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Civil Society in China: A Dynamic Field of Study
Deborah S. Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton, and Elizabeth Perry,
editors. Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy
and Community in Post-Mao China. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson
Center Press; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, .
ix,  pp. Hardcover,  . Paperback,  .
Deborah S. Davis, editor. The Consumer Revolution in Urban China.
Berkeley: University of California Press, . xiii,  pp. Hardcover,
 . Paperback,  .
Randy Kluver and John H. Powers, editors. Civic Discourse, Civil Society,
and Chinese Communities. Stamford, Connecticut: Ablex Publishing
Corporation, . xii,  pp. Hardcover,  . Paperback,
 .
Timothy Brook and B. Michael Frolic, editors. Civil Society in China.
Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, . xii,  pp. Hardcover, 
. Paperback,  .
Richard Madsen. China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging
Civil Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, . xiii,  pp.
Paperback,  .
Gordon White, Jude Howell, and Shang Xiaoyuan. In Search of Civil
Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, . x,  pp. Hardcover,  .
Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, editors. Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance. London: Routledge, . xii,  pp. Hardcover, 
. Paperback,  .
© 2003 by University
of Hawai‘i Press
The seven books under review here were not chosen in any well-planned way to
reflect all the major recent achievements in research on civil society in China.
Some of them happened to be sent by the publishers for review; a few came at my
request. While this short list is far from complete, it provides an adequate starting
 China Review International: Vol. , No. , Spring 
point for a general review of the field. Much of my discussion will refer to these
books but will not be limited to them. My main goal is to delineate the achievements and challenges of this new field. I will start with a brief discussion of the
initial academic interest, followed by a survey of the first major debate in this
area. I will then devote three separate sections to the four central components of
civil society: public sphere, social organizations, individual autonomy, and popular resistance. The classification of civil society into these four components is
based on my understanding of how the concept is defined and used in the current
literature. Some scholars may focus more on associational life than on individuals.
Others may be more interested in the public sphere than in popular protest. But
it is helpful, if only to structure the analysis that follows, to think of these as interrelated elements of a civil society, a more or less organized public realm for the
protection of the rights of citizens and the construction of civic values, sometimes
through collective protest.
In the concluding part of this essay, I will make several general observations
about the state of the field and describe some future research areas. My general conclusion is that the study of civil society in China has been a dynamic field and will
remain so because many new research questions invite explorations and answers.
Initial Interest
Academic interest in civil society in China arose in response to the world-historical events of : the student protests in China and the fall of the Berlin Wall in
Eastern Europe. Xin Gu provides a useful review of the initial interest. He credits
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the Danish scholar Clemens Strubbe Ostergaard as the first to introduce the concept of “civil society” into this academic discourse and the American scholar
Craig Calhoun as the first to use the related concept of “public sphere.” In both
cases these concepts were used to analyze the  student movement. Ostergaard
argues that the significant changes in Chinese society before  had created a
“nascent civil society” of citizen groups and thus provided a social basis for the
movement. While Calhoun’s analysis focuses on how the movement itself transformed Tiananmen Square from an official ceremonial space into a public sphere
of critical discourse, he suggests that the cultural debates and mass media discourse (especially that surrounding the TV series River Elegy [Heshang]) before
the movement had an impact on the rise of the movement. In both cases, then,
the concepts of civil society and public sphere were used to explain the emergence
of the student movement. The starting point of the analysis is the existence of
some form of civil society and public sphere before .
Following the two essays mentioned above, numerous other works on the
student movement appeared within a period of about five years that directly or
indirectly addressed issues of civil society and public sphere. These included studies of civil society activities before and during the movement, the transformation
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of the Chinese media during the movement period, organizations and citizen
groups during the movement, and the dynamics of the protest. These works set
the agenda for the rise of a dynamic field in studies of contemporary China: the
study of Chinese civil society.
The  Symposium “Public Sphere” / “Civil Society”
The initial interest in Chinese civil society culminated in an influential symposium
on civil society and public sphere in volume  of Modern China, published in .
The symposium consists of six articles representing some very different views.
Mary Rankin and William Rowe argue that a Chinese civil society and public
sphere existed in late imperial China, although they were not exactly the same as
their counterparts in eighteenth-century Europe due to the differences in historical context. Adopting a stringent concept of civil society and public sphere,
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Frederic Wakeman dismisses these arguments, arguing that the so-called civil society and public sphere in late imperial China were never quite autonomous from
state power. On the same basis, Wakeman rejects the view of a reemerging civil
society in China in the years before the  student movement. Philip Huang
agrees with Wakeman that the concept of public sphere is value-laden and historically specific and therefore hard to apply to Chinese realities. At the same
time, however, Huang recognizes that insofar as Habermas’ concept of “public
sphere” is used to address changing state-society relations, it is potentially
important. To render it useful for studying China, Huang proposes to substitute
“third realm” for “civil society” and “public sphere.” For him, the concept of the
“third realm” is a value-neutral category referring to a third space distinct from
state and society.
