Post-Mao China Research Articles

China's Long March Toward Rule of Law. By Randall Peerenboom. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xviii+673 pp. £80.00. ISBN 0-521-81649-1.

Randall Peerenboom has become one of the most prolific specialists writing in English about the legal system of post-Mao China. In his latest book, Peerenboom provides a summary overview of the development of the post-Mao legal system, drawing on a number of his previously published works on issues such as lawyers, globalization, human rights, and legal theory.

Gender in post-Mao China

Post-Mao gender discourse readjusts a politicized vision of gender based on Maoist ethics. While rejecting revolutionary concepts of sex equality, contemporary Chinese women embrace a notion of femininity through the revision of a traditional conception of womanhood as well as the construction of new role models. Women poets participate in this construction process with a fresh, powerful voice to express their gender consciousness. In their efforts to (re-)define womanhood, they present by poetic means radically gendered perspectives.

Authorizing a Disability Agency in Post-Mao China: Deng Pufang's Story as Biomythography

One day in early 1971, officials of Beijing University (Beida) arrived at the 301st Brigade Military Hospital. They entered and approached the bedside of a former Beida graduate student, a young man who had lost the ability to walk two years earlier. The officials told the young man they wished to transfer him elsewhere to convalesce. Still the dutiful student, he consented, and in the afternoon he was packed into a jeep and moved to the Qing He Shelter (Qing He Jiuji Yuan) 45 kilometers northwest of Tiananmen Square. Originally a nursing home for women, Qing He had become a place of last refuge for a variety of people following the Korean War. Wounded veterans without family were brought there and gradually all sorts of what Chinese then often called fei ren (social outcasts, lit., garbage people) ended up at Qing He. These outcasts included orphans, the mentally impaired, the deaf and mute, the chronically ill, and persons with other forms of bodily difference that were viewed locally as highly delegitimizing. According to published reports, conditions at the shelter were dire at the time when the former Beida student arrived. Most residents slept six or seven to a bed. Medical care was unavailable. Meals were usually nothing more than rice, bread, and small amounts of vegetables.

The Applicability of Policy-Making Theories in Post-Mao China (review)

Reviewed by: The Applicability of Policy-Making Theories in Post-Mao China Lawrence C. Reardon (bio) Huang Jianrong . The Applicability of Policy-Making Theories in Post-Mao China. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999. xiii, 351 pp. Hardcover $84.95, ISBN 1840148837. The division between international-relations theorists and area specialists has had a detrimental impact on the analytical study of Chinese foreign economic policy. Broadly speaking, theorists derive decision-making theories from the experiences of advanced industrialized economies. A more radical approach is adopted by the proponents of rational choice, who totally disregard political, economic, and cultural differences by assuming that all decision makers are motivated by the same self-interested behavior. On the other hand, area specialists often adopt a case-study approach, and many of their studies are purely descriptive accounts devoid of any explanatory arguments. And of course there are the "how-to" authors, who write nontheoretical studies to satisfy a business community that is eager to learn about the burgeoning China market. As a result, the literature on Chinese foreign economic decision making is underdeveloped, especially when contrasted with the literature on Japan and the United States. Huang Jianrong hopes to bridge the gap between area studies and theoretical approaches. To understand the past two decades of Chinese foreign economic policy, Huang applies various Western theories of decision making to analyze the formulation of China's special economic zone (SEZ) policies. The study is divided into three major sections: the first is a review of decision-making literature (chapters 2 through 4), the second section is devoted to analyzing SEZ policy formation (chapters 5 through 8), and the third section applies various decision-making theories to explain the SEZ decision-making process (chapters 9 through 11). Huang's goal is laudable, and some of his analysis is enlightening. Unfortunately, theoreticians will have problems with the study's ponderous research design. Area specialists will criticize the SEZ case studies. And everybody will criticize Ashgate, which should be ashamed to charge such a high price for a study riddled with mangled English syntax and glaring romanization mistakes. In discussing the decision-making literature, Huang reviews various decision-making theories in chapter 2, including pluralist, elitist, Marxist, globalization, and institutionalist theories. After outlining Chinese decision-making structures, he evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of each theoretical approach in analyzing Chinese policy making. In chapter 3, he organizes sinological decision-making approaches into three general paradigms. The pluralist-based paradigm includes a "politicians-in-negotiation" model (MacFarquhar), a "power-conflicts-oriented" model (Pye; Chang; Nathan), a "bureaucracy in dominance" model (Oksenberg; Whitson; Teiwes), and an "interest group" model (Moody; Liu; Oksenberg). The [End Page 440] elitist paradigm includes "Mao-in-command" or "Deng-in-command" models (Teiwes; D. Chang). Finally, the institutionalist paradigm includes the "ideological-conflict-oriented" models (Oksenberg and Goldstein; P. Chang; Harding; Solinger), bureaucratic structures (Lieberthal and Oksenberg; Lampton; and others), and "policy-making pattern" models (Lewis; Schurmann; Barnett; Harding). While the characterization of particular sinological approaches could be disputed, it is refreshing to read Huang's discussion of their theoretical origins. Chapter 4 discusses six prescriptive theories on how decisions should be made, and proposes that four approaches (rationalism, incrementalism, contingent approach, and optimal method) will be used to analyze the SEZ case. The book's second section is devoted to describing the SEZ policy process, beginning with a short introduction to the SEZ concept in chapter 5. Chapter 6 briefly describes the SEZ authorization process, highlighting the role of the China Merchant's Steam and Navigation Company (CMSN) in the establishment of the Shekou Industrial Zone. Chapter 7 is a lengthy and more detailed discussion of the Hainan SEZ policy process, starting with State Council document 80.202 and Central Committee document 83.11 and ending with the formal establishment of the Hainan SEZ, which would also be designated a separate province in 1988. Huang focuses on the political problems involved in developing Hainan's Yangpu Economic Development Zone and on the highly publicized dispute involving the Hong Kong affiliate of Kumagai Gumi, a major Japanese building concern, which won a contract to develop thirty-two square kilometers of Yangpu. Because the project was criticized for allowing...

