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China Perspectives
2017/4 | 2017 Grassroots Makers of Chinese Digital Economy
Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/7448 DOI: 10.4000/chinaperspectives.7448 ISSN: 1996-4617
Publisher Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine
Printed version Date of publication: 1 December 2017 ISSN: 2070-3449
Electronic reference China Perspectives, 2017/4 | 2017, « Grassroots Makers of Chinese Digital Economy » [Online], Online since 01 December 2018, connection on 26 November 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ chinaperspectives/7448 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.7448
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Special Feature
Editorial - Beyond E-Commerce The Social Case of China’s Digital Economy Haiqing Yu
China’s Internet Finance Boom and Tyrannies of Inclusion Nicholas Loubere
Programming Practices of Chinese Code Farmers Articulations, Technology, and Alternatives Ping Sun
Therapy Made Easy E-Commerce and Infrastructure in China’s Psycho-Boom Hsuan-Ying
Articles
Between Resistance and Adaptation The Place of the Uyghur Language in the Sinicised Zone of Ürümchi Giulia Cabras
The Migration of Experts and Savoir-faire The Case of French Cuisine Professionals in Shanghai Hélène Le Bail and Aël Théry
Current affairs
The Imprisonment of Occupy Student Leaders Public Reactions and Debates over Hong Kong’s Judicial Independence Ting-Fai Yu
Book reviews
Yiu-Wai Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 2017, 256 pp. Nathanel Amar
Luigi Tomba, The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2015, 225 pp. Judith Audin
China Perspectives, 2017/4 | 2017 2
Ji Zhe, Religion, modernité et temporalité. Une sociologie du bouddhisme Chan contemporain (Religion, modernity and temporality: A sociology of contemporary Chan Buddhism), Paris, CNRS Editions, 2016, 348 pp. Sébastien Billioud
Ruoyun Bai, Staging Corruption: Chinese Television and Politics, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 2015, 276 pp. Qian Gong
David S. G. Goodman, Class in Contemporary China, Cambridge, UK, Polity Press, 2014, 233 pp. Gilles Guiheux
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Special Feature
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Editorial - Beyond E-Commerce The Social Case of China’s Digital Economy
Haiqing Yu
ABSTRACTS
This special feature brings together three original articles on Internet finance, grassroots programmers, and an e-psychotherapy platform, respectively, to engage in the ongoing debate on China’s e-commerce and digital economy. The three authors contribute to a rethinking of the Chinese digital capitalism from the perspective of sociology (Nicholas Loubere), anthropology (Ping Sun), and social psychology (Hsuan-Ying Huang). They pinpoint the role of commercial activities as vehicles to highlight human agency and diversity in China’s transformations. The three articles— “China’s Internet Finance and Tyrannies of Inclusion” by Loubere, “Programming Practices of Chinese Code Farmers” by Sun, and “Therapy Made Easy” by Huang—not only provide empirical studies of particular grassroots players or makers in China’s e-commerce and digital economy, but also critically discuss their role and agency in negotiating the complicated network of power and knowledge to create a politics of difference in people’s daily lives. The special feature contributes to the debates on Chinese digital economy from a micro and meso-level analysis that is rooted in the humanities and social sciences. It examines the grassroots participants and makers of China’s e-commerce boom, and at the same time moves beyond the discussion on e-commerce to critique the paradoxes of Chinese digital capitalism, as experienced by poor and disadvantaged individuals engulfed by entrepreneurial digital loan sharks and systems of social surveillance (Loubere), the second-generation-migrant grassroots programmers or code farmers in small software companies in Shenzhen (Sun), and an entrepreneurial psychotherapist whose online platform has taken on the mission of constructing a psychotherapy infrastructure for an under-developed profession (Huang). Together the three articles aim to redefine the “who” of digital economy as an unlikely collection of unimagined individuals and underrepresented groups; the “what” of digital economy as measured by its
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social and cultural impact rather than its volume of business and transaction; and the “how” of digital economy in terms of the implication of and impact on grassroots players in their strategies for survival.
AUTHOR
HAIQING YU Haiqing Yu is Associate Professor of Chinese media and culture at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.UNSW Kensington campus, High Street, Kensington NSW Australia 2052 ([email protected]).
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China’s Internet Finance Boom and Tyrannies of Inclusion
Nicholas Loubere
ABSTRACTS
One of the main drivers of China’s e-commerce boom is the dramatic expansion of the country’s Internet finance industry, which has grown and diversified at a staggering rate over the past decade. The emergence of Chinese Internet finance has been discussed in largely positive terms as facilitating commercial activity. It has also been linked to the wider developmental goal of promoting financial inclusion through the provision of financial services to previously excluded populations. Emerging from the global microfinance movement, the concept of financial inclusion depicts increased access to financial services (particularly credit) as an inherently beneficial means of empowering the poor and driving bottom-up economic development. This article challenges this dominant narrative of beneficial digital financial inclusion in China. It draws on the growing body of literature critiquing the global financial inclusion movement, and examines examples of exploitation, fraud, instability, and extraction related to expanded digital financial coverage in contemporary China. It then demonstrates that digital financial inclusion is part and parcel of the Chinese government’s plans to create a social credit system in an attempt to construct a “trustworthy society.” In this way, digital financial inclusion can be seen as a key element in a wider project of expanding surveillance through big data in order to close down spaces for those seeking to contest the hegemonic socioeconomic order. The article argues that these examples illuminate fundamental processes implicit in the expansion of the commercial Internet finance industry. In this way, while the extension of digital financial inclusion in China benefits certain groups, it also necessarily serves to reproduce patterns of inequality and exploitation.