While Wakeman and Huang both start with Habermas, Heath Chamberlain’s
conceptual starting point is Tocqueville. Chamberlain emphasizes civil society as
a civic and moral community working together for the common good. He argues
that by this standard much of the academic attention to civil society in China is
misplaced. China’s civil society is not at the barricades nor in the world of intellectual activity, but in the industrial workplace and the realm of civil law. Chamberlain is especially interested in the development of legal procedures and in
whether Chinese citizens resort to formal procedures rather than informal social
mechanisms for the resolution of disputes. Richard Madsen shares Chamberlain’s concern with civic and moral communities. He argues that not all kinds of
associations and organizations are civic, noting that “some are certainly more
‘civil’ than others. . . . Those with the quality of ‘civility’ might eventually contribute to the creation of a democratic public sphere. Those without it may simply
push China closer toward anarchic fragmentation.”
Overall, this symposium exerted an important influence on the study of civil
society in China. The authors’ careful problematization and reexamination of con-
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ceptual issues must have been instrumental in cautioning researchers to take a
more nuanced and historically informed approach to the study of Chinese civil
society.
The Chinese Discourse on Civil Society
Even before the Western debates on Chinese civil society began, Chinese intellectuals were already starting to use variants of the concept. As Shuyun Ma, Baogang
He, and Yijiang Ding have shown, Chinese intellectuals have made many attempts to use the Western concept of civil society to analyze Chinese realities,
producing what may be called a Chinese discourse on civil society. The mere existence of such a discourse indicates the continuing relevance of the concept.
More interesting, however, are two distinct features in this Chinese discourse.
First, while Western scholars debate the feasibility or unfeasibility of transplanting
the concept to China and the presence or absence of civil society in China, this
did not seem to be much of an issue for Chinese intellectuals. Following the tradition of their May Fourth predecessors, many Chinese intellectuals in the s
were still adamant proponents of a Chinese enlightenment modeled on the ideals
of the European Enlightenment. The initial focus of China’s domestic discussion
of civil society was on individual rights and freedom. The political culture of the
PRC had condemned individual rights as “bourgeois.” In the mid-s, Chinese
theoreticians reimported the notion of individual rights through ingenious reinterpretations of Marx’s classical writings. Shen Yue, for example, argues that the
term “bourgeois rights,” a standard Chinese translation of Marx’s German term
bürgerliche, should be translated as “townspeople’s rights.” Because “townspeople” (shimin) includes both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, townspeople’s
rights would be a class-neutral concept applicable to both classes. The political
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import of such an interpretation is clear: it was an attempt to reintroduce the notion of individual rights. To accommodate this notion to China’s political
context, Chinese intellectuals did not go so far as to reject collective values or the
role of the state in fostering such civic virtues. They stressed the importance of
citizen rights, but also maintained that citizens in a civil society would be in a
harmonious relationship with the state.
This moderate view among domestic intellectuals forms a contrast with a
more radical view propounded by intellectuals who went into exile after the repression of the  student movement. The radical view holds that the most important function of a civil society is to challenge and oppose the state. From this
perspective, underground and secret organizations would be considered as part of
civil society, a view that is absent in the original Western concept of civil society.
The contrasting views of China’s domestic intellectuals and those in exile no
doubt reflect differences in the authors’ political situations and personal
experiences. They also reflect two very different visions of civil society. As Madsen
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puts it, the Anglo-American vision based on thinkers like John Locke, Adam
Ferguson, and Adam Smith mistrusts the power of the state and emphasizes the
independence of civil society. In contrast, the Continental European vision based
on the work of thinkers like Montesquieu and Hegel takes a more positive view of
the state and emphasizes the role of the state in the fostering of community and
civil society. Although both visions underlie the Chinese discourse on civil society as much as the debate in the Modern China symposium, they are not explicitly
stated, so that at least part of the disagreements among scholars are due to differences in their visions of civil society.
Following the conceptual terrain opened up by earlier studies of Chinese civil
society, I will divide the following discussion into three parts, focusing, respectively, on public sphere, social organizations, and individual rights and protest.
Public Sphere
Two of the seven books under review here, both edited volumes, devote considerable space to the public sphere in China: The Consumer Revolution in Urban
China and Civic Discourse, Civil Society, and Chinese Communities. The latter contains nineteen essays in four parts: () civic discourse and national identity, ()
emerging patterns of discourse in Chinese civil societies, () modes of civic discourse in Chinese communities, and () civic discourse between China and the
world. Although most of the essays deal with the PRC, a few are concerned only
with Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Chinese communities in North America. The only
one that explicitly uses the concept of public sphere is a study of call-in talk
shows in Taiwan. The most distinct feature of this volume is, as the title
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suggests, its focus on civic discourse. This probably reflects the disciplinary orientations of the two editors (Randy Kluver is a scholar of speech and rhetoric while
John Powers specializes in communication studies), but it also represents a
broader view of the public sphere—not the public sphere of Habermasian rational discourse among citizens and social groups only but that of civic communication among social groups as well as between citizens and the government, among
government agencies, and between governments. Their guiding assumption in
broadening the discussion is that “civil society is created through the discursive
practices of the people who identify with the society.” Thus, for the authors in
this volume, civic communication may be about explicitly political issues, but it
may also be about movies, literature, TV shows, and even kan dashan (daily conversations or chats). Their analysis of communication in informal social settings
shows that the public sphere has not only the political function of forming public
opinions but also the social function of strengthening communities.
