civilian run non-enterprise units; (2) To carry out annual inspections of social associations, civilian run non-enterprise units, foundations, and representative bodies of foreign foundations; and (3) To investigate allegations of violations of the Regulations by social associations and civilian run non-enterprise units as well as to administer administrative penalties for such violations. The Regulatory Bodies have five responsibilities: (1) To be responsible for approving the establishment,

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modification and dissolution of social associations and civilian run nonenterprise units before these matters are registered; (2) To oversee and guide social associations and civilian run non-enterprise units to observe the state’s Constitution, laws, regulations and policies and to engage in activities in accordance with their charters; (3) To make a preliminary investigation of the social associations and civilian run non-enterprise units before their annual inspections; (4) To assist the Registration Departments and other relevant agencies in investigating illegal activities of social associations and civilian run non-enterprise units; and (5) To guide, along with other agencies, social associations and civilian run non-enterprise units in their liquidation. It is easy to see that the above listed functions overlapping. This is not only a great waste of institutional and government resources; in addition, institutional redundancy does not necessarily make government guidance of civil organizations more effective; rather, it generally weakens it. The original intention in setting up the system was to make it doubly safe by duplicating approval and responsibility, but in practice overlapping and duplicate responsibilities readily lead to both agencies shirking their responsibilities, leaving gaps in oversight. In addition, the oversight tasks and responsibilities of the Regulatory Bodies are invariably greater than those of the Registration Departments, but they do not receive any payment for their efforts, so they lack motivations to carry out their oversight function. Yet once they receive supervision fees paid by the civil organizations they oversee, they usually let the organizations do whatever they please. The Registration Departments readily ignore routine oversight duties of civil organizations because these duties are the primary functions of the Regulatory Bodies. In the end, the duplicate supervision system degenerates into a mere formality (He, 2005). On the other hand, apart from institutional redundancy, there exist lots of vacuums in the supervision of civil organizations, which are manifested mainly in the following three ways. First, there is no comprehensive law for the supervision of civil organizations. At present, supervision of civil organizations rests mainly on several regulations of the State Council, which are regulations, not formal state laws. There are only a few formal laws that touch on the supervision of civil organizations, such as the Trade Union Law, most of which are special laws. China still does not have a

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mother law for supervising civil organizations. Second, there is a lack of directed and operational regulations. For example, there are no regulations directed specifically at various categories of civil organizations, such as industry associations, professional groups, academic groups, federations of social associations, and volunteer work. Third, many existing regulations are already relatively unsuitable to the present circumstances. Some scholars believe that a considerable portion of regulations concerning civil organizations are “too complex, opaque and difficult to understand” and that their “technical details are crude, their content is general and vague, and they are difficult to implement” (Zhu, 2004, pp. 204–225). The institutional deficiencies invariably result in leaving many civil organizations at a loss as to what to do, and it’s true even to those advocated by the central government. For example, in recent years, the central authorities have especially encouraged farmers’ occupational and cooperative organizations, but in many places throughout the country, they have encountered institutional difficulties. Because their legal position is not clear, their development is constrained by a series of environmental factors of a legal, institutional and taxation nature. Whether they are actually enterprise legal persons, social association legal persons or cooperative legal persons is not given clear legal specification. For example, the farmers’ professional cooperative organizations in Wenling, Zhejiang Province, registered as stock cooperative enterprises, which are enterprise legal persons; therefore, the tax agencies and financial institutions must treat them as stock cooperative enterprises for the purposes of assessing taxes and making loans. However, at the same time, the 19th article of the “Regulations of Zhejiang Province Concerning Farmers’ Professional Cooperative Organizations” also stipulates that the sale by cooperatives of agricultural goods produced by members of the cooperatives should be treated the same as goods produced and sold by households. Primary-level agricultural goods produced and sold by farmers are not subject to tax, but if the goods are turned over to a cooperative for sale, then they are subject to tax. Another problem is the difficulty in getting financing. Farmers’ cooperative organizations register with administrations for industry and commerce as legal persons, but banks do not recognize their status as legal persons and do not grant them loans. They can only get loans in the names of their individual

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members, who must pledge their property collateral. This is without a doubt not beneficial for expanding the scale of rural professional cooperative organizations (Yan, 2005).

4.6.

Actual space and institutional space

The institutional space of civil organizations is much smaller than their actual space. This is an important characteristic of China’s institutional environment. Institutional space is here interpreted as the space allotted to civil organizations by China’s regulatory laws and regulations, and actual space is interpreted as the actual space civil organizations have. A typical example of how civil society’s actual space exceeds its institutional space is the fact that the number of actually existing civil organizations greatly exceeds the number formally registered with government departments. The Chinese government published data in March 2005 on the number of civil organizations registered with the Registration Departments. There were 149,000 social associations, 132,000 civilian run non-enterprise units, and 994 foundations — a total of 282,000 — registered with civil affairs agencies at the four levels of government. However, in addition, scholars estimate that there is a large number of NGOs that have not registered in accordance with government requirements, including Non-profit Organizations registered with administrations for industry and commerce, primarylevel urban community organizations, village community public welfare or mutual assistance organizations, farmers’ cooperative organizations, foreign financial aid organizations and project organizations in China as well as foreign chambers of commerce and industry associations in China. It is impossible to determine their exact number because there are no reliable statistics, but a conservative estimate puts the number between 2 and 2.7 million (Wang Ming, 2005b). The National Conference on Developing Village Occupational Economic Associations held by the Ministry of Civil Affairs revealed that at the end of 2004 there were already 100,000 village occupational economic associations throughout the country, but only about 10,000 of them had registered with civil affairs departments at various levels, which is only one-tenth of the total (He, 2005). A research study done by Tsinghua University shows that in addition to legally registered civil organizations, China presently has at least the following ten kinds of “extra-legal” 88

