Democratic thought and practice in rural China

Democratization

Volumn 12, Issue 5, 2005, Pages 801-819

  Brandtstädter, Susanne ^a   Schubert, Gunter ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF TÜBINGEN   (Germany)

Author keywords

Citizenship; Grass roots democracy; Maoism; Socialist democracy

Indexed keywords

CITIZENSHIP; DEMOCRACY; RURAL AREA; SOCIALISM;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 31344452931     PISSN: 13510347     EISSN: 1743890X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13510340500322223     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. Alain Touraine, What is Democracy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), p.64.
2. See Journal of Democracy, Vol.9, No.1 (1998) and Vol.14, No.1 (2003). Andrew Nathan's article 'Authoritarian Resilience' (pp.6-17) set the tone for the second collection's discussion on China's political future, pointing at two contending 'schools' in the China studies field: While some scholars find the People's Republic of China (PRC)'s regime more stable and even legitimate today, others would rather predict imminent implosion because of rapidly falling degrees of state capacity.
3. Merle Goldman, 'China's Sprouts of Democracy', Ethics and International Affairs, No.4 (February 1990), pp.70-90.
4. See Zhang Xudong, Whither China: Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2001).
5. We use this phrase in a slightly ironic way. 'Sprout watching' could be called a typical profession of contemporary China scholars trying to understand China's unique path of development while looking for similarities with the 'West' (as in 'the sprouts of capitalism'). The 'sprouts' metaphor is appropriate, however, in the sense that it supports our argument that democracy 'grows out' of entitlements and claims that define membership in local communities.
6. We use the term 'peasant' (nongmin) for those Chinese who hold a 'peasant household register' (nongmin hukou) and are thus classified peasants by the state, irrespectively of whether they still work the land. Nongmin is, furthermore, an important political category in China: under Mao, nongmin were the standard-bearer of the revolution; the revolutionary masses the party claimed to be 'one' with in the 'democratic dictatorship of the people'. In the reform era, peasants have become the 'peasant problem' (nongmin wenti) of China's modernity, a group of people regarded as backward (luohuo) and as 'undercivilized' (bu wenming), and thus as an obstacle to national development and modernization.
7. However, recent experiments with (more or less) direct elections in urban neighbourhoods may have paved the way for comparable experiences in the coming years in China's cities. See Li Fan, Zhongguo jiceng minzhu fazhan baogao (Report on China's Grassroot's Democracy Development) 2003 (Beijing: Falü, 2004).
8. However, according to a 2002 guideline issued by the party headquarters, party secretaries in villages must face 'recommendation votes'. In these instances, all villagers are given the opportunity to vote on a candidate. However, the result is non-binding for the village party committee which would have the final say (while being supervised by township party authorities).
9. Daniel Kelliher, 'The Chinese Debate over Village Self-Government', China Journal, No. 37 (January 1997), pp.63-86
10. Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang, 'Accommodating "Democracy" in a One-Party State: Introducing Village Elections in China', China Quarterly, No.162 (June 2000), pp.465-89.
11. Mechthild Exner, 'The Convergence of Ideology and the Law: The Functions of the Legal Education Campaign in Building a Chinese Legal System', Issues and Studies,Vol.31, No.8 (1995), pp.68-102.
12. Touraine (note 1), pp.124-8.
13. Kevin O'Brien, 'Rightful Resistance', World Politics, No.49 (October 1996), pp.31-55
14. Li Lianjiang,'Elections and Popular Resistance in Rural China', China Information, Vol.15, No.2 (2001), pp.1-19
15. Kevin O'Brien, 'Villagers, Elections, and Citizenship in Contemporary China', Modern China, Vol.27, No.4 (October 2001), pp.407-35
16. Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (forthcoming, 2006).
17. Touraine (note 1), p.66.
18. Chris Hann 'Introduction. Political Society and Civil Anthropology', in Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn (eds), Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), pp.1-26.
19. Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawai'i: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp.28-9, uses the term 'contact zone' to denote a zone between complex social fields where cultural production involves hybridization and processes of cultural appropriation and re-appropriation. As she shows, these processes take often place in relations of domination and subordination, such as colonialism. The socialist state in China can be said to have colonized the 'cultural world' of rural China through turning local communities into socialist collectives.