To a certain extent, the authors in The Consumer Revolution in Urban China
share this interest in the social functions of the public sphere. This book contains
fourteen essays divided into two parts. Part  is devoted to the consumer revolu-
 China Review International: Vol. , No. , Spring 
tion in the domestic sphere. The essays in this part focus on how changing consumption patterns are related to individuality. I will come back to these later. Part
 focuses on how economic changes have created new forms of consumption,
which are simultaneously new spaces for public communication and socializing.
With the exception of a chapter by David Wank, where he argues that new access
to goods and services in markets does not necessarily enhance individual or group
autonomy from authorities, all the contributions in this part point to one consistent conclusion: the new spaces for consumption and communication have altered the social experiences of Chinese citizens such that they can explore new
identities and experience more individual autonomy. The authors are aware of
the dark shadows of commercialization and the state, but by and large they see
China’s consumption revolution as liberating for Chinese citizens. This thesis is
expressed most clearly in Yunxiang Yan’s “Of Hamburger and Social Space.”
Based on ethnographic research conducted in , Yan argues that McDonald’s
attraction for Chinese customers does not come from its food but from the sociality of the space it provides to consumers. The space is sociable, because it gives
customers a sense of public accessibility, a sense of equality between customers
and restaurant employees, and, among women customers, even a sense of gender
equality. For these reasons, while McDonald’s in the United States is a place for
grabbing some fast food, in Beijing it is a place for friends and colleagues to hang
out and communicate.
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The two books just discussed provide a basis for making some general observations about the study of the public sphere in China. First, it seems that researchers are now careful to avoid the explicit use of the concept of public sphere,
reflecting an attempt to avoid the pitfalls of the concept. Instead, more value-neutral terms such as “social space” and “public space” are frequently used. Even
where the “public sphere” is used explicitly, its definition is loosened and freed
from its Habermasian origins. Thus, in his contribution to The Consumer Revolution in Urban China, Krauss argues that “All societies have a public sphere.” For
Krauss, the public monuments and parks in Nanjing, built by the state, are public
spheres for the morning tango dancers, because the graceful steps of the dancers
gradually push back the boundaries of the state by extending private pleasures
into the public arena. In this sense, there is no telling “the difference between
dancers and demonstrators” (p. ).
Related to the relaxed use of the concept of public sphere is a broader concern with a variety of areas of social life as public spaces. The discussions about
public sphere following the  movements centered on the official media and
intellectual activities. These two volumes have brought the topic down to earth.
Living-room conversations, hamburgers, greeting cards, telephone hotlines,
discos, bowling alleys, and the like become the center of analysis and are shown to
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have socializing and communicative functions. They are spaces for public expression and social networking.
In light of this shift of attention away from the Habermasian concept of public sphere, is it time to jettison this concept? This appears to be a de facto practice
among the authors just reviewed, but it is not really so upon closer examination.
Whether the authors admit it or not, they are implicitly guided by the normative meanings of Habermas’ concept. They may use alternative terms such as
social space and public space, but they all imply that for the development of a
Chinese civil society, it is better to have these spaces than not. The distinct contribution of these studies is the combination of the two visions of civil society referred to above. The emphasis is no longer just on the political role of an independent public sphere, but also on the role of the public sphere in integrating
social groups and communities.
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Social Organizations
Four of the books reviewed here are explicitly concerned with social organizations:
Civil Society in China, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, China’s Catholics:
Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society, and In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China.
Three of the seven essays in Civil Society in China seek to answer the question
of whether the concept of civil society is applicable to China. The other four are
case studies intended to test the concept against situations in that country. The
editors of the volume intend to showcase how scholars are coming to terms with
the issue of civil society there. The result is unclear. The authors of the three conceptual studies differ in their views as wildly as those of the case studies. Such disagreements do not encourage readers to think that the debaters have come to
terms with the concept of civil society. Several essays, however, do offer analytic
frameworks for the concrete study of Chinese society. For example, Timothy
Brook’s essay “Auto-Organization in Chinese Society” starts with the assumption
that a key element of civil society is voluntary and autonomous social organizations. He then identifies four principles beyond kinship by which Chinese have
organized themselves: () locality, () occupation, () fellowship (e.g., religious
society, literary club), and () common cause (e.g., political party). This is a useful analytic framework, which Brook then applies to a historical survey of social
organizations in China, showing how they vary in form under different historical
conditions.
