172003 78 copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 kjeld erik brødsgaard china: a note on state personnel changes and economic achievements kjeld erik brødsgaard the two-week long spring 2003 meeting of the 10th national people's congress (npc) witnessed the completion of the leadership transition that had been initiated at the 16th party congress in november 2002. the new state and government leaders were elected without drama or open factional in-fighting. thus the impression that chinese politics has entered a phase of predictable institutionalization has been strengthened. on march 15, 2003 the 2,985 deputies of the 10th national people's congress cast their votes to elect the new general secretary of the ccp, hu jintao, as president of the prc (beijing xinhua news 2003). he succeeded jiang zemin who graciously stepped down after having served for two terms. member of the politburo standing committee, zeng qinghong, who is widely regarded as jiang zemin's right-hand man, was appointed vice-president. the former mayor and first party secretary of shanghai, wu bangguo, was elected to succed li peng as chairman of the npc and wen jiabao, the number three man in the power hierarchy, took over the position of prime minister from zhu rongji, after zhu's ten-year tenure. these appointments were all expected. on march 17, the npc meeting finalized the line-up of the new state council, nominated by premier wen jiabao, and elected huang ju, wu yi, zeng peiyuan and hui liangyu as vice premiers and zhou yongkan, cao gangchuan, tang jiaxuan, hua jianmin and chen zhili as state councillors. the meeting also approved the composition of the eight special committees of the 10th npc. the full state council, approved by the npc, consists of the following 35 members (foreign broadcast information service 2003): the 10th national people's congress in 79 the 10th national people's congress in china 1elbat cpnht01ehttadetcele,licnuocetatsehtfonoitisopmoc: eman noitisop oabaijnew reimerp ujgnauh reimerpecivevitucexe iyuw reimerpeciv nayiepgnez reimerpeciv uygnailiuh reimerpeciv gnakgnoyuohz ytirucescilbupforetsinimdnarollicnuocetats nauhcgnagoac ecnefedforetsinimdnarollicnuocetats nauxaijgnat rollicnuocetats nimnaijauh yraterceslareneglicnuocetatsdnarollicnuocetats ilihznehc rollicnuocetats gnixoahzil sriaffangierofforetsinim iakam noissimmocmroferdnatnempolevedetats,retsinim ijuohz noitacudeforetsinim auhnaugux ygolonhcetdnaecneicsforetsinim nauhcnuygnahz lanoitanrofyrtsudnidnaygolonhcet,ecneicsrof.mmoc,retsinim ecnefed uhzedil noissimmocsriaffacinhteetats,retsinim euygnoyux ytirucesetatsforetsinim nulihzil noisivrepusforetsinim ujeuxil sriaffalivicforetsinim nesufgnahz ecitsujforetsinim gniqnernij ecnanifforetsinim gnilobgnahz lennosrepforetsinim nilisgnehz ytiruceslaicosdnaruobalforetsinim nahsgnefnait secruoserdnadnalforetsinim oatgnauggnaw noitcurtsnocforetsinim nujihzuil syawliarforetsinim naixnuhcgnahz snoitacinummocforetsinim gnoduxgnaw yrtsudninoitamrofniforetsinim gnehcuhsgnaw secruoserretawforetsinim nauyuful ecremmocforetsinim gnehzaijnus erutlucforetsinim gnaknewgnahz htlaehforetsinim gniqiewgnahz gninnalpylimafdnanoitalupoprof.mmocetats,retsinim nauhcoaixuohz anihcfoknabs'elpoepehtforonrevog auhnijil eciffotidualanoitanehtfolareneg-rotidua .3002hsa;3002ecivresnoitamrofnitsacdaorbngierof:ecruos 80 copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 kjeld erik brødsgaard wen jiabao and all vice premiers are members of the politburo. wen jiabao and executive vice premier huang ju are also members of the standing committee of the politburo and are ranked third and sixth respectively (brødsgaard 2003). other political heavyweights in the new state council include state councillor and minister of public security zhou yongkang, a politburo member and the former party secretary of sichuan province, and state councillor and defence minister cao gangchuan, a member of the politburo and vice-chairman of the central military commission. during the recent sars crisis there was a minor reshuffle of the state council due to zhang wenkang's ousting as minister of public health on april 20. zhang, formerly jiang's personal doctor, was blamed for having concealed the sars outbreak in southern china. instead vice premier wu yi took over the co-ordination of the struggle against sars (brødsgaard 2003). the deputies also elected a new state central military commission. it came as no surprise that jiang zemin was confirmed in his position as chairman of the commission. the membership of this body is always identical with the membership of the ccp central military commission. since jiang zemin kept this position at the 16th party congress, he was also expected to continue as chairman of the state military commission. hu jintao was re-elected vice-chairman together with minister of defence cao gangchuan and guo boxiong, former executive chief of staff of the pla. :2elbat detcelenoissimmocyratilimlartnecetatsehtfonoitisopmoc cpnht01ehtta eman noitisop nimezgnaij cmcehtfonamriahc nauhcgnagoac retsinimecnefed,orubtilopforebmem,cmcfonamriahc-eciv gnoixoboug orubtilopforebmem,cmcfonamriahc-eciv oatnijuh fotnediserp,pccfoyraterceslareneg,cmcfonamriahc-eciv crpeht ianijil tnemtrapedstnemamralarenegforotcerid,cmcforebmem eilgnauggnail ffatslarenegfofeihc,cmcforebmem uohiacux tnemtrapedlacitiloplarenegehtforotcerid,cmcforebmem alpehtfo ecruos .3002hsa;3002ecivresnoitamrofnitsacdaorbngierof: 81 the 10th national people's congress in china some analysts have claimed that by jiang's remaining as chairman of the central military commission, the transition to the new fourth leadership with hu jintao as its core was not fully completed. instead a kind of 'deng xiaoping scenario' had evolved with the old leader (jiang) retaining ultimate power via his control over the armed forces. however, jiang is not deng xiaoping and does not enjoy the same status as deng, who never seemed to need a formal top position in order to wield supreme power. second, jiang is himself not a military man and even though he has appointed most of the serving pla generals, he does not command the same prestige among the military as deng, who served as a military commander in the second field army during the civil war and later became pla chief of staff. third, jiang is not supported by a cohesive group of party elders. in fact, in february 2003 a group of retired party elders wrote a letter to hu jintao and wen jiabao encouraging them to pursue a path different from that of jiang zemin (zheng 2003). fourth, there does not seem to exist a politburo decision, as there was in 1987, giving the retired leader the right to intervene in major decisions. fifth, it cannot be ruled out that hu jintao perhaps prefers a slow and gradual power transition, whereby the old leader still plays an important role, while the new leader consolidates his power. to assume that there is a political cleavage between a hu and a jiang faction is to analyse political change in china within a paradigm of factionalism (brødsgaard 2003). evidence seems to point to an alternative framework for analysis, namely that chinese politics is increasingly characterized by institutionalization and normativization (ibid.; nathan 2003). from such a perspective it makes sense for jiang to stay rather than have him pull strings from behind the curtain. institutional reform the 10th npc continued the institutional reform initiated at the 9th npc in 1998. at the meeting in 1998, zhu rongji and luo gan outlined an ambitious plan which involved reducing the 41 ministerial-level working departments (ministries and commissions) of the state council to 29 and downsizing central-level staff by 50 percent (luo gan 1998). provincial-level agencies were to be cut from 55 to 40 and county-level agencies from 28 to 18. according to zhu rongji, a number of ministries such as the ministry of the coal industry, the ministry of the metallurgic industry, the ministry of machine-building industries, the ministry of power, the ministry of the chemical industry, and the ministry of internal trade were to be reorganized as internal bureaux (ju) within the 82 copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 kjeld erik brødsgaard state economic and trade commission (setc). other ministries such as the ministry of the electrical industry, the ministry of post and communications, and the ministry of radio, film and television would be merged into a new ministry of information. in 1999 a china securities regulatory committee was added so that there were 54 ministeries, commission, offices and directly subordinated organs of the state council (brødsgaard 2002). at the recent 10th npc, the number of ministerial-level working departments of the state council was further reduced by one from 29 to 28 (liu 2003; http://news.xinhuanet.com/2003-08/19). this was effected by merging the former state economic and trade commission with the ministry of foreign trade and economic corporation to create a new ministry of commerce. the state economic and trade commission was created in 1993 and put under vice-premier zhu rongji's control. the setc was to become zhu rongji's power base in his successful bid to take over the post of premier after li peng. it seems only logical that an organ so much associated with zhu rongji could not survive the retirement of its creator. the state development planning commission was renamed the state development and reform commission and put in charge of economic restructuring. this also signifies the end of an era. in the past the state planning commission was a cornerstone in running a centrally planned economy. with the introduction of the market economy, this relic from the stalinist past became obsolete. moreover at the 10th npc, the state family planning commission was renamed the state population and family planning commission. finally two new institutions with the status of institutions directly under the state council (zhishu danwei) were established: the state asset management commission, responsible for the reorganization of the state-owned enterprises, and the china banking regulatory commission. the current restructuring has not resulted in any reduction of the size and numbers of the state council. thus there are still 54 central government organs, including the organs directly subordinated to the state council. but there has been a redefinition of functions, resulting in a reallocation of the bianzhi (central personnel allocations). in 1998 central government leaders also had stressed the need for reducing the administrative staff at all levels by 50 percent in a threestage process of administrative reform, starting with the central government apparatus and ending with local reform (luo gan 1998). this was effected at the centre where, for example, the staff of the state coun83 the 10th national people's congress in china cil was reduced from 32,000 to 16,000 in a process of redefining government functions and reallocating staff. it was the original intention to extend the trimming of administrative personnel to the local level where most of the 10 million strong bureaucracy work. but the plan met with strong resistance and the central government had to reduce cutbacks in staff to 20 percent rather than the planned 50 percent. zhu rongji mentions in his work report that the number of the country's administrative personnel was cut by 1.15 million (zhu rongji 2003). however, given that there were 9.66 million civil servants in 1998, this would only represent a 11.9 percent reduction. once again it has proven difficult to effect substantial cutbacks. the bureaucrats will fight to keep their positions and the further one goes down the administrative hierarchy, the more difficult it is for the central leadership to effect the desired changes. economic gains in his lengthy review of government work, 1998-2002, the outgoing premier zhu rongji outlined a picture of economic and social progress (zhu rongji 2003). he cited a number of quantitative indicators to support his claim of continued economic progress. for the five-year period in question, gdp, measured in constant prices, had risen 7.7 percent on annual basis. foreign trade had increased from us$ 352 billion to us$ 621 billion, thereby raising china's global rating as a trading nation from 10th to 5th place. exports had risen from us$ 183 billion to us$ 326 billion. owing to a continued favourable trade balance, foreign exchange had increased from us$ 140 billion to 286 billion. cumulative utilized foreign direct investment (fdi) amounted to us$ 226 billion for the five-year period. in 2002 alone, china attracted nearly us$ 54 billion in fdi, overtaking the us as the most attractive destination for fdi. zhu mentioned that a number of key infrastructural projects had been completed. they included major water conservancy projects, road building, railway construction and building/expanding 50 airports. telecommunication was dramatically expanded and the number of fixed-line and mobile telephone subscribers rose from 84 million in 1998 to 421 million by the end of 2002. zhu also reported increases for both urban and rural incomes, although he had to admit that the rise of per capita urban disposable income was more than double the increase of per capita rural income, causing a widening of the urban–rural income gap. he also mentioned that the nine-year compulsory education had become virtually univer84 copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 kjeld erik brødsgaard sal and that average life expectancy had reached 71.8 years––only 4 years lower than that of denmark. it should be noted that china's continued economic progress, as reported by zhu rongji, had taken place during a period characterized by the onset of the asian financial crisis and stagnating world economic growth––what zhu in his speech called 'the grim international environment'. in the latter half of 1998, china's exports actually registered a negative growth rate as a result of the asian financial crisis. still china did not devaluate its currency as many other asian countries had done. although the gains were significant, zhu rongji admitted that there were still a number of economic and social difficulties and problems. they included: • insufficient domestic demand; • failure of the supply structure to respond to changes in market demand; • slow rise in the income of farmers and some urban residents; • rise in unemployment and serious difficulties in some people's livelihood; • incomplete soe reform; • poor state of the market order; • unacceptably high incidence of serious industrial accidents; • poor public security in some places; • degradation of the ecological environment; • persistence of formalism, bureaucracy, falsification, extravagance and waste among some officials. in spite of these difficulties, china had performed exceptionally well by most quantifiable international standards. this is also the picture emerging from the 'statistical communiqué on national economic and social development 2002' which was pub:3elbat )$sunoillibni(2002-8991,htworgidfdnaedart,pdg 8991 2002 esaercni% pdg 189 282,1 13 edart 253 126 67 tropxe 381 623 87 idf 54 45 02 sevreseregnahcxengierof 041 682 401 :ecruos .2002ujijgnotaijougougehgnognimnerauhgnohz;3002ijgnoruhz 85 the 10th national people's congress in china lished a few days before the opening of the 10th npc meeting. the communiqué showed a rise in gdp in 2002 of 8 percent, compared to 7.3 percent in 2001, to reach a total of 10.298 trillion yuan (us$ 1.282 trillion). all sectors of the economy showed progress although industrial growth (9.9 percent) again outstripped that of both agriculture (2.9 percent) and services (7.3). especially output of export-oriented and high-tech products increased rapidly. thus in 2002 china produced 15 million pcs, 52 million colour tv sets, 31 million air conditioners and 120 million units of mobile telephones, to mention a few of the major industrial commodities. summing up economic indicators point to a buoyant economic performance in the 19982002 period. available statistics also indicate that china was affected by the asian financial crisis, but did not suffer as badly as other asian countries such as thailand, korea, and indonesia. by 2000 the chinese economy was back on track with high growth rates and growing interaction with the outside world in terms of foreign trade and fdi inflows. in the political sphere, the country has recently completed what one observer has termed 'the most orderly, peaceful, deliberate, and rulebound succession in the history of modern china outside of the recent institutionalization of electoral democracy in taiwan' (nathan 2003a). the sars crisis in china in april–june put the new leadership to the test. hu jintao and wen jiabao showed they were capable of acting swiftly and decisively when they fired the mayor of beijing and the minister of health for their part in attempting to conceal the outbreak of the disease. paradoxically the sars crisis seems to have strengthened the legitimacy of the new leadership in the eyes of the chinese population. certainly one does not get the impression that china is entangled in a crisis of government as claimed by some observers (pei 2002). on the contrary, the party-state seems to have been able to revitalize its organizational machine with new and better trained and educated leaders at all levels of the political-administrative apparatus. currently the party under the slogan of 'three representations' is engaged in a massive project of coopting the booming private sector. clearly the chinese party-state constitutes an amazingly resilient authoritarian system (nathan 2003b) which does not yet seem to have outplayed its historical role. kjeld erik brødsgaard is director of the asia research centre and professor of international business in asia/china at the copenhagen business school. 86 copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 kjeld erik brødsgaard references ash, robert f. (ed.) 2003. 'quarterly chronicle and documentation.' the china quarterly 174: 556-606. beijing xinhua news 2003 (march 15). brødsgaard, kjeld erik 2002. 'institutional reform and the bianzhi system in china.' the china quarterly 170 (june): 361-86. — 2003. 'the 16th party congress in china: a note on personnel changes.' the copenhagen journal of asian studies 16: 138-49. foreign broadcast information service 2003. fbis-chi-2003-0317 (march 17). liu, jen-kai 2003. 'the main national leadership of the prc.' china aktuell (march): 341-60. luo gan 1998. 'guanyu guowuyuan jigou gaige fang'an de shuoming' [explanation of the draft for institutional reform of the state council]. in guowuyuan bangongting mishuju and zhongyang jigou bianzhi weiyuanhui bangongshi zongheju (eds), zhongyang zhengfu zuzhi jigou [central government institutions and organs]. beijing: gaige chubanshe, 1998: 8-17. nathan, andrew 2003a. 'china's ambiguous leadership transition.' paper presented at the seminar on 'the new chinese leadership', instituto do oriente, lisbon (july 8). — 2003b. 'china's changing of the guard: authoritarian resilience.' journal of democracy 14 (1): 6-17. national bureau of statistics. 'statistical communiqué on national economic and social development 2002'. www.stats.gov.cn. pei, minxian 2002. 'china's governance crisis.' china review (autumn–winter): 7-10. 'übersichten' [overview] 2003. china aktuell (april) 423-39. zhonghua renmin gongheguo guojia tongji ju [national bureau of statistics of china] 2002. zhongguo tongji nianjian 2002. beijing: zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2002. zheng, yongnian 2003. 'interest representation and the transformation of the chinese communist party.' the copenhagen journal of asian studies 16: 57-85. zhu rongji 2003. 'government work report, delivered at the first session of the national people's congress on march 5, 2003.' http://china.org.cn. 172003 110 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran competing capitalisms: japan, business schools and global ideology michael e. porter, hirotaka takeuchi and mariko sakakibara, can japan compete? basingstoke: macmillan, 2000. 190 pp. hard cover isbn 0-33-378658-0. ronald dore, stock market capitalism: welfare capitalism—japan and germany versus the anglo-saxons. oxford: oxford university press, 2000. 252 pp. hard cover isbn 0-19-924062-0; paperback isbn 0-19924061-2. two books of reflection by two giants in their respective fields about the japanese economy. two books that differ in their problematization of just what is, or is not, 'wrong' with the japanese economic system and why. two books with very different agendas and thus with very different answers to the problems they define. two kinds of scholar, and thus two kinds of scholarship: one blunt, confident and typical of a business school; the other, more nuanced, extremely knowledgeable and characteristic, perhaps, of a university environment. two different methodological, theoretical and disciplinary approaches—one (porter) promulgating an american-oriented global strategic management studies, supported by statistical data; the other (dore) using the vantage point of economic sociology, years of ethnographic fieldwork, and in-depth readings of japanese materials to sift painstakingly through the whys and wherefores of a local—and now threatened—capitalist style. together these books epitomize the classic problem facing those who dare to study a culture and economy very different from their own. to what extent should they conduct their analyses and present their findings within a disciplinary framework that emphasizes commonalities? and how much should they recognize the influence of local cultural factors and incorporate them in their assessments of, in this case, the japanese economy? this is the issue that in the past has clearly divided academic disciplines from area studies within the university system, and today still differentiates anglo-american focused business school research from the broader cultural investigations of university academics. there are exceptions among the former, but they are few and far between. which is why, presumably, porter calls on two japanese coauthors to present his case. 111 competing capitalisms let us start with the volume with the airport bookstore title, can japan compete? the aims of porter and his two japanese co-authors are typical of the kind of 'proactive approach' to scholarship found in business schools all over the world. they claim to provide both 'a theory that can explain and interpret japan's post-war economic trajectory', and 'an outline of what steps will be necessary to restore japan's economic vitality, at a time when a new direction for the nation is far from clear' (p. x). such modest aims, like those expressed in a lot of business school studies, clearly target an audience of corporate managers and government administrators, and it is for them that this book's––often repetitive––arguments and illustrative details are clearly framed. the question that immediately arises is: does this 'shareholder' approach bode well for disinterested scholarship? porter's argument is as follows: the japanese economy has not been, and still is not, a unified entity. indeed, besides all the success stories of competitive industries that astounded the rest of the world in the 1980s, there have been other industries that were, and still are, highly uncompetitive, about which nobody says anything. there are, in short, 'two japans, one composed of highly productive export industries, the other containing the "domestic' sectors"' (p. 147). this repeats an old japan studies classification of 'front' (omote) and 'back' (ura) stages to social organization, but is posed as a structural problem, located at the microrather than macro-economic level of industry-by-industry competition. furthermore, continue porter and his co-authors, japan's apparently superior and much-vaunted 'bureaucratic capitalism' is not the cause of japan's success. rather, japanese government actually mistrusts competition and so intervenes in the economy in ways that harm productivity and prosperity. in a veiled attack on a japanese tendency to value co-operation, harmony and consensus over competition and conflict, they argue that: 'what really ails japan has to do with the nation's deeply ingrained attitude towards competition' (p. 138). signs of the japanese economy's impending fall were (in retrospect) obvious: only a small number of industries were competitive in world markets; corporate profit rates were chronically low; and a large number of uncompetitive industries (agriculture, chemicals, consumer-packaged goods, medical products and software, for example) acted as a serious drag on overall productivity. having laid out their thesis, which differs little, if at all, from numerous studies and arguments put forward within japan over the last decade, the authors proceed to challenge the two main models put for112 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran ward by scholars to 'explain' japan's post-war economic successes (until, that is, the bursting of the financial/real estate bubble in 1990). the first of these is what they refer to as the 'japanese government model', first codified by chalmers johnson (1982) who, in his study of miti, japan's ministry of international trade and industry, suggested that the japanese government nurtured industrial development by strategic investment in certain industries. the elements making up this model include an activist central government with a stable bureaucracy; targeting priority industries to enhance economic growth; aggressive promotion of exports; extensive 'guidance', approval requirements and regulations; selective protection of the home market; restriction on foreign direct investment; lax antitrust enforcement; government-led industry restructuring; official sanctioning of cartels; highly regulated financial markets and limited corporate governance; government-sponsored cooperative r&d projects; and sound macro-economic policies. the authors' own research suggests two things: firstly, that all this was only partially correct and that the japanese government's role was rather different from that usually espoused in the model. in some successful competitive industries (like fax machines and robotics), for example, government often stimulated early demand for new products. by setting stringent standards in others (air conditioners are cited), it triggered innovations. it also ensured a supply of engineering (but not chemistry) graduates from universities through its universal and rigorous education system, and created policies to encourage patient capital. in unsuccessful industries, however, a number of problems emerged. these included: a shortage of trained talent, and a failure by the employment system to develop specialists (as opposed to multi-skilled workers); an inefficient and high-cost wholesaling system that prevented competitiveness; a failure in basic and applied research and innovation; and a misalignment between the needs of japanese consumers, on the one hand, and of world consumers, on the other. in short, the japanese government model failed to discriminate between competitive and uncompetitive industries, and therefore cannot be said to have driven japanese competitiveness as a whole. the second conclusion from the research conducted by porter and his colleagues is one frequently repeated by both americans and, nowadays, a considerable number of japanese confused at the continuing economic recession in their country: namely, that the japanese government's 'convoy system' (managing and protecting the interests of a limited number of companies) is obsolete, and that systemic change is 113 competing capitalisms needed, involving a whole new array of mutually enforcing policies that include trust in the idea of competition and open trade; the building of a world-class university system; the modernization of archaic and inefficient domestic sectors; the creation of a 'true' system of corporate accountability; encouragement for innovation and entrepreneurship; and decentralization, regional specialization and cluster development. having disposed of one leg of the theorizing that once set the 'japanese way' of capitalism apart from other ways, while invoking grudging admiration from beleaguered american and british businessmen and politicians, porter and his co-authors set out to 'rethink' the second explanatory model that has focused on japanese management methods. here, 'japanese corporate success is built on the notion that a company can achieve both the highest quality and lowest cost simultaneously by employing fundamentally better managerial practices than its rivals do' (p. 69). its elements include high quality and low cost; a wide array of models and features; lean production; employees as assets; permanent employment; leadership by consensus; strong intercorporate networks; long-term goals; internal diversification into high-growth industries; and a close working relationship with government (p. 70). they agree that the japanese corporate model's stress on teamwork, a long-term horizon, and dedication to continuous quality improvement is justified, but also argue that it has encouraged conformity and a dangerously incomplete idea of competition. they note the internal consistency of this model, which is reinforced by the japanese government model. when pointing to what they call 'warning signals', however, the authors proceed to repeat the criticisms they have already made of the japanese government model (thereby adding their own 'reinforcement' and 'internal consistency'): low returns on investment and low profits; competitive success limited to small number of industries; declines in hitherto successful industries since the 1980s; and precious few new success stories (p. 77). what, then, is required for japanese companies to transform themselves into competitive, profit-oriented, strategically smart organizations? the 'new corporate agenda' laid out by porter includes such elements as creating distinctive, long-term strategies which take account of industry structures; expanding companies' focus of operational effectiveness and shifting their goal from growth and market share to profitability; reversing unrelated diversification; updating the japanese organizational model by improving governance, relaxing hierarchy, and providing new forms of incentives (like stock options and various in114 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran centive pay systems). in short, 'what is necessary is no less than a redefinition of corporate goals in japan and a whole new conception of how competitive advantage is created and maintained' (p. 180). this argument is intriguing for the way that it proposes a new business school and management paradigm. in the heady years of the 1980s, when the japanese economy seemed so overwhelmingly vibrant and all-conquering, there was much discussion of the decline in the economic performance of the united states, which was attributed to 'the failure of us companies to attend to, and manage, the cultural aspects of organization, a failure which was seen to be in direct contrast to japanese companies' (salaman 1997: 246). such reflections gave rise to the corporate culture movement, which for over a decade flourished in business schools and management circles as the answer to all corporate problems. now, porter is spearheading a new business school-cummanagement buzz phrase: 'competitive strategy'. ironically, however, it is once again the non-western economic system of japan that is the instigator of this american-led propagation of a global ideology. so, can japan compete? yes, say porter and his co-authors, provided that people realize that their 'deeply ingrained social and cultural norms' are 'inconsistent with the innovation, entrepreneurship, and risk taking that are the hallmarks of today's competition' (p. 181). are we witnessing here another example of american cultural imperialism, perhaps? porter's insistence on (an undefined notion of) 'competitiveness' and 'strategy' would suggest so, especially when he claims that few japanese corporations have any strategy whatsoever (p. 91). indeed, he hoists himself by his own petard when he argues that 'the choice of what not to do is central to strategy' (p. 90), since one strategy adopted by japanese companies has been not to go for the kind of immediate profits that porter believes they should. 'fortunately', however, things are moving in the right direction. or so we are told. foreign investors are becoming more significant equity shareholders in japanese companies; foreign companies are entering japan in growing numbers, often through acquisitions of japanese companies; the keiretsu system of alliance capitalism (gerlach 1992) is on the decline; government organizational reforms are under way; a new 'generation' of ceos is assuming leadership; young entrepreneurial companies are getting larger and more important; and—yes—japanese culture will change. final victory, then, to the pax americana. 115 competing capitalisms in the current political climate, one might be excused for thinking that this kind of argument sounds like an academic equivalent of the recent anglo-american military invasion of iraq, especially when porter repeats his points time and time again with the monotony of the us aerial bombardment of baghdad. he has the same kind of audacity as the 'little bush', it seems, when he begins to tell 'japanese citizens' what they 'must begin to understand' and 'must learn' (p. 140). one thing is that, as consumers, they are far too fussy and spoiled, since they are provided with 'services never found in other countries' (p. 149). these apparently reflect a 'misalignment between japanese home customer needs and the needs of the global market' (p. 34) which may be interpreted as shorthand for saying that, since american businesses cannot hope to meet such consumer demands, japanese consumers have to forget about local cultural traditions and accept that globalization is here to stay. it is true that porter does not openly expect japan to become 'a clone of american capitalism' (p. 188), but it is striking that, in his assessment of the state of japan's economic system, porter uses a vocabulary that clearly continues a patronizing colonialist—and orientalist (cf. said 1978)—tradition. he thus distinguishes between (american) 'good' (accountability, aggressive, competitive, creative, distinctive, dynamic, efficient, entrepreneurial, freedom, individual[ized], independent, innovative, maverick, openness, originality, productivity, progress, revolutionary, sophisticated, specialization, striking, transparent, unique, vibrant) and (japanese) 'bad' (anachronistic, collaboration, compromise, consensus, constraint, control, cumbersome, emulation, entrenched, (rigid) hierarchy, homogeneity, identical, idiosyncratic, imitative, impediments, inefficient, ingrained, obsolete, outmoded, over-regulated, protective, second rate, standardization, (unhealthy) tradition, uncompetitive, uniform, unproductive). indeed, although he would never express it so crassly, porter almost presents japan as part of an economic 'axis of evil' (comprising all those other nations in east and southeast asia whose leaders propound an asian, or at least non-american, 'way') that must be overcome if american capitalism is to reign supreme. is there nothing, then, that the japanese can do, other than huddle in the frail shell of their corporate communities and wait docilely for the victory of the kind of anglo-american capitalism that guru porter and his converted japanese apostles propound? in the end, probably not. but, in the meantime, other academics sympathetic to the japanese cause can put up a token fight, even though they sense that it will be to little avail. so we have ronald dore to thank for revealing, and filling in, all 116 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran the chinks in porter's seemingly superior theoretical armour, and for providing us with a little understated irony to help cope with porter's otherwise overwhelming missionary and––in the context of a harvard business school professor continuing to try to make his distinctive mark among top managers, bureaucrats and politicians––strategic zeal. dore's central theme is whether there will continue to be a stable 'alternative form of capitalism' (p. x) to the kind of stock market capitalism propounded as a global reality by english and american politicians and businessmen, as well as by scholars eager to please them. and the way he frames his arguments reveals a very different scholarly orientation: one that is culturally sensitive, exceedingly well-versed in the twists and turns taken by the japanese economy over the past 50 years, and, above all, humane. although porter and his co-authors claim to be analysing 'japan' at the 'micro-economic level', it is dore who is able to go beyond their limited understanding of what such a microeconomics consists of (innovation and strategy, apparently) and to talk about 'living people' and different kinds of 'japanese' (p. viii). thus, where porter manages three and a half lines on the role of women in the workforce (p. 160), dore provides more than three and a half pages (pp. 59-63); where porter provides a dismissive 12-line paragraph on the protection of the uncompetitive construction 'industry' (p. 148), dore devotes three pages to the different players (contractors, public officials, politicians, ombudsman's associations, media, sokaiya thugs, american trade negotiators) involved in this aspect of public contracting (pp. 143-46). right from the start of stock market capitalism: welfare capitalism, readers find themselves looking at the 'japanese economic system' in the same academic mirror, but seeing a sharper picture reflected there, with all its background details in full focus. as dore puts it in his preface: if you want to know why people work hard, work conscientiously, work creatively, work entrepreneurially, money is only a small part of the answer. you need also to look at social structure, the perceived fairness of organizational arrangements, friendships, collegiality, obligations arising from personal relations, as well as the intrinsic satisfactions of the work itself [pp. vii-viii]. none of these are mentioned in can japan compete?, where the bottom-line is money (in the form of profits from competitiveness). and it is precisely at the 'post-industrial' form of modern capitalism found in the united states and britain—specifically, at its embrace of 'marketization plus financialization'––that dore takes careful aim. at the same time, he is good enough to admit his prejudices, while taking 117 competing capitalisms considerable care to present all sides of every argument regarding the pros and cons of japan's economic system. this is in stark contrast to porter's attitude that 'economic culture can and will change as the context changes' (p. 187) and that japanese must realize that globalization is changing their lives irrevocably, whether they like it or not. dore quickly helps us realize that the key policies of the neoliberal radicalism of thatcher and reagan happen to be the key policies propounded by porter and his co-authors in their recommendations for change in japan: lower taxes and smaller government; improved national competitiveness through encouragement of a spirit of enterprise; and a belief in superior efficiency and justice of allocation through competitive markets, rather than through politics and administration (pp. 4-5). both groups––politicians and business school professionals––advocate an economy centred on the stock market as the measure of corporate success and on the stock market index as the measure of national well-being, as opposed to an economy which has other, better, more pluralistic criteria of human welfare for measuring progress towards the good society (p. 10). it is in dore's book that the view of the workings of the japanese economy put forward by porter and his co-authors can be seen to be one-sided, simplistic, and––occasionally (as with their overemphasis on internal trading requirements within keiretsu industrial groups [p. 165])––factually wrong. first, there is the downside of those arguments they have presented in such a shining light. for instance, american companies as a whole spent us$220 billion in 1998 buying back shares so that employees could 'exercise their options' (p. 12). then, 'corporate strategy' (a field dominated by porter himself in business school consultancy and theorizing) is becoming more and more equated with the buying and selling of (bits of) companies, so that senior management is dominated by financial, rather than by engineering, expertise (p. 13). finally, upsizing in corporate profits is usually accompanied by downsizing in individual workers' employment and wages (p. 18). porter mentions nothing of this in his recipes for japanese competitiveness. second, there are those aspects of the japanese economy that are criticized without regard for what is going on in the american economy. here dore's comparative approach is much more illuminating and balanced in its arguments. for example, while accepting that gasoline price controls and consequent high petrol pump prices up to the early 1980s criticized by porter and his co-authors were, indeed, anti-competitive, dore adds that american oil companies did so well out of this particu118 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran lar piece of legislation that it never featured in bilateral trade talks between japan and the united states. in discussing the so-called dango in the japanese construction industry––which porter describes as 'bid-rigging' (p. 148) and sees as symptomatic of japanese inefficiency, protectionism and corruption––dore points out that dango (which he translates more accurately as 'coming to a conclusion through discussion' [p. 144]) is––or was––effectively a system of negotiated contracts of the kind that is found in defence contracting in the united states and other modern industrial societies. finally, to keep the list short, porter and his co-authors argue that research in japan should be according to what dore nicely refers to as 'the graduate school whiz-kid/entrepreneurial individualism/venture capital/eventual ipo recipe', rather than according to its present 'corporate research/corporate finance/corporate commercialization recipe' (p. 236). in response, dore points out that: 'a careful count would almost certainly show that in the united states, too, it is in fact the latter, corporate recipe which produces the overwhelming bulk of innovative activity' (ibid.). it is observations such as these that make porter's analysis seem suspect. is he really concerned to help the japanese? or is his aim to help american businessmen successfully force their japanese counterparts to adapt to their way of trading? and why does he not mention the fact that one of the problems with the commercialization of academic research is the fact that corporations tend to muffle results that show them in a poor light (klein 2001)? given the rich complexity of dore's analysis of the japanese economic system, it will probably come as no surprise to hear that stock market capitalism: welfare capitalism is not nearly such an easy work to summarize as can japan compete? not that complexity of argument means obtuseness in style. dore's prose is succinct, jargon-free and pleasantly laconic––so different from the endless two-line sentences strung together by porter and his colleagues. one can only hope and pray that the businessmen who should be reading dore's book have the time, inclination and intelligence to move beyond such powerpoint sentences as: 'the japanese economy is not a special case after all' (porter et al.: 118); 'japan must make universities the center of its innovation strategy'; and 'japan must base its innovation strategy on competition rather than on collaboration (ibid.: 153). dore's concern is, first, to outline the important differentiating characteristics of the japanese economic system as they existed around 1990 when the so-called 'bubble' burst and when japanese themselves were more or less happy with the way things were. these centred on four 119 competing capitalisms factors: the structure of the corporation, relational trading, inter-competitor co-operation, and a strong role for government. together they constituted a society of long-term commitments, in which the firm was viewed as a community of stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers and subcontractors, creditors, and so on) rather than as the property of shareholders. the shaping of the modern japanese corporation (which, legally, is not so different from a british or american corporation) was facilitated by four events historically: the second world war, the post-war labour movement and its militancy, the development of stable cross-shareholdings, and a reliance on debt finance. relational banking and relational employment were accompanied by relational trading, or the pattern of inter-firm trading which generated mutual obligations between companies and their suppliers. the japanese generally, for one reason or another, have generally been more inclined towards co-operative, rather than competitive, adversarial patterns of relations. here dore, in passing, shows how culture-bound is the idea of 'competitiveness' propounded by porter. for example, market share––criticized by porter––is, in japanese eyes, the most direct measure of a company's competitiveness (dore, p. 26). second, it is not just a matter of the price and quality of its products that determine a company's competitiveness. rather, competition in relational trading is measured by 'the purchaser's subjective assessment of willing effort to improve price and quality' (p. 37). it is the fact that excessive competition, although virtually impossible to define precisely, tends to offend the norms of decent behaviour in japan (p. 41) that led to 'administrative guidance' by the country's bureaucrats. dore's own term for the ways by which the various government ministries managed excessive competition through different kinds of cartels is 'umpire state' (rather than johnson's 'developmental state' vis-à-vis america's 'regulatory state'). all in all, dore argues that two different mechanisms worked to create 'the system-ness' of japan's economic system. one of these was institutional interlock between such interrelated practices as lifetime employment, long-term, obligated customer-market supplier relations, and longterm committed equity capital, which enabled trust to prevail over contracts, long-term over short-term views, and so on. the other was motivational congruence and the consistency of explanations for certain kinds of behaviour in a wide range of economic and social situations. having outlined the way things were, dore proceeds, in the second part of his book, to look at a broad range of factors affecting japanese dispositions to behave in certain ways, and thus affecting the institu120 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran tions that mould those dispositions. as he puts it about the forces now changing the 'system': the factors range from unwilled social evolutionary changes in class structure, or in the distribution of material and social capital, to changing interest-group objectives based on changing perceptions of self-interest, ideological influences, technological change, and globalization. they cover the whole gamut of modes of coercion, modes of persuasion, and modes of production [p. 48]. in examining these changes, dore shows how the american model has begun to take root, regardless of 'the defects of american society', 'the excesses of american boardroom salaries', and americans' 'self-righteous arrogance in trade talks' and 'hectoring advice on economic policy' (p. 55). he then juxtaposes this model with different aspects of japanese society––long-term value changes, gender and the family, and class and equality. he shows how advocates for change have called for adaptations to be made to lifetime employment and insiderism in the face of global financial markets, the need for capital and increases in shareholder leverage (all the stock options, share buy-backs, auditing reforms and so on called for by porter). he then traces actual changes in corporate governance (everything from employment relations, enterprise unions, and cross-shareholdings, on the one hand, to restructuring, dividends and payout ratios, and pensions and shareholder pressure, on the other) which suggest a move from favouring employees to favouring shareholders, before assessing whether the employee-favouring firm stands a chance in the future (the answer: probably not much). when it comes to relational trading between firms, relational banking, and the solidarity within mutually trading keiretsu, advocates for reform as a matter of principle are not so vociferous. actual change is certainly taking place, but not as much or as dramatically as reported in the western financial press. in particular, subcontracting patterns are not changing substantially, while cross-shareholding arrangements have for the most part held up. rather more signs of change are to be found, however, in the competition/co-operation balance among market competitors in japan, where deregulation has played a considerable part in loosening the limits on competition. 