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INDEX
Keywords: Internet finance, Digital finance, Financial inclusion, Digital financial inclusion, Microfinance, Microcredit, Social credit, China
AUTHOR
NICHOLAS LOUBERE Nicholas Loubere is Associate Senior Lecturer in the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University.Lund University, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Sölvegatan 18, 22362 Lund, Sweden ([email protected]).
China Perspectives, 2017/4 | 2017 8
Programming Practices of Chinese Code Farmers Articulations, Technology, and Alternatives
Ping Sun
ABSTRACTS
Built on the theoretical framework of articulation and assemblage, this article explores programming practices among grassroots programmers in contemporary China. Using data obtained from ethnographic fieldwork in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, it provides an account of the information technology practices in contemporary China at the nexus of the Beijing government, IT corporations, and individual programmers. Through examining how programming is articulated in both China’s advocacy for “a creative society” and grassroots programmers’ daily practices in the process of China’s informatization, this article has mapped myriad articulations such as engagement, communication, discourse, and practice that have made and unmade grassroots programmers’ programming assemblage. We argue that technology for Chinese programmers is a mixed blessing. As a means of survival, technology exacerbates the precariousness and marginalisation of grassroots programmers in China, while the capability of technology production also enables the remaking of subjectivity and social change. The findings of this study thus advocate a deeper and dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology, labour, and empowerment.
INDEX
Keywords: Programmers, articulation and assemblage, technology, Maker Movement, China
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AUTHOR
PING SUN Ping Sun is Assistant Professor at the Department of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Building No. 9, Panjiayuan Dongli, Beijing, Chaoyang District ([email protected]).
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Therapy Made Easy E-Commerce and Infrastructure in China’s Psycho-Boom
Hsuan-Ying
ABSTRACTS
In China, the rise of e-commerce has made significant impacts on a broad range of business and professional fields; psychotherapy, a profession born of the recent “psycho-boom” (xinli re 心理 热), is one of them. This article, using materials collected from interviews, participant observation, and media accounts, delineates the development of Jiandan xinli (简单心理), a Beijing-based startup that features an e-commerce platform for psychotherapy services, and explicates how and why it has achieved enormous initial success. Drawing on the insights of anthropological studies of infrastructure, it argues that the platform can be conceptualised as an example of “infrastructural entrepreneurship,” a business practice taking the construction of infrastructure—in this case, for the field of psychotherapy—as its primary mission.
INDEX
Keywords: e-commerce, infrastructure, O2O, psychotherapy, profession
AUTHOR
HSUAN-YING Hsuan-Ying Huang is Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Chinese University of Hong Kong.Room 322, New Asia Humanities Building, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T. Hong Kong ([email protected]).
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Articles
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Between Resistance and Adaptation The Place of the Uyghur Language in the Sinicised Zone of Ürümchi
Giulia Cabras
ABSTRACTS
The urban areas of Xinjiang have recently experienced major changes in their demographic, urban, ethnic, and linguistic landscapes. Ürümchi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a typical example of this. In this city, which is undergoing rapid economic and urban expansion, the Han make up around 72% of the population and the Chinese language is ever more present in the language use of the Uyghurs. This study examines the place of the Uyghur language in the context of the sinicisation of the city of Ürümchi, its role in the daily life of the Uyghur community, and opportunities for its use and revitalisation.
INDEX
Keywords: Ürümchi, Uyghur community, Uyghur language, language use, language policies
AUTHOR
GIULIA CABRAS Giulia Cabras has a Ph.D. in language sciences from the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris. She is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Freie University.Freie Universität, Kaiserswerther Str. 16-18, 14195 Berlin, Germany ([email protected]).
China Perspectives, 2017/4 | 2017 13
The Migration of Experts and Savoir-faire The Case of French Cuisine Professionals in Shanghai
Hélène Le Bail and Aël Théry
ABSTRACTS
This article focuses on the practice of French cuisine in Shanghai and questions the permanence of this professional niche. It combines an anthropological approach to culinary techniques with a sociological approach to workforce migration, tracing the ways in which the discourse and practices of chefs and maîtres d’hôtel working in French cuisine’s restaurants employ forms of ethnocultural and technical legitimacy. The case of Shanghai, a city undergoing rapid transformation in its modes of consumption, provides a clear illustration of the shifts that have occurred over the last ten years in the hierarchy of Western migrants and Chinese locals: the symbolic and material privileges offered to the former are beginning to disappear, and professional recognition is increasingly becoming based on savoir-faire and a strong work ethic.
INDEX
Keywords: China, French cuisine, migration, knowledge transfer, training
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AUTHORS
HÉLÈNE LE BAIL Hélène Le Bail is a research fellow at Sciences Po Paris-CERI, CNRS.Sciences Po CERI, 56 rue Jacob, 75006 Paris ([email protected]).
AËL THÉRY Aël Théry is a doctoral student at EHESS/TEPSIS (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences), and a research assistant at ESSCA on the ANR project “Immigration and the transformation of Chinese Society.”EHESS, 54 boulevard Raspail, 750016 ([email protected]).