The editors of Urban Spaces in Contemporary China are less ambivalent on
conceptual issues. They clearly believe that the concept is relevant to the Chinese
case. Starting with Habermas’ public sphere but adopting a less stringent
approach, they ask the contributors to explore the shifting boundaries between
 China Review International: Vol. , No. , Spring 
private and public and state and society and the conditions for the emergence of a
public sphere in China against the background of a changing urban landscape. A
key contribution of this volume is that it shows how the transformation of the
physical environment is linked to the transformation of urban public and private
life and how social practices in physical spaces help to transform them into social
spaces. Nancy Chen’s “Urban Spaces and Experiences of Qigong” is an interesting
case in point. She explores popular qigong practices that came into fashion in the
mid-s. These practices took place in a variety of public venues—urban parks,
public spaces in work-unit compounds, and even streets. While these became
“breathing spaces” for individual practitioners, the very act of having breathing
exercises in these public arenas turned them into social spaces for organizational
life. It was in these spaces, Chen argues, that various kinds of official and unofficial qigong associations mushroomed. For observers of the most recent develop-
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ments in China, I should note that Falun Gong was originally one of those many
qigong associations that found its life in the “breathing spaces” of urban China.
The authors of several other important essays in the volume share this concern for the relationship between public space and social organizations. Focusing
on case studies of labor unions, legal scholars, and student associations,
respectively, Elizabeth Perry, Mark Sidel, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, and Xinyong Liu
explore the dynamic processes of social organizations breaking out of state
control. Instead of evaluating how independent or autonomous China’s social organizations are, these authors show China’s social organizations in the throes of
birth. The most important insight of these studies is that whatever civil society
there has been in contemporary China has not been a heavenly gift but was born
in the struggles between social groups and state power, often by appropriating official organizational forms and spaces.
While Civil Society in China and Urban Spaces in Contemporary China implicitly follow the assumption that the presence of autonomous social organizations indicates the presence of civil society, China’s Catholics and In Search of
Civil Society take a more “neutral” stand on this question.
Richard Madsen’s China’s Catholics is one of the few in-depth case studies of
civil society in China. As an ethnographic study of the Catholic Church, it provides many insights into the internal dynamics of a particular area of associational
life in contemporary China. Madsen not only examines the intimate details of
Catholic life but also uses his case to address bigger questions about Chinese civil
society. He starts by asking the question “Are all self-governing groups to be considered a part of civil society?” His answer is a clear “No.” Madsen had been a
participant in the symposium on civil society and public sphere featured in Modern China. In that debate, he had already argued that some social organizations
are more “civil” than others, and his concern with the civil aspect of civil society
runs through the pages of China’s Catholics. Again, his conclusion is not at all
Features 
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encouraging, for he finds that “however one evaluates the civil status of the Chinese Catholic Church, the actions of that church often lack civil consequences.”
The independently organized activity of the Catholic Church “sometimes leads to
fragmentation, and potentially, anarchy.” The implication is that the construction of civil society should focus not just on independent organizational activity
but, more importantly, on the building of a civic and moral community. Are
there resources for moral construction in today’s China? Madsen sees few. He
thus shows that the most serious challenge facing China today is not the lack of
autonomous social organizations but the need for the reconstruction of morality.
White, Howell, and Shang, the authors of In Search of Civil Society, express a
similar ambivalence about China’s civil society, although they are less concerned
with morality. To my knowledge, In Search of Civil Society is the first monograph
on Chinese civil society (all the others are edited volumes). By focusing on what
they refer to as a sociological conception of civil society, namely an intermediate
associational realm situated between the state and the society, the authors attempt
to delink the concept of civil society from any political or ideological project. For
White, Howell, and Shang, the often touted connection between civil society and
democracy is an empirical connection to be investigated, not a logical issue to be
assumed. This pronounced neutral stand allows the authors to explore both old
(hence official) and new social organizations in China’s reform era. Included in
their analysis, for example, are women’s federations and trade unions, as well as
“new-style” social organizations such as business associations. The book offers
many good things: rich empirical material, a nice selection of case studies, and
comprehensive coverage of different types of social organizations. Two contributions are especially notable. First, the authors provide an explanation of the rise of
civil society in reform-era China. They call it the “dual dynamic of civil society.”
One dynamic is political, which focuses on how social organizations emerge in
the process of political resistance and struggles. The other is a market dynamic,
which emphasizes how China’s transition to a market economy shifts the balance
of power between state and society in the latter’s favor and creates the structural
conditions for new social organizations.
The second important contribution is that the authors offer a useful classification of social organizations in contemporary China. They distinguish four
types: official, semi-official, popular, and interstitial or unrecognized organizations (p. ). Classification is not always a worthwhile endeavor, but it is particularly helpful in this case, because it shows that different forms of social organizations now coexist in different kinds of relationships with the center of
political power. In short, it presents a more nuanced and multidimensional picture of civil-society organizations in China.
