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China Perspectives
2007/4 | 2007 China and its Past: Return, Reinvention, Forgetting
Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/2463 DOI: 10.4000/chinaperspectives.2463 ISSN: 1996-4617
Publisher Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine
Printed version Date of publication: 15 December 2007 ISSN: 2070-3449
Electronic reference China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007, « China and its Past: Return, Reinvention, Forgetting » [Online], Online since 10 April 2008, connection on 20 October 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ chinaperspectives/2463 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.2463
This text was automatically generated on 20 October 2020.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
China and its Past: Return, Reinvention, Forgetting
Editorial Sebastian Veg
Jiaohua: The Confucian Revival in China as an Educative Project Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval
The Heritage of the Temples, a Heritage in Stone: An Overview of Beijing’s Religious Epigraphy Marianne Bujard and Xi Ju
Shadows, Illusions, and Realities in the History of Modern Manchuria A review of Manchuria under Japanese Domination by Yamamuro Shin’ichi, translated by Joshua A. Fogel, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006 Christopher Howe
The “Active Rightists” of 1957 and Their Legacy: “Right-wing Intellectuals,” Revisionists, and Rights Defenders Zeming Chen
The Threatened History and Collective Memory of the Cultural Revolution’s Lost Generation Michel Bonnin
Finding a Place for the Victims: The Problem in Writing the History of the Cultural Revolution Youqin Wang
Utopian Fiction and Critical Examination: The Cultural Revolution in Wang Xiaobo’s “The Golden Age” Sebastian Veg
Forbidden Memory, Unwritten History: The Difficulty of Structuring an Opposition Movement in the PRC Jean-Philippe Béja
The Persistent Memory of Historic Wrongs in China: A Discussion of Demands for “Reappraisal” Eva Pils
China Analysis
China’s Think Tanks, the King’s Counsellors Compiled and commented Analysis Michal Meidan
Relations between France and China: the Break . . . with Germany? Compiled and commented Analysis Mathieu Duchâtel
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 2
Book reviews
Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, China on Screen: Cinema and Nation Kristof Van Den Troost
Shu-mei Shih, Visuality and Identity. Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific Emmanuel Lincot
Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang, Rightful Resistance in Rural China Chloé Froissart
Ning Wang, Making a Market Economy; Yan Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China Gilles Guiheux
Czeslaw Tubilewicz, Taiwan and Post-Communist Europe. Shopping for Allies J. Bruce Jacobs
Karl Taro Greenfeld, China Syndrome. The True Story of the 21st Century's First Great Epidemic; Thomas Abraham, Twenty-First Plague. The Story of SARS. Frédéric Keck
Estelle Lau, Paper Families. Identity, Immigration Administration and Chinese Exclusion Adam McKeown
Térence Billeter, L’Empereur jaune, Paris, Les Indes savantes, 2007, 549 pp. Sébastien Billioud
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 3
Sebastian Veg (dir.) China and its Past: Return, Reinvention, Forgetting
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 4
Editorial
Sebastian Veg
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 5
Jiaohua: The Confucian Revival in China as an Educative Project
Sébastien Billioud et Joël Thoraval
RÉSUMÉS
This article explores the rediscovery of “Confucianism” in mainland China in the field of education, understood in the broad sense of training dispensed to others and self-cultivation. It begins by examining the general context of the phenomenon and then analyzes how it is currently taking form and becoming institutionalized. On such a basis, it becomes possible to better understand one of its main features – its paradoxical anti-intellectualism.
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 6
The Heritage of the Temples, a Heritage in Stone: An Overview of Beijing’s Religious Epigraphy
Marianne Bujard et Xi Ju
RÉSUMÉS
Out of the thousands of temples that still existed in Beijing before the 1950s, less than a dozen are nowadays active, the remaining ones having been either abandoned or destroyed. However, the commemorative inscriptions that were carved on stelae for centuries and that still remain on rubbings enable us to understand whole sections of the history of temples and of the religious life of the capital.
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Shadows, Illusions, and Realities in the History of Modern Manchuria A review of Manchuria under Japanese Domination by Yamamuro Shin’ichi, translated by Joshua A. Fogel, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006
Christopher Howe
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 8
The “Active Rightists” of 1957 and Their Legacy: “Right-wing Intellectuals,” Revisionists, and Rights Defenders
Zeming Chen
RÉSUMÉS
In this article, Chen Ziming makes use of recent publications and many first-hand witness accounts to bring a new perspective to the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957. The first part draws a distinction between “active rightists” (zhudong youpai) and “passive rightists” (beidong youpai)and further divides the former category into three groups: “right-wing intellectuals”, “revisionists” and “rights defenders, analysing the specificities of and differences between these groups. While the “right-wing intellectuals” consisted of democratic personalities influential prior to 1949, particularly Zhang Bojun and Luo Longji, who advocated “changing the constitution and the mode of government,” the “revisionists” encompassed intellectuals within the Party (Li Shenzhi and Liu Binyan) as well as students raised “under the red flag” (Lin Xiling and Tan Tianrong). Influenced by recent developments within the communist camp, they denounced the personality cult and the excesses of the system and called for a change of political and ideological line in favour of a “great democracy.” The “rights defenders” referred to the constitution of the People’s Republic of China to denounce violations of political rights (in particular during political campaigns), and of individual freedoms, economic and social rights, as well as the absence of liberty in the scientific, cultural, and artistic spheres (epitomized by the suppression of entire academic fields such as law, political science, and sociology). The last part of the article highlights the legacy of the movement, and describes how its ideas have been taken
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further by various forces campaigning for a democratisation of China. For this issue of China Perspectives, we have chosen to publish a full translation of the part of Chen Ziming’s essay that deals with the first group of rightists, the “right-wing intellectuals,” as well as substantial extracts from the last part. (Editor’s note)
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The Threatened History and Collective Memory of the Cultural Revolution’s Lost Generation
Michel Bonnin
RÉSUMÉS
Since the Communist Party of China published its brief official version of the Cultural Revolution in 1981, few works on the history of that period have been approved for publication, even if they have kept strictly to the orthodox line. Still, some research work and eye-witness accounts by Chinese people outside the official apparatus have appeared, mostly in Hong Kong and Taiwan but also on the mainland. In spite of official attempts to bury the memory of that time, and against the grain of unreliable nostalgic recollections of some of their contemporaries, some former Red Guards and educated youth have managed, against all the odds, to put together an authentic and critically aware "people's" memory. These scattered islands of memory of China’s “lost generation” are under constant threat of submersion, but they are worth our attention, not only because they are essential for the future of China but also because the Cultural Revolution was an event of global significance.
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Finding a Place for the Victims: The Problem in Writing the History of the Cultural Revolution
Youqin Wang
RÉSUMÉS
This paper argues that acknowledging individual victims had been a crucial problem in writing the history of the Cultural Revolution and represents the major division between the official history and the parallel history. The author discusses the victims in the history of the Cultural Revolution from factual, interpretational and methodological aspects.
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Utopian Fiction and Critical Examination: The Cultural Revolution in Wang Xiaobo’s “The Golden Age”
Sebastian Veg
RÉSUMÉS
The first novella in Wang Xiaobo’s Trilogy of the Ages has in recent years become a genuine cult- work, in particular among Chinese students. The popularity of a text that links the sending-down of “educated youths” to the country with a golden age of sexual liberation in nature can certainly be explained in part by its scandalous aspects. However, it also conceals a sharply ironic discourse directed against the agrarian utopia of Maoism, which is associated with a regression to animal existence. From this perspective, Wang Xiaobo appears as an advocate of critical reflection, encouraging intellectuals to renounce political utopias and engage with society. His often polemical tone, when he refuses to regard past suffering as sacred, has in this way opened a precious space for discussion of the Cultural Revolution, a space that has so far proved elusive outside the area of fiction.
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Forbidden Memory, Unwritten History: The Difficulty of Structuring an Opposition Movement in the PRC
Jean-Philippe Béja
RÉSUMÉS
This paper suggests how control over transmission of memory by the Party, applying China’s own dynastic tradition of reinterpreting history, and borrowing the Soviet practice of erasing people and events from records, has hindered the structuring of an opposition movement. Every resistance movement since 1949 has had to start from scratch as their actors, isolated from the past, see themselves as innovators. The paper analyses the 1957 Anti-Rightist Movement and the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations to illustrate the thesis.
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The Persistent Memory of Historic Wrongs in China: A Discussion of Demands for “Reappraisal”
Eva Pils
RÉSUMÉS
This essay describes two forms of institutional redress for historic wrongs in contemporary China, arguing that one is authoritarian, the other liberal, and that neither is entirely satisfactory. Some victims of political persecution reject the right of the state to classify citizens as enemies, and with it the authoritarian method of corrective official reappraisal. Liberal avenues of redress through adjudication, on the other hand, remain closed to most victims of historic injustice, and are meaningful only if accompanied by the liberation of memory and opinion.
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China Analysis
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China’s Think Tanks, the King’s Counsellors Compiled and commented Analysis
Michal Meidan
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 17
Relations between France and China: the Break . . . with Germany? Compiled and commented Analysis
Mathieu Duchâtel
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 18
Book reviews
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Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar, China on Screen: Cinema and Nation
Kristof Van Den Troost
1 During the last decade, books and papers on Chinese cinema have multiplied almost exponentially. One of the major problems engaged in those writings has been the very question of how to write on Chinese cinemas. Should one include the works of Hong Kong and Taiwan filmmakers? What about “transnational” films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)? And can we still speak of a “Chinese national cinema”?
2 In their new book, Berry and Farquhar convincingly argue that “the national informs almost every aspect of the Chinese cinematic image and narrative repertoire” (p.2). However, the old “national cinemas” approach, which took the national for granted as something known, can no longer be adequately used to study the national in Chinese cinema. Instead, Berry and Farquhar suggest approaching the national as “contested and construed in different ways” and focusing on “cinema and the national as a framework within which to consider a range of questions and issues about the national” (p. 2). After establishing this framework, the authors go on to investigate the intersections of the national with various topics.
3 Chapter 2 examines time in the cinema. Berry and Farquhar argue that cinematic time and the national are configured in at least three major ways. National history films, such as four Opium War films made at different times in different ideological contexts, produce time as linear, progressive, and logical. A second group of films looks back critically at the past by mixing fact and fiction, with Hou Hsiao-hsien’s City of Sadness (1989) and Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth (1984) serving as examples. The final configuration involves haunting time and includes films such as Wong Karwai’s In the Mood for Love (2000), which demonstrate how the persistence of non-modern time undermines modernity and the linear logic of national progression.