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Current affairs
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The Imprisonment of Occupy Student Leaders Public Reactions and Debates over Hong Kong’s Judicial Independence
Ting-Fai Yu
AUTHOR
TING-FAI YU Ting-Fai Yu is a research assistant at CEFC ([email protected]).
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Book reviews
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Yiu-Wai Chu, Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 2017, 256 pp.
Nathanel Amar
1 Yiu-Wai Chu, director of the Hong Kong Studies Program at the University of Hong Kong, continues in Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History the analyses he outlined in his previous book, published in 2013, Lost In Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China.1 Like Lost In Transition, this book is haunted by the decline of Hong Kong culture since the handover, and by the spectre of mainland China. By offering a chronological history of Hong Kong popular music, Yiu-Wai Chu's book emerges as a reference in Asian Cultural Studies in English.
2 The introduction (pp. 1-20) reviews the notion of "Cantopop,” a term that emerged in the late 1970s to describe popular music in Cantonese produced in Hong Kong. For the author, Cantopop lies at the intersection of the two traditional definitions of pop music, as it is both "the main commercially produced and marketed musical genre" (p. 3) and popular in the sense that it is "capable of uniting a variety of social groups" (p. 4). This fairly wide definition of pop allows Chu to not contrast Cantopop too strongly with rock and alternative music—which are present at the margins throughout the book. The author justifies his focus on Cantopop in view of the limited existing English language studies on Hong Kong folk music: "Academic work on Chinese popular music shows a bias toward rock music from Beijing rather than pop
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music from either Hong Kong or Taiwan" (p. 10). The present work is thus an introduction to Cantopop. This leads the author to leave aside the study of the lyrics of songs, which, while regrettable, is justified by the global economy of the book.
3 The second part of the book (pp. 21-39) challenges the representations traditionally associated with Cantopop, by making a genealogy of it even before the appearance of the term. Until 1974, Cantopop was marginalised in the colonial society of Hong Kong, with music and the Cantonese language being perceived as inferior to English and Mandarin. Popular music in Cantonese was thus considered a "working-class pastime" (p. 21), which most often dealt with the difficulties of daily life during colonisation.
4 The rise of Cantopop in the 1970s is the subject of the book’s third part (pp. 40-68), concomitant with the identity and social claims born of the workers' revolts of 1967 and the extension of the market in the 1970s. The year 1974 marks a turning point in the history of Cantopop, with the broadcast on TVB (Television Broadcasts Limited) of the series A Love Tale between Tears and Smiles, the Cantonese theme song of which was hugely successful. The author shows the close links between Cantopop and other cultural forms, such as television and cinema. The 1970s saw the emergence of many singers and lyricists who made it possible for Cantopop to develop, such as Sam Hui, "the God of Cantopop" (p. 48), who took up social problems in songs using vernacular language. Composer Joseph Koo and lyricist James Wong also participated in the popularisation of Cantopop through their songs for the television series Jade Theater. James Wong, nicknamed "the Godfather of Cantopop,” was also to make Cantopop the subject of his thesis, defended in 2003 at the University of Hong Kong,2 and which serves as a reference throughout Yiu-Wai Chu’s book. The popularity of Cantopop pushed the music industry in Hong Kong to turn to Cantonese. Singers who hitherto sang in Mandarin or made covers of English hits began producing songs in Cantonese, giving Cantopop the hybrid aspect that would make it successful.
5 The 1980s, described in the fourth part, represent the golden age of Cantopop (pp. 69-104), as well as its cultural hegemony on the Asian scene during the period of economic reforms in mainland China. The popularity of the song "The Bund,” from the eponymous television series, sung in 1980 by Frances Yip with music by Joseph Koo and lyrics by James Wong, went well beyond the borders of Hong Kong and was even translated into Mandarin and Thai. During this decade, the first "superstars" appeared, such as Alan Tam, Leslie Cheung, and Anita Mui, who initiated a wave of unprecedented concerts. More than mere commercial events, these concerts "became a venue for building a collective memory for Hong Kong people" (p. 84). It is also the period when a limited but very influential Cantonese alternative music scene developed, including the rock bands Beyond and Tat Ming Pair, whose songs contain subversive political messages. The Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 profoundly marked Cantopop, prompting singers, even the most popular ones, to pose the question of the future of China and Hong Kong in their songs.
6 The fifth part of the book focuses on the 1990s (pp. 105-144), in which the decline of Cantopop began, although it enjoyed a prosperous period at the beginning of the decade with the "Four Heavenly Kings"—Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Leon Lai, and Aaron Kwok, and the “Four Heavenly Queens”—Sally Yeh, Cass Phang, Sammy Cheng, and Kelly Chen. These singers were to dominate the Asian musical and visual scene in the 1990s, but this was not enough to stop the more general decline of Cantopop in the face of the development of Mandapop—popular music in Mandarin—from Mainland China
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and Taiwan. This shift is illustrated by the journey of the singer Faye Wong, born in Beijing, who became famous after settling in Hong Kong in 1987 by singing Cantopop before returning to Mandapop in the late 1990s. The slow decline of Cantopop was accompanied by a crisis of Hong Kong identity as retrocession approached, expressed in 1997 by a song that reeked of nationalism, "Chinese" ("Zhongguo ren") by Andy Lau, sung in Mandarin.
