Introduction
Civil society re-entered the Anglophone research agenda in the late 1980s when democracy movements in Eastern Europe, arguments for more social participation in Western democracies, changing paradigms in development aid, and neoliberal ideas about reducing the state's role in social service provision all contributed to its revival.Footnote 1 Today China studies are still informed by this ‘optimistic’ early 1990s understanding of civil society, which sees it as supporting democratization and market liberalization. Use of this concept over the last two decades has been largely isolated from ongoing theoretical debates. Considering that recent scholarship on civil society elsewhere in the world has been quite critical of the early 1990s formulation of civil society— blaming it for being ‘based more on faith than fact’,Footnote 2 for ‘an impoverished notion of civil society’,Footnote 3 and for romanticizing the concept to the extent that ‘any meaningful or politically relevant discussion of civil society has often been obfuscated’Footnote 4—it is time for China studies to recognize that their theoretical basis in civil society research is far from uncontroversial.
Theoretical poverty plagues research on contemporary Chinese civil society in three ways. Its isolation from contemporary theoretical debates, as mentioned above, is one. Second, it uses a very narrow and, in many ways, misleading understanding of civil society which hampers analysis. The criteria it uses to evaluate Chinese civil society—-which fixate on autonomy—-are too strict even to be met by many Western associations. This narrow understanding has made civil society research highly repetitive. For the past two decades, China studies have focused on one and the same issue—-the organizational independence of civic associations from the state. The long and rich tradition of civil society theory can provide tools for much more than just listing Chinese social organizations and assessing the degree of their autonomy. Third, China studies have tended to use theory in the wrong manner. Research has found discrepancies between the theory and empirical evidence, but instead of falsifying or correcting the theory, researchers fault China for not fitting the theory. No astronomer would blame stars if their movement in the sky diverged from what the theory predicts and no neurologist would propose that we should wait for a future when brains will eventually start to function according to the theory. Nevertheless, this is exactly what some China scholars do.
This impoverished, romanticized conception of civil society in China studies is most apparent in the supposition of its autonomy from the state. This approach is a product of witnessing a sudden collapse of authoritarian governments in Eastern Europe and East Asia as a result of pressure from democracy movements. China studies took their perception of state–society relations from these oppositional movements which distinguished themselves from authoritarian governments. Theoretically this approach is a hybrid of two understandings of civil society: an Eastern European tradition that equated civil society with autonomous social space and a Tocquevillean tradition that focused on associations. Significantly, neither the Eastern European nor the Tocquevillean understandings equate civil society with autonomy. Both conceptualize civil society as a realm in which people are actively linked together. All civil society theories are essentially about this specific form of sociability, which in this paper is called ‘horizontality’. Civil society is the realm of active citizenship and social self-organization and, as such, necessarily needs horizontal linkages.
Eastern European resistance movements sought to carve out autonomous social space that was free from socialist state control. Unfortunately, China studies have not used this civil society framework to research similar enclaves of autonomy, such as artist or migrant villages. Instead, they have applied the framework primarily to business organizations and NGOs, although under Eastern European communism neither of these forms of organization would have been equated with autonomous spaces. China studies have analysed business associations because they suited a historically informed developmental model of civil society deriving from early modern Europe in which the bourgeoisie was at the vanguard, while NGOs have been equated with civil society in development aid discourse. Both these approaches have been simplified into the thesis of societal autonomy. However, the anti-state advocates of civil society in Eastern Europe articulated their moral resistance through a rhetoric that was never meant to be an adequate analytic description of actual existing civil societies. By the same token, the anti-statist rhetoric of aid agencies reflected the search for less corrupt and more transparent partners than developing world states as well as neoliberal attempts to reduce the role of state. Neither of these anti-statist approaches really succeeded in achieving their goal of autonomy: in Eastern Europe, dissidents soon acquired state power, while development aid distributors still deliver most of the aid through governments. Nevertheless, in China studies the anti-state stand continues to be popular because many scholars interpret China through ideal types of state–society relations deriving from oriental despotism and totalitarianism, both of which postulate that the Chinese state leaves little or no space for society. Paradoxically, civil society research on China seeks empirical evidence of civil society to show that China can somehow transform itself from one ideal type to another.
Through a review of the literature, complemented with observations from fieldwork among Chinese civic associations, this paper takes some preliminary but necessary steps to update entrenched theoretical presumptions, put empirical evidence in its theoretical context, and introduce the many possibilities that civil society theory offers for researching China. This paper thereby seeks to form a bridge between China studies literature and critical literature from other parts of the world that has attacked the autonomy approach to civil society. Ironically, China studies have produced ample empirical evidence of the limitations of the autonomy approach, but this evidence has not led to theoretical refinements. This paper argues that a re-examination of civil society theory would be beneficial for China studies because this theory offers many productive alternatives to the autonomy approach in the analysis of Chinese society.
A contested concept
In China studies, civil society is usually presented as conceptually unproblematic. Even China scholars who are aware of the plural traditions of civil society still end up dealing with its autonomy from the state.Footnote 5 This interpretation reflects a general post-1989 euphoria for civil society, defined in terms of its autonomy from the state, contributing to democratic transitions.Footnote 6 Later critical study has shown that in this literature the concept of civil society is ‘diffuse, hard to define, empirically imprecise, and ideologically laden’,Footnote 7 sometimes subject to ‘cynical hijack’Footnote 8 to suit other agendas. Critics demonstrate that civil society is a complex entity, its empirical variation is large, and its theoretical and political connotations are many.