4 Chapters 3 and 4 analyze two distinctively Chinese cinematic modes, the operatic and the realist, “whose variations must be explained within contexts of different formations of the national” (p. 11). The operatic mode, which Berry and Farquhar call “shadow opera,” represents an “ongoing sinicization of cinema” (p. 48), and is
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therefore a culturally nationalist mode. However, it was realism that was adopted as the aesthetic counterpart of the quest to make China a modern nation-state (p. 77). Realism merged with melodramatic conventions to offer different views of the national through the metaphors of family and home. Berry and Farquhar then move on to discuss the intersection of gender and nation in chapters 5 and 6. In chapter 5, the “way a Chinese woman should look” is analyzed in relation to different configurations of modernity and the nation state. Through the star images of Ruan Lingyu, Xie Fang, Gong Li, and Maggie Cheung, three senses of the look are examined: the look of the camera upon the woman, the woman’s subjective look, and how she looks before others. Chapter 6 on “how Chinese men should act” then investigates the Confucian codes of loyalty, filiality, and brotherhood, which continue to operate in Chinese cinema as “mythic symbols of national identity, ideal masculine behaviour, and institutional governance” (p. 136). The chapter discusses the play with these codes that “link contemporary struggles over masculine identity with various constructions of the colonial and the national in Hong Kong and China , respectively” (p.12) in films such as Drunken Master II (1993), The Killer, (1989) and Hero (2002).
5 In chapter 7 on ethnicity in Chinese cinema, the focus is on some less noticed configurations of ethnicity and nationality. An analysis of Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993) illustrates how the good foreigner is accommodated within the Chinese family. Next, Berry and Farquhar discuss a second pattern that appeared in the People’s Republic after 1949, where minorities were depicted as “little brothers” to the Han Chinese “big brother” in order to reduce tension between the ethnic and territorial nation. Finally, the appearance of intra-Chinese distinctions in Taiwanese and Hong Kong films after the influx of mainland refugees is examined.
6 The last chapter reflects on how the national and transnational interact. With the intention of offering a more nuanced view of Chinese cinema’s export successes, the authors ask what price has been paid for them. Three transnational projects are examined: Bruce Lee’s borrowing from Hollywood in revitalizing Chinese masculinity, the propriation of the blockbuster concept in the attempt to counter Hollywood domination, and the rebirth of the Singaporean film industry through its use of the transnational cinema market.
7 The framework proposed by Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar allows them to engage many of the topics discussed in relation to Chinese cinema in the last few years. Although certainly innovative, one sometimes wonders whether some films can convincingly be discussed in terms of the national – the link between a film such as In the Mood for Love and the national seems somewhat farfetched to say the least. Nonetheless, by approaching their topics from new angles, China on Screen: Cinema and Nation offers not only a good overview of what has been published on the topic in the past in both China and the West, but also an excellent addition to these analyses. Written in a clear and entertaining style, with short plot outlines of the films inserted in the main text, this book is as suitable for people just entering the field as for specialized scholars.•
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Shu-mei Shih, Visuality and Identity. Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific
Emmanuel Lincot
1 A Professor of comparative literature at the University of California , Los Angeles (UCLA), and a specialist in gender studies, Shu-mei Shih, in this new book, adopts an original approach to the question of identity in today’s Sinophone world. At 244 pages in length, Visuality and Identity. Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific comprises an introduction and six parts: the first deals with globalisation and its effects on minorities, and the second with the more specific case of transnational feminism in the Sinophone milieu, which opens up a more general discussion on the relationship to cosmopolitism and to the idea of empire, which is treated in the remaining parts. More fundamentally, Shih’s thesis is to demonstrate that the Chinese communities situated on both shores of the Pacific adhere more to linguistic and emotional values mediated through a global and visual culture than to ethnic or national references.
2 The idea is seductive and starts out from an established finding: the Sinophone world is a plural one whose cultural and economic enrichment is developing in a complex network that remains, on the surface, outside the realm of sovereignty of any state. To back up her argument, Shi draws inspiration from the theories of Gilles Deleuze (that of the rhizome in particular) and of Paul Virilio (relating to the ubiquity of urban cultural phenomena), but also from the works of Françoise Lionnet on the Francophone world, and of Fredric Jameson, who posits that experience, since the middle of the 20 th century, is passed on through images. Elsewhere, Shih makes recourse to visual sources (contemporary art, television productions, the Internet), a commendable initiative given the fact, underlined by the author, that “Many contemporary Western thinkers share the suspicion of the visual and take different notions from poststructuralism to elaborate a contemporary visual theory” (p . 9). Indeed, it is the whole traditional pattern of the relationship to culture that finds itself overwhelmed by the media. The great merit of this work is to show that the new networks of culture that irrigate the Sinophone world are not simple distribution channels. They are made up of interactive
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mechanisms where the hierarchical relations between transmitters and receivers, and with them the relations between distributors and consumers, are becoming blurred. From this confusion is born a deterritorialized citizenship (p. 43), the emblematic names of which include the film directors Ang Lee and John Woo but also the visual artists Hung Liu and Wu Mali , some of whose works are reproduced in the book. These new cultural geopolitics have changed our perception of the Chinese world and its frontiers and with it what the sociologist of everyday life Erving Goffman, whom the author curiously fails to quote, refers to as the “interaction ritual”.
3 It is, however, to this analysis that Shu-mei Shih devotes chapter III, which, under the lovely title The Geopolitics of Desire, deals with the passions that, in reality or fictitiously, play off against each other the wives of Taiwanese businessmen and their mainland rivals; genuine power struggles that reveal – well beyond the political antagonisms characteristic of the Taiwan Strait – powerful and ambiguous conflicts of identity, sometimes stamped by mixed feelings, sisterly or maternal, of love and hate. However, one question left unsettled by the author excites the curiosity of the reader: who are the players in the Sinophone world of which Shih speaks? They constitute, in essence, an elite of the artists, businesspeople, and/or committed feminists who form a “bridge” between the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong , Taiwan , and the megalopolises of California . The circulation of this elite, if one follows the theoretical model set out not too long ago by the sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, is probably not unrelated to the socio- political stability of China on the one hand and, on the other, the definition of a policy that the Beijing authorities notably qualify today as China ’s soft power (ruan shili). Even if this economic and cultural influence is quite removed from the concept originally forged by the American political scientist Joseph Nye, it remains no less significant that Beijing has undertaken since 2004 to set up a network of Confucius Institutes throughout the world, cultural and language centres built on the model of the Alliance Française or the Goethe Institute.
4 As a consequence, two observations can be made. First, if the style of the programmes distributed by the Chinese media sometimes panders exclusively to a popular craze for kung-fu stories with anachronistic tonalities (p. 2) – comparable in this respect to the fiction of Jin Yong, for example – these same broadcasts attempt to transmit and systematically establish the signs of a cultural and language identification through the use of Mandarin among actors as different as Michelle Yeoh in Malaysia or Chow Yun- fat in Hong Kong . Beyond these signs one may distinguish an imperial attempt for control sometimes emanating from a regalian power that has renounced none of its prerogatives, censorship in particular, as Frédéric Douzet has demonstrated in his recent studies on nation states and the governance of the Internet. Secondly, the Sinophone world of the image has not dissolved in a transnational lingua franca dominated by the West under the influence of capitalism and globalisation. The frontiers of this Sinophone world are shifting, and along these frontiers the logic of the state sometimes comes into conflict with the logic of the individual, even if the two sometimes overlap, redefining new forms of belonging in terms of identity and memory as defined by Maurice Halbwachs. These sociological, ethical, and political aspects could perhaps have been studied more thoroughly by the author. Similarly, a comparative parallel between the problematics put forward by Shih and works as important as those developed (albeit in different historical and geographical contexts) by Michel Maffesoli, Joël Thoraval, Pierre Barboza, or Craig Peariso – whether they concern the transfiguration of politics and the tribalisation of social systems or the
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anthropological changes in identity in the Chinese world, or even the circulation of images and the question of deviance in the relationship with the media – would have given greater depth to this general reflection. Subject to the reservation of these last observations, the work of Shu-mei Shih is innovative in its subject matter and will assuredly lead to many more explorations
5 Translated by Nick Oates
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Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang, Rightful Resistance in Rural China
Chloé Froissart
1 Rightful Resistance in Rural China is a good example of the heuristic character of the inductive method in political sociology, that is to say, the manner in which a new social reality leads to an evolution in the theoretical framework of a discipline. The book is the product of an impressive 10 years of field work that began in 1994 and ranges from extensive quantitative studies conducted in partnership with Chinese universities to hundreds of semi-direct interviews with farmers and officials. The authors have also tapped greatly diverse primary sources, from government reports to villagers’ complaints, press reports, and Chinese researchers’ studies. But the work is presented mainly as an effort in conceptualisation and theorisation of a type of contentious action that can be defined in terms of neither institutional participation nor social movements, nor even of “everyday forms of resistance” theorised by James Scott, while presenting many characteristics of each of these forms of action. So what is it about? It is a fight to compel the authorities to narrow the gap between what they say and what they do in a context where rights that are recognized – more or less formally – are not guaranteed1.
2 The concept of “rightful resistance” demolishes a postulate that has long prevailed among theories of collective action, which is that there are two distinct types: conventional-institutional actions and collective non-institutional ones, the latter uninformed by established social norms. The specificity of this type of resistance is that it strains the limits of institutionalized channels of contention (and cannot thus qualify as either completely institutionalized or non-institutional), combining, for instance, litigation or administrative procedures with political pressure; and that it invokes official values, operating within the framework of these values yet in tension with them. We are thus confronted with an atypical form of resistance that effectively opposes the appropriation of resources and forms of political control deemed illegitimate, but does not question the legitimacy of the authorities as such, and does not fall under the classical scheme of societal opposition to the state; rather, it develops vertical alliances that exploit divisions within the state and seeks elite support. Rightful
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Resistance in Rural China thus belongs to a current in political sociology that since the 1990s has tended to rethink the notion of conflict outside the mere binary state-society or dominant- dominated opposing schemes by showing how the poor and the weak can defend their interests by invoking norms proclaimed by a state that is not seen as monolithic.
3 This brief but dense book (with only six chapters) is remarkable in many respects. It invents and exposes in a highly didactic manner a new concept that will leave a mark in political science. While the preface – a model in the genre – takes account of progress made in analytical steps and retraces the genesis of the concept, the first chapter sets about demonstrating its scientific value using a comparative perspective. The concept of “rightful resistance” is not synonymous with Chinese exception, as it can cover similar collective actions in other times and under other regimes, including Western pluralistic democracies2. Thus the book is aimed as much at China hands as at sociologists and political scientists not specialising in the country, especially as it keeps up a constant dialogue with the literature on collective action, making the most of theoretical contributions to the field. The authors succeed in reconciling approaches that have often been – wrongly – deemed divergent, taking as much interest in the origin, development, and means of action as in its consequences, and also taking note of macro and micro-sociological aspects such as the structure of political opportunities and how they are seen by the actors, and the consequences of the action on the system and on individuals.
4 Moreover, the book marks a major contribution towards understanding the dynamics at work in the relationship between state and society in China : it highlights the deep contradictions within the regime and the way in which these are exploited by the people. It demonstrates how this type of resistance leads to systemic developments (legislation is strengthened, local officials are compelled to be more accountable to villagers) and how that in turn affects the forms and content of claims. Taking as much interest in the objective determinants of action as in subjective consequences of its failure or success, the authors carry out a subtle and convincing analysis of the evolution of the repertory of protest during the 10 years of their study. Collective action tends to become more and more direct and autonomous, that is to say, non- institutionalized: encouraged by growing support within the village community, it prefers protests to petitions, and direct confrontation with opponents to seeking patrons from among the elites. Finally, one of the major merits of the book is its nuanced appreciation of the nature and consequences of this type of protest, stressing that its dynamics also constitute its limits.