7 The last part (pp. 145-183) deals with the Cantopop crisis, which began in the noughts. In addition to declining sales, the world of Cantopop lost two of its most popular representatives in 2003, Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui, while the SARS epidemic hit the Hong Kong economy hard that same year. The promotion of four new Heavenly Kings, Andy Hui, Edmond Leung, Hacken Lee, and Leo Ku, did not enable Cantopop to resist the domination of Mandapop. Cantopop nevertheless followed the evolution of society, and some groups took a stand in support of the Umbrella Movement in 2014, such as Denise Ho, Anthony Yiu-Ming Wong, and Kat Tse, who sang the anthem of the movement, "Raise the Umbrella.” In the midst of an identity crisis, Hong Kongers also turned to other forms of music, such as hip-hop with the collective Lazy Motha Fucka (LMF), while the record labels were no longer investing in new singers, preferring to recycle the old glories of Cantopop.
8 Yiu-Wai Chu's book opens new perspectives in Asian cultural studies, including a comparative approach to popular music in mainland China. The author provides some very interesting analyses of the queer genre and the queer imagination of Cantopop, but one is surprised when he states that "Leslie Cheung never openly declared his sexual orientation" (p. 135), nor does he mention TVB's censorship of homoerotic clips produced by Cheung.3 Moreover, the scandal provoked in 2008 by the diffusion of pornographic photos taken by the actor Edison Chen in the company of popular Cantopop singers is barely mentioned.4 The book’s aim to write a history of Cantopop, which undoubtedly fills one of the gaps in Chinese studies, neglects the mainland’s popular music, whether inspired by or critical of Cantopop. The book therefore encourages future research on the relationship between Cantopop and Chinese rock in the 1990s, for example through the concert given in front of 8,000 people by He Yong, Tang Dynasty, Dou Wei, and Zhang Chu on December 17, 1994 in the Hong Kong Coliseum, during which He Yong called the Four Heavenly Kings "clowns" and insulted Cantopop.5 Similarly, the author's desire to deal with Hong Kong alternative music at the same time as Cantopop forces him to bring together bands as diverse as the hip-hop collective LMF, the subversive anti-folk group My Little Airport, or the hardcore-punk band King Ly Chee, all of which deserve to be further analysed. Unfortunately, there are typos in the names of some Mainland singers and song titles, as well as repetitions in the body of the text.
9 Hong Kong Cantopop nevertheless remains an essential book for Asian cultural studies. In addition to a very complete chronology of Cantopop, accompanied by an excellent appendix, Yiu-Wai Chu’s book makes it possible to place Hong Kong pop music in its geopolitical, cultural, and social context. Also to be appreciated is the effort of systematic transcription of the names of singers and songs in Chinese characters. This is an important book for understanding the construction of Hong Kong identity, which more generally enables taking popular music seriously, and deconstructs many prejudices about Cantopop.
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NOTES
1. Chu Yiu-Wai, Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2013. 2. James Wong, The Rise and Decline of Cantopop: A Study of Hong Kong Popular Music (1949-1997), PhD Thesis, Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong, 2003. 3. Natalia Sui-hung Chan, “Queering Body and Sexuality: Leslie Cheung’ s Gender Representation in Hong Kong Popular Culture,” in Yau Ching (ed.), As Normal As Possible: Negotiating Sexuality and Gender in Mainland China and Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 2010, p. 147. 4. It was the subject of a chapter in the book by Jeroen de Kloet and Yiu Fai Chow, Sonic Multiplicities. Hong Kong Pop and the Global Circulation of Sound and Image, Chicago, Intellect, 2013, pp. 81-100. 5. Mike Levin, “Chinese Pop Music Lovers Show A Taste For Rock,” Billboard, 21 January 1995, p. 45.
AUTHOR
NATHANEL AMAR Nathanel Amar, Ph.D. in Political Science, is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities of the University of Hong Kong ([email protected]).
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Luigi Tomba, The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2015, 225 pp.
Judith Audin
1 A residential neighbourhood can appear as more of a domestic than a political domain; it nevertheless constitutes a space governed by power relations that are interestingly structured in authoritarian regimes. From the 1950s, the Chinese regime introduced and strengthened social control mechanisms extending into the city’s lanes and residential units. During the market economy reforms period, the local modalities of government recomposed. How can one study them in the current urban context? Breaking with theories of “governing from a distance” and the liberal prisms of autonomisation of individuals in the framework of housing commodification, the latest work of Luigi Tomba gets to the heart of power relations to unscramble the tangled web of fragile equilibriums of domination stemming “from below” to better conceptualise the Chinese state’s formation. He highlights “everyday practices of power in the neighbourhood” (p. 3), meaning daily manifestations of the rationalities of local level administrative action (p. 11), where principles such as segregation, social distinction, and quality (suzhi) are detailed and
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accepted (p. 12), reinforcing governmental legitimacy. The author introduces the political consensus concept (p. 19)—a set of local government-produced declarations. The consensus, which can be divisive and selective, stems not only from coercion but also quite simply from acceptance of values underlying an administrative technology, meaning that the locality is the place for exercising daily rationalities that contribute to local and national governance. The book records “the different experiences of the state that neighbourhoods promote as well as the role they play in maintaining social stability while creating new dependencies and loyalties to the state” (p. 5). Bearing in mind the great diversity of Chinese localities (p. 9), each chapter studies one specific government rationality and practice.
2 Chapter 1 deals with social classification resulting from “social clustering” in residential neighbourhoods, comparing different localities and showing that residents are differently affected by government techniques through class, given their social characteristics.
