Book Reviews Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China after Mao.BySTANLEY B. LUBMAN. [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. xxii ϩ 447 pp. £40.00; $65.00. ISBN 0-8047-3664-2. Stanley Lubman has been a major force in the academic and practical discourses of Chinese legal studies for most of the history of the People’s Republic of China. Drawing on a wide array of Chinese and international sources, as well as a useful range of interviews and conversations with Chinese jurists, Lubman offers in this volume a comprehensive assess- ment of the achievements and problems of law in the PRC. Lubman’s purpose is to further understanding of China through analysis of the legal regime. This, in Lubman’s view, can aid in understanding relations between state and society generally, particularly in the context of the two decades’ long effort at legal and economic reform that has characterized the post-Mao age. Lubman acknowledges important achievements in Chinese legal reform, but also identifies significant constraints. Lubman begins with a discussion of the principal differences between Chinese and Western legal traditions in the areas of law and philosophy, state–society relations, rights, issues of state power, the role of legal professionals and the issue of legal pluralism. He then suggests several strategies for assessing the performance of the Chinese legal regime itself, including comparison with the rule of law notions of Fallon and Friedman, consideration of law in action and the functional elements of Chinese law, and examination of legal culture. Armed with this approach, Lubman proceeds to examine a broad range of institutions and practices, starting with the Maoist period and extending to the post-Mao legal reforms. In Lubman’s view, law under Mao was an instrument of rule particu- larly in the context of the criminal process but also through civil law institutions that served as highly politicized mechanisms of state auth- ority. Lubman examines the role of law in post-Mao China in the context of emerging non-state actors, a resilient state and Party system operating largely outside the law, diminished Party authority in the countryside, emergent clientelism and corporatism, and the continuing weakness of property rights. Under these circumstances and constrained by instrumen- talist approaches that subordinate law to the requirements of policy, aspirations about the rule of law in China remain unfulfilled. Lubman surveys a number of important examples. After examining legislation and rule-making, the Chinese bar and the criminal process, he goes on to discuss domestic economic regulation, foreign investment law and the administrative law regime. Much attention is given to dispute resolution – through mediation, arbitration and the court system. Lubman reports useful statistical information on the increase in civil disputes in China, The China Quarterly, 2000 846 The China Quarterly and depicts in considerable detail the internal processes of judicial decision-making. Lubman suggests that the courts remain heavily politi- cized and dominated by the instrumentalist policy orientation of the Party and state. It is the continued lack of autonomy of the court system that provides for Lubman the metaphor that is the title of the book – that law remains within the cage of Party power and policy direction. Lubman advises U.S. policy makers to adopt a realistic response to the continued limits on the role of law in China. Lubman makes a convincing case that because China continues to lack a unifying concept of law and as a result of instrumentalist approaches to law and the fundamental reluctance of the Party to tolerate any significant diminution of its authority, China does not yet have a legal system. While this is a masterful study overall, the state–society relationship that Lubman had hoped to illuminate in this work remains somewhat obscure. We learn much about how the Party-state considers and enforces its authority, but we learn less about the perspectives and values of contem- porary Chinese society with regard to law and governance. Nonetheless, Lubman has made a major contribution to our understanding of the PRC legal regime. This book should be read by anyone with an interest in Chinese law and politics, and will undoubtedly become a standard teaching and reference text on the subject. PITMAN B. POTTER The Democratization of China.ByBAOGANG HE. [London and New York: Routledge, 1996. xv ϩ 276 pp. £45.00. ISBN 0-415-14764-6.] Baogang He’s impressive analysis of the prospects for democratization in China originated as a doctoral thesis. Earlier versions of many of these chapters were presented as conference papers and have appeared in a variety of academic journals and proceedings. It is helpful, however, to have the revised versions of this material collected between the covers of a single book. Professor He has three primary objectives. First, he intends to intro- duce and discuss the three models of democracy – populist, official or paternalistic, and liberal – that have contested for support in contempor- ary China. Secondly, he offers a critical