5 The protesters in fact seek legitimacy for their action by projecting themselves as ardent defenders of a regime they see as having gone astray, endangered by its local representatives. Because the protesters’ identification with the Central authorities serves as the springboard for their action, it cannot lead to radical change in power relations and tends instead to boost the Party’s legitimacy. But this form of resistance also opens up a social space, pushing back the boundaries of what is permitted and nurturing debate on values and norms. It attests to the emergence of a more contractual relation between the state and society, that is to say, the evolution of what is expected from the state and in the way law is perceived, but not of the perception of individual rights as inher ent in the human person. The authors thus conclude that this form of resistance has more of a sociological than political impact, while also putting
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forward the hypothesis that the Central authorities could eventually be overtaken by demands that tend to become more radical through a dynamic that is beyond their control.
6 Meanwhile, the book raises a question: to what extent has this “rightful resistance” become an integral part of the functioning of the Chinese regime, and could that help explain the regime’s formidable ability to endure and adapt? The authors show how this resistance finds its origin in the convergence (part real, part assumed) of the interests of protesters and Central authorities: the latter have a stake in this type of resistance, since it helps keep track of transgressors of their policies and thus constitutes a means of reaffirming their power over local cadres. As one protest leader stressed in a highly realistic tone, “What I am struggling against also undermines Party rule.” Another activist insisted that, “So long as China ’s president wished to stay in power, he would need people like him to help control wayward local officials” (p. 90). The Centre publishes laws and policies but has no interest in seeing them systematically implemented, partly because it needs to juggle the interests of local governments with which its own are linked, but also because proper implementation would mean political reforms that would weaken the Party’s might. Now “rightful resistance” seems like a solution to this basic contradiction: by seeking intervention from higher levels of administration, this form of resistance helps the Centre respond to conflicts through ad hoc solutions that expand its capacity to manage contradictions while withholding political reform. Of course, as the authors point out, this method does not always succeed, hence the radicalisation of modes of action reflecting the “affirmation of a right to resist rather than to denounce,” as the protesters increasingly see themselves as enforcers of law rather than as informants letting the Centre know that its policies are being violated (p. 68). While this radicalisation may indicate a drop in confidence in the Centre’s ability to implement its policies and keep its officials in check, it actually leads to increasing efforts to help the Centre and does not, therefore, reflect any change in the attribution of responsibility. The Party thus gains new “martyrs” even less inclined to question a regime that is adept at coopting them. In fact, this resistance is relatively effective: it induces a better implementation of public policies, helps set limits on local officials’ arbitrariness, and fights corruption. Not only does it help improve application of laws, it also compels the regime to better adapt itself to cope with social and economic changes without embarking on any basic alteration in power relations. In this regard, the authors show that such resistance is not merely reactive but also proactive. All these elements lead one to think that this form of resistance is doomed to remain a perpetual mobilisation that cannot transform itself into a fight for institutional guarantees of rights because of its basic role supporting the functioning of the regime. Why go in for political reforms if the systemic failures are compensated by the mobilisation of the people? It would thus appear that this form of resistance is an integral part of the regime’s dynamic stability, though that does not rule out the possibility of the balance being upset some day.
7 Clearly, the book opens debate that can be expected continue indefinitely in the scientific community, especially as it calls upon other researchers to pursue field work and theoretical reflection. To the many avenues for future research suggested by the authors, two more could be added. The first would be to develop a historical perspective comparing “rightful resistance” to the tactic used by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution of “waving the red flag to fight the red flag ” (qu hongqi da hongqi) and thereby better understanding its scope. This would require reworking
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the discourse of the powerful against the powerless and the exploiting of divisions within the elite, more specifically drawing on factional disputes during the Cultural Revolution. Contrary to what the authors seem to be saying, the Chinese have always been aware of divisions among those in power and of the need to find patrons among the mighty in order to safeguard their personal interests3 or to advance the values they believe in4On the other hand, notions of rights and of reciprocity were not absent in the Maoist era (it was always stated that cadres should serve the people), nor indeed were notions of participation (within the work unit as in the public place through the use of dazibao), all of which is highlighted by the fact that some protesters interviewed by O’Brien and Li specifically refer to such Maoist precepts. Of course, “rightful resistance” innovates: to the extent that it demands strict application of laws, it testifies to the emergence of law as the legitimate and prevailing norm in relations between state and society. A comparative historical study would thus facilitate a better understanding of the evolution in the repertory of collective action and of motivations behind some elites’ support for such resistance. To what extent does “rightful resistance,” which is closely linked to the expanding juridicisation of the relations between the state and Chinese citizens, not reflect a paradoxical advance of apoliticism? It would seem that similar resistance strategies that earlier sought to redefine power relations and destabilized the regime tend now to preserve it and help strengthen it. If such is indeed the case, China may be proceeding in a direction diametrically opposed to that analysed by Charles Tilly in Europe , where modernisation brought about a politicisation of the repertory of protests, thus leading to the development of citizenship.
8 Another route of enquiry that could be pursued would be to pay more attention to the social and political environment in which such resistance is growing now. This environment is uniquely accounted for from a structural point of view, and the authors show clearly how much the paradigm of “rightful resistance” owes to the state structure and the nature of the Chinese regime. Meanwhile, circumstantial changes could have major repercussions on the structure of political opportunities. For instance, to what extent have the change of leadership in 2002 and the adoption of new populist discourses favouring “underprivileged categories” – peasants being the chief among them – influenced the radicalisation of demands? How much bearing does public opinion in its larger sense have on the claims, and does it perhaps contribute to maximising their impact? This would require focusing on the observations of experts, public intellectuals5, and the media. O’Brien and Li mention media support for protesters: what arguments do the media develop to lend direction and legitimacy to protest actions? What reasons are adduced for the lack of application of Central laws and policies, and how do they differ from the reasons the protesters come up with? It seems that that an extensive public policy framework favouring the countryside was adopted in 2004 as a result of support for peasants’ resistance from experts and public opinion.
9 This book can be highly recommended as a major contribution to political science that sheds new light on the relations between state and society in China and raises key questions regarding the evolution and mode of functioning of the regime. In addition, the book is a highly agreeable read, not only because it is organized, as the authors themselves describe it, “like an episode of collective action,” or like a novel with
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suspense, plot development, and denouement (which however remains open), but also because of the lively interaction between fieldwork and theory.
10 Translated by N. Jayaram
NOTES
1. he protesters refer as much to rights clearly set out in law as to the more informal – and thus more debatable — rights recognized in Central policies or deduced from leaders’ discourses. 2. The authors show that this form of resistance, which can appear whenever there is a gap between what is promised by the authorities and what is effectively guaranteed, is characterised by either the social group that undertakes it or by the political system in which it takes place. Going by the examples cited by the authors, it can occur in countries where there is no rule of law and/or be undertaken by marginalized groups or those lacking any power or special status. 3. See Xu Youyu, Xingxingsese de zaofan (All sorts of rebellions), Hong Kong : Zhongwen daxue chubanshe, 1999. 4. This was in fact the case of the Shengwulian, an association of Red Guards in Hunan , whose activities have been described in Révo. Cul. dans la Chine pop (Cul Rev in Pop China) Anthologie de la presse des gardes rouges. Prepared by Hector Mandarès, Gracchus Wang et al. Paris , Union générale d’éditions, 1974. 5. Many fiery commentaries denouncing the peasants’ condition were published during the decade studied by the authors. The following three drew much attention: Cao Jingqing, Huanghe bian de Zhongguo: Yi ge xuezhe dui xiangcun shehui de guancha yu sikao ( China along the Yellow River : reflections on rural society), Shanghai , Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 2000; Li Changping, Wo xiang zongli shuo shihua (Telling the premier the truth), Beijing , Guangming Ribao chubanshe, 2002; Chen Guidi, Wu Chuntao, Zhonguo nongmin diaocha(Chinese peasantry: a survey), Beijing , Wenxue chubanshe, 2004. Many fiery commentaries denouncing the peasants’ condition were published during the decade studied by the authors. The following three drew much attention: Cao Jingqing, Huanghe bian de Zhongguo: Yi ge xuezhe dui xiangcun shehui de guancha yu sikao ( China along the Yellow River : reflections on rural society), Shanghai , Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 2000; Li Changping, Wo xiang zongli shuo shihua (Telling the premier the truth), Beijing , Guangming Ribao chubanshe, 2002; Chen Guidi, Wu Chuntao, Zhonguo nongmin diaocha(Chinese peasantry: a survey), Beijing , Wenxue chubanshe, 2004.
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 29
Ning Wang, Making a Market Economy; Yan Sun, Corruption and Market in Contemporary China
Gilles Guiheux
1 These two works shed light on the conditions under which, in the course of the last 25 years, the command economy has been dismantled and gradually replaced by a market system in China . Yan Sun, a professor of political science, is interested in corruption from a double perspective, both at the macro and the micro level. Ning Wang, a neo- institutionalist economist, asks how, thanks to the reforms, a region (Jingzhou, south of Hubei ) has been converted to pisciculture.
2 Corruption is a crucial question, since it threatens both social stability – it has direct consequences for the distribution of wealth – and the legitimacy of political power – it provokes popular discontent. Yan Sun’s work sets out a broad panorama of corrupt practices that have been employed since 1978, understood in the (restricted) sense to which the Chinese judicial apparatus extends, that is to say “the abuses of power committed by officials of the State and of the Party to the benefit of private interests.” The author takes a look at corrupt people (Who are they? To what level of the hierarchy do they belong?), at the funds in question (What are the amounts involved? Are they related to the commercialisation of services?), andat the structural elements that make possible and indeed encourage these practices. Forming part of the literature that is dedicated to the transition of former communist countries and seeks to find out if corruption is the price to be paid for the switch to a market economy, Yan Sun studies how the reforms (and the change to a market economy) have made corruption possible, but also how, in return, corruption has influenced the reforms. She shows how and why liberalisation has been accompanied by corruption and what the consequences of that are.
