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The Journal July 2010 Issue 64 ______Ben Hillman, Factions and Spoils: Examining Political Behavior within the Local State in China 1 Sally Sargeson and Yu Song, Land Expropriation and the Gender Politics of Citizenship in the Urban Frontier 19 Lianjiang Li, Rights Consciousness and Rules Consciousness in Contemporary China 47 Ling Chen, Playing the Market Reform Card: The Changing Patterns of Political Struggle in China’s Electric Power Sector 69 Xuehua Zhang and Leonard Ortolano, Judicial Review of Environmental Administrative Decisions: Has it Changed the Behavior of Government Agencies? 97 Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, Eugenic Birth and Fetal : The Friction between Lineage Enhancement and Premarital Testing Among Rural in Mainland China 121 PUN Ngai and LU Huilin, A Culture of Violence: The Labor Subcontracting System and Collective Action by Construction Workers in Post-Socialist China 143 Geng Song and Tracy K. Lee, Consumption, Class Formation and Sexuality: Reading Men’s Lifestyle Magazines in China 159 Shi-Chi Mike Lan, The Ambivalence of National Imagination: Defining “The Taiwanese” in China, 1931–1941 179

REVIEW ESSAY Jonathan Unger, The Warfare at Beijing’s Universities 199

REVIEWS Heroes of China’s : Two Stories, edited by Richard King. (Felix Wemheuer) 213 Village China under and Reform: A Micro-History, 1948–2008, by Huaiyin Li. (Pauline Keating) 214 The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation, by Prasenjit Duara. (Justin Tighe) 216 A History of the Modern Chinese Army, by Xiaobing Li. (David M. Finkelstein) 218 East River Column: Guerillas in the Second World War and After, by Chan Sui-jeung. (Parks Coble) 220 Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese, by Law Wing Sang. (Gordon Mathews) 222 Hong Kong’s Watershed: The 1967 Riots, by Gary Ka-wai Cheung. (Alan Smart) 224 China’s Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections, 1900–1950, edited by Daniel H. Bays and Ellen Widmer. (Joseph Tse-Hei Lee) 225 Chinese Utopianism: A Comparative Study of Reformist Thought with Japan and Russia, 1898–1997, by Shiping Hua. (John A. Rapp) 228 Other-Worldly: Making Chinese Medicine Through Transnational Frames, by Mei Zhan. (James Flowers) 229 Communist Multiculturalism: Ethnic Revival in , by Susan K. McCarthy. (James Leibold) 231 China with a Cut: Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music, by Jeroen de Kloet. (Marc Moskowitz) 233 Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China, by Tiantian Zheng. (James Farrer) 235 Communities, Crime and Social Capital in Contemporary China, by Lena Y. Zhong. (Shumei Hou) 237 Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, edited by Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank. (Thomas Heberer) 239 The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China: Environmental Values and Civil Society, by Bryan Tilt. (Anna Lora-Wainwright) 241 The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online, by Guobin Yang. (Colin Hawes) 243 Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China, by Yingjin Zhang. (Niv Horesh) 245 Shanghai Rising: State Power and Local Transformations in a Global Megacity, edited by Xiangming Chen. (Lisa Hoffman) 247 China: The Pessoptimist Nation, by William A Callahan. (Kerry Brown) 249 Politische Partizipation und Regimelegitimität in der VR China. Band I: Der urbane Raum (Political Participation and Regime Legitimacy in the PRC. Vol. I: Urban China), by Thomas Heberer and Gunter Schubert; and Politische Partizipation und Regimelegitimität in der VR China. Band II: Der ländliche Raum (Political Participation and Regime Legitimacy in the PRC. Vol. II: Rural China), by Gunter Schubert and Thomas Heberer. (Björn Alpermann) 252 Government and Policy-Making Reform in China: The Implications of Governing Capacity, by Bill K. P. Chou. (Yu Zheng) 254 China’s Great Economic Transformation, edited by Loren Brandt and Thomas G. Rawski. (Carl Riskin) 256 Chinese Capitalisms: Historical Emergence and Political Implications, edited by Yin-wah Chu. (Christopher A. McNally) 258 The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy, by Minqi Li. (Christopher A. McNally) 260 Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China, edited by Deborah S. Davis and Feng Wang. (PUN Ngai) 262 Inequality and Public Policy in China, edited by Björn A. Gustafsson, Li Shi and Terry Sicular. (Sarah Cook) 263 States’ Gains, Labor’s Losses: China, France, and Mexico Choose Global Liaisons, 1980–2000, by Dorothy J. Solinger. (William Hurst) 265 The Rise of China and India: A New Asian Drama, by Lam Peng Er and Lim Tai Wei. (Louise Merrington) 267 Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context, by Charles Horner. (Peter Ditmanson) 269 China 2020: How Western Businesses Can—and Should—Influence Social and Political Change in the Coming Decade, by Michael A. Santoro. (King Chi Chris Chan) 270 Fortifying China: The Struggle to Build a Modern Defense Economy, by Tai Ming Cheung. (William A. Fischer) 272 Chinese Security Policy: Structure, Power and Politics, by Robert S. Ross. (Robert Bedeski) 274 China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, by Sophie Richardson. (Kerry Brown) 275 China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores, by R. Evan Ellis. (Merriden Varrall) 277 CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

Ling Chen is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests include the political and East Asia. She has published articles in Review of International Political Economy and New Political Economy. She is currently working on a research project that examines industrial upgrading and innovation in China’s coastal localities. Ben Hillman is Lecturer in Political Science at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University, where he teaches graduate courses on comparative government and democracy. His current research focuses on local governance and ethnic conflict. Other recent publications can be viewed at http://www.crawford.anu.edu.au/staff/bhillman.php. Shi-Chi Mike Lan is Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Tracy K. Lee is a lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Communication, Chu Hai College of Higher Education, Hong Kong, and a PhD candidate with The Australian National University. Her research focuses on gender and . Lianjiang Li is a professor in the Department of Government and Public Administration at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His work focuses on village elections, collective action and political trust in rural China. His articles have appeared recently in China Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Modern China and Political Behavior. He is the author, with Kevin J. O’Brien, of Rightful Resistance in Rural China (Cambridge, 2006).

LU Huilin is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Peking University. His primary research and teaching interests are historical sociology, rural social change in modern China and class formation of peasant workers. Leonard Ortolano is UPS Foundation Professor of Civil Engineering at Stanford University. He is a specialist in environmental and water resources planning, with a focus on the implementation of environmental policies and programs in the United States and several other countries, including China. He and his students have engaged in research activities related to a variety of environmental issues in China for over two decades.

PUN Ngai is Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her current research interests include labor, gender, socialist theory and history. Sally Sargeson is a Fellow of the College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University. Her research interests centre on the local politics of rural reforms, and gender and rural development. With Tamara Jacka, she is currently co-editing a book on Women, Gender and Development in Rural China. Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner is Reader in Anthropology at the University of Sussex. Her work focuses on processes of nation-state building in China and Japan and on biotechnology and society in Asia (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/ anthropology/profile192052.html). Geng Song is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the Australian National University. He has published five books, including The Fragile Scholar (2004) and Globalization and Chineseness (2006), and is currently working on a book- length project on men and masculinities in contemporary China. Yu Song is a Lecturer in the School of Economics and Management at Zhejiang Sci- tech University. Her current research focuses on gender, rural development and internal . Jonathan Unger, a sociologist, is a professor in The Australian National University’s Department of Political and Social Change. He has published more than a dozen books about China, the most recent of which is, as co- author, Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization (2009). Unger co-edited The China Journal for 18 years from 1987 through 2005. Xuehua Zhang is an independent consultant on environmental, energy and climate issues in developing countries. She received her PhD from Stanford’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) with a focus on Environmental Law, Institutions and Economics. She has done extensive research on environmental policy-making, enforcement and compliance, as well as the role of legal institutions and citizen participation in China’s local environmental enforcement. She is currently investigating the effects of energy conservation and emissions reduction programs on China’s cadre evaluation system. NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS The China Journal is an externally refereed scholarly journal that focuses on topics relating to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan since 1949, plus studies of the major issues before that date which contribute to our understanding of Communist Party history and contemporary events. The Journal welcomes contributions from all points of view and from all fields. Submission of an article to the Journal for publication is taken to mean that it has not previously been published and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Contributions should not be longer than 11,000 words. The author’s name and identity should be deleted from the manuscript or file to ensure anonymity during the refereeing process. Papers should preferably be submitted as an e-mail attachment in Word or, alternatively, by mail, with three typed copies, single-sided and double-spaced, to: The China Journal Contemporary China Centre Coombs Building #9 The Australian National University Fellows Road CANBERRA ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA Phone: 61-2-6125-4155 (mornings only) Fax: 61-2-6125-9047 E-mail: [email protected] URL: http://rspas.anu.edu.au/ccc/journal.htm

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FACTIONS AND SPOILS: EXAMINING POLITICAL BEHAVIOR WITHIN THE LOCAL STATE IN CHINA

Ben Hillman

While students of Chinese politics have long been interested in the impact of fiscal and administrative decentralization on patterns of governance in China, few have examined the impact of decentralization on political dynamics within the local state. Focusing on the county—the level of government primarily responsible for delivering public services, managing local state-owned enterprises, and coordinating the economy—this article explains how the pressures and incentives associated with decentralization have changed the “rules of the game” at the local level. It argues, in an in-depth study of a rural county, that local politics is driven largely by a competition over spoils and that competition over spoils is organized around a relatively stable system of factionalism. The first part of the article examines the emergence of local factions in County X and their relationship to the formal institutions of Party and government. The second part examines the resilience of local state factionalism and its implications for central government control and one-Party rule.

Studying the Local State in China From the late 1970s, decentralization has heralded a fundamental shift in the way China is governed. Local governments were made directly responsible for governing the local economy, delivering public services and for raising revenues. By the 1990s China had become one of the most decentralized states in the world as measured by sub-national governments’ share of public expenditure.1 Case studies from different regions taught us that China’s “local states” responded to the challenges of decentralization in different ways.2 In the more industrialized regions, some local states were able to capitalize on

1 Sub-national governments’ share of public expenditure in China was 78.7 per cent in 2009. Source: China Statistical Yearbook 2009, http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2009/indexeh.htm, accessed 18 May 2010. 2 Two useful overviews of the local state literature are: Tony Saich, “The Blind Man and the Elephant: Analysing the Local State in China”, in Luigi Tomba (ed.), East Asian Capitalism: Conflicts Growth And Crisis (Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 2002), pp. 75-99; and Richard Baum and Alexei Shevchenko, “The State of the State”, in Merle Goldman and Roderick McFarquar (eds), The Paradox of China’s Post-Mao Reforms (Cambridge MA: Harvard

THE CHINA JOURNAL, NO. 64, JULY 2010 2 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 extant infrastructure to support further rapid industrialization. In these regions local governments could fund their mandates from the profits of state-owned enterprises or from taxes paid by new private firms. In the rural hinterland, however, cash-strapped local governments resorted to increasing taxes and fees on farmers—a phenomenon that became known as the “peasant burden”.3 Not surprisingly, the first studies of China’s local states focused on changing relations between state and society. A typology emerged in which local states were characterized as either “developmental”, 4 “entrepreneurial”, 5 “predatory” 6 or “involuted”.7 By focusing on changing state-society relations, however, the literature tended to overlook an important consequence of decentralization—namely, its impact on political behavior within the local state. In fact, a key weakness of the literature on local governance in China has been its tendency to treat the local state as monolithic, in contradistinction with society below or the central state above. Such approaches, particularly when unsupported by first-hand observations, have often been blind to the complexity of interests within the local state and the nature of contestation between such interests. Fiscal decentralization placed new pressures on local administration, but it also placed new “prizes” in the local political arena. With the assets and regulatory powers of the state at their disposal, local officials were given wide latitude to pursue and collect revenue. In fact, it became the primary task of local governments to make money. Profiteering was tolerated, even encouraged, and large amounts of revenues could be moved off-budget to be used at the discretion of local officials— a trend that continues despite central government efforts to tighten fiscal discipline. Off- budget revenues often amounted to half or more of total local government revenues.8

University Press, 1999), pp. 330-60. On local state variation, see especially Elizabeth Remick, Building Local States: China During the Republican and Post-Mao Eras (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 3 Thomas P. Bernstein and Xiaobo Lü, Taxation Without Representation in Contemporary Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). See also Linda Chelan Li, “Working for the Peasants? Strategic Interactions and Unintended Consequences in Chinese Rural Tax Reform”, The China Journal, No. 57 (January 2007), pp. 89-106. 4 Marc Blecher and Vivienne Shue, Tethered Deer: Government and Economy in a Chinese County (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). 5 Jane Duckett, The Entrepreneurial State in China: Real Estate and Commerce Departments in Reform Era Tianjin (London: Routledge, 1996). 6 Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 7 Tao-chiu Lam, The Local State under Reform: A Study of a County in Hainan Province, PhD Dissertation, Australian National University, 2000. For an overview of the large number of typologies that scholars have produced to characterize China’s local states, see Richard Baum and Alexei Shevchenko, “The State of the State”. 8 On the role of off-budget revenue in Chinas local public finance, see Fan Gang, “Market- oriented Economic Reform and the Growth of Off-Budget Local Public Finance”, in Donald J. S. Brean (ed.), Taxation in Modern China (London: Routledge, 1998); and

FACTIONS AND SPOILS 3

While allowing local governments to “make money” (zhengqian 挣钱) relieved the fiscal burden on the center, it also led to rent-seeking on a scale unprecedented in contemporary China. The pressure and opportunities to raise revenue in an environment in which financial accountability and transparency mechanisms were weak led to an explosion of official corruption. Much has been written about the explosion of official corruption in the era of economic reform but, rather than use corruption as the frame of analysis, this study is interested in the institutional dynamics that have made certain acts of official corruption possible, desirable and sometimes necessary for local political actors. Specifically, I ask how (i) the pressure to generate revenues, (ii) local fiscal autonomy, and (iii) increased opportunities for profiteering have reshaped the rules of the game of local politics. I argue that the competition over sources of revenues, while not readily visible to outside observers, has become a key driver of local politics. This competition largely plays out within the Party-state apparatus, although it increasingly involves non-state actors. It also tends to be structured, not by formal organizational boundaries, but by informal coalitions of officials dispersed across multiple agencies. As the example of County X reveals, inter-group competition within the state has become highly factionalized. While factionalism is considered by many to be an integral part of Chinese national politics, few have studied factionalism closely at the local level.9

The Emergence of Factions in County X County X is a rural county with a small but growing industrial base. Agriculture, once the largest industry, now accounts for only one-third of economic output. Mining, energy and tourism account for increasingly large shares of the county’s GDP. The state sector still dominates the local economy, although the private sector has expanded in recent years and now accounts for approximately 40 per cent of economic activity. As in many other parts of China, the local economy has been

Christine Wong and Richard Bird, “China’s Fiscal System: A Work in Progress”, in Loren Brandt and Thomas Rawski (eds), China’s Great Transformation: Origins, Mechanisms, and Consequences of the Post-Reform Economic Boom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 9 The following works are key studies on factionalism in contemporary Chinese politics. Notably, all are concerned with élite politics. For an overview, see the collection of articles in The China Journal, No. 34 (1995), later published as Jon Unger (ed.), The Nature of Chinese Politics, from Mao through Jiang (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002); and Lowell Dittmer and Yu-Shan Wu, “The Modernization of Factionalism in Chinese Politics”, World Politics, Vol. 47 (7 July 1995), pp. 467-94. For an historical treatment of factions in élite Chinese politics, see also Jing Huang, Factionalism in Chinese Communist Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). For recent studies of China’s élite factions, see Cheng Li, “One Party, Two Factions: Chinese Bipartisanship in the Making?”, paper presented at the conference on “Chinese Leadership, Politics, and Policy”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2 November 2005; and Wang Zhengxu, “Hu Jintao’s Power Consolidation: Groups, Institutions and Power Balance in China’s Élite Politics”, Issues and Studies, Vol. 42, No. 4 (December 2006), pp 97-136.

4 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 growing steadily since the 1980s, with local incomes more than doubling in the first decade of the 21st century alone. As in many other parts of China, local government has been a catalyst for much of this growth, both in providing the infrastructure for private economic activity and by engaging directly in profit-making activities, either through state-owned enterprises or through public-private partnerships of various sorts. As in other parts of China, fiscal decentralization gave local officials in County X wide latitude in directing local economic activity. Already in control of the key factors of production, local officials now had the power to deploy assets in ways that maximized local comparative advantage. Within this environment a new class of entrepreneurial officials emerged—officials whose success was increasingly dependent on their ability to mobilize resources and generate revenues rather than on their ideological “correctness”. The local economy began to grow and revenues began to flow, but in a political system predisposed to rule by man and administrative fiat, opportunities for self-enrichment abounded. In County X, as across China, “bureaupreneurs” were able to use their political and economic powers to build independent kingdoms (duli wangguo 独立王国) and personal fortunes based on patronage and influence. Following Lü Xiaobo, I use the term “bureaupreneur” because it neatly encapsulates both the developmental and predatory dimensions of local state entrepreneurialism.10 In the more industrialized parts of China, the first generation of local “kings” built their kingdoms with the profits of state-owned enterprises. The same was true of County X, except that, in the 1980s, local state revenues came from natural resource exploitation rather than manufacturing. County X’s first bureaupreneurs made profits by selling raw materials to factories in the more industrialized regions. As the market for timber grew, huge profits could be made by exploiting the difference between the market price and the price paid to villagers for felled trees. Profits could be made on the books and off the books, for example by harvesting beyond official quotas and selling the extra timber through informal channels. Many of County X’s new bureaupreneurs in the 1980s were men who controlled lucrative timber mills—mostly at the township and county levels. Mining was another important source of revenue. According to retired officials who served during the period, those quickest to rise to senior positions in the county and district level governments were officials from the townships richest in resources. Advancing to senior posts in county and district government bureaus and Party agencies gave the bureaupreneur more influence over local policy and state assets, including a greater ability to protect and expand private business interests. As the economy grew and opportunities for wealth accumulation increased, political competition became more intense. Rival local bosses gained power (shili 势力) which was rooted both in their formal public authority (gongquan 公权) as well as

10 See Xiaobo Lü, “Booty Socialism, Bureau-Preneurs, and the State in Transition: Organizational ”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 32, No. 3 (April 2000), pp. 273-94.

FACTIONS AND SPOILS 5 in their ability to mobilize resources and political support through informal networks. Rivalries intensified as the spoils of office grew larger. Rivalries between two government bureaus over the control of a major project would might actually boil down to rivalries between two men who controlled the different departments. By the same token, departments that collaborated on public projects often built their collaboration on the basis of factional or other informal ties. As political competition intensified, the most powerful of local “bosses” in the county administration continued to invest in the expansion of their patronage networks. Dispensing patronage allowed them to advance in the local state hierarchy and recruit supporters into positions beneath them as they rose. This gave them greater access to information as well as a greater capacity to coordinate across multiple government and Party agencies. These informal networks became an essential source of political power in a fast-changing political system characterized by bureaucratic indiscipline and fragmented authority.11 As the economy grew and public administration became more complex, patronage networks in County X began to evolve into relatively stable factions. While there has been disagreement over the applicability of the concept of “factionalism” to Chinese politics,12 my investigation into the political dynamics of County X suggests that the factional model is a useful way of understanding political behavior within the local state. Informal networks within County X were relatively organized, existed within the context of a large organization, namely, the Party-state, and competed with one another for power advantages within this larger organization. According to Belloni and Beller, a faction can be understood as “any relatively organized group that exists within the context of some other group and which (as political faction) competes with rivals for power advantages within the larger group of which it is a part”.13 “Factionalism” can be understood as “the competition between factions for scarce resources or power”.14 Local officials in County X also use the Chinese word for “faction” (pai 派) to refer to these groups, but only do so in private because factionalism is prohibited under Party regulations.

11 Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). 12 See Tang Tsou, “Prolegomenon to the Study of Informal Groups in CCP Politics”, The China Quarterly, No. 65 (March 1976), pp. 98-114. The debate resurfaced in a 1995 issue of The China Journal in which Nathan and Tsou reasserted their positions. Nathan restated his case for a structural approach in the language of the new institutionalism. See Tang Tsou, “Chinese Politics at the Top: Factionalism or Informal Politics? Balance-of- Power Politics or a Game to Win All?”, The China Journal, No. 34 (July 1995), pp. 95-156; and Andrew Nathan and Kellee S. Tsai, “Factionalism in Chinese Politics from a New Institutionalist Perspective”, in Jonathan Unger (ed.), The Nature of Chinese Politics, pp. 161-75. 13 Frank P. Belloni and Dennis C. Beller, Faction Politics: Political Parties and Factionalism in Comparative Perspective (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio Press, 1978), p. 419. 14 Jeremy Boissevain, “Faction”, in Aolam Kuper and Jessica Kuper (eds), The Social Science Encyclopedia, 3rd edition (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 289.

6 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64

Factions in County X are patronage-based networks that operate within the local Party-state apparatus. They derive their strength from the capture of bureaucratic power. In the language of Andrew Nathan’s analysis of China’s élite politics, factions grow like “vines” on the “trellis” of the formal Party-state administration.15 For a faction boss, this means securing positions of influence for one’s people (zijiren 自己人). The evolution of Faction A—County X’s second most influential faction—is illustrative. Faction A’s progenitor—a member of County X’s first generation of bureaupreneurs—used his political talents and control over revenues from local enterprises in his home township to climb through Party and government ranks during the 1980s, eventually rising to the position of governor of the district—the administrative level between the county and the province.16 From this commanding height, he was able to dictate the appointment of many county officials. During his term as governor he recruited dozens of men from his home district into positions in township, county and district governments, promoting the most talented among them to head the most powerful local bureaus. After six years as district governor he was subsequently promoted to the powerful position of Deputy Party Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee. From there he was able to continue to ensure that his network dominated politics in the district and below. By the time of my first visit to County X in the late 1990s, even though the township had become an economic backwater through the depletion of its natural resources, the faction had already established a firm power base within the Party-state apparatus. Between 2005 and 2008, officials from Faction A occupied key positions in local Party and government, including, District Deputy Party Secretary, Bureau Chief, the Deputy District Governor (formerly head of the Bureau), the Agriculture Bureau Chief and, importantly, the Human Resource Bureau Chief. Other townships with similar socio-economic indicators had produced nowhere near as many county and district officials. As the example of Faction A illustrates, factional bosses tend to recruit from sources they can trust. Because native place association remains a strong bond in Chinese society, it is not surprising that recruits are drawn from a faction boss’ home township. This practice is so well established that the four factions identifiable in County X all take their names from the township of origin of their leaders and the majority of their members. Where recruitment takes place outside of the faction chief’s native place, the recruit is almost always from a region that does not support a county faction of its own. Other ties may also bind the individual to the group—usually friendship, kin relationship or shared experience in the army or the bureaucracy, providing the faction with more than one potential source for recruitment. The existence of “emotional” ties between group members is the reason that one critic rejects the use of the term “faction” in Chinese politics, but this rests on an assumption that factions must be organized solely on the basis of instrumentality. I argue that,

15 Andrew Nathan, “A Factionalism Model for CCP Politics”, The China Quarterly, No. 53 (1973), pp. 33-66. 16 In many parts of China the district level is a municipality.

FACTIONS AND SPOILS 7 while the purpose of factions is instrumental, a relatively stable factional system has emerged in County X partly because there are culturally sanctioned bonds between group members. These bonds are an important source of factional strength and resilience in the face of central government efforts to instill greater fiscal discipline, strengthen accountability mechanisms and punish the most egregious cases of official misconduct. In fact, increasing bureaucratic complexity has arguably made factions an indispensible resource in local politics. The same bureaucratic complexity has made it increasingly difficult for a single “independent kingdom” to dominate political and economic affairs in the county. Instead, a dominant faction becomes first among equals in new and evolving forms of political competition within the local state. Parallels can be seen at the center of Chinese politics today, where the Shanghai faction of former President Jiang Zemin continues to flex its muscles in different policy arenas even while the inland (Communist Youth League) faction of current President Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao occupies the Party and government’s most senior positions. In County X, the most senior posts were occupied by Faction B, but Faction A wielded a significant portfolio of positions that rivaled Faction B in influence over important local decisions. 17 To understand a faction’s base of power within the local state, it is important to understand the specific sources of bureaucratic power. Factions derive power from control over decision-making processes, but also from access to on-budget and off- budget revenue streams. This means that not all the sources of factional power are immediately obvious to the outside observer. By interviewing both currently serving and retired officials, I was able to identify the prize posts over which factions compete. The strongest factions command a portfolio of positions that provide access to state projects, planning, information and economic decision-making powers—the wider the portfolio of positions, the greater the magnification of power. I have divided the most coveted positions in the local state into four categories: (1) leadership of bureaus with large budgets for social services, (2) leadership of bureaus that regulate the private sector, (3) leadership of bureaus with control over discretionary revenue streams (I call these bureaus the “quiet earners” because their bureaucratic power is often otherwise limited), and (4) “veto player” positions—positions with authority over personnel appointment and recruitment.

Category 1: Bureaus Controlling Social Services and Infrastructure These are the county bureaus that have large budgets to implement ongoing programs and projects. Examples include bureaus that control public construction projects, public transport and education. The urban construction bureau is particularly powerful

17 During the debate on factionalism in China’s politics, Andrew Nathan argued that Chinese élite politics was characterized by primus inter pares factional struggle. Tang Tsou argued that inter-group rivalry must result in the domination by one and the elimination of the other for political equilibrium to be restored. While Tang’s might have been more accurate in an earlier era, I argue that the complexities of governing China today probably preclude the domination of one intra-state group. See Note 12.

8 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 because it also acts as a regulatory bureau. Other bureaus without large annual budgets for regular programs may also fall into this category if they have access to grants for rural development projects. These agencies include those in charge of agriculture, forestry and water management. Bureau chiefs responsible for these projects are in a position to award lucrative contracts. Contracts can be awarded to a company controlled by the factional boss or a factional ally. Sometimes, a number of senior factional players can benefit through cascading sub-contracts. If a contract or sub-contract is awarded outside the family—for example, to a non-local firm—a substantial kickback can be demanded.

Category 2: Bureaus Engaged with the Private Sector A second category of powerful bureaus are those directly responsible for regulating commercial activity. One of the foremost among these is the Tobacco Bureau. It operates like a private corporation, forcing contracts on farmers and reselling the tobacco at a hefty mark-up to cigarette manufacturers. Bureau chiefs can reinvest such revenue in other income-generating enterprises such as real estate and hotels, which they control. The Tobacco Bureau is seen as an attractive place to work because of the superior conditions it offers its employees, including large salary bonuses. The higher-paid jobs in this bureau are traded as favors and rewards. Another important bureau in this category is the Electricity Bureau, which is involved in a number of public–private joint ventures for the production and sale of hydroelectricity. Hydroelectric power is sold to larger cities such as , many hundreds of miles away. Another major income-generating agency is the local Tax Bureau. This oversees not only taxable incomes but also enterprises with investments below 1,000,000 yuan (US$140,000). Larger enterprises pay tax directly to the national Tax Bureau, which operates outside of local government authority. Taxes on local enterprises are determined by arbitrary estimation of gross income, giving tax agents significant discretionary power. The Land Management Bureau is another in this category. In recent years local governments have become increasingly dependent on land sales to finance expenditure. As new businesses and industries open up they need access to land in and around urban areas. Local governments can sell state owned land for this purpose, but they can also facilitate the conversion of farmland to commercial land, profiting from transaction fees.18 Laws governing such transactions require that the Land Management Bureau first acquire the rights to the land from the farmers or farming collectives, before changing the land’s classification status and on-selling the rights. The Land Management Bureau effectively acts as an intermediary in any commercial transaction, with opportunities for informal fee collection. While the

18 See Sally Sargeson and Song Yu, “Land Expropriation and Women’s Citizenship Entitlements”, The China Journal, No. 64 (July 2010), pp. 19-45, and You-Tien Hsing, The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

FACTIONS AND SPOILS 9

Land Management Bureau does not directly receive or manage large funds, its decisions can have enormous impact on the profits of parties to the land deal. The Urban Construction Bureau has similar powers over commercial activity. This bureau regulates local private construction activity in the towns, issuing licenses, arranging loans and even making joint public–private investments.19 The bureau chief has regular contact with private investors, who will pay informal fees for assistance with the convoluted system of licensing and regulation, or with negotiating tax advantages, loans and joint ventures with public enterprises. More importantly, this bureau has the power to decide which firms get to operate in certain markets. If Faction A controls this bureau, for example, it can make business easy for Faction A’s firms (faction bosses and other powerful local officials all continue to own firms, but they are registered in other people’s names) and squeeze out competition from rival firms. In County X, when Faction B took control of the bureau, it used red tape to obstruct one local business monopoly, while arranging its replacement by another firm connected to the faction’s boss. According to insiders, this was done without specific instructions from the faction’s boss, but on the initiative of more junior members who that knew their chief would be pleased by the outcome.

Category 3: The Quiet Earners Leadership positions in the “quiet earner” agencies, while often small and bureaucratically weak, are also hotly contested. What makes them attractive is their access to “off-budget” rents, especially rents from land and buildings owned by the bureau. Although it is unlawful for these bureaus to directly operate private enterprises, they circumvent legal restrictions by registering their assets as other entities. As an example, a building owned by County X’s Bureau of Religious and Minority Affairs is officially registered as a training center. For several years, however, the bureau has leased the building to an entrepreneur who operates a hotel out of the premises. The Civil Affairs Bureau, responsible, among other things, for emergency relief in the countryside, owns a building that is registered as the county’s Emergency Relief Center. However, the facilities are used to operate a hotel. The annual rents are retained as discretionary off-budget revenues to be used in accordance with the bureau chief’s preferences. Local power brokers and factional chiefs normally allocate these positions as rewards to allies.

Category 4: Veto Players Veto players are those local state officials with control over leading cadre appointments and those who oversee the work of local agencies. The first tier of veto players includes the heads of the government and Party at the county and district levels and their deputies. The heads of government must authorize local public works, but deputies can be influential in persuading their boss of a project’s merits. The six or

19 The same bureau in another county will not necessarily have all the same powers or responsibilities.

10 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 seven deputies who are attached to the county’s Party Secretary and the county government head (repeated at the district level) are responsible for overseeing the work of a variety of bureaus. A deputy can be responsible for several portfolios, and not surprisingly, the most powerful deputies are those in charge of overseeing the bureau chiefs in construction, communications, industry, taxation, and electricity. A particularly powerful deputy can sometimes be responsible for several of these powerful portfolios. Bureau heads need to curry favor with the deputies to ensure that their projects and activities get the executive’s formal approval. Party Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries cover the same portfolios as the heads and deputy heads of government (making for extensive duplication of functions) but also oversee Party work such as propaganda. These deputies can be extremely powerful, because the Party has greater veto power than the government executive, as well as the power to conduct meaningful investigations into illicit activities. The head of the administrative secretariat (mishuzhang 秘书长) of the Party is also a powerful position because it serves as gatekeeper to the Party’s highest-ranking official—the Party Secretary.20 Beneath the Party and government chiefs are second-tier veto players, namely the chairs of the County People’s Congresses. While the People’s Congress is familiar to students of Chinese politics as a toothless, rubber stamp parliament, the chairs of these organizations participate in the Party standing committee meetings where leading cadre appointments are determined. The Chairs of the People’s Congress and the Political Consultative Assembly can also nominate candidates for any top post. In this research site, the position of Chair of the Political Consultative Assembly was occupied by a powerful factional boss with an extensive portfolio of business interests. He had sought this Chair position because it required little work and gave him time to concentrate on maneuvering to further his faction’s overall interests. Heads of bureaus are now required to report to the People’s Congress every quarter year, at which time they receive approval or disapproval for their policy implementation efforts and other project work. This process is largely a formality, but the option is available to formally criticize or praise a local government official for the record, or to delay or sidetrack project proposals. Factions seek to dominate the People’s Congress leadership in order to have leverage over their factional rivals when they come before the Congress. It should be noted, however, that deputy positions in both the People’s Congress and the Political Consultative Committee are politically weak because they have little influence over cadre appointments or resource allocation. These positions are used to “rest” officials (xianguan 闲官)— sinecures given in reward for service, or as a means of sidelining loyal associates who may not have the required acumen for the “main” game.

20 Graeme Smith has written of the influence of the mishuzhang in a county in Anhui. See Graeme Smith, “Political Machinations in a Rural County”, The China Journal, No. 62 (July 2009), pp. 29-59. While Smith does not use the “factional” model in his analysis of local politics, he identifies similar sources of power and influence within the local Party- state as well as similar patterns of political behavior.

FACTIONS AND SPOILS 11

There are more veto positions in the Party than in the government, reflecting the dominant status of the Party in China’s political system. That said, it is not necessarily given that a Party Secretary wields more power (shili) than his government counterpart. If a Party Secretary, especially an outsider, is astute at managing factional politics, he can often control them, but this can usually only be achieved by making balanced concessions to different factions. In fact, the strongest Party Secretaries from outside the county are those who succeed in maintaining a balance of power between local factions. For example, Party Secretaries can use their veto power over local cadre appointments and promotions to ensure that one faction does not become too dominant. The most formidable Party Secretary in the history of County X understood this source of power too well—during his three- year tenure he oversaw changes to no fewer than 130 senior and middle-ranking positions. However, the recent national trend towards localization of top Party and government positions has reinforced the influence of factions in County X. The appointment of non-locals to top posts is now much less common. In County X, this has opened up the possibility for local factions to control the important position of Party Secretary. In 2010, top officials from Faction B occupied the seats of County Magistrate, County Party Secretary and also District Party Secretary—a position with great influence over the appointment and promotion of senior county officials. Local factions extend their clout when a member of a faction rises to a senior position in the provincial administration. This is not just because that individual can influence district-level appointments, but because the provincial government provides access to resources that can be channeled through factional networks—for example, state projects or grants awarded to an ally’s bureau. Factions A and B—the two most powerful factions in County X—both have progenitors who advanced to the provincial level, whereas Factions C and D do not.21 Veto players are arguably the most important positions for factions to control because of their influence over the appointment of other leading local positions. In the next section I explain how factions exert their influence over the cadre management process.

Cadre Management in County X In County X, factions operate like executive placement agencies, preserving and extending their influence by ensuring that members occupy key decision-making and resource-controlling positions. The role of factionalism in personnel appointments challenges recent arguments about the role of the cadre management system in maintaining central control over the political system. In recent years a number of analysts have argued that central Party leaders keep lower-echelon officials in check, despite radical decentralization and the fragmentation of authority, through the cadre

21 While research findings suggest that factional linkages extend through the province to the central government, it is beyond the scope of this study to examine factional politics at the provincial level and beyond. The nature of factional politics at the provincial level and how such factions link political struggles at the grass roots with political struggles at the center is an important subject for future research.

12 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 management system.22 Pierre Landry observes that “the CCP controls the selection and promotion of 10.5 million officials posted in 307,000 work units, among whom 508,000 are high-ranking cadres above the county level”.23 By the time appointments are made at the county level, however, they are already several steps removed from the center. As Landry himself acknowledges, “at the local level, one would not necessarily expect decentralization to occur without significant loss of central political control of the process and criteria for the appointment of officials”.24 While a number of other studies have noted that positions in the local state bureaucracy can often be bought (maiguan 买官),25 few studies have noted the potential for local capture of the cadre management system by informal groups. In County X, I found the convoluted and opaque cadre management system to be a key battleground of factional competition. In the first stage of appointment for leading positions in the county, candidates are formally nominated at a meeting attended by all cadres ranked deputy section chief (fukeji 副科级) and above. Participating officials then cast a secret ballot for their preferred candidate. This is an opportunity for factions to mobilize as many votes for their candidate as possible. In County X, the two largest factions would sometimes join forces with smaller rivals to maximize their votes. As part of the deal, the smaller faction might get support for one of their candidates in a subsequent round. There are other ways in which factions can manipulate the system. During one of my visits to County X, a Party leader called a snap meeting on a Sunday to vote on the appointment of a new bureau chief. The Party leader had ensured that his factional allies were previously informed about the meeting and available to attend. Many rivals, however, were unable to attend at such short notice. The preliminary vote, however, is not determinative. Voting is only a show of peer support, which guides subsequent decisions by the Party’s Standing Committee. Final decisions are made only after the Party Organization Department

22 Leading proponents of this view are Maria Edin, “State Capacity and Local Agent Control in China: CCP Cadre Management from a Township Perspective”, The China Quarterly, No. 173 (March (2003), pp. 35-52; and Pierre Landry, Decentralized Authoritarianism in China: The Communist Party’s Control of Local Élites in the Post-Mao Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Dali Yang has also argued that recent reforms have strengthened performance and reduced corruption in the public service. See Dali Yang, Remaking the Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2004). Minxin Pei offers a different view. Consistent with my arguments, Pei argues that that administrative decentralization has compounded principal–agent problems and given rise to local political monopolies. See Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition. 23 Pierre Landry, Decentralized Authoritarianism in China, p. 16. 24 Ibid., p 17. 25 See, for example, Graeme Smith, “Political Machinations”; Dali Yang, Remaking the Chinese Leviathan; Xiaobo Lü, Cadres and Corruption: The Organizational Involution of the (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); and Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition.

FACTIONS AND SPOILS 13

(zuzhibu 组织部) has conducted extensive evaluations (kaocha 考查) of the candidates. Factional bosses have various means at their disposal to influence the process at the evaluation stage. One of the more ruthless methods involves sabotaging the career prospects of another faction’s candidates by having someone send an accusation of improper dealings to the Party Disciplinary Committee, which is obliged by law to investigate any accusations of misconduct—even from an anonymous source. Regardless of the final outcome (many allegations are found to be groundless), an official is ineligible for transfer or promotion while being investigated—a process which can take up to several months. This happened to one candidate from County X who was seeking a promotion to a senior position in the district government. On the Party room floor, he mustered more votes than two rival candidates for the position, but was subsequently forced to quit the race when someone filed an anonymous complaint regarding the candidate’s private business dealings. It was widely assumed by the candidate and by others familiar with the process that factional rivals were responsible for the accusations. While the candidate was cleared of wrongdoing by a subsequent investigation, the process delayed his appointment for one year, giving rival factions an opportunity to field their own candidate. The same position would not become vacant again for five more years—the new standard length of leading cadre tenure. Before being formally instated, leading cadres are also subjected to a detailed background check by the Party’s Organization Department. The Party Organization Department keeps detailed records of state employees, and can interview scores of present and former colleagues as part of the evaluation process. Evaluations vary according to position, but the criteria are generally divided into four areas: (1) virtue, (2) industriousness, (3) capability, and (4) record.26 Virtue refers mostly to loyalty to the Communist Party as well as professional integrity. Industriousness and capability are measured according to the subjective opinions of superiors and colleagues. The only objectively measurable criterion is “record”, where cadres must demonstrate that they have successfully met specific quantifiable tasks in policy implementation. For leading cadres, the emphasis is generally on GDP growth, but also includes hard targets for such items as education enrolments and birth control. However, even with “hard” targets, there are myriad ways in which statistics can be manipulated and evidence manufactured for or against a candidate. The actual decision about the appointment is often made before the Organization Department’s junior officials begin their tedious evaluations. Importantly, the evaluating officials are almost always of junior rank, and are often given specific instructions about whom to interview during the evaluation and what conclusions to reach at the end of the process. If they are factional allies, supervisors of a poorly performing cadre can also be instructed to speak highly of him when the evaluation team visits.

26 For further detail on the formalities of this process, see Yang Zhong, Local Government and Politics in China: Challenges from Below (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2003).

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In arguing that the cadre management system provides an effective mechanism for the Party to maintain political control, Landry notes that the “ultimate test is whether local decisions conform to the broad requirements set by China’s central leadership”.27 While it is true that candidates for leading cadre positions must meet increasingly strict criteria set by higher levels, in County X new regulations did not appear to have loosened local factions’ grip on the appointment process.28 Tougher requirements such as examinations sometimes narrowed the pool of eligible cadres, which occasionally meant that no faction had an eligible candidate for a vacant position. Under these circumstances, the provincial government would typically dispatch a qualified official from within its own ranks. However, factions mostly responded to the new eligibility criteria by working to upgrade their members’ qualifications and recruit new members with better qualifications. The final decision over leading cadre appointments rests with the Party Standing Committee, which typically consists of 5 or 7 members. In County X memberships included the head of government, the Party Secretary, the head of the Party Organization Bureau, the Chair of the People’s Congress, the Chair of the People’s Political Consultative Assembly, the Propaganda Department Chief and the People’s Armed Police Chief. The Party Standing Committee has become more powerful since administrative reforms in 2004 required it to cast formal votes for senior appointments (previously, the Party Secretary signed off on appointments single handedly). Factions need to control at least one seat on the Standing Committee if they are to influence key appointments. The size of the Standing Committee makes it difficult for one faction to control all positions, which makes it an arena for negotiation, compromise and horse-trading. A key beneficiary of the outcome of this process is the factional system itself, in which all players have a vested interest.

The Resilience of Factionalism The theoretical literature on factionalism suggests that factions tend to be short- lived.29 There are two reasons for this. First, the instrumentality on which factions are based is assumed to preclude long-lasting bonds. Second, because factions are built on dyadic personal relations, the transaction costs of maintaining the faction eventually become too high. Yet, while County X’s factions exist for instrumental purposes and

27 Pierre Landry, Decentralized Authoritarianism in China, p. 17. For similar arguments, see Maria Edin, “State Capacity and Local Agent Control in China”. For another perspective on this subject, see Susan Whiting, “The Cadre Evaluation System at the Grassroots: The Paradox of Party Rule”, in Barry Naughton and Dali Yang (eds), Holding China Together (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 101-19. 28 Yan Sun similarly argues that the cadre management system remains vulnerable to local capture despite (and in some cases because of) recent administrative reforms. See Yan Sun, “Cadre Recruitment and Corruption: What Goes Wrong?”, Crime, Law and Social Change, Vol. 49, No. 1 (February 2008), pp. 61-79. 29 See, for example, Frank P. Belloni and Dennis C. Beller, Faction Politics.

FACTIONS AND SPOILS 15 are unrelated to the ideological or class-based cleavages of an earlier time, native place association provides a very strong bond between members, especially among groups from rural areas in China. Bonds between factional members are further reinforced by the use of fictive terms such as “big brother” and “little brother”, signaling the strength and longevity of the dyadic ties. As noted in other studies of networks, this emotional dimension makes factions cohesive and reduces transaction costs— favors are not necessarily traded quid pro quo, but on the understanding that loyalty and favors will eventually be rewarded. So while China’s local factions closely resemble factions in other parts of the world, the use of cultural resources gives factionalism in County X a particular flavor. During a time of rapid change and under conditions of fragmented authority and bureaucratic indiscipline, factionalism provides a pragmatic means of organizing political competition among the new class of bureaupreneurs. Factionalism thus brings a degree of stability to local state politics where ruthless competition between bureaupreneurs might otherwise cause chaos and collapse. Factionalism provides a supplementary “rules of the game” for political competition, which supports internal stability and probably reduces political violence within the local state. In County X, factionalism has been resilient through several periods of administrative reforms including fiscal reforms designed to give the center more control over taxation as well as reforms designed to increase local accountability, by strengthening the role of the Party and local People’s Congresses. In fact, factionalism appears to be resilient, not despite reforms, but because of them. As public administration increases in complexity, factionalism helps to bridge the gaps in flows of information and authority. With authority fragmented between horizontal (kuai 块) and vertical (tiao 条) chains of command and between cellular Party and state agencies, informal channels of communication and negotiation have arguably become essential to public administration. Because large parts of the economy remain state controlled, economic development is driven in large part by the mobilization of public resources and deployment of state-owned assets. Increasingly, the design and implementation of major public works projects demands collaboration across a number of government departments and Party agencies. To build a new road, for example, designs need to be approved by the County Government Executive, the Party Secretary, the local office of the National Reform and Development Commission (formerly State Planning Commission) and Transport and Construction Bureaus. In addition, agreement on expropriations needs to be reached with the Land Management Bureau and township and village governments and, if all or part of the project was financed by loans, with the state banks as well. With well-placed members in their network, factions can help to coordinate policy action. They do this through the exchange of information and favors, and by spreading the risks associated with decision-making. Even if factional activity is driven by the promise of spoils, it can be argued that factions make things happen. Just as one study has argued that China’s dynamic growth

16 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 through the reform period can be attributed to factional struggle at the top,30 so can it be argued that factionalism is a source of dynamism within a complex and grinding maze of often dysfunctional local state institutions. The dual function of factions as vehicles for collective corruption and as catalysts for local economic investment partly helps to explain how official corruption and high levels of economic growth have managed to coexist. Factionalism is also resilient because of its ability to minimize the risks associated with bureaupreneurialism. With members spread across Party agencies, the judiciary and police, factions are in a strong position to ensure that their activities either are not investigated or are difficult to investigate for watchdog agencies. This is largely because the watchdog agencies are themselves vulnerable to factional capture. The two main agencies responsible for monitoring corruption—the government’s Investigation Bureau and the Party Discipline Committee—are not independent of other Party and state agencies.31 Local Party- state leaders exercise significant discretion over investigations. Investigations into officials above the rank of deputy section chief (county bureau chiefs/district deputy bureau chiefs and above—the most influential and lucrative positions), for example, must be authorized by the Party Secretary. In County X the Party Secretary rarely approved such investigations. Because corruption typically involves multiple players working in multiple bureaus, investigations into wrongdoing might be a can of worms for a Party Secretary. A local investigation might be thwarted by factional intervention at either the local or the provincial level, seriously undermining the Party Secretary who took on the case. Party Secretaries are also aware that high-level investigations might reflect badly on the Party Secretary himself. Another disincentive to launch investigations into wrongdoing is the lack of clear lines of accountability in local government. Because multiple agencies can be involved in any one project, investigations into the actions of one group might result in unwelcome attention for others, including one’s own people. As an example, I investigated a township road project that had been extravagantly funded (namely, very high costs per kilometer) but poorly constructed. The road did not survive its first rainy season. It was an open secret that so much of the project’s funds had been siphoned off that there was little money left to spend on construction. Later, it was revealed that the road had been deliberately designed to be several kilometers longer than necessary in order to maximize funding and kickbacks, despite the inconvenience caused to township residents. While members of Faction B had instigated the project, the county magistrate—a Faction A man—had approved it on the basis of a funding commitment from the province. When provincial officials

30 Hongbin Cai and Daniel Treisman, “Did Governent Decentralization Cause China’s Economic Miracle?”, World Politics, No. 58 (July 2006), pp. 505-35. 31 The functions of these two agencies are largely the same, except that the Party Discipline Committee investigates Party members and the Investigations Bureau investigates non- Party members on the state payroll. Most, but not all, senior local government officials are Party members.

FACTIONS AND SPOILS 17 came to inspect the project, members of both factions made a united effort to ensure that the inspection team never got to see the road. Drawing on the county’s entertainment (jiedai 接待) budget, the visiting officials were kept busy in the county seat. As this example shows, rival factions are capable of collaboration in the interests of system preservation and mutual protection.

Concluding Comments While this study is based on a single case study, studies from other parts of the country, both urban and rural, suggest that factional politics matter across China. Factions in County X emerged as a creative response to the new political and economic pressures associated with fiscal and administrative decentralization in the 1980s. Intra-state factions coalesced around patronage networks in order to better compete with other groups for control over public power and resources. As opportunities and risks increased, factional competition intensified. This institutional environment has been true of most localities in China throughout the reform period. While factionalism has long been regarded as a building block of Chinese politics, the factions that emerged in County X in the reform era bore little or no resemblance to the ideological or class-based cleavages of the pre-reform era. They were formed for the instrumental purposes of political competition. This does not mean, however, that contemporary local state factions were devoid of a normative dimension. Factional membership was based primarily, though not exclusively, on native place association—a strong cultural resource on which faction bosses could draw, and which lent an otherwise universal phenomenon its Chinese characteristics. Factions thrived in a fast-changing and free-wheeling environment in which bureaucratic entrepreneurialism was rewarded with career advancement and improved prospects for private wealth accumulation. In a fragmented political system, factions enhanced members’ capacity to extract spoils by capturing a wide portfolio of positions within local Party and government agencies. These positions provided access to the bureaucratic levers of power needed to mobilize state resources and to regulate economic activity in the growing private sector. Importantly, factions also provided a degree of security, protecting the activities of bureaupreneurs from encroachment by the state’s feeble integrity system. Even if a faction failed to control a particular watchdog agency, the long tentacles of its operations provided a strong incentive against investigation. If one faction spearheaded an investigation into alleged misconduct by its rivals, it could wind up exposing some of its own people. Except in extreme cases, a “code of civility” prevailed between the factions, which gave the system its strength. Factions competed, but not to the extent that they risked undermining the spoils system that benefited them all. The prevailing “code of civility” helps to explain the resilience of factionalism. In a political system characterized by personal authority and bureaucratic indiscipline, the opportunities and risks of political competition are high. In such an environment, factionalism plays a key role in organizing political competition.

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While political violence remains common at the local level in China, factionalism helps to keep it in check. In the absence of political parties, factionalism provides a means of organizing and articulating the interests of powerful local groups. Evidence of this can be seen in the horse-trading over leadership positions that often takes place within the Party Standing Committee. Factions also help to navigate complex bureaucratic pathways within the local state. By facilitating the exchange of information between otherwise cellular and fragmented formal state institutions and by mobilizing public resources including investment capital, factions are a source of dynamism, even if venal motives can be found to underlie some of the enterprise. For example, County X’s factions might determine which township benefits from a new public works project and which company is awarded the contract, but their collective enterprise also serves to get the project off the ground. Factions derive power from the control of official bureaucratic positions. The more positions a faction controls, especially key leadership positions, the more influence it can wield over local policy and economic activity. Factionalism’s capacity for hijacking the cadre appointment process helps to explain how “independent kingdoms” sustain themselves despite administrative reforms designed to strengthen central controls. In fact, the experience of County X suggests that factionalism has expanded in step with increasing complexity in public administration. Bureaucratic complexity makes factions more useful as tools of local policy coordination. Factional capture of the cadre management system at the local level raises questions about the central state’s capacity to control its local agents. This study has shown the various ways in which factions are able to “game” the convoluted cadre management system. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that local factionalism is a threat to Communist Party power simply because it undermines central control. In fact, factionalism might prove to be a major bulwark of Communist Party rule. By organizing and stabilizing political competition, supplementing formal institutional deficiencies and rewarding underpaid local élites with spoils, factionalism has helped to sustain China’s political system through a generation of change.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE URBAN FRONTIER

Sally Sargeson and Yu Song∗

Taxes, fees and profits from the sale of expropriated rural land have become a major source of revenue and investment capital for municipal governments in China.1 To village collective organizations powerless to prevent expropriation of their land, however, only modest amounts have been paid in compensation for loss of land and livelihoods. In October 2008, China’s leadership signaled its intention to adjust this relationship to ensure that development of rural land contributes to development among expropriated villagers.2 This decision foreshadows a significant devolution of control over profits from land development from governments to village collectives. In this context, the question of who is a village member assumes profound importance, for, while members will be entitled to participate in and benefit from land development, non-members will not. The stakes for village women are particularly high. Gender inequalities in civil, political and social entitlements widened after the de- collectivization of assets and devolution of governance to villages in the last decades of the 20th century, and women’s membership in a village collective often is debated.

∗ We are grateful for the comments on an earlier draft of this paper made by anonymous reviewers and the editors of The China Journal. Research for this project was funded by Ford Foundation Grant No. 1075-0591 and Leverhulme Foundation Research Fellowship No. 2006/0381. We are grateful to colleagues at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Hunan Agricultural University, Yunnan Agricultural University and the three provinces’ Academies of Social Sciences, and provincial, municipal, district and neighborhood officials and Women’s Federation offices for assistance on this project. 1 Zhou Feizhou, “Shengcai you dao: tudi kaifa he zhuanrang zhong de zhengfu he nongmin” (Creating Wealth: Governments and Villagers in the Development and Transfer of Land), Shehuixue yanjiu (Sociological Research), No. 1 (2007), pp. 49-82. 2 The Resolution of the CCP Central Committee on Some Major Issues in Rural Reform and Development (Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu tuijin nongcun gaige fazhan ruogan zhongda wenti de jueding) directs that governments’ rights to expropriate rural land will be curtailed, while the rights of village collective organizations to transfer land planned for municipal construction directly into the primary market and to retain, invest and distribute profits from land leases will grow.

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Yet there is no definitive answer to the question of who is a village member, much less whether village women enjoy equal membership. Some sociologists have reasoned that orthodox customs of virilocal marriage3 which, over time, have shaped patrilineal village settlement and formation naturally continue to influence concepts of village membership and entitlement. In contrast, legal scholars have argued that village women’s ambiguous membership status derives from contradictions between laws endorsing gender equality in all spheres of political, economic and social life and legislation empowering villagers to determine democratically the rules regulating their communities.4 These two interpretations of possible sources of gender differentiation in village membership are consistent with a long tradition of scholarship which conceptualizes membership in territorially demarcated polities—what we understand as citizenship—primarily as a status bestowed on individuals who meet agreed criteria of birth, residence and contributory requirements or, in the case of women, marriage. However, they overlook the possibilities suggested by republican theorists’ interpretation of citizenship as active participation in the political life of community, and research empirically illuminating how contestation over exclusive membership criteria and disparities in members’ entitlements has expanded the scope and substance of citizenship. It is precisely those possibilities that are explored in much of the work of Kevin O’Brien and Lianjiang Li.5 O’Brien and Li have argued that, by demanding that the state enforce the lawful rights of all villagers, villagers are acting as citizens. In so doing, villagers are making citizenship status, entitlements and practice in China more inclusive. In this paper we, too, conceptualize citizenship both as a malleable status to which rights attach and as active participation in the affairs of the political community but, whereas O’Brien and Li focus on efforts by a collective “we, the village” to assert its rights,

3 Virilocal marriage involves the bride’s relocation to the groom’s place of residence. 4 See He Lirong, “‘Chujia nü’ tudi quanyi baohu de kunjing yu chulu” (Difficulties and Solutions in Resolving “Out-Married Women’s Land Rights”), Hebei faxue (Hebei Legal Studies), No. 9 (2008), p. 129; Qin Wanping, “Minjian fa yu guojia fa shiye xia de chujia nü tudi buchang kuan an” (Cases of Land Compensation for Married Women from the Perspective of Customary Law and National Law), Yunnan daxue xuebao (Journal of Yunnan University), Vol. 20, No. 5 (2007); Wang Zhuqing, “Shehui xingbie shijiao xia de nongcun funü tudi quanyi baohu” (Protection of Rural Women’s Land Rights from a Gender Perspective), Nongcun jingji (Rural Economy), No. 2 (2007). 5 See Kevin J. O’Brien, “Rightful Resistance”, World Politics, Vol. 49, No. 1 (1996), pp. 31-55; Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers, Elections and Citizenship”, pp. 212-31, in Merle Goldman and Elizabeth J. Perry (eds), Changing Meanings of Citizenship in Modern China (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, “Suing the Local State: Administrative Litigation in Rural China”, The China Journal, No. 51 (2004), pp. 75-96; Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Lianjiang Li, “Driven to Protest: China’s Rural Unrest”, Current History, Vol. 105, No. 692 (2006), pp. 250-54; Lianjiang Li, “Political Trust and Petitioning in the Chinese Countryside”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 40, No. 2 (2008), pp. 209-26; Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Protest Leadership in Rural China”, The China Quarterly, No. 193 (2008), pp. 1-23.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 21 curb misconduct and resist repression by state agencies, our gaze turns to rural women’s efforts to resist deprivation of their rights by an androcentrically configured “we, the village”. Further, whereas O’Brien and Li seek to highlight how activism, led mostly by men, is strengthening villagers’ civil and political rights vis-à-vis local authorities, we argue that it is often activism by women to secure the authorities’ backing for their claims against village exclusivity that is contributing to an expansion of entitlements, particularly in the area of civil and social citizenship. Our arguments are significant, not just for theorizing the co-constitution of citizenship status, practice and rights, but also for understanding how gender politics are contributing to regional variation in the citizenship of people at the margins of China’s expanding cities. We support these arguments empirically, by examining conflicts over compensation entitlement in communities where land has been expropriated for urban expansion. We show that, in these communities, village leaders, committees and assemblies are attempting to limit distribution of compensation funds by converting virilocal marriage custom into village rules mandating women’s marital expatriation. Questioning the legality and equity of village rules, excluded women are championing residential registration and property laws as more just criteria of entitlement. In response, some municipal governments are overturning marital expatriation rules, transforming villages into urban communities and expanding their provision of public goods to all expropriated people. Our evidence is drawn from a comparative study conducted in six districts and counties of (Fujian Province), Changsha (Hunan Province) and Yuxi (Yunnan Province) municipalities between 2007 and 2009. In each of the six sites, settlements were selected to reflect variations in geography and economy. Half were free-standing settlements a few kilometers from built-up areas where villagers had farmed intensively before their land was expropriated. As a result of incremental expansion, the other settlements had become “villages in cities” (cheng zhong cun 城中村)—contiguous with or wholly encircled by urban built space. Villages around Fuzhou were populated predominantly by single lineages, and families placed great importance on having at least one son.6 Following the initial division and contracting of land to households in the early 1980s, rapid growth of local off-farm employment opportunities suppressed demand for a readjustment of village land. Only abandoned farmland was reallocated, much of it under contract to Taiwanese agribusinesses, and some villages had not readjusted contract land among households for more than two decades. In 2006, Fuzhou villagers’ per capita average annual incomes were 7,273 yuan, considerably higher than the national average. Around Changsha and Yuxi, all villages comprised multiple surnames and the sex-ratio at birth was more even. Most villages periodically readjusted contract land. The majority of households contracted land and also relied on local off-

6 Only 15.8 per cent of Fuzhou respondents had no son, but 41 per cent had no daughter. On the correlation of lineages, gender-unequal land rights and son preference, see Laurel Bossen, “Reproduction and Real Property in Rural China: Three Decades of Development and Discrimination”, in Tamara Jacka and Sally Sargeson (eds), Women, Gender and Development in Rural China (London: Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2011).

22 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 farm work and migrant remittances. In Changsha, per capita rural average annual income in 2006 was 5,986 yuan. Although Yuxi is neither a provincial capital nor of comparable size to Fuzhou and Changsha, its industries and urban areas are expanding at a similarly rapid rate. Yuxi villagers’ per capita annual incomes reached 4,687 yuan in 2006, higher than in all other Yunnan municipalities except Kunming. Field research combined qualitative and quantitative methods. Our primary informants were women aged between 20 and 60 from villages whose land had been expropriated at least once between 2001 and 2007.7 Over two visits to each site, lengthy interviews were held with 92 women, ten of whom were interviewed on both visits. Two surveys were conducted. The first was implemented among a non-random sample of 842 women by neighborhood and village women’s representatives in all six research sites. Findings from Survey 1 and the initial round of interviews informed the design of a second, more detailed survey of 208 respondents in settlements in the two sites displaying the widest variation in policy approaches and outcomes for women: Fuzhou’s Minhou County and Changsha County. The sample was selected by superimposing a grid over maps of each settlement, and selecting equal numbers of respondents from random squares in the grid.8 Questionnaires were completed in face-to-face discussions lasting approximately one hour. Information on local policies and procedures was gathered from interviews with officials at all levels of provincial administration, as well as government and media reports. The following analysis is informed by all aspects of our research, but we draw primarily on Survey 2 and the interviews to illustrate our arguments. Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of the Survey 2 respondents. Table 1: Characteristics of Survey 2 Respondents N=208 (Unit %) Aged 20 to 40 years 49.3 Currently married 93.2 Uneducated or with primary education 43.7 Worked in agriculture, before expropriation 45.9 Participated in migrant work, before expropriation 8 Experience in village or team committee, or as women’s 5 representative, before expropriation

7 The 1,050 survey respondents and 92 interviewees came from 33 villages: 10 in Fuzhou, 9 in Yuxi and 14 in Changsha. The “high tides” of expropriation occurred in Fuzhou between 2003 and 2006; Changsha, 2002–04; Yuxi, 2003–07. Women whose villages experienced multiple instances of expropriation between 2001 and 2007 were asked in which year the largest area of land was taken, and questions comparing conditions before and after expropriation referred to that instance of expropriation. 8 For similar sample selection methods, see World Bank, Gender Issues and Best Practices in Land Administration Projects: Synthesis Report (2005), Appendix, p. 55; Wenfang Tang and Qing Yang, “The Chinese Urban Caste System in Transition”, The China Quarterly, No. 196 (2008), p. 765.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 23

Gender Differentiated Citizenship Criteria: Comparative Perspectives Historically, citizenship has been theorized either as a rights-bearing status or as participation in a territorially bounded polity, be that national, municipal or a “self- governing” village. Liberal scholars who follow Thomas Marshall’s definition of citizenship emphasize that those with the status of citizen enjoy rights, including civil rights to justice and property, political rights to join in public deliberation and governance, and the social rights to public goods that ensue from citizens’ exercise of civil and political rights.9 Republican theorists have interpreted citizenship as active participation in the political life of the community. In both traditions, economic independence is viewed as a key citizenship virtue, for it enables deliberative participation by autonomous, equal, rights-bearing agents. 10 More recent scholarship synthesizes these theoretical approaches by examining the co- constitution of rights and political engagement.11 As Ruth Lister puts it, citizenship as rights enables people to act as political agents, but it is through political engagement that people achieve citizenship entitlements. 12 Rarely are polities populated only by citizens, and, excepting in a nominal legal sense, not all citizens are equally entitled. Citizenship thus simultaneously figures as an enabling statutory category, political role, signifier of inequality and motive for contestation between members and non-members, those fully entitled and those who are not.13 Such struggles have propelled shifts, evident at different times in different sites across the globe, from those using citizenship criteria such as patrilineal birth right, to those linking individuals’ membership to residence or contribution. As Shachar and Hirschl note, utilizing patrilineal birth-right as a membership criterion effectively preserves the wealth and power of patriarchal communities and households, while “camouflaging these crucial distributive consequences by appealing to the presumed ‘naturalness’ of birth-based membership”. 14 Where citizenship is patrilineally inherited, women’s marriage consequently becomes a focus of both intense regulation and activism. In states as diverse as the United States, Switzerland and Singapore in

9 Thomas H. Marshall, Sociology at the Crossroads and Other Essays (London: Heineman, 1963); for a critique, see Birte Siim, Gender and Citizenship: Politics and Agency in France, Britain and Denmark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 10 Iris Marion Young, “Mothers, Citizenship and Independence: A Critique of Pure Family Values”, Ethics, Vol. 105, No. 3 (1995), pp. 546-50. 11 Mark P. Gaige, “Citizen: Past Practices, Prospective Patterns”, in Jose V. Ciprut (ed.), The Future of Citizenship (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 121-44. 12 Ruth Lister, Citizenship and Feminist Perspectives (Houndmills: Macmillan, 2003), p. 37. 13 Margaret R. Somers, “Rights, Relationality, and Membership: Rethinking the Making and Meaning of Citizenship”, Law and Social Inquiry, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1994), pp. 75-76; Pnina Werbner and Nira Yuval-Davis, “Women and the New Discourse of Citizenship”, in Nira Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner (eds), Women, Citizenship and Difference (London: Zed Books, 1999), pp. 1-38; Richard Dagger, “Neo-Republicanism and the Civic Economy”, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2006), p. 155. 14 Ayelet Shachar and Ran Hirschl, “Citizenship as Inherited Property”, Political Theory, Vol. 35, No. 3 (2007), p. 258.

24 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 the 19th and early 20th, centuries, legislation automatically expatriated and effaced the entitlements of native women who married citizens of other countries.15 It was partly as a consequence of women’s campaigning for equal suffrage and wider civil and social entitlements that the states mentioned above adopted residential and contributory criteria of citizenship.16 Yet the potential for those reforms to enhance gender equity was limited by domestic policies that continued to presume men’s predominance in public decision-making and production. Hence, as conditional, partial citizens, women continued to agitate for equality. “In ancient times”, wrote Liang Qichao, “we Chinese were people of villages instead of citizens”.17 Since Liang penned these words in 1902, the shift from using patrilineality to residential criteria that are nominally gender neutral has been integral to élite activists’ efforts to transform China’s villagers into national citizens. In 1929 the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) adopted the Soviet legal principle that women’s citizenship would not be determined by their husbands’ nationality, but the KMT retained patrilineal inheritance of nationality.18 Promising to make “a nation of citizens who could and would participate in public life”, 19 China’s Communist leaders introduced legislation granting women equal civil, political and social rights, including rights to choose their place of post-marital residence. As many scholars have remarked, however, in three key respects inequality was implicit in state plans to develop this “nation of citizens”. First, individual rights were limited “to protect the rights of the whole citizenry”.20 Second, to facilitate centrally planned industrialization, in 1958 China’s government introduced a residential registration (hukou 户口) system which

15 Joyce Kaufman and Kristen Williams, “Who Belongs? Women, Marriage and Citizenship”, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2004), pp. 416-35; Kif Augustine- Adams, “‘With Notice of the Consequences’: Liberal Political Theory, Marriage and Women’s Citizenship”, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2002), pp. 5-20; Brigitte Studer, “Citizenship as Contingent National Belonging: Married Women and Foreigners in Twentieth-Century Switzerland”, Gender and History, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2001), pp. 622-54; Mika Toyota, “Editorial Introduction: International Marriage, Rights and the State in East and Southeast Asia”, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 1-7. 16 Bryan. S. Turner, “Citizenship, Reproduction and the State: International Marriage and Human Rights”, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2008), p. 46; Pnina Werbner and Nira Yuval- Davis, “Women and the New Discourse of Citizenship”; Christian Joppke, “Transformation of Citizenship: Status, Rights, Identity”, in Engin F. Isin, Peter Nyers and Bryan S. Turner (eds), Citizenship between Past and Future (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 36-47. 17 Cited in Peter Zarrow, “Citizenship in China and the West”, in Joshua A. Fogel and Peter G. Zarrow (eds), Imagining the People: Chinese Intellectuals and the Concept of Citizenship 1890-1920 (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), p. 19. 18 Louise Edwards, Gender, Politics and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008); Hyun Choe, National Identity and Citizenship in China and Korea, PhD dissertation submitted to University of California, Irvine (2003), pp. 84-86. 19 Robert J. Culp, Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912–1940 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 280. 20 Chen Duxiu, quoted in Elizabeth J. Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of ‘Rights’: From Mencius to Mao—and Now”, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2008), p. 46.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 25 granted urban and rural residents status and entitlements only in their places of registration. Notwithstanding the post-Mao liberalization of markets, state withdrawal from public goods provision and the expansion of legal rights, the rural–urban bifurcation of, and inequality in, citizens’ entitlements persists.21 Third, among both urban and rural populations, gender grounded in biological essentialism was reinstated as a “natural” and therefore higher-order fact that justified and perpetuated women’s treatment as a special category of citizen.22 Kevin O’Brien and Lianjiang Li have argued persuasively that, in appropriating state commitments to the rule of law to defend their rights and hold governments to account, villagers are expanding the political possibilities for citizens in China. They explain villagers’ efficacy by pointing, on the one hand, to the political opportunities created by the large size, structural fragmentation and political and policy diversity of the state, and on the other hand, to the relative unity of village polities—the “unfragmented” nature of their political power and organization, and their community cohesion—that enables village activists to mobilize their neighbors and forge a sense of common, legitimate purpose. 23 O’Brien and Li describe how “rightful resisters” in Hunan refer to each other as “citizens” and proclaim that “they are undertaking to defend the citizenship rights (baohu gongmin quan) of all villagers”.24 At particular issue are the rights to democratic “self government” enshrined in the Organic Law of Village Committees. In defending those rights, O’Brien argues, “practice may be creating status, as local struggles begin in enclaves of tolerance, spread when conditions are auspicious, and evolve into inclusion in the broader polity”. 25 Of course, O’Brien and Li recognize rural women’s limited representation in village polities. Yet, in repeating the claim by village activists that they “defend the citizenship rights of all villagers”, O’Brien and Li disregard activists’ elision of intra-village discrimination in the interest of political mobilization. Just whose citizenship rights are being defended? Is it not likely, as Shachar and Hirschl argue, that a focus on rights claims by village men, on behalf of polities in which men constitute most of the office-bearers and voters, make the rules, control most property and earn most income, risks overlooking gendered citizenship as a means

21 Serena Liu, “Social Citizenship in China: Continuity and Change”, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 11, No. 5 (2007), pp. 465-79; Wang Feiling, Organizing Through Division and Exclusion: China’s Hukou System (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); Dorothy J. Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State and the Logic of the Market (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 22 Joan Judge, “Citizens or Mothers of Citizens? Gender and the Meaning of Modern Chinese Citizenship”, and Margaret Y. K. Woo, “Law and the Gendered Citizen”, in Merle Goldman and Elizabeth J. Perry (eds), Changing Meanings of Citizenship in Modern China, pp. 23-43 and 308-29. 23 Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers, Elections and Citizenship”; Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in R ural China, pp. 51-66, 135-37. 24 Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China, p. 118. 25 Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers, Elections and Citizenship”, p. 228.

26 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 of perpetuating the power, wealth and privileges of androcentric communities and households? If that is the case, is gender exclusivity also being ignored as a rallying point for citizenship activism? He Baogang’s study of Zhejiang villages offers a telling illustration of how the gender politics of citizenship might be eclipsed when village “self government” is interpreted as an expression of citizenship. He writes that, “under the collective system, all villagers, men and women, old and young, enjoyed rights over the collective wealth ... ownership of land distinguishes a villager from a non-villager, bringing with it acceptance as a member of the collective, with full rights to land and land-related benefits as well as management of village affairs”. Even in communities where land use has changed as a result of industrialization or urbanization, he argues, “this sense of common interest has not disappeared”.26 He acknowledges that, when land or other village assets increase in value, villagers attempt to limit wealth distribution by voting to expunge the rights of “married out” women. Yet it is such discriminatory uses of the vote, He argues, that has “turned peasants into modern citizens”.27 Nowhere does He critically interrogate the political implications of linking the gendered ideological formulation of “married out” women to citizenship. Nor does he consider how women’s contestation of their exclusion and efforts to secure equal entitlement might alter the scope and substance of citizenship.

Source: Outlook (Liaowang dongfang zhoukan 瞭望东方周刊), 27 January 2003, p. 47. To explore the gender politics of citizenship in the urban frontier, we first address the question posed in the cartoon above: how is women’s marital status translated into a village citizenship criterion? We then examine the consequences of village citizenship for women’s livelihoods when land is expropriated for urban growth,

26 Baogang He, “Village Citizenship in China: A Case Study of Zhejiang”, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2005), p. 215. 27 Baogang He, “Village Citizenship in China”, pp. 216, 217.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 27 and the distinctive configurations of citizenship being created through interactions between women denied citizens’ entitlements, village members and state authorities.

From Virilocal Custom to Village Rule: Institutionalizing Marital Expatriation in Village Citizenship Ellen Judd pinpoints the orthodox custom of women’s virilocal marriage as the key cultural practice ensuring “the residentially structured predominance of agnatically related men in territorially based communities ... It is residence centered on related males that is the decisive element in the gendered politics of everyday rural life”.28 Strong normative pressures contribute to the persistence of virilocal marriage. In one of our research sites in Yuxi, we were told that women who questioned customary virilocality were scolded: “Local customs, passed down from the older generations, and if you complain that it isn’t fair they curse you, insisting, ‘It’s right for girls to marry out and sons to bring in families and make their living here. Isn’t that so!’” Men who marry uxorilocally often are subjected to ridicule. Shaking her head when asked if she could recall any cases of uxorilocal marriage, a woman on the outskirts of Fuzhou explained, “We’ve got this saying, ‘Better to live in a toilet than at your wife’s mother’s home!’” 29 Potent though customs of virilocal marriage are in influencing the androcentric formation of village communities, however, they are not binding rules on membership. Who determines village rules affects the citizenship criteria adopted. In our research sites, the locus of village rule-making varied, with rules decided by Communist Party Secretaries, Party branches, village or team leaders, Village Committees and village assemblies. 30 In one site near Yuxi, votes defining membership and other important matters were cast in secret ballots in village assemblies: “Under village rules, it’s the villagers who decide ... With difficult issues, we vote on it. They hand out voting slips, and you write on them whether you agree or disagree. In this way, it’s a completely local rule, it’s nothing to do with laws ... Women get the same say as men. The majority decide.” However, even in the few locations where voting on village rules was procedurally gender-equal, the composition of the rule-making bodies was not. Although all villages had complied with the stipulation in the Organic Law to include “an appropriate number of women” on the Village Committee, and women categorized as members could participate in assemblies, the single feature common to all the rule-making bodies was that men vastly outnumbered women. Few Committees included more than one woman. Village assemblies usually comprised only household heads, the great majority of whom

28 Ellen R. Judd, Gender and Power in Rural (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 58-59. 29 For another view of uxorilocal marriage, see Weiguo Zhang, “State, Gender and Uxorilocal Marriage in Contemporary Rural North China”, The China Journal, No. 60 (July 2008), pp. 111-32. 30 The village assembly comprises a majority of adult village members or representatives of two-thirds of village households.

28 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 were men.31 Consequently, the percentage of our respondents who had attended an assembly in the year prior to expropriation of the land ranged from 21 per cent in Changsha to only 4 per cent in Fuzhou. The wife of a Fuzhou village Party Secretary said that differences in cultural capital accounted for gender discrepancies in assembly participation: “Very few women attend assemblies and meetings. Before, women had a heavy burden at home, read very little. They had no quality to speak of. They can’t be compared to girls today. So when the village has a meeting, it’s usually all men who attend.” Her neighbors’ explanations emphasized political exclusion, rather than women’s lack of civic “quality”: “We can’t go to meetings! Never! It’s all those insiders who have meetings … They wouldn’t listen to us women. If I spoke out they’d skin me!” Men’s predominance in rule-making bodies was reflected in, and reinforced by, their adoption of gender differentiated rules on village citizenship that, as the Yuxi interviewee quoted above put it, had “nothing to do with laws”.32 Men’s citizenship hinged on patrilineal birth-right, hukou and fulfillment of villagers’ obligations. No limit was placed on the number of sons in each household who, as members, could use collective land for farming and housing construction and whose families would benefit from village welfare. 33 Women’s birth-right, hukou and fulfillment of obligations determined their citizenship only until they married. After marriage, it was conditioned by their husband’s status. Women who bucked orthodox custom and married endogamously within their natal village thereby retained citizenship locally. Those who married non-local villagers or urban residents were categorized as “married out”, irrespective of their place of post-marital residence and hukou. Categorizing a woman as “married out” resulted in her expatriation and what Augustine-Adams, in a comparative study of marital expatriation laws, dubs “civil annihilation”.34 As a woman newly elected to a Village Committee in Yuxi explained,

31 See Xiajuan Guo, Yongnian Zheng and Lijun Yang, “Women’s Participation in Village Autonomy in China: Evidence from Zhejiang”, The China Quarterly, No. 197 (2009), pp. 145-64; Tamara Jacka, “Increasing Women’s Participation in Village Government in China”, Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 40, No. 4 (2008), pp. 499-530; Zhen Yan (ed.), Zhongguo nongcun funü zhuangkuang diaocha (Report on the Situation of Rural ) (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, 2008). 32 The Organic Law stipulates that village charters and rules may not contravene China’s Constitution and laws, which endorse women’s equal rights. Article 33, Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women (Funű quanyi baozhang fa [Revised 2005]), states: “No organizations or individual shall infringe upon women’s rights and interests in rural collective economic organizations on the pretext of their being single, married, divorced and widowed”. 33 Similar rules were observed in some Zhejiang villages. See Sally Sargeson, “Women’s Property, Women’s Agency in China’s ‘New Enclosure Movement’: Evidence from Zhejiang”, Development and Change, Vol. 39, No. 4 (2008), pp. 641-65. However, Andrew Kipnis notes, in a personal communication, that in Zouping County, Shandong, village rules are gender-neutral, and each household may replace itself with only one couple per generation. 34 Kif Augustine-Adams, “‘With Notice of the Consequences’”, p. 17.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 29

“When a woman marries, she has to present her marriage license, and from the date of the license her hukou is removed from the team. If she can’t move her hukou—say, into the city—the team retains it, but it’s empty, devoid of any benefits whatsoever.” Only in households without sons could one daughter, conceptualized and institutionally treated as a proxy son, marry uxorilocally and remain a village citizen. Village rules also conditioned in-marrying women’s naturalization as village citizens. Registration of residence, typically in their husbands’ household, was a minimum requirement for brides’ citizenship. If brides were long-distance marriage migrants, some villages required them to demonstrate marital fidelity by fulfilling a three-year probationary period of marriage or giving birth to a child, in order to become citizens. Moreover, naturalized women’s entitlements lasted only for the duration of their marriage, as a divorcee in Yuxi discovered: I moved my hukou to my husband’s village and farmed there for eight years when I was married. My hukou is still there. But when I gave birth to a daughter, my husband said I’d have a rough time. He wanted a son. He became unbearable, abusive, and said filthy things. We got divorced, and he remarried. I separated my hukou from his, but with , if the powerful won’t budge, the weak get nothing. When I divorced, they stripped me of everything. I asked for a room in the house, but they wouldn’t let us stay there. I tried to get a one- child certificate for my daughter so she could get into school under the preferential policy, but the village cadre refused to handle it. Earlier, I’d asked the old team leader for some land, and he’d said I could get some in the next readjustment, but the readjustment wasn’t made until after my divorce. By then the old leader had died, so I got no land. When the land was expropriated I got no compensation. So after the divorce, I had no home, no land and not even the right to vote! I’m not eligible for anything. I can’t attend meetings. They wouldn’t even let me join the Women’s Day festivities! I asked, “Am I considered a man or a woman”? and they said, “You’re not a resident!” So I pulled out my hukou booklet and showed them, and they asked how I’d managed to stay registered there. They keep telling me to find another husband ... There are three of us divorcees in the village now. One of the others is my ex-husband’s second wife. She had a daughter too. Appealing to both marital tradition and modern democratic procedures, village organizations are operating as the agents of agnatic groups. Linking women’s citizenship to their affiliation with male villagers institutionally consolidates local men’s control over political organization and collective assets, income and redistribution. Women who forge permanent, productive unions with local men do enjoy social and political rights, but at the expense of village women who marry non-local men and of in-married women whose marriages end. The gender-distributive consequences of village women’s marital expatriation become particularly apparent when the most valuable of all collectively-owned village assets, land, is expropriated for urban expansion, for, although women rely disproportionately on land for their livelihoods, their entitlement to land and compensation for its loss is mediated by their marital status.

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Land Expropriation, Women’s Livelihoods and (In)dependent Citizenship Marital expatriation rules combined with legal strictures on villages’ readjustment of households’ land during the 30-year land contract term are depriving virilocally marrying women of access to land. 35 A cross-national survey by the All-China Women’s Federation (hereafter, WF) in 2004 found that women comprised 70 per cent of all villagers without contract land, and 43.8 per cent of landless women had lost their access to land at marriage. 36 Among our survey respondents and interviewees, most landless women lost land when they married or divorced. Some women gained contingent access to land contracted by their husbands’ households, or had been apportioned land in an earlier land readjustment.37 In total, 58 per cent of Fuzhou respondents, 59 per cent of Yuxi respondents and 70 per cent of Changsha respondents had received a portion of contract land. In most cases, their husband, father-in-law or father was registered as the contractor. Only 9 per cent, 21 per cent and 15 per cent respectively of respondents in the three sites had their names listed as sole or joint contractor. Yet, although most rural women gain access to land through their affiliation with land-contracting men, rural women are more reliant on farming for their livelihoods than are men.38 Among farmers, women also derive a larger proportion of their income from agriculture than do men. Gender variations in villagers’ reliance on agricultural livelihoods increase during middle age.39 Whereas rural men typically work off-farm until their mid-to-late-50s, women’s off-farm employment prospects diminish around the age of 40, and many turn to agricultural production. To track changes in the significance to women of various sources of livelihood, we asked respondents to Survey 2 to describe and rank their three principal sources of personal livelihood in the year prior to land expropriation, and in 2008. As shown in Table 2, just under half listed farming as their primary source of livelihood prior to expropriation. Regional differences in the availability of jobs which employers

35 The Chinese government announced in the 1980s that land contracts were valid for 30 years. However, many villages periodically readjusted contract land to accommodate changes in household size caused by births, marital movements and deaths. In 2002 the Rural Land Contracting Law (Nongcun tudi chengbao fa) prohibited readjustments except in specific circumstances. 36 He Lirong, “Chujia nü”, p. 128. 37 See Ellen R. Judd, “No Change for Thirty Years: The Renewed Question of Women’s Land Rights in Rural China”, Development and Change, Vol. 38, No. 4 (2007), pp. 689- 710; Li Yang and Yingsheng Xi, “Married Women’s Rights to Land in China’s Traditional Farming Areas”, Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 15, No. 49 (2006), pp. 621-36. 38 Quanguo fulian, guojia tongjiju, “Di’erqi Zhongguo funü shehui diwei chouyang diaocha zhuyao shuju baogao” (Report on Main Data from the Second Chinese Sample Survey on Women’s Status), [EB/OL] (2001), http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjgb/qttjgb/qgqttjgb/ t20020331_15816.htm, last accessed 14 August 2009. 39 Hsiao-hung Nancy Chen and Tsung-hsi Fu, “Older People’s Income Security in China”, in Tsung-hsi Fu and Rhidion Hughes (eds), Aging in East Asia: Challenges and Policies for the Twenty-First Century (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 37-53.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 31 considered to be appropriate for rural women meant that the total percentage of respondents identifying primarily as farmers varied from 41 per cent in the hinterland of Fuzhou, where small labor-intensive enterprises flourished, to 51 per cent around Changsha, where heavy and high-tech industry and construction predominated. The majority of the under-40 cohort worked off-farm. Among survey respondents aged 40 or over, however, 70 per cent primarily relied on farming, 16 per cent depended on their family for support and 14 per cent listed wages, savings, rent, business or other non-farm earnings as their main sources of livelihood. Table 2: Changes in the most important source of women’s livelihood following land expropriation (Unit % respondents) Prior to expropriation 2008 Farming 45.9 3.9 Wage work 25.1 22.7 Husbands’ or children’s income 19.3 48.8 Business 3.4 7.2 “Other” own income 3.4 1.4 Rent 2.9 7.7 Own savings, share dividends 0 1.4 Own pension 0 1.1 Public welfare (dibao) 0 3.4 Own compensation 0 2.4 Total 100 100 Land expropriation eliminated many women’s livelihoods. While the effects were most immediate and severe for those aged over 40, younger women, too, lost an important optional source of livelihood. The total percentage of women who had an independent livelihood declined from 77.8 per cent before land was taken to 40.1 per cent in 2008.40 There was a corresponding increase in the percentage who became dependent on family income, household assets and public welfare. Tracking changes in the ranking of all three principal sources of livelihood, we found that 46 per cent of respondents depended more heavily on their family for support in 2008. In most households, incomes increased to some extent following land expropriation, as Table 3 illustrates. However, the contraction in women’s livelihoods and the resulting higher dependency ratio suppressed per capita income growth in the households of former women farmers, compared to the households of women who had off-farm employment. At the same time, as few families still had land on which to produce for their own table, household consumption costs increased substantially. In relative terms, therefore, farmers’ standards of living declined. The spending power

40 Independent livelihoods were classed as farming, waged work, business, own savings, dividends, pension, compensation and “other” own income. Although farming and business often involved cooperative use of assets registered under men’s names, women said that their contribution of labor to those activities entitled them to income.