While the authors of In Search of Civil Society take an explicitly neutral stand
on the political implications of civil society, they cannot resist concluding their
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book with observations on this issue. White, Howell, and Shang demur at the
popular view that civil society is necessarily linked to democratization. They argue
instead that “The sociological civil society . . . has an ambiguous political potential. It contains the seeds of both political construction and collapse” (p. ).
They further suggest that the diverse, fragmented, and potentially destabilizing
character of China’s incipient civil society means that in China civil society “is as
much of an obstacle as an impetus to democratization” (p. ). For this reason,
they propose that China’s democratization may best be achieved through a process of political bargaining and accommodation between state elites and civil
society. This is a sobering view. It would be fascinating to observe how this process may (or may not) be enacted in Chinese politics.
Rights and Resistance
The final book, Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, is devoted to
rights and resistance. But first let me say that the issue of rights is also dealt with
explicitly in two other books discussed above, Urban Spaces in Contemporary
China and The Consumer Revolution in Urban China. Shaoguang Wang’s essay
“The Politics of Private Time” in Urban Spaces in Contemporary China shows
nicely the breakdown of the state monopolization of private leisure in China in
the second half of the twentieth century. The diversification and expansion of the
private leisure space of individuals marks the expansion of the realm of individual
rights in the process of market change. This thesis is taken up at some length in
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The Consumer Revolution in Urban China, which contains five essays on the
changing patterns of consumption in the domestic sphere. Being about consumption, they invariably have a lot to say (and some nice pictures to show) about the
increasingly commercialized nature of contemporary Chinese society. The interesting point is that the authors all conclude that the newly gained purchasing
power of Chinese citizens both reflects and enhances their individual freedom
and personal choice. Housing advertisements in Shanghai thus cater to the taste
of consumers for new lifestyles (David Fraser, “Inventing Oasis”). Increased
spending for children speaks the language of acquisition and mastery that is at
once commercial and individualistic (Deborah S. Davis and Julia S. Sensenbrenner, “Commercializing Childhood”). Agency is seen in a wedding gown
(Maris Gillette, “What’s in a Dress?”). Daily grocery shopping is about personal
choice as well as family values (Ann Veeck, “The Revitalization of the Marketplace”). And finally, to live a relatively comfortable life is to achieve the ideals of
individual and family autonomy prescribed in the Confucian classics (Hanlong
Lu, “To Be Relatively Comfortable”). In other words, consumption is about individual rights to autonomy and freedom.
The issue of individual rights takes a new twist in Chinese Society: Change,
Conflict and Resistance, edited by Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden. It becomes
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both a basis for protest and resistance and an object of political struggle. In elaborating on this thesis, the authors in this volume enter the debate on Chinese civil
society in several ways.
First, the entire volume focuses on forms of protest and resistance in recent
years. Although articles and even books continued to appear after the mid-s
on popular protest and social movements in China, the study of these issues
subsided after the publication of the first barrage of works on the  Chinese
student movement. This edited volume brings the question of protest back to the
discussion of Chinese civil society. The second feature of the volume is the presentation of the sheer diversity of forms of protest in contemporary China—protest related to labor, environment, ethnicity, religion, family planning, women,
and more.
The third and most notable contribution of this book is that several authors
respond to Heath Chamberlain’s earlier call to look for civil society in the domain
of civil law and in the reliance of citizens on legal procedures for conflict resolution. From different angles, they take up the question of what Kevin O’Brien elsewhere refers to as “rightful resistance” or “policy-based” resistance. The leading
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essay by Minxin Pei, “Rights and Resistance: The Changing Contexts of the Dissident Movement,” sets the stage for this discussion by outlining how, theoretically
and practically, greater resistance is a result of rising rights consciousness. One
example of rising rights consciousness is the increase in the number of lawsuits
filed against violations of property and personal rights. For example, Pei finds
that in a span of eight years civil lawsuits of this kind tripled, from , in 
to , in . Similarly, in “Pathways of Labor Insurgency,” Ching Kwan Lee
not only examines everyday forms of resistance and work stoppages and strikes
but also calls attention to the rapid increase in formally arbitrated labor disputes
through institutional channels.
Finally, in his “The ‘Externalities of Development,’” David Zweig documents
the increasing frequency of rights-based protest within the framework of new political institutions such as village elections, administrative litigation law, contract
law, and public petitioning. He examines the cases reported in the Chinese magazine Minzhu yu fazhi (Democracy and law) from  and  and concludes
that “villagers are developing a strong ‘rights consciousness’ and using the law to
their own advantage.” This does not mean that the rule of law is strong in
China: it “remains prey to administrative power which can manipulate (or
undermine) the level of justice distributed by a new legalistic system.” Nor does
it mean that villagers will refrain from civil disobedience: civil disobedience and
collective protest still prove more effective when institutional forms of lodging
complaints are futile. Nevertheless, the challenge for the development of Chinese
civil society is clear: the seeds for the rule of law and for civil disobedience and
social unrest exist side by side.