3 The research and analysis are based on an important body of Chinese sources, a dozen casebooks that compile corruption cases, published between 1989 and 2003 by the disciplinary committees (both local and central in Beijing ) of the Communist Party, and judicial editions. These volumes describe the corrupt practices that have been
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punished by the Chinese judicial system throughout the country; they deal with both the local and central apparatus of the party and of the state, both those responsible for state-owned enterprises and the executives of private companies. The presentation is built up on systematic comparisons. Yan Sun analyses the dynamics of corruption in the different contexts of the reform process. In terms of the timeframe, she distinguishes the years 1978-1992, when planning remained important, from the period that followed, after Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour, which marks the definitive erosion of the command economy in favour of the market. Before 1992, corruption is of less importance; the sums at stake are smaller and the cadres involved are located at a lower administrative level. In terms of geography, Yan Sun compares the rich coastal provinces with the poorer inland provinces. The analysis confirms that liberalisation and the reforms facilitate corruption. The author similarly distinguishes between corruption that gives rise to a reciprocal exchange of goods or services (“transaction corruption ”) and corruption where the goods or services move in a single direction (embezzlement of funds, fraudulent appropriation, etc.). Finally, Yan Sun compares the case of China with that of Russia . If in China the state has not fallen into the hands of a mafia, she explains, it is because it is not as weakened as its Russian counterpart was. In the Chinese case, the party and state cadres were able to take advantage of the reforms; in Russia ’s case, the absence of opportunities of this type led officials to oppose reform. Certainly, the capacity of the Chinese state to control its agents under the effects of decentralisation and of the transformation of its functions has diminished, but it remains powerful in its institutional (continuity of the regime) and political (autonomy of the political elite) dimensions. Furthermore, when the command economy was split open in China , dynamic non-state economic actors (the village and township enterprises) took up the baton, while in Russia the vacuum left by the retreat of the state was filled by a new oligarchy and organised crime.
4 The presentation is methodical, relying on accounts of both well-known corruption cases (such as Chen Xitong, the mayor of Beijing dismissed in 1995, and Lai Changxing, the head of the Yuanhua Group in Xiamen , who became China ’s most wanted man in the autumn of 1999) and those less well known, which reveal the reality of the dynamics and of the mechanisms in play in a variety of contexts. What will be noted from the work’s conclusions is that corruption is largely a product of the post-Mao reforms, made possible by the opportunities born from a progressive change to a market economy (“dual track” price system, new regulations, reform of state-owned enterprises, etc.); the gradual retreat of the state subsequently increased the opportunities for corruption. Corruption is thus, according to Yan Sun, extensively a consequence of the economic reforms1. Secondly, with regard to the effects of corruption on the reforms, the author highlights a clear difference between the two periods before and after 1992. During the first period, corruption helped facilitate the reforms and played a positive role in accelerating the dismantling of the command economy. After 1992, corruption created major obstacles to the deepening of the reforms. In other words, contrary to what a certain neo-liberal theory maintains, the growing liberalisation of the economy is accompanied by growth in corruption.
5 It is perhaps regrettable that the author has not taken the trouble to set the corrupt practices in China under reform against the yardstick of Chinese history and thus put them into greater per- spective or give more weight to their disclosure. Is it not also the case that corruption is now exposed and denounced more in the press? That is worth explaining. Finally, forward-looking reflection is undoubtedly lacking. But it
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remains the case that this is a methodical and rigorous work that is useful thanks to its ambition to be exhaustive.
6 For his part, Ning Wang takes a look at the conditions under which a particular region changed to specialised production as a result of the reforms. His brief work (145 pages) constitutes a monograph on the region around Changhu Lake (30 km long and 18 km wide) to the south of Hubei , the author’s own place of origin. He studies the process by which the transition to a market economy has transformed this portion of the Chinese countryside in a micro-analysis of based on 30 or so interviews with peasants and local heads conducted in 1997 and 1998.
7 The southern part of Hubei in the vicinity of Jingzhou is a region of natural lakes, rivers, and canals. Before 1978, the peasants fished strictly for subsistence purposes. Only a single state farm, set up on the banks of Changhu Lake , was dedicated to this activity in a professional fashion that qualified it as a fish “producer.” The introduction of contracts under the household responsibility system at the end of the 1970s did not initiate any genuine rupture, as the peasants were still not free to choose their own means of production, which they carried out on land acquired under lease. When the peasants were authorised to convert their agricultural lands into fish farms, they did it on a massive scale to supply the urban markets that were developing rapidly. It was only then that fish production became their principal activity, no longer on Changhu Lake , but within the framework of farms, the majority of which were operated by several households affiliated in partnerships. Thanks to the reforms, the capture of fish, a marginal activity for subsistence purposes, became the area’s dominant productive activity with commercial aims and oriented on supplying the Jingzhou market.
8 Ning Wang’s goal is to study how, within an agricultural framework, a market economy became established. To do this, he mobilises the acquired knowledge of neo- institutionalist economics (the work moreover features a preface by one of this branch’s principal figures, Ronald Coase, Nobel laureate for economics in 1991). He is interested in the institutions, understood as the whole body of rules and standards that provide the framework for and regulate economic behaviour, or, to put it another way, the rules of the game of pisciculture. The author thus directs his attention at three institutions. He first asks questions about the conditions under which there emerged markets (for fish), non-existent in the decades in the 1970s and 1980s. He then brings his thoughts to bear on the consequences of the new individual property rights. Finally, he looks at the fish farms considered as productive organisations.
9 On this Chinese terrain, Ning Wang seeks to confirm some of the conclusions of neo- institutionalist economics. Thus the emergence of a hierarchy of markets – small wholesale markets close to the producers, medium-sized markets and, at the top, the main market in Jingzhou – is accompanied by the development of an intermediation activity, the raison d’être of which is to minimise the transaction costs for producers and consumers, something that confirms Ronald Coase’s definition of markets. Ning Wang notes that if the development of the commercial activity, once the prohibitions had been lifted, was somewhat spontaneous, the definition of property rights still requires state intervention. But he also shows that this in itself is not sufficient. The consolidation of the new system of rights has only been made possible by the transformation of social norms; the observance of new formal rules thus depends on the transformation of uses and associated values. In particular, the peasants only
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respected the property rights of the state farm over the fish farming resources of Changhu Lake the day that they themselves became proprietors of fish farms. Considered until then as customary and normal, individual (and illegal) fishing has since that time been an activity that is socially disapproved of and condemned. Ning Wang underlines here the ideological dimension of the social change: it is not enough to transform the institutions; even more necessary is the social actors’ evolving perception of their interests. New legal norms are only observed from the time that social norms are transformed.
10 On the question of property rights, the transition in China is often associated with privatisation. But Ning Wang shows that not only have the collective forms of property not been weakened, they have actually been reinforced. Thanks to the reforms, the state farm operating on Changhu Lake has seen its interests consolidated. What’s more, fish farms operated by individuals are rare. Because the management of a farm requires a large workforce, and economies of scale make a large farm more profitable, the majority of the farms bring together several families in a partnership.2 The preferred style of organisation is thus an association of individuals in new collective forms.
11 One drawback in this work may be the sometimes inadequate linkage between theoretical developments and the actual Chinese terrain, a shortcoming of numerous publications produced from Anglo-Saxon doctoral theses; its major interest lies in its narrative and monographic dimension and in the restoration of the strategies and points of view of the actors (in particular pp. 72 to 92). In the chapter devoted to property rights, Ning Wang relates in particular the conflicts between the collective enterprise operating on Changhu Lake and the individual fishermen (before the establishment of fish farms and while commercial demand was growing). The intensification of the fishing carried out on an individual basis culminated in the virtual disappearance of the fish stock. When the state farm tried to enforce observance of its legal rights in the face of the “wild” (because illegal) fishing, the confrontations became violent. To protect their material interests and resist the application of the law, the peasants organised themselves into “illegal fishing gangs” ( dixia buyu dui). There was thus a sharpening of the conflict between the legal state property rights and existing social norms. Appeasement arrived with the development of the fish farms and the decline of fishing by individuals in the lake. Once the peasants themselves became proprietors, they became concerned about their own rights and respected those of the state farm. To understand the conditions leading to the emergence of a market economy, it is thus not sufficient to pay attention only to the reforms set in motion by the state; it is also necessary, as these two works usefully remind us, to take a look at the modalities under which the social actors take on the new arrangements or resist them.
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NOTES
1. Yan Sun thus disputes the validity of the arguments of those such as Lü Xiaobo ( Cadre and Corruption: The Institutional Involution of the Chinese Communist Party, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000) who associate corruption with the legacy of the Maoist political system. 2. See on a similar subject: Susanne Brandtstädter, “Money Plucked from the Sky: Shrimp Farming, Entrepreneurship and the Circulation of Know-How in a Fujian Village" , Taiwan Journal of Anthropology, 2 (1), 2004, p. 41-67. Susanne Brandtstädter takes a look at the emergence of rural entrepreneurs and places the emphasis on the distribution of know-how within the village community.
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Czeslaw Tubilewicz, Taiwan and Post-Communist Europe. Shopping for Allies
J. Bruce Jacobs
1 This book joins Chen Jie’s Foreign Policy of the New Taiwan: Pragmatic Diplomacy in Southeast Asia (Elgar, 2002) as a leading analysis of the foreign relations of democratic Taiwan . Tubilewicz’s book analyses Taiwan ’s relations with the European nations that had been Communist prior to 1990. Before then, the former dictatorial Kuomintang government had forbade any sort of relations, including trade, with its Communist “enemies,” thus providing a special challenge for a newly democratic Taiwan trying to gain “international space.”
2 Tubilewicz breaks his analysis into five geographical parts. Taiwan made its first overtures to Central Europe , including Hungary , Czechoslovakia , and Poland . These countries were all anti-Communist, and the aftermath of the Beijing Massacre of 3-4 June 1989 gave Taiwan further opportunities. In addition, Taiwan hoped these countries would assist Taiwan ’s entry into Western Europe . President Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia initiated “first ladies diplomacy,” with Mrs. Havel visiting Taiwan on his behalf. Prague also gave Premier Lien Chan VIP treatment during a 1995 visit. In the Baltic region, Latvia provided Taiwan with an important breakthrough. Even though Latvia recognized the People’s Republic, it also established consular relations with Taiwan in early 1992, a dual-recognition that continued until mid-1994, when Latvia had a change of government. Tubilewicz notes that this arrangement was not unique in that Britain had a consulate in Taiwan from 1950 to 1972, the Netherlands had a consulate in Taiwan during 1954-1972, and Taiwan had a consulate in a provincial Nigerian city in 1993.
3 Although Taiwan was late to establish trade and other links with Russia , these links developed reasonably well. While ultimately Russia supported China internationally, Tubilewicz argues that the current status quois to Russia ’s advantage, while a “resolved ‘ Taiwan problem’ is not necessarily in actually been reinforced. Russia ’s interest” (p. 122). He concludes that despite Russian arms sales to China , “ Realpolitik
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seemingly demands that Moscow does not encourage a military resolution of the ‘ Taiwan problem’” (p. 122).
4 Although Taiwan paid little attention to the Balkans, this area receives two chapters because of the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Macedonia and Taiwan from early 1999 until June 2001, thus giving Taiwan its second “diplomatic ally” in Europe after the Vatican . Finally, Tubilewicz considers the Ukraine and Belarus , two relatively powerful economies in the former Soviet Union .
5 Several structural factors have inhibited Taiwan ’s moves in post-Communist Europe since the early 1990s. First, China as a member of the United Nations Security Council has a veto over new memberships and key proposals. Many of the newly independent nations of post-Communist Europe , especially the Baltic and Balkan nations, wanted UN membership and feared a Chinese veto. Chinese vetoes of UN peacekeeping assistance to Macedonia in the wake of the Yugoslav wars also reduced Macedonia ’s resolve to maintain relations with Taiwan .