Writers’ political aspirations often decide which aspects and understandings of civil society they emphasize. Consequently, many scholars lament that civil society has become an ‘all-purpose placeholder’ that ‘captures otherwise inchoate—as yet unnamed and unnameable—popular aspirations, moral concerns, sites and spaces of practice; likewise it bespeaks a scholarly effort to recalibrate worn-out methodological tools. . . amid conceptual confusion’.Footnote 9 The ‘concept of a civil society is in fact not a unitary one but rather a cluster of linked concepts’Footnote 10 and, considering its rich history, perhaps justifiably its ‘very essence lies in its diversity, difference and pluralism’Footnote 11 instead of in a single correct usage for the term. Still, it is important to apply the concept consistently, because not all civil society arguments are in agreement. Civil society's role as a counterweight to the state can be in conflict with its apolitical functions, which are beneficial for governance.Footnote 12 Although the two meanings of civil society as self-structuring and as social activity that has a significant impact on state policy are not contradictory as such, impact maximization may mean reduced autonomy.Footnote 13
Scholars have identified several ways to conceptualize civil society. Mary Kaldor determines that civil society can refer to a political community safeguarded by the rule of law, the arena of ethical life between state and family, active citizenship and self-organization outside formal political circles, a non-profit sector providing social services, and an arena of plurality and contestation.Footnote 14 Jenny Pearce distinguishes distinct and often conflicting conceptions of civil society as a non-purposive arena of human interaction, as willed action and agency for social change, as a mediating arena or as an end itself.Footnote 15 Alison van Rooy finds that people refer to civil society as civic values and norms, as a sum of organizations in the voluntary sector, as a space for action, as a moment in historical development, as anti-hegemonic social mobilization, and as an antidote to the state.Footnote 16 The framework of civil society is used as a political slogan to criticize government policies, as a descriptive analytical concept, and as a normative philosophical concept about good social order.Footnote 17 Evidently, no single model for civil society can be found.
Critics maintain that civil society is not ahistorical, but is always contextualized in its particular time and place. All definitions of the concept bear the marks of the political struggles within which they were born. Singling out just one definition would thus privilege the historical-social relations of a specific time and place.Footnote 18 When civil society is presented as universal, this normative model is actually based on Western liberalism.Footnote 19 As the historical conditions causing its emergence cannot be replicated in other parts of the world, cultural difference easily becomes seen as deviation, weakness or incivility.Footnote 20 Therefore, post-socialist civil societies appear weak and atomized when they are compared with Western ideals and practices; instead, during the transitional period they should be compared with past socialist institutions.Footnote 21 As various historical, social, and cultural conditions create different types of civil society, concepts found in social sciences that originate in the West may denote objects behaving differently in dissimilar cultural and social contexts.Footnote 22
Since civil society is a contextual concept describing social developments that took place between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, some theorists even argue that the social conditions for civil society no longer exist. They either maintain that civil society has been eroded by a new configuration of apparatuses, deployments, and structures that no longer provide sufficient space for anti-hegemonic struggles or that non-Western people lack trust beyond their narrow group identities, while individualistic Westerners have little shared mutuality left or because contemporary mass societies no longer provide conditions for politics based on the formation of public opinion among citizens.Footnote 23 A globalized economy is currently undermining the bases of social solidarity upon which civil society depends.Footnote 24
Empirical evidence does not seem to corroborate the autonomy approach. Some researchers suggest that civil society theory has been immune to empirical counter-evidence because it is a metanarrative, true because of its logical integrity, or a metaphor that interprets the unfamiliar through something familiar. Both metanarratives and metaphors use a priori understandings about social reality, making it difficult to correct one's understanding even when this reality does not substantiate these assumptions.Footnote 25 Others, however, see that civil society theory does not even try to faithfully describe the empirical reality, but an ideal type or heuristic device helps scholars frame good research questions about interrelations between social, political, and economic forces.Footnote 26 These scholars distinguish clearly between the theory and actual civil societies never fully corresponding to the theory.