32 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 of most women decreased, with 40 per cent of all respondents reporting that they had less cash-in-hand, and 13 per cent saying they had none at all. Table 3: Changes in per capita average annual household income of women farmers and non-farmers following land expropriation (Unit RMB) Prior to expropriation 2008 Mean Range Mean Range Farmers 3,200 20,000 3,401 33,000 Non-farmers 5,887 33,000 7,517 60,000

In Marxist theory, Chinese political rhetoric and the everyday parlance of villagers, women’s independence requires participation in public production. As one interviewee put it, “How could independence be possible without money?”41 Loss of farming livelihoods, economic dependence on families and the resulting pressures on household budgets undermined the sense of efficacy that women had derived from contributing to their communities and households. Interviewees aged over 40 repeatedly complained that without a livelihood they felt “useless”, socially marginalized and lacking in self-confidence. Many said they also exerted less influence in household decision-making. The adverse consequences of land expropriation for women’s independence and citizenship are compounded because the regulatory framework and procedures governing restitution for affected villagers authorizes Village Committees to manage the distribution of much of the compensation fund. 42 This provides incentive and opportunity for village decision-makers to try to maximize the amounts of compensation available for citizens by minimizing the number of eligible recipients. In all our research sites, contra national legislation, marital expatriation rules initially were applied to achieve this objective.43 Most villages also treated the monetary compensation to which individual members were entitled as the patrimony of household heads. Consequently, fewer women than men

41 See also Peter Zarrow, “Citizenship in China and the West”, pp. 12-13; Huang Yuqing, “Labour, Leisure, Gender and Generation: The Organisation of ‘Wan’ and the Notion of ‘Gender Equality’ in Contemporary Rural China”, in Tamara Jacka and Sally Sargeson (eds), Women, Gender and Development. 42 The Land Administration Law (Tudi guanli fa) stipulates that compensation for land should be paid to the rural collective economic organization representing collective owners, so that it can provide for their future livelihood. Resettlement compensation should go to the organization arranging villagers’ relocation, re-employment and social protection. Frequently, both are rolled into a one-off monetary payment from governments to Village Committees. Individual owners should be compensated for loss of fixed assets, businesses and crops. Hence, women farmers should be compensated for destruction of their crops. 43 Article 32, Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women (Funű quanyi baozhang fa [Revised 2005]), states: “Women shall enjoy equal rights with men in ... distribution of the earnings of the collective economic organizations, and use of the compensation for expropriated or requisitioned land”.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 33 personally received compensation when the land was expropriated, and many compensated women received less than men. Simultaneously, however, gender disparities in the distributive impacts of expropriation motivated women to demand more inclusive, comprehensive restitution. When community rules stipulating gender as a criterion of citizenship and governments’ predatory land-taking contradict national laws endorsing gender equality and state commitments to promote rural development, women simultaneously face substantial impediments to acting locally as citizens, while possessing alternative institutional resources that can be deployed to claim entitlements. Moreover, as land expropriation in the urban frontier often involves a transformation in the administrative status, governance, property institutions and public goods of communities, it also provides opportunities for women denied compensation to pit state authorities and national law against village organizations and rules. In our research sites, the extent to which the citizenship entitlements of expropriated people expanded depended, in part, on the ensuing interactions among the authorities, village decision-makers and women denied compensation.

The Gender Politics of Citizenship in the Urban Frontier City, district and county, and township governments aim to boost their revenue and sustain local economic growth rates by making land available at low cost for commercial development, while avoiding censure for predatory land-taking from higher levels of the state. At the same time, the devolution of responsibility for land planning, social policy and the pricing and provision of infrastructure and services to cities allows for flexibility in municipalities’ structuring of reparations packages for affected villagers.44 Village Committees, households with different generational and gender structures, and individuals affected by land-taking attempt to capitalize on those opportunities not only to maximize their receipt of monetary compensation but also to secure access to public goods by manipulating criteria of entitlement.

Fuzhou Land expropriation around Fuzhou has been conducted in a piecemeal manner. Ad hoc, often unauthorized land-taking by district and county governments, sometimes in collusion with village lineage leaders, has surrounded many villages with high-rise construction, without incorporating them into municipal planning codes, budgets or the provision of services and infrastructure. Around the free-standing settlements,

44 The Land Administration Law pegs compensation for land and resettlement to the production value of the land over the previous three years. However, municipal governments have long paid higher amounts for land in the urban perimeter. See Zheng di zhidu gaige yanjiu ketizu, Yanjiu zheng di wenti, tansuo gaige zhi lu (Research on Problems of Land Expropriation, Exploration of Reform Paths) (Beijing: Zhongguo Dadi Chubanshe, 2002). State Council Documents 28 (2004) and 32 (2006) require that land compensation must be sufficient to ensure that affected villagers’ standards of living become “no worse” and incorporate their social security premiums. Compensation also might comprise villagers’ transfer to urban hukou, re-housing, vocational training or re-employment.

34 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 land has been expropriated by provincial and municipal authorities to construct port infrastructure and a massive, joint foreign-invested auto-parts manufacturing zone. Despite the involvement of higher-level governments, villages in the port and manufacturing zone are no better serviced than the villages in the city. In both types of settlements, after land was expropriated housing and infrastructure were left intact, lineage-dominated Village Committees continued operating and villagers retained rural registration. Thus, women’s citizenship entitlements were determined by village rules. In this context, the very concept of villagers’ civil and political rights rings hollow. Many villagers had experienced detention without charge, beatings and destruction of their property when their farmland was cleared. 45 Although rural incomes around Fuzhou were considerably higher than those near Yuxi, Fuzhou villagers received less monetary compensation per mu for land located at comparable distances from the city center, compared to Yuxi villagers. Few were informed about the purpose or reparation terms of the land-taking, and in fewer than half the villages had village assemblies met to discuss rules determining villagers’ eligibility for compensation and distribution procedures. In most sites, rules were unilaterally decided by Village Party and Committee leaders. Women’s entitlements were particularly weak. Because of lineages’ domination of village political organizations, only 4 per cent of surveyed women had attended a meeting at which compensation criteria were discussed. Almost one-third said that they were not informed about criteria which determined villagers’ eligibility for compensation. Formally, the most common criteria adopted were hukou (mentioned by 37 per cent of respondents) and land contracting (mentioned by 22 per cent). In practice, however, marital expatriation rules were so taken-for-granted that, irrespective of their hukou, “married out” women and divorcees were automatically excluded. In anticipation of their future marriage, in one village unmarried daughters were awarded half the amount of compensation given to their unmarried brothers. In another, naturalization conditions meant that women married-in from remote areas received up to 50 per cent less than wives from neighboring settlements. Women were similarly disadvantaged when compensation was linked to land contracting, as an Agriculture Department official acknowledged: “Out- marrying women lose their contract land, and then don’t get any in the villages into which they marry. This extends to another problem, because with the industrialization and urbanization occurring now, it’s easy for their land compensation to fall through.”46 Moreover, because some villages compensated the registered land contractors, only 59 per cent of women allotted a portion of land personally received any restitution whatsoever when their land was expropriated. Three-quarters of all respondents reported that compensation for all eligible members was pooled and paid into the bank accounts of household heads.

45 See, for example, Zhao Yan, “Qingkou zhen xiandaihua de daijia” (The Cost of Modernization in Qingkou Town), http://www.Chinaelections.org/PrintNews.asp? NewsID=67166, accessed 5 November 2008. 46 Fujian Department of Agriculture, 15.5.2008.

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Asked to assess changes in their property rights after land expropriation, 27 per cent of respondents said that they had weakened, 58 per cent reported no change, and 15 per cent, most of whom were younger members of wealthy households, said that they had improved. Complaints about compensation had been lodged with provincial and municipal authorities by 7 per cent of respondents. Indeed, appeals against infringements of rural women’s land and housing rights comprised 44.6 per cent of all complaints received by the Fujian WF in 2003 and 62.5 per cent of complaints in the first half of 2004.47 In response, the WF had created a legal hotline and offered support in the most egregious cases. However, when asked how the organization was attempting to clarify women’s compensation entitlements, a leader of the provincial WF replied, “Rural property is all registered under men’s names. It isn’t significant, registering men’s names isn’t particularly feudal, no-one takes it seriously. The women aren’t interested in property.”48 Women who protested to government agencies often faced subordinates of the very authorities who had approved their expropriation: “When we went to the Mawei Labor Bureau, no-one paid us any attention. As soon as they saw we were villagers they put their heads down and walked away. They wouldn’t let us all in, so we selected a few representatives, mostly women, a few men. But when we got in they just said, this is a municipal regulation, there’s nothing you villagers can do.” Within villages, normative expectations about women’s role as caring wives and mothers offered a culturally legitimate position from which women defended their household interests by demanding that village leaders distribute a larger share of the compensation fund. They were hampered in this, though, by the information asymmetries resulting from their exclusion from village decision- making, as one feisty 50-year-old found: The team leader first asked if my husband was home. He wasn’t, so the leader showed me a notice and said our land had been expropriated. I said, “How much each mu?” That day—it must have been the 16th—he said “3,000 yuan per mu, but if you come and collect the compensation before the 18th, you get a bonus of a few hundred”. I asked, “Who’s expropriating the land?” It was the city, so I said, “You should demand more! What a pittance! We are all over 50. If you take away our land what are we going to live on?” He got huffy, said I was being unreasonable, and stamped off … There were thirteen households affected. Some were widows who’d let others farm their land. They would’ve taken whatever was offered. So I went around to each, mobilizing them, saying we shouldn’t collect the money because if we refuse, they can’t take our land.

47 He Fuping, “Fujian sheng shixing ‘tudi chengbao fa’ zhong nongcun funü tudi chengbao quanyi baozhang yanjiu” (Study of the Protection of Rural Women’s Land Contract Rights during Fujian Province’s Implementation of the “Land Contract Law”), Zhonggong Fujian shengwei dangxiao xuebao (Journal of the Fujian Communist Party School), No. 12 (2004), pp. 61-66. 48 Fujian WF, 9.12.2008.

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Then, because we held out, it went up from 3,000 to 28,000 yuan, and eventually we got 57,000 yuan per mu … But later I saw an advertisement in the newspaper offering our land for 1.4 million per mu and I thought, shit, why did we accept 57,000! Changes in economic structure precipitated by land expropriation exacerbated intra-community wealth inequalities. While younger women in wealthy households capitalized on the employment, business and rental opportunities created by urban and industrial growth, women who had farmed said their age, lack of skills and capital and the sub-standard quality of their houses prevented them from taking advantage of the same opportunities. An influx of migrant workers fueled poorer women’s resentment over their and their feelings of insecurity. Some households could barely make ends meet: “Even with careful management it’s hard. We have to scrimp on food. We’ve nothing. We are really in a mess. There’s no work for us, we got nothing for the land, because it was eaten up by the officials. With the price of rice increasing, we can hardly afford to eat!” Despite the adverse impacts of expropriation on older women’s livelihoods, governments had made little effort to provide them with the social protection to which they were entitled. In 2001, Fuzhou city announced that all expropriated villages would be included within the scope of urban labor and minimum livelihood guarantees (dibao 底保).49 Yet 98 per cent of Fuzhou respondents said they had received no government assistance toward gaining vocational training or finding work. Only a couple received urban dibao, and none had been awarded the much lower payments provided by rural dibao schemes. In the wealthiest settlements, village collectives and district governments co-contributed to pensions for villagers who had reached locally determined retirement ages. However, even the most generous of those pension schemes provided pensions equivalent to only one-fifth the per capita rural average income. Commercial insurance coverage was limited to the well-off: 8 per cent of survey respondents held old age insurance and 6 per cent, medical insurance. The remainder had only rural cooperative medical insurance. Without land, jobs or social protection, the percentage of women primarily dependent on their families for support more than doubled, from 26 per cent prior to land expropriation to 54 per cent in 2008. Structural connections between women’s status as contingent village citizens, their political, economic and social marginalization, and dependency on families reinforced women’s sense of being “useless”. The situation around the perimeter of Fuzhou suggests that, where “unfragmented” village polities co-terminous with lineage organizations enforce marital expatriation rules and governments fail to intercede to protect women’s entitlements, both gender

49 “Fuzhou shi bei zhengdi nongmin xiangshou dibao” (Fuzhou City Expropriated Farmers Receive Dibao), Zhongguo guotu ziyuan wang (China Land and Resources web) http://www.clr.an/front/read/read.asp?ID=15829, accessed 6 November 2008; Fujian sheng minzhengting, “Yidian daimian zhenghe ziyuan jiji tuijin chengxiang shehui qiuzhu tixi jianshe” (Promote Work in All Areas and Appropriate Resources to Actively Advance Construction of a System of Urban and Rural Social Relief), 6 June 2006.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 37 and intra-community inequalities in citizenship widen. In contrast, in Yuxi and Changsha, women’s challenges to village citizenship formulations were spurring governments to provide more equal, inclusive and extensive forms of restitution to people affected by expropriation.

Yuxi Between 2003 and 2007, repeated land-taking, some unlawfully approved by the office of Yunnan Governor Xu Rongkai, transferred hundreds of hectares of land to Yuxi municipal departments and the local corporate giant, Hongta, for expansion of the city’s development zone, commercial real estate ventures and transport corridors. Complaints about land expropriation outnumbered all other grievances in the 12,464 petitions received by the city government in 2006. 50 In response to escalating protests and media exposes of corrupt land transactions, a central discipline inspection team was dispatched to Kunming.51 The Governor resigned and officials at various levels of government in Yuxi were demoted and transferred. In this politically fraught environment, local governments adopted three strategies to try to defuse villagers’ protests and avoid censure from higher authorities, whilst continuing to make land available for development. First, as in Fuzhou, they limited information and detained village activists. Second, in contrast to Fuzhou, they transformed landless villages into urban communities. Depending on the proportion of land expropriated, village organizations were instructed to select a corresponding number of members whose hukou would be changed to urban. When average per capita land holding fell below 0.2 mu, all villagers were given urban hukou, Village Committees were converted into urban Community Committees under the administration of Street Offices and, apart from a few communities in which small areas were allocated for the construction of collective (share-owned) enterprises, residual land was expropriated. The transformation of villages into urban communities potentially made available to women an alternative suite of citizenship entitlements. However, as most Community Committees were staffed by former Village Committee members, many continued to apply village rules when determining residents’ benefits. Third, governments increased the average amount of land compensation paid, and prohibited businesses from bargaining directly with Village Committees. 52 With more money at stake, conflicts over women’s eligibility for compensation intensified, confounding local authorities’ efforts to moderate unrest.

50 Yuxi nianjian 2007 (Kunming: Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, 2007), p. 98. 51 See, for example, Xu Yang and Li Xinde, “Hongta jituan bamai nongtian da gai haohua bieshu neimu” (The Inside Story on Hongta Group’s Forcible Acquisition of Farmland to Build Luxury Villas), Shijie shangye baodao (World Business Report) (10 October 2006), http://biz.icxo.com/htmlnews/2006/10/10/953700_0.htm, accessed 17 December 2008. 52 Between 2005 and 2008, the average compensation per mu paid to Village Committees in Liqi township doubled, to around 350,000 yuan.

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Women’s low representation in village polities meant that they had limited access to information about land expropriation, and little say in deciding on the rules governing eligibility for compensation. Those rules were decided by village assemblies in around half the research sites, but less than 10 per cent of respondents had attended the assemblies. In the other sites, rules had been fixed by the Party Secretary, Village Committee or team leaders, most of whom were male. Although hukou was the most common formal criterion for compensation entitlement, “married out” women and female divorcees were ruled ineligible. The compensation amounts allotted to village members correlated with the proportion of time that they had resided in the village between the dates when notice of expropriation was served and compensation was distributed, disadvantaging all local women who married during that period. In all but a few cases, the compensation was paid to male household heads. Women’s responses to village compensation rules reflected their status as either contingently entitled village citizen or expatriated non-citizen. To retain their entitlements to land compensation and other benefits, increasing numbers of young women opted to live in de-facto relationships or refused to notify Committees of their marriages and transfer their hukou. Those such as Granny Li (a pseudonym), who had a long-standing stake in village assets, upheld village collectives’ and patrilineal households’ rights to reparation from government for their loss of intergenerational livelihoods and welfare: They said they’d only give us a little money because the land would be used to build a university. But instead they built villas, more than a thousand Hongta corporation villas! So the money was never given to us at all, for more than 200 mu of our land! So we five teams went to complain ... We’ve spoken out. Lots of us. Originally, when they took our land and the government wouldn’t pay us, we complained here. Then we went to the province. I myself went to the provincial government in Kunming. Kunming wouldn’t handle it. Eventually, we pooled money and sent representatives to the petitioning office in Beijing. They were received by the petitioning office and told that they’d resolve the problem, but later we were told it would be fixed by the local authorities, and of course they’ve done nothing whatever to sort it out! We’ve still received nothing, though we’ve spent a lot petitioning. It’s been more than two years since they went to Beijing. My grandson was just a tiny baby then, and I carried him on my back through countless government doors! All I wanted was to pass something, some kind of a livelihood on to him! Excluded women cited gender-neutral residential registration, marriage and property laws to challenge village rules and claim a share in the compensation. After persistent petitioning—in one case, over eight years—a few “married out” women succeeded in pressuring higher-level governments or courts to rescind marital expatriation rules. When this occurred in Granny Li’s community, she joined other naturalized women in contesting the decision:

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 39

It’s got even worse, because now they’ve cancelled our village rules. Before, out-married women wouldn’t get a compensation share but in-marrying women would. But now, out-married women will get a share if their hukou was here then, but my daughter-in-law will only get 40 per cent from when her hukou was transferred! It’s unfair, so we’ve complained to the Community office. Many local authorities attempted to avoid mediating intra-village conflicts over compensation by arguing that the Organic Law allows villages to make their own rules. A former farmer, denied compensation because of her marriage to an urban resident, was outraged at the state’s failure to enforce rights inscribed in national legislation: I went to the city government. They said they’d sort it out. I told them, “This is entirely a problem of the village cadres!” They said, “But village cadres are all chosen by the villagers”. So I said, “Don’t you care if the village cadres are rotten?” Then I went to the court, but they looked at my material and said it was a government matter and they couldn’t handle it … [Song Yu: “Wouldn’t the WF help?”] The WF help? Don’t even bother going! They said, “In situations like yours, there’s nothing to be done; there are thousands like you in Yuxi now and we haven’t the capacity to handle it”. Although the Constitution states that men and women are equal, here we aren’t, we women are victims! The 1998 Land Law stipulated that there would be no change in land contracts for 30 years. I signed my land contract in 1998. It’s still valid for another 20 years. But they took my land and sold it, then gave me no money! They infringed the Rural Land Contract Law, the Law Protecting Women’s Rights, the 2007 Property Law. How can village rules, a vote by the team, infringe the Constitution, and the government not do anything about it? Women’s struggles over just grounds for reparation prompted governments to create more inclusive social policies. To reduce the 50 per cent rate of unemployment among expropriated women, Street Offices recruited them to staff newly-created urban Community Committees. However, this was less an indication of women’s increased participation in local government than a reflection of the fact that, as the operational arm of street-level government, Community Committees exerted less authority and controlled fewer resources than Village Committees, and staff salaries were below the average urban wage. Women also were given cash incentives to attend vocational training courses.53 Course curricula transmitted gender-segregated skills such as hairdressing, word processing, child care and domestic cleaning, whilst the 45-year age limit for enrolment excluded precisely those women most likely to be unemployed. Gender and age segregation in the labor market thus remained unchanged.

53 Yuxi Fenghuang jiedao banshichu, “Guanyu shidi nongmin jiuye fuwu wu xiang tixi ji shengcun fazhan de sikao” (Reflections on a System of Five Principles for the Sustainable Development of Landless Villagers’ Employment Services), 13 November 2006.

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The authorities also held workshops to improve expropriated women’s civic virtues. Participants were instructed in their obligations to the state, and mobilized to participate in neighborhood beautification projects that would maintain real estate values and allow them, as the beneficiaries of rentier-capitalism, to purchase symbols of sedentary femininity marking their progress from an agrarian life: With urbanization, it’s like before they were farming, faces to the earth and their backs to the sky, and now, they’ve really benefited from the state’s policies. This is a change for them. Besides, their income increases, because the village houses aren’t worth money so they can’t rent them out, but with urbanization the house values increase. Now most rely on rents ... And then there are their lives, because they’ve been villagers and one by one become urban residents, they start dressing up, and their cultural quality improves. For example, before they were, oh, they looked just like peasants, and then gradually as the community becomes more urbanized, they start dressing up like us urbanites. This really brings them a lot of benefits. So when we have meetings with them, we remind them, “You should remember what advantages the state has brought you! Say you still lived in the village, were still a rural woman, how could you be choosing skirts, looking at pictures, making up your faces so beautifully, and have money in your hands the way you do now?” Social protection measures were expanded. Prior to expropriation, most villages had linked rights to collective resources to intergenerational welfare contracts. For example, in households with adult sons, only the sons were eligible to apply for contract land and house sites, and Village Committee approval was conditional on the sons’ written commitment to support their aging parents. Eligibility for rural dibao was restricted to disabled and elderly village citizens without offspring, and very few expropriated villagers received urban dibao.54 Much to the consternation of villagers, however, after petitioning in Beijing against their exclusion, a few divorcees secured entitlement to both house sites and dibao. In 2008, in response to widespread complaints about gender inequity and rural–urban inequality in welfare provision, Yuxi city introduced an inclusive pension scheme for expropriated residents aged 60 and over. Pension funds will accumulate from contributions by expropriating governments, collectives and individual participants. 55 Women’s pension rights remain vulnerable to infringement, though, because their eligibility to participate in the scheme must be approved by Village and Community Committees. Though Yuxi villages continued to adopt marital expatriation rules, contestation by excluded women was reducing the salience of women’s marital status and

54 A 2006 Statistical Bureau survey of expropriated villagers in five cities in Yunnan showed that only 9.2 per cent of those whose income was below the poverty line received dibao. See Huang Lifei, “Yunnan sheng shidi nongmin wenti ji duice sikao” (Reflections on Problems and Countermeasures for Landless Villagers in Yunnan), Xiandai nongye keji (Modern Agricultural Science and Technology), No. 4 (2007), pp. 122-26. 55 Yuxi shi, Yuxi shi beizhengdi nongmin yanglao baoxian shishi xize (Implementation Regulations on Yuxi City Old Age Insurance for Expropriated Villagers), 1 November 2008.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 41 increasing the significance of residential registration as a determinant of all expropriated villagers’ entitlements. In this respect, Yuxi represents an intermediate case between the gender exclusivity distinguishing Fuzhou’s villages and the relatively inclusive mode of citizenship emerging around the perimeter of Changsha.

Changsha In comparison to Fuzhou and Yuxi, land expropriation around Changsha represented a triumph of unified, comprehensive and, in general, legally compliant governance. All expropriations were authorized by appropriate agencies. Villages were demolished. Following a period of subsidized residence in temporary relocation barracks, affected villagers moved into identical rows of new, privately- purchased, multi-story houses with ground floor shop-fronts, situated in large, purpose-built suburban communities. All were registered as urban residents. Younger, better-educated Village Committee members were retrained and offered positions in urban Community Committees. Eight per cent of the land in the communities was allocated to construction of collective (share-owned) enterprises. Villagers’ protests against the terms of expropriation were comparatively mild, and most governments followed due process in dealing with protesters. The transformation of Changsha villages into urban communities had far- reaching consequences for Changsha women’s citizenship. Like urbanized women in Yuxi, they became subject to stricter reproductive limits. Yet only three respondents complained about those restrictions. The great majority were more concerned about improvements in their environment and property rights and the deterioration in their incomes and standards of living. Changsha women’s civil entitlements were stronger than in the other sites, and strengthened further in the course of land expropriation. First, there was greater information transparency and more participation of women in compensation management. For example, more than 80 per cent of Changsha respondents said that their village assembly decided on the criteria of eligibility for compensation, half had attended those assemblies, and almost all knew what criteria had been applied. In addition, the proportion of women who personally received compensation for expropriation of the contract land in which they had been allocated a portion was 13 percentage points higher than in Fuzhou, at 72 per cent. Third, 38 per cent of Changsha respondents said compensation was paid directly to individuals rather than to household heads. Fourth, after their relocation, 85 per cent of survey respondents had their names registered on leases of house sites, and the percentage registered on house titles grew from 11.5 to 26 per cent. One-third of respondents, twice as many as in Fuzhou, reported that their property rights improved after land expropriation. The property gains made by Changsha women were secured through a sequential process of claim-making by women and systematic regulatory reform by local authorities. Among respondents to Survey 2, 21 per cent reported that they had complained to the government, the WF, the media or courts over compensation issues. Many had challenged the marital expropriation rules initially adopted by

42 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 villages to limit the number of compensation claimants. In Yuelu District, a WF official said that women’s appeals against villages’ gender exclusivity grew to constitute around one-third of all petitions lodged with the District authorities. To stem the tide of petitions, the WF provided legal aid to women contesting village infringements of their property rights, the district government prohibited Village Committees from discriminating against women on the basis of their marital status, and the Land Bureau began to register the names of all adult household members on the leases of house sites. A similar process was underway in Changsha County: “Early on, ‘married out’ women and their kids weren’t eligible for compensation. It was only after the women complained to the town government that they got some, along with the women whose husbands married in. Afterwards, everyone whose hukou was there got a full share of compensation.” In 2007, the municipal government directed that all registered village residents were eligible for compensation, and Village Committees must set aside 2 per cent of their total compensation fund to pay compensation to any registered residents unjustly excluded. Some villages sought to comply with the letter, if not the spirit, of the regulations by creating gender differentiated age-categories of compensation beneficiaries. In one, adult women received only half the amount allotted to men. In another, the age range of gender categories varied: Registered residents were divided into five age categories. Those under 9 got 11,200 yuan. From 9 to 18, they got 18,900 yuan. At 19 it increased to 25,200. Then it went up to 31,000 for men aged from 23 to 50, and for women from 25 to 40. Old folk like me got 24,800, but I got a double share because we’ve an only child. Overall, however, as a consequence of women’s activism, gender disparities in civil rights were reduced. Disparities in organizational representation also decreased. The proportion of women grew from less than 20 per cent on Village Committees to around two- thirds on Community Committees. Yet, in contrast to Yuxi, because Changsha governments exercised much greater control over Community Committees, the disjuncture between women’s increased political representation and their continued exclusion from substantive policy-making became a point of contention. Women’s dissatisfaction centered primarily on their inability to influence local employment and welfare policy. A total of 69 per cent of Changsha respondents to Survey 2 had no remunerated work in 2008. In communities close to the city, some households substituted for lost income by renting surplus floor space, and a few women borrowed money to establish mahjong halls or retail stores. In poor households and the more remote communities, however, economic stress intensified. Almost half the respondents reported that their households’ debt had increased, largely because they had lost their livelihoods and their households’ compensation was insufficient to purchase replacement housing. Community officials confirmed interviewees’ reports that indebtedness and impoverishment were sparking domestic conflicts.

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 43

Local authorities responded by strengthening the social entitlements of expropriated people. Free vocational training courses and job advice were provided. As in Yuxi, these were of limited effectiveness in addressing older women’s employment needs, because training curricula and the age limits for enrolment mirrored—and so reinforced—the gender and age structure of the labor market. Unlike Yuxi, however, Changsha had established a comprehensive social safety net. Expropriated people’s participation in urban commercial insurance schemes was encouraged and subsidized. Thus, although Changsha respondents’ had lower per capita average incomes than their Fuzhou counterparts, their rate of participation in commercial insurance schemes was higher, with 13 per cent holding social insurance, and 18 per cent, medical insurance. The remainder held rural cooperative medical insurance. As welfare provider of last resort, the government also provided urban dibao to expropriated households who fell below the municipal poverty line. By 2008, dibao had become the primary source of livelihood for around 7 per cent of respondents. Dorothy Solinger argues that receipt of dibao renders recipients “politically pacified, socially marginalized and excluded, silent and discarded, the effectual detritus of the country’s modern, metropolitan development”.56 Based, as it is, on the model of the unitary household, with payments pegged to local poverty lines and applicants humiliated by the publication of evaluations of their circumstances, the dibao system is undoubtedly flawed. But does it render recipients socially excluded and politically pacified? Within households, equal per capita provision of dibao might counter the subordination which women experience from economic dependence. Significantly, we found that, although unemployment among Changsha respondents was 14 percentage points higher than among Fuzhou respondents, because in Changsha women had access to social insurance and dibao, the proportion economically dependent on family support there was 12 points lower than in Fuzhou, at 43 per cent. Moreover, Changsha dibao recipients expressed greater confidence in their influence over household decision-making than did poor respondents in Fuzhou. Dibao provision also limited income inequalities among expropriated people around Changsha, checking the anxieties about social disparity, exclusion and insecurity felt by Fuzhou villagers. Finally, Changsha recipients’ conviction that they were morally and legally entitled to dibao as restitution for loss of their livelihoods prompted them to collective action. In December 2008, district and county governments attempted to rein in welfare expenditure by applying more restrictive asset-based conditions on welfare eligibility. Dozens of households which had purchased air-conditioners to cope with the summer heat during their sojourn in relocation barracks suddenly had their dibao payments cut. The response from women was immediate: “We’ve rebelled! We padlocked the Community Office, and we are demanding that, if they cancel our dibao, then the higher-level government has to pay us a land-use fee. So now a group of us has gone off to the County government to raise hell!”

56 Dorothy J. Solinger, “The Dibao Recipients: Mollified Anti-Emblem of Urban Modernization”, presented at ANU 26 March 2009, pp. 3-4.

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Public notices announcing which households’ dibao payments had been reduced were ripped up, and the notice boards defaced. Wedged between their outraged neighbors and government, community staff chafed at the financial constraints and lack of policy autonomy that prevented them from resolving the dispute locally. In Changsha, it was partly as a result of women’s protests over villages’ marital expatriation rules that all expropriated residents became entitled to inclusive, comprehensive compensation packages. Beyond demanding equal restitution on the basis of residential registration, women also were agitating for a voice in local policy-making, and for land development transactions to be made conditional on government guarantees of residents’ livelihood and welfare. In struggling to enhance their own entitlements, women in Changsha were creating a broader arena of citizenship than those in Fuzhou and Yuxi.

Conclusions In acting to change citizenship criteria, people participate in remodeling the composition of the political community and the substance of entitlements shaping members’ political, economic and social interactions. Where gender serves as a criterion of citizenship, transformation of that criterion profoundly alters gendered distributions of power and wealth. To illustrate the centrality of gender politics to changes in citizenship, we have focused on the contradictory impulses spurring expropriated women to act as citizens, the different principles on which they base their citizenship claims, and the variations in citizenship entitlements being created in China’s urban frontier. From this vantage, we have shown that a failure to recognize the gender politics of village citizenship is to miss one of the most common ways in which villages differentiate citizens’ status, rights and relations. In areas where land has been expropriated for urban development, many male-dominated village organizations have adopted citizenship rules that make women’s membership conditional on their marriage to local men, thereby perpetuating men’s control of collective and household wealth. Those gendered formulations of village citizenship adversely affect not only women but also their households and communities. Deprived of agricultural livelihoods, adequate land compensation and social protection, large numbers of women become economically dependent on their families. Households with higher dependency ratios have lower per capita incomes and living standards, and are susceptible to indebtedness and domestic strife. Economic dependence exacerbates women’s social marginalization and insecurity. Communities in which more women are economically dependent display greater intra-community inequality. Given the rapidity and scale of urban development in China, these findings suggest that there is an urgent need for municipal governments to monitor villages’ management of land compensation to ensure that women equally participate in, and benefit from land development and urbanization. Our research also sheds light on how citizenship is achieved through struggles to determine who is a citizen. Like the rural “rightful resisters” described by O’Brien and Li, women affected by land expropriation also “worked the territory between

LAND EXPROPRIATION AND THE GENDER POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP 45 different levels of government”57 and justified their claims by reference to rights granted by custom, law and policy. The women in our study were divided, rather than united, however, by their defense of different conceptions of citizenship. Certainly, those naturalized as village citizens defended the right of their “self governing” communities to use patrilineality and virilocality as criteria of membership and entitlement. Conversely, excluded women defended rights accorded them as equal members of a larger political community—the nation—when demanding that state authorities overturn their expulsion from villages and enforce their residential and property entitlements. Where they succeeded, as in Changsha, citizenship became more equal and inclusive. Both groups of women (indeed, all affected villagers) appealed to the state to protect their standards of living. Commenting that such demands for welfare from the state must be distinguished from demands for legal protections against the state and participation in the state, Elizabeth Perry cautions that it is belief in collective socio–economic justice, rather than a desire for individual civil and political rights, that distinguishes political thought and action in China.58 Socio–economic justice was the pre-eminent concern for most of our respondents. However, analysis of their demands reminds us that, in practice, citizenship struggles span the conceptual distinctions which scholars draw between rights that are individual and collective and those that are civil, political and social. Convinced of the justice of their individual property rights, some women challenged village collectives’ rules and governments’ failure to enforce legislation. Many demanded legal protection from governments’ predatory land-taking, and sought social entitlements as recompense for their expropriation. Aspiring to influence employment and social policy, Changsha women did question constraints on their participation in the deliberative life of their communities. Reformulating Marshall’s and Perry’s arguments, we therefore conclude that, in China, people’s demands for the right to participate politically might arise from their attempts to defend their civil entitlements against state predation and claim welfare from the state.59 Finally, our comparison of citizenship trajectories in the perimeter of the three municipalities draws attention to gender politics as a source of regional variation in urban policy, governance and citizens’ entitlements. In Fuzhou, Yuxi and Changsha, interactions between women denied compensation, village organizations and state authorities contributed to differentiation in the gendered configuration, breadth and strength of residents’ rights to property, political participation, employment and social protection. Women’s reorientation of citizenship in the urban frontier is a facet of China’s urbanization that deserves further research.

57 Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China, p. 65. 58 Elizabeth J. Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of ‘Rights’”; see also Lianjiang Li, “Rights Consciousness and Rules Consciousness in Contemporary China”, The China Journal, No. 64 (July 2010), pp. 47-68. 59 Thomas H. Marshall, Sociology at the Crossroads.

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA

Lianjiang Li∗

Rights claims by ordinary people in reform-era China have taken many different forms. Workers claim a right to “labor and subsistence”, pensioners claim the “sacred right not to have to labor”, and migrant workers claim the right to organize unions.1 Farmers assert a right to refuse to pay the grain tax when a township breaches its responsibilities, a right to reject excessive fees and a right to elect village leaders.2 Moreover, rights talk is not simply empty. In numerous cases, efforts to claim lawful rights have spurred disruptive protests. By 2003 “rights-defense activities” (weiquan huodong 维权活动), such as petitioning and demonstrating, had become so widespread that a Chinese commentator dubbed it “the Year of Citizenship Rights”.3 Scholars, however, disagree about how to understand popular rights claims and the contention associated with them. Kevin O’Brien and Lianjiang Li suggest that farmers’ claims about rights represent a nascent rights consciousness and that rightful resistance

∗ For helpful comments on earlier drafts, I would like to thank Susanne Brandstädter, Timothy Cheek, David Kelly, Andrew Kipnis, Pierre Landry, Melanie Manion, Andrew Mertha, Luigi Tomba, Linda Wong, two anonymous reviewers and especially Kevin O’Brien. Financial support for survey and post-survey fieldwork was provided by the Research Council of the Hong Kong Government and the Program of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 1 Ching Kwan Lee, “From the Specter of Mao to the Spirit of the Law: Labor Insurgency in China”, Theory and Society, Vol. 31, No. 2 (April 2002), p. 207; William Hurst and Kevin J. O’Brien, “China’s Contentious Pensioners”, The China Quarterly, No. 170 (June 2002), p. 351; Feng Chen, “Individual Rights and Collective Rights: Labor’s Predicament in China”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1 (March 2007), pp. 67-69. 2 Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers and Popular Resistance in Contemporary China”, Modern China, Vol. 22, No. 1 (January 1996), p. 41; Thomas P. Bernstein and Xiaobo Lü, Taxation without Representation in Contemporary Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers, Elections, and Citizenship in Contemporary China”, Modern China, Vol. 27, No. 4 (October 2001), pp. 407-35. 3 Wang Yi, “2003: gongmin quanli nian” (2003: The Year of Citizenship Rights), Xinwen zhoukan (China Newsweek), No. 47 (22 December 2003), pp. 20-21.

THE CHINA JOURNAL, NO. 64, JULY 2010 48 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 could “evolve into a more far-reaching counterhegemonic project”.4 Similarly, Merle Goldman argues that demands for popular rights “indicate a bottom-up claim to citizenship” which may precipitate “a fundamental breakthrough in state–society relations”.5 Elizabeth Perry, on the other hand, believes that what appears to be rights consciousness is instead a historically-familiar “rules consciousness”. As Perry sees it, popular contention driven by rules consciousness implies no major challenge to the Party-state and can “undergird rather than undermine” the political system by providing “an effective check on the misbehavior of state authorities”.6 This debate, which came to a head in two panels at the 2009 Association of Asian Studies meeting,7 calls for a clearer definition of rules and rights consciousness along with tests that allow us to distinguish between the two. What is rules consciousness? What is rights consciousness? How can we tell one from the other? This paper conducts an analysis of claims about rights made by aggrieved workers and farmers to define rules consciousness. It then refines existing definitions of rights consciousness in light of Chinese political practice. To distinguish rules consciousness from rights consciousness, this paper uses survey data to illustrate how four types of claims by members of one social group—farmers—are related to trust in central and township leaders.

Rules Consciousness Perry argues that the following statement by retired workers from Anyuan reflects rules consciousness:

4 Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers and Popular Resistance”, p. 55; Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 121-26. 5 Merle Goldman, Political Rights in Post-Mao China (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 2007), pp. 71ff. For similar arguments, see Benjamin L. Liebman, “Class Action Litigation in China”, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 111, No. 6 (April 1998), pp. 1523-41; David Zweig, “The Externalities of Development: Can New Political Institutions Manage Rural Conflicts?”, in Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden (eds), Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 132; Guobin Yang, “Civil Society in China: A Dynamic Field of Study”, China Review International, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring 2002), p. 11; Mary E. Gallagher, “Mobilizing the Law in China: ‘Informed Disenchantment’ and the Development of Legal Consciousness”, Law and Society Review, Vol. 40, No. 4 (December 2006), p. 785; Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p. 27. 6 Elizabeth J. Perry, “Studying Chinese Politics: Farewell to Revolution?”, The China Journal, No. 57 (January 2007), p. 21; Elizabeth J. Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of ‘Rights’: From Mencius to Mao—and Now”, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 6, No. 1 (March 2008), p. 37, pp. 45-47; Elizabeth J. Perry, “A New Rights Consciousness?”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 20, No. 3 (July 2009), pp. 17-20. 7 The panel on “Rights Consciousness vs. Rules Consciousness in Chinese Society: Data and Debate on Farmers, Migrant Workers, and Intellectuals”; and Perry’s contribution to the roundtable on “The Chinese Student Movement Twenty Years After: Continuities and Changes in Popular Contention since 1989”. The Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, 26–29 March 2009.

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS 49

Please permit us, along with the mass of retired workers across the country, to enjoy the newly designated wage standards. If you ignore this, and refuse to resolve the issue of our legitimate rights and interests, we will [after obtaining the city government’s permission and protection], at an appropriate time, in accordance with our constitutionally given rights, organize a large-scale protest demonstration. We will enlist the assistance of the media in upholding justice, or we may ask relevant government agencies to investigate the internal economic operations of the company. This is the democratic and legitimate supervisory authority given to us by the Chinese Communist Party. Of course a confrontation is not our first choice; our choice is a peaceful livelihood.8 In this statement, from an open letter to the Party secretary and the chairman of the board of trustees of the Ping mining company in Anyuan, a group of retirees asserted three rights: the economic right to enjoy wage standards set by the central government, the legal and constitutional right to organize demonstrations, and the Party-granted right to supervise the management of a state-owned enterprise. The claims are clearly rules-based: the substance of the claimed entitlement is enforcement of existing rules; existing rules form the basis for the claim; and the purpose of the claim is to ensure that local rule-enforcement authorities comply with existing central policies and state laws.9 The retirees’ claims seem to be framed in five different steps.10 First, upon learning about new wage standards the retirees realized that the company had denied them pension increases in spite of government wage policies. Such awareness generated or reinforced skepticism toward company authorities, who, the retirees believed, “think nothing of [government] documents and do not care whether we live or die”. Second, the retirees perceived the vulnerability of company leaders who, they argued, had violated rules made by the Center. Third, the retirees believed that they were on equal footing with company decision-makers in relation to rules made by the central government: “We hope that company leaders understand our good intentions and deal with the victims— retirees of the Ping Mine—on equal standing” [italics added]. Fourth, the retirees located an institutional opening to pursue their claims without breaking the law. Lastly, they

8 Elizabeth J. Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of ‘Rights’”, p. 47. In brackets is an omitted clause. For the Chinese original, see Yu Jianrong, Zhongguo gongren jieji zhuangkuang: Anyuan shilu (The Plight of China’s Working Class: Annals of Anyuan) (Hong Kong: Mirror Book, 2006), p. 372. 9 For the analytical framework, see Ian Shapiro, The Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 14. 10 On framing, see David A. Snow, E. Burke Rochford, Jr., Steven K. Worden and Robert D. Benford, “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 51, No. 4 (August 1986), pp. 464-81. For analyses of framing in contentious politics of contemporary China, see William Hurst, “Mass Frames and Worker Protest”; Feng Chen, “Worker Leaders and Framing Factory-based Resistance”, in Kevin J. O’Brien (ed.), Popular Protest in China (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 71-87, 88-107; Patricia M. Thornton, “Framing Dissent in Contemporary China”, The China Quarterly, No. 171 (September 2002), pp. 661-80.

50 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 seemed to have derived a feeling of empowerment from their faith in the Center, which they believed would not countenance abusive actions by the company: “The Center’s policies are good and welcomed by ordinary people. The main problem is that the policies are not implemented down below, and the Center must not know about it”.11 Viewed from such a perspective, fighting for protection from abusive local authorities is not overly risky and stands a reasonable chance of succeeding. Taking into account how it is expressed and framed, rules consciousness can be defined as a combination of awareness of the necessity for protection from local rule-enforcement authorities and eagerness to obtain such protection through direct or indirect participation in rule-enforcement. 12 Rules consciousness presumes skepticism toward local rule-enforcement authorities and a sense of equality with them before the rules. In its simplest sense, rules consciousness implies a demand to preempt or halt abusive rule-enforcement, but it involves no challenge to the legitimacy of existing rules, no demand for rule change or new rules, and no demand for participation in rule-making. As Perry points out, the mobilization of rules consciousness can be a force that serves political and regime stability.13 Public pronouncements by the powerless under authoritarian rule, however, cannot simply be taken at face value. In fact, once we look at their hidden discourse and their actions, it is clear that the Anyuan retirees possessed something more than rules consciousness. In their “public transcripts”,14 the retirees sounded as though they had faith in the city government, pledging to organize a demonstration “after obtaining the city government’s permission and protection”. In fact, they had no illusions about city officials. As they explained to a trusted observer: “Workers’ representatives have analyzed [the situation] and concluded that it is impossible for the public security bureau to approve the application. Although China has a Law on Processions and Demonstrations, when has any application under it been approved?” The Anyuan retirees submitted an application simply to “apply pressure” on the company and to demonstrate their good will in intending to “take strong measures only after courteous ones failed”. They did not care much if the public security bureau turned down their application. What they pledged not to do was in fact exactly what they planned to do.15 The plan which the Anyuan retirees hatched was to repeat what they had done in 2004, when they had staged a mass demonstration without permission. As one participant proudly recounted: On August 26 [2004], we retired workers finally took action ... It was a great event. Thousands of workers went to Pingxiang City from all directions and gathered at

11 Yu Jianrong, Zhongguo gongren jieji zhuangkuang, p. 352, see also pp. 114, 356, 330-31, 331, 372. 12 Contrast p. 54, below, and its accompanying note 30, on rights consciousness. 13 Elizabeth J. Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of ‘Rights’”, p. 45. 14 On the distinction between public and hidden transcripts, see James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 15 Yu Jianrong, Zhongguo gongren jieji zhuangkuang, pp. 372, 366-67.

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS 51

the Mining Bureau. The whole city was shocked, and traffic on several streets was blocked. The Pingxiang city government dispatched many policemen, but the police could do nothing about us. We didn’t shout any slogans, raise any banners, beat anybody, nor did we occupy any public spaces. We just walked toward the Mining Bureau as if we were going shopping, and then we just stood in the square in front of the Mining Bureau. Nobody can forbid us to walk; neither can anybody forbid us just to stand there. Our action truly terrified the officials. They begged us to send in representatives for negotiation and ordered the mining companies to pick up the workers. In the end, we sent in representatives to negotiate with them, and they received our petition.16 When taking this action, the Anyuan retirees went significantly beyond a demonstration of the rules consciousness that they had articulated in the open letter. They knew there was a law on demonstrations, yet they deliberately sidestepped it. They insisted that they were just walking on the street and standing in the square rather than staging a parade or demonstration, yet they dispatched representatives to negotiate with the authorities. Moreover, they showed no unease about having broken the law. Instead, they seemed to take great pride in what they did. In the course of transcending rules consciousness, the Anyuan retirees also made claims that were seemingly “contained” but in fact were “boundary-spanning” or even “transgressive”.17 In their open letters to top managers of the mining company, Anyuan retirees invoked two kinds of rules to justify their claims. They cited “primary rules”, namely, enforceable laws and regulations such as the national wage policy, the Labor Law, the Trade Union Law and the Law on State-owned Enterprises. They also cited “secondary rules” that govern rule-making, 18 for example, the Constitution, the principle of “creating a party that promotes justice and rules for the people”, Jiang Zemin’s notion of “the three-represents”, and “’s theory that the objective of developing the economy is to improve people’s livelihood”. 19 More importantly, the retirees cited soft, secondary principles as if they were enforceable primary rules. Although the retirees did not explicitly demand that central leaders comply with the Constitution and the ruling party’s legitimating formulas, some of them had a reason to do so. These workers expressed grave doubts about the Center itself, complaining that the Communist Party was “no longer a party of workers”.20

16 Ibid., p. 359. 17 See Douglas McAdam, Charles Tilly and Sidney G. Tarrow, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 7; Kevin J. O’Brien, “Neither Transgressive nor Contained: Boundary-Spanning Contention in China”, Mobilization, Vol. 8, No. 1 (February 2003), pp. 51-64. 18 On the distinction between “primary” and “secondary” rules, see Herbert L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 89-96; Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 19-31. 19 Yu Jianrong, Zhongguo gongren jieji zhuangkuang, pp. 330-31. 20 Ibid., pp. 62-63, pp. 112-14, p. 222, p. 241, p. 262.

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That Anyuan retirees moved beyond rules consciousness in action and in their hidden discourse is open to two interpretations. One is that they believed, as many Chinese have done for centuries, that “it is right to rebel” against abusive local authorities without challenging the top ruler. 21 The other is that they had rights consciousness. I argue that if the Anyuan retirees’ distrust in the Party is associated with an explicit demand that the Party abide by its own ruling principles, that claim is best understood as rights consciousness.22 Like workers in many cities, 23 some Chinese farmers share the rules consciousness articulated by Anyuan retirees. These farmers carefully frame their claims within existing rules in their public announcements. They share workers’ skepticism toward local rule-enforcement authorities as well as their sense of equality with local officials before the rules made by the central government. Typical public statements of rules consciousness made by farmers include: Failing to carry out the “three-linkage-policy” amounts to unilaterally breaking a contract. I have the right not to pay the grain tax. If you [local officials] don’t listen to the Center, then we won’t listen to you.24 Also like the Anyuan retirees, many farmers often transcend rules consciousness both in action and in what they say behind closed doors. First, some farmers pledge to follow certain rules but then bypass them when popular action begins. For instance, a Hunan villager pledged to lodge petitions according to the Regulations Concerning Works of Letters and Visits (1995) but ignored its restriction on collective visits by dividing a large group into small teams; other villagers in Hunan held demonstrations without seeking permission and insisted that they were publicizing policies rather than staging a protest parade. Second, some farmers argue that they are in the right when they break the law if they are impelled to do so by abusive local authorities. A protest leader in Hengyang, Hunan, for instance, admitted that he organized a traffic blockade in the county seat but insisted that he was driven to adopt a “forceful” measure after the county government turned a deaf ear to his rightful demands. Finally, some farmers cite both primary and secondary rules to justify their claims. Several farmers from Hengyang County, for instance, insisted in 2003 that they had

21 Elizabeth J. Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of ‘Rights’”, p. 45. 22 A favorite strategy of dissidents in the former socialist countries in Eastern Europe was to demand that Communist regimes comply with their own constitutions, see Jeremy Brooke Straughn, “Taking the State at its Word: The Arts of Consentful Contention in the German Democratic Republic”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 110, No. 6 (May 2005), pp. 1598-650; Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 2. 23 See Mary E. Gallagher, “Mobilizing the Law in China”, p. 785; William Hurst and Kevin J. O’Brien, “China’s Contentious Pensioners”, p. 351; Feng Chen, “Individual Rights and Collective Rights”, pp. 67-69; Ching Kwan Lee and Yuan Shen, “The Paradox and Possibility of a Public Sociology of Labor”, Work and Occupations, Vol. 36, No. 2 (May 2009), p. 120. 24 Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers and Popular Resistance”, pp. 41, 47.

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS 53 a right to establish a farmers’ association because the Constitution granted citizens the freedom of association.25 Unlike the Anyuan retirees, at least as reported by Perry and by Yu, some farmers have also made claims that unambiguously represent rights consciousness.

Rights Consciousness Scholars have defined rights consciousness as the awareness of existing rights, the willingness to assert rights, and the understanding of social relations in terms of rights.26 Rights, in turn, are commonly defined as individual claims against the state. Negative rights prescribe what the state must not do to its citizens: “If someone has a right to something, then it is wrong for the government to deny it to him even though it would be in the general interest to do so”. Positive rights, on the other hand, prescribe what the state is obliged to provide its citizens.27 Existing definitions of rights consciousness do not apply fully to China because they presuppose a tradition of rights and politically independent rights-enforcement institutions, which are largely absent.28 The absence of institutionalized rights, however,

25 Yu Jianrong, Dangdai Zhongguo nongmin de weiquan kangzheng: Hunan Hengyang kaocha (Organized Peasant Resistance in Contemporary China: An Investigation of Hengyang County of Hunan Province) (Beijing: Zhongguo Wenhua Chubanshe, 2007), pp. 80-81, 115, 307-09, 356. 26 For definitions of rights consciousness, see Stephen L. Wasby, “History of the Court: Rights Consciousness in Contemporary Society”, in Kermit L. Hall, James W. Ely, Jr., Joel B. Grossman and William M. Wiecek (eds), The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 398; Austin Sarat, “Studying American Legal Culture: An Assessment of Survey Evidence”, Law and Society Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (September 1977), p. 450; James L. Gibson, Raymond M. Duch and Kent L. Tedin, “Democratic Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union”, Journal of Politics, Vol. 54, No. 2 (May 1992), p. 343; James L. Gibson and Raymond M. Duch, “Support for Rights in Western Europe and the Soviet Union: An Analysis of the Beliefs of Mass Publics”, in Frederick D. Weil, Jeffrey Huffman and Mary Gautier (eds), Research on Democracy: Democratization in Eastern and Western Europe (Greenwich: JAI Press, 1993), p. 242; Michael W. McCann, Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 7; Michael McCann, “Law and Social Movements: Contemporary Perspectives”, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Vol. 2 (2006), p. 22. 27 Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, p. 269. On the evolution of rights in Western Europe, see Thomas H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship, and Social Development (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976). 28 On conceptions of rights advocated by Chinese authorities and intellectuals, see Gungwu Wang, “Power, Rights and Duties in Chinese History”, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, No. 3 (January 1980), pp. 1-26; Andrew J. Nathan, Chinese Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Edwards R. Randle, Louis Henkin and Andrew J. Nathan, Human Rights in Contemporary China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Stephen C. Angle, Human Rights and Chinese Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Randall P. Peerenboom, “What’s Wrong with Chinese Rights: Towards a Theory of Rights with Chinese Characteristics”, Harvard Human Rights

54 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 is not a barrier to appreciating the necessity of having rights, nor is it an obstacle to asserting rights as if one had them. Quite a number of Chinese farmers, as Kevin O’Brien has observed, “are acting like citizens before they are citizens”.29 Based on these considerations, this study defines rights consciousness as a combination of awareness of the necessity for protection from central rule-making authorities and eagerness to acquire such protection through direct or indirect participation in rule- making.30 Rights consciousness so defined presumes skepticism toward central rule- making authorities and an understanding that the ruled are equal with the ruler in relation to general constitutional principles that govern rule-making and/or antecedent principles that are, in Perry’s words, “both prior—and superior—to” political rules.31 Doubt about central leaders’ commitment to rule in the interests of the ruled, in particular, is a necessary condition for the birth of rights consciousness. Some Chinese farmers have explicitly expressed their doubts about central rule- making authorities. A Hunan villager, for instance, argued that “the lawmakers are not quite fair to us, so the laws themselves are unfair”. He compared and Deng Xiaoping to two generations of shepherds. The father drove his herds to poor grasslands and kept them half-starved and weak out of fear of rebellion; the son drove his herds to greener grasslands but allowed his dogs and hawks to fatten themselves on the cattle.32 Another Hunan farmer argued that farmers had been treated like “modern slaves” (xiandai nongnu 现代农奴) for much of the time since 1949.33 He challenged

Journal, Vol. 6 (Spring 1993), pp. 29-58; Randall P. Peerenboom, “Human Rights, China, and Cross-Cultural Inquiry: Philosophy, History, and Power Politics”, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 55, No. 2 (April 2005), pp. 283-320; Elizabeth J. Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of ‘Rights’”; Peter Zarrow, “Anti-Despotism and ‘Rights Talk’: The Intellectual Origins of Modern Human Rights Thinking in the Late Qing”, Modern China, Vol. 34, No. 2 (April 2008), pp. 179-209. 29 Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers, Elections, and Citizenship in Contemporary China”, p. 425. 30 The distinction between rule-making and rule-enforcement authority is relative. When they face a dictator, who holds both ultimate rule-making and rule-enforcement powers, individuals who are aware of the necessity of having protection from rule-enforcement power and are eager to obtain such protection have rights rather than rules consciousness. As Georg Simmel points out: “If the absolute despot accompanies his orders by the threat of punishment or the promise of reward, this implies that he himself wishes to be bound by the decrees he issues. The subordinate is expected to have the right [italics added] to request something of him; and by establishing the punishment, no matter how horrible, the despot commits himself not to impose a more severe one” (Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, translated, edited and with an introduction by Kurt H. Wolff [Glencoe: Free Press, 1950], pp. 186-87). Moreover, provincial-level people’s congresses in China have the authority to enact local regulations, see Young Nam Cho, Local People’s Congresses in China: Development and Transition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) and Ming Xia, The People’s Congresses and Governance in China: Toward a Network Model of Governance (London: Routledge, 2007). 31 Elizabeth J. Perry, “Chinese Conceptions of ‘Rights’”, p. 39. 32 Yu Jianrong, Dangdai Zhongguo nongmin de weiquan kangzheng, pp. 510, 515-17. 33 Ibid., pp. 477-79.

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS 55 the legitimacy of current laws and policies and questioned the rulers’ commitment to rule in the interests of farmers with a barrage of questions, including: Why does the state make policies? What are policies for? Why does the state make laws? What are laws for? Do policies and laws of the state serve the public interest, private interest, or the interest of the powerful? Are policies and laws weapons made exclusively to control ordinary folks? Are policies and laws regulations that endow powerholders with the highest status and particularly high-end entertainment? Are policies and laws thunder and lightning that powerholders use to decide the life and death of common people? Are they tools of dictatorship?34 Since rights consciousness is directed against central rule-making authorities, claims that embody it should have the following features: the substance of the claimed entitlement should be rule changes, which involve the abolition of existing rules and/or the making of new rules; the basis of the entitlement should be antecedent principles and/or general constitutional rules that govern rule- making; and the purpose of the entitlement should be to stop or prevent central leaders from ruling arbitrarily. Chinese farmers have made claims with precisely these features. First, some of them, often and loudly, demand rule changes. In the last two decades, for instance, many villagers have demanded that the discriminatory household registration system be abolished. When asked to comply with birth control policy, a farmer in Beijing suburb responded: “Give me an [urban] household registration, give me labor insurance, then I agree to be sterilized immediately”.35 Similarly, tens of thousands of farmers in Hanyuan County, Sichuan Province, who were forced to relocate owing to dam construction, demanded in 2004 that they be compensated at the same level as urban residents. 36 Some farmers have even insisted on popular election of top national leaders. A Hebei villager, for instance, argued that “all government leaders, including the state chairman, should be directly elected by the masses rather than appointed by higher levels”.37 Chinese farmers also justify their demand for rule changes by invoking antecedent principles. A Hunan villager, for instance, argued that farmers should have the right to own contracted land because “the land of China was cultivated

34 Ibid., pp. 488-89. 35 Li Kang, “Jiceng zhengquan yu jiceng shequ” (Grassroots Government and Grassroots Community), in Li Xueju, Wang Zhenyao and Tang Jinsu (eds), Zhongguo xiangzhen zhengquan de xianzhuang yu gaige (Current Situation and Reform of Chinese Township Government) (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Chubanshe, 1994), p. 267. 36 Personal correspondence with a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, October 2007. 37 Author’s interview, Hebei, September 1993.

56 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 by ancestors of the Chinese nation and belongs to all descendants of Emperors Yan and Huang. The people are the landlord and should have the sovereign right to use and manage the land”.38 Lastly, some Chinese farmers have demanded that central leaders be held accountable to the popular will. A farmer from Anhui, for instance, argued in 1998 that “taxpayers pay taxes to their own government so that the government can more effectively fulfill its legal obligations to taxpayers. If the government fails to perform its duties, then taxpayers do not have to pay taxes”. 39 Some farmers have also made more pointed claims against unaccountable central leaders. A villager from Hunan, for instance, stated that “the state’s revenue is tax money, which comes from the people, so the people should have the right to supervise and audit [its use]”. He further argued that farmers should have the right to elect and dismiss all “people’s servants”: When so-called people’s servants are rogues and ignore their duties, why don’t the people have the right to elect and dismiss their servants? … The people should be the master. Popular sovereignty is above everything else and it is greater than everything else. The people should have the right to manage and supervise everything.40 Another Hunan farmer, Ling Chunwei, put forth a similar claim for accountability. According to him, the Constitution is an agreement reached between the rulers and the ruled through consultation, and it is binding on both parties: The Constitution and the law are documents agreed to by the top ruling group and the ruled through communication, consultation and compromise under a given historical condition in a country. They require compliance from both sides and are binding for both sides … If the government is faithful to the law and the people, the people will believe that it is a good government and rally closely around it. With the people rallying around it, the government will be an invincible force and will sweep all die-hard and corrupt elements onto the rubbish heap of history. Otherwise the government will be cast aside by the people and eliminated by history.41 As politically savvy as he was, Ling must have appreciated that he was not describing how the Constitution and related laws were agreed to in China. In his ever- so-reasonable language he was in fact prescribing how the Constitution and laws should be made and arguing why they should bind both ruler and ruled. He wrote as if the people already had a right to participate in Constitution-making as well as a right to retract their consent if the “top ruling group” failed to honor its responsibilities. Like many other farmers, he was, as Kevin O’Brien has put it, “cloaking a daring

38 Yu Jianrong, Dangdai Zhongguo nongmin de weiquan kangzheng, p. 496. 39 Remark written by a survey correspondent from Anhui Province in 1998. 40 Yu Jianrong, Dangdai Zhongguo nongmin de weiquan kangzheng, pp. 497, 487. 41 Ibid., p. 111.

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS 57 proactive claim in reactive terms, demanding citizenship rights they had never enjoyed, while making it appear they had just been deprived of them”.42

An Empirical Test Admittedly, the farmers quoted above were exceptionally thoughtful and articulate. To see whether rights consciousness is also found among ordinary villagers, this section uses survey data to examine how farmers’ claims are related to trust in central rule-making and local rule-enforcement authorities.

Data and Methods of Analysis The survey was conducted in 2007. The field sites were D County and W County in Fujian Province, S County in Jiangxi Province, and Y County in Zhejiang Province. The four counties were selected by convenience. Sampling in each county was conducted in three stages. First, five townships were selected with probability proportionate to size (PPS). Second, four villages were selected from each township with PPS. Lastly, within each selected village around 20 randomly chosen individuals over the age of 18 were interviewed.43 Altogether 1,600 farmers were interviewed. Cases were weighted according to the rural population size of the county.44 To adjust for survey design effects, each township was treated as a stratum and each village a cluster. Unobservable factors such as claims against government authorities and trust in government leaders were tapped with multiple indicators to improve measurement reliability. Data analysis proceeded in two steps. First, confirmatory factor analysis was used to assure that multiple measures of latent theoretical constructs were reliable. A path model was then estimated to examine the relationship between claims, trust in government leaders, and other factors that might affect an individual’s rights and rules consciousness. Ordinal indicators of latent constructs were treated as crude measurements of latent continuous factors. The WLSMV (weighted least squares mean and variance adjusted) estimator was used to correct for the bias that results from having ordinal endogenous variables in the model.45 Since it relies on a local probability sample, the research focuses on exploring relationships between variables.46

42 Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers, Elections, and Citizenship”, p. 429. 43 Interviews were administered by advanced undergraduate students in the Department of Sociology at a leading university in South China under the supervision of their professor. 44 On weighting procedure and formulas, see Pierre Foy, “Calculation of Sampling Weights”, in Michael O. Martin and Dano L. Kelly (eds), Technical Report Volume II: Implementation and Analysis (Chestnut Hill: Boston College, 1997), pp. 71-80. 45 Linda K. Muthén and Bengt O. Muthén, Mplus User’s Guide, 4th Edition (Los Angeles: Muthén and Muthén, 2006). 46 See Melanie Manion, “Survey Research in the Study of Contemporary China: Learning from Local Samples”, The China Quarterly, No. 139 (September 1994), pp. 741-65.

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Four Types of Claims One difficulty with analyzing the Chinese discourse on rights is that the word for “rights” (quanli 权利) and the word for “power” or “authority” (quanli 权力) are homonyms. 47 Even fairly educated people often use the word for “power” or “authority” when they mean “rights”. For instance, when the Anyuan retirees wrote in their open letter “this is the democratic and legitimate supervisory authority (权力) given to us by the Chinese Communist Party”, they must have meant “right” (权利) because they insisted that they were striving for “lawful rights and interests” (hefa quanyi 合法权益), not “power” (权).48 Compounding these linguistic complexities, claims about rights are often made with reference to both primary and secondary rules and even in the form of value judgments, which reference abstract “principles” (li 理). For instance, when farmers argued that in principle the village Party secretary should be elected by all villagers because he managed the affairs of the whole village rather than those of Party members, they made a claim about rights.49 A third difficulty is that farmers often make rights claims without specifying which level of government they are targeting. They talk generally about “the government” (zhengfu 政府), which they use to refer to both the Center and various levels of sub-national government.50 Owing to these complications, claims are classified along two dimensions. First, a claim may be made against either local rule-enforcement authorities or central rule- making authorities. Second, a claim is reactive if the claimed entitlement is at least arguably based on existing political rules; it is proactive if the claimed entitlement requires fundamental rule changes or new rules.51 The survey showed that Chinese farmers had four types of claims. First, most issued a strong reactive claim against local rule-enforcement authorities. Over 80 per cent of 1,600 respondents agreed that farmers should have the right to demand that higher levels dismiss corrupt township officials, and over 70 per cent of the respondents agreed that farmers should have the right to disobey local policies that run against the law and central policies (see Appendix for variable descriptions). Both claims were directed against local authorities, and they were arguably based on existing rules. The State Council’s Regulation on Peasant Burdens and Labor (1991) and the Agriculture Law (1993), for instance, granted farmers the right to reject excessive fees. This type of claim is indicative of the rules consciousness that Perry discusses, if it is associated with distrust in local rule-enforcement authorities.

47 See Deborah Cao, : A Language Perspective (Burlinton: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 71-75. 48 Yu Jianrong, Zhongguo gongren jieji zhuangkuang, pp. 363, 372. 49 Lianjiang Li, “The Two-Ballot System in Shanxi Province: Subjecting Village Party Secretaries to a Popular Vote”, The China Journal, No. 42 (July 1999), p. 104. 50 See, for instance, Yu Jianrong, Dangdai Zhongguo nongmin de weiquan kangzheng, pp. 187-425. 51 On the distinction between “reactive” and “proactive” claims, see Charles Tilly, “Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain, 1758–1834”, Social Science History, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer 1993), pp. 253-80.

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS 59

Second, a large majority of farmers had a strong proactive claim against both local rule-enforcement and central rule-making authorities. Over 85 per cent of the respondents agreed that, in principle, the township head should be elected by ordinary people through voting, and nearly 40 per cent thought that the township head should be popularly elected with one-man one-vote and that such elections could be held right away. These claims were proactive because the claimed entitlement had no grounding in current rules. In fact, introducing popular election of township heads would require a constitutional amendment, and experimental township elections have been repudiated several times over the last decade by central leaders.52 This type of claim reflects rights consciousness, if it is associated with skepticism toward central rule-makers. Third, a good number of farmers issued a fairly strong reactive claim against central leaders. Over 65 per cent of the respondents agreed that ordinary people should have the right to criticize decisions made by the Center, and 64 per cent of the respondents agreed that farmers should have the right to demand the recall of central leaders who do not care about farmers. The claims were reactive because the claimed entitlement was arguably based on current rules, such as the Constitution (Art. 41) and the Communist Party’s pledge to “serve the people”. This type of claim is indicative of rights consciousness if it is associated with skepticism toward central rule-making authorities. Lastly, a significant number of farmers had a proactive claim against central leaders. Over 65 per cent of the respondents agreed that, in principle, the state chairman should be elected by ordinary people through voting, and over 15 per cent thought that the state chairman should be popularly elected with one-man one-vote and that such elections could be held right away. Like the claims about the right to elect the township government head by popular vote, these claims were proactive because the claimed entitlement had no grounding in current rules. Furthermore, these claims targeted the state chairman—the top ruling authority in China. This type of claim embodies rights consciousness, if it is associated with skepticism toward central rule-making authorities.

Trust in Government Leaders as a Criterion The crucial distinction between rules and rights consciousness, it will be recalled, is that the former presumes skepticism toward local rule-enforcement authorities while the latter presumes skepticism toward central rule-making authorities. To explore whether the four types of claims represent rights or rules consciousness, this study uses multiple regressions to examine how they correlate with confidence in central and local authorities. Trust in central leaders is used as a proxy for trust in central

52 For discussions of the constitutionality of township elections, see Lianjiang Li, “The Politics of Introducing Direct Township ”, The China Quarterly, No. 171 (September 2002), pp. 704-23; Tony Saich and Xuedong Yang, “Innovation in China Local Governance: ‘Open Recommendation and Selection’”, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Summer 2003), pp. 185-208.

60 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 rule-making authorities, and trust in township leaders is used as a proxy for trust in local rule-enforcement authorities. Trust in political leaders is multi-dimensional, as its objects include leaders’ commitment, competence, character, equity, honesty and responsiveness.53 This study focuses on trust in the government leaders’ commitment to rule in the interests of the governed,54 because skepticism in this regard is most likely to enhance appreciation of the necessity of having protection from government authorities. To measure trust in commitment to rule in the interests of the governed, respondents were asked if they believed that the township and central leaders: (1) put their own interests before those of farmers; (2) do not care whether farmers will agree when they make policies/decisions; and (3) care primarily about the powerful and rich and neglect the interests of ordinary people. Trust in township leaders was significantly weaker than that in central leaders. Over 22 per cent of the respondents had no confidence in township leaders in all three aspects, while 15 per cent had no trust in central leaders. Conversely, over 35 per cent of the respondents were confident about central leaders in all three aspects, while less than 20 per cent had full confidence in township leaders. The observation corroborates a previous finding that the Chinese people have less trust in lower levels of government than in higher levels.55 To make sure that the observed correlation between a claim about rights and trust in leaders was not spurious, eight factors that might affect a farmer’s attitude toward central and local authorities were controlled. First, internal political efficacy, which refers to the sense of competence in understanding public affairs and participating in politics,56 was controlled, since more efficacious individuals were expected to have stronger claims. Second, personal assertiveness was controlled, as more assertive individuals might make stronger claims against government authorities. The third control variable was knowledge about potentially beneficial central policies and laws, because more knowledgeable individuals might have stronger rules consciousness but weaker rights consciousness. In addition, four demographic features, namely, gender, age, education, and membership in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), were also controlled. Lastly, three county dummies, W County in Fujian Province, S County in Jiangxi Province and Y County in Zhejiang Province, were included in the analyses to control for the effect of

53 See Jack Citrin and Christopher Muste, “Trust in Government”, in John P. Robinson, Phillip R. Shaver and Lawrence S. Wrightsman (eds), Measures of Political Attitudes (San Diego: Academic Press, 1999), pp. 466-69. 54 Margaret Levi and Laura Stoker, “Political Trust and Trustworthiness”, Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 3 (2000), p. 476. 55 See Tianjian Shi, “Cultural Values and Political Trust: A Comparison of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 33, No. 4 (July 2001), pp. 401- 19; Lianjiang Li, “Political Trust in Rural China”, Modern China, Vol. 30, No. 2 (April 2004), pp. 228-58. 56 See George I. Balch, “Multiple Indicators in Survey Research: The Concept ‘Sense of Political Efficacy’”, Political Methodology, Vol. 1 (1974), pp. 1-43; Stephen C. Craig and Michael A. Maggiotto, “Measuring Political Efficacy”, Political Methodology, Vol. 8 (1982), pp. 89-110.

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS 61 unobserved differences between the four selected counties. D County in Fujian was used as the reference (see Appendix for variable descriptions).

Model and Results A path model was constructed based on the theoretical considerations discussed above. Exogenous variables listed in the rectangular box on the left-hand side of Figure 1 were allowed to influence all endogenous variables on the right-hand side of the bracket. The model held that trust in the central and township leaders affected claims about rights. Trust in township leaders was assumed to affect trust in central leaders. Internal efficacy, personal assertiveness, and legal knowledge were allowed to influence claims about rights. The model has four versions, which are identical except that they estimate, respectively, the relationship between trust in central and township leaders and the four different types of claims.57

Figure 1. Path model

Internal efficacy Gender Age Education Personal CCP member assertiveness

W county in Fujian Trust in S county in township Jiangxi Claim Y county in Zhejiang Trust in center

Legal knowledge

Note: Exogenous variables listed in the rectangular box are allowed to affect all endogenous ones on the right side of the bracket. Indicators of latent constructs and error/residual terms of endogenous variables are suppressed for the sake of clarity.

57 Missing cases were deleted listwise. For comparative purpose, the model was also fitted to a singly imputed dataset generated with the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm and five multiply imputed datasets generated using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. Results obtained from the three alternative treatments of missing values are highly consistent with each other.

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The results appearing in Table 1 can be grouped into four general findings.58 First, the reactive claim against local rule-enforcement authorities represented rules consciousness, as it was associated with skepticism toward township leaders. All else being equal, individuals with stronger doubts about township leaders had a stronger claim about the right to protest against abusive rule-enforcement authorities and the right to resist illicit local policies. The fact that confidence in central leaders had a positive effect on this claim also suggested that it represented rules consciousness. In theory, rules consciousness presumes neither trust nor distrust in central rule-makers, because it can be entirely strategic. In reality, however, rules consciousness in authoritarian China may presume some confidence in rule-making authorities, because asserting rights against local authorities is too risky if one does not believe that central leaders want faithful rule enforcement. The finding corroborates an earlier observation that farmers with more trust in central leaders are more likely to petition.59

Table 1: Correlation of Claims against Government Authorities and Trust in Government Leaders’ Commitment to the Interests of the Governed Reactive claim Proactive Reactive claim Proactive against local claim against against central claim against rule- local rule- rule-making central rule- enforcement enforcement authorities making authorities authorities authorities Trust in township -.170** -.221*** -.270*** .035 leaders (low to high) (.058) (.046) (.044) (.051) Trust in central .187*** .176** -.004 -.188*** leaders (low to high) (.057) (.058) (.041) (.033) Internal efficacy .069† .225*** .051† .109 (low to high) (.036) (.027) (.028) (.068) Personal assertiveness .105* .180** .089† .183*** (weak to strong) (.050) (.069) (.050) (.053)

58 Table 1 presents a variety of goodness-of-fit statistics for the model. These statistics indicate overall that the model fits the data very well. The model is not an exact fit (p <.001). However, three widely-accepted close fit indexes, namely, Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI, also called Non-Normed Fit Index (NNFI)), and Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation (RMSEA), meet conventional cut-off criteria, which are, respectively, CFI >.950, TLI > 950, and RMSEA <.060 (see Li-Tze Hu and Peter M. Bentler, “Cutoff Criteria for Fit Indices in Covariance Structure Analysis: Conventional Criteria versus New Alternatives”, Structural Equation Modeling, Vol. 6, No. 1 [March 1999], pp. 1- 55). Also see Herbert W. Marsh, Kit-Tai Hau and Zhonglin Wen, “In Search of Golden Rules: Comment on Hypothesis-Testing Approaches to Setting Cutoff Values for Fit Indexes and Dangers in Overgeneralizing Hu and Bentler’s (1999) Findings”, Structural Equation Modeling, Vol. 11, No. 3 (September 2004), pp. 320-41). The goodness-of-fit test results assure us that the estimated coefficients are acceptable descriptions of the data and can be used to test hypotheses. 59 Lianjiang Li, “Political Trust and Petitioning in the Chinese Countryside”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 40, No. 2 (January 2008), p. 214.

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS 63

Legal knowledge .061 -.234** .085 .005 (low to high) (.058) (.079) (.071) (.043) Gender .094 .057 .054 -.057 (0= female; 1=male) (.072) (.073) (.065) (.061) Age .004 -.002 .000 .001 (18-88 years) (.004) (.004) (.002) (.003) Education .010 .009 .016 -.009 (0-21 years) (.013) (.014) (.012) (.015) CCP membership .039 -.189* -.108 -.214* (0=non-member, (.096) (.091) (.076) (.104) 1=member) W County in Fujian .051 .200* .024 .129† (0=no; 1=yes) (.110) (.097) (.093) (.075) S County in Jiangxi -.376** .127 -.164 .126 (0=no; 1=yes) (.134) (.145) (.109) (.121) Y County in Zhejiang .076 .497*** .223* .391*** (0=no; 1=yes) (.113) (.102) (.096) (.109) R2 .113 .285 .273 .107 Model fit indexes χ2 42.872 40.525 44.645 45.563 DF 14 14 15 15 P value .000 .000 .000 .000 CFI .985 .986 .985 .984 TLI .980 .982 .980 .980 RMSEA .037 .036 .036 .037 Observations 1,498 1,488 1,492 1,489 Notes: Entries are unstandardized OLS coefficients, with standard errors in parenthesis beneath them. † p ? .05 one-sided; * p ? .05 two-sided; ** p ? .01 two-sided; *** p ? .001 two sided. Data are weighted. Second, the proactive claim against township leaders was expected to represent rights consciousness in that it required a major rule change which central leaders had repeatedly refused to make. The empirical result, however, was ambiguous. On one hand, the claim about a right to elect township heads by popular vote was associated with skepticism toward township leaders, which suggested that farmers who made the claim sought to hold township authorities accountable. On the other hand, this proactive claim was positively associated with trust in central leaders, which suggested that farmers who demand township elections did not aim to use such elections to constrain the power of central leaders, nor did they believe that central leaders opposed such elections. One may regard this claim as a tentative expression of rights consciousness, in that it asserts a new right that central rule-makers have repeatedly refused to grant. This claim, however, falls short of unambiguously representing rights consciousness, in that farmers who made it seemed to believe that central rule-making authorities would not deny them the right to elect township heads, probably because they did not know that the top leaders criticized and banned experimental township elections.

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Third, the reactive claim against central leaders might represent rights consciousness. Regardless of level of confidence in central leaders, farmers made a fairly strong claim to a right to criticize central policies and the right to demand dismissal of unresponsive central leaders. The claim bespoke rights consciousness because 1) the rules invoked were general constitutional principles and legitimating formulas, which govern rule-making; 2) the claim was associated with a neutral judgment about the trustworthiness of central leaders, which in China likely indicated lack of confidence; and 3) the purpose of the claimed entitlement was to hold central leaders accountable. Lastly, the proactive claim against rule-making authorities unambiguously represented rights consciousness, since it was associated with distrust in central leaders. All else being equal, individuals with stronger doubts about central leaders’ commitment to rule in the interests of farmers were more eager to claim a right to elect the state chairman by popular vote. The finding suggested that a significant number of farmers were aware of the necessity of having protection from central rule-makers and had a real desire to obtain that protection through popular election of the country’s top ruler. This observation provided definitive evidence that at least some farmers had rights consciousness.60

Conclusions Rules and rights consciousness in contemporary China share the common goal of stopping or preventing the arbitrary exercise of power, but they have different objects, ideational foundations and behavioral implications. Rules consciousness targets rule- enforcement authorities, presumes skepticism toward them and a sense of equality with them before central policies and state laws, and implies a demand for direct or indirect participation in rule-enforcement. Rights consciousness, on the other hand, targets rule-making authorities, presumes skepticism toward them and a sense of equality with them before antecedent principles and/or constitutional principles, and implies a demand for direct or indirect participation in rule-making. Chinese workers in Anyuan, as we can see in the research by Perry and Yu, certainly have rules consciousness, but they have also moved beyond it in action and in their closed-door discussions. Chinese farmers likewise display rules consciousness, and they too have transcended rules consciousness in rhetoric and action. Some Chinese farmers, moreover, have also unambiguously shown evidence of rights consciousness. In sum,

60 It is worth noting that, due to the lack of longitudinal data, this research cannot establish causal relationships between trust in central and township leaders and claims against government authorities. In fact, alternative models that posit different relations between trust and claims would fit the data equally well, see Ingeborg Stelzl, “Changing a Causal Hypothesis without Changing the Fit: Some Rules for Generating Equivalent Path Models”, Multivariate Behavioral Research, Vol. 21, No. 3 (July 1986), pp. 309-31.

RIGHTS CONSCIOUSNESS AND RULES CONSCIOUSNESS 65 ordinary Chinese people do have rules consciousness, but it is problematic to conclude that they only have rules consciousness and no rights consciousness.61 Both rules and rights consciousness represent a significant break from what Wei-ming Tu calls “duty consciousness”, which presumes a hierarchical order in which ordinary people are obliged to obey all political authorities.62 Popular protests driven by rules consciousness may help pave the way for building the rule by law or even the rule of law. Moreover, the mobilization of rules consciousness can contribute to the growth of rights consciousness by encouraging popular protests against local authorities, because such contention often weakens popular trust in central leaders, which in turn may foster rights consciousness. Rights and rules consciousness are not mutually exclusive. Individuals may express strong skepticism toward local rule-enforcement without losing confidence in central rule- making authorities, but they may also have strong skepticism toward both central and local authorities. Accordingly, individuals may have a combination of strong rules consciousness and weak rights consciousness, but they may also have strong rules consciousness and strong rights consciousness. The growth of rights consciousness among China’s rural population is a significant political development. Perry is right that rules consciousness is an old story in China, but important changes have occurred, too. China has undergone unprecedented changes in its economy, educational system, social life, and legal infrastructure since 1949, particularly in the last three decades. The fact that the political system continues to be authoritarian undoubtedly inhibits the growth and manifestation of rights consciousness, but the regime’s suppression of popular demands for rights may also enhance rights consciousness, especially when popular contention occurs over issues that impinge on people’s economic interests. In recent years, corruption-ridden market reforms, forced urbanization, unfair social welfare policies and predatory development projects have dramatically increased the number of confrontations between ordinary people and various levels of government authorities. More and more Chinese people attempt to assert their rights—either legally-endowed or not—within the existing political and legal system. When their efforts are frustrated, those individuals may become more distrustful about the legitimacy of existing laws and regulations, as well as about central rule-making authorities, and may thereby develop stronger rights consciousness. Analytically distinct types of political consciousness often co-exist in the mind of the same individual. Conceptual dichotomies such as rules and rights consciousness are a useful tool for classification, but a typology is always an abstraction rather than a description of reality. As we see in this study, many ordinary farmers have both rules and rights consciousness rather than only one or the other of them.

61 Further empirical work is needed to discover if Chinese workers in Anyuan and elsewhere also have rights consciousness; ongoing research by Feng Chen, Mary Gallagher, William Hurst, Ching Kwan Lee and others suggests they are quite likely to do so. 62 Wei-ming Tu, “Li as Process of Humanization”, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 22, No. 2 (April 1972), p. 196.

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The formation of two distinct ways of approaching state power may depend on whether there are national laws or central policies that ordinary people can strategically invoke to justify their claims against government authorities. On issues such as excessive local taxation, which was explicitly prohibited, Chinese farmers are more likely to develop rules consciousness. By contrast, on topics such as land appropriation, where existing laws and regulations provide at best a tenuous basis for claims, farmers are more likely to develop rights consciousness. In addition, how rights and rules consciousness are manifested may depend on the perceived risk of doing so. If people assert their rules-based claims using the politically accepted language of rights, they may also disguise their claims about rights using the even safer language of rules. To figure out the extent to which ordinary Chinese people have rights consciousness, rules consciousness and/or a combination of both, it is critical to analyze both their public claims and more hidden discourses and to examine what they pledge to do, what they actually do, and how they interpret what they have done. The fact that rules consciousness and rights consciousness often co-exist in the mind of the same individual is exactly why it is important to distinguish them from each other. Compared to those who only have rules consciousness, individuals who also have rights consciousness are more likely to press for institutional changes in the hope of converting revocable “state-endowed rights” into inalienable rights. If rights consciousness keeps a democracy healthy by turning citizens into active participants in governance, 63 the mobilization of rights consciousness may help chart a course toward a more participatory political system in China.

Appendix: Description of Variables Mean SD Std. Factor Loading

DEPENDENT VARIABLES Latent REACTIVE CLAIM AGAINST LOCAL RULE-ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES Farmers should have the right to demand higher 2.928 .630 .781 levels to dismiss corrupt township officials. Farmers should have the right to disobey local 2.784 .692 .801 policies that run against the law and central policies. 1=strongly disagree; 2=disagree; 3=agree; 4=strongly agree

63 James L. Gibson, Raymond M. Duch and Kent L. Tedin, “Democratic Values and the Transformation of the Soviet Union”, p. 345.