3 Chapter 2 describes formal administration and government structures (residents’ committees and community committees) in Shenyang City (Liaoning Province), which, during the process of deindustrialisation and de-danweisation, redefined residential governance to foster allocation of social services needed by the unemployed. This transition from danwei to neighbourhood has converged towards basic organisations, developing a governance model quite different from that of Shanghai. The author conducted a quantitative study of community residents’ committee directors to more precisely gauge the process of urban industrial reconversion and the ways in which demobilised factory personnel found job niches and thus assumed responsibility for some social assistance missions while remaining relatively legitimate in residents’ eyes. Tomba also analyses apparently more informal forms of socio-cultural performances in the sociability spaces of Tiexi District such as public parks, in reality organised and financed by local cadres (p. 81). The “borrowing of credibility” (p. 82) from higher-level leaders who rely upon the residents’ committee agents to initiate and maintain a dialogue with the residents is an extremely useful notion to grasp the dynamics of local Chinese politics.
4 Chapter 3, focused on “Hopetown,” a neighbourhood located in northeast Beijing, reveals a new type of social fabric of Chinese citizens formed through the production and appropriation of new types of “commodity” residential compounds (shangpinfang xiaoqu). Noting different stages of housing sector liberalisation in urban China, as well as hybrid forms of marketization such as the public sector coexisting with the new real- estate sector to then cede place to it in the name of a new paradigm of social distinction, Tomba demonstrates that the formation of a middle class of homeowners is one of the essential factors of neighbourhood consensus.
5 The next chapter plunges into the issue of homeowners’ class, analysing how homeownership conflicts do not affect the state’s legitimacy, as they evolved in the relatively independent context of the neighbourhood and do not lead to the formation of an enlightened middle class seeking regime democratisation, unlike what many studies have suggested. Based on an instance of collective action by Hopetown apartment owners, Tomba retraces the causes and consequences of ownership conflicts that erupted in the first decade of this century. He holds that interests linked to local conflicts determine configurations of solidarity among neighbours and could strengthen collective demands. However, the self-government of homeowners through
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the direct election of homeowners’ committees is not a smooth process, as pertinently explained in the section on “pains of self-administration” (p. 136). Thus, the form of both physical and social borders makes the neighbourhood an “internal space” with limited autonomy where conflicts and collective action paradoxically form part of the neighbourhood consensus.
6 Finally, Tomba presents the last dimension of the consensus: the promotion of civilised and urban values in residential space. He studied the production of social norms through the notions of exemplarity, quality (suzhi), and civilisation. The demonstration is useful in that it takes into account not only municipalities’ educational materials that are put at people’s disposal, but also concrete experiences defining citizenship, especially the housing segregation process initiated in part through urban renewal operations (p. 154). The case of the Shenyang industrial district’s “revitalisation,” wherein any reference to industrial labour is no longer available, aptly characterises the phenomena of Chinese cities’ planned gentrification (p. 161-162), lending Wang Bing’s film West of the Tracks an archival status.
7 The book’s strength and relevance stem from the author’s ability to paint a “canvas”1 of neighbourhood governance that helps to quite fully visualise the social, spatial, political, and economic factors that contribute to this “consensus.” The book thus not only contributes to studies on local urban government in China but also addresses general issues in political science such as deindustrialisation, legitimisation of political regimes, social stratification, housing reform, residential segregation, bureaucratisation of para-administrative organisations, and the dynamics of collective action.
8 While the book is exhilarating, some reservations must be noted. First off, in regard to research methodology, the book lacks ethnographic “matter.” Urban neighbourhood fieldwork would have gained from more direct observation, especially interviews with those studied. Moreover, the research needed a deeper investigation of the spatial dimension of the studied phenomena. Locally produced consensus varies according to the social profiles of inhabitants, as well as the type of property and their relation to the urban space, that is to say, the sensory and social experience of living. A few valuable references would have helped complete this reflection, especially those of David Fraser on the oasification of Shanghai’s residential compounds and the briefly mentioned work of Zhang Li on Chongqing’s residential subjectivities and practices. Furthermore, the neighbourhoods studied during fieldwork (a series of studies carried out throughout the previous decade) do not allow for visualising a political environment and the local production of consensus in a specific context. The chapter on the problems of social assistance extended to Shenyang’s public sector workers is juxtaposed with the one on conflicts of co-ownership in new residential compounds in Beijing. Tomba could have broached the issue of middle-classification of neighbourhoods in Shenyang instead of Beijing, as he explained in the previous chapter that the city had undertaken major urban renovation work in the city-centre in order to boost reconversion towards a “competitive, global, and post-industrial city” identity (p. 157). Moreover, the notion of autonomy introduced in the comparison of different types of neighbourhoods would have benefited from a more critical elaboration, as the chapters seem to be heading towards contradictory conclusions: on the one hand the reader learns that “poor” urban spaces are under greater control of cadres than middle class residential areas, but on the other, the author states that the middle classes face
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“patterns of dependence” more complex than in the past (p. 127). It is also regrettable that conflicts in the recent residential compounds have not been studied mirroring the demolition-displacement (chaiqian) conflicts characterising old neighbourhoods. Further, the historic dimension, which represents a mere sub-section, could have gained consistency by extracting the genealogy of the neighbourhood consensus through the dual process of housing reform and de-danweisation in Chinese cities. Finally, some notions are difficult to grasp, especially “consensus,” which while relying on a profusion of actors and practices, is limited to a state-society binary dialectic (not being clear what precisely the author means by “state” or “society”), whereas a more fascinating reflection could have been attempted on political processes “from below” in the Chinese context and more specifically on the subjectification concept.