 China Review International: Vol. , No. , Spring 
Conclusions and Directions for Future Research
What conclusions can be drawn about the study of Chinese civil society as an academic field? While it is hard to make generalizations based on a review of a small
selection of works, the foregoing discussion does point to several distinct features
of this field.
First, the conceptual terrain seems quite clear now. For all the debates about
the concept of civil society, the historical or empirical analyses mostly concentrate
on four areas: () the public sphere, () social organizations, () individual rights,
and () popular protest and social movements.
Second, an analytic focus of many studies is on the degree of autonomy of
the public sphere, social organizations, and individuals vis-à-vis the state. There is
no consensus on this issue, nor, for that matter, is it realistic to wish for one. This
has to do with the nature of civil society, which is a relational concept: it is related
to the political society (the state) and the domestic society (the family), yet is distinguishable from both. Relations, however, are necessarily relative: they fluctuate
and change. This suggests that it would be more fruitful to explore the conditions
under which the key elements of civil society change in relation to the political
and the domestic society. As Thomas Gold has recently argued, there is no such a
thing as absolute autonomy.
© 2003 by University
of Hawai‘i Press
Related to the second point is a third feature in recent works on civil society.
While some scholars still feel uncomfortable with the concept because of its
Western origins, many others have simply stopped puzzling over conceptual
issues. They choose instead to operate with more relaxed definitions or alternative
but similar terms, such as “public space” and “social space.” This allows them to
carry out concrete historical or empirical analyses of Chinese society. It is the
concrete and in-depth analyses like Madsen’s China’s Catholics that are making
the most important contributions to the field.
Finally, while some of the authors reviewed here provide explanations for the
rise of civil society in China and others offer insights into the consequences of the
development of civil society, the field would benefit from more rigorous analyses.
By this I do not mean that there is no need for descriptions and basic documentation of the various historical and current forms of civil-society activities. Descriptive accounts are important and in short supply. Still, it is necessary to complement rich descriptive accounts with careful and systematic analyses of the
conditions, dynamics, and consequences of whatever phenomena are observed.
Systematic analysis may thus be considered the first exciting area for future
work. Some researchers have done inspiring work in this direction. Edward Gu,
for example, casts new light on the emergence of intellectual groups in China by
adopting a neo-institutional approach. Tony Saich provides new insights into
China’s social organizations by focusing on how these organizations “negotiate”
Features 
with the state in ways that minimize state penetration and allow for policy input
or pursuit of the interests and organizational goals of members.
The changing regulative frameworks in China in recent years have shaped the
dynamics of associational life in significant ways. In , China’s State Council
promulgated two new regulations on the registration and management of “social
organizations” (shehui tuanti) and “private nonprofit organizations” (minban fei
qiye danwei). In October , at the International Conference on NGO Poverty
Reduction Policy held in Beijing, a “Beijing Joint Declaration on Poverty Alleviation by Chinese NGOs” was issued that charted new roles for China’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and their relationship with the government and the
market. Among other things, it explicitly called on NGOs to act as a “third force,”
to complement both market and government in providing assistance to marginalized groups. How these changing regulative frameworks affect civil society activities and how civil society actors make use of these changing policies to promote organizational growth is a second fruitful area for future research.
A third area is comparative research, which will contribute to a deeper understanding of how the development of civil society may vary with historical and
social conditions. Outside the field of China studies, there is a fine literature on
civil societies in Asian nations such as Korea and Japan. Because of some shared
Confucian values, comparisons of these Asian societies may be especially helpful
for understanding the relative importance of culture vis-à-vis other factors in
shaping the national trajectories of civil-society development.
Two last areas for future work are the impact of new information technologies on Chinese civil society and the connections between China’s domestic civil
society and global civil society. Currently, there is tremendous interest in how the
Internet may affect Chinese politics and society. Some scholars have examined the
political impact of the Internet, including how new technologies may shape associational life, such as by creating virtual communities. Overall, however, this is a
relatively new area of social development that awaits future explorations. Studies
of global civil society have been a major new enterprise in social science research,
and the focus so far has been on transnational social movements and global governance through nongovernmental organizations. Do elements of Chinese civil
society—for example, China’s public sphere and social organizations—have any
connections with the global civil society? What kinds of connections? How are
they maintained? How do they shape the dynamics of China’s domestic civil
society? With all these important questions and new areas to explore, the study of
civil society in China will remain a dynamic field in the years to come.
© 2003 by University
Guobin Yang
of Hawai‘i Press
Guobin Yang is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Hawai‘i. He
has published articles on China’s Red Guard generation, the  Chinese student
movement, and the impact of the Internet on Chinese civil society.
 China Review International: Vol. , No. , Spring 
notes
I would like to thank Hagen Koo and Patricia Steinhoff for helping to clarify my thoughts on
Chinese civil society through their expertise on civil society in Korea and Japan.