Normative expectations have often replaced analyses of the complexities of actual civil societies, limiting the practical utility and explanatory value of the concept and allowing researchers to ignore relevant factors that do not match their presumptions.Footnote 27 Often the term is used politically. ‘Pseudo-civil society language’Footnote 28 utilizes the democratic language of civil society to mask a project for privatization and constraining the scope of state.Footnote 29 At worst, civil society theory is used for ‘social engineering’,Footnote 30 as a ‘civilizing mission’Footnote 31 or a ‘project of transformatory development’.Footnote 32
Critics point out that all too often civil society and its associations are axiomatically— without adequate empirical investigation—assumed to play a positive role in democratization.Footnote 33 In reality, civil society is a fragmented and divided realm, with internal conflicts and uncivil features that can foster intolerance, subvert civil forms of association, undermine state power, and even foment violence.Footnote 34 Since civil society can both expand and contract democratic space, a strong civil society is not automatically a democratic one.Footnote 35
China studies are far from free of these simplifications. Researchers are seldom interested in the rich tradition of the concept, they do little to contextualize the concept, they compare theory with Chinese realities as if social realities elsewhere would fully conform to theories, and they often add normative predictions about democratization to civil society. In fact, their theoretical depth has deteriorated rather than improved. In the 1990s, some writers still compared different civil society traditions, recognized that civil society can both challenge and strengthen regimes, questioned the flawlessness of Western civil societies, showed caution around ethnocentrism, and pondered whether civil society is a suitable analytic framework for understanding Chinese developments.Footnote 36 Along with autonomy-centred research, individual scholars saw civility, governance, citizenship or interactions between society and state as defining civil society.Footnote 37
Researching China
The problem with the civil society approach in China studies are not the lack of good empirical work, but the narrow research question which excludes many interesting developments. Even worse, with this research question, ‘We know the result of the study beforehand.’Footnote 38 Scholars have by now concentrated on the issue of autonomy from state control, often understood as the criterion for the existence of civil society. Consequently, Anglophone scholarship has been conducting the same research again and again with different empirical data. Researchers find that Chinese activism is ‘embedded’,Footnote 39 that associations negotiate their own niche with state,Footnote 40 and that associations deliberately blur the demarcation between themselves and state in order to survive or to change state policies from within.Footnote 41 Essentially, these qualifications all mean the same thing: although their autonomy from state is compromised, Chinese associations still have social space to pursue their aims.
This does not mean that we have not learned much about links between Chinese civil society and the state. We now know that Chinese civil society seeks state resources to pursue aims that do not conflict with those of state,Footnote 42 relies on networks among like-minded people within and outside the state,Footnote 43 and uses these networks to mobilize resources and counter-expertise against state-dominated information.Footnote 44 We also know that the government controls associations flexibly and selectively, depending on how beneficial or threatening they are,Footnote 45 and that Chinese environmentalism has not developed into a state-challenging movement because the Chinese state itself is ‘greening’.Footnote 46
Much of civil society research in China studies have a strong normative element. Many writers explicitly assume that an emerging civil society could support democratization in China,Footnote 47 and some even speculate about developments following the Eastern European path where civil society contributed to the collapse of socialism.Footnote 48 However, Jean-Philippe Béja shows that any similarity between Eastern Europe and the present type of association-centred civil society in China is deceptive.Footnote 49 Sometimes normative becomes ethnocentric. One scholar even recommends that China adopt civil society because the United States would treat China better if it did.Footnote 50
Some writers, who use autonomy as the criterion for the existence of civil society, have concluded that we cannot yet speak about civil society in China.Footnote 51 The argument in this paper is that this rejection misplaced. According to Western scientific tradition, the purpose of research is not to dismiss social phenomena that do not fit a theory, but to reject or reformulate theories that fail to explain what we find in the physical or social world. Instead of condemning China for not conforming to the theory, researchers should develop better theories and concepts to analyse China. One effort to do so adopted a corporatist framework to describe organizations within the official bureaucratic hierarchy,Footnote 52 but this is not useful for analysing more independent forms of associational life in China. Moreover, it is nihilistic to say that no definition of civil society can describe China since, as Schwartz argues, ‘Civil society as a sphere of social and economic life separated from the political life of the state is not difficult to identify in China.’Footnote 53
Teleological conceptual formulations, such as ‘nascent’ or ‘embryonic’Footnote 54 civil society, set Western historical development as the standard against which China might never develop a fully satisfactory civil society. Although social space is expanding in China, the possibility remains that China will continue to have its own distinctive type of state–society relations. After all, despite associational development, the Communist Party's understanding of the pattern of social organization remains unchanged.Footnote 55
The emphasis on autonomy is empirically demonstrably problematic, and yet the ideal of autonomy remains the starting point of discussion, against which those who disagree need to argue. Many writers offer piecemeal empirical observations, showing that compromised autonomy can serve Chinese associations. Good relationships with the state bring resources, information, and funding; open channels for influencing policies; and enhance associations’ legitimacy among the government and the public alike.Footnote 56 With this legitimacy and support, associations can carry out their mission, strengthen their organizations, and enhance their autonomy.Footnote 57 Considering these benefits, Chinese associations often intentionally blur boundaries between themselves and the state as they swap their associational and official hats or invite office-holders to take up honorary posts.Footnote 58 As associations are established not for autonomy but for accomplishing particular goals, many actively seek co-option.Footnote 59 Porous boundaries enable the state to extend its power to social organizations, but also enable society to colonize the state.Footnote 60
Quoting Saich, ‘Those with close government links often play a more direct role in policy formulation than their counterparts in many other countries as they do not have to compete in social space with other NGOs for dominance and access to the government's ear on relevant policy issues.’Footnote 61 As civil society is sometimes defined by its social influence on state policies,Footnote 62 Chinese civil society could even be considered to be quite strong and influential. My research reveals that even non-registered associations could commonly cite examples of influencing either policies or administrative practices. In interviews, Chinese associations perceive their autonomy as adequate and see time and money as the real constraints on their activities.Footnote 63 One association interviewed yearned for real co-participation in decision-making,Footnote 64 rather than influence gained from arousing public opinion in the public sphere. Indeed, associations seek close and cooperative relations with the government more than autonomy, although autonomy is not irrelevant for them.Footnote 65
