Geography, China's Path and State-Society Relations: Redressing Western Misinterpretations

Abstract

The complexity of China's state-society relations is often underestimated, or completely neglected, by Western commentators, journalists, politicians and, at times, academics. There especially seems to be a lack of theoretical ideas and systematic analysis in geographical studies. The overall outcome of said underestimation is the proliferation of misinterpretations on the meaning-sense of evolving relational configurations between power, people and places in China. Hence the Western ability (institutions and common people) to understand and judge, as objectively as possible, ongoing socio-economic and political trends in China, its hybrid experimental path and general development trajectory, is concretely invalidated. Starting from this standpoint and drawing from different sources, this paper first suggests that the changing characteristics of the current Chinese multi-scalar politico-socio-economic processes cannot be simply reduced to “capitalism.” Secondly, to get a better understanding of China in a comparative perspective — by analyzing the country's direction of development and governance — I summarize some instructive traits of state-society relations, arguing that the nature and significance of these differ, when they are not quite the reverse, from the prevailing (mis) interpretations by Western agents. I specifically refer to the need to (re)interpret two points from a comparative standpoint: a) the state's popular legitimacy and socio-economic dynamism, and b) the variegated modes of conflict resolution and financial governance.