9 However, given its empirical and theoretical contribution, this book undeniably contributes to research on urban China at the crossroads of political sociology and political economics of domination based on case studies of a subject both ordinary and heuristic—the residential neighbourhood. Various aspects of power relations are finely dissected, making for a highly interesting analytical work in a socio-political arena in which “the existence of a space where bargaining between state and society and within society is made possible through formalized institutions, routinized practices, and discursive boundaries” (p. 169). To conclude, the neighbourhood is an “incubator of political processes that have implications for our understanding of Chinese politics, both local and national” (p. 4).
NOTES
1. This reviewer dealt with the “neighbourhood” issue in a thematic study of different facets of power relations traversing such geographic and social spaces in her doctoral thesis. See Judith Audin, Vie quotidienne et pouvoir dans trois quartiers de Pékin: une microsociologie politique comparée des modes de gouvernement urbain au début du 21e siècle (Daily life and power in three Beijing neighbourhoods: a comparative political microsociology of urban government in the early 21st century), PhD thesis, political science, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, 2013, http:// spire.sciencespo.fr/hdl:/2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m28294h86 (accessed on 18 October 2017).
AUTHOR
JUDITH AUDIN Judith Audin is a researcher with CEFC and chief editor of China Perspectives ([email protected]).
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Ji Zhe, Religion, modernité et temporalité. Une sociologie du bouddhisme Chan contemporain (Religion, modernity and temporality: A sociology of contemporary Chan Buddhism), Paris, CNRS Editions, 2016, 348 pp.
Sébastien Billioud
1 For several years now and through a number of books and articles, Ji Zhe, professor at INALCO (France’s National Institute for Oriental Languages and
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Civilisations) and a member of l’Institut Universitaire de France (University Institute of France), has been replenishing our understanding of changes in Chinese contemporary Buddhism, analysing what they reveal of transformations in China as a whole. This long-awaited book under review, based on a doctoral thesis defended in 2007, is the latest of his works. His analysis of transformations in Chan 禪 Buddhism (better known in the West as Zen) also serves as an ambitious and larger sociological reflection on the issue of religious modernity and thereby on temporality. His initial premise is that any analysis of religious change cannot be divorced from a reflection on modernity, but that the failure of classical theories of secularisation (incapable of explaining persisting religious vitality) necessitates a deeper reflection on temporality that transcends the often dominant positivist approaches (for instance rational choice and “religious economy”). Thus, pursuing a “temporalist sociological” approach, Ji tackles how Chinese Chan Buddhism—legitimised a priori like most religions by tradition and the past—now articulates in a special manner the different dimensions of time (past, present, and future) in a modern general context (including postmodern, ultramodern, etc.) dominated by change, novelty, and the future, as well as by the idea of constant acceleration.
2 The basis of the analysis presented is particularly rich as it was carried out on three recent groups (founded in the 1980s) and evolving in three different contexts: the Chan Bailin temple, a monastery built in Hebei Province in China; the Modern Chan Society, in the south of Taipei; and Plum Village at Thénac, in Dordogne, France. The reconstruction of Buddhism’s religious temporality is thus studied from four angles (institutions, discourses, practices, and authorities) and also transversally as the author relies on concrete examples drawn from the three places.
3 In Part I (entitled “Evoking the Past”), Ji examines the ways in which Chan Buddhism gradually acquired a new legitimacy as an institution, starting with China’s opening up in the 1980s. Using the reconstruction of the Bailin temple (1988-2003) as an example, he analyses the process of reconstitution or remobilisation of religious memory by evoking space arrangements, encoding objects (the planting of cypress symbolically re- actualising ancient precepts associated with the tree), commemorating heroes, or genealogical inscription. The past thus symbolically reconstituted helps remake an ahistoric religious temporality after a period of discontinuity.
4 Part II deals with the production of an innovative Buddhist discourse seeking to adapt to the expectations of secular, modern, and autonomous subjects concerned with progressive self-construction or self-realisation. Bailin temple thus promotes a “living chan” valorising the present (dangxia 當下), consciousness of what surrounds us, and “aestheticisation” and ethicisation of daily life without necessitating other-wordly asceticism (in fact, the living chan, a new form of “Buddhism in the world” accessible to everyone). The situation is close to that in Plum Village, whose founder, the Vietnamese-born Thich Nhât Hanh, preaches “mindfulness” practice: centering oneself and focusing on the present to gain mastery over the self to achieve self-realisation. A series of concrete techniques are offered (recitation of stanzas, mindful breathing, walking meditation, etc.), effectively rupturing modern temporal awareness turned towards the future and in quest of constant novelty. The present is thus reinvested while being informed by a religious temporality further oriented to the past (the experiences of the Buddha and the enlightened ones who followed).
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5 As religious modernity is characterised largely by a marginalisation of “church religions,” a “privatisation” of religion, and explosion of belief modalities, religious groups need to adapt to a context largely dominated by mobility. Part III analyses how the Chan groups studied, having largely shaken off traditional rules and calendars, devised strategies for gathering followers (summer camps at Bailin temple or communal reterritorialisation at Modern Chan Society) and offer new practices (for instance adapted or invented ceremonies), thus seeking to articulate religious and secular time.