AT THE JUNCTURE OF CENSURE AND MASS VOYEURISM

AT THE JUNCTURE OF CENSURE AND MASS VOYEURISM

Hybridized discourse: social openness and functions of English media in post–Mao China

This study investigates the real and potential functions of English media in the milieu of social openness in post–Mao China. The unique position of China’s English media reflects key characteristics of a ‘hybridized discourse’ and a style of reporting which seems both keen to control and eager to please. Three socio–political functions emerge from this mixed product. Consensual functions denote conformity to official ideology, with the media assuming the double role of political advocates and economic ‘boosters’. Conflictual functions, on the other hand, enable the media to promote cosmopolitan worldviews, pluralistic opinions, and occasionally alternative voices. Somewhere in the middle of the two opposing platforms are the Instrumental functions that emphasize media’s role as an information conduit, a language–learning tool, and a professional role model. This article examines the varying degrees to which China’s English media perform all three sets of functions, identifies conditions and timing for selective emphasis, and discusses the social and theoretical implications of studying the English media’s functions.

Between Politics and Markets: Firms, Competition, and Institutional Change in Post-Mao China. Yi-min Lin

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsBetween Politics and Markets: Firms, Competition, and Institutional Change in Post-Mao China. Yi-min Lin Bennis Wai-yip SoBennis Wai-yip So Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 48Jul., 2002 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/3182463 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 2002 The China JournalPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Post-Mao China: an alternative to ‘The end of history’?

The authoritarian regime in China emerged after Mao’s rule. It was successful not despite brutality, but precisely because of brutality. It was a regime policy that insured stability and provided economic growth and military buildup for the future. In the future generations, China could be stronger than the USA. The ideology of the regime was a successful blending of nationalism with Marxism. Unlike Russia, that followed the Western prescriptions and failed to pull itself from the crisis, post-Mao China is a viable alternative to Western liberal capitalism. At the same time, the success of China actually depends on one man—the leader.