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Latent PROACTIVE CLAIM AGAINST LOCAL RULE-ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES In principle the township head should be elected 3.002 .564 .573 by ordinary people through voting. 1=strongly disagree; 2=disagree; 3=agree; 4=strongly agree Do you think that the township head should be 2.271 .666 .581 elected by popular vote with one-man one-vote? 1=no; 2=yes but conditions are not ripe; 3=yes and can be held now Latent REACTIVE CLAIM AGAINST CENTRAL RULE-MAKING AUTHORITIES Ordinary people should have the right to 2.687 .688 .535 criticize decisions made by the Center. Farmers should have the right to demand the 2.718 .687 .541 recall of central leaders who do not care about them. 1=strongly agree; 2=agree; 3=disagree; 4=strongly disagree Latent PROACTIVE CLAIM AGAINST CENTRAL RULE-MAKING AUTHORITIES In principle the state chairman should be elected 2.758 .711 .666 by ordinary people through voting. 1=strongly disagree; 2=disagree; 3=agree; 4=strongly agree Do you think that the state chairman should be 1.874 .664 .679 directly elected by the people through one-man one-vote? 1=no; 2=yes but conditions are not ripe; 3=yes and can be held now. EXPLANATORY VARIABLES Latent TRUST IN CENTRAL LEADERS’ COMMITMENT TO RULE IN THE INTERESTS OF THE GOVERNED Do you believe the following statements about central leaders? They put their own interests before those of 3.307 1.233 .776 farmers. They do not care if farmers agree when they 3.261 1.212 .832 make policies. They care primarily about the powerful and rich 3.409 1.232 .899 and neglect the interests of ordinary people. 1=fully believe; 2=believe; 3=half believe and half doubt; 4=disbelieve; 5=fully disbelieve Latent TRUST IN TOWNSHIP LEADERS’ COMMITMENT TO THE PUBLIC INTEREST Do you believe that the following statement about township government leaders? They put their own interests before those of 2.770 1.108 .767 farmers. They do not care if farmers agree when they make 2.895 1.086 .790 decisions.

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They care primarily about the powerful and rich 3.006 1.116 .862 and neglect the interests of ordinary people. 1=fully believe; 2=believe; 3=half believe and half doubt; 4=disbelieve; 5=fully disbelieve

CONTROL VARIABLES Latent POLITICAL EFFICACY Do you think you can do the following? Judge a county head’s performance after 3.170 .922 .857 listening to his/her work report. Judge which one is better if two county head 3.177 .939 .960 candidates debate each other. Judge if a county head’s decisions benefit or 3.285 .959 .859 harm self-interests. 1=definitely can’t; 2=can’t; 3=unsure; 4=can; 5=definitely can Latent LEGAL KNOWLEDGE What law allows ordinary people to sue the .133 .340 .928 government? What law stipulates that villagers’ committee .158 .364 .917 director must be democratically elected by villagers? What legal regulation allows ordinary people to .133 .340 .928 petition? 0=don’t know or wrong answer; 1=correct answer Latent PERSONAL ASSERTIVENESS Do the following descriptions fit your character? I’m not fearful of officials and I don’t hesitate to .483 .500 .788 object to any official who has done something wrong. I’m competitive and eager to win and I’m not .450 .498 .874 fearful of strong and bullheaded people. I can’t stand the powerful and influential .597 .491 .958 bullying the powerless and weak and I like to stand up for the weak. I’m not afraid of suffering a beating, arrest, or .487 .500 .898 death in the course of upholding justice. I can’t stand unfairness in society and I like to poke .551 .498 .777 into it even when it is not my own business. 0=no; 1 = yes DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES Gender (0 = female; 1 = male) .516 .500 Age (range 18—88) 41.27 13.602 Education (0—21 years) 8.024 3.490 CCP membership (0 = non-member; 1 = .176 .381 member) Notes: Row entries are means, standard deviations, and standardized factor loadings.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD: THE CHANGING PATTERNS OF POLITICAL STRUGGLE IN CHINA’S ELECTRIC POWER SECTOR

Ling Chen*

Since its reform and opening, China has impressed the world with a relatively successful transition to a market economy. A number of sectors, however, are still struggling to operate according to market principles. Of these, the electric power sector stands out as an important case.1 Since the 1980s, China has carried out an impressive array of reforms in the power sector, aiming to introduce competition, enhance industry efficiency and establish an “orderly and open electricity market”.2 Reforms have diversified investment sources, separated power generation from transmission and created an independent regulator and an electricity exchange center. These policies seem to have demonstrated the central government’s determination to push forward fundamental changes. They have also been carried out in a sequence that followed the standard model in other countries.3 The actual results of the reform, however, have been meager. The sector remains largely monopolistic, and the goal of introducing market competition is far from being realized. Many of the other targeted problems—such as electricity shortages, rampant corruption and substantial losses of state assets—have remained unsolved or have even worsened.

* I would like to thank Kellee Tsai, Mark Blyth, Stephan Haggard, Victor Falkenheim, Jeff Pugh, Charlie Sido, several anonymous reviewers and the editors of The China Journal for their insightful comments. I would also like to thank participants at the Association for Chinese Studies 20th Annual Conference and the Harvard East Asia Society 10th Annual Conference in 2007 for feedback on earlier versions of the paper. 1 The expression “electric power sector” is used interchangeably with “power sector”. The article focuses on thermal power, which accounts for about 75 per cent of power generation in China in 2009. 2 “Guowuyuan pizhun shishi dianli tizhi gaige fangan” (The State Council Passed the Power Sector Reform Plan), Zhongguo nengyuan (China Energy), No. 4 (2004), pp. 4-5. 3 David Victor and Thomas Heller, “Introduction and Overview”, in David Victor and Thomas Heller (eds), The Political Economy of Power Sector Reform: The Experiences of Five Major Developing Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 6.

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Why, despite repeated efforts to reform the power sector, has China failed to reach its stated objective? This article draws attention to how the policy-making process at the central level has strongly affected the substance of reforms. It finds that the reform has been trapped in a partial equilibrium due to political struggles between two groups over three rounds of reforms since 1985. On one side are the reformers, bureaucrats who view market reform as the key to improving the sector. This group pushed through radical reforms to dismantle the sector and introduce market competition. Opposing them is the conservative group, composed of industrialists from the power sector and bureaucrats from a closely related state agency whose interests were compromised by the market reform. This group has sought to defend the monopoly position of the sector through various means. Both groups have particular bureaucratic organizations as institutional constituents and have relied on leader–follower patronage ties to reinforce group solidarity. Although bureaucratic agencies have been reorganized and new group leaders have emerged at different stages of reform, the composition of each group has displayed considerable stability, and the cleavage between the two sides has remained salient throughout the reform process. A crucial cause of the stagnation lies in the way in which, paradoxically, market reform has empowered the conservative group. As the market economy gained increasing domestic and international legitimacy, conservatives switched their strategy from directly opposing reform to “playing the market reform card” by openly advocating the market approach and competing for reform opportunities. Market reform thus became a political weapon used by both groups. However, conservatives appropriated reform discourses and rationales in proposing a number of seemingly pro-reform policies, and then manipulated these to realize their anti-reform agenda. This delayed the reformers’ attempts to introduce competition, and re-consolidated the monopoly of the sector. Two features of the reform enabled and sustained the conservatives’ adoption of a new strategy without changing their conservative stance substantially. The first was the ambiguity and complexity of the concepts “market” and “market reform” in the power sector. This provided the conservatives with ample maneuvering room to formulate a series of seemingly “market friendly” measures which could be utilized to delay the reform process. As this article will demonstrate, reform measures such as corporatization of the sector and establishing an electricity exchange center have been used by conservatives as weapons to re-consolidate their monopolistic control. The second important factor has been the sector’s direct involvement in the political process. The central governing body of the power sector, both before and after its corporatization, is regarded as a quasi-government agency with the same rank in the policy-making process as central state commissions. This equips the potential loser from reform with significant bargaining leverage either to battle against or ally with other state agencies, and to seize the policy initiative from the reformist group. The change in the conservatives’ strategy suggests a new pattern of political struggle in China’s market reform. Both reformists and conservatives started to play

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 71 the market reform card in the policy-making game from the early 1990s. By examining three rounds of reforms, this article not only reveals the complicated politics behind the market reform process but also brings a dynamic element into the study of central policy-making in China. It sheds light on the ways in which political actors can respond to institutional change by shifting their bargaining strategies, which in turn affects the pace of such changes. Contrary to the resounding call from experts and society for market reforms to be extended and the monopoly of the power sector to be further broken, simply proposing more radical reform strategies may provide additional opportunities for conservatives to delay the reform process. As a result, it might take some time for China to break out of the current dilemma and to implement new reform measures.

China’s Power Sector Reform: An Overview From 1949 to the mid-1980s, China’s power sector was a vertically integrated state- owned monopoly strictly controlled by the central planning system. The State Planning Commission (SPC) played an “all-around role” in predicting demand for power, allocating annual production quotas and determining the power prices.4 No market demand and supply relationship existed in the industry, and all enterprises were placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Electric Power (MEP). The MEP thus assumed the responsibilities of both a top-level enterprise and a regulator of the local power bureaus. It coordinated with the SPC and the State Economic Commission (SEC) in carrying out detailed plans.5 While most power plants were managed jointly by the MEP and the provincial power bureaus, the industry remained vertically integrated. In the mid-1980s, China started to introduce market reform in the power sector, and since then three major rounds of reforms have been carried out. Each round highlighted a different theme: 1) decentralizing the investment authority from the center to the localities and diversifying investment sources to include non- government investors; 2) transforming the MEP and local power bureaus into power companies so as to separate government administration from business operations; 3) disaggregating the functions of the transformed power companies into generation, transmission and distribution so as to introduce competition in each market and establish an independent regulator and an electricity exchange center. The first round of reform was launched in response to the severe shortage of electricity in the mid-1980s. During this period, rapid economic growth led to surging demand for electricity, yet the annual growth rate of electricity production

4 Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, and Processes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 64; Yi-chong Xu, Powering China: Reforming the Electric Power Industry in China (Aldershot: Ashgate Dartmouth, 2002). 5 Yi-chong Xu, “A Powerhouse Reform: Conversion from the Ministry of Electric Power to the State Power Corporation of China”, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2001), p. 136.

72 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 was only half of that of industrial output growth. In 1986, the shortfall of electricity reached 17 per cent of annual consumption.6 In the mid-1980s, the central government decided to decentralize the investment authority and to encourage local governments to finance their own power generation capacity through multiple channels of investment. The new generation projects were entitled to charge different electricity rates and maintain part of the profits. The reform gave rise to a group of semi-independent power producers (IPPs), funded by local governments, large enterprises and foreign companies; this resulted in the diversification of investment sources and contributed to the increase of power generation capacity.7 The second round of reform started in the 1990s, when domestic pro-reform forces returned and various countries stampeded toward the neoliberal electricity reforms promoted by the World Bank, the IMF and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).8 This round revolved around corporatization, which means separating government functions from the production activity of enterprises and transforming enterprises into independent economic entities accountable for their own profits and performance. In 1997, the State Power Corporation of China (SPCC) was formally created as a state- owned utility corporation. It took over all the assets and business functions of the MEP, and transferred the latter’s regulatory and administrative functions to the State Economic and Trade Commission (SETC). Following the reorganization, the SPCC and the SETC supervised the continuing corporatization of regional and provincial power bureaus and launched a multimillion dollar project of construction and improvement of transmission and distribution (T&D) networks. Meanwhile, in 1999, the SPCC selected six provinces in which to experiment with disaggregating the power sector and introducing market competition in power generation. The third round of reform was launched in 2002, when the SPCC was broken down into five groups devoted to power generation (Huaneng 华能, Datang 大唐, Huadian 华电, Guodian 国电 and the China Power Investment Group [Zhongguo dianli touzi jituan 中国电力投资集团]), two power-grid companies (the State Grid Corporation of China [Guojia dianwang 国家电网], or SG, and China Southern Power Grid [Zhongguo nanfang dianwang 中国南方电网]), and four auxiliary companies.

6 It was estimated that, for every percentage of growth in national industrial output value, electricity output had to increase by 1.2 per cent. See Yi-chong Xu, Electricity Reform in China, India and Russia: The World Bank Template and the Politics of Power (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004), p. 108. On the electricity shortage, see Chi Zhang and Thomas Heller, “Reform of the Chinese Electric Power Market: Economics and Institutions”, in David Victor and Thomas Heller (eds), The Political Economy of Power Sector Reform, p. 93. Also see Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China, p. 97. 7 Chi Zhang and Thomas Heller, “Reform of the Chinese Electric Power Market”, pp. 93-94; Yi-chong Xu, “A Powerhouse Reform”, pp. 136-37. 8 James Williams and Navroz Dubash, “Asian Electricity Reform in Historical Perspective”, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Fall 2004), p. 422.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 73

The SG, formerly the SPCC, took over most T&D assets from the SPCC, while the Southern Power Grid became a body in charge of the operation of grids in Guangxi, Yunnan and Hainan. Meanwhile, at the suggestion of the World Bank, in the same year the State Council created the State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) as an independent regulator for the sector. Most recently, after the State Council issued its “Suggestions on Deepening the Reform of the Electricity Sector in the Eleventh Five- Year Plan” in 2006, the SG formally established the electricity exchange center as a locus for electricity market competition. At first glance, each round of reform seems to have been supported by a logic which facilitated marketization. Transforming a central planning system requires breaking the domination of the state and bringing in other types of actors; the operation of the electricity market requires basic economic actors such as power companies; and competition is based on the existence of multiple companies rather than an integrated monopoly in the market. However, as some critics point out, these reform measures ultimately failed to introduce market competition, and even ran against their purpose by eventually strengthening the monopoly of the sector.9 Industrial efficiency has hardly been enhanced; it was reported in 2005 that 1,280 enterprises in the industry were making a loss amounting to 12.7 billion yuan, with thermal power plants’ loss increasing by 10.1 per cent. 10 Moreover, power shortages since 2000 have been the most severe of the past two decades, causing an estimated 1,000-billion-yuan loss in industrial output between 2001 and 2005.11 Finally, corruption and the illegal use of state assets remain rampant both at the central and local levels of the power sector.12

9 Liu Jipeng, “Diangai weihe lü bu chengong” (Why Has Power Sector Reform Repeatedly Failed?), Zhonghua gongshang shibao (China Industry and Commerce), 19 August 2005; Wanguo Xu, “Dianli gaige jiben bu chenggong” (The Power Sector Reform Was Basically a Failure), Nanfang ribao (Southern Daily), 18 December 2005; Chi Zhang and Thomas Heller, “Reform of the Chinese Electric Power Market”, p. 104. 10 National Development and Reform Commission, “Dianli hangye 2005 nian yuxing fenxi ji 2006 nian qushi yuce” (The Analysis of the Electric Power Sector Performance in 2005 and the Prediction for that of 2006), 20 April 2006, at http://finance.people.com.cn/ GB/4315860.html, last accessed 12 May 2007; Xiaoying Cheng, “Huodian jingying zhuangkuang ehua” (The Worsened Situation of Thermal Power), Diyi caijing ribao (China Business News), 26 June 2006; Yiqiang Sha and Ping Liu, “Fadian qiye: xiaoyi miju” (Power Generation Enterprises: Efficiency Confusion?), Zhongguo dianli qiye guanli (China Power Enterprise Management), No. 6 (2006), pp. 4-7. 11 “Quanguo dianhuang zaocheng canzhong sunshi” (Nationwide Power Shortages Caused Severe Losses), Nanfang jingji cankao (Southern Economic Reference), 15 December 2005; Yingbo Shao, “Weihe 19 sheng fasheng dianhuang” (Why Have Electricity Shortages Occurred in 19 Provinces?”), Jingji guancha (Economic Observer), 13 April 2006. In 2005, 24 provinces experienced power cuts. Among them Zhejiang and experienced most severe shortages, leading to losses in GDP of 100 and 50 billion yuan respectively. 12 According to the National Audit Office, SPCC was involved in the illegal use of 21.1 billion yuan, including a 4.5-billion-yuan loss of state assets and another 1.2 billion yuan of

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In response to the results of the reform, there emerged from experts, scholars and bureaucrats a strong call to push forward more thorough market reform measures and to breakdown the sector’s monopolistic structure further. They argued that only market competition could bring about efficiency, and only true market reform could be the final antidote to the unsolved problems.13 While these arguments seem reasonable, they overly idealized the role of the market and largely ignored the politics behind the reform process.

The New Politics of Market Reform in the Power Sector Economic reforms in post-Mao China have always been fraught with tension at the central level. The struggles over different reform paths since the late 1970s have been studied intensively by scholars of Chinese élite politics. Their works proposed several competing models for understanding top-level politics.14 Andrew Nathan’s factional model depicts central-level politics as a balance of power between patron–client ties among central leaders. Tang Tsou’s theory of informal politics views politics as a struggle resulting in clear-cut victories of one informal group over the other. Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg’s model of fragmented authoritarianism highlights the bureaucratic conflicts and incoherent policy-making caused by different chains of authority in central state agencies. Following these classic models, Joseph Fewsmith and Richard Baum provide fine-grained analyses of top-level political and economic debates over the market reforms, while Susan Shirk reveals the “political logic” of succession competition and consensus-building in the economic reform process.15

top-level corruption. See Bin Qi, “Yuan guodian gongsi daozhi guozi liuchan 45 yi” (SPCC Caused a 4.5 Billion Yuan Loss of State Assets), Zhongguo qingnian bao (China Youth), 24 June 2004. For local-level corruption, see Tun-jen Cheng and Chung-min Tsai, “Powering Rent Seeking in the Electricity Industry”, in Tak-Wing Ngo and Yongping Wu (eds), Rent Seeking in China (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), pp. 117-44. 13 Bingling Wang, “Zhang Guobao: bixu jiakuai dianli gaige bufa” (Zhang Guobao: We Must Accelerate the Pace of the Power Sector Reform), Xinjing bao (Xingjing News), 15 April 2004; Yumin Wang, “Rang shichang zhi shou tuidong dianli gaige” (Let the Hand of the Market Push for the Power Sector Reform), Zhongguo dianli bao (China Electric Power News), 10 March 2005; Yu Peng, “Yang Mingzhou: dianli tizhi gaige buke nizhuan” (Yang Mingzhou: The Power Sector Reform Is Irreversible), Beijing chenbao (Beijing Morning Post), 20 December 2005; Xiaoqin Ruan, “Dianjianhui fu zhuxi: bixu jin yibu tuijin dianli shichanghua gaige” (The Vice President of SERC: The Market Reform of the Power Sector Must Be Further Pushed Forward), Shanghai zhengquan (Shanghai Securities), 20 September 2006. 14 Harry Harding, “Competing Models of the Chinese Communist Policy Process: Toward a Sorting and Evaluation”, Issues and Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2 (February 1984), pp. 13-36. 15 Andrew Nathan, “A Factionalism Model for CCP Politics”, China Quarterly, No. 53 (1973), pp. 33-66; Tang Tsou, Culture Revolution and Post-Mao Reforms: A Historical Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986); Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China; Joseph Fewsmith, Dilemmas of Reform in China: Political Conflict and Economic Debate (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1994); Richard Baum, Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping (Princeton: Princeton

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In all these studies, the battles that took place in the 1970s and 1980s over the issue of market reform largely revolved around whether market or planning should be the main feature of the economic system. Since the early 1990s, the market has been established as the dominant mechanism. Political struggles and jockeying between reformists and conservatives, however, have remained salient, but they have taken on new characteristics which were not addressed adequately in previous studies. The institutional basis of the political struggles has come to reflect a hybrid pattern of the bureaucratic and the factional model.16 On the one hand, bureaucratic organizations have been the major constituents for both the reformist and conservative groups, and the cleavage between the two camps has remained relatively clear and stable throughout the three rounds of reform. The reformist side is mainly composed of pro-reform agencies, such as the SEC and the Sate Development and Planning Commission (SDPC), which have consistently pushed for radical reform measures. Sitting on the conservative side are the governing body of the sector at the state level, joined by other influential state agencies such as the SPC, SETC and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). The composition of the two groups also shows considerable organizational continuity over time. While the bureaucratic agencies may be disbanded, renamed or reorganized, the position of a particular organization remains the same unless there is significant reshuffling of personnel (such as from SPC to SDPC). On the other hand, both groups have displayed factional elements in their struggles as, at different stages, they have gained firm support from individual leaders such as Zhao Ziyang, Zhu Rongji, Li Peng and Gao Yan. There were patronage ties in both groups, such as between Li Peng and Gao Yan and , or between Zhu Rongji and Zeng Peiyan. This factionalism does not contradict the bureaucratic model, and in fact is reinforced by it. The protégé of a central leader is often also the head of a bureaucratic agency, which provides the faction with further organizational support.17 This hybrid form of political struggle in the power sector reflects the complex changes of organizations at the central level since the 1990s. With a higher level of political institutionalization and a diminishing role for individual charisma, the bureaucratic model has played an increasingly important role in decision-making.18 Yet, at the same time, building factions remains an important tactic in political struggles at the top level.19

University Press, 1996); Susan Shirk, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). See also the symposium, “The Nature of Chinese Politics”, The China Journal, No. 34 (July 1995), pp. 1-205. 16 Due to this hybrid form, this article uses the term “groups” rather than “factions” when referring to the reformist and conservative camps. 17 Examples include Zou Jiahua, director of SPC, Zeng Peiyan, director of the SDPC, and Gao Yan, general manager of the SPCC. 18 Harry Harding, “Competing Models”, p. 31. 19 For a more recent contribution on factional politics in élite politics, see Victor Shih, Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

76 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64

More importantly, previous studies of élite politics have also failed to devote adequate attention to the dynamics of political struggle, that is, how changes in institutional contexts over time affect the strategies which actors choose. A salient characteristic of struggles over power sector reform has been the conservatives’ shift from directly opposing the reform to “playing the market reform card”. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, conservatives led by Chen Yun seized every chance to argue against, criticize and attack the reform coalition led by Deng Xiaoping so as to delegitimize the role of market forces and to defend the central role of the planning system. The context was largely viewed as one “to win all or lose all”.20 “Market” and “planning” were ideological tags used by the two groups to distinguish themselves, as well as the objectives that they stood for. However, by the second and third rounds, “market reform” had become a weapon used by both groups to strengthen political power and achieve control over the policy-making process.21 This change in the pattern of political struggle has taken place as market forces have gained increasing legitimacy both domestically and internationally. Domestically, Deng’s Southern Tour in 1992 revitalized pro-market forces both in practice and in the central state’s discourse. Internationally, many developing countries have experimented with neoliberal electricity reform over the past one- and-a-half decades. Under such circumstances, conservatives in the power sector reform switched their strategy. Instead of simply blocking reform initiatives, they jumped at reform opportunities, controlled reform initiatives and launched their own changes under the banner of “market reform”. Now, one can hardly distinguish between reformists and conservatives through their official discourses and announcements without carefully investigating the detailed reform measures that each group has proposed and carried out. What enabled conservatives to join in the game of market reform without compromising their interests and changing their anti-reform stance? First, the ambiguity involved in introducing markets to the power sector has aided the conservatives. Unlike markets for commercial products that can easily be stored, transported and sold among numerous producers and buyers, electricity “markets” are extremely complex and vague. The measures required to achieve market competition in the sector remain very controversial among experts, both in China and abroad. Like most developing countries, China borrowed a reform model adopted in England and Wales in 1990, which involved two main steps: dismantling the sector into multiple parts, and introducing market competition into each part. Ideally, this means that multiple power generators

20 Joseph Fewsmith, Elite Politics in Contemporary China (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), pp. 99-100. 21 A discussion of the formation and development of group interests is beyond the scope of this article. State agencies such as the SPC, SEC, SETC, SDPC and NDRC all have broad mandates in regulating economic and industrial affairs. Power sector reform is only one issue which these agencies manage. Explaining the interests of each group thus requires going beyond power sector reform. However, the reform process suggests that power and control over policies have become far more important than , with the latter largely becoming the tools for the former.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 77 compete with one another to trade power with distributors by bidding in a common pool or through contracts.22 In practice, however, the questions of how to dismantle the sector and where to introduce market competition are subject to extraordinary debate. Should the sector be broken up into individual companies, each responsible for their own generation and T&D, or should it be unbundled into multiple generators, transmitters and distributers? Should market competition be introduced simultaneously into every part of the sector, or should it be introduced into certain parts first? How should market relations be coordinated between sectors, and how should prices be set? These unresolved questions provide conservatives with considerable space to maneuver in designing and implementing reform measures. For example, conservatives chose to support the vertical dismantling of generation from transmission and distribution, rather than the horizontal division of the sector into different regional corporations. The plan allowed the conservatives to divert emphasis from introducing competition into the electricity-generation market and focus only on the expansion of cross-provincial transmission networks. This eventually consolidated the conservatives’ monopoly over transmission in the country. Another example is SG’s seemingly market-friendly initiative to create an electricity exchange center, but with headquarters and sub-level divisions all located in the power grid companies. This measure in effect strengthened the domination of the SG over the electricity producers in the price-setting process, and blocked further market competition. Despite the possibility of large-scale changes at the beginning of each round of reform, conservatives were always able to find maneuvering space without overtly violating the norm of pursuing market reform. Another factor contributing directly to the success of the conservatives’ strategy lies in the sector’s direct influence on the policy-making process. In China, most industries have little impact over reform policies made at central level. Although firms since the mid-1990s have begun to voice policy preferences indirectly through trade associations or to engage in direct lobbying of regulators, their influence over central policy-making remains limited.23 In contrast, the power sector is both a vast industry, crucial to the whole national economy, and a political base for China’s ministries and bureaucracies. It has therefore been historically important in central policy-making. Even after the MEP was corporatized in 1997, the sector acted much like a quasi-ministry with almost the same rank as central state commissions. The general manager of the SPCC or SG has the same ministerial-level ranking as the chairman of SDPC or SERC. This special status provided the industry, the supposed target of reform and the potential loser from the breaking down of its monopoly, with incomparable bargaining leverage over the policy-making process. The control over data, resources and technical knowledge pertaining to the industry

22 David Victor and Thomas Heller, “Introduction”, p. 5. 23 Scott Kennedy, The Business of Lobbying in China (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Guosheng Deng and Scott Kennedy, “Big Business and Industry Association Lobbying in China: The Paradox of Contrasting Styles”, The China Journal, No. 63 (January 2010), pp. 101-25.

78 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 further helped their fight for a leading position in the reform process. Bolstered by the maneuvering space created by market reform, the power sector and its conservative allies were in a good position to play the market reform game against their reformist adversaries without harming their own vested interests.

The Changing Pattern of Political Struggle in Three Rounds of Reform Reformists and conservatives came into conflict in all three rounds of the power sector reform. The conflicts originating from tensions between the MEP, the SPC and the SEC in the 1980s played out further in political battles between the SPCC, the SETC and the SDPC in the 1990s, and then extended to the current competition among the SG, the generation groups, the NDRC and the SERC (see Table 1). The first round of reform reflected the traditional political battles between pro-market and anti-market groups, during which the reformists’ initiatives were openly criticized and attacked by the conservatives. Starting from the second round, however, a new pattern of political struggle emerged when conservatives switched their strategy. This pattern has been reinforced in the third round, when the conservative side designed and implemented aggressive reform measures unexpected by the reformists.

The First Round: Fighting Battles over Market Reform The first round of reform largely reflected the traditional political struggles between reformists backed by Deng Xiaoping and conservatives backed by Chen Yun in the early and mid-1980s. On the reformist side, Zhao Ziyang became the pivotal figure of the reformist camp and boldly pushed ahead a series of market reforms in urban industries. The main state agency supporting Zhao’s initiative was the SEC. As a high-level commission responsible for coordinating and improving enterprise management, the SEC had always been an enthusiastic advocate for enterprise autonomy and market-oriented reforms. 24 While conservatives launched several assaults on reformists’ policies during this period, both the decisions taken at central-level conferences and the support of the mass media indicate that reformists gained the upper hand. In particular, the Third Plenary Session of the Twelfth Central Committee in 1984 adopted the “Decision on Economic Structural Reform”, which marked the turning point towards building a socialist commodity economy. The session called for a reduction in the scope of central planning and an expansion of operational autonomy and profit incentives for enterprises. It also called for delegation of responsibilities from the central government to provincial and local governments. 25

24 Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China, p. 76. 25 Joseph Fewsmith, Dilemmas of Reform, p. 133.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 79

Table 1: Struggles in the Three Rounds of Power Sector Reform*

Reformist Side Conservative Side Time Organizations Major Reform Organizations Major Reform Measures Period Measures First SEC Decentralize MEP; SPC Re-centralize investment Round investment authority and re-impose (1985– authority and central planning (1989) 93) diversify investment channels to include local governments, enterprises and foreign companies (1985) Second SDPC Separate SPCC; Convert provincial Round government SETC power bureaus and (1997– administration from regional power groups to 2002) business operation subsidiaries of SPCC and corporatize the (1998–2000); expand MEP into the SPCC cross-provincial T&D (1997); push for networks (1998); separation of experiment with market generation and competition in six distribution from provinces (1999) transmission (2000) Third NDRC, Dismantle the SPCC SG, SERC Build high-voltage Round SERC (since into five generation (before 2005) transmission network (2002– 2005), five groups, two power (2005); create an Present) generation grids and four electricity exchange groups auxiliary companies center (2006) (2002); establish the SERC as a regulator (2002) * MEP = Ministry of Electric Power; NDRC = National Development and Reform Commission; SDPC = State Development and Planning Commission; SEC = State Economic Commission; SERC = State Electricity Regulatory Commission; SETC = State Economic and Trade Commission; SG = State Grid; SPC = State Planning Commission; SPCC = State Power Corporation of China It was within this favorable pro-reform and pro-local-initiative context that reformists launched the first round of power sector reform to encourage diversified investment at local levels. In 1985, in order to broaden sources of financing and allow local governments and large enterprises to invest in power project constructions, the State Council issued the policy of “who invests, who uses the electricity, and who benefits” (shei touzi, shei yongdian, shei shouyi 谁投资, 谁用电, 谁受益) and the Provisional Regulation on Encouraging Fund-raising for Power Construction and Allowing Multiple Electricity Prices (guanyu guli jizi bandian, shixing duozhong dianjia de

80 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 zanshi guiding 关于鼓励集资办电, 实行多种电价的暂时规定).26 While the reform was officially proposed by the MEP in 1984 as a means to alleviate the mounting power shortages, the real supporter behind the scenes for the adoption of the reform was the reformist group. The group was led by the SEC, which had significant influence over power policy, and played a key role in introducing pricing and managerial reforms into the sector at local levels.27 Since new local power plants did not enjoy the benefits of plants built by the central government, such as cheaper fuel supplies, the SEC pushed for the introduction of a special dual-track pricing system into the industry. New plants established after 1985 were entitled to charge different tariffs based on actual costs. They were also allowed an accelerated capital repayment schedule and were granted greater control over labor and wages. Meanwhile, provincial governments gained the authority to approve generation projects smaller than 50 MW (US$30 million), and were allowed to collect an additional 0.02 yuan per kWh for developing and improving T&D capacity and building power plants.28 During this period, local governments, large enterprises and foreign companies actively engaged in building generation facilities, creating a group of semi-IPPs in the form of joint ventures or with shares listed on the stock exchange. Examples include the Longkou Power Plant in Shandong Province, Huaneng Enterprise Group, the Yantan Power Station in Guangxi Province and the Ertan Power Station in Sichuan Province.29 The reform lowered entry barriers for investors and attracted a variety of new sources of capital, reducing the exclusive reliance on central budgetary allocations. The level of investment from the central government decreased from 78 per cent in 1985 to 52 per cent in 1988. In the same period, power generation capacity grew at an average of 5,000 MW, or 7 per cent per year, with about 40 per cent of generation capacity financed by new sources of capital.30 The reformists and the SEC aroused increasing opposition from conservatives in the MEP and the SPC, whose power was on the rise from the mid- to late-1980s. Li Peng, a Soviet-trained electric engineer who had been working for the sector since 1946, maintained control of the sector as Minister of Electric Power before his promotion to premier in 1988.31 He was widely regarded as a cautious conservative who viewed central planning as of “primary importance” and did not support the view

26 “Zhongguo dianli gongye de xiandaihua licheng” (The History of the Modernization of China Electric Power Industry), at http://www.china.com.cn/news/zhuanti/09gyh/2009- 05/09/content_ 17749285.htm, last accessed 1 March 2010. 27 Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China, pp. 75-78. 28 Chi Zhang and Thomas Heller, “Reform of the Chinese Electric Power Market”, pp. 93-96. 29 They were not classical IPPs, since they could not make entirely independent decisions and were affiliated with central or local governments. Nevertheless, they were seen as more autonomous than previous plants, as they needed to be responsible to their investors. 30 Yingzhong Lu, Fueling One Billion: An Insider’s Story of Chinese Energy Policy Development (Washington: Washington Institute Press, 1993), p. 53. 31 Kenneth Lieberthal and Michel Oksenberg, Policy Making in China, p. 56.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 81 that market reform would improve the efficiency of the power sector.32 Li gained support not only from his own MEP but also, more importantly, from the SPC, the central planning body and the most powerful institution in the Chinese economic system at the time. Headed by another well-known conservative, Yao Yilin, the SPC sought to defend the authority of the plan and often clashed with the interests of the pro-reform SEC over economic and energy policies.33 From the mid-to-late 1980s, the conservatives fought strenuously to recentralize investment authority and to re- impose central planning on the power sector. The best opportunity for conservatives to fight back occurred during the overheating and eventual meltdown of China’s economy in the late 1980s. With inflation reaching 18.5 per cent, a rising velocity of hot money and overinvestment in capital construction, the Chinese economy spun out of control in 1987 and 1988.34 Similar problems occurred in the power sector. The opening of various investment channels at localities led to the proliferation of small thermal power plants, which were easy to approve and required little capital and a short construction time. However, these plants were less efficient and caused more environmental pollution and energy waste than the large ones. As of 1987, 86 per cent of the nation’s power generation was produced by plants smaller than 100 MW.35 Moreover, as in other industries, the increase of local governments’ control over investment resources led to their growing autonomy from the central government and diminished the role of the MEP.36 These problems provided good reasons for conservatives to criticize reformist policies and to advocate recentralization of the economic authority. The SPC and the MEP claimed that reforms of the power sector had led inefficient small firms to compete with large and medium-sized plants for scarce resources, and they blamed reformists for delegating too much authority to localities.37 In 1988, with Li’s rise to the position of premier and Zhao’s loss of Deng’s support at the Beidaihe meeting, the conservatives increasingly gained the upper hand. The purge of Zhao as the scapegoat for the 1989 Tiananmen movement heralded the final victory of the conservatives. The SEC was broken up into a set of bureaus under the SPC. The function and power of the SPC was expanded and strengthened, with Li’s close ally Zou Jiahua appointed as its chair. As reformists lost support from both the highest- ranking bureaucracy in the group and the central leader of their faction, reforms in the power sector stalled, together with other industrial reforms, and the sector was largely

32 Yi-chong Xu, Electricity Reform, p. 119. 33 Susan Shirk, The Political Logic of China’s Economic Reform, p. 95. 34 Athar Hussain and Nicholas Stern, “Effective Demand, Enterprise Reforms and Public Finance in China”, Economic Policy, Vol. 6, No. 12 (April 1991), pp. 141-86. 35 Allen Blackman and Xun Wu, “Foreign Direct Investment in China’s Power Sector: Trends, Benefits and Barriers”, Energy Policy, Vol. 27, No. 12 (November 1999), p. 698. 36 Laura Dodge, “The Political Effects of Ideas and Markets on China’s Economic Reforms: The Case of Electric Power”, PhD dissertation, University of California at Santa Barbara (2003), p. 97. 37 Yi-chong Xu, Powering China, p. 90.

82 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 restored to the previous central planning system. The first round of reform was thus characterized by traditional clear-cut struggles between reformists and conservatives.

The Second Round: Seizing Reform Opportunities Although China was still drifting between the central planning and the market economy during the first round of the reform, the situation changed decisively during the early 1990s. Domestically, Deng’s Southern Tour in 1992 revitalized pro-market forces and set a new course for China’s economic development. The Fourteenth Party Congress, which marked China’s historical shift from a socialist commodity economy to a socialist market economy, legitimatized the abolition of central planning in favor of regulated market competition and called for the separation of government functions from business operations. By the mid-1990s, it became evident to conservatives that continuing to use planning as their main weapon would mean fighting a losing battle. Worried about their diminished political prospects, conservative leaders like Li Peng, Jiang Zemin and Zou Jiahua jumped on the bandwagon of market reform and started openly to endorse the productivity and efficiency brought by market competition.38 Internationally, a wave of neoliberal reforms in power sectors was sweeping developing countries. Due to governments’ declining ability to finance generation capacity, countries such as India, Thailand and South Korea all changed the sector’s vertical organization and experimented with the market reforms promoted or compelled by the World Bank, IMF and ADB. Although China’s power sector was able to exercise greater latitude vis-à-vis these organizations, there has nonetheless been growing involvement of them in the reform process.39 The second round of reform was thus launched in a vastly different domestic and international context. In 1993, the SEC became the most important economic policy body and was headed by Zhu Rongji, a tough reformer known as China’s economic “czar”. Viewing the SOE problem as a priority, reformists in the State Council pushed forward the separation of government functions from business operations and the restructuring of the power industry. To specify reform objectives and plans, a workshop on “Strategic Options for Power Sector Reform” was held jointly by China and the Institutional Development Fund of the World Bank in 1993, with experts from six nations. This was followed by a series of seminars in Beijing, Xi’an and Huangshan, meant to facilitate dialogue between China, the World Bank and foreign experts. Meanwhile, various independent studies were carried out by the World Bank, the ADB and other international consultants to explore regulatory and legal frameworks for the power sector. These activities helped to formulate the primary blueprint of the second round of reform.40

38 Richard Baum, Burying Mao, pp. 351-52. 39 Emily Yeh and Joanna Lewis, “State Power and the Logic of Reform in China’s Electricity Sector”, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Fall 2004), p. 448. 40 Shiwei Shao, Zhengyong Lu, Noureddine Berrah, Bernard Tenenbaum and Jianping Zhao (eds), China Power Sector Regulation in a Socialist Market Economy, World Bank Discussion Paper No. 361 (Washington: World Bank, 1997).

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 83

The plan was initiated in 1996, when Zhu formally proposed to corporatize the power industry. By replacing the MEP with the SPCC in 1997, the central government claimed to have taken a “significant step for the electric power industry management system to change from a central planning system to the socialist market economy”.41 The SPCC was created as a state utility corporation with independent legal status and state-appointed executives. The SPCC took over business management functions from the MEP, while transferring the regulatory and administrative functions to the newly created SETC in 1998. Meanwhile, the SDPC, which was reorganized from the SPC in the same year, gained the authority to approve major power project investments and the setting of electricity tariffs. The SPCC, SETC and SDPC thus became the major players in the struggle over power sector reform, with the SPCC and SETC dominating the conservative side and the SDPC on the reformist side. While the SPCC was supposed in principle to be an independent state corporation, it nevertheless acted like a central ministry of the same rank as the SETC and SDPC, by participating in central policy-making. Meanwhile, Li Peng still maintained strong control over the power sector through wide patronage networks, despite his replacement by Zhu as premier in 1998. In particular, his son, Li Xiaopeng, became the head of the Huaneng Power Corporation, the largest IPP, funded directly by the State Council.42 His long-term protégé, Gao Yan, was appointed general manager of the SPCC, guaranteeing Li Xiaopeng’s later position as SPCC’s deputy general manager. Standing firmly on the SPCC side was the SETC. Although the SETC assumed regulatory responsibilities, it had little real independence from the power sector. During the 1998 government restructuring, the employees of the MEP transferred either to the SPCC or the Electric Power Department of the SETC, producing a tightly connected coalition between the two. Moreover, as the latter was often understaffed (initially employing just 16 people), it often recruited staff directly from the SPCC, which further blurred the line between the regulator and the enterprise. Finally, since the SETC had to depend on the powerful SPCC in carrying out reforms, the SPCC often succeeded in persuading its regulator that the SPCC not only understood the correct direction of reform better but was also capable of launching its own restructuring.43 The conservative camp thus coalesced around the SPCC and the SETC, which attempted to keep any radical reforms off the agenda of the State Council. The SDPC, by contrast, took a radical stance and insisted on introducing competition into the sector. Unlike its predecessor, the SPC, the SDPC no longer focused on micro-level planning to meet specific industrial targets but was

41 “Guojia dianli gongsi chengli” (The State Power Corporation of China Has Been Established), Renmin ribao (People’s Daily), 18 January 1997. 42 His daughter and wife became respectively the CEO of the China Power Investment Corporation and the manager of the Daya Bay nuclear plant. 43 Philip Andrews-Speed, Energy Policy and Regulation in the People’s Republic of China (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2004), p. 180; Laura Dodge, “The Political Effects”, p. 126; Yi-chong Xu, Powering China, p. 153.

84 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 responsible for macro-level regulations such as approving major investment projects and cooperating with international financial institutions on developing domestic industrial projects. With a significant reshuffling of personnel, Zeng Peiyan, a reformist and a close colleague of Zhu, became the director of the commission in 1998. As a result, the SDPC went against its predecessor and became an eager pupil of Western reform experiences, showing strong interest in the models adopted in England and Wales, where the power sector was unbundled to introduce competition. Thus it was not the SETC, the direct regulator of the SPCC, but the SDPC that proposed to the State Council a series of radical reform plans. Shortly after the birth of the SPCC, the temporary occurrence of power surplus in 1998 opened a window of opportunity for the SDPC and the World Bank to push the reform process forward. Reformists pointed out that corporatization was only the preliminary stage of transforming the central planning system. Establishing a fully competitive sector invariably entails the dismantling of the monopolistic sector and the introduction of market mechanisms to power generation, transmission and distribution.

The Shift of the Conservatives’ Strategy The SDPC’s radical attitude towards power sector reform aroused the enmity of the SPCC and SETC.44 However, in contrast to their predecessors, the SPCC and SETC did not fight back by directly opposing the reform agenda but by actively promoting their own reforms. On various public occasions, the SPCC emphasized the importance of deepening the reform of the power sector and expressed its firm determination to “follow the trend of the world” and the “spirit of reform and innovation”, to “push forward market competition step by step” and raise the sector’s efficiency.45 In order to seize the reform initiative, conservatives also strengthened their connections with international organizations such as the United Nations Development Project and the World Bank. They hired a number of international consultants, such as the ADB, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the Regulatory Assistant Project and the Mirant Corporation to provide advice on how to carry out reform experiments with different models.46 Meanwhile, they vied with the SDPC to send delegates to the US, Australia and Europe to undertake substantial studies of foreign reform experiences. Indeed, a glance of the activities of the SPCC and SETC in the late 1990s seemed to suggest that they, rather than the conservatives, were the serious reformers. Claiming that they were in the best position to lead the reform process, the SPCC and the SETC took pre-emptive action by proposing their own reform plans to the State Council in 1998.47 In the name of pushing forward corporatization of the sector

44 Yi-chong Xu, Powering China, pp. 152-53. 45 See Gao Yan’s speech in 1999 on “The Four Steps of Powers Sector Reform”, Zhongguo dianli (China Electric Power), Vol. 36, No. 2 (2000), pp. 2-5; Also see Gao Yan and Liu Zhenya’s speech in 2000 on “The Future Direction of the Power Sector Reform”, Zhongguo dianli bao, 20 April 2000. 46 Laura Dodge, “The Political Effects”, pp. 123, 133. 47 Yi-chong Xu, Electricity Reform, p. 198.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 85 at the provincial and regional levels, the SPCC and SETC jointly supervised the conversion of provincial power bureaus to power companies, as well as the dissolution of previous regional power groups and the creation of new regional divisions (fen gongsi 分公司). By 2000, all five regional groups were replaced by the regional divisions of the SPCC, and all 27 provincial power companies were incorporated into the SPCC as its direct subsidiaries. As some international analysts commented, in terms of commercializing the provincial power bureaus these measures were only “paper fictions”. Moreover, through them the SPCC strengthened its vertical integration at the national level and gained control of 60 per cent of China’s generation assets and 90 per cent of T&D networks.48 At almost the same time, conservatives started to deal with the issue of disaggregating the sector, which had been put on the table by the reformists. International experience suggested two methods to introduce market competition in the power sector (Figure 1). The first was to break the sector up horizontally into regional corporations, each with its own generation, transmission and distribution facility, competing with one another on the market to sell electricity to consumers. The other was to dismantle the sector “vertically” into generation, transmission and distribution, and then introduce market competition into generation and distribution while keeping an integrated transmission grid at the national level. The second method implies multiple generators and distributers conducting market transactions in the electricity market.49 Fearing that the first method would compromise the sector’s national integration, conservatives supported the vertical method. Yet, instead of focusing on introducing competition into generation and distribution, they diverted attention to maintaining the national integration of power transmission. Thus, shortly after corporatization, the SPCC and SETC proposed a second plan, a multimillion-dollar project to construct and improve cross-provincial T&D networks. In order to create an enabling environment for introducing competition, the SPCC argued, a market large enough to contain a sufficient number of competitors must be established, and the individual provinces could not apparently provide such a market. Creating well-connected interprovincial grids thus became the precondition for talking about any effective market competition. 50 Among top officials, Li Peng was one of the most vocal advocates of this “national integration” thesis. In a public speech, he insisted that “a united power grid and distribution network should be established across the country”

48 The World Bank Sector and Thematic Evaluations Group, “The Bank’s Assistance to China’s Energy Sector: An OECD Country Sector Evaluation”, at www.worldbank.org, 28 February 2001, last accessed 2 September 2005. 49 Mingzhou Yang, “Dianli gaige ruhe fan longduan” (How to Counter Monopoly in Power Sector Reform), Jingji ribao (Economic News), 18 May 2001. 50 See Gao Yan’s speech in 1998 on “The Plan to Build a Nationwide Grid”, published in Zhongguo dianli, Vol. 32, No. 1 (1999).

86 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 so that “market mechanisms can be introduced at a later stage”.51 The SPCC and SETC succeeded in persuading the State Council to approve this project. Yet, as observers pointed out, the SPCC and SETC showed no real intention of introducing competition. The expansion of cross-provincial networks became another exercise of top-down re-consolidation of SPCC power over its provincial subsidiaries, which helped the SPCC and SETC to occupy the leading position in the reform process.52 Figure 1: Illustration of the Two Models of Market Competition

Power Power Power Power Group Group Group Group A B C D

GA GB GC GD

TA TB TC TD

DA DB DC DD

Horizontal Competition

GA GB GC GD

T

DA DB DC DD

* Vertical Competition G = Generation, T = Transmission, D = Distribution * The model supported by conservatives

51 “Li Peng zai quanguo dianli gongzuo huiyi shang de jianghua” (Li Peng’s Speech at the National Conference of the Electric Power Industry), Renmin ribao, 30 December 1997. 52 Author’s interview with officials from the Associations of the Power Industry in January 2004 in Beijing and Sichuan.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 87

The SDPC criticized the SPCC and SETC for obstructing real market reforms. It argued that the so-called “market reforms” which the SPCC carried out were in fact a return to a centrally planned economy and strengthened their already too-powerful position. If the SPCC and SETC truly supported the “vertical” model, the SDPC pointed out, they should not stop at building power grids but should also separate power generation and distribution from transmission in order to extend competition.53 It further contended that, since the SETC had almost no independence from the SPCC, the reform should instead be led and supervised by the SDPC. To maintain their position, the SPCC and SETC quickly put forward a third proposal, to carry out unbundling experiments in six provinces (Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjing, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Shandong) in 1999. Contrary to its previous argument regarding the inadequate size of the provincial market, the SPCC this time emphasized the provincial market and designed a reform plan for each province. The idea was to separate local generation enterprises from provincial power companies so that the former became IPPs that could compete in an electricity pooling system. However, the SPCC and SETC were far more interested in putting out this proposal as an expedient way to deal with the pressure to reform than in seriously carrying out the plan. Of the six provinces, Zhejiang was the only one where some changes were observed. 54 In other provinces, power generation groups continued to remain under the protection of the provincial companies, without market pressure from IPPs. Concluding that “these experiments were largely disappointing and failed to set successful examples for other provinces”, the State Council officially suspended them in 2000.55 Unlike the first round of power sector reform, the second was characterized by an environment favoring market forces. In response to reform pressures, the SPCC and the SETC did not directly oppose the pro-reform SDPC but put forward their own “blueprints” for market reform so as to seize reform opportunities. The complexity involved in this round also provided considerable maneuvering space for the conservatives. It enabled them to launch a number of reforms, such as the corporatization of the regional subsidiaries and the expansion of nationwide power networks, that were both instrumental in advancing their own interests and in accordance with the spirit of “market reform”. This new strategy made it increasingly difficult for the reformists to criticize them.

The Third Round: Manipulating the Market In late 2000, the problem of deepening reform reached the top of the agenda. In response to the failure of the SPCC-led reforms, the State Council took the reform initiative out of the hands of the SPCC and SETC and authorized the SDPC to lead

53 Liu Jipeng, “Dianli de tizhixing sikao” (Thoughts on the Institutional Problems of the Power Sector), Jingji cankao (Economic Reference), 13 July 2000. 54 “Streamlining and Advancing Power Sector Reforms in China”, World Bank Working Paper No. 76023, Washington DC (24 August 2001). 55 “Notice on the Question of Power Industry System Reform by General Office of the State Council”, available at www.sp.com.cn/english/publications, last accessed 20 December 2008.

88 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 the reform. Openly criticizing the SPCC and SETC for delaying the introduction of market mechanisms to the power sector, the SDPC sponsored another workshop with the assistance of the World Bank and the Energy Foundation, and submitted several drafts of plans to the State Council. The plans called for both vertical and horizontal disaggregation of the power sector so that power generation and distribution would be separated from transmission and regional power groups and provincial power companies would gain considerable autonomy from the SPCC.56 A number of factors helped the reformists gain momentum in this period. Domestically, frequent electricity shortages and the rise of electricity rates drew criticism from experts, investors, IPPs, NGOs, industries and consumers. 57 Internationally, the monopolist image of the power sector was inconsistent with China’s entry into the WTO, presenting a good chance for the SDPC to combat vertical integration in the power sector.58 In anticipation of being disaggregated, the SPCC and SETC decided to fight their last battle by falling back on their previous “variety of investment channels” thesis. The SPCC general manager Gao Yan argued that the monopoly could be changed by encouraging other investors to hold a small proportion of stocks, thereby providing multiple investors. Meanwhile, the SPCC also pointed to the California electricity crisis as an example of the potential danger of power sector restructuring.59 However, a series of severe corruption scandals from 2000 to 2002 soon crippled the conservatives. In 2000, reports of corruption within the SPCC and the Huaneng group began to surface, involving both Li Peng and his son Li Xiaopeng. This caused more than a hundred protesters to publicly demand further investigation of the Li family. 60 This was followed by Gao Yan’s sudden disappearance in April 2002. After embezzling and misallocating an estimated 3.28 billion yuan worth of state funds, Gao fled to Australia as a fugitive, ironically only two months after he gave a final public speech on fighting corruption.61 The scandals strengthened the reformists’ call to tame the power sector by radical reforms. Coinciding with the growing pressure for change was

56 Yi-chong Xu, Electricity Reform, p.199. 57 Jizhong Zhao, “Dianli shichanghua gaige ji dianli keji chuangxin” (The Power Sector Structure Reform and Technological Innovation), Qiye guanli (Business Management), Vol. 42 (2001). 58 Yi-chong Xu, Electricity Reform, p. 199. 59 During the electricity crisis of 2000 and 2001, California experienced a severe electric shortage and rapid increase in electricity prices (as high as $750 dollars per megawatt hour). The cause of the crisis is generally attributed to deregulation of public utilities and manipulation of the market. 60 Antoaneta Bezlova, “China corruption probes signal power plays”, 1 November 2002, at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/DK01Ad05.html, last accessed 22 April 2009. 61 His son Gao Xinyuan was sentenced the following year for bribing power sector officials for his own power investment company. See Hongqing Duan, “Son of Ex-Power Czar Gets Five Years”, 20 September 2004, at http://english.caijing.com.cn/2004-09-20/ 100043279.html, last accessed 22 April 2009.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 89

Premier Zhu Rongji’s own support for disaggregating the sector. Without having achieved much progress in SOE restructuring and responding to the danger that the central government would be perceived as passive or inert, Zhu was “playing a game of catch up” at the end of this premiership. Supporting the unbundling of the sector was one of the crucial measures he decided to take before stepping down.62 On 29 December 2002, following the issuance of the Electric Power Sector Reform Plan by the State Council, Zeng Peiyan announced the dismantling of the gigantic SPCC into five power generation groups, two power-grid companies and four auxiliary companies. Each of the five generation groups gained about 20 per cent of the market. The SG gradually spun off its previous generation assets to the groups and took over most of the SPCC’s T&D assets, while leaving a small parcel of assets to the Southern Power Grid. In addition to the “vertical” logic of separating generation from transmission and distribution, the SDPC-led reform simultaneously emphasized the “horizontal” logic: it established five regional power grid companies (Huabei 华北, Dongbei 东北, Xibei 西北, Huadong 华东 and Huazhong 华中) so as to prevent the SG from becoming a monopoly. Furthermore, after consultation with the World Bank experts, the State Council also created the SERC as an independent regulatory agency. The change in the power sector was accompanied by changes in other state organizations during this period. In 2003, during the reorganization of the Chinese government, the SETC was abolished and its functions partly incorporated into the Ministry of Commerce and partly transferred to the NDRC, a new commission created out of the SDPC. The NDRC not only became the most authoritative body for China’s macro–economic policy but also took over from the SETC the functions of making industry policy and leading industrial reforms. Although losing its ally, the SETC, in this round of reform, the SG still controlled most of the T&D assets in China and remained the most powerful agency in the sector. Theoretically, the five generation groups were supposed to compete for profits in the electricity market by selling electricity to the SG at the market price. However, since the SG was the sole buyer of their electricity, the actual price did not float. This enabled the SG to obtain electricity from generation plants at much lower rates than market prices, while selling the electricity to consumers at the highest possible price. The generation groups thus complained about the implausibility of enforcing market competition with the presence of a powerful SG and were often in conflict with the SG over the setting of power prices.63 The NDRC, which gained much more authority over industrial development and reform than had its predecessor, was an active supporter of market competition in generation and distribution. It advocated the development of five regional power grids so as to change the SG-dominant situation, and saw the SG as the main obstacle to smooth market transactions between producers and consumers. Like the

62 Barry Naughton, “Evening Glow: The Final Maneuvers of Zhu Rongji”, China Leadership Monitor, No. 4 (November 2002). 63 Author’s interview in June 2006 in Beijing.

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SDPC and SPCC, the NDRC and SG fought over electricity price-setting. The NDRC sought to curtail inflationary pressures by keeping end-user prices low, and thus often criticized the SG for charging excessively high electricity rates. The SG was concerned about its own profits, and often pointed to the high cost of T&D as justification for the high prices. The NDRC in turn criticized the SG for deliberately raising their official cost by including the cost of auxiliary companies and illegal business within the cost of T&D.64 The SERC, according to the Electric Power Sector Reform Plan and the “roadmap” designed by the World Bank, was supposed to function as an independent regulator, to be separate from the industry that it was regulating and to maintain substantial autonomy from the political influence of other government agencies.65 Its responsibilities included setting the rules for electricity markets, overseeing market operations, supervising the establishment of transaction institutions and arbitrating disputes within the sector.66 In reality, both the independence and authority of the SERC remained questionable.67 The SERC not only shared the same office building as the SG but was also partially financially dependent on it. Moreover, many of its staff were ex-SPCC employees. Although the president of the SERC, Chai Songyue, was considered neutral towards the industry, he had 20 years of experience working in the power sector and was a long-time associate of Li Peng, casting doubt on the SERC’s independence.68 Moreover, the SERC’s authority was substantially overshadowed by the NDRC, which ranked first among all regulatory agencies for the power sector.69 With the NDRC having the decisive authority over the approval of power projects and regulation of power prices, the SERC only had the right to make suggestions, and was viewed by many as mere “decoration” to the policy-making process.70 The situation seems to have changed in 2005, when the State Council granted the SERC more authority over market reforms.71 Since then the SERC has proposed

64 Haidong Cao, “Gaibugai chaifen guojia dianwang? Zhuanjia pinglun” (Should the SG be Dismantled? Opinions From Three Experts), Nanfang jingji pinglun (Southern Economic Review), 17 August 2005. 65 Margaret M. Pearson, “The Business of Governing Business in China: Institutions and Norms of the Emerging Regulatory State”, World Politics, Vol. 57, No. 2 (January 2005), pp. 299. 66 Chi Zhang and Thomas Heller, “Reform of the Chinese Electric Power Market”, p. 103; The World Bank, Establishment of A State Electricity Regulatory Commission in China: A Suggested “Roadmap” (Washington: The World Bank, 2002). 67 Author’s interview in December, 2004 in Beijing. Also see Robert Gee, Songbin Zhu and Xiaolin Li, “China’s Power Sector: Global Economic and Environmental Implications”, Energy Law Journal, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2007), p. 434. 68 Margaret M. Pearson, “The Business of Governing Business”, p. 308; Emily Yeh and Joanna Lewis, “State Power”, p. 460. 69 Tun-jen Cheng and Chung-min Tsai, “Powering Rent Seeking”, p. 122. 70 Chi Zhang and Thomas Heller, “Reform of the Chinese Electric Power Market”, p. 105; Philip Andrews-Speed, Energy Policy, p. 214. 71 Robert Gee, Songbin Zhu and Xiaolin Li, “China’s Power Sector”, p. 434.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 91 to the State Council a series of aggressive measures to break the monopoly of the SG, and has even taken a more radical reformist position than the NDRC.72

The Strategies of the State Grid Corporation Since the birth of the SG in 2002, reformists have repeatedly demanded its dismantling in favor of an electricity market with multiple “buyers” for generation plants and multiple “sellers” for end users. Officials and experts from both domestic and international institutions, such as the SERC, the NDRC and the ADB, have voiced this position. Their call for unbundling the SG has revolved around two themes: first, the horizontal development of several regional power grids in order to avoid the monopoly of the SG; second, the continued vertical separation of power distribution from transmission so that distribution companies could participate directly in market transactions with the generation plants. In response to, or probably in anticipation of, these pressures, the SG developed two important strategies. The first was the building of an 800-billion-yuan high-voltage transmission network. In 2005, the People’s Daily published an article by Liu Zhenya, the general manager of the SG, who emphasized the important role of a nationwide cross- regional high-voltage transmission network. If the ultimate goal of reform is to optimize the allocation of resources based on market forces, he argued, only the high- voltage grid could provide the basic condition and carrier for such allocation. Furthermore, since a high-voltage grid had many advantages for security and transmission speed, developing the grid was the “inevitable choice” and the “objective law” for restructuring the industry.73 The plan, which was later submitted to the central state, immediately aroused wide opposition and criticism from the reformists. They pointed out that constructing such a network would not only need three to four times the capital used for constructing the Three Gorges Dam but would also directly strengthen the monopoly of the SG. Since the high-voltage transmission standard was 1,000 Volts while the regional power grids were generally only 500 Volts, construction of the former would lead to the elimination of the latter. In fact, in the name of building the high-voltage network, the SG stopped the development of regional electricity markets and instructed all regional grids to transfer the management of their operations to the SG; for those regions that failed to do so, the SG would block their generation plants from accessing the SG’s transmission network. By doing so, the SG would remain the sole buyer and distributor in the electricity market. This behavior was viewed by reformists as “maximizing its own interests” instead of “optimizing resource allocations”, and the SG was accused of “patently going against the spirit of the 2002 Power Sector Reform Plan”. 74

72 The reason for this change in the attitude of the SERC needs further research. 73 Zhenya Liu, “Quanmian jianshe xiaokang shehui xuyao jianqiang de guojia dianwang” (The Building of Xiaokang Society Calls for Strong National Power Grid), Renmin ribao, 11 May 2005. 74 Ying Peng, “Te gaoya zhizheng” (The Debate Over the Construction of a High-Voltage Transmission Network), Caijing kexue (Finance and Economics), 15 December 2006;

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Nevertheless, after more than one year of struggle, the SG seemed to have won and the project was finally launched in 2007.75 While the building of a high-voltage network resembled the previous strategy of expanding cross-province grids used by the SPCC, the SG also created a new strategy to deal with the reform pressure. In 2006, following the State Council’s issuance of the “Suggestions on Deepening the Reform of the Electricity Sector in the Eleventh Five Year Plan”, the SG formally established a “triple-level” electricity exchange center. The center was located within the SG office in Beijing and its sub-levels were located in regional and provincial power grid companies. In July 2007, all thirty transaction locations started formal operation. The SG claimed that the establishment of the exchange center marked the introduction of market mechanisms to the power sector and the separation of power transmission from power market transactions. This meant that electricity producers and buyers could conduct market exchanges on a daily, monthly or longer-term basis while the power grid companies would only be responsible for electricity transmission. It further emphasized that the center provided a convenient, efficient and free platform for sellers and buyers with little additional transaction cost.76 The SG’s strategy was a preemptive bid which took the NDRC and SERC by surprise. Immediately after the establishment of the center, the NDRC and SERC openly required the SG to “explain” its intentions and the reasons that, as regulators of the power sector, the NDRC and SERC were “uninformed” of such a plan. As some officials and experts from these two institutions pointed out, the transaction center was yet another measure adopted by the SG to strengthen its leading position in the reform. The center deprived the regional electric grids of power over market reform, and the transaction center itself became another tool directly controlled by the SG. In fact, since late 2006, the SG has already started to refuse or delay providing transaction data to regional offices of the SERC. Many generation plants also complained that the center was completely controlled by the SG without introducing any change to the sector; the SG still dominated the price-setting process and maintained direct control over transmission and distribution.77 The creation of the center thus represented another victory of the conservative side, as the SG successfully gained the right to set the rules for the whole electricity market.

Mingzhou Yang, “Dianwang gongsi longduan” (The Monopoly of the SG), Zhongguo jingyingbao (China Business Management), 12 November 2006. 75 The reason that the central state passed this project remains unclear. 76 “Dianli jiaoyi zhongxin xinxing” (The Electric Transaction Center Has Started Operation), Shanghai zhengquan, 20 July 2007. 77 “Dianli jiaoyi zhongxin nanpo dianwang longduan” (The Electric Transaction Center Hardly Changed the Monopoly of the SG), Xinjing bao (New Beijing News), 7 September 2006; Feng Yao, “Dianli jiaoyi zhongxin zao zhiyi” (Electric Transaction Center Questioned), Jingji baodao (Economic Report), 12 December 2006.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 93

Power Sector Reform at the Cross Roads Currently, the reformists face a dilemma. On the one hand, reform has been largely put on hold, with the SG having strengthened its leading position in the sector. Among the reformists, divisions and conflicts have begun to emerge regarding reform priorities. The NDRC is primarily concerned with the stability of the entire economy and devotes most of its attention to keeping electricity prices low. The SERC worries more about establishing its own regulatory authority and keeps a watchful eye on both the SG and the NDRC. The five generation groups are mainly concerned with realizing floating electricity prices and curtailing the dominant role of the SG in price setting, but their requests are often restricted by NDRC’s cautionary price policy. Thus, although these agencies were all reform supporters, each of them has its own concerns, and there is no coherent force that consistently pushes forward the reform agenda. On the other hand, since the reform has already been launched, abandoning the reform project is not an option. The disappointing results and societal criticism of the sector have pressured the central government to keep its promise and continue with reform. Since 2002, most provinces have experienced severe power shortages and frequent power cuts. Electricity rates were raised in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Reports of serious corruption continue. These problems have aroused wide public discontent and social indignation, culminating in the summer of 2006, when the “power sector high income” event coincided with a notorious blackout scandal.78 Faced with rising calls to further break up the monopoly of the sector, the state once again announced its determination to pursue reform. In 2006, the State Council approved the “Suggestions on Deepening the Reform of the Electricity Sector from 2006 to 2010”, which largely repeated the goals of market reform set in the 2002 reform plan.79 Like the second round of reform, the third round was also launched in a pro- market context and was characterized by the conservatives’ harnessing of reform opportunities for their own use. However, the strategies of the conservative group were even more aggressive. The SG not only responded to reform pressure by strengthening its vertical integration, as in the second round, but also created a seemingly market-friendly measure, establishing the electricity exchange center, which was unanticipated by reformists. Further adding to the complexity and difficulty of the reform was the emergence of multiple players on the reformist side,

78 The chain of events was triggered by a news report on 26 June 2006, uncovering the excessively high income of 100 thousand yuan per year of a bottom-level staffer in a power plant on the verge of bankruptcy, which, together with the earlier report that the sector was making a total loss of 12.7 billion yuan in 2005, aroused public indignation. In August, the Vice Secretary General of the China Electric Council, Fan Jixiang, gave an open defense of the legitimacy of such high income levels in the power sector to the media. This, however, only intensified public anger, which exploded when the scandal of an arbitrary power cut by local power bureau officials in Hunan was exposed in August 2006. 79 “State Council Approves Suggestions on Electricity Industry Reform”, 2 November 2006, at http://english.gov.cn/2006-11/02/content_431156.htm, last accessed 12 May 2008.

94 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 each with different reform priorities. This weakened the solidarity of the pro-reform group and provided the anti-reform group with a better opportunity to manipulate the so called “electricity market”. Consequently, it becomes increasingly unclear how to proceed with future reforms.

Conclusion: Learning from China’s Trapped Reform By examining conflict over three rounds of China’s power sector reform, this paper reveals the fundamental difficulties of introducing market mechanisms into an established monopoly. The pendulum of reform, after swinging between the reformist and the conservative sides through three rounds, seems to have eventually stabilized in a partial equilibrium. Minxin Pei has attributed this type of “trapped transition” to China’s lack of political reform despite economic progress, which enables the ruling élites to reap benefits and gives rise to a predatory autocracy that is in the long run self-destructive.80 The goal of this article is more modest, but shows, through an important example, how political interests and struggles at the élite level can substantially influence the quality and sustainability of economic reform. Such a trapped reform is particularly likely to occur when the potential losers learn to adapt their strategies to changing institutional contexts. In the case of the power sector, as market forces have gradually established legitimacy in China, conservatives have shifted to support reform measures that can both appeal to pro-market forces and preserve their sector’s monopoly. This change in strategy, in turn, affects the pace of institutional change by making it increasingly difficult for the reformist group to oppose the conservatives’ reform agenda. Power sector reform thus bears important lessons for reform in China’s other state-dominated sectors, which are subject to the same danger of being trapped in partial equilibria. Industries such as telecommunications, aviation and railways were all ranked as the priority targets of reform in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan. China has been trying to introduce market mechanisms into these industries since the late 1990s, but has achieved little success in changing the monopoly structure.81 Telecommunications reform, for example, resembles power sector reform in many aspects. The government reorganized and dismantled the industry into multiple entities in order to introduce competition, but the sector continued to be dominated by non-efficient SOEs that had previously been affiliated with the Ministry of Information Industry, the supposed regulator of the sector. Studies have suggested

80 Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 81 Kenneth DeWoskin, “The WTO and the Telecommunications Sector in China”, The China Quarterly, No. 167 (September 2001), pp. 630-54; Rong Zhang and Dominique Bouf, “How Can Competition Be Introduced into Chinese Railways?” Transport Policy, Vol. 12, No. 4 (July 2005), pp. 345-52; Pamela Mar and Michael Young, “Corporate Governance in Transition Economies: A Case Study of Two Chinese Airlines”, Journal of World Business, Vol 36, No. 3 (August 2001), pp. 280-302; Jae Ho Chung, “The Political Economy of Industrial Restructuring in China: The Case of Civil Aviation”, The China Journal, No. 50 (July 2003), pp. 61-82.

PLAYING THE MARKET REFORM CARD 95 that, similar to the power sector, an important cause of the slow progress of telecommunications reform lies in the political interests controlling this vital industry and the strength of reform opponents to protect their monopoly.82 In a broader perspective, this study challenges the teleological view commonly associated with market reform. Instead of simply leading to liberal market competition, market reform is often filled with complexity and ambiguity, and the objective of a competitive market can be used as a powerful weapon by different groups in the policy process. In fact, studies of power sector reforms in other countries—including India, South Korea, Russia and Latin American countries—have shown that, beneath the veneer of market friendly policies, there has always been complex political competition among policy coalitions and incumbent interest groups, which often prevent substantial changes.83 To avoid idealizing market reform in the power sector, a careful examination of the policy- making process is of vital importance for diagnosing the roots of the problem. Simply proposing more radical reform policies, as some experts and observers of the power sector in China have done, may be counterproductive. It is the way in which actors manipulate these policies, rather than the policies themselves, that eventually shapes the path of reform.

82 Minxin Pei, China’s Trapped Transition, pp. 102-09; Margaret M. Pearson, “The Business of Governing Business”. 83 Sunila S. Kale, “Current Reforms: The Politics of Policy Change in India’s Electricity Sector”, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Fall 2004), pp. 467-91; John Byrne, Leigh Glover, Hoesung Lee, Young-Doo Wang and Jung-Min Yu, “Electricity Reform at a Crossroads: Problems in South Korea’s Power Liberalization Strategy”, Pacific Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Fall 2004), pp. 493-516. For a comparison between China, India and Russia, see Yi-chong Xu, Electricity Reform; for reform experiences in five developing countries, see David Victor and Thomas Heller (eds), The Political Economy of Power Sector Reform; for reforms in Latin America, see Victoria Murillo, Political Competition, Partisanship, and Policy Making in Latin American Public Utilities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

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Asian Survey provides penetrating analysis and commentary on the politics, economics, social issues, and foreign relations of countries from Afghanistan to the Pacific Rim. Since 1961, this scholarly yet accessible journal has offered empirically grounded insider perspectives on important current events, making it one of the most widely read and quoted sources on developments in the region.

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JUDICIAL REVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONS: HAS IT CHANGED THE BEHAVIOR OF GOVERNMENT AGENCIES?

Xuehua Zhang and Leonard Ortolano∗

The promulgation of the Administrative Litigation Law (ALL) in 1989 was widely hailed as an historical milestone in China’s legal development.1 The law’s primary intent is to empower citizens to curb administrative misconduct by government. This is consistent with enhancing the rule of law, the essence of which is described by Randall Peerenboom as placing meaningful constraints on government agencies and individual officials.2 In the late 1980s, early drafts of the ALL faced substantial bureaucratic opposition.3 Agencies were so concerned about the possibility that their decisions

∗ We are very grateful to Professor Zhongmei Lü for making the data collection involved in this work possible. We greatly appreciate the data collection assistance from Professor Zengwei Yuan, Dr Zhongmin Zhang, Shunwei Zhang and Haisong Chen. We would like to thank the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Energy Foundation and the UPS Foundation for their financial support. We also thank Yuen Yuen Ang, Rachel Stern and anonymous reviewers for making constructive comments on this paper. Any errors remain exclusively ours. 1 Susan Finder, “Like Throwing an Egg Against a Stone? Administrative Litigation in the People’s Republic of China”, Journal of Chinese Law, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Summer 1989), pp. 1-28; Pitman Potter, “The Administrative Litigation Law of the PRC: Judicial Review and Bureaucratic Reform”, in Pitman Potter, Domestic Law Reforms in Post-Mao China (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), pp. 270-304. 2 Randall Peerenboom, China’s Long March Toward Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 2. Although the meaning of “rule of law” has remained contentious among legal scholars, it is accepted that the ability of a legal system to impose meaningful constraints on the state and individual officials is a basic component. More generally, Peerenboom has commented on rule of law in his analysis of China’s system of “individual case supervision” (gean jiandu). See Randall Peerenboom, “Judicial Independence and Judicial Accountability: An Empirical Study of Individual Case Supervision”, The China Journal, No. 55 (January 2006), pp 67-92. 3 Pitman Potter, “The Administrative Litigation Law”, pp. 274-76.

THE CHINA JOURNAL, NO. 64, JULY 2010 98 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 would be challenged by ordinary citizens and reviewed by courts that the central government delayed the ALL’s implementation date so that top officials could build support for the law among agencies and give them time to prepare.4 A senior judge on the Hubei Provincial Court said, “Many agency leaders were so afraid of being sued in court that they could not even get to sleep at night”. After nearly 20 years of implementation, we ask whether and how the ALL has achieved its goal of restraining administrative behavior. Empirical studies of the ALL have focused on the processes and outcomes of administrative litigation cases (ALCs) filed by citizens and organizations. These studies identify the tactics employed by litigants and comment on the significance of the ALL in the broader context of state–society relations.5 Among the studies that have considered its overall effects, some conclude that the ALL has made administrative organs more careful about exercising their powers according to the law. 6 Others, however, characterize the ALL as a “frail weapon” that has not significantly reduced the arbitrary nature of administrative behavior.7 Abigail Jahiel’s work is one of the few environmentally-related studies touching on empirical investigations of the specific effects of ALCs on bureaucratic behavior. Jahiel argues: “… the fact that the EPB [Environmental Protection Bureau] has been put on the offensive … is responsible for the institutionalization of environmental law enforcement … In Wuhan, challenges brought against EPB rulings have led to greater efforts on the part of EPB officials to abide strictly by the law.”8

4 Originally the law was to take effect on 1 April 1990. The date was postponed to 1 October 1990. 5 Gong Ruixiang (ed.), Fazhi de lixiang yu xianshi (The Ideal and Reality of the Rule of Law) (Beijing: Zhongguo Zhengfa Daxue Chubanshe, 1993); Minxin Pei, “Citizens vs. Mandarins: Administrative Litigation in China”, The China Quarterly, No. 152 (December 1997), pp. 832-62; Jiang Mingan (ed.), Zhongguo xingzheng fazhi fazhan jincheng diaocha baogao (An Investigation Report of the Development of China’s Administration According to Law) (Beijing: Falü Chubanshe, 1998); Ying Songnian and Yuan Shuhong (eds), Zouxiang fazhi zhengfu: yifa xingzheng lilun yanjiu yu shizheng diaocha (Toward Government by Law: Theoretical Research and Empirical Investigation of Administration According to Law) (Beijing: Falü Chubanshe, 2001); Kevin O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, “Suing the Local State: Administrative Litigation in Rural China”, The China Journal, No. 51 (January 2004), pp. 75- 91; Yuen Yuen Tang, “When Peasants Sue En Masse: Large-scale Collective ALL Suits in Rural China”, China: An International Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 2005), pp. 24-49. 6 Gong Ruixiang (ed.), Fazhi; Jiang Mingan (ed.), Zhongguo; Ying Songnian and Yuan Shuhong (eds), Zouxiang; Abigail Jahiel, Policy Implementation Through Organizational Learning: The Case of Water Pollution Control in China’s Reforming Socialist System (University of Michigan, PhD Dissertation, 1994); Minxin Pei, “Citizens vs. Mandarins”. 7 Veron Mei-Ying Hung, Administrative Litigation and Court Reform in the People’s Republic of China (Stanford University, PhD Dissertation, 2001); Robyn Marshall, Administrative Law in the People’s Republic of China: A Process of Justice (Australian National University, PhD Dissertation, 2003). 8 Abigail Jahiel, Policy Implementation, p. 416.

JUDICIAL REVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONS 99

Most research on the impact of ALCs on bureaucratic behavior has relied either on survey questionnaires9 or interviews with administrative officials or judges.10 Our study examines comprehensive court case files and uses in-depth interviews with all parties involved in ALCs. 11 This method enables us to identify variations in the effects of individual ALCs on administrative behavior, and to isolate the factors that might explain such variations. We address these unexamined issues in the context of environmental protection. We analyze 14 ALCs filed in two counties in Hubei Province to explore the effects of individual ALCs on EPBs and to identify the factors explaining differences in those effects. Given the relatively small number of lawsuits investigated in this paper, the findings cannot be considered as representative; rather, they illustrate the spectrum of specific effects of individual ALCs and provide a basis for hypotheses that can be tested with a larger sample in future research. Our analysis shows that half of the 14 ALCs led to changes in EPB behavior and procedures. The changes occurred only in cases in which (i) the officials in charge of administrative enforcement had knowledge of legal issues, and (ii) those officials agreed with the courts’ judgements regarding legal deficiencies in EPB practices. In cases where these two conditions were not met, either ALCs had no effect on EPB practices or the ALC outcomes caused the EPBs to modify their enforcement strategies to avoid future litigation without correcting legal errors identified during litigation. In examining whether and how ALCs placed administrative behavior under the supervision of the courts and citizens, we found the record to be mixed. In some cases, court findings had no influence in aligning subsequent EPB practices with the law. However, there were a number of cases in which the procedures and practices of EPBs were fundamentally changed as a result of court actions. It is these cases that demonstrate the ALL’s long-term potential. In the remainder of this paper, we first introduce the relevant key provisions of the ALL and describe the rationale for choosing Hubei as the research location and for selecting the two counties as case study sites. We then present an overview of the 14 ALCs and analyze the effects of each ALC and the factors that appear to explain variations in the observed effects.

Relevant Legal Provisions of the ALL The ALL contains 75 legal provisions that guide local courts in accepting and adjudicating ALCs. Three aspects of the ALL are particularly important for our

9 Gong Ruixiang (ed.), Fazhi; Jiang Mingan (ed.), Zhongguo; Ying Songnian and Yuan Shuhong (eds), Zouxiang. 10 Abigail Jahiel, Policy Implementation; Veron Mei-Ying Hung, Administrative Litigation and Court Reform; Robyn Marshall, Administrative Law. 11 The approach employed in our work differs distinctly from that in Abigail Jahiel, Policy Implementation. Jahiel’s study relied exclusively on interviews with EPB officials to describe the legal processes and effects of individual ALCs. This partly explains why her study seemed to find only positive impacts of ALCs on EPBs.

100 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 study.12 First, administrative acts that may be legally challenged by filing an ALC are “concrete administrative acts”, namely, applications of a rule in a particular case. Examples of concrete administrative acts include administrative penalties such as detaining a person, imposing fines, confiscating property or issuing warnings. An ALC can also be used to challenge an agency for failing to perform its legal responsibilities. Administrative acts not subject to judicial review include, according to Article 12, (1) acts of the state; (2) abstract administrative acts; (3) internal administrative decisions; and (4) administrative decisions that are final as provided by law. 13 Thus, courts are expected to adjudicate ALCs without ruling on the validity of underlying administrative regulations. When facing sub-national administrative regulations (abstract acts) that are inconsistent with the constitution or with superior legislation, Article 53 stipulates that courts can refuse to follow lower-level regulations in adjudicating specific cases but may not invalidate those regulations.14 Second, Article 5 makes “legality” the fundamental principle for judicial review of concrete administrative acts. The general grounds for judicial review consist of credible allegations of illegal actions by agencies. Article 54 details seven grounds for determining that an agency’s actions are illegal: ƒ insufficient principal evidence; ƒ inaccurate application of laws, regulations or rules; ƒ violation of legal procedures prescribed by law; ƒ exceeding legal authority; ƒ abusing power; ƒ obviously unfair administrative penalties; ƒ failing to perform (or delaying the performance of) legal duties. A third key aspect of the ALL concerns types of court rulings. If a court finds in favor of a plaintiff, it may revoke (fully or partially) the disputed administrative action and, if it finds in favor of the agency, it can uphold the agency’s decisions. Based on our interviews with judges, there are several circumstances in which an agency is considered to have “actually lost” (shiji baisu 实际败诉) in court: ƒ agency decisions are fully or partially revoked; ƒ agencies are ordered to perform their legal responsibilities;

12 For a comprehensive review of ALL provisions, see Susan Finder, “Like Throwing an Egg”; Pitman Potter, “The Administrative Litigation Law”. 13 All specific provisions of ALL discussed in this paper can be found in “Administrative Litigation Law of the PRC”, Translation in Chinese Law and Government, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Fall 1991), p. 22 (no author given). Also see Pitman Potter, “The Administrative Litigation Law”, for an analysis of the six main limits of ALL, including the limits on the scope of court review. 14 Randall Peerenboom, China’s Long March, pointed out that this ability to refuse to follow inconsistent regulations in specific cases allows for a kind of indirect court review of legal consistency.

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ƒ agency decisions are revised or confirmed as illegal;15 ƒ plaintiffs withdraw a case (following court approval of an application to withdraw) after an agency rescinds or changes its original actions. A unique feature of Chinese court rulings under the ALL is the requirement for court approval of a plaintiff’s request to withdraw the complaint. Article 51 says that a court may approve such a request at any time before rendering a formal judgement if (i) the plaintiff withdraws the case voluntarily (ensuring that the plaintiff does not withdraw because of pressure from the agency involved) or (ii) the agency changes or rescinds its concrete acts and the plaintiff agrees.

Case Selection, Data Collection and Lawsuit Overview We chose Hubei Province as a field research site partly because of its long history of environmental administrative litigation.16 A senior judge at the Supreme People’s Court reported that the numbers of ALCs in China’s central regions (including Hubei) are relatively large compared to other regions.17 Also, Hubei is not an atypical region of China in terms of its area, geographical location, population and level of socio– economic development. 18 More importantly, we gained critical access to court records, judges and the EPBs in the province from a prominent legal scholar. After examining local court registration books, we chose counties B and C in City A as in-depth case study sites, for two reasons.19 First, EPBs in those counties had been sued relatively frequently. As of 2005, the County B EPB had been sued nine times (since 1992), the most frequently sued EPB in City A. The County C EPB had been sued five times (since 1999). Second, the two EPBs “actually lost” 13 of the 14 ALCs filed against them (see Table 1). Courts revoked EPB decisions in six cases, and plaintiffs withdrew five lawsuits after the EPBs revised or revoked their decisions. The County B EPB was sued twice for failure to stop pollution from local enterprises and was then ordered by the court to perform its legal duties; one of the cases was a collective lawsuit filed by 29 county residents. This extensive record of lost cases allowed us to observe potentially significant and wide-ranging impacts of ALCs on EPBs.

15 Courts can order agencies to perform a new, specific administrative action or directly modify administrative penalties being challenged. In practice, courts rarely render such rulings. 16 The first environmental ALC was filed in 1987. 17 Cai Xiaxue, “Xingzheng susong zhengzai shengwen” (Administrative Litigation Is on the Rise), People’s Daily (30 January 2002): http://www.people.com.cn/GB/shehui/43/ 20020130/ 658451.html, accessed 27 January 2008. 18 According to the 2000 census, Hubei was ranked eighth in the nation in terms of population and 16th in terms of land area. In 2005, Hubei’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was ranked 16th in the nation. For more details, see http://www.hubei.gov.cn/hbgk/, http://region.cei.gov.cn/ WebSite/CRM/UpFile/File79.doc, accessed 11 July 2009. 19 They were also suggested by some senior EPB and court officials in Hubei. We chose the county level for case studies because county courts accept and handle most ALCs and most environmental enforcement work takes place at this administrative level.

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Whereas previous studies on Chinese courts had to rely primarily on written court judgements, we were unusually privileged to have access to a comprehensive set of case files that tracked the entire process of litigation. The items in the case files included: (1) written complaints by plaintiffs; (2) written replies by the EPBs; (3) evidence presented by the EPBs; (4) records of court investigations and hearings (trials); (5) records of internal court discussions; (6) the court’s written approval of withdrawal requests; (7) written court judgements; and (8) other similar documents if a case was appealed to higher-level courts. We conducted a total of 92 in-depth, person-to-person interviews: 32 in County B and 45 in County C with plaintiffs, judges, EPB officials and lawyers involved in the 14 lawsuits as well as 15 interviews in other parts of China.20 We first collected annual summaries of ALCs involving all administrative agencies from each of the 14 municipal courts in Hubei from 1986 to 2005. Each summary contains information on the number of ALCs filed against each agency, types of court rulings and the number of ALCs appealed to higher-level courts. We chose City A as the basis for selecting case study sites. In comparison with other cities in Hubei, City A had a relatively large number of ALCs involving EPBs and 82.4 per cent of ALCs in which EPBs “actually lost” in court, the largest percentage among all cities in Hubei.21 We were particularly interested in ALCs that EPBs lost, because many senior judges and environmental legal officials at the national and provincial levels had argued that such cases would have more notable effects on EPB practices than cases in which EPBs won in court.22 They reasoned that, in losing cases, EPBs would be forced to correct errors and to follow legal requirements more closely in future enforcement activities.

