Chinese State Society Research Articles

Complexity of agricultural economies in the Yiluo region in the late Neolithic and bronze age (3500–221 BC): An integrated stable isotope and archeobotanical study from the Tumen site, North China

AbstractThe region of Yiluo in North China witnessed the development of social complexity in the Neolithic period and the emergence of the first Chinese state society in the early Bronze Age. However, the agricultural economies in the Neolithic–Bronze Age periods of this region and its influence on the social complexity in this area have not been adequately understood, owing to the relative lack of evidence from archeobotany, chronology, and stable isotope analysis in this region. Archeobotanical and isotopic evidence, together with chronological data from the Tumen site, reveals that the complexity of the agricultural economy composed of millet and rice appeared during the late Yangshao period in the Yiluo region and became more intensified in the following Longshan and Bronze Age periods. During the Yangshao and Longshan periods, environmental factors such as landform and hydrology were likely important factors for the diverse agricultural patterns. The complexity of the agricultural economy has an influence on settlement hierarchy and population growth, suggesting that the rise and intensification of the complex agricultural economy was an important driving force in societal development in the Yiluo region.

State–society relations under a new model of control in China: Graduated control 2.0

Graduated control models are often used to explain the variety of government treatment of social organizations in China. These models have been slowly losing their explanatory power in recent years, with advocacy-oriented grass-roots groups participating in the policymaking process. Why are these social groups not regulated in the way the graduated control models predict? Based on an analysis of three recent policy advocacy cases, this article proposes a graduated control 2.0 model to explain the new dynamics in Chinese state–society interactions. The upgraded model argues that the government officials’ behaviour patterns are influenced by numerous factors such as the inherent nature of social groups highlighted by graduated control models, and inter-ministerial competition – the power position of the state sector and its rival sector in the bureaucratic system. Some contingent factors also play a part, such as timing and the NGO’s onstage performance. This research contributes to the ongoing discussion on Chinese state–society relations by developing a theoretical model that highlights both the fragmentation and reactiveness of state control over social groups and further unpacks the ‘monolithic state’ in China studies.

Occupational Hazards: Sex, Business, and HIV in Post-Mao China by Elanah Uretsky

Reviewed by: Occupational Hazards: Sex, Business, and HIV in Post-Mao China by Elanah Uretsky Priscilla Song Elanah Uretsky, Occupational Hazards: Sex, Business, and HIV in Post-Mao China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016. 262 pp. Elanah Uretsky's potent ethnography demonstrates how China's burgeoning HIV/AIDs epidemic is intimately related to the everyday practices of Chinese government officials and businessmen. Her unflinching analysis and clear prose shine the spotlight on these elite men, challenging public health scholars and policymakers to rethink conventional understandings of risk and vulnerability in order to mount an effective campaign to address sexually transmitted infections in China. As a socio-cultural anthropologist based at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health, Uretsky offers a powerful counterpoint to dominant global health paradigms through detailed fieldwork in southwest China. Public health work on HIV/AIDS typically focuses on groups marginalized by inequalities of wealth, gender, race, and sexuality. But as Uretsky points out, zeroing in on these populations as the predominant loci of vulnerability to HIV infection runs the danger of further stigmatizing these groups. In a classic case of "studying up" (Nader 1972), Uretsky leverages an ethnographic perspective to demonstrate how "quest[s] for professional success" (5) by elite Chinese men are fueling China's HIV/AIDS epidemic. Overlooked because of their power and wealth, these "mobile men with money" (Uretsky 2008) constitute a hidden "at-risk" population missed in standard interventions focusing on marginalized groups. The analytical power of Uretsky's erudite scholarship lies in her ability to bring a rich body of social science scholarship on Chinese state–society relations into conversation with key debates in medical anthropology and public health. Building on the work of China experts in the fields [End Page 329] of anthropology (Fei 1992, Yang 1994, Yan 1996, Osburg 2013), sociology (Walder 1986, Wank 1999), and political science (Tsai 2007), Uretsky demonstrates the sociopolitical logic underpinning what is typically framed in the public health sector as individual risk and behavior. She focuses in particular on how two classic concepts in sinology—guanxi and yingchou—have fueled China's HIV epidemic. Through detailed ethnographic description, Uretsky illustrates how aspiring Chinese bureaucrats and businessmen establish guanxi (a system of relationships built upon trust and reciprocity) through social practices of yingchou (shared rituals of eating, drinking, smoking, and entertainment). Although yingchou practices have deep roots in the socialization of China's literati class during the imperial era, Uretsky demonstrates how these ritualized forms of male-centered entertainment have flourished in the post-Mao era. Under the uncertainties of market socialism, these guanxi relationships between businessmen and local government officials enhance access to state-controlled resources and protect mutual business interests. These practices also provide fertile ground for the circulation of STIs. Uretsky divides her book into two parts. She devotes the bulk of her analysis (Chapters 1–4) to detailing the culture of elite masculinity in post-Mao China. Paying close attention to elite men's lived experiences, Uretsky unveils the inner workings of business networking rituals, the centrality of homosocial relationships, and the competing cultural scripts organizing men's sexual experiences. While readers focused on public health concerns may find themselves impatiently wondering how this all connects with China's HIV/AIDS epidemic, China scholars and sociocultural anthropologists will delight in her thick descriptions of Chinese feasting and drinking practices, the vivid stories of how her informants constructed their masculinity in the realms of family and workplace, and her cultural deconstructions of off-color "yellow jokes" featuring politicized sexual innuendo circulating as anonymous text messages. Uretsky more than satisfies her public health readership in the remaining third of her book, which analyzes the effects of these elite masculine practices on China's burgeoning HIV epidemic. These final two chapters anchor her preceding analysis of yingchou and elite masculinity to more explicit public health concerns. Uretsky's book makes the provocative claim that drinking, smoking, banqueting, and sexual entertaining are not recreational activities for elite men in China, but instead constitute a form of work that ultimately jeopardizes their health and well-being. Her analysis of yingchou practices [End Page 330] redefines conventional gender and class framings of sex...