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civil organizations: (1) Non-Profit Organizations registered with administrations for industry and commerce, (2) Primary-level urban community organizations, (3) Social associations affiliated with various kinds of bodies, (4) Village community development organizations, (5) Farmers’ cooperative organizations, (6) Village community public welfare or mutual assistance organizations, (7) Foreign financial aid organizations in China, (8) Foreign project organizations in China, (9) Foreign chambers of commerce and industry associations in China, and (10) Religious groups (Wang Ming, 2005a). There is a very interesting phenomenon that the institutional space within China’s civil society varies considerably depending on variations in the standard for having legal standing. Relatively speaking, the institutional space of civil organizations which were set up strictly in accordance with the three Regulations is the smallest. In China, there also exists such a kind of civil organizations, who are not required to register with civil affairs agencies, but they are viewed as “legal” by the governments. Such civil organizations have more institutional space. Such civil organizations can basically be divided into two kinds. One kind is civil organizations that the CPC Central Committee, the State Council or the Ministry of Civil Affairs clearly specified “unnecessary to register”. For example, the “Ministry of Civil Affairs’ Notice Concerning Issues Pertaining to the Exemption from Registration for Some Social Associations” clearly states that the following three kinds of social associations are exempt from registration: (1) People’s organizations that belong to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC); (2) Social associations identified by regulatory agencies of the State Council and approved by the State Council as organizations “unnecessary to register;” and (3) Groups that are established by institutions, agencies and enterprises and operate within them. The other kind is civil organizations of all kinds established with the encouragement of Party committees and governments at all levels under the instructions of higher-level committees and governments or to meet work needs, such as the widespread and numerous farmer cooperative organizations. There are no formal regulations stipulating that organizations like these are exempt from approval and registration, but because they are established at the urging of the Party and government, they are always considered to be legal even though they have not been approved and registered by a civil affairs

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department. A survey of civil organizations in one city revealed that the municipal civil affairs department had formally registered 163 civil organizations, but the civil affairs department had records of more than 1,200 civil organizations that had not undergone formal approval and registration. The latter number is seven times more than the former. A spokesman for that municipal civil affairs department added that there were even more civil organizations that the civil affairs department had no records of (Yan, 2005).

5.

Conclusion

Despite the multitude of differing views on China’s civil society, there is at least a consensus on the following points among officials and scholars, i.e., China’s civil society is rapidly growing along with the development of the market economy and political democracy and it is playing an ever more important role in the political, economic and social life of the country. However, China’s civil society must solve many problems and overcome a lot of difficulties, the most pressing of which arise from its institutional environment. This has already been verified by some field surveys. The Peking University Social Groups Research Center once did a massive investigation using questionnaires of civil organizations in Zhejiang Province and Beijing over the course of two years. The response rates for various answers to the question “What factors are most detrimental to the development of civil organizations?” were: (1) They lack funds and/or operating site (Beijing 38.7%, Zhejiang 40.8%); (2) The supervisory system is too strict or chaotic and there are too many restrictions (Beijing 33.4%, Zhejiang 22.7%); (3) Their position and legal status is not sufficiently clear and relevant laws are inadequate (Beijing 22.8%, Zhejiang 20.5%); (4) The government does not attach sufficient importance to them (Beijing 22.0%, Zhejiang 19.9%, Heilongjiang 23.8%) (Li Jingpeng). A nationwide sample survey of social associations by Tsinghua University NGO Research Center in 2000 revealed that the main problems currently facing civil organizations are: Lack of funds, sites to hold activities and operating equipment, insufficient government support, lack of personnel, lack of information exchanges and training opportunities, inadequate laws and regulations, inadequately 90

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standardized internal supervision and excessive government interference (Wang Shaoguang, 2004, p. 73). The general characteristics of institutional environment as well as the institutional difficulties China’s civil society facing is an indicator of the overall development of China’s civil society. In other words, it is an institutional expression of the overall development of China’s civil society. In China, modern civil society actually first appeared in late Qing Dynasty. The development of China’s civil society is extremely arduous which was disrupted frequently. The changes in the economic and political environment resulted from “reform and opening up” set off a rapid expansion in civil organizations beginning in the 1980s. By 1989, there were 1,600 national mass organizations and more than 200,000 local ones. According to the most recent statistics, there were a total of 147,937 social associations of all kinds, 131,322 civilian run non-enterprise units and 714 foundations in China on March 31, 2005.5 There is no official data on the number of civil organizations below the county level at this time. Someone estimates there are more than 3 million civil organizations in China. Some scholars have noted that at the end of 2003, China had 142,000 registered social associations, 124,000 registered civilian run non-enterprise units, 40,000 unregistered social associations, and 250,000 unregistered civilian run non-enterprise units. At that time, there were also estimated to be 5,378,424 primary-level organizations of the eight major types of mass organizations (including trade unions, the Communist Youth League, and women’s federations, students’ federations, peasants’ associations, literary federations, friendship associations, and associations of industry and commerce); 1,338,220 quasi-governmental, primary-level social associations, such as disabled persons’ federations, family planning associations, and art and literature federations; and 758,700 grassroots organizations, such as students’ groups, community recreational groups, homeowners’ committees and Internet groups. Thus, the total number of social associations is estimated to be 8,031,344 (He, 2005). The growth of the market economy and democracy has brought with it the gradual rise of China’s civil society, which has an ever-increasing influence on China’s social and political life. Civil organizations, as the subjects 5 “Civil Government Statistical Data for the First Quarter of 2005”, Ministry of Civil Affairs

website: http://www.mca.gov.cn/mztj/yuebao0503.html.