20. We use a notion of moral economy that is slightly different of James Scott's famous formulation of 'the moral economy of the peasant'. Moral economy in Scott's sense describes a set of economic practices which follow a 'subsistence ethic' rather than a logic of profit-maximizing, and which are embedded in social institutions that help to spread economic risk. We expand the notion of economy to look at processes that produce collectivity, local identities and entitlements in rural China. These are, however, centrally rooted in reciprocal relations of shared property and exchange in a rural gift economy, which places emphasis on a fundamental equality of insiders and on the responsibility of local leaders towards their collective. Cf. James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant. Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976).
21. See John Flower and Pamela Leonard, 'Community and State in Sichuan', in Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn (eds), Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), pp.199-221. Flower and Leonard write of a 'moral equilibrium of mutual obligation' that from the villagers' point of view should define interactions both within the community and between peasants and the state. They regard this notion as an important element in the formation of civil society in China; a civil society in which the state, and its local representatives, are part of a local moral order.
22. See James Townsend, 'Chinese Nationalism', in Jonathan Unger (ed.), Chinese Nationalism (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), pp.1-30
23. Gunter Schubert, Chinas Kampf um die Nation (China's Struggle for Nationhood) (Hamburg: Institute of Asian Affairs, 2002)
24. Suisheng Zhao, A Nation-State by Construction (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004).
25. See Jack M. Potter and Shulamith Heins Potter, China's Peasants. The Anthropology of a Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.255.
26. Joseph Y.S. Cheng (ed.), China in the Post-Deng Era (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1998)
27. Lowell Dittmer, 'Three Visions of Chinese Political Reform', Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol.38, No.4-5 (2003), pp.347-76.
28. Claudia Derichs, Thomas Heberer and Nora Sausmikat, Why Ideas do Matter: Ideen und Diskurse in der Politik Chinas, Japans und Malaysia (Ideas and Discourses in the Politics of China, Japan, and Malaysia) (Hamburg: Institute of Asian Affairs, 2004).
29. Quite prominently among this group figures the concept of shehui guanlian, 'social (inter)connectedness', which describes the complex structure of personal networks within a village as an asset for solidarity and development, now severely menaced by a decontextualized implementation of elections which follows a logic of individual interest-seeking. See Tong Zhihui, Xuanju shijian yu cunzhuang zhengzhi (Election Incidents and Village Politics) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue, 2004).
30. On the shifts in the make-up of the good citizen from the collective and altruistic mass citizen to the individual and entrepreneurial citizen in the reform era, see Michael Keane, 'Re-defining Chinese Citizenship', Economy and Society, Vol.30, No.1 (2001), pp.1-17.
31. See Stephan Feuchtwang, 'Peasants, Democracy and Anthropology. Questions of Local Loyalty', Critique of Anthropology, Vol.23, No.1 (2003), pp.93-120.
32. See Stephan Feuchtwang, 'What is a Village', in Eduard B. Vermeer, Frank N. Pieke and Woei Lien Chong (eds), Cooperative and Collective in China's Rural Development. Between State and Private Interests (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), pp.46-74.
33. See Yan Yunxiang, The Flow of Gifts. Reciprocity and Social Network in a Chinese Village (Stanford. CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).
34. Feuchtwang, 'What is a Village' (note 25), pp.68-9.
35. Susanne Brandtstädter, 'Re-defining Place in Southern Fujian: How Overseas Mansions and Ancestral Halls Re-appropriate the Local from the State', Max Planck Institute For Social Anthropology Working Papers No.30 (2001), (available at )
36. See also Lily Lee Tsai, 'Cadres, Temple and Lineage Institutions, and Governance in Rural China', The China Journal, Vol.48 (July 2002), pp.1-27
37. Feuchtwang, 'What is a Village' (note 25).
38. Brandtstädter (note 28),
39. Feuchtwang, 'What is a Village' (note 25).
40. See Flower and Leonard (note 17).
41. See Brandtstädter (note 28)
42. John Flower, 'A Road is Made: Roads, Temples, and Historical Memory in Ya'an Country, Sichuan', The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.63, No.3 (2004), pp.649-86
43. Stephan Feuchtwang, 'Religion as Resistance', in Elizabeth.J. Perry and Mark Selden (eds), Chinese Society: Change, Conflict, and Resistance, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2003), pp.173-4.
44. Feuchtwang, 'Peasants, Democracy and Anthropology' (note 24).
45. Feuchtwang, 'Religion as Resistance' (note 31), pp.173-4
