In Search of Civil Society

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.