Some scholars criticize the autonomy approach. Lu Yiyi finds that it has confused policy with actual practice and equated government support with control.Footnote 66 Regardless of the assumption that the state controls much in China, it sometimes neglects to regulate associational activities to a degree that is detrimental to their work.Footnote 67 Michael Frolic argues that even a state-led civil society can serve the development of civic consciousness, individual liberation from the constraints of traditional society, and mediation between state and society.Footnote 68 Government-organized associations sometimes serve civil society functions well, as they encourage civic participation and community action.Footnote 69 They have qualified staff and stable funding, the lack of which commonly limits the working capacity of societal associations in China.Footnote 70 Indeed, autonomy alone is not enough to enable associations to empower society; their ability to exercise power and members’ participation have to be accounted for too.Footnote 71
When investigating social transition, the focus should be on functional aspects and changes in state—society interaction rather than on formal structural separations.Footnote 72 Flaws in autonomy can be assets for growth during this transitory period.Footnote 73 In China, vigorous pursuit of autonomy is not a practical alternative as it can reduce associations’ influence and effectiveness, even to the point of irrelevance.Footnote 74 Non-autonomous organizations could even prove to be a de facto civil society if they advocate social interests.Footnote 75 As the Chinese state opens up more space for associational activities and responds to many civil society initiatives, associations have little reason to oppose it.Footnote 76
Certain scholars note that the civil society model describing European development might not be suitable for analysing the Chinese situation. There is no reason why China should have a civil society, apart from Western hopes that China will assimilate its values. China's own past could provide better frameworks for analysing China, as Chinese arrangements may accomplish many goals associated with civil society, including providing restraints on governmental power, pluralist interest representation, and social peace.Footnote 77 In Western theory, ‘civil society is as much a creature of the state as it is of society’Footnote 78 and is an analytical framework that does not exist anywhere, as such. Rather than as a fixed set of structures, civil society should be seen as processes, interactions, and negotiations, as it describes not only the separation of state and society but also their reintegration through new forms of public behaviour.Footnote 79 Because state and society interests are not a zero-sum game and the state–society divide is not the only political cleavage, one society–state alliance can be in conflict with another and a strong civil society can strengthen a state's capacity.Footnote 80 Autonomy is not enough to constitute civil society, as it cannot guarantee the civility of organizations or the successful development of civil society.Footnote 81 It misses the transformative effect of current state–society relations and social capital that even non-voluntary or government-initiated associations can create.Footnote 82
This widespread discontent over the ways in which the civil society framework is used in China studies has seldom translated into theoretical conclusions. True, attempts to develop models of Chinese state–society relationshipsFootnote 83 and utilize organizational theoriesFootnote 84 exist. Using Bourdieu's field perspective, Guobin Yang shows how associations can use the media, the Internet, and international organizations to enhance their position in the state-dominated scene.Footnote 85 However, the civil society framework itself should be re-evaluated. The problem is not only that China does not fit into the dichotomous civil society model, but that it is unrealistic to expect clear-cut demarcation between state and society at all.
State–society relations in theory
According to critical scholars, the state–society dichotomy distorts classical civil society theory.Footnote 86 When civil society is defined in terms of what it is not, it becomes difficult to find positive definitions for what it is.Footnote 87 The image of ‘social virtue confronting political vice’ may be serviceable for political struggle, but reduces the value of civil society as a scientific concept,Footnote 88 nor is a dichotomous approach helpful in recently democratized contexts when ‘implacable opposition to the state, once a virtue, currently leads to the further disintegration of public institutions’.Footnote 89
Neither contemporary society nor the contemporary state is a simple entity—both are complex, heterogeneous, and differentiated—even fragmented.Footnote 90 Research commonly fails to distinguish between the state and the regime or different levels of government.Footnote 91 When state power is treated as an abstraction, it becomes difficult to analyse how particular policies, institutions, and beliefs constitute power.Footnote 92 Unable to deal with interconnectedness, this approach leaves us poorly equipped to explain ‘the mechanisms by which. . . “microsocial” effects translate into “macropolitical” outcomes’Footnote 93 and is not very useful for understanding the structure and process of civil society.Footnote 94 Research ignores many traditional planes and spaces not belonging to either of the two domains, with the result that histories are erased and inadequate analytical understandings are produced.Footnote 95 The understanding that places civil society on the side of the private and the pre-political fails to theorize adequately participatory notions of politics and the social solidarity that aroused scholars’ interest in the issue when Eastern European socialism collapsed.Footnote 96
The dichotomy of seeing the state as simply a coercive apparatus and civil society as a realm of freedom may obscure complexities, contradictions, and inequalities in actual civil societies.Footnote 97 Offering ‘one principle for civil society, that of “nonstate”. . . conflates institutions and processes—public and familial, economic and solidaristic, corporate and voluntary—that are often divergent and contradictory’.Footnote 98 Some critics argue that the differences within the nonstate sphere are intentionally blurred to mask economic exploitation in capitalism.Footnote 99 Not just state, but various social institutions—donors included—limit civil society actors’ independence.Footnote 100 As civil society is not free from power relationships and inequalities, one social sector can be in conflict with another and can oppose social institutions rather than the state.Footnote 101 The power of different associations reflects the distribution of economic and other resources in society, and people lacking the resources and capabilities to function in civil society may be excluded.Footnote 102 Thus, the celebration of civil society against the state contributes to an unequal representation of interests.Footnote 103
The state is needed to provide the necessary legal and political framework, safeguard rights, enforce norms of civility, regulate conflicts within civil society, reduce social inequality, and fight coercion within civil society.Footnote 104 Especially in post-authoritarian settings, civil societies need government support to develop and become consolidated.Footnote 105 Indeed, associational life is most likely to thrive in the presence of a strong state.Footnote 106 Without state funding and regulation, perhaps only the powerful and the well-to-do have the resources to associate, and associations are free to replicate uncivil social practices.Footnote 107