6 The book’s last part, perhaps less directly linked than others to the central problematic of temporality, deals with the issue of authority through a reflection on lay Buddhists. They are traditionally in a situation of inferiority vis-à-vis monks, “religious virtuosi” whose charisma builds on continuity, repetition, and persistence. Using the example of Modern Chan Society and of its founder’s “prophetic” charisma, Ji describes an effort to valorise secular ethics and the institution of a “lay clergy,” facilitating the obtaining of salvation in modern conditions.
7 This remarkable book is very clear and well developed, stimulating in its depth and agreeable in form: detailed ethnographic descriptions alternate with meticulous historical contextualisations and ambitious theoretical discussions. The reflection on temporality presented via the case of Chan Buddhism would interest readers other than specialists in the religion, so relevant just when China is reappropriating (not without amnesia and in a selective, fragmented, fantasised, and often ideologised manner) parts or layers of its history (Confucian revival, fervour for Ming or Republican studies, recourse to Maoist references, etc.). Each of these reappropriations raises the issue of articulation of different dimensions of time. While often these ideological and official “productions of the past” superficially sanctify the present (and current authorities) rather than challenge the time order, there are cases—Chan Buddhism among them— wherein among the diverse social actors, the past informs the present and even the future, also raising the larger issue of an eventual evolution of China’s current “regime of historicity.”
AUTHOR
SÉBASTIEN BILLIOUD Sébastien Billioud is director of CEFC’s Taipei office and professor at the Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité ([email protected]).
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Ruoyun Bai, Staging Corruption: Chinese Television and Politics, Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 2015, 276 pp.
Qian Gong
1 Reading Bai Ruoyun’s book Staging Corruption: Chinese Television and Politics is even more fascinating while watching the 55-episode anti-corruption television drama In the Name of the People (Renmin de mingyi 人民的名义). This top-rating serial, created to spotlight Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption, attracted millions of viewers. Many saw it as resurrecting a genre that had been in decline since 2004, when the government suddenly slapped a ban on the topic. The popularity of the serial serves as a footnote to how important the anti- corruption genre has been in public discourse, as well as its continuing relevance to Chinese society today. One can’t help but admire Bai’s foresight in writing a book that illuminates the evolution of the anti-corruption genre and how this issue is embedded in Chinese society. Overall, I found Bai’s account insightful, ingenious, and interesting.
2 Bai’s book adopts an interesting point of entry into television studies in China. Unlike other books in the field, which often look at the various sub-genres, Bai’s book has focused on one single genre, the anti-corruption television serials. This allows the author to thoroughly investigate the ebbs and flows of the TV drama serials in the complicated media ecology formed by media policy, censorship, financing, licensing,
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and content production in post-Mao China. However, Bai does not stop there. She takes on the sensitive topic of anti-corruption and examines the issue as “a site of ideological contestation” (p. 12). This enables her to probe broader social and political issues of great tension in post-socialist China, such as morality and governance. The book thus provides a rich and in-depth narrative about the transformation of contemporary Chinese society.
3 One of the main themes of the book is that the dominant feature of the post-Mao China media landscape is a “disjunctive media order.” Bai uses the idea to describe the complex media system resulting from the interplay of political and economic forces. In the subsequent analysis, the book convincingly shows the impact of the contingent configuration of political and commercial interests on the features and fortunes of the anti-corruption genre. This allows for a more nuanced exploration of various logics at play within the TV drama as a mediated space. It is a welcome addition to the literature, which debunks some binary thinking about Chinese media as being only the product of state versus market, and provides insightful observations on this point.
4 Bai’s ability to tease out the complex forces at play in the Chinese media industry is clear in Chapter Two, a case study on Heaven Above (Cangtian zaishang 苍天在上) (1995), the first anti-corruption TV drama serial. China Central Television (CCTV) commissioned a series on the hot topic of anti-corruption partly because of the Party’s agenda on fighting corruption, but mostly out of a motivation to compete with the more commercialised provincial television stations. Subject to more stringent censorship, it was perhaps counterintuitive for CCTV to propose a politically risky project such as Heaven Above. However, Bai points out that CCTV is buffered from immediate commercial repercussions if a production ends up losing money. Its political capital can provide certain protection for its professionals in case the production also incurs official criticism. The tensions between the market and state cannot be resolved easily, but Bai observes that intellectuals, as cultural brokers, serve as mediators between the two forces. Sometimes the intellectuals are so skilful that they are actually able to produce “politically acceptable, market-sensitive, and even artistically gratifying” products.
5 In Chapter Three, Bai looks at the various factors that contributed to the rise and fall of the genre from 2000 to 2004. Here Bai provides systemic insights into the genre’s transformation. Carried along with the anti-corruption campaign in 2000, corruption dramas faced less stringent political censorship. However, the real opportunity to flourish came when the government issued a ban on foreign dramas on prime-time TV, creating an immediate market for corruption dramas, now often financed by private investment. A synergy with the publishing industry also contributed to the boom in the genre. As the genre grew, the government was increasingly disturbed by the increasingly explicit crime and corruption content. In 2004, regulators put a ban on the entire genre, supposedly to maintaining social stability and restore moral order after these TV excesses.