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of civil society, must be non-governmental, non-profit and independent, and membership in them must be voluntary. The existence and development of such civil organizations in Chinese society after reform and opening up is an important difference from the preceding period. However, civil organizations in China are very different from those in the West. Compared with Western countries, China’s civil society has the following characteristics (Yu, 2002, pp. 216–220). First, China’s civil society is a typical case of a civil society led by the government, and it obviously has both official and unofficial aspects. Most of China’s civil organizations were established by the governments and are led by the governments, especially for the most influential civil organizations that are legally registered, such as industry organizations, professional organizations, academic associations and interest groups.Although the CPC and the Chinese government have tried to increase the independence of civil organizations and have repeatedly issued documents stating that leaders with positions in Party and government departments may not hold leading positions in civil organizations and civilian run non-enterprise units, government dominance of civil organizations has always been a prominent feature of China’s civil society. Second, China’s civil organizations are in the process of being formed and have a transitional nature. Compared with their counterparts in Western countries, China’s civil organizations are still very immature, and their natures of “independent”, “voluntary” and “non-governmental” have not yet fully extended. Most of China’s civil organizations began to develop after the mid-1980s and it is just a period of less than 20 years. They are in a process of changes and growth, and neither their structure nor functions have taken set form. For example, the latest government regulations require all civil organizations to separate themselves from the government, yet the governments control the important activities of civil organizations through the Regulatory Bodies. This kind of transitional nature of civil organizations is just one aspect of similar changes taking place throughout the whole of Chinese society, and it is the specific manifestation in civil organizations of these more general social changes. Third, in accord with the above stated characteristics, China’s civil organizations have not been yet normalized. Although the Ministry of Civil Affairs promulgated revised supervision regulations in an attempt to

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standardize civil organizations in 1998, this standardization process still has a long way to go. In terms of organizational characteristics, China presently has at least the following kinds of civil organizations: (1) Social associations with high administrative degree, such as trade unions, the Communist Youth League and women’s federations. In reality they have no substantive differences from administrative agencies; (2) Social organizations with significant administrative functions, such as all kinds of industry supervision associations, associations of industry and commerce and consumers’ organizations. They have a certain staff allocations and enjoy a certain rank while shoulder some administrative management functions; (3) Academic associations, which have become essentially unofficial, such as scientific and research associations. The vast majority of them do not have fulltime staffs, and their principal leaders are elected by the association itself (although needed to be approved by the Regulatory bodies). Apart from several exceptions, most of such associations do not enjoy administrative rank; (4) Civilian run non-enterprise units. They constitute a very unique kind of civil organization. They do not have administrative rank and perform few administrative functions. Except research and exchanges, they also provide specialized services to the whole society. Fourth, the development of China’s civil organizations is very uneven at present, and they are different on the social, political and economic influence as well as social positions. As for rural and residential civil organizations in grassroots, those with the greatest influences and prestige are villagers’ committees, neighborhood committees, and some other community organizations, for example, retirees’ associations. Organizations which were very influential in the past, such as CommunistYouth League branches, women’s conferences and militia battalions, have lost much of their influences. At the central and provincial levels, the influence of industry associations, management associations, charitable organizations, professional organizations and civilian run non-enterprise units is in general growing. The main reasons for the disparity lie in the facts that they are different in institutional resources, cultural basis, economic strength as well as the prestige of their leaders. We can summarize our conclusions concerning the institutional environment of China’s civil society as follows. In our opinion, since the reform and opening up and the accompanying development of the market economy

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and democracy, all kinds of civil organizations have emerged in great numbers and a relatively independent civil society is now rapidly emerging in China whose influence on the political and economic life of society is deepening by the day. The rise of China’s civil society is an important manifestation of China’s overall social progress. It not only helps promote Chinese democracy, but also helps promote the healthy development of the market economy. The birth and development of a relatively independent civil society in China directly benefits from improvements in the institutional environment. Since the mid-1980s, China has carried out important reforms of the political system, such as revising the Constitution, separating the Party from the government and the government from business, transforming government functions and placing the country under the rule of law. It has also brought forth a series of laws, regulations and policies to encourage and standardize civil organizations and transformed its attitude toward civil society. All these are institutional factors that facilitate the rapid development of civil society. After more than 20 years of development, China’s civil society has reached a new stage in which many aspects of China’s present institutional environment are no longer conducive to its further growth, and some institutional factors have already become a bottleneck restricting its growth, making it necessary to undertake reforms. Reform should be based on a thorough understanding of the development laws of civil society. It should further transform our understanding of civil society, correctly define civil society and classify civil organizations rationally. It should revise and improve laws, regulations and policies concerning civil organizations as soon as possible. It should energetically support, enthusiastically assist, correctly guide and rationally standardize the approval, registration, regulation, spending and taxation of civil organizations. It should create an institutional environment conducive to the healthy growth of civil society. It should prevent civil organizations from becoming adversaries of the government and promote cooperation between civil organizations and the government, so that they work together towards a society with democratic governance and highly harmony.