All references below to the titles under review here are presented as “author–short title” citations only, the full bibliographic data appearing at the head of this review.
. Xin Gu, “A Civil Society and Public Sphere in Post-Mao China? An Overview of Western
Publications,” China Information , no.  (–): –.
. Clemens Strubbe Ostergaard, “Citizens, Groups and a Nascent Civil Society in China:
Towards an Understanding of the  Student Demonstrations,” China Information , no. 
(): –.
. Craig Calhoun, “Tiananmen, Television and the Public Sphere: Internationalization of
Culture and the Beijing Spring of ,” Public Culture , no.  (): –.
. Thomas Gold, “The Resurgence of Civil Society in China,” Journal of Democracy , no. 
(): –; David Strand, “Protest in Beijing: Civil Society and Public Sphere in China,” Problems of Communism  (): –; Lawrence R. Sullivan, “The Emergence of Civil Society in
China, Spring ,” in Tony Saich, ed., The Chinese People’s Movement: Perspectives on Spring
 (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, ): –; George Black and Robin Munro, Black
Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defiance in China’s Democracy Movement (New York: Wiley, );
Craig Calhoun, Neither Gods nor Emperors (Berkeley: University of California Press, ).
. Michael J. Berlin, “The Performance of the Chinese Media During the Beijing Spring,” in
Roger V. des Forges, Luo Ning, and Wu Yen-bo, eds., Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of 
(State University of New York Press, ), pp. –; Seth Faison, “The Changing Role of the
Chinese Media,” in Saich, The Chinese People’s Movement, pp. –; Edward Gunn, “The
Rhetoric of River Elegy: From Cultural Criticism to Social Act,” in des Forges, Luo, and Wu,
Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of , pp. –; Judy Polumbaum, “‘Professionalism’ in
China’s Press Corps,” in des Forges, Luo, and Wu, Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of , pp.
–; Frank Tan, “The People’s Daily and the Epiphany of Press Reform,” in des Forges, Luo,
and Wu, Chinese Democracy and the Crisis of , pp. –; Zhang Xiaogang, “The Market
versus the State: the Chinese Press since Tiananmen,” Journal of International Affairs , no. 
(): –.
. David Kelly, “Chinese Intellectuals in the  Democracy Movement,” in G. Hicks, ed.,
The Broken Mirror: China after Tiananmen (Chicago: St. James Press, ), pp. –; Jeffrey N.
Wasserstrom and Liu Xinyong, “Student Associations and Mass Movements,” in Davis, Kraus,
Naughton, and Perry, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, pp. –.
. Joseph W. Esherick and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, “Acting Out Democracy: Political Theater in Modern China,” Journal of Asian Studies , no.  (): –; Jonathan Unger, ed.,
The Pro-Democracy Protests in China: Reports from the Provinces (Armonk, New York: M. E.
Sharpe, ); Nan Lin, The Struggle for Tiananmen: Anatomy of the  Mass Movement
(Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, ).
. Mary B. Rankin, “Some Observations on a Chinese Public Sphere,” Modern China ,
no.  (): –; William T. Rowe, “The Problem of ‘Civil Society’ in Late Imperial China,”
Modern China , no.  (): –.
© 2003 by University
of Hawai‘i Press
. Frederick Wakeman, Jr., “The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture,” Modern China , no.  (): –.
. The concept is most fully developed in Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation
of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: MIT Press, ).
Features 
. Philip C. C. Huang, “‘Public Sphere’ / ‘Civil Society’ in China? The Third Realm between State and Society,” Modern China , no.  (): –.
. Heath B. Chamberlain, “On the Search for Civil Society in China,” Modern China ,
no.  (): –.
. Richard Madsen, “The Public Sphere, Civil Society, and Moral Community,” Modern
China , no.  (): –.
. Shu-yun Ma, “The Chinese Discourse on Civil Society,” China Quarterly no.  ():
–; He Baogang, The Democratic Implications of Civil Society in China (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, ), chap. ; Yijiang Ding, “The Conceptual Evolution of Democracy in Intellectual Circles: Rethinking of State and Society,” in Suisheng Zhao, ed., China and Democracy:
The Prospect for a Democratic China (New York: Routledge, ), pp. –.
. Shen Yue, “Zichan jieji quanli ying yi wei shimin quanli” (“Bourgeois rights” should be
translated as “townspeople’s rights”), Tianjin shehui kexue (Tianjin social science), no.  ().
. Shu-yun Ma, “The Chinese Discourse on Civil Society,” p. .
. Madsen, China’s Catholics, p. .
. Rueyling Chuang and Ringo Ma, “(Re)locating Our Voices in the Public Sphere: Call-in
Talk Shows as a Channel for Civic Discourse in Taiwan,” in Kluver and Powers, Civic Discourse,
Civil Society, and Chinese Communities, pp. –.
. Kluver and Powers, Civic Discourse, Civil Society, and Chinese Communities, p. .