6 Chapters Four to Six of the book focus on how the anti-corruption drama evolved into different genres over a span of two decades or so. Chapter Four examines the earlier productions of anti-corruption dramas, mostly melodramas. This type of serial often adopted a “good official” narrative, which originates in Confucianism. Initially popular with viewers, these dramas tied in closely with the CCP’s anti-corruption campaign by putting the CCP at the centre of moral order. However, it increasingly came under
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attack from liberal-minded intellectuals for failing to address structural problems and for promoting “rule of man” instead of “rule of law.” Intellectual interventions helped to disassociate corruption from the realm of morality in these dramas; yet ironically, the issue of corruption was rationalised and normalized in the process. According to Bai, a more dominant neoliberal discourse pre-empted critiques on the link between corruption and economic reform. Instead of delving into the systemic roots of corruption, anti-corruption dramas slid into cynicism.
7 Chapter Five deals with the development of new anti-corruption dramas in the 2000s. Bai astutely observes that despite the official ban on the anti-corruption topic on prime-time TV, the genre did not disappear but morphed into a “prototypical narrative of workplace politics” (p. 160). Corruption was removed from its contemporary context and relocated into an imagined “guanchang” (官场) culture, namely the realm of officialdom and all the dirty tricks associated with it. Taking the divergent forms of Qing court corruption, or contemporary satire on bureaucratic politics, cynics could view corruption as inherent and an unavoidable product of “guanchang” culture. Once again, corruption dramas failed to engage the political and economic roots of corruption, but served instead to further normalise it. Bai’s impressive knowledge of Chinese literature, society, and politics helps lay bare the development of the genre in this stage, which could be rather hard to fathom otherwise.
8 Chapter Six gives a detailed analysis of a crowd-pleasing serial, Snail House (Wo Ju 蜗居), and its online responses to demonstrate how cynicism is at work full force in the production as well as the consumption of corruption drama. Snail House valorises a corrupt official, portraying him as capable and charismatic, a “desirable subject” who can survive in the competitive guanchang world. The online community seemed reluctant to see corruption as a moral issue, but was more ready to identify with the “neoliberal imperative to nurture and optimize the self” (p. 207). To Bai, the popularity of Snail House shows that the middle-class has largely lost the will and capacity to effectively critique corruption.
9 Bai’s book is a remarkable addition to Chinese television studies. Readers will benefit not only from her in-depth research into the production and regulation of Chinese television drama, but also from her erudite observations of the social, cultural, and political conditions of the fascinating anti-corruption genre. Her insightful analysis provides a fine example for students doing media and culture studies, as well as for the many in the general public who are fascinated by where China is headed.
AUTHOR
QIAN GONG Qian Gong is a lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities of Curtin University, Perth, Australia ([email protected]).
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David S. G. Goodman, Class in Contemporary China, Cambridge, UK, Polity Press, 2014, 233 pp.
Gilles Guiheux
1 Needless to say, one of the most important consequences of China’s economic reforms is the reconfiguration of its social space. David S. G. Goodman presents a useful synthesis relying on his own investigations and the work of many Chinese and Western sociologists. He notes that identifying social classes lay at the heart of the Maoist project; in the early 1950s, a process of labelling, based on both political and economic criteria, assigned everyone a position. This categorisation, which took place in rural areas during land reform, and in urban areas during the Three- and Five-Anti campaigns, facilitated the Party’s control over society. By the late 1970s, when this classification was abandoned, Chinese society was remarkably egalitarian and unstratified; 80% of the population lived in the countryside in great destitution. The launch of reforms and the economy’s structural transformation rekindled social change. New social categories emerged: private entrepreneurs, owners of small or large enterprises, service sector employees, and new workers from the countryside. These upheavals opened the way for elaboration of new propositions for representation of social space. Now, sociologists found much to work on.
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2 The book mainly focuses on a critical analysis of the main social groups. Upper classes and political and economic elites form the subject of a chapter that deals with their diversities in terms of generations and education levels, and in the case of the latter, politicisation. The middle classes are particularly difficult to identify. They are members of “old middle classes” —small private entrepreneurs and individuals in their own right—and members of “new” middle classes made up of managers or independent professionals. Quantitative evaluations by scholars vary widely. Discussion on the middle class mainly tends to include the largest possible section of Chinese society, distracting attention from situations of extreme poverty and wealth. In fact, the majority of China’s population (85%) continues to belong to subjugated classes such as state sector workers, migrant workers in the market sectors, and farmers. While such factors likewise vary according to province—rich on the east coast and poor in the interior—or gender and ethnicity, they share commonalities, especially in terms of growing mobilisation and participation in protest outbursts.
3 The book closes evoking discussions that engaged sociologists or rather still do. Does the transition from a planned economy to a market economy lead to an erosion of the Party-state’s role? Victor Nee defends that controversial stand. Will the emergence of middle classes usher in democracy? The Chinese case helps test Barrington Moore’s theories on the link between social transformation and political change. Might the emergence of a working class endowed with class awareness be imagined? This is a position that Pun Ngai and Chris Chan defend, especially in regard to rising working class activism since 2010. Does rural mobilisation constitute a factor in transforming the political system? Some believe that modernisation could come from the countryside. The book ends with a reflection on inequality and the relevance of the class concept in contemporary China.
AUTHOR
GILLES GUIHEUX Gilles Guiheux is professor at the Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité ([email protected]).
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