Empirical evidence indicates that the state and civil society are interwoven, not clearly separated.Footnote 108 The relationship between civil society and the state is reciprocal. Political power has an impact on habits, norms, and organizations in civil society, but the state simultaneously codifies and institutionalizes social power.Footnote 109 The scope, representativeness, and effectiveness of state institutions affect the scope and purposes of civil society organizations and the resources available to them.Footnote 110 Quoting John Ehrenberg, ‘Civil society is subject to the same contradictory imperatives of autonomy and determination that characterizes all intermediate spheres.’Footnote 111 The state–society dichotomy is inadequate even in the contemporary West where the state has reappropriated society and society has colonized the state.Footnote 112
An analytical distinction between the spheres of state and civil society might be useful for the empirical observation of interrelations between civil society and other spheres, but in reality this distinction is blurred and there is much overlap between civil society, political society, state bureaucracy, and economic society.Footnote 113 These boundaries are actively constructed, and therefore far from absolute. The state's boundary with society is porous, mobile, and elusive because the state–society distinction is erected internally through institutional practices in order to generate resources of power.Footnote 114 Thus, power dissolves boundaries between public and private, state and society.Footnote 115 Foucauldians show how associative social bonds make individuals governable and how forms of power existing within civil society are legally framed and instrumentalized as technologies of government.Footnote 116
Dichotomous perceptions create a boundary maintenance problem. Associations do not always have a clear state or civil society character but can adopt both social and political functions and switch between the two sides.Footnote 117 Therefore, efforts for boundary maintenance ‘come at the expense of empirical inquiry into how social phenomena actually work’.Footnote 118 There is ‘the additional problem of how overlapping boundaries can possibly contain separate and discrete logics’.Footnote 119
Critics underline that advocacy for the dichotomy between the state and civil society and, correspondingly, between the political and social spheres, is itself political. This separation upholds certain power structures and, when presented as the standard, is essentially normative and even transformative.Footnote 120 The strict separation between civil society and the sphere of political power plays into the hands of the status quo since struggles for socioeconomic justice would make civil society enter into the political sphere.Footnote 121 When the spheres of the state and civil society are strictly separated, citizens are left only with a relatively apolitical role in independent and critical opinion formation.Footnote 122 Marginalization of politics undermines accountability and can even threaten freedom: if civil society takes over the functions of the democratic state, people can be left at the mercy of market forces and the strongest interest groups.Footnote 123
Some critics even argue that the state–society dichotomy is a political project aimed at transforming states, civil societies, and the behaviour of citizens. They see the contemporary advocacy for civil society as a way to constrain and undermine state power, privatize social services, and use the positive image of civil society to make it more acceptable for states to cede their responsibilities.Footnote 124 Some Western agencies seem to hope that ‘a socio-political process creating a new organizational culture based on Western sectoral divisions. . . would eventually transform social relations without much deliberation with people in a given context’.Footnote 125
Many Chinese activists likewise dismiss the state–society dichotomy. An environmentalist confessed that opposition to the state does not make much sense to her because there is no point in antagonizing someone who might later become your neighbour or colleague.Footnote 126 Another activist commented that she does not like confrontational methods because the Chinese state shares the same goal with her association as it does not want people to live in poverty.Footnote 127 Chinese academic discussions likewise see state–society relations in basically harmonious terms.Footnote 128 This does not mean that dichotomous conceptualizations are alien to China. In the early reform era, civil society was discussed using the terms ‘official’ (guanfang) and ‘popular’ (minfang), causing the official press to warn against seeing the official as neglecting the people's interest and the popular as always representing it.Footnote 129
Problems related to the dichotomous approach
Due to the dichotomous approach, much of the research on China has an inadequate understanding of the state. It is often presented as a single unit and its only purpose seems to be control over society. Some writers even conclude that associations which adopt tasks that the state has not directly delegated to them or which serve their constituency's interests show signs of autonomy from the state.Footnote 130 However, what these particular examples actually show is that this associational behaviour leads to the results for which the state established these associations: disseminating technical innovations, improving regulation or creating a better environment for entrepreneurship and, consequently, economic growth. The Chinese government might even consider social integration and representation as desirable for good governance. When investigated empirically, the state proves to be a complex system in which different agencies implement policies and control inconsistently, providing spaces and allies for civil society.Footnote 131 Chinese civil society activists are aware of the departmentalization of the state and its simultaneous proactive and control-oriented impulses. For example, an environmentalist explained how his organization uses the central government's intentions for environmental protection to curb the provincial government's growth-driven economic activities.Footnote 132
The dichotomous approach has too simplistic a perception of society, failing to see divisions and illiberal tendencies within it. As some Anglophone scholars find social resistance to Communist Party rule desirable, they celebrate any challenger to the government, regardless of the different categories to which they belong. It is as if associations, business organizations, working class and peasant protests, and the re-emergence of clans and religious groups are all equally beneficial for social autonomy and democratization in post-reform China.Footnote 133 Those taking this view forget that civil society is a sphere in which social contradictions are played out. Divergent social groups can hardly form a common front against the regime. It is possible that some groups (workers, for example) might look for state protection against social inequality (managerial powers and economic exploitation) rather than autonomy. Many civil society definitions even exclude clans and religious groups like Falungong because they are faith-based, hierarchically built organizations that do not respect their members’ freedom and are likely to hijack the public agenda for the benefit of their exclusive membership. While clan focus is too parochial for civil society, Falungong-advocated theocracy would hardly tolerate freedom of opinion. Elsewhere, groups like these are usually seen to threaten democratization.