20 All interviewees were asked a fixed set of open-ended questions that was modified based on the specific lawsuit and the interviewee’s role in the lawsuit. Interviews lasted from half an hour to five hours. Most took two hours. 21 The percentage of EPB cases “actually lost” in court from 1992 to 2004 for the entire province was 66.4 per cent (authors’ calculations). Note that our analysis is based on local court statistical data collected within Hubei Province. The outcomes of EPB cases appear to be significantly different from those of previous studies, for example Benjamin van Rooij, Regulating Land and Pollution in China, Lawmaking, Compliance, and Enforcement: Theory and Cases (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2006), pp. 302-03. Van Rooij used data reported by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) to illustrate that the number of EPB cases are few and EPBs nearly always win the cases. Our field research in Hubei reveals that the number of EPB cases reported by SEPA was significantly lower than the corresponding number of EPB cases reported by the Supreme People’s Court. In our case study locations, this discrepancy resulted primarily because county/urban district EPBs frequently reported to SEPA only lawsuits in which they won. For more details, see Xuehua Zhang, Enforcing Environmental Regulations in Hubei Province, China: Agencies, Courts, Citizens (Stanford University, PhD Dissertation, 2008). In 2008, SEPA became the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Because our field research concerns the period before this change, we refer only to SEPA. 22 Interviews with a senior legal official at SEPA, senior judges at the Hubei Provincial Court and City A Court and officials at the Hubei Provincial and City A EPBs.

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Table 1: Basic Characteristics of 14 Administrative Litigation Cases Involving EPBs in Counties B and C Plaintiff(s) Environmental EPB Decisions Trial Court Appellate Issues Involved Challenged Results Court Results Case 1: County metal Sanitary Penalty for refusal Revoked Revoked 1992 material wastewater to register pollution EPB EPB County B company conditions decisions decisions Case 2: A farmer Rare, protected Confiscation of Revoked Revoked 1992 plants farmer’s plants EPB EPB County B decisions decisions Case 3: County Sanitary Penalty for refusal Revoked 1994 traditional wastewater to pay pollution EPB County B medicinal herb levies decisions company Case 4: County water Sanitary Penalty for refusal Upheld EPB Upheld EPB 1998 and soil wastewater to pay pollution decisions decisions County B maintenance levies station Case 5: County Construction Penalties for refusal Revoked EPB 1999 construction noise to pay pollution EPB withdrew its County B design levies decisions appellate institute request Case 6: 29 county Industrial Failure to take Ordered EPB 1999 residents wastewater, air action against a to take action County B pollution, noise polluter Case 7: A farmer Dust, noise Failure to take Ordered EPB 2000 action against a to take action County B polluter Case 8: County Sanitary Penalty for failure Withdrawn 2003 agricultural wastewater to conduct an County B bank environmental impact assessment Case 9: Two Hazardous Penalty for illegal Withdrawn 2003 businessmen waste transfer of waste County B Case 10: An audio– Noise Penalty for refusal Withdrawn 1999 video shop to pay pollution County C levies Case 11: A restaurant Sanitary Penalty for no Withdrawn 1999 owner wastewater wastewater County C discharge facility Case 12: County water Sanitary Penalty for refusal Revoked Revoked 2000 bureau wastewater to pay pollution EPB EPB County C levies decisions decisions Case 13: County rural Sanitary Penalty for refusal Withdrawn 2001 credit wastewater to register pollution County C cooperative conditions Case 14: A farmer Wastewater Penalty for failure Revoked 2005 to conduct an EPB County C environmental decisions impact assessment Sources: Court case files, County B and County C courts, 1992–2005. (Case files are with first author).

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The five withdrawn lawsuits are particularly interesting because, in most instances, the EPBs either revised or revoked their penalty decisions before court trials were initiated; mediation by courts was limited.23 In Cases 9 and 10, the EPBs rescinded their decisions informally to allow the cases to be dropped. 24 Several County B EPB officials acknowledged procedural errors involved in Case 9, and the EPB director confessed that he had no confidence that the EPB would win if the case went through.25 In Case 10, when the County C EPB vice-director involved realized that there was no clear legal grounds for the EPB to collect levies from non- construction noise sources, such as the audio-video shop owned by the plaintiff, he decided not to collect levies (informally rescinding the EPB’s decision); the plaintiff then dropped the case.26 Case 13 was withdrawn when the EPB rescinded its penalty decision shortly after it received the plaintiff’s written complaint and realized it had issued the punishment to the wrong legal entity.27 Case 8 was dropped after the County B vice-magistrate in charge of the county Agricultural Bank (plaintiff) successfully persuaded the EPB director to reduce the penalty.28 Mediation by a court played a role in only one of the five withdrawn cases. In Case 11 in County C, the presiding judge knew the plaintiff very well personally. The day before the public trial, the judge called the EPB vice-director to his office to settle the matter.29 As a result of the meeting, the EPB vice-director agreed to eliminate the penalty, and the plaintiff dropped the lawsuit. As shown in Table 1, the parties that filed ALCs included a variety of organizations and individuals: an administrative agency; public service units (shiye danwei 事业单位);30 individual businessmen (getihu 个体户); and ordinary citizens,

23 Some scholars have argued that most withdrawals have been a result of court mediations leading to out-of-court settlements or because plaintiffs lost hope of being successful in court due to administrative interventions by agencies. Other scholars believe that a large number of withdrawals represent out-of-court settlements based on the sued government agencies unilaterally rescinding or changing the administrative actions that were the subjects of the lawsuits. See Minxin Pei, “Citizens vs. Mandarins”; Jiang Mingan (ed.), Zhongguo. 24 Plaintiffs, judges, EPB officials and a lawyer involved in both cases. 25 The director regarded this case as the worst that he had encountered. 26 The vice-director asked an EPB official who was an acquaintance of the plaintiff to consult with the plaintiff. According to the court record, when the judge asked the plaintiff why he had decided to withdraw the case, the plaintiff replied, “The EPB office director reached an oral agreement with me that the EPB would not collect levies from me anymore. To maintain future relationships with the EPB, I decided to drop the case.” 27 An EPB official, a lawyer and the plaintiff involved in the case. 28 The interviewee was the then EPB director. During the interview, the director claimed that the EPB had done nothing wrong in issuing a penalty to the county agricultural bank. 29 An EPB official and the plaintiff involved in the case. The plaintiff and judge were neighbors and their parents were very good friends. 30 Public service units in China generally refer to subsidiaries of governmental agencies that perform social or public functions, partly or fully on a self-financing basis. Examples are schools, hospitals and state-owned hotels.

JUDICIAL REVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONS 105 such as the county residents and farmers in Case 6. The ALCs also covered a wide range of environmental issues: sanitary wastewater, legally protected rare plants, noise pollution, industrial wastewater, air pollution, dust and hazardous wastes. Half of the lawsuits involved sanitary wastewater (namely, from toilets and sinks). Table 2: Main Plaintiffs’ Complaints and Court Reasoning for Judgements

Main Plaintiffs’ Complaints Main Court Reasoning for Judgements Procedural errors, i.e. insufficient Insufficient principal evidence for the evidentiary materials; inconsistent forms Case 1 penalty decision used during pollution registration process No legal authority for confiscating Case 2 Illegal confiscation of plaintiff’s plants plaintiff’s plants and issuing a penalty Incorrect application of pollution levy- Incorrect application of pollution levy- Case 3 related rules related rules Inaccurate application of pollution levy- Case 4 related laws; incorrect principal evidence Procedural errors, e.g., failure to clarify Case 5 violation facts Issued penalty to a wrong subject Failure to stop the pollution discharged by Failed to respond to the plaintiffs’ Case 6 a local detergent factory complaints Failure to stop the pollution discharged by Case 7 a factory Failed to perform legal responsibilities Case 8 Inaccurate principal evidence No formal court opinion Case 9 Incorrect penalty decision No formal court opinion No legal authority for collecting levies Case 10 from non-construction noise sources No formal court opinion Insufficient principal evidence; inaccurate application of laws; failure to follow legal Case 11 procedures in issuing a penalty No formal court opinion Incorrect application of provincial EPB exceeded its legal authority by regulations that are inconsistent with the collecting levies from administrative national law; administrative agencies Case 12 agencies; procedural errors should not pay levies Case 13 Issued penalty to incorrect subject No formal court opinion EPB punishment decision directly Plaintiff’s business was a typical family contradicted earlier county government sideline (not a small paper mill) with no decision and was obviously contrary to Case 14 pollution the law Sources: Court case files (written complaints by plaintiffs, records on court’s internal discussions, written court judgements), County B and County C, 1992–2005. A variety of errors in EPB penalty decisions were identified by the plaintiffs and/or the courts. As shown in Table 2, EPB errors ranged from minor procedural mistakes such as using inconsistent forms during the pollution registration process to substantive errors such as applying inappropriate legal provisions and issuing penalties to incorrect legal subjects. It is notable that eight of the 14 lawsuits concerned pollution levies. The pollution levy system was introduced in China in 1978 to provide an economic incentive for waste dischargers to cut pollution, and to generate revenues for waste treatment projects. Before 2003, the national program applied only to enterprises and

106 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 public service units.31 In 2003, the State Council expanded the scope of the levy system to all units, including individual industrial and commercial businesses. Environmental supervision stations, subsidiaries of the EPBs at and below the provincial level, are in charge of assessing and collecting pollution levies. 32 A discharger that either refuses to register its waste releases or fails to pay the assessed levy may be subject to an administrative penalty. Once a penalty decision is made, the violator receives a notification signed by the EPB director.

Types of Effects To analyze how individual ALCs influenced EPB procedures and behavior, we examined whether the two EPBs had made changes in their enforcement practices to correct errors identified during litigation. In instances in which such changes had not been made, we determined whether any actions were taken by the EPBs in response to court rulings. Our analysis revealed the following four types of actions: ƒ modifications in enforcement practices to correct errors; ƒ enhancements in EPB enforcement capabilities; ƒ use of evasive strategies to avoid future litigation; ƒ no procedural changes.

Modifications in Enforcement Practices Many EPB errors identified by the plaintiffs and/or judges led either to reversing EPB decisions in court or to withdrawing cases after EPBs formally or informally withdrew their original decisions. In response to half of the ALCs, the EPBs made notable changes. EPBs had to establish new procedures for handling noise sources after some lawsuits. Case 10, which involved the owner of a small audio–video shop, caused the vice-director of County C EPB (1995–present, hereafter called vice-director M)33 to examine the relevant legal documents carefully. On the basis of this review, the vice-director realized that the EPB had no clear legal authorization to collect levies from non-construction noise sources. He informally rescinded the decision

31 National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA), Zhongguo huanjing baohu fagui quanshu (1982–1997) (Full Collection of China’s Environmental Protection Laws and Regulations [1982–1997]) (Beijing: Huaxue Gongye Chubanshe, 1997). 32 EPB supervision stations also inspect pollutant discharge conditions and settle environmental accidents and disputes. 33 The vice-director in County C (1995–present) took the bar examination, to test the legal knowledge that he had learned from books and his practical work. The vice-director in County B (1998–2003) had intended to leave the EPB to become a lawyer, and also took the bar examination, because the then EPB director (who was present during Case 4 and left afterwards) did not support his efforts to standardize the enforcement procedure so that the EPB followed the law closely. To avoid confusion below, we refer to these two vice- directors as vice-director M and vice-director N respectively. Other EPB enforcement leaders are mentioned without further specification.

JUDICIAL REVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONS 107 and agreed that levies would no longer be collected from the plaintiff.34 Following that case, the EPB stopped imposing levies on all non-construction noise sources in the county. Now, whenever the EPB receives complaints about noise from a non- construction source, it refers them to the county public security bureau for further action.35 A noise-related ALC in County B also led to changes in EPB actions. According to the plaintiff involved in Case 5, the County B EPB stopped collecting pollution levies from construction companies after the court reversed its penalty decision against the construction brigade. Instead of penalizing construction companies for excessive noise, the EPB started collecting levies from entities that hired construction companies.36 Some ALCs led EPBs to adhere closely to legal details and mandates in carrying out enforcement work. For example, EPBs in both counties have become more careful about verifying a polluter’s legal status. In Case 5 the EPB made the mistake of not photocopying the plaintiff’s business license and the court therefore revoked the EPB’s decision.37 In Case 13 the court determined that the EPB issued its penalty decision to the incorrect legal entity. The EPB had to formally rescind its decision, and the plaintiff subsequently withdrew the case.38 Since then, if the County C EPB has doubts about the accuracy of the names of regulated parties, it consults the business registration office of the county industrial and commercial bureau.39 Two cases in County B caused the EPB to change its response to citizen complaints about pollution. After being sued for failing to respond to such complaints in Cases 6 and 7, County B EPB leaders had to take public complaints regarding pollution more seriously by asking the EPB supervision station to assign specific staff to handle complaints from the public. Even Case 4, the only case in which either EPB prevailed in court, led to changes in EPB enforcement procedures. It caused County B EPB’s vice-director (1998–2003, hereafter called vice-director N) to realize that their internal procedures for issuing penalty decisions were imperfect: during the trial, the plaintiff pointed out that the EPB decision did not have the EPB director’s signature.40 After the lawsuit, the vice-director

34 An EPB official, the plaintiff and a lawyer involved in the case. 35 An EPB official in charge of the case. 36 A plaintiff involved in the case. 37 An EPB official, the plaintiff and a lawyer involved in the case. 38 An EPB official, the plaintiff and a lawyer involved in the case. 39 An EPB official in charge of the case. 40 EPB internal procedures for collecting levies and issuing penalties allow EPB leaders to exercise considerable discretion. A number of scholars have commented on such discretionary power being exerted by EPB leaders. For example, see Benjamin Van Rooij, “Organization and Procedure in Environmental Law Enforcement: Sichuan in Comparative Perspective”, China Information, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2003), pp. 36-64; and Xuehua Zhang, Leonard Ortolano and Zhongmei Lü, “Agency Empowerment through the Administrative Litigation Law: Court Enforcement of Pollution Levies in Hubei Province, China”, The China Quarterly, No. 202 (June 2010). Pp. 307-26.

108 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 established an internal team to supervise penalty decisions and required all such decisions to be signed by the EPB director before issuance. More importantly, this case caused the EPB to appreciate the importance of standardizing enforcement procedures and documents, something which many staff and officials had not previously recognized. Another illustration of procedural change is given by Case 9, which caused the County B EPB to align its enforcement practices more closely with the law. In this case, the EPB director had used his own discretion and issued (on the spot) a fine. The legally required procedures for issuing penalties had not been followed and documentation had not been prepared. The EPB vice-director in charge of enforcement (N) only became aware of these details after the case was filed in court, and he also learned (from the presiding judge) that EPB would lose the case because the required procedures for issuing a penalty decision had not been followed. The EPB “actually lost” the case because it dropped the penalty and the plaintiffs withdrew the case. After hearing explanations from the vice-director in charge of enforcement (N) and the presiding judge of Case 9, the EPB director realized that he and his staff employed too much discretion, and this exercise of discretion did not follow legal requirements and gave excessive bargaining leverage to non-compliant regulated parties, thereby undermining the EPB’s enforcement efforts. The director thus gave a special enforcement-related talk in an EPB meeting and required all enforcement personnel to follow legal procedures closely in future work. Moreover, he forbade private negotiations with polluters before formal levy collection decisions were issued.41 The director claimed that since that time he has not made any penalty decisions based on his own discretion and that every decision has carefully followed legal procedures.42 While it is not possible to substantiate the claim made by the EPB, the Case 9 outcome clearly provided the director with motivation for aligning the EPB’s practices more closely with formal legal requirements of the law.

Enhancements in Enforcement Capabilities Interestingly, Cases 6 and 7, in which the County B EPB was sued for failure to act against polluters violating the law, enhanced the EPB’s ability to take enforcement action against well-connected local enterprises. In both cases, local government leaders had previously blocked the EPB’s action against the polluters.43

41 Here, the director tried to reduce the discretion exercised by individual inspectors but not to eliminate it entirely. 42 During the interview, the director described (in great detail and expressing considerable frustration) how he had to use his personal connections at the county court and government to have them persuade the plaintiffs to drop the case. In addition, he made several direct efforts to negotiate personally with the plaintiffs. 43 Three plaintiffs, a lawyer, two judges and two EPB officials involved in the two cases.

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In Case 6, the plaintiffs (29 county residents representing 19 households) lived adjacent to a detergent factory and suffered greatly from the factory’s loud noises, offensive smells and noxious wastewater discharges. The judges recognized that the severe pollution seriously affected the plaintiffs’ health and lives. The pollution also affected several government organs nearby, including the food bureau, the agricultural committee, the retired cadre bureau and the court itself. The factory, which had been established with funds from outside investors, had close relationships with county leaders and enjoyed many favorable policies. County leaders who feared that the factory would leave the county if environmental rules were enforced had prevented the EPB from regulating it.44 Given the plaintiffs’ dire situation and the tremendous public pressure, the court ordered the EPB to take concrete actions responding to the plaintiffs’ complaints within a month. The EPB used the court order to pressure the county government into asking the detergent factory to implement pollution reduction measures.45 As a result, there was a great reduction to the noise, air and water pollution discharged by the factory.46 In Case 7, the polluter was a model factory, the first powdered ore factory established by the county government in the town where the plaintiff (an individual farmer) lived. The presiding judge hearing the case said, “The plaintiff’s house was just 1.5 meters away from the factory and was completely covered with dust; I would not want to live there for even one day”. Before the litigation, the County B EPB claimed it was impossible to do anything about the pollution.47 The court judgement, which ordered the EPB to take concrete actions within two months, enabled the EPB to force the factory to adopt control measures that greatly reduced the dust and noise pollution.48 An additional effect of Cases 6 and 7 was that the County B EPB utilized the enhanced public understanding of the EPB’s levy collection authority to assist in enforcement by deflecting pressures linked to guanxi (关系 connections) and renqing (人情 human feelings)49 Vice-director N took advantage of the well-attended trials

44 A plaintiff, lawyer, EPB official and judge involved in the case. 45 Two judges and an EPB official involved in the case. 46 An EPB official and two plaintiffs involved in the case. The EPB sent an official reply to the plaintiffs saying that it could not stop the pollution entirely. In the court’s view, the EPB had fulfilled its legal duties, but the plaintiffs believed that the court judgement did not generate the desired result, namely, to stop the pollution. The plaintiffs, however, felt that the court and EPB had done their best at the time. 47 An EPB official and a judge involved in the case. 48 Two judges and an EPB official involved in the case. In the plaintiff’s view, reducing dust and noise pollution did not meet his original litigation request of stopping the pollution entirely, but he did not make a further appeal. 49 Guanxi and renqing have long influenced EPB enforcement work. As a result, EPBs were often only able to collect fees much lower than the amounts called for in regulations. For more details, see Xuehua Zhang, Enforcing Environmental Regulations, pp. 54-56. However, some lawsuits (for example 4, 5, 11 and 13) led to improved EPB-polluter relationships, thereby facilitating subsequent levy collection. These improvements took place, in part,

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(the court house was fully packed during both) to educate the public about the EPB’s legal responsibility to collect pollution levies. After the lawsuits, when polluters tried to use guanxi and renqing to avoid paying levies, the EPB would say, “We have to do our job [collecting levies] otherwise we will be sued and even lose in court as we did in the [Cases 6 and 7] lawsuits”. The EPB also used the court ruling in Case 7 to overcome the obstacles which town government leaders had previously imposed to block EPB levy collection from local powdered ore factories. After the lawsuit, town leaders were unable to resist EPB enforcement, and EPB levy collection proceeded more smoothly. Cases 6 and 7 are particularly significant because, in addition to being the only lawsuits in our study initiated by citizens, they empowered the County B court and EPB to deflect political pressures exerted by local leaders. As a result of these cases, ordinary Chinese citizens observed that they could use the courts to protect their legal and environmental rights and to force the EPB to implement environmental regulations. Without these lawsuits and court judgements, the County B EPB would not have been able to take action against the polluters because they were well protected by local leaders. Case 6 is especially notable because the large number of citizens involved in the case (which is classified as a “collective lawsuit”) appeared to put so much pressure on local leaders that the leaders had to let the court make a judgement and allow the EPB to enforce applicable rules.

Evasive Strategies to Avoid Future Litigation Some lawsuits (for example, 1, 12, 14) led not to new EPB practices more consistent with the law but instead to novel EPB strategies to avoid future litigation without correcting errors noted in the cases. A particularly illuminating example is Case 12. In this case, the plaintiff, the County C Water Bureau (CWB), believed that it should not be required to pay pollution levies because the relevant national law—the 1996 Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law—specified that “enterprises and public service units” (qishiye danwei 企事业单位) should be subject to the pollution levy system, while administrative agencies, like the CWB, were not mentioned. The CWB’s position was that Hubei provincial regulations50 declaring that “all units” were covered by the levy system were not consistent with the national law and thus should not be followed.

because court actions and, in some cases, mediation by judges allowed EPBs and plaintiffs to cultivate or improve guanxi. Generally, the two parties were able to negotiate mutually agreeable levies in subsequent years. 50 “Environmental Protection Regulation of Hubei Province” (promulgated in 1994) and “Implementation Rules of Collecting Pollution Levies in Hubei Province (1995)”, http://law.lawtime.cn/d504167509261.html/pos=1, accessed 8 April 2008. As a result of this regulation, EPBs in Hubei were authorized to collect levies for sanitary wastewater discharge from administrative agencies and private businesses in the tertiary sector (for example, barber shops, hair salons, hotels, restaurants and nightclubs).

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The County C Court agreed with the CWB’s argument and revoked the EPB’s decision. It declared that the “all units” stipulation in the Hubei provincial regulations, which the EPB had cited to collect levies from the CWB, clearly conflicted with the national Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law and expanded the scope of levy collection beyond what the law permitted. The County C EPB appealed to the City A court, which then asked for an opinion from the Hubei Provincial Court and later followed the provincial court’s advice by upholding the county court’s decision.51 In this instance, the courts followed Article 53 of the ALL by observing that, because the provincial regulations were inconsistent with the national mandate, the courts refused to follow the provincial regulations in adjudicating this specific case.52 Instead of following the court rulings and eliminating the practice of collecting levies from administrative agencies, the EPB continued to collect levies informally from some agencies after Case 12.53 The EPB was able to do so because the levies were generally small and often negotiated. When payments were made, it was because agency leaders wanted to maintain strong guanxi with the EPB directors. Moreover, some agencies also needed to collect administrative fees and were thus sympathetic to the EPB’s position and willing to cooperate. Other agencies continued paying because they were not aware of the lawsuit (court judgements are generally not widely circulated). Notwithstanding its ability to collect levies from some agencies, the EPB chose not to penalize any agencies that refused to pay levies. It did so to avoid future litigation that it would surely lose because of the aforementioned court rulings. The EPB also avoided use of a provision in the ALL that allowed it to use court assistance to enforce levy collection decisions from noncompliant parties (for example, other administrative agencies).54 Although the EPB stopped imposing levies on the CWB, it started collecting levies from CWB subsidiaries that were typically public service units subject to the national levy program.

51 As the court case file shows, the provincial court replied that trying this lawsuit should be based on the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law. Hubei provincial regulations expanded the scope of the levy program without clear legislative authority and thus violated the national “Legislation Law”. 52 This was not the only instance under which local courts in China had to rule on a conflict between national and provincial regulations. A few years later in Luoyang City of Province, the presiding judge on a municipal court case involving a conflict between national and provincial laws went further by explicitly “declaring the provincial law invalid”. For more details on this landmark case, see James Yardley, “A Young Judge Tests China’s Legal System,” New York Times (28 November 2005): http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/ world/asia/28iht-judge.html?_r=2, accessed 8 December 2009. 53 Three EPB officials and a plaintiff involved in the case. 54 Five EPB officials, a plaintiff, a judge and a lawyer involved in the case. Article 66 of the ALL allows agencies to enlist compulsory court enforcement of administrative decisions when the regulated parties fail to comply. For more on this, see Xuehua Zhang, Leonard Ortolano and Zhongmei Lü, “Agency Empowerment”.

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The County C EPB’s behavior in ignoring court rulings in Case 12 is consistent with the broader pattern observed by a senior judge at the provincial court. He noted that administrative agencies often continue their original practices, despite court judgements, while adopting strategies to avoid future litigation.55 Moreover, in the Chinese court system, one court’s judgement does not necessarily affect another’s on a similar case. As a result, EPBs in other parts of the city in which this lawsuit took place and in other parts of Hubei Province continued collecting levies from agencies, even when the EPBs were aware of the CWB lawsuit and court judgements.56 Evidence from other cases further demonstrates the strategies adopted by EPBs to avoid future litigation without correcting errors identified in ALCs. In Case 14, the County C Court ruled that the county EPB should not issue a penalty to a party whose business had at the same time been outlawed by the county government. The plaintiff’s business was classified as one of “The Fifteen Smalls”, which consist of 15 categories of seriously polluting enterprises that a 1996 State Council decision requires local governments to shut down.57 In the court’s view, the EPB should not have required the plaintiff to conduct an environmental impact assessment and install pollution control facilities and then issued a penalty when the plaintiff failed to comply with EPB requirements. Instead, the court ruled that the EPB should order any business falling under “The Fifteen Smalls” to stop its production and then ask the county government to ban the business if the owner fails to comply. However, the County C EPB did not follow the court’s procedures after the lawsuit. The EPB decided not to take any direct action when such small businesses were discovered; it would merely report their existence to the county government.

No Procedural Changes In some cases, EPBs did not make any changes in response to litigation. For example, Cases 1 and 2 did not cause the County B EPB to do things differently, even though the EPB had made either substantive or procedural mistakes. In Case 1, the EPB was sued because the plaintiff disagreed with the EPB penalty decision regarding the plaintiff’s refusal to register its sanitary wastewater discharge. The judge ruled that the evidence for issuing the penalty was insufficient and that requirements in EPB pollution registration forms were contradictory. In Case 2, the EPB confiscated rare plants (protected by the state) that an individual farmer (plaintiff) had allegedly grown illegally. After being taken to court, the EPB learned that the farmer was not the legal entity who owned the confiscated plants,

55 Randall Peerenboom, China’s Long March, mentioned that the inconsistent regulation remains in effect, and the issuing agency may continue to apply it in the future. 56 A County B EPB official, a City A EPB legal official and a legal officer at Hubei Provincial EPB mentioned the CWB case. 57 Examples of “The Fifteen Smalls” are paper factories producing less than 5,000 tons a year and coking enterprises and sulfur-smelting enterprises using backward technology. See the “State Council Decision on Several Problems Concerning Environmental Protection” issued on 3 August 1996: http://baike.baidu.com/view/2257572.htm, accessed 15 August 2009.

JUDICIAL REVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONS 113 and therefore the EPB had formally to rescind the penalty decision.58 An EPB official heavily involved in Case 2 admitted that they had done everything wrong: the law did not grant the EPB the right to issue a penalty regarding the illegal purchase and sale of protected rare plants, and the EPB had no legal right to confiscate those plants. Notwithstanding the errors revealed in Cases 1 and 2, the County B EPB did not take any measures to avoid making similar legal mistakes in the future. Similarly, the County C EPB did not change any of its enforcement procedures as a result of Case 11. The Case 11 presiding judge found that having one staff member signing EPB documents on behalf of others on site was incorrect; the judge ruled that all staff members on site were required to sign the EPB documents individually. We reviewed the handwriting used in the multiple signatures on the County C EPB’s official documents for three subsequent cases and found that all documents appeared to have been signed by a single staff member. This indicates that the EPB continued its original practice of having only one person sign the documents on site.59

Explanations for Variations in Effects Our study started with a basic assumption: losing lawsuits in court would influence EPBs’ procedures and behaviors by causing them to correct legal errors identified during litigation. However, as shown in the previous section, EPBs did not always make procedural changes to correct legal errors identified in the ALCs that they lost. Below, we consider four factors affecting EPB decisions to make changes: the legal knowledge of leaders, perceptions of court opinions, the prospects of losing future ALCs, and adverse publicity surrounding the lost cases.60

Legal Knowledge of EPB Enforcement Leaders The seven lawsuits that led the County B and C EPBs to correct legal errors had one common characteristic (shown in Table 3): the vice-directors in charge of those cases (N and M, respectively) had sufficient legal knowledge to allow them to understand and appreciate the legal requirements associated with their enforcement work.61 A key indicator demonstrating their strong legal knowledge is that both of them had taken the national bar examination. Vice-director M in County C nearly passed, while N, the vice-director in County B, did pass, and obtained a license to practice law.62 They gained their legal knowledge through a combination of on-the-job experience and

58 The farmer insisted that he actually owned the rare plants and refused to withdraw the case. 59 Interestingly, this practice was not considered an error by judges who handled the three lawsuits that followed Case 11. 60 These latter two explanations were initially suggested by a senior legal official at SEPA, a senior official at Hubei Provincial EPB and a senior judge at Hubei Provincial Court. 61 Those lawsuits are Cases 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 in County B and 10, 13 in County C. 62 See above, note 33.

114 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 independent study.63 We found that, soon after these two vice-directors started to supervise enforcement work, they established enforcement procedures that were consistent with legal requirements and created formal documents for EPB staff to follow in conducting enforcement work. 64 They believed that standardizing EPB enforcement procedures and documents was the key to improving what they perceived to be weak enforcement. The significance of the legal knowledge of these vice-directors is demonstrated by the actions taken by the County B EPB in the aftermath of Cases 2 and 5. In both lawsuits, the court revoked EPB decisions because they were issued to incorrect legal subjects. After Case 2, the EPB official in charge of enforcement at that time made no changes in response to the court ruling. Many procedural errors identified by judges in Case 2 (1992), including the identification of the incorrect legal subject, were present in EPB documents for Case 3 (1994) and for other penalty decisions.65 This outcome stands in contrast to the EPB response to Case 5, which was handled in 1999, when the legally trained EPB vice-director was in charge of enforcement. Following the loss in Case 5, vice-director N felt that the enforcement staff were mistaken in failing to photocopy the business license of a regulated party during their on-site inspection and that this mistake caused the EPB to lose the case. The vice- director subsequently required his staff to make photocopies of violators’ business licenses before issuing penalty decisions. Cases 2 and 5 had similar EPB errors and court judgements, but they generated significantly different effects on the County B EPB. The vice-director in charge of Case 5 was more intent than his predecessor on following legal procedures. Moreover, the EPB errors that had caused EPB losses in Cases 1 (1992) and 3 (1994) did not result in any changes in EPB procedures. The key difference in all of these cases is the level of legal knowledge of EPB enforcement leaders.66

63 According to a senior policy staff member at the Hubei Provincial EPB, up to 2005, SEPA had been hosting annual environmental legal training workshops for local EPBs. Note that the vice-director of County B EPB commented as follows: “I have not received any legal training since I came to the EPB in the early 1990s”. Thus it is unclear whether such legal training has been provided to lower-tier EPBs. 64 Note that having EPB leaders with legal knowledge is not a necessary condition for establishing formal enforcement procedures. Some EPB leaders chose to follow the legal requirements closely for other reasons. Examples of those reasons are: a sense of respect for the law, as mentioned by an EPB policy staff in another Hubei city, and a desire to improve overall job performance ratings by demonstrating compliance with national requirements, as indicated by a judge. An official from Hubei Provincial EPB pointed out that, during the 1990s, many county EPBs had not established a formal set of enforcement procedures and formal documents as required by the SEPA. 65 Internal documents involved in other EPB penalty decisions were provided by County B EPB. 66 A similar comparison cannot be made at County C, because the EPB vice-director with strong legal knowledge was in charge of all five lawsuits examined in our study.

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Table 3: Effects of 14 ALCs on EPBs and Factors Explaining Variations in Effects EPB Leaders’ EPB Leaders Strong Legal Agreed with Specific Effects Knowledge Court Opinions No Procedural Changes Case 1 Evasive Strategies to Avoid Future Litigation No Yes Case 2 No Procedural Changes No Yes Case 3 No Procedural Changes No Yes Case 4 Modifications in EPB Enforcement Practices Yes Yes Case 5 Modifications in EPB Enforcement Practices Yes Yes Modifications in EPB Enforcement Practices Case 6 Enhanced EPB Enforcement Abilities Yes Yes Modifications in EPB Enforcement Practices Case 7 Enhanced EPB Enforcement Abilities Yes Yes Case 8 No Procedural Changes Yes No Case 9 Modifications in EPB Enforcement Practices Yes Yes Case 10 Modifications in EPB Enforcement Practices Yes Yes Case 11 No Procedural Changes Yes No No Procedural Changes Case 12 Evasive Strategies to Avoid Future Litigation Yes No Case 13 Modifications in EPB Enforcement Practices Yes Yes No Procedural Changes Case 14 Evasive Strategies to Avoid Future Litigation Yes No Sources: Interviews with EPB officials, judges, plaintiffs and lawyers involved in lawsuits in Counties B and C, 2005–06.

EPB Perceptions of Court Opinions Even in cases in which EPB leaders with strong understanding of the law were in charge, sometimes the EPBs did not respond to legal errors pointed out by the courts. Our analysis reveals that another key factor governing their responses was EPB perceptions of the correctness of court opinions. When the EPB vice-directors acknowledged that their bureaus had made legal errors, they were eager to follow up by making procedural changes to prevent the repetition of those errors. Without such an acknowledgement, no EPB procedural changes took place. This is most evident in Cases 11, 12 and 14, in which the County C EPB vice-director M disagreed with the courts’ opinions. For example, the vice-director did not think that having one staff member sign on-site inspection documents, was wrong. Consequently, the vice-director did not require all EPB staff present during an on- site inspection to sign documents individually. Similarly, the EPB vice-director involved in Case 12 (M) disagreed with the courts’ opinions and insisted that the national law did not exclude administrative agencies from paying levies and that Hubei provincial regulations filled gaps in the national law and did not conflict with it. When asked about Case 12 in 2005, that EPB vice-director said: I still think there was no contradiction [between the provincial regulations and national law]. If there had been a contradiction, many local regulations would have

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become useless and could not be carried out. This was an issue of legal interpretation. I think local courts [county, municipal and provincial courts] completely misunderstood the spirit of environmental laws. During an interview with the chief of a court administrative division at another city in Hubei, the chief confirmed, “Sometimes, when EPBs disagree with court opinions, they ignore the court judgements and continue their original practice in future work”.

Concerns about Future Litigation At the outset of our research, we felt that EPBs would make changes to correct errors identified in ALCs because they would be concerned about losing future ALCs if errors were allowed to persist. However, our analysis revealed that losing in court was not a preoccupation of EPB enforcement leaders. For example, the County C EPB’s vice-director M seemed unconcerned about being sued in the future and having EPB decisions revoked by the courts. He said, “Through litigation and judicial review, we can identify errors and make corrections. I have never regarded agencies being sued in court as a bad thing, and I have never been afraid of being sued.” Similar remarks were also made by County B EPB officials. The EPB director involved in Case 7 commented, “Losing in court is just a learning process and could advance our work. It is not an important matter because the EPB is not the only agency that has lost in court. Even the county government has lost several lawsuits, and those cases did not appear to have many negative effects on the county.” Another related factor involves the evaluation of cadres’ performance, which does not give great weight to the rate of losing legal cases. According to the director of the County C government’s legal office, the legal case loss rate of a county government and its administrative agencies under the ALL counts for a very small fraction (two out of 100 points) of the county leaders’ overall performance evaluations, and the loss rate has little influence on their promotion prospects.67 This absence of concern about future legal challenges is also partly explained by the subject matter of many ALCs: pollution levy collection. If an EPB loses in court on a levy-collection case but disagrees with court opinions, it can reissue the penalty to the same violator (plaintiff) and follow the court’s reasoning in the case. This can take place as long as the facts documenting violations are clear and valid. As the County C vice-director M in charge of Case 11 indicated, “If the court ruled that the application of legal provisions in the EPB decision was incorrect [in Case 11], I would apply the court’s reasoning and penalize the plaintiff again [even if I disagreed with the court’s reasoning]. The facts establishing the violation still exist.” An EPB official involved in Cases 1 and 2 in County B similarly claimed: “This is the advantage of administrative litigation: we can always reissue a penalty decision after the court revokes our initial decision”. In this instance, the EPB made no effort to correct its overall procedures so that it could avoid being

67 A similar situation was found in County B.

JUDICIAL REVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONS 117 challenged in court in the future. For example, in Case 1, the court ruled that the County B EPB issued the penalty to the wrong legal entity. In this case, the EPB simply reissued a penalty to the correct legal entity, which had been indicated in the court judgement. In issuing future penalties, however, the EPB followed the procedures that it had used prior to Case 1. In discussing the pollution levy system, a common subject of ALCs faced by EPBs, the County C EPB vice-director M argued, “We cannot hold the EPB inspectors involved accountable for being sued in court. If so, who would dare to continue enforcing the law strictly?” In his view, EPB inspectors who enforce levy system rules strictly would probably be sued because those asked to pay levies and penalties according to what regulations require look for minor procedural errors and sue EPBs in attempts to get levies and penalties reduced. In order to avoid being sued and losing on a technicality, EPB inspectors would avoid enforcing pollution levy system regulations strictly. The County B EPB vice-director added that he knew of no cases in which EPB inspectors were held personally responsible for being sued and ultimately losing in court. The EPBs’ observed lack of concern about losing court cases suggests that, in some instances, court rulings have had limited power in aligning EPB behavior more closely with required procedures. As noted in the following section, many court cases have not received the kind of widespread publicity that could put sufficient public pressure on the sued EPBs to correct errors in the future. Moreover, EPBs that lose in court may not face any penalties, particularly in cases involving pollution levies. As mentioned, in such cases, the EPB only needs to make corrections in their procedures on that particular case and then reinitiate the process of imposing the levies and penalties. Under such conditions, the courts’ power in constraining future administrative illegality is limited. The number of environmental ALCs investigated in our study is small and only two study sites were involved, so our findings regarding the EPBs’ apparent lack of concern about losing ALC cases in court may not represent the general situation in China. A senior judge of the Hubei Provincial Court suggested that many local EPB leaders were deeply afraid both of being challenged and of losing in court.

Lawsuit Publicity Another possible explanation for the procedural changes following ALCs concerns adverse publicity: highly publicized ALCs lost by EPBs would cause them to correct legal errors known to many people. However, we did not find evidence to support this. The two well-publicized ALCs in our study (1 and 2) had greatly damaged County B EPB’s reputation, but failed to bring about procedural changes. Both cases involved well-attended public trials, and many local people were aware of the lawsuits against the EPB and its losses in court. According to EPB officials, judges and lawyers involved, those cases encouraged waste dischargers to think that the EPB was weak, and greatly diminished the EPB’s enforcement capacity. After those cases, the then-Party Secretary of the county government often criticized the EPB in government meetings for “collecting arbitrary fees and not serving the enterprises”.

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According to the presiding judge in Case 1, for a long period after this the two lawsuits the EPB faced tremendous difficulties in collecting levies. Many polluters (from large state-owned enterprises to small barbershops) refused to pay. However, though faced with the great reputational damage linked to Cases 1 and 2, the EPB was not motivated to change its enforcement procedures to correct legal errors. Instead, the EPB enforcement leaders at the time, who had limited legal knowledge, adopted a strategy to keep them from being sued again: they simply chose not to punish powerful polluters, such as the plaintiff involved in Case 1. In addition, several of the ALCs in our study received limited publicity, which partially explains why the EPBs were able to avoid future litigation under similar situations without changing their procedures to eliminate legal errors. Withdrawal of a lawsuit generally took place in private. Few people, other than those involved in the cases, knew that the EPBs had made legal errors which forced them to compromise by modifying their original decisions.68 For example, the absence of publicity on Case 11 enabled the County C EPB to continue its original practice after the case without being sued again. Other lawsuits (for example 4, 5, 12 and 14) also had little publicity. The trials were typically attended by only the few people directly involved in the case. 69 During the trial of Case 14, for example, only the plaintiff, his lawyer and three witnesses, five EPB officials, the presiding judge and three court staff members attended. Moreover, written court judgements received limited public circulation: they were often delivered, without public announcement, only to plaintiffs and defendants. In particular, court concerns about public backlash against EPBs made them reluctant to circulate judgements against EPBs widely.

Conclusions The EPBs investigated in our study committed a variety of errors in their enforcement decisions involved in the 14 ALCs. Many of the errors caused the EPBs to “actually lose” in court. While some lawsuits caused the EPBs to modify their enforcement procedures in order to correct errors, others did not. EPB procedural changes to follow legal requirements more closely in future enforcement appeared to take place when two conditions held: (i) the officials in charge of administrative enforcement had strong knowledge of legal issues, and (ii) those officials agreed with the courts’ judgements regarding legal deficiencies in EPB practices. In the absence of these two conditions, the EPBs sometimes ignored court opinions and continued their original practices, or adopted strategies to evade future litigation. Concerns about future litigation and the adverse publicity did not necessarily lead to procedural changes. Since our study involves only two localities, these findings should be viewed as hypotheses that can be tested with a larger sample involving different provinces. Future research could also examine additional factors (such as media coverage of ALCs)

68 Three judges and a plaintiff. 69 Robyn Marshall, Administrative Law, also observed such limited attendance during her field research in Beijing.

JUDICIAL REVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL ADMINISTRATIVE DECISIONS 119 which might explain variations in effects. The lawsuits investigated in our study were typically not widely known and had little media exposure within and beyond the individual counties involved. That the EPBs’ procedures and practices were sometimes changed as a result of court actions demonstrates the ALL’s long-term potential for placing effective constraints on local governments. When ordinary citizens challenged the County B EPB for failure to perform its legal duties in Cases 6 and 7, court trials and judgements generated publicity that empowered the court and the EPB to deflect political pressure exerted by local leaders. The local leaders who had frequently prevented the EPB from enforcing environmental regulations had to let the court pass judgement, and they had to allow the EPB to enforce applicable rules. The effects of the ALL on administrative practice are limited partly because Chinese court rulings lack precedential value and are not widely publicized. While the lack of precedential value in China cannot be easily modified, more widespread dissemination of court decisions could increase pressure on administrative agencies to correct legal errors in the future.

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EUGENIC BIRTH AND FETAL EDUCATION: THE FRICTION BETWEEN LINEAGE ENHANCEMENT AND PREMARITAL TESTING AMONG RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN MAINLAND CHINA

Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner∗

Family planning, abortion and eugenic birth have long been contested issues in China. Abortion was prohibited during the late Qing dynasty but accepted in 1953, when it was justified in the interest of the mother’s health, and it has been used as a tool of the state in the context of the one-child policy since late 1979.1 China’s family-planning policy came under both international and domestic attack for forcing abortions and sterilizations on unwilling women, despite regulations saying the procedures should be performed only with a women’s consent. Discussion became especially heated after 1994, when the so-called “New Eugenic Policy” made premarital testing compulsory. After 2003, when premarital check-ups were no longer mandatory, criticism lessened, but flared up again during renewed policy discussions about the prevention of birth defects in 2007. The ideas contained in these policies are reproduced in handbooks on “Eugenic Birth and Fetal Education” that have filled shelves in bookshops to educate young couples about morality and behavior with regard to marriage and birth for over a decade. Few couples in rural China, however, seem to follow the suggestions made by these books. The high rate of sex selection and low rate of premarital and prenatal testing in the countryside suggest that rural households are neither willing nor able to live up to the expectations of dominant policies and educational discourses. This paper examines the relationship between official eugenic discourse in China, as expressed in policies and handbooks and in procreative practice in rural China.

∗ This article has benefited from research support provided by the Netherlands Organisation of Science (NWO) and ESRC (RES-350-27-0002; RES-062-23–0215). I would like to thank the editors, the reviewers, Ayo Wahlberg and Alex Faulkner for their helpful comments on this article. 1 Jing-bao Nie, Behind the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), p. 24; Susan M. Rigdon, “Abortion Law and Practice in China: An Overview with Comparisons to the United States”, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 42 (1996), pp. 544-45.

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Scholars interested in the social effects of procreative policies and technologies have argued that the knowledge obtained through genetic and predictive testing can potentially lead to discrimination against people with particular genetic make-ups; deaf people, people with Down syndrome, autistic people and women have been described as vulnerable in certain societies.2 Kevles argues that popular forms of such discrimination differ from “state eugenics”.3 State eugenics refers to situations where states such as Nazi Germany attempt to enforce eugenic policies.4 In contrast, much of the eugenics happening in Western societies today is the result of “choice” by couples who undergo testing voluntarily. Agar uses the term “liberal eugenics” to refer to the study and noncoercive use of reproductive and genetic technologies to enhance the biological characteristics and capacities of human beings.5 Margaret Lock uses the term “laissez-faire eugenics”, to argue that the language of eugenics is no longer focused on social policy, the good of the species or even the collective gene pool. Genetic testing, abortion and participation in screening programs are dominated by the idea of individual choice.6 Taussig et al. have argued that “flexible eugenics” arises from longstanding biases against atypical bodies, leading to a tension between genetic normalization and biotechnological individualism. It is a “tension between free choice within an array of technically mediated possibilities and in a context of discourses of perfectibility we all live in, within dominant ideologies of power”.7 In this paper, with regard to China, I question both the extent to which individuals exert “free choice” regarding medical possibilities and the extent to which their choices are mediated by state discourses. I introduce a third possibility in which women’s choices are conditioned by a clash of dominant ideologies: those of local traditions, religion and dominant state discourse. In their introduction to Pragmatic Women and Body Politics, Margaret Lock and Patricia Kaufert pay attention to women’s knowledge about and responses to

2 Xin Mao and Dorothy C. Wertz, “China’s Genetics Services Provider’s Attitudes Towards Several Ethical Issues: A Cross-cultural Survey”, Clinical Genetics, Vol. 52 (1997), pp. 100-09; Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, “Social-Science Perspectives on Bioethics: Predictive Genetic Testing (PGT) in Asia”, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 3 (December 2007), pp. 197-206. 3 Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York: Knopf, 1985). 4 Edward J. Larson, Sex, Race, and Science. Eugenics in the Deep South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). 5 Nicholas Agar, Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement (London: Blackwell Publishers, 2004); Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans: Choosing Our Children’s Genes (London: Profile Books, 2003). 6 Margaret Lock, “Utopias of Health Eugenics, and Germline Engineering”, in Mark Nichter and Margaret Lock (eds), New Horizons in Medical Anthropology ( London: Routledge, 2003), p. 250. 7 Karen-Sue Taussig, Rayna Rapp and Deborah Heath, “Flexible Eugenics: Technologies of the Self in the Age of Genetics”, in Alan H. Goodman, Deborah Heath and M. Susan Lindee (eds), Genetic Nature/Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 65-66.

EUGENIC BIRTH AND FETAL EDUCATION 123 biomedical technologies, but at the same time situate the subjectivity and agency of women in the context of their experience. Here, technologies of the body are not autonomous but, like the individuals using them, historical products. Proceeding from this view, this article argues that concepts of eugenics which presume free and individual choice are misplaced in the context of rural China. It also shows that concepts of state eugenics, as expressed in handbooks for eugenic birth and fetal education (from here onwards, Handbooks) are not enough to explain reproductive choice in the countryside. Although dominant discourses of eugenic birth or “well- birth” in China have been influential in urban China, in rural China a strong commitment to strengthening the family household is at odds with state eugenic policies directed at improving the Chinese collective stock. Indeed, the choices available to rural households tend to lead to decisions against premarital and prenatal testing. These choices are a dialectical result of decades of state population policies, health-reform policies, and the revival of traditions in the local communities themselves. I use the concept of lineage enhancement to emphasize the significance of the unit of the family household in reproductive decision-making, especially in rural regions. This concept contrasts with the state eugenic endeavor to improve the stock of the national population. Decollectivization since the late 1970s has fundamentally changed the ways in which the countryside is managed, as the rural household has become the basic unit of agricultural production since the implementation of the household responsibility system in 1981. This reform reconfigured power relations within the community and the family household. Villages made up of lineage clans are “property- holding corporations that socially integrate groups of households whose male heads trace their descent to an apical ancestor”.8 Although there is considerable variation among rural areas, patrilineal and patrilocal joint household structures and associated values still limit women’s autonomy and power, and the preference given to sons, combined with women’s declining fertility, affects women’s status. 9 Patrilineal ideologies stress the role of the male in continuing the male line of descendants.10 Furthermore, ideas that value male over female labor have spread, diminishing the bargaining power of women in the household.11 Such ideas have even affected the birth control policy itself, leading to the 1984 adjustment in which a second child became an option if the first one was a girl. Moreover, the revival of folk religions and Confucian gender ideologies, which stress women’s traditional roles as wives and mothers,

8 Graham E. Johnson, “Family Strategies and Economic Transformation in Rural China: Some Evidence from the Delta”, in Deborah Davis and Stevan Harrell (eds), Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 131. 9 Jutta Hebel, “Social Welfare in Rural China”, in Peter Ho, Jacob Eyferth and Eduard B. Vermeer (eds), Rural Development in Transitional China (London: Frank Cass, 2003), p. 233. 10 Frank Pieke, “The Genealogical Mentality in Modern China”, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 62, No. 1 (2003), pp. 101-28. 11 Jianhong Li and William Lavely, “Village Context, Women’s Status and Son Preference among Rural Chinese Women”, Rural Sociology, Vol. 68 (2003), pp. 87-108; Joan Kaufman and Fang Jing, “Privatisation of Health Services and the Reproductive Health of Rural Chinese Women”, Reproductive Health Matters, Vol. 10, No. 20 (2002), pp. 108-16.

124 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 have strengthened the notion of women as biological beings, their responsibilities as caretaker of the family and as mother of heirs to continue the family line.12 Among both urban and rural couples whom I interviewed, patriotically informed notions of improving the quality of the Chinese were contrasted with the desire to continue the rural household lineage. Whereas notions of “improving the quality of the Chinese population” referred to official population policies and related to the improvement of the Chinese stock, the rationale of lineage enhancement referred to sustaining the family household. The notion of lineage enhancement shifts the emphasis away from the interests of individuals and couples to minimize endangering household reputation, and shows how state policies against gender-based abortion and against consanguineous marriage are bypassed in favor of local ideals of maintaining the family lineage. In short, the concept of lineage enhancement emphasizes how national discourses are adapted to the expectations of rural families. I use it to highlight how this adaptation violates national goals of population policies and bypasses the interests of individuals and couples to enable the maintenance of the family household.

Method This study draws on both a systematic reading of Handbooks and on interview data. In my exploration of eugenic birth and fetal education in the Handbooks, I aim to show that these concepts belong to a state discourse. As such, the discourse makes sense in reproductive policy-making, but it has no teeth in the conceptual world of rural households, where it is not part of generally accepted reproductive norms and values. Although the political conceptualization of eugenic birth affects the rural population, the reproduction of the family household as agency has its own dynamic. For this reason, the idea of “stock enhancement” is best understood as a political notion relevant to urban reproductive discourse, while the notion of lineage improvement gives a better indication of reproductive decision-making in rural areas. In the context of the exploration of new means of reproduction, such as IVF, the position of rural women and their spouses has to be understood in the light of the moral pioneering of family households. I randomly selected the 18 handbooks for eugenic birth and fetal education from one of Beijing’s large bookstores (Wangfujing Bookstore), from the section reserved for hundreds of books on childbirth and fetal testing. In each of the selected books, I examined the standard sections dealing specifically with methods of eugenic birthing and fetal education. The books’ authors are practitioners and medical scholars in the field of reproduction and family planning, and their opinions represent dominant state views of reproduction. While I lingered repeatedly in this section of the bookstore, I noticed an average of 20 young persons browsing there, some of them purchasing a copy of one Handbook or another. In a mini-survey conducted in May 2009, among urban women from urban areas (mainly Beijing), 30 were asked if they consulted these books before or after marriage. Six of them replied in the affirmative, but not all had

12 Harriet Evans, Women and : Dominant Discourses of Female Sexuality and Gender Since 1949 (Cambridge: Polity, 1997).

EUGENIC BIRTH AND FETAL EDUCATION 125 bought the books themselves. Others consult magazines on the same topic or talk with their friends about reproduction and the planning of childbirth. I also conducted a study of infertility in urban and rural areas, in which conversations were held with over 20 couples from rural areas and 30 from urban areas, some of whom were met in IVF clinics, while others were introduced through friends and acquaintances. Conversations related to their motivation to go for IVF treatment, their experience with infertility, and the choices available to them. Eight interviews with genetic counselors cum infertility doctors were conducted, most of which pertained to problems faced by infertile couples in the countryside and led to interviews with IVF clients.

Figure 1: Shelves full of handbooks on eugenic birth and fetal education in a large Beijing bookstore.

Birth Policies In the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party, the first comments on population issues date back to Deng Xiaoping’s statement on the desirability of contraception in 1954, and relatively mild population policies were implemented in the 1970s in various regions,13 but large-scale population policies started to effect compulsory family planning only after 1979. Though the implementation of

13 Susan Greenhalgh, Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

126 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 birth control policies varies by region, in general these policies promote the deferment of marriage and childbearing, fewer but healthier births and prevention of genetic defects. They advocate the practice of “one couple one child” and encourage birth spacing for those who may have more than one child.14 The one- child policy was criticized internationally and nationally for its infringement of human rights and the violation of women’s reproductive choices. Fierce debate arose again when the New Eugenics Law, which made premarital check-ups mandatory, was ratified by the Chinese parliament in late October 1994. Although its name was altered to the Mother and Infant Healthcare Law (MIH-Law), criticism continued after the policy became effective on 1 June 1995.15 Premarital check-ups involved personal birth applications for both spouses, written comments from village committees, neighborhood committees or work units, and written approval from township (town) governments.16 At a local level, however, it was especially the examination’s quality, its price and its implementation that were challenged. Local dissatisfaction and international criticism led to a revision of the Marital Registration Law in August 2003, changing the mandatory premarital check-up to a voluntary examination. Nevertheless, the importance of this check-up is still emphasized by the MIH-Law, and the references which non- Chinese and Chinese scholars make to it as “eugenic birth” reflect both official propaganda and the Handbooks.17 In 2001, the State Council issued a ten-year plan on children’s development (2001–10), which was supposed to raise premarital check-up rates to 80 per cent in urban areas and 50 per cent in rural areas in 2010.18 After the amendment of the Marital Registration Law in October 2003, however, premarital testing became voluntary, and the number of couples willing to undergo premarital check-ups dropped abruptly. While the percentage of would-be-couples who had a premarital check-up before 2003 was estimated to be 68 per cent nationwide, in 2004 less than 10 per cent of them underwent premarital health checks, with the rate dropping to less than 3 per cent in 2005. 19 Birth defects rose steeply between 2002 and 2005. 20

14 Thomas Hesketh and Zhu-Wei Xing, “Human Population Growth: China’s One Child Family Policy Is Changing”, British Medical Journal, Vol. 320, No. 7232 (2000), p. 443. 15 Frank Dikötter, Imperfect Conceptions: Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects and Eugenics in China (London: C. Hurst and Co, 1998); Ann Anagnost, “A Surfeit of Bodies: Population and the Rationality of State in Post-Mao China”, in Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp (eds), Conceiving the New World Order: Local/Global Intersections in the Politics of Reproduction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 22-41. 16 Thomas Scharping, Birth Control in China 1949–2000: Population Policy and Demographic Development (London: RoutlegeCurzon, 2003), pp. 94-95. 17 Andrew Kipnis, “Neoliberalism Reified: Suzhi Discourse and Tropes of Neoliberalism in the People’s Republic of China”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 13 (2007), pp. 383-400. 18 Anonymous, “Birth Defects On Rise as Checkups Slide”, China Daily (21 May 2007a). 19 Anonymous, “Birth Defects On Rise as China Loosens Premarital Checks”, People’s Daily (3 March 2005a); Anonymous, “Birth Defects On Rise as Checkups Slide”.

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The Beijing Public Health Bureau revealed that from 1996 to 2002 a total of 15,794 people were found during premarital check-ups to have hereditary diseases. Among them, 695 were diagnosed as “not suitable to have children”.21 Worries about the increase in the rate of birth defects led a number of CPPCC National Committee members, including Zhao Shaohua, vice-chair of the All-China Federation of Women, to propose amendments in the marriage registration regulations in a bid to make premarital health checks mandatory again. Wang Longde, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Health (MoH), announced that China might re-impose the premarital health check-up system.22 The argument made was that, had the check-up rate been higher, the birth of a great number of defective children could have been prevented. The high rate of birth defects is widely attributed to people who are ignorant about genetic disease, and do not understand the use of the tests. For this reason, the reinstatement of mandatory premarital check-ups has gained much support, especially in political and medical circles. Zhang Xizhi, a doctor with the Maternity and Children Care Centre of Hunan Province, explains: The policy of voluntary check-ups is humanistic, as it aims to respect the individual’s privacy. However, due to a weak awareness among the public, especially in rural areas, people tend to ignore the significance of such health benefits.23 Such specialists further hope that raising people’s awareness of congenital defects and infectious diseases which can harm childbirth will persuade couples to have a premarital check-up. According to the handbook edited by Zhang Qingbin,24 the premarital check-up consists of: ƒ investigation of the couple’s disease history: history of family disease and genetic background; history of innate diseases; date of birth; health habits (drinking, smoking and so on); menstrual history; previous marriages; ƒ a general health check-up: checking of blood type compatibility; chromosomal and genetic diseases, creation of a genealogical chart; ƒ a health check-up of the reproductive organs; ƒ laboratory tests; ƒ marriage advice.

20 Anonymous, “Birth Defects On Rise as Checkups Slide”. 21 Desheng Cao, “Premarital Check-up Vital to Family Health”, China Daily (30 November 2004), p. 5. 22 Anonymous, “China Considers Re-imposing Premarital Health Check-up System”, People’s Daily Online (1 September 2005b), available at: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ 200509/01/eng20050901_205857.html, last accessed 29 April 2010. 23 Desheng Cao, “Premarital Check-up Vital to Family Health”, p. 5; all translations from Chinese to English in this text are mine. 24 Zhang Qingbin, Xinhun bidu (Must-Read for Newly Married Couples) (Beijing: Zhongguo Renkou Chubanshe, 2007), p. 31.

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Critics suggest that the absence of genetic testing from this list means that such checkups may give couples a false sense of security. Furthermore, many patients complain that the check-up in some hospitals, especially rural ones, is a mere formality, a lucrative source of income. Diagnosticians in rural hospitals suggest that a lack of funding, reagents and testing equipment impedes effective technological control of the genetic make-up of Chinese citizens.25 In other words, even though many physicians and geneticists would support the state’s eugenic policies, there is insufficient capacity for its implementation.26 Some clinics have lowered the price for premarital check-ups to make them more attractive.27 The director of the Family Planning and Maternity and Child Care Centre of a county in Shanxi Province decided, for example, to lower the price from 108 yuan to 60 yuan per couple when the rate of premarital check-ups in 2004 fell to almost zero in rural areas in 2004. In addition, to make the check- up more convenient, the county moved the marriage registration office to the Center. Even so, the director observed that many people were reluctant to pay.28 The State Council is now focusing on plans to raise public awareness and to make the check-ups more convenient. 29 Wang Bin, director of the Division of Women’s Health with the Ministry of Health, believes it is not just a question of money but of “public awareness”. “The cost of such a check-up is about 100 yuan, not a burden for most couples. In rural areas a family usually spends at least 10,000 yuan on a wedding”. Many local governments have started to offer free premarital check-ups, but response has been weak.30 Another view argues that the increase in birth defects cannot be ascribed to the decrease in the number of premarital check-ups alone, but is due to a number of factors, including higher rates of late births, infectious diseases and extramarital sex, the greater popularity of keeping pets, an increase in water, noise and air pollution, more widespread contact with chemical fertilizers and insecticides, greater use of drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, higher social pressure and competition and the increasingly small gene pool in rural areas.31 It is therefore unclear how much of the increase in defective births is attributable to the October 2003 amendment of the Marital Registration Law. While a variety of views on premarital check-ups have been expressed, none of these views get at the importance of lineage reproduction and its relation to

25 Interview J, Shanghai, 28 April 2007. 26 Xin Mao, “Chinese Geneticists’ View of Ethical Issues in Genetic Testing and Screening: Evidence for Eugenics in China”, American Journal of Human Genetics, Vol. 63 (1998) pp. 688-95; Xin Mao and Dorothy C. Wertz, “China’s Genetics Services Provider’s Attitudes Towards Several Ethical issues”; Interview Z, Beijing, 14 May 2007. 27 Interview L, 28 March 2007. 28 Desheng Cao, “Premarital Check-up Vital to Family Health”, p. 5. 29 Anonymous, “Premarital Checks Ensure Healthy Babies”, China Daily (22 July 2005c). 30 Anonymous, “Birth Defects On Rise as Checkups Slide”. 31 Xue Zi, Yun qi (Pregnancy Period) (Shijiazhuang: Hebei Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2006), p. 11.

EUGENIC BIRTH AND FETAL EDUCATION 129 state policies. To understand the relationship of state policies to the practices of rural couples, a detour through the Handbooks is first necessary.

Handbooks for Eugenic Birth and Fetal Education The Handbooks are an important source for young urban Chinese couples to learn about family planning. They are available in bookshops, and are consulted by both customers and window-shoppers/browsers. The professional backgrounds of the authors of the Handbooks range from medical practitioners and officials in health departments to obstetricians. All authors are expected to be aware of and use the official guidelines for reproduction in China. Although the Handbooks reflect dominant state views on population planning, they also refer to Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist health cosmologies. The terminology of eugenic birth and fetal education (taijiao 胎教) is central to the Handbooks. Here are some representative titles and lists of contents: (1) Twenty-four Concepts of Eugenics and Superior Child-raising, in three parts: 1. The five important health concepts of superior birth; 2. Twelve important concepts of superior pregnancy; 3. Seven important concepts of child-rearing; (2) Eugenic Fetal Education: The Road to Raising Outstanding Offspring, in five parts: 1. Some knowledge about eugenic fetal education (FE); 2. The miracles created through fetal education; 3. Methods of eugenic fetal education; 4. Yin- yang—the root of FE; 5. The mobilization of FE; (3) Eugenic Pregnancy, in seven parts: 1. Very 1+1; 2. Changes of pregnancy period that one needs to know; 3. Ten months of good pregnancy movement; 4. Ten months FE program; 5. Welcoming a new life; 6. Nurturing a new- born; 7. Health and protection maintenance after birth; (4) Pregnancy and Fetal Education, in nine parts: 1. How to give birth to an intelligent and lovely baby; 2. Factors of influence on the development of the fetus; 3. A calendar for each of the ten months; 4. What food is good/bad for mummy; 5. What medicine is good/bad for mummy; 6. What is forbidden/suitable in mummy’s sex life?; 7. What is forbidden/suitable in mummy’s daily life?; 8. Fetal education; 9. How to deal with abnormal situations in pregnancy. Discourses on eugenic birth and fetal education are not new in China. Frank Dikötter describes how, since the 1920s, a belief in science (amalgamated with naturalist holism) adhered to eugenic concepts of birth. Just as Confucian self- cultivation had been necessary to be a healthy and properly behaved person, self- discipline and proper behavior would result in a healthy and balanced constitution. The importance of fetal education, then, lay in the belief that the inner being was shaped by the outer milieu. As early as 1922, Cai Yuanpei, the founder of Academia Sinica, envisaged the creation of a Fetal Education Institute (taijiaoyuan 胎教院) in his quest for “racial improvement”.32 Continuing this tradition, most of the Handbooks start with an explanation of eugenics, referring to Francis Galton’s biological evolution theory, the heredity of health. Galton, it is explained, warned against the increasingly inferior

32 Frank Dikötter, Imperfect Conceptions, p. 102.

130 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 genetic quality of man, and advocated the birth of high-quality individuals through selective partner choice.33

Figure 2: Sample of handbook covers. The Handbooks all point out that eugenics begins with partner choice. Apart from paying attention to character, age and socio–economic background, most Handbooks emphasize the compatibility of the couple’s health and their intelligence. Thus Li and Wang explain: Speaking of eugenics, many factors are important, such as the timing and occasion of conception, the health of the pregnant woman, her diet and nutrition, disease prevention, scientific fetal education, healthy parturition and so on. In any event, eugenics must start from partner choice, because the physical health and genetic make-up of the parents are directly related to the health and intelligence of the child. Usually, when young people choose a partner they just check their physique, character and health, while important genetic qualities and other factors are unjustifiably ignored. Partner choice is

33 Cheng Huo and Li Xinghua, Yousheng yu taijiao shouce (Handbook for Eugenics and Fetal Education) (Guangzhou: Guangdong Luyou Chubanshe, 2006); Yang Yaqin, Yousheng, youyu de 24 ge guanjian (24 Concepts of Eugenics and Superior Birth) (Shijiazhuang: Hebei Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2004), p. 3; Zhang Xueping, Yousheng taijiao: youxiu houdai peiyang de bijing zhi lu (Eugenic Fetal Education: The Road to Raising Outstanding Offspring) (Yangcheng: Yangcheng Wanbao Chubanshe, 2006), p. 141.

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not just a matter of the happiness of the individual, but is related to the quality of offspring and the strength and flourishing of the nation. Therefore, young people must consciously and seriously think through their choice of partner.34 It is clear from this passage and many others in the Handbooks that individuals are encouraged to make choices advantageous to themselves, while at the same time, and more importantly, supporting the collective goal of improving the Chinese stock. Apart from the matching of socio–economic, genetic and educational background, partner choice may involve birthday calculations that indicate the astrological suitability of the couple.35 When the couple decides to have children, they have to keep in mind that “for a healthy, intelligent baby you need three months preparation before conception”. The best age for having children, the best time for conception, and the best season for pregnancy are all of great importance. Yang Yaqin, for instance, quotes statistics that show that of a group of 28,000 schizophrenics, most were born in January and February; from a group of 3,000 asthma patients, most were born in July to October; from a group of 21,000 patients with cancer, most were born from December to March.36 Eugenic birth is directly associated with “fetal education”. Fetal education is considered to be of increasing importance in a national and global situation of fierce social and economic competition. For this reason, the fetus should be trained from conception. The Handbooks frequently refer to the age of 0 as the traditional beginning of life in China, which is why in China babies are one year old at birth. As a method, FE uses the stimulation of six senses (touch, smell, hearing, sight, taste, spinal sensation) using music, massage, petting, talking, reading, warmth, nutrition, chewing and breathing.37 One handbook claims that there is scientific evidence that the fetus is a small life with feelings, responding to changes in the environment via the blood circulation, intestinal functions and coughing. It is also sensitive to sound and music, touch, mood, the voice of the parents, and singing.38 Zhang Xueping explains that FE is of such importance because the mother and fetus have separate bodies and nervous systems. They are not just one big brain and a single subject with a joint nervous system: they communicate as two beings; the fetus has emotions and the ability to learn; it dreams, cries and even has a memory, through which it experiences past traumas decades later.39 Zhang lists ten things

34 Li Xingchun and Wang Lirun, Huaiyun zhunbei yiji: zhuanjia zhonggao (Do’s and Don’ts for Pregnancy Preparation: Expert Advice) (Beijing: Huaxue Gongye Chubanshe, 2006), p. 1. 35 Zhang Jialin, Huaiyun yangtai (Pregnancy and Fetal Education) (Renmin Ribao Dabianshe, 2006), p. 7; Lei Yi, Yunqian-hou yi yu ji (Do’s and Don’ts Before and After Pregnancy) (Beijing: Zhong-Yi Guji Chubanshe, 2006), p. 12. 36 Yang Yaqin, Yousheng huaiyun (Eugenic Pregnancy) (Shijiazhuang: Hebei Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2006), p. 5. 37 Qu Lili, Kexue taijiao zhinan (Compass for Scientific Fetal Education) (Beijing: Beifang Funü Ertong Chubanshe, 2007), p. 4. 38 Ibid., p. 5. 39 Zhang Xueping, Yousheng taijiao, p. 35.

132 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 that terrify the fetus: mummy becoming ill, mummy taking medicine, mummy feeling uncomfortable, mummy getting drunk, mummy smoking, mummy getting X-rayed, mummy playing with pets, mummy having sex, mummy doing heavy work, and mummy not having a prenatal check-up!40 To support the expectant mother, Wu Lingyu provides a Schedule for Fetal Education (Table 1): Table 1: Schedule for Foetal Education

Time Daily schedule Contents of FE 6:00 Get up, clean the entire “Good morning!” music FE, light FE (7 house, put on make-up cycles) 6:30 Take a walk Sports FE, language FE 7:10 Breakfast Small quantity, high calorie food, animal milk, egg, wheat product, fruit 7:40 On the way to work Language FE, environmental FE 8:00 Start work Break: toe exercise; language FE 12:00 Lunch Small amount, high calorie food, animal milk, egg, grain product, fruit 13:00 Siesta Music 14:30 Start Work Ankle’s joint movement, language FE. 18:00 Dinner Nutritious FE 19:00 Watch television The news & weather 20:00 Quality time for couple Direct FE, 20 cycles of massage FE 21:00-22:00 Preparing for bed Drink milk, emotional FE, “Good Night”

In Handbook depictions the fetus is central. The mother’s behavior is expected to adjust to the needs of the fetus; if it does not, she will have to live with the consequences after childbirth. Importance is placed on the mother’s feelings only in so far as they benefit the fetus. Marriage requires an enormous emotional investment, making it difficult to heed Xue Jing’s advice “not to be nervous, as birth is natural”.41 Moreover, all the texts warn against anxiety during pregnancy, as it may adversely influence fetal development. However, if the fetus is not of high quality, its destruction is advised. Despite the detailed advice on producing healthy babies, none of the Handbooks provides any clue for dealing emotionally with the abortion of a fetus that is treated as if it were a full person already, and none provides advice on how to deal with birth defects. Most Handbooks emphasize both the scientific nature and the traditional importance of eugenic birth and fetal education. Statistics quoting genetics, social science and medicine pepper the chapters of the Handbooks, painting a disquieting

40 Zhang Xueping, Yousheng taijiao, p. 41-42. 41 Ji Xue, Chanqian chanhou: you wen bi da (Pre-birth Post-birth: Questions That Must Be Answered, translated as Nurture Book For Fresh Mothers) (Changchun: Jilin Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2005), pp. 61-62.

EUGENIC BIRTH AND FETAL EDUCATION 133 picture of the occurrence of mental retardation, physical handicaps and genetic and congenital disorders in China. At the same, time the handbooks root both eugenics and fetal education in Chinese traditional culture and medicine. Thus, China has known that marrying kin yields inferior offspring since 644BC and, according to the Mawangdui manuscripts found near Changsha in Hunan Province, China practiced FE 2000 years before Darwin even thought of evolutionary theory.42 Furthermore, the classic Book of Rites says that a woman’s emotions, her work, diet, temperature and living environment are important for the growth and health of the fetus.43 Cheng Huo and Li Xinghua make clear that eugenics is a matter not just of the natural sciences but also of the social sciences. Biology and medical science are needed to understand the mechanisms of genetics and inferior genetic elements; social science develops eugenic propaganda and education through sociology and population studies; while the study of eugenic therapy and public health facilitate the diagnosis, therapy and prevention of genetic disorders and non-genetic congenital diseases.44 A further characteristic of the Handbooks is that they all relate to China as a modern, scientifically advanced society. The social paradigm is that of progress, advancement and optimism: in other words, enlightenment. Solutions to problems are found in the advancement of science, tradition and competition, both within China and in the modern world in general. It is not surprising then that the covers of most Handbooks display photographs of beautiful, healthy and pregnant Caucasian women, implying that the advice in the Handbooks is already in use by successful, strong Westerners. Even though homosexuality, bachelorhood and childless couples are increasingly discussed and gradually being accepted in urban areas, it is common to presuppose that marriage in China means having children. The restrictive family-planning policy has encouraged parents to wish for an ideal child. In urban areas, the gender aspect may be less strong than in the country, but a healthy and intelligent child seems to be a minimum expectation. All the Handbooks use this standard in encouraging couples to go for a premarital check-up. One Handbook states: In progressive societies with advanced medicine, choosing the right time and opportunity for pregnancy, giving birth to an intelligent, beautiful, healthy and lively child and being a suitable parent has become the new social trend.45 The meaning of being a suitable parent receives much attention in the Handbooks. All refer to Article 7 of the Marriage Law:

42 Zhang Xueping, Yousheng taijiao, p. 141. 43 Ibid. 44 Cheng Huo and Li Xinghua, Yousheng yu taijiao shouce, p. 3. 45 Tang Zhuanxing, Qiuzi zhuyun bidu (Child Wish, Pregnancy Aid: Necessary Reading) (Zhuanmei: Jituan Kexue Jishu Chubanshe, 2006), p. 21.

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No marriage may be contracted under any of the following circumstances: (1) If the man and the woman are lineal relatives by blood, or collateral relatives by blood up to the third degree of kinship; and (2) If the man or the woman is suffering from any disease which is regarded by medical science as rendering a person unfit for marriage.46 All Handbooks also refer to the PRC Mother and Infant Health Law, emphasizing: Those suffering from infectious diseases, such as AIDS and STDs, and from mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and manic depression, should defer marriage. Marriage is prohibited if both partners suffer from schizophrenia and manic depression and other serious mental diseases, as the persons involved are unable to judge social situations and have a high chance of procreating offspring with birth defects. Such marriages are legally void. Couples of which one or both partners suffer from infectious diseases, such as STDs and leprosy, or from mental diseases or an epidemiological disease listed by the state are advised to defer marriage. The couple should not get married if not cured, and should observe a probationary period of two years. The couple needs evidence for this from a medical institution before marriage. Those with inherited hemophilic disorders are advised not to have children, although marriage can be considered. Those with problematic reproductive organs or other diseases that could hamper childbirth and a healthy sex life, such as heart, lung and liver diseases, are advised not to get married. The reproduction of the couples in the Handbooks is directly related to the reproduction of the family and the reproduction of the Chinese nation. According to Zhang Qingbin: The ultimate aim and main significance of the premarital check-up is to carry responsibility for the nation, for society, for one’s own self and for partner and offspring.47 Repeated provision of unreferenced statistics about the percentage of handicapped people emphasizes the importance of the check-ups. For instance, for one Handbook the annual rate of handicapped children is 13.07 per thousand births, and varies between 20.00 per thousand in some provinces and 8.83 per thousand in others. The Handbook explains that this means that every year 200,000 to 300,000 handicapped children are born. Adding the number of late-onset and hidden handicaps, this totals 0.8–1.2 million handicapped children, which

46 Cf. China Population Information and Research Center: http://www.cpirc.org.cn, last accessed 29 April 2010. 47 Zhang Qingbin, Xinhun bidu, p. 31.

EUGENIC BIRTH AND FETAL EDUCATION 135 constitutes 4–6 per cent of the annually added population. 48 To avoid these problems, Li and Wang claim, “superior people should marry superior people”: Young people should choose a partner on the basis of their talents in the fields of literature, mathematics, music, sports, observational ability, logical thought and so on, so that they can produce offspring of higher quality compared to themselves.49 In short, the handbooks emphasize stock enhancement for the nation as a whole.

Eugenic Birth and Rural Regions: Lineage Enhancement The Handbooks, in their advice and their argumentation, presume China to be a modern welfare society with widespread use of advanced reproductive technologies, presuppose its population to be keen on improving the quality of the Chinese stock, and assume that Chinese couples will increasingly resemble what are imagined as Western couples. The question of the impact of the Handbooks on rural areas is largely ignored. Interviews with infertility specialists and couples from rural areas indicate that severe problems exist in relation to access to healthcare, family pressure, son- preference, poverty and the continuation of the family line. Yet, despite the focus on family planning, the Handbooks do not mention how to deal with insufficient medical resources. Only one Handbook makes special mention of home-birth as an option for couples residing in the countryside. 50 It points out that medical facilities in the household may not be sufficient, “although the familiarity of the home environment may be comforting”.51 No mention is made of the financial conditions and healthcare facilities necessary when a premarital check-up reveals “incompleteness” (que bo shao tui 缺膊少腿: literally, lacking an arm and missing a leg). Furthermore, there are no references made to handicapped children born despite premarital or prenatal check-ups. The Handbooks give the impression that the birth of any child with a handicap could have been prevented and is undesirable. This mode of presentation promotes the treatment of handicapped children as second-rate citizens, and worsens the ostracism and discrimination faced by their families. 52 The social isolation of families with handicapped members is especially problematic in the countryside. In one case, the birth of a child suffering from Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy (DMD) isolated the entire family from the community, creating problems in finding marital partners for siblings and cousins and exacerbating a heavy financial burden.53

48 Li Xingchun and Wang Lirun, Huaiyun zhunbei yiji, p. 2. 49 Ibid., p. 8. 50 Ji Xue, Chanqian chanhou, p. 45. 51 Ibid., p. 59. 52 Wu Yong, “Discrimination Rife Against Carriers of Hepatitis Virus”, China Daily (23 March 2007). 53 For further detail, see Suli Sui and Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, “Genetic Testing on Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy in China: Vulnerabilities of Chinese Families”, in Margaret

136 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64

Most of the Handbooks make distinctions between urban, rural and national minority areas. This distinction serves mainly to point out the backwardness of people living in rural and national minority regions. The Handbooks associate son-preference with the countryside and discourage it. They suggest that rural tradition treats only the male as family offspring, and call sons “burning incense” (xianghuo 香火), for traditional custom prescribes that only a son can hold a memorial ceremony for the ancestors.54 Despite the questionability of the idea that son-preference is intensive only among rural women under the one-child policy,55 Zhang Jialin explains the forbidden practice of gender selection as associated with a socially and economically backward (luohou 落后) countryside: There are some male comrades who engage in “favoring men and despising women” (zhongnan qingnü 重男轻女), a practice based on feudal thought, and especially widespread in the isolated countryside. When the wife gives birth to a baby girl, she gets cursed as a useless wife. If they cannot give birth to a baby boy to continue the family line, then she could even be divorced. Yet it is not possible to control the gender of the baby.56 It is also implied that people in the country do not know that women cannot determine the sex of the baby, in contrast with the urban female audience of the book. Yet, when it comes to modern medical insights, the Handbooks provide do- it-yourself methods for gender selection as a solution in the case of x-linked chromosomal disorders.57 The Handbooks especially associate isolated regions and national minorities with consanguineous marriage. Li Xingchun and Wang Liru are among the many editors of handbooks which relate the practice to the backwardness of rural areas and regard it as a sign of a lack of education: 58 Consanguineous parents have three times more chance of stillbirth and their offspring have a 150 times greater chance of having a genetic disorder. After consanguineous marriage became illegal in China, some people still do not understand the law, do not understand that consanguineous marriage would

Sleeboom-Faulkner (ed.), Frameworks of Choice: Predictive and Genetic Testing in Asia (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2010), Chapter 9. 54 Liu Shuang, “Zhongguo de xingbie pianhao” (Gender Preference of Chinese Couples), Renkou yanjiu (Population Research), Vol. 3 (2005), pp. 1-11. 55 Juan Wu and Carol S. Walther, “Patterns of Induced Abortion”, in Dudley L. Poston Jr., Che- Fu Lee, Chiung-Fang Chang, Sherry L. McKibben and Carol S. Walther (eds), Fertility, Family Planning, and Population Policy in China (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 23-37. 56 Zhang Jialin, Huaiyun yangtai, p. 44. 57 Xue Zi, Yun qi, p. 20-21 ; Lei Yi, Yunqian-hou yi yu ji, p. 18. 58 Qin Zhonghua, Jiankang huaiyun mei yi tian (Healthy Pregnancy Every Day) (Beijing: Zhonghua Guji Chubanshe, 2004); Tang Zhuanxing, Qiuzi zhuyun bidu, p. 25; Lingyun Wu, Kexue taijiao: boabao gen congming (Scientific Fetal Education: Even More Intelligent Babies) (Beijing: Renmin Junyi Chubanshe, 2006), p. 70; Xue Zi, Yun qi, p. 10.

EUGENIC BIRTH AND FETAL EDUCATION 137

endanger their offspring. In backward regions and where old customs survive people think that “adding family to family means continuing the family fortune” (qin shang jia qin, bu duan qin yuan 亲上加亲,不断亲缘). On the basis of China’s old customs, people presume incorrectly that it is wrong for cousins of the same name to marry (tang xiongmei 堂兄妹), but that it is all right for cousins that do not carry the same name (biao xiongmei 表兄妹) to get married.59 Consanguineous marriage and gender selection clearly do not fit in with the idea of optimistic progress presented in the Handbooks. During the reform era, a main concern for rural households is the continuation of the patrilineal line upon which the household-clan is built. In many places such continuity boosts the household’s power base, status and finances. Thus, infertility is particularly problematic in the countryside and sons are especially desired. 60 When one of the partners is diagnosed as infertile, it is common to defer or cancel a marriage. The entire family household may be involved in the decision-making, with the aim of securing healthy male offspring. A doctor in a fertility clinic in Changsha told me about two cases of rural infertility, the first of which related to an infertile husband: In the countryside the situation is not very good. If the woman does not give birth to a child, then the husband will divorce her. Although a minority of highly cultured people do not care if they have no children, the great majority of the people are not so highly cultured ... Many people have to come here [for treatment]. There was one couple from a country village who came here. The man was infertile. So I said, “Well then, you need to have ICSI [intracytoplasmic sperm injection]”. When I saw the couple again, much later, I asked them, “Why did you not come for ICSI?” The husband said that it was too expensive, and they could not afford it. At the time, he had a carpenter building a house for them; he made the carpenter sleep with his wife ... But this child was handicapped. The child died. After that, they came to me again, now for ICSI. You can imagine how difficult that was. The husband just told the woman, “Tonight you can sleep with him”. The woman has no say in it.61 This case tells us something about the views of a genetic counselor on life in rural households. The genetic counselor regards rural individuals as uneducated and backward, giving no thought to the political and financial pressures under which the household is placed to continue the family line. Members of the family household are denied any rational agency. The second case concerned an infertile wife: Her mother-in-law and husband consulted each other, and asked a peasant girl to live with the husband. She gave birth to a child. Now the husband treated the

59 Li Xingchun and Wang Lirun, Huaiyun zhunbei yiji, p. 29. 60 Sui Suli, “Guanyü Zhongguo xingbiebi shengheng de sikao” (Reflection on Balancing the Sex Ratio in China), Zhongguo yixue lunlixue (Chinese Medical Ethics), No. 2, March (2007), pp. 89-91. 61 Interview X, Changsha, 28 March 2007.