Between politics and markets: firms, competitions, and institutional change in post-Mao China

Between politics and markets: firms, competitions, and institutional change in post-Mao China

Moving The Masses: Emotion Work In The Chinese Revolution

Previous explanations of the Chinese Communist revolution have highlighted (variously) the role of ideology, organization, and/or social structure. While acknowledging the importance of all these factors, this article draws attention to a largely neglected feature of the revolutionary process: the mass mobilization of emotions. Building upon pre-existing traditions of popular protest and political culture, the Communists systematized "emotion work" as part of a conscious strategy of psychological engineering. Attention to the emotional dimensions of mass mobilization was a key ingredient in the Communists' revolutionary victory, distinguishing their approach from that of their Guomindang rivals. Moreover, patterns of emotion work developed during the wartime years lived on in the People's Republic of China, shaping a succession of state-sponsored mass campaigns under Mao. Even in post-Mao China, this legacy continues to exert a powerful influence over the attitudes and actions of state authorities and ordinary citizens alike.

Giovanni Gentile: philosopher of fascism

The recent rise in Europe of extreme right-wing political parties along with outbreaks of violent nationalist fervor in the former communist bloc has occasioned much speculation on a possible resurgence of fascism. At the polemical level, fascism has become a generic term applied to virtually any form of real or potential violence, while among Marxist and left-wing scholars discredited interpretations of fascism as a product of late capitalism are revived. Empty of cognitive significance, these formulas disregard the historical and philosophical roots of fascism as it arose in Italy and spread throughout Europe. In Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism, A. James Gregor returns to those roots by examining the thought of Italian Fascism's major theorist. In Gregor's reading of Gentile, fascism was - and remains - an anti-democratic reaction to what were seen to be the domination by advanced industrial democracies of less-developed or status-deprived communities and nations languishing on the margins of the Great Powers. Sketching in the political background of late nineteenth-century Italy, industrially backward and only recently unified, Gregor shows how Gentile supplied fascism its justificatory rationale as a developmental dictatorship. Gentile's Actualism (as his philosophy came to be identified) absorbed many intellectual currents of the early twentieth century including nationalism, syndicalism, and futurism and united them in a dynamic rebellion against new perceived hegemonic impostures of imperialism. The individual was called to an idealistic ethic of obedience, work, self-sacrifice, and national community. As Gregor demonstrates, it was a paradigm of what we can expect in the twenty-first century's response, on the part of marginal nations, to the globalization of the industrialized democracies. Gregor cites post-Maoist China, nationalist Russia, Africa, and the Balkans at the development stage from which fascism could grow. The first book-length analysis in English of Gentile's thought in over thirty years, this volume is valuable not only as a work of historical scholarship but as a timely warning. While Marxism-Leninism has passed into history, fascism may yet reemerge as an external threat to democratic nations.

State Rebuilding, Popular Protest and Collective Action in China

Reforms in post-Mao China have led to the rise of social movements and collective action. The Falun Gong movement, a semi-religious movement, in particular has caught worldwide attention. Indeed, social protests have become a norm in China.

Markets and Income Inequality in Rural China: Political Advantage in an Expanding Economy

When market reform generates rapid growth in an agrarian subsistence economy, changes in inequality may be due to economic growth and structural change rather than to the intrinsic features of markets. The case of post-Mao China is examined using nationally representative survey data gathered in 1996 to address unresolved questions about findings from 1980s’ surveys. Well into reform's second decade, political officeholding has a large net impact on household income—comparable to that of operating a private enterprise. Contrary to findings based on earlier surveys and expectations about the impact of growth, cadre household advantages are stable across levels and forms of economic expansion. Returns to entrepreneur ship, however, decline sharply with the spread of wage employment. Future declines in relative returns to political position are therefore unlikely to occur due to the further spread of private household entrepreneurship, and theories of change based on this mechanism appear untenable.

Markets and Income Inequality in Rural China: Political Advantage in an Expanding Economy

When market reform generates rapid growth in an agrarian subsistence economy, changes in inequality may be due to economic growth and structural change rather than to the intrinsic features of markets. The case of post-Mao China is examined using nationally representative survey data gathered in 1996 to address unresolved questions about findings from 1980s' surveys. Well into reform's second decade, political officeholding has a large net impact on household income-comparable to that of operating a private enterprise. Contrary to findings based on earlier surveys and expectations about the impact of growth, cadre household advantages are stable across levels and forms of economic expansion. Returns to entrepreneurship, however, decline sharply with the spread of wage employment. Future declines in relative returns to political position are therefore unlikely to occur due to the further spread of private household entrepreneurship, and theories of change based on this mechanism appear untenable.