Simultaneously, some other groups are systematically excluded from Anglophone research. Regardless of very visible associational activity during the Cultural Revolution, it is usually dismissed either because scholars count only officially registered organizations or because some state leaders supported the new groups.Footnote 134 As old organizations collapsed under the pressure from their new, unregistered rivals, the number of registered organizations decreased, although associational activity itself grew and the monopoly of social representation granted to old organizations was broken down in favour of associational pluralism. Many new organizations challenged the organization and leadership of the Communist Party. Therefore, Anglophone research needs to rethink how to assess associational activity during the Cultural Revolution: illiberal—even uncivil—it might have been, but certainly partly autonomous too.
When concentrating on state-posed limits to civil society, China studies have too often ignored other forces that can constrain civil society actors. Only two Anglophone articles have been found that were concerned with civil society's independence from the private sphere being corrupted through familism and economic power,Footnote 135 and two that understood that a civil society must free itself from the pressures of traditional society.Footnote 136 By now, research mostly sees the impact of foreign donors as expanding associational autonomy in China.Footnote 137 However, as Petr Kopecký and Cas Mudde ask, ‘If civil society should be financially independent from its own national state, should it not then also be independent from other states?’Footnote 138 Many Chinese associations answer positively and complain about the need to adapt to foreign donor's preferences.Footnote 139
The emphasis on autonomy leads some scholars to explore many alternative or subversive, but non-public, activities as possible roots for civil society. They speculate with the idea that civil society or the public sphere could be emerging, using evidence from their research on private exchanges (guanxi) and telephone discussions on an NGO-run hotline.Footnote 140 However, civil society by nature has a public character. The category for these non-public activities that do not fit the logic of the official state-promoted society is not civil society but second society.Footnote 141 After democratization in Eastern Europe, second society has undermined rather than strengthened efforts to build an open civil society.Footnote 142 Thus, autonomous space is not automatically conducive to creating a civil society.
The autonomy approach uses double standards to evaluate Chinese and Western associations. While Chinese associational autonomy is measured by the number of officials on the staff or the percentage of funding received from the government,Footnote 143 the Carter Center—established by the former president of the United States—is understood as a genuine NGO.Footnote 144 This classification is insensitive to Chinese history. As Carolyn Hsu notes, NGO leaders and staff tend to be former cadres because, until recently, able and educated people had only politically backed careers to pursue,Footnote 145 and practically all urbanites were employed by the state. Moreover, many Western associations are state funded and are still considered to be independent.Footnote 146 Chinese scholars even lament that Chinese associations receive less financing from the state than Western associations do.Footnote 147 Besides, semi-official organizations are usually embedded in civic culture, while many autonomous or illegal groups lack civic consciousness.Footnote 148
Civil society is indeed separate from the state, but this does not mean autonomy in the sense used in China studies. Civil society should surely be able to constitute itself and enjoy freedoms of association and speech that legally limit state interference in social self-organization. In addition, autonomy means that civil society has its own logic of functioning, separate from the state and enterprises. Mark Warren sketches the difference between state institutions structured by legal and administrative power, economic institutions working through market transactions, and the associational sphere having voluntary and consensual qualities constituted by shared purposes and interests. Yet, these separate logics necessarily cross the lines between different spheres, creating links between them.Footnote 149 We find weakly separate space for civil society in China where there is no clear boundary between civil and other organizations, as associations engage in profit making and have a strong tendency towards bureaucratization.Footnote 150
In China studies, autonomy often refers to organizational autonomy. Yet, the civil society autonomy of self-organization is not compromised if certain participating individuals or associations have links to state bureaucracy. All civil societies have associations that are initiated or funded by state or corporations. They are threatened if state or economic power dictates the forms of social integration. In the early 1990s it was perhaps meaningful to establish if China had any autonomous organizations, but now that it certainly has, the issue of organizational autonomy is outdated. Besides, Lu regards it as naive to assume that genuinely non-governmental associations would have more operational autonomy in China's restrictive environment.Footnote 151
Moreover, in Chinese socialist history, organizational autonomy has not correlated with regime- or system-challenging movements and discourses. Indeed, independent associations now have much less radical and more conciliatory aims than critical intellectuals and protesters had before.Footnote 152 Regime- and system-challenging movements of the 1970s and 1980s were provided with sufficient mobilizing grounds by state organizations, including universities and workplaces.Footnote 153 To survive now, any Chinese association, registered and unregistered alike, must rely on the state for legitimacy and, thus, depoliticize its message.Footnote 154 This leaves only spaces without any stable organization free to make demands for systemic changes. Thus, in China, civil society as a form of societal organization does not always correlate with a critical public sphere.