138 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64

girl with more intimacy than he did his wife. But then the girl wanted the husband to get a divorce or give her a lot of money. These kinds of circumstances still exist widely in China.62 In this case, members of the patrilineal household—the mother-in-law and the husband—decided to create an offspring by engaging a rural woman when the wife was assumed to be infertile. The feelings of the wife counted for little, but were not ignored, as the woman hoped to raise the child as her own. The rural woman became demanding and did not plan to give up her child. The husband then decided to stay with his wife and try IVF, as he chose not to affront his wife’s family. There is no simple formula regulating rural reproductive life, divorce or abortion; family and household situations are complex. Both husband and wife are under immense pressure, and both make rational and irrational choices, just as urban residents do, depending on their circumstances. However, the tendency is to make decisions in favor of the continuation and sustenance of what is regarded as the family household. Strategies of lineage enhancement directly influence rural views of premarital check-ups. In the Handbooks, family households are not an important means of survival. This picture conforms to the situation in cities, where women quite commonly enjoy education and powerful positions, and are relatively empowered in matters related to reproduction and the family in general.63 In rural households, however, it is the view of the family household rather than the individual woman that matters. If a young woman is to help her family household when entering the marriage market, she needs to be known as healthy and fertile and to have a healthy family background. If she decides to go for a premarital check-up, she runs the risk of getting herself and her family devalued as a low-quality human commodity.64 The example of Hu Xin illustrates this. This young woman never intended to go for a premarital medical check-up, for she knew that what could be revealed “could drive Mr. Right away”. But a health check after her marriage revealed that she carried the hepatitis B virus, as do about 10 per cent of the Chinese population, according to the Ministry of Health. Hepatitis B can lead to liver cancer, but inoculation is cheap. Nevertheless, many people think that the virus can spread through casual contact and this has led to widespread discrimination against hepatitis B carriers. Hu Xin’s husband instantly filed for divorce, as he was disappointed in Hu’s apparent concealment of the truth.65 For mental disorders, similar circumstances obtain. One of the Handbooks warns that “if your family has a history of schizophrenia or manic depression, you have a higher than average risk of producing affected offspring”.66 If kept secret, you have a good

62 Interview X, Changsha, 28 March 2007. 63 Vanessa Fong, “China’s One-Child Policy and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters”, American Anthropologist, Vol. 104, No. 4 (December 2002), p. 1099. 64 Suli Sui and Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, “Choosing Offspring—Case Studies of Prenatal Genetic Testing for Thalassemia and the Reproduction of a ‘Saviour Sibling’ in China”, Culture, Health and Sexuality, Vol. 11, No. 9 (2009a) (forthcoming). 65 Wu Yong, “Discrimination Rife Against Carriers of Hepatitis Virus”. 66 Wu Lingyun, Kexue taijiao, p. 158.

EUGENIC BIRTH AND FETAL EDUCATION 139 chance of finding a spouse and still having children, but if revealed, it warns, you may not succeed in finding a partner. Worse, you may have unhealthy children. In short, being aware of eugenic knowledge, no matter how imprecise, unscientific or tendentious, has consequences for the marital prospects of members of rural family households. For those who depend on the family household for their material and emotional survival, getting a premarital check-up is a great risk to the family household and is not automatically conducive to lineage enhancement. While premarital check-ups are rare in the countryside, increasing numbers of people are being influenced by the idea that selective abortion can help to eliminate genetic disorders. Mr. S, from a town in Gansu Province, related how his younger brother was always followed and mocked in the streets, and how the family suffered from gossip regarding DMD as a retribution for sin or misconduct in the past. Mr. S said: Now I have drawn a pedigree and found those who are at risk of being a carrier and developing the disease. I will try to contact them and offer them money to take a test. I hope no newly affected boys and no new carriers will be born to my family. Let this damned illness disappear from my family.67 Although there is no scientific evidence that genetic syndromes can be rooted out in a large country such as China, in cases where the name of the family household is already tainted it is thought that the household will suffer less if members find out about the genetic status of fetuses and abort those who carry imperfect genes.

Conclusions Eugenic ideas about family planning in China are intimately linked with the organized control of human birth, ideas about improving the quality of the Chinese population and a staunch belief in enlightenment ideas of progress and rationality. China’s policy is based on popular views of social evolution, instrumental views of birth and the assumed capacity to raise the quality of the population. Nevertheless, the use of compulsion in birth planning is mostly rejected in favor of persuasion and emancipation by means of public education and propaganda, so that voluntary decision-making and responsible individual choice are important moral considerations under this socialist regime. In rural areas, however, family households prioritize their own ways of continuing the family lineage’s interests. The Handbooks, by their focus on the eugenic awareness of urban areas, augment the already deep schism between urban and rural areas.68 By increasing the sense of stigma associated with infertility and congenital diseases, the Handbooks exacerbate the politics of family reputation that reform-era policies have made so important to rural China. Rather than leading to a high demand for premarital check-ups, family-planning propaganda tends to encourage prospective couples to make strategic and rational

67 Suli Sui and Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, “Genetic Testing on Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy in China”. 68 Frank Dikötter, Imperfect Conceptions.

140 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 choices to maximize their own and their family household’s interests in negotiating marriage. Eugenic advice provided in the Handbooks proceeds from socio–economic circumstances associated with modernity, technological advancement and welfare societies, and presumes the availability of universal healthcare, spare time and the partner’s support. They do not cater for rural areas where healthcare facilities are inadequate, free time sparse, son-preference reigns and the household has become a primary reference point for family survival. In this sense, this article confirms Vanessa Fong’s finding that, although the one-child policy creates advantages for daughters in urban areas, it may well frustrate daughters in the countryside.69 The notion of lineage enhancement contrasts with notions of laissez-faire eugenics or flexible eugenics, which emphasize factors underlying individual choice in reproductive decision-making. The notion also contrasts with concepts underpinning state eugenics policies that are based on a discourse of nation-state building and the enhancement of the national and racial Chinese stock. Instead, lineage enhancement implies that reproductive choices are partly shaped by state eugenic policies but are at the same time a historical product of Marxist state ideologies, cultural traditions and local relations of power, including that of male domination.

Appendix 1

Handbooks on Eugenic Birth and Fetal Education. Editors Year Chinese title Title in Translation Publisher 1 Cheng Huo 2006 Yousheng yu Handbook for Guangzhou: and Li taijiao shouce Eugenics and Fetal Guangdong Luyou Xinghua Education Chubanshe (main eds) 2 Huang 2006 (Zhongguoshi) [Chinese style] Anhui Renmin Weiming Yunchi baoyu Programme for Chubanshe (main ed.) dacheng Pregnancy and Childcare 3 Li Hong 2006 Fenchan qianhou: Before and After Shandong Kexue and Bi zui xiang zhidao Parturition: The 400 Jishu Chubanshe Baoling de 400 ge wenti Issues You Want to (main eds) Understand Most 4 Li 2006 Huaiyun zhunbei Do’s and Don’ts for Beijing: Huaxue Xingchun yiji—zhuanjia Pregnancy Gongye Chubanshe and Wang zhonggao Preparation: Expert Liru (main Advice eds) 5 Qin 2004 Jiankang huaiyun Healthy Pregnancy Beijing: Zhonghua Zhonghua mei yi tian Every Day Guji Chubanshe (ed.) 6 Qu Lili 2004 Kexue taijiao zhi Compass for Beifang Funu (ed.) nan Scientific Fetal Ertong Chubanshe Education

69 Vanessa Fong, “China’s One-Child Policy and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters”.

EUGENIC BIRTH AND FETAL EDUCATION 141

7 Tang 2006 Qiuzi zhuyun bidu Child Wish, Zhuanmei Jituan Zhuanxing Pregnancy Aid: Jiangsu Kexue Jishu (ed.) Necessary reading Chubanshe 8 Wang 2006 Yunchanfu you Early Knowledge of Beijing Kexue Jishu Jinhui, bing zao zhidao Illness in Pregnant Chubanshe Zhen Hun Women and Wang Guizhen (eds) 9 Wu 2006 Kexue taijiao: Scientific Fetal Renmin Junyi Lingyun baobao gen Education: Even More Chubanshe (main ed.) congming Intelligent Babies 10 Xue Ji (ed.) 2005 Chanqian Pre-birth Post-birth. Jilin Kexue Jishu chanhou: You wen Questions That Must Chubanshe bi da Be Answered, transl. as: Nurture Book For Fresh Mothers 11 Xue Zi 2006 Yun qi Pregnancy Period Shijiazhuang: Hebei (ed.) Kexue Jishu Chubanshe 12 Yang 2004 Yousheng, youyu 24 Concepts of Hebei Kexue Jishu Yaqin (ed.) de 24 ge guanjian Eugenics and Superior Chubanshe Birth 13 Yang 2006 Yousheng huaiyun Eugenic Pregnancy Hebei Kexue Jishu Yaqin (ed.) Chubanshe 14 Lei Yi 2006 Yunqian-hou yi yu Do’s and Don'ts Zhong-Yi Guji (main ed.) ji before and after Chubanshe Pregnancy 15 Zhang 2006 Huaiyun yangtai Pregnancy and Fetal Renmin Ribao Jialin (main Education Dabianshe ed.) 16 Zhang 2007 Zhuyun qiuzi bidu Assisted Pregnancy Tianjin: Tianjin Lirong and Desire for Keji Fanyi Chuban Children: Must Read Gongsi. 17 Zhang 2007 Xinhun bidu Must Read for Newly Zhongguo Renkou Qingbin Married Couples Chubanshe (ed.) 18 Zhang 2006 Yousheng taijiao: Eugenic Fetal Yangcheng Wanbao Xueping youxiu houdai Education: The Road Chubanshe (ed.) peiyang de bijing to Raising zhi lu Outstanding Offspring

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A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE: THE LABOR SUBCONTRACTING SYSTEM AND COLLECTIVE ACTION BY CONSTRUCTION WORKERS IN POST-SOCIALIST CHINA

PUN Ngai and LU Huilin∗

The glamorous skylines of Shanghai and Beijing today seem to crystallize Chinese dreams of modernity and global status. 1 These modern cityscapes, however, are underpinned by a construction industry steeped in a culture of violence. This culture arises from the political economy of the industry and the politics of labor resistance among migrant construction workers. The rapid development of the industry has enabled a highly exploitative labor subcontracting system to emerge.2 This labor system includes two processes: the rapid commodification of labor through non-industrial social relations organized by a quasi–labor market in the rural villages; and the expropriation of labor during the production process of the construction sector in urban areas. These two processes shape a labor subcontracting system that is specific to reform-era China, resulting in

∗ We are particularly grateful to Jonathan Unger, Anita Chan, Yan Hairong and the two anonymous reviewers who have provided careful readings and valuable comments on this paper. Our gratitude also extends to Liu Jing, Li Dajun, Lian Jiajia, Zhou Lijuan and Li Qingsu who have provided unfailing research support. We are also thankful to the funding support from a Hong Kong Research Grant Council project, “Making a New Working Class: A Study of Collective Actions in a Dormitory Labor Regime of South China” (2007–09), a National Social Science Foundation of China project (06CSH009), “Class Formation of New Generation of Peasant-Workers”, and a research grant on “Working Class Community: Space and Labor Resistance in China” supported by the Department of Applied Social Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. 1 See Lisa Rofel, Other Modernities: Gender Yearnings in China after Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Yan Hairong, New Masters, New Servants: Migration, Development, and Women Workers in China (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008). 2 See Lei Guang’s significant study on the home renovation industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which is one of the few studies related to construction workers. Lei Guang, “The Market as Social Convention: Rural Migrants and the Making of China’s Home Renovation Market”, Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3 (2005), pp. 391-411. See also Shen Yuan, Shichang, jieji yu shehui (Market, Class and Society) (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, 2007), pp. 216-69.

THE CHINA JOURNAL, NO. 64, JULY 2010 144 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 a never-ending process of wage arrears and the struggle of construction workers to pursue delayed wages in various ways, often involving violent collective actions. Practically no other industry has experienced a boom comparable to construction.3 The Chinese construction industry has been consuming half of the world’s concrete and a third of its steel and employing more than 40 million people, most of them rural workers coming from all over the country. About 30 per cent of all migrant workers from the countryside work in the industry.4 In order to build Beijing and Shanghai into China’s global cities and speed up the process of urbanization, since the Tenth Five Year Plan (2001–05) China has invested about 376 billion yuan in construction each year. Construction is now the fourth largest industry in the country. At the turn of the 21st century, this industry accounted for 6.6 per cent of China’s GDP; by the end of 2007, its total income had risen by 25.9 per cent to 5.1 trillion yuan, and gross profits had risen 42.2 per cent to 156 billion yuan.5 The total output value reached 2.27 trillion yuan in the first half of 2008, showing a further 24.4 per cent increase on the previous year. We conducted research at four construction sites on the outskirts of Beijing, interviewing more than 200 workers at these sites. Because we conducted this research in the year of the Olympics,6 our research team retreated from the intense media attention on the center of the capital to focus on a suburban town to the northwest of Beijing, where huge construction projects owned by well-known property developers were being undertaken. In January 2009 we followed some of the workers back to their rural village in Tang County, Hebei, where, among a population of 6,000, more than 1,500 of the working adults were construction workers. In the village, we began to understand the daily practices of the labor subcontracting system and its relationship to the culture of violence among the migrant construction workers. Despite the enormous gross profits and output value of the construction industry, construction workers are poorly protected as regards physical and financial risks, compared to most other workers.7 The working lives of construction workers are also deeply affected by quarrels, individual and collective fighting, attempts

3 In China, the construction industry is defined as the sector that creates buildings and other structures. See Sunsheng Han and George Ofori, “Construction Industry in China’s Regional Economy, 1990–1998”, Construction Management and Economics, Vol. 19 (2001), pp. 189-205. 4 See the report on “Construction Workers Alienated”, China Daily, 9 July 2007. 5 See Zhongguo jianzhu nianjian, 2008 (Statistics of China’s Construction 2008) (Beijing: Guojia Tongji Chubanshe, 2009). 6 The four research sites in Beijing were identified in November 2007. Ethnographic study began in December 2007 and was conducted throughout 2008 and 2009. A study in a Hebei rural village was conducted in January 2009. The research team is composed of eight postgraduate students of the Sociology Department of Peking University. 7 Their work intensity, work hours and payment methods are exploitative, but the rates of pay for construction workers are not as bad as those for workers in the manufacturing or service sectors.

A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 145 to damage buildings, bodily abuse and even suicidal behaviors. At the construction site, we observed a variety of violent actions taken by construction workers which were no doubt caused by the political economy of the construction industry.

The Past and the Present “No urban youth are willing to work on the construction site. Don’t look at me right now. After work and after bathing, I’ll look completely different and have a new face”, said a 20-year-old Hebei man, covered with dust and dirt, who felt ashamed of being a construction worker. These feelings reflect a notorious image of chronic wage arrears, heavy casualties and labor conflicts over unpaid wages in the industry. In 19th-century China, construction craftsmen were recruited from renowned “cradles of building craftsmen” in Hebei, Jiangsu and Shandong to help build urban centers.8 Such craftsmen were considered to be masters (shifu 师父) or skilled labor, and enjoyed relatively high social status compared to farmers or small businessmen. New laborers came to learn from masters through apprenticeship.9 The construction craftsmen were organized through a guild system which provided professional protection and a monopoly over the industry. As the historian Lynda Shaffer put it, The fundamental goal of the guild was to present a solid front to a potentially hostile world ... In order to ensure that their own numbers expanded no more rapidly than the local market, they placed strict limits on the number of apprentices that could be accepted.10 The original and dominant relationship between master and journeyman was that of teacher and student, so conflicts between employer and employee were not as sharp as those seen in the modern factory or labor subcontracting system.11 Hence, construction workers in pre-PRC China had their own associational power to protect their labor rights, unlike those of today’s China. In the middle of the 19th century, Western construction companies arrived in China and began to recruit rural workers through a labor subcontracting system to be wage laborers in construction projects. After 1880, Chinese companies also initiated such a system.12 These actions undermined the guild system. Some masters became entrepreneurs, and stopped working as carpenters or masons. Only their employees,

8 See the report on Xin Zhongguo jianzhu ye wushi nian (The Fifty Years of New China’s Construction Industry), published by a study group formed by the Construction Ministry (Beijing: Zhongguo Sanxia Chubanshe, 2000), p. 3. 9 See Gail Hershatter, The Workers of Tianjin, 1900-1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), pp. 52-53. 10 See Lynda Shaffer, “Mao Ze-dong and the October 1922 Changsha Construction Workers’ Strike”, Modern China, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1978), p. 381. 11 Ibid., p. 383. 12 See Youjie Lu and Paul W. Fox, “The Construction Industry in China: Its Image, Employment Prospects and Skill Requirements”, Working Paper, International Labor Organization, Geneva, October 2001, p. 13.

146 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 the journeymen, still performed manual labor.13 The journeymen soon found that they were proletarians, lacking the support of their guilds. This is the historical root of Mao’s leadership of the 4,000 construction workers who went on strike and founded the Changsha Construction Workers’ Union in 1922.14 In the early days of the PRC, the CCP government relied on construction workers to rebuild ruined cities and war-torn communities in both urban and rural areas. A shortage of construction workers led the State Council to utilize labor from the People’s Liberation Army, and in 1952 eight army divisions were turned into state-owned construction enterprises.15 Labor subcontracting persisted. In 1958, the labor subcontracting system was ended. Construction work was organized under state-owned or collective enterprises. Workers in urban or rural collectives generally received less protection and fewer benefits than SOE workers, but their food was provided and they enjoyed modest but regular payments and reasonable working hours. During this period, construction jobs were viewed as skilled and respected work, and construction workers were often propagandized as “model workers” contributing to the rebuilding of the socialist country. Being pulled from a rural collective to work in the construction industry was a positive experience. A 60- year-old construction master from the village in Tang County, Hebei Province, told us, We had to pay the production brigade [that is, their village] 1 yuan every day we left to work for a construction team in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, there were few subcontractors, and also few cases of cheating. We all got paid after we finished the work. The work team usually provided us with work uniforms, hard hats, work boots and other daily necessities. Nowadays, the subcontractors are different. They all cheat people. We were fine in our time and we were seldom cheated. By 1980, the number of employees in state-owned construction enterprises was 4.82 million, while the workforce in urban construction collectives numbered 1.66 million and those in rural collectives 3.34 million. Fewer than 10,000 employees worked at privately owned construction enterprises.16

State, Capital and Labor: The Emergence of the Labor Subcontracting System The Deng-era reforms brought an end to socialist labor practices in the construction industry. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping pointed out that construction could be a profit-making industry. The reform objectives set for the construction industry included restructuring the industry’s administrative system, opening construction markets, allowing autonomy

13 See also Gail Hershatter’s discussion of the use of the apprenticeship system in Tianjin in the early 20th century, in The Workers of Tianjin, pp. 101-04. 14 See Lynda Shaffer, “Mao Ze-dong and the October 1922 Changsha Construction Workers’ Strike”, pp. 387-95. 15 This force from the People’s Liberation Army was to become the most significant pillar in the construction industry in the reform period. 16 See Xin Zhongguo jianzhu ye wushi nian, p. 6.

A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 147 in state-owned enterprises, establishing a competitive bidding system and improving project managerial skills.17 In 1980, a World Bank project, Lubuge Hydropower in Yunnan Province, challenged socialist practices in the construction sector by adopting international competitive bidding for its work. The practice of bidding and the subcontracts system in the construction industry re-emerged.18 In 1984, the State Council issued a document stating: “The state-owned construction and installation enterprises shall reduce the number of fixed workers gradually. In future they shall not, in principle, recruit any fixed workers except skilled operatives necessary to keep the enterprise technically operational.” 19 Another significant 1984 regulation, the “Separation of Management from Field Operations”, stated that general contractors or contracting companies should not directly employ their blue-collar workforce.20 Rather, they should employ labor subcontractors who were to be responsible for recruiting the workforce. These regulations accelerated change in the management of the construction industry and the composition of its workforce, leading to today’s problems. Driven by state initiatives, construction enterprises were further marketized and field operations were delinked from direct management via the labor subcontracting system. By the late 1990s, the restructuring of the construction industry was almost complete.21 While it is arguable that this series of dramatic changes increased efficiency and productivity in the operation of construction projects, a direct result was the emergence of a multi-tier labor subcontracting system. More than 40 million workers are today part of this labor contracting system, organized through subcontractors who recruit teams of migrant workers from rural areas.22 In the actual operation of the industry, there has been a delinking of capital from industry, and of management from labor. In the production chain, top-tier contractors control construction projects through their relationships with property developers and the local state but outsource their work to low-tier subcontractors. The top-tier contractors seek to make a profit by transferring investment risks and labor recruitment to their subcontractors. “They don’t bother to get their hands dirty.

17 See Richard E. Mayo and Gong Liu, “Reform Agenda of Chinese Construction Industry”, Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, Vol. 121, No. 1 (1995), pp. 80-85. 18 See also Lei Guang, “The Market as Social Convention”, pp. 391-92. 19 This was the “Tentative Provisions for Construction Industry and Capital Investment Administration System Reform”. See Xin Zhongguo jianzhu ye wushi nian, pp. 7-8. 20 See the Construction Ministry’s report on Xin Zhongguo jianzhu ye wushi nian, p. 8. 21 In August 1995, the State Planning Commission, the Ministry of Power Industry and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued “The Circular on Granting Concession to Foreign Financed Capital Projects”. The Construction Law was put into effect on 1 March 1998, covering a wide range of issues such as qualifications for entry into the construction industry, procurement and delivery of works, construction supervision, construction safety, construction quality, legal liability, market regulations and procedures in construction projects. 22 The number of peasant-workers in the industry is listed in a 2004 ACFTU report, “A Survey on the Situation of Construction Peasant-Workers”. See http://finance.sina.com.cn/ g/20041111/17381148918.shtml.

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They transfer all the risks to us. They make us face the workers at times of wage arrears when the money doesn’t arrive from above”, said Lao Feng, a third-tier subcontractor who, like many others, complained about the top-tier contractors. Diagram 1: The Subcontracting System

Bidding

Subcontracting

Subcontracting

Labor Management

Labor Use

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We may take a construction project in a Beijing migrant community as an example. The subcontracting system began with a well-known property developer who was responsible for land reclamation and the design of a villa project. Responsibility for the construction was shifted down the chain through a bidding process to a state-owned construction company, which only took charge of the project management and equipment arrangement for its contractors. In turn, this company relied on three “big contractors” (dabao 大包) who came from Jiangsu, Hebei and Guangdong; these were responsible for providing raw materials and labor for the project. Two of them set up a labor service company to help recruit rural laborers, but in reality they relied on labor-supplier subcontractors (xiaobao 小包 or qingbao 清包) to recruit the labor, manage the daily division of work and pay out wages on completion of the project. In return, these labor-supplier subcontractors further depended on labor-use facilitators (daigong 带工), usually relatives or co-villagers, to look for workers in their own or surrounding villages. Thus, for this building project, one thousand workers were organized into a number of small subcontracting teams that worked on the construction site. The number of workers in each subcontracting team ranged from a dozen to a hundred. Most contractors and subcontractors do not have capital to spare, and most of them also operate without access to a credit facility. About half of the construction projects lack adequate funding at the time of budget approval, and triangular debts in the construction industry account for a large portion of China’s total triangular debt.23 Inasmuch as the developers at the top of the pyramid do not make the bulk of their payments to the contractors until the project is completed, the labor subcontractors in turn often face a shortage of available funds even at an early stage of building. The workers have had to become accustomed to a system in which they themselves do not receive their salary until the project is completed and the contractors and subcontractors have been paid. The construction projects that we studied in Beijing made very low profits for the subcontractors, who often did not have sufficient funds to tide them over until their final payment. In one instance, the work was the construction of 108 villas of 300–500 square meters. Lao Feng, an experienced subcontractor, provided us with detailed information: to build a block of villas estimated to sell for about 10 million yuan, the bidding price was only 760,000 yuan (including the costs of raw materials, labor and administration) for the first-tier contractors, who further out-sourced the construction work to a second tier of contractors, who further subcontracted the work to labor-supplier subcontractors. The standard unit price set for labor costs was 80,000 yuan per villa, which meant that the third-tier and fourth-tier labor-supplier subcontractors had only this lump sum from which to pay the workers whom they recruited and still to make a profit. Lao Feng explained, “We almost lost money in

23 The China Construction Bank is the major bank providing credit to large-scale construction projects, but only a small proportion of large enterprises have access to its services. Debt is said to be “triangular” when it involves a chain of debtors. See Youjie Lu and Paul W. Fox, “The Construction Industry in China”, pp. 13-15.

150 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 building the villas. 24 Sometimes we run into debts but we still have to keep ourselves in the production chain, otherwise we will be left out.” What Lao Feng hoped for was the opportunity to contract the interior renovation jobs after the villas had been sold. As he explained, “When the rich buy a 10-million villa, they use an additional 1 million for renovation. I am waiting to try my luck to get that work.” Taking on a money-losing project with a view to compensating for the initial loss by getting an inside track on the new homeowner’s interior renovations was the business logic of the low-tier subcontractors. Coming from places like Hebei, Anhui, Sichuan and Shandong, most of the contractors and subcontractors had little bargaining power with the construction companies, which were mainly from big cities like Beijing and Guangzhou and were often transformed state-owned enterprises well connected with the city government. The contractors and labor subcontractors often faced serious arrears even in the modest payments owed to them at the early stages of construction, and they were in a weak position when facing the locally influential developers and construction companies. As in almost every other industrial sector in China, the local state thus teams up with capital (whether private or state-owned) to shift risk and to exploit migrant workers from other parts of the country, and wage arrears have consequently become a chronic phenomenon. Over-speculation, insufficient project funding and the absence of state oversight of the industry are also factors. More than anything else, however, the labor subcontracting system, which delinks capital from industry and management from labor, creates a power imbalance in the production chain, to the advantage of the top-tier contractors.

The Expropriation of Labor in the Production Process Accompanying China’s rapid urban and industrial development and the further expansion of the construction industry in the 1990s was a tremendous demand for cheap labor. The provision of this labor through the subcontracting system has been a joint creation of capitalist firms and the CCP-led state. The state changed management–labor relations in the industry, ordering the construction industry to rely upon subcontracting and turning state-owned enterprises into profit-making corporations. The local state, sometimes in defiance of laws passed by the central state, also favors first-tier contractors over lower-tier contractors in disputes. Firms are all too happy to manipulate and profit from this arrangement. In the late 1990s the labor subcontracting system matured, leaving the rural workforce entirely without state or social protection. They had no health cover, no insurance to cover accidents and no injury payments. By the end of the 1990s, subcontractors recruited rural workers as casual laborers, and did not even provide their workers with a legal contract as required by the Labor Law of 1995.25 Up to the present,

24 Villas are more complicated to construct than a high-rise building, so the subcontractors have to set aside more labor days for the completion of the work. 25 The 1995 Labor Law was supposed to lay a foundation for workers’ legal and contractual rights and a system for resolving labor disputes. In the 2000s, the Beijing leadership began to channel labor disputes into arbitration committees and the court system through bureaucratic

A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 151 none of the construction workers whom we interviewed had received regular monthly payments, and none had signed a labor contract. Despite the fact that the new Labor Contract Law was in force as of January 2008, neither the contractors nor subcontractors observed it, and most workers were unaware of the new legal obligations placed on their contractors. When we asked workers, the usual answer was: “What’s a labor contract? No, we don’t have it. I never heard of it.” All the workers whom we interviewed in Beijing and Hebei from December 2007 to January 2009 had been promised a daily pay rate ranging from 50 yuan to 120 yuan, depending on the type of job and the skills required.26 However, they were often ultimately paid at a substantially lower rate, and were even at risk of never receiving any payments. Without contracts, they have very limited grounds for pursuing their employers through the courts. Instead of payouts of a weekly or monthly wage, construction workers are usually paid an irregular shenghuo fei (生活费 living allowance) arranged by their subcontractors, until the completion of the project or the end of the year. The allowance ranges from a hundred to a few hundred yuan per month (about 10 to 20 per cent of their promised monthly income), depending on the subcontractor— barely enough to cover food and other daily expenses. Of the subcontractors whom we interviewed, Mr Song was the most sympathetic to his workers: If the workers followed you, but they had no money to spend, or if a worker caught the flu and had no money to buy medicines, you had to give them one or two hundred yuan. For the whole of 2007, the company never gave me money up front, but if the workers didn’t have living allowances, then I needed to go and ask for money. Many subcontractors had to use their own money to provide a living allowance to their workers. Some of the workers received no living allowance at all, because their subcontractor claimed to have no money. Significant extraction of labor value in the production process was made possible when wages were replaced by living allowances and when the subcontractors justified this practice by saying that there were no funds for salaries coming from their contractor. We visited a 50-year-old Hubei worker in his dormitory at a construction site in January 2008. He showed us a notepad with all the details of his daily work, saying, We’re not even workers. Workers sell their labor to the boss and in return they get their wage ... As construction workers, we are different. I have been

and legal procedures. The Labor Contract Law, which went into effect on 1 January 2008, is considered the most significant change in the Chinese labor law in the reform period. 26 Women are paid 5 to 10 yuan less each day than their male counterparts on the same job. Pay rates reached a peak in 2007 and 2008, due to the shortage of labor evident from the early to the mid-2000s. In 2006, the daily pay rates for cement pourers and carpenters were 30 yuan and 50 yuan respectively; they soared to 50 yuan and 100 yuan in 2008.

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working 286 days for the boss and I still can’t get my pay. I’m waiting for my working money (gongqian 工钱),27 just as I’m always waiting for my luck. Because of the promise of a relatively high wage compared to jobs in manufacturing or service industries, many migrant workers are willing to work in the construction sector despite the problem of wage arrears.28 In addition, male construction workers who have reached the age of 50 have few other job options.

The Commodification of Labor Through Non-Industrial Social Relations Rapidly changing social relations in rural areas have further complicated the problems and conflicts arising from the labor subcontracting system, which originally operated through kin and ethnic networks. At the village research site in Hebei, most households derived income from construction work. It was not a particularly poor village, with annual family incomes in the range of 15,000 to 20,000 yuan. We visited more than 30 families with one or more members working on construction sites in Beijing. Most of these families had both father and son working in the sector. These families were keen to show us the “debt papers” (baitiao 白条) that they had collected in the past years, each telling a story of unpaid toil. One case was more than five years old. Hai, a 45-year-old man who had worked continuously for ten years in the construction industry, showed us a piece of worn paper on which was writted, “XXX owes Hai three thousand yuan only”. The debtor’s signature made this piece of paper the only evidence of a debt owed to the worker. Every time we ran into cases of debt, we enquired into the debt and the reasons for non-payment. A typical story was: “This debt paper is just waste paper. It’s useless now to ask for money. The subcontractor claimed he had no money. He was a shark”, a worker said. “Do you mean that the subcontractor intentionally kept your money or that he couldn’t pay you because the money didn’t come through?” We asked. “Who knows? We didn’t know who the boss was. We haven’t even seen the boss.” The boss whom the workers mentioned was not the labor-supplier subcontractor but the second- or third-level contractor who out-sourced the work. The subcontractor, however, was the only one responsible for wage payment, because he recruited the workers, even though he was not the boss in a legal sense.29

27 In the construction industry, workers used gongqian to describe their wages, but workers in the manufacturing and service sectors usually used gongzi (salary), a more formal concept. 28 The situation is like that for coal miners, who are at risk of serious injury or fatality because of frequent explosions in the mining industry, but who work there principally because of the relatively high rate of pay. 29 Strictly speaking, according to the Company Law and the Construction Law, the labor- supplier subcontractors do not have corporate status, and hence do not have the legal status to employ workers.

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In this village, most of the labor supplier subcontractors recruited from their own or surrounding villages. After the Chinese New Year holiday, subcontractors used their networks in the village to recruit a group of workers, the exact number depending on the size of the construction project, and promised a daily rate of 70 yuan for skilled workers and 50 yuan for unskilled workers. All the workers knew that their wages would be paid after the completion of the project or at the end of the year; this practice had already become common among the workers in the village. As long as they could be sure to receive their wages by the time they returned home to help with the harvest or to celebrate Chinese New Year, they consented to the delayed payment, though not altogether willingly. In the village, non-industrial social relationships are manipulated to serve the purpose of labor expropriation and to disguise the relationship between wage-labor and capital. As a consequence, the “real” boss has become something of a myth in the construction industry. The construction workers’ hope that they will be paid eventually relies on kin connections and villager networks. A saying popular among the workers, especially from the older generation, is: “A monk may run away but a temple stays”, implying that the subcontractor also has relatives in the village and it would be difficult to avoid his responsibilities. However, this belief became increasingly shaky when wage arrears and debts became routine in the late 1990s. The non-commodified social relationships were gradually destroyed through the labor subcontracting system.30 When the problem of wage arrears became serious, conflicts between subcontractors and villagers occurred more frequently and their relationship worsened. A number of workers emphasized that every year they looked for a new small subcontractor, always hoping he would be better than the previous one but, when jobs were badly needed, the workers, especially middle-aged ones, had little choice. Even if the subcontractor had a poor record in wage payments, there was still hope that he would be able to pay at the end of the Lunar Year. By the time we visited the village in Hebei, there were serious worries among the workers that the subcontractors would run off without paying the wages owed. Many villagers complained that, as more people were hired as construction workers, the social relationships within the rural community became more tense. Complaints often came from both sides of the employer/employee divide. One subcontractor, for example, complained that one of his workers had just left the construction team without saying a word: “This is not a normal industry. You don’t have a long-term relationship with anybody. People just leave the construction site whenever they like.” The complaints of subcontractors about their workers were as frequent as the complaints that workers made about their subcontractors. Trust was very much in decline, seriously damaging the entire social fabric of the village.

30 This finding contradicts Shen Yuan’s recent study of construction workers, which argues that non-industrial social relations are the pillar of the labor subcontracting system and are able to keep the system intact. Shen Yuan, Shichang, jieji yu shehui, pp. 216-69.

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A Culture of Violence With declining trust in the subcontracting system, conflicts arise on the construction sites as well as in the villages. The lack of trust has also eroded the self-esteem and social status of the construction workers. Few of the workers whom we interviewed were proud of working in the construction industry, though a few young men felt that they had more freedom on their construction site than in a factory. Suffering the consequences of an unreasonable labor subcontracting system, the workers have learned that their labor rights are poorly protected. They do not usually take action until the bottom line of their consent—receiving wages at the end of the Lunar Year—is broken. When actions are taken, however, they are often of a violent nature, with fighting, bodily injuries, suicidal behavior or attempts to damage buildings. In January 2008 we visited Lan, a woman worker, in her dormitory on a construction site. She said: Young people don’t understand hardship and tiredness. Our work requires working day and night. We wake up at four or five when the stars and the moon are still glittering and we work until dark comes. We only have very short breaks for meals. Even my pigs are fed better than me and yet I have to pay nine yuan a day for pig food. The construction workers often talk about the hardship of their working life. Work hours in this industry are often irregular. A 13- or 14-hour work day is the norm, though the hours can be shorter in the winter. They refer to their jobs as bitter (ku 苦), dirty (zang 脏) and exhausting (lei 累). The cardinal concern of the workers is the risk of industrial injury and death. However, a superstitious fear of mentioning the words injury (shang 伤) and death (si 死) means that they avoid discussing with their subcontractors the issue of compensation should the worst occur. One sudden death is illustrative. In March 2009, Pan, a 57-year-old worker from Hubei, had been working continuously on the site for three months without a day off and without pay. According to his two brothers who worked with him on the same site, he felt extremely ill when he returned from work to his dormitory one evening. The next day, Pan still could not get up to work, but had no money to go to hospital. When his two brothers came to see him at 11:30am, he was trembling and his face was grey. He died at 1:30 p.m., shortly after reaching the hospital. He had only 1.5 yuan in his pocket. Pan’s daughter came from Hubei to ask for compensation, but the subcontractor who had recruited her father obviously had no money to do this. Accompanied by her two uncles and a nephew who worked in Beijing, she approached the labor-service company which had subcontracted the work. The company at first denied any labor relationship with her father, and then claimed that he had died of “natural death”, implying that this was not the result of an on-the-job ailment. The manager of the labor-service company finally told them, “Out of humane concern, we are willing to give you 20,000 yuan for the cost of a funeral”. While the daughter hesitated about taking the money, an angry quarrel broke out between her nephew and the manager. The manager soon called in a dozen hired hands, who beat the nephew and threw

A CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 155 them all out of the office. “Those men hit my head and twisted my neck. See my bruise, here.” Infuriated, the nephew swore to take revenge, while the two uncles still hoped that the company could give them the money and their three-month wages so that the family could return home to arrange the burial as soon as possible. Workers live on hope and despair. On a freezing winter’s evening in 2008, we met Lan and her co-workers again in their dormitory on the construction site. The cold wind blew in through cracks in the walls. The below-zero temperature prevented them from sleeping in their exposed, unheated wooden hut. Work had been finished for a few days, but the workers’ wages had not arrived, leaving them with an anxious wait before they could return to their hometowns. Lan and her co-workers were from a village in Hebei, and they were arguing with their subcontractor, who was trying to convince them to be more patient and to go on waiting for their payment. The argument was so loud that it attracted workers from other dormitories. Afterwards, Lan complained: A group of Henan workers took action to fight for their wages yesterday. Why do we still have to wait? Wait for what? The Henan workers threatened to damage the villas that they built, and surrounded the office of the contractor on the construction site and didn’t allow the office staff to leave. The staff then called the police and two police cars came. The manager of the company finally showed up and promised to pay the workers three days later ... But how about us? We haven’t managed to nao (闹 make a noise and create a disturbance)! How could we get our wages! Arguments and fighting were frequent on the construction site. The tense relationship between subcontractors and workers would often trigger violent acts growing out of verbal disagreements. A number of times, we observed severe fighting, either of groups of workers and their subcontractor, or of subcontractor and workers against their contractor. In December 2008, a subcontractor called up 20 of his workers to surround his contractor’s office and demand payment. The contractor called upon his own hired hands, and a gang fight erupted in which number of workers suffered injuries. Lan’s group had been told by their subcontractor that they would receive their wages on 26 December. Some of her co-workers had already bought train tickets, hoping to return home immediately after receiving their three months’ payment. On 29 December the subcontractor said that the company still had not paid him, and workers would have to wait until 3 January. That day also came, but the workers still did not see their money. Anxiety and anger mounted. On the evening of 4 January we visited Lan again. She anxiously asked for our help: You are educated people. You know how to ask for our wages. Please let us know how to get our wages. We’ve toiled extremely hard for three months, and now we have no money to go back home. How can we support our family and our children? One of her co-workers, Ting, jumped into our conversation and said,

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We have to nao. We have to show our muscle. When we were working, they [the quality controllers sent by the contractor] came to monitor and fuss about our job. Every day we were watched. But now that our work has finished, we are dumped. We are nobody. We have to nao to ask for our wages! Both in the city and in the village, nao, creating a disturbance, was the word used most frequently when the workers talked about demanding their delayed wages. Despite the delays, some of the workers felt that nao was not an appropriate strategy, since it often involved breaking up relationships and disturbing social harmony. Driven by their experiences on the building site and by desperation, however, most of the workers found no other appropriate weapon to defend their basic labor rights. The long wait for wages created despair and anger. Lan and her co-workers asked their subcontractor to provide a written guarantee that their wages would be paid in full within three days. It was often the case that when the boss finally had the money to pay the workers, the original pay rate would be cut by 20 to 30 per cent. One Sichuan worker explained, “We were told we would have 70 yuan a day. Now they say they can only give us 50 yuan. Take it or leave it, it’s up to you. Take it, and you can go home. If not, you can wait.” Eventually he had to accept. The workers’ bargaining power was minimal, once all their work was completed and they were eager to return home. Staying on the construction site without work was like a punishment. They still had to pay for their meals and other daily expenses. Waiting in the city thus means a double loss: workers cannot return home in time to help with the harvest, and have to pay for daily living costs. Lan’s co-workers insisted that they should take action to back up their wage request. Ting feared simply waiting: “What do we do if 6 January comes and the boss still has no money to pay us? We can’t wait any more!” A heated discussion followed, until a consensus was reached: to visit the offices of the Construction Ministry the next day and ask the officials for help. While some of the workers prepared a petition letter, others collected information about their contractor and evidence of their labor relationship, while still others tried to find out the Ministry’s address. The workers went without sleep that night to prepare for the visit to the Ministry office, a place completely strange to them and located in the central part of Beijing. Three workers, including Ting, were chosen as representatives to see the official (jianguan 见官). It is traditional that, when the weak need help, they request a meeting with officials in the government office. The workers travelled for three hours by bus to reach the Ministry building. They arrived at noon, hungry and cold, to be told by office staff that they were in the wrong place. Because they did not have a labor contract, they had to go to the Labor Bureau for help. It took a further hour to reach the Labor Bureau, where they were told to go to the District Labor Bureau, since they could not bypass bureaucratic levels—they were required to ask for administrative help at the lowest level. In the late afternoon, the workers finally got to the district office, which was crowded with workers from other construction sites, all caught in the same impasse of wage arrears. Ting said,

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Some workers were squatting quietly in the corridor waiting to see the officials. Some, however, were very agitated and shouted that, if they still couldn’t get their wages, they would climb up to the top of the building and jump off. Workers from other groups applauded the suggestion and screamed loudly that only by attempting suicide would the boss listen to them and repay them on the spot. “No boss has a conscience” or “all bosses have the worst conscience” were the most frequent utterances. Self-destructive acts or violent protests are often threatened when construction workers find no way out. In the same month of 2009, at another construction site that we visited, a worker climbed onto a bulldozer, threatening to commit suicide if his pay continued to be withheld. The construction company called the police, who ordered the worker to climb down but also asked the company to pay the delayed wage to him. We also heard of a threat to commit suicide that ended in death when the worker accidentally fell. Other workers have been known to take up axes and sledgehammers, surround the villas that they had built and damage the buildings. In June 2008, a group of construction workers surrounded and wrecked a sales office as it prepared to welcome customers in the morning. The workers yelled, “The company cares about customers, but not us!” This drew the attention of the property developer, who put pressure on the construction company to resolve the wage arrears. Blocking roads to attract the attention of top officials in the central government is also a popular method of resistance. Only by creating disturbances to city life have the city’s builders been able to secure their wages. Ting and his co-workers, though, were still at a point of seeking redress by appealing to the authorities. He and his co-workers waited for an hour and a half to get in the door of the legal aid department of the District Labor Bureau. The first question put to them was whether they had a labor contract. They were told that the Labor Department could not help them if they did not, as they did not have a legal employer. The officer, though polite, told Ting and his co-workers to go back to their dormitory, but promised to phone the contracting company the next day to try to resolve the situation. The staff of both the Construction Ministry and the District Labor Bureau know that most workers in this industry are not automatically given a labor contract. Ting asked, “If a labor contract was that important, why doesn’t the government enforce it seriously? Why do none of us have a contract?” He felt very angry at being sent from department to department. When three of the workers returned to their construction site in the late evening, they could not calm down and repeatedly declared that if their money did not come, they had no other choice but to fight: “It’s not a normal industry! We workers have worked for no wage! ... If they don’t give us our money, I’ll lay down my life to fight them. How can they dare not to give us our money?” That evening, however, Ting had not yet reached the point of pushing for actual violence. Instead, he started to mobilize the other workers to make a banner for a demonstration, that read: “Give back my money stained with my blood and sweat!” Such demonstrations are often the last step before physical conflict. These conflicts were not isolated cases;

158 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 most of the workers whom we interviewed had participated in collective actions in one way or the other.

Conclusion Construction is not a “normal” industry, for either subcontractors or workers. There is no boss, no employer directly responsible for employment practices. The capital–labor relationship has been entirely disguised: workers literally do not know the identity of the developers and the construction companies who are ultimately responsible for the non- payment of the wages owed to them. This mis-recognition has been made possible through the labor subcontracting system; an invisible hand, the market, operating several steps removed from the workforce, enables a rigged losing hand to be dealt out to a transient army of labor. The exceptional practices involved in the rapidly changing construction industry induce angry, largely impotent collective actions by construction workers. The political economy of the industry shapes a specific labor subcontracting system that embodies two processes: the rapid commodification of labor in the rural villages and the expropriation of labor in the production process of the construction sector in the urban areas. Rural non-industrial social relationships have been manipulated to serve the process of labor expropriation, which in turn has destroyed social trust and intensified the labor conflicts at the construction site. Today the construction workers are the “invisible” subjects of the city that they have built. They were present when what is now prime land in the city was still wasteland, having no economic value to society. They disappear once the buildings have been constructed with their toil, and the value of the land has increased. The workers are absent in the space that they have created and too frequently are not paid the wages that they have worked for. In short, the labor subcontracting system is a core problem of the construction industry, generating a culture of violence that gets acted out in both destructive and self-destructive forms. At times of anger and despair, the workers enact the logic of nao, which shapes collective actions among China’s construction workers and informs their class consciousness.

CONSUMPTION, CLASS FORMATION AND SEXUALITY: READING MEN’S LIFESTYLE MAGAZINES IN CHINA

∗ Geng Song and Tracy K. Lee

This study examines the construction of consumerist middle-class masculinities in postsocialist China by focusing on a new form of popular culture and consumerism, men’s lifestyle magazines. Although women’s magazines in China can be traced back to the end of the nineteenth century,1 lifestyle magazines directly aimed at a male readership emerged only in the recent decade and remain largely understudied.2 One of the fastest-growing magazine sectors in today’s China, these magazines exemplify the changing concepts of manhood in a consumer society. Highly priced and targeted at affluent executives and businessmen in Chinese cities, they represent and cater for the demands and fantasies of the emerging social group popularly known as the “middle class” (zhongchan jieceng 中产阶层), who are economically privileged and obsessed with status. This article seeks to map out changes in this group’s male subjectivities by reading men’s magazines as “both representative site and mobilizing force of crucial

∗ We are deeply indebted to Andrew Kipnis, Luigi Tomba, Tamara Jacka, Gaik Cheng Khoo and two anonymous reviewers at The China Journal for their very helpful comments and criticisms on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks are also due to Liu Jiang, Shouma, Wang Feng and other magazine editors for the interviews and the permission to use their cover pictures. 1 The first women’s magazine appeared in China in 1898. See the website “Women’s Magazines from the Republican Period” at the Institute of Chinese Studies, University of Heidelberg, for a rich resource on women’s magazines in China: http://www.sino.uni- heidelberg.de/womag/index.htm (accessed on 5 May 2009). A digitized collection of Linglong, a women’s weekly published in Shanghai during 1932 to 1937, can be found at: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/linglong/ (accessed on 5 May 2009). 2 Esquire (Shishang xiansheng), the first men’s lifestyle magazine in China, was launched in 1999 and there has been a proliferation of titles since then. Currently there are 18 titles on the market, with Esquire, FHM (Nanren zhuang); GQ (Zhizu) and Men’s Health (Shishang jiankang) occupying a majority of the market share. For a survey of the men’s magazines market in China, see Tracy K. Lee, “Constructing Consumerist Masculinities: Men’s Lifestyle Magazines in Contemporary China”, in Proceedings of the 17th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, http://arts.monash.edu.au/ mai/asaa/tracyklee.pdf (accessed 5 May 2009).

THE CHINA JOURNAL, NO. 64, JULY 2010 160 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 cultural shifts in masculinity”.3 It will argue that masculinities in contemporary Chinese society must be examined in the context of social stratification and class formation. Many scholars have pointed out the cultural specificity of gender and masculinity in pre-modern China. Kam Louie, for instance, conceptualizes Chinese masculinity through an all-encompassing wen/wu (文/武 literary/martial) dyad and maintains that “Chinese masculinity has evolved in a historical and cultural context that required no inspiration and gained no benefit from comparison with the West”. 4 In his study of the scholarly masculinity in late imperial China, Geng Song relies on the politicized, hierarchical yin/yang framework to interpret the “effeminacy” of male images in scholar–beauty romances, and argues that in pre-modern China masculinity was primarily constructed in a homosocial network, rather than in opposition to “woman”.5 As a matter of fact, according to Martin Huang, there were two common strategies for negotiating masculinity in relation to women: namely, to “validate itself through the feminine” or to “defend itself against the feminine”.6 These reconstructions of a traditional “Chinese masculinity” challenge the presumption that modern Western masculinities are universal. For contemporary China, however, these conceptualizations are insufficient. Masculinities have become increasingly diversified and hybrid in the era of globalization and, according to R. W. Connell, in a given society there are always competing constructions of masculinity that variously become hegemonic, subordinate and marginalized masculinities.7 In contemporary Chinese history, images of the principled Confucian junzi (君子— both the wen and wu types) and the selfless Maoist revolutionary hero still have wide currency.8 The debunking of Confucian and Maoist ideologies in the reform era, however, has led to a “crisis of masculinity”.9 In today’s China, “hegemonic masculinity” defines masculinity primarily in terms of virility, power and wealth. At the same time, male images in popular culture have become increasingly plural. Particularly noteworthy are the

3 Bethan Benwell (ed.), Masculinity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), p. 7. 4 Kam Louie, Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 148. 5 Geng Song, The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004). 6 Martin W. Huang, Negotiating Masculinities in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), p. 32. 7 R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 81. 8 For a discussion of the legacies of the Confucian and Maoist masculine discourses in today’s TV dramas, see Geng Song, “Chinese Masculinities Revisited: Male Images in Contemporary Television Drama Serials”, Modern China, prepublished 15 April 2010; DOI:10.1177/0097700410368221. 9 According to Xueping Zhong, the crisis is primarily caused by a male anxiety that can be explained by the “marginality complex” of Chinese male intellectuals and the presumed Chinese male weakness (along with a male desire for strong masculine identity) and is closely linked with the pursuit of modernity in modern China. See Xueping Zhong, Masculinity Besieged? Issues of Modernity and Male Subjectivities in of the Late Twentieth Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 11-12.

CONSUMPTION, CLASS FORMATION AND SEXUALITY 161 popularity of metrosexual types of young men and a resurgence of the traditional wen type of masculinity.10 In the broader context of these competing masculinities, we explore the particular types of consumerist masculinities formed through the middle-class consumption of up-market lifestyle magazines. We pay particular attention to the interplay of gender and class identities. The “middle class” that we discuss here is a discourse rather than an actual bounded social class. While this social group has become the subject of burgeoning research both inside and outside China, terms like “middle class(es)”, “new middle class” or “new rich” are more often than not used vaguely without clear definitions and specific contexts.11 In China, the term “middle stratum” (zhongchan jieceng) is preferred to “middle class” (zhongchan jieji 中产阶级) as a common term among both academics and a more general public.12 Popular discourse strategically avoids the Marxist term “class” (jieji 阶级), a core concept of Maoist ideology,13 but for the sake of convenience we employ the term “middle class” to refer to the discourse on a social group whose status is viewed both by themselves and others as being determined by high levels of consumption and leisure. As Luigi Tomba points out, members of the middle class “appear increasingly to shape their status around a new set of collective interests, especially in their modes of consumption and access to resources”. 14 For the middle class, consumption marks status discursively and defines the identity of this social group.

10 For instance, there is criticism on the internet that the winners of the TV singing contest, Kuaile nansheng (Happy Voice Boy) are “unbelievably effeminate”. See http://tren.blog.sohu.com/45602829.html (accessed on 5 May 2009). For a discussion on “a return to more traditional type of more soft and delicate manhood” since at least the mid- 1990s, see Nimrod Baranovitch, China’s New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978–1997 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 132. 11 See, for instance, David S. G. Goodman, “Why China Has No New Middle Class: Cadres, Managers and Entrepreneurs”, in David S. G. Goodman (ed.), The New Rich in China: Future Rulers, Present Lives (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 23-37. 12 In a widely circulated report on social stratification in contemporary China, Lu Xueyi, a sociologist who works at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) divides the society into ten social groups. See Lu Xueyi (ed.), Dangdai Zhongguo shehui jieceng yanjiu baogao (Research Report on Contemporary China’s Social Stratification) (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, 2002). A series of “Studies on the Middle Stratum in China” has recently been published by China Encyclopedia Press. The titles in the series, focusing on the consumption, cultural and educational behaviors, identification and political participation of the middle stratum, are the results of a large project led by Zhou Xiaohong of Nanjing University. 13 For a discussion on the rejection of the language of class and the adoption of social strata as the language of social analysis, see Ann Anagnost, “From ‘Class’ to ‘Social Strata’: Grasping the Social Totality in Reform-era China”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3 (2008), pp. 497-519. 14 Luigi Tomba, “Creating an Urban Middle Class: Social Engineering in Beijing”, The China Journal, No. 51 (2004), p. 3. See also his “Of Quality, Harmony and Community: Civilization and the Middle Class in Urban China”, positions: east asia cultures critique, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Winter 2009), pp. 591-616.

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The key catalysts in the appearance of lifestyle magazines in China were globalized commercialization and the growth of the Chinese middle-class market. The first lifestyle magazines in post-Mao China were, so to speak, “androgynous”, targeting both men and women. To meet the market demand of some advertisers, such as toiletries producers, magazines designed exclusively for women came into being in the late 1980s, through copyright cooperation with internationally popular titles. Men’s magazines arrived at least ten years later as a further development based on the women’s magazines.15 Since the first men’s lifestyle magazine appeared on the market in 1999, there has been a proliferation of titles. The period from 2004 to 2006 witnessed a particularly rapid development of the market, with ten men’s magazines launched within two years. The popularity of men’s magazines has challenged the stereotyped gender association of magazines with women. In terms of copyright ownership, men’s magazines in China can be roughly divided into two groups: the mainland editions of world-wide famous titles, such as Esquire and FHM, and local publications, such as Mangazine and Men’s Style (Meili xiansheng 魅力先生). Chinese law does not allow foreign publishers to publish directly in China; those who want to enter the Chinese market must therefore find a local partner and produce their new magazines under the partner’s license. Investment from the Chinese partner should not be lower than 51 per cent in these forms of “copyright cooperation”, ensuring that the Chinese side has editorial control. Generally speaking, the internationally partnered magazines enjoy many advantages compared to the locally published ones, and therefore take the lead in the market.

“Your Taste Defines Your Position”: Pinwei as Cultural Capital Characterized by a journalist as “a gratification for the rich and a temptation for the poor”,16 lifestyle magazines are normally priced around 20 yuan per copy and thus beyond the means of people with average incomes in Chinese cities. Almost all the magazines explicitly target a social group of a certain age, social status and, most importantly, income standard. For example, Esquire (Shishang xiansheng 时尚 先生) targets readers with a monthly income of more than 3,000 yuan, and Mangazine targets those who earn 6,000 yuan or more.17 Lifestyle magazines thus become a status symbol for a minority social élite. The publishers strategically place their magazines in places of luxury consumption, such as beauty salons or dental clinics, thus associating

15 Interview with Liu Jiang, January 2008. 16 Zhou Chunling, “Shishang zazhi: manzu furen, youhuo qiongren” (Lifestyle Magazines: A Gratification for the Rich and Temptation for the Poor), Jingli ribao (The Manager’s Daily) (18 August 2002), p. A1. All the translations from Chinese in this paper are our own unless otherwise stated. For a discussion of lifestyle cultures and consumer segmentation that “fuels the engine of emulative spending” in contemporary China, see Jing Wang, “Bourgeois Bohemians in China? Neo-Tribes and the Urban Imaginary”, The China Quarterly, No. 183 (2005), pp. 532-48. 17 The information on the benchmarks is obtained from the magazines’ official websites (accessed 4 December 2008). According to Jing Wang, “without delimiting and naming the target segment for a product, the engine of emulation could not get started”. Ibid, p. 533.

CONSUMPTION, CLASS FORMATION AND SEXUALITY 163 their magazines with a “middle-class” lifestyle.18 In a study of cultural taste and status anxiety, Xu Rong recorded a middle-aged woman’s comments on a lifestyle magazine which she uttered when by chance she encountered its editor-in-chief: Your magazine is terrific. It sells very well. I flick through your magazines now and then, but it is too expensive; I cannot afford it. I often see it in places like beauty salons, a bit up-market. Another place is a dental clinic, a high-class one, where I had my porcelain crown done. There are many high-class magazines and I flip through them there. But I’ve been going there for a year and there are just three issues, all dog-eared. I asked the proprietors, “Why don’t you buy new ones?” They said that they are too expensive—20 yuan a copy. Amazingly expensive! Even such a high-class clinic can only afford three issues.19 Most of the magazines under discussion employ the discourse of “good taste” in their marketing strategy: “good taste” (pinwei 品位 or gediao 格调) and “élite” (jingying 精英) are the keywords that they commonly use to attract readers. For instance, the promotion slogan of Esquire is “To build lifestyles in good taste for élite men” (dazao jingying nanshi de pinwei shenghuo 打造精英男士的品位生活) and the flash banner on the top of the Metropolis (Da dushi 大都市) website reads: “Life, Taste, Business—To build up a new Chinese gentleman” (shenghuo, gediao, shangwu—dazao Zhongguo xin shenshi 生活, 格调, 商务—打造中国新绅士). Moreover, the new magazine Harper’s Bazaar: Men’s Style (Basha nanshi 巴莎 男士) is so obsessed with “taste” that it defines itself as a “taste textbook for successful men” and promotes the claim that “your taste defines your position”.20 The overwhelming emphasis on pinwei distinguishes Chinese men’s magazines from those in other parts of the world. However, although pinwei is often translated as “good taste”, the English phrase fails to convey the semantic content of hierarchy and élitism of the original word. Pinwei is a compound, pin 品 meaning “grade” or “quality” (the character was also used for the ranks of court officials in ancient China) and wei 位 indicating “position” or “rank”.21 The cult of pinwei is in keeping with the ubiquitous discourse of quality (suzhi 素质) in contemporary China, which, according to Ann Anagnost, “articulates the boundaries of China’s newly differentiating social strata” and “produces subject positions necessary for capitalist accumulation”.22

18 Interview with Liu Jiang, January 2008. 19 Xu Rong, Zhongguo zhongjian jieceng wenhua pinwei yu diwei konghuang (The Cultural Taste and Status Anxiety of the Middle Stratum in China) (Beijing: Zhongguo Dabaike Quanshu Chubanshe, 2007), p. 177. 20 Http://chinadaily.cn/hqss/2007-12/21/content_6339774.htm (accessed on 20 January 2009). 21 Xiandai hanyu cidian (A Modern Chinese Dictionary) (Beijing: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1999), p. 976. 22 Ann Anagnost, “The Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)”, Public Culture, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2004), p. 190. See also: Andrew Kipnis, “Suzhi: A Keyword Approach”, The China Quarterly, No. 186 (2006), pp. 310-11, and the winter 2010 issue of the journal positions: east asia cultures critique.

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The marketers of lifestyle magazines use pinwei as the external marker of the internal quality of suzhi. It is ultimately the choices that one makes about how one looks and acts which indicate one’s educational background and aesthetic disposition. The term has become increasingly popular in China and is closely related to middle-class social positioning. The social theorists Peter Trifonas and Effie Balomenos suggest that taste “involves classifying yourself and others so that you can try to find a common ground on which to be accepted for the choices you make, and, in the process, working out where you want to belong and with whom you have a collective bond”.23 In China, the social group most concerned with “good taste” are the well-off, white-collar, urban dwellers sometimes referred to as (小资), a jokey appropriation of the Chinese translation of petty bourgeois.24 Fundamentally, the pursuit of pinwei illustrates the overwhelming impact of Western lifestyles enabled through global consumerism. Pierre Bourdieu maintains that cultural capital exists in three distinct forms: In the embodied state, i.e., in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.), which are the trace or realization of theories or critiques of these theories, problematics, etc.; and in the institutionalized state, a form of objectification which must be set apart because, as ... in the case of educational qualifications, it confers entirely original on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee.25 In light of this classification, middle-class lifestyle magazines can be regarded as an objectified form of cultural capital, while the lifestyle which they promote, the “habits and dispositions” and even the healthy, fit male body associated with leisure and consumerism, are embodied forms of cultural capital. In Distinction, Bourdieu further points out that cultural consumption serves to legitimate social differences and class stratification. Cultural capital helps strengthen the distinction between the classes. The bourgeois are therefore known as the “status seekers”, who are anxious to separate themselves from the lower class by playing “the game of distinction”, namely, the pursuit of “highbrow” art and culture.26 While the concepts of cultural capital and distinction can be applied to the study of lifestyle magazines in almost every modern culture, they are of particular significance for contemporary Chinese society, where the notion of culture as a form

23 Peter Trifonas and Effie Balomenos, Good Taste: How What You Choose Defines Who You Are (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2003), p. 2. 24 See Bao Xiaogugang, Xiaozi qingdiao (The Petty Bourgeois Lifestyle) (Changchun: Jilin Sheying Chubanshe, 2002). 25 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital”, translated by Richard Nice, in John G. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp. 241-58. 26 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, translated by Richard Nice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979).

CONSUMPTION, CLASS FORMATION AND SEXUALITY 165 of capital is still a new phenomenon. Jing Wang has acutely pointed out the shift of the social function of culture in China in recent years: No longer packaged as a Marxist category, as a superstructure that reflects or disguises the economic activities of society, culture now parts with ideology and is turned into capital itself, that is, into an economic activity in itself, and perhaps the most important economic activity of all … In fact, the logic of cultural capital was inconceivable as late as the 1980s, when Chinese cultural production was still largely dominated by anti-market-thinking cultural and literary élites. The historical continuity of Chinese elitist tradition made the collapse of culture into capital such a radical phenomenon. What we are witnessing is arguably the shift from productive to reproductive technologies, a phenomenon that Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard would fain ascribe to the symptomatic arrival of postmodernity.27 The pursuit of pinwei in Chinese popular culture illustrates cultural capital as “a social relation within a system of exchange that includes the accumulated cultural knowledge that confers power and status”.28 What lies behind the phenomenon is the drive to promote consumers’ interest in luxury goods, which is clearly evident in the advertisements in these magazines. 29 However, at the same time, pinwei in the Chinese context differs from the form of aesthetic competence delineated in Bourdieu’s account of French lifestyles. Its content cannot be explained simply as the adoration of knowledge, educational background or even aesthetic aptitude. Shakespeare or European classical opera, for instance, are not typical topics of pinwei in these magazines and other forms of Chinese popular culture. So what is pinwei in the current context? It is a matter of knowing how to dress, behave, dine and travel “like a gentleman”, which usually involves a superficial “copying” of the Western lifestyle, or an imagined Western lifestyle. This may be attributable to the long- standing association, conscious or unconscious, of Westernization and modernization in modern China and, in particular, during the reform era. Thus, “taste” is ultimately a symbol of modernity and a status claim, or “a game of distinction”, that reflects the vision of modernity of the newly emergent middle class. A typical example of the fetishitic fantasy of Western lifestyle in the pursuit of pinwei and masculinity is a widely circulated essay on the internet entitled

27 Jing Wang, “Culture as Leisure, Culture as Capital”, positions: east asia cultures critique, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2001), p. 83. 28 Chris Barker, The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies (London: Sage, 2004), p. 37. For the power relations in the formation of middle class taste in China, see also Stephanie Hemelryk Donald and Zheng Yi, “Richer than Before—the Cultivation of Middle Class Taste: Education Choices in Urban China”, in David S. G. Goodman (ed.), The New Rich in China, pp. 71-82. 29 See Tracy K. Lee, “Constructing Consumerist Masculinities”, for an empirical analysis of a sample of advertisements collected from Shishang xiansheng and Nanren zhuang between 2004 and 2007.

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“Ten Indicators of the Good Taste of Managers”.30 The essay examines the “finer things” in male lifestyle, including “Swiss Army knives—a spiritual totem for men”, and Zippo lighters, a “loved and enjoyed topic of conversation” for men and “the symbol of stepping towards male maturity”. Other listed indicators of pinwei include cigars, whisky and golf. Interestingly, apart from these extravagantly exotic commodities, the author also thinks that “the ultimate taste of a man lies in his selection of a wife” and lists some very “traditional” standards of a good wife, such as being virtuous and dutiful, possessing a childish innocence, enjoying reading and appreciating music. As a marker of identity, the quest for pinwei represents an anxiety to be distinguished, not only from the poor, but also, and perhaps more importantly, from the notorious “explosive rich” (baofahu 暴发户), a disdainful term for those who were not well-educated in their youth and who made a great fortune overnight under the reformist state. “Explosive rich” “struggle against public prejudice which portrays them as uneducated greedy individuals, and sometimes even as criminals”.31 Many of them seek to distinguish themselves morally with formal intellectual credentials or by building Christian churches or Buddhist temples. In a study of “boss Christians” in Wenzhou, Nanlai Cao observes how rich Christians simultaneously display their newfound wealth and secure their social status by building spectacular “Wenzhou model” churches all over the world.32 Others pursue cultural capital by donating money to charity or investing in the education and health care sectors.33 In comparison to the explosive rich, it seems that the “middle class” adopt different means to distinguish themselves. They are relatively well- educated but not yet rich enough to build churches and hospitals. They play the game of distinction by performing high-quality pinwei lifestyles. Interestingly, this transformation of pinwei into cultural capital is sometimes packaged with the Party-speak of “raising” people’s cultural standard and “guiding” their lifestyle. For instance, the publicity message of the “Esquire Man of the Year Award” by Esquire reads: Since 2004, the “Esquire Man of the Year Award” competition has been held for four years. It demonstrates that Esquire, apart from providing overall guidance to men on daily consumption, expresses the ideals, hobbies, interests and zealous lives of mature men. The competition further represents the advanced productive force, advanced culture and the ideals of life by the new rich in China ... Esquire is not only

30 “Shida jingliren caifu pinwei (nanshi)” (The Ten Indicators of the Good Taste of Managers [male]), http://biz.cn.yahoo.com/050223/16/80n4.html, accessed on 10 May 2009. The essay was allegedly first published by China Fortune magazine but we were not able to find it in past issues of the magazine. 31 Beatriz Carrillo, “From Coal to Hospital White: New Welfare Entrepreneurs and the Pursuit of a Cleaner Status”, in David S. G. Goodman (ed.), The New Rich in China, p. 99. 32 Nanlai Cao, “Boss Christians: The Business of Religion in the ‘Wenzhou Model’ of Christian Revival”, The China Journal, No. 59 (2008), pp. 63-87. 33 Beatriz Carrillo, “From Coal to Hospital White”.

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a magazine but also a weather-vane of men’s vogue in China. It has exerted extensive and profound influence on Chinese men and even Chinese people in general.34 This passage borrows heavily from the official Party rhetoric of “the Three Represents”.35 It serves as an excellent example of how the new role of culture as something with exchange value in a consumer society is legitimized by mimicking the old discourse of culture as a tool for ideological education and guidance. In fact, the Party-state itself also endorses the discourse of pinwei or self-improvement in order to increase consumerism and therefore boost the market economy.36

Embodied Capital: From Male Gaze to “Consuming Men” According to Pierre Bourdieu, “Most of the properties of cultural capital can be deduced from the fact that, in its fundamental state, it is linked to the body and presupposes embodiment”.37 To thumb through most men’s lifestyle magazines, whether Chinese or Western, is like walking through a forest of “erotic bodies”. These images range from sexy girls, photo models for fashion and costumes, celebrities and muscular men to gay erotica. However, one thing in common is that the body is presented as something to be looked at and admired. There are many ways of categorizing these magazines. Tan Qiong, a Chinese critic, holds that there are two kinds of men’s magazines: those for men to “to look at” and those for men “to be looked at” (“kan” yu “bei kan” “看” 与 “被看”).38 In other words, what have been included under the rubric of “men’s magazines” actually include magazines for men and magazines about men. In terms of the bodies on display, the magazines can be roughly divided into two groups, those featuring

34 Http://esquire.trends.com.cn/event/2008-01/page_91572/91572_2.shtml (accessed on 10 November 2008). 35 “The important thought of the Three Represents”, first put forward by former CCP leader Jiang Zemin in 2000, maintains that the Party must always represent “the development trend of China's advanced productive forces, the orientation of China's advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people”. It has been enshrined in the Party constitution as a guiding ideology of the CCP in the new era, together with Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory. See http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90002/92169/92211/6274616.html (accessed on 9 January 2009). 36 The “complicity” between the Party ideology and the middle-class lifestyle can also be interpreted as a sign of the political “conservatism” of the new rich in China. As observed by many a scholar in the West, the upper/middle classes in Chinese society, far from becoming a force that champions “democracy”, see continued CCP authoritarianism as a layer of protection from the lower classes. See, for example, Jonathan Unger, “China’s Conservative Middle Class”, Far Eastern Economic Review (April 2006), pp. 27-31. 37 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital”, p. 244. 38 Tan Qiong, “Shixi nanxing zazhi wenhua dingwei zhong de si zhong ‘duili’ guanxi” (On the Four “Confrontations” in the Cultural Positioning of Men’s Magazines), Chuban faxing yanjiu (Publishing Research), Vol. 5 (2008), pp. 63-67.

168 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 mostly men’s bodies and those featuring women’s bodies; the distinction is most observable from their cover pictures. We start with magazines featuring women’s bodies. Like its partner in the West, the Chinese version of FHM (Nanren zhuang 男人装) epitomizes heterosexual soft-core pornography. The magazine is popularly known for the sexy girls on the cover of each issue. Each year there is a selection by the readers of the “hottest” cover girls. The winners usually become an overnight sensation. This magazine’s bold exposure of the female body and open attitude toward sex appear shocking even for Western journalists: ... the February issue of For Him Magazine ... features a Chinese singer, A Duo, on its cover wearing a white V-neck leotard that reveals every other inch of her rather substantial figure [Figure 1]. Inside, A Duo poses like a dominatrix, clutching her breasts, wrapping her naked body in celluloid and bending, sweat-drenched, over a submissive man ... The racy For Him Magazine also offers tips on “how to do it in five minutes” (because a “sex break is the same as a coffee break”) and features stories with titles like “The Dangerous Sex Journey of Qi Qi”.39

Figure 1: The cover of the February 2007 issue of For Him Magazine.

39 David Barboza, “A People’s Sexual Revolution in China”, International Herald Tribune, 4 March 2007.

CONSUMPTION, CLASS FORMATION AND SEXUALITY 169

After her sexy photos appeared, A Duo achieved overnight national fame and became the object of sexual fantasy for many men. One man wrote in his blog, “I desperately want to make love to A Duo! Can anybody help me contact her?”40 Obviously, sexual images of women cater for the “male gaze” of readers and exemplify the objectification of the female body as something to be consumed in a society dominated by men. Targeting a heterosexual male readership, even the advertisement sections are flooded with sexy girls. As many products advertised have nothing to do with women, these also convey the message of “buy the product, get the girl!” The magazines suggest that upward class identification may be achieved through the consumption of women. Xin Liu describes how local businessmen in Beihai, Guangxi, treat visiting government officials to massage parlor girls and then comment on the cadres’ inexperience in this form of consumption,41 suggesting that even sex can require a form of pinwei. “High-quality”, beautiful women are not only rewards for successful men but also an important indicator of their status. At the same time, eroticized and idealized male bodies also appear in some men’s lifestyle magazines. This phenomenon resonates with current trends in Western mainstream popular culture, in which “men’s bodies as bodies have gone from near invisibility to hypervisibility in the course of a decade”.42 The rise in the visibility of the male body has changed the traditional pattern in which “men look at women and women watch themselves being looked at”.43 There are a number of perspectives from which to interpret the visual discourse of the male body in these magazines: men’s narcissistic self-expression, the impact of gay culture, the impact of metrosexual ideals and, more importantly, the impact of the empowerment of women by capitalism. The male bodies in these magazines, ranging from handsome metrosexual men to macho-type muscular men, can be sites of both identification and objectification, depending on the spectator. Magazines like Men’s Health (Shishang jiankang 时尚健康) fetishize muscles and muscularity (Figure 2). Healthy bodies relate to hedonism; tanned skin and highly developed muscles signify fashion, leisure and money, rather than participation in manual labor.44 This presentation of masculinity constitutes a sharp contrast to the image of the fragile scholar as the ideal masculine in premodern China.45 The body becomes a site of self-expression and projection, reinforced by consumerism. As a result,

40 Http://aduo.blog.sohu.com/ (accessed on 15 January 2009). 41 Xin Liu, The Otherness of Self: A Genealogy of the Self in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 47-48. 42 Rosalind Gill, Karen Henwood and Carl McLean, “Body Projects and the Regulation of Normative Masculinity”, Body & Society, Vol. 11, No. 1(2005), p. 37, original emphasis. 43 John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: BBC, 1972), p. 47. 44 Rosalind Gill, Karen Henwood and Carl McLean, “Body Projects and the Regulation of Normative Masculinity”, p. 40. 45 See Geng Song, The Fragile Scholar.

170 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 it functions as an important form of embodied capital for upwardly mobile middle-class men.

Figure 2: A typical cover of Men’s Health (Shishang jiankang). Other images celebrate the male body as an object of desire. They target women and gay readers—a significant portion of the readers of men’s magazines are women and it is estimated that 20 to 30 per cent are bought by women. For some titles, the figure is even as high as 40 per cent.46 Women read men’s magazines for various purposes, but one reason is to look at men and to know more about them.47 The rise of female entrepreneurs in China has attracted increasing attention from the media in recent years,48 and thirteen of China’s richest 100 people are women, according to the 2007 Forbes list. 49 Women are also exerting an increasing influence on cultural production. The men’s lifestyle magazines which objectify the male body as a sexual fetish thus reflect a significant and profound change of gender relations in contemporary China, because there is a “contradiction between the vulnerable passivity arguably implicit in the state of being-looked-at, and the dominance and control which patriarchal order expects its male subjects to exhibit”.50 Nimrod Baranovitch has also noticed this

46 Tan Qiong, “Shixi nanxing zazhi wenhua dingwei zhong de si zhong ‘duili’ guanxi”. 47 Interview with Shouma, January 2008. According to Shouma, apart from looking for pictures of attractive male stars/models, some female readers read their magazine in order to buy the trendiest gifts for their boyfriends/husbands, or to regard the sexy girls in the magazines as something they would aspire to be if they want to be with a (rich) man. Women who are looking for hypergamous marriages therefore may also be a potential audience. 48 For instance, Current TV has aired a feature entitled China’s Rich Women, focusing on the stories of the self-made female millionaires. 49 “Yang Makes It Two in a Row for China’s Rich Women”, China Daily, 2 November 2007. 50 Pat Kirkham and Janet Thumim (eds), You Tarzan: Masculinity, Movies and Men (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1993), p. 12.

CONSUMPTION, CLASS FORMATION AND SEXUALITY 171 reversal of “male gaze” in Chinese popular culture and maintains that “[f]or the first time in Chinese history, men became a commodity for female consumption”.51 The consumers of erotic male-body pictures also include gay readers. They are interested in both mainstream magazines with muscular men and the openly gay (tongzhi 同志) magazines. According to an online article, in order to “attract the eyeball” of a gay reader, a magazine must fulfill three criteria: first, the cover image must be a sexy man, half covered, with a bath towel slipping down; second, inside the magazine there must be at least two pages of semi-naked or naked men; third, the magazine should focus on narcissistic topics, such as body-building, body-grooming and dressing. 52 Sexualized male bodies flood a group of magazines that includes Visual Man (Shijue zhinan 视觉质男), MenBox (Shishang junzi 时尚君子) and Men’s Health. The emergence of gay magazines is a result of the growing visibility of homosexual expressions in Chinese media and popular culture. Though gay magazines remain marginal and even semi-legal, they target a potential readership of 20 million men in China.53 Among them, Zero Space (Ling juli 零距离), a bi- monthly magazine launched in September 2006, is the first explicitly gay magazine in mainland China.54 According to its website, its purpose is “to promote public understanding of this vulnerable social group, the queer, and to provide the gay population with concern, education, and guidance”.55 Apart from homoerotica, the

51 Nimrod Baranovitch, China’s New Voices: Popular Music, Ethnicity, Gender, and Politics, 1978–1997 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 143. 52 “Luonan, xing’ai cheng shishang xuetou, nalei zazhi zao tongzhi xiai?” (Naked Men and Sex are in Vogue, What Kind of Magazines Are Liked by Gays?) http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/ blog_49dbcbc801000b9r.html (accessed on 19 January 2009). 53 According to the Survey on the Health Condition and Consciousness on Prevention of AIDS of Chinese Gays, the homosexual population in China numbered 30 million. Among them, 20 million are gays, http://love.enorth.com.cn/system/2008/04/01/003068735.shtml (accessed on 14 October 2008). 54 This magazine was officially registered in Hong Kong with an international standard serial number. During an interview on 16 October 2008, the publisher, Yi Shengguo, said that he was facing serious financial difficulty. In fact, his home was the editorial office and he was the only person producing the magazine. When asked why he established a gay magazine, he said that he was trying to fulfill his social obligations and to help gays as a minority and marginalized group in society. Despite a potentially large readership, the magazine ceased publication after March 2008, due to various reasons. As it does not have a local serial number, it cannot be sold publicly in the newspaper stands. In Beijing and Xiamen Zero Space was confiscated by local police. In addition, according to Yi, even when his magazine is available on the market, very few people dare to buy it from the stands, as gay identity is still hidden in most cases. Yi also told us that subscriptions constitute the main source of his readership, but there are less than a hundred of them. An alternative way to reach readers is to place copies of the magazine in gay bars. Another reason contributing to financial constraints is that no advertiser is willing to advertise in Zero Space because, in Yi’s words, they think that advertising in a gay magazine will “downgrade” the image of their products. 55 Http://www.china-zerospace.cn/ (accessed on 19 January 2009).

172 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 magazine also contains useful information on psychological and physical health care for male homosexuals. As Paul Baker points out, one of the most significant differences between magazines targeted at heterosexual men and those aimed at gay readers is that “the latter are likely to include a section for personal adverts, allowing its readership to engage socially, romantically or sexually with each other”.56 In Zero Space, there is a column called “Diaries of True Feelings”, which provides a channel for readers to share their personal stories. The government’s attitude toward homosexual culture has been described as a “Triple No” policy: no approval, no disapproval and no promotion. According to a Western journalist, there has never been a better time to be gay in China because “[t]hat hands-off approach—a sort of commercial don’t ask, don’t tell policy—is emblematic of the delicacy with which the Communist regime is learning to deal with many of the issues concerning personal liberties that are increasingly being raised by its burgeoning middle class”.57 Gay masculinity is an important yet largely neglected aspect of consumerist masculinities constructed in contemporary China. Its relationship to the rise of a middle-class society, however, is a complex issue that deserves full-length treatment elsewhere.

Soft Porn and Pinwei Masculinities Scholarly analyses of men’s magazines in Britain focus on the distinction between the “New Man” and “New Lad” identities. 58 This distinction is also evident in Chinese men’s magazines, but the two discourses are remarkably different in China. Chang Xiaowu divides current men’s titles in the Chinese market into four sub-categories, namely, “gentleman” magazines, “beer culture” magazines, alternative sexuality magazines and “others”.59 In what follows we will focus on the first two types and compare them with the “new man” and “new lad” categories in Britain. According to Chang, the gentleman magazines construct an image of bourgeois lifestyle by focusing on high-brow artifacts, delicate food, luxurious housing and fashion, elegant watches, exotic travel, fitness advice and financial management. Their target readers are successful men in their late thirties

56 Paul Baker, “No Effeminates Please: A Corpus-based Analysis of Masculinity via Personal Adverts in Gay News/Times 1973–2000”, in Bethan Benwell (ed.), Masculinity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines, p. 243. 57 Simon Elegant, “The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name—Discreetly”, Time (13 January 2008), http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1703180,00.html (accessed on 26 June 2009). 58 See Bethan Benwell (ed.), Masculinity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines; Peter Jackson, Nick Stevenson and Kate Brooks, Making Sense of Men’s Magazines (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001); Sean Nixon, Hard Looks: Masculinities, Spectatorship and Contemporary Consumption (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 123-95; and Leon Hunt, British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 56-73. 59 Chang Xiaowu, “Woguo nanxing shishang qikan shichang saomiao” (A Survey of the Market of Men’s Lifestyle Magazines in Our Country), Bianji xuekan (Editors Bimonthly), No. 1 (2001), pp. 57-61.

CONSUMPTION, CLASS FORMATION AND SEXUALITY 173 to mid-forties, and they aim at providing the social élites with advice on leisure and on “uplifting” the taste and quality of their life.60

Figure 3: An image of mature masculinity: Jackie Chan on the cover of Esquire. The very first men’s lifestyle magazine in China, Esquire, is without doubt the epitome of the discourse of mature and successful masculinity. The “Esquire Man of the Year” awards have been held annually since 2005 and have become a highly popular event. According to their website, an “Esquire Man” should be distinguished in four aspects: “health, emotion, sensibility and wealth” (jiankang, qinggan, zhixing, fuzu 健康, 情感, 知性, 富足).61 The four criteria for the selection are “successful career, outstanding talents and glamour, tasteful disposition, dignified bearing and remarkable appearance” (chenggong de shiye, chuzhong de caihua he meili, qizhi youya, yibiao bufan 成功的事业, 出众的才华和魅力, 气质优雅, 仪表不凡). 62 However, the list of past winners includes celebrities such as actors, directors, writers and, predominantly, entrepreneurs, most of whom are not particularly handsome. The magazine’s cover often features middle-aged men and celebrates the notion of mature masculinity. Hong Kong kungfu star Jackie Chan, for instance, appears in one issue in a Chinese suit and holds a big Chinese brush pen, an image highly reminiscent of the

60 Interview with Wang Feng, January 2008. 61 Esquire 2008 Mediakit, p. 10. 62 Http://esquire.trends.com.cn/event/2008-01/91572.shtml (accessed on 1 February 2009).

174 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 call for the revival of the “Chinese tradition” by mainstream ideology in Chinese society since the mid-1990s (Figure 3).63 By contrast, “beer culture” magazines slant more toward a hedonistic lifestyle, with wine, sports and sex as their common themes. They sport front cover images of scantily clad young women and are filled with articles about sex. The editor of FHM, Shouma (Jacky Jin), said that their readers are all “fully confident” in life. They buy what they like, without concern for the price of the products. They care very little about the future and enjoy the present. They want to be independent from the domestic responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood. They are keen on fashion and new technologies. Comparatively speaking, they are open-minded and ready to accept Western lifestyles. Members of this social group are younger than the “gentleman” readers and have been called “post-yuppies” by Shouma.64 They are often tagged as the post-70 and post-80 generation. The dyad of “gentleman magazines” and “beer culture magazines” closely resembles the “New Man” and “New Lad” dichotomy in Britain. According to Rosalind Gill, “New Man” and “New Lad” “represent perhaps the two dominant and most pervasive constructions of masculinity circulating in Britain over the past decade and are frequently represented as products of particular chronological moments, with ‘new man’ representing the zeitgeist of the 1980s and ‘new lad’ the 1990s”.65 “New Man” and “New Lad” are defined by men’s lifestyle magazines. Roughly, the terminology “New Man” is associated with the launch of the men’s style magazine Arena in the UK in 1986, while “New Lad” relates to the launch of loaded in 1994. These two images of masculinity are summarized by Gill as follows: The “new man” is generally characterized as sensitive, emotionally aware, respectful of women, and egalitarian in outlook—and, in some accounts, as narcissistic and highly invested in his physical appearance. He is as likely to be gay as straight. By contrast, ‘new lad’ is depicted as hedonistic, post- (if not anti-)feminist, and pre-eminently concerned with beer, football and “shagging” women. His outlook on life could be characterized as anti-aspirational and owes a lot to a particular classed articulation of masculinity.66 Tim Edwards further points out that the New Man was the archetype of an aspiring yuppie, while work is curiously either unimportant, absent or invisible in the world of the New Lad.67

63 For a discussion of the nationalist resurgence of traditional culture in recent years, see Yingjie Guo, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). 64 Interview with Shouma, January 2008. 65 Rosalind Gill, “Power and the Production of Subjects: A Genealogy of the New Man and New Lad”, in Bethan Benwell (ed.), Masculinity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines, p. 37. 66 Ibid. 67 Tim Edwards, “Sex, Booze and Fags: Masculinity, Style and Men’s Magazines”, in Bethan Benwell (ed.), Masculinity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines, p. 132.