6 Second, the great Latvia and Macedonia breakthroughs were not as great as they seemed. Taiwan- Macedonia diplomatic relations failed to reach ambassadorial level, while the Latvians never established a consulate in Taiwan .
7 Finally, despite the importance of democracy and human rights in Taiwan and in many of the countries of post-Communist Europe , the key factors in Taiwan’s relationships with post-Communist Europe were economic. In the early 1990s, most of these countries were experiencing great economic difficulties, while Taiwan had substantial foreign currency reserves and keen businessmen ready to invest overseas in profitable markets.
8 Yet, despite numerous promises of economic assistance, Taiwan repeatedly failed to follow through. Bureaucratic and other obstacles made investment in Central and Eastern Europe problematic. Furthermore, the Taiwan government could not force its businessmen to invest in particular places. Thus, many of the promises of economic assistance remained unfulfilled. In addition, trade with Eastern Europe , though it expanded greatly, remained very small in the context of Taiwan ’s overall economic activity. Similarly, while Taiwan trade proved important to some smaller eastern European countries, it was not important to the larger countries. By 2005, trade with the Czech Republic , Hungary , Poland , and Slovakia ranged from US$230 million to just over US$500 million, while trade with the three Baltic nations ranged from US$50 million to US$106 million. Trade with the Balkan states remained small, and Taiwan ’s trade with Macedonia barely reached a maximum of US$4 million in 2001, a figure that has since declined. In contrast, China ’s trade with Macedonia has exceeded US$10 million since 2001 and reached over US$35 million in 2003. Only Russia , which exports raw materials to Taiwan , has reached substantial trade figures with Taiwan of US$2,712 million in 2005. These figures, however, total less than one per cent of Taiwan ’s total trade of US$381,000 million in 2005.
9 As Tubilewicz concludes, Taiwan ’s attempts to establish relations with these countries have produced successes as well as failures. Taiwan has several offices in several of these countries, and some of these countries also have offices in Taipei . Trade relationships have been established, and there are many visits between Taiwan and these countries, as well as academic and culture exchanges. These positives have all
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been built de novo, as no relationships existed between Communist Europe and the dictatorships of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo.
10 Taiwan and Post-Communist Europe has an excellent bibliography. An added plus is the helpful inclusion of many Chinese characters within the text rather than in a glossary.
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Karl Taro Greenfeld, China Syndrome. The True Story of the 21st Century's First Great Epidemic; Thomas Abraham, Twenty-First Plague. The Story of SARS.
Frédéric Keck
1 The SARS crisis in 2003 very quickly gave rise to a number of analyses on its consequences in terms of public health by setting China and the World Health Organisation (WHO) if in opposition to each other in a global and quite general way1. Few accounts, however, take into consideration the plurality of the actors who were involved in this crisis, the brevity of which (a few months between December 2002 and April 2003) disguises somewhat the intensity of the efforts to bring it to an end. Two accounts published by journalists, one by Thomas Abraham, assistant professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong , the other by Karl Taro Greenfeld, former director of Time Asia, retrace the evolution of the epidemic from a chronological and geographic perspective. The account by Thomas Abraham is more academic and retrospective, evaluating the succession of events from the point of view of the epidemiological results that were finally established. That of Karl Taro Greenfeld, though written at a later stage, presents the events “in the heat of the moment” and uses all the resources of journalistic suspense, re-creating the sense of uncertainty and urgency of the scientific data produced on the infectious agent. Both show that the fight against SARS not only brought China and the WHO into conflict, but also linked actors in diverse locations: Guangzhou , Hong Kong , and Beijing on the one hand, and Hanoi , Geneva , and Atlanta on the other. Greenfeld’s book is a good introduction to the events that constituted the SARS crisis, as its novelistic style is lively and en- joyable to read. To claim that it is the “true story,” as the subtitle makes out, is an exaggeration, however, for despite the efforts of the author to acquire and convey the foundations of virology, it is not lacking in scientific errors2. The book starts with a list
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of the dramatis personae, and indeed, its major interest lies in its recounting of the international comédie humaine grappling with the contagion. In his role as editor-in- chief of Time Asia, Greenfeld had particularly good access to two types of actors: on the one hand, the two scientists at the University of Hong Kong who identified the cause of the disease, Malik Peiris and Guan Yi, and on the other, the Chinese doctors who, defying the official ban, revealed to the greater public the extent of the contagion: Zhong Nanshan, director of the Institute for Respiratory Diseases in Guangzhou , and Jiang Yanyong, a physician at the 301 Military Hospital in Beijing . It was Time Asia , in fact, that published in April 2003 the letter by Jiang Yanyong maintaining that the number of SARS victims was much higher than that declared by the Minister of Health, Zhang Wenkang, and it seems that this event was the trigger that pushed Greenfeld to undertake an investigation into the disease from the point of view of Hong Kong , where he was based at the time.
2 The narrative begins in November 2002, when the first victims of a mysterious respiratory disease were beginning to feel its symptoms in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The author endeavours to follow an ordinary patient, Fang Lin, who refuses to admit himself to hospital for fear of the cost of medical care, and intermeshes his account with the inquiries conducted by Malik Peiris and Guan Yi on birds that had contracted avian flu in Hong Kong , comparing the contractions of the lungs of the human victims with the facial haemorrhages of the winged creatures in striking and bloody descriptions. We discover an essential factor in the crisis in the fact that the scientists who treated the first SARS victims in Hong Kong expected to encounter the H5N1 virus responsible for the avian flu that began afflicting Hong Kong in 1997: this crossover between the two infectious diseases initially caused a delay in the response of the Hong Kong health authorities to the SARS contagion, but then spurred a tremendous acceleration of research into the emerging viruses, which allowed the disease to be understood and may have controlled its spread. It was because Malik Peiris and Guan Yi had been working for 10 years on avian flu, under the supervision of Robert Webster, Kenneth Shortridge, and Kwok-Yung Yuen, that they were the first to show that SARS was caused by a coronavirus (21 April 2003) and that it had been transmitted to humans by civet cats sold in the markets of Guangzhou (23 May): the methods of reasoning and experimentation that had been tried and tested for the H5N1 virus were successfully applied to SARS. Greenfeld follows Malik Peiris and Guan Yi as they ask themselves about the identity of the virus, express scepticism or anger at the announcements of hypotheses by other scientists (the Chinese authorities talked of the Chlamydia bacteria, researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong of a metapneumovirus, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta of a paramyxovirus), and cross the border to collect human and animal samples in Guangzhou or Shenzhen (thanks to the support of Zhong Nanshan). Despite its scientific errors, this account gives a good sense of the frantic competition between the different personalities and scientific institutions, accelerated by a feeling of urgency as people start dying of a disease that has yet to be identified.
3 The account broadens its horizons as SARS begins to spill over the Hong Kong/ Guangdong border to become a global pandemic. Greenfeld follows the doctor Liu Jianlun as he leaves Guangzhou , where he has been treating patients with the mysterious illness, and comes to Hong Kong to take part in a family celebration, only to die on 21 February. By then he had already infected a dozen or so people who had been
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staying, like him, at the Metropole Hotel, and who the next day took flights to Toronto , Hanoi , Singapore , and Beijing , where they spread the disease. Greenfeld follows one of them, Danny Yang Chin (Johnny Cheng), an American of Chinese origin, as he is treated in the French Hospital of Hanoi , where he infects several nurses as well as Dr. Carlo Urbani, who was the first to inform the WHO of the appearance of the first cases and who himself tragically died of SARS in Bangkok on 20 March 2003.
4 Rather than looking at the cases in Singapore , Toronto , and Taiwan that also resulted from this first infection3. Greenfeld once again narrows in on Hong Kong , where two phenomena dominate the story: the infection of nurses and doctors at the Prince of Wales Hospital, which traumatises the medical staff, and the infection of residents of the Amoy Gardens housing estate, which triggers panic in the general population and leads to wild hypotheses that the virus was transmitted by rats or crows or was simply airborne before epidemiologists ultimately trace the blame to ventilation ducts linked to the toilet drainage system. Greenfeld skilfully recreates the atmosphere of suspicion in Hong Kong , the flight of expatriates, and the complete shutdown of activity, extending to the editing desk of Time Asia.
5 In one of the most lyrical passages of the book – which also betrays the point of view of a person who, although born of a Japanese mother, remains attached to an American intellectual elite – the author, on the point of sending his wife and children on holiday to Sri Lanka , contemplates the city from his flat at the top of the Peak and imagines the virus passing from one district to another through the feverish bodies of their residents (p. 256). In a fascinating and recurring theme that serves as a sort of key to the book, the author plays at “Guan Yi’s game consisting of pretending to be a virus” (p. 250): he pictures himself passing from body to body, seeking out the organisms that are most suitable for its reproduction. In fact, the interest of this book lies in “following the viruses” by means of their peregrinations across the globe, the people affected constituting merely hosts for a vast cycle of viral reproduction: one could say that it is not so much a matter of people catching viruses as viruses passing through people4. Finally, the account arrives at the confrontation between China and the WHO, or rather between Geneva and Beijing , which remains the most spectacular and, without a doubt, historically the most important aspect of the SARS crisis. In this grand history, Greenfeld highlights the role of an individual, Jiang Yanyong, whose letter published by Time Asia provoked a turnaround in the policy of the Chinese government. Greenfeld analyses the reasons that pushed this respected military surgeon to become a whistle blower5. It was not so much the humiliations of the Cultural Revolution as the memory of the Tiananmen massacre that came to Jiang Yanyong’s mind as he received patients in respiratory distress and saw Zhang Wenkang announce on television that Beijing had the disease under control. However, there is little information on what subsequently happened to the imprudent doctor, who after a short period of glory in the Chinese press was detained for criticising the “Tiananmen incident.” Likewise, Green feld enlarges little upon the political changes that resulted from Jiang Yanyong’s revelation, notably the reshuffle provoked by Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao when they realised that the SARS crisis provided an opportunity to distance themselves from the politics of Jiang Zemin.
6 On the effectiveness of the Chinese recovery of control, which coincided, in fact, with the end of the epidemic, Greenfeld has few hypotheses. The account is more informative on the possibility of locking up the Chinese information system than on the
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manner in which these incidents were recovered by this system – in this sense, Jiang Yanyong’s act offers even more material for analysing the relationship between the media and politics in China . There is also little information on the way in which the WHO was able to organise its strategy faced with the Chinese government: even if Greenfeld openly admits that, at a time when the United States was invading Iraq in contempt of the UN, the restored authority of the WHO had something comforting about it (p. 138), he has trouble hiding the biased assumption that an international organisation is necessarily manipulated by the state powers it endeavours to regulate. We thus do not know, by the end of the work, how China ’s mobilisation against SARS was able to coordinate with that of the WHO following a period of open opposition. All of the complex interaction between the Chinese government and the local elite escapes Greenfeld, who remains attached to a fixed, monolithic, and ultimately very negative image of China : during a trip to Shanxi , where he interviews the health authorities on the SARS cases in the countryside, he describes the dirtiness of the roads and houses and concludes, “All these people, they’re just meat for virus.”