Neglected horizontality
The autonomy-centred approach is inadequate even for demonstrating whether there is a civil society in China or not. Although a certain level of autonomy might be a precondition for genuinely horizontal social relations, it is not vertical autonomy but horizontal interaction that makes for civil society. As Michael Walzer remarks, ‘If there were a Sartrean “series” of groups, an unlinked set of associations, without overlap, without any coming and going, no movement of members from one to another, minimal conversation across the boundaries, we probably would not call this civil society.’Footnote 155 The horizontality becomes evident in characterizations of civil society as a solidary sphere, an autonomous arena for self-governance, a critical public sphere or a site for democratic participation. Autonomous associations alone are not sufficient to produce civil society as ‘a pattern of public social life, and not just a congeries of private enclaves’.Footnote 156 Thus, civil society research should pay more attention to relations within society, such as networking, solidarity, and public deliberation.
Timothy Cheek maintains that China studies conflate the two interpretations of civil society, and expect that associations would automatically contribute to politically active life in the public sphere.Footnote 157 Craig Calhoun notes that autonomy from the state is not enough to demonstrate an organization of society that is constructive for the public sphere. Instead, research should pay attention to ‘how social integration is accomplished and whether those extrastate institutions have substantial capacity to alter patterns of integration or the overall exercise of power’.Footnote 158 According to Thomas Metzger, ‘to amount to a civil society. . . political interaction cannot be fragmented and excessively particularistic’.Footnote 159 Heath Chamberlain emphasizes that a genuine civil society coheres because its actors share values of civil interaction.Footnote 160
However, research about horizontal relations between Chinese associations and horizontal communication patterns in the formation of public opinion is lacking.Footnote 161 Chinese associations are not devoid of horizontal links within society. I have interviewed several associations that are issue-based networks for organizations or professionals and which provide a platform to link the needy with sponsors. Some belong to networks of associations that work in the same field and many networks are based on personal contacts between activists. Moreover, state-organized forums and seminars provide many arenas for different associations to meet.Footnote 162
The fragmentary evidence available in the research literature shows that horizontal contacts in China lack strength and density. Many associations prioritize their relations with officials and international donors over relations with constituencies or other associations. They have weak contacts with ordinary people and lack public trust. Strife over different methods and purposes, and competition over resources and government contacts, inhibit associations’ potential for cooperation and the pooling of resources necessary to give them a stronger collective voice.Footnote 163 Poor coordination hampers associations’ capacity to help the needy.Footnote 164 Associations are so fragmented and local that it is ‘not clear that they add up to more than the sum of their parts’.Footnote 165 The title ‘non-governmental person’Footnote 166 is an extreme example of the lack of concern for self-organization in China. Jude Howell thus estimates that China has diverse civil societies, rather than one with a collective voice, to check the state.Footnote 167
The weakness of horizontality is seen in the frailty of sectoral representation. Social sectors are divided by their different relations with the state and have little interest in seeking links with other social sectors.Footnote 168 Collective identity is fragile at best.Footnote 169 Chinese associations show accountability to the values and ideals of their founder rather than to their constituency.Footnote 170 Members use associations as platforms to establish personal links with bureaucrats in order to gain exceptional treatment rather than to win benefits for the whole sector.Footnote 171 Associations likewise lobby for individual solutions. This can prevent others from doing the same and might delay the development of a more robust civil society.Footnote 172
Poor horizontal contacts within civil society result partly from a state policy that limits associations’ geographical and vertical organizational growth. Informal networks and Internet groups are sometimes favoured exactly because they can connect people across the country.Footnote 173 As the state is wary of letting associations grow, they are reluctant to establish horizontal links to avoid suppression.Footnote 174 This policy has theoretical roots. Although non-state actors and associations fit well into the Chinese Communist understanding of social organization, this is essentially a hierarchical approach that ignores horizontal links within society.Footnote 175 At present we lack research about how much space the vertical Chinese political system actually leaves for horizontal interaction across associations, geographic areas, and social strata.
Alternative approaches
Along with switching focus from autonomy to every facet of civil society, China studies should recalibrate their theoretical tools. Other civil society theories could serve China studies better than the autonomy approach.Footnote 176 For example, David Lewis proposes that the Hegelian concept of analysing access to and exclusion from public space and the Gramscian approach, which is helpful for investigating resistance to colonialism and authoritarian repression, could better explain Eastern civil societies than the standard Tocquevillean one.Footnote 177 Cheek maintains that the Gramscian functionalist conception of civil society, which examines how social power is deployed by the economic and political elite and how this hegemonic order is subject to contention and change, is more useful for analysing China than the customary approach.Footnote 178 Catherine Goetze recommends Bourdieu's approach to scrutinize the degree to which civil society supports the existing order of liberalism and market economy and offers alternatives to it.Footnote 179
The neoliberal understanding of civil society can be used to explain the Chinese government's intentions when it encourages the building of civil society according to the ‘small government, big society’ model. It advocates an apolitical civil society that assumes social service provision from the state. However, there is considerable discrepancy between the government's intentions and the social reality in China as government control has been detrimental to the expansion of societal service provision.
