Organizer: Andrew Wedeman, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Chair and Discussant: Kevin O'Brien, Ohio State University
In recent years, debate over state-society relations in post-Mao China has revolved around whether economic reform and ideological decay have led to the emergence of a "civil society" autonomous from the state and the evolving state-society balance of power. Interaction between state and society is not, however, limited to the issue of balance of power. In actual practice, they interpenetrate each other independently of any movement toward a civil society, thus ensuring constant interaction. This panel, therefore, focuses on the interface between state and society, looking specifically at areas where citizens routinely confront the state and its institutions. Breaking the interface down into specific issue areas, the panelists examine how reform has affected the role of the state in persevering social order, preventing the spread of "dangerous" ideas, mediating economic relations, and maintaining the integrity of its local agents.
Leslyn Hall assesses the evolving relationship between peasants and the state, concluding that reform has given rise to a "norm of avoidance" that reduces the relevance of the state in maintaining social order. Daniel Lynch examines how the marketization, pluralization, and globalization of the media and telecommunications has affected "thought work" and the ability of the state to control the heterodox ideas. Daniel Rubenstein examines the evolution of contract law reform, arguing that the process has resulted in a dialectic transformation of both state and social norms. Andrew Wedeman analyzes spatial variations in the abuse of power by state cadres, looking at the relationship between economic transformation, crime, corruption, and "local tyranny."
The Problem with Peasants
Leslyn Hall, University of Michigan
The relationship between peasants and the state, particularly on a day-to-day basis, remains little understood. Although numerous studies have been devoted to the subject of peasants, no clear consensus on their structural relationship to the state has emerged. According to the literature, peasants are portrayed variously as quiescent victims of frequently arbitrary and occasionally abusive state policies, active defenders of their rights when faced with state encroachment, or largely insulated from the state by protective local cadres. Although such characterizations have a certain value, the relationship between state and peasant is more accurately viewed as one of dynamic interaction, whereby norms governing how the state and peasant society are defined and modified in light of changes in structural incentives, including those brought on by the reform process.
Using survey and interview data gathered in northwest China, this paper maps out the peasant-state game at the grassroots level, focusing on the specific area of conflict resolution and the role of the state in controlling social conflict. The data suggest that peasants and local cadres alike generally eschew the formal state when seeking to mediate conflicts, choosing instead to rely on extra-legal means. The resulting "norm of avoidance" sharply reduces the relevance of the state as an arbiter between individuals and groups, an enforcer of social and legal norms, and as the protector of individual citizens, thereby widening the gap between state and society, and potentially rendering the state less important as a social institution.
The Market is the Message: Thought Work Transformation in Reformed China
Daniel Lynch, University of Southern California
One of the most important tools at the disposal of the Chinese state for managing a geographically gigantic and demographically diverse society has historically been "thought work" (sixiang gongzuo), or the careful control of public communications messages. The Imperial Confucian state made use of a rudimentary form of thought work in its public rituals and educational system, but only under Mao Zedong did the effort become radically thoroughgoing and intrusive.
Since the advent of reform, however, a combination of administrative fragmentation, property rights reform, and rapid dissemination of advanced communications technologies has produced a serious weakening of the state's ability to control thought work, with the power of other domestic actors and actors abroad increasing correspondingly. China's mass media now face strong incentives to cater to the interests of their audiences in constructing messages rather than to the demands of thought work bureaucrats, and telecommunications providers enthusiastically supply Chinese citizens with the tools to create and circulate their own thought work messages.
This paper examines the consequences of these developments for the Chinese state-society relationship given the myriad pressures and tensions produced by 17 years of rapid economic growth, huge levels of foreign investment, massive population movements, and political succession. Thought work transformation does not appear likely in the short run to produce a classical "public sphere" in China-nor the attendant "civil society"-but it does weaken Beijing's ability to attain its goals in other issue-areas such as corruption, population growth, and crime. The Chinese people now have many more models and information sources from which to choose in constructing their world views and action strategies to pursue interests. To the central party-state in Beijing, this is potentially quite a serious threat.
The Dialectic Evolution of Contract Law Reform and Legal Norms in the PRC
Daniel Rubenstein, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
A key element of China's current transition to a "socialist market economy" has been the granting of legal sanction for a wide range of economic actors to enter freely into mutually negotiated exchanges, that is, to enjoy freedom of contract. Although often viewed narrowly as a matter of legal development, the shift from plan to contract undergirds nothing less than a fundamental restructuring of relations between state and society and within society itself-a shift in the very rules of the game by which both state and society play. Contract reform embodies, at root, an ideological and normative transformation, not a simple act of state versus society.
Using documentary sources, as well as interviews and surveys of entrepreneurs, managers, and judicial officials, this paper contrasts official norms, as represented by formal law, institutions and popular legal education materials, with the beliefs, values, and attitudes of economic practitioners including lawyers and members of household, private, collective, and state enterprises. It finds that even though societal agents tend to be more liberal than the state, there exist significant areas of agreement. The state is, in principle, more willing to compromise with social ideals than oft-reported petty dissatisfactions suggest. Reconceptualizing state autonomy the dialectic evolution of contract law reform thus raises new questions and reveals under-appreciated but vital facets of the state's relationship with society and its efforts to sustain popular legitimacy and, hence, long-term stability.
The Abusive State: Reform and the Breakdown of Cadre Discipline in China
Andrew Wedeman, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Since the early part of the 20th century, the state has gradually penetrated deeper into Chinese society. Whereas the imperial state formally extended only down to the county level, the post-1949 communist state extended its reach down to the grassroots level, displacing local gentry with agents of the party-state apparatus. Like its imperial counterparts, however, the new party-state has faced difficulty in controlling grassroots cadres and ensuring that they act as agents of the state hierarchy and do not become a protective buffer between the state and local interests or degenerate into "local tyrants."
In recent years, although Chinese officials have decried an increase in local despotism, insufficient data has prevented analysis of its structural correlates. Using data on disciplinary (."ΌΝ) cases published by provincial procuratorates, this paper examines the spatial distribution of abuse of power cases and correlations between abuse of power, corruption, and crime, as well as the correlation between abuse of power and economic and policy variables that act as proxy measures of reform. The paper hypothesizes that because this type of malfeasance stands distinct from corruption, which can be linked to a desire to maximize personal wealth, abuses of power such as arbitrary arrest, torture, and the use of fabricated evidence in criminal cases are less easily linked to economic motives, such as greed and, therefore, abuse of power should be characteristics of backwater areas, not those undergoing rapid economic change.