Bin Xu's excellent contribution to the scholarship on the politics of the wave of civic engagement following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake correctly notes the dramatic nature of this time: “the tragedy, chaos, difficulties, however, led to many extraordinary happenings, which made the earthquake not only a devastating disaster but also a political drama” (p. 8). Moments like this create uncertainty and disrupt normal politics, and in doing so, allow for the possibility of change. Many scholars, myself included, wondered if this massive wave of volunteering might fundamentally change the politics around civil society in China.
Although Xu notes the huge increase in volunteer activity, he finds that this civic engagement failed to bring significant change to Chinese civil society. In light of the continued trends of volunteering, it is hard to concur; however, Xu argues that because volunteers do not share the same meanings and goals of participation that civil society scholars do, their civic engagement should not be interpreted as fundamentally changing civil society. Instead, he finds that participation in disaster relief was “deeply embedded in and intertwined with the political system” (p. 16), and that the political conditions shaped civic engagement in such a way as to not allow for significant evolution in Chinese civil society.
Xu answers two puzzles: first, why did this earthquake, rather than other disasters, enable civil society participation? Second, how did the volunteers interpret their participation? In answer to the first puzzle, Xu finds that this type of disaster created a “consensus crisis” where all parties worked together pragmatically because of the challenge to the state's administrative capacity, the need for civil society service delivery, the moral politics of disaster response, and a consensus around goals and priorities (p. 38). Due to the Olympics, the state's image was at stake over how they responded to the disaster, and the moral values inherent in the volunteers did not trigger social unrest but instead aligned with official narratives of altruism. Thus, the situation interacted with structural factors like low local state capacity to allow for unprecedented civic engagement.
In response to the second puzzle, previous opinion polling demonstrated that citizens view the state as the appropriate party to resolve problems: however, Xu finds that many of the volunteers and organizations he interviewed demonstrated a change in this belief to one of personal efficacy. This is an important shift in Chinese society regarding who has the right and ability to resolve problems. However, this shift is limited in that most volunteers cared only about things within their capacity to resolve. Similar to the social mobilization literature, the author finds that the volunteers who interpreted the meaning of their actions to be political in nature differed from the ones that did not: “Tan Zuoren differed from ordinary volunteers … embedded in a tiny public of dissidents … strongly identified with the values present in that tiny public, and had experience in activism” (p. 164). Xu finds that the repressive context deterred most volunteers from engaging with this obvious source of suffering, and that the biggest irony is that “apathy went hand in hand with compassion” (p. 199). In this context of volunteering under authoritarianism, he finds that there cannot be fundamental change in civil society until political institutions transform. Any one event is unlikely to represent true change since state–civil society relations are reliant on specific situations and relationships. Although the other volunteers allowed the state to reshape the narrative about the causes and consequences of the earthquake, perhaps this only highlights that apathy might be a normal human state easily reinforced by fears of state repression. Indeed, the question might not be why more volunteers did not ascribe political meaning, but rather why the few who did were able and willing to do so. Apathy might not be created as much as reinforced, questioning whether this outcome is solely attributable to an authoritarian state or interaction with universal problems of political apathy.
I also find the “solidarity of strangers” a more important change than Xu because it is a powerful unifying force, so as this trend continues and young strangers increasingly connect over online networks, ideas of political participation might continue to change. Currently the Party recognizes this and is trying to use volunteering to bolster loyalty, but it is unclear if they can do this effectively (see Anthony J. Spires “Chinese youth and alternative narratives of volunteering,” China Information, 2018). This might still be an important source of change even without changes in political institutions, especially as civil society organizations connect to young volunteers and online networks. In fact, civil society adaptation can how also be seen in how failure in previous disasters created the motivation to play a larger role after the earthquake, despite the fact that their capacity and institutional context had not changed (p. 52). Changing political institutions will, of course, impact civil society more than any other factor, but shifting conceptions of citizenship through volunteerism might also influence change over time.
This excellent book is further strengthened by the author's decision to situate himself and his volunteer experience in the research, and I highly recommend it for those interested in understanding civil society and volunteering in China, political activism and the politics of disasters.
