Hainan is the forgotten island of Chinese political and economic reforms. A poor and desolate place to live in the late 1970s, Hainan became a symbol of the ambitious reform ideas of the Zhao Ziyang/Hu Yaobang era – and their ultimate failure. Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard has now published a monograph, Hainan: State, Society, and Business in a Chinese Province, addressing the recent history of Hainan as a short-lived reform experiment. His book is an excellent study of provincial and local developments in China in the era of opening-up and a timely reminder of the huge diversity that characterizes the PRC. At the same time, Brødsgaard provides a fascinating insight into the modern workings and structure of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the challenges of ruling a continent the size of China by a central bureaucracy. This book is a provincial study at its best: a thorough introduction to local politics, business and society highlighting basic features of China's political economy in general.

Brødsgaard's monograph is especially enlightening where he trades his role as rapporteur of local developments for a deep dive into the bianzhi and nomenklatura system. Hainan became a province and a Special Economic Zone in 1988. It was the first and is still the only time a whole province received this preferential treatment, highlighting among other things Hainan's backwardness and geographic seclusion. Any failure of policies on the island could easily be prevented from affecting mainland China.

Thus, Hainan became a testing ground for administrative and political reform based on policies developed by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and particularly by Liao Xun. Given this context, the author appropriately puts the attempted political and administrative reforms at the centre of his study. And while the other chapters on history (chapters two and three), Hainan's economy (chapter four), foreign trade and investment (chapter five), the Yangpu Development Zone (chapter six), Hainan and regional co-operation (chapter nine) and Hainan and the South China Sea (chapter ten) cover a wide range of Hainan related issues, it is the analysis of the reform concepts which makes for fascinating reading and defines the significance of this study for a better understanding of modern China.

The main ideas for Hainan were laid down in the concept of “small government, big society” aiming at substantially reducing government functions and developing “an autonomous sphere consisting of the independent activities of the citizens and their own associations and organisations” (p. 108). This was based on the belief that the individual forms the basis for society and that the government should not interfere in too many areas of individual life. The concept attempts a strict separation of society and government and calls for a separation of party and state.

Brødsgaard's analysis of the reform concept shows a deep understanding and provides important insights. However, the discussion on the role and functions of government might have deserved more attention. While the author covers the implicit acknowledgement of civil society as a basis for big society, he only touches upon the profound change in perception of government and governmental tasks. Limiting the state's functions (zhengfu zhineng) to a mere combination of “soccer referee,” “traffic police” and “fire fighter” (p. 88), as proposed by Liao Xun, was an audacious approach for a political elite that had just started to redefine China's political and economic structures. These policies resemble modern concepts in social sciences regarding the “regulatory state” or “governance.” In this regard, the political and academic debate within China today still exhibits traces of the original reform ideas.

After the June 4th disaster, Hainan lost its reform-minded leadership. The concept itself was shelved. A few later references to “Small Government” under Jiang Zemin cannot hide the fact that until today the idea of separating party and government has little support among China's rulers. The two chapters “Small government in Hainan” and “Big society in Hainan” with a short yet poignant introduction into bianzhi and nomenklatura and into the concept of civil society can be highly recommended for anybody interested in how the CCP dominated administration works.

One minor flaw of the book is the slight patchwork character of its chapters, some of which are based on earlier publications. Elegantly rewritten, revised and partly updated, they suffer from a tendency to focus on events and developments in the late 1990s and very early 2000s. Finally, it would have been interesting to be presented with more detailed lessons to be learned from studying Hainan beyond the short conclusion at the end of the book. But then, this book is less a Hainan handbook than an excellent analysis of China's political economy, its reform dilemmas and the specifics of regional development. And as such, it deserves full attention from those interested in modern China.