review of liberal ideas of human rights, evil and proceduralism, and provides a liberal constructive critique of the intellectual foundation of the Chinese liberal theory of democracy. Thirdly, he analyses the practical feasibility of liberal democracy, as well as basic problems associated with Chinese democratization, from the viewpoints of political culture, civil society and legitimacy (p. 3). Dealing with such large issues, the book is certainly ambitious. Fortu- nately, it is also very impressively researched. In addition to his extensive knowledge of the primary source literature – which has been supple- mented by interviews with such important figures as Hu Ping, Yan Jiaqi, Yang Xiaokai and Li Zhengtian – Professor He has also read widely in the Book Reviews 847 secondary literature of Western political theory and Chinese studies. He believes strongly that value issues must be incorporated into Chinese studies and therefore is admirably candid about his own values. Indeed, in contrast to much of the social science literature on China, the normative dimension is very consciously incorporated in his analysis. While he suggests that only 30 per cent of the book consists of normative thinking, compared to 70 per cent devoted to an empirical study of the intellectual development of the ideas of democracy in China and of preconditions for liberal democracy, those less sanguine that a “democratic breakthrough” is “certain” in China may feel that these figures are in fact reversed. He devotes a great deal of attention to refuting arguments that liberal democracy is impossible in China because of Chinese culture, the lack of a pluralistic or self-organizing civil society independent of the state, or the difficulty of a totalitarian state reforming or democratizing itself from within, but does not really address much of the debate on China’s future occurring within China, for example the views of the neoconservatives. The contemporary thinkers he does cite are most often the “dissidents” who are no longer in China. Moreover, in suggesting that the precondi- tions for democracy already exist in China, he seems overly optimistic that the next generation of China’s leaders “will play the card of democracy so as to gain legitimacy” (p. 225). Ultimately, despite the careful research and the thoughtful arguments, many readers are likely to come away from this book with a great respect for the author’s intellect, dedication and emotional attachment to such worthy liberal democratic goals as human rights and equal liberties, but not necessarily persuaded that China’s “need” for liberal democracy will actually produce it. STANLEY ROSEN Provincial Strategies of Economic Reform in Post-Mao China: Leader- ship, Politics, and Implementation. Edited by PETER T. Y. CHEUNG, JAE HO CHUNG and ZHIMIN LIN. [Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. 472 pp. Hard cover $68.95, ISBN 0-7656-0416-X; paperback $34.95, ISBN 0-7656-0417-8.] This collection adds significantly to the growing number of studies of provincial China. In order to provide comparability between the case studies, the editors have imposed a relatively tight framework on the contributors. All chapters focus on the role of provincial leadership in the initiation and implementation of economic reform, thus allowing fruitful and direct inter-provincial comparisons. The eight provincial cases suggest, in the words of Zhimin Lin, that “provincial leaders … mattered a great deal” in the success or failure of the provincial economic reform process (p. 412), though the studies demonstrate that different leaders used different strategies in dealing with Beijing and in mobilizing support within their provinces. 848 The China Quarterly Guangdong provides the classic case of economic reform and Peter T.Y. Cheung’s chapter shows that Guangdong’s leaders have been strong and consistent proponents of reform since 1978. According to Shawn Shieh, Fujian received a similar suite of policies but proved less enthusi- astic about reform with the consequence that the province lagged far behind Guangdong. Shanghai and Shandong both were late-starters in reform but, as Zhimin Lin and Jae Ho Chung show, both received new leaders in the mid and late 1980s who were committed to reform, and both leaderships gained central support for their new reform policies. Hainan’s initial leaders, according to Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman, strongly supported reform, but Hainan was established as a province in 1988 just when China underwent three years of economic austerity. Furthermore, the reformist leadership was replaced following the Beijing Massacre of June 1989, and the new leaders fought among themselves. Kevin Lane suggests that Shaanxi’s revolutionary tradition led to a “leftism” which “emerged repeatedly throughout the reform period as a source of obstruction to reform” (p. 221). In the other analysis of an inland province, Lijian Hong shows that Yang Rudai, the first native provincial leader in Sichuan since 1949, was poorly equipped education- ally to deal with the complexities of reform, science and technology, and foreign investment.