7 The anti-Chinese prejudice that becomes increasingly perceptible as the book progresses is apparent from the very title of the work: the “China syndrome” is SARS, or rather the inability of China to mobilise in time against SARS; and the “21st Century’s First Great Epidemic” is the one that appeared in southern China , presaging other pandemics to come – avian flu or others. If Greenfeld gives a high profile to the discovery of Guan Yi, according to which the SARS virus emerged in the animal markets of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, that is because it reinforces the image of a China ready to explode, a veritable virus bomb mixing people and animals in an inextricable confusion, the “Ground Zero” of bio-terrorist attacks to come (p. 342). From this point of view, the attraction of the book is that it imbues virology, a technical and precise discipline, with a genuine fascination for those who worry about the threats hanging over their lives: it is the destiny of our organisms that is being played out in China , a veritable breeding ground for the viruses that will kill us tomorrow. This lesson of the book hides another so subtle that the author has been prevented from formulating it: Hong Kong , thanks to its colonial past and its scientific equipment, is a real sentinel for observing and controlling diseases that are emerging not only in China but throughout the rest of Southeast Asia . It has to be remembered that when the WHO experts gave the new disease the name of severe acute respiratory syndrome, observers immediately made a connection between the acronym SARS and the status of Special Administrative Region (SAR) bestowed upon Hong Kong when it reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. SARS is without doubt less the “China syndrome” than the “ Hong Kong disease” in the sense that it revealed to the world the structural strengths and weaknesses of Hong Kong , and contributed powerfully to giving it a new identity in the context of the “one country, two systems” concept. Greenfeld relates, moreover, that he himself was one of the 500,000 people who marched in the streets of Hong Kong on 1 July 2003 in protest against Article 23 of the Basic Law, but even more profoundly, against a government that was not adequately protecting them against the threats they perceived confronting them from the mainland.
8 Thomas Abraham’s book provides a corrective to the partiality and subjectivity of Greenfeld’s account. The historical and scientific hindsight Abraham applies to the same events cast doubts on the validity of several of Greenfeld’s statements. The work deals with China before discussing Hong Kong , and this order radically alters the presentation of the problem. Abraham recalls that Guangzhou doctors had identified
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 41
the disease in December 2003 and prepared emergency plans indicating how to recognise and treat patients suffering from “atypical pneumonia.” He analyses in fine detail the media coverage of the first cases and the subtle semantics through which the authorities simultaneously acknowledged and denied the rumour. He also provides important information on China ’s strategy against SARS, in par- ticular the construction in one week of a thousand- bed hospital intended for patients presenting the symptoms of the disease. He discusses the debate surrounding the quarantine measures at Amoy Garden , and recreates with great precision the epidemiological investigation led by Thomas Tsang that enabled the ventilation system to be identified as the source of the contagion. He shows that Hong Kong took up the fight against SARS two weeks late because of the city’s focus on avian flu, and he reproduces the controversies surrounding the efficacy of the measures taken at the Prince of Wales Hospital and the Department of Health. He underlines the vigour of the WHO directors, in particular Gro Harlem Brundtland (whom Greenfeld surprisingly does not mention) and David Heymann, who broke with precedent to criticise the Chinese government for its lack of co-operation. He also shows the reticence of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta to follow the WHO recommendations, and its ultimate alignment with other countries in the global question of the crisis. It is in the last chapter, entitled “The virus hunt,” that Abraham finally describes with great clarity and precision the discoveries by the team of Malik Peiris and Guan Yi concerning the coronavirus and its animal origins. Thomas Abraham in fact attended numerous conferences and work meetings of the microbiologists at the University of Hong Kong , where he teaches, and this experience has given him first-hand knowledge of the scientific data he discusses – although he also tends, because of this, to play down the research conducted at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in particularly on the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of SARS6
9 The great advantage of Thomas Abraham’s book is above all to place SARS in the context of other infectious diseases that have made headlines in the past 20 years – Aids, Ebola, Nipah, Marburg – by providing factors for interpreting the pre-eminence it has been accorded. If it is essentially the metaphor of war that has been applied to SARS, Abraham shows that this metaphor is justified in the case of viruses whose distinctive feature is to violently occupy the host cells in order to reproduce (the paradox being that the virus ends up destroying the cell that enabled it to live), but he also underlines that SARS was perceived as a global war from the start, as it spread by the most rapid means of transport and affected all categories of the population indiscriminately. The analogy with terrorist attacks springs immediately to mind – it is striking that the room occupied by the “super-spreader” Liu Jianlun at the Metropole Hotel was No. 911, for the virus literally transforms an ordinary person into a living bomb – and numerous Japanese manga cartoons have exploited the visual possibilities of this metamorphosis. In this war of man against virus, nurses become the soldiers dying at the front line without having been prepared for such attacks, valorised as secular martyrs in the same manner as New York ’s firefighters. In unfurling this string of metaphors, Thomas Abraham does not apply the scepticism of the semiologist, and he thus gives an effective account of the global mobilisation against this disease and the lessons that have been drawn from it for the prevention of similar diseases. “SARS has attracted the attention that it has because it affected the more globalised cities and regions of the world: China , Hong Kong , Singapore , Taiwan , Toronto . In the same way, the avian flu pandemic has taken on such an importance because the richest and
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 42
the most powerful nations of the world are as vulnerable to this disease as the poorest.” (Preface)
10 Translated by Nick Oates
NOTES
1. See D. Fidler SARS, Governance and the Globalization of Disease, Basingstoke , Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, for an approach that clearly favours the WHO, and A. Kleinmann and J. Watson (eds.), SARS in China , Prelude to Pandemics, Stanford University Press, 2006, for an approach more favourable to China . The reviews of these works by A. Guilloux in Perspectives chinoises (nos. 92 and 99) underline the overly general characterisation of “ China ” and “world organisation” as entities. 2. See the review of this book by A. Danchin, founder of the Pasteur Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong , in La Recherche, 2006, no. 401, p. 89 3. On these cases, see P.C. Leung and E.E. Oi (eds.) SARS war, Combating the disease, World Scientific Publishing Co, Singapore , 2003 (for Toronto and Taiwan ), and C. M. Hoong, A Defining Moment. How Singapore beat SARS, Singapore , Stamford Press, 2004. 4. In this sense, this book unconsciously illustrates the method inaugurated by Bruno Latour in Les microbes : guerre et paix, Paris , Métailié, 1984 (translated into English under the title The Pastorization of France, Harvard University Press, 1988). 5. See on this point F. Chateauraynaud and D. Torny, Les sombres précurseurs, Une sociologie pragmatique de l’alerte et du risque, Paris, EHESS, 1999. 6. On this point, see P. C. Leung, “Efficacy of Chinese Medicine for SARS,” in P. Tambyah and P. C. Leung (eds.), Bird Flu. A Rising Pandemic in Asia and Beyond, World Scientific Publishing Co, Singapore , 2006, p. 147-166.
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 43
Estelle Lau, Paper Families. Identity, Immigration Administration and Chinese Exclusion
Adam McKeown
1 The U.S. Chinese exclusion laws enforced from 1882 to 1943 are proving to be a nearly bottomless source of scholarly inspiration. Not only is exclusion one of the substantive and intellectual foundations of Asian American studies and increasingly recognized as a fundamental aspect of U.S. immigration history, but the exclusion archives are a vast repository of diverse sources that will provide sustenance to intrepid and innovative scholars for years to come. Estelle Lau’s book adds to the burgeoning literature on the exclusion laws by analysing them in the context of sociological theories about bureaucratic development. Many scholars have noted the crucial role of the Chinese exclusion in forging of U.S. immigration law and as a pioneering institution of the fledgling U.S. administrative state. This is the first work to put questions about administrative (as distinct from the legal) development at the centre of its analysis. Much of the empirical material will be familiar to readers of Asian American history, but Lau’s approach brings a new analytical perspective that can create a bridge between Asian American studies, the history of the administrative states, and the sociology of bureaucracy.
2 Lau sets up the book with several nuanced arguments and questions. She does not want merely to tell an institutional history of how a bureaucracy was established to regulate people, but of how it created the very categories and objects that were to be regulated. The consolidation of exclusion enforcement was not merely a case of the state unilaterally imposing itself upon hapless immigrants, but a set of techniques that emerged through practice. Both regulators and regulated contributed to the creation of procedures that had the capacity to transform a fluid and messy reality into immutable facts and identities. This transformation was ultimately made possible through the establishment of a consistent and uniform procedure that was rooted, above all, in textuality as the main indicator of truthfulness. The ability to verify statements was more important than the substance of those statements. Truth was to be found in files.
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 44
3 Unfortunately, the book’s empirical exposition does not quite fulfil its ambitious conceptual agenda. The biggest problem is that the sociological method of sampling fails to grasp broader historically processes in which the institutions developed and changed. Given the vastness of the case files, sampling is the only reasonable method of dealing with them. But that sampling must be augmented with a broader knowledge of the overall trajectories of institutional growth, inter-agency politics and historical events. The sampling method does successfully identify a general shift away from apparently arbitrary and unexplained decisions to a system of standardized opinions that could even be written into pre-printed forms. But many of the author’s quotes and footnotes are offered without dates, so that much of the material is framed as absolute statements about the exclusion bureaucracy per se rather than as aspects of an historically changing process. For example, some key evidence used to construct arguments about the institutional legacy of exclusion is taken from intra-departmental correspondence in 1905 (especially pp. 141-9). But 1905 was a unique year for the administration of Chinese exclusion, the culmination of seven years of reform that resulted in the anti-American boycott in China , sensationalised criticisms in the press, and deep ruptures within the US government over the proper means of enforcement. None of this is mentioned in the book, but Lau interprets the relatively extreme attitude of the Bureau of Immigration in this correspondence (a position from which it later retreated) as typical of its bureaucratic practice.
4 Lau spends a lot of time on two themes that run parallel to, but are not entirely integrated into, the broader arguments of the introduction. One is an extended discussion of the rise of discretion in the decisions of immigration agents. Not only does the idea of heightened discretion seem to go against evidence from her samples, but it also undermines some of her larger arguments about bureaucratic systematisation. Of course, the two arguments are not incompatible. While specific decisions could be arbitrary, the modes of constructing and justifying those decisions were increasingly formalistic and left a clearly circumscribed space within which discretion could be exercised. Lau hints at this argument in the intro duction (5-6) but does not follow up on it. The other theme is the extended descriptions of how racialised stereotypes shaped immigration decisions. This is not a surprising argument, given that racialisation was written directly into the legislation itself. Indeed, it has been the bread and butter of most previous analyses of the exclusion laws. But such analyses tend to depict exclusion enforcement as a top-down imposition that generated necessary reactions rather than as one of collective agency. Lau follows this line of analysis to argue that the legacy of racism continues to contaminate the entire edifice of immigration law. While this is surely true, a greater integration of the ideas of interactive agency, the creation of procedure through practice, and the importance of textuality would help to create a much more ambivalent picture that also implicates migrants, public opinion, and well-intentioned lawyers as something more than merely reactive agents in the production of this tainted institution.