References CPC Research Group on Hangzhou’s Civil Organizations ( ) (2003). “Jiaqiang Minjian Zuzhi Zhong Dang De Jianshe Gongzuo

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Civil Society in China: Concepts, Classification and Institutional Environment Sikao” (Considerations on Strengthening Party Building Work in Civil Organizations). In Zuzhi Renshi Guanli Yanjiu (Research on Human Resource Management in Organizations), No. 3. Deng, Guosheng (2001). Fei Yingli Zuzhi Pinggu (Evaluation of Non-profit Organizations). Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe (Literature in Social Sciences Press). He, Zengke (1997, 2001) “Analysis of Factors Affecting the Institutional Environment of China’s Civil Society (a research report on this project), 2005 Legal Affairs Office of the CPC Central Committee General Office, Legal Affairs Office of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the General Office of the Organization Department of the Central Committee, eds., Zhonguo Gongchandang Dangnei Fagui Xuanbian (Selected Laws and Regulations of the Chinese Communist Party). Beijing: Law Press. Li, Jingpeng. Comprehensive General Analytic Report on a Survey of Beijing and Zhejiang Province. Working paper, not yet published. North, Douglass C. (1991). Institutions. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5(1) 97–112. Salamon, Laster M. (1994). The Emerging Sector. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Shandong Province Bureau for Supervising Civil Organizations (eds.) (2005). Minjian Zuzhi Guanli Wenjian Ziliao Huibian (Collected Documents and Data Concerning the Supervision of Civil Organizations). Shandong University Press. State Council (1998). Shehui Tuanti Dengji Guanli Tiaoli (Regulations Concerning the Registration and Supervision of Social Associations), October. Wan, Jianghong and Zhang Cui’e (2004). “Jin Shinian Woguo Minjian Zuzhi Yanjiu Zongshu” (Review of Research on China’s Social Organizations During the Past TenYears). Jianghan Luntan (Jianghan Forum), No. 8. Wang, Ming et al., Zhongguo Shetuan Gaige (Reform of China’s Social Associations). Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe (Literature in Social Sciences Press). Wang, Ming (2005). Introduction. In Qinghua NGOYanjiu Congshu NGO (Series of Tsinghua University NGO Research Studies). Beijing: Tsinghua University Press. Wang, Ming (2005). “Speech at the 17th Annual International Philanthropy Fellows in Philanthropy and Social Justice International Conference. Unpublished, July 11. Wang, Shaoguang and Wang Ming (2004). “Cujin Woguo Minjian Fei Yingli Zuzhi Fazhan De Zhengce Jianyi” (Policy Suggestions for Promoting the Development of China’s NPOs). In Wang Ming, ed.,

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Yu Keping Zhongguo Fei Zhengfu Gonggong Bumen (China’s Nongovernmental Public Sector). Beijing: Tsinghua University Press. Wang,Ying et al. (1993). Shehui Zhongjian Ceng (The Intermediate Level of Society), Beijing: Zhongguo Fazhan Chubanshe (China Development Press). Wang, Ying and Sun Bingyao (2002). Survey of the Development of China’s Civil Organizations. in Yu (2002). Wu, Zhongze (ed.) (1996). Shetuan Guanli Gongzuo (Managing Social Associations). Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Chubanshe (China Social Press). Yan, Jian (2005). Survey of Rural Civil Organizations in Wenling, Zhejiang Province. A research report on this project, July. Yu, Keping (2002). Zhongguo Gongmin Shehui De Xingqi Yu Zhili De Bianqian (The Rise of China’s Civil Society and the Transformation of Its Governance). Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe (Literature in Social Sciences Press). Zhu, Xiaoming (2004). “Zhongguo Minjian Zuzhi Shengcun Fazhan De Falü HuanjingYanjiu” (A Study of the Legal Environment of the Existence and Development of Civil Organizations). Zhejiang Shehui Kexue (Zhejiang Social Sciences), No. 3.

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Graduated Control: Research on State-Society Relationship in Contemporary Mainland China1

Chapter

4

Kang Xiaoguang, Han Heng2

Abstract The authors have conducted a series of positive researches on the topic of state-society relationship in contemporary Mainland China. Through an examination of the actual state control over a great many organizations, this paper proposes the concept of a “system of graduated controls”. Based on this system, the government, out of consideration for their benefits, takes different control strategies on different social organizations according to the social organization’s capability and the public goods they offer. In other words, it is a new system where the government implements an overall control on the society and offer public goods by means of a non-governmental method in a new economic environment. Through comparing with other state-society relationships, this paper points out that the graduated control system is a new “ideal type” for state-society relationship. Keywords: Graduated control; state-society relationship; social organization; NGO.

1.

Raise the Issue

The reform and opening up policy raised by Deng Xiaoping brought wide, profound and rapid change in Mainland China, stirring academia’s 1 This research was sponsored by Ford Foundation. 2 Kang Xiaoguang, School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development Renmin Uni-

versity of China, P. R. China. Han Heng, School of Public Administration, Zhengzhou University, P. R. China.

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enthusiasm on re-discussing the development direction and strategies of China. In the 1980s, the theoretical paradigm occupying dominant position was the modernization theory. Within such paradigm, “neoauthoritarianism” and “democratic priority” became two famous theories with competitive relations (Liu and Li, 1989). However, this situation had been broken up at the end of the 1980s. After that, the research on state-society relationship received more and more attention from academia with the economic reform advancement and increasingly highlighted social problems. The advocators of a new paradigm no longer fixed their eyes only on the “superstructure,” but the “base” instead with a close attention to social domain other than state. In the past research on state-society relationship, “civil society” trended the analytical frame earlier. It is Clemens Stubbe Ostergaard that introduced the theory of civil society into China, and he explained the political events at the end of 1980s with the theory of “civil society resists against the State” (Gu, 1994).3 Gordon White pointed out the appearance of civil society in China upon the inspection to the grass-roots associations in Xiaoshan, Zhejiang Province, and he thought such situation was developing to become a civil society (White, 1993). Later, under a concept of civil society in a sociologic sense, White and other researchers analyzed the changes in social organizations resulting from the economic reform and pointed out that the development of Chinese primary organizations presented systematical features of civil society (White et al., 1996, p. 208). Considering there is no social organizations independent from state in China, some scholars adjusted civil society concept from Western society followed by proposing the new ones such as “semi-civil society” (He, 1997), “state-led civil society” (Frolic, 1997) and then analyzed actual situation in contemporary China based on these concepts. Since the concept of civil society underlines the social domains independent from the state which did not exist in the contemporary mainland China, a number of researchers throw away such concept and turned to the corporatism frame to analyze the state-society relationship within the frame of corporatism. Anita Chan and Jonathan Unger indicated that the state-society relationship in China currently was in a “corporatism model” 3Anthony Saich also points out that the early documentary concerning contemporary China

and civil society focuses on the conflicts between state and society (Saich, 2001, p. 206).