Special section on the Yiluo project] THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPLEX SOCIETIES IN CHINA: A STUDY FROM THE HUIZUI SITE

Holocene environmental change on the Loess Plateau of China presented both opportunities and challenges for populations inhabiting the region. A study of sediment sections within the catchment of the Yiluo River, Henan Province, indicates a sequence beginning with a stable landscape and high water tables in the early MidHolocene corresponding to the Peiligang occupation, shifting to a period of valley alluviation in the later MidHolocene at the time of the Yangshao occupation. Alluvial sediments dating from 5300/5010 cal. BC through 2130/1870 cal. BC are waterlogged deposits that contain sediment and phytolith evidence for the first rice paddy farming in this region. This coincides with the first migration of rice farmers to the area in the Yangshao Period ca. 5500 cal. BC. After ca. 2000 cal. BC stream incision in this catchment led to narrowing floodplains, the disappearance of the marsh deposits, and a reduction in land available for paddy farming. Ironically, this period coincided with the first Chinese state society and large population increases, necessitating new agricultural and economic strategies on the part of the Early Bronze Age inhabitants of the Loess Plateau. This study illustrates how human responses to environmental change depend on social as well as environmental considerations.

Perspectives of Time and Change

China's burgeoning civil society has often been characterized as state-led or corporatist. However, these concepts fail to capture the current dynamics of Chinese social activism, as they cannot account for two of its critical features. First, the fact that the nature of Chinese state—society relations is not a matter of the former dictating the latter, but rather a kind of “negotiated symbiosis.” Second, the semiauthoritarian context necessitates that China's social activists develop a diffuse, and informal rather than formal, network of relations. This informal web of relations has yielded undeniable political as well as societal legitimacy. It is against this background that we put forward the concept of “embedded social activism.” Since its initial emergence, environmental activism has resourcefully adapted to, rather than opposed, the political conditions of its era. The hallmark, and in fact, the success of China's reforms lie in their strategy of incremental change. Therefore, we might view embedded environmentalism as a transient phase which is itself changing through time, a transitional feature of a burgeoning civil society in a semiauthoritarian context.

Changes and Continuities in the Political Ecology of Popular Protest

This article will delve into the historical roots of Chinese environmentalism. A wave of recent research has unearthed numerous instances of Chinese state—society conflicts, as well as the ecological crisis precipitated by drastic population and commercial growth in 18th-century China. Based on a survey of protest events derived from archival sources, this contribution analyzes how the mounting ecological crisis and falling capacity of the Qing state in the 18th and 19th centuries generated changing forms of popular protests as responses to the “externalities of development.” It is found that when the Qing's regime capacity peaked in the early 18th century, most popular protests were peaceful and were resolved through compromises between officials and protesters. Amid the administrative breakdown in the 19th century, however, many protests escalated into violent confrontations, while others developed into “appeals to the capital” ( jingkong ), a litigation process that enabled local communities to seek the support of the central government in their struggle with predatory local officials. Remarkably, some repertoires and patterns of environmental protests in contemporary China can be traced back to the Qing times, which raises questions about whether today's environmental protests are completely novel, or whether certain continuities are inherent in the deep-seated tradition of state—society conflict and negotiation in China's late imperial history.

China and democracy: the prospect for a democratic China

Forward Larry Diamond. Introduction Suisheng Zhao. Part : China's Search for Democracy in the Twentieth Century 1. Chinese Democracy: The Lesson of Failure Andrew J. Nathan. 2. A Tragedy of History: China's Search for Democracy in the Twentieth Century Suisheng Zhao. Part II: Chinese Political Culture and Democracy 3. Confucianism and Western Democracy. 4. Democracy in China Enbao Wang and Regina F. Tutunik. 5. New Moral Foundation of Chinese Democratic Institutional Design Baogang He Part III: Chinese State-Society Relationship and Democracy 6. Conceptual Evolution of Democracy in Intellectual Circles: Rethinking State and Society Yijiang Ding 7. Plural Institutionalism and the Emergence of Intellectual Public Spaces in China: A Case Study of Four Intellectual Groups Edward X. Gu 8. The Limits of the Chinese State: Public Morality and the Xu Honggang Campaign Dawn Einwalter. Part IV: Prospect for Democracy in China at the Dawn of the Twenty First Century 9. The Prospects for Democratization in China: Evidence from the 1995 Beijing Area Study Daniel V. Dowd, Allen Carlson and Mingming Shen. 10. The Political Pragmatism of Chinese University Students: Ten Years After the 1989 Movement Che Po chan. 11. Economic Development and Village Elections in Rural China Tinajian Shi. 12. Chinese Nationalism and Authoritarianism in the 1990's Suisheng Zhao.