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As a matter of fact, both New Man and New Lad are connected to the “metrosexual” trend in the West: New Man and New Lad, apparently antagonistic phenomena, were in fact intimately related—both were the offspring of glossy magazine culture. Both were also about a kind of commodified masculine self-consciousness that stemmed from insecurity and rootlessness—though, ironically, New Lad was much more successful in selling men fashion and vanity products than New Man. In other words, new men and new lads both had strong metrosexual tendencies, it’s just that new lads hadn’t come out to each other (or themselves) yet. It was Beckham, the new-mannish footballing icon and militant metrosexualist, who outed the footie fetishising new lads.68 In China, the “New Lad” magazine, primarily associated in the West with working-class or juvenile audiences and therefore frowned on by high culture critics,69 has been transformed into a form of middle-class cultural capital. FHM, for instance, is regarded in the UK as a soft-porn magazine read mostly by young working-class men; it is scarcely imaginable that this magazine could be associated with good taste and upward class identification. In China, however, its partner publication is categorized as an up-scale, high-quality commodity affordable only by the new rich. Celebrating upper-middle-class bachelor life, a type of life that many men dream of having, the magazine constructs an image of affluent, hedonistic “post-yuppies”. It instructs readers what products to buy to become a “metrosexual” type of men while the sexy women are designed to be “teasers”, demonstrating to the reader what he could have if he adopted the lifestyle of high-level consumption.70 This strategy of sexualizing consumption combines sex and status. In the words of Liu Jiang, despite their differences in style, the “DNA” of all men’s magazines in China is the same: successful men, good taste and consumerism.71 While there are both upper-class and lower-class pornographic magazines in the West,72 generally speaking, as Laura Kipnis puts it, “insofar as porn is relegated to a low thing culturally, it takes on all the associations of a low class thing”.73 In China, the absence of lower-class pornographic magazines may simply point to the lack of purchasing power of lower-class men, but it may also reflect a discursive tradition of correlating sexuality with power, which merits particular analysis from the

68 Mark Simpson, “Metrosexual? That Rings a Bell”, http://marksimpson.com/pages/ journalism/metrosexual_ios.html (accessed on 9 December 2008). 69 Tim Edwards, “Sex, Booze and Fags”, p. 144. 70 Gail Dines, “Dirty Business: Playboy Magazine and the Mainstreaming of Pornography”, in Gail Dines, Robert Jensen and Ann Russo, Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 49. 71 Interview with Liu Jiang, January 2008. 72 For a discussion of the marketing strategies of “mainstreaming” the pornography industry by Playboy, see Gail Dines, “Dirty Business”, pp. 37-63. 73 Laura Kipnis, Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 174-75, original emphasis.

176 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 perspective of cultural studies. Unlike in the US, where working-class and Black men are sometimes constructed as hyper-sexual, with strong abilities to seduce and consume women,74 in China hyper-male sexuality is constructed as a privilege of the rich, just like other forms of consumption. It seems that men without money simply cannot have sex at all. They are neither able to seduce women outside marriage nor to find wives. The dissociation of pornography from lower-classness may also reflect the Maoist legacy of constructing working-class revolutionaries as desexualized heroes. In addition, the cultural constituents of this discourse can be traced back to the Confucian concept of masculinity, which relates to power more than to sex. 75 The scholar, for instance, is the man who embodies all the desirable masculine qualities and the power of the text (wen) in Confucian discourse. Only the physically weak scholar is capable of seducing beautiful women, while macho warriors are desexualized. In Communist culture, by contrast, male intellectuals were “emasculated” by the regime, deprived of the privilege of sex. Women would only be interested in men who were politically dependable. In the reform era, however, popular imagination conspicuously represents the successful and wealthy man as the male sexual ideal.76 Masculinity is equated with wealth and power, and women and sex are proof of men’s success. As a widely circulated doggerel goes, “Men become bad when they are rich; women become rich when they turn bad”. This cultural framing enables Chinese soft-porn magazines to use sex as a status symbol.

Concluding Remarks According to Jonathan Rutherford, men’s lifestyle magazines have “established a new hegemony of masculine thoughts, values and behaviours” in the West.77

74 See, for instance, Beverley Skeggs, “Refusing to Be Civilized: ‘Race’, Sexuality and Power”, in Haleh Afshar and Mary Maynard (eds), The Dynamics of “Race” and Gender: Some Feminist Interventions (Basingstoke: Taylor and Francis, 1994), pp. 106-26; and Martha Hodes (ed.), Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999). 75 See Geng Song, The Fragile Scholar, pp. 69-86; for the relationship between potency and political status during the Communist era, see Zhang Xianliang’s novel Half of Man Is Woman and Xueping Zhong’s reading of it in Masculinity Besieged?, pp. 52-86. 76 Lost in Beijing, a controversial 2007 film directed by Li Yu, can perhaps be read as a good footnote. Liu Pingguo, a young woman from the countryside who works as a foot masseuse in a massage parlor in Beijing, is raped by her employer, Lin Dong. The rape is witnessed by her husband, An Kun, who washes windows for the massage parlor. When An goes to Lin’s wife to reveal the scandal, he is also seduced and sexually exploited by the middle- aged woman. Later when it is discovered that Liu Pingguo is pregnant, the two men negotiate. Lin agrees to pay An 20,000 yuan for his “mental suffering” and, if the child turns out to be his, he will pay another 100,000 yuan to buy the child. See also, Geng Song, “Chinese Masculinities Revisited”. 77 Jonathan Rutherford, “Preface”, in Bethan Benwell (ed.), Masculinity and Men’s Lifestyle Magazines, p. 3.

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As an emerging form of popular culture, they have also begun to exert an increasingly significant influence on what it means to be a man in today’s China. The forms of masculinity constructed through pinwei exemplify the commercialization of culture in contemporary China. Through pinwei, Chinese lifestyle magazines attempt to equate the consumption of luxury items and women with the embodiment of cultural capital. In so doing, they promote forms of masculinity that are distinguishable from both the Confucian and Maoist masculinities of earlier eras and the “New Man” and “New Lad” masculinities of the West.

REVIEW FERNAND BRAUDEL CENTER A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations Vol. XXXII includes two special issues: World Food Crisis edited by Philip D. McMichael and Immanuel Wallerstein’s new translation of Fernand Braudel, “Histoire et sciences sociales: La Longue durée” (1958) with his introduction to its making. Previous Special Issues and Sections still available include:

XXXI, 3, 2008 — The Second Slavery: Mass Slavery, World- Economy, and Comparative Microhistories, Part II XXXI, 2, 2008 — The Second Slavery: Mass Slavery, World- Economy, and Comparative Microhistories, Part I XXX, 2, 2007 — Remembering Stephen G. Bunker XXIX, 2, 2006 — Decolonizing Postcolonial Studies XXVIII, 4, 2005 — In Honor of Vitorino Magalhães Godinho XXVIII, 2, 2005 — Discussions of Knowledge XXVIII, 1, 2005 — The Black World and the World-System XXVII, 4, 2004 — The Environment and World History XXVII, 3, 2004 — Russia and Siberia in the World-System: German Perspectives XXVII, 1, 2004 — Directions for World-Systems Analysis? XXVI, 2, 2003 — Ecology of the Modern World-System XXV, 3, 2002 — Utopian Thinking XXIV, 1, 2001 — Braudel and the U.S.: Interlocuteurs valables? XXIII, 4, 2000 — Development Revisited XXIII, 1, 2000 — Commodity Chains in the World-Economy, 1590–1790 A brochure containing the Table of Contents of past issues is available on request. Institutions $125/yr. Managing Editor, Review Individuals $28/yr. Fernand Braudel Center Non-U.S. addresses, Binghamton University postage $12/yr. State University of New York Special rate for low gnp PO Box 6000 per capita countries $10/yr. Binghamton, NY 13902-6000

THE AMBIVALENCE OF NATIONAL IMAGINATION: DEFINING “THE TAIWANESE” IN CHINA, 1931–1941

Shi-Chi Mike Lan∗

When did we become “a people”? When did we stop being one? Or are we in the process of becoming one?1 In March 2000, just two days before Taiwan’s presidential election, China’s then Premier Zhu Rongji stated: “No matter who comes into power in Taiwan, Taiwan will never be allowed to be independent. This is our bottom line and the will of 1.25 billion Chinese people.” Adding to this implicit threat, Zhu continued, “The Chinese people are ready to shed blood and sacrifice their lives to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the motherland”.2 Evidently, “Taiwan”, as a problematique of political, intellectual and social contention, is today closely linked to Chinese nationalism. In Japan in 1907, nearly a century earlier, the eminent Chinese thinker Liang Qichao met Lin Xiantang, a leading figure in the Taiwanese political campaign against the Japanese. At the time, Taiwanese intellectuals widely admired Liang Qichao, and Lin Xiantang was no exception. The conversation took place partly through a translator and partly in writing (or brushtalk). Liang began by stating: “(We were) originally of the same root, but are now of different countries; experiencing this vicissitude of human affairs, (I) feel a sense of sympathy ... (our) encounter tonight surely was not a coincidence.” 3 Lin in return asked for Liang’s advice on the Taiwanese campaign against the Japanese colonial regime. Liang replied: “China will definitely not be able to provide any assistance to the Taiwanese struggle for freedom in the next thirty years. Therefore, it would be better for the Taiwanese not to initiate any bold moves so that no unnecessary sacrifice occurs.” Liang suggested that the Taiwanese should build up

∗ I would like to thank everyone who has kindly read and provided comments on earlier drafts of this article, particularly Professor Prasenjit Duara and the editors of The China Journal. 1 Homi Bhabha, “Introduction”, in Homi Bhabha (ed.), The Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 7. 2 The Washington Post, 18 March 2000. 3 According to the account by Lin’s secretary at the time, Ye Rongzhong. See Ye Rongzhong, Taiwan renwu qunxiang (Portraits of Eminent Taiwanese Figures) (Taipei: Shibao Wenhua, 1995), pp. 72-73.

THE CHINA JOURNAL, NO. 64, JULY 2010 180 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 connections with Japanese dignitaries, as the Irish did with British politicians, and then rely on Japanese friendship and sympathy to restrain further oppression.4 Clearly, in Liang’s eyes, both Taiwan and the Taiwanese were far from being a Chinese concern. The contrast between the words of Zhu and Liang regarding the Chinese conception of Taiwan and the Taiwanese, and the relationship between Taiwan and China, raises a broader question. How did the problematique of “Taiwan” change in the Chinese discourse of nationalism over this span of almost a hundred years? In recent years, several scholars have studied the way in which “Taiwan” has come to be conceived as a part, if not the epicenter, of the Chinese discourse of nationalism. As Michel Foucault points out, the analysis of the “history of ideas” or “history of knowledge” is “intended to question teleologies and totalizations”. 5 Three notable recent works have questioned the teleologies and totalizations of the Chinese nationalist narrative by focusing on different time periods. First, Emma Jinhua Teng has studied changing cross–Taiwan Strait relations by examining Chinese perceptions of Taiwan from 1683 to the 1930s; her work shows how Taiwan came to be seen as an integral part of the Chinese domain, or “imagined geography”, at the end of the nineteenth century.6 Second, focusing on the geostrategic dimension of China’s territorial claim over Taiwan and the “shifting salience” of KMT and CCP leaders seeing Taiwan as a part of China from 1942 to the Cold War,7 Alan Wachman delineates Chinese political élites’ “indifference” to Taiwan in both the KMT and the CCP before 1942. He argues that Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong and many other high-ranking leaders did not view Taiwan as part of the “mental map of China” and drew a clear distinction between China/Chinese and Taiwan/Taiwanese.8 Wachman concludes that “Chinese ruling elites have not always viewed Taiwan with the high degree of attachment that the nationalist narrative constructed in the early 1940s asserts”.9 Third, moving to the period immediately after the Second World War, Steven Phillips examines the Chinese ’s retrocession of Taiwan, and Taiwanese responses between 1945 and 1950. Through analyzing how the Chinese Nationalist government defined Taiwan’s place in China,10 Phillips finds that Japanization led the KMT government to

4 Ibid., p. 73. 5 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), pp. 15-16. 6 Emma Jinhua Teng, Taiwan’s Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). It should be noted that, while the title of Teng’s book indicates the endpoint of her study as 1895, analysis in the book—particularly the Conclusion—concludes in the 1930s. 7 Alan M. Wachman, Why Taiwan? Geostrategic Rationales for China’s Territorial Integrity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 69-117. 8 Ibid., pp. 72, 75-76, 84-90. 9 Ibid., p. 82. 10 Steven E. Phillips, Between Assimilation and Independence: The Taiwanese Encounter Nationalist China, 1945–1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).

THE AMBIVALENCE OF NATIONAL IMAGINATION 181 become suspicious of the Taiwanese.11 Phillips concludes that the KMT government’s “perceptions of Taiwan’s place in the nation and state” were ambivalent, and conflict between the KMT government and the native Taiwanese population arose in this context of ambiguity and suspicion. These three works have made a great contribution to our understanding of the ways in which modern cross–Taiwan Strait relations were conceptualized before 1949. They identify the rupture in the historical conception of “Taiwan” between the late Qing/early Republican period and the 1940s. However, their analysis is incomplete. Both Teng and Wachman focus on examining “Taiwan” as a land or territory in the national imagination in China. They do not pay much attention to how Chinese intellectuals conceptualized “Taiwan” as a (group of) people and their relationships to the nation of “China”. Wachman’s lack of attention to “the Taiwanese” as a people means that he cannot explain the KMT’s attitude of differentiating the Chinese from the Taiwanese. This attitude is significant because it reveals an inconsistency between the post-1942 official line of seeing the land of Taiwan as part of China and the actual policies and behaviors of the KMT government toward the people of Taiwan. This inconsistency, as analyzed by Phillips, became the main source of animosity between mainland Chinese and Taiwanese in postwar Taiwan and eventually led to the 2/28 Incident in 1947.12 Though Phillips successfully differentiates “the Taiwanese” from Taiwan’s landmass in KMT discourse, he does not examine pre-1945 history and, consequently, does not provide an explanation of the origins of the Chinese nationalist discourse differentiating the Taiwanese from the Chinese. This article fills in this gap. It examines discursive representations of the Taiwanese during the period between 1931 and 1941. The year 1931 is chosen as the starting point because it was the year in which antagonism between China and Japan reached new heights following the Japanese military advance in Manchuria. The year 1941 is chosen as the closing point because the Sino–Japanese conflict entered a new phase following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the US entry into the war with Japan.13 With regard to theory, this paper will consider “China” the nation as a “form of narrative”,14 in which “Taiwan” and “the Taiwanese” are narrated as ideological constructs. As Homi Bhabha suggests, “it is from those traditions of political thought and literary language that the nation emerges as a powerful historical idea”. 15

11 Steven E. Phillips, Between Assimilation and Independence, p. 10. 12 Steven E. Phillips, “Confronting Colonization and National Identity: The Nationalists and Taiwan, 1941–45”, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2001), at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v002/2.3phillips .html, accessed 24 March 2010. 13 After 1941, China’s geostrategic considerations and attitude toward Taiwan changed dramatically, mostly as a result of the new international setting. See Alan M. Wachman, Why Taiwan?, pp. 76-81, 91-99. 14 Homi Bhabha, “Introduction”, in Homi Bhabha (ed.), The Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 2. 15 Ibid., p. 1.

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By examining the Chinese conceptualization—or “cultural construction”—of “the Taiwanese”,16 this paper aims to delineate how “the Taiwanese” were defined and their boundary with the Chinese nation was demarcated, and to examine what Homi Bhabha describes as “a turning of boundaries and limits into the in-between spaces”17 through which the meanings of “China” the nation, “Taiwan” as a land, and “the Taiwanese” were negotiated throughout this volatile period. By emphasizing the temporal dimension of nation and national narratives, I hope to recover nation-views that have been repressed or destroyed in the totalizing ideology of nation-formation, and consequently ignored by later historians. Ultimately, by historicizing and problematizing the Chinese narratives of Taiwan/Taiwanese, I aim to present a temporally more differentiated account of nationalism and to explore more fully the “the Janus-faced ambivalence of language itself in the construction of the Janus-faced discourse of the nation”.18 The issue of “Taiwan” was continuously a part of the Chinese consciousness between 1931 and 1941, and there was indeed a great deal discussed and written about Taiwan during this period.19 From what is available to us today, it is not hard to find what authors from a wide spectrum of social and ideological background wrote about Taiwan in the 1930s.20 Although “Taiwan” was the exclusive topic of several monographs, in most cases it was discussed in articles dealing with a larger context, such as world affairs and China’s own “national” struggle against foreign aggression. To the Chinese political and intellectual élite of this period, writing about Taiwan became part of the “complex strategies of cultural identification and discursive address that function in the name of ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’”.21 During the 1930s, China was anything but peaceful. After years of struggle against the KMT government, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other socialist activists promoted their agenda by both propaganda and armed confrontation.

16 Homi Bhabha,“DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation”, in Homi Bhabha (ed.), The Nation and Narration, p. 292. 17 Homi Bhabha, “Introduction”, p. 4. 18 Ibid., p. 3. 19 It is worth noting that, in comparison, the number of works concerning issues related to Taiwan increased significantly after 1941 in China. 20 Generally speaking, as regards the time at which a particular work was written, Taiwan- related writings circulated in China during the 1930s can be divided into three categories. The first group consisted of works written in the Qing dynasty and published or re- published in the 1930s, which we may call “Qing Reprints”. The second group included works written and published at the turn of the 20th century—between the cession of Taiwan in 1895 and the establishment of the Republic in 1911—which we call “Late Qing/Early Republic Works”. The third group consisted of works written shortly before or during the 1930s, which we call “Contemporary Writings”. As ideological constructs, narratives of Taiwan from the former two groups were written by persons who lived in a time different from the period with which this paper is concerned. In this paper, I focus solely on “Contemporary Writings”. 21 Homi Bhabha,“DissemiNation”, p. 292.

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The Japanese threat to China’s “national” survival escalated as Japan launched military attacks (Manchuria in the north and Shanghai in the south) at the onset of the decade and gradually occupied a vast area of Chinese territory.22 As a state, China was further torn from within between the KMT government in Chongqing, the CCP in Yan’an, the other KMT government led by Wang Jingwei in Nanjing, and other local and regional authorities. Amidst all these difficulties and uncertainties, different groups of political forces often presented and projected their views. Throughout these years, narratives of “Taiwan” continued to be multi-faceted and evolving, as they represented many different viewpoints, ideological orientations and, most of all, conceptions of China as a nation. In the remainder of this paper I group these narratives into three types, beginning with the most common one.

The Taiwanese as a Weak and Small Nation (Ruoxiao Minzu 弱小民族) The most common narrative of Taiwan during the 1930s was related to China’s continuing struggle against imperialism. This narrative contributed to an anti- imperialist discourse. In this discourse, Taiwan, like other nations (minzu 民族) under oppression from the imperialists, was understood as an independent, weak and small nation fighting against Japanese imperialism for its liberation and independence. Narratives based on such anti-imperialist ideology were found in both political propaganda and in publications geared toward the general public. Since the period 1931–41 in China was a time best characterized by war, it makes sense to first examine such narratives in publications directly related to this topic. A small wartime handbook titled Survival Pamphlet was published in 1938. Intended to mobilize the population at large and to boost morale, this handbook was widely circulated in China as the conflict between China and Japan intensified into full-scale warfare during the mid-1930s. The meaning of “survival” was significant for both individuals and the nation as a whole. At the beginning of this book, Taiwan was listed with Korea and Liuqiu (Ryukyu, or Okinawa as it is now known) as “ceded” to Japan, and was categorized together with Hong Kong (ceded to Great Britain) and Annam (Vietnam, taken by France).23 In the section, “How to Fight for a Future of Victory”, the pamphlet states: (China should) try to sign a pact of mutual assistance with the Soviet Union, unite Great Britain, the United States and France to form an anti-Japanese front, and work hand-in-hand with Korea, Taiwan and Japanese domestic forces of laborers and peasants to oppose Japanese imperialism.24

22 Known as the Northeast (dongbei) or the Eastern Three Provinces (dong san sheng) in Chinese. This paper adopts the more commonly used term “Manchuria”, simply for the sake of clarity. 23 Qian Junrui et al., Jiuwang shouce (Survival Pamphlet) (Shanghai: Shenghuo Shudian, 1938), p. 1. 24 Ibid., p. 61.

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We see here the suggestion that the people of Taiwan were partners—like the Koreans, British or Americans—with whom China should seek cooperation in a common struggle against the imperialist Japanese. On what grounds were the people of Taiwan considered as China’s “comrades”? Other publications designed to mobilize public support for war provide some answers to this question. A paramilitary organization with alleged ties to the CCP issued a statement announcing its establishment in 1936. One of its “Proposals” touched upon Taiwan: We, the United Anti-Japanese Army of the Northeast [dongbei 东北], welcome all nations [minzu] under oppression—the Koreans, the Inner Mongols, the Taiwanese, (be they) individuals, groups or armies—to join us to form a united front [tongyi zhanxian 统一战线] of weak and small nations [ruoxiao minzu 弱小 民族] against the imperialism of the Japanese bandits.25 Again, the Taiwanese, as well as the Koreans, are represented here as partners and considered equals to the Chinese in the joint-force of an international anti-Japanese United Front. Furthermore, it is clear that the Koreans, the Inner Mongols and the Taiwanese were to be enlisted in the anti-Japanese front on the grounds of being “weak and small nations”. Studies of nationalist movements have shown that narratives delineating and promoting an international “United Front” consisting of “weak and small nations” were widely popular in most parts of Asia during the 1930s.26 China was no exception. Most interesting is that, in conceptualizing China as a nation and its relationship with Taiwan, “Taiwan” was understood as an independent weak and small nation fighting for its own liberation and independence in the face of Japanese imperialism.

25 Dongbei kangri lianjun (United Anti-Japanese Army of the Northeast), “Dongbei kangri lianjun tongyi jundui jianzhi xuanyan” (Statement on Establishment of a Unified Army by the United Anti-Japanese Army of the Northeast) (1936), in Zhongyang tongzhanbu (Central Department of United Front) and Zhongyang danganguan (Central Archive) (eds), Zhonggong zhongyang kangri minzu tongyi zhanxian wenjian xuanbian (Selected Compilation of Documents of Anti-Japanese Nationalist United Front by the Central Authority of the CCP), zhong (middle volume) (1935–37) (Beijing: Dangan Chubanshe, 1985), p. 543. The fact that this statement was compiled and included in this collective works by the Chinese Communist Central Archive hints at the possible connection between the United Anti-Japanese Army of the Northeast and the CCP in the 1930s. 26 Often referred to as “leftist” ideology, narratives of “national determination” against the imperialist oppressors (usually from the West) were commonly found in Asia, especially after the First World War. In Taiwan, the Taiwan Cultural Association and the Taiwanese Communist Party (TCP) provide two examples. See Taiwan Sotokufu, trans. Wang Shilang, Taiwan shehui yundong shi—wenhua yundong (History of Social Movement in Taiwan— Cultural Movement) (Taipei: Daoxiang Chubanshe, 1988), pp. 263-64; “TCP Manifesto” (taigong gangling) (1928), in Confidential Intelligence Report No. 450, by the Consul General in Shanghai, 26 May 1928, in Japanese Foreign Ministry Archive I.4.5.2.3-11; and Taiwan Sotokufu, Taiwan keisatsu enkakushi (History of the Development of Police in Taiwan), middle section, Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Taiwan Shiryo Hozonkai, 1969 re-print), pp. 601-11.

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It may well be argued that, given their relevance to wartime mobilization, the above narratives—and the “Taiwan” they represented—were nothing but propaganda, but similar narratives were omnipresent even in writings that had less to do with warfare. For example, in a book series written specifically for young readers in the mid-1930s, an entire book was devoted to, as spelled out in the title, The Issue of Weak and Small Nations of the World.27 On the opening page, the editor states unequivocally that the purpose of the book is to present a concise and systematic overview of “every” weak and small nation of the world to “eradicate prejudice against weak and small nations”.28 Among some 46 nations listed as weak and small, Taiwan and 14 other “nations” (minzu) are highlighted, with an entire chapter devoted to each of them; Taiwan is represented as the “nation of Taiwan” (Taiwan minzu 台湾民族).29 In the chapter on Taiwan, the majority population of the island is referred to as “Han people of this island” (bendao hanren 本岛汉人), a category separate from the thirty thousand “overseas Chinese” (huaqiao 华侨) living in Taiwan. As a geographical area, Taiwan is where “the Chinese national resistance movement [Zhongguo minzu fankang yundong 中国民族反抗运动] demonstrated its peak”.30 Furthermore, Taiwan is described as a place with a “close relationship with China” and the Taiwanese as a part of the “Chinese nation” (Zhongguo minzu 中国民族). This view, identifying the Taiwanese nationally and nationalistically as Chinese, appears to contradict the premise set out earlier in the book that the people of Taiwan are an independent nation; this apparent contradiction is clarified, however, when the author discusses Taiwan’s past and future: The anniversary day of losing our country [wangguo 亡国] was 17 June, 38 years ago. We Chinese [Zhongguo ren 中国人] may have already forgotten (it),

27 Zheng Chang (ed.), Shijie ruoxiao minzu wenti (The Issue of Weak and Small Nations of the World) (Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, 1936). This book was a title in the series Chinese Encyclopedia (Zhonghua baikequanshu), which was edited to facilitate “extracurricular reading by middle school students and self-study by youth who miss schooling”. Books were selected for this series on three criteria: “to provide theoretical explanation to daily phenomena”, “to supplement the textbook with materials not identical but complementary”, and “to stimulate readers’ spontaneous interest in further study”. See “Zongxu” (General Preface), pp. 4-5. 28 Zheng Chang (ed.), Shijie ruoxiao minzu wenti, pp. 1-2. 29 In this book, the English translation of Taiwan was spelled as “Formosas” (sic, Formosans). Taiwan was listed under the category of “colonized and semi-colonized nations”. There are nine other “nations” listed in the same category: “Indians”, “Malaisia” (sic, referring to people of the “Dutch East Indies”), “Malays”, “Annams” (sic, referring to people of Vietnam), “Burmese”, “Philippines” (sic, Filipinos), “Chosene or Koreas” (sic, Koreans), “Jews” and “Negros” (sic, referring to “Black people in Africa and all over the world, twenty-three kinds in total”). See ibid, pp. 8-9. 30 Ibid., p. 65.

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but the Taiwanese will never forget (it) unless (their) nation is liberated, (and) their independent autonomy movement succeeds.31 Under the section heading, “The Awakening of the Taiwanese Nation”, this narrative makes two related points. First, by using the expression “we Chinese” it differentiates the people of China from the people of Taiwan, a differentiation which reflects how things actually were for the Taiwanese and the Chinese in 1934. Second, this narrative’s use of the term “independent autonomy movement” represents what the Taiwanese were pursuing for the future. The Taiwanese movement is seen as distinct from the Chinese nationalist cause. The book’s two narratives about Taiwan thus refer to conceptions of Taiwan–China relations at two different points in time, 1895 and 1934. The reference to a time lapse of “38 years” points to a change in both the relationship between Taiwan and China and in the Chinese conception of the Taiwanese: in 1895, what the Taiwanese did might have been considered a Chinese national resistance movement, but in 1934 the Taiwanese were involved in an “independent autonomy movement”. The contradictory narratives present in this single work reveal an embedded tension within the Chinese representation of Taiwan of that period. The book series Contemporary Youth introduces knowledge of Taiwan in a book on national liberation movements (minzu jiefang yundong 民族解放运动) around the world.32 Here, Taiwan is discussed in the chapter titled “The Current Situation of National Liberation Movements of Asia”. This chapter consists of nine sections, each focused on one nation (minzu) in Asia fighting for its national liberation. These Asian nations are—following the order in the book—China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Annam (Vietnam), the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Palestine and Syria. In subsequent chapters, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil and Argentina represent national liberation movements in Latin America; while Abyssinia, Egypt and the Federation of South Africa represent Africa. The book argues for the principle of “national self-determination” (minzu zijue 民族自决) as the foundation for a United Front. Speaking of Taiwan’s resistance movement since 1895, it states: ... these national liberation struggles were all pointing their spears against Japanese imperialism and fighting for Taiwan’s independence and freedom ... The wave of “national self-determination” which arose after the First World War gave the liberation movements of Asian weak and small nations an ultimate

31 Ibid., pp. 68-69. 32 Wu Qingyou, Xianjieduan de minzu jiefang yundong (National Liberation Movement at the Current Stage) (Shanghai: Dangdai Qingnian Chubanshe, 1937). There were other titles in the book series Contemporary Youth (Dangdai qingnian), including “China’s Past, Present, and Future”, “Japan”, “(National) Survival Movement”, “War? Peace?”, “Statements to Chinese Youth in Disarray”, “Topics of Political Science for the General Public” and “Topics in Economics for the General Public”. The coverage and selection of these titles show that, in being included in this book series, Wu’s book was intended to provide a general and paradigmatic understanding of domestic and international affairs for young readers in China.

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stimulation, causing the Taiwanese national liberation movement once again to resume its organized activities from (the year of) Taishō 15 (1926).33 Narratives in this book further confirm popular conceptions of Taiwan as a weak and small nation pursuing its liberation and independence based on the principle of self-determination. CCP leaders produced similar narratives.34 Liu Shaoqi stated that part of the CCP’s “External Policy” was “to support the independence movements of the peoples of Korea and Taiwan”.35 Wang Ming confirmed Taiwan as one of China’s partners in the international United Front. 36 The towering CCP leader Mao Zedong said, “If the Koreans wish to break away from the chains of Japanese imperialism, we will extend them our enthusiastic help in their struggle for independence. The same thing applies to Taiwan”.37

33 Ibid., pp. 70-71. 34 Two noted works have studied the Chinese Communist Party’s view of Taiwan. An earlier study argues that the CCP’s policy toward Taiwan at this time was dictated by “doctrinal ideology”. However, as the CCP gradually took power in China in the latter half of the 1940s, “operational ideology” took over and caused a significant attitude change concerning Taiwan among the CCP leadership. See Akio Moriyama, “The Issue of Formosa and the Chinese Communist Party: Process of Attitude Change from ‘Independence of Formosa’ to ‘Liberation of Formosa’” (Tokyo: International Christian University, 1974). Another study examines CCP documents before 1943 extensively and identifies a complete turnabout in CCP’s policies on Taiwan in 1943. See Frank S. T. Hsiao and Lawrence R. Sullivan, “The Chinese Communist Party and the Status of Taiwan, 1928–1943”, Pacific Affairs, Vols. 52-53 (Autumn 1979), pp. 446-67. I would like to thank Professor Masahiro Wakabayashi for providing me with Moriyama’s piece. 35 Liu Shaoqi, “Kangri youji zhanzheng zhong gezhong jiben zhengce wenti” (Various Fundamental Policy Issues in the Anti-Japanese Guerilla War) (1937), in Zhonggong zhongyang shujichu (Central Secretariat, CCP) (ed.), Kangzhan yilai zhongyao wenjian huibian (Compilation of Important Documents Since the War of Resistance) (Unknown: Zhonggong Zhongyang Shujichu, 1942), p. 30. 36 Wang Ming, “Jiu Zhongguo renmin de guanjian” (The Key to Saving the Chinese People) (1937), in Zhongyang tongzhanbu and Zhongyang danganguan (eds), Zhonggong zhongyang kangri minzu tongyi zhanxian wenjian xuanbian, p. 637. 37 Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1938/1968, revised and enlarged edition), p. 110. It is worth noting that the reference to Taiwan differs from its English original in several versions of the Chinese translation of Snow’s interview with Mao. For example, in one version it is stated: “Manchuria must be regained. The same thing applies for Taiwan”, see Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong yijiu sanliu nian tong Sinuo de tanhua (Mao Zedong’s Conversation with Snow in 1936) (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1979/1980), p. 113, and Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong wenji, diyi juan (Mao Zedong’s Collected Works, Volume 1) (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1993), p. 403. In another version, the reference to Taiwan is completely omitted, see Aidejia Sinuo (Edgar Snow), Chen Yunpian (trans.), Xixing manji, shang ce (Random Notes from the Journey to the West, Vol. 1) (Hong Kong: Nanyue Chubanshe, 1975/1977), p. 101. In one Chinese translation, the reference to Taiwan is kept the same as the English original, see Aidejia Sinuo (Edgar Snow), Dong Leshan (trans.),

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In 1938, while speaking at the CCP’s Sixth Central Assembly, Mao advised that “the current urgent mission for the entire Chinese nation [Zhonghua minzu]” was to “build up a united front among the peoples of China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan against the war of aggression, to conduct collectively a fight against the Japanese fascist warlords”. Then, speaking more specifically of China’s own efforts, Mao advocated uniting all nations of Chinese (Zhonghua ge minzu 中华各 民族) (Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui, Zang, Miao, Yao, Yi, Fan and so on) into a unified force, to oppose Japan and to seek survival together”.38 Mao’s narrative conspicuously leaves the Taiwanese out of this list and represents them as an equal partner with the nation of Chinese in an international United Front against Japanese imperialism. Throughout the decade, narratives by leading figures of the CCP such as Zhou Enlai continued this representation of Taiwan.39 Notably, the outbreak of the Pacific War at the end of 1941 had no immediate impact on the CCP’s representation of Taiwan.40 Etienne Balibar differentiates the “internal border” of a nation (its conceptual boundary) and the “external border” (the territorial boundary of the land which a nation inhabits).41 In cases where a nation is experiencing or is about to encounter territorial changes, its internal border becomes more clearly distinguished from its external border. As a Japanese colony, Taiwan was represented without dispute as outside China’s external border in the above narratives. Even more significantly, these narratives show that, in the 1930s, “Taiwan” and the people of “Taiwan” were considered outside the internal border of China.

Xixing manji (Random Notes from the Journey to the West) (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 1979), p. 84. 38 Mao Zedong, “Zhonggong kuoda de liuzhong quanhui zhengzhi jueyi an” (Political Resolution Adopted at the Expanded Sixth Central Assembly of the CCP) (based on a report by Mao Zedong, 1938), in Zhonggong zhongyang shujichu (Central Secretariat, CCP) (ed.), Kangzhan yilai zhongyao wenjian huibian (Compilation of Important Documents since the War of Resistance) (N. p.: Zhonggong Zhongyang Shujichu, 1942), pp. 74-75. 39 Zhou Enlai, “Minzu zhishang yu guojia zhishang” (The Nation as the Highest Priority and the State as the Highest Priority), in Xinhua ribao (New China Daily) (Chongqing), 15 June 1941. 40 Despite the continuing escalation of armed conflict with the Japanese and popular reference to the conflict as China’s “war of resistance” (kangzhan) after 1937, the KMT government did not declare war against Japan until 9 December 1941. For the CCP statement made immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, see Jiefang ribao (Liberation Daily), 10 December 1941, “Zhongguo Gongchandang wei Taipingyang zhanzheng de xuanyan” (Chinese Communist Party’s Statement on the Pacific War), in Zhongyang danganguan (Central Archive) (ed.), Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji (Selected Collection of Documents by the Central Authority of the CCP), di shisan ce (Vol. 13) (1941–42) (Beijing: Zhonggong Zhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1991), pp. 248-50. 41 Etienne Balibar, “Fichte and the Internal Border: On Addresses to the German Nation”, in Etienne Balibar (trans. James Swenson), Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 61-64.

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Taiwanese as Foreign/Non-Chinese With regard to the relationship between Taiwan and China, the decade between 1931 and 1941 was a period of rising antagonism on the one hand and stronger connection on the other. Antagonism was generated by Japan’s aggression toward China, in which (as Japanese colonials) the people of Taiwan took part; the connection resulted from greater interaction between people across the Taiwan Straits. Symbiotically but ironically, antagonism was also generated by greater interaction, while Japan’s ever-increasing aggression toward China also built connections. This complex and dynamic relationship was visible in the popular Chinese narrative of Taiwan found in survey reports, both official and unofficial, written by government officials. Most authors of these survey reports had visited Taiwan prior to writing about it. They all agreed that the Taiwanese were an integral part of the Japanese state, and hence outside the internal and external boundaries of China. Chinese government agencies at different levels began to produce survey reports on Taiwan shortly after the Republic was established in 1911. The earliest of these reports is dated 1915.42 Of the reports available today, most are from Fujian, geographically the closest Chinese province to Taiwan. In many ways, it is not hard to find similarities and connections between Fujian and Taiwan. A Fujianese government publication states that the “custom and language of the people of Taiwan are identical to those of people in Zhang Quan Xia (a part of Fujian)” and that, as a result of mutual migration, commercial relationships between Fujian and Taiwan were “getting closer and closer”.43 In 1934, the Provincial Government of Fujian sent a group of government officials to Taiwan and conducted a survey of the island’s industrial and economic development. 44 Shortly after, the Xiamen Municipal Government organized a similar task force to Taiwan in 1936. 45

42 Cheng Jiaying, Taiwan tudi zhidu kaocha bagao shu (Investigative Report on Taiwan’s Land Administration System) (n. p., possibly Fuzhou: Fujian Xunanshi, 1915). Another example is Wang Yang, Taiwan shicha baogao shu (Report of Observation in Taiwan) (Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, 1916 [reprint 1985]). 43 Chen Ticheng, “Zonglun” (General Overview), in Fujian Shengzhengfu (Provincial Government of Fujian), Taiwan kaocha baogao (Taiwan Survey Report) (Fuzhou: Fujian Shengzhengfu, 1935), p. 17 (hereafter referred to as Taiwan 1935 Report). Zhang (Zhangzhou), Quan (Quanzhou) and Xia (Xiamen) are major cities in southern Fujian, directly across the Taiwan Straits from Taiwan. Due to geographical proximity, the majority of Chinese immigrants to Taiwan before 1945 were from these areas. 44 The official name of this group, which indicated its purpose, was the Investigation and Observation of Taiwan’s Economic Development Group (Kaocha Taiwan Shiye Tuan). It was led by the Secretary of the Office of Development (jianshe ting) of Fujian Provincial Government. This group of 22 members arrived in Taiwan on 14 November and departed on 25 November 1934. See Taiwan 1935 Report, pp. 2-13. 45 This 11-member group, led by the Mayor of Xiamen (Amoy), reached Taiwan on 2 December and left on 13 December 1936. See Xiamen Shizhengfu (Municipal Government of Xiamen), Taiwan kaocha baogao (Taiwan Survey Report) (Xiamen: Xiamen Shizhengfu, 1937, hereafter Taiwan 1937 Report), pp. 58-68. With regard to Sino–Japanese relations, the timing of this

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Each group published its own report under the identical title of Taiwan Survey Report (Taiwan kaocha baogao 台湾考察报告) one year after their trip. Both Reports cover many aspects of public administration in Taiwan.46 The extensiveness of their coverage, as one editor of the 1935 Report put it, was “unprecedented”.47 The governor of Fujian, Chen Yi, wrote prefaces for both Reports. He described the information presented in the 1935 Report as “foreign knowledge” (shijie zhishi 世界知识) that “our country” should “import”.48 Chen further elaborated in the 1937 Report: From now on (Fujian’s) administration should focus on economic development ... [We should] borrow from our “mirror”. Taiwan and Fujian are across the straits from each other. Not only do they share the same weather and topography, but regarding the process of economic development, they are almost identical in various aspects such as agriculture, irrigation, transportation and sanitation. To learn from and to make reference to the other’s conduct of business would help (us) to “double our results with half the effort”.49 Despite the emphasis made on the close resemblance between Fujian and Taiwan, by depicting Taiwan as “mirror” these narratives represent Taiwan as an Other, whose industrial and economic development is more advanced—both Reports present Taiwan as a model of modernity. Compared to the “backwardness” and decline in Fujian, Taiwan’s progress in rural development is lauded as “truly worthy of respect and admiration”.50 A hydraulic power plant in Taiwan is praised as a “rare scene in the Orient”. 51 Speaking of industrial growth and agricultural productivity,

report was significant in two ways. On the one hand, it was made more than five years after the Japanese Army took control of Manchuria and the country of Manchukuo was established, and the antagonism between China and Japan was continuing to rise. Many Chinese were calling for a war with Japan as they considered Japan their “state enemy”, although the antagonism between China and Japan was yet to reach its peak. Taiwan 1937 Report was written just months before full-scale warfare erupted in July 1937, so the point of view reflected in the report offers us a better understanding of a crucial historical context in which the Chinese conception of Taiwan was shaped. 46 There were a total of 19 specific topics covered by the group of 1934, and 11 by the group of 1936. Both groups covered the topics of hygiene, the administration of opium, forestry, the agricultural economy, farmers’ cooperative, irrigation, transportation/railways, electricity, the administration of land, and sugar. See Taiwan 1935 Report and Taiwan 1937 Report. 47 Chen Wentao, “Epilogue”, in Taiwan 1935 Report, p. 457. 48 Chen Yi, “Chen zhuxi xu” (Preface by Chairman Chen) in Taiwan 1935 Report, p. 1. The word shijie in this context, as in shijie dili (geography) and shijie lishi (history), was used to refer to something “foreign”, vis-à-vis “benguo” (domestic). 49 Chen Yi, “Chen zhuxi xu” (Preface by Chairman Chen), in Taiwan 1937 Report. 50 Zhong Gancheng, “Kaocha taiwan nongcun jingji zhi ganxiang” (Afterthought to Investigation and Observation of Taiwan’s Rural Economy), in Taiwan 1937 Report, pp. 27-28. 51 Ye Jingyun, “Kaocha riji” (Investigation and Observation Diary), in Taiwan 1935 Report, p. 12.

THE AMBIVALENCE OF NATIONAL IMAGINATION 191 one contributor to these Reports wrote, “there is no doubt that in comparison (to Taiwan) our Fujian is far inferior”.52 As an editor of one of the Reports confessed, after reviewing accounts of Taiwan’s accomplishments over the previous 40 years he “cannot help but feel overwhelmed by all kinds of emotion”.53 Authors of these Reports praised Taiwan as a “heavenly place” (tianfu zhiguo 天府之国).54 The chair of the 1936 observation group, Amoy Mayor Li Shilin, wrote another Preface for the 1937 Report, likewise representing Taiwan as modern and foreign: In the past, Taiwan was regarded as a place outside the frontier. It was often ignored or vaguely recorded in geographical studies. Since it became a part of Japan, its Government-General has worked hard at reform. (Now) settlement has replaced emptiness, material conditions have improved and the people have been enriched.55 Li further also represents Taiwan as foreign when explaining the purpose of the report: If my fellow countrymen [guoren 国人] could learn and know the recent condition of that island, could use (Taiwan as) a mirror to reflect on ourselves, could forsake [our own] shortcomings and learn [others’] strengths ... then the wish of the colleagues of the survey group would be realized.56 The sections on education in these reports make it clear that Taiwan was considered outside the internal border of China as well. In the Reports, education in Taiwan was understood as a tool to “enlighten the intelligence of its people (the Taiwanese), to increase productivity of its land, and to realize the goal of ‘same language’” (tongwen 同文). The Japanese colonial success in spreading Japanese as the “national language” (guoyu 国语) in Taiwan was tied to the ideal of modernity.57 Considering the rapid adoption and prevalence of the Japanese language, the effectiveness of education in “spreading the national language” in Taiwan in the previous forty years was considered such “amazing progress” that the Chinese could only “watch its dust (as something that could never be reached) and sigh”.58 Instead of criticizing Japanese efforts to assimilate the Taiwanese through indoctrination and forced schooling, these narratives expressed admiration for Japanese colonial education policy. Nationalist writings often use language to define what a nation is. Etienne Balibar argues that Fichte, for example, prescribed that the specifically “German” character of the nation was to be based upon the “inherence of the German language

52 Chen Wentao, “Shuhou” (Epilogue), in Taiwan 1935 Report, p. 459. 53 Ibid., p. 463. 54 Zhang Shuchun, “Taiwan de toushi” (Insight about Taiwan), in Taiwan 1937 Report, p. 50. 55 Li Shilin, “Xuyan” (Preface), in Taiwan 1937 Report. 56 Ibid., emphasis added. 57 Chen Zhimei, “Jiaoyu” (Education), in Taiwan 1935 Report, pp. 371, 407. 58 Ibid., pp. 371, 409.

192 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 and a culture of morality”.59 From a later, orthodox Chinese nationalistic point of view, adopting Japanese as a “national language” would be regarded as both an infringement of Chinese-ness and an insult to China as a nation.60 Yet in these reports from the mid-1930s, the furtherance of the Japanese language in Taiwan is recognized as a successful model of education and an achievement of modernity that China should look up to. In addition to “language”, these reports also discussed the “culture” of Taiwan. In praising Taiwan’s progress in the previous 40 years, they represent Japanese efforts in education as having contributed to the “daily progress of Taiwanese culture”.61 The significance of such narratives is that the Japanese input was not only recognized as a part of Taiwanese culture but was further acknowledged as a, if not the principal, driving force behind the furtherance of Taiwanese culture. Like language, culture is often considered a fundamental attribute defining the internal border of a nation.62 Conspicuously, these narratives portray Taiwan as more foreign than Chinese, with regard to culture. On the one hand, the reports make no reference at all to Chinese culture or its impact on Taiwanese culture; on the other, they recognize the preeminence of the Japanese element in Taiwanese culture. It is revealing to compare survey reports on Taiwan with those on Mongolia, a territory contested by the Soviet Union, Japan, China and the people of Mongolia. Politically, despite claims made by the Chinese government and reiterated in numerous survey reports, China exerted very limited authority in Mongolia. Ethnically, the people of Mongolia differ significantly from the Han Chinese with regard to language, culture, custom and religion. Bearing this in mind, how were Mongolia and the Mongolian people represented in Chinese survey reports? Unanimously, Chinese survey reports begin by asserting that the issue of Mongolia, China’s “natural shield”, is a concern of China.63 Regardless of the extent of China’s actual control of Mongolia, Mongolia is represented in the reports as within China’s external border. The survey reports then go on to define the people of Mongolia and their relationship with the Chinese nation (China’s internal border). Beginning with physical characteristics, Mongolians are represented as having “wider heads”, “flat facial complexions”, “high cheek bones”, “low and wide noses”

59 Etienne Balibar, “Fichte and the Internal Border: On Addresses to the German Nation”, pp. 68-69. 60 This was exactly what suddenly occurred in 1945. At that time the fact that Taiwanese were speaking Japanese was indeed considered a matter of “national shame” [guochi]. 61 Chen Zhimei, “Jiaoyu” (Education), in Taiwan 1935 Report, p. 408. 62 For the significance of a unique culture to national identity, or “cultural nationalism”, see John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish National State (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987). 63 Wang Hualong, Menggu diaocha ji (original title: Explorations in Mongolia) (Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1923/1925, 3rd edition), p. 1. See also Dai Chuanxian (Dai Jitao), “Dai xu” (Dai’s Preface) (November 1930); Yu Youren, “Yu xu” (Yu’s Preface) (February 1931); and Ma Hetian, “Zi xu” (Author’s Preface), all in Ma Hetian, Neiwai Menggu kaocha riji (Survey Diary of Inner and Outer Mongolia) (Nanjing: Xin Yaxiya Xuehui, 1932).

THE AMBIVALENCE OF NATIONAL IMAGINATION 193 and, in particular, “Mongolian eyes” which are said to “slant” in a way that is distinct from Han people. In addition, it was acknowledged that the language of the people of Inner Mongolia was “structurally identical to Japanese and Manchurian”. 64 Despite these physical and linguistic differences, however, narratives in survey reports go on to represent the people of Inner Mongolia as “Chinese people” (huaren 华人). They have had their “personality and custom assimilated by the Han nation”, and have “Han surnames” and “first names written in Han characters”.65 Since “Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Hui (Uyghur) and Zang (Tibetan) are all of the color of Yellow and belonged to the same stock (zhong 种) after four thousand years of blending, in terms of blood (xuetong 血统), who can tell them apart? (These) five races are Chinese, and all should be named the Chinese people.”66 In spite of all the ethnic difference between Mongols and the Han Chinese, the people of Mongolia are thus represented in various survey reports as inside China’s internal border. More significantly, they are represented as inside China’s internal border because they live within China’s external border. Since Mongolia is represented by the survey reports as within China’s external border, these narratives suggest that China’s external border was congruent with its internal border. The definition of nation found in the survey reports of Mongolia thus echo the survey reports of Taiwan but, since the external border between Taiwan and China was well established, the people of Taiwan were considered foreign.

Taiwanese as Compatriot (Tongbao) and Family The Chinese conception of nation is closely tied to the conception of race.67 In early 20th-century revolutionary discourse, Han-ness was taken as a justification for overthrowing Manchu rule. Thus, the racial and cultural concept of Han became a political basis of a Han nation which constituted the core of the Chinese nation. Though a homogeneous Han race is largely a mythical creation, the concept has come to be taken for granted and has had a significant impact on modern Chinese history. The Taiwanese are often considered descendents of Han people from a patrilineal perspective. This “blood” connection served as the foundation for a unique but complicated representation of Taiwan and Taiwanese in the 1930s. Authors from this period often depict the majority “Taiwanese” (Taiwan ren 台湾人) as “descendents of Chinese [Zhongguo ren]”, 68 or say that “what we call the Taiwanese were the

64 Wang Hualong, Menggu diaocha ji, pp. 2-3. 65 Ibid., p. 3. 66 Ibid. 67 For the Chinese conception of race and its significance, see Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). 68 Wang Mo, Chuzhong waiguo dili jiaokeshu (Middle School Textbook for the Geography of Foreign Countries) (no place: no publisher given, 1933), p. 83.

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Fujianese and Cantonese of the Chinese nation [Zhongguo minzu]”.69 A Chinese author, who gave himself the pen-name Han Ren (Han people), took this argument to another level when he declared, “the history of Taiwan is entirely the responsibility of us, the Han nation [minzu]”. 70 Other narratives refer to the Taiwanese as compatriots (tongbao 同胞) of the Chinese.71 Those depicting the Taiwanese as compatriots often used metaphors of family to define further the relationship between the Taiwanese and the Chinese. The people of Taiwan were considered “elder sister and younger brothers deserted more than thirty years ago”, 72 or “brothers” who were sold out by incompetent “Manchurian traitors” (man jian 满奸) and then sacrificed as victims for “us” the Chinese.73 China’s cession of Taiwan to Japan was described as a family marrying a “daughter” to a barbarian from afar in exchange of peace at home,74 or else the people of Taiwan were depicted as “orphans” deserted by their birthmother—the Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu)—and abused by the stepmother (Japan).75 However, with respect to the definition of China as a nation, the Taiwanese family members—although brothers or offspring of the Chinese nation—were represented as distinct from the Chinese. The family analogy involves a differentiated relationship among family members. As one author put it, China’s cession of Taiwan to Japan was like parents “under the pressure of debt having sold their second son to another family whose first son then treats the second son as an ‘outsider’ [wairen 外人]”.76 As Fei Xiaotong points out in his classic study of rural society in China, “In Chinese, the word jia (家 family) is used in many ways ... Zijiaren (自家人 my own people) may include anyone whom you want to drag into your own circle, and you use it to indicate your intimacy with them.”77 By considering the Taiwanese as

69 Zhu Qianzhi, “Xu” (Preface), in Han Ren, Taiwan gemingshi (History of the Taiwanese Revolution) (Shanghai: Taidong Tushuju, 1926). 70 Han Ren, “Xu” (Preface), in Han Ren, Taiwan gemingshi, pp. 2, 6. 71 Ibid.; Peng Ziming, Taiwan jinshi shi (The Modern History of Taiwan) (Fuzhou: Fuzhou Mingshe, 1929), p. 33; Zhang Yizhi, “Taiwan Yiyongdui shi zenyang zuzhi qilai de” (How Was the Taiwan Yiyong Corps Organized?) (Part 1), in Zhandi, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1 April 1939), pp. 6-7. 72 Xu Dishan, “Preface”, in Shan Chuan Jun (Hitoshi Yamakawa), Taiwan minzhong de beiai (Sorrow of the Taiwanese People), trans. Song Jiaonong (Beiping: Xinyazhou Shuju, 1930). 73 Han Ren, Taiwan gemingshi, p. 17. 74 Yuan Kewu, “Preface”, in Yuan Kewu, Taiwan (Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1927). 75 Zhang Qiyun and Li Haichen (eds), Waiguo dili (Geography of Foreign Countries) (Nanjing: Zhongshan Shuju, 1933), p. 31. 76 Song Jiaonong, “Translator’s Preface”, in Shan Chuan Jun, Taiwan minzhong de beiai. 77 Fei Hsiao-t’ung (Fei Xiaotong) (Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng, From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society: A Translation of Fei Xiaotong’s Xiangtu Zhongguo, with an Introduction and Epilogue [Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992]), p. 62.

THE AMBIVALENCE OF NATIONAL IMAGINATION 195

“second son”, “daughter” and “brothers”78 of the Chinese people, the compatriot narratives clearly define the Taiwanese as having a close relationship with the Chinese; however, a close relationship does not make the Taiwanese Chinese. As Fei notes, the “scope of ‘my own family’ can be expanded or contracted according to the specific time and place. It can be used in a very general way, even to mean that everyone under the sun is a jia (one family).”79 Fei further points out: Two brothers certainly would have the same parents, but each brother would have his own wife and children. Therefore, the web of social relationships linked with kinship is specific to each person. Each web has a self as its center, and every web has a different center.80 In other words, families headed by different brothers are all members of one “extended family”, but under this flexible and contingent “extended family”, each family headed by a sibling is independent. From this perspective, the compatriot narratives representing the Taiwanese as “married-out daughter”, “second son” and “brother” of the Chinese people effectively defined the Taiwanese as independent of the Chinese. In other words, while the Taiwanese and the Chinese belong to the same extended family, each is separate from the other. This understanding helps to explain why Taiwanese were represented as compatriots of the Chinese, on the one hand, and as having undertaken “anti- Japanese/land-recovery” (fanri futu 反日复土) efforts motivated by their “national spirit” (minzu yishi 民族意识)81 until “independence and freedom” were granted, on the other.82 The “Taiwanese independence movement” (Taiwan duli yundong 台湾 独立运动) and the “Taiwanese national liberation movement” (Taiwan minzu jiefang yundong 台湾民族解放运动)83 were represented as efforts of the Taiwanese, by the Taiwanese, and for the Taiwanese. Therefore, with respect to defining nation, the people of Taiwan pursued their own independence and liberation as a nation, just as the Chinese nation did. Taiwanese and Chinese were like brothers, each independently fighting similar battles for the sake of their individuated families. The term “compatriot” was used to refer not only to the Taiwanese but also to other nations during this period. Most notably, the Koreans and the Taiwanese were collectively represented as “Taiwanese–Korean compatriots” (taixian

78 Shao Ping, “Wei Chaoxian Taiwan Liuqiu zhuwei xiongdi shuzui” (Redeeming the Korean, Taiwanese and Liuqiu [Ryukyu] Brothers) (short review), in Guolun, Vol. 23 (23 July 1938), pp. 2-4. 79 Fei Hsiao-t’ung (Fei Xiaotong) (Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng, From the Soil), p. 62. 80 Ibid., p. 63. 81 Yun, “Rijun nanqin zhong de Taiwan” (Taiwan in the Japanese Army’s Southbound Aggression), in Xinshidai (New Era), Vol. 1, No. 5 (5 June 1939), p. 17. 82 Han Ren, Taiwan gemingshi, p. 169. 83 Peng Ziming, Taiwan jinshi shi, pp. 67, 147.

196 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 tongbao 台鲜同胞) of the Chinese.84 In a similar fashion, the term “brother” was also applied to the people of Liuqiu.85

Conclusion This paper delineates, typologically, the three major narratives constituting the Chinese representation of the Taiwanese between 1931 and 1941. Narratives of Taiwan as a weak and small nation, narratives of the Taiwanese as non-Chinese, and narratives of the Taiwanese as compatriots and family members based on the racial conception of Han often overlapped with one another. These multiple, imbricated, ambivalent and sometimes contradictory meanings of “the Taiwanese” were created in “disjunctive forms of representation” 86 in China throughout the 1930s. The diversity and overlapping nature of these narratives illustrate the ambivalence embedded in the Chinese representation of Taiwan. Defining the internal border can be significantly different from defining the external border. China’s external border and its relations to (the land of) Taiwan, as Alan Wachman finds, were clearly demarcated. Up to 1942, Taiwan as a land was defined as outside the territorial boundary which the nation of China inhabited; after 1942, Taiwan came to be defined as inside the “mental map of China”. The Chinese conception of Taiwan’s “territorial salience” changes swiftly and thoroughly. The internal border defining China’s people, however, was more ambivalent to begin with and changed less dramatically. This ambivalence also helps to explain the KMT government’s suspicion of and hostility toward the Taiwanese in the 1940s. This attitude gave rise to the inconsistency between the new official line that re-defined (the land of) Taiwan as Chinese (territory) after 1942 and the actual policies and behaviors of the KMT government toward the people of Taiwan. This inconsistency between words and action, as analyzed by Phillips, alienated the native population from the newly-arrived

84 Shao Ping, “Wei Chaoxian Taiwan Liuqiu zhuwei xiongdi shuzui”, pp. 2-4; Anon., “Wuwang Taiwan” (Never Forget Taiwan), in Chongqing dagong bao (3 May 1940), p. 3. It is worth noting that Korea was usually given priority over Taiwan in Chinese narratives. Korea and the people of Korea were usually represented as more significant to the Chinese and China as a nation than were the Taiwanese. One intriguing example was the song titled “Ten Great Hatreds” (shi dahen). There, the greatest significance of the Treaty of Shimonoseki was placed on the monetary retribution paid to Japan, followed by the forced independence of Korea; the cession of Penghu, Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula was last. See Edgar Snow and John K. Fairbank (eds), Zhonggong Yanan shidai shiliao (Chinese Communist Historical Materials from the Yan’an Period) (Boston: Harvard- Yenching Library, 1957). Similar examples were also found in Dadong shuju, Riben diguo zhuyi (Japanese Imperialism) (Shanghai: Dadong Shuju, 1928), pp. 41-43; Ge Suicheng, Chaoxian he Taiwan (Korea and Taiwan) (Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, 1935). 85 Shao Ping, “Wei Chaoxian Taiwan Liuqiu zhuwei xiongdi shuzui”, pp. 2-4. 86 Homi Bhabha, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation”, p. 292.

THE AMBIVALENCE OF NATIONAL IMAGINATION 197

KMT government after 1945 and, tragically, became the source of conflict in postwar Taiwan, leading to the 2.28 Incident in 1947. In 1942, the boundaries that defined Taiwan and China were transformed. As a result of shifting geo-strategic concern, China began to assert its territorial claim over Taiwan. Under what Prasenjit Duara calls the “territorial imperative”, which dictates that “all global resources be controlled by territorially sovereign polities”,87 China came to define Taiwan as a political space in which “the efforts to invest sovereignty and defend it were most densely concentrated”.88 Since 1942, Chinese cultural products have labored to produce the frontier of Taiwan “anew within the national imaginary” and to enable its citizens to see the contested territory of Taiwan as an “inalienable part of their national being”.89 As Duara points out in his study of China’s nation-formation, “communities with hard boundaries tend to develop an intolerance and suspicion toward the adoption of the Other’s practices”.90 Throughout the 1930s, practices of the Taiwanese that were distinctively different from the Chinese, such as language (using Japanese) and aspiration for an independent Taiwan, were widely acknowledged and accepted in Chinese narratives. After 1942, however, these different practices were considered a threat to the constitutive principle of the community (of China) as China’s new territorial claim over Taiwan hardened the boundaries. From this perspective, it is easier to understand KMT suspicion and hostility toward the Taiwanese in the 1940s. Challenging the teleological and totalizing nationalist narrative defining Taiwan and the Taiwanese as “historically” Chinese, Chinese narratives from the 1930s can be regarded as “counter-narratives of the nation that continually evoke and erase its totalizing boundaries—both actual and conceptual—[and] disturb those ideological maneuvers through which ‘imagined communities’ are given essentialist identities”.91 They help us better appreciate the ambivalence of the national imagination and to understand a highly diversified and constantly changing intellectual and political discourse of nationalism in China.

87 Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), p. 179. 88 Ibid., pp. 199-200. 89 Ibid., p. 200. 90 Prasenjit Duara, “Historicizing National Identity, or Who Imagines What and When”, in Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds), Becoming National: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 169. 91 Homi Bhabha,“DissemiNation”, p. 300.

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Review Essay

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION WARFARE AT BEIJING’S UNIVERSITIES

Jonathan Unger

Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement, by Andrew G. Walder. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. xvi + 400 pp. US$39.95/£29.95/ €36.00 (hardcover). Too little research has been conducted about the fascinating, confusing upheavals that shook China during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966–68. Now, four decades after the mass fighting was suppressed, Andrew Walder helps to fill important gaps in our knowledge, in a 400-page book that examines the origins and chronicles the factional fighting at Beijing’s universities. In researching the book, Walder conducted a modest amount of interviewing, but his footnotes make clear that he has relied primarily upon documentation from the 1966–68 period. As he notes in the Introduction, “Several decades ago, when documentary sources were largely unavailable, researchers relied primarily on the oral reminiscences of former … [but] by the late 1990s a remarkable array of new sources was at hand” (p. 8). These include archived factional newspapers from dozens of universities, wall posters and the transcripts of speeches. By far the richest collections of these materials are from Beijing, and Walder therefore chose the capital for his study. He does not mention how many Beijing universities he was able to cover through these voluminous materials, but I have counted at least 27 tertiary institutions. The book derives from meticulous trolling through a vast array of original materials. In ten chapters, Walder moves chronologically from early June 1966, when university leaders came under fire and were quickly removed from their posts by “work teams” (gongzuo dui 工作队) of officials sent onto Beijing’s university campuses by the national Party leadership (Chapter 2), through the tumultuous events of the latter half of 1966 (Chapters 3 to 7), and on into the student factional fighting of 1967–68 (Chapters 8 and 9). Chapter 10 presents Walder’s reflections on Beijing’s university Red Guards, on the unusual organizational and political context in which they emerged and then split into factions, and on the reasons that factional fighting persisted for more than a year and a half.

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By coincidence, 2009 witnessed the publication not only of Walder’s study but also of two other books that explore this period of civil war among students—Joel Andreas’ Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origin of China’s New Class 1 and Yin Hongbiao’s 560-page Chinese-language opus Footprints of the Missing: Trends of Thought of Young People during the Cultural Revolution.2 I will discuss Walder’s findings in relation to these works, focusing on his analysis of the reasons for the divisions among university students, his explanation of why an increasingly violent factionalism persisted for so long and his discussion of whether ideological differences played any role during the student upheaval. I will also attempt to weigh which of Walder’s conclusions are relevant to China in general or alternatively apply only to Beijing’s universities.

Divisions, 1966 Walder takes issue with some of the previous Western-language writings about Red Guard factionalism at the universities, which tried to analyze the conflicts in terms of tensions that predated the Cultural Revolution. Walder argues, contrarily, that the formation and actions of the university Red Guard factions in Beijing had almost nothing to do with pre–Cultural Revolution issues or antagonisms. He endeavors to show that the initial rise of student factions was shaped purely by the events of the first two months of the Cultural Revolution in the late spring and summer of 1966, when the work teams of Communist Party officials entered the universities and mobilized students to purge selected administrators and teachers. Work teams were a time-tested instrument of the Party when conducting political campaigns, penetrating grass-roots levels in order to guide and control a campaign. Whereas some Western writings have assumed that these work teams and the students who were Party loyalists often defended the leading Party figures at the schools, Walder challenges this presumption (at least for Beijing’s universities). He argues that the cadre work teams in Beijing very rapidly toppled all of the university leaderships and shattered the hierarchical Party networks through which student Party members had previously been mobilized to serve the university Party organization’s purposes. In this circumstance, even those who had been loyal Party followers “concluded that they might be found guilty by association, and they hastened to repudiate rather than defend their erstwhile leaders” (p. 11). If not over whether to defend or repudiate the universities’ power structure, on what grounds did a split first emerge at Beijing’s universities? During this early period, as Walder shows, a small minority of the students clashed with the cadre work teams and accused them of erroneously curtailing student initiative in the campaign.

1 Joel Andreas, Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China’s New Class (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). The book was reviewed by Jeremy Brown in the January 2010 issue of The China Journal. 2 Yin Hongbiao, Shizongzhe de zuji: wenhua da geming qijian de qingnian sichao (Footprints of the Missing: Trends of Thought of Young People during the Cultural Revolution) (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2009).

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Was this small minority of students drawn from among the students who had previously been marginal to the Party networks at the universities, had felt disfavored and now felt rebellious? To his surprise, Walder discovered that “[t]he very same party members and political activists whom I expected to defend party hierarchies and obey the work teams in fact led the militant minority” (p. 11). Walder explains that the dissidents acted in circumstances where work teams were abruptly shifting their own stances, which created ambiguities and complicated a student’s choice of how to react. From Walder’s portrayal, it seems as though the decision sometimes came down simply to a student’s personality. This seems to have been the case with Qinghua University’s Kuai Dafu, one of the most famous of China’s Red Guard leaders, a student of good-class peasant origins who had held a crucial post in the university’s Communist Youth League. Walder discusses how, when the cadre work teams were discredited by Mao for having controlled his mass campaign too tightly and were ordered to withdraw immediately from the universities at the end of July 1966, some students and staff members rallied to the support of those who had risked all to oppose a work team. This enlarged minority among the students demanded that the work team return to the university to confess its errors, and then marched to the government offices from which the work team had come, to demand the work team’s surrender and the removal of incriminating materials from the student dissidents’ political files. Walder notes that, extraordinarily, during the assaults on national ministries and commissions in late 1966, “Rebels only assaulted the ministries from which their work teams came” (p. 251). For instance, if the work team of officials that had taken over a campus derived largely from the Foreign Ministry, the student militants from that campus became embroiled with the Foreign Ministry. At a later period at the various government offices, the students subsequently became “inadvertently drawn into factional conflicts among government personnel” (p. 261), complicating and exacerbating the Cultural Revolution conflict. In the late summer of 1966, the majority of students and university staff remained detached from this minority’s efforts, and at most of the campuses the two groupings gravitated into opposing factions, with the anti–work team group emerging as the so-called Rebel faction. Walder concludes that “the social profiles of both factions were initially very similar, whether in terms of positions in school political networks or of social categories like household labels” (p. 11). The split on campuses did not last long, since the majority faction folded when it became evident that Mao and the committee that he had established to implement the Cultural Revolution—the Central Cultural Revolution Group (CCRG) (zhongyang wenge xiaozu 中央文革小组)—looked favorably upon those who had led resistance to the work teams. An essential element of Walder’s scenario is that during that first half-year of Cultural Revolution turmoil, CCRG members including Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng developed ongoing contacts with the leaders of university Red Guard groups and throughout the two years of Cultural Revolution upheaval the CCRG manipulated these groups from above. The university Red Guard alliances in Beijing were not

202 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 autonomous actors—instead, they became essentially the instruments of various members of the CCRG, who engaged in Machiavellian games and often operated at cross-purposes with one another.3 We know less about what occurred at universities outside Beijing, since almost all previous authors have focused on Beijing campuses.4 Enough is known, though, to be able to state with confidence that the frequent communications between Red Guard groups and the CCRG were not usually replicated outside Beijing, and thus provincial campus groups were able to remain far more independent in their activities. The book jacket prepared by the Press’s publicists claims that “Walder’s nuanced account challenges the main themes of an entire generation of scholarship about the social conflicts of the Cultural Revolution”. The reality, however, is that the book only challenges previous chronicles of Beijing university factionalism: the bulk of Walder’s findings apply only to this small slice of Cultural Revolution activity. It was there that the fighting was shaped by the repeated interventions of CCRG leaders. Walder himself notes this anomaly and points to additional ways in which the scenario in Beijing

3 Walder provides examples of despicable, manipulative behavior by CCRG’s leaders, but none is more surprising than the stories of two Red Guard groups, Liandong and the Western District Picket Corps. Among observers of the Cultural Revolution upheaval, both Liandong and Western Picket are remembered as secondary-school Red Guard groups in Beijing composed of children of high-level officials who carried out gruesome atrocities against victims. Walder shows that the truth was quite the opposite. These two student groups were appalled by the violence around them, and sought to reduce the brutality. They threw up picket lines to rein it in, and were perturbed by the CCRG’s indifference to the acts of escalating cruelty. After their activities brought them into cooperation with Zhou Enlai and into conflict with militant students backed by the CCRG, the CCRG moved quickly to destroy Liandong and Western Picket. The two groups’ teenage leaders were imprisoned and, with a cynicism that is breathtaking, the CCRG whipped up a media campaign accusing the two groups of the very kind of atrocities that the groups had courageously condemned. A “Big Lie” is often effective and, until Walder’s exposé of what actually occurred, Liandong and Western Picket were usually regarded by writers as having been viciously brutal. 4 English-language publications include Victor Nee, The Cultural Revolution at Peking University (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969); William Hinton, Hundred Day War: The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972); David and Nancy Milton, The Wind Will Not Subside: Years in Revolutionary China 1964–1969 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976); Joel Andreas, “Battling over Political and Cultural Power in the Cultural Revolution” [focusing on Qinghua University], Theory and Society, Vol. 31, No. 4 (August 2002); and Xiaowei Zhang, “Passion, Reflection, and Survival: Political Choices of Red Guards at Qinghua University, June 1966-July 1968”, in Joseph Esherick, Paul G. Pickowicz and Andrew G. Walder (eds), The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 29-63. For his Doctoral dissertation, Stanley Rosen conducted interviews in the 1970s with former students from the élite Beijing colleges, with similar findings (Stanley Rosen, “The Origins and Development of the Red Guard Movement in China, 1960-1968”, PhD dissertation, UCLA, 1979).

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION WARFARE 203 was unique. For instance, he emphasizes that in Beijing the universities’ leaderships were purged and so collapsed at the very start; thus, no defensive efforts were ever mounted in their support by either work teams or campus Party loyalists. However, this was often not the case at universities outside the capital, where events unfolded at a different pace and with lower-level local work teams. Where defending or opposing the university’s Party administration became an issue on provincial campuses in those initial months, there was a distinct potential for a subsequent eruption of factional divisions between the Party loyalists and other students.5 Nor did the scenario at Beijing’s universities necessarily apply to spheres outside education. Walder himself is quite aware of this. In 1979–80, he carried out research on pre–Cultural Revolution Chinese factories which revealed how in the 1950s–60s favoritism toward politically activist employees had built hierarchic networks of loyalty that reinforced the factories’ authority structures. 6 Walder described how, during the Cultural Revolution, factional conflicts often broke out between the politically favored employees, who defended the factory’s Party leadership (often at the latter’s behest), and the many co-workers who resented the factory’s political pressures and favoritism and formed a rebel faction. Nor is Walder’s depiction of the Beijing university scene transferable to secondary schools, even in Beijing. The book includes a chapter on high schools (Chapter 5), focusing on four élite schools. Walder finds that support for or resistance to work teams had a distinctly different tenor there. A far higher percentage of students at the élite secondary schools came from families of the national political leadership. Many of them showed disdain for the low-ranking work teams that entered their high schools, and they were able to resist these with impunity. More important, strong differences of opinion arose at the élite secondary schools over the class origins of students and over Red Guard violence. This issue of class origins was also contested at other high schools across China, and made the conflict in these schools quite different from what occurred at China’s universities. Most of the previous Western-language writings about the Red Guards focused on the urban secondary schools and described how, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, students from “red-class” (Party cadre and pre-Liberation working class)

5 Two provincial universities in Yunnan and Guangdong where this schism occurred are noted in Jonathan Unger, “The Cultural Revolution at the Grass Roots”, The China Journal, No. 57 (January 2007), pp. 124-25. 6 Walder published this research more than a decade later in Andrew Walder, “The Chinese Cultural Revolution in the Factories: Party-State Structures and Patterns of Conflict”, in Elizabeth J. Perry (ed.), Putting Class in its Place: Worker Identities in East Asia (Berkeley: China Research Monograph 48, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1996); also Andrew Walder, “When States Unravel: How China’s Cadres Shaped Cultural Revolution Politics”, in Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard and Susan Young (eds), State Capacity in East Asia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), especially pp. 178-83.

204 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 family origins and students from educated middle-class family origins had been engaged in an increasingly difficult and tense competition to get admitted to university. Whereas the middle-class children wanted admissions policies to stress academic achievement, the red-class students favored admissions policies that stressed family origins. When Mao Zedong opened the floodgates to the Cultural Revolution in mid-1966, only the red-class high school students were initially allowed to participate, which intensified the antagonisms between them and the middle-class students and gave rise by year’s end to two rival Red Guard camps.7 At the four truly élite Beijing secondary schools studied by Walder, a milder split emerged very early on between the children of high-level Party officials and students of working-class family background, some of whom resented the officials’ children’s presumption that they were superior and should lead all activities. During July–August 1966, this mild split among the two types of red-class children also occurred at many of the élite provincial high schools across China. The rise of two antagonistic Red Guard camps—one dominated by the officials’ children and the other dominated by middle-class children—was a separate phenomenon and did not emerge at any high school in China until the late autumn of 1966. Since the secondary schools are peripheral to the topic of Walder’s book, he does not pursue what occurred at his four élite schools after August 1966. Had he extended his research into later months, he would very likely have found the same division into rival Red Guard camps that occurred at provincial high schools. In point of fact, a paper has been published about one of the four Beijing high schools covered by Walder and found precisely this—the Red Guard factional conflict there that lasted from late 1966 through mid-1968 occurred between students from middle-class intellectual families and the political officials’ children.8

The Violent Factionalism of 1967–68 Events after the end of 1966 have always seemed confusing, as university student groups split and re-split and entered opposing alliances. Walder helps us make sense

7 The literature on the origins of high-school Red Guard factionalism includes Hong Yung Lee’s pioneering studies based on Red Guard broadsheets, “The Radical Students in Kwangtung during the Cultural Revolution”, The China Quarterly, No. 64 (December 1975), pp. 645-83, and Lee’s The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). Also see Stanley Rosen, Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982); Anita Chan, Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation (London; Seattle: The MacMillan Press; University of Washington Press, 1985); Jonathan Unger, Education Under Mao: Class and Competition in Canton Schools, 1960–1980 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), Chapters 5 and 6; Anita Chan, Stanley Rosen and Jonathan Unger, “Students and Class Warfare: The Social Roots of the Red Guard Conflict in Canton”, The China Quarterly, No. 83 (Autumn 1980), pp. 397-446; and Joel Andreas, “Battling over Political and Cultural Power”. 8 Joel Andreas, “Battling over Political and Cultural Power”.

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION WARFARE 205 of this long one-and-a-half year stretch of violent activity through August 1968, when the Cultural Revolution factions were finally forcibly suppressed. This one-and-a-half-year civil war at the universities was entirely unforeseen by the university students. It had seemed in the autumn of 1966 that unity had been restored to Beijing campuses. The CCRG’s support for the so-called Minority or Rebel faction had caused other groups to dissolve, but some of the campus militants who had been anointed as leaders by the CCRG, in particular Nie Yuanzi at Beijing University and Kuai Dafu at Qinghua University, soon antagonized many of their own followers through autocratic, intimidating behavior, and drove them into opposition. The opposition forces within the two universities joined with Red Guard groups from other universities, and eventually two evenly balanced, mutually antagonistic, city-wide coalitions emerged—one titled Heaven (tian pai 天派) since one of its member Red Guard groups was based at the Beijing Aeronautics Institute (a specialized tertiary institution) and the other titled Earth (di pai 地派) since one of its member Red Guard organizations was centered at the Geology Institute (also an educational institution). Each claimed to be the true Rebel faction, and each side had the ear of CCRG members. Violence mounted as each side suffered increasing casualties and vowed vengeance, and as each side increasingly feared harsh penalties if it lost. Walder claims that there were no other reasons for the prolonged internecine warfare. He notes that, with the exception of one university, there were no ideological differences between the two factions and no discernible difference in their social composition. They did not cease fighting, he observes, because there was no neutral third party to mediate or arbitrate an end to the conflict. While there was no benefit to the Maoist leadership in the continued fighting, the CCRG appears to have been too hamstrung by internal bickering to bring the Red Guard factional hostilities to an end.

Contrasting Interpretations of the Divisions among Students The new book by Joel Andreas focuses entirely on China’s élite science university, Qinghua. He covers a far longer time period than does Walder, so Andreas’ discussion of the tumultuous events of 1966–68 is confined to two chapters (Chapters 4 and 5). It is interesting to compare the two authors’ findings for this period about the same university. Andreas parts with Walder in analyzing the earliest months when Kuai Dafu (whom both Walder and Andreas have interviewed) and a small group of fellow Qinghua students rebelled against the work team. In Andreas’ telling, ... nearly 40 percent of the students at the university were from working-class or peasant families. They had the class qualifications to participate, and while many followed the lead of the revolutionary cadres’ children in the Red Guards, others formed their own fighting groups. The campus split into two factions, defined by their stand toward the work team—the Red Guards, led by the cadres’ children, defended the work team and their opponents [whose leadership came from peasant and working-class families] attacked it.9

9 Joel Andreas, Rise of the Red Engineers, p. 108.

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It becomes all but impossible to determine whether Walder or Andreas is correct in interpreting this early period. On the one side, Walder, whose overall thesis is that class background and pre–Cultural Revolution loyalties counted for almost nothing at the universities during the Cultural Revolution, emphasizes that the great majority of the worker–peasant children (like the great majority of the student body as a whole) defended the work team. On the other side, Andreas prefers to focus on the fact that Qinghua students of worker–peasant background were prominent among the small minority of the student body who stood up in opposition to the work team. The overall evidence that both scholars present is similar—but what they consider to be the most salient portion of the evidence differs. Walder singles out Qinghua as the only Beijing university where there was a noticeable ideological difference between the two factions that developed later in the Cultural Revolution. He sees this ideological divide as resulting from a tactical maneuver. In March 1967 the CCRG was calling for “revolutionary cadres” to be included in new Revolutionary Committees that were supposed to be set up as new governing bodies at each and campus. Kuai Dafu resisted the call at Qinghua, on the pretext that Qinghua’s officials were more infected by the revisionist line than elsewhere. This provided an opening for his opponents at the campus to position themselves as not just more in step with CCRG policy but also as the campus faction behind which Party members, former student cadres and others should throw their weight. The faction’s support swelled as a result. Walder observes that, in keeping with the sources of its new support, this Qinghua faction eventually developed a more positive assessment of the pre–Cultural Revolution status quo, but he argues that this turn of events resulted entirely from the initial strategic decision made to outflank Kuai Dafu’s faction, not from any underlying ideological cause. Walder and Andreas largely agree on the facts regarding the development at Qinghua University of a moderate faction starting in March 1967. Again, however, their analysis of what is most salient about the evidence differs. Walder’s main point is that Qinghua, as the only campus in Beijing where the two factions developed different ideological thrusts, is an outlier, and that, overall, ideological differences played a scant role in campus conflicts. In contrast, Andreas sees the emergence of the moderate faction at Qinghua as intrinsically important, in that it created “an alliance between political and cultural capital” that attracted many “children of both the political and the intellectual élites”.10 He sees this Qinghua faction’s stand as a harbinger of the prevailing ideology of the post-Mao era, in which the gradual convergence of the political and educated élites has led to the “rapid consolidation of a technocratic class” and the transformation of “the CCP into a party of technocrats”.11

10 Ibid, p. 129. 11 Ibid, p. 173. Andreas examines the postponement of this thrust during Mao’s lifetime, and shows the ways in which Mao’s policies in the 1970s played off the academic experts against political radicals at Qinghua, in “Institutionalized Rebellion: Governing Tsinghua

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As noted earlier, Walder’s and Andreas’ books were joined in 2009 by a third major work, by Yin Hongbiao. Yin, a Beijing-based academic who is now 60, has devoted his entire career to researching what occurred at the grass roots in the Cultural Revolution. Sections of his new book examine the post-1966 factionalism that erupted among students across China, including at provincial universities. Yin uncovers a scenario in the provinces similar to what Walder and Andreas found at Qinghua—a more moderate faction that held to a generally positive appraisal of the pre–Cultural Revolution status quo versus a more condemnatory faction. The factionalism at most of Beijing’s universities indeed seems to have been an anomaly.

The Role of Dissident Ideology Yin’s main interest, however, centers not on this but on the strands of thought that developed in various parts of China among the Red Guard generation. Yin finds that, where new ideas developed that deviated both from the Party status quo and from Mao’s line, the authors were largely young people of middle- and bad-class family origins. His book is divided into two parts: the first depicts the 1966–68 period, and the second portrays the period after 1968, when most of the Red Guard generation was consigned to the countryside. There, some of them organized reading groups (often studying European Marxist classics, as other works were not available) and developed new perspectives through animated discussion. Notably, both Yin Hongbiao and Joel Andreas are interested in focusing on the influence of Cultural Revolution–era thought on the post-Mao worldview but, whereas Andreas focuses on how the Qinghua University moderate faction developed a view amenable to the creation of a post-Mao technocratic political élite, Yin traces an evolutionary line from the dissident “ultra-left” writers of the Cultural Revolution to the reading groups in the countryside, and then to the liberal and social democratic dissident thinkers of the Deng era. At first blush, Yin’s thesis seems antithetical to Walder’s. Whereas Walder, looking at the broad-based factional divisions, avers that there was no ideological basis to the Beijing university student conflict, Yin’s book devotes considerable space to student groups across China holding provocative ideological positions during 1967–68. But notably, the dissident schools of thought that Yin examines comprised individual authors and small marginal groups. Yin’s approach does not actually contradict Walder’s, inasmuch as Yin does not claim that the dissident individuals and groups had any meaningful following in the universities or affected the factional fighting there. An exception was the capital city of Hunan province, Changsha, where one of the two major factions after the summer of 1967 through mid-1968 was Shengwulian, a coalition of militant Rebel groups holding grievances regarding discriminatory pre–Cultural Revolution class-line, political and wage policies. The 20-plus mass organizations that came together in Shengwulian included groupings

University during the Late Years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution”, The China Journal, No. 55 (January 2006), pp. 1-28, and at greater length in his 2009 book.

208 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 representing the poorly paid trades, apprentices, temporary workers, non-red-class high-school students, university students who had held grievances before the Cultural Revolution either because of unfavorable family backgrounds or because of personal political black marks,12 teachers who had been attacked early in the Cultural Revolution, disgruntled army veterans and former Communist guerrillas who felt that their contributions had been ignored, and so forth. Shengwulian became well known across China—and of interest to Yin Hongbiao—because of the “ultra-leftist” writings that bore the group’s name. Famous among these was an essay titled “Whither China?” by a student named Yang Xiguang, which proclaimed that the major genuine division in China was not between Mao’s supporters and enemies, nor between China’s proletariat and the former wealthy, but rather between a “red capitalist class” composed of the families of high Party officials (akin in many respects to Djilas’ “new class”) and the masses of the Chinese people.13 Shengwulian has been portrayed both in China and abroad as the prime example of a Cultural Revolution mass grouping sustained by strong political and economic complaints and by an ideological thrust. Yet the reality is complicated, and in fact the case of Shengwulian helps confirm one of Walder’s main themes. Walder’s premise is that the violent struggle between mass factions which escalated over one-and-a-half years in 1967–68 was very largely based on fears of losing: They were, quite simply, fighting not to lose. In the context of Chinese politics of that era, to end up on the losing side of a political struggle would lead at best to drastically reduced career prospects and at worst to imprisonment or physical harm. (p. 260) Was this true only of Beijing university factions, or was it more widely applicable? During July 1989 I had an opportunity to spend many hours with Yang Xiguang discussing Shengwulian and the genesis of “Whither China?”. If any Cultural Revolution organization belies Walder’s premise, it ought to be Shengwulian. After finishing Walder’s new book, I went back through the transcripts of my interviews with Yang, and to my surprise discovered comments by Yang that I had never previously paid attention to—comments that parallel Walder’s. To place Yang’s observations into context, it should be noted the Rebel organization that was Shengwulian’s predecessor

12 Political black marks had been pinned on students for various sorts of indiscretions. For instance, some of the leaders of University Storm, the main city-wide university student group in Shengwulian, had been declared Rightists in their dossiers during the Socialist Education Campaign of 1964–66 for having been overheard speaking disparagingly about the Great Leap Forward, or as Mid-Rightist Sentimentalists for having shown too romantic an appreciation of The Dream of the Red Chamber. 13 Yin Hongbiao focuses on Shengwulian and Yang Xiguang on pp. 105-12. Yang Xiguang’s essay “Whither China?” is translated into English in a monograph about Shengwulian: Klaus Mehnert, Peking and the New Left at Home and Abroad (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, China Research Monograph No. 4, 1969). Also see Jonathan Unger, “Whither China?: Yang Xiguang, Red Capitalists, and the Social Turmoil of the Cultural Revolution”, Modern China, Vol. 17, No. 1 (January 1991), pp. 3-37.

THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION WARFARE 209 was titled Xiang River Storm (Xiang Jiang Fenglei 香江风雷). Across China during February 1967, the Rebel faction was suppressed by the army, and in Changsha some 10,000 members of Xiang River Storm were thrown into prison, Yang among them. Mao reversed himself in March 1967 and ordered the Rebels’ release. Yang Xiguang commented: Before February 1967 the factional alliances at the university level were based on opposition to the work teams and to the leaderships within each university. This differed between politically activist and non-activist students … But after February, the two issues they clashed over involved 1) support for the military and 2) persecution of those arrested by the military … At that time we generally supported Jiang Qing. Our political interests coincided: for if we were persecuted she’d lose face. The same with Chen Boda [one of the top leaders of the CCRG] and perhaps Mao too. It was not so much that we shared Chen Boda’s beliefs. After February 1967 people were more pragmatic, and thought more of their own political interests than of idealism. After being in jail, students began to consider their political interests, which centered on not being labeled counter- revolutionary; and related to this, the rehabilitation of Xiang River Storm. After July–August 1967, Mao officially rehabilitated Xiang River Storm, and all of the Conservative [loyalist] faction organizations were dissolved. Zhou Enlai, with the aid of Qi Benyu [a leader in the CCRG] and others, worked out a name list of organizations whose leaders were to be invited to a meeting in Beijing to prepare a Revolutionary Committee [to govern Changsha]. Those selected [from Xiang River Storm] were the groups whose members had better class origins and were considered “more reliable”. None of the organizations that later formed Shengwulian were put on this name list. So of course they were angry. They felt they had to join in if they were to be influential, recognized and legitimate. Thus, after August 1967 the Rebels divided into two factions: those that had been invited to the meeting and those that hadn’t. This split was deliberately fomented by Zhou Enlai and others in the government. Some of the former members of the Conservative [loyalist] mass organizations joined the alliance that had been invited, and the two Rebel factions became pitched into conflict with each other. Notably, even among the militants in Changsha, a fear of the consequences of defeat spurred continued resistance and factional upheaval in 1967, much as in Beijing. Walder’s theme that factions were “fighting not to lose” rings true here. Notably, too, even in Hunan province, Zhou Enlai, Jiang Qing and the CCRG played roles in the shaping of factional conflict (albeit less frequently and at a later date than in Beijing). It was the central leadership’s manipulations in mid-1967 that instigated a realignment of factions in Changsha which placed disfavored groups—those with worse class labels or poor work conditions or who had had run-ins with political activists and authorities—on one side of a factional divide, with those whom the Party regime had previously favored on the other. Again, the theme in Walder of the pernicious role played by a Machiavellian political élite rings true. So while some important aspects of Walder’s discussions apply only to Beijing-based universities,

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Walder also sheds new light and offers insights on generalizable aspects of the urban Cultural Revolution mass movements. A question that remains is whether Walder is correct that ideological differences never emerged among the mass of students who battled it out at Beijing’s campuses. It is, after all, possible that the universities’ Red Guard factional newspapers may not have portrayed student feelings that lay outside the parameters of what was acceptable to the CCRG. While it was acceptable for the Red Guard newspapers to use extreme, hyperbolic language to attack their factional opponents, university students presumably realized that it was politically suicidal to express deviant political thinking publicly. In the mid-1970s I had an opportunity to interview former high school Rebel Red Guards from Guangzhou, and they discussed a strong undercurrent of not- entirely-heretical thought that had influenced them in 1967–68. It was a belief in “big democracy” (da minzhu 大民主). It had been quite legitimate to use the phrase—Lin Biao himself declared approvingly at Tiananmen Square in November 1966 that: .... big democracy is when the Party fearlessly and without reservations allows the broad masses a free airing of views (da ming da fang 大鸣大放),14 big character posters, big debates and big link-ups to criticize and monitor the different levels of leadership organs and leaders of the Party and state. At the same time, the democratic rights of the people are being fulfilled in keeping with the principles set forth by the Paris Commune.15 As used among Guangzhou high-school students in 1967–68, the “big democracy” catch-phrase did not imply that it was proper to criticize Chairman Mao or to doubt the legitimacy of Communist Party rule under Mao’s leadership (no one dared to contemplate such ideas publicly). Rather, the phrase “big democracy” meant the right of grass-roots groups to criticize local Party committees freely and to help decide local policy through the discussion of ideas. Rebel faction high school students saw this belief in big democracy as marking them off from their enemies, the high school students in the city’s loyalist faction, who reportedly believed more in rule by a top-down political hierarchy. With different interpretations of how “redness” and devotion to the revolution should be evaluated, with different opinions about how loose or tight Party control should be and whether “big democracy” should be part of the fabric of Chinese life, the high-school students could feel that they were battling for a set of beliefs that transcended themselves. As such, the students’ ardor was greater and their resistance stronger against ending the Cultural Revolution civil war without a victory for their cause.

14 Notably, da ming da fang (often translated as Big Blooming and Contending) was the slogan of the Hundred Flowers period of 1956. 15 This verbatim quotation from a Lin Biao speech is in Yin Hongbiao, Shizongzhe de zuji, p. 126.

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Some of the students from Guangzhou carried a belief in big democracy with them into the countryside when they were dispersed there in 1968–69, and it played a part in some of the discussion groups on which Yin focuses. This belief in big democracy helped to fuel the writings of a group of former high-school Rebel Red Guards from Guangzhou who in 1974, under the pen-name Li Yizhe, composed a famous long essay, “On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System”. 16 Yin Hongbiao’s book contains more than two dozen separate references to big democracy, and the book makes it obvious that it had adherents across China. What is not clear is whether a belief in big democracy not only developed among Rebel secondary school students during 1967–68 but also influenced university students in Beijing. Possibly not. After all, most of the politically active Beijing university students were caught up in an unusual competition which necessitated staying on-side with members of the CCRG. Yet it is also possible that big democracy did have adherents at Beijing campuses but that they did not normally proclaim their beliefs in faction newsletters and thus did not draw Walder’s attention. After such a long passage of time, as Walder notes, oral reminiscences can be untrustworthy, but this creates a dilemma, since a reliance on documentation can also result in holes in the available evidence. Nonetheless, in most respects Walder’s documentation has served him well. It has enabled him to lay out a coherent chronology of a truly confusing period. It has also enabled him to develop new lines of approach to a number of issues that had not previously been adequately examined. His new book has been researched in admirable depth and at a level of analysis that we have come to expect from him. Overall, Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement makes an important contribution to our knowledge of an extraordinary, tumultuous period in recent Chinese history.

16 On the Li Yizhe group, see Yin Hongbiao, Shizongzhe de zuji, pp. 374-97. Also Anita Chan, Stanley Rosen and Jonathan Unger (eds), On Socialist Democracy and the Chinese Legal System: The Li Yizhe Debates (White Plains: M. E. Sharpe, 1985).

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REVIEWS

Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward: Two Stories, edited by Richard King. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010. 132 pp. US$15.00 (paperback). Recent research on the Great Leap Forward is mostly focused on the destructive and traumatic famine that took place in China between 1959 and 1961 and caused the death of between 15 and 45 million people. In contrast to this trend, Richard King has edited a book, Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward, which includes a short introduction, fresh translations of two pieces of fiction, and a glossary. The first story, A Brief Biography of Li Shuangshuang by Li Zhun, was published in 1960 and is a combination of revolutionary realism and romanticism. Li Shuangshuang is a peasant woman who becomes a heroine of the Great Leap, because she succeeds in setting up Public Dining Halls in her village, against all the doubts of her conservative husband. The story is full of enthusiasm for the campaign, and possibly 300 million people read different versions of it during the Mao era. The second story, which belongs to the “scar literature” of the early reform era, tells a very different story of heroism. In Zhang Yigong’s The Story of the Criminal Li Tongzhong, published in 1980, the honest and responsible party secretary Li steals grain from the public stocks in order to save the lives of hungry peasants. He is then labeled as a criminal by zealot cadres who impose the policies of the Great Leap at all cost and without mercy. All suffering cannot destroy Li’s trust in the Communist Party, because the Party would correct the wrongdoings of local officials in the end. The hero is willing to go to prison for the higher principles of “Serving the People” and the truth. Both stories give the reader deep impressions of the mentalities and narratives of the Great Leap and the famine. Even if they cannot be considered great pieces of literature, they are worth reading. King’s introduction, however, is too basic and short for non-experts to be able to understand the ways in which the official versions of history are reflected in both stories. For example, in The Story of the Criminal Li Tongzhong, peasants are at first ready to die rather than eat stolen grain, and they then beg Chairman Mao for forgiveness, weeping. This is a typical narrative of how Chinese intellectuals and writers imagined loyal and foolish peasants in the early reform era. In reality, underreporting and stealing of grain was a widespread “weapon of the weak”. Interestingly, the careful criticism of the

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Great Leap is focused on local cadres. At the beginning of the famine, a telephone line to the Party Central Committee is cut. In the end, the line is restored and the government takes forceful measures to fight the famine. In contrast to The Story of the Criminal Li Tongzhong, the “Resolution on some questions regarding the history of the Party since the founding of the PRC”, issued in 1981, holds Mao Zedong and leading cadres responsible for the failure of the Great Leap. All in all, King’s small book can be assigned for reading in courses on the Great Leap or on fiction in the Mao era, and is a useful addition to current research on the most terrible catastrophe of New China. Felix Wemheuer University of Vienna

Village China under Socialism and Reform: A Micro-History, 1948–2008, by Huaiyin Li. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. xviii + 402 pp. US$65.00 (hardcover). Village China under Socialism and Reform can be read, on one level, as the recent history of a somewhat nondescript village located in a former marshland area of central Jiangsu Province. It is, however, much more than that. Huaiyin Li presents the story of Qin village, his birthplace, as a microcosm of nationwide processes and patterns. His “micro-history” of an unremarkable village is, from beginning to end, a compelling analysis of the evolution of state–society relations during China’s Maoist and reform eras. One of Li’s main purposes is to trace the critical continuities in the relationship between the Party-state and rural society through the six decades since 1948 and to show that the achievements of the reform era have depended heavily on economic and political foundations laid during the collectivist years. Li argues that the main obstacle to rural development in the Maoist years was not collectivism as such, but the state’s excessive extraction of agricultural products, the mass mobilizations of rural laborers for water-control projects (the costs of which the production teams had to bear), and the state’s strict limits on migration and non-collective economic activities. The big reform-era leaps forward in rural China are largely explained by the sizeable tax reductions of the 1980s and ’90s and the eventual abolition of agricultural taxes, the easing of restrictions on migratory movements and the consequent radical broadening of villagers’ employment opportunities (p. 349). Li challenges “conventional wisdom” on village politics in China since 1949 in a number of important respects. He gives prominence, for example, to the indigenous “subinstitutions” (that is, “social relations, customs, work norms, collective consciousness, and identities”) that were no less important than the state’s formal institutions in determining policy outcomes (p. 3). As a consequence, he finds that Qin villagers were more powerful, had more say in the shaping of government policy, than previous studies of Chinese peasants under Communist Party rule have typically allowed. Li shows how villagers “played a pivotal role in shaping the Party’s agrarian policies in the formative years of the collective system” (pp. 79-80), describing the state–peasant relationship up to 1957 as “conciliatory”. Communization and the Great

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Leap Forward certainly deepened state penetration and control of rural society, but the Great Leap disasters and peasant resistance to radical collectivism forced a return to many of the more moderate practices of the mid-1950s, including the reinstatement the as the basic accounting unit and tolerance of some independent family farming. Constant factors underpinning peasant foot-dragging, non- compliance, resistance and protest were those “subinstitutional social bases of formal structures” that Li keeps in focus throughout his study; peasant behavior, he argues, was “an outcome of the interaction between the formal systems imposed from above and informal institutions embedded in the rural communities” (p. 8), and peasant behaviors contributed significantly to the shaping of Party policy. That does not mean that peasants under Party rule were stick-in-the-muds, resistant to change. Li points to two critically significant societal changes since 1949: first, the villagers’ age-old protest strategies of “righteous resistance” are increasingly being replaced by a “rightful resistance”; second, rural communities, less “governed” by the state centre in the reform era, are developing self-government capabilities. Both processes are the product of rising education levels in rural areas as well as a political savvy learned by peasants who lived through the mass campaigns of the Maoist era and who have been repeatedly called upon to “supervise” their local leaders. As early as the 1950s, some “élite” villagers had quickly learned that they had the right to protest against cadre malfeasance, particularly when their protest was expressed in the language of Party ideology; they found that such “rightful” protest was more potent than a resistance driven by a traditional moral “righteousness” (that is, assertions of the right to subsistence). Li acknowledges that, in the widespread opposition to collectivization in the mid-fifties, the division between “righteous” and “rightful” resistance was often blurred. In the reform era, however, knowledge of “rights” is much broader and more than ever the Party-state needs the villagers’ help in combating corrupt and criminal behavior among cadres. Rightful resistance, he suggests, is now quite common. On the other hand, any progress from “being governed” to “governing” is incipient rather than clearly evident at present. Li concedes that top-downism is still deeply entrenched; the “state is used to imposing its will on society”, and Qin villagers find it difficult “to cultivate the spirit and abilities of self-government after having lived under an all-powerful state for half a century” (p. 333). Even so, he says, villagers’ initiatives are required if the increasingly privatized TVEs are to survive and prosper; this points up a need for state–society partnerships in which “self-motivated villagers [interact] fruitfully with the state to advance their collective as well as individual interests” (p. 334). That need, together with the strivings of rural young people “to change their status from the stigmatized peasants to citizens”, gives cause for some optimism in relation to the project of village self-government (p. 314). Li notes, however, that most rural youths, more highly educated than any previous generation, do not see their futures in the village (p. 313). What ramifications does the exodus of youth have for village self-government and for village communities in general? The book’s conclusion reflects on the prospects for

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“the development of grassroots democracy in rural China”, but does not consider how urbanization and the shredding of rural communities by rural-to-urban migration might impinge on those prospects. Little attention is given to environmental problems. The “green revolution” that began in the 1970s is celebrated as a liberation of farm families; the introduction of chemical fertilizers, insecticides and machines resulted in a “remarkable growth in land productivity” (p. 257); it also significantly reduced the time that farmers needed to invest in farm-work, freeing them for work in more profitable enterprises once the reforms provided this freedom. The environmental “cost of development”, including water contamination and rising cancer rates, is summarized in Chapter 11 in just two paragraphs (pp. 288-89). Overall, however, the lacunae in this study should be judged as minor; Li’s study covers just about everything of relevance in a Mao-to-Hu history of Qin village in central Jiangsu, and complaints about what it leaves out are really quibbles. Some might want to question the author’s impartiality. From the 1950s to the early 1980s, his father served as village, team and brigade accountant, and finally brigade head before he retired. Large parts of several chapters draw on Huaiyin Li’s interviews with his father and other Qin villagers—people, he says, “who never treated me as an outsider during my visits to them on many summer evenings” (p. xv). His close relationships with his informants may well have inhibited Li from “telling all”. On the other hand, his privileged access through family and friends to local material, especially data on village, team and brigade finances, and his own boyhood experience of growing up in Qin village, represent a resource that few scholars in this field can match, and this more than compensates for any “partial” treatment that there might be in Li’s study of the people close to him. The book is the product of impeccable scholarship, a combination of rigorous archival research and extensive fieldwork. Huaiyin Li’s firsthand knowledge and personal connections have enabled him to probe a village community’s “informal and often invisible structures”, and he has persuasively demonstrated the critical role that those “subinstitutions” have played in determining the direction of Party–peasant relations in Qin village, a microcosm of village China, during the PRC’s first 60 years. Pauline Keating Victoria University of Wellington

The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation, by Prasenjit Duara. London: Routledge, 2009. xii + 253 pp. £85.00/US$170.00 (hardcover), £21.99/ US$31.95 (paperback). In The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation, Prasenjit Duara proposes a recasting of modern Chinese history—a shift from the “proscriptive and normative” approach of nation-centered historiography towards recognition of the global and the regional as important constitutive forces and interpretive arenas in shaping modern China.

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Duara has been an influential presence in the field of modern Chinese history over the last 20 years. His Culture, Power and the State, Rural China 1900-1942 (1988), Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (1995) and Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (2003) have made seminal contributions to the field. His latest offering, published as part of the Routledge Critical Asian Scholarship series, is a collection of nine articles or chapters from earlier and more recent work (some of which have been re-worked, usually with added introductions or conclusions), highlighting the extrinsic dimensions determining modern Chinese historical experience and the flows and interlinkages between the domestic/national and the external/supranational spheres. In part, the collection serves as a retrospective of Duara’s contributions to the field on nationalism and imperialism, modern state building, hegemony and popular religion. It also traces the growing importance of global and transnational perspectives in Duara’s approach and recontextualizes earlier work in this light. In his introduction, Duara situates his theoretical approach against the backdrop of the post-Cold War period: an era in which the certainties of narratives of national modernization have been displaced and neo-liberal theories of globalization have gained discursive force. The nation-state, as Duara reminds us, has both global and national functions and he proposes an “historical globalization hypothesis” as an alternative to nation-centered histories. Such an approach emphasizes the way the nation-state has been shaped by global circulations and systems of knowledge and power. The essence of historical globalization, argues Duara, is the increasing elaboration and creative tensions over the last 150 years between three major inter-related systems on a global scale: world capitalism, the nation-state system and state sovereignty, and “hegemonic modernity” (the hegemonic status of modern apprehensions of time and history as linear and progressive). These systems have functioned both independently and in concert but also in conflict (for example, world capitalism vs. nation-states) to produce much of the history of the late 19th- and 20th-century world. The book divides into three sections. Part 1 presents three recent writings which trace the tangled skein of imperialism and nationalism and their transformations in East Asia from the late 19th century up to the present day. The first examines the interconnected histories of Korea, Japan and China and the different reception of global categories such as race and nation into these societies against an increasingly powerful backdrop of Japanese modernization and nationalized empire. National societies in each place, argues Duara, have been shaped by global circulations of “capital, institutions and ideas” intersecting with regional unities and linkages which ‘bind nations together in rivalry and independence” (p. 21). The second examines the “schizoid” ideology of late 19th- century and early 20th-century Japanese imperialism as a new global formation in which Japan, intent upon aggrandizement in world terms also reinvented the categories of empire and nation by emphasizing fraternal bonds and the liberation of “free nations” under its imperial control. In the case of Manchukuo, this led to

220 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 the elaborate charade of the creation of an “independent” modern developmental state. Duara proposes post-World War 2 US imperialism as a further refinement of this imperialism of “free nations”—the global development of a form of domination that becomes expressed as a form of federalism in which the hierarchical distinction between core power and periphery all but dissolves. The final chapter in this section moves to the present and examines the implications of intensifying globalization for changing historical understandings of sovereignty, territoriality and community in reform-era China in the context of East Asia. In the second part of the book, sub-titled “Society and Religion”, Duara presents three substantial and theoretically-challenging writings from earlier works. First is his examination of the Guandi myth as a mode of symbolic communication and legitimation associated with the Chinese imperial state in the context of the shift from imperial to national forms of state power. The seminal article from 1993, “Deconstructing the Chinese Nation, How Recent is It?”, follows, and a slightly reworked chapter on modernity and women within patriarchal régimes in East Asia from Sovereignty and Authenticity completes this section. In Part 3, Duara turns to comparisons. First, he presents an illuminating and theoretically-informed comparative analysis of the discursive and governmental régimes shaping and constricting the place of Chinese migrants in the colonial Dutch East Indies as opposed to the modern nation state, the USA, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The section is rounded out by two essays on the China– India comparison, one from 1995 on critics of modernity in China and India, and a more recent essay which examines the divergent national formations of post- independence India and New China after 1949. The great appeal of this collection is it gives an excellent overview of the many provocative theoretical insights that this major scholar offers in his writing. The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation also sketches out a provocative new paradigm for historians of modern China, East Asia and, indeed, the modern world. Justin Tighe The University of Melbourne

A History of the Modern Chinese Army, by Xiaobing Li. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009. xvi + 413 pp. US$39.95 (hardcover), US$27.95 (paperback). How did the PLA transform itself from a peasant army in the late 1940s into the professional military force that it is today? What domestic and external drivers were at work? What successes and failures paved the way to the ongoing modernization of the PLA, and at what price—human and otherwise? These are the fundamental questions that Xiaobing Li addresses in his engaging survey history of the Chinese defense establishment. Ambitious in its scope, Li’s book highlights major aspects of the development of the PLA from its pre-1949 Red

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Army roots through the accession of Hu Jintao to the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission in 2004. If Li were to offer a central thesis to sum up over sixty years of Chinese military modernization it would be this: “Chinese military reform took place only within the greater context of the newly founded republic, constrained by how far the Communist Party was willing to go and what Chinese society at large could support” (p. 114). At its heart, then, this book is a political–military , not strictly a military history or a history of the PLA per se. Li offers a simultaneously institutional, operational and political history of China’s military. As an institutional history, Li adds his voice to those of Ellis Joffe (Party and Army: Professionalism and Political Control in the Chinese Officer Corps, 1949-1964 [1965]), Harlan Jencks (From Muskets to Missiles: Politics and Professionalism in the Chinese Army, 1945-1981 [1982]), and Monte Bullard (China’s Political-Military Evolution: The Party and the Military in the PRC, 1960- 1984 [1985]). Li covers much of the same ground but updates the story of PLA institutional change through 2004 and makes the total story accessible. Specialists may be frustrated at the cursory treatment which some major events in PLA institutional history receive (such as the wide-ranging implications of Deng’s 1985 “strategic decision”), but non-specialists will be grateful for a non-recondite survey that highlights all of the important turning points. As an operational history, this book introduces readers to the PLA’s various conflicts since 1949: Korea (1950–53), the first Taiwan Straits crises (1954, 1958), India (1962), the border engagements with the Soviets (1969), Vietnam (1979) and the Taiwan “missile crises” of 1995 and 1996. Being a survey, Li’s operational narrative is not likely to satisfy those looking for detailed campaign histories. That said, Li more than compensates by offering discussion probably not to be found elsewhere. For example, this may be one of the few books in English to discuss the nasty border war which Beijing and Hanoi fought for nearly a decade after the 1979 withdrawal of PLA troops from Vietnam. Some readers may be surprised to learn that between 1965 and 1970 the PLA rotated 320,000 troops through North Vietnam to man air defenses against American aircraft (p. 205), and that PLA and Soviet military advisors raced each other to American aircraft crash sights to be the first to obtain the advanced avionics (p. 222). (Li quotes one PLA veteran as quipping that in Vietnam the Chinese troops had two enemies, “the American imperialists in the sky, and the Soviet revisionists on the ground” [p. 220].) Among this book’s fine attributes, two stand out. The first is that it offers in English a Chinese perspective, in that Li has mined a wealth of Chinese primary and secondary sources to inform his narrative. In conducting his research, Li had access to various PRC provincial government and Party Committee archives, PLA document collections, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives. He also had access to primary sources on Taiwan, allowing him to cover the Straits crises of 1954 and 1958 from both sides. As for secondary works, the bibliography lists nearly 200 Chinese titles. Overall, Li does a very credible job of walking the fine line of

222 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 exploiting these Chinese sources without being uncritically co-opted by the official historiographies in which he was immersed. The lens through which this history is seen, therefore, is Chinese. This constitutes a contribution to the growing body of English-language scholarship on the PLA. The second significant contribution is in humanizing the Chinese military experience. Through interviews with veterans of China’s wars—from privates to generals—Li introduces us to the people in the People’s Liberation Army. A former enlisted man on the Sino–Soviet border (1969–1973), the author writes empathetically of the suffering, heroism and sometimes cowardice of the common Chinese soldier, from Korea to Vietnam. His use of interviews, supplemented by biographies (zhuan) and memoirs (huiyilu), helps us to see the face of battle from China’s side of the lines. In its entirety, this study shows the story of PLA modernization as the story of grappling with seven major “contradictions”: (1) politics vs. professionalism, (2) external vs. internal threats, (3) homeland defense vs. régime defense, (4) the need for reform vs. institutional inertia, (5) the demands of civil society vs. the needs of the PLA, (6) indigenous modernization vs. foreign acquisition, and (7) central command and control vs. local initiative. All told, A History of the Modern Chinese Army has much to commend it. Specialists of the PLA will want this book on their shelves and will be particularly interested in the primary and secondary sources cited by Li, especially works from the various PLA publishing houses. Lay readers will also find this a useful political–military history providing a narrative introduction to a very complex period in Chinese history. Educators will find this book useful, for there are far too few works in English covering the military dimensions of modern Chinese history for college-level survey courses: this book will be an excellent supplement to the standard textbooks. Li is to be commended for this grand study. David M. Finkelstein Center for Naval Analyses, China Studies

East River Column: Hong Kong Guerillas in the Second World War and After, by Chan Sui-jeung. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. xvi + 182 pp. HK$250.00/US$34.50 (hardcover). The East River Column was a Communist-led resistance group in the Hong Kong area during the Sino–Japanese War of 1937–45. In the English-speaking world, this group has primarily been known because of its heroic efforts in aiding British and Commonwealth prisoners of war who escaped from Japanese internment camps after the fall of Hong Kong in December 1941. Later in the war, the group played an equally important role in rescuing American pilots who were shot down over Japanese-held territory. Chan Sui-jeung’s important new study, however, gives us a much broader picture of this group and its role in modern Chinese history. Although not an academic historian, Chan is the ideal author for such a study. He has consulted extensive British and Chinese sources, including archival material and conducted a wide range of interviews, aided in part by his personal

REVIEWS 223 connections through his late father, Chan Kwok-wing. The elder Chan had been stationed in Kunming during the war as part of the British Army Aid Group (BAAG) and was among the first to return to Hong Kong after Japanese surrender. BAAG worked with Chinese guerillas to help allied personnel escaping Japanese- held territory. The East River Column got its start after the outbreak of the Sino–Japanese War and the fall of Guangzhou to the Japanese in October 1938. This left the then neutral territory of Hong Kong adjacent to occupied territory. Drawing on extensive Communist elements in the Guangdong area, the group was headed by , son of Liao Zhongkai and a CCP member since 1927. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the organization worked in Hong Kong with United Front organizations such as the Chinese Defense League to channel funds from overseas Chinese to the resistance cause. A key element in the organization, Chan notes, was the dominance of Hakka. Both Liao and another key leader, Zeng Sheng, were Hakka; a high percentage of the membership and many of the contacts among overseas Chinese also belonged to this group. Liao received permission from Yan’an to form a guerilla band in the territory around Hong Kong. Approximately 3,000 guerillas, including 600–700 Party members, were in the initial group. Aside from helping approximately 100 British and Americans to escape the Japanese, they were also instrumental in assisting Chinese leftists to flee the Crown Colony when the British surrendered. After the New Fourth Army Incident in January 1941, a number of intellectuals, including Mao Dun, Zou Taofen and Feng Zhi, had left “Free China” for Hong Kong, and needed to flee anew in early 1942. The Japanese were not the only worry for the East River Column, however. authorities in Chongqing were very suspicious of the group because of their Communist connections, and were largely successful in preventing the British or Americans from providing aid to the Column. When the Japanese surrendered, the KMT made every effort to attack and disband the group, refusing to recognize their role in the war. This effort might have succeeded, except for the enormous goodwill which the East River Column had built up with the British and Americans because of their aid during the war. Eventually the Americans transported 2,500 of the guerilla forces to Yantai in Shandong as part of a cease- fire agreement between the Communists and Nationalists. The East River Column personnel also had their difficulties with the CCP central leadership. The CCP remnants in south China increasingly ran afoul of Mao’s headquarters before 1949, and many suffered during the People’s Republic. Early in the war, for instance, Yan’an rebuked Zeng Sheng for moving his forces without permission. However, most of the difficulty came after the establishment of the PRC, when the northern cadres sent from Beijing clashed with Party members who were natives of Guangdong and had been involved with the wartime resistance. The clash was also cultural and linguistic: few of the Guangdong natives spoke “Putonghua”, and few of the northerners spoke Cantonese or Hakka. When Mao became unhappy with the slow pace of land reform in Guangdong, he sent the hardliner Tao Zhu, a

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Hunanese, to take over in November 1950, accompanied by Zhao Ziyang. Many of the East River Column cadres were attacked for “localism” and removed from office. Worse came in the Cultural Revolution period. Veterans of the Column were targeted, often accused of working for the British and American imperialists during the war. Many were imprisoned, some committed suicide. Zeng Sheng, who had served as mayor of Guangzhou, was placed in solitary confinement in Beijing’s Qincheng prison. Rehabilitation was slow in coming, even in the reform era. This book is both fascinating and important. It will be of great interest to scholars studying World War II in Asia, providing full coverage of a Chinese guerilla force which worked closely with the Allies. At the same time, this study is very revealing of CCP internal politics, particularly in the Guangdong area. Parks M. Coble University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese, by Law Wing Sang. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. xii + 262 pp. HK$350.00/US$45.00 (hardcover), HK$195.00/US$25.00 (paperback). During the 1980s and early 1990s, it was sometimes said that Hong Kong’s renderings of its history were trapped between a Western or British narrative stressing Hong Kong’s extraordinary colonial success apart from China and a mainland Chinese narrative stressing Hong Kong’s colonial humiliations and coming return to the motherland; Hong Kong’s own historical narrative had yet to spring forth. In recent years, a number of historians of Hong Kong have emerged to tell Hong Kong’s own story in a subtler and more nuanced way than these earlier narratives. With this book, the cultural studies scholar Law Wing Sang joins this new breed of Hong Kong chroniclers. The argument of the book is that colonial power in Hong Kong was never simply a political force but rather a complex web of relationships—it was a collaborative colonialism. This theme has been present in a number of recent books on Hong Kong, such as those of Tak-wing Ngo and John Carroll, but is particularly and forcefully articulated here. Part One focuses on collaborative colonialism from the first Opium War through to the Republican Revolution. Chapter 1 depicts the “(self-)making of the colonial Hong Kong Chinese elite” (p. 20) during the late 19th century, examining the establishment of Tung Wah Hospital in the 1870s as a core institution in such collaboration. Chapter 2 examines English language and schooling in early Hong Kong, analyzing the various pronouncements of James Legge and showing how the newly-established educational system privileged the Hong Kong Chinese élite who learned in English, and marginalized other Chinese residents who did not—a social class exclusion very much sought by the Chinese élite, according to Law. Chapter 3 considers Hong Kong University and its founding by Frederick Lugard in the early 20th century as “a strategy by which colonizers might tap native rule and integrate it into colonial rule” (p. 71), thereby creating common ground between the British imperial colonizers and Chinese nationalists in Hong Kong.

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Part Two covers the 20th century. Chapter 4 deals with the important colonial Hong Kong intellectual Ho Kai, portraying him as having a double identity of “culturally Chinese and politically British” (p. 95). Chapter 5 considers Chinese cultural nationalism in the 1920s, and depicts how leading southbound Chinese intellectuals saw Hong Kong as “a filthy corner of an unreclaimed Chinese territory … backward, vulgar, and colonized” (pp. 113, 115). Chapter 6 looks at the Cold War era, during which American government money funded numerous anti- Communist publications in Hong Kong. Among these was Chinese Students Weekly, which adopted a “free–dictatorial, us–them” standpoint towards the mainland, reversing the hierarchy between Hong Kong and China felt in earlier decades. Part Three examines Hong Kong of the handover era. Chapter 7 examines the indigenization of colonial power, arguing that “decolonization … is still an objective to be longed for a decade after the Chinese authorities … assumed their governmental power in Hong Kong” (p. 152, italics in original). This chapter focuses on the journal Panku and its shifting usages of the term “return”; it also examines the writings of Lau Siu-kai, explicating his well-known term utilitarian familiarism, as a sociological justification for colonial rule in Hong Kong. Chapter 8, the final substantive chapter, explores “northbound colonialism”, a “creeping civilizing mission lacking only a church and a clergy” (p. 186), whereby Hong Kong people in effect sought to replicate their own colonization by colonizing the world to their north. Given the mainland’s growing economic power and influence over Hong Kong, this is a trend that seems less the case today than it was when this book was apparently first written. A significant flaw in this book is that it is dated—almost all of the book’s references seem to have come directly from the 2002 doctoral dissertation from which it has emerged, with little attention paid to the last eight years. At one point (p. 184), Law refers to the “present Chief Executive of the HKSAR” as Tung Chee Hwa, who resigned in 2005 after massive protests in 2003 and 2004. It is unfortunate that a book copyrighted in 2009 should not have been revised to reflect recent events: “collaborative colonialism” has taken fascinating new turns over the past decade, but they are not reflected here. Readers who like their history presented in a straightforward fashion should be forewarned that the book’s arguments are couched in cultural studies jargon, and are not for the uninitiated. The book’s recounting of history revolves around texts and journals and intellectual institutions, leaving socio–political events to one side. This analysis is invaluable for those who know Hong Kong’s history well, but may at points leave the non-specialist baffled. Despite these caveats, this book does a valuable job in bringing to light aspects of Hong Kong history that have long been ignored, and in offering a convincing portrayal of the collaborative complexities of Hong Kong colonialism over the territory’s history through detailed textual analysis. For this it is well worth reading. Gordon Mathews The Chinese University of Hong Kong

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Hong Kong’s Watershed: The 1967 Riots, by Gary Ka-wai Cheung. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. viii + 241 pp. HK$195.00/US$25.00 (paperback). The year 2007 saw a number of events commemorating and evaluating the 40th anniversary of the 1967 riots, as well as simultaneous events assessing the first decade since the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Gary Ka- wai Cheung’s book was first published in Chinese in 2000, but its publication in English is clearly related to a period in which the history of the former British colony received a great deal of scrutiny, as its future had in 1997. I think that it is safe to predict that the useful longevity of these historical volumes will be much greater than that of most of the books attempting to forecast Hong Kong’s prospects during the handover. While Cheung’s descriptive account of the 1967 riots is not a definitive analysis, it has strengths that will make it an important resource for future scholars. Notable among these strengths are the interviews that he conducted with a variety of people involved in the events, which are reproduced in full at the end of the book. The events of 1967 were of great importance, and as the author stresses, until recently have not received the attention that they deserved, at least in part because they raised extremely sensitive issues that were even more awkward before the issue of Hong Kong’s future had been resolved between London and Beijing. As the title indicates, Cheung believes that 1967 was a watershed in Hong Kong’s history: the riots “prompted the colonial administration to introduce sweeping social reforms in labour rights, education, public housing and social welfare” and profoundly affected the subsequent political climate (p. 3). Diagnosing the impact of the confrontations and violence of 1967, however, requires some consideration of counterfactual history. If 1967 had been the calmest of years, would none of the indicated changes have taken place? The problem for Cheung is that the Star Ferry riots of 1966 had also been interpreted as demonstrating the emergence of a dangerous gap between the colonial government and the people, and the risks of neglecting rising expectations when residents began to develop a stronger identity as Hong Kong people with legitimate claims for better governance. Government reactions to the 1966 events suggest that similar reforms would have happened anyway. Indeed, the 1967 riots and bombings could be, and were, dismissed by the government as indicating not disaffection among the population but as externally inspired by elements that wanted to export the Cultural Revolution to Hong Kong, after their successes in Macau. There was a strong public reaction against the violence, particularly against bombs that hurt innocent children, so that in some ways the colonial government’s situation was stronger after 1967 than it had been after the Star Ferry Riot. Domestic problems were more clearly revealed in 1966 than during 1967. As a result, most discussions of social reforms in Hong Kong refer to the influence of “1966 and 1967”. The strongest case for an independent reform impetus from 1967 may be found in an argument by Leo Goodstadt when he was interviewed: “Following the failure of the general strike in June 1967, the Hong Kong government had to accept that the city belonged to the people of Hong Kong and the fate of the city had been decided by the people of Hong Kong” (p. 137).

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Cheung makes a stronger case, though, for viewing the riots as a watershed in the political environment within Hong Kong, especially in regard to beginning the processes which led to the negotiations for the return of Hong Kong. Confidential archival documents allow Cheung to demonstrate that “the British government realized after the 1967 riots that Hong Kong’s future eventually lay in China and Britain’s objective must be to attempt to negotiate with Beijing the return of Hong Kong at a favourable time in the future” (p. 140). The resolution of the conflict also resulted in the initiation of contacts and discussions that would later form the basis for the secret phase of the negotiations. Hong Kong’s Watershed is valuable because of its inclusion of these primary materials, and because it provides a clearly documented chronicle of the events of 1967, grounded in a variety of different perspectives. It is fairly well written, but could have benefitted from another round of careful copy-editing. While primarily of interest to those concerned with Hong Kong, it is also relevant to scholars of Chinese international relations, because of the importance of Hong Kong in Chinese affairs. Eventually, we can hope that archival research in the People’s Republic will give us a fuller understanding of China’s side of the story, which is partially revealed here through interviews, published memoirs and contemporary newspaper accounts. The central story of how a non-democratic government responds to serious unrest and challenges to its authority and future is also of broader relevance. Alan Smart University of Calgary

China’s Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections, 1900–1950, edited by Daniel H. Bays and Ellen Widmer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. xiv + 405 pp. US$65.00 (hardcover), US$24.95 (paperback). China’s Christian Colleges fills an important gap in the historiography of the Christian higher . This edited volume builds on the early studies by Jessie G. Lutz, Philip West and Zhang Kaiyuan to examine the cross-cultural interactions that took place at Chinese Protestant colleges during the 20th century. This work argues that the appropriation of western educational practices was a reciprocal process which involved foreign missionaries, Chinese educators and students. It draws on unpublished archival materials to explore the Sino–American experiment of Christian higher education, the hybrid cultures on the college campuses, and the students’ contributions to modernization and nation-building. All the thirteen chapters are grouped thematically into five sections. Part one reviews the secularization of Protestant missionary education in China. Terrill E. Lautz looks at the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, a body founded in 1886 to recruit American university graduates to become missionaries. The early 20th century saw a significant shift towards secularism, and many missionary applicants were interested in humanitarian, educational and medical works rather than evangelization. This secularism coincided with China’s quest for modernization.

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The transplantation of American Christian higher education is covered in Part Two. Jeffrey W. Cody points out that in constructing the Protestant colleges, many architects deliberately combined traditional courtyards with modern public squares and tall buildings to create a campus space for Christianizing and civilizing Chinese students. Even though these colleges were nationalized after 1949, their campuses remain intact and are regarded as the most elaborate architectural works in modern China. Ryan Dunch assesses the principles and practices of the college curriculum. During the 1880s and 1890s, most colleges used classical Chinese as the medium of instruction and published Chinese learning materials on applied sciences, religion and humanities. However, when the imperial government abolished the civil service examination in 1905, classical Chinese lost its appeal. The college educators immediately adopted an English curriculum and emphasized the teaching of applied sciences for China’s development. Ellen Widmer looks at the international partnership between Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Ginling College in Nanjing. While Smith College attracted many well-educated Chinese women to continue their academic studies in the United States, the China mission field enabled American female graduates to pursue their professional careers, which they would not have been able to do at home. When nationalism gained strength in the 1920s, the medium of instruction and the focus of academic studies became contentious issues. Part Three reviews the colleges’ responses to nationalism. Edward Yihua Xu evaluates the English academic curriculum at St. John’s University in Shanghai. Founded by the American Episcopal Church in 1879, St. John’s was the most anglicized university there, with strong emphasis on professional studies such as journalism, medicine, agriculture, library sciences and laws. However, this English-speaking learning environment was criticized by Chinese nationalists as drawing students away from their heritage. Dong Wang follows the missionary career of Charles K. Edmunds. When Edmunds was president of the Canton Christian College (later known as Lingnan University) from 1907 to 1924, the acquisition of English was a prerequisite for students. But he actively promoted the study of Chinese history and culture on campus. Upon his return to the United States, he drew on his China experience to create a department of Oriental affairs at Pomona College. This was the first Asian studies program at an American liberal arts institution. Many Christian colleges offered professional studies programs to attract students. According to Helen Schneider, missionary Ava B. Milan designed home economics at Yenching University to provide Chinese women with a sense of professional womanhood and practical skills for a modern society. Another example was Soochow University Law School, the only professional school to teach Anglo–American law in China. Alison W. Conner stresses that Soochow’s unique curriculum helped students to integrate liberal arts education with legal training. Politicization had a far-reaching impact on Christian colleges in the mid-20th century, a theme addressed in Part Four. Susan Rigdon takes a critical look at citizenship education. When the Republican state implemented the National Salvation movement in the 1930s, it demanded the colleges to propagate patriotic nationalism

REVIEWS 229 among students. Consequently, loyalty to the Chinese state took precedence over membership in a global Christian community. Jiafeng Liu examines the American plan for Christian colleges after the Second World War. Concerned with the need for postwar recovery, many Chinese educators sought to train a new generation of specialists to assist with social and economic reconstruction. The status of Chinese studies was another contentious issue in the colleges. The Harvard-Yenching Institute, founded in 1928 to promote the study of Chinese culture, was hailed as an exception to the conventional focus on sciences and professional training. Paul Daniel Waite and Peichi Tung Waite reveal the conflicting versions of Harvard and Yenching administrators regarding the development of Asian studies. Harvard intended to educate Americans about Chinese arts and culture, but Yenching was determined to provide fellowships for Chinese students preparing for graduate research on China. How representative was the Chinese example of Christian higher education is discussed in part five. Yuko Takahashi refers to Japan’s Tsuda College, which taught Japanese women the western ideals of marital partnership, individuality and self-discipline, and provided them with practical skills to compete in a fast- changing world. Ted Widmer discusses the problem of politicization in Turkey’s Robert College. Its English curriculum contributed to the success of Robert College, but the close connection with the United States provoked serious anti-foreign attacks when the Turkish society became increasingly nationalistic. As a result, the college campus was taken over by the government in the 1970s. The Japanese and Turkish stories paralleled the experience of Chinese Christian colleges. Considered together, all the chapters highlight the global and local forces that shaped the development of Christian higher education in China. The success of these colleges had to do with the system of modern educational management. The American educational missionaries worked closely with Chinese faculty members to design the goals, contents and structure of the academic curriculum. They introduced a range of liberal arts and professional studies programs, and implemented experiential learning at different levels. Methodologically, the editors skillfully integrate a China-centered perspective with comparative studies on Japan and Turkey. Their findings show that the transmission of western educational ideals and pedagogical practices never took place in a vacuum. On some occasions, the American educators intended to promote religious and professional studies but their Chinese colleagues were determined to educate critical minds and train specialists. Only by understanding these interactions can we appreciate the continuity and change of these colleges, and their longstanding impacts and legacy in China today. In short, China’s Christian Colleges is an important reference work. It is authoritative, balanced and insightful, and should be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of Sino–American encounters and the development of modern education in China. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee Pace University in New York

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Chinese Utopianism: A Comparative Study of Reformist Thought with Japan and Russia, 1898–1997, by Shiping Hua. Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. xviii + 186 pp. US$35.00 (hardcover). In his latest of many works on Chinese political culture, Hua Shiping widens his focus to how utopian thought in Japan, Russia and China related to political reforms that in turn were responses to internal and external challenges. In this short work (107 pages of text and 46 pages of notes, plus bibliography), Hua utilizes a breadth of Chinese, Russian and Western sources to make bold generalizations and comparisons, some of which are provocative while others seem over-generalized. His main thesis is that the varying directions taken by reforms in the three countries from the 19th century to the present were heavily influenced by varying forms of utopianism, a term he defines as hope for a future ideal society. Even readers skeptical of the political culture approach will find this book useful. Just as one may accept that homeopathic practices such as acupuncture or chiropractic can achieve successful results even if one doubts the validity of the theories underlying those practices, so too can one question whether the hypotheses generated by the political culture approach are really falsifiable and yet still find the approach useful as a suggestive form of analysis. Hua finds that Japan’s tradition of an “optimistic tone toward life” and a “moral relativism” based on particularistic values made social transformations easier for Japanese people. Hua claims that Japan’s culture of borrowing from other countries led to a more inclusive attitude toward religions, which in turn was more conducive to the growth of a pluralistic society and made it much easier for Japan to adopt modernizing reforms, including the Meiji Restoration and Japan’s democratization after WWII. In this broad generalization, Hua mostly ignores the flaws in the Meiji constitution and the militaristic elements of its political culture that led to military rule in Japan during the 1930s and ’40s, a system which had to be forcibly removed by the United States before Japan could democratize. Nevertheless, even a person who questions the empirical basis of Hua’s claims can still find provocative his view of the relative pluralism of Japanese society, a view at odds with that of many Western scholars. In a similarly idiosyncratic vein, Hua sees China’s political culture as based on more universalistic values than are found in Japan’s tradition, especially China’s Confucian tradition of datong, or “Grand Harmony”, which Hua posits as a hope for a collective good which provided a more monistic and egalitarian influence on Chinese political culture. This view contrasts with Western views of Chinese Confucianism as leading to a particularistic political culture which, if not as rigidly enforced as in Japan, justified a hierarchical society that made national unity very hard to achieve in the face of modern challenges from the 19th century to the present (a view reflected in Sun Yatsen’s famous phrase about China being made up of loose grains of sand). Hua mostly equates the Daoist tradition of taiping, or “Great Peace”, with the datong tradition, in contrast to those who distinguish between a Confucian, state-centered, hierarchically organized system and a Daoist egalitarianism that has been drawn upon throughout Chinese history to challenge that tradition. Also, by raising the Confucian

REVIEWS 231 fallback position of xiaokang or “lesser prosperity”, Hua is able to explain quite different types of Chinese rulers, who in fact very seldom pushed for datong. In sum, the idiosyncratic nature of his approach and the factors which he ignores or downplays perhaps demonstrate both the non-falsifiability problem of the political culture approach and its potential for generating suggestive generalizations. As an example of the latter, Hua’s suggestion of continuity between the monistic aspects of the Confucian datong tradition and the attempted “reforms” of Chairman Mao in the Great Leap Forward and especially the Cultural Revolution seems to ring true, echoing the idea that Mao “Confucianized” Marxism, as many others have noted. In the most useful section of the book, Hua should be commended for distinguishing between three different lines of policy in Leninist China and Russia, which he identifies as the Stalinist, Maoist and Khrushchev-type approaches. Hua recognizes that the three approaches overlap, as in the price-scissors squeeze on peasants in both the Maoist and Stalinist periods and the lack of meaningful political decentralization in Stalinist and Dengist periods. Nevertheless, the three lines represent different responses to challenges of modernization. One could certainly question some of Hua’s particular arguments, such as using the label “reform” for each of the three approaches, the failure to distinguish fully between the abandoned “Shanghai Commune” model in the Cultural Revolution and the more élite-directed Revolutionary Committees, and especially his equating of the policies of both Mao and Deng as types of “decentralization”, mostly ignoring that one decentralized politics to the control of autocratic “little Maos” while the other decentralized economic policies to provincial leaders. Nevertheless, Hua’s sharp focus on shifts between the three poles of should be very valuable for students of comparative Communism. Though he accepts the partial utility of “structural” explanations for differences between the reforms of Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping, Hua ultimately finds the “holistic way of thinking” in China to be the best explanation for Deng’s focus on economic rather than political reform. Again, even for those readers who would question the empirical base for this claim, the distinctions that he draws and the often- facile assumptions which he questions make this book a provocative and useful read. John A. Rapp Beloit College

Other-Worldly: Making Chinese Medicine Through Transnational Frames, by Mei Zhan. Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2009. xiv + 240 pp. US$79.95 (hardcover), US$22.95 (paperback). In this complex study of a difficult and relatively unexplored subject, Mei Zhan tackles issues that evade the radar screens of most scholars in the China field. She asks what happens at the level of people’s lives and how they understand the world when supposed essentially Chinese beliefs and cultural practices encounter worlds across the oceans. She shows that Chinese medicine is never fixed, is in a constant state of flux and is very receptive to being transformed in the process of its encounters

232 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 across borders. The very act of crossing borders in both geographical terms and in imaginary terms renders a state of entanglement and reconstruction. Many are confident that China will be much more influential on a global scale both politically and economically. While the published arguments as to why this would be so are many, scanty in the extreme are those who argue that China’s classical thought and concomitant philosophical values will feature in this new arrangement in the global architecture. Chinese medicine, however, is one feature that is inexorably globalizing, as it gradually moves into mainstream health care systems across the world and becomes, for many people, their first encounter with things “Chinese”. The cosmological worldview that sees qi, yin, yang and wu xing as crucial not only survives but encompasses concepts which have become known to vast numbers of people outside China. In her ethnography, Zhan sets out to describe the “worlding” of Chinese medicine. Her key argument is that there is no fixed Chinese medicine, and that it changes meaning across borders. She argues that the concept of globalization is inadequate to describe the constant making and re-making of Chinese medicine in translocal and transnational settings. She consciously refers to the term “worlding”, coined by Martin Heidegger, to avoid what she describes as globalist assumptions of totality, transition and transcendence. Using such a theoretical framework, she also draws on work on “worlding” by Gayatri Spivak and Dipesh Chakrabarty. Zhan spent ten years visiting locales of Chinese medicine on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, and her fieldwork outside China focused on the San Francisco Bay area. She recounts many stories from her fieldwork, fitting them into her overall analysis focusing on translocality and entanglements of knowledge. This study is of interest for those who wish to explore the complexities of how so-called “Chinese” knowledge is created and re-created in translocal settings. The implications of Zhan’s arguments are not limited to Chinese medicine and, although the message is subtle and indirect, she shows that China is changing the world in ways that most people have not even considered. The first part of the study discusses entanglements and the ways in which Chinese medicine is part of a larger project of worlding. Zhan describes China’s sending of teams throughout the Third World and especially to Africa. From the 1960s to the 1970s, many African people encountered Chinese culture in the form of acupuncture. Chinese medicine was reinvented in a largely African setting. We are also reminded that the idea that China closed itself to the world during this period is just wrong. Chinese medicine was already being worlded and concomitantly, Chinese “culture” was worlded, as Zhan puts it. The second part of the book discusses negotiations. Zhan discusses the worlding of Chinese medicine as it moved beyond Africa across the globe. From the mid-1970s onwards, Chinese medicine became a part of the landscape across many parts of the world. I found this the most interesting part of the study, as Zhan tackles the issue of the definition of science and of knowledge. Her anthropological training serves her well in arguing that race and gender are important factors in conceptions of many orthodox conceptions of science.

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In a discussion of miracles, Zhan describes the phenomenon in which practitioners of Chinese medicine regularly cure supposedly incurable diseases in disparate parts of the world. As these commonplace phenomena cannot be explained by medical science, they are often described as miracles. While “Chinese” knowledge is seen as marginal by positivists, its benefits mean that its worlding has become both ubiquitous and inexorable. In the third part of the study, Zhan discusses dislocations. She attempts to steer us away from a binary understanding of the encounter of Chinese knowledge with the world. Her emphasis is on plurality and contingency. Despite the worlding of Chinese medicine, the concept of China is still elusive and distant to many. This is a brave attempt at unraveling many of the complexities in China’s encounter with the world and at the level of people-to-people interaction. Perhaps nothing is more other-worldly than Chinese medicine, yet its presence is obvious across the globe. What is not obvious is what is actually happening on the ground. Does the project of Chinese medicine mean that the world is being worlded, or in other words, coming closer together? Are meanings becoming unified and synthesized? Zhan shows that this is happening, but that, simultaneously, complexities of meaning and dislocations also open other worlds and that open- endedness is the norm. In some respects, distance is also created. If there are any criticisms of the book, they will be that arguments of diversity and complexity are stating the obvious. Many scholars in the field take complexity as a starting point and not as a conclusion. Nevertheless, many of Zhan’s points are valid and useful in reminding us that cultural flows are often so complex as to evade description. One quibble is that not one mention is made of Australia. This is the country where Chinese medicine has probably been brought most into the mainstream of a society with strong Anglo–American norms and beliefs: Australia is a very clear case of Zhan’s contention that China is being worlded through its medicine. Yet, despite the ubiquity of Chinese medicine, not to mention a large Chinese community, for many Australians China is as distant as ever. This paradox is puzzling and real. Anyone who thinks about the deeper meanings of China’s multi-layered engagement with the world should read this book, if only to grapple with the larger questions of what is knowledge and what the world may look like, as Chinese norms cross porous borders, both real and imagined. James Flowers Wonkwang University

Communist Multiculturalism: Ethnic Revival in Southwest China, by Susan K. McCarthy. Seattle; London: University of Washington Press, 2009. xviii + 226 pp. US$70.00/£54.00 (hardcover), US$25.00/£17.99 (paperback). Communist Multiculturalism is the latest volume in Stevan Harrell’s path-breaking “Studies on Ethnic Groups in China” series with the University of Washington Press. With the publication of its first title in 1994, the series has helped move the once

234 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 obscure field of “minority studies” to the centre of Sinological discourse, demonstrating how the politics of identity cuts across various aspects of Chinese society and our disparate academic disciplines for studying it. The multidisciplinary approach that Harrell helped pioneer is reflected in Susan K. McCarthy’s important contribution, which combines ethnographic field research with a sophisticated analysis of political theory on citizenship and identity to explore the practices and performances of multiculturalism in contemporary China. McCarthy explores the unprecedented “minority cultural revival” which has accompanied China’s rapid economic modernization. The book’s significance and innovation lie in the way it complicates our notions of “Chineseness”, successfully subverting the view of minority–state relations in which an authoritarian and all- powerful Chinese Party-state oppresses the marginalized and muted minorities, who can only revert to the “weapons of the weak” in their elusive struggle for ethnic recognition. In place of this essentialized paradigm, McCarthy joins others in convincingly demonstrating the vast scope for minority agency in a state that actively protects and promotes ethnic diversity, albeit in a highly regulated, commodified and prescriptive fashion. In sharp contrast to those who decry the lack of “genuine” minority autonomy in China, McCarthy argues that the discourse of autonomy has “taken on a life of its own” in Reform-era China, as both minority and Han “cultural entrepreneurs” mobilize and, at times, manipulate state policies in order to “put some real bit into the concept of ‘autonomy’” (p. 94). McCarthy’s conclusions are conditioned by the location and groups being studies. Leaving the more contentious regions of Xinjiang and to one side, she focuses on the Dai, Bai and Hui minorities in Yunnan. In planning her multisite fieldwork in Yunnan during 1996–97 and 2002, McCarthy intentionally selected these three groups because of their different locations within the cognitive schema of ethnic otherness in modern China, which locates groups in relation to their degree of assimilation, docility, exoticism and restiveness. In this cognitive scheme, the Dai are perceived as a “model minority” due to their exotic and docile nature. The highly acculturated nature of the Bai leads them to be perceived as both docile and assimilated, while the Sino-Muslim Hui are viewed as assimilated yet resistive, and thus difficult for McCarthy to gain official state sanction to study. Missing from this study of minority citizenship are those groups that are labelled as both exotic and restive, and one might add “backward” and “underdeveloped”. These groups, chiefly the Tibetans and Uyghurs, present the biggest challenge to the neo-liberal developmentalism and “pluralistic unity” (duoyuan yiti) at the heart of Chinese-style multiculturalism. Among these three groups, however, there exists a degree of mutual benefit between the goals of the Party-state and minority élites. Both seek to revive minority cultures in pursuit of the state’s modernization goals, although sometimes for different reasons. The instrumentalism of the Party-state leads it to not only tolerate the revival of Islam among the Hui or the daily performance of “water splashing” among the Dai, but even actively to promote these practices in order to help stimulate domestic tourism and consumption while forging new transnational linkages and investment projects.

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Yet McCarthy demonstrates how the minorities (or at least some minority élites) view these acts of cultural preservation as “an end in itself”, and at times seek to challenge stereotypes and normative schemas by pioneering different forms of “citizenship practice”, that is “ways of participating, or attempting to participate, in the imagined community of the nation” (p. 171). She argues that, by framing this cultural revival in “minority-centric terms”, minority élites are actively involved in constructing a shared yet hybrid sense of Chineseness. In the author’s words, “cultural revival can be as much about being Chinese as it is about being minority” (p. 9). McCarthy’s focus on different modes of citizenship practice pioneers an important new line of inquiry in the field of Chinese minority studies. It successfully complicates many of the neat dyads that underpins our thinking and forces us deeper into the messy complexities of identity politics in contemporary China. Yet I, at least, was left wanting more evidence of the nature and scope of this citizenship sentiment and practice among the minorities under study. One is forced to wade through 69 pages of background material, including long sections where McCarthy attempts to position herself (dissertation-style) within a growing body of literature, before arriving at the heart of her ethnographic data, three chapters and just under one hundred pages on the Dai, Bai and Hui respectively. These chapters contain a number of thought-provoking vignettes and short snippets of dialogue with minority informants and state officials, but more detailed interviews, survey and statistical data, and ethnographic observations could have strengthened the author’s argument. Perhaps a more thorough and deeper focus on just one of these groups would have made this task easier and more manageable. That said, McCarthy’s fine study is an important new contribution to evolving understandings of “multiculturalism with Chinese characteristics”, forcing readers to contemplate how competing forms of ethnic nationalism interact with shared forms of citizenship practice. This book is a must-read for both scholars and students of ethnic relations in Reform-era China. James Leibold La Trobe University

China with a Cut: Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music, by Jeroen de Kloet. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010. 255 pp. €42.00 (paperback). As Jeroen de Kloet points out in his introduction, most of the English language scholarship on Chinese rock has not addressed anything after the mid-1990s and as such there is a whole new generation of musicians and fans to be accounted for who have grown up in a very different political economy, surrounded by new technological innovations that have transformed music industries and cultures. De Kloet’s contemporary focus with historical contextualization is therefore a most welcome addition to the growing field of scholarship on Chinese language music. De Kloet provides a wonderful overview of different musical styles that connect to Chinese rock including folk rock, punk, underground rock and mainstream pop rock, among others. He deftly analyzes an array of important

236 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 issues such as rock’s contemporary claims of being both Western inspired and emblematic of Chinese identity, and the ways in which Chinese rock incorporates old Communist cultural revolution ideologies to be one of the people, to serve the people or, in the case of punk, to create anarchy. He examines gender issues in the hyper-masculine world of Chinese rock and rock artists’ claims to musical authenticity in relation to their portrayal of pop. As with any text, there are a few points that I would quibble with. De Kloet, for example, uses the term Gang-Tai pop to refer to the wildly popular pop music produced in Hong Kong and Taiwan, failing to recognize that the term is very much a PRC construction that centers Chinese music and culture in Beijing. A second, related point is that in spite of the title’s claim that the book is on popular music, China’s rock is not very popular. De Kloet acknowledges both that rock has very low sales in relation to mainstream pop from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and that Western scholarship has for the most part focused on Chinese rock (p. 103). Rather than using this to problematize English language scholarship, however, he seems to draw on these points as validation for an even greater academic focus on rock and on Beijing as China’s supposed musical and cultural epicenter. The result of all of this is the occasional distortion of information. This inverted logic places pop, and not rock, in the chapter entitled “subaltern sounds”. Graphs on the findings from his surveys (especially those on p. 149) create the erroneous impression that rock is only slightly less popular than pop music from Taiwan and Hong Kong which, if one looks at music sales, is not even close to the truth. Clearly the respondents to his survey are not reflective of the majority of Chinese consumers. Nor is he reflexive about the ways in which this might influence his analysis and assertions about the music or Chinese culture as a whole. In Chapters 3 and 4, de Kloet argues that female musicians are stigmatized subalterns whose voices have been marginalized in rock, and that Chinese rock revolves around men’s reaction to feeling emasculated on a global level. De Kloet’s analysis of these issues is both eloquent and insightful. Yet in choosing not to rearticulate rock’s own subaltern status at this juncture, he undermines the larger theoretical implications of his analysis for gender relations in China as a whole. Rock in China is approximately as central to the average Chinese person’s life as jazz is in the US. It is therefore a mistake to take Beijing rock’s obsession with machismo as emblematic of Chinese language music’s themes, especially in light of the centrality of women and what in the West might be categorized as androgynous men in mainstream pop, which is what most people are listening to. I should point out that these problems are symptomatic of English-language studies on rock as a body of scholarship rather than arising because of any individual eccentricities of the author. When de Kloet explicitly situates his analysis in rock, with no larger claims about Chinese music as a whole, the results are nothing less than fantastic. He explores the strategies with which female rock artists negotiate their places in this male domain, for example, and the ways in which male rock artists, the media, and the state engage with female rock musicians’ different personas. Employing Foucauldian analysis, he links music to technologies of the

REVIEWS 237 self. He also uses music as a means of better understanding China’s new youth in relation to the dramatic shifts in family structure that have ensued in recent years, their surprising nationalism given how important global culture has become to their identities, their dismissal of the theme of rebellion in Western rock because of its associations with chaos during the Cultural Revolution, and the ways in which censorship both stifles and fans the flames of creativity. China with a Cut is a superb work—one of the best books on China to come out in a long time. It is articulately written, insightful and, at times, poetically lyrical in its prose. Reading this book is a must for anyone hoping to gain a better understanding of Chinese music, pop culture, youth culture or, indeed, modern China. Marc L. Moskowitz University of South Carolina

Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China, by Tiantian Zheng. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. 293 pp. US$22.50 (paperback). Red Lights is an impassioned and highly personal ethnography of the karaoke sex entertainment industry in Dalian during the reform era. The book is unique in studies of the Chinese commercial sex because it is based on months of difficult and dangerous participant observation research by a Chinese woman graduate student. There is no better work on the subject in English or Chinese, providing an insightful and highly readable scholarly account of one corner of what is already perhaps the largest commercial sex industry in the world. The narrative becomes most personal, even poignant, in Tiantian Zheng’s account of her own awakening to the socially constructed nature of filial piety and the oppressive norms of female chastity that she was educated into while growing up in China. Zheng describes the humiliation she felt at her mother’s fierce admonitions about what may strike most readers as minute violations of sexual propriety. Most of this short but vivid personal account occurs in the first chapter, but it remains a theme throughout the volume. The aspect of themselves that Chinese women are shown to value most—their self-definitions as virtuous daughters—is the very one that most traps them in a pattern of subordinate relations with men and the larger society. Hostesses resist their subordination only to the degree that they subvert and appropriate signs of gendered servility and docility in relations with clients. They achieve this most spectacularly by making their clients emotionally dependent on them and “cheating” these men out of money and gifts. Still, Zheng argues, hostesses cling to an idea of “home” as a place that they can be their best true selves, taking care of their natal families financially, while hoping for a good marriage and family for themselves. Zheng’s strong suit is the authority of her ethnography. As a participant in the daily routines of the clubs, she witnesses both the front stage and backstage behaviors of clients and hostesses. Hostesses serve customers in the club with conversation, flirtation, drinking, dancing and sexual touching. Most, but not all, hostesses also “go out” of the clubs to have sex with customers, also for cash tips. The text provides

238 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 a multifaceted account of the attempts of both players to gain “control” of these complex emotional, sexual and financial interactions. Clients hope to manipulate their hostess lovers into falling for them emotionally, thereby allowing the men to monopolize their sexual services for free. Hostesses, in turn, attempt to manipulate clients’ emotional attachments and sexual fantasies in order to extract a maximum economic return. Romance, like performances of virginal innocence, becomes another tool of trade through which hostesses aim to maintain autonomy in relations with clients and achieve their goals of financial independence and freedom from the stigma of sex work. Zheng is not only skeptical of the ability of the hostess and clients to see through these hegemonic patriarchal constructs of sexuality and family, but also critical of the politically induced myopia of Chinese social scientists researching prostitution in their own country. No sentence more honestly conveys her intellectual position than the following passage in the “Afterword”: My journey has taken me to America, a place where I can stand and see China for the first time. It is a place outside of myself where I can see myself for the first time. My study of the social sciences allows me to understand that the deep cultural values of filiality are socially constructed values that are immutable truths only in China. (p. 243) Zheng cites relatively few of the recent works published on Chinese sexuality, and other than those of a few mostly American feminist scholars, most come in for an unfavorable treatment. She takes particular umbrage at the work of Pan Suiming, who heads up the most visible and renowned research program on the sociology of sexuality in China at Beijing People’s University. The critique of Pan Suiming is both distracting and dismissive. Pan’s voluminous publications on barbershop prostitution provide, in my view, a thorough though somewhat idiosyncratic account of that social world. The greater failing of Zheng’s treatment of Chinese scholars, however, is the inability to find common cause with any of the liberal and highly critical voices writing about sexuality in China today, including prominent liberal scholars such as Li Yinhe and Fang Gang. Rather than being apologists for government crackdowns on prostitution, they are among a growing number of scholars bravely defending alternative positions on prostitution, including decriminalization. Perhaps the least convincing part of the ethnography is the account of clients’ sexual desires, which are attributed primarily to a male need to live up to a modern entrepreneurial masculine image. Although the phrase “turning in the grain” for servicing their legal wives sexually is developed into an evocative metaphor for state–society relationships, the corollary explanation of male promiscuity as symbolic resistance to state authority fails, in my view, as a plausible account of male sexual desire. The notion that men pursue sex with women in order to prove their “masculinity” is very fashionable in recent Anglophone scholarship, but ethnographic and interview evidence is seldom up to the task of constructing a convincing phenomenology of sexual desire. A much more obvious explanation of clients’ behavior is that they actually lust for sexual experiences with a variety of

REVIEWS 239 attractive young female hostesses, and are willing to pay for these opportunities in whatever contexts become available. Perhaps to encounter this type of “essentialist” argument, Zheng’s narrative of a “coarsening of masculine identity”—illustrated in men preferring nude hostesses in 2004 to the “cultured courtesans” of the Qing era (p. 245)—purports to show a changing pattern of male sexual desire, but this historical trajectory is not as well-grounded empirically as her first-hand account. For example, nude shows were popular throughout China in the Republican era, and there is little evidence that completely nude hostesses will remain in fashion for long in contemporary China, or even that they are popular at all. Zheng’s concern with hostess’s dignity is politically well placed, but I am unsure whether the answer lies in constructing an increasingly pathological Chinese masculine sexuality. To describe sex work simply as “humiliation” seems dangerously close to advocating harsher criminal penalties, which is clearly not Zheng’s intent. The more pertinent critique focuses on the system of illegality and official corruption that results in women losing control over their workplaces. The concept of “patriarchy” becomes the primary theoretical category for explaining the social relations of sex work in China. With patriarchy as a master category, the huge distinctions we can find, for example, between the practices of karaoke hostessing in China and Japan find little explanation. The strongest and most original theoretical formulations in the book concern the unique distinctions in reform-era China between rural and urban residency. Zheng’s accounts of women’s attempts to remake themselves as modern urbanites through fashion consumption ring very true, and provide a useful contribution not only to the literature on sex work but also to that on urban–rural migration. The same patterns of harsh discrimination against rural people may partly explain the cruel social and sexual treatment to which these women become subject within the nightclubs. This book is one whose flaws are also very nearly virtues, because they are generally revealed with a highly transparent and reflexive ethnographic account that gains in authority from its honest treatment of the researchers’ encounters with both the world of the hostess and the world of American academia. We see where Tiantian Zheng is coming from, and we see what she has seen and experienced. We are thus in a strong position to interpret the evidence she presents, making this a very useful monograph for teaching in both undergraduate and graduate courses. James Farrer Sophia University

Communities, Crime and Social Capital in Contemporary China, by Lena Y. Zhong. Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2009. xviii + 277 pp. £40.00/US$69.95 (hardcover). Lena Y. Zhong is presented as one of “a new generation of Chinese criminologists, trained in the West” (p. x). Her book is based on her University of Hong Kong PhD thesis. It examines changes in crime during China’s reform years, with a focus on the “overnight city”, Shenzhen. The book moves beyond the thesis thematically, but its

240 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 structure and presentation still have the feel of a thesis. The reader has to push through several chapters of extended literature review and historical background before reaching the core of the study which discusses “social capital” as it is deployed in the explanation of grass-roots community crime prevention in Shenzhen. The book essentially asks whether Chinese communitarianism has provided a viable approach to China’s changing criminal reality and whether the notion of “social capital” has any value in the Chinese context. Zhong’s cross-cultural perspective makes for interesting reading. She argues that there is a lot of “social capital” in the Chinese context that revolves around guanxi, the household registration system (hukou), the neighborhood committee and the work unit (danwei). The “social capital” of these agencies is critical to the success of what has been called in China the “comprehensive management of public order”. The book’s analysis focuses on the development of community crime prevention based on “Building Little Safe and Civilized Communities”, within the highly transition context of Shenzhen. Zhong’s surveying brings together a comparative reading of both a strong and a weak community experience in Shenzhen’s crime prevention campaigning. Zhong attempts to correct the over-emphasis on individual versus society in Western observation of China by focusing on the positive correlation of “bonding”, or “localized capital” with “bridging capital”. She argues that an “integrated model” of crime prevention needs to consider the “strong ties between family member and neighbours” as well as the “weak ties with outside communities and between communities, formal institutions (including laws and norms), and state–community interactions”. The reader is then advised of the importance of “both the internal and external dynamics of a social structure” (p. 98). Such analysis of China’s specific situation naturally raises the question of the relation between the state and society in Chinese community crime prevention. The analysis does acknowledge a blurring between “formal” and “informal social control in the Chinese context” (p. 218). Indeed, the state and society are very closely tied together through Party leadership of the process of the comprehensive management of public order. Zhong is wary of what is described as a non-empirical Chinese criminology that is politically inspired and appears to endorse Turk’s statement: “Formal agencies make informal groups the locus of social control” (p. 218). “Social capital” in China is discussed with appropriate consideration of the changing nature of the household registration system, the work unit and the neighborhood committee in the heightened and complex deepening of economic reform. “Comprehensive management”, however, does presume that these key institutions work alongside formal state structures, the “comprehensive” range of which will vary depending on the politically determined focus of crime fighting. The concluding analysis notes that dichotomies of informal and formal social control imply “an underlying theme”, namely, “the role of the state” (p. 224). However, “the role of the state” is integral and highly explicit as it seeks to unify formal and informal dimensions of crime control from within a top-down as well as horizontally comprehensive management of public order. What then is the relation between the state and social capital? Perhaps the state mobilizes the latter and is

REVIEWS 241 effectively in the driver’s seat. Or perhaps the state is in retreat, given the new complexities of the market era. In my view, it is highly unlikely that an informal control network can exist outside state control in China. Zhong recognizes that more research will be needed to measure the effectiveness of changing Chinese communitarian approaches. She explores the implications of the danwei system. The latter can no longer provide the same level of social welfare, and it cannot make the same contribution to social control. Her argument that policy professionalization does not inversely guarantee a decline in informal mass line mechanisms is also persuasive. Further, the appearance of private as distinct from public crime prevention is discussed as it complicates the state’s objective in encouraging the formation of “bridging social capital”. Zhong is concerned about the gap between “criminology” and “criminal policy” in China. One suspects, however, that the Chinese strategy for the prevention of crime draws creatively from an extraordinary domestic organizational experience that has adapted to one of the most profound socio–economic transitions of our time. Under China’s circumstances, Chinese “communitarianism” may actually demonstrate a highly adaptive deployment of social capital. Many more studies may be needed before we can reach a definitive conclusion. In the meantime, this book supports a more deliberate interaction between Chinese and Western criminologies and should make the reader think. Shumei Hou Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University

Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, edited by Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. x + 294 pp. US$70 (hardcover), US$24.95 (paperback). In recent years the policies and principles of the Chinese Party-state with regard to religion have changed. Religions are now conceived to play a positive role in social development, representing positive values and contributing to the development of a . In the last decade, Western scholarship has extensively examined these changes, analyzing modifications in central state policies and the revitalization of religious activities, including popular religion. This book edited by Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank conceptualizes the interrelationship between the state and religion from a somewhat different perspective. It shows that both religious élites and the various echelons of the state are interested in institutionalizing religion and religious activities, as well as in opposing “superstition”. The editors argue that, during the process of modernization, the politics of modern “religion” is constituted by ongoing negotiations between various state and non-state actors. This leads to specific patterns of interweaving, bargaining and shared interests between state agencies on the one hand and religious actors on the other. This book’s objective is thus to display the emergence of a concept of modern religion during the process of China’s state-building.

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Apart from the introductory chapter, nine chapters examine this issue from various perspectives. Timothy Brook addresses the regulatory role of the state, particularly in the first half of the 20th century, and illustrates that this role follows a specific path, finding its expression in religious policy since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. Yoshiko Ashiwa portrays the re-defining and re- arranging of state and religion in the modernizing process, taking Buddhism as a case study. Richard Madsen and Lizhu Fan describe religious revival by analyzing the relationship between popular institutions and state institutions through a study of a Catholic shrine in Shanghai. Carsten T. Vala traces how state policy and church politics affect the number of “Three Self Patriotic Movement” churches, and shows that Party-state policies weaken the state’s authority among pastors. David L. Wank examines the institutionalization of the modern discourse of “religion” in China’s Buddhist revival by presenting the results of his field research in Fujian. He concludes that the change in religious policies created a discursive space for religion. By the same token, the institutionalization of religion in Buddhism has spawned a “new phase of modern state building”, as Buddhism is conceived “as a field of organizational actors whose activities are positioned within the state’s discursive space of ‘religion’” (p. 145). Dru Gladney is concerned with the issue of integrating China’s Muslims into the Chinese state. His essay also helps to explain the conflicts in Xinjiang in July 2009. Kenneth Dean portrays the revitalization of Daoist rituals across China, concluding that the interaction between the state and Daoism is complex and locally differentiated. Adam Yuet Chau argues that the state has constructed space for and of popular religion (p. 211). He demonstrates that temples advance strategies to enhance the space of folk religion and to ensure legitimacy for temple activities. He distinguishes between the “intolerable” superstition which is not accepted by the state and “tolerable” religion based upon shared interests between temples and local authorities. By funding socially beneficial projects (such as tourism) or charity activities, temples generate a functional utility (and thus legitimacy), and hence are supported by the local state: non-religious activities of this kind are at the same time a protection against state crackdowns on religious activities. This leads to a symbiosis between temples of the banned, “superstitious” folk religion, on the one hand, and the local state, on the other, so that such temples may register officially as temples of a “high religion” (like Daoism or Buddhism), and thus acquire legal protection. In the final chapter, Utiraruto Otehode examines the creation and reemergence of qigong in China. In the 1950s, he argues, qigong was transformed and institutionalized by the state as national medical heritage, and thus integrated into the official health system. In the reform era since the late 1970s, however, practitioner groups and academic organizations promoting qigong have emerged. In addition, a broad discourse has developed within state and society, combining qigong, traditional medicine and research on supernatural power into a “human body science”. This book is an outstanding and very stimulating contribution to the scholarly discussion on state–society interaction. It demonstrates that religion by no means

REVIEWS 243 contradicts and challenges the state, but is rather embedded in processes of interaction and bargaining between various levels of the state and religious organizations and institutions. This resembles a phenomenon that Ding Xueliang once called “institutional amphibiousness”: in this case, strong linkages between state and religion and the impact of religious activities on the behavior of the local state. This book is highly recommended to scholars of both religious affairs and local developments and policies. Furthermore, it provides plenty of avenues for research into local religious issues from a social science perspective. The only issue which might be missing is the study of the indigenous religions of ethnic minorities, and their ethnic bargaining power vis-à-vis the state. Thomas Heberer University Duisburg-Essen

The Struggle for Sustainability in Rural China: Environmental Values and Civil Society, by Bryan Tilt. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. xviii + 192 pp. US$89.50/£62.00 (hardcover), US$29.50/£20.50 (paperback). Bryan Tilt’s remarkable monograph has an importance that cannot be overstated. The book portrays the often horrifying conditions precipitated by a confluence of development targets, privatization of industry and growing uncertainty amongst farming communities. Much of the literature on environmental pollution in China recites a macroscale mantra of the central state producing policies which local governments are too corrupt to enforce. By contrast, Tilt presents a much needed informative and detailed account of the lived realities of pollution victims, pollution perpetrators and regulatory agents. The study combines various methodologies including seven months of residence and participant observation in Futian, semi- structured interviews, survey questionnaires with government officials, industrial workers, farmers and State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) scientists and bureaucrats, as well as attendance of township government meetings. Ethnographic methods in particular have enabled Tilt to provide a humanizing picture of actors all too often written off as corrupt. Here is an engrossing account of grassroots understanding of pollution, development and environmental values as they are situated in particular socio–political contexts. After a brief preface, the book is divided into 8 chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. Chapters one and two provide some solid general background on China’s recent history and how it has played out in the research setting of Futian, a township situated on the western edge of the heavily industrialized Panzhihua municipality, in Sichuan. Tilt traces the rise of a development imperative during the Maoist years, and its emphasis on rural industrialization. In the late Mao and early reform periods, Futian experienced what most locals remember fondly as a golden age of industrial development, when revenue from local industry was used to develop local infrastructure. By the late 1990s this communitarian ethic had fully given way to privatization, as local industries were sold to outsiders. The profit from small and low-tech polluting industries such as Futian’s zinc smelter, coking plant

244 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 and coal-washing plant ceased to benefit the local community and government to the same extent, and these industries were eventually closed for noncompliance with environmental protection regulations. The effects of these changes on the relationships among the local community, industry and the local state are examined further in chapters three and four. Where previously critiquing local industries for causing pollution would have amounted to attacking the state itself, privatization opened space for a critical assessment of their impact. That benefits were no longer distributed to the local communities also increased incentives to complain about pollution. Other studies have already examined the complexities of enforcing environmental protection regulation due to inadequate staffing and ambiguous responsibilities. Tilt gives us a real sense of the scope of these problems. The size of the Renhe district’s Environmental Protection Bureau’s enforcement team—consisting of three technicians and the monitoring station chief and charged with overseeing more than 120 factories across 14 townships—is grossly inadequate. Despite this, the local population is shown to be acutely aware of pollution, belying assumptions that those in economic dire straits are too poor to care about the environment. A key strength of this study lies in its questioning of the very terms of the debate: what is deemed worthy of protection? What, in the discourse of sustainable development, is to be sustained? What is to be developed? Predictably, the answers vary with the speaker, as do the pathways of action which are premised upon them. The following chapter presents a locally sensitive study of the formation of environmental values. Tilt shows that perceptions of development differed across occupational groups. While commercial and service workers and farmers—who reaped limited benefits from industrialization—were emphatic about its negative effects, factory workers were proud of “eating bitterness”, saw industrialization as the only means to secure development and said that pollution did not harm them. More ethnographic detail, beyond the scope of this book, would be needed to unpack fully why factory workers strategically suppressed their awareness of pollution. Indeed, if one of the reasons that farmers are suspicious of development is their current sense of growing inequalities, such inequalities are just as obvious to factory workers. They are all too aware of their precarious position and limited earning capacity as compared to more skilled workers and their own employers. The remaining chapters cogently undermine the widespread assumption that implementation problems are due simply to lax environmental laws. Here Tilt outlines the complex array of factors and agents involved in these processes, including media, central government policy, SEPA emission standards, local EPBs, industry bosses and township officials as well as factory workers and villagers. The ambiguous position of EPBs—responsible for implementing environmental protection and yet embedded within county and municipal governments charged with promoting development—becomes clear, as do their mixed results. Closures of small factories in the relatively remote town of Futian, whose role in the district-level economy was negligible, provided evidence of the government’s commitment to implement sustainability without exerting a major impact on their need to raise

REVIEWS 245 revenue. Larger polluting enterprises such as Pangang remained beyond the remit of district EPBs. Environmental regulation itself is shown to be contending not just with what is often constructed as a selfish and corrupt profit motive but with the imperative to secure funds for maintaining standards of living barely above the poverty line. Three competing parameters of development are at play: the modernistic “idealized sustainable development” of central state discourse, the “pragmatic sustainable development” upheld by district governments and EPBs and the “sustained development” envisioned by Futian township government and focused on maintaining income and tax revenue. Yet, local governments are not simply non- compliant and out to protect their own interests against central government mandates. Rather, “sustained development” complies with the Great Western Opening policy, designed to foster development in the poor Western regions. These examples highlight tensions between different levels of government and elucidate the complexities of the Chinese state, making Tilt’s study fascinating to any scholar of China’s governance. I am less convinced of whether the concept of civil society is analytically useful in making sense of these complexities. Indeed, Tilt’s material and overall argument show that many actors, often situated at intricate crossovers between state, industry and civil society, are involved in negotiating around environmental protection and development, than any overarching category could encapsulate. In a situation where an array of regulations put forward by the central state are sometimes in contradiction with each other, even a carefully defined concept of civil society would gloss over the sophistication of real life. The great value of Tilt’s work lies in the subtle questioning of how exactly development and sustainability are defined, by whom, for what purposes and with what effects. It illustrates the inherent complexities of sustainable development and governance more broadly. To make reading on these topics an enjoyable and refreshing—if sobering—experience is no small feat. Tilt’s work is extremely accessible and engaging. It merits careful reading by undergraduates, graduates and more senior scholars in anthropology, geography, development studies and Chinese studies, as well as by a broader non academic audience. It is a timely book, which offers a major contribution to the study of China and environmental governance in the developing world. Anna Lora-Wainwright Oxford University

The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online, by Guobin Yang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. xviii + 302 pp. US$29.50/£20.50 (hardcover). In this useful and interesting study, the author shows how online activism enables “new forms, dynamics, and consequences of popular contention” in China and how Chinese people have attempted to “transform personhood, society, and politics” through the medium of cyberspace (p. 1). The author refutes the view that Chinese government control has led to the internet being primarily a space for apolitical entertainment and commerce. Of course there is control, and Yang gives a detailed

246 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 description of the government’s extensive monitoring and censorship régime in Chapter 2, “The Politics of Digital Contention”, yet at the same time he demonstrates numerous ways that ordinary Chinese citizens have managed to circumvent this control to get their messages across. Moreover, the sheer numbers of netizens, blogs and bulletin boards in China today mean that the government is frequently fighting a losing battle even to keep track of online contention, let alone suppress it. In order to capture the complexity of the online environment in China, Yang makes use of the concept of multi-interactionism—interactions between online activism and state power, culture, the market, civil society and transnationalism (pp. 6-8). Not only are there multiple parties, but the influences between them “go in multiple directions” (p. 7). Yang demonstrates how this multi-interactionism works in subsequent chapters. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the rituals, genres and styles of contention online. Yang compares online rituals and genres with earlier forms of protest in China, and also identifies innovative practices, such as blogs, that would not have been possible without the development of the internet. Particularly interesting is the use of parody, humorous verses and flash videos satirizing corrupt government officials. The author of one such satirical verse about officials in Sichuan Province was arrested but later released and compensated after numerous netizens expressed their support for him publicly (pp. 78-79). The fact that such an arrest could happen at all shows the highly circumscribed nature of freedom of expression in China. Yet Yang provides many other examples where online exposure by netizens has resulted in government officials reversing their decisions, with officials occasionally even arrested and charged with corruption. He also shows how Chinese citizens have used their creativity to outwit government monitors, for example by taking advantage of homonyms and code words that allow them to discuss sensitive topics without being caught by the government’s automatic word filters (Chapter 4). One important point implied by many of Yang’s examples, but not explicitly stated in the multi-interactionism model, is that online contention or activism in China includes moral debates among netizens themselves, with no overt political overtones. Examples include the “sex diary” published by a woman calling herself Muzimei, which led to a widespread online debate about sexual mores in Chinese society (p. 79). In this sense, the internet becomes a public space for expressing and sharing opinions that might not be tolerated in “real” life. Of course, when thousands of netizens link up online, even if initially they are just sharing common interests, it can result in new civic associations being created, or provide much-needed national support for movements in the “real” world. It can also lead to real assistance for victims of injustice, if they happen to come to the attention of one of these online communities. This is the focus of Chapters 6 to 8. In Chapter 6, Yang uses several surveys to demonstrate the growing importance of the internet for the survival and flourishing of civic associations, especially environmental groups. In Chapter 7, he shows how members of online communities frequently celebrate the internet as a forum where they can express themselves more freely and find fellowship with others. In Chapter 8, he describes

REVIEWS 247 the various ways in which the internet allows civic groups and individuals within China to link up with like-minded organizations and people overseas. What is particularly interesting here is the complex interaction between the online world and the “real” world. On the one hand, the online world is an escape from a restrictive or burdensome reality for many netizens. On the other hand, it is very common for netizens to provide real assistance to others, even to the extent of sending money to strangers and or helping them to find lawyers. Yang calls this a mixture of utopianism and realism. He gives a fascinating account of a young woman who sought help on a popular BBS board for her dying mother. Netizens soon provided over 100,000 yuan in online donations to her bank account. More skeptical netizens later questioned her integrity, especially when some of her private email messages were hacked into and posted online (pp. 175-80). Yang notes that while it is admirable that “online communities with strong collective sentiments ... can generate effective offline action”, the episode also shows the “badly damaged condition of trust in Chinese society” (pp. 180-81). At the same time, Yang is optimistic that these kinds of mixed online/offline activities are creating new kinds of Chinese citizens with keener awareness of their rights and responsibilities, and willingness to contend and engage in real action to defend those rights: “Although democracy as a political system remains an ideal and not a reality, at the grassroots level, people are already practicing and experimenting with forms of citizen democracy” (p. 220-21). Two aspects of Yang’s book could be improved. One is his tendency to summarize main arguments too often. The other weak point is Chapter 6, titled “The Business of Digital Contention”, which includes much information about the development of the internet that is not clearly relevant to business, and then provides only a few brief examples of the interaction between commerce, politics and online activism. Yang’s treatment of this key issue feels half-hearted, contrasting with his detailed analyses of the other themes in the book. Overall, however, the book is essential reading for all those seeking a more nuanced account of the power of the internet in China than that provided by international media and human rights organizations. Colin Hawes University of Technology Sydney

Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a Globalizing China, by Yingjin Zhang. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2010. xii + 257 pp. US$49.00 (hardcover). This engaging work integrates Professor Zhang’s earlier essays on contemporary Chinese cinema. In essence, the book’s seven chapters offer an examination of recent—mostly non-mainstream—Chinese films with a good deal of theoretical discussion about the interaction between urban auteurs, their audience and the Party-state. Zhang shows that few of China’s lesser-known independent directors have tapped into overseas sources of funding in order to “articulate the voices of the weak”. These “Sixth Generation” directors pry open the dark side of the PRC’s

248 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 glossy economic transformation over the last three decades. They typically employ a mix of cinéma vérité and more commercial genres, as they go about telling the stories of marginalized migrant workers, poorly-paid coal miners, dispossessed peasants, underground artists, gay couples, the orphaned and the disabled. China’s movie industry has changed remarkably since the 1980s, when it was dominated by large state-owned, provincially-based studios churning out “leitmotif” epics glorifying socialist accomplishments. In the early 2000s many of these studios were allowed to merge and form “polylocal” alliances. At the same time, more and more Hollywood, Japanese and Korean distributers started investing in Mandarin features aspiring for broader international audience. According to Zhang, the award-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is perhaps the best example of the “polylocal” nature of Chinese cinema nowadays: its lead actors were cast from all over Greater China; its scenes were shot in every corner of the PRC including the Gobi desert; and a number of Westerners and Chinese-Americans were involved in the production. In addition to “polylocality”, Zhang suggests that Crouching Tiger bears out the “translocal” quality of contemporary Chinese cinema. By that he means, for example, the way in which James Schamus wrote the preliminary screenplay in English, which was then translated into Mandarin, and finally subtitled into English again for the international market. The intricate global networks that currently underlie Chinese film productions undermine, in Zhang’s view, the validity of “Chinese national cinema” as a self- contained field of study. Here, it is worth recalling that Zhang himself had until recently engaged in precisely that “national” field of study, so his departure from this line of enquiry is quite telling. The author of Chinese National Cinema (Routledge, 2004), Zhang now observes that the epithet “national” has been irreparably subverted by the very different political and artistic paradigms informing, for example, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s minimalist Taiwanese films and Zhang Yimou’s grandstanding Mandarin productions. Chapters 4–6 foreground important independent œuvres with which non- specialists may not necessarily be familiar. While he does not laud globalization as a liberator, Zhang nevertheless points out that dissenting artists can surreptitiously take advantage of it. If Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth (1984) was daring for its time, in that it confronted viewers with the sorry predicament of China’s rural heartland, “Sixth Generation” producers are by and large preoccupied with urban cosmopolitan themes. In this context, Zhang Yuan’s work is discussed at length: from Crazy English (1999), a documentary capturing the mass movement to study English “with nationalist pride” set up by controversial motivational speaker Li Yang, to the tragic-romantic drama I Love You (2002), a tale of troubled relationship unfolding in 21st-century Beijing. Other important works which this book helps to introduce to non-specialists in the West are Ning Ying’s I Love Beijing (2000), a fictionalized chronicle of a local taxi driver’s quotidian errands, and Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006), a searing social critique of the vast dislocation caused by the Three Gorges Dam project.