Between Politics and Markets: Firms, Competition, and Institutional Change in Post-Mao China (review)

Reviewed by: Between Politics and Markets: Firms, Competition, and Institutional Change in Post-Mao China Wei-Wei Zhang (bio) Yi-min Lin . Between Politics and Markets: Firms, Competition, and Institutional Change in Post-Mao China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xiv, 255 pp. Hardcover $60.00, ISBN 0-521-77130-7. Yi-min Lin's Between Politics and Markets is an excellent study of the political economy of China's reform era. Lin tries to resolve one of the lingering puzzles in interpreting China's two decades of relatively successful economic reform: in the absence of overhauling the country's political system China's economy has been growing rapidly, and the standard of living has improved substantially. Lin attributes this to the interplay between two emerging markets: an economic market for the exchange of finished goods and resources and a political market for the exchange of state-controlled resources, opportunities, and official favors. In his introduction, Lin sets out to further the arguments of the two main schools of interpretation with regard to China's economic reform: (1) the economic competition thesis that emphasizes the growth of markets and competitive pressures generated by many piecemeal reforms and (2) the local-developmental-state thesis that stresses the pro-market policies of local governments in the reform era. The author also offers a sketch of his thesis of "dual marketizaton" with its focus on "how the competitive advantage of firms has been formed in two emergent markets, the economic and the political." Chapter 1 provides an overview of the Chinese industrial economy, with an emphasis on various new forms of firms and the institutional changes they undergo [End Page 183] with the rise of markets in China. Lin raises some interesting questions, especially concerning "dichotomized ownership labels," and argues that "the widely perceived superiority of the non-state sector has been exaggerated." According to the author, "the marketization in both the economic and political processes holds a key to understanding these issues." Chapters 2 and 3 explore with case study materials the changing advantages and disadvantages among different types of firms during the reform era. And the issues involved are examined in the context of the interactions between the economic and political markets. Lin points out that although "concrete markets" have become "the main motivating and mediating force for economic activities" in China, they are not yet in a position to play "the dominant role" in determining the "distribution of relative payoffs among firms," where "particularistic state action" continues to be predominant. In discussing state-firm relations against the backdrop of decentralization, he highlights the "particularistic state action" in terms of resource allocation, regulation, and distribution of liabilities. Chapter 4 looks into the entrepreneurial activities of state agents and the interactions between these agents and firms in three areas: competition, transaction, and collusion. The author argues that firms capable of making the best use of such interactions "tend to have an edge" over others, and the decline of central planning is largely due to the "corrosive effects" of the self-seeking behavior of state agents. Chapter 5 reveals, on the basis of case studies, how exchange relations have evolved in the process of China's decentralization and in what way state-firm relations have thus been affected. While it had occurred several times before, the decentralization in the reform era is unique in the sense that "state agents have gained increasing individual discretion in defining both the content and the scope of the agenda implemented in local jurisdictions." Furthermore, the author argues, the policy shift from political mobilization to economic development has "fostered greater interest convergence" and "collusive collective actions" among local officials, and opportunistic officials have used various ways to pursue their own interests "under the cover of reform," especially in the "gray area." Chapter 6 analyzes the "means and contexts of favor seeking." The author goes beyond the general interpretation of guanxi (personal networks) by exploring "what shapes the outcomes of guanxi-mediated favor exchange, especially in the context of multiple-party interactions." He argues that the use of guanxi is more restrictive in urban than in rural areas because urban enterprises are "more extensively exposed" than rural ones to...

Mini-Nationalism in Post-Mao China

China’s provincial problem is not the possibility of secession but the lack of provincial compliance with central policies.

Re-Drawing Boundaries: Work, Households, and Gender in China

Representing the culmination of more than a decade of empirical research in post-Mao China, this collection of essays explores changes in the nature of work in relation to changes in households, migration patterns, and gender roles during an era of economic reform. The contributors are respected scholars in fields that range from history and anthropology to demography and sociology. They use a variety of data and diverse approaches to gauge the impact of new economic opportunities on Chinese households and to show how the rise of the private sector, the industrialization of the countryside, and increased migration have affected Chinese workers and workplaces. The collection also asks us to consider how gender roles have been redefined by the economic and institutional changes that arose from post-Mao market reform.