. David L. Wank, “Cigarettes and Domination in Chinese Business Networks: Institutional Change during the Market Transition,” in Davis, The Consumer Revolution in Urban
China, pp. –.
. Yunxiang Yan, “Of Hamburger and Social Space: Consuming McDonald’s in Beijing,”
in Davis, The Consumer Revolution in Urban China, pp. –.
. Richard Krauss, “Public Monuments and Private Pleasures in the Parks of Nanjing: A
Tango in the Ruins of the Ming Emperor’s Palace,” in Davis, The Consumer Revolution in Urban
China, p. .
. Nancy N. Chen, “Urban Spaces and Experiences of Qigong,” in Davis, Kraus,
Naughton, and Perry, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, pp. –.
. Elizabeth J. Perry, “Labor’s Battle for Political Space: The Role of Worker Associations
in Contemporary China,” pp. –; Mark Sidel, “Dissident and Liberal Legal Scholars and
Organizations in Beijing and the Chinese State in the s,” pp. –; Jeffrey N.
Wasserstrom and Liu Xinyong, “Student Associations and Mass Movements,” pp. –, all in
Davis, Kraus, Naughton, and Perry, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China,.
. Madsen, China’s Catholics, p. .
. Shaoguang Wang, “The Politics of Private Time: Changing Leisure Patterns in Urban
China,” in Davis, Kraus, Naughton, and Perry, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China, pp. –
.
. For a recent article on consumer rights, see Beverley Hooper, “Consumer Voices: Asserting Rights in Maoist China,” China Information , no.  (): –.
. Two examples are Elizabeth Perry, Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest
© 2003 by University
of Hawai‘i Press
and State Power in China (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, ), and Dingxin Zhao, The
Power of Tiananmen: State-Society Relations and the  Beijing Student Movement (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, ).
 China Review International: Vol. , No. , Spring 
. See Kevin O’Brien, “Rightful Resistance,” World Politics , no.  (): –, and
Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O’Brien, “Villagers and Popular Resistance in Contemporary China,”
Modern China , no.  (): –.
. Minxin Pei, “Rights and Resistance: The Changing Contexts of the Dissident
Movement,” in Perry and Selden, Chinese Society, p. .
. Ching Kwan Lee, “Pathways of Labor Insurgency,” in Perry and Selden, Chinese Society,
pp. –.
. David Zweig, “The ‘Externalities of Development’: Can New Political Institutions Manage Rural Conflict?” in Perry and Selden, Chinese Society, p. .
. Ibid., p. .
. Thomas Gold, “Bases for Civil Society in Reform China,” in Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and
David Strand, eds., Reconstructing Twentieth-Century China: State Control, Civil Society, and National Identity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), pp. –.
. See Kenneth Dean, “Ritual and Space: Civil Society or Popular Religion?” in Brook and
Frolic, Civil Society in China, pp. –.
. Edward X. Gu, “Plural Institutionalism and the Emergence of Intellectual Public Spaces
in China: A Case Study of Four Intellectual Groups,” in Zhao, China and Democracy: The Prospect for a Democratic China, pp. –.
. Tony Saich, “Negotiating the State: The Development of Social Organizations in China,”
China Quarterly, no.  (): –.
. People’s Daily (Online), “Chinese NGOs to Work with Government for Poverty
Reduction,”  October .
. See Hagen Koo, “Strong State and Contentious Society,” in Hagen Koo, ed., State and
Society in Contemporary Korea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ), pp. –; Sunhyuk
Kim, “Civil Society and Democratization in South Korea,” Korea Journal  (): –;
Helen Hardacre, “Japan: The Public Sphere in a Non-Western Setting,” in Robert Wuthnow,
ed., Between States and Markets: The Voluntary Sphere in Comparative Perspective (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, ), pp. –; Patricia Steinhoff, “Doing the Defendant’s
Laundry: Support Groups as Social Movement Organizations in Contemporary Japan,”
Japanstudien: Jahrbuch des Deutschen Instituts fur Japanstudien  ().
. Geoffry Taubman, “A Not-so World Wide Web: The Internet, China, and the Challenges to Nondemocratic Rule,” Political Communication  (): –; Eric Harwit and
Duncan Clark, “Shaping the Internet in China: Evolution of Political Control over Network Infrastructure and Content,” Asian Survey , no.  (): –; Guobin Yang, “The Internet
and Civil Society in China: A Preliminary Assessment,” Journal of Contemporary China,
forthcoming.
. See Ronnie D. Lipschutz, with Judith Mayer, eds., Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance (Albany: State University of New York Press, ); Jackie Smith, Charles
Chatfield, and Ron Pagnucco, eds., Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity Beyond the State (Syracuse University Press, ); and John A. Guidry, Michael D. Kennedy,
and Mayer N. Zald, eds., Globalizations and Social Movements: Culture, Power, and the
© 2003 by University
of Hawai‘i Press
Transnational Public Sphere (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ).