Civil Society and Protest in China
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The brutally repressed 1989 student protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square have been widely seen as one spark that helped ignite the uprisings in Eastern Europe in that same year. When it is asked why the same kind of uprising did not take place in China many scholars have blamed the supposed absence of "civil society" there. Though uses of this term vary considerably, those who subscribe to this explanation of China's problems generally conceive of civil society as "an arena of independent associational activity free from state domination" (Perry, Introduction 297). This is the type of activity -- ranging from the Catholic Church in Poland to dissident intellectual circles in Czechoslovakia -- that others have credited with providing the "institutional stage on which the revolutions of 1989 were played out" (Perry, Introduction 297). This explanation seems fitting despite the fact that the Tiananmen protests were staged by student groups who fit the civil society definition. In fact, in reviewing the literature on associations it becomes clear that there are numerous organizations in China which fit the definition. The problem for China has not, however, been the complete absence of civil society but the fledgling status of the associations, the state's efforts at coopting these organizations, the willingness of the government to resort to extremes of repression, and the inability of various groups to find common cause.The specific European origins of the notion of
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t between the state and society which they see as essential to the concept. The argument on this point echoes Zhou's claim regarding the forced absence of a public sphere. Many types of associations have been identified as emerging in the late 1980s and the 1990s but they possess, Perry claims, a blend of "private, public, and state involvement" that defies the categories recognized by the Western conception of civil society (298). But few of Perry's examples of this supposedly essential difference in Western and Chinese associations are convincing. She claims, for example, that "a simple state-society dichotomy" is not very useful in analyzing Chinese labor activism (Introduction 300). The vast differences in goals between student groups and labor groups as well as significant differences among various kinds of labor associations, Perry argues, are shaped by traditional parochial ties among individuals and must, therefore differ from Western examples (298). But is this difference truly significant? Strand suggests that these ties could have either an inhibiting or a facilitating effect on association. For example, whereas "locality differences often proved divisive for workers", traditional ties of the tonxiang type "help
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Perry Fuller, Eastern Europe, Shu-Yun Ma, Solidarity Zhou, Tiananmen Square, Wasserstrom Xinyong, Soviet Bloc, Western Chinese, Perry Introduction, civil society, Eastern European, public sphere, perry fuller, political sphere, associational activity, public opinion, contemporary china, civil society china, collective action, urban spaces, society china, kraus barry naughton, davis richard kraus, deborah davis richard, barry naughton elizabeth,
Approximate Word count = 4253
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)
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