Civil Society in China: A Dynamic Field of Study

Civil Society in China: A Dynamic Field of Study Guobin Yang (bio) Deborah S. Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton, and Elizabeth Perry, editors. Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ix, 449 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0521474108. Paperback, ISBN 0521479436. Deborah S. Davis , editor. The Consumer Revolution in Urban China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. xiii, 366 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0520216393. Paperback, ISBN 0520216407. Randy Kluver and John H. Powers, editors. Civic Discourse, Civil Society, and Chinese Communities. Stamford, Connecticut: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1999. xii, 296 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 1567504426. Paperback, ISBN 1567504434. Timothy Brook and B. Michael Frolic, editors. Civil Society in China. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. xii, 244 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0765600919. Paperback, ISBN 0765600927. Richard Madsen . China's Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xiii, 183 pp. Paperback, ISBN 0520213262. Gordon White, Jude Howell, and Shang Xiaoyuan. In Search of Civil] Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. x, 241 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0198289561. Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, editors. Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance. London: Routledge, 2000. xii, 249 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0415204909. Paperback, ISBN 0415223342. The seven books under review here were not chosen in any well-planned way to reflect all the major recent achievements in research on civil society in China. Some of them happened to be sent by the publishers for review; a few came at my request. While this short list is far from complete, it provides an adequate starting [End Page 1] point for a general review of the field. Much of my discussion will refer to these books but will not be limited to them. My main goal is to delineate the achievements and challenges of this new field. I will start with a brief discussion of the initial academic interest, followed by a survey of the first major debate in this area. I will then devote three separate sections to the four central components of civil society: public sphere, social organizations, individual autonomy, and popular resistance. The classification of civil society into these four components is based on my understanding of how the concept is defined and used in the current literature. Some scholars may focus more on associational life than on individuals. Others may be more interested in the public sphere than in popular protest. But it is helpful, if only to structure the analysis that follows, to think of these as interrelated elements of a civil society, a more or less organized public realm for the protection of the rights of citizens and the construction of civic values, sometimes through collective protest. In the concluding part of this essay, I will make several general observations about the state of the field and describe some future research areas. My general conclusion is that the study of civil society in China has been a dynamic field and will remain so because many new research questions invite explorations and answers. Initial Interest Academic interest in civil society in China arose in response to the world-historical events of 1989: the student protests in China and the fall of the Berlin Wall in Eastern Europe. Xin Gu provides a useful review of the initial interest.1 He credits the Danish scholar Clemens Strubbe Ostergaard as the first to introduce the concept of "civil society" into this academic discourse and the American scholar Craig Calhoun as the first to use the related concept of "public sphere." In both cases these concepts were used to analyze the 1989 student movement. Ostergaard argues that the significant changes in Chinese society before 1989 had created a "nascent civil society" of citizen groups and thus provided a social basis for the movement.2 While Calhoun's analysis focuses on how the movement itself transformed Tiananmen Square from an official ceremonial space into a public sphere of critical discourse, he suggests that the cultural debates and mass media discourse (especially that surrounding the TV series River Elegy [Heshang]) before the movement had an impact...

Institutional Theory and Institutional Change: Introduction to the Special Research Forum

Institutional Theory and Institutional Change: Introduction to the Special Research Forum

Politics and history curriculum reform in post-Mao China

In post-Mao China, wide-ranging reform programmes have affected almost every sphere of life. History education has been no exception, and in addition to attempts to revise teaching, learning and assessment methods, there have been preliminary forays into textbook pluralism and gradual devolution of curriculum development. History education professionals, however, are fully cognisant of their subject's ‘sensitivity’, and reforming goals and content of both the preactive and active curriculum has thus been a cautious endeavour. This chapter explores the progress of reform through the ‘officially authorised’ historical narratives and teaching goals specified in national curricula. It focuses primarily on the junior secondary curriculum, as primary school History has recently been absorbed by Social Studies, and senior secondary education is neither compulsory nor universally accessible. It is argued that while curriculum objectives and syllabus content remain largely circumscribed by ‘traditional’ views of history as moral-ideological education and by contemporary political imperatives, curriculum developers are also influenced by professional academic and pedagogical concerns, and by efforts to justify the status of History in an increasingly crowded curriculum.