One understanding of civil society is that is the space between state and family. This is useful for investigating how this space has been expanding in China since economic reforms started. It is suited to researching how people collectively create new social practices and institutions and, in this way, open new social spaces. To demarcate civil society from society, one connected understanding could be added—that of civil society being a legally protected sphere. By now the legal framework for associational activity has been studied from the perspective of control,Footnote 180 although Chinese associations understand the need for a regulatory framework that will permit them to gain public trust and institutional stability.Footnote 181 Research should establish whether Chinese legal norms and practices are developing towards providing society with better means to constitute itself.
Another useful approach is the Gramscian perception of civil society as a base from which to consolidate the hegemonic power. Chinese organizational structures support the cooption of intellectuals and entrepreneurs.Footnote 182 The Chinese state has permitted intermediate-level organizations in order to incorporate new social elites, which has had the effect of empowering both the state and these social elites.Footnote 183 This new arrangement enables the upper middle class elite to strengthen its hegemony through networks between cadres, successful entrepreneurs, and the intellectuals who run Chinese associations. Indeed, compared to workers and peasants, entrepreneurs and intellectuals enjoy more rights of association.Footnote 184 This disproportion is reflected in the numbers of associations representing these social strata.Footnote 185 Even associations giving voice to the interests of marginalized groups are commonly run by intellectuals, not by the marginalized themselves.Footnote 186 Considering that the associations’ success relies more on the accumulation of social capital than on institutionalized social representation,Footnote 187 social groups with fewer or no elite connections are likely to have less influence. As the elite groups gain political influence through their social status and networks, it is not necessarily in their interest to demand a more inclusive or democratic process.Footnote 188 Social stability sustains social stratification in a way that benefits the educated urban elite while associations provide this elite with a way to fulfil its sense of social responsibility within the prevailing system. As Jean-Philippe Béja notes, the state has succeeded in persuading the Chinese intelligentsia to accept the advisory and charity-giver roles, with the result that intellectuals have given up their demands for systemic reform.Footnote 189 Elite domination in civil society is not unique to China. Partha Chatterjee and his disciples have found that in other Asian countries, state and civil society are realms for the Westernized elite, while ordinary people use a different logic to articulate their resistance and demands.Footnote 190 The same might be true of China.
Foucault is useful for analysing the technologies of government involved. Chinese associations can assist the state in governing, but they are simultaneously controlled. Research literature generally agrees that most associations avoid controversial activities. They are even ready to limit their size and membership.Footnote 191 When associations adopt sensitive issues, the state often uses soft power to dissuade them. Two of my interviewees tell a similar story of adjusting their activities after being warned privately through a friend that they might experience problems.Footnote 192 The Chinese state rewards compliance with influence.Footnote 193 Simultaneously, the state benefits when societally provided services help to reduce social conflict, address the immediate needs of the poor, and maintain social stability.Footnote 194
Hegel and Marx help in addressing inequalities and conflicts within civil society. For example, with economic reforms, the power of entrepreneurs has increased, while the representation of the working class interest is hampered in many ways by a state that has prohibited independent labour unions. Their unequal ability to organize within civil society can increase inequality between them. Gramsci, then, would be useful for analysing how the marginalized use civil society to fight exclusion. Civil society has provided groups like workers, migrant labour or AIDS patients with some means to articulate their needs.
China studies could find useful the traditional perception of civil society as a commonwealth which includes both state and society but presumes a reciprocal relationship between them, based on shared civility. Critical scholars encourage research into the ways in which various cultures generate social trust, representation, and political accountability; the ways in which demands for inclusion are voiced; and the ways in which contests over the control of public space take place.Footnote 195 Philip Huang has made us aware of the third realm—a semiformal or even institutionalized space between state and society where the two meet.Footnote 196 The third realm is a useful starting point to inquire into mediations between the state and society in China and even a possible Chinese civil society model, considering that often the term ‘civil society’ itself refers to the intermediate sphere between the state and society. As the Chinese state is always a strong actor in the third realm, many might prefer to look for civil society in the ways in which ordinary people demand accountability from their leaders. For example, Chinese farmers demand that that state fulfils its responsibilities and displays moral uprightness by incorporating state agents into their own social networks and moral universe.Footnote 197
To conclude, the civil society framework used in China is misleading and explains China poorly. It has led to discrepancies between the theory and empirical knowledge about Chinese society. Thus, research needs to go beyond the question of the degree of autonomy from the state. It must address the nature of horizontal contacts through which civil society is constituted. Although some scholars complain that civil society provides too crude a framework for explaining actual variance in societal organization,Footnote 198 the argument here is that as soon as scholars give up their narrow interpretation of it, the civil society approach can guide investigations of Chinese associations to meaningful and nuanced conclusions. The civil society approach is suitable for examining relations not only between associations and the state, but also between associations’ relations to each other, the media, the legal system, and other social forces. All of these relations are both general and particular, structural and situational. They can be either supportive, conflictual, mixed or neutral.