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based on their research on labor unions and business associations (Chan, 1993; Unger and Chan, 1995; Unger, 1996). Tony Saich also used the concept of corporatism to analyze the state-society relationship during the reform (Saich, 2001, pp. 207–210), and Dai Muzhen even applied the concept of local corporatism to her interpretation of local economic growth and the role of local government during reform (Oi, 1992). As both concepts originated from the West, so the effectiveness of their application in China was doubted by some scholars.4 Meanwhile, a few scholars intended to create new analytical conceptions based on the experience of China. For instance, Wang Ying and some other scholars established the “theory of social middle-class group” after an inspection on the grass roots associations in Xiaoshan, Zhejiang Province (Wang et al., 1993; Wang, 1994). Why there are so many different models concerning state-society relationship against the reality in China? The answer is that the country is too large and complicated such that any theory model may find its supporting data as long as its advocators make effort to seek and dare to ignore the contrary facts. Generally speaking, the research on state-society relationship in Mainland China still stays in local observation stage. Researchers concerned with political events think China has entered an era of “civil society resists the State”; researchers of new types of organizations think the civil society is emerging in China; researchers focusing on mass organizations think China falls into the category of “corporatism”; however, researchers caring about “duality of government and the people” of associations consider a “social middle-class group” is being established in Chinese society. In terms of such situation, Bao Duanjia and Alexer Shevchenko have described it vividly as “proliferation of labels” or “the blind man trying to size up the elephant” (Baum and Shevchenko, 1999, pp. 333–334, p. 346). This chapter tries to go beyond such stage of the studies of state-society relationship and intends to conduct a comprehensive observation on the whole “elephant” based on past researches, then raises a new analysis framework from the data of field investigation.

4 The doubt about civil society, see: Wakeman (1993); Huang (1993); Dean (1997); Cham-

berlain (1998, p. 68); Saich (2000, p. 139); Howell (2004, pp. 163–164). The doubt about corporatism, see White et al. (1996, pp. 211–215); Saich (2001, p. 209); Foster (2002, pp. 62–63); Howell (2004, pp. 162–163).

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2.

Research Hypothesis and Programme

Upon current studies on state-society relationship, a common feature existing in methodology is the taking of the management method of the government performed on social organizations as the entry point. To a large extent, the difference in the conclusions of different researchers is subjected to the different types of organizations they have studied. In terms of “local observation”, their conclusions are right. But the deficiency exists in their conclusions is “over-generalization”, i.e., concluding the whole features based on local observation. This has offered us a “hint”: On the whole, the management methods of government are “plural” rather than “unitary”. In other words, the government has different methods for different social organizations. We name this “plural management strategy” as “graduated control” and conclude the basic features of state-society relationship in contemporary Mainland China with such method. For authoritative government, social organization has “double properties”: On one hand, it is a challenge for it represents one of the most powerful carriers of collective behavior; on the other hand, it is an auxiliary power as well for social organizations offer public goods, which belongs to part of the governmental obligations. In addition, the abilities of different organizations for dealing with the authorities are different, also the provision of various goods. Therefore, a government pursuing self-interest maximization must carry out respective management on those organizations according to their power and the public goods they offer.5 But obviously, this is only a “subjective wish” of the government, of which the realization requires proper government ability. However, the Chinese government is equipped with such ability. The reform in China began with the holism. The government occupied the absolutely leading position in the power distribution pattern between state and society during the initial stage. But the reform did not change the situation fundamentally, and itself was government dominant reformation. Such power distribution pattern before reform 5 “Government” is not an abstract concept. The government in real life is composed of a group of live people. In general, they are the “rational economic man” pursuing the selfinterest maximization. The character of “rational economic man” appeared in behavior way of government has decided that all the behaviors of the government serve the realization of the interest maximization of the government or the ruling class.

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and leading position during reform enable the government to promote the reform at its own will, and the progressive process of the reform has left enough time for it to adjust strategies. Therefore the government gradually set up “the system of graduated control” that may perform various control strategies on different social organizations according to its self-interest. We may draw two ratiocinations from the “theories” above. Suppose the ultimate interest of the government is the monopoly on political power while the most powerful challenge on it comes from the collective behavior of the public, the government shall choose the control method according to social organizations’ abilities for launching such collective behavior firstly. Thus the first ratiocination floats onto the surface: Facing social organizations with different power of challenging or ability for launching collective behavior, the government shall select different control method; since the government also assumes the function of providing public goods in which its stability is likely to be threatened for a poor performance of this duty, the government will also choose control strategies based on the properties of public goods the organization will offer. Then the second ratiocination comes up: The government takes different control actions on social organizations in line with the properties of the goods they offer. In order to verify the hypothesis (ratiocinations) above, we select eight types of social organizations for typical investigation (see Table 1); they are labor union, trade association, chamber of commerce, urban neighborhood committee, religious organization, GONGO, grass-roots NGO, informal organization and political opposition organization.6 Their abilities for launching collective behaviors are different as well as in the offered public goods. Labor union is a labor organization; trade association and chamber of commerce are interest groups of entrepreneurs. All of these functional organizations have strong abilities for launching collective action. Political opposition organization is more powerful than others in challenging the government while religious organization may create a different system concerning value. The geopolitical community organization offers crucial public goods to residents and a carrier of their collective action as well. In general, GONGO for public benefit, grassroots NGO and hobby group 6 The sample of political opposition organization is Falun Gong, the relevant data are sorted

according to the Kang Xiaoguang’s investigation on Falun Gong during 1998–2000 (Kang, 2000).

