Continuity and Change in China’s Civic Engagement from a ‘State in Society’ Perspective

Abstract

Civic engagement in China has been under particular scrutiny in the last decade. The analytical vantage points have often built on the implicit understanding of statesociety relations as a zero-sum game in which the third sector’s gains are equivalent to the party-state’s loss, and vice versa. As a result, the findings from such studies often oscillate between scenarios of subliminal democratization on the one hand, and increased repression and the advent of a regime-stabilizing third sector on the other (Chamberlain in Mod China 19(2):199–215, 1993; McCormick et al. in Pac Aff 65(2):182–202, 1992; Unger and Chan in China after socialism: in the footsteps of Eastern Europe or East Asia? 1996; White in Aust J Chin Aff 29:63–87, 1993). Deviating from this dichotomy we start from a more nuanced perspective and conceptualize civic engagement as an integral part of state-society relations that constitute the interplay between state and societal actors (Ho in China Inf 21(2):187–209, 2007; Ho and Edmonds in Chinas embedded activism: opportunities and constraints of social movement, 2008; Saich in Curr Hist 93:260–264, 1994; Saich in China Q 161:124–141, 2000; Shieh in State and society responses to social welfare needs in China: serving the people, 2009; Teets in China Q 213:1–20, 2013; Teets in Civil society under authoritarianism: The China model, 2014). We follow Migdal’s (State in society: studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another, 2001) ‘state in society’ concept to add to existing theory the notion that civic engagement can be either mutually empowering or lead to disengagement and alienation between both sides. Which conditions and strategies