5 The final chapter of the book moves beyond 1943 to look at the continuing legacy of the exclusion archives in immigration law and Asian American identity. Lau shows how the files shaped truth and identities during the confession program (of immigration fraud) in the 1950s and 60s, how the files became an anchor of Asian self-knowledge in relation to non-Chinese, and how exclusion created a set of general immigration procedures that blames immigrants rather than the system and encourages legalistic
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 45
trickery over substantive cases. Lau’s fairly conventional humanitarian critique of contemporary immigration law does not entirely follow from the arguments about bureaucracy proposed in the introduction. But this book nonetheless suggests a provocative approach to understanding how multiple agents are implicated in the construction of unintended institutions.•
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 46
Térence Billeter, L’Empereur jaune, Paris, Les Indes savantes, 2007, 549 pp.
Sébastien Billioud
1 In this book on Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, the mythical patron figure of Chinese civilization, Térence Billeter presents a meticulously documented study on the Chinese authorities’ use of traditional culture today. His main thesis is that the Beijing regime is in this way seeking to “build an alternative model of modernity to counter the dominant Western one” (p. 432). This nationalist ideology seeks above all to impart a renewed legitimacy to the authorities in rallying their new social base, “the emerging urban and cosmopolitan bourgeoisie.” In the process, they perpetuate a vision of politics harking back to the imperial state’s creation. The work consists of nine chapters and copious annexes. The first chapter plunges into the heart of the matter with a lively description of a 1999 ceremony in Huangling, a township in Shaanxi province, where the shrine of the Yellow Emperor is located. The second chapter leaps back to another epoch, 1688, and to similar ceremonies through which Billeter introduces the practice of venerating Huangdi and, more generally, imperial cults. The third chapter, on the “nationalist transfiguration” (p. 20) of Huangdi, tries to make a link between these two dates by focusing on a certain number of cults taking place towards the end of the imperial era (for instance by the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance, Tongmenghui), under the Republic, during the Anti-Japanese war (Kuomintang and Communist delegates paid a joint homage to Huangdi in 1937 and 1938), and during the early years of the People’s Republic. Though suspended during the Cultural Revolution, the practice revived in the reform era. The author shows how the rituals have changed with the passage of time and have always been adapted to the needs of the moment.
2 Then comes a broader reflection on Chinese nationalism, its history dealt with at the outset of the fourth chapter to provide a better understanding of the different connotations of the Huangdi figure at given times, especially as creator of the centralised state and/or ancestor of the race. The next chapter pursues this enquiry in Communist China. The retreat of nationalism in the face of socialism, the symbolically
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 47
inappropriate nature of the allusion to the Han race or nation (in the context of internationalism or absorption of minority nationalities), and the personality cult of the Great Helmsman are among the factors that explain the gradual eclipse of the Huangdi figure. Billeter notes the return in the 1980s of a mix of tradition and socialism1, whereas the 1990s were, in his view, characterized by nationalism as the dominant trait in Chinese political discourse. In this context, he explains that the Huangdi figure underwent a real consecration by the authorities (p.191), who, depending on what they wanted to achieve, played on different themes: founding hero (of the political), civilizer (since the Chinese state, the author holds, sees itself as the incarnation and agent of civilization) and progenitor (ancestor of the Hanand, by extension, the Chinese nation) (p.240-42).
3 In the next section the author goes beyond the specific case of the Yellow Emperor to reflect on the role of culture in the creation of political legitimacy in China today. He first studies a list of 100 patriotic sites presented in official propaganda (chapter 6) before taking a more theoretical approach to the debate (chapter 7). Proceeding from reflections on the difference between nationalism and patriotism and on theories of nation, he shows how, gradually and in a decisive manner, the relative weight given to socialism and a reinvented and partially remobilized high traditional culture (depending on its utility) become reversed in Communist Party discourse (p. 313). He perceives a return of zhengtong, a way of legitimating politics through reference to the past (p.343) directed by regime propaganda “smoothly” using mass culture (p.348 sq). After having set the general political scene, the remainder of the book refocuses on Huangdi. The eighth chapter looks at two connected aspects: tourism — which the authorities are developing — and popular religion. Billeter briefly evokes the relation that has built up around this last issue between the peasantry and political authorities looking to promote a neutralized veneration shorn of “superstition.” The last chapter is a more general reflection on the foundation of the political, the author showing that the Beijing regime deliberately displays some aspects of a symbolic system that has played a role in the imperial state’s ideological construction (p. 397), thus perpetuating “a vision of politics whose origins go back to the establishment of the imperial state two millennia ago.” In developing these theses, the book considers an impressive number and diversity of materials while situating itself in an interdisciplinary approach that ranges from political science to fairly broad sociological considerations, to anthropological observation of precise events in historical perspective. Such an approach is theoretically rich, and the essay is lively and readable despite its length. Basically, Billeter puts forth sound arguments to back his analyses of the centrality of cultural nationalism that Chinese authorities use today as an alternative to modernity. One need not entirely agree with his analysis to appreciate the merit of Billeter’s coherent thesis on the regime’s ideological evolution, which constitutes a major contribution to the debate. Having made these points, however, some limitations of the study need to be noted. Firstly — as acknowledged in his own introduction — Billeter systematically adopts a “top-down” approach that ultimately perceives reality through the prism of the authorities and elites2, in whom is vested the initiative in cultural matters, faced with a society that seems little more than a material on which their mark can be left. This is paradoxical, given that the author devotes remarkable attention to China’s social evolution in the 1990s, which, it may be noted, greatly contributes to the book’s interest. The question of the interaction between the authorities and a people whose “horizon of expectations” extends along with the
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 48
expansion of its “field of experience” is only infrequently considered. If there is one phenomenon that characterizes the historicity of the start of the new century in China, it is precisely that society is also reappropriating some fragments of its past heritage3. In this respect, it would no doubt have been interesting to further distinguish, in the reappearance of a discourse dealing with culture, that which stems from a policy conceived at the top and imposed on those at the bottom (in a manner that is still quasi totalitarian) and that which corresponds to the response the authorities come up with to deal with (if not weaken) the aspirations of a society that is now enjoying much greater autonomy4.
4 With this, the discussion emerges from the strict confines of the Yellow Emperor to consider “high traditional culture” more generally, though the concept remains extremely vague. Another limitation of the work may be underlined at this point, where Billeter uses the Huangdi figure to present a much larger and more general thesis on the development of a cultural nationalism in China. In what way doesn’t it go too far? While it is often noted that the authorities cannot lose sight of socialist heritage in their use of culture, the book nevertheless gives the impression that the game is set for the present, and that cultural nationalism is shaping up as the indubitable new source of legitimacy for the authorities. Is that really so? What of the strength of socialist tradition in China? What other hypotheses may be envisaged? These questions are not really discussed. While they need not necessarily form part of a work limited to Huangdi, they are nevertheless central to a larger analysis of the regime’s ideological evolution. Finally, another question may be posed: Doesn’t Huangdi lend himself particularly well to this type of interpretation precisely because he is, as Billeter shows only too well, a nationalist icon? In other words, using Huangdi, would it be possible to come to definitive conclusions on the appropriation of “high traditional culture” by the authorities? As he considers the difficulty of proceeding in this manner, the author chooses to expand the debate using interesting developments: analyses of lists of patriotic sites drawn up by the regime (which also helps gauge the weight given to socialist heritage) or frequent evocation of other figures such as Confucius.
5 The Huangdi/Confucius parallel is especially interesting. Billeter shows quite well that historically, the recourse to one or other of these two figures is not a neutral activity. Furthermore, one has sometimes been invoked to counter the other. Thus Zhang Binglin (1869-1936) was able to invoke the figure of Huangdi, ancestor of the Han nation, to instil a national feeling detached from Confucianism and rejecting the “imperial tradition” (p. 135). In the very heart of the Kuomintang era, during the “New Life Movement” ( xin shenghuo yundong) launched in 1934, which claimed in many respects to have Confucian values, a proto-fascist faction was disdainful of cosmopolitan and Confucian universalism, preferring instead the racial exclusivity of Huangdi (p. 159). Even today, we might add, Confucius and the Yellow Emperor stand for entirely different things. The ancestor figure (or, in the author’s words, that of the founding hero, civiliser and progenitor) is not that of a Master or Sage. And if one talks of zhengtong (see above), it is not possible to forget that Confucianism is also historically linked to Daotong, i.e. to the transmission of the Way, imbuing it with clearly subversive potential5. Billeter repeatedly stresses the current recourse to Confucianism: he mentions its “spectacular return to grace” in the 1990s (p.190), the philosophical bases established by the new Confucians since the late 1950s (p.266), the resumption of Confucius anniversary ceremonies at Qufu, and even the promotion of
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 49
the moralising role of Confucius (pp. 347, 430), “whose teaching is recalled to help restructure Chinese society”6. While the increasing reference to Confucianism and other aspects of “high Chinese culture” is undeniable, these elements should nevertheless be considered with caution. The return to grace in the1990s is notable in the context of the situation that prevailed in the 1980s, but it is highly marginal in terms of the totality of ideological output by the regime during this period and remains largely circumscribed in the academic world. On the other hand, the philosophical bases of the system promoted by the authorities are certainly not those of the new Confucians referred to in the book, who are mostly ardent advocates of Western-style democracy and promoters of a universalist humanism (much more than of any narrow nationalism). It is also through direct references to democracy, deemed a universal dharma, that a Confucian such as Mou Zongsan, who is an inheritor of the May 4th Movement, reinterprets what should be the new zhengtong. It may also be noted that the authorities generally observe the utmost prudence on another front, that of some forms of intellectual and “illiberal” Confucianism that are now growing in the continent. As for official celebrations in Qufu, a more detailed analysis might conclude that the government would organise them very differently if it were really concerned with restoring the old Sage to a prominence. For all these reasons, it appears that the Confucius figure is actually more difficult to mobilise than the Yellow Emperor. If the authorities do re-appropriate it partially and episodically, it is always with caution and no doubt to associate their action in the cultural domain with Chinese society’s ongoing massive rediscovery of its past7. None of these remarks in any way detract from the very high quality of work presented in l’Empereur jaune. Erudite and absorbing, the book will certainly become a durable reference for those interested in the relationship between power and culture in contemporary China.
