Unlike many edited collections this book is not the compendium from a conference. Instead it flowed from an idea that surfaced among a group of interested scholars who took good guidance and sought contributions from others respected in the field. This targeting has borne fruit in the book's range and perceptiveness.
The topic is Chinese capitalisms, refreshingly plural in a simplifying world, and it sets out to examine—if not to fully answer—three questions: What forces underlie the economic dynamism of China and other Chinese societies? What are the political implications of capitalist development in these societies? Are these Chinese societies exhibiting unique Chinese characteristics?
In a powerful and challenging opening chapter, Chung-hwa Ku argues that an unintended consequence of Mao's attempt to build a socialist state via the weakening of family and clan ties was that the earlier patrimonial bureaucracy was replaced by a party bureaucracy. Some would argue that nothing fundamentally changed in the power structure, but at least the new form of patrimonialism evolved to seek legitimacy for its perpetuation in the drive for economic performance. This gave rise to new legal, financial, and monetary institutions and a form of ‘bird-cage’ capitalism. This form takes certain international norms and institutions from other capitalisms and places them in a cage. It does not extend economic freedom into the socio-political arena. Nor does it absorb, or indigenously create, a ‘spirit’ capable of underpinning capitalist action with ethical-political ideals. The search for those is still on, as the recent parallel book edited by Sujian Guo and Baogang Guo shows (China in Search of a Harmonious Society, New York: Lexington Books, 2008).
Yin-wah Chu and Alvin So provide a valuable reminder of the three socio-political crises of 1978, 1992, and 2002 that marked the state's long attempt at neo-liberalism while retaining control. They point to the contradictions built into the response of sporadic state benevolence and tolerated plunder and exploitation. Yi-min Lin tracks the changes in organizational psychology in the private sector in recent decades and asks whether the social engineering of Mao has had effects still working through society and visible in a loss of core ideals. James Hudson, William Hurst, and Christian Sorace, in a fine-grained study of motorcycle drivers in Hunan, show the anguish and struggle of people subjected to relentless cycles of radical change, in which they were simply pawns. Concern over the future of a potential civil society accumulates bleakly in these accounts.
Outside mainland China, where Chinese societies have grown rich, are possible inspirations. For the case of Taiwan a valuable new insight is provided by Gary Hamilton and Cheng-shu Kao, who show how the art of making money out of the global economy was so heavily dependent there on one achievement. Taiwanese entrepreneurs had to import ways of operating so as to satisfy the great external retailers on which “original equipment manufacturing” (OEM) depends. These ways of operating, with design and supply chain logistics externally provided, were the leading probes of modernization. The account of Taiwan is further enriched here by studies of ethnic Chinese regional business groups by Michael Hsiao, I-Chun Kung, and Hong-zen Wang, and by Tsai-man Ho and Wenbin Sun.
The key issues in the book are brought together by Ivan Szelenyi in a comparative review. He suggests that the search for new modernities in post-Communist societies produces a host of alternatives. In China these have included many experiments changing in sequence: entrepreneurial, state-led, corporatist/populist. The question is how can the laboratory of China combine and reassemble elements of traditional culture and Confucianism to fit the requirements of modernity.
This book falls short of an answer. It does so because it does not have a comprehensive enough theory running through it. Such a theory would require a book still to be written by somebody with a multi-disciplinary perspective. It would identify the core universal differences between the pre-modern and the modern (or post-modern). It would seek out the deeper universals that all societies have to contend with if they are to construct (or encourage the emergence of) versions of high level, intensive economic exchange. It would seek the origins of these subtle but crucial capacities in societal features that facilitate their emergence. It would attempt to boil these features down to universals, such that each society's way of meeting the universal challenges could be analyzed and their effectiveness for citizens' lives compared. Examples of such deep issues are: the releasing of human creativity with individual freedom; the transaction cost efficiency of virtue, or spirit of community; the efficiency of applied rationality; the benevolent outcomes of empowerment. China has made huge strides to meet these universal challenges. It worries about being a good society. It admires the explosion of growth led by the private sector. But it invites external rationality only in a cage. It cannot handle endemic mistrust. And it struggles with the devolution of power. These issues need a comprehensive theory before their weight in the account can be judged and their combinations assessed for their likely results. But such a theory will rest on the kinds of detail contained in worthy books such as this one.