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The last two chapters bring to mind the breadth and abundance of contemporary Chinese cinema in the face of pervasive piracy. Statistics compiled by Professor Zhang suggest that China is one of few countries in the world where domestic films—or polylocal films, strictly speaking—still capture a slightly larger market share than imported Hollywood grossers. Implicitly, Zhang is wary of Western exaggerations about the extent of PRC political repression and censorship. In that context, he seems to suggest that piracy could become an improbable ally of “democracy” in a country like China where, for example, wages are relatively low and sex education is very limited. Overall, Zhang’s presentation comes across as very sound. Within the sweep of Chinese Studies, however, the book does touch on two vexed issues. It is only on page 75 that Professor Zhang explains his choice to focus on recent films and documentaries set in Beijing. Readers are told that this decision had to do, in no small measure, with Joseph Esherick’s call to shift attention away from Shanghai to other parts of China that have been neglected by scholars. But, as Zhang himself concedes, Chinese cinema was in its formative era predominantly Shanghainese, and Shanghai itself was crucial to the formation of Chinese modernity and the perception of China in the West. Thus, even this book cannot but discuss important works like Shanghai Express (1932). Notably, it also mentions Suzhou River (2000) and Shanghai Dreams (2005). It would appear that a book mostly dedicated to Beijing cinema does not require an apologia of any kind. Esherick’s call was primarily directed at historians of pre- war China. Even if the import of the call were to be extended to contemporary media studies, one could surely think of more remote, neglected locations than Beijing. Apart from that, Professor Zhang is not entirely persuasive in his suggestion that film studies have become more popular than comparative literature in American universities because the latter is a more Eurocentric discipline by nature (p. 29). Student demand for media-studies coursework has been driven by swag of factors, of which theoretical persuasion is probably the least significant. These minor criticisms apart, Yingjin Zhang’s new book is quite accessible and makes for a very informative read. I hope that it will promote awareness of the achievements of the PRC movie industry, and the profundity of some of the work produced there. Niv Horesh University of New South Wales

Shanghai Rising: State Power and Local Transformations in a Global Megacity, edited by Xiangming Chen. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. xxvi + 267 pp. US$25.00 (paperback). Shanghai Rising is a timely book both in how it brings together perspectives in the global cities literature and in its focus on Shanghai as it hosts the 2010 World Expo. The “Shanghai model” has also been cited across Asia, implying that Western cities do not necessarily define what it means to be global in today’s world.

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As the front title suggests—Shanghai Rising—the book argues that this megacity has been expanding in multiple dimensions and should be a central part of the “global cities research agenda”. The subtitle—State Power and Local Transformations in a Global Megacity—highlights that examining the Shanghai case contributes to the understanding of how the state plays a role in creating global cities, and how local conditions and histories shape globalization processes. While edited books are notoriously difficult to align, Xiangming Chen (with Zhenhua Zhou) has done an admirable job by writing a detailed introduction, including a strong concluding statement (with Anthony Orum), and ensuring explicit references across chapters. Chen is also the co-author of three chapters. The book is divided into two sections: the first takes a comparative perspective, and the second focuses specifically on Shanghai. By separating the two sections, the book offers policy prescriptions for Shanghai from examples elsewhere and provides “lessons” for the global cities research agenda. These lessons include arguments that a city’s history matters and that state goals, especially in their localized manifestations, shape processes without being able to direct everything. The book also argues that a regional perspective is critical for understanding how cities are globalizing, often at uneven tempos. The first part begins with Saskia Sassen’s chapter on global cities, which reviews her keyword concept and its productive/economic nature, but also notes the importance of recognizing urban/national conditions as well as the global nature of certain industries. The following two chapters by Ann Markusen and Pingkang Yu and by John Kasarda take a more policy-oriented perspective. Using US cities for comparison, Markusen and Yu argue that cities that wish to be “high tech” should support the development of human capital and broadly defined (and diverse) high-tech skills, rather than targeting manufacturing operations or investing in infrastructure projects. Kasarda uses his notion of the aerotropolis as a model to assess, and critique, how well prepared Shanghai is to become the global logistics hub that it aims to be. The final two chapters in this section use Singapore and Hong Kong as examples of state-directed global competitiveness and nation-dependent globalization respectively. K. C. Ho argues that Singapore’s decision to establish the Economic Development Board, for example, has been central to the city-state’s ability to attract flexible capital, but also that the combination of “timing, favorable stage, and strong state—does not last forever” (p. 87). Tai-lok Lui and Stephen W. K. Chiu emphasize that Hong Kong is situated within the southern China region, and, like Shanghai, within “China’s grander national marketization and globalization project” (p. 94). The second section begins with Fulong Wu’s discussion of how central-level efforts shaped the economic restructuring and “reglobalization” of Shanghai, which also lead to local urban entrepreneurialism, and produced evidence that cities follow “different trajectories” in becoming global. This is followed by Zhenhua Zhou and Chen’s analysis of a highly “global” sector— telecommunications—to argue that Shanghai may be globally competitive in IT coverage, but that e-commerce and e-government have had slower development.

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Tingwei Zhang focuses on three urban districts in Shanghai to argue that multiple factors contribute to spatially and functionally differentiated development, producing both “winners” and “losers”. Hanlong Lu, Yuan Ren and Chen consider degrees of “global connectivity” with “the gradual withdrawal of the central and local states from community governance and affairs” (p. 202), raising questions about emergent class distinctions. Jiaming Sun and Chen’s chapter reinforces this section’s focus on the local through an argument that local consumer behavior towards global brands is related to individual attributes such as wealth and age, as well as “personal global connections”. Shanghai Rising is an interesting book in that its single-city focus allows for more specific local analyses that help move the “global cities research agenda” forward, but by not critically evaluating the hierarchical nature of inter-city competition itself, the book also missed an opportunity to shape that research agenda more dramatically. Most significant is the absence of any discussion of sustainability—social, economic or environmental—in the “rising” of Shanghai, especially given the “green” claims of the Shanghai World Expo, the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the official “harmonious” society efforts of the central government. One is left wondering if such conversations should take advantage of a global cities focus to challenge the model itself. Nevertheless, the book offers an important step in rethinking global city research and should be commended in particular for including scholars from Asia. It should be of broad interest to urban scholars as well as practitioners. Lisa M. Hoffman University of Washington Tacoma

China: The Pessoptimist Nation, by William A. Callahan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. xxvii + 262 pages. £25.00 (hardcover). William Callahan’s study addresses the perplexing ambiguity at the heart of China’s self image, and the image it projects to the rest of the world, in the modern era. For this highly divided identity, Callahan coins the phrase “pessoptimist”. While it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, it captures at least some of the highly conflicted nature of what China, and Chinese, thinks about itself, and what outsiders think about it. Callahan asserts that much internal discourse on China’s image is based on a “structure of feeling”. This is based on a narrative of recent history which is primarily of hurt—humiliation since the Opium wars in the mid-19th century, and then the breakdown of national unity in the Republican Period, leading to the devastating war with Japan. The Communists were the cure at least for the unity issues, largely pulling China together as one after their victory in 1949. The historical stain of suffering and grief remains, however, even to this day, and can be resurrected at will when countries are accused of “hurting the feelings” of China through diplomatic slights. This happened most recently when President Obama

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“hurt the feelings of the 1.3 billion Chinese people” by meeting with the Dalai Lama in Washington in late February 2010. Callahan has chosen rich albeit controversial territory. It is odd diplomatic behavior for what is now one of the world’s largest economies, and most powerful countries, to constantly speak in this wounded way as though it were the underdog. During 2008, as Callahan documents carefully, there were multiple sources of misunderstanding between China and the outside world in the build up to the Beijing Olympics in August that year which arose from this image that China projects. The torch ceremony through various foreign capitals became a cause célèbre of mixed messages and clashing values, with demonstrators battling with nationalist young overseas Chinese students. The nadir was the snatching of the torch flame from a disabled Chinese athlete in Paris, something which in part inspired the temporary boycotting of Carrefour stores in China itself. Callahan is wise in not denying the deep historic wounds left by the Second World War. The handling of this by the right wing in Japan, in particular, with a refusal to deal with the historic record robustly, especially in government- sanctioned school textbooks, has been a constant source of anger in China. Tellingly, even the very well-meant joint committee between Japan and China in its report on the war issued late in 2009 did not commit itself to specific figures for fatalities in the 1937–45 conflict. It remains a source of deep anger and controversy. There is a distinction, however, between this and the political uses of the Second World War almost 50 years after the event. In Maoist China, particularly during the Cultural Revolution from 1967, the preoccupation was with class struggle, purging enemies within and fighting foreign revisionists. The real fire of anger at that time was reserved for the USSR, with the US and Europe a close second. The anger against Japan slept. In the 1980s, these feelings were resuscitated, with various formulations of national humiliation movements, culminating in the early 2000s in a National Humiliation Day, and finally the National Defense Day which is still observed. In his tour around this newly articulated sense of hurt, Callahan describes visits to the museums of humiliation in China, including the very powerful Nanjing Massacre Memorial. Here he sees the dominant portrayal of China as being like a violated female, invaded, raped and then mutilated by Japanese male troops. This self image reappears in language about the “century of humiliation” from 1840 onwards, in which the virtue of China had been sullied by the new technologies of the west. Yet there are hard questions about this history that are being asked, inside and outside China. Fellow Chinese did their fair share of murder, attack and persecution in the Republican Period. There were many Chinese who were “willing executioners”. Vicious purges of these collaborators in the Cultural Revolution were at least one manifestation of this deeply divided aspect of Chinese society in the modern period. A desire to point the finger at outsiders for most of China’s ills continues to today, with frequent nationalist anger at the “economic model” foisted on China (see the essays in the March 2009 Zhongguo bu gaoxing [China Is Not Happy] which trot out this argument).

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Foreign enterprises have been accused of exploiting Chinese labor, polluting the environment and creating deep inequalities. Other, more patient research has proved that, more often than not, foreign enterprises (with the exception of some Taiwanese and Hong Kong ones) maintain higher salary and environment standards, and have brought in much-valued technology and know-how. At heart, the rapidity of China’s recent growth means that this conflict between what President Hu Jintao calls “a strong, wealthy country” (the stated endpoint for current Chinese government policy) and the widespread sense of China’s weaknesses and grievances has remained unaddressed. As memories outside of China’s sufferings in the late Qing and Republican Period get weaker, though, this projection of a country that is “hurt” and needs to be “pitied” becomes more puzzling. How can an imminent “superpower” which, on most indicators, is doing better than the rest of the world, feel able to continue asking for pity? The other element here, as Callahan states in his final chapters, is that of good old-fashioned political manipulation. Valiant attempts to write a credible history of some of the darker moments of national history after 1949 under the Communists (see, for instant, Yang Jisheng’s magnificent Mubei [Tombstone], a history of the mass starvation after the Great Leap Forward in the 1960s) have come up against a shrill demand by the political establishment in modern China to toe the line and not allow the current régime to lose face. The Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen 1989 remain embargoed, for another generation to make sense of. Even Wang Hui’s recent The End of the Revolution only refers to the 1989 event as a “social movement”. There is plenty of evidence that the Chinese government manipulates feelings of humiliation and the narratives around it to its advantage. The question remains whether one day its manipulations will end up creating a reaction of anger and indignation so great that they will turn on the Party and damage it, perhaps fatally. Callahan states in his conclusion that “to understand a nation’s dreams you must understand its nightmares”. The current “dream” of China, as he rightly notes with reference to the Olympic logo of “one world, one dream”, is highly unified. The dreams of Tibetans and Mongolians and Han in China must be the same, as must the dreams of rich and poor, Party and non-Party members, officials and people. Régimes of control and restriction are placed on the realm of hope and even of fantasy. As this timely and provocative study shows, however, there is plenty of evidence that under the unified surface there are manifold voices within “pessoptimist” China who want something a bit richer, more complicated and more satisfying than to be currently told that they should feel hurt, angry and anxious. The world needs to start preparing to deal with a China that is no longer angry, unhappy or hurt, but confident and knowledgeable, and that might well prove to be a far greater challenge than anything that has happened before. Kerry Brown Chatham House

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Politische Partizipation und Regimelegitimität in der VR China. Band I: Der urbane Raum (Political Participation and Régime Legitimacy in the PRC. Vol. I: Urban China), by Thomas Heberer and Gunter Schubert. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008. 226 pages. €39.90 (paperback), also available as an e-book; Band II: Der ländliche Raum (Political Participation and Régime Legitimacy in the PRC. Vol. II: Rural China), by Gunter Schubert and Thomas Heberer. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009. 270 pages. €39.90 (paperback). Over the past three decades China’s basic level governance has seen tremendous changes. While these reforms, particularly those in the countryside, have received considerable attention from Chinese and Western scholars, this publication project is unique because it seeks to comprehensively review and compare rural and urban governance reforms within one analytical framework. Both volumes share the same theoretical approach, and hence the same introduction which lays out the rationale of the study. Institutional changes, the construction of new urban communities (shequ) and adoption of village elections in the countryside, are seen as triggering a learning process: political and social participation are on the rise, political knowledge is enhanced and efficacy (the perception of having influence on politics) is strengthened. This learning effect, in turn, lifts political consciousness to a new level by turning subjects into citizens, although in a gradual and so far incomplete way. Ideally, at least from the vantage point of the ruling party, this would lead to increased legitimacy of the system, political trust in its local and national authorities and loyalty toward the Communist Party. In the final analysis, the result would be enhanced régime stability. Thus, in contrast to other authors, Heberer and Schubert do not assume a priori that democratic practice will be incompatible with continued one-Party authoritarianism, but rather pursue the question in an open-ended manner. While this goes against the literature on China’s transition to democracy, it opens up intriguing new perspectives and places the study in the context of an on-going debate on China’s “authoritarian resilience”. The research design adopted for urban and rural areas is similar in that in both cases three field-sites of varying socio–economic development were selected, and semi-structured interviews with resident and officials were conducted. The urban study focuses on Shenyang in the northeastern “rust belt”, Chongqing in the west and Shenzhen in the far more developed south. Heberer, the lead author of the first volume, traces the evolution of shequ from the late 1990s to the reforms of urban basic-level governance in which residents’ committees (jumin weiyuanhui) were amalgamated. Although officially defined as a level of “self-administration”, in practice shequ lack autonomy, resources and capacity to perform their wide- ranging social service functions. Instead they perform unwelcome tasks, such as birth control and public security. Of particular importance in their daily work are their social welfare functions, such as disbursing the minimum living allowance (dibao). Checking eligibility of dibao recipients can be a very contentious task

REVIEWS 255 and the official state bureaucracy seems happy to thrust this onto the “self- administration” of the shequ. Residents’ participation varied significantly between the field-sites. Respondents in Shenyang displayed a passive attitude and expected the state to act as a paternalistic provider. Their interest was in protection by the state rather than in participation. In Chongqing a more proactive attitude prevailed, but instead of leading to increased participation in the public realm of the shequ, it fostered independent activities in the economic field. Also, residents in Shenzhen were particularly uninterested in the shequ, focusing their energies instead on home- owners’ associations and other venues of participation. Ironically, then, participation in shequ activities was highest in the least developed and most state- dominated case, namely Shenyang, and higher for the socially dependent than for better-off persons. Closer to conventional definitions of political participation, the study also addresses elections at the community level. It finds a low level of political knowledge among residents matching an equally low democratic standard of actual electoral practice. Nevertheless, it is argued that even such orchestrated elections can have an empowering effect in that they initiate learning processes. In this sense, the authors also speak of “proto-political participation” (p. 153). Finally, the first volume also addresses the relationship between citizenship, autonomy and community in urban neighborhoods. Expectations on the part of residents that the state act in a paternalistic manner work as an impediment to rising citizenship, which would involve rights consciousness but also a sense of civic duty. The latter is also hampered by increasing individualism in urban areas. Against such a backdrop, the authors interpret the Party-state’s attempt to construct urban shequ as a strategy of “authoritarian communitarianism” (p. 182), including the production of citizenship through a top-down process of education. The conclusion emphasizes the—so far largely unrealized—potential of shequ to contribute to widening and deepening participation with the accompanying political learning effects and positive spill-over for régime legitimacy and stability. Some of these inferences could be questioned. For example, it could be argued that a system engaging in birth control is far from developing into a “minimalist state” (p. 193). In the end, it is probably too early to observe far-reaching changes induced by institutional reforms in urban communities because the most crucial one, direct local elections, has hardly been implemented, but this research will serve as a thought-provoking baseline against which future studies can measure the progress made. The situation in the countryside, where several rounds of direct village elections have been conducted already, is strikingly different. The second part of the study, with Schubert as its chief investigator, first provides an overview of the institutional history of village governance. Then major arguments and findings of previous research are succinctly summarized. With respect to the study variables, this research found increasing participation through elections, rising political consciousness and efficacy and even stirrings of rural citizenship in a more rights-conscious peasantry. Earlier authors differed in their assessment of consequences of elections for legitimacy and stability. These preliminary findings are put to the test in three case-

256 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 studies, suburban villages in Shenzhen city (Guangdong), agricultural Fenyi County (Jiangxi) and Lishu County (Jilin), a well-known demonstration-site for village self- administration. In each of these places, interviews were conducted in two villages to give a nuanced picture of political change at the grassroots level. Thus, on the one hand, voting in direct village committee (VC) elections did have an empowering effect and many respondents conceived it as their right. Yet, at the same time, fewer than half the villagers felt that elections had made the VC more responsive and only one third thought that their influence on village-level decision-making had improved. Political knowledge among rural residents was as limited as among their urban counterparts. Residents in Shenzhen’s affluent suburban villages seemed to have been bought off by local cadres through dividends disbursed each year. With the transformation of these villages into urban neighborhoods and the associated loss of revenues from land-leases, these officials have reason to worry about future social stability. In contrast, the long history and high quality of village elections in moderately developed Lishu contributed to an increase in legitimacy of and trust in the local state to endure external shocks. The Jiangxi case was different again. Clans and lineages played a greater role in stabilizing social order but, due to the general low level of economic development, they could not be expected to be a buffer in case of an economic downturn. However, villagers still did not display a great interest in local politics, as they were caught up in their daily struggle for survival. In view of these contrasting empirical findings, the authors conclude that the empowerment brought about by elections has not yet led to the rise of rural citizenship. Only in Lishu could they observe a partial horizontalization of relations between voters and officials. As there is no observable pressure for bottom-up democratization in the countryside, they formulate the hypothesis that village elections currently contribute to enhancing the legitimacy and stability of one-party rule. However, in the long run, this effect could only be maintained if political participation becomes more institutionalized and deepens over time. In the final analysis, in both urban and rural areas the potential for generating legitimacy at the local state level is to be found. But the state will only be able to harness it if more room for political participation is granted and if this in turn leads to a strengthening of rights consciousness and a civic culture. Based on intensive qualitative fieldwork and a thought-provoking theoretical approach this double-study is a valuable addition to the literature on grassroots reforms in China. It should be widely read and debated. Björn Alpermann University of Würzburg, Germany

Government and Policy-Making Reform in China: The Implications of Governing Capacity, by Bill K. P. Chou. London: Routledge, 2009. xiv + 167 pp. £75.00/ US$125.00 (hardcover). During the 1980s, China experienced a steady decline in the policy-making authority of the central government as decentralizing reforms moved forward. In order to

REVIEWS 257 reverse the trend, the central government launched new reforms to regain control over local governments. This book reviews the efforts of policy-making reforms and their consequences in a number of policy fields. It has two main arguments. First, the reconfiguration of policy-making structure followed a top-down approach and gave the central government more capacity to control local governments. Second, the reforms have had only limited success because: 1) policymakers have been locked into limited policy choices; 2) the central élites’ reform policies were primarily driven by their desire to strengthen central control rather than to adapt to the demands of local interests. The book consists of five case studies, on citizen participation, taxation, public spending control, civil service and administrative licensing law. The second chapter analyzes how the Chinese government institutionalized citizen participation in governance. It notes that the retreat of the state from the socio–economic sphere has led to the emergence of new forms of citizen participation, notably non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It argues that, while NGOs have become more active, they have not played any meaningful role in affecting the real policy-making. In the third and fourth chapters, Chou delves into the discussion of the consequences of fiscal reforms including taxation and public spending control. He argues that the reconfiguration of fiscal authority has strengthened the central government’s capacity to extract revenue and its control over public spending, while undermining local governments’ ability to provide public services. The underlying argument is that the mismatch between local fiscal capacities and obligations has resulted in more public grievance and social discontent. Chapters 5 and 6 examine the civil service and regulatory reforms. In both chapters, Chou demonstrates that the central government has strengthened its capacities, but he concludes that both reforms have been delayed because of the conflicting interests between the central élite and local politicians. While this book does a solid job in analyzing the policy-making reforms and their consequences, some of the arguments could be more robust and convincing. First, the book presents plenty of data and cases to illustrate that all of the policy-making reforms were conducted from the top down, but it misses the opportunity to answer a more interesting question: what explains differences in policy implementation in different issue areas? Given the increasingly complicated central–local relations, it seems too simplistic to argue that all policy-making reforms are driven by the same top-down mechanism. Chou notes that the reforms are imperfect and incomplete, but does not present a clear picture of what specific aspects of the reforms have fallen short of their goals. To do that, he should have looked beyond the top-down and bottom-up dichotomy and examine instead unique features of the policy implementation process in the chosen fields of study. The book would have made a more important contribution to the decentralization literature if it had paid more attention to the nuanced variation in the outcomes of policy-making reforms. Second, even if we are convinced that all the reforms were conducted from the top down, it is still difficult to understand why top-down reforms necessarily lead to unsuccessful outcomes. Chou argues that it is because the central élite’s political

258 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 agenda deviates from the demands of local interests. However, under an authoritarian system, can we really assume that local officials will be held accountable by local constituents and will be responsive to local demand? The book would have benefited from more careful analysis of the interests and capacities of local politicians. Some of Chou’s discussions require clarification and elaboration. For example, he claims that “the expansion of democracy in cities is not a high priority of any political agenda” (p. 5). To my knowledge, there is little academic study on Chinese politics that would regard the purpose of political reform as the expansion of democracy or democratization. Second, Chou argues that the “process of implementing reform policies are shaped by institutions” (p. 9), but there is little discussion of what specific institutions he means. Lastly, Chou describes policy-making “in the reform era” without specifying the exact period of time. While most of the analysis focuses on reform policies during the 1990s, Chou sometimes goes back to review policies during the 1980s. China’s economic reform, however, demonstrate distinct features in different periods of time. The reform in the 1980s emphasized decentralization of decision-making authority, while “holding China together” was the primary goal for the reform in the 1990s. Despite quibbles like these, this book is a useful contribution to the study of governance in China. It is appropriate for undergraduate study on the political economy of contemporary China as well as for readers seeking a comprehensive map of the labyrinth of policy-making in post-reform China. Yu Zheng University of Connecticut

China’s Great Economic Transformation, edited by Loren Brandt and Thomas G. Rawski. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xxii + 906 pp. £80.00/US$175.00 (hardcover), £40.00/US$70.00 (paperback), US$60.00 (eBook). Last year’s news is older for China’s economy than for that of most countries. Any book that aims to sum up “China’s great economic transformation” must find itself in a losing race with history, as China’s economy barrels along year after year while transforming itself continuously along many dimensions. Despite this generic and unavoidable problem, China’s Great Economic Transformation is a fine, comprehensive set of discussions of China’s economy from the late 1970s, when the reform period began, until around 2006. This is a big book of some 900 pages. A long list of distinguished people has contributed to it. There are chapters on China as a transition economy (Jan Svejnar), the political economy of China’s transition (Barry Naughton), the demographic aspect of the transition (Wang Feng and Andrew Mason), the labor market (Fang Cai, Albert Park, Yaohui Zhao), education (Emily Hannum, Jere Behrman, Meiyan Wang, Jihong Liu), environmental issues (James Roumasset, Kimberly Burnett, Hua Wang), science and technology (Albert G. Z. Hu, Gary Jefferson), private sector development

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(Stephen Haggard and Yasheng Huang), the role of law (Donald Clarke, Peter Murrell, Susan Whiting), the fiscal system (Christine Wong and Richard Bird), agriculture (Jikun Huang, Keijiro Otsuka, Scott Rozelle), the financial system (Franklin Allen, Jun Qian, Meijun Qian), industry (Brandt, Rawski and John Sutton), China and globalization (Lee Branstetter and Nicholas Lardy), growth and structural change (Brandt, Chang-tai Hsieh, Xiaodong Zhu), income inequality (Dwayne Benjamin, Brandt, John Giles and Sangui Wang), spatial dimensions of China’s development (Kam Wing Chan, J. Vernon Henderson, Kai Yuen Tsui), and forecasting China’s future growth (Dwight Perkins and Rawski). A comprehensive list, indeed, and one that usefully extends the realm of the economic to embrace related areas, such as law, the environment, science and technology, and demography, that undoubtedly interact with economic development and transformation. Moreover, the chapters in this book are not quick summaries but rather lengthy and carefully thought out discussions, often containing new information, new insights or new analytic approaches to their topics. What is left out? It would have been nice to include something more about the impact of political reform (or its absence) upon China’s development (touched on briefly, for example, in Naughton’s chapter and that by Perkins and Rawski); the intersection between human rights and the economy (Clarke, Murrell and Whiting’s chapter deals mainly with contracts, property rights and other aspects of law more directly related to economics); and the important elements of continuity—not just radical change—between the pre- and post-reform periods. To put the last point somewhat differently, consider a counter-factual thought experiment: could China, under different leadership, have launched directly into its post-1978 trajectory in 1950? Whatever one thinks of that possibility, the question is a complex one without a simple and obvious answer. Indeed, the phrase, “China’s great economic transformation”, applied by the editors of this book to the thirty years beginning around 1978, could refer instead to the 60 years since 1950. Naughton mentions “the considerable achievements of Chinese socialism” and the profound damage they sustained during Mao’s final twenty years, and he relates this damage to the choices that were made early in the transition period. One thinks of an old book from 1975, edited by Dwight Perkins, called China's Modern Economy in Historical Perspective, which was concerned with elements of continuity and change between China’s pre-1949 history and that of the post-49 but (as we now know) pre-reform era. In the current book, however, Perkins teams up with Rawski to think about China’s future rather than its past, forecasting continued rapid growth up to 2025. How serious is the obsolescence problem? There are inevitably examples of publication moving more slowly than the Chinese economy. An otherwise valuable discussion by Heston and Sicular of “China and Development Economics”, which compares China with other countries using purchasing power parity (PPP) measures, was completed just before the emergence of new and remarkably different PPP estimates from the World Bank in 2008. Branstetter and Lardy’s informative chapter on “China’s Embrace of Globalization” ends by

260 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 speculating that the exchange rate reforms announced in 2005 “are potentially an important watershed …” (p. 677) in better aligning China’s currency with long run equilibrium levels. It now seems a long time since 2005 and the exchange rate issue is still very much alive. On the other hand, what happened between 1979 and 2005 is certainly a very large part of the story of China’s “great economic transformation”. If the editors had been intimidated by the rapidity of change and retreated from aiming at their moving target, this useful and informative book would not exist and we would be the poorer for it. China’s Great Economic Transformation will serve very well, at least for a few more years, as a comprehensive reader in courses on China’s economy. Carl Riskin Queens College, CUNY and Columbia University

Chinese Capitalisms: Historical Emergence and Political Implications, edited by Yin-wah Chu. Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. xiv + 248 pp. £57.50 (hardcover). Chinese Capitalisms addresses three major issues emerging from theories of economic sociology and the political economy of development as they pertain to China: How has capitalism taken root in Chinese societies? What are the political implications of capitalist development in Chinese societies? Have Chinese societies exhibited a unique variety of capitalism? On the whole, the book provides several fresh insights, while being theoretically eclectic. The introductory and final chapters by Yin-wah Chu frame the book well and provide some coherence. Several of the chapters also contain true analytical nuggets. In analyzing Chinese capitalisms the book adds to a recent yet rapidly expanding literature examining China’s economic reemergence via the capitalist lens. While some of this literature is referenced and analytically incorporated, the book for the most part does not effectively engage with it. Rather, as is often the case with edited volumes, the foci of chapters are quite disparate, ranging from examinations of Weber’s “China Thesis” to an in-depth case study of a prominent Taiwanese family business. There is no coherent analytical framework and, as Chu readily admits in the concluding chapter, “authors contributing to this collection have mostly refrained from providing an explicit definition of capitalism, evaluated if Chinese societies are capitalist, or examined if they exhibit unique Chinese characteristics” (pp. 235-36). This also constitutes the major weakness of the book: it fails to spell out what unique characteristics of capitalism are actually found in Chinese societies and does not generate deeper comparative insights on how Chinese capitalisms relate to other real existing forms of capitalism. Moreover, there is no common thread linking the chapters internally and, beyond the book, to the emerging literature on China’s capitalist transition. Despite these weaknesses, the book includes several insights that should inform studies of China’s capitalist reemergence.

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Chung-hwa Ku in Chapter 2 reviews Weber’s “China Thesis” and then defines capitalism in ideal-typical fashion building on Weber. This definition takes the “rational spirit” as essential to capitalism. At times, this gives the impression of veering in the direction of crude modernization theory, though the chapter provides an intriguing viewpoint. Ku argues that the use of radical communist ideology during the Maoist period and the subsequent implementation of the one-child policy destroyed the clanship network so prevalent in Chinese history. “China’s traditionalism has been annihilated by conscious political force under the dictatorial rule of the CCP” (p. 30). As a result, the Confucian ethic often taken as central to Chinese forms of capitalism “survives only in the form of remnants” (p. 33). Ironically, the destruction of traditional roots by Maoist extremism provided “an opportunity for Western capitalism to press forth into China without being hindered by traditional factors” (p. 35). Devoid of clear ethical rules, China’s “bird cage capitalism” only shapes economic exchanges without extending to socio–political spheres. China’s emergent capitalism therefore does not exhibit a rational “spirit of capitalism” and remains “embedded in the authoritarian structure of Chinese politics” (p. 38). Ku cautions that this “deficiency in thought and values” (p. 36) raises the risk of China following pre- World War II Germany and Japan to militarism, nationalism and fascism. Chapter 3 puts forward the concept of “state neoliberalism” and argues that this formulation highlights “both the centrality of the state, and the contradictions and tensions inherent in the neoliberal practices” (p. 47). As a transitional economy, China undoubtedly implemented policies of economic liberalization. The wave of globalization in which China found itself as a late developer starting in the 1980s further reinforced the primacy of neoliberal policy advice. But the term “state neoliberalism” confuses more than it enlightens. In the end, China’s reform and opening has all along been a statist project, aimed at strengthening the Communist Party-state and China’s international stature. Neoliberal policies have been strategically applied in certain sectors and timeframes, but capital accumulation empowers the state more than it does individual capitalists. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on firm organization and workers. Chapter 4 argues that China’s capitalism continues to bear the birthmarks of the country’s recent history, especially state socialism. This has weakened the pillars of the ideal- typical Chinese family firm, especially its patriarchal structure. In its place a range of hybrid organizational forms incorporating state bureaucratic, foreign and family ownership influences are emerging. Chapter 5 argues that reforms have caused the Chinese working class to lose its privileged status in society. Workers in China now experience high insecurity in their livelihoods and, as a class, face political disintegration and weakness. Chapters 6 through 8 offer three perspectives on Taiwan’s political economy. While interesting, much of this information has already been published previously and only tangentially fits the book’s overall purpose. Certainly, none of the chapters

262 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 engages with intriguing possible parallels between the history of capitalist development on Taiwan and what is now happening in Mainland China. In Chapter 10, Ivan Szelenyi engages with the nature of China’s political economy, questioning to what extent China can be termed “capitalist” or a “socialist market economy”. This leads him to a detailed analysis of how growing private property rights remain juxtaposed with a dominant Leninist party-state. He makes clear that the Chinese state is “so intimately involved in economic processes that it is arguably beyond the usual role of the ‘developmental state,’ even in its East Asian variant” (p. 203). Despite socialist characteristics, Szelenyi holds that “the directionality” (p. 207) of change is toward private property rights and capitalist dynamics of accumulation. By providing some basic definitional elements of capitalism (p. 209) and exploring capitalist development in Eastern Europe (pp. 211-18), the chapter frames China’s emergent capitalism comparatively. One is left wanting more concrete formulations regarding what form(s) of capitalism might be emerging in Chinese societies and how these will shape China’s global re-emergence. Christopher A. McNally East-West Center

The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy, by Minqi Li. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008. xx + 208 pp. US$16/95 (paperback). Minqi Li’s book, as he himself admits, is more about the “Demise of the Global Capitalist System” than about “The Rise of China”. China’s increased participation in the capitalist world-economy, he argues, has played a crucial role in the global triumph of neoliberalism. However, China’s capitalist transition also signals that the globe’s remaining “strategic reserves” of cheap labor and ecological space might soon be exhausted, hastening the demise of the capitalist system. In fact, China’s entry into the capitalist world-economy will depress the profit rate, create systemic chaos as US hegemony declines, and accelerate “the development of the global environmental crisis” (p. 20). The author’s perspective is essentially Marxist, though he builds most systematically on world-systems analysis, especially the works of Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi and their collaborators. In the book’s preface Li consciously lays out his intellectual journey. Before 1989 he, as many of his classmates at Beijing University, was a liberal intellectual in favor of market reforms. June 4th, however, changed his views. Reflecting upon the movement’s failure, he vehemently criticizes Chinese liberal intellectuals for selling out workers and being politically inept. Having made a shift from the Right to the Left, Li gave a political speech on Beijing University’s campus one year after Tiananmen. This landed him in jail for two years, but also gave him ample time to read Marxist writings. He started to question the Communist Party’s account of the Maoist era, viewing Mao’s efforts at revolutionary struggle in a positive light. In December 1994, Li arrived in the United States to study at the University of Massachusetts.

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In the 2000s Li was inspired by Wallerstein’s insights and began to explore the international implications of China’s capitalist transition. In this work he argues that China’s economic rise will destabilize the capitalist world-economy in three ways. First, the exhaustion of China’s strategic reserve of cheap labor and the rise of a large Chinese middle class “could turn the global balance of power again to the favor of the global working classes” (p. 92). The required accommodation of the socio–economic demands of China’s (and India’s) working classes will foster more state regulation and social compromise. As a result, capitalists’ profit rate will be undermined. Second, a key historical condition of the capitalist world-system is a dynamic balance between inter-state competition and a dominant hegemonic power fostering capital accumulation. In his view, US hegemony might have been the last of capitalism’s “systemic cycles”. While China is widely viewed as overtaking the US to become the world’s largest economy, he doubts that China can “provide system- level solutions to system-level problems” (p. 130). China, as any other contender, suffers from “some fundamental and insurmountable weaknesses” (p. 133). The only solution is an alliance of several continent-sized states. But the globe’s problems are so daunting that such an alliance would either falter or evolve into a world-government, either of which would lead to the demise of capitalism. Li’s third and most compelling argument is that the global capitalist system will cause a rapid exhaustion of earth’s resources. Basically, the world has already overshot its ecological limits and can hardly survive China’s (and India’s) rise as voracious resource exploiters. Chapter 1 provides the reader with a concise introduction that frames the book well. Chapter 2 takes a bit of a detour into an analysis of the Maoist period. Li emphasizes here the successes of Mao’s rule and questions the failures of the Great Leap Forward and its subsequent famine. Mao thus emerges as the misunderstood hero and Deng Xiaoping as the villain that hatched a plan to ally the new exploiter classes—privileged bureaucrats, technocrats and bureaucratic capitalists—in opposition to Chinese workers and peasants. “In retrospect, Deng’s political plan worked marvelously well” (p. 64), and capitalism triumphed in China. Chapter 3 explores China’s immersion in the neoliberal global economy, including an analysis of both US and Chinese macroeconomic imbalances and the resulting global imbalances. Li argues that a reorientation towards domestic consumption in China will ultimately lead to the emergence of a large proletarianized Chinese working class. Chapter 4 expands further on this argument by providing a detailed analysis of class structures globally and within China. Somewhat deterministically, Li comes to the conclusion that a rising Chinese working class will lead to a falling profit rate and crisis of accumulation. Alas, the declining profit rate argument is not fully convincing here. Nonetheless, Li explores four pertinent scenarios of China’s rise that range from Chinese failure to a displacement of the historically well-to-do semi-periphery. In Chapter 5 the rise and fall of great hegemonic powers is recapped. Li contends that George W. Bush’s adventurism has squandered US strategic power

264 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 and is increasing the US’s inability to regulate global geopolitics and geo- economics. China, though, cannot fill the US’s shoes, and the world is faced with either systemic chaos or the gradual advent of world-government. Chapter 6 homes in on how the pursuit for profit and endless accumulation of capital is ecologically unsustainable. In several respects this is the most interesting and persuasive chapter, though there is a lack of regard for the role that technological progress and human capital accumulation (for example, education) can play. This chapter also could have benefitted from a more focused analysis of how China’s economic ascent exactly impacts the scarcity of global resources and climate change. Nevertheless, the basic argument that the rise of a new power on China’s massive scale within the historical framework of capitalism will be highly disruptive for the earth’s ecology is significant and constructive. As Li states in the concluding chapter: “The capitalist world-economy rests upon the ceaseless expansion of material production and consumption, which is fundamentally incompatible with the requirements of ecological sustainability” (p. 177). For anyone interested in the global effects of China’s rise this book provides a unique perspective. Li does not shy away from conceptualizing China as an emerging capitalist power that will inexorable change the way the global capitalist system works. Above all, the consequences of China’s rise on the earth’s already fragile eco-system are worth pondering. Christopher A. McNally East-West Center

Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China, edited by Deborah S. Davis and Feng Wang. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. xvi + 293 pp. US$65.00 (hardcover), US$24.95 (paperback). The cardinal concern of Davis and Wang’s edited book is that wealth and poverty are twin creations of China’s reform era. The rapid growth of wealth has been accompanied by rising income inequality, turning China’s relatively equalized socialist system into one of the most unequal societies in the world, characteristic of other capitalistic developing countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia. Contradicting conventional development theory or transitional society theory, reform- era China’s development path does not resemble either East European countries or the East Asian Tigers. Rapid economic development neither brought about a collapse of China’s socialist power structure nor created a “trickle down effect” reducing the income gap in Chinese society. The price that China has paid for its rapid economic growth, most of the authors in this book argue, is widening social inequality which may eventually undermine the legitimacy of the rule of the Communist Party. Davis and Wang coin the concept of “Communist capitalism” to highlight the specific path of Chinese transition to capitalism, largely shaped by institutional factors and historical legacies. The book’s chapters reveal that all the binary forces of state power and market force, public ownership and private capital, redistributive system and privatization, production and reproduction of labor power work closely

REVIEWS 265 together to shape Chinese society. The result is a hybrid capitalist economy that combines state power and capitalism. Social stratification, not class, is still the dominant concept that helps conceptualize the existing patterns of social inequality along the lines of regional difference, the rural–urban divide, work hierarchy, gender and generation, opportunity of education and so on. While few authors in this book would think that the specific mechanisms that they suggest contribute to social stratification could be removed, most of them neglect an important dimension of Chinese society: the formation of class is a timely and urgent social agenda that deserves serious and in-depth investigation. This book’s contribution, however, is the detailed depiction of the mechanisms that affect Chinese society as it undergoes a rapid transformation in the postsocialist period. Despite some flaws, this is one of the most comprehensive and insightful books in recent years to address the issue of social inequality in globalizing China. PUN Ngai Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Inequality and Public Policy in China, edited by Björn A. Gustafsson, Li Shi and Terry Sicular. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xviii + 364 pp. £50.00/US$90.00 (hardcover), US$72.00 (eBook). This is a rigorous and well-executed book by leading scholars of China’s economic and social transformation. It provides a rare fusion of rigorous empirical analysis, clear presentation, good-quality data and thoughtful attention to public policy concerns. The book represents the major collective output of the third phase of an initiative to examine changing patterns of inequality in reform- era China. Prior surveys covering 1988 and 1995 led to landmark publications on changing patterns of inequality in the transitional economy. The current study, based on data for 2002, continues to document these changes following major state sector reforms and coinciding with significant policy changes with respect to rural areas and social welfare. To capture the complex dynamic of rural–urban changes, this round is the first to add a sample of over 5,000 migrants from 12 provinces to the existing rural and urban samples. The book starts with an excellent introduction which should become a standard text for anyone looking for an accessible review of trends in income distribution over China’s recent reform period. It provides an admirable review of key findings from the study, along with a clear discussion of data sources and measurement issues. Major findings (elaborated in Chapters 2 to 5) include stable (not increasing) inequality since 1995; a decline in poverty over this period—though much faster in urban than in rural areas; and an increase in wealth inequality, particularly within rural China, where the Gini coefficient for wealth now exceeds that for income. Spatial (rural–urban) inequalities have continued to rise; education is an increasing contributor to inequality, while political factors such as Party membership now contribute less. While some of the differences with other studies are explained in terms of methods for calculating income, in particular the inclusion of subsidies,

266 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 others are explained in terms of the changing pattern and stage of China’s structural transformation and various public policy interventions. In contrast to many earlier studies of this type, the book moves beyond an assessment of how far China is moving towards the market allocation of resources, with inequalities reflecting either market imperfections or returns to endowments; instead, certain inequalities are viewed as a policy problem which require state or public policy engagement, including redistributive interventions, to ensure a more equitable outcome. All chapters in some way address the wider policy context, with reference to public action contributing, positively or negatively, to distributional outcomes. Issues addressed include social protection mechanisms (particularly dibao), health and unemployment benefits, land policies and discrimination against migrants, and the pivotal role of the tax system. A valuable discussion explains the increasing inequality in rural wealth in terms of policies which prevent farmers from realizing the true value of land. This story contrasts with that in urban areas, where the distribution of wealth was already more unequal than that of income. In both cases, housing is a major contributor to inequality. These findings suggest the possibility of income inequalities again rising, reinforced by the nature of wealth accumulation. This chapter, along with several others, points to the implications particularly for the tax system, with more progressive taxation recognized as a critical area of policy concern. The chapter on poverty also notes that, while less regressive than in 1995, taxes still fall disproportionately on the poor. Several chapters link questions of inequality explicitly to contemporary policy concerns, including the elderly and health care. Chapter 7, by Edward Palmer and Deng Quheng, uses data from the three surveys to explore the changing pattern of support for the elderly. In urban areas, changes in housing and pensions have led to greater independence of, and evidence of declining inequality among, the elderly. However, the chapter suggests that the lowest income households are most likely to have to absorb the costs of caring for the low income elderly, thus potentially reinforcing other inequalities. Chapter 11, by Meng Xin and Luo Chuliang, links the issue to changing housing availability. A discussion of health financing (Chapter 8, by Wei Zhong and Björn Gustafsson) points to a need for public spending to overcome the major burden of catastrophic health spending for the poor. Given the time of data collection, this chapter does not reflect new government policies aiming to expand health coverage and reduce the incidence of catastrophic expenditures. While the book does include dimensions of inequality beyond income, some aspects receive insufficient attention. These include gender and ethnicity, and their intersection with location or age. Chapters on the elderly, for example, would benefit further from a more systematic gender analysis. Palmer and Deng (pp. 195-96) note the increasing gender income gap among the elderly, reflecting differences in pensions—feeding through from gender wage gaps (discussed in Chapter 9, by John Knight and Lina Song), an earlier retirement age and other biases against women’s labor-force participation.

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The final two chapters break new ground by shifting from the individual to community and institutional arrangements that affect inequality. Chapter 12 by Hiroshi Sato examines the role of village-level factors on household income and its distribution. As noted on p. 288, this approach complements earlier chapters which identify location as a critical determinant of income inequality. It also enables meso-level institutions to be considered as the mediating channels between public policies and individual outcomes. Together with the final chapter, by Sato, Li Shi and Yue Ximing, this chapter offers a note of caution about the capacity of policies to translate readily into desirable redistributive impacts at the local level. Overall, this book stands as a tribute to long-standing research partnerships, collaborative relationships between Chinese and international scholars, and to the donors who have supported multiple rounds of the survey. It is a model of research, and of research collaboration, deserving support and emulation. Sarah Cook United Nations Research Institute for Social Development

States’ Gains, Labor’s Losses: China, France, and Mexico Choose Global Liaisons, 1980–2000, by Dorothy J. Solinger. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2009. xviii + 245 pp. US$45.00/£30.50 (hardcover). Dorothy Solinger has substantially advanced the state of the field with this book, which constitutes a rare and admirable attempt by a China specialist to speak directly to broader political science debates through explicitly cross-national comparative research. In State’s Gains, Labor’s Losses, she argues that, much to the chagrin of their countries’ workers, left-leaning governments in France, China, and Mexico all embraced free-market capitalism, international trade and global integration in response to crises (real or imagined) during the 1980s. These moves set the stage for later reforms, further supported and escalated by the three countries’ entry into supra-national economic organizations, that substantially undercut the material and political position of the formal sector labor force. The similarities end there, however, as workers responded differently in each country with distinct implications for the reform and development of welfare and social protection policies. Specifically, President François Mitterand instituted policies of economic retrenchment, leading the mass lay-offs in France, in response to imperatives of European integration; while at roughly the same time, Mexican President de la Madrid, responding to his country’s debt crisis, slashed state spending, leading to widespread job losses. In China, the process was slightly less clear-cut, as the crises of the 1980s were largely imagined, but CCP leaders decisively opted for the market and international trade, laying the groundwork for later integration into the world economy and the millions of lay-offs in the state sector that were to follow. Paradoxically, workers responded most militantly where unions were weakest—in China—and with the greatest degree of quiescence where unions were strongest—in France—with Mexico falling somewhere in between. This,

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Solinger argues, can be explained by the specific “terms of attachment” that formerly bound workers to the state in each county. Perhaps not so surprisingly, this pattern of protest and worker activism helped shape the reform and expansion of welfare systems in each state, with China dramatically revamping and deepening its social protection policies, while Mexico expanded and retooled its social safety net only slightly, and France actually reduced benefits and coverage by many measures. The book draws almost exclusively on secondary scholarly sources, media reports, and documents issued by national governments and international organizations (such as the OECD) and has little of the rich fieldwork data and interviews that have been a hallmark of much of Solinger’s other work. This, however, is not unusual for comparative studies of this sort and does not, in and of itself, weaken the book or undermine the arguments presented. Indeed, a substantial pay-off from this book for China specialists is the chance to see their case in relation to others commonly studied by political scientists. It is striking to think, for example, that Chinese workers may actually have been more successful at articulating their interests and advocating for redress of their substantial grievances than their French counterparts. It is also useful and instructive to place the reform of China’s welfare system into comparative perspective and look beyond the mostly idiosyncratic categories and concepts frequently deployed in internal debates. Though the book offers little new data that would surprise China scholars, the summaries of basic patterns of workers’ protest and resistance, as well as of welfare reform programs and their effects, are clear, comprehensive, and concise. There are also several substantive claims that are quite thought-provoking and not uncontroversial. For example, Solinger posits a direct causal relationship between China’s integration into the world economy in general, and its moves to enter to WTO in particular, and the waves of state sector lay-offs that began in the mid- 1990s and took off after the 15th Party Congress in 1997. Also she claims, at several points, that international competition and central policy directives played central roles in driving lay-offs. These factors are emphasized mostly to the exclusion of others such as inherent inefficiencies of the planned economy, lingering problems from early rounds partial reform (for example, in fiscal policy), or issues related to the explosive growth of the domestic private sector, to name just a few. Though good arguments can be made in support of her substantive findings, they do not reflect a settled consensus in the field or a commonly accepted conventional wisdom. Rather, they represent a significant challenge to what many other authors have said or assumed over the past decade. Solinger, as one of the most dedicated and thorough scholars of Chinese labor politics and lay-offs, would have been well placed to offer a more comprehensive explanation of and accounting for each step in the causal chains underlying these claims, cementing a significant contribution to the substantive literature on these topics. It is a pity she did not accomplish this here (though, in fairness, I do not think this was her primary objective).

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In sum, States’ Gains, Labor’s Losses, is the most coherent and ambitious attempt in decades to examine important phenomena in Chinese politics in explicitly cross-regional comparative context. As such, it breaks new ground in the field of Chinese studies and all students and scholars of contemporary China would do well to take note. Solinger also writes in a style (though sometimes a tad tangled and over-wrought) accessible to most undergraduates and the book is sure to provoke lively debate and discussion if used in the classroom. William Hurst The University of Texas at Austin

The Rise of China and India: A New Asian Drama, by Lam Peng Er and Lim Tai Wei. Singapore: World Scientific, 2009. viii + 169 pp. US$80.00 (hardcover). The Rise of China and India is yet another addition to the growing body of work on how India and China are ostensibly destined to take over the world. Unfortunately, with the exception of one or two outstanding chapters, this book fails to inspire, and in some cases actively contributes to the erroneous “Chindia” construction that has grown out of a failure of communication between China and India specialists. Although this book, like so many in the genre, ostensibly attempts to conflate the two, for the most part, like many of its counterparts, it does not succeed. It should be the duty of an editor not only to bring disparate chapters together but also to provide a degree of coherence and consistency between them, and it is this latter task which Lam and Lim have failed to accomplish. The book is a collection of papers from the 2008 – Daisaku Ikeda Peace Research Conference on “The Rise of China and India: Towards a Harmonious Region?”, and it reads like it, with numerous structural inconsistencies. Only one chapter, Noel M. Morada’s “The Rise of China and India and Its Implications for Southeast Asia: A Philippine Perspective”—which, incidentally, seems to spend more time discussing Myanmar than it does the Philippines—provides any sort of biographical information on its author. The book is also rife with spelling mistakes, inconsistencies and non-standard English usages, giving it the appearance of being both unprofessionally edited and published in haste. The quality of the chapters is also extremely inconsistent, varying from K. M. Seethi’s excellent analysis in “Emerging India and China: Potentials and Constraints”, which doesn’t shy away from exploring the nuances and complexities of China and India’s respective growth, to Johan Saravanamuttu and Minoru Koide’s solid chapters on Malaysia and Japan respectively, to the superficial, overly simplistic theoretical analysis of China and India by Ding Dou, which raises many interesting questions but fails to engage properly with any of them. In their introduction (“China, India and the New Asian Drama”), Lam and Lim acknowledge that “even though the ascendancy of both Asian giants is often stated in the same breath, we argue that there are considerable differences between them” (p. 3), but then go on to offer a simplistic analysis of the two

270 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 countries drawing heavily on their superficial similarities, such as population size and ethnic diversity, but failing to explore the more fundamental differences. This is a common trap often encountered by China or East Asia scholars seeking to jump on the “Chindia” bandwagon—a fundamentally flawed concept in itself— and it is quite clear from this introduction that neither Lam nor Lim has any solid grounding in Indian politics or foreign policy, not least because of amateur mistakes such as referring to Indian “provinces” rather than states. Thankfully, K. M. Seethi is not afraid to challenge this view, noting that “... the economies of India and China are generally seen as somewhat similar from the angle of economic growth. In fact, the vast differences in the developmental trajectories make such similarities very superficial” (p. 23). Seethi looks beyond the obvious comparisons of population size, territorial size, ethnic diversity and recently reformed economies and delves into the nuances of domestic politics, history and foreign policy which are too often neglected in India–China comparisons. As the only Indian featured in the book, he is able to provide interesting insights into the country’s development. Seethi’s chapter, when taken next to Ding Dou’s valiant but slightly misguided attempt to wrestle international relations theory into an India–China framework in “The Rise of China: Conflict or Harmony in East Asia?” highlights a major problem which has been increasingly coming to the fore in recent years. China is still studied much more extensively in India than India is in China; this is also true in Western and Southeast Asian countries. Consequently, there is enough of an understanding of China in India to comprehend that there is no “Chindia” or even really any Sino–Indian competition; in fact, most Indian China scholars are bemused by what they see as a Western construct taking hold in countries which remain fearful of China’s rise and wish to set India up as a balance. Unfortunately, this truth has not yet penetrated deeply into Western thought or scholarship, and there is a woeful lack of communication between Northeast and South Asian scholars so that, in spite of shared borders and common interests, China and India are still often viewed in an academic context as operating in completely different spheres. When coupled with the superficial comparisons discussed above, the result is the concept of a “Chindia” or a mutual and equitable rise, which is completely disconnected from reality and which fails utterly to take any historical, social, political or cultural context into account. The best chapters in the book understand this problem and go some way to dealing with it; the worst, unfortunately, contribute to it. The Rise of China and India is less than the sum of its parts. It has certain things to recommend it, such as Seethi’s excellent comparative chapter, which provides the only real insight into India’s domestic affairs and their impact on its “rise”; and those interested in Malaysian, Japanese, Singaporean or Thai perspectives will no doubt find those chapters appealing. Louise Merrington Australian National University

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Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate: Memories of Empire in a New Global Context, by Charles Horner. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. xvi + 224 pp. US$34.95 (hardcover). This interesting book is a collection of reflections upon China’s present transformation, in which the author examines the dramatic trajectory of the reform period against the backdrop of the past several centuries of Chinese history. Such a project is difficult to do without falling into standard clichés: Chinese autocracy or sinocentrism, China as an isolated ethnic and political monolith and so on. Charles Horner avoids such pitfalls, offering a range of useful historical paradigms without becoming too deeply entrenched in any of them. The title of the book follows Joseph Levinson’s Confucian China and its Modern Fate, a highly influential trilogy published in late 1950s and early 1960s that examined China’s cultural, intellectual and political transition from the imperial age into the 20th century. Horner profiles China’s reformation in recent decades as a similarly significant transition that echoes important themes and issues from the past. The “postmodern” in the title is not intended to be heavily freighted with theoretical weight. Rather, it is used to suggest the imprecise vision of Rising China’s future, the sequel to the certitude of the modernist projects that characterized much of China’s tumultuous 20th century. Horner both locates China’s current rise in the context of several paradigms in Chinese history and considers the ways in which the circumstances and ideologies of the present have shifted the ground in how the Chinese past is understood, most notably in the Qing dynastic history project, slated for completion in 2012, the hundredth anniversary of the end of the dynasty. Horner’s brisk review of the past several centuries of Chinese history draws on a judicious survey of recent scholarly sources (though mostly limited to English-language materials). He underscores the broad potentialities of China’s future by drawing links to previous versions of “Rising China”. He begins with the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and Khubilai Khan’s 13th-century efforts to rule a vast and multicultural realm. The “high imperial policy of disinterest and acceptance” (pp. 185-86) deployed by the Mongols, argues Horner, can inform policies of multiculturalism in China’s 21st century. Similarly, the ambitious Zheng He expeditions and vibrant economic networks of the Ming Empire offer important parallels in which to contextualize China’s current global engagement. Horner gives more attention to the “Pax Manjurica” of the Qing dynasty and the ways in which it shaped many of the parameters of Chinese modernity. Until recent decades, the Manchus were regarded as emblems of China’s backward parochialism. Horner draws instead upon the rich findings in Manchu studies that have shown the Qing as a broad and politically sophisticated empire, a colonial power in its own right, whose reach in all directions (but particularly Central Asia) dramatically expanded “China” in the 18th century. The Manchus so persuasively integrated these additions to the empire that they remained dogmatically fixed to the modern Chinese nation state. Horner also surveys recent scholarship on the late Qing cultural and political world that dynamically shaped much of the trajectory of China’s 20th century.

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After reviewing the last three imperial dynasties, Horner explores historical trends that span the Republican, Maoist and Reformist periods. Several of these themes examine Chinese efforts throughout the 20th century to adapt to the new world order imposed upon it. In Chapter 5, he considers arguments that Maoist military and political strategies of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s were based upon traditional Chinese gamesmanship derived from Sunzi’s Art of War or from the game of weiqi (go). Chapter 6 explores Chinese literary projects, going back to those of Liang Qichao, that attempted to re-contextualize Chinese civilization within the broader history of world culture. Chapter 7 examines the Maoist focus upon the countryside, a strategy that was dramatically reversed with the stunning mega-metropolitan centers that emerged in the reform era. Chapter 8 explores the violent human costs of China’s 20th-century transformations and some of the literary efforts to encompass the traumatic alienation and fragmentation. Chapter 9 offers an overview of the Chinese response to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its implications for the Chinese Communist state, and Chapter 10 delves into the problematic features of Chinese national identity and the tumultuous political landscape of ethnicity in the 20th century. There are many divergent themes and points to be made in these chapters, but an overriding element is the past, present and future process of dynamic change and adaptation in China. Horner notes, “an examination of past eras of Chinese greatness shows far more adaptation to changed circumstances—often dangerous circumstances—than it demonstrates an implementation of some pre-existing vision” (p. 183). Against this historical backdrop of shifts and turns, Horner reflects on China’s current rise, not as an anomaly, but as part of a long tradition of dramatic transformations. This book is thus an elegant warning against either dogmatic or essentializing interpretations of Rising China, or excessive certitude about its fate. Peter Ditmanson Oxford University

China 2020: How Western Businesses Can—and Should—Influence Social and Political Change in the Coming Decade, by Michael A. Santoro. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009. xvi + 162 pp. US$21.95/£11.95 (hardcover). The impact of economic engagement on democracy and political freedom has long been a controversial topic. Experience in China in the past 30 years tells us that trade and economic development do not give rise to political liberalization per se. Nonetheless, the changing relations between state and market have created spaces for different forms of activism. Santoro’s book covers four areas, namely: sweatshop labor, production safety, internet freedom and the rule of law, and asks how transnational corporations can contribute or “do their ‘fair share’” (p. 18) in the process of social change. This is a book on business ethics targeted at business leaders and corporation decision-makers in the West, especially the US. According to Santoro, while the main responsibility for the development of China’s democracy and human rights will rest

REVIEWS 273 on domestic actors, foreigners also have a crucial role to play. While encouraging corporations to engage in social and political change, Santoro raises the argument that effective enforcement of regulations and the rule of law, the main weaknesses of China’s political system, are also in the interests of the Western business. Santoro’s first concern is sweatshops. Quoting labor activists, he suggests that the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) will play a diminishing role in protecting workers’ rights, because of poor administration and inadequate scope of the voluntary code. The CSR system does not affect most workers. Even when it is practiced with integrity, factory audits are often evaded by subcontractors. Instead of CSR, Santoro predicts the rise of trade unionism as the primary response to the need to protect migrant workers’ rights. He comes to this position after reviewing the new Labor Contract Law, which has been in effect since January 2009 and gives workers substantive and procedural rights, as well as the campaign of the All China Federation of Trade Union (ACFTU) to unionize migrant workers in foreign-owned enterprises. The second issue which Santoro analyzes is the safety of drugs and other products manufactured in China, which have recently raised significant challenges for the global production chain. Santoro tries to examine the fundamental cause of China’s systemic and pervasive product-safety problems and to suggest policy recommendations for Western governments and pharmaceutical companies. He argues strongly that drug companies should bear full ethical responsibility for the safety and efficacy of products sold in the US. They should insist on conducting “a full service audit program” (p. 65) according to Western, rather than Chinese, standards and regulations, and pay their Chinese subcontractors a reasonable price. By doing so, foreigners could help to reshape the future of China by “find[ing) an economic path that combines growth with safety” (p. 69). The third focus of the book is the Internet. The Internet has become a space for expressing public concern, and has contributed to policy change in a number of cases. At the same time, state-of-the-art technology and tens of thousands of censors have been employed by the state to control Internet content and block or shut down thousands of websites. This censorship has undermined political progress and crushed the hope that China’s WTO admission would bring a positive impact on democracy and human rights. Santoro’s special concern is the self- censorship of foreign ISP companies like Google, MSN and Yahoo. These US- based companies tend to exercise less censorship than their Chinese counterparts, but their images have been damaged by issues like Yahoo disclosing a dissident journalist’s identity to Chinese authorities in 2005. Santoro calls for the companies to come to a “moral compromise”, “do no more evil than is necessary” and raise a WTO legal claim by seeing Internet censorship as a barrier to trade. The final issue is China’s judicial system. The Chinese legal system is said to have made some progress in the education and professionalism of its judges and lawyers. However, it is constrained by Party-state dominance. The term “rule by law” well describes the Chinese judicial system as an instrument of government control over the ordinary citizens. This has resulted in court decisions in favor of

274 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 local business and local government against foreign companies and ordinary citizens. Santoro criticizes foreign companies for not having the moral courage to challenge the illegal behaviors of Chinese authorities for fear of retaliation, although the Administrative Litigation Law gives them some leverage to do so. “The emergence of the rule of law in the coming decade will partly depend on whether foreign corporations and lawyers posses the moral courage to do their fair share to foster the development of the rule of law”, he argues. Considering the aforementioned factors, Santoro predicts two possible ways out for China in 2020: a Pax China, in which Westerners help to move China to greater freedom, democracy and respect for human rights; and a Nox China, where Westerners fail to do so and China becomes so dysfunctional that its economic development is threatened. Overall, this is an audience-friendly book, providing rich and updated information in a simple and clear style. Santoro has tried to contribute many practical progressive suggestions to potential audiences in the US government, corporations and trade unions. The book’s main weakness is that it overemphasizes the potential role of Western corporations in the process of political change in China. The hope of social change in China rests on different forms of activism inside the country. International support can certainly play a part, but there is no sign that Western corporations will support radical activism. In fact, some of this activism is directed against the interests of global business. For instance, in Chapter 5, Santoro quotes the example of the Western commercial chambers which lobbied the Chinese government on the Labor Contract Law. He argues: “... lobbying efforts were teaching China an important civics lessons about how laws were made in liberal democracies” (p. 120). In fact, I would see this as an effort by foreign business to downgrade labor protection in their own interests. As long as exploitation by global capital is one of the main issues facing the Chinese working class, there is no point in placing much hope in Western corporations. King Chi Chris Chan City University of Hong Kong

Fortifying China: The Struggle to Build a Modern Defense Economy, by Tai Ming Cheung. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009. xvi + 279 pp. US$39.95/ £20.50 (hardcover). The mantra at IMD, the business school where I reside, is that “strategic effectiveness is determined by choice and execution”. Both are essential if strategic aspirations are to be achieved. The title of Tai Ming Cheung’s book—Fortifying China—suggests “choice”, but in fact, its real contribution is on “execution”. Tai Ming Cheung makes China’s execution challenges both understandable and relevant, for policy-makers and technologists alike. China and innovation are both fields of study full of “contradictions”. What Cheung shows is that China’s military has been an important engine of economic growth, but at the same time the real breakthrough in “execution” has come from the ascendancy of the civil sector in making technology decisions. Not at all

REVIEWS 275 unlike the West, the promise of commercialization has been an extremely effective vehicle for achieving profound changes in the mindset of several key stakeholder groups. What Cheung convincingly shows is that the “redder China” of the 1960s and ’70s was characterized by an “insular, secretive, highly bureaucratic, and risk-adverse institutional culture”. No wonder China was so far behind the West in military and commercial technology. Cheung is fascinated by the intricacies of what he refers to as a “Titanic struggle” between market champions and the protectors of the socialist legacy. The outcome, he admits, is still not certain, but socialism with Chinese characteristics is at its best when market forces are in control. Cheung argues convincingly that China’s recent historical failures in keeping up with Western military innovation in conventional weaponry can be attributed to a variety of severe structural limitations, including: profound vertical siloing; a severe separation of the defense sector from other players (such as universities, for example); the inflexibility of monopolist suppliers; conversational blockages between different sectors; a preference for imitation over innovation; and chronic political battles between key institutional actors. All of this has led, for decades, to fractured decision-making; a lack of coordination and standardization; the localization of tacit knowledge; and ineffective institutions. On the other hand, strategic weapon systems, Cheung argues, have enjoyed significant technological innovation precisely because that system was able to overcome the innovation pathologies of the conventional weapons industry. Strategic weapons typically have influential sponsors, who are able to cut through frustrations, access foreign technology and create innovation processes marked by demand-pull, mutual cooperation and experimentation among key value-chain stakeholders. I think that Cheung’s great contribution with this book, besides chronicling in considerable detail the execution problems that led to the prolonged failure of China’s defense innovation system, is the detailed way in which he shows that China’s re-emergence as a military innovator is due largely to attentiveness to the very same “principles” of successful innovation—horizontal communications; demand-pull initiatives; experimentation; prototypes; value-chain partnerships; and the essential merits of top-down innovation leadership—that we would be advocating in the West. What Cheung reminds us is that, while much of the management is infused by local cultural norms, there are still sufficient commonalities of management issues and approaches across cultures to allow us to resist the persistent (and very Chinese) argument that “we are different”, no matter who “we” are. This is an important book for the way it takes a policy topic and interprets it in managerial terms. China is changing and is emerging as not only the “factory of the world”, but increasingly as a world-innovator as well. This book provides well-documented insight into the struggles that China is presently involved in to modernize innovation in the military sector. William A. Fischer IMD (International Institute for Management Development)

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Chinese Security Policy: Structure, Power and Politics, by Robert S. Ross. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. x + 331 pp. £85.00/US$170.00 (hardcover), £23.99/US$41.95 (paperback). This collection of articles and essays provides an insightful analysis of key developments in Sino–American relations during the post-Mao period. It illustrates well the dynamics and structure of Chinese negotiations in the context of various historical events and the relative bargaining strengths of different historical powers. The analysis is premised on the assumption that China’s foreign policy springs from dynamics common to all states—particularly the imperative of security, given the international system and the omnipresent possibility of war. Geography is a major factor, and China’s growing continental scope of power is countered by American maritime power in the Pacific and along its rim. Ross argues that a bipolar Asia, with Great Power spheres of influence, is likely to witness greater cooperation and stability than during the Cold War antagonism between the US and Soviet Union. In a retrospective chapter, the presidential policies of Nixon, Carter and Reagan towards China are scrutinized in terms of Chinese responses, which were sensitive to the perceived strengths and weaknesses of each administration. Reagan’s stress on the Soviets as the root cause of troubles coincided with Chinese objectives and began the era of Sino–American cooperation. How the Chinese negotiated and aligned with the US against the USSR is related in fine detail without losing sight of the larger strategic picture. The US commitment to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea ensures that China’s continental dominance stops at the “water’s edge”. Even with the loss of bases in Thailand and the Philippines, the US maintains maritime and air supremacy in the region. Military power is a major dimension of the strategic relationship, and China has been astute in using its growing economic power to entice, not only states in Southeast Asia, but also Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, into a profitable trade embrace. Although East Asia has been the major beneficiary of the Pax Americana, China has been able to use that peace and prosperity to its strategic advantage. One of the essays examines the role of secondary powers. Ross examines relevant realist views and considers how lesser states seek security through their relationships with greater powers. State accommodation and economic dependence provide important dimensions, as balance-of-power realism explains state alignments without reference to cultural or historical particularities. His conclusions thus differ from those of David C. Kang in China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Deterrence and coercive diplomacy are the subjects of several essays, including a case study of the Cambodian peace process, where China pursued a strategy of imposing high costs on adversaries (chiefly Vietnam). Another case study examines the Taiwan Strait confrontation (1995–96), which proved to be a turning point in post–Cold War Sino–American relations. At the time,

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Washington moved away from strategic ambiguity and demonstrated the credibility of its security guarantees by standing up to Chinese threats. In the process, the US protected Taiwan, and gave the local independence movement unwarranted confidence to pursue its goals. Clinton’s granting of a US visa to Lee Teng-hui, after Congressional pressure, was seen in Beijing as a challenge to the Chinese opposition to Taiwanese independence, and may have been the trigger to subsequent events. After the confrontation settled down, America has been cautious not to encourage the belief that there will be protection of an independent Taiwan. Ross argues that, as long as there is no Taiwan declaration of independence, China can be deterred from using force in the Straits. In the final section, the book examines the relationship between China’s domestic politics and foreign policy. While internal politics unquestionably affect external policy, the international arena sets limits to what can be ventured and gained. Ross provides an overview of the interaction of domestic and foreign dynamics, as context for relations with the US. In the 1970s, Chinese leaders recognized the need to cooperate with America against Soviet hegemonism, and later saw Sino–Soviet cooperation as a way to improve their position in the strategic triangle. Élite instability during the 1970s was also a factor in China’s international alignment. Finally, the diplomacy surrounding Tiananmen demonstrated a policy belligerence greater than would have been expected, largely because of relative hardliners in China and the US. Ross’s analysis is valuable reading on the dynamics of a relationship between the global superpower and an already dominant regional power. His arguments and interpretation of events project a high-level understanding of events with reference to appropriate theory and approaches. Robert E. Bedeski University of Victoria

China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, by Sophie Richardson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. xii + 332 pp. US$50.00/£34.50 (hardcover). Sophie Richardson argues in her study of Sino–Cambodian relations that the Five Principles of peaceful coexistence, articulated at the dawn of the new Communist era in the 1950s, are not just rhetoric and are grounded in a view of the world that has been remarkably consistent. The Five Principles (of peaceful co-existence, mutual respect of territory and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in the affairs of others, and mutual equality and benefit) were rooted, as she explains, in China’s traumatic experience of colonialism and invasion. They managed to balance the need for preserving sovereign integrity while managing external threats from more powerful nations when the People’s Republic was being formed. In that sense, they gave China a unique and cohesive foreign relations strategy, one that defended its own interests while allowing it to build international links with countries that were similarly poor, developing and

278 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 recovering from a history of economic, military and political aggression from developed countries. This book is the result of Richardson’s PhD thesis, but it benefits from her extensive use of Chinese-language primary source materials and, equally importantly, a range of interviews with Chinese and Cambodian officials and academics who had firsthand experience of the history that she records. China’s relations with Cambodia from the 1950s onwards were highly problematic. As Richardson notes, there was no compelling reason, initially, that China, led by Communist rulers, should have cultivated good relations with what was then a conservative monarchy. Of course, the US was becoming an increasingly important player in the region, and that did play some part in China’s strategic thinking, but the Chinese élite developed links with almost all the main players in Cambodian society, reaching above and beyond mere pragmatic, self-interested bonds. As part of this overall strategy of engagement, in 1966 at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a leader of one of the parties more ideologically close to the Chinese Communists, Pol Pot, visited China. Scholars like David Chandler have argued that this exposure was to give the Khmer Rouge the inspiration for their own extreme form of internal revolution, which, once they had gained victory over the Lon Nol régime in 1975, was to lead to three tragic, catastrophic years. Somehow, Beijing had managed to balance good relations with both Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge, prevailing on the King to return to Phnom Penh in 1975. Behind their public support for the régime, which was consistent with the Five Principles’ emphasis on non-interference, no less a figure than Zhou Enlai, then suffering from cancer, warned the Khmer Rouge not to go too fast (a warning evidently not heeded). Richardson explains later that this public support for the Khmer Rouge was to be hugely damaging to China, laying it open to accusations it was the main funder and international supporter of one of the most murderous régimes in history. However, as one Chinese interviewee lugubriously states, their rise to power had a grim inevitability about it, and the rule at least saved Cambodia from being swallowed by the Vietnamese and the US-friendly Lon Nol régime. This fatalistic view prevailed in Beijing, and was only dislodged during the peace negotiations in the 1990s in Paris, where, as part of the final deal, China ceased funding the Khmer Rouge’s extant armies, leaving them to withdraw and slowly implode almost a decade later. Richardson quotes another witness who commented that Deng Xiaoping, himself a victim of a radical group’s violence in the Cultural Revolution, personally disliked Pol Pot because “he reminded him of Jiang Qing”, Mao’s demagogue wife. It is not the least irony of this fascinating story that the current strongman of Cambodia, Hun Sen, declared in the 1980s that “China was the root of all evil in Cambodia”. As the figures which Richardson lists show, China is now the root of all the country’s wealth, having written off as much as perhaps US$1 billion in non-paid loans, and extended investment, soft loans and credit into the billions over the last two decades. As she spells out in her final chapters, for this largesse, China has received very little— and demanded next to nothing. Despite being accused of trying to build up and buy

REVIEWS 279 influence in southeast Asia, on the whole it has been a largely disinterested actor, sometimes even taking direct hits (as with its support for the Khmer Rouge) when more brutal self-interest and pragmatism might have saved it. Richardson concludes that China may have done this because the heart of the Five Principles is indeed a belief, beyond any rhetoric, that countries have the right to be self-determining, to conduct their own affairs, and to enjoy full, untrammeled sovereignty. In her final chapter, Richardson briefly discusses why the misunderstanding of China’s commitment to the Five Principles by the United States has been a particular source of tension in the relationship between these two countries. She argues that they both have principles for international engagement, but these principles are different, hence the frequent verbal clashes and difficult periods in their bilateral relationship. Too often, American policy- makers refuse to believe that their Chinese counterparts aren’t just mouthing platitudes. As China’s economic influence penetrates deeper, and further, into neighboring countries, it is worth balancing the suspicions about China’s construction of an enormous international community of sympathizers alongside Richardson’s arguments that, in many cases, China is sticking to principles that it acquired long before it was rich or strong. That explains the very curious, and sometimes self-destructive, choices that it makes in partners for its international ventures. Kerry Brown Chatham House

China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores, by R. Evan Ellis. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2009. xiv + 329 pp. US$68.00 (hardcover), US$24.50 (paperback). The book is subtitled The Whats and Wherefores, and Ellis explains in his first chapter that his goal is to present a more detailed description of the emerging relationship between China and Latin America than the existing literature has so far provided (p. 2). To that end, Ellis outlines the general themes characterizing the ties between China and each country in Latin America, and discusses motivations and mutual interests. The book also provides extensive detail about links in areas including trade, investment, infrastructure development, technology cooperation, political and military relations, and aid and development assistance. His description of the relationships does not simply cover these material concerns, however, but also looks at the role of historical context and the relevance of the Chinese community in influencing each country’s relationship with China. The book provides a very thorough examination of current engagements, and concludes by discussing the complex implications of increasing interactions— both for Latin America and for the United States. Fundamentally, Ellis argues that increasing engagement with China is transforming the Latin American region by generating “a complex mixture of opportunities and threats” (p. 288), such as competition from China in manufacturing, and demand for primary products and resources (p. 289). Ellis’ concern is that the long-term effects of these changes in areas like income equality,

280 THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 64 corruption and sustainable growth are not clear. However, Ellis’ focus on the implications for Latin American countries and US policy-makers from a strategic perspective limits the book’s ability to add to existing understandings of the “wherefores” of China’s relationships with Latin American countries, particularly as seen from the Chinese side. As such, the book’s potential to quench the thirst of those interested in what Ellis posits as the larger overarching issue, that is, the lack of clarity around both the whats and the wherefores for Latin America’s future, remains limited. The book is divided into four main sections. It begins with an overview of China’s expanding relations with Latin America, examining the scope and character of the ties and some key considerations in the dynamics of China’s engagements. This overview is followed by chapters on “Why China is Interested in Latin America” and “Why Latin America is Interested in China”. The former outlines what Ellis sees to be the key factors of China’s interest in Latin America, namely: its role as a source of primary products important for China’s continued economic growth; as a potential market for Chinese goods; the diplomatic isolation of Taiwan; strategic competition with the United States; and a new and more confident generation of leadership in the PRC. Why Latin America is interested in China is divided into sub-headings of hopes for export-led growth and investment in fuel development; and a discussion of China as an alternative to US regional dominance. Structured in this way, some common interests are immediately apparent, and the next part of the book examines these in more detail. Going country by country, Ellis provides very thoroughly researched and methodologically diverse evidence to illustrate how and where Sino–Latin American connections are expanding, and what limitations exist to fulfilling their potential. Ellis concludes with a consideration of Latin America’s future, discussing areas such as economic health, the role of Chinese communities, technology partnerships, and organized crime. The book finishes by analyzing the impact of China’s presence in Latin America on US agencies, and the implications for US policy in the region. The book’s basic framework is premised on the author’s desire to provide policy advice to the US on how to deal with China’s growing involvement in Latin America. Ellis’ final paragraph recommends that the US would be “well served to increase substantially its engagements with the individual nations of Latin America” as a way to “build new forms of partnerships” in which “all players collaborate to realize the opportunities offered by expanded commerce with China, while mitigating the tensions, social dislocations and sources of misunderstanding that such interactions generate” (pp. 290-91). These conclusions suggest that Ellis is concerned that China’s increased role means that the role of the US is diminishing, which is accepted as an issue that must be addressed. Ellis’ research is unquestionably some of the most thorough and detailed in the existing literature. However, his approach is based on realist understandings of international relations, in which sovereign states battle for power in an anarchic international system. According to this perspective, power is always a zero-sum game,

REVIEWS 281 and any increase in Chinese influence means a corresponding decrease in US influence. As such, the fundamental question underpinning Ellis’ work is whether or not China will be a threat (in this case to Latin America). This binary division is a common feature of much recent work on China’s international role, and a question to which, interestingly, a wide range of conclusions have been posited. As Peter Hays Gries has noted (China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics and Diplomacy, 2004, p. 137), since intentions are invisible, many foreign policy analysts have tried to focus on China’s material power as a means to infer intent. Gries argues that this approach is ill-equipped to meaningfully address such a complex issue. Like much of this literature, Ellis has a tendency to infer Chinese motivations from analyzing material projections, like trade and investment figures, with little reference to the context within which policies and projects are developed. The result unfortunately perpetuates the existing China-threat binary divide, and undermines both the breadth and longevity of the book’s explanatory potential. The “whats and wherefores” of China’s increasing presence in Latin America are without doubt critical issues for Sinologists, foreign policy analysts and international relations theorists alike. A great deal of research effort has been, and continues to be, expended on trying to increase the understanding of China’s role in the international system. This book achieves its goal of painting a detailed picture of the emerging relationship between China and Latin America. As such, it will certainly add some cold, hard facts to the heated debate. However, its conclusions, based as they are on realist assumptions, tend to reiterate rather than challenge existing paradigms in the conventional wisdom about China. Merriden Varrall Macquarie University

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