'the sense that each industry constitutes a community whose member firms have some kind of minimal duty to help each other' (p. 146) has certainly weakened during the course of the 1990s, although dore provides two or three impressive examples of continued industry solidarity. all in all, the balance between co-operation and competitiveness is likely to depend in the future on the role of the bu121 competing capitalisms reaucracy in japan's economy. here the really imponderable factor is the quality and prestige of the civil service itself. once seen to be an independent and disinterested force working for the people, japanese bureaucrats found themselves the focus of media attention several times during the 1990s as one or other of their number was discovered to have been making personal profit from government-directed transactions. part of the problem has been the political system which has never really been anything other than corrupt, so that until politicians get their act together and learn to rule as well as reign, the civil service will always find itself in a difficult position. after turning aside to take a look at the german economic system, which he sees as broadly comparable to that of japan, dore sums up by asking whether 'nice guys finish last?' it would seem so. reformers, both inside and outside japan, seem to be having their way and, in the process, contributing to the tendency to 'increase inequality, increase the ruthlessness of competition, destroy the patterns of cooperation on which social cohesion rests, and thus promise to degrade the quality of life' (p. 220). for the fair-minded dore, this is little short of tragedy. true, changes may be slow, but they are seemingly sure, and so are likely in the end to herald the triumph of bottom-line-ism in japan as elsewhere—unless, that is: the coming bursting of the wall street bubble is more cataclysmic than a 'correction' and real depression in the dominant economy gives enough backing to 'global capitalism in crisis' talks, [that] things could change … but, if the hiccups in the system are not greater than, say, those produced by the 1987 black monday stock market fall, in the long run vice will prevail over virtue [p. 221]. in spite of his overall pessimism, dore reckons that japan is more likely to survive the stock market capitalist onslaught than germany – first, because the japanese have a stronger sense of their country's cultural and racial distinctness; second, because their 'corporatism' is more holistic and serves 'national' rather than 'class' interests; and third, because of their neighbours korea and china, each of which is currently wrestling with american 'corruption' of its (confucian) soul. moreover, present trends suggest that in 20 years' time, china and the other east asian economies will anyway have eclipsed american might. in which case, the ball game will be totally new. all of which leads to the hope that maybe—just maybe—current american activities in the middle east will end up in 'imperial overstretch' and serious global economic recession before a new, and hopefully more pleasant, age of capitalism flour122 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran ishes. that saddam hussein should end up indirectly as saviour of a fairer, community-centred capitalist system, however, would be an irony of ironies that only history could imagine. it will be clear from this review that, when it comes to comparing the work of two scholars highly respected in their different fields, i remain unconvinced by the business school approach taken by porter. of course, he makes a number of good and relevant points, but, so far as i can judge, they have been made before and therefore do not contribute anything new to the discussion of what 'should' be done to jump-start the japanese economy. for his part, dore, too, summarizes a lot of former arguments, but with a cultural depth and vision that not even porter's japanese co-authors can begin to match. at the same time, he frames his overall assessment of the japanese economy within a much broader critical discussion of the place of capitalism in our modern 'post-industrial' societies, and provides us with philosophical reflections that porter clearly cannot begin to entertain. if only the nobel committee were to name dore as the next recipient of its economics prize (as vain a hope as the ultimate victory of japanese-style welfare capitalism)! his integrity is too scarce a resource to be ignored in an age when academic scholarship is fast turning into little more than marketing strategy and competitive self-promotion. brian moeran professor in culture and communication copenhagen business school references gerlach, michael 1992. alliance capitalism: the social organization of japanese business. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. johnson, chalmers 1982. miti and the japanese miracle. stanford: stanford university press. klein, naomi 2001. no logo. london: flamingo. said, edward 1978. orientalism. new york: vintage. salaman, graeme 1997. 'culturing production'. in paul du gay (ed.) production of culture/ cultures of production. london: sage and open university press: 235-84. 123 reviews daniel arghiros, democracy, development and decentralization in provincial thailand. richmond, surrey: curzon press, nordic institute of asian studies, democracy in asia series, no. 8, 2001. 308 pp. paperback isbn 0-7007-1523-1. in recent years the literature on political change and democratization in thailand has expanded, probably in response to the diminishing role of the state bureaucracy and to pressures for liberalization. the literature has focused on understanding the changing role of the national politics, vote buying, money politics, corruption, cronyism and nepotism, reforms of the bureaucracy, and new modes of interaction between the state apparatus and political parties. another strand has explored the links between ngos and the bureaucracy, but rarely beyond the national, urban and provincial levels. this book by arghiros adds an important dimension to the literature by switching the perspective to electoral and factional politics at the rural and local level and its integrated relationship at the provincial and national levels. by adopting a bottom-up approach to elections, the book attemps to trace the rise of new classes and changing power relations in society. this perspective is extended to focus on decentralization and devolution of administrative and fiscal powers to elected bodies at both central (parliament), provincial (provincial administrative organization pao), and the local levels (subdistrict administrative organization sao). democratic decentralization has apparently received support from both the left and right, but the legacy of bureaucratic authoritarianism leads to obstruction from conservative forces and a paradoxical tendency whereby the extension of local government powers strengthens rather than limits the state's influence over local affairs. the explanatory model of the book refers to only two variables: vote-buying and political clientelism but sees decentralization as a political device and not merely a technical exercise. the book is divided into nine chapters including the introduction and conclusion. chapter 2 gives a comprehensive historical account of the transition from a bureaucratic polity to a bourgeois polity as one where provincial and big business elites dominate. chapter 3 moves to the central plains district, klang, with specific emphasis on one constituent subdistrict called ban thung. this subdistrict consists of five administrative villages and about 450 households and 3,000 residents. both chapters deal with local elections of businessmen politicians who either become local leaders (often described as godfathers [jao pho]) or are bankrolled by them. 124 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 reviews the next four chapters focus on case-study material based on the author's fieldwork on local factional politics. chapter 4 discusses competition for the position of subdistrict head and notes that the winners in thailand's new local electoral politics are those prepared to use money (estimates claim that about half of the votes cast throughout thailand were bought, while 70-90 percent of votes cast in the northeast involved an exchange of money). chapter 5 examines the impact of democratic decentralization on provincial council elections. chapter 6 analyses villagers' participation in three general elections over a five-year period (1990-95) which includes a military coup. chapter 7 turns to provincial council elections and the general election of 1996. chapter 8 explores the level of generalization and validity of the casestudies examined in the previous chapters. it re-examines the relationship between the impact of recent decentralization reforms aimed at empowering subdistrict local government bodies and the use of money as a means of gaining influence. the conclusion is that the bureaucratic polity is very much alive in the countryside, thus democratization in general and especially democratic decentralization has not translated into greater freedom for the majority of the rural population. this is a reflection of the state's emphasis on local leaders as a medium for bringing development to their communities, which explains why candidatures are so attractive for legal and illegal business. the term 'representative clientelism' defines the electoral politics of contemporary thailand and denotes a specific type of vertical network held together by the distribution of money and development grants. its core is the mechanism of manipulative giving, which defines electoral contests at all levels. but the terrains over which the electoral contests are fought are entirely fashioned by the state. elections often yield representatives who are only a little more accountable than are non-elected civil servants. patronage and mutually beneficial relations between bureaucrats and the commercial elite mean that power remains concentrated within this sphere. the result is that the benefits of democratic decentralization at the community and provincial levels tend to be captured by local capitalists. candidates who make use of tightly run networks of canvassers, vote-buying and political patronage are also the ones who most probably win the elections. the book's emphasis on case-studies begs the question whether the author sometimes stretches his arguments too far. for instance, there is a lack of emphasis on the role of ideology and institutions in the promotion of certain types of non-participatory democratization, and es125 reviews pecially on the significance of conservative ideology which tries to preserve status quo. in addition, arghiros's dismissal of radical development thinking is problematic as it fails to take account of the existence of between 1020,000 ngos, many of which are concerned with various types of alternative development. this contrasts with the evidence of the author's own informants who, for example, note that 'without a doubt, it is the poor who make money for the rich', and 'the rich ride on the necks of the poor' (p. 56). the question as to why workers and landless farmers do not have any interest-based political representation is not presented here. in conclusion, the book represents a significant contribution to the literature on thai local elites. its main strength lies in its exploration of certain key themes in relation to local politics: poor and marginalized rural people's participation (or lack of it); the role of religious leaders and monks who act as canvassers; and the influence of other individuals and groups. as such, it makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of bottom-up politics by its uncompromising exploration of elections at the village and subdistrict level. one major conclusion is that, seen from the rural voters' perspective, 'national elections are of little significance; local elections are what matters'. nonetheless, it seems that democracy is more evident in discourse than practice as it represents a continuation of hierarchical and authoritarian traditions of administrative rule: the poor as a social category are routinely subjected to intimidation and even their voting behaviour can be detected, despite 'secret' balloting. the reluctance of the state to devolve substantive powers to the local level is a major constraint to increasing popular participation in local government. money will continue to define electoral politics and political parties will continue to be weak and in a state of flux. johannes dragsbaek schmidt associate professor research center on development and international relations aalborg university, denmark 126 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 reviews michael jacobsen and ole bruun (eds), human rights and asian values– –contesting national identities and cultural representations in asia. richmond, surrey: curzon, nordic institute of asian studies series, 2000. 330 pp. hard cover isbn 0-7007-1212-7; paperback isbn 0-70071213-5. the 14 topical chapters in this book derive from papers presented at a workshop held in copenhagen in may 1997. the book deals with topics of quite general relevance to the discourse on human rights and asian values and is therefore of interest even though the chapters build on papers delivered in 1997. the book opens with an introductory chapter by the editors on the asian values discourse in general. the editors note that their aim is to broaden the perspective of human rights and asian values to be understood as a global concern, guarding human rights against political and cultural myth-making. the authors of the 14 different chapters represent a range of disciplines, including asian studies, political science, sociology, history, law and anthropology. their geographic locations also reflect an interesting variation, coming as they do from several countries in asia (the philippines, taiwan, hong kong and vietnam), in addition to the more westernized backgrounds of australia, denmark, england, iceland, ireland, norway and usa. in his contribution, edward friedman discusses the asian values discourse from the angle that human rights are not western alone, and concludes that what is at question is not a matter of different values east or west, but an issue of the policies of ruling groups at particular moments of history. michael freeman then discusses concepts of asian values and human rights in the context of culture, taking his point of departure in a recognition of the complexity and mutability in this area. he emphasizes a need for dialogue in the interpretation of human rights principles, and the protection of human rights as necessary for genuine dialogue. joseph chan debates human rights and asian values in terms of 'thick' and 'thin' accounts of human rights. he asks how the specificities of a particular society affect the understanding and content of universal human rights. drawing on the examples of freedom of expression in the case of pornography, chan discusses the asian values discourse as an issue of extent and legitimacy of systematic ideological or cultural interpretations of human rights, and the significance that this has on asian societies. 127 reviews maria serena i. diokno focuses on human rights in the philippines. she discusses and questions reasons for rejecting international standards of human rights, particularly (over-)emphasis on civil and political rights, the international human rights regime as a product of western thought and tradition without applicability to asia, and the use of human rights conditionality by western governments in relation to aid and trade. vo van ai provides the reader with views on human rights and asian values in vietnam, discussing paradoxes and contradictions of the discourse in the current political system, and links to vietnam's tradition. the author supports the existence of an original vietnamese concept of human rights, arguing that this is based more on ethics than on law, and founded in buddhism and confucianism. jon o. halldorsson looks at indonesia as the cradle of asian values consciousness and focuses his discussion on the role of islam and the national ideology of pancasila. hugo stokke bases his chapter on a discussion of whether modernization is also westernization, and whether one is possible without the other. this is exemplified through the cases of singapore and malaysia. tine gammeltoft and rolf hernø focus on reproductive rights and economic rights in vietnam, discussing vietnam's policies and practice against a background of selected international human rights instruments. david kelly discusses freedom as an asian value, taking his point of departure in historical sociology. marina svensson's contribution is, in the eyes of the present reviewer, possibly the most important in the volume. discussing the chinese debate on asian values and human rights, svensson argues for a clarification of underlying assumptions behind the asian values discourse, including that of 'confucian' values. she warns against trying to discover proto-human rights within confucianism, arguing simultaneously that such a search is unnecessary, because the absence of an indigenous human rights tradition does not preclude the contemporary realization of human rights. discussing also official and dissident chinese views on human rights and the development of the chinese discourse on human rights since the late 1970s, svensson concludes that china bases its claims more on economic and political factors than on culture. mab huang discusses chinese liberalism through examples from the 1920s to the 1970s, including parts of the taiwanese experience, and concludes that there is a genuine dialogue on chinese liberalism and human rights. colin campbell and avril mcdonald look at states of emergency and human rights protection, assessing cases in china, india and malaysia and their impact vis-à-vis constitutional provisions 128 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 reviews can-seng ooi, cultural tourism and tourism cultures. the business of mediating experiences in copenhagen and singapore. copenhagen: copenhagen business school press, 2002. 277 pp. paperback isbn 87630-0091-1. not too long ago, tourism was considered a service industry that provided only a minor contribution to the overall economy of most countries. with the breathtaking expansion of international travel in recent years—the 9/11 terrorist attack, the iraq war and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars) outbreak notwithstanding––the situation has changed dramatically. it is now the world's largest industry, affecting the lives of many people directly and indirectly. the tourism industry and human rights. richard pierre claude deals with human rights education in the philippines as an issue of international and constitutional law and of politics, providing perspectives from cambodia, thailand, japan and malaysia. contrasting the cases of south korea and singapore, deborah j. milly in the final chapter discusses foreign migrant workers as vulnerable groups at particular risk of human rights violations. the book does not deal in detail with particular points of the discourse on human rights and asian values, but rather is like a sketchbook introducing different angles of the discourse. a thorough crossdisciplinary discussion of one or two of the topics might have strengthened the book’s contribution to the academic discussion on the universality of human rights and how to provide this debate with legitimacy across cultures. the discourse on human rights universality being one not least of international law, one or more contributions on the legal aspects of the universality discourse in relation to asian values would also have provided a useful framework. however, the range of disciplines represented by the authors provides the reader with interesting and heterogeneous perspectives that serve to underscore the diversity of the discourse of the issue of cultural relativism in relation to human rights and asian values. the essays may well serve as useful appetizers to readers interested in specific topics in the discourse or in perspectives of a particular discipline. karin buhmann assistant professor department of social sciences roskilde university, denmark 129 reviews has become a key part of the economic development strategy of many countries. tourism is thus an important phenomenon, which deserves social scientists' increased attention. can-seng ooi's highly original book on cultural tourism and tourism cultures in copenhagen and singapore focuses on how cultural mediators appropriate destination cultures and package them into products of cultural tourism and on how their mediation affects the consumption of the products and influences the host society. the book is organized into nine chapters and comes with a 20-page references section, more than 50 attractive black-and-white photos and tables as well as an excellent index, which makes it very easy to quickly locate special areas of interest. as a singaporean who has lived for quite a few years in copenhagen, ooi is in a privileged position to write about the two capitals' approaches to cultural tourism. the two locations of course differ immensely. singapore, branded as 'new' (formerly 'instant') 'asia' in tourism-authority-speak, is a tropical island city-state with a poly-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual population of 4 million, and also (by far) southeast asia's most developed country. 'wonderful copenhagen' (in the lingo of the tourist marketers), on the other hand, has an ethnically more homogeneous population and is justifiably famous for the little mermaid, h.c. andersen, smørrebrød, and perhaps christiania, among other things. the vast cultural differences between these destinations, however, by no means weaken, but rather strengthen ooi's theoretical and empirically grounded argument that mediators play similar roles in both locations. chapter 1 provides an introductory overview and explains some key concepts. these key concepts (especially mediation, decentring and recentring and ooi's dialogic understanding of tourism), together with a theoretical framework, are further elaborated in chapters 2 and 3. chapters 4 and 5 focus on the contexts of tourism and look into mediated consumption and the versatile tourist as well as tourism economics and strategies. chapters 6, 7 and 8 focus on selected cultural products and exemplify certain types of mediation by looking into destination branding, living cultures, history and art in both copenhagen and singapore. the concluding chapter 9 revisits the key issues of the book and also provides an outlook as to where ooi's original theoretical framework could be applied other than in tourism research. as i believe that ooi is making a rather important theoretical contribution not only to tourism research, but also to cultural studies in general, some of the key concepts used in his research deserve special men130 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 reviews tion. while 'mediation' is often understood as a process to help consumers, i.e. as an enhancing and non-intrusive process, ooi argues convincingly that the cultures that are packaged into products for tourist consumption are also influenced in the process. decentring and recentring are two aspects of cultural mediation, which take place simultaneously and dialogically. in terms of tourism, culture is decentred at two levels. first, 'tourists are removed from the local embeddings and have limited resources to truly appreciate local cultures', and second, 'the packaged culture can only approximate the "real" culture' (p. 41). the gap between the local culture and the tourist is attempted to be closed in the process of recentring, during which selected local cultural elements are accentuated and aestheticized for tourists. tourists are also offered easy-to-digest cultural snippets and lessons. while many tourists desire to experience the world-of-the-local, they are and can only be engaged in the world-of-presenting-thelocal (p. 184). the dialogic concepts which ooi employs, such as heteroglossia, polyphony, genre, chronotope and the carnivalesque, are all reinterpretations of mikhael bakhtin's colourful, tremendously rich and useful terminology. ooi's choice of concepts is influenced by the so-called post-modernist discourse, but is refreshingly different from many of the post-modernists. he is very clear in his use of language and provides an attractive theoretical framework that never threatens to descend into obscurity. avoiding 'de(con)struction' (preferring 'reconstruction') and the temptation of black-versus-white structuralist dichotomies—and perhaps in line with a more 'asian', syncretic approach—the author adopts a perspective of a continuous dialogue with his topics. the question arises whether such a theoretical framework may not be 'too all-encompassing' and—like, for instance, psychoanalysis—neither falsifiable nor contestable from within. ooi certainly does not adopt such a neo-positivist or critical-realist conceptualization of theory (which is at the core of such a question) and has more of a foucauldian 'toolbox' approach in mind, where conceptual tools are used eclectically. space does not allow me to place equal emphasis on the descriptive strengths of ooi's work, in addition to its theoretical forte. even a reader extremely familiar with singapore is bound to learn new things about the city. although this reviewer is not as familiar with copenhagen, i suspect that the same can be said about the description of cultural tourism in that capital. 131 reviews the empirical example offered in ooi's book is cultural tourism. his book, however, is also a study of mediation and cultural intermediaries such as tourist agencies, radio and television producers, presenters, magazine journalists and professionals from the caring industry, to name but a few. as a consequence, ooi makes a substantial and highly readable contribution to a sociological approach to culture, which analyses meanings that have become tangible by their transformation into commodities. he masterfully analyses these meanings within their specific social milieux. ooi's book is a remarkable and unique work of scholarship. for anybody interested in global tourism or a highly original sociological approach to culture, can-seng ooi's book is mandatory reading. jürgen rudolph managing director centre for professional studies, singapore arviond rajagopal, politics after television: religious nationalism and the reshaping of the indian public. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2001. 393 pp. hard cover isbn 0-521-64053-9. professor rajagopal has written a fascinating and illuminating book about the rise of hindu nationalism and its transformative impact on the indian politics. the book analyses the skilful use of political space afforded to the bharatiya janata party (bjp), a party that for many decades did not hold much sway among indian voters. while political space creates the possibility for a political party to reshape its fortunes, whether or not this transformation occurs depends on how skilfully the political party is able to exploit the emerging opportunities. the failure of the state in india to initiate and sustain a high rate of economic growth had created profound disenchantment within the populace at large. the profound disenchantment was reflected in the declining influence of the congress party in india. this led to the emergence of what rajagopal describes as 'non-committed voters', i.e. voters who were willing to cast their lot in with any party willing to articulate an alternative vision about india. the political space created by the declining fortunes of the congress party was skilfully exploited by the bjp, which thereby began its ascendancy in the indian political environ132 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 reviews ment. bjp was able to forge an alliance between the proponents of economic liberalization and the proponents of hindu nationalism. the strategies used by bjp in reshaping the indian political environment, and the underlying reasons for its success, forms the central thrust of this study. a major theme of the book is that bjp’s success in reshaping the indian political environment was crucially influenced by the broadcast of the ramayana series on indian television. this ancient indian epic resonates strongly with the indian public. indeed, as rajagopal (p. 87) notes, 'the power that has been attributed to the ramayana is extraordinary— to know ramayana, is to know india, it is said.' the decision to broadcast this series was made by the congress party with the goal of enlarging the television audience. within a few months of its launch, market estimates suggested that the viewing public had increased from 40 to 80 million per week. the symbolic significance was profound in that ramayana offered 'a way of talking not just about faith and the epic fast, but what kind of leadership a society required, and the mode of public engagement appropriate for its members' (p. 119). the broadcast of this series provided bjp with a perfect opportunity to sell the hindu identity, or what rajagopal describes as 'retail hindutva'. in other words, it furnished the context within which the bjp could create a new vision of what india would be like under a new leadership. the other element which rajagopal draws attention to is the notion of the 'split public'. this refers to the discrepancy between the goal of the modernizing elite to create a secular society and its inability to fulfil this mission in its entirety. the implications of this division became very apparent in the context of the ram jamnabhumi movement, when the vindhya hindu parishad proposed a foundation ceremony for the proposed ram temple closed to the babri masjid in ayodhya. the english language press viewed this movement with alarm, fearing that it would threaten stability in the country, whereas the hindi language press exhibited much more diversity in its coverage. rajagopal notes that this split provided the hindu nationalists with a strategic resource which they were able to effectively use to garner support, but he notes that this support is somewhat unstable given the underlying contradictions that exist within the hindutva project. the book makes a contribution in several different areas and for that reason is likely to be of interest to scholars in different disciplines. it is a treatise in the political sociology of india as it explores the shifting political fortunes of the different political parties in the indian polity and how the changing political environment was skilfully exploited by the 133 reviews bjp. it is also an exploration of how television as a medium dramatically altered the landscape and how this challenged the different political parties to devise strategies that created both new opportunities as well as new threats. finally, the book also provides an in-depth look into the bjp and the factors that led to its shaping as a potent political force. chapter 6 'hindutva goes global' is particularly illuminating in documenting how the hindutva project drew global support, although the manner in which the project was conceived in the indian context was undoubtedly different from how it was conceived globally. overall, this is a book well worth reading. it is extremely well written and well documented and provides an illuminating account of how politics was transformed in india. although the book provides an insightful analysis as to how bjp gained power, it is unclear if the dynamics of gaining power will reflect the dynamics entailed in maintaining power. the author does note that the party continues to be politically weak even as it increases its cultural acceptability. a disjunction between the two is interesting and invites greater exploration. my second observation is that while the content of hindu nationalism was undoubtedly different from its predecessor (viz. the congress party), in my view, both represent an idealistic mode of thinking. hindu nationalism was symbolically concerned with a return to the mythical past whereas the congress party was trying to make india strong through a focus on the developmental state. the project of the congress did not succeed; it remains to be seen if bjp will prove any more successful. rajesh kumar associate professor aarhus school of business, denmark 134 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 latest new titles from nias press full details of the nias publishing programme are available at www.niaspress.dk, where you can also access our online bookshop and request a printed catalogue. nias press welcomes serious book proposals in many fields of asian studies. the social dynamics of deforestation in the philippines actions, options and motivations gerhard van den top detailed case study into the dynamics of forest use, degradation and loss in this last large forest frontier in the philippines. nias, sep 2003, 410 pp., illus hbk • 0-7007-1483-9 • £45, $67 co-management of natural resources in asia a comparative perspective edited by gerard persoon, diny van est and percy sajise case studies of experiments with comanagement in a number of countries are combined with more reflective contributions on the actual implementation of co-management. nias, sep 2003, 320 pp., illus 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1-124 @ normalize_2 ________________________________________________________________________ 111 ___________________________________________________________________ reviews huang, yasheng, selling china. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2003. 383 pp. isbn 0 521 81428 6. huang yasheng's book is an important contribution to understanding not only fdi in general, but its role in china in particular. in addition, it provides the reader with some keen insights into the dynamics of chinese society. the book is well researched and documents its statements, which makes it a pleasure to read at a time when too many volumes are published with superficial content targeted at the business community. the introduction of the book, comprising more than 60 pages, provides one of the most detailed accounts of fdi in china i have ever read. having thereby set the scene, the second chapter describes the motivations for the research followed by an analytical framework that builds on both economic and institutional theory. this culminates in the central claim of the book that the 'high relative competitiveness of foreign over domestic firms resulted from government policy and regulatory treatments that specifically advantage foreign firms' (p. 87). the next three chapters deal with china's corporate sector in general, the non-state firms and state-owned enterprises. both the non-state firms and the state-owned firms are described in the light of the huge inflow of fdi. the penultimate chapter discusses what huang calls 'economic fragmentation' and fdi. the basic argument of the book is that the chinese state, in its desire to mix public ownership of capital and to utilize foreign capital, created unforeseen institutional conditions, which led to a high degree of dependence on fdi. in huang's own words, he has written a book 'about the effect of suppressing the private sector'.1 a more rigorous way of describing the book might be that it analyses how poor financial and legal treatment by the state undermined the competitiveness of the chinese private firms and led to insolvency in state-owned enterprises. despite my high regard for huang's work, three weaknesses came to mind during my review. the first concerns what alternatives may have existed in the socio-political environment in china in the 1990s. political pressure did not allow large-scale privatization and, even if it had, the result would have been a 'big-bang' type of development with massive unemployment and a shortened lifespan for the population. all these phenomena are well-known from the collapse of the soviet union. the second weakness concerns the way huang sees the political system in china, which he views as highly static. however, what huang describes is the system as it existed in the late 1990s; he does not take account of the dynamics that took place in the five years leading up to the 112______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 reviews ___________________________________________________________________ book's publication in 2003. it was this period (1998-2003) which showed the chinese government doing exactly as huang suggests, namely promoting the private/semi-private sector in china, because now the state-owned enterprises had been dealt with (privatized). in 2005 the amount of realized fdi had not grown.2 under current circumstances, the private sector can be given more support. another important issue is that although the chinese political system was not supportive of the private sector in the early 1990s, during this period the government did develop the physical infrastructure to the benefit of all, including the private companies. it was 'only' the financial system that took a long time to reform. finally i am not convinced that support to the private sector and a high amount of fdi are contradictory. in such a huge country as china, in the coming years i foresee a large inflow of fdi, while at the same time the private/hybrid sector will flourish as the state-owned sector diminishes. this has already happened to a large extent. and how can we know that the only way to develop china is through the indigenous private sector? in the countryside the development in the 1980s was largely created by township and village enterprises, which were not entirely private. although i do not believe there would have been another way to proceed if china were to avoid the 'big bang' model, i cannot help thinking about the likely consequences if the chinese government had followed huang's indirect suggestion, namely giving a large amount of capital to the private sector in the early 1990s—with the implication that due to competition, the amount of fdi would have been more limited. to my mind this would have had negative consequences both for china and for the world economy. china's economic development would have been slower, possibly leading to even higher unemployment than we have witnessed. an additional implication is that the amount of cheap goods manufactured in china for our consumption would have been less. this would mean that the western economies would not have had to focus on scaling up their activities. from an academic point of view, the whole globalization debate, which basically is created by the increasing outsourcing to china and more recently to india, would probably not have taken place. companies do not outsource abroad unless forced to do so. everybody, except maybe a few chinese entrepreneurs, would have suffered, but i am sure they will recover during this decade. ________________________________________________________________________ 113 ___________________________________________________________________ reviews despite my critical remarks this is an outstanding book, which i thoroughly recommend to academics who wish to gain a fuller insight into overall global development as well its specific applications in china. i look forward to huang's next book. verner worm associate professor asia research centre copenhagen business school notes 1 huang yasheng (2005) huang's response. management and organization review 1(2): 332. 2 http://www.fdi.gov.cn . accessed 9 january 2006. 22 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia johannes dragsbaek schmidt abstract this paper is based on a critical comparative political economy perspective that seeks to explain interrelated variables, inconsistencies and potential disruptive effects of china's dramatic rise and entrance into the global political economy. furthermore, the paper argues that one should in particular focus on the strategically political decision taken by the chinese leadership to integrate china into the global political economy. during this process, they have allowed chinese sovereignty, in the economic sphere at least, to become 'perforated', and thus increasing the number of actors in the policy sphere. however, any analysis of china's present overseas economic expansion and foreign policy interests must also consider chinese realpolitik and the underlying forces that shape these interests. due to this the present paper includes a security perspective on whether china's reliance on soft power is only a temporary phase on its way to gain regional cum global hegemony. the employed critical comparative political economy perspective is based on an eclectic approach to east and southeast asian international relations, employing realism, liberalism and constructivism to analytically differentiate between the different dimensions of the system's modus vivendi. based on this recognition the paper analyses the new geo-political and geo-economic strategic relationship between china and southeast asia. is chinese encroachment into southeast asia creating greater stability, does it jeopardize us interests and what is the impact on the regime-types, economic restructuring, and the state-civil society relationship? keywords: globalisation, regionalism, bilateralism, diaspora, usa, china, southeast asia. introduction globalization is rapidly changing the overall structure of the international division of labour with the shift of services and manufacturing from the old industrialized economies to the new emerging giants the global office platform in india and the global factory floor in china. this dislocation in production, services and manufacturing signifies a challenge to the west but is also part and parcel of the inherent imbalances in the world economy. the question for international political economy is where and how countries like india and china fit in? _________________________________________________________________________ 23 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia one possible answer is that we are entering a new phase of capitalism characterized by a changing production pattern with a shift of economic gravity to the east with corresponding consequences for labour markets, wage levels and living standards in the west; another scenario is related to the substance of the re-emergence of protectionism and a repeat of the all-out tariff battles that led to the great depression in the 1930s. in short, and very significantly, it is necessary to ask what the responses are of the old economies that are loosing out (newsweek february 6, 2006) in their seminal account 'china awakes', kristof and wudunn noted: 'almost overnight china has changed' (1994: 9). although their observations primarily focused on internal dynamics and social and political changes, this book revealed the contours of a new 'asian miracle' based on the premises and earlier experiences of the developmental state as exemplified in the 'command capitalist' strategy in japan, south korea and taiwan. the new literature on china has concentrated on the country's ability and success to attract foreign investment and the accompanying high economic growth rates. china is rapidly ascending to the status of a new economic, as well as political and military power, both regionally and globally. the world's most populous nation of some 1.3 billion people is already the seventh largest economy in terms of gdp as well as the third-biggest trading nation after germany and the us. china's booming economy attracted fdi worth more than $60 billion in 2004, making it the world's biggest fdi recipient. china's sharply growing exports also accumulated more than $700 billion in foreign reserves, the second-largest amount in the world after japan's nearly $850 billion. in addition, total employment in china is estimated around 750 million, which is about one and a half times that of the whole of the oecd with enormous labour reserve in agriculture and the informal sector ready to migrate to the coastal areas if, or rather when, labour markets tighten. many of these issues are well covered in the academic literature, but what is really new, is the fact that chinese enterprises themselves are now investing worldwide and across a broad range of economic activities, ranging from trading and banking, to manufacturing and natural resource exploitation. unctad (2005) estimated that china's outward fdi amounted to almost 39 billion in 2004. these data indicate that china has become a global player with operations established in more than 160 countries. this has led many commentators to speculate about the impact of chinese overseas involvement: 'president hu jintao spent more time in latin america last year than president bush. and china's vice president, zeng qinghong, spent more time in the region last month 24 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ than his us counterpart, vice president dick cheney, over the past four years'(miami herald february 2, 2005 cf landau 2005). while the bush administration asked congress to increase us indebtedness with an additional $81 billion in order to keep forces in afghanistan and iraq, china offered more than $50 billion in investment and credits to countries inside the traditional monroe doctrine's shield. that sum surpasses president kennedy's well known $20 billion package for the decade of the alliance for progress in the 1960s. in 1975, chinese trade with latin america amounted to $200 million; in 2004, it had reached over $40 billion. china has become one of the foremost players in the era of globalization, which us leaders promoted without considering that china might avail itself of this opportunity to move into previously sacrosanct us spheres (landau 2005). at the same time, china's very rapid capital accumulation has brought a spectacular rise in its share of world gdp, nearly tripling from 5 percent to 14 percent in a quarter of a century. china alone has made up for the collapsed output share of the ex-soviet union and eastern europe and much of the downward drift in the share of europe and japan (glyn 2005: 8). china is using 'soft power' remedies to nurture 'alliances with many developing countries to solidify its position in the world trade organization, flex its muscles on the world stage and act as a counterbalance to us power' (chicago tribune december 20, 2004 cf landau 2005). this is also the case in sub-saharan africa and asia, where governments and business welcome chinese investment and cooperation as an alternative to washington's overwhelming obsession with security and 'hard power' related issues. it seems clear that the chinese leadership attempts to increase its ability to attract and persuade the world community, regional groups and individual states to comply with its interests. in contrast the present strategy of the bush administration is an extension of its ability to coerce as a means of implementing us foreign policy exclusively relying on military or economic might. soft power arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies. hard power remains crucial in a world of states trying to guard their independence and of non-state groups willing to turn to violence. the neo-conservatives who advise the president are making a major miscalculation: they focus too heavily on using military power to force other nations to do america's will, and they pay too little heed to our soft power. it is soft power that will help prevent terrorists from recruit_________________________________________________________________________ 25 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia ing supporters from among the moderate majority. and it is soft power that will help us deal with critical global issues that require multilateral cooperation among states. and it is soft power that will help the us to deal with critical global issues that require multilateral cooperation among states. that is why it is so essential that america better understands and applies soft power. (nye 2004a; 2004b; 2003). thanks to an overly narrow focus on terrorism and a tendency to place bilateral ties above multilateral relationships, the united states is also losing its influence in southeast asia to china. china targets southeast asia as a region with a very assertive asean policy. us security policies following the 11 september 2001 terrorist attacks have played a significant role in its estrangement. however, the problem in fact goes back to the asian financial crisis of 1997, when the clinton administration used its influence on the imf to impose us businessfriendly solutions on the region. china's decision not to revalue its currency helped stabilize the regional economic order. shortly after that, china, japan and south korea began holding annual discussions with southeast asia under the asean-plus-three formula. in 1999, after china's accession to the wto, asean governments began to worry about the impact of sino-us trade relations. as a result, china proposed a free trade agreement (fta) with southeast asia, the framework for which was signed in 2002. it seems that china will soon become asean's second-largest trading partner and bilateral trade could reach us$200 billion by 2010. road and dam building, consolidation of control over the south china sea, trade and investment combined with overseas development aid (oda) and military assistance, might eventually result in china's domination of southeast asia regardless of beijing's intentions. the question is whether we are watching a chinese replay of the japanese flying geese scheme with the moving of production platforms, fdis combined with oda and other diplomatic remedies to the catching-up formation in a pattern similar to that of japan and later east asian nics in the past decades. as a by-product of such a course, china will sooner or later replace the united states as the region's most important strategic partner. although the global contradictions and problems provide the overall context, the purpose of this contribution is devoted to provide insight into, and investigate how, these emerging tendencies in the region are spelled out in the triangular relationship between china and the united states in southeast asia. 26 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ the approach of the paper relies on a critical comparative international political economy perspective (cox 1990; evans & stephens 1988a and 1988b; strange 1994 & 1996) which seeks to explain the interrelated variables, inconsistencies and disruptive effects of china's dramatic rise and insertion into the global political economy, and the concomitant increase of foreign debt in the united states and its obsession with security and terrorism, respectively. the focus then is broadened into one that not only takes the state alone into consideration but also realizes that: 'through conscious political decision, elements of the chinese leadership have chosen to integrate china – or at least, parts of china – into the global political economy. in the process, they have allowed chinese sovereignty, in the economic sphere at least, to become 'perforated', and increased the number of actors in the policy sphere' (breslin 2002: 34). however, any analysis of china's present overseas economic expansion and foreign policy interests, must also consider chinese realpolitik and the underlying forces which shape these interests. it should especially include the fact that the state and local government authorities play a significant role makes it imperative to focus on these factors which are unique to china. therefore, this paper includes a security perspective on whether china's reliance on soft power is only a temporary phase on its way to regional cum global hegemony (nye 2006). the critical comparative international political economy perspective is based on an eclectic approach to east and southeast asian international relations, employing realism, liberalism and constructivism to analytically differentiate between the different dimensions of the system's modus vivendi (katzenstein and okawara 2001/02: 167-185). based on this recognition the paper analyses the new geo-political and geo-economic strategic relationship between china and southeast asia. is chinese encroachment into southeast asia creating greater stability, does it jeopardize us interests and what is the impact on the regimetypes, economic restructuring, and the state-civil society relationship? from fifth column to investor china's strategic interest in southeast asia goes back centuries exerting suzerainty of the region. in more modern times, such as during the cold war, the ccp supported insurgencies and communist governments across the region. after the us defeat in indochina, beijing became perceived as a direct threat in vietnam in 1979, when chinese troops crossed the sino-vietnamese border to 'teach vietnam a lesson' over its invasion and occupation of neighbouring cambodia. _________________________________________________________________________ 27 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia during the wave of national liberation struggles in southeast asia, the pro-american ruling classes facing strong local communist parties, such as in indonesia and, revolutionary movements as in thailand, malaysia, philippines and burma, were receptive to the us policy which portrayed the communist regime in china as the source of the menace to these societies. today, mutual perception and trust in sino-asean relations has become important for both sides (twining 2005). furthermore, this relationship has strengthened as a consequence 'of the post-mao leadership's acknowledgement of the ideological and political reliability of singaporean-style authoritarianism as a worthwhile formula for its own reform process' (hersh 1998:32). thus, the former hostilities have been turned into claims by beijing that its growing influence in asia threatens no-one and is to the mutual benefit of all. zheng bijan, dean of the influential ccp school says that 'if china does not provide economic opportunities for the region, it will lose the opportunity for a peaceful rise....this is by no means a bid for hegemony' (brookings 2005). some us based observers see china's bilateral engagement with asia as more political than economic. in a testimony to congress, assistant secretary of state james kelly claimed that the bilateral agreements mean little in economic terms, 'but they serve notice of how china is using its newly won economic power to expand its presence and political influence among its southern neighbors' (economy 2005). such statements are intriguing as they confirm a change in us policy towards china from a friendly competitor to a strategic rival. china's renewed interest in bilateral engagement with southeast asia comes in several spates which will be touched upon in the following. first and foremost, is the increase in development aid and trade volumes; second is the increase of fdi both inward and outward; third is related to china's need for oil, gas and other energy sources; and finally security, defence and diplomacy related matters which cannot be separated from the above. this strategy is embedded in a regional and multilateral umbrella which will be discussed in the second and third sections of the paper. china's relation with asean is affected by the way the state controls its insertion into the global division of labour and manages its growth and overseas expansion under a dual-trading regime of export promotion and import substitution (low 2003: 72). one analysis of the impact of chinese exports on its asian competitors shows that countries producing consumer goods based on low wages are increasingly suffering negative 28 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ consequences as china's share of world trade grows. thailand, cambodia or laos are not able to compete with base wages as reported from guangdong at about $80 per month and working hours up to 80 per week. the harsh discipline imposed on the chinese working class and the fact that no independent unions exist translating in appalling working conditions makes it almost impossible for others to compete (glyn 2005: 12-13). china's rapid strides in expanding its trade relations with southeast asia have been paralleled by the growth of its role as a source of regional investment. as it secures the resources necessary to fuel its growth, chinese state-owned enterprises (soes) are investing heavily in mining, natural gas, and logging opportunities throughout the region. china has committed us$100 million in aid and investment to myanmar and is actively extracting indonesian natural gas, investing in infrastructure development in the philippines, establishing rail and highway links with cambodia, thailand and singapore, and promising to dredge part of the mekong river in laos and myanmar to make it suitable for commercial navigation (economy: 2005: 6). also private chinese companies are rapidly joining the soes in their search for new investment opportunities. china tries to reassure its neighbours by claiming that its growing regional importance is a win-win situation for all. nonetheless, some countries are seeing the benefits moving largely one way. in myanmar and cambodia, newly signed deals with china are generating fears of economic dependence and political domination. a trade agreement with thailand has benefited china's exporters. the first cries of complaint are being heard. 'china has found it relatively easy in recent years to build closer ties to its neighbours with rhetoric about nurturing an east asian economic community', says david shambaugh. 'but striking specific deals in specific areas to china's benefit,' he contends, 'will drive a wedge into the diplomatic progress china has made'(vatikiotis 2004a: 12). asean-china trade totalled us$ 39.5 billion and us$ 41.6 billion respectively in 2000 and 2001. asean's share in china's foreign merchandise trade has been continuously on the rise, increasing from 5.8 percent in 1994 to 8.3 percent in 2000. china is now the sixth biggest trading partner of asean (tongzon 2005: 191). the two-way trade between china and asean has been growing at a much faster pace than that between japan and asean in recent years. china-asean trade topped $100 billion in 2004, and soared 25% in the first half of 2005 from a year earlier amid ongoing reductions in tariffs. asean is now china's fourth-largest trading partner behind the european _________________________________________________________________________ 29 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia union, the us and japan. china has already superseded the us as the biggest trading partner of japan and south korea. for asean, the us and japan are still the two biggest trading partners. it is just a matter of time before china will replace both as asean's biggest trading partner (masaki 2005). in 2005, asean became china's fourth-largest trading partner behind the european union, the us and japan. china has already superseded the us as the biggest trading partner of japan and south korea. it is just a matter of time before china will replace the us and japan as asean's biggest trading partner (masaki 2005). china's export structure is similar in many respects to that of the asean countries. the prc is an export rival to its regional neighbours in both labour-intensive products and in goods with greater technological complexity. it is also a competitor in terms of its capacity to attract fdi, which can only increase at the expense of others. in competitive export capacity the prc is a threat to thailand and other southeast asian economies' market shares in the eu, us and japan (holst and weiss 2005). more intense competition is, therefore, to be expected in third-country markets and asean domestic markets with the establishment of a fta. china has the lowest unit labour cost and thus a comparative wage advantage in relation to the original asean-6. even with regard to productivity increase, china's output per worker is growing faster than that in the philippines, malaysia and indonesia (tongzon 2005: 208). in smaller countries like myanmar, laos and cambodia, the economic imbalances in the two-way trade are even more apparent. chinese exports to myanmar in 2003 were valued to be as high as $900 million, compared with $170 million in exports from myanmar into china. laos absorbed chinese goods valued at almost $90 million in 2003, more than double the 2002 figure. laotian exports to china meanwhile, amounted to $8 million, a 15% increase (vatikiotis 2004a: 12). the situation in myanmar has clear similarities with cambodia. china has supplied more than us$1.6 billion in arms to the country and continues to train a significant number of its military. in march 2004, chinese vice-premier wu yi was in yangon to sign 24 pacts on economic and technical cooperation. the chinese also gave myanmar $200 million in low-interest loans. myanmar's collaboration with china has become so close that some observers claim that beijing now has a big say in domestic politics. diplomatic sources say that a common complaint is that china is also dumping cheap goods and demanding special privileges for chinese companies (vatikiotis 2004b: 12). china 30 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ wants to secure stable oil and other energy supplies by land, as well as by sea. speculation is rife about the idea of building an oil pipeline running across myanmar to kunming at an estimated cost of $2 billion (masaki 2005). beijing has a strategic interest and motive behind its dealings with the military junta. in this way, 'china has supplied about us$ two billion for armaments that have made the burmese military, the second largest in southeast asia after vietnam, much more technically sophisticated. it has helped the construction of roads, railroads, airfields, ports, and dams….equally important are unrecorded chinese influences: chinese investment – probably the largest of any foreign country – is not found in international statistics' (frost 2004: 334). in cambodia, closer ties to beijing are spawning economic, political and even military agreements that, some officials fear, ties their country too closely to china. in november 2003, china and cambodia signed a military agreement under which beijing provides funds for military training as well as equipment. cambodia also has accepted aid to help build a railway linking china's yunnan province to the cambodian seashore, a strategic priority for beijing. china has lent cambodia more than $45 million during the past two years, mostly on interest-free terms. for some cambodians, china has gained a strategic foothold in the country at the expense of cambodian autonomy and is geo-politically using cambodia as a buffer against its old foe, vietnam. china has also funded the 'north-south corridor' project to build a highway linking kunming and bangkok via laos. the highway is scheduled to be completely opened to traffic in 2011. japan balked at funding the project, partly out of fear of lending china a hand in increasing its influence southward on the indochina peninsula. china also set up a special fund totalling $20 million within the adb for poverty alleviation of the region in 2004 (masaki 2005). as an economic, political and cultural power house, china has been adept at overtaking the us in what american political scientist joseph nye has dubbed the soft power approach in influencing foreign societies' public opinions, and achieve sympathy. in a trade related issue, thailand has asked for support from beijing, which has promised to train more thai chinese language teachers, send native speakers to work in thai schools, and provide free teaching materials. whether this has implications for the thai population's view of china is difficult to discern, but according to one poll in 2003, 76 percent of thais said that china was thailand's closest friend as opposed to 9 percent who named the united states (vaughn 2005: 20). _________________________________________________________________________ 31 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia these figures imply that there is a clear strategic link between fdi, oda, military support and a specific focus on export of cultural values. china is already supporting language training in dozens of countries and reportedly has set a target of raising the number of foreigners studying mandarin around the world to 100 million by 2010. currently, more than 30 million people worldwide are studying mandarin. since 2004, china's education ministry has opened cultural language centres called confucius institutes in over 20 countries. in 2004, 110,844 foreigners from 178 countries were studying mandarin in china, says xinhua, up 43 percent on 2003. in southeast asia, private language schools in malaysia and indonesia report rising enrolment in chinese classes (montlake 2006). this will also have important spill-over effects on future trade and investment patterns. some observers argue that, dynamic economic growth will propel overseas investment in the asean countries, rather than divert fdi from the region. 'china's rapid growth will result in a shift in comparative advantage between the region and china....in the near future, china could well constitute the fourth wave of fdi for southeast asia…' (wong and chan 2003: 278-279). in a specific case, which illustrates these points, chinese firms are reportedly aggressively grabbing local market shares for manufactured items like motorcycles and other consumer products. a chinese semi-state-owned enterprise tcl invested $ 10 million in vietnam to manufacture colour tvs, and within three years edged out foreign rivals sony and samsung to grab a 15 percent share of the vietnamese market (wong and chan 2003: 297). furthermore, the region is host to a relatively big share of chinese outward investment in non-trading activities. although there is substantial disagreement about the actual figures, china is now either the third or fourth biggest investor or rapidly climbing to become number one (frost 2004). thailand attracted the largest number of chinese projects and garners the greatest share of investment (wong and chan 2003: 286). this rapidly growing flow of outward direct investment from china is primarily state-owned capital, but private chinese companies have also started to see benefits of investing abroad. with a chinese domestic market of 1.3 billion people and plenty of low-cost labour, it might be surprising to find companies looking at investing offshore. yet, as china grows and competition intensifies, some companies are searching for new markets and try to develop global brands. they may also be aiming to escape regulatory barriers 32 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ and overcapacity at home and, in the most developed areas, higher land and labour costs. besides with protectionism growing in the us and eu against chinese exports, a foreign presence can be a clear advantage. sluggish domestic demand and declining profit margins have in some cases forced manufacturers such as the consumer-goods giant haier, and the electronics heavyweights changhong and konka to establish production bases outside china (vatiokakis 2004). beijing openly shows its desire to promote chinese overseas investment. premier wen jiabao told a business audience at an asean summit in bali in october 2003: 'the chinese government will encourage more of its companies to make investment and establish their businesses in asian countries' (vatiokakis 2004). more than 100 chinese business executives attended an investment forum held in conjunction with the bali summit and another 40 companies went to an asia pacific economic forum investment conference in bangkok the same month. despite premier wen jiabao's encouragement, and china's accession to the wto in late 2002, outward investment still requires official approval. projects that exceed $30 million must go to the state council, china's cabinet. from beijing's point of view, lifting all barriers to overseas investment could risk a stampede with capital-rich companies bidding against each other for foreign assets, something that has already happened in the oil industry (vatikiotis 2004a). in the more recent past, the bulk of china's overseas investments went primarily to resource-based extraction like in oil and gas in australia, indonesia and thailand. however, now chinese manufacturers are scouting the region for production platforms to penetrate new markets. chinese companies now supply indonesia with electric-power plants and mobile-phone networks, and there are plans to build a 17-hectare china business centre in jakarta. chinese investors come to thailand 'to use the country as a gateway to the asean market,' says boi secretary-general somphong wanapha (vatikiotis 2004a). fdi flows also create problems. while the growth of china hypothetically can be a boon to the rest of the world in the long run, it can also be a cause for concern to southeast asia in the short and middle terms. when one considers the fact that china is now expected to capture 6.5 percent of the total fdi for the next five years, the fight for the leftovers is even more severe. 'that is to say, 10 southeast asian countries have to compete for the remaining 23.5 percent of the fdi left by china an average of little more than 2 percent for each country' (beng 2002). _________________________________________________________________________ 33 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia these features partly explain why fdi into southeast asia has been declining dramatically. in this context, it is easy to understand why asean is now trying to develop a close relationship to china. in 2000, southeast asia received just $10 billion of foreign capital, a 37 percent decline from the $16 billion in 1999. the figure was $27 billion in 1996 and $19 billion in 1998. china is the lone beneficiary of the global investment flows while southeast asia both on individual country by country basis and as a region has been excluded as a major recipient of global fdi flows (beng 2002). this situation means that the region found itself in a catch 22 situation in competing for a share of fdi. globalization has now turned the world into a beauty contest where the most attractive country or region will stand to gain the most from the flows of funds (beng 2002). in other words, the region has entered the race-to-the-bottom which implies a decrease in regulation levels of labour relations, as well as an irreversible process that seeks to exert a downward pressure on welfare and social benefits that are presumed to 'inhibit' the incentive to work (schmidt 2006b). indeed, the political establishments of southeast asia have to satisfy the expectations of international investors in as many areas as possible. most notably, they have to strengthen the region's business outlook encompassing transparency, accountability and fair competition. barring such efforts, fdi will continue to make its way into neighbouring and other regions, to the detriment of southeast asia. capital goes to places where profits can be guaranteed. right now, unless asean makes southeast asia better and safer than china, the flows of future fdi will continue to go north. it is interesting, in passim, to note with callahan, that 'it is common to assume that western multinational corporations are the main investors in china. but diasporic chinese (including taiwan and hong kong) account for around 80 percent of foreign direct investment in the prc' and 'thailand's cp group is the largest foreign investor in china' (callahan 2003: 491/500). this is important because although the bulk of outward investment from china remains state-driven, it is indeed plausible that some capital is recycled back through formal and informal diasporic networks. moving now to the pertinent issue of energy it has become clear that since 1993 china has become a net importer of crude oil. the chinese economy is now the world's second-largest oil consumer, after the us. prc already depends on imports for as much as 40% of its oil needs, nearly half of which comes from the middle east. about 80 percent of 34 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ chinese oil imports are shipped through the malacca strait, a waterway notorious for piracy activities (masaki 2005). chinese investments in indonesian oil, gas and power plants will certainly increase further under the susilo bambang yudhyono administration. jakarta needs fdi urgently and beijing is promising to deliver. sino-indonesian ties have undeniably improved since the 1990 normalisation of relations. resource and oil rich indonesia is the most important state in the region for energy-deficient china (low 2003: 73). the recent signing of the strategic partnership agreement between the two countries in jakarta on april 24, 2005 is certainly an historical event. former president megawati also focused on closer economic relations with china. a memorandum of understanding was signed in 2002 which established an indonesia-china energy forum. this was followed by petrochina's moves to secure oil fields in indonesia. china's national offshore oil corporation has also invested in indonesia's energy sector. in 2002, indonesia won a contract to supply liquid natural gas to china's fujian province. from 1992 to 2002 bilateral trade between indonesia and china increased from $2 billion to $ 8 billion while chinese investment in indonesia has grown from $282 million in 1999 to $6.8 billion in 2003. despite growing economic ties, some analysts see indonesia's desire to play a leading role within southeast asia as potentially creating a geo-political rivalry with china (vaughn 2005: 27). there is a possibility that the economic relationship may not deliver the benefits to indonesia that some have come to expect. in fact, 'most analysts agree that china's changing export profile represents a serious threat to the future export competitiveness of most southeast asian countries.' according to chia siow yue, 'the export overlap between china and indonesia is 83 percent and the overlap between china and singapore is 38 percent' (hart-landsberg and burkett: 88). beijing seems intent in pursuing a more active diplomacy around its southern periphery in southeast asia, including using 'renminbi diplomacy' and defence co-operation. china's us$400 million loan to the philippines for a rail link between manila and the former us airbase clark was a carrot for manila to conclude a defence co-operation agreement with china, although the philippines remains an important ally of the united states. manila has since signed an agreement to co-operate in joint oil and gas exploration in the disputed spratley islands in the south china sea. in march 2005, the state-owned oil companies from china, vietnam, and the philippines signed a three-year deal to jointly search for oil and gas in the disputed area (economy 2005: 8). _________________________________________________________________________ 35 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia during the bilateral quarrel between china and singapore in 2004, there were rumours that the people's liberation army (pla) had offered to sell chinese missiles to malaysia, so as to calm the malay majority's suspicions of china. defence co-operation between jakarta and beijing has also been touted recently. in concrete terms, china has established a listening post in myanmar; and in 2002, china signed its first ever border agreement with vietnam. the two countries also conducted a joint campaign to clear all the landmines along their border, resulting in an increase of border trade to $4 billion yuan (economy: 2005: 7). between 1999 and 2000, china has succeeded in signing bilateral political agreements with all asean countries that are aimed at boosting bilateral long-term cooperation in the new century. moreover, chinese leaders have made full use of their attendance at almost all multilateral forums, to conduct bilateral meetings with their asean counterparts. for china, the relationship between multilateralism and bilateralism, thus, is a reciprocal one (cheng-chwee 2005). in all cases, beijing has shown real panache and sophistication in dealing diplomatically with individual asean countries, while promoting the much-touted aseanchina fta (to be in effect by 2010). it has even managed to implement a foreign policy relying on 'divided to rule' within asean, as illustrated by the recent sino-singaporean spat in which beijing openly favoured and courted singapore's asean partners, who seemed just as keen to be courted by the chinese panda (teo 2005). rivals in regionalism the new east asian community few major international relationships have changed so rapidly as the chinese-asean rapprochement. today, all countries of the region embrace and acknowledge publicly the 'one-china' policy. this is to high degree a consequence of better sino-asean economic ties, but also implies that taipei will be left with little room to carry out economic diplomacy with southeast asia' (cheng-chwee 2005: 113). china has shown a definite readiness to use its growing soft power, notably economic leverage and national image and the benefits that accrue from non-material, ideational and cultural influences as a persuasive means to translate its influence into concrete policy interests. this also implies that asean has witnessed a major conceptual change of its northern neighbour, from what was termed a 'china threat' to one of a 'benign' china with opportunities. three factors encouraged this evolution: 1) china's pragmatic policy of political stabilisation denotes a radical political shift in terms of appeasement; 2) the real catalyst was an 36 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ outcome of the financial crisis with the chinese leadership's decision not to devalue the renminbi and the later bonus of surplus trade, accorded to asean countries by beijing; and 3) the shift or reduced threat-perception is also due to beijing's new, active foreign policy and sophisticated diplomacy, based on the smooth internal transitions from deng xiaoping to the jiang zemin-zhu rongji team, and then to the present hu jintaowen jiabao team. four areas of beijing's present foreign policy sophistication would include a less pompous, but more pragmatic foreign policy; a growing economic diplomacy; a thrust towards international integration and finally, a struggle for multi-polarity in the world (teo 2005). official relations between china and asean began in july 1991 when beijing started attending the asean post-ministerial conference. this was followed by various cooperation and partnership agreements with asean, including one on comprehensive economic cooperation, one on the south china sea, and another on non-traditional security issues (beng 2003). since july 1994, china has also become a full dialogue partner of asean and a member of the asean regional forum (arf). all these diplomatic partnership agreements help to assure the asean-countries of a more benign china in its outlook and national strategy, and have reduced the previous perception. china is increasingly being recognized not only as a benign power, but also as a responsible actor on the world stage. the key to this policy change has been beijing's move towards pragmatism, which can be observed in both china's domestic policies and external relations. southeast asia appreciates the normalisation of china's new approach. this is encompassed in a greater sophistication of its foreign policy, and beijing has deliberately redesigned its overall strategic engagement with the region based on an active policy of strategic friendship with asean countries. beijing's new security concept can also be interpreted as aiming at undermining us influence in southeast asia and loosen its alliances with thailand and the philippines. for example, in 1999, chinese president jiang zemin warned asean states against 'hegemonism and power politics' and 'gunboat diplomacy,' code words for the united states. china is not against playing power politics itself. chinese inroads in myanmar, laos, and cambodia, through economic aid and military assistance, have become a cause of geo-strategic concern in vietnam and india, which view china's presence in these countries as creating levers of influence (thayer 2004: 181). _________________________________________________________________________ 37 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia related to the soft power engagement in the region, china has taken a more active role in the adb and was the prime mover in the establishment of the boao forum, the asian version of davos. all of these initiatives can be grouped under the rubric of china's new soft power security concept, which emphasizes cooperative (win-win) security, confidence building, and multilateral engagement. the popularity china has garnered from these activities is no doubt also enhanced by the economic opportunities it presents to regional states. yet, without china's active engagement of multilateral institutions, its growing bulk might provoke more fear than admiration, much as it did during the early and mid-1990s. beijing's multilateral engagement has enabled it to improve its material position and its image simultaneously. the fact that this engagement furthers chinese interests does not make it any less welcome in the region (heginbotham and twomey 2005: 246). the smooth transition from jiang-zhu to hu-wen despite the western critique of china's lack of human rights and democracy is considered as another plus by the asean elites. the common impression in the region is that the new generation of chinese leaders is taking a more business-like and pragmatic approach to foreign affairs. in 1996, the chinese leadership engaged a new security concept in an attempt to develop mutual trust and ties of common interest with the aim of promoting genuine security and create regional calm. in the aftermath of the asian financial crisis, beijing offered economic assistance to the worst hit economies. in fact, the financial crisis contributed to a major foreign policy change towards a more active chinese engagement with asian multilateral security and regional organizations (foot 2006: 85). moreover the crisis changed the regional perception of the us and eu's intentions. 'in this context, the chinese prime minister zhu rongji declared in november 2000 that china stood 'ready to work with other east asian countries for the reform of the current international financial architecture', and was 'open to all ideas' about financial cooperation in the region' (sohn 2005: 495). china not only refrained from devaluing the renminbi but also provided a us$1 billion loan bailout of thailand. despite objections by the imf and washington, in june, 2003, 'china and 10 other asia-pacific countries, including five asean members, agreed to establish an asian bond fund worth more than $1 billion to help bail out economies in crisis' (economy: 2005: 6). soon after in december 2004 china implemented a second bond fund for another $2 billion to be invested in asian currency-denominated government bonds. indeed it is possible to argue that 38 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ the region – policy elite and wider community alike – perceived imf policy throughout the late 1990s as humiliating and wrong. in the summer of 1997 the imf (and the us government) impeded the japanese initiative to create an asian liquidity fund. the asian monetary fund (amf as it would have been called) was explicitly to apply softer conditions than those of the imf. the amf's concept corresponded more to that of a 'lender of last resort' than the imf. essentially, the amf idea was about providing unconditional loans to overcome liquidity crises (dieter & higgott 2003: 442). these initiatives on financial matters were taken in parallel with several moves on the diplomatic front towards asean. in november 2002, china signed two documents: a framework trade agreement designed to establish an asean-china fta by 2010, and also with asean members, a declaration on the conduct of parties in the south china sea, renouncing violent means of dealing with disputed sovereignty claims in these waters. in october 2003 it became the first major asian state outside asean to sign up to the association's treaty of amity and cooperation, the provisions of which likewise rule out the use of force for settling issues in dispute (foot 2006: 85-86). 'china has expressed ... to work towards signing the southeast asia nuclear weapons-free zone.' the agreement underscores the willingness of china to refrain from the use of force as an instrument of policy (beng 2003). as dieter and higgott note 'what we are seeing is the contours of a new regionalism in asia that exhibits three overlapping and complex trends': 1. an interest in monetary regionalism arising from the desire that has emerged, since the financial crises of the late 1990s, to combat financial volatility. 2. an interest in bilateral trade initiatives within the context of the wider multilateral system, largely at the expense of the us endorsed asia pacific economic cooperation (apec) style of open regionalism of the 1990s. 3. the emergence of a regional voice beyond that of the sub-regions southeast and northeast asia but more restricted than that of the pacific as a mega region. the voice of region in the global political economy that is emerging is a new one, an 'east asian' one (dieter & higgott 2003: 446). as a consequence, it is of interest to ask whether china is able to keep up its close ties with asean and other regional partners. the following section argues that the main objective is to free itself from the encirclement of the united states. if china's history of foreign relations is taken into further account, beijing's words can indeed be taken at face value (beng 2003). yet the outreach to southeast asia _________________________________________________________________________ 39 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia is not entirely altruistic. it has been worked into the grand chinese strategic calculation of how to cultivate a multipolar world, in which the us, the current hegemonic power, would loose its dominance. similarly, china's diplomatic overtures to asean can be interpreted as an attempt to pre-empt member-states from increasing their bilateral security cooperation with the us. it is also a foreign policy goal to prevent indonesia and australia from further enhancing their military relationship following the signing of a security pact in 1995. 'to be sure, beijing is trying to forge a diplomatic strategy to prevent other countries from 'uniting' against china by virtue of a perceived fear of a 'china threat', economic or otherwise. that said, the principal focus has been on countering the lengthening shadow of the united states on the region' (beng 2003). this might have serious consequences for the creation of a new regional entity, and not least on the chinese rivalry with japan for a leadership role of the region. although a lot of discussions and energy has been devoted as to whether the east asian community (eac) should be seen as an alternative to the us-led apec, or be more inclusive towards canberra and washington, japan and china have been in constant rivalry about who should lead the process. this has placed asean in the middle as the two nations have competed for increasing ties with asean. taken alone as individual countries, the 10 asean members are much smaller than japan and china, but they wield a strong voice in east asia when acting as a collective (masaki 2005). china has had the upper hand by taking a number of early concrete initiatives. in a geo-economic perspective, the framework agreement for overall economic cooperation signed in november 2002 became the starting point for the creation of the world's biggest free trade zone with more than 1.8 billion people. under that agreement, china and the old asean members will put zero tariffs on most basic products by 2010. china and cambodia, laos, myanmar and vietnam will do the same by 2015. a year after the china-asean framework agreement, japan and asean signed the similar framework for comprehensive economic partnership in october 2003, starting the process of creating a free trade zone by 2012. japan has already concluded a fta with singapore and reached basic fta agreements separately with the philippines, malaysia and thailand. japan's fta negotiations with indonesia and the whole of asean got under way in 2005 (masaki 2005). in a geo-political perspective, china has taken a number of diplomatic initiatives as well. 40 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ these assertive and at times conflicting chinese policies apparently reflect a desire to assuage the perception of china among some in asean as the most serious security threat to their countries and thereby to forge closer ties with the grouping. cementing ties with asean in general and the joint oil-exploration agreement with vietnam and the philippines in particular is also seen by some as part of efforts to pre-empt a possible us-led containment of china (masaki 2005). this illuminates the fact that geo-political concerns have important impacts on geo-economic problems such as the creation of an asian monetary fund and/or the eac. beijing's new soft diplomacy, especially with regard to its asian neighbours, has evolved into a sophisticated and active soft power policy, and it has to be recognized that china is seeking or at least searching for a hegemonic role regionally, internationally, strategically and diplomatically. now beijing's asian neighbours are accommodating their chinese companion, but their dreams may turn out to be different. understanding china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia asean has sought to restrain chinese power by enmeshing it in regional institutions. whereas asean is engaging china to tame the aggressive realpolitik that has characterised chinese foreign relations, beijing views the same institutions as a way to extend its regional influence and has sought to exclude the us. in planning for the first eac summit, which was held in malaysia, china tried to exclude india, australia and new zealand, but was overruled by japan and asean members. as china's regional influence grows, most asean members are working to push against or balance chinese power. while deepening trade and diplomatic co-operation with beijing, many members, us allies such as thailand and the philippines, key 'swing states' such as singapore, and emerging regional powers such as indonesia, have also increased security ties with washington (twining 2005). the question is why the us has changed its policy in the region from a benign power to one almost squarely focusing on hard power balance issues including terrorism as the overall obsession. for southeast asia, long under the united states' political and economic influence, times are rapidly moving in a new direction. a decade ago about three-quarters of us investment in east asia went to southeast asia. that figure has now fallen to 10 percent. approximately 80 percent of us investment in east asia now goes to china (thayer 2004: 178). _________________________________________________________________________ 41 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia the united states remains the region's single biggest destination for exports, and will be for some years to come. this is probably why the white house is on the defensive in terms of coming to grasp with the regional and multilateral setting in east and southeast asia. as one observer remarks: ''relations between southeast asia and the united states are perhaps best described as 'a policy without a strategy'' (banloi 2003). asian leaders are organizing and building new regional institutions precisely to avoid the sort of power politics that america is practicing. progress has been tenuous but real, and most regional leaders are cautiously optimistic about asia's future. as long as this remains true, american emphasis on balance-of-power politics will continue to meet with only limited success. indeed, this approach is likely to be undermined by regional players, who are more interested in participating in economic integration and building regional communities than in divisive balancing behaviour. most troubling for the united states, it will also cede its leadership role in asia and limit washington's ability to influence the future shape of regional institutions in the region (heginbotham and twomey 2005: 243-244). china's ultimate strategic purpose remains a subject of debate and speculation among analysts. southeast asia, in this respect, is the sole region adjacent to china in which chinese influence can most easily expand. a benign interpretation would see china as simply cultivating the sort of stable, peaceful, and prosperous regional environment that is required for its own successful modernization. a more sceptical view sees china playing a long-term game designed to curtail american influence and weave a close-knit economic and security community with china at the centre (dalpino and steinberg: 2003: 15). beijing is in fact using nationalism and the 'glories of the chinese civilisation' to instil a sense of unity among chinese nationals domestically and among the chinese diaspora in southeast asia. although beijing may acknowledge that rampant nationalism could pose a danger to its own internal stability, it has astutely harnessed it to build a new asian pride and identity, which it hopes could help establish a new asian system of politics, economics, security and culture within the 'asean+3' framework. the prc ardently hopes this could be transformed ultimately into an east asian community under its leadership (teo 2005). to realize its peaceful rise, china is using a sophisticated blend of trade, confidence building measures, and development assistance to establish itself as an important regional-cum-global leader. 42 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ of course the appeal of confucianism offers beijing a definite comparative advantage in its soft power approach. moreover, the relationship china enjoys with the chinese diaspora in the region, who dominate the economic and, in some countries like thailand, increasingly the political scene, is another advantage. the immediate implications of such an approach are that it would be naive to believe that china is not interested in exerting a dominant influence over its regional hinterland; commercial and financial muscle will eventually be the levers of choice, perhaps spearheaded by a strong regional currency. as much as the chinese may be more ethnically exclusive than americans and some europeans, they are every bit as eager to see chinese culture and traditions adopted by others as a mark of civilization. as more and more chinese tourists visit the region and even begin to dominate the tourist trade, the service sector response will be to tailor to chinese taste and custom. this will inevitably result in a revival of chinese culture and language in local communities once believed to have assimilated. already one of the fastest growing chinese language media groups is based in malaysia, where chinese language education has an unbroken history of more than a century. up to the present, businesses have catered to a culture that projects modernity and sophistication in a western guise this could change and have an impact on u.s. and european influence (vatikiotis 2003: 75). the use of culture as a tool of diplomacy highlights the sense of theatre that china skilfully deploys to exaggerate kin, ethnicity and national bonds between the motherland and the diaspora. it also reflects an increased appreciation by the chinese government of the importance of norms and soft power in diplomacy. chinese print media, television, music, food, and popular culture are spreading around the region as never before. so, too, are chinese tourists fanning out across the region, often filling the void left by american tourists staying home after 9/11, the bali bombing, and tsunami; 800,000 chinese toured both thailand and singapore in 2004 (shambaugh 2005). in this way it is safe to say that ethnic chinese business communities scattered in southeast asia have facilitated 'the rearticulation of mainland china into the global economy' not least through their reciprocal involvement in more than 100,000 joint ventures in china (yeung 2000: 267; 271). it is also arguable that the chinese diaspora has been used not 'just as a financial resource in china to fund revolutions in the past and economic reforms in the present; they have been an important symbolic resource in the construction of chinese nationalism' (callahan 2003: 483). the combination of geo-political and geo-economic strategies and cultural expansion begs an answer to the question: 'what are the impli_________________________________________________________________________ 43 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia cations of china's policy of soft power for us influence in the region'? elizabeth economy notes the important point that, china's rise to date appears to be less about the 'inevitable conflict of rising power' theory, popular in some circles, than about creeping power transition. chinese thinkers, themselves, have recognized that the international community is concerned by the potential implications of china's rise and have taken pains to ensure that it will be perceived as non-threatening. this is well illustrated by li junru, vice-president of the central party school at the chinese communist party (ccp), who explicitly outlined the benefits to china's neighbours, stating, 'china's rise will not damage the interests of other asian countries. that is because as china rises, it provides a huge market for its neighbours. at the same time, the achievements of china's development will allow it to support the progress of others in the region' (2005: 3-4). in order to comprehend the motives and objectives of chinese pragmatism, it is important to put both bilateral and multilateral diplomatic initiatives and foreign policy into the overall trade and security context and understand the internal and external constraints for a chinese expansive strategy in southeast asia. the region as a whole maintains a trade surplus with china of us$8 billion annually, largely from its enormous exports of raw materials and precision machinery. china also agreed to an 'early harvest package' that is perceived by asean as 'largely a concession' to provide benefits through tariff reductions on 573 products including agricultural and manufactured goods. individual chinese entrepreneurs are also now expanding china's economic reach throughout laos and myanmar. in some areas, locals now use only the yuan and speak chinese (economy: 2005: 4). the forays of chinese companies fit in with a broader strategic push by beijing to establish closer economic cooperation with and among asian countries. unofficial reports by asean officials claim that the foreign policy aim is part of a broader thrust by china to deploy multilateralism against what it sees as us unilateralist hegemony in the region and the world. 'this is a long-term game that china is playing,' says a senior asean official. 'they want a situation in southeast asia that automatically takes into account china's interests. the whole objective of the policy is to avoid strategic encirclement by the u.s.' (vatikiotis and hiebert 2003). critical voices note that asean's trade with japan of $136 billion and that of the united states of more than $136 billion in 2004 exceeds trade with china. at the same time, in both indonesia and malaysia, people complain that jobs are being lost to china. not least because chinese 44 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ textile exports since january 2005 have increased, thus implying downward competition for cambodia and vietnam. a growing mainland chinese economic presence could also fuel latent resentment against the sizable ethnic chinese economic elites in the region (economy 2005: 5). in fact, almost no research has so far been done to investigate the impact of china's fdi on labour markets, environment and social issues and the question is whether china is exporting its own poor labour practices (frost 2004). factors inhibiting chinese private investment and tourism are sensitive to the treatment of chinese minorities in southeast asia and in particular in the philippines and indonesia. the indonesian racial riots in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 1998 which targeted ethnic chinese created long-term damage to the 'bamboo network' (low 2003: 73). there are also cultural impediments when it comes to expansion as noted by a senior asean official: 'unlike americans, chinese don't embrace foreigners you cannot 'become chinese'' (vatikiotis 2003: 75). china's approach has been subtle, using soft power and economic diplomacy to build a benign multilateral framework in the shape of a free-trade agreement with asean. 'china has shown a great deal of sensitivity,' says singapore prime minister goh chok tong. 'china realizes that it is a huge elephant, and even if it treads softly, it can still shake the ground.' one observer notes that 'china is seen by some to be slowly filling the vacuum left behind by the united states in the political, economic and security spheres in the region. this implies that 'u.s. influence in asia under bush is waning' (agence france presse, august 29, 2004.) and being replaced by china. beijing has also stimulated the dynamics of regional cooperation in many other ways. one example is china's enthusiasm for developing the asean-china dialogue into a vibrant web of multilevel and multisector cooperation. as noted above, the 1997 financial crisis was the main catalyst for the creation of a full-fledged diplomatic mechanism spanning summit, ministerial, and senior official levels. as cheng-chwee notes, the mechanism has stretched into various semi-state and civil society organizations that include research departments, media outlets, youth organizations, and the business sector. also cooperation in agriculture, transport infrastructure, as well as energy has been included. over time, these ties have interwoven into a web of interdependence between china and asean. the prc has also taken the initiative in pushing for the creation of the network of east asia think-tanks (neat) (2005: 115). these moves are not merely tactical but part of prcs overall goal to uti_________________________________________________________________________ 45 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia lize the asean-plus-three as the main vehicle of east asian cooperation and the creation of the hybrid east asian community. although there are other factors at play, china has played a decisive role in pushing in that direction. 'china's enthusiasm for east asian cooperation is clearly driven by its aspiration to shape the direction of the existing regional institutions' (2005: 115-116). diplomatically, china's goals and vision in southeast asia are clear as it rivals the us and japan world-wide and regionally. moreover it may be again considering asean as its own monroe sphere, as it was during the 400 years of the chinese tributary system under the mingqing emperors. southeast asian countries appear to be accepting subordination as they seek to profit from the rising china. conclusion this paper has provided a detailed desk-study based on empirical evidence showing that china has a strategic interest in southeast asia. beijing has engaged the region at all levels, bilaterally and multilaterally with individual states, and been at the forefront in the establishment of new regional institutions. china has legitimate interests, both geo-economic and geo-strategic, not only in southeast asia, but also in east asia in general. the chinese leadership has shown a benevolent attitude in its dealing with regional organizations and the contrast between american power politics and chinese soft power bilateral and multilateral engagement has helped shift world and regional perceptions of both the united states and china. it is interesting to note that a new asian assertiveness has been brought to the fore, not least helped by active chinese involvement. now that china's power has gradually grown, it has become imperative for beijing to get up to cultivate good ties to southeast asia. the most important side-effect of china's growth is the attendant siphoning of critical fdi away from southeast asia. under such conditions beijing has to ensure that members of asean remain closely bonded to china, not other stronger and richer powers. this is a sufficient reason for beijing to support mainland chinese outward investment into the region and even relocation of production platforms and industries. china's manufacturing prowess is also displacing that of southeast asia, indeed, even japan. this is another reason why beijing is actively supporting and cultivating increased volumes of trade and providing much needed oda to poorer southeast asian states. given such figures, coupled with the possibility that china might dominate the entire mass 46 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 johannes dragsbaek schmidt _________________________________________________ manufacturing spectrum, hence leaving little room for southeast asia to innovate, it is little wonder that china is trying its best to ensure good ties with southeast asia. the forward looking and inclusive character of china's foreign policy is underlined through beijing's active and repeated assurance that the relevance of the project is less important for china's own interest as it is for 'the sake of the creation of a region structure' (dieter 2000: 22; schmidt 2006a). beijing's relation to asia is also a function of the american geo-economic and geo-strategic current hegemony in world affairs. having observed the relative facility of us military operations conducted in the persian gulf and especially in the balkans and iraq, it can be observed that neither prospective adversaries nor international organizations pose much of a constraint on washington and pentagon's behaviour. by cultivating ties with asean, china can potentially put a check on us influence and accessibility to southeast asia. in a more systematic manner this contribution has shown that bilateral geo-strategic ties at the formal level have deepened in terms of substantial increases in development aid, likewise the trade volume between china and individual southeast asian countries will soon surpass trade with japan, the nics, the eu and the united states. the same can be said about chinese fdi pouring into the region's economies. indeed china is following in the footsteps of japan and later nics in pursuing a diplomacy and economic policy based on soft power and a listian neomercantilist strategy. in reality, china's diplomatic offensive started in the wake of the financial crisis in 1997 and has since then been based on a sophisticated strategy enhancing china's security and defence needs and can best be conceptualized as an attempt to break the us encirclement of mainland china. this also explains its rather successful push to create new regional institutions and its outright strategy of establishing a new asian identity. it is probably only a matter of time before the amf an alternative institution to the imf will be formally initiated. the east asian community is still in an embryonic stage, but also in this case it will most probably emerge as a real alternative regional institution to the eu, nafta and other types of regional organizations. the myriad of free trade areas, agreements and measures are, it seems part of a grand design to create a new east asian entity. johannes dragsbaek schmidt is associate professor at research center on development and international relations, aalborg university (jds@ihis.aau.dk) _________________________________________________________________________ 47 ________________________________ china's soft power diplomacy in southeast asia references: banlaoi, r. c. 2003. southeast asian perspectives on the rise of china: regional security after 9/11, parameters, summer beng, p. k. 2002. 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'economic globalization, crisis and the emergence of chinese business communities in southeast asia'. international sociology 15(2) june. _______________________________________________________________________ 131 ___________________________________________________________________ rewievs david scott, china stands up: the prc and the international system. routledge, 2007. 212 pages incl. bibliography, index. isbn10: 0-41540270-0 (pbk) david scott's china stands up uses mao zedong's famous line as a starting point and title to trace its influence on china's foreign policy up to the present day. dealing with a hostile outside world from a position of inferiority has been a central and galling -aspect of the prc's international standing. the ability of the beijing regime to stand up internationally, to demonstrate its independence from foreign pressure and go its own way, is crucial to the continued legitimacy of the chinese communist party as the sole arbiter of political power within the country. scott turns to international relations theory to examine how the prc has interacted with the international system. he favours a constructivist approach, which focuses on how international actors construct images of each other. constructivism does not entirely disregard the contributions of other strands of ir theory, and one can hardly escape hard-line realism, rooted to a hobbesian, social darwinian (and sometimes mechanistic) view of inter-state relations, as well as somewhat more moderated liberalism, with its stress on complex interdependence. constructivism necessarily draws on the history, psychology and culture of the nation-states under consideration. students of politics sympathetic to the approaches of comparative politics, which looks to the domestic political drivers of international behaviour, will find much of constructivism familiar territory. from this scott argues that 'various ideational strands deeply affect tangible actions and events at play between china and the world—then, now and probably in the future' (p. 5). it appears that scott has read just about every english language political commentary dealing with china (and the world), written since the founding of the prc. his bibliography is 41 pages long and contains around 1000 separate citations from a wide range of authors. scott's mining of this massive literature review has both strengths and weaknesses. regarding the strengths, firstly, as noted, the range of sources and opinion is quite diverse. secondly, from this range, one gets a vivid sense of the hostility china has faced from foreign observers on all sides, from blatantly racist 'yellow peril' mongers, to cold war observers in the 1950s and 1960s who saw chinese expansionism as a threat to asian stability and peace. scott points out that today these themes are quoted by writers who put forward the idea of 'the china threat'. however, even in the more subtle analyses of china's contemporary 'soft power' 132 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 rewievs ___________________________________________________________________ diplomacy and 'hard power' military modernization, one can hear echoes of these ideas in the background. scott, a lecturer in international politics at brunel university, does us a service with this reminder. yet this reviewer is not sure that scott gives enough credit to the chinese themselves for having contributed to this state of affairs. the cold war was a real contest. china was unremittingly hostile to much of the outside world, and while the korean war might have confirmed to mao and others that the world was out to get them, active and concrete prc support for revolution and insurgencies around the world did not exactly project an image of a china that might become a responsible stakeholder in the international system. after all, what was one to make of the cultural revolution and lin biao's creed 'long live the victory of people's war'? today, realist inspired public intellectuals like yan xuetong and others, are not ashamed of their negative views of the outside world and their positive views concerning china becoming a great power. even the seemingly palliative slogan of 'china's peaceful rise' should be re-analysed. as a top chinese official is said to have remarked, 'the "peaceful" is for foreigners, and the "rise" is for us'. (see susan shirk, china: fragile superpower, oxford university press, 2007, p. 109). furthermore, scott's methodology of listing selective quotations one on top of the other to make a point, leads to overkill, resulting in some of his points s getting lost in the forest of quotation marks. moreover, one does not get the sense that scott really discriminates between scribblers promoting a 'threat' agenda (usually right-wing and with domestic american, not chinese, targets) and more objective analysts. for instance, in chapter 7, 'up against the hegemon, the usa' (pp. 112-128), scott cites a wide range of american scholars and observers, some of dubious china expertise, on all sides of the noisy 'china threat' question, without really coming to grips with how these views affected policies. the furious chinese response to the most alarmist us writing, using words such as 'unbalanced psychology', and 'demonizing',suggests that the prospect of finding an agreement is remote. however, scott balances his account by looking at the generally positive accounts of china to be found in the economic literature. true, business perceptions of china over time have ranged from joy to despair, and in the case of china, the political will always override the economic. however 'standing up' has a large economic aspect, and that leads to the main thrust of scott's conclusion: 'the twenty-first century is…increasingly envisaged as a century in which china will be a particularly _______________________________________________________________________ 133 ___________________________________________________________________ rewievs significant actor' (p. 130) as it embraces the existing multilateral order of the un and wto. scott wraps up his study with a wide-ranging review of china's main bi-lateral relations, russia, japan, india and the us. he states that management of these relationships will be key: 'geopolitical and geo-economics issues are joined by basic geocultural nuances' (p. 163). certainly, one cannot argue with that. if, as scott's concluding chapters suggest, realist 'geopolitics' remain the main paradigm driving china's relations with the world, 'geoculture' and the subjectivity of perceptions are key and complicating components of that relationship. alas, it is the reviewer's duty to point out occasional errors that one might pass over in non-academic writing but which should have been caught in the editing process. for instance, us aircraft carriers did not 'interpose themselves in the taiwan straits' during the taiwan missile crisis of early 1996 (p. 113). the uss nimitz did indeed cross the straits in december 1995, several months after prc missile launches in july and august, but the major 'intervention' was positioning of two carrier battle groups in international waters east of taiwan in march 1996 during renewed prc hostility towards taiwan. moroever, one also regrets to report an unfortunate typographical error on the first page which the eagle-eyed (and pin-yin savvy) will catch. to sum up, china stands up provides us with an exhaustively researched review of the way the world has reacted to china's interaction with the international system. a little more care in discriminating amongst sources would have been useful, but on the whole the study is a welcome addition to the ir literature on china. john frankenstein associate professor, phd. economics department brooklyn college/city university of new york __________________________________________________________________________ 5 _______________________________________________________________ introduction introduction: in the shadow of mainland china: changing ethnic chinese business practices in southeast asia michael jacobsen and ng beoy kui (guest editors) it has been argued that one of the main reasons behind mainland china's post 1978 rise to its current status as a global economic superpower has been particularly the economic success of southeast asian chinese entrepreneurs, who sent huge amounts of foreign direct investments (fdi) to china in order to develop, and thus tap into, this emerging market. the success of these entrepreneurs has generally been attributed to some shared cultural characteristics with mainland chinese entrepreneurs. this was particularly based on confucian values that govern an array of economic practices such as guanxi (dyadic (business) relations), xinyong (trust) and the importance of family relations, all economic practices which had their origin in china itself. due to the perceived cultural affinity between chinese entrepreneurs from mainland china and southeast asia, it was imagined that this would facilitate investment opportunities between the two groups of chinese entrepreneurs. according to such a culturalist perspective, there was thus a perfect match between an opening mainland china, with its low labour costs and huge domestic market, and ethnic chinese investors living outside mainland china, who were eager to invest in this promising market, so benefiting the overall relationship between china and the southeast asian countries, where the bulk of ethnic chinese resided.1 ng beoy kui, in the first article of this special issue, deals with this match between china and the southeast asian economies. he examines the economic impact of china on the southeast asian countries, mainly in terms of trade and investment. he raises the question of whether the rise of china poses a threat to southeast asia as a region with regard to international trade, or whether both parties can collaborate based on their common interests in promoting economic growth. ng beoy kui goes on to question whether the concentration of fdi in china implies a diversion of fdi away from southeast asia. does the fdi in china and southeast asian region support each party in the international division 6 _______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen and ng beoy kui (guest editors) _____________________________ of labour? he argues that the increasing role of china as an international trader and global investor provides a golden opportunity for southeast asian countries to integrate their ethnic chinese economy. the huge domestic chinese market provides vast opportunities for investment, the entrance to which is facilitated through perceived notions of a common mode of doing businesses in the region. ng beoy kui concludes that the rise of china benefits the southeast asian economies particularly in terms of china's role in the asian production networks, destination for investment, its outward investment and, more importantly, its huge and growing domestic market. according to the author, this turns china into yet another driver for economic growth in asia. however, the rise of china as mainly a manufacturing powerhouse also poses a threat to the southeast asian economies. taking a point of departure in the fluid political and economic landscape of east and southeast asia, the contribution by michael jacobsen focuses on ethnic chinese sme entrepreneurs in southeast asia, especially in indonesia and malaysia. he argues that they are gradually becoming a kind of hostage in the discussion of whether a rising mainland chinese economy is a benevolent or predatory force in the asian region. contrary to the coherent nature otherwise ascribed to this particular ethnic group, michael jacobsen argues that, in fact, it is divided into many different factions. this differentiation of the ethnic chinese community particularly in southeast asia, it is argued, is a reflection of multi-dimensional impacts from colonialism and different contemporary social and political developments within the individual southeast asian country in which the ethnic chinese live. this increasing societal complexity makes the ethnic chinese entrepreneurs vulnerable in the wake of a rising mainland chinese economy. the latter can impact either positively or negatively on the various southeast asian economies, thus indirectly influencing the processes of societal embedding of their respective ethnic chinese minorities. as a consequence, the otherwise attractive chinese market has both positive and negative connotations. going beyond the impact of culture on southeast asian chinese business practices, and taking a rapidly changing business environment into account, the contribution by menkhoff et al examines the organisational change management behaviour of the owner-managers of small and medium-sized enterprises in singapore. the analysis of survey data aims at ascertaining whether there are any differences between chinese and english educated (chinese) small businessmen in terms of change management, a dichotomy that is of great historical and politico-cultural __________________________________________________________________________ 7 _______________________________________________________________ introduction significance in singapore. the survey data collected by the authors show that there are indeed differences between the subgroups (e.g. with regard to the initiation of a more participatory people management style). however, these variations turned out to be far less pronounced than expected. access to information and actionable managerial knowledge appears to be a key antecedent of the various change management approaches used by both groups. chinese educated businessmen in particular seem to be somewhat disadvantaged in this respect, as the modern change management literature is still largely published in english. the article by ramin and ziemnowicz takes us to a more general level in the discussion of entrepreneurial activities, although the discussion stills relates specifically to singapore. according to them, there are more general ramifications in this connection for the southeast asian business community that has to be taken into account. creativity and risk-taking, widely accepted prerequisites for successful entrepreneurial behaviour, were, according to ramin and ziemnowicz, absent for a long time from the singaporean community, accustomed as it was to well paid and readily available jobs in the public sector. promoting entrepreneurial activities thus became a priority of the singapore government in the last decade as a result of the economic slowdown in the late 1990s. using this environment for measuring entrepreneurship in singapore, ramin and ziemnowicz then analysed the entrepreneurial characteristics of singapore's multi-racial and multi-cultural society in search of differences in the propensity to engage in entrepreneurship based on factors such as race, gender, and culture. their main finding is that the economic policies of the singapore government have been hugely successful in increasing growth and affluence. these achievements may, according to ramin and ziemnowicz, have led singaporeans, especially the younger generation, to be complacent, heightening their reluctance to leave their comfort zone. this has resulted in their inability to realize the need for diligence and determination. in addition, while the abundance of employment opportunities provides a safety net for the working adults, in actual fact it may have reduced their level of determination, as they lack motivation and perhaps the ability to face the obstacles that are an inherent aspect of innovative entrepreneurial endeavours. as mentioned previously, southeast asian chinese businesses can be characterised as possessing some unique cultural attributes. fock siew tong et al argue in their contribution, that being embedded in culturally specific institutional environments might hold back the growth of these chinese businesses, thus leading them to take on limited or altruistic 8 _______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen and ng beoy kui (guest editors) _____________________________ economic roles in their respective southeast asian home countries. familism, particularism, nepotism and the lack of state support, it is argued, stand in the way of developing large, successful and enduring firms, problems that are further aggravated by inter-generational transitions that frequently lead to their demise. sounding a more optimistic note, the authors argue that such fatalistic prognoses are misplaced. they introduce some case studies of successful chinese family businesses in singapore to demonstrate how business leaders, as agents, can incorporate, defy, or recombine elements from the socio-cultural environment in ways that enable continuity and growth. furthermore, fock siew tong et al highlight the important role of a proactive state in promoting a specific chinese mode of doing business based on notions of so-called confucian capitalism, which despite its culturalist image, is based on pragmatic capitalist practices. as can be seen, all five articles in this special issue of copenhagen journal of asian studies point to the fact that being an entrepreneur of chinese descent in southeast asia does not imply that culture plays an omnipotent and determining role when engaging in business as otherwise generally presumed. on the contrary, due to statist interventions combined with complex inter-ethnic relations and increasing entrenchment of global capitalism, current southeast asian chinese business practices do not correspond to the stereotypical notion of chinese capitalism based on confucian values or any other specific chinese modes of doing business. rather, they have to respond to ever changing political and economic conditions in order to adapt to local environmental imperatives. by not doing so, they run the risk of not only experiencing worsening inter-ethnic relations with the dominant 'other', but also potentially loosing out in the economic sphere, be it domestically or internationally, as cultural mores do not relate well to global market mechanisms. in such a complex context, the mainland chinese market is not only conceived of as a golden opportunity for doing business, but also as a potential problematic factor that has to be taken into account when doing business in a southeast asian context. michael jacobsen is associate professor at asia research centre, copenhagen business school, and ng beoy kui is associate professor at school of humanities and social science, nanyang technological university, singapore. notes 1 for a critique of the culturalist approach to ethnic chinese entrepreneurship, see michael jacobsen this volume. economic and political reform in post-mao china kjeld erik brbdsgaard east asia institute, university of copenhagen since the death of mao zedong in 1976 and deng xiaoping's second return from disgrace in 1977, china has been in the middle of a great transformation and modernization process which as its overarching goal aims to turn china into an industrialized, developed country by the middle of the next century. since december 1978, a reform of the rigid and overly centralized political and economic systems has been an integral part of the modernization pro gram. the economic reforms involve adopting measures to (1) decentralize deci sion-making power to the production units, whether enterprises in the urban state sector or households in the rural sector, (2) enhance material incentives to stimulate economic efficiency and productivity, ( 3 ) substitute administra tive planning methods by economic levers (jingji ganggan), e.g. credit control, interest rates, taxes, and prices, (4) and allow the market mechanism to play a role in resource allocation and distribution. of the chinese post-mao reforms those in the economic realm have attract ed the greatest attention in china as well as abroad. however, in the latter part of 1980, the issue of political reform also became the subject of a signifi cant debate among the chinese leaders and in the chinese media. the debate was taken off the agenda in 1981 and effectively suppressed during the cam paign against spiritual pollution (jingshen w u r a n ) in late 1983. recently, the need for political reforms has reappeared as an important theme in the chinese political discourse and the concept of reform of the pol itical system (zhengzhi tizhigaige) is now as widely discussed as reform of the economic system (jingji tizhi gaige). the present paper will focus on the evolution of economic and political re form in the post-mao era. it will be argued that although economic reforms were being introduced and implemented from 1979 onwards, the road toward basic systemic reform was blocked by the absence of a simultaneous change of the political system. that the issue of political reform has resurfaced in china kjeld erik brsdsgaard now, ten years after mao, may signify that economic and political reformers have joined forces and that major systemic changes are likely. a postscript has been added to the main body of the article in order to ana lyze the significance of the fall of general secretary hu yaobang in january this year. it is based on a collection of ccp central documents (zhongfa) that have a restricted circulation in china and, in principle, are unavailable to western analysts of chinese politics. economic reform the present chinese economic reform process started in october 1978, when sichuan province undertook an experiment, granting expanded decision making power to a selected group of enterprises. during 1979 and 1980, the scope of the reforms were considerably extended, and by the end of 1980 some 6600 enterprises throughout the country were invo1ved.l these enterprises ac counted for 60 percent of the value of industrial output and 70 percent of total state owned enterprise profit. it was decided that in 1981 the new economic management system would encompass all state enterprises in the ~ o u n t r y . ~ soon, however, the introduction of economic reforms ran into major diffi culties. the expanded decision-making powers for enterprises had caused extra-budgetary funds to increase sharply in 1979 and 1980.= as a conse quence, the government lost control over capital construction, and invest ment increased rapidly, creating serious imbalances in the economy, budget deficits and inflation further aggravated the situation, and in late 1980, thelea dership decided to call a halt to the implementation of further reform measu res. recentralization was stressed, and centralized control and planning were to be strictly enforced not only in capital construction, but also in the allocation of raw materials and primary products, in rates of profit retention, in price policies, e t ~ . ~ it was clear that the aim of simultaneously readjusting and reforming the economy had run into major difficulties, and it was decided that for the time being readjustment and consolidation were to have priority over r e f ~ r m . ~ the economic responsibility system in the 1981-1982 period, the reform process was only slowly unfolding, and in the urban sector emphasis was placed on the introduction of the so-called economic and political reform in post-mao china economic responsibility system (jingji zeren hi).^ this system that was in spired by developments in the agricultural sector defined the responsibilities and tasks of every workshop, shift, team, and individual in a given enterprise. it also specified the exact amount of bonus to be received for the overfulfil ment of each job assignment. at capital iron and steel company, for ex ample, there were more than 230.000 targets for the different kinds of work at the factory. the system was regarded as a sophisticated kind of "scientific ma nagement" and was much propagated in chinese publications in 1982. the reform discussion surfaced again in mid-1982. earlier reform measures had centered primarily on individual enterprises, but now the reform process also began to address issues concerning the very core of the chinese planning system: namely, the relationship between plan and market in economic plan ning. plan versus market in january 1982, chen yun convened a meeting with leading members of the state planning commission to discuss the relationship between plan and mar ket in the chinese economic system. in the wake of the meeting there unfolded among chinese economists an interesting debate on the relationship between planned economy and regulation by the market m e ~ h a n i s m . ~ all participants in the debate agreed on a strategy that combined central planning with the market mechanism. but they differed in their views on what this meant in practice. the advocates of comprehensive planning argued that the slogan of "taking the planned economy as the dominant factor and the market as the supplement" ( y i jihua jingji wei zhu, yi shichang tiaojie wei fu) should be taken literally. the plan was superior to the market and a prerequi site for socialist development. this group also denied that the economic prob lems of the past were caused by central planning: "the tortuous path along which our economy has developed has not been caused by planned economy, but because we have violated planned economy. finally, they claimed that it was wrong to hold that planning meant governing the economy by way of or ders from above and that the plan therefore could not respond flexibly to mar ket demands. in sum, this group wished to retain a planned economy and the changes that they thought were needed were aimed at perfecting the planning system rather than abolishing it. the adherents of reducing the scope of central planning argued that the pre sent system was restraining the possibilities of exploiting the full potential of the enterprises. they wanted to further expand the role of the market forces by instituting a system of guidance planning and market regulation. said xue muqiao : "mastering true methods of applying economic levers, gradually re ducing mandatory plans and replacing them with guidance plans for reference is an important part of the future reforms of our planning ~ y s t e m . " ~ in short, according to this group, the crucial role given to the plan constituted an ob stacle to economic development, and it was therefore necessary to establish an economic system that also reflected regulation of supply and demand by the market. hu yaobang's report to the 12th party congress, on september 1, 1982, seemed to indicate that a compromise had been reached on the issue of plan versus market. hu outlined an economic planning system which contained three elements: mandatory planning (zhilingxing jihua), guidance planning (zhidaoxing jihua), and market regulation (shichang tiaojie).1° mandatory planning should be enforced in regard to the production and distribution of capital goods and consumer goods in the state sector which were vital to the national economy. guidance planning, i.e. planning which is mainly imple mented by economic levers rather than by administrative means, should be used in regard to the rest of the economy, except for a small number of com modities "which are low in output value, great in variety, and produced and supplied only seasonally and locally." as it was neither necessary nor possible for the state to control these by planning, they should be produced and distri buted in accordance with the law of supply and demand. hu claimed that some reform measures had not been well coordinated with each other. this had caused problems for the functioning of the state's unified plannning system, and he warned: hereafter, while continuing to give play to the role of market regulation, we must on no account neglect or relax unified leadership through state planning ." a few days later, the people's daily published an article by liu guoguang, the new head of the economic research institute of the chinese academy of so cial sciences.12 the article differed from hu yaobang's speech by explicitly questioning the merit of central planning. thus, liu guoguang criticized a "certain viewpoint" according to which "mandatory targets are the principal symbol of the planned economy; the greater the number of such targets, the stronger planning will be; and following the improvement of the level of plan management, the scope covered by mandatory plans will become larger and larger. economic and political reform inpost-mao china according to liu guoguang, such a viewpoint is questionable because it does not take into account that central planning has advantages as well as dis advantages : the experience of all countries that have adopted a mandatory plan sy stem shows that such a plan management form is relatively weak in sol ving those traditional shortcomings that are intrinsic to a centralized planning system, such as the gap between production and demand, waste of resources, poor quality and lack of varieties of products, and poor mic roeconomic results.14 liu also claimed that the experience of countries practicing a centralized plan ning system for a long time shows that "the consequences of microeconomic returns being lowered had gradually outweighed its superiority in terms of macroeconomic returns." this had, in his opinion, led to a situation where the slowing down of the growth rate of the whole economy "can hardly be re versed, and the imbalance of the economic structure can hardly be re liu's conclusion was that the expansion of the scope of mandatory planning cannot be the direction structural reform should take in the case of the chinese economy. on the contrary, it was necessary gradually to reduce the scope of the plans which are mandatory in nature and expand the scope of plans which are indicative in nature, i.e. so-called guidance plans. two weeks after liu's article had appeared, the people's daily published an authoritative commentator's article on the issue of plan versus market in chi nese economic^.^^ the article stressed the importance of mandatory planning. it argued that if planning is abandoned as the guiding principle "the unified state-run economy will deviate from serving the people's interests and from the socialist orientation, and the entire social system will develop under the spontaneous forces of the market."17 in a clear rebuttal of liu's criticism of the mandatory planning system, the commentator's article stated that it is "groundless to assert" that production under mandatory planning always will result in "a gap between production and demand, waste of resources, poor quality, and less variety of products, and low microenomic efficiency".ls the commentator's article amounted to an official criticism of liu guo guang's position on reform of the chinese economic planning system. how ever, apparently, liu survived this "incident" without having had to make a self-criticism. in fact, during an interview at the chinese academy of social sciences in december 1982, liu reiterated his position.19 it is remarkable that liu's article appeared only 6 days after hu yaobang's report and while the party congress was still in session. under these circum stances, the article could probably not have been published without clearance from the top echelon of the power hierarchy. this leads us to two possible as sumptions. one is that "someone" wished to signal to hu yaobang and the party that hu's report did not meet with unanimous approval and support, and that the opponents of hu were strong enough to have their views pub lished at this particular time. the second, and more likely assumption, is that liu guoguang was in agreement with hu yaobang, and that he only wrote what hu would have said in his report, had he not had to compromise be tween contending parties in his position as party leader. by using liu as a mouthpiece, hu could get his message across without running the risk of being the target of possible reprisals from the conservative wing of the party. liu, on the other hand, could count on the support of hu yaobang, and therefore he had reason to believe that he did not run too much of a risk by publishing his reform-oriented views. economic retrenchment by late 1981, it seemed that the readjustment policy adopted in december 1978 and further strengthened in december 1980 was succeeding in its twin goals of (1) slowing down the growth rate of heavy industry in favour of agri culture and light industry and (2) reducing the accumulation rate. however, statistics published in 1983 revealed that the old pattern of heavy industry oriented growth was re-emerging . for example, state capital construction in 1982 had ballooned to a record high of 55,5 billion yun and the output of heavy industry had increased 9.9% which was 8.9% higher than the planned figure of 1%. these trends continued in the first half of 1983. heavy industry rose 12.2 % over the 1982 period, far outstripping the planned annual growth rate of 3.9%. furthermore, the volume of capital construction also increased rapidly during the first months of 1983, bringing the amount for the first half of 1983 up to a level 14.7% higher than the previous yearezo in july, a ccp working conference convened to arrest this development, and an emergency circular from the state council called for an immediate economic retrenchment .21 however, this time the reform process did not come to a complete standstill. in the urban sector, there were further attempts to re form the financial system and the wage and labor systems, and in the country side the separation of government administration from the rural people's communes was carried out." in mid-1983, a major tax reform was intro duced, according to which the profit retention schemes would be substituted by a new enterprise taxation system. the new system was to be introduced in stages. the first stage involved the imposition of income tax on all state enter prises coupled with a sharing of post-tax profits between the individual enter prise and the central budget. the next stage would try to reduce disparities in after-tax profits by introducing a readjustment tax that would ofset variations in profitability due to factors external to the enterprise, in particular the ir rational price system.23 nevertheless, in 1984 xue muqiao complained that the reforms had only re sulted in partial and minor alterations of the system and that the enthusiasm of enterprises and workers had been stifled by attempts to recentralize. said xue muqiao : it is necessary to conduct a major reform in the planned management sys tem, to give full play to the role of key cities, to delegate more decision making power to the enterprises and workers, and to separate govern ment administration from enterprise management in a step-by-step man ner. in recent years we have conducted some reform experiments in the urban econmy at selected points and we have delegated some financial de cision-making power to lower levels, but the enterprises cannot yet man age to assume sole responsibility for their own profit and losses after paying taxes. moreover, there have been no changes by and large in the personnel and labor management system and only minor changes (some changes were made by the enterprises in making breakthroughs instead of following the old principle, some power was recalled shortly after being delegated), in the decisionmaking power over materials (including sup ply, production and marketing), thus the enthusiasm of enterprises and workers has not been fully aroused.24 in this passage, xue muqiao, dissatisfied with a reform process focussing on the introduction of partial and experimental reform, clearly calls for more comprehensive and lasting reform efforts. the second reform phase a new reform strategy was, in fact, already on its way. the new strategy was embodied in a comprehensive reform package that had been prepared by the committee on the reform of the economy (jingji tizhi gaige weiyuanhui) and was adopted at the third plenary session of the 12th party congress in octo ber 1984.25 "the decision on reform of the economic structure" covers ten chapters totalling 16.000 chinese characters and must be regarded as one of the most important documents pertaining to the chinese reform process. the decision mentions that china now has over one million urban indus trial and commercial enterprises with a work force totalling more than 80 mil lion. the taxes and profits delivered by these enterprises account for over 80 % of the state's revenue. thus, the urban enterprises have a vital bearing on the national economy as well as on the state's financial and economic situation. the decision calls for a reform of every aspect of the entire economic stmc ture. this involves a whole range of reforms, including planning, pricing, economic management, and the labor and wage system. these reforms should largely be accomplished within five years. the goal is to make the indi vidual enterprise an independent economic entity responsible for its own pro fits and losses and able to act as a legal person with certain rigths and duties. the decision claims that in the reform of the planning system "it is necess ary, first of all, to discard the traditional idea of pitting the planned economy against the commodity economy."26 in fact, according to the decision, a so cialist economy is a "planned commodity economy" and the difference be tween socialist and capitalist economy does not lie in whether commodity economy and the law of value are still functioning, but in the difference in ownership. in short, it is public ownership of the major means of production which defines a socialist system, not the structure of the planning system. the implication is that it is possible to attempt far-reaching reforms of the plan ning system without altering the fact that china is a socialist country. the chinese price system is based on administrative prices set by the state. prices of labor, energy, and many raw materials have been separated from relative scarcities, which has resulted in an irrational price system that does not provide suitable information and signals to the economic actors. the de cision lists several examples of the irrational price system: inadequate price differentials for a given product with varying quality, irrational price ratios between different commodities, particularly the low prices for some mineral products and raw and semi-finished materials; and the retail price of major farm and side-line products being lower than their state purchasing price. the decision admits that this situation constitutes an obstacle to the reform of the planning system: "therefore, reform of the price system is the key to the re form of the entire economic s t r u c t ~ r e . " ~ ~ the decision recommends a three-tiered pricing system which will reflect and also support the tripartite management system: planned prices for essen tial products covered by the state plan, floating or negotiated prices for pro economic and political reform in post-mao china ducts under guidance planning, and free prices for products circulated in the free market. suggestions to pay more attention to what the chinese call economic levers (pricing, taxation, credit, etc.) are combined with suggestions to implement a wage and labor reform "in accordance with the principle of linking wages with responsibilities and achievements" so as to reflect more fully "the differences between mental and manual, complex and simple, skilled and unskilled, and heavy and light along these lines we also find a call for an enterprise management system where the director or manager assumes full responsibil ity. the decision points out that a thorough reform of the economic structure badly needs a contingent of managerial and administrative personnel, and especially managers who are knowledgeable in modem economics and tech nology. it is therefore necessary to promote a new generation of managerial personnel. this is called "reshuffling of leadership in enterprises", and was to be completed before the end of 1985. the decision on reform of the economic structure was given wide coverage in the media in china as well as abroad. the chinese used phrases like "great practical importance" and "far-reaching historical significance" in order to emphasize that this time the reform process did not aim at partial and minor alterations of the system, but rather had entered a stage of "comprehensive re form". to be sure, following the decision on reform of the economic structure, im portant changes took place in the realm of planning. in industrial production, the number of products controlled by the mandatory planning of the state planning commission were reduced from 123 to 60, and the number of ma terials allocated through unified state distribution by the state planning com mission and the state bureau of material supply went down from 256 to 65.29 the types of agricultural and sideline products covered by mandatory plans declined from 29 to and in late march the central committee issued a zhongfa that consolidated the shift from state planning to market regulation in farm production. state purchasing quotas were to be abolished, and instead the state would buy grain and cotton according to contracts and allow farmers to sell their surplus production on the open market .31 other agricultural goods would be allowed to float at free market price^.^" 1985 also saw further experimentation with a wage and labor reform, and industrial enterprises were given permission to keep their depreciation funds. finally, an important reform of the science and technology management sys kjeld erik brodsgaard tem was announced in march 1985, when the central committee issued its "decision on reform of the science and technology management system".j3 the science and technology reforms were aimed at science and technology development and technology transfer not only in accordance with the produc tion needs, but also in line with the emerging combination of mandatory and guidance planning with the free market. moratorium on reform the introduction of these reform measures had a stimulating effect on econ omic performance, and during the first nine months of 1985 chinese econ omic growth surged upward. however, soon the old problems of inflation, budget deficits, excessive capital construction, etc., reappeared. confronted with these signs of imbal ance and with a marked drop in foreign exchange reserves due to large-scale import of consumer goods from japan, the reformers were pressed to call a temporary halt to the implementation of further reforms. recentralization and consolidation reappeared as the key words. on april 12,1986, the national people's congress formally adopted chi na's seventh five-year plan, which will cover the 1986-1990 period.34 the plan introduces a two-year reform moratorium for the years 1986 and 1987. during this period efforts will be made to keep investments in control. thus, investments will not exceed the 1985 level of 157 billion yun for at least two years and the average accumulation rate will be maintained at 30 percent. efforts will also be made to enhance macroeconomic control of the economy in order to achieve a "basic balance" and avoid a discrepancy between supply and demand. anticipated growth rates are modest, at least compared to the economic growth rates of the 1981-1985 period. industrial output is targeted to increase 7.5 percent a year in the next five years, compared with an increase in indus trial output in 1985 of 18 percent and an average growth of 12 percent over the past five years. agriculture is planned to increase 4 percent a year in the plan period, which is significantly lower than the average annual growth of 8.1 per cent between 1981 and 1985. combined agricultural and industrial output is expected to grow 6.7 percent a year in the next five years, compared with the 11 percent annual growth in the past five years.j5 clearly, the plan aims to slow down the overheated chinese economy. economic and political reform in post-mao china the chinese polity seems to generate the same policies and policy positions re peatedly. in the economic realm a pattern recurs of reform and readjustment, of decentralization and centralization, etc. since 1978 we have seen two, pos sibly three, of these cycles. clearly there are deeply rooted systemic obstacles to reform. these are not just of an economic nature. in fact, the absence of basic political reform could be a major factor blocking full-fledged economic reforms. political reform in august 1980 an enlarged meeting of the politburo was called to discuss the question of how to reform the leadership systems of the party and the state. at the meeting deng xiaoping delivered an important speech addressing these issues. deng's speech was not published at the time, but the chinese press was full of allusions to it.36 the debate that unfolded and the policy proposals that were formulated came to be known as the gengshen reforms.37 the most elab orate of these reform proposals was the one put forward by liao gailong, a member of the policy study office under the central committee, at a seminar on party history held by the national party school system in 1980.38 in his august 1980 speech, deng identified five major obstacles to political reform and democratization: bureaucracy, overconcentration of power, patriarchal methods, lifelong tenure of leading posts, and various kinds of pri vileges. in order to combat these phenomena andintroduce reforms in the pol itical sphere it was necessary to "fully practice people's democracy; ensure that all people truly enjoy the right to manage, through various effective forms, state affairs and particularly local state power at the grass-roots level and the various enterprises and institution^."^^ deng also mentioned three objectives in the socialist modernization process: (1) to catch up with the deve loped capitalist countries in terms of economic performance; (2) to create a democracy "which is at a higher level than that of capitalist countries", and (3) to educate more qualified people than the developed countries.40 deng is very much aware that the above-mentioned problems constitute obstacles to the successful implementation of economic reforms. he argues, for example, that the overconcentration of power means the concentration of all power in the party committees. this constitutes a major problem because the power of the party committees themselves is often in the hands of party secretaries, especially the first secretaries. in this way "centralized party leadership" often turns into leadership by individuals. on this issue, liao gailong goes even further and, allegedly basing himself on remarks made by deng in august 1980, in fact proposes the abolition of the concept of the leadership by the party committes at the basic levels: why must we carry out such reforms? because the kind of system of leadership practiced in the past in enterprises and businesses, is though called the leadership of the party committees actually a system of indivi dual dictatorial and arbitrary rule by the party committee secretaries, who have the final say on any matter. moreover, these party committee secretaries are mostly nonprofessionals in the enterprises and businesses over which they exercise l e a d e r ~ h i p . ~ ~ although deng would phrase his objection to too much party interference in enterprise management differently, it is probably correct to assume that liao gailong is in agreement with deng xiaoping on this issue. a speech for re stricted circulation, delivered by deng in the fall of 1980 and only recently made available, substantiates this p r o p o ~ i t i o n . ~ ~ in this speech, deng stated that is is ncessary to reduce the power of the party at the basic level. said deng : at the grass-roots level, we must make up our mind to change the situ ation in which party members dominate the masses, party branch secre taries dominate all other cadres, and party organizations dominate all other organizations. our party committees should n o longer take on and intervene in e ~ e r y t h i n g . ~ ~ in wanting to abrogate the privileges enjoyed by basic-level party committees and their secretaries, deng is in complete agreement with liao gailong. he thought that if the party did not introduce reforms to solve the problems, it would be placed in a position "antagonistic to the masses". he warned that when the polish communist party had failed to redefine its position in socie ty, the polish workers had reacted by establishing their own independent trade unions, and he asked: "can we say we are not facing a similar prob lem?"44 liao gailong is also in favor of a loosening of party control over chinese so ciety, and an increase in the autonomy of other organizations. he proposes to divide the national people's congress into two houses where one house should be chosen on the basis of territory and the other on the basis of a social economic and political reforminpost-mao china or functional representation. these two houses would jointly execute legislat ive power, jointly supervise the work of the government, and jointly exercise the highest state power. they would impose a constraint on each other so that neither house would have the final say.45 there should also be an independent judiciary which would mean that when a court passed a verdict, it would not have to send it to any party committee for e ~ a m i n a t i o n . ~ ~ the workers should be permitted to elect the officials of the trade unions, making these unions re present the interests of the masses rather than the party. if this did not happen the working class might rise in rebellion as had happened in poland.47 the work of the party should be separated from the work of administrative or gans, in enterprises and businesses, and enterprise management should be de m o c r a t i ~ e d . ~ ~ the next part congress should elect three parallel central com mittees which will "mutually supervise and impose constraints on each other",49 as deng, according to liao gailong, had suggested in august 1980. in sum, liao gailong proposed the introduction of changes or reforms that would change the political system into a system characterized by "checks and balances" between various political institutions and organs rather than by the all-pervasive dominance of a strong centralized party. what is at stake is no less than an attempt to introduce pluralistic elements into the chinese political system. again liao gailong seemed to have the support of deng xiaoping. to be sure, in his august 1980 politburo speech deng had claimed that "the pur pose of reforming the system of party and state leadership is precisely to ad here to and strengthen, rather than weaken, party leadership and di~cipline."~' but in the other, shorter, speech for restricted circulation from the same per iod, he said "that the method of the party ruling over the country cannot be practiced any more", and that it was necessary to separate the party organiza tion from the government and other organs of state power.51 by suggesting changes along these lines liao gailong and deng xiaoping approached the threshold of systemic reform and not just improvements of the existing sys tem. in 1981 the reform debate receded, faced with the realities of economic re trenchment and consolidation. in fact, only a few of the gengshen reforms were implemented during the following five years. the term reform became almost synonomous with economic reform. kjeld erik bradsgaard the present reform debate in the summer of 1986, the notion of political reform staged a comeback. a spate of articles on the theme of reform of the political system (zhengzhi tizhi gaige) appeared in chinese media in july-august-september, and since may several conferences have been convened to address this issue. the present de bate has, like the gengshen reform debate, been initiated by deng xiaoping. this happened at a meeting with the provincial governors in april, where deng gave a talk that called for a reform of the political system.5z in june deng again on several occasions addressed this topic, and at a meet ing in the politburo's standing committee he emphasized that ultimately re form of the political system and reform of the economic system support and supplement each other, and he argued that political reforms were the indis pensabie concomitant of economic reform." o n july 1, the people's daily edi torial advocated reform of that part of the political system that was no longer in accordance with the economic base. o n july, 16, wang zhaoguo, member of the party secretariat elaborated on the need for reforms in a speech at the ccp central party school; and on july 31, another political heavyweight, vice-premier wan li, joined the it is also noteworthy that deng xiao ping's speech from august 1980, which started the gengshen reform debate, reappeared in excerpts in beijing review in august 1986.55 the debate in the summer of 1986 explicitly connected political reform with economic reform.56 in particular two reform proposals had a direct bearing on the economy as well as on the political arena. one was the reduction of the power of local governments and local party committee^.^^ this had actually been implemented on a trial basis in a number of small and medium-sized cities. the other was the introduction of a new responsibility system for enter prise directors and managers that would strengthen the work of the enterprise management and reduce the powers of the enterprise party committee. this reform was already suggested in speeches by deng xiaoping and liao gailong in 1980. on september 15, the central committee and the state council issued the "regulations on the work of the directors of industrial enterprises owned by the whole people", the "regulations on the work of grass-roots party organi zations in industrial enterprises owned by the whole people", and the "regula tions on the congresses of staff and workers of industrial enterprises owned by the whole people." the central committee and the state council also issued a joint circular calling on state enterprises to implement these regulations from october 1.58 economic and political reform in post-mao china the reform process had picked up momentum again, and it was expected that the upcoming 6th plenary session of the present central committee would decide on a major reform of the political system. the plenary session which took place in late september adopted an important r e s o l u t i ~ n . ~ ~ it stated that "reforms mean the development and perfection of the socialist sys tem", that it is not possible to achieve modernization without democracy, that democracy must be institutionalized and legally codified, and that "the party must conduct its activities within the limits permitted by the constitution and the laws of the state."60 the resolution admits that reform of the political sys tem will be "a very complicated t a s k . after thorough investigation and study the central committee will work out plans to accomplish political reform so that it may "proceed step by step and with proper g ~ i d a n c e " . ~ ~ "proper guidance" seems to be a key phrase. it denotes that the central committe will not abolish "the leading role of the party" in the reform pro cess. o n the contrary, "the leading role of the partyr' and "the people's democ ratic dictatorship" are principles that will be upheld. the resolution does not give the green light for any systemic reform. major decisions on this issue were postponed to the 13th party congress, scheduled to convene in october 1988. the conservative wing of the party had once again weathered the storm. systemic change? seweryn bialer has proposed a typology of reforms to be used when dis cussing the possible departure from the stalinist the first type he calls policy reforms. these aim to achieve different policy outcomes by changing policy inputs. here the decision-making process is viewed as a "black box" and is not changed. in bialer's view the main instruments of policy reforms are pricing, taxation, and subsidies, and they address the issue of resource alloca tion. the second type is, according to bialer, organizational-administrative re forms. here the aim is to change the process of decision-making, i.e. to inter fere with how the "black box" works. the main instruments of this type of re form are the allocation and distribution of responsibilities, obligations, au thority relations, the size and composition of existing organizations, etc. the third type bialer calls structural reforms. these aim to change the very parameters within which the decision-making process and the political-econ omic patterns of behaviour operate and are confined. the main instruments kjeld erikbndsgaard have to do with the process of institutionalization and concern the creation, abolition, or fundamental change of politico-economic institutions. the differentiation of these three types of reforms proposed by bialer fol lows the distinction between changes in the system and changes of the system. thus policy reforms and organizational-administrative reforms belong to the category of changes in the system, whereas structural-institutional reforms must be classified under reforms of the system. in the chinese case one could accordingly argue that the reforms intro duced thus far all belong to the two first categories (policy reforms and organi zational-administrative reforms). the reforms have sought to improve parti cular aspects of the system, but they have not gone beyond the borderline to radical reform (structural reform) which tries to change the system itself. in the political field such a threshold would be crossed if, for example, the decision-making process were changed. this could happen if a more plural istic political system was established in the sense that the party was no longer the source of ultimate power. what is involved is the introduction of checks and balances in the political system. however, in china as well as in other cen tralized planning economies the leading role of the party seems to be the sine qua non of socialism. here the limits of possible reform initiatives seem to have been reached. postscript the decison of the politburo of the ccp on january 16 to "unanimously" ac cept general secretary hu yaobang's resignation and to rerjlace him with pre mier zhao ziyang came as a surprise and created an atmosphere of confusion and u n ~ e r t a i n t y . ~ western analysts tended to believe that it was an outcbme of the battle between reformers and conservatives within the party leader ship.m according to this line of thought, the conservatives had used the politi cal instability caused by the student demonstrations to inflict on the reformers their most serious defeat since they took the offensive in 1978, however, the new acting general secretary zhao ziyang had been one of the the chief ar chitects of china's reform process all along, and it would seem that it is too simplified to view hu yaobang's dismissal as the result of a clear-cut two-line struggle between the reformers and the conservatives. in this postscript an attempt will be made to evaluate the significance of the recent leadership changes. do they signal an orthodox backlash and are the economic and political reform in post-mao china reforms really in jeopardy? the main part of the postscript, however, will be devoted to an analysis of what happened when it was decided to oust hu yao bang. in other words: what was the background and what were the reasons? hopefully, this will throw some light on the question of the significance of the incident for the reform project as such. usually leadership changes in china are shrouded in mystery due to the lack of information available to the outside observer. this time one is in a much better position since the major factors influencing the decision to dis miss hu yaobang are described in a series of central documents (zhongfa). the collection is entitled feidang zhongyang youguan 'fan ziyouhua' douz heng zhongfa wenjian huibian (collection of central documents on the struggle against liberalism issued by the ccp central committee) .65 zhongfa no. 1 of 1987 was issued on january 6. it contains the main points of deng xiaoping's remarks on the problem of student disturbances, at a meeting on december 30, 1986, where wan li, hu qili, li peng, he dong chang, hu yaobang and zhao ziyang also were present. deng said that the student demonstrations were the result of failing to take a clear stand against bourgeois liberalism (zichan jieji ziyouhua). over a period of several years bourgeois liberalism had been allowed to spread unchecked and the four car dinal principles had not been upheld." deng said that he "had read fang lizhi's speeches, which didn't at all sound like they were said by a party member", and he continued: "why do we have such a person in the party? it is not a question of persuading him to withdraw; he should be thrown he also had some harsh comments on wang ruo wang who he regarded as very reckless (changkuang de hen). he wondered why he had not been expelled from the party even though he himself had or dered it long ago.68 deng warned the other participants in the meeting that developing democ racy in china did not imply introducing bourgeois democracy (zichan jieji minzhu). china should not establish a bourgeois democratic system like the american with the division of power between three branches of government: "i always criticize the americans and say they have three government^."^^ in a statement that seems to contravene what has been widely believed in the west, deng implied that china did not take its relations with the west into special consideration in matters dealing with political dissent and demands for democratization. he speficied his remarks by pointing to wei jingsheng who in 1979 was sentenced to 15 years of prison: "do you mean to say that china's reputation suffered as a result? we arrested him and we haven't let him go and china's image has not suffered the slightest damage. our reputation is getting better day by day. "70 discussing events in poland, deng said that at the time of the polish crisis the polish leaders had been clear-headed and resolute. they were faced with a united opposition from the trade unions and the church and they resorted to military measures to bring the situation under control: "this proves that it won't do without the methods of dictatorship", only one should use these methods carefully and arrest as few people as possible and in as bloodless a manner as possible.71 conluding, deng said that the opposition against bourgeois liberalism would last for at least 20 years. if china tried to import western style democ racy, it would only end in chaos." socialist construction in china should be carried out under conditions of stability and solidarity and implemented with leadership and in good order, so although china should not worry about what foreigners said, it was, according to deng, important to show to the outside world that the political situation was stable. summing up : deng indirectly blamed hu yaobang for failing to take a clear stand against bourgeois liberalism. he had been guilty of a laissez-faire atti tude and had allowed things to take their own course. he should, for example, have expelled fang lizhi, wang ruowang and liu binyan. since "the people who have behaved badly all are members of our own communist party",t3 the responsibility rested with hu in his position as general secretary. bourgeois liberalism zhongfa no. 2 is dated january 9,1987. it contains a speech by deng xiaoping at the 6th plenary session of the 12th central committee on september 28, 1986. in this speech deng very sharply criticizes bourgois liberalism. in de fining liberalism deng claims that "liberalism itself is bourgeois in nature; there is no such thing as proletarian or socialist liberali~m."~~ returning to the notion that the idelogical tendency (sichao) of bourgeois liberalism had existed for several years, deng referred to the resolution adopt ed by the national people's congress in 1980 to delete the "four bigs" (the rights of the citizens to "speak out freely, air their views fully, holdgreat deba tes, and put up big-character posters") from the constitution. asked deng: why did we do this? because there was an ideological tendency of liberal ism. if we had gone in for liberalism, it would have undermined our politi cal stability and unity, without which construction would be out of the question.75 economic and political reform inpost-mao china abolishing the "four bigs" by the chinese authorities was part of an attempt to suppress the unofficial democracy movement which still showed some activ ity in 1980, although some of the movement's leaders, including wei jing sheng, had been arrested in 1979.76 now deng claimed that the reason for the crack-down on the movement was that they were leading china "down the road to capitalism" .77 commenting on the time horizon for the "struggle against bourgeois lib eralism", deng remarked that it will "have to be carried on for the next 10 or 20 years".78 he warned that if this ideological tendency is not checked, it will merge with undesirable "foreign things" that will inevitably find their way in to china because of the open door policy and will deal a blow against the modernization program. summing up: in publishing this speech in january, the chinese leadership probably wanted to show that deng already in september 1986 had warned against the danger of bourgeois liberalism. if allowed to spread it would en danger the open door policy and the economic modernization program. hu yaobang's six mistakes zhongfa no. 3 was issued on january 17. it consists of a report by bo yibo which was delivered at the enlarged politburo meeting the day before, when it was decided to oust hu yaobang. the report is in the form of a criticism of the general secretary's mistakes. according to bo yibo they were six. (1) there were people who had taken advantage of the opportunity presented by the reform of the political system to advocate liberalism, full-scale west ernization (quanpan xifanghua) and the introduction of the capitalist econ omic and political system. this had formed the background for the student unrest that spread throughout the country in late 1986. hu yaobang's mistake was that he had "shown weakness" and had not intervened to stop this devel opment. (2) hu had failed to support the party rectification which was spelled out at the second plenary session of the 12th central committee, and in ideological matters he had only criticized the left and never the right. this amounts to a criticism for being a rightist. (3) hu's economic policies had caused an overheated economy. his emphasis on "consumption comes first" was something he had taken from western economics, and it was not "compatible with the concept of the relations be tween production and consumption in marxist political economic^".^^ (4) in political work hu failed to follow the line laid down at the third plenary kjelderik brprdsgaard session of the 11th central committee in december 1978 and he ignored the constitution and the party program. (5) in foreign affairs "he said too many things he ought not to have s a i d and violated existing regulations on how to run foreign relations work.80 (6) he often expressed his opinions on important problems without consulting the central committee. all these faults were aggravated by hu's failure to listen to leading comrades from the politburo, especially deng xiaoping. after bo yibo had delivered his criticism, hu yaobang admitted that he had committed "grave mistakes", and failed to perform the duties entrusted to him by the party. he would "certainly" do what the party expected of him and make a frank and sincere self-examinati~n.~~ limits to the campaign zhongfa no. 4 was sent out internally in the party on january28. its main pur pose was to set some limits on the campaign against bourgeois liberalism. the campaign was to be restricted to the party and the idelogical arena and was not to be allowed to turn into a mass movement. such methods as pointing out names in newspapers and periodicals and using public criticism was only to be used "in very special cases" such as those of party members who have great influence, who have publicly been promoting bourgeois liberalism, and who have repeatedly been re-educated as to their mistakes and refuse to re form. even with regard to these people appropriate work should be found "in which they can make use of their special skills, and full respect must be shown for their rights as citizens."in rectifying the "errors of political ideology" it was by no means permitted to interfere with the reforms or the policy of opening up to the outside worldee3 zhongfa no. 4 announced some tough measures in relation to publishing. in the future, departments concerned with public opinion should set up necess ary systems of inspection and supervision. some people would also be re moved from their posts, especially those who had demanded bourgeois lib e r a l i ~ m . ~ but the red thread in this zhongfa was clearly to set limits on the ex tent of the campaign. zhongfa no. 5 was released on february 4. it is not contained in the present collection of zhongfa. but from other sources it is clear that it supplements zhongfa no. 4 in setting limits to the campaing against bourgeois l i b e r a l i ~ m . ~ ~ hence, it specified that the campaign was not to be extended to the country side. economic and political reformin post-mao china zhongfa no. 6 is dated february 6 . it stresses the necessity to propagate the decision of the national people's congress on the strengthening of legal work and defending stability and unity. the document also emphasizes the four fundamental principles and especially the leading role of the party, and it is stated that these principles should be followed by all china, and not only party membexa6 concluding remarks these zhongfa, and especially the first two, indicate that the growing influ ence of western ideology, or bourgeois liberalism, was a major factor in the fall of hu yaobang. closely connected with this notion is the perceived danger of w e s t e r n i ~ a t i o n . ~ ~ although the concept of westernization (xifanghua) refers to attempts to introduce the "capitalist ideology and social system" of the west, it does not imply that the open door policy should be terminated. it is also clearly stated that the reform process should be continued. in practice, however, the conservative faction in the party leadership was profitting from the incident. peng zhen has considerably strengthened his po sition by successfully attempting to bring the national people's congress mo re into the political p r o c e ~ s . ~ ~ d e n g liqun has been able to demonstrate that al though he may not be the actual head of the ccp propganda department any more, he still exercises a tremendous influence in the ideological realm. chen yun is known for his preference for a balanced and orderly development of the economy, and he has continuously warned against proceeding too rapidly with the reform process. perhaps even more importantly, the older party lea ders who were believed to have accepted a situation of semi-retirement have been quite active in coordinating the attacks against hu yaobang. it is note worthy that it was bo yibo, the 79-year old vice-chairman of the central ad visory commission, who at the politburo meeting in january actually formu lated the criticism of hu. this lends substance to the assumption that hu's at tempt to retire the party elders in connection with preparations for the 13th party congress in october backfired. there were also signs that hu never suc ceeded in achieving the support of the army, and therefore was deprived of an important factor in the chinese power equation. it is probably not correct to assume that the changes in leadership and the expulsion of some party members such as fang lizhi, wang ruowang, and liu binyan signified a reversal of the reform process. it was probably more a question of how fast to go rather than where to go. in addition, hu yaobang's style of leadership perhaps raised doubts in some of the party elders, including kjeld erikbretdsgaard deng himself, as to his abilities as leader of the party. it seems that deng and zhao ziyang have been able to limit the damage to the reform project caused by huts fall. there is still a good chance that a resolution on reform of the pol itical system may be adopted at the 13th congress this october. notes 1 see martin lockett and craig r. littler, "trends in enterprise management, 1979-1982", world development, vol. 11, no. 8 (1983), pp. 683-704. 2 wang bingqian, "report on financial work" (delivered at the third session of the fifth national people's congress on august 30, 1980), beijing review, 1980, no. 39, pp. 11-22. 3 extrabudgetary funds are funds which are not included in the state budget, but are retained, administered and used by local authorities, units and enterprises. see "explanation of terms used in the sixth five-year plan", foreign broad cast information service (hereafter fbis), china: economic report (april 29,1983), pp. 50-91. jin xin reports that extrabudgetary income has increased 66-fold since 1953, and constituted about 60 billion yuan in 1981, see jin xin, "strengthen management of extra budgetary funds improve the efective ness of funds utilization", fbis, china: economic report (june 8, 1983), pp. 43-50. 4 see teyue pinglunyuan (special com mentator), "tiaozheng shiqi jiben jians he bixu gaodu jizhong tongyi" (capital construction must be centralized and unified to a high degree in the period of readjustment), renmin ribao, decem ber 30, 1980. 5 see kjeld erik brfldsgaard, "paradigm atic change, readjustment and reform in the chinese economy, 1953-1981, part 11", modem china, vol. 9, no. 2 (april 1983), pp. 253-272. 6 for a more detailed discussion of this system, see, for example, jiang yiwei, "qiye de quanmian zhengdun shi jians hexing de zhengdun" (overall enterprise reorganization is constructive reorgan ization), jingji guanli, 1982, no. 4, pp. 14-19. how the system worked at the national model, the capital iron and steel company, is described in shou gang shixing jingji zerenzhi de jingyan (beijing: beijing ribao chubanshe, 1982). 7 xue muqiao, "jihua jingji wei zhu, shi chang tiaojie wei fu" (take planned economy as the dominant factor and market regulation as a supplement), hongqi, 1983, no& pp. 30-33. 8 gong shiqi and xu yi, "jianchi jihua jin gji wei zhu shichang tiaojie wei fu" (ad here to planned economy as the domi nant factor and the market as the supple ment), jingji yanjiu, 1982, no. 6, pp. 3 8. see also xiang qiyuan, zhang zhuoyuan, and tian jinghai, "jianchi ji hua jingji shi tigao jingji xiaoguo de gen ben baozheng" (adherence to planned economy is the basic guarantee for raising economic results), jingji yanjiu, 1982, no. 7, pp. 14-20. 9 xue muqiao, op.cit.; see also su xing, "zhongguo de jihua jingji yu shichang" (china's planned economy and the mar economic and political reform in post-mao china ket), jingji yanjiu, 1982, no. 8, pp. 14 19. 10 hu yaobang, "create a new situation in all fields of socialist modernization" (report to the 12th national congress of the communist party of china, septem ber 1 , 1982), beijing review 1982, no. 37, pp. 1-40. 11 ibid., p. 19. 12 liu guoguang, "jianchi jingji tizhi gaige de jiben fangxiang" (adhere to the basic direction for reform of the economic sys tem), renmin ribao, september 6,1982. 13 ibid. 14 ibid. 15 ibid. 16 "jianli gengjia fuhe woguo qingkuang de jihua guanli tizhi" (establish a planning system better suited to our country's conditions), renmin ribao, september 21, 1982. 17 ibid. 18 ibid. 19 i wish to thank professor zhang youren, department of economics, beijing uni versity, for arranging a series of inter views at the chinese academy of social sciences in november-december 1982 with liu guoguang, dong fureng, and yang jianbai. thanks are also due to the scandinavian institute of asian studies for financially supporting my trip to china in 1982-1983. 20 yao yilin, "report o n the 1983 plan for national economic and social develop ment" (delivered at the first session of the sixth national people's congress on june 7,1983), beijing review, 1983, no, 28, pp. i-viii; survey of world broad casts (hereafter swb), fe/ w l 2 4 4 / a / 7 (july 13, 1983); swb, fe/ w1249ic1/4 (august 17, 1983). 21 swb, fe/w1251/a/4 (august 31, 1983). 22 see frederick w. crook, "the reform of the commune system and the rise of the township-collective-household system", in china's economy looks to ward the year 2000, vol. 1 , the four modernizations (washington, d.c. : government printing office, 1986), pp. 354-375. 23 fbis, joint publications research ser vice, china: economic affairs (hereafter fbis, jprs-cea)-84-105 (december 21, 1984), pp. 7-11. 24 xue muqiao, "keep abreast of the new situation, improve the planned sys tem", jingji ribao, august 16, 1984. an english translation appeares in fbis, jprs-cea-84-085, pp. 2-6. 25 see "decision of the central committee of the communist party of china on re form of the economic structure" (adopted by the 12th central commit tee of the comunist party of china at its third session on october 20,1984), bei jing review, 1984, no. 44, pp. i-xvi. for a n illuminating overview of the chi nese reform process, 1978-1984, see harry harding, "reform in china: a mid-course assessment", journal of northeast asian studies, vol. 3, no. 2 (1984), pp. 3-25. 26 "decision of the central committee of the communist party of china on re form of the economic structure", op, cit. this phrase was the object of a large number of articles in the fall and winter of 1984. see, for example, guangming ribao on december 9 and december 10, 1984 and jingji ribao on november 19 and 21, 1984. see also the article by liu guoguang who by now had become vice-president of the chinese academy of social sciences: "gaizao jingji tizhi moshi, wanshan shehui zhuyi zhidu xuexi 'zhonggong zhongyang guanyu jingji tizhi gaige de jueding' yixie tihui" (transform the model of the economic structure, perfect the socialist system some lessons to be derived from the ccp central committee decision on reform of the economic structure), jingji yan jiu, 1984, no. 12, pp. 16-24. 27 "decision of the central committee of kjeld erik bradsgaard the communist party of china on re form of the economic structure", op. cit. 28 ibid. 29 see song ping, "guanyu 1985 nian guo min jingji he shehui fazhan jihua caoan de baogao" (report on the 1985 natio nal economic and social development plan), renmin ribao, april 13, 1985. 30 fbis, jprs-cea-84-105 (december 21, 1984), pp. 31-32. 31 "zhonggong zhongyang, guowuyuan guanyu jinyibu huoyue nongcun jingji de shixiang zhengce", zhongguo non gye nianjian 1985, pp. 1-3. see also zhao ziyang, "fangkai nongchanpin jiage, cujin nongcun chanye jiegou de tiaozheng" (set free the prices of agricul tural products, advance readjustment of the rural property structure), hongqi, 1985, no. 3, pp. 10-14. 32 for further details, see thiagarajan ma noharan, "the 1981 economic contract law of the people's republic of china: a brief economic analysis of legal provi sions", review of socialist law, no. 12 (1986), pp. 101-138. 33 "zhonggong zhongyang guanyu kexue jishu tizhi gaige de jueding" (central de cision on reform of the science and tech nology system), guowuyuan gongbao, no. 461 (april 10,1985), pp. 201-208. 34 see beijing review, 1986, no. 17, pp. i xxiii. 35 see kjeld erik brodsgaard, "breaking away from the soviet model: issues and problems in the chinese quest for socialist development" (forthcoming). 36 deng xiaoping, "dang he guojia lingdao zhidu de gaige" (reform of the leader ship systems of the party and state). this text appears in sanzhong quanhui yilai zhongyao wengao xuanbian (beijing: renmin chubanshe, 1982), pp. 510-535. this two-volume collection of speeches was published internally by the central committee in september 1982. there is an excerpt of the speech in shiyi jie sanz hong quanhui yilai jingji zhengce wen xian xuanbian (beijing: renmin chu banshe, 1982), pp. 64-75. a version available to the chinese public appeared for the first time in the summer of 1983 in deng xiaoping wenxuan, 1975-1982 (renmin chubanshe, 1982), pp. 280 302. 37 most of the year 1980 was called geng shen according to the traditional 60-year calendar cycle. 38 this text, "lishi de jingyan he women de fazhan daolu" (historical experience and our development path), was not openly published in china either. a translation of the speech based on a manuscript transcribed from a tape re cording appears in issues & studies, oc tober, november and december, 1981. parts of the speech have been published in qishi niandai, no. 134 (march 1981), pp. 38-48 and translated into english in fbis, daily report: china (hereafter fbis-chi), march 16, 1981, pp. u1 u19. a photolithographic reproduction of the chinese text, which will be re ferred to in the following, appears in zhonggong yanjiu, vol. 15, no. 9 (sep tember 15, 1981), pp. 108-177. for an analysis, see also stuart schram, "'econ omics in command?" ideology and pol icy since the third plenum, 1978-1984', the china quarterly, no. 99 (1984), pp. 417-461, and harry harding, "political development in post-mao china", in a. doak barnett and ralph n. clough (eds.), modernizing china (boulder, westview press, 1986), pp. 13-37. 39 deng xiaoping, "dang he guojia lingdao zhidu de gaige", op. cit. 40 ibid. 41 liao gailong, "lishi de jingyan he wo men de fazhan daolu", op, cit., p , 169. 42 "a speech of deng xiaoping for re stricted use only", fbis-chi-86-117 (june 18,1986), w1-2. 43 ibid, 44 ibid. 45 liao gailong, op. cit., p. 164. economic andpolitical reforminpost-mao china 46 ibid., p . 165. 47 ibid., p . 67. 48 ibid., p. 170. 49 ibid., p . 171.. 50 deng xiaoping, "dang he guojia lingdao zhidu de gaige", op, cit. 51 deng xiaoping, "a speech of deng xiaoping for restricted use only", op. cit. 52 swb, july 25, 1986. 53 see peter schier, "der diskussion ber politische reformen und ihre hinter griinde", china aktuell, august 1986, pp. 534-538. 54 see wang zhaoguo, "gaohao gaige shi zhongqingnian ganbu de diyiwei lishi ze ren" (to do a good job in reform is the primary historical responsibility of young and middle-aged cadres), hong qi, 1986, no. 19, pp. 6-15 ; and wan li, "juece minzhuhua he keshu shi zhengzhi tizhi gaige de yige zhongyao keti" (de mocratic and scientific decision-making is an important aspect of reforming the political system), renmin ribao, au gust 15, 1986. 55 beijing review, 1986, no. 32 (august 11, 1986). 56 see, for example, bao xinjian, "woguo zhengzhi tizhi gaige zongti mubiao tan tao" (investigation of the general goal of the reform of china's political system), guangming ribao, july 14, 1986. see also fbis-chi-86-141 (july 23, 1986); fbis-chi-86-153, (august 8, 1986). 57 fbis-chi-86-143 ( j ~ l y 2 5 , 1 9 8 6 ) , w4-7. 58 see swb, fe/8401/bii/9-11 (october 28, 1986). 59 "resolution of the central committee of the communist party of china on the guiding principles for building a social ist society with an advanced culture and ideology" (adopted at the sixth ple nary session of the 12th central com mittee of the communist party of china on september 28,1986), beijing review, 1986, no. 40 (october 6, 1986), pp. i viii. 60 no account, however brief, of the econ omic and political reform process in post-mao china can ignore the empha sis based on legality. perhaps the most concrete manifestation of this emphasis in a socialist country like china is the promulgation of the 1986 general provi sion of civil law, which incorporates the discussion in the prc on a civil code. the general provisions reflected in various ways the general nature of law, the class character of law and the socia list character of law. it is still not unam biguously clear whether the party and the administration are subject to the le gal, juridical processes before a court of law. for further details, see thiagarajan manoharan, "the 1981 economic con tract law and the 1986 general provi sions of civil law of the people's repub lic of china a supplementary note", review of socialist law, no. 13, 1986 (forthcoming). 61 "resolution of the central committee of the communist party of china on the guiding principles for building a social ist society with an advanced culture and ideology", op. cit. 62 severyn bialer, "stalinism and anti-sta linism and soviet reform", paper pre pared for the conference on "to reform the chinese political order", june 18-23, 1984, harwichport, massachusetts. 63 see "zhonggong zhongyang zhengzhiju kuoda huiyi gongbao" (communique from the enlarged meeting of the polit bureau of central committee of the communist party of china), renmin ri bao, january 17, 1987. 64 see, for example, robert delfs, "re forms in jeopardy", far eastern econ omic review, january 26, 1987, p. 10; and peter schier, "der sturz des hu yao bang orthodoxe marxisten und alte berater schlagen zurck", china aktuell, january 1987, pp. 63-68. 65 "feidang z h o n g ~ a n g you guan 'fan ziyouhua' douzheng zhongfa wenjian huibian" (collection of central docu ments on the struggle against liberalism issued by the ccp central committee). the collection is from taiwan and it is undated. it is undoubtedly authentic. 66 the four fundamental principles are the socialist road, the people's democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the party, and marxism-leninism-mao zedong thought. 67 "feidang zhongyang you guan 'fan ziyouhua' douzheng zhongfa wenjian huibian", op. cit., p. 3. 68 ibid., p. 4. 69 ibid. 70 ibid. 71 ibid., p. 5. 72 ibid., p. 6. 73 ibid. p. 5, 74 ibid., p. 11. 75 ibid., p. 11-12. 76 for a discussion of the democracy move ment of 1978-1979, see kjeld erik b r ~ d s gaard, "the democracy movement in china, 1978-1979: opposition move ments, wall poster campaigns, and underground journals", asian survey, vol. xxi, no. 7 (july 1981), pp. 747-774. 77 "feidang zhongyang you guan 'fan ziyouhua' douzheng zhongfa wenjian huibian", op. cit., p. 12. 78 ibid. 79 ibid., p. 19. 80 ibid. 81 ibid., p. 20. 82 ibid., p. 27. 83 ibid., p. 28. 84 ibid., p. 32. 85 see, for example, zhengming, 1987, no. 3, p. 6. 86 "feidang zhongyang you guan 'fan ziyouhua' douzheng zhongfa wenjian huibian", o p , cit., p. 35. 87 on the relationship between bourgeois liberalism and westernization, see ben bao pinglunyuan (renmin ribao com mentator), "'quanpan xihua" jiu shi quanpan fouding shehuizhuyi" (com plete westernization is a complete denial of socialism), renmin ribao, january 12,1987; and chen junsheng, "zai gai ge, kaifeng zhong jianchi sixiang jiben yuanze" (in reform and the open door policy adhere to the four fundamental principles), renmin ribao, january 12, 1987. 88 the april 8 interview peng gave to jour nalists from hong kong and macao seems to indicate that peng played an important role in ousting hu yaobang and in initiating the campaign against bourgeois liberalism. although peng de nies harbouring any wishes of entering the politburo standing committee, and has turned down several proposals to do so "i shall be 85 in october, what can i do on the standing committee" he probably feels that his status and pres tige in the party would entitle him to a seat along with the other party elders, chen yun, deng xiaoping, and li xian nian. see swb, fe/8540/c2/1-17. 172003 87 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan brian moeran abstract this article examines the potential use of anthropology as an effective means of studying business organizations. taking, as a case study, preparations by an advertising agency for a competitive presentation to a potential client in japan, the author shows how anthropological fieldwork––in particular, the method of participant observation—enabled him to understand and then analyse the social processes underpinning contemporary advertising. in addition, he addresses other issues relevant to success in research: for example, access to an organization, the strategic use of social connections, and the ability to take advantage of unexpected opportunity. written in the style of a 'confessional' narrative, in which the author's presence and contributions to his informants' work are made obvious, the article shows the clear advantages of the methods of anthropology over those of other disciplines, like management studies, that are engaged in the study of contemporary business organizations. business and anthropology the question that underlies this article is: what can the discipline of anthropology contribute to the study of business organization that other disciplines cannot contribute? is it something related to our understandings of 'culture'? or is it more connected with methodology? in which case, what is anthropology's methodology and how does it work in practice? one problem for most anthropologists involved in the study of business organizations is that they are hesitant to promote themselves or their discipline, precisely because their work is rather personal, relies a lot on subjective interpretation, and makes use of a haphazard methodology that refuses to confine itself to particular issues. as a result, anthropologists know that they cannot provide the 'quick fix' answers that businessmen generally expect and that their colleagues in management studies provide. occasionally, however, we find help from an unexpected quarter. another social anthropologist employed in a business school, malcolm chapman (2001: 19), tells the story of how he was chair88 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran ing the final address at a conference on 'managing global change' and was heartened to hear bruno leblanc, a distinguished scholar, researcher, consultant and teacher in the world of management education, sum up the contributions of other disciplines to business studies and then say: 'looking back, it amazes me that we have never had anthropologists in our faculties of business and management; we need them and their ideas.' but what ideas, exactly, was leblanc referring to? alas! chapman does not enlighten us on this. it could, perhaps, have had something to do with culture. given the hazy idea prevalent among my colleagues that anthropologists study 'culture', i suspect that it is this concept that they would like to have clarified. after all, culture is rather like the cheshire cat in alice in wonderland: 'now you see it, now you don't'. this is problematic for those who like to think of organizations as 'objectively existing, capable of being studied by value-free science, and explained by analysing their constituent parts as elements of a functioning whole' (waldo 1961, quoted in wright 1994: 14). compared with anthropology, organization, management and business studies in general are predominantly behaviourist and positivist. they do not know what to do with 'culture' because they still tend to believe in 'hard facts' and statistical (and graphic) analysis as a way of 'understanding' what is going on in the world of business. for them, culture is something to be taken up, constructed as an independent object isolated from context, and then used as one among a number of 'independent variables' that can 'explain' behaviour. unfortunately, social anthropologists don't think of culture in this way, if they think about it at all. for them, culture is infinitely divisible (and therefore must be plural). not only do whole societies have cultures; so too do different kinds of business corporations, concert orchestras, drinking establishments, families, film studios, golf clubs, health spas, hotels, media organizations, political activists, schools, and soccer teams. moreover, cultures are infinitely flexible. the meanings of cultures are always being negotiated and renegotiated by those involved: politicians, citizens, media, managers, employees, unions, teachers, students, administrators, and so on. thus, so far as anthropologists are concerned, the concept of culture can fast become a black hole in which we become intellectually immobilized unless we are first careful to define the terms in which we wish to analyse it. given this considered wariness of the one concept that almost everyone is probably convinced is important in both the management and analysis of business practices and organizations, it might be argued that, 89 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan in that case, anthropology can offer very little to the study of business. to add weight to this argument, its proponents might—to some degree, justifiably—claim that anthropologists are for the most part only interested in the study of 'primitive' or 'third world' societies and that they studiously ignore everything that goes on in the 'real' world of contemporary market economies. but i have two objections to this line of argument. in the first place, some anthropologists have been involved in studies of industrial organization and factory shop-floor organization from very early on1—an initiative that has been continued through the post-war period.2 in addition, a number of anthropologists have conducted long-term fieldwork studies of and written about business corporations, particularly in japan (clark 1979; dore 1973, rohlen 1974). a second line of objection would point out that, even though a large number of anthropologists have worked predominantly in 'primitive' societies in which the institutions of modern capitalism hardly existed, this does not mean that they have ignored economic relations in such societies. on the contrary, they have highlighted the role that social and cultural variables—such as kinship, community, age, gender, power and authority, to name but a few—play in people's economic relations, especially those to do with exchange. as a result, they have argued, contra economists, that it is virtually impossible to disentangle the economic from the social and cultural.3 the issue that remains relatively unexplored, however, is how much society and culture do or do not determine the economy. it is precisely this kind of approach linking culture and economy that can be brought to bear by anthropologists in the study of modern business corporations. corporations are in many respects bounded entities. they have particular buildings of one sort or another in which people gather and work together every day, five days a week, for all but a few weeks a year, for something like 40 years of their lives. corporations have fairly fixed structures, in which some people are placed in positions of authority over others and given the power to make decisions. the buildings in which they are housed often reflect spatially the hierarchical social structure of their occupants, with managerial staff located in private offices, by windows, on upper floors, and so on, while ordinary employees find themselves in darker, less personalized, and less elevated quarters. to all appearances, a corporation is rationalized in terms of a division of labour, work units, employee time and so on to provide goods or services at the lowest reasonable cost to ensure the maximum economic return. even though it may be concerned with the 90 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran economic costs of raw materials, labour, machinery, facilities and so on, a business corporation is primarily concerned with the organization of people. it is the unpredictability of 'human chemistry' that is the stuff of anthropology (and also, let us add, of some research in sociology and cultural studies). and yet anthropological studies have not as a general rule been taken up by those working in organization studies. this is no doubt partly because anthropology's philosophical tenet of participant observation, together with the holism that such a method demands and supplies, has not been conducive to the positivist agenda of organization studies.4 it is also partly because an anthropologist's research is shaped as much by accident and happenstance as by planning and foresight (van maanen 1988: 2-3). then there is the fact that, in their determination to carve out an intellectual niche in the academic and business worlds, scholars in organization and management studies have consciously or unconsciously ignored existing scholarship (e.g. drucker 1993: ix).5 finally, while anthropology has for the most part been concerned with the study of other cultures, contemporary business studies are 'predominantly monocultural (and effectively usa-centred)' (chapman 2001: 21).6 nevertheless, i want here to bring organization, management and business studies together with anthropology and ask each to take the others more seriously than they have done to date. there are at least two important arguments in favour of such an alliance—apart from the mutual benefits each would gain from the other's insights. first, the world's second largest economy (japan's) and one of its most rapidly expanding economies (mainland china's) are neither american nor european. moreover, indian, korean, taiwanese and many other asian economies have specific social, cultural and structural characteristics that seem to mark them out as different in some ways from those hitherto focused on in business and management studies. it is precisely these cultural specifics that anthropologists have studied in these societies over many decades and can thus help explain and put into context. second, one kind of business organization—the joint-stock company—is probably one of the most prevalent social institutions to be found anywhere in the world today. what such business organizations do, how they distribute wealth, where they choose to locate their premises, how many and what kind of people they employ, what kind of research they carry out, what sporting or cultural events they choose to sponsor, and so on and so forth, have enormous financial, economic, administrative, governmental, environmental, social and cultural con91 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan sequences (clark 1979: 1). (this list includes the awarding of a nobel prize to one japanese 'salaryman' researcher.) it is anthropology's theoretical ability to deal with the holistic nature of a company's activities and its relations with the wider world (and vice versa) that makes it so valuable to organization, management and business studies. not only can anthropology examine social norms, and formal and informal relations within a company, as well as the industries, fields, institutions, networks and regulatory spheres in which it operates. it can also analyse organizational environments in terms of change, conflict, ethics, gender, identity, morality, power, symbolism and values—to name but a few of the discipline's interests and proven abilities. studying organizations although, as a discipline concerned with cultural and social life, anthropology has much in common with other social sciences and humanities, it is characterized by two main features. one of these is theoretical and emphasizes comparison. the other is methodological and stresses the role of participant-observation in the close-up study of social and cultural environments (eriksen 1995: 9). it is these two features that i wish to discuss here in the context of business organization in japan. the study of business—and, indeed, of all other—organizations is fraught with various kinds of difficulties, not least of which is the fact that managers are often disaffected from the practices of business research (chapman 2001: 2). for a start, it is often very difficult to gain initial access to an organization. even when this has been achieved, and as a researcher you get one foot in the corporate door, the kind of access you are permitted is often problematic. will you be able to watch people in their working environment—at their computers, in meetings, having lunch together, visiting customers, and so on? or will you be confined to interviews with selected employees of the organization? what will be the nature of those interviews? will you be obliged to submit questions in advance and structure them accordingly? or will you be able to roam more freely from one topic to another in an unstructured manner which will allow those being interviewed to discuss what is closest to their hearts? who exactly will you be able to talk to? top management? middle management? clerical staff? union representatives? a combination of these and other representative groups? will you get no further than being allowed to administer a questionnaire? in which case, what percentage of respondents will actually take 92 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran the trouble to answer your carefully thought-out questions? will they even think those questions relevant to what they actually do in their everyday lives? and how are you to find out? in a number of interesting respects, the profession of the anthropologist is not entirely unlike that of an advertising executive (cf. malefyt and moeran 2003). this can be seen both in the ways in which they need to interact with all kinds of different people and in how they zigzag between the observation of facts and theoretical reasoning. both anthropologists and advertising executives, therefore, are 'folk ethnographers' (kemper 2001: 4)7 who: listen, observe, participate, converse, lurk, collaborate, count, classify, learn, help, read, reflect and—with luck—appreciate and understand what goes on (and maybe why) in the social worlds they have penetrated. (van maanen 2001: 240) to take the analogy between anthropology and advertising further, i suggest that there are seven basic principles involved in undertaking research in a particular organization or ethnographic group—principles that are also crucial to those working in advertising. true to business school form, i have arranged these principles according to an acronym: target pascal, which i use merely as a mnemonic device. briefly, an ethnographer (and advertising account executive) has to: target the right person in the group being studied; learn to make a successful pitch; display an appropriate attitude; take advantage of status; make use of connections; accept what is offered, but aim for more; and turn the lucky break into a golden opportunity. needless to say, these seven elementary lessons in fieldwork do not necessarily occur in the neat order in which they are presented here. connections, for example, may well be the principle that provides initial access to a business organization, while recognized status may make the initial self-presentation, or pitch, less important to successful entry into an organization. however, i will take each of these as outlined here to show how they affected my own fieldwork experience in adk, a large japanese advertising agency in which i conducted a year's fieldwork back in 1990 (see moeran 1996). first, given the problem of access, it is extremely important to know whom to target in the organization in which you intend to study. for example, when i first decided to conduct a study of an advertising 93 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan agency, i used to mention the idea to japanese friends and colleagues during my comparatively frequent visits to japan in the late 1980s. one of these was a mr mizutani, the foreign correspondent of a japanese provincial newspaper in london.8 mizutani and i had first met when he contacted me as chair professor of japanese studies at london university to ask whether i would contribute the occasional column to the hokkaido shimbun. this i did three or four times a year, and continued to do so after mizutani was recalled to japan in 1987. i used to call on him when visiting tokyo—both because of past relations and because i was at the time involved in setting up a student exchange programme between london university and the hokkaido university of education, and the hokkaido shimbun proved to be an active supporter of the initiative. in late 1988, i mentioned my advertising agency project and, during my next visit early in 1989, mizutani introduced me to the advertising manager of the newspaper.9 here i come to the first aspect of targeting. the person who introduces you to the fieldwork group or community must be the 'right' connection, and not just anyone who happens to know somebody in the targeted group. thus i could have tried to gain access to the agency by way of mizutani, but the latter was smart enough to realize that it should be his newspaper's advertising manager, tanaka, rather than an international news journalist, who should act as the go-between. the former asked me a few questions about what i wanted to do and why, before suggesting that i study an agency of which i had never heard: asatsû (now adk). 'it's very japanese', he said proudly, 'i'll try to arrange a meeting with the ceo while you're here. asatsû is a very good customer of our newspaper.' this marked the second aspect of targeting. an ethnographer must be introduced to the decision-maker in the group to be studied (and, as every account executive knows—often to his cost—those in official positions are not necessarily the ones who make the decisions [cf. moeran 1993]). in the case of an earlier study of folk potters, for example, i was introduced to a younger potter and not to the elected leader of the potter's co-operative. although the community was so small that i was able to address them all together and explain my aims and objectives before going to ask official permission to do my research from the cooperative leader, there were later occasions when some of the elder potters expressed their resentment that i had not come through 'official channels'. 94 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran in the case of the agency, this was not a problem. the hokkaido shimbun's advertising manager took me straight to the top. two days later, at 9 a.m. on a saturday morning, i found myself with tanaka visiting adk's then ceo, inagaki masao. he was joined by the chief of his 'president's office', a mr. hayashi, and his personal secretary. tanaka introduced me to inagaki, and then i was on my own. i suddenly found myself faced with a third basic lesson in ethnography: how to make a pitch (that most crucial of all advertising practices). instinctively realizing that this was a make or break situation, i mustered as much selfconfidence as i could and embarked upon a 3-4 minute presentation of myself and my research plans. i kept things fairly simple and as much to the point as i could, explaining that, as a scholar, i was tired of impressionistic accounts and interpretations of advertisements by other scholars (who were often biased against the commercial world) and that i wanted to find out how the world of advertising worked: in short, how ads were made. it was the social processes of advertising as a business, and personal interactions among people in an agency that i thought would be fascinating. inagaki watched and listened to me carefully throughout, and i was conscious of being judged, of having every phrase carefully weighed by a shrewd businessman who had established his own agency 40 years earlier and taken it to the number 6 spot in japan's advertising industry. when i had finished, he picked on something that i had not said (indeed, something that i was keen to avoid, if at all possible), but that he himself implied from my discussion of social processes. 'yes, we japanese are always being misunderstood,' he said quickly. 'just look at the way in which the americans are complaining about unfair trade practices. somebody has to explain to them what we japanese really are about.' i was not all that keen to get involved in this kind of discussion in my research, unless there was some obvious connection between international trade friction and domestic japanese advertising practices. however, what i later realized was that a question that most decision-makers surely ask themselves, when approached by a request to do research is: 'what's in it for us?' inagaki was looking for a way to justify my presence in his company, should he decide to accept me as a researcher. this he was doing primarily for his two subordinates (and possibly for himself), rather than for me. although it took some time for me to understand this, i did at the time instinctively make use of another basic lesson in ethnography and advertising. this was one of attitude: make 95 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan sure to agree (or, at least, not to disagree) with the client. so i made various sympathetic comments about the plight of japanese trade negotiators and criticisms of american cultural practices, before steering the discussion back to my project. inagaki asked various questions—presumably to get more factual information, as well as to give himself more time to judge if i was acceptable as a person, or not. how was i going to survive financially in tokyo? it was an expensive city to live in. did i know that? was i sure i could manage on my own salary? hopefully, i replied, especially if i was awarded a research grant. and how long did i wish to stay in the agency doing fieldwork? one year? he paused for a few seconds, weighing up all that i had said. well, he concluded, i could stay for three months perhaps. one year was a very long time to be there. he suggested that i start out by doing three months and then he could see how things were going before committing himself further. that was the best offer i could get, but it taught me another lesson in advertising (or in japanese advertising, at least): accept the little that a client first offers you and make sure you get more later. yet another lesson in advertising, i learned a few months later when i was awarded a japan foundation fellowship. this not only assured inagaki that i would not be a financial burden on the agency in any way. it also convinced him that i was a recognized bona fide scholar who could add (just a little) prestige to his organization by my presence there. in short, i learned the lesson of the contagious magic of status. during the entire period of my fieldwork, people in the agency would refer to me as a 'professor of london university' and 'japan foundation scholar' when introducing me to clients (at formal presentations or informal meetings). that was what was in it for adk. i could be classified in such a way that brought credit upon the agency, since the 'symbolic capital' (to use bourdieu's term [1984]) of my own academic institution and financial guarantor could be used to enhance that of adk and thereby, perhaps, its economic capital. fieldwork practices it was agreed that i should start my fieldwork in adk on the first working day after the new year in 1990. three or four months before i left england, however, i received a letter from hayashi, chief of the president's office, outlining the agency's proposals regarding how my fieldwork should proceed. i was to spend the first two weeks in his office, 96 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran familiarizing myself with the japanese advertising industry, before spending a month in the media buying division where i would learn about magazine, newspaper, television and radio advertising. i was to move from there to the marketing division, and thence to market development. after that, i should join account services, before studying in the creative, promotions, international, personnel, finance and computer divisions. all in all, i was to spend approximately one month in each division. by the end of my year of fieldwork, i should have gained a thorough, rounded comprehension of japan's advertising industry. this prepared programme both surprised and worried me, although at the time i merely wrote back to confirm hayashi's plan and thank him for his time and trouble in arranging everything on my behalf. i was pleasantly surprised because, for the first time in my fieldwork experience, i did not have to work out for myself where to start my fieldwork enquiries. whereas, on previous occasions, i had had to learn by trial and error how to go about studying a particular community of people, this time my collective informant, the advertising agency, was itself telling me where to begin. my immediate worry was that the agency's management might be guiding me to examine what it wanted me to examine, rather than what i myself might wish to follow up. after all, as someone 'studying up' (nader 1969), i was here dealing with a collective organization that was in an infinitely stronger power position than my own, and with people therein who might well manage the terms of my research engagement (marcus 1998: 121-22). i began to envisage arguments about academic freedom, on the one hand, and an ethical deadlock of some kind resulting in my leaving the agency, on the other. in fact, this worry proved to be totally unfounded, since— once fieldwork had started—i found myself more or less free to study what and where i wanted, provided that i liaised with hayashi and others concerned to make sure that everybody knew what i was doing and where i was located at any one particular time. a second remarkable feature of my agency fieldwork was that i found myself frequently being given lectures on the 'theory' of advertising, before being immersed in its actual practices.10 the advantage of this type of fieldwork was that i was able for the first time to practise a form of 'grounded theory' that should be, but rarely is, characteristic of all anthropological fieldwork. previously, when in the field in rural areas, i did not have access to books or materials enabling me to apply theories to data gathered during research and to let this combination of theory and data inform my fieldwork investigations as part of an ongoing 97 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan project. in the agency, however, there was a wealth of statistical detail and case study material to support the stories that i was told during my everyday interviews and conversations. i was thus able to practise a grounded fieldwork that made use of these data and materials continuously to inform my further research enquiries. such grounded fieldwork was a crucial element in my ability to understand and grasp the complexities of the advertising industry that i was studying. all of this in itself, however, was not sufficient means to ensure that fieldwork proceeded towards a successful conclusion. and here i come to the lucky break. all anthropologists can recount particular moments when they were afforded insights that they might not otherwise have had, or suddenly found themselves closer to informants than might otherwise have been the case.11 these moments are in retrospect used to justify or validate particular positions adopted or held by anthropologists. i am myself very aware of such moments in all three of my longer periods of fieldwork. while the first two depended in large part on a particular personal relationship i had with someone in the community being studied, the last came about as a result of a particular business problem to which i was able to make––as it turned out, a successful––contribution. as every advertising account executive knows, one has to create circumstances that allow the lucky break to occur (so that the break is rationalized as being not as 'lucky' as it might at first glance appear); then one must take maximum advantage of the opportunity offered. let me now turn to describe how this combination of contact and opportunity coalesced during the fourth month of my fieldwork. as a general rule, i have found that this is usually a crucial stage in fieldwork. the first three months are spent asking all sorts of questions of everybody one meets in a particular area of enquiry, and learning all that there is to learn in the form of 'textbook knowledge'. however, after this acclimatizing period, when informants are usually very helpful (because they know there is nothing to fear from the ethnographer's naïve––and generally superficial––questions), one can end up getting more or less the same answers to different questions. this 'impression management' (goffman 1990) sometimes makes it seem as if a whole community of people is programmed to react in a uniform way towards one who is in some way an outsider. as a result, i have usually found myself beating ineffectively against a social wall whose well-mortared bricks effectively prevent further understanding of the subject of my research (whether of the economics of folk craft pottery, or the 'cultural' activities of department stores). although the japanese advertising in98 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran dustry was considerably more open and more complex than other worlds i had studied, i still had the feeling that a lot was going on 'behind my back' and that i would never get to really know how the system worked. fortunately, during one of my visits to the agency prior to starting fieldwork, i had been introduced to one of the managing directors, sato, whose son was by chance going to london to study at my own academic institution. soon after the young man arrived in england, therefore, i made sure to get in touch and take him out to for an extended drink (or two, or three) one evening. when i arrived to start my fieldwork, his father thanked me for looking after his son, and when it was my turn to be assigned to the account services division, it was sato who, as one of the divisional managers, took me under his wing, gave me a desk beside him, and ensured that i talked to whoever we both felt i should talk to. he also invited me out to one or two 'unofficial' lunches and dinners with clients, where we deliberately did not talk about possible business opportunities, but instead confined ourselves to 'wide ranging discussions' of the apparent breakdown of socialism, the european community, japan's role in the world, art, literature, and whatever else it took to keep everyone interested and/or amused over a two-or three-hour meal. i was able in this way to begin to appreciate the informal side of the advertising business and to get an inkling of some of the agency's 'back-stage' strategies vis-à-vis potential and existing clients. the accounts services division was a particularly opaque part of the agency because of the extremely intimate relations developed by account executives12 with their opposite numbers (product managers, advertising managers, directors, and so on) in client companies (see moeran 1996). i had heard about the existence of 'presentations', which were the events by which adk gained, failed to gain, and occasionally lost advertising accounts. but i had little idea of when or where or how often they took place; of who attended them; or of what they consisted of by way of substance and social process. inquiries about them had been met with answers that were either evasive or so general that they might have been taken from a textbook. yet i was aware from previous experience that what i learned in fieldwork was never as described in textbooks. i had mentioned this point to sato, but we both knew that presentations might be an even more difficult piece of the agency's business to observe because of the recurrent problem of 'client confidentiality'. one evening, however, sato phoned me up after i had got home and asked whether i would be free the following morning at 10 o'clock. 'as a matter of fact,' he said, 'we've been asked to prepare an ad campaign 99 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan for frontier, the electronics company, to be used in america and germany, and we need a european to give us his opinion about our visual ideas. could you possibly oblige, sensei?' he asked, politely using an honorific form of address for anyone who professes to teach at all. there will be an informal presentation to frontier in the afternoon, and i'll see if i can get you in on that in exchange' i was willing, of course, and, naturally, i 'obliged'. my ethnographer's antennae were already twitching. instinctively, i knew that something big was about to happen. the next morning, therefore, i followed sato downstairs into a small, smoke-filled meeting room where half a dozen men in their shirt-sleeves were discussing a number of story-boards (mock advertisements) strewn on the table in front of them and lined up along two walls. sato introduced me to all present (none of whom i had previously met) and they briefly filled me in on the situation and the assistance they required of me. adk was due to participate in a competitive presentation for an account with frontier—a major electronics firm in japan—which wanted to run an identical campaign in germany and the united states later on in the year. i was asked, as an englishspeaking european, to give my opinion of the various advertising images and ideas that were now lining the room in which we sat.13 this i duly did. most of my comments involved correcting english mistakes, although one or two focused on why particular images were being used and what marketing aims they set out to achieve. my attention was drawn in particular, however, to the frontier tagline: the pulse of entertainment. how had this idea in particular been arrived at? apparently, frontier itself had given the agency this phrase to work with at its orientation two weeks previously. a second choice had been the art of entertainment. this, it was agreed, was only marginally—if at all— better. a third alternative, much liked by a senior frontier director, was the light of joy and creativity. we had something to think about. after long discussion and a hurried lunch, i found that sato had been true to his promise and arranged for me to attend the pre-presentation that took place early that afternoon. those present included three members of frontier's international division, and, from the agency, its account team, a creative team from its international subsidiary, the chief of the agency's international division, the agency's executive director, sato, and myself. during the best part of the following two hours, three different account executives explained the agency's marketing and communications strategies, and i was able to get my first confused glimpse 100 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran of what a presentation could be like. there were some sharp questions from the senior frontier executive present, who—among other things— asked why the agency had not made use of the 'light' (hikari) tagline, even though it had been emphasized by frontier's managing director at adk's orientation two weeks previously. after the departure of the frontier executives, there was a postmortem meeting among those from adk present at the pre-presentation. there was a lot of discussion of the format of the presentation itself, who was to make the pitch, which of the six series of ads the account team would actually show and why, what the competing agency was likely to do, and so on. this helped me realize the importance of such meetings for the mutual understanding of events by all participants, as well as for strategic planning. i learned how important it was for an advertising agency to target the right person (i.e. the decisionmaker) in the client company. i also became aware of the close relationships that account executives built up with their opposite numbers in client companies. not only had the senior frontier executive acceded to the agency's idea of a pre-presentation; he had also made an unofficial telephone call during our post-mortem to advise us which of the ad series he thought most likely to persuade his colleagues to vote for adk at the competitive presentation. in other words, the agency was on an inside track in the race for frontier's account. i also found out how an individual executive's personal likes or dislikes could influence the content of an advertising campaign (something no textual analysis would ever have revealed). as a result, arrangements were quickly made to check consumers' reactions to the three taglines made available by frontier. finally, the fact that the competing agency, j&m, was almost certain to use a couple of foreigners in its presentation encouraged sato to officially designate me a member of the presentation team the following tuesday. he had a valid reason for my participant observation. it was at this point that i suggested doing my own research among expats in tokyo to find out their reactions to the six series of ads dreamed up by the creative team and the three different taglines. this was readily agreed to. so, later that evening in a belgian beer pub, i talked to a dozen friends and asked them what they thought of the pulse of entertainment, the art of entertainment and the light of joy and creativity. very quickly i found out that none of them was particularly good. as one friend put it: 'the trouble with frontier is that it's too frightened of being forthright. like its name says,' she added, 'it's at the forefront. it's a pioneering company.' this helped me 101 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan latch onto the taglines, like the name says, the name says it all and it's in the name. while i sipped my beer, i also scrawled down another phrase that leapt to mind: entertaining ideas for the future. advertising, as i was to learn, often advances by means of a process of post-rationalization. i needed to justify it's in the name and my other taglines and found myself going back to principles of structural linguistics read many years previously. the following morning i explained to the account executive in charge how frontier needed to set itself apart from its competitors by ensuring that its tagline did not have any associations with those of rival companies. the art of entertainment ran into trouble with aiwa's the art of aiwa, while any allusion to the 'future' would run foul of jvc's founders of the future, and a focus on technology would clash with sanyo's the new wave in japanese technology. by focusing on entertainment, i reasoned, frontier would merely be falling in line with a set of associations (art, technology, future) that did not really differentiate one company from another, in the way that sony had succeeded in doing with its the one and only. frontier needed to be incomparable. it had to adopt a tagline that was distinctive, not subject to fashion and timeless. by going for something like it's in the name, the name says it all, or like the name says, frontier would be able to reinforce its image and turn back on itself in a never-ending cycle. frontier, the corporation's name, was the frontier of its industry. in short, frontier = frontier. the account executive did not sound particularly enthusiastic, and i had the distinct impression that he knew all about semiotics and structural linguistics. nevertheless, he asked me to write it all down for a monday morning meeting, but when i presented him with my ideas then, he seemed far more preoccupied with other matters. it was, as i was to learn from other similar situations, a matter of so much to be done, and so little time to do it. there did not seem to be much that i could contribute at this stage, apart from pointing out one or two spelling mistakes and misprints, so i went off and did other things about the agency. maybe i had been a bit over-optimistic about my own potential usefulness as both foreigner and academic in the creation of the frontier campaign. presentation and result still, at least i was going to attend a presentation. that much had been achieved. the next afternoon we took a train down to frontier's headquarters in meguro, heavily loaded with slide and overhead projectors, 102 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran a couple of dozen bound copies of the presentation proposal, ad storyboards, and so on. we were sent up to the twelfth floor and prepared ourselves for the 'tournament of value' that was about to take place. the agency fielded ten people all told (three of them senior executive directors who were not involved in preparations for the presentation), while frontier brought in almost two dozen—ranging from senior executives to middleand low-ranking managers. we sat on one side of a long oval table, they on the other and at the end of the boardroom. proceedings began with greetings during which a senior manager from each side thanked all present for gathering at such a busy time and outlined the reason for our being there together. once the stage had been set in this way, adk's account executive was given the floor and embarked upon his presentation or pitch. he opened by reiterating points made in frontier's orientation to the agency, moved from there to a market analysis, and then outlined the agency's proposed communication strategy. making use of slides, he distinguished between 'inner' and 'outer' target audiences, and described the campaign aims and basic brand concept, towards new frontiers in entertainment, before shifting to a discussion of the tagline. after outlining reasons for adopting the pulse of entertainment, he suddenly flashed on the screen as an alternative tagline, entertaining ideas for the future. this, he said, had been very favourably received in the united states because it attracted one's attention, gave off an impression of creative products, resonated well, was future oriented and suitable for entertainment-related products.14 just as i was praising the creative effects of belgian beer and wondering whether i might have a future career in an american advertising agency, the account executive giving the presentation introduced a new slide proposing a second series of taglines. these were like the name says, the name says it all and it's in the name––all linked under the umbrella concept of frontier = frontier. he then proceeded to justify the agency's reasoning along precisely the lines that i had followed when phoning him the previous saturday morning. adk's creative recommendations that followed were divided into two approaches: one of 'depth' (frontier = frontier); the other of 'scope' (entertaining ideas for the future). noticing my surprise, the international division chief, who was sitting beside me, leant over and muttered sotto voce: 'very good ideas, sensei.' but would the ideas be good enough to persuade frontier to choose adk over its rival, j&m? we found out soon enough. the very next afternoon, i was asked to present myself in one of the agency's smartest meeting rooms at 4 o'clock when frontier's senior executive was 103 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan coming to inform us officially that his company had decided to award adk its international account. about a dozen of us gathered on the ninth floor of the agency's offices in shinbashi and heard him inform us that those present at the two presentations the previous afternoon had been involved in fairly lengthy discussions over the de/merits of each of the agencies' proposals. there were two things that had to be decided: the brand concept and tagline; and the communication strategy and ad campaigns to be used. as a result, frontier had decided to go for the art of entertainment, and to turn down all communication strategy ideas and ask for new series of ads to be made. while younger members of frontier had felt more inclined to support j&m's vision of power technology, older members had felt that the agency's entertaining ideas for the future was closer to frontier's vision. however, all agreed that the agency had potential and it was this potential––exhibited in its ability to come up with new taglines in particular––which decided frontier to award adk its $6 million account. apparently everyone present had agreed that the tagline to go for was it's in the name. this, they felt, expressed exactly what frontier was all about. but those at the top—and, remember, the company's chief executive was still keen on his 'light' idea— had felt that it was perhaps a little ahead of its time (20 to 30 years ahead in fact) and that it was a mite too close in concept to sony's the one and only. if frontier were to be seen as a 'mini' sony, it would be the company's downfall. so, reluctantly, they had decided to shelve it's in the name, even though the tagline 'remained consciously in their minds'. concluding points this has been a 'confessional' narrative because my aim has been to show the various kinds of chance events, phrases and social networks that come into play during the course of anthropological fieldwork, and which affect its 'detached' theoretical outcome. so what does this narrative tell us about business and anthropology? in the first place, i have tried to show the strategic use to which randomly struck-up connections can be put by the anthropologist––in the same way that they are regularly used by people in the world of advertising and business more generally. one chance can lead to another, and it is the ability or inability of both anthropologist and businessman to make the most of opportunity that leads to success or failure in the endeavour in hand. thus, although access to adk depended to some extent on chance, in spite of what buchanan et al. (1988: 56) say to the contrary, skill was needed to take advantage of initial opportunity. 104 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran second, i have highlighted how access is crucial to success or failure in anthropological, as well as in management, business and organization studies research. the fact that i had the blessing of adk's ceo in conducting my research meant that a whole programme was prepared for me in advance. it meant that i was properly introduced to all the agency's staff at its monthly early morning assembly (where i again had to introduce myself and state my research aims), and that i was then taken around and introduced to every section and department in every division by a senior member of the president's office. for better or for worse, everyone knew who i was and could approach or avoid me, depending on how they felt. but access in itself was not good enough to transform research since it had to be renegotiated (gellner and hirsch 2001: 5) every time i moved about the agency from one division to another. i mentioned earlier the difficulty facing a researcher in all organizations, where people are very willing to talk about things that they want to talk about, but are usually equally adept at avoiding discussion on things they'd rather not talk about. this kind of impression management may not be noticed by the researcher who is confined to conducting one-off interviews with people in an organization. but it usually hits the full-time participant observer a few months into research, when s/he comes up against a brick wall designed to prevent further understanding of how an organization really works. in other words, the ethnographer somehow has to move from the front stage of impression management where people tell you what they do, to the back stage where you can see what they actually do.15 it is for this reason that i have my reservations about research based only on formal and informal interviews. on the basis of past and present practice, i firmly believe that only participant observation and full-immersion fieldwork can provide a means of breaking down this wall and seeing how an organization really functions and why.16 in this respect, as a methodology, ethnography offers a broad approach whose 'open-ended flexibility' can incorporate other research methods like in/ formal interviews, text analysis, questionnaires, historical research, and so on (macdonald 2001: 78). let me illustrate this methodological point. as i said earlier, one of the problems i faced in doing my research at adk was finding out about agency–client relations, since these were shrouded in mystery. 'client confidentiality' was the phrase invariably used to brush off my questions. and yet it was clear that the advertising industry was structured somehow around agency–client relations. after all, it was the clients 105 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan who provided the agencies with the accounts, or sums of money, that enabled them to produce the advertising that we see in newspapers and magazines, on television, billboards, airport baggage trolleys, items of clothing, and so on. it was vital that i find out in concrete terms how agencies got those accounts by interacting with clients, if i were to be able to make sense of the world of japanese advertising. the frontier presentation provided me with this opportunity and i was able, by attending the ultimate 'front stage' performance of impression management (in terms of setting, personal appearance, manner [goffman 1990: 32-36]), to see the kinds of things that went on 'back stage' in the advertising industry. but it was only a brief glimpse behind the scenes and much of what i observed did not make all that much sociological sense at the time, until i experienced it again and again in other agency–client contexts. that this in itself was possible was due to the small part i played in the build-up to the frontier presentation. by coming up with a series of creative ideas that, by chance, fitted in with adk's own assessment of how frontier should approach the german and american markets, i showed that i could be more than a visiting 'professor'. i could actually be of use to the organization that i was studying. once news of my contribution to adk's success in securing the frontier account spread around the agency,17 others began to come to me to ask if i couldn't help out in this or that project that they were working on. thus, for the first time, informants came voluntarily to the anthropologist, rather than have the anthropologist come to them (usually at an inconvenient moment). as a result, i learned an awful lot (though never enough, of course) about the world of japanese advertising, both in breadth and in depth. during agency–client meetings, i frequently witnessed the kind of 'impression management' that i myself had earlier been subjected to as a not-fully-integrated researcher. the difference now was that my informants-cum-colleagues knew that i knew that they were managing impressions of one sort or another. this led to a certain sense of solidarity and rapport between us (of the kind often commented upon by anthropologists in their accounts of fieldwork). but the fact that i was now more of an 'insider' meant that, when i was part of an account team dealing with external organizations, i had to participate in the very same arts of impression management that i had previously sought to tear asunder. in this respect, solidarity also involved a certain 'complicity' (marcus 1998: 105-31) with, or 'dramaturgical loyalty' (goffman 1990: 207-10) to, my informants-cum-colleagues. 106 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran however, this sense of complicity, which was enabled by and sustained rapport, did not derive from the kind of 'inherent moral asymmetry' between anthropologist and informant that one finds in rural backwaters of india or southeast asia, for example, and discussed by clifford geertz (1968: 151) and george marcus (1998: 110). rather, it arose from the institutional and financial asymmetry that existed between advertising clients who distributed advertising accounts, on the one hand; media organizations, which ran the advertising campaigns, on the other; and the advertising agency itself, which moved restlessly between the two. this complicity was thus inter-organizational, rather than inter-personal, and was driven by how money––in the form of the split account system––circulated within the advertising industry. by recognizing this, i came to realize just how the advertising industry as a whole was structured by the tripartite relationship between these three different players of advertising clients, media organizations and agencies. this then prompted me to examine how the agency itself was internally structured to meet the demands of the industry, or field, as a whole (moeran 2000). in this respect, my 'intervention' in the preparations for the frontier competitive presentation not only led to immediate interaction with different people in the agency, but also allowed me in the long term to work out the social structure of the advertising field and the social mechanisms by which it operated. in these and one or two other respects, the case study detailed here provided me with the classic benefits of participant observation. by 'being there', and being there long enough to make a difference, i was able to hear and structure the multiple voices of my informants. by looking at their interaction during both 'front' and 'back' stage performances, i became aware of unanticipated details, as well as of the relevance of apparently irrelevant things said and done (cf. chapman 2001: 24). as a result, i was able to arrive at a holistic study with general theoretical implications for the advertising industry both in japan and elsewhere (cf. gellner and hirsch 2001: 9-10). this, then, is the potential value of an anthropological approach to the study of organizations, management and business, both in the asian region and elsewhere in the world. brian moeran is a professor in culture and communication at the copenhagen business school. 107 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan notes 1 radcliffe-brown's pupil, lloyd warner, was brought into the third stage of the hawthorne experiments conducted between 1927 and 1932, and introduced fieldwork methods to conduct in-depth studies of factory shop-floor units. unfortunately, however, the social explanation of workers' behaviour deriving from these studies was ignored and 'supplanted by an individually-based psychological one' (wright 1994: 8). this confusion of anthropology with psychology continues to this day (see sunderland and denny 2003). 2 shop-floor studies were pursued in the 1950s and 1960s by anthropologists working at manchester university under max gluckman, who, with the support of george homans who was visiting from harvard, advocated full participant observation by researchers (rather than mere observation as in the hawthorne bank wiring study). five studies were conducted to discover what, if any, relation there was between informal group structure and output norms in different factories. various wider contexts—the organizational structure of industries, class, community and social environment, and gender roles—were drawn upon to explain the differences in management–workers relations found in the five field sites (wright 1994: 10-14). 3 this argument gave rise to the well-known distinction between 'substantivists' and 'formalists' in the subfield of economic anthropology (cf. wilk 1996). 4 we should recognize, however, that some of those in organization studies, notably peter drucker (1993 [1946]), have conducted long-term fieldwork in particular corporations. 5 for example, in the 1993 introduction to his 1946 book, the concept of the corporation, drucker claims as part of his impression management that his 'was the first book that looked upon a "business" as an "organization", 'even though at least one business historian, ralph hower (1939), had already described an american advertising agency in these terms. 6 drucker also claims, in total disregard of the comprehensive literature on japanese corporations based on extensive fieldwork, that since he wrote his book almost 50 years ago, nobody has tried to do anything similar––'whether with one big business enterprise or with any of the big organizations in and through which the social tasks of modern society are being discharged' (drucker 1993: ix). 7 mccreery (2000: 4) suggests that advertisers and market researchers are more like 'guerrilla' ethnographers. 8 i have changed the names of all individuals mentioned in this article, except for that of adk's former ceo and now chairman, inagaki masao, since it would be a little ridiculous to try to conceal his name. 9 i made it clear, incidentally, that i did not want to study the largest agency, dentsû. this was, firstly, because it was too big an organization; and secondly, because i have always believed in the 'avis principle': that those behind the leading organization anywhere are probably 'trying harder'. 10 hine (2001: 65) reports a slightly similar experience upon her arrival to do fieldwork in a science laboratory in england. 11 clifford geertz's (1973: 412-17) famous opening description of the balinese cockfight is a case in point. 12 in japanese, they are called by the rather more down-to-earth title of 'salesmen' (eigyô man). 13 a formal analysis of this case study may be found in moeran (2003). 14 i discovered after the presentation that people in adk's los angeles branch office really had taken to the streets the day before and asked people what they thought. 15 this is one of the essential 'commitments' of fieldwork (cf. miller 1997: 16-17). 16 my current research on women's fashion magazines in france, hong kong, japan, the uk and us is based on the kind of 'multi-sited' research advocated by george marcus (1998), but which, as a concept, totally fails to get to grips with the problem of impression management and backstage manoeuvres. 108 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 brian moeran 17 the account was primarily won as a result of the close personal relationship developed over some time between adk's account executive in charge of the presentation and his opposite number in frontier. references bourdieu, pierre 1984. distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. london: routledge & kegan paul. buchanan, d., d. boddy, and j. mccalman 1988. 'getting in, getting on, getting out and getting back'. in a. bryman (ed.), doing research in organizations. london and new york: routledge. chapman, malcolm 2001. 'social anthropology and business studies: some considerations of method'. in d. gellner and e. hirsch (eds), inside organizations. oxford: berg: 19-33. clark, rodney 1979. the japanese company. new haven, ct: yale university press. dore, ronald p. 1973. british factory–japanese factory. berkeley, ca: university of california press. drucker, peter 1993 (1946). concept of the corporation, new brunswick: transaction publishers. eriksen, thomas h. 1995. small places, large issues: an introduction to social and cultural anthropology. london: pluto press. geertz, clifford 1968. 'thinking as a moral act: ethical dimensions of anthropological fieldwork in the new states'. antioch review 28 (2): 139-58. — 1973. 'deep play: notes on the balinese cockfight' in c. geertz, the interpretation of cultures. new york: basic books: 412-53. gellner, david and eric hirsch (eds) 2001. inside organizations: anthropologists at work. oxford. berg. goffman, erving 1990 (1959). the presentation of self in everyday life. harmondsworth: penguin. hine, christine 2001. 'ethnography in the laboratory.' in d. gellner and e. hirsch (eds), inside organizations. oxford: berg: 61-76. hower, ralph 1939. the history of an advertising agency. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. kemper, steven 2001. seeing is believing: sri lankan advertising and consumers in a transnational world. chicago: university of chicago press. mccreery, john 2000. japanese consumer behavior: from worker bees to wary shoppers. london: curzon press. macdonald, sharon 2001. 'ethnography in the science museum, london.' in d. gellner and e. hirsch (eds) inside organizations. oxford: berg: 77-96. malefyt, timothy de waal and brian moeran (eds) 2003. advertising cultures. oxford: berg. marcus, george 1998. ethnography through thick and thin. princeton, nj: princeton university press. miller, daniel 1997. capitalism: an ethnographic approach. oxford: berg. moeran, brian 1993. 'a tournament of value: strategies of presentation in japanese advertising.' ethnos 58 (2): 73-93. — 1996. a japanese advertising agency: an anthropology of media and markets. london: curzon press. — 2000. 'the split account system and japan's advertising industry.' international journal of advertising 19 (2): 185-200. — 2003. 'imagining and imaging the other: japanese advertising international.' in t. malefyt and b. moeran (eds), advertising cultures. oxford: berg. nader, laura 1969. 'up the anthropologist'. in dell hymes (ed.), reinventing anthropology. new york: basic books. 109 the business of anthropology: communication, culture and japan rohlen, thomas p. 1974. for harmony and strength. berkeley, ca: university of california press. sunderland, patricia and rita denny 2003. 'psychology vs. anthropology: where is culture in marketplace anthropology?' in t. malefyt and b. moeran (eds), advertising cultures. oxford: berg. van maanen, john 1988. tales from the field. chicago: university of chicago press. — 2001. 'afterword: natives 'r' us: some notes on the ethnography of organizations'. in d. gellner and e. hirsch (eds), inside organizations. oxford: berg: 233-61. waldo, d. 1961. 'organization theory: an elephantine problem.' public administration review 21: 210-25. wilk, richard 1996. economies and cultures: foundations of economic anthropology. boulder, co: westview. wright, susan 1994. 'culture in anthropology and organizational studies'. in s. wright (ed.), anthropology of organizations. london: routledge: 1-31. 126 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 rewievs ___________________________________________________________________ roderick macfarquhar and michael schoenhals, mao's last revolution. the belknap press of harvard university press, cambridge, massachusetts, and london, england, 2006. 693 pp. isbn: 10: 0-674-02332-3 a number of significant new studies of mao zedong's 'great proletarian cultural revolution' (gpcr) 1966-1976 have appeared in the last few years, changing and developing the state of the field considerably. virtually all the established and internationally recognized cultural revolution scholars – such as jonathan unger, andrew walder, frederick teiwes and warren sun have recently produced important new work. at the same time, a younger generation of scholars has also entered the stage. in china as well the gpcr attracts a lot of historical attention. the movement, though still living memory for millions, is gradually making the transition from 'contemporary affairs' to 'recent history', as memories and people fade away. in the proliferation of new studies mao's last revolution stands out. it is the first comprehensive historical account of the gcpr, and is destined to be the standard reference work on the cultural revolution for many years to come. mao's last revolution, ten years in the making, is the crowning achievement of two splendid academic careers. harvard professor roderick macfarquhar began his research on the gcpr in 1968, when the movement was still at a high. in the decades that followed, he wrote the three volumes of the origins of the cultural revolution (1974, 1983, 1997), which have long since become established as the authoritative account of chinese politics in the years 1956-1966. expectations regarding professor macfarquhar's 'fourth volume', the study of the gcpr period itself, obviously ran high in the academic community. they were not diminished by the news that macfarquhar had joined forces with swedish scholar michael schoenhals, also a veteran of gcpr studies. although from a younger generation, he is highly respected for his perceptive studies of the 'mother of all movements' (to paraphrase sadam hussein) and not least for his grasp of gcpr primary sources (cf. his documentary study from 1996 china's cultural revolution, 1966-1969: not a dinner party). mao's last revolution satisfies all expectations. the two authors have produced a rich and very readable text that captures many of the complexities of the late maoist era. quite naturally, the central focus of the study is the political stage at 'mao's court', since the movement, from beginning to end, was both mao's invention and responsibility. moreover, the reception of, or reaction to, the gcpr at the local level, _______________________________________________________________________ 127 ___________________________________________________________________ rewievs as well as in the minds of the chinese people, is also examined in the book this provides the context for politics at the centre, although a comprehensive study of the social history of the gcpr remains a project for future scholarship. mao's last revolution is not an easy read. the huge number of chinese names, and the intricacies of the many histories, might be off putting to some readers. however, even an experienced china studies scholar will be left with many thoughts after reading mao's last revolution. the book offers no easy solutions to the many mysteries of the 1966-1976 period, and in some cases, the mystery actually appears to have deepened. in the first generation of gcpr studies, such as hong yung lee's much read the politics of the cultural revolution from 1978, but also in the sociological studies of anita chan, jonathan unger and stanley rosen, factional conflicts were understood to be an expression of conflicts between institutions and social forces, thus suggesting a basic rationality in the pattern of political behaviour during the gcpr. military leaders such as lin biao, mao's second-in-command, strove to maximize the influence of the military. as premier, zhou enlai sought to limit the damage to government institutions. children of the party elite, as well as those from the 'red classes', struggled to maintain their comparative advantage, while marginalized youth saw opportunities for winning a place at the top. with all that is now known, the assumption of rationality has become much more difficult to uphold, and mao's last revolution paints a disturbing picture of a political system that became seriously dysfunctional. like a spoiled child, the omnipotent chairman kept everybody around him busy trying to guess his real intentions while struggling to fulfil his impossible demands. one after the other, all his old colleagues of the chinese revolution, now reduced to submissive and flattering courtiers, were tossed away like unwanted toys. for example, what was the political message to the chinese population of, say, the lin biao affair? after having designating lin as his successor at the 9th ccp congress in 1969, mao's views of his 'closest comrade-in-arms' began to cool, leading the lin family to its destruction in a desperate attempt to flee the country in september 1971. how to explain that the all-knowing great leader had – once again – allowed a 'traitor, scab and renegade' to become his closest collaborator? as if this loss of face was not enough, the propaganda machine in its vilification campaign against the lin family quoted passages from a document allegedly written by lin's son, lin liguo, which described mao, quite appropriately, as an unpredictable and cruel dictator. politically, lin biao was first criticized 128 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 rewievs ___________________________________________________________________ for the 'ultra leftist errors' of the gcpr, and then, in 1974-1976, he was condemned as a right-winger as well as a follower of the conservative philosophical principles of china's ancient master kong fuzi. from the viewpoint of political spin, none of this makes much sense, and it is up to the reader of mao's last revolution to make his or her own judgment on the entire affair. in this sense mao's last revolution is also commendable for the things that are not in the book. quite naturally, the book painfully documents many of the worst episodes of the gcpr, as well as some of the most bizarre events. it raises questions as to how it was possible for ordinary chinese to live in such a society. mao's last revolution offers only a few glimpses of 'daily life in the cultural revolution' and cannot convey to its reader the immense boredom of the times that probably tortured the chinese city population just as much as the occasional outbursts of frenzied 'struggle'. for most of the time, even the young went to bed early, because there was nothing else to do. the shops sold the same few products year after year. most people had an assigned job for life, and most lived in walled compounds with restricted access from the outside. playing cards became the favourite pastime. for most of the time, for most of the people, nothing at all happened. there is probably no easy way to introduce to the western reader this duality of the gcpr as a lived experience, with its interplay of boredom and frenzy. the first half of mao's last revolution, covering the years 1966-1968, is particularly