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Kang Xiaoguang, Han Heng Table 1. General category

Subdivision

Functional Labor Union Organization

Trade Association, Chamber of Commerce Urban NeighCommunityborhood based Committee Organization

Investigation Samples List.

Designation SG federation of trade union SG ironworks labor union SK corporate labor union SD corporate labor union YY chamber of commerce ZB trade association WS investment association SY community neighborhood committee XX community neighborhood committee YC Christian church BD Christian church

Religious Christian Organization Three-Self Patriotic Movement NGO GONGO FP foundation Grassroots NGO XY education Institute FZ briefing

Remark State-owned corporation State-owned corporation Joint venture

Shenzhen

Foreign company

Shenzhen

Beijing Beijing

Beijing Shenzhen Shenzhen “Compound” neighborhood committee Ordinary neighborhood committee Urban church Rural church

Beijing

Beijing

Henan Henan

Beijing Local organization Beijing Overseas organization Organization in a unit

Informal Hobby RD painting and Organization Organization calligraphy research institute SY waist drum team Organization in a unit QN hobby Organization in a organization park

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without official organization form will not compose a remarkable threat to the authorities. However, for the government, the GONGO and grassroots NGO are more important than any informal organization in terms of providing public goods. We use five variables to describe the management methods of the government in controlling social organizations: (A) The government’s attitude towards the establishment of social organization. Does the government permit their existence? If it does, has the government offered a positive support or put a strict limitation on the registration issue? During the process of the establishment, does the government take care of everything or represents non- intervention? (B) The setup method of the government department concerning social organization’s activities management. If the government allows the existence of social organization, is there any government department or institution appointed by the government conducting management on their business activities. If there is a government department responsible for managing, is it functional department designated by the government or a part time one with no clear function found by social organizations? (C) The governmental control over the management structure. How do those social organizations make their crucial decisions? Is the decision formulated by the order of the upper management department or made independently by the organization itself? Or make through negotiation of both parties? The so-called “crucial decision” refers to the decision on important activities or personnel matters. (D) The government control over the needed resources of social organizations. The “resource” includes funds and human resource. In terms of funds control, we mainly investigate on the government control over funds source. Does the government carry out intervention through clear laws and regulations or administrative methods, or does it not step in? In the aspect of human resource, what we study is, to what extent the staff, welfare in social organization are controlled by the government. (E) The government control over the daily routine in social organization. The investigation mainly involves whether the daily routine in this social organization has been intervened by government department. The daily routines are required by competent department or decided by the organization? If it decides on its own, is the decision required to be reported to the competent department before or after the implementation? Next, we will examine the hypothesis above with the data of typical investigation. 103

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3.

Corresponding Analysis: Description of Graduated Control System

According to the data from typical investigation, we can figure out the actual state of each control variable. For instance, control variable A has six different status: a1 — The organization is established in a top-down way; a2 — The establishment of the organization is encouraged by the government; a3 — The organization is established in a bottom-up way within the management system set by the government; a4 — The organization is established in a bottom-up way without governmental intervention; a5 — The organization is prohibited from registering as corporation, but the government tacitly consents to the social organizations existing as legal entity; a6 — The organization is prohibited from establishing, and the government bans the existing organization. See Table 2. Using the code in Table 2, we are able to re-state the government control over these 18 social organizations (see Table 3). We carry out a plural corresponding analysis with the application of “alternating least squares and optimal scaling analysis method” and draw a result that there is an obviously corresponding relation between the control method of the government and the type of the social organization, mainly divided into five categories. Such corresponding relation is reflected in Table 4. In the first corresponding pattern, the social organizations are labor unions and community neighborhood committees, which both are established in a bottom-up way by the government. Among the four investigated labor unions, 2 (SG federation of trade union and SG labor union of ironworks) were set up in 1949 by the government; the other 2 (SK corporate labor union and SD corporate labor union) were established after the reform and opening policy as required by the government. Similarly, the community neighborhood committees were also set up in this way. The precursor of community neighborhood committee is the resident committees or family committees set by the government in the city, and its evolution is still under the direct control of the government.7 7 For instance, XX community neighborhood committee is consolidated by the previ-

ous 2 committees while SY community neighborhood committee is set up after the a few previous family committee consolidated into one. Later, it evolved into the current

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Graduated Control Table 2. Index System in the Investigation on Government Control over Social Organization. Control variable

Status of control variable

A: The government attitude towards the establishment of social organization

a1 : The organization is established in a top-down way; a2 : The establishment of the organization is encouraged by the government; a3 : The organization is established in a bottom-up way and shall be included in the management system set by the government; a4 : The organization is established in a bottom-up way without governmental intervention; a5 : The organization is prohibited from registering as corporation aggregate, but the government tacitly consents to the social organizations existing as legal entity; a6 : The organization is prohibited from establishing, and the government bans the existing organization.

B: The setup method of the government department concerning the management social organizations’ activities

b1 : The government appoints a certain department in charge of the management; b2 : The government and social organization determine a business management unit after negotiation; b3 : No business management unit; the government manages social organization as corporation; b4 : The management of social organizations’ activities is conducted by the unit to which the organization belongs; the government does not conduct direct intervention; b5 : Business activity is developed by the organization itself.

