In Search of Civil Society : Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China

This empirical study of China's economic and social transition focuses on the social effects of the emergence of the developed market economy in post-Mao China. The study is based on extensive fieldwork on the changes in the eonomic reality of three major social groups - manual workers, women, and managers/entrepreneurs. The primary emphasis is on transformations in urban China, though, for contrast, one chapter is devoted to a detailed case study of a rural county in Guangdong. The authors describe the state corporatism in social and political life that has resulted from the transition from centralization of power in the Leninist state to a new form of associationism relatively independent from the state but jeopardized by the lack of general democratization of the political institutions. Their anlaysis turns on the concept of `civil society' - the means whereby members of society can limit the power of the state and transform it in the direction of liberal democracy.