46. also see John Flower and Pamela Leonard, 'Definining Cultural Life in the Chinese Countryside. The Case of the Chuan Zhu Temple', in Eduard B. Vermeer, Frank N. Piek and Woei Lien Chong (eds), Cooperative and Collective in China's Rural Development. Between State and Private Interests (Armonk, NY:M.E. Sharpe, 1998), pp.273-290.
47. Guo Yuhua, 'D'une forme de réciprocité à l'autre', in Isabelle Thireau and Wang Hansheng (eds), Disputes au village chinois. Formes de juste et recompositions locales des espaces normatifs (Paris: Éditions de la maison des science de l'homme, 2001), pp.39-77.
48. As is argued, for example, by Xiao Tangbiao, whose description clearly shows the influence of 'village democracy': 'The clan's "working leaders" have a modern spirit. Among the Xiao clan the village leader's working group is made up of the village leader, deputy village leader, accountant and cashier. Apart from the cashier role - which is performed in rotation by family heads from the minor hall - the other personnel are elected annually by the village's households - one vote per household. In the last ten years, these working group members have all been young men from the minor hall, and no member of the senior hall has taken part. Because of the limitations brought by the one year term of office - since 1998 - the lineage has extended the term of the village leader's working group to three years. The mode by which this working group is constituted clearly shows the modern spirit of democracy and equality.' 'Rural China Entering the 21st Century - Clans and Lineages', China Research Papers Online, Universities Service Center, Chinese University of Hong Kong (available at www.usc.cuhk.edu.hk/ wk_wzdetails.asp?id=1594., accessed 21 July 2005).
49. Li Lianjiang and Kevin O'Brien, 'Villagers and Popular Resistance in Contemporary China', Modern China, Vol.22, No.1 (1996), p.42.
50. O'Brien, 'Villagers, Elections, and Citizenship' (note 12), p.59.
51. O'Brien and Lianjiang (note 12).
52. Guo Zhenlin and Thomas P.Bernstein, 'The Impact of Elections on the Village Structure of Power: The Relations Between the Village Committees and the Party Branches', Journal of Contemporary China, Vol.13, No.39 (2004), pp.257-75.
53. Richard Levy, 'The Village Self-Government Movement: Elections, Democracy, the Party, and Anticorruption - Developments in Guangdong', China Information, Vol.17, No.1 (2003), pp.28-65.
54. Certainly enough, this comes close to the concept of legitimacy. However, trust should be analytically distinguished from legitimacy as it lays the ground for the latter and is also a result of legitimacy. While trust is based on reasonable expectations, legitimacy stems from factual knowledge.
55. See also Feuchtwang, 'What is a Village' (note 25), p.68.
56. Vivienne Shue, The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988).
57. Jean Oi has called this tension 'the struggle over the harvest'. See Jean Oi, State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Contemporary Village Government (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992).
58. Brandtstädter, 'Redefining Place' (note 28).
59. A good recent example is the urbanization of villages by administrative decree (chengshihua) in China's big cities with the effect that control of the local land is taken away from the village committees and transferred to the district governments. This measure is strongly resented by the new urbanites who believe to be unjustly deprived of the right to further develop their respective communities.
60. See Flower and Leonard (note 17).
61. See Elizabeth Perry, 'Rural Violence in Socialist China', The China Quarterly, Vol.103 (1985), pp.414-40.
62. See Susanne Brandtstädter, 'With Elias in China. Civilizing Process, Local Restorations and Power in Contemporary Rural China', Anthropological Theory, Vol.3, No.1 (2003), pp.87-105.
63. Isabelle Thireau, Hua Linshan, 'Du présent au passeé: Accords et désaccords concernant les affaires communes villageoises', in Isabelle Thireau/Wang Hansheng, pp.79-124.
64. See Kevin J. O'Brien, and Lianjiang Li, 'Selective Policy Implementation in Rural China', Comparative Politics, Vol.31, No.2 (1999), p.180.
65. Li Lianjiang, 'Political Trust in Rural China', Modern China, Vol.30, No.2 (2004), pp.228-258.
66. See Perry (note 48).
67. Brandtstädter, 'With Elias in China' (note 49).
68. This is the position of Tong Zhihui and He Xuefeng, who suggest that lineages contribute positively to the social integration of a village, something that village elections may destroy by fostering interest fragmentation. See Tong, Xuanju shijian yu cunzhuang zhengzhi; He Xuefeng, Xiangcun zhili de shehjui jichu (The Social Basis of Village Governance) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexuan, 2003).
69. For a more recent comprehensive account of the state of Chinese village elections see Li Lianjing, Guo Zhenlin and Xiao Tangbiao, Xuanju guancha (Observing Elections) (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin, 2001).