C: The government control over the governance structure

C1 : Crucial decision making

C2 : The appointment of the person in charge

C11 : Crucial decisions are made by the competent department; C12 : Crucial decisions are proposed by the organization and require the approval from the competent department; C13 : Crucial decisions are made by the organization. C21 : The person in charge is appointed by the competent department; (Continued)

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Kang Xiaoguang, Han Heng Table 2.

(Continued) C22 : The person in charge is appointed by the unit to which the organization belongs; C23 : The person in charge is determined by the organization and government after negotiation; C24 : The person in charge is determined by the organization.

D: Resource Control

D1 : Funds control

d11 : The government specifies the funds source of the organization through laws and regulations; d12 : The government restricts the funds collection through administrative methods; d13 : The government supports the funds collection through administrative methods; d14 : The government does not intervene with the funds, but the organization needs to report the source to the competent department; d15 : The funds come from the unit to which the organization belongs without direct government management; d16 : The funds are arranged by the organization. d21 : The arrangement concerning D2 : Human resource control: staff, salary human resource is decided by the standard competent department; d22 : The arrangement concerning human resource is decided by the unit to which the organization belongs; d23 : The arrangement concerning human resource is decided by the organization, but it needs to report to the competent department; (Continued)

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Graduated Control Table 2.

E: Control over daily routines

(Continued)

d24 : The arrangement concerning human resource is decided by the organization. e1 : The daily routines are the tasks assigned by the competent department; e2 : The daily routines are supported by the unit to which the organization belongs; e3 : The content of daily routines are decided by the organization but needs approval from the competent department before implementation; e4 : The daily routines are decided by the organization, but it needs to report to the competent department after implementation; e5 : The daily routines are conducted by the organization.

The government not only decides the establishment of the social organization of this type, but also sets the specialized management department for them;8 the crucial decisions are made by the competent department and the implementation followed top-down way. The people in charge is appointed by the unit to which the organization belongs or the competent department. The investigation indicates that important leading comrades in community neighborhood committee. All of these are completed upon the command from upper government. 8 The investigation indicates, most business activities in labor union are arranged by the system of each federation of trade union while the federation of trade union above the county level actually has been included into the governmental frame, for the “Trade Union Law” specifies: “The welfare of the retired personnel or veteran cadres in the federation of trade union above the county level is the same as that of the personnel in state organs” (the 48th article). The major activities of neighborhood committee are mostly organized by subdistrict office. The “Urban Residents Committees Organization Law” has also made clear specification: “The people’s government or its agencies in cities without districts, or district under city administration guide, support and help the work of neighborhood committee. Neighborhood committee assists the people’s government or its agencies in cities without districts, or district under city administration with their works” (the 2nd article). In other words, the government has appointed the federation of trade union at all levels, urban grassroots government and its agencies to manage respectively the business of labor unions and community organizations.

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Kang Xiaoguang, Han Heng Table 3.

Detailed Control Information of the Government over Social Organization. C

D

Control method The type of the organization

A

B

C1

C2

D1

D2

E

SG federation of trade union SG ironworks labor union SK corporate labor union SD corporate labor union SY community neighborhood committee XX community neighborhood committee YY chamber of commerce ZB trade association WS investment association YC district Christian church BD township Christian church FP foundation XY education institute FZ briefing RD painting and calligraphy research institute SY waist drum team QN hobby organization Falun Gong

a1 a1 a1 a1 a1 a1 a2 a2 a2 a3 a3 a2 a5 a5 a4 a4 a4 a6

b1 b1 b1 b1 b1 b1 b2 b2 b2 b1 b1 b2 b3 b3 b4 b4 b5 b1

C11 C11 C11 C11 C11 C11 C12 C12 C12 C12 C12 C12 C13 C13 C13 C13 C13 C13

C22 C22 C22 C22 C22 C21 C22 C23 C23 C23 C23 C21 C24 C24 C24 C24 C24 C24

d11 d11 d11 d11 d11 d11 d14 d14 d14 d12 d12 d13 d16 d16 d15 d15 d16 d12

d22 d22 d22 d22 d22 d21 d22 d23 d23 d23 d23 d23 d24 d24 d24 d24 d24 d24

e1 e1 e2 e2 e1 e1 e4 e4 e4 e3 e3 e4 e5 e5 e5 e5 e5 e5

labor union are appointed by the Party branch of its corporation.9 Speaking of community neighborhood committee, though electoral system has been promoted in the grass-roots community in recent years, the election 9 In SG the federation of trade union, the chairman of labor union is held concurrently by the Party committee member of the Standing committee in the head company of SG; the person in charge of each department is elected under an appointment system of Party committee; the chairman of labor union of subordinate factories and mines (including the labor union of SG ironworks) are also assumed by the deputy secretary of the Party committee at same level or the Party committee member of the Standing committee. In the labor union of SK corporation, the chairman of labor union is held concurrently by the deputy secretary of the Party committee, who is also the chairman of the board of supervisors and administrative director; the chairman of each branch union is appointed through the negotiation between labor union and department managers and “must have the consent of department manager”. Sometimes department managers will even take the job as the chairman of labor union.

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Graduated Control Table 4. Method.

