Mao's Invisible Hand is a collection of ten essays discussing Maoist-style governance strategies in contemporary Chinese policy-making. The contributing authors are primarily qualitative political scientists, but perspectives from history, law and communications are also represented. I would strongly recommend this book to social scientists studying contemporary and Maoist China. Contemporary China scholarship describing the modern influence of Maoism is sparse and Mao's Invisible Hand helps fill this gap.
The lead chapter, written by Elizabeth Perry and Sebastian Heilmann, argues that policy-making in the PRC is influenced by the CCP's revolutionary origins. Born as a guerrilla movement, the revolutionary CCP could not apply a rule-bound approach to governance. Instead, policy was inherently local and situational, emerging from ideology and guerrilla leaders’ goal-oriented and tactical experimentation. The modern CCP has sought to preserve the ruthless adaptability of a revolutionary organization. Perry and Heilmann argue that this flexibility has helped the CCP transition from Marxist ideology to economic pragmatism. Under Maoism and under reform, the CCP has consistently stressed the experimental search for local models of socialist development. Reform-era search objectives have shifted dramatically and the celebrated models of recent decades bear little resemblance to those of the 1960s. However, the fundamental “guerrilla approach” has retained Maoist characteristics and the modern CCP remains experimentalist and wary of formalization.
Perry and Heilmann's characterization of Chinese policy-making strikes me as accurate and their essay would be useful as reading material for courses on Chinese politics or political economy. However, their claims about links between guerrilla policy-making and China's economic success made me quite uncomfortable. The thesis that the absence of constraints on government has contributed to Chinese economic growth is radical. True, China has substantially failed to implement the rule of law and, true, this has contributed to policy-making flexibility. However, evidence from other countries suggests that legal formalization generates profound economic benefits. I felt that the authors should have proceeded much more cautiously with this idea.
The introductory essay best captures the spirit of the book, but the other essays also offer noteworthy insights into specific areas of Chinese policy-making. Elizabeth Perry discusses the evolution of the mass campaign since the Maoist era and the continued application of campaigns as a promotional tool, particularly in the stimulation of rural development efforts. Modern campaigns continue to have a Potemkin village element, sometimes imposing undesirable policies on rural residents.
In his own chapter Sebastian Heilmann traces the evolution of “point-to-surface” experimentation in Chinese policy-making from the CCP's revolutionary period to the modern day. The “point-to-surface” relies on local initiative to apply experimental polices at test points and later spread them to neighbouring regions. Formal legislation occupies the last step in the policy-making process.
Wang Shaoguang's chapter describes rural health insurance schemes, ranging from county cooperatives’ provision of free basic care during the 1960s and 1970s to subsidized fee-for-service schemes introduced during the 1980s and 1990s. Wang argues against that the introduction of fee-for-service care had negative consequences for healthcare in rural communities. The article contains institutional details, but has a polemic character and lacks direct supporting evidence.
Nara Dillon explores the Communist Party's management of civil society during the Maoist and Reform periods. During the 1950s, campaigns targeted participants in voluntary organizations, eliminating these groups through intimidation. During the reform period, the Communist Party has recognized civil organizations as providers of public goods, but remains intolerant of them as independent political forces. Legal compliance standards for Chinese NGOs are deliberately kept vague and informal. Intimidation campaigns and selective prosecution remain important tools for the control of these organizations.
Benjamin Liebman's contribution, “A return to populist legality? Historical legacies and legal reform,” discusses legal models and adjudication in the PRC. China has made significant efforts to popularize and expand the reach of law in recent years, but certain aims of the PRC's legal expansion may surprise Western observers. Besides enforcement of the letter and spirit of the law, Chinese legal decisions are also expected to respect popular and Party opinion and attempt to satisfy all parties involved in disputes.
In the following chapter, Yuezhi Zhao considers the Communist Party's use of the internet as a revival of “mass-line” politics. The CCP has used the internet to cultivate support among netizen activists. Surprisingly, pro-Maoist and anti-market groups have also exploited the internet to protest reform policies, despite being older and more conservative than most PRC netizens.
Patricia Thornton describes shifts in CCPs presentation of journalism and social science, in a chapter entitled “Retrofitting the steel frame: from mobilizing the masses to surveying the public.” Maoist social science rejected quantitative surveys in favour of characteristic narratives. Reforms have revived scientific models throughout society and the social sciences are no exception. The modern CCP increasingly uses representative opinion surveys, but manipulates the process to “construct public opinion” through strategic choice of questions and selective presentation of results.
In chapter nine, Joseph Fewsmith delves into the challenges of local government accountability without democracy. Since imperial times, lax central monitoring has enabled abuses of power among rural governments. Despite some promising political experiments, recent efforts to introduce direct accountability to local residents have stalled.
Finally, Jae Ho Chung's chapter examines centre–locality authority relations. During the Maoist period, the centre exploited ideological control and self-censorship to curtail regionalism. More recently, the centre has restricted interprovincial cooperation and strengthened central control over the military.
Taken as a whole the essays in this volume are well worth reading and each essay has something significant to offer China scholars.