6 Translated by N JayaramTérence Billeter, L’Empereur jaune, Paris, Les Indes savantes, 2007, 549 pp.
7 Sébastien Billioud
8 China Perspectives n°72, 2007/4, page n°0
9
10 In this book on Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, the mythical patron figure of Chinese civilization, Térence Billeter presents a meticulously documented study on the Chinese authorities’ use of traditional culture today. His main thesis is that the Beijing regime is in this way seeking to “build an alternative model of modernity to counter the dominant Western one” (p. 432). This nationalist ideology seeks above all to impart a renewed legitimacy to the authorities in rallying their new social base, “the emerging urban and cosmopolitan bourgeoisie.” In the process, they perpetuate a vision of politics harking back to the imperial state’s creation. The work consists of nine chapters and copious annexes. The first chapter plunges into the heart of the matter with a lively description of a 1999 ceremony in Huangling, a township in Shaanxi province, where the shrine of the Yellow Emperor is located. The second chapter leaps back to another epoch, 1688, and to similar ceremonies through which Billeter introduces the practice of venerating Huangdi and, more generally, imperial cults. The third chapter, on the “nationalist transfiguration” (p. 20) of Huangdi, tries to make a link between these two dates by focusing on a certain number of cults taking place towards the end of the imperial era (for instance by the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance, Tongmenghui), under the Republic, during the Anti-Japanese war (Kuomintang and
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 50
Communist delegates paid a joint homage to Huangdi in 1937 and 1938), and during the early years of the People’s Republic. Though suspended during the Cultural Revolution, the practice revived in the reform era. The author shows how the rituals have changed with the passage of time and have always been adapted to the needs of the moment.
11 Then comes a broader reflection on Chinese nationalism, its history dealt with at the outset of the fourth chapter to provide a better understanding of the different connotations of the Huangdi figure at given times, especially as creator of the centralised state and/or ancestor of the race. The next chapter pursues this enquiry in Communist China. The retreat of nationalism in the face of socialism, the symbolically inappropriate nature of the allusion to the Han race or nation (in the context of internationalism or absorption of minority nationalities), and the personality cult of the Great Helmsman are among the factors that explain the gradual eclipse of the Huangdi figure. Billeter notes the return in the 1980s of a mix of tradition and socialism,(1) whereas the 1990s were, in his view, characterized by nationalism as the dominant trait in Chinese political discourse. In this context, he explains that the Huangdi figure underwent a real consecration by the authorities (p.191), who, depending on what they wanted to achieve, played on different themes: founding hero (of the political), civilizer (since the Chinese state, the author holds, sees itself as the incarnation and agent of civilization) and progenitor (ancestor of the Hanand, by extension, the Chinese nation) (p.240-42).
12 In the next section the author goes beyond the specific case of the Yellow Emperor to reflect on the role of culture in the creation of political legitimacy in China today. He first studies a list of 100 patriotic sites presented in official propaganda (chapter 6) before taking a more theoretical approach to the debate (chapter 7). Proceeding from reflections on the difference between nationalism and patriotism and on theories of nation, he shows how, gradually and in a decisive manner, the relative weight given to socialism and a reinvented and partially remobilized high traditional culture (depending on its utility) become reversed in Communist Party discourse (p. 313). He perceives a return of zhengtong, a way of legitimating politics through reference to the past (p.343) directed by regime propaganda “smoothly” using mass culture (p.348 sq). After having set the general political scene, the remainder of the book refocuses on Huangdi. The eighth chapter looks at two connected aspects: tourism — which the authorities are developing — and popular religion. Billeter briefly evokes the relation that has built up around this last issue between the peasantry and political authorities looking to promote a neutralized veneration shorn of “superstition.” The last chapter is a more general reflection on the foundation of the political, the author showing that the Beijing regime deliberately displays some aspects of a symbolic system that has played a role in the imperial state’s ideological construction (p. 397), thus perpetuating “a vision of politics whose origins go back to the establishment of the imperial state two millennia ago.” In developing these theses, the book considers an impressive number and diversity of materials while situating itself in an interdisciplinary approach that ranges from political science to fairly broad sociological considerations, to anthropological observation of precise events in historical perspective. Such an approach is theoretically rich, and the essay is lively and readable despite its length. Basically, Billeter puts forth sound arguments to back his analyses of the centrality of cultural nationalism that Chinese authorities use today as an alternative to modernity. One need not entirely agree with his analysis to appreciate the merit of Billeter’s coherent thesis on the regime’s ideological evolution, which constitutes a major
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 51
contribution to the debate. Having made these points, however, some limitations of the study need to be noted. Firstly — as acknowledged in his own introduction — Billeter systematically adopts a “top-down” approach that ultimately perceives reality through the prism of the authorities and elites,(2) in whom is vested the initiative in cultural matters, faced with a society that seems little more than a material on which their mark can be left. This is paradoxical, given that the author devotes remarkable attention to China’s social evolution in the 1990s, which, it may be noted, greatly contributes to the book’s interest. The question of the interaction between the authorities and a people whose “horizon of expectations” extends along with the expansion of its “field of experience” is only infrequently considered. If there is one phenomenon that characterizes the historicity of the start of the new century in China, it is precisely that society is also reappropriating some fragments of its past heritage. (3) In this respect, it would no doubt have been interesting to further distinguish, in the reappearance of a discourse dealing with culture, that which stems from a policy conceived at the top and imposed on those at the bottom (in a manner that is still quasi totalitarian) and that which corresponds to the response the authorities come up with to deal with (if not weaken) the aspirations of a society that is now enjoying much greater autonomy.( 4)
13 With this, the discussion emerges from the strict confines of the Yellow Emperor to consider “high traditional culture” more generally, though the concept remains extremely vague. Another limitation of the work may be underlined at this point, where Billeter uses the Huangdi figure to present a much larger and more general thesis on the development of a cultural nationalism in China. In what way doesn’t it go too far? While it is often noted that the authorities cannot lose sight of socialist heritage in their use of culture, the book nevertheless gives the impression that the game is set for the present, and that cultural nationalism is shaping up as the indubitable new source of legitimacy for the authorities. Is that really so? What of the strength of socialist tradition in China? What other hypotheses may be envisaged? These questions are not really discussed. While they need not necessarily form part of a work limited to Huangdi, they are nevertheless central to a larger analysis of the regime’s ideological evolution. Finally, another question may be posed: Doesn’t Huangdi lend himself particularly well to this type of interpretation precisely because he is, as Billeter shows only too well, a nationalist icon? In other words, using Huangdi, would it be possible to come to definitive conclusions on the appropriation of “high traditional culture” by the authorities? As he considers the difficulty of proceeding in this manner, the author chooses to expand the debate using interesting developments: analyses of lists of patriotic sites drawn up by the regime (which also helps gauge the weight given to socialist heritage) or frequent evocation of other figures such as Confucius.
14 The Huangdi/Confucius parallel is especially interesting. Billeter shows quite well that historically, the recourse to one or other of these two figures is not a neutral activity. Furthermore, one has sometimes been invoked to counter the other. Thus Zhang Binglin (1869-1936) was able to invoke the figure of Huangdi, ancestor of the Han nation, to instil a national feeling detached from Confucianism and rejecting the “imperial tradition” (p. 135). In the very heart of the Kuomintang era, during the “New Life Movement” ( xin shenghuo yundong) launched in 1934, which claimed in many respects to have Confucian values, a proto-fascist faction was disdainful of cosmopolitan and Confucian universalism, preferring instead the racial exclusivity of
China Perspectives, 2007/4 | 2007 52
Huangdi (p. 159). Even today, we might add, Confucius and the Yellow Emperor stand for entirely different things. The ancestor figure (or, in the author’s words, that of the founding hero, civiliser and progenitor) is not that of a Master or Sage. And if one talks of zhengtong (see above), it is not possible to forget that Confucianism is also historically linked to Daotong, i.e. to the transmission of the Way, imbuing it with clearly subversive potential.(5) Billeter repeatedly stresses the current recourse to Confucianism: he mentions its “spectacular return to grace” in the 1990s (p.190), the philosophical bases established by the new Confucians since the late 1950s (p.266), the resumption of Confucius anniversary ceremonies at Qufu, and even the promotion of the moralising role of Confucius (pp. 347, 430), “whose teaching is recalled to help restructure Chinese society.”(6) While the increasing reference to Confucianism and other aspects of “high Chinese culture” is undeniable, these elements should nevertheless be considered with caution. The return to grace in the1990s is notable in the context of the situation that prevailed in the 1980s, but it is highly marginal in terms of the totality of ideological output by the regime during this period and remains largely circumscribed in the academic world. On the other hand, the philosophical bases of the system promoted by the authorities are certainly not those of the new Confucians referred to in the book, who are mostly ardent advocates of Western-style democracy and promoters of a universalist humanism (much more than of any narrow nationalism). It is also through direct references to democracy, deemed a universal dharma, that a Confucian such as Mou Zongsan, who is an inheritor of the May 4th Movement, reinterprets what should be the new zhengtong. It may also be noted that the authorities generally observe the utmost prudence on another front, that of some forms of intellectual and “illiberal” Confucianism that are now growing in the continent. As for official celebrations in Qufu, a more detailed analysis might conclude that the government would organise them very differently if it were really concerned with restoring the old Sage to a prominence. For all these reasons, it appears that the Confucius figure is actually more difficult to mobilise than the Yellow Emperor. If the authorities do re-appropriate it partially and episodically, it is always with caution and no doubt to associate their action in the cultural domain with Chinese society’s ongoing massive rediscovery of its past.(7) None of these remarks in any way detract from the very high quality of work presented in l’Empereur jaune. Erudite and absorbing, the book will certainly become a durable reference for those interested in the relationship between power and culture in contemporary China.
15 Translated by N Jayaram
NOTES
1. Under the slogan “building a socialist spiritual civilization” (p.185) 2. Authorities and elites are clubbed together here because the author often bases his argumentation on writings that are not, strictly speaking, official discourses but rather conference papers or articles and works by professors. It should be stressed in passing
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that problems can arise when interpreting this type of documents in the same way as materials of a more official nature (speeches or five-year plans, among others) 3. See, for example, the article by Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval in this issue of China Perspectives. 4. Billeter certainly insists on a link between the authorities and their social base. While referring to the Communist Party, he says that “its basic objective is to formulate an ideology for its new social base – the emerging urban and cosmopolitan bourgeoisie – in order to ensure its cohesion and gain its loyalty at a time of capitalist globalisation” (p. 432). However, the arrangement here remains one in which the initiative is always with the authorities. This is all the more evident when he says, “the Chinese Communist Party has succeeded in modifying the rapport between the population, especially in urban areas, and high traditional culture” (p. 349). However, there is little discussion of the relationship that this “social base” (by no means homogenous) may on its own maintain with classical culture. 5. A classic response to this is to stress that Confucianism’s subversive power is far from having been dramatically manifested in history. While refraining here from joining in that debate, it may be simply stressed that in China today, some aspects of current Confucianism (rediscovered, reinvented, or re-imported) could present, for the authorities, a subversive potential. 6. All these elements back his thesis on current nationalism, which, as he has very well explained, is not founded on Confucianism alone (p. 305): “The regime’s ideologues have clearly preferred to embed the new Confucianism in a much larger sense of national spirit, thus avoiding turning a philosophical orthodoxy into the sole criterion of Chineseness 7. On these issues, see Sébastien Billioud, “Confucianism, ‘Cultural Tradition,’ and Official Discourse in China at the Start of the New Century,” in China Perspectives, no. 2007/3, pp. 50-65.
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