Corresponding Relationship between Type of Organization and Control

Control method of the government over social organizations Corresponding pattern

Type of organization

I

Labor union; Community neighborhood committee Associations, chamber of commerce; GONGOs Grassroots NGOs; Informal hobby organization Church groups Political opposition groups

II

III

IV V

A

B

C

D

C1

C2

D1

D2

E

a1

b1

C11

C21 C22

d11 d11

d21 d22

e1 e2

a2

b2

C12

C21 C22 C23

d13 d14

d22 d23

e4

a5 a4

b3 b4 b5 b1 b1

C13

C24

d15 d16

d24

e5

C12 C13

C23 C24

d12 d12

d23 d24

e3 e5

a3 a6

is still under the total control of the government. Some elections are a mere formality.10 10 For instance, before the election of XX community neighborhood committee takes place,

in order to control the votes, the personnel in the subdistrict office has conducted wide propaganda, holding meetings with resident representatives and intentionally increasing the interaction between the representatives and the “favorite” candidate of the subdistrict office to “let the residents know more”. SY community neighborhood committee also held its election, but it was “a mere formality”. For example, the election in 2003 was as follows: First the leader of SY (the unit to which the committee is attached) delivered an address, expressing the recognition on the past achievement of the committee and explaining that SY neighborhood committee was converted from family committee, which was rather different from the current neighborhood committee in society. He encouraged the representatives to vote for the previous members of the committee. After that, the leader of the subdistrict office gave a speech, the content of which was similar to that of the SY leader, calling everyone to continue supporting the committee work. Finally the list of candidates was given to resident representatives, and the candidates were exactly the previous members. But there was a “blank” on the vote. If the representative was not satisfied with those candidates,

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Concerning source of the organization funds, the “Trade Union Law” and the “Urban Residents Committees Organization Law” have made clear stipulations. For instance, the “Urban Residents Committees Organization Law” stipulates that “neighborhood committee’s working funds and its source, as well as the scope, standards and sources of the members’ living allowance,” are regulated and allocated by the government; “the office space of neighborhood committee is planned and offered by local government” (the 17th article); “the working funds, living allowances, and office space for family committee are offered by its unit” (the 19th article). Of course, the staff structure and welfare of the grass-roots labor union are decided by the corporation to which it belongs. In terms of daily routine, the daily routine of the labor union in state-owned enterprise depends on the upper union system.11 The activities of labor union in joint ventures or private enterprises are supported by their enterprises,12 while the activities of community neighborhood committee comply with the order of higher governmental department.13 he could write down his favorite person. Thus, the election result was that the candidates were the same with the last term. Then the neighborhood committee organized the formal election following a single-candidate election. The director, committee members were all pre-appointed. The residents selected the committee personnel through the single-candidate election. 11 By contrasting the activities of SG federation of trade union in 2002 and that of Beijing federation of trade union, we can discover that the former are either conducted as required by the municipal federation of trade union (or municipal Party committee, local government), or carried out for participating in the activities uniformly organized by Beijing federation of trade union; some are frequently “emphasized” or “arranged” by the municipal federation of trade union. 12 We once investigated a foreign company without labor union — CL Group, though it has not established a labor union, all the activities in SK corporate labor union can be found in CL Group, and those activities are performed well. Therefore, we can see that the existence of the labor union in joint venture is not a big issue for workers. In some better enterprises, some activities are carried out even without a labor union, such as recreational and sports activities, skill contest, or propaganda. The ultimate goal of these activities is to stimulate the activity of workers and increase the sense of belonging and cohesion rather than for the interest of the workers, though these activities have satisfied the need for recreation of the workers objectively. 13 When we interviewed in XX community neighborhood committee, the interviewees kept complaining that the subdistrict office had assigned too much tasks and members had to attend meetings frequently: “We are afraid of meeting followed by tasks”. When the director attends the meeting every Tuesday, there are always numerous people in charge there assigning numerous tasks: “Works line up in queue”, they speak simply, but the job assigned

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Under the government control above, labor union and community committee have actually become the “quasi-governmental organizations” implementing government’s specific policies. To a large extent, they almost totally depend on government organs without autonomy.14 In the second corresponding pattern, the types of social organizations are association, chamber of commerce, and GONGO. Government encourages the establishment of the organizations of these types. In 1989, the “Interim Provisions for the Administration of Foreign Chambers of Commerce in China” was published to attract foreign businessmen to invest in China; in 1999, the government published “Some Proposals of Speeding up Cultivating and Developing the Business Association (For Trial Implementation)” to help and support associations to develop. The Proposals pointed out: “the business associations (including industrial and commercial association, chamber of commerce and other intermediary organizations in society) are an important part of socialist market economy. Cultivating and developing the business associations are major tasks of promoting the reform in government institutions and deepening the reform of state-owned enterprises”. Obviously, the government supports the development of the associations positively.15 Not only has the establishment of associations, chambers of commerce received the financial support from the government, but also the establishment of GONGOs.16 to me means several days’ work”. A member of the committee must receive guidance from several sections of the subdistrict office: “One person deals with several upper sections”. 14 Grassroots labor union and compound-based neighborhood committee are not only supported by the government, but also by the unit where they exist, for the personnel appointment, funds source, and human resources of these organizations highly depend on the unit to which they belong. Therefore grassroots labor union and compound-based neighborhood committee have double dependence. 15YY chamber of commerce itself is a product of the separation of enterprise from administration and the transformation of government functions; ZB trade association and WS investment association are set up jointly by the government and enterprises. 16 The establishment of FP Foundation is directly initiated by the government. It maintains a close relationship with the government during its development. According to what an official has said: “The members in the Party Central Committee and the State Council always pay attention to the works in the foundation and support its development. There are clear instructions for no matter the candidate appointment, or the solution of problems emerging in the developing process, including audit”. See “The Address of State Councilor Chen Junsheng in the Third Conference for FP Foundation Council Members”, September 9, 1996.

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In the setting of the management department, the government did not appoint a certain department to control the business activities of the organizations; instead, the competent department is the outcome through the negotiation between social organizations and the relevant government institutions. The organizations of this type have autonomy with different degree in making crucial decisions and appointing the person in charge.17 In the aspect of resources,