interesting. this was the time of the red guards, the various kinds of 'rebels', and the factional battles. this period is sometimes referred to as the 'cultural revolution proper', the years when chaos reigned. in 1968 the army was called in to restore order. the 9th chinese communist party (ccp) congress in 1969 was a further milestone on the road to normalization. however, after the lin biao affair, mao once again began to talk about the gcpr in the present tense, and twice in his last few years he again strove to promote cultural revolution values in big political campaigns with his wife jiang qing and her associates, the later 'gang of four', as the main agents. only after the death of mao and the arrest of the 'gang' in 1976, was the gcpr truly over. despite many things remaining the same between the years 1966 and 1976, there is one very substantial difference between the first two years of the gcpr (i.e. from the summer of 1966 to the summer of 1968) and the remaining eight years of this period. in the first period, when the ruling communist party itself was paralyzed by red guard attacks, many young people experienced a kind of freedom and empowerment _______________________________________________________________________ 129 ___________________________________________________________________ rewievs that they had never tried before. this is not to deny the significance of manipulation of the red guards from above, but at least in some places, there emerged a measure of autonomous organization at the grass roots level. in contrast, after 1968, gcpr slogans were mostly aired in strictly controlled top-down campaigns, while many of the young activists of the red guard/rebel period were actually rounded up and punished. gcpr scholarship veterans anita chan and jonathan unger argue, and with some justification, that in putting the two periods, the 'grassroots autonomy' and the 'top-down' periods, together under the same heading, one risks losing sight of the uniqueness of the early gcpr period, the second half of mao's last revolution also seems to contain less new material and offers fewer challenges to the 'conventional wisdom' of contemporary gcpr scholarship. moreover, it has also to some extent since been eclipsed by the latest volume by frederick c. teiwes and warren sun, the end of the maoist era: chinese politics during the twilight of the cultural revolution, 1972-1976 (2007), although that book focuses exclusively on elite politics. my own critique of mao's last revolution relates to another issue: the book does not adequately prepare young readers for unconventional gcpr scholarship such as mobo gao's gao village (1999) and han dongping's the unknown cultural revolution (2000). both were children at the time of the gcpr, and to them the cultural revolution meant, first of all, access to education. the gcpr period was in fact the crucial period in making schooling universal at the village level. later, these two authors completed phd programs at western universities, enabling them to introduce to the world how the great political movements of the mao era, above all the gcpr, were experienced at the village level. for older readers, the surprise may be less profound. many things in gao's and han's accounts – quite different from each other by the way remind us of a once familiar world from the pro-china literature of the 1960s and 1970s, that is, a world of politically awakened and empowered villagers, enthusiastic youngsters, proud barefoot doctors, and so forth. this image has since crumbled under the weight of a mountain of revelations concerning gcpr crimes. while there is no justification for those crimes, it should not be ignored, that at least in some villages, the gcpr was actually a rather dynamic period with progress in many fields, culturally as well as economically. for example, in many places the gcpr meant the creation, for the first time ever, of a social sphere for the young, with some sports and other cultural activities that allowed the youngsters to get together and perhaps fall in love, upsetting the 130 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 rewievs ___________________________________________________________________ traditional pattern of arranged marriage. the new basketball ground – often next to the new primary school or the new village clinic might be the meeting ground for this emerging youth culture. some youths who were sent out to the country from the big cities were able to connect meaningfully with the villagers and introduce (a maoist version of) modern life to them. in some places, the gcpr was instrumental in the development of collective agriculture. none of this is a denial of the vast destruction, the absurdity, and the agony of the gcpr. so many of mao's actions in those fateful last ten years of his life were both criminal and absurd, but this does not mean that his diagnosis of china's condition was a mere illusion. bureaucratic systems, elitism, suppression of women, formalism, and many other such elements of the cultural tradition were – and still are – real, and they provide parts of the wider context that explains why the chairman's gcpr policies were able at least initially to unleash such an enthusiastic response from millions of chinese. søren clausen university of aarhus landry 31 the political management of mayors in post-deng china the political management of mayors in post-deng china pierre f. landry abstract this article examines how the chinese communist party (ccp) maintains political control over municipal elites in post-deng china. first, it analyses the career paths of mayors for all prefecture-level municipalities between 1990 and 2000. it then shows how the dual processes of economic decentralization and the decentralization of the personnel management system has not led to a decline of the ccp's capacity to enforce key organizational norms. an ordered probit model of cadre promotion suggests that the economic performance of cities has little substantive impact on promotion or removal from office. however, strict enforcement of cadre retirement regulations has the effect of shortening the tenure of mayors, which facilitates the promotion of a greater share of secondary officials than was possible before the reforms of the personnel system, but weakens the link between good governance and political rewards. introduction during the post-maoist era, the centre of gravity of the chinese political economy tilted decisively towards cities. the unprecedented pace of china's economic transformation favoured urban growth, which in turn increased the political relevance of municipalities and the officials who rule them. cities now control a far greater share of the country's resources than at any point in the history of the people's republic. in 2000, chinese municipalities accounted for 51.8 percent of the country's gdp, 50.1 percent of its industrial output and 76 percent of the value of services (jiang and cui 2001). this increased economic might was largely deliberate. as early as 1979, the centre1 targeted some of its boldest policy initiatives at municipalities, symbolized by the early creation of special economic zones (crane 1990; kleinberg 1990). after 1984, economic decentralization was generalized to other areas, but premier zhao ziyang stressed that coastal cities would enjoy economic privileges that would not be extended to the less developed and more rural chinese hinterland (yang 1990). the leadership's favourable bias towards cities survived the transition of 1989. until 2002, jiang zemin pierre f. landry 32 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 and zhu rongji—both former mayors and party secretaries in shanghai—presided over further reform initiatives that benefited cities (naughton 1995; wang and hu 1999). in parallel with their rapid economic transformation, cities also enjoy greater formal institutional weight. their number rose rapidly— from less than 200 in 1978 to over 660 today2—but more importantly their formal bureaucratic rank as well as those of the cadres who rule them has also increased. many county seats have been elevated to the status of 'prefecture level municipalities' (diji shi), and 15 cities now have 'vice-provincial' rank (fushengji shi).3 scholars who have examined china's decentralization often conclude that the economic power of the localities has eroded the political authority of the centre.4 this article examines how this authority is exercised with respect to city mayors. my choice of focus is not simply because cities are inherently important, but also because the terms of the debate on the political impact of china's economic decentralization rely excessively on provincial aggregate data. critics of decentralization who focus on central–provincial fiscal relations (hu and wang 1996; wang 1994, 1995, 1997) conclude that state capacity has weakened, while their detractors, who emphasize the role of institutional and political controls—particularly the power of appointment of central party institutions (brødsgaard 2002; burns 1989; harding 1981; manion 1985), argue that the political authority of the centre is still very much intact in high-priority areas (bo 2002; huang 1995, 1996; lampton 1992). as important as provinces are, they may not constitute the proper level of analysis to adjudicate the debate, because of their particular position in the chinese political hierarchy. both huang (1996) and bo (2002) find evidence that central control over provincial appointments facilitates policy enforcement, but that result is hardly surprising given that beijing has always retained direct nomenklatura authority over provincial leaders. the institutional capacity of the chinese state should instead be tested against a tougher standard, namely beijing's capacity to impose its policy preferences when principal–agent relations are not as straightforward as those linking central and provincial leaders. it seems more fruitful to focus on local political actors over which beijing only exercises indirect control—such as mayors. the party control mechanisms differ vastly between provincial and municipal cadres. although personnel management over city, county and township cadres has evolved over time, under the current system, top municipal leaders are appointed by the provinces, without direct 33 the political management of mayors in post-deng china central control (burns 1989, 1994; landry 2000).5 furthermore, focusing on municipal elites allows one to test hypotheses about regional differentiation that cannot be evaluated by looking at provinces alone. specifically, one can learn whether the party's organizational practice visà-vis local officials is consistent across provinces, and whether its personnel choices follow the logic of rewarding good governance in the localities. this article tests the hypothesis that municipal performance affects the political fate of mayors. the political control of cadres the ccp has mobilized considerable resources to enhance its political control over local cadres. it sought to improve personnel management by gradually reshaping the institutions that collect information, monitor the performance of local governments, and sanction officials (harding 1981; huang 1995; whiting 2001). these institutional reforms were designed to act as a counterpoise against the centrifugal forces of economic decentralization. the web of party organization departments (zuzhi bumen), discipline inspection commissions (jiwei) and local ccp committees is expected to root out cadres who flaunt central policies, are guilty of 'localism', or who are shown to be corrupt.6 this strategy of reform has allowed economic decentralization to proceed, but seeks to reduce the costs of devolution. the political principals of the chinese state recognize that effective governance is a necessary condition to maintain regime legitimacy among ordinary citizens (tang and parish 2000). they rely on the ccp's institutional dominance to enforce the norm among cadres that the goal of achieving a 'relatively wealthy society' (xiaokang shehui) is critical to the regime's strategy for long-term survival. they stress the need to recruit and promote officials who deliver good governance––defined, for the most part, in terms of economic growth (wei 2002: 1733). article 6-2 of the 'regulations on the work of selecting and appointing leading party and government cadres' specifies that 'cadres should . . . be determined to carry out the reform and opening-up policy, be devoted to the cause of modernization, and work hard for the building of socialism and the making of concrete achievements' (ccp organization department 2002). the centre has devised various incentive mechanisms to reduce shirking and to improve performance among local cadres.7 the question of how best to select and reward local officials has always vexed the ccp's 'organizational and personnel management system' (zuzhi renshi xitong), but the problem is especially acute when the pierre f. landry 34 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 cadre management system is decentralized (zhang 1994). in his classic analysis of the maoist polity, schurmann (1968) argued that reliance on ideology could effectively compensate for weakened state organizations during periods of decentralization. the decline of ideology in the reform era has revived the role of formal organizations as instruments of political control. the centre's challenge of controlling cadres is dual: local officials not only have broad leeway to steer the local economy in a direction that they choose, but leadership selection itself is also decentralized. since beijing controls directly only a handful of posts below the provincial level, it must trust that appointed provincial leaders have both the will and the capacity to implement personnel selection policy in a fashion that does not undermine the party's political authority at the sub-provincial level. operationalization and data collection this evaluation of the ccp's personnel management strategy is based on fairly systematic data about china's municipalities.8 mayors (shizhang) constitute a natural pool to study how party committees allocate political power: they exercise broad responsibilities in economic management, but remain politically subordinate to provincial party organizations. they do not rank so high that they stand no chance of further promotion if they perform well. in recent years, the composition of the top echelon of party leaders has reflected the importance of experience as mayors and municipal secretaries for promotion to higher political office.9 since mayors typically serve concurrently as (first) deputy secretary of municipal ccp committees (shiwei fushuji), promotion to the post of municipal secretary is a natural career move for analysis. other types of promotions are also possible: mayors sometimes become provincial vice-governor, or are deployed in central ministries. thus, the dependent variable of interest is promotion, within the same locality or elsewhere. the collection of local political and economic data in the prc is a challenging task. data collection about provinces has improved (bo 2002; huang 1996), but this is decidedly not the case below the provincial level. although basic socio-economic performance indicators have generally been available since the 1990s, systematic political data are much harder to collect. until recently, even lists of local officials were typically not available below the provincial level, let alone detailed biographical information about the cadres in question. thus, practical considerations have motivated the focus on mayors: they are the lowest 35 the political management of mayors in post-deng china level of local cadres for whom reasonably systematic biographical information is available. since the late 1980s, the chinese urban development research council (cudrc) has been publishing biographical notices of mayors annually (zhongguo chengshi fazhan yanjiuhui 19852001; li and bachman 1989). this information has been combined in the present study with a cross-section time-series dataset of municipal performance, supplemented with data gathered from a variety of sources that allow one to track, with reasonable confidence, cadre careers after their terms as mayor.10 municipal governance in the era of marketization prima facie, performance standards are clearly spelled out and uniform across cities. the zhongguo chengshi fazhan yanjiuhui (2001) lists 33 socioeconomic indicators of municipal modernization (see appendix at end of article) and rates cities accordingly. the linkage between performance and promotion is even highlighted visually, with the mayor's name, picture and short biography prominently displayed above the table. mayors have a broad mandate to 'govern well', but they must do so under market pressures that increasingly constrain the capacity of the local state to control local outcomes. in fact, many objectives of good governance tend to reduce bureaucratic control in favour of non-state actors. several indicators measure the growing impact of market forces that are beyond the direct control of local officials. for example, the share of services in the gdp (indicator 3) depends heavily on the size of the non-state sector in the local economy. similarly, openness to international trade (indicator 5, calculated as import + exports/gdp) is affected in part by global market conditions which local officials can hardly control. these indicators probably measure the pace of the localities' economic modernization, but it is harder to conclude that they accurately measure the leadership's contribution to the modernization of the local economy. these indicators are powerfully biased towards gdp performance: the variables that seek to measure 'economic development' not only account for almost a third of the overall index, but other factors are also strongly correlated with output growth, either by construction (indicator 9) or indirectly (indicators 10, 11 and 12, inter alia). simple co-linearity tests between the main components of the index confirm that the indicators are deceptively broad (see table 1). market forces also have the effect of exaggerating performance gaps across localities. the rise of regional disparities has been well documented across provinces (wang and hu 1999), but the differences are even more pierre f. landry 36 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 pronounced among sub-provincial units. table 6 (pp. 44-45) illustrates the large inter-municipal disparities in contemporary china, although the broad components of the overall performance exhibit some co-linearity.11 large interand intra-regional disparities have disturbing implications for the party authority. at worst, persistently poor performance undermines the credibility of the regime's claimed successful transition to a 'socialist market economy with chinese characteristics'. if the ccp is serious about penalizing poor governance and rewarding good governance, then career patterns among local cadres should reflect this heavily differentiated landscape. by this reasoning, officials posted in fast-growing cities ought to be promoted more frequently than their counterparts posted in regions in relative economic decline. in summary, china's rapid economic transformation has aggravated the party's adverse selection problem. provincial ccp committees may have the power to appoint and dismiss mayors, but this institutional strength remains theoretical in the absence of accurate ways to measure the leadership abilities of local officials. as marketization deepens, it is increasingly difficult to map the economic performance of the localities to the specific action of officials. :1elbat ehtfostnenopmocyekneewtebytiraenil-ocfotset xedniecnamrofreplapicinumcduc :elbairavtnedneped )401=n(srorredradnatstsuborhtiwnoissergerxednierutcurtsarfni )201,1(f 68.32 f>borp 00.0 2r 22.0 esmtoor 70.2 elbairav .feoc estsubor xednitnemnorivne 853.0 370.0 *** tnatsnoc 763.5 040.1 *** :elbairavtnedneped )401=n(srorredradnatstsuborhtiwnoissergerxedniecnamrofrepcimonoce )201,1(f 57.73 f>borp 00.0 2r 62.0 esmtoor 73.3 elbairav .feoc estsubor xedniefilfoytilauq 296.0 311.0 *** tnatsnoc 749.6 115.1 *** :eton srotacidniecnamrofrephcihwrof)401=n(seiticfotesbusehtnodesaberaatadeht .seiticesenihcllafotesetelpmocatneserpertonseodsiht.dehsilbupera :ecruos .1002iuhuijnaynahzafihsgnehcouggnohz 37 the political management of mayors in post-deng china who are china's mayors? chinese mayors are typically well-educated men in their fifties and overwhelmingly han.12 although they share the broad characteristics of provincial officials (e.g. more than two-thirds have received some form of tertiary education), they are younger. whereas bo (2002) reports a mean age of 55.5 years, male mayors typically are just above 50 and their female counterparts just above 48. in contrast to provincial officials, ethnic minorities seem under-represented (under 5 percent)— a low number, but one that also reflects the concentration of municipalities in coastal han-dominated provinces. formal personnel regulations (ccp organization department 1995, 2002) strongly suggest that the odds of promotion depend on a cadre's personal characteristics. the rule of retirement (60 for most cadres, 55 for women) constrains career prospects heavily. age limits were initially introduced to rejuvenate the post-cultural revolution leadership (manion 1993; shen 1994). this policy not only led to the replacement of 'old revolutionaries' by 'career bureaucrats' (harding 1981; lee 1991), but was also conducive to a considerable improvement in the overall level of education among cadres, since newly appointed officials were typically better trained than their predecessors (landry 2000; shen 1994) (see tables 2 and 3). enforcing the retirement age is no longer controversial: the mayors' average age has hovered around 50 since 1990, well within formal regulatory limits. the data indicate strongly that they are always removed from office by the age of 60, unless they serve in deputy-provincial2elbat )0002-0991(noitacudefolevel:sroyam: levelnoitacude elam elamef sesaclla )latotfo%sa( leveletaudarg 792 9 )3.21( egelloc 941,1 22 )1.74( egelloclanoitacov )nauhzad( 914 31 )3.71( *loohcshgih 86 0 )7.2( **rehto 405 2 )3.02( latot 734,2 64 )%( )1.89( )9.1( :ecruos .esabatad .atadgnissimgnidulcni*;)nauhzgnohz(noitacudelanoitacovgnidulcni** pierre f. landry 38 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 level cities or centrally administered municipalities (cams), where the formal retirement age is higher. even in this group, no one has remained in office beyond the age of 64.13 mayors also tend to serve shorter terms: the 1990 average of 3.2 years that matched the regulatory standard of threeyear appointments had declined to a mere 2.3 years by 2000. since 1998, few mayors have served a full three-year term (see table 4 and figure 1). the norm of retirement is a powerful way to guarantee that relatively young cadres—who are arguably better trained and more attuned to the workings of a market economy—reach leadership positions in the localities. however, its enforcement can also come at the expense of :3elbat )0002-0991(sutatsytironimdnarednegyb,ega'sroyam redneg eganaem .on noitaived.dts elam 05.05 979,1 79.4 elamef 01.84 640,0 45.4 latot 44.05 520,2 79.4 yticinhte nah 34.05 029,1 89.4 ytironim 85.05 501,0 47.4 latot 85.05 520,2 79.4 :ecruos .esabatad 4elbat )0002-0991(noitubirtsidega:sroyam: raey .on naem .ved.dts .nim .xam 0991 791 5.05 4.5 53 36 1991 891 4.05 9.4 63 36 2991 691 6.05 3.5 63 46 3991 671 3.05 8.4 73 26 4991 571 9.05 7.4 83 26 5991 381 9.05 1.5 43 36 6991 261 7.05 1.5 53 46 7991 461 8.05 1.5 93 16 8991 571 0.05 8.4 73 16 9991 491 2.05 7.4 83 26 0002 502 6.94 6.4 83 36 :ecruos .esabatad 39 the political management of mayors in post-deng china figure 1: mayors' average tenure (1990-2000) note: units are years of tenure at the time of observation. source: database. y = -0.08t + 171.48 r = 0.70 2 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3 3.2 3.4 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 200 year average length of tenure (in years ) length of tenure linear (length of tenure) cadre accountability. o'brien and li's finding that cadre rotation among rural cadres weakens accountability (1999: 176) applies here as well. it is difficult to see how a mayor, no matter how effective he may be, can signal his contribution to local development if his expected tenure in office is barely above two years. modelling the relationship between cadre characteristics, municipal performance and political outcomes dependent variable: promotion for the sake of tractability, a mayor's political fate is ordered along a single dimension and analysed as an ordered probability model: in a given year, he/she can 'exit'14 (coded 0), 'continue' as mayor or be transferred to a position of identical rank (coded 1); or be 'promoted' to the rank of municipal party secretary (coded 2) in the same city or elsewhere.15 recall that ordered probit models make no scaling assumption of any kind: one need not assume that the difference between an exit and continuation is more or less desirable than the difference between 'continue' and 'promoted'. one need only be satisfied that: exit < continue < promoted 2 0 pierre f. landry 40 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 while the definitions of 'promotion' and 'transfer' are not particularly controversial, the reader may question the treatment of an 'exit' as less desirable than continuing as mayor. mayors disappear from the dataset for various reasons. in some cases, they die in office or retire from public life. alternatively, cadres may be eased into non-executive positions at the local people's congress or the people's political consultative conference. this ranking assumes that such posts are less desirable than the post of mayor. however, a third possibility is decidedly more threatening to statistical inference: exit may also reflect promotions to unobserved posts in provincial departments or central ministries. since there is no comprehensive database of chinese leaders above the prefectural level, there is no way to confirm that this third case is rare enough to ignore. however, every effort was made to verify that officials coded as 'exit' do not reappear in executive positions elsewhere. a mayor's appointment marks the beginning of the last decade of his political career, barring exceptional circumstances. the dataset includes a handful of leaders who attained high office in the 1990s, including jiang zemin, zhu rongji, li ruihuan and bo xilai, but the presence of former mayors among china's top leaders should not mask the grimmer reality that promotions are relatively rare events. independent variables mayors' individual characteristics the model accounts for the salient individual attributes of cadre promotion regulations. these variables include age (in years), level of education, gender, as well as whether the cadre is han chinese or not. the effects of these variables are discussed in detail in the next section. in addition, two contrasts capture the length of tenure up to the year of observation: three to five years, which corresponds roughly to a second term in office, and six years or longer.16 municipal bureaucratic rank a second set of variables captures the bureaucratic rank of each municipality. 'central appointment' accounts for cities whose leadership is managed from beijing. furthermore, cam party secretaries often sit as full or alternate members of the central committee, which enhances their visibility and access to core decision-makers. their peculiar position in the chinese political hierarchy is likely to increase their odds of promotion. in addition, an interaction term for 'vice-provincial cities' accounts for instances of extensive autonomy over economic policy combined with par41 the political management of mayors in post-deng china 0 20 40 6 0 80 100 120 140 16 0 18 0 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 year frequency exit continue promoted tial central political control. such is the economic status of provinces, but only their mayor and party secretary are centrally appointed. deputymayors and secretaries remain under provincial management, since they have the rank of prefecture-level cadres (diji ganbu). municipal performance at the current stage of the dataset development, it is necessary to restrict the set of municipal performance criteria to four indicators that are highly correlated with the municipal performance index published in 2001: • the city size (population); • the city's overall wealth (gdp per capita); • the extent of the transition to a market economy–measured by the share of services to the local gdp; and • openness to the world economy, measured by the magnitude of foreign direct investment (fdi) in the city. 17 figure 2: mayors: distribution of political fate (1990-2000) note: in order to avoid 'right censoring', the analysis ends in 2000, a year when the fate of almost all mayors is known. source: database. pierre f. landry 42 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 :5elbat )0002-0991(ecnivorpybnoitaunitnocdna,tixe,snoitomorp:sroyam ecnivorp )%(yrogetacnoitomorp )wor(n tixe eunitnoc detomorp gnijieb 81 54 63 11 nijnait 81 46 81 11 iebeh 12 26 81 021 ixnahs 33 45 31 16 uggnemien 82 35 91 34 gninoail 52 16 41 251 nilij 91 06 12 48 gnaijgnolieh 72 95 41 21 iahgnahs 9 37 81 11 usgnaij 61 17 31 731 gnaijehz 82 26 11 401 iuhna 51 66 91 421 naijuf 32 17 6 87 ixgnaij 42 16 51 66 gnodnahs 71 46 91 151 naneh 12 26 71 351 iebuh 32 76 11 39 nanuh 42 66 01 131 gnodgnaug 81 36 91 681 ixgnaug 22 86 01 78 naniah 41 28 5 22 gniqgnohc 0 09 01 01 nauhcis 71 27 11 531 uohziug 22 57 3 23 nannuy 42 36 21 14 tebit 9 28 9 11 ixnaahs 22 56 31 77 usnag 61 96 51 55 iahgniq 81 37 9 11 aixgnin 42 67 0 52 gnaijnix 72 37 0 22 anihc 12 56 41 663,2 xnosraep 2 .11.0:ytilibaborp81.37:)26( ecruos .esabatad: 43 the political management of mayors in post-deng china provincial contrasts a set of dummy variables tests the hypothesis of systematic disparities in the way provincial party committees exercise political authority. most of the published research on disparities refers to economic disparities (hu and wang 1996; tan 1997; wang 1995, 1997; wang and hu 1999). here, provincial contrasts relate instead to a political logic. assuming that economic disparities are reasonably accounted for by municipal performance indicators, provincial contrasts capture systematic differences across provincial party committees. recall that apart from cams and vice-provincial cities, it is the provinces and not the centre that exercise direct nomenklatura authority over municipal leaders. principles of organizational discipline suggest that personnel policy is implemented uniformly across provinces. if the hypothesis holds that cadre management practices are similar across provinces, these contrasts should be irrelevant in the multivariate model. conversely, if systematic variations exist across provinces, these contrasts should exhibit both statistical significance and powerful substantive effects. at face value, differences in the political fate of mayors exist across provinces. in xinjiang and ningxia, mayors (who usually belong to ethnic minorities) never become party secretary, while in beijing, jilin, shandong, anhui and guangdong, promotions occur in about 20 percent of cases, which is well above the national average of 14 percent. it remains to be seen whether these differences are statistically significant and reflect true behavioural differences across provincial party committees. i shall return to this point in my discussion of the ordered probit model. time contrasts finally, annual dummy variables18 account for two distinct processes. they control for time-specific shocks that are not specifically encapsulated in the model. furthermore, annual dummy variables 'purge' the stochastic term of possible biases caused by omitted time-dependent variables and reduce autocorrelation among error terms, a major pitfall of cross-section time-series models.19 results i present three closely related versions of the multivariate model of mayor promotion. model 1 estimates the odds of the ordered outcome (exit<continue<promotion) for the entire sample. models 2 and 3 split the sample between cities located in coastal provinces and cities of interior provinces. pierre f. landry 44 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 :6elbat setamitseytilibaborpderedro 1ledom 2ledom 3ledom secnivorplla secnivorplatsaoc secnivorpdnalni 0871 478 149 doohilekil-gol 9.35411.4766.167x>p 2 000.0 000.0 000.0 selbairavtnednepedni epyt scitsiretcarahcs'royam sraey5-3erunet .d 191.0360.0 *** 381.0260.0 *** 191.0460.0 *** +sraey6erunet .d 694.0741.0 *** 384.0341.0 *** 394.0841.0 *** 5691-7291,htribforaey .c 920.0 800.0 *** 520.0 800.0 *** 720.0 800.0 *** elamef=1,redneg .d 210.0381.0 010.0 771.0 310.0181.0 ytironim=1,ytironim .d 620.0 891.0 140.0151.0 610.0251.0 etaudarg .d 060.0361.0 910.0551.0 610.0851.0 noitacudeegelloc .d 010.0 031.0 630.0 221.0 810.0 521.0 .cudeegelloc.cov .d 950.0451.0 460.0541.0 120.0841.0 scitsiretcarahcytic tnemtnioppalartnec .d 294.0 072.0 * 133.0 312.0 yticlaicnivorpytuped .d 664.0603.0 862.0872.0 630.0102.0 noitalupop )elpoep000,01( .c 000.0 000.0 000.0 000.0 000.0 000.0 * atipacreppdg )0001bmr( .c 110.0 500.0 ** 310.0 700.0 * 110.0 600.0 * secivresfoerahs )pdg%( .c 600.0300.0 * 700.0300.0 ** 700.0300.0 ** df ( )0001$su .c 000.0 000.0 000.0 000.0 000.0 000.0 tsartnoclaicnivorp s gniqgnohc .d 263.0573.0 iebeh .d 261.0 481.0 130.0 001.0 ixnahs .d 950.0542.0 012.0691.0 uggnemien .d 030.0161.0 261.0391.0 gninoail .d 422.0 071.0 380.0 021.0 nilij .d 073.0 832.0 822.0 981.0 gnaijgnolieh .d 210.0181.0 261.0431.0 usgnaij .d 641.0 191.0 710.0 501.0 gnaijehz .d 211.0991.0 532.0721.0 * iuhna .d 933.0 102.0 * 671.0 341.0 naijuf .d 130.0502.0 261.0041.0 ixgnaij .d 480.0 552.0 550.0202.0 45 the political management of mayors in post-deng china :6elbat ).tnoc(setamitseytilibaborpderedro 1ledom 2ledom 3ledom secnivorplla secnivorplatsaoc secnivorpdnalni 0871 478 149 doohilekil-gol 9.35411.4766.167x>p 2 000.0 000.0 000.0 selbairavtnednepedni epyt gnodnahs .d 013.0 912.0 371.0 951.0 naneh .d 922.0 702.0 950.0 541.0 iebuh .d 070.0591.0 332.0031.0 * nanuh .d 641.0081.0 903.0001.0 ** gnodgnaug .d 013.0 902.0 791.0 441.0 ixgnaug .d 650.0 691.0 690.0841.0 naniah .d 181.0 071.0 070.0 901.0 nauhcis .d 382.0 491.0 501.0 821.0 uohziug .d 580.0071.0 722.0180.0 *** nannuy .d 830.0552.0 891.0602.0 ixnaahs .d 743.0 662.0 981.0 722.0 usnag .d 945.0 572.0 ** 493.0 162.0 iahgniq .d 552.0 702.0 011.0 761.0 tsartnocemit s 9991 .d 855.0 721.0 *** 245.0 621.0 *** 445.0 521.0 *** 8991 .d 396.0 631.0 *** 866.0 331.0 *** 176.0 231.0 *** 7991 .d 137.0 741.0 *** 107.0 541.0 *** 017.0 341.0 *** 6991 .d 974.0 341.0 *** 154.0 041.0 *** 954.0 041.0 *** 5991 .d 159.0 731.0 *** 719.0 531.0 *** 529.0 431.0 *** 4991 .d 769.0 751.0 *** 129.0 251.0 *** 449.0 451.0 *** 3991 .d 097.0 861.0 *** 447.0 561.0 *** 667.0 761.0 *** 2991 .d 446.0 071.0 *** 195.0 661.0 *** 126.0 761.0 *** 1991 .d 090.1 671.0 *** 620.1 071.0 *** 860.1 271.0 *** 0991 .d 378.0 181.0 *** 097.0 771.0 *** 258.0 771.0 *** sretemarapyrallicna 1tuc 633.65 56.51 *** 484.74 558.32 *** 672.15 481.51 *** 2tuc 404.85 66.51 *** 435.94 378.32 *** 233.35 891.51 *** elbairavtnednepedehtfonoitubirtsiddevresbo )tixe(ytilibaborp 91.0 81.0 02.0 )eunitnoc(ytilibaborp 76.0 76.0 66.0 )nitomorp(ytilibaborp 41.0 61.0 31.0 eton foesoprupehtrofroatadgnissimoteuddettimoerastsartnoclaicnivorpemos.sraey-royamerasnoitavresbo: lla.ymmuda'd',elbairavsuounitnocasetoned'c'.0002sistsartnocemitehtfoenilesabeht.noitacifitnediledomgnirusne .01.0<p:*50.0<p:**10.0<p:***.yticybgniretsulcrofdetsujda,srorredradnatstsuboresusledom pierre f. landry 46 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 municipal performance does municipal performance matter? municipal economic performance seems to have a positive but limited impact on the political fate of mayors. figure 3 plots the fitted odds of promotion for a typical case.20 it evaluates the impact of municipal performance by varying municipal gdp per capita within sample values, and does so in three cases: mayor whose 'tenure so far' is less than three years; three to six years; and more than six years. while all three models suggest that performance— in this relatively narrow sense—matters, they still point to the limited capacity of chinese political institutions to reward 'good' governance. first, the odds of promotion remain low if we limit our measure to 'typical cities'. the observed maximum gdp of rmb 148,000 per person in shenzhen in 2000 is a far cry from the sample mean of rmb 8,651. if we restrict our assessment to the effect of economic performance around the mean, the results are far less spectacular: our typical mayor overseeing a hypothetical trebling of the gdp from the sample mean to rmb 18,170 (namely, a one standard deviation improvement) would only see the odds of promotion shift from 0.11 to 0.13, a trivial gain.21 disturbingly, developing the service economy seems detrimental to one's political career, even if we restrict the analysis to interior provinces where such changes are arguably welcome.22 finally, the impact of economic openness (measured by the amount of fdi) is nil. these results hold when the sample is split between coastal and interior cities. thus, it appears that the party's stated preference for performance-based career advancement is hardly consistent with the revealed preferences of provincial party committees. in this sense, my findings are in accordance with bo's conclusion that growth per se does not explain promotion patterns among provincial cadres (bo 2002).23 overall, it is doubtful that municipal leaders are being rewarded for their economic performance while in office. as discussed earlier, the decentralized and increasingly marketized nature of municipal economies may well be at the root of this weak principal–agent relationship. regardless of the statements of the officials concerned, it is not altogether clear that mayors and government officials 'cause' or 'slow' economic development in the first place. to use naughton's image (1995), as the economy 'grows out of the plan', the mapping of bureaucratic actions to specific outcomes is arduous, if not irrelevant. the weak linkages between performance and political careers may also be rooted in other political considerations. even though shorten47 the political management of mayors in post-deng china ing tenure lengths tend to obfuscate personal accountability, appointers may still have a powerful incentive to do so, for two reasons. first, frequent turnover allows ccp committees to reward a larger proportion of secondary officials. long tenures would increase competition for (rare) desirable posts and be demoralizing to competent cadres whose prospects for political advancement would be limited. these concerns motivated the push for cadre rejuvenation and orderly retirement in the first place. the pool of secondary officials is very large: typical cities have at least three deputy party secretaries and three vice-mayors. with shorter tenure at the helm, more officials can expect to reach the top executive positions. second, the fight against corruption provides the other incentive to shorten cadre tenure. leaders who remain entrenched in their localities are more likely to develop extensive informal 'guanxi' networks that undermine party authority. when cadres spend only a couple of years in executive positions, opportunities for 'corrupt' or 'localist' behaviour are less likely to arise. 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 annual gdp per capita (thousands of rmb) p r o b a b il it y tenure 0-2 tenure 3-5 tenure 6+ figure 3: fitted impact of municipal economic performance on the probability promotion of mayors, by tenure length note: plots are based on model 1. the shaded area denotes usually high gdp values, greater than one standard deviation above the sample mean. pierre f. landry 48 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 municipal bureaucratic rank and size model 1 also indicates an important political difference between mayors under direct central management and those whose careers are primarily handled by provincial party committees. all else being equal, the former are more likely to be promoted than the latter. the interaction term shows no difference between cams and deputy provincial cities. what matters is the existence of central political control, not whether a city has the full rank of a province or not.24 cadre characteristics on the other hand, all three models highlight the importance of the cadres' individual characteristics and are highly consistent with the hypothesis that key organizational rules on cadre promotion prevail in the localities. older mayors are less likely to be promoted than younger ones. the effect of age is particularly acute when length of tenure is also taken into account. at the beginning of his sixth year in office, the same hypothetical mayor in jiangsu discussed above—but this time varying his age and holding gdp per capita at the sample mean—has a mere 1.2 percent chance of promotion were he born in 1940, in contrast to a 20 percent chance for an otherwise identical mayor born in 1970, in his first term. notice that the effect of tenure is not linear: the substantive effect is much greater among younger mayors than older ones. since provincial organizations departments take personnel regulations seriously and since cadres rarely become mayor before the age of 50, the logic of tying promotions to performance works as an incentive to keep tenure relatively short, lest competent cadres reach the age limit by the time they reveal themselves as leaders worthy of promotion. to some extent, this seems to be the case. gender and ethnicity in addition to a rule of earlier retirement than men, female cadres also suffer from significant institutional discrimination. not surprisingly, the pool of chinese women mayors is very small (16 since 1990; see table 7) and promotions are exceedingly rare: only xu xiaoqing eventually became party secretary in jingdezhen where she was mayor from 1995-97.25 the promotion model suggests that discrimination affects female cadres at earlier stages of their career, not when they have already reached the rank of mayor. uneven access to tertiary education and membership in the communist party are likely act as powerful barriers to entry in the cadre corps. 49 the political management of mayors in post-deng china however, once selected into officialdom, women do not seem to suffer from unequal treatment, at least among mayors. similar results obtain with respect to ethnic minorities. again, when we discount the issue of access to the cadre corps in the first place, there is scant evidence of discrimination against ethnic minority mayors. consider model 3, which encompasses all 'autonomous regions', as well as many inland provinces with a high proportion of ethnic minorities such as sichuan, yunnan, qinghai and gansu. ceteris paribus, mayors in autonomous regions are not promoted to party posts less often than their counterparts in ordinary provinces, despite the conventional wisdom that high positions for minority leaders are restricted to government jobs, while han officials hold key party posts. these results hold when the minority status of individual cadres is included. in short, the party does not discriminate (positively or negatively) between han and other officials, measured spatially or individually (see table 8). 7elbat 0002-0991,sroyamelamef: eman foraey htrib noitacude tnemmoc ilna 8491 egelloc 49-2991,)nilij(nauyoailforoyam gnauh gnornay 5591 egelloclanoitacov -0002,)nauhcis(na'ayforoyam gnakil 7591 egelloc gnauhz.-0002,)ixgnaug(uohzgniqforoyam ytilanoitan iemuyil 6591 etaudarg -7991)gnodnahs(iynilforoyam ougnalam 4591 egelloc 8991,)iebeh(iatgnixforoyam nehzoaiqam 5491 egelloc 89-6991,)ixnahs(gnehcnijforoyam nujilihs 8491 egelloclanoitacov 79-3991,)gnodnahs(uwialforoyam niqoaixuhs 6591 egelloclanoitacov 79-5991,)ixgnaij(nehzedgnijforoyam -8991,nehzedgnijfoyratercesytrapdetomorp ia'uhsgnos 4491 egelloc 29-0991,)iebeh(edgnehcforoyam nayux 4491 egelloc 49-0991,)usgnaij(gnotnanforoyam aixgnaw 4591 .a.m detomorp.-9991)ixnaahs(na'nayforoyam -1002,na'nayfoyratercesytrap iemujgnaw 9491 nwonknu -9991)naneh(gnaynanforoyam nilnaux 8491 egelloc -0002,)iuhna(uhuwforoyam nalgnefnauy 2491 egelloclanoitacov 49-1991,)ixgnaug(niliugforoyam uwihsnauy 6391 egelloc 49-2991,)gnaijehz(uohzuhforoyam gnotuhz 9491 .a.m 0002-8991,)nilij(nahsiabforoyam :ecruos esabatad . pierre f. landry 50 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 regional differentiations the regional contrasts do not reveal particularly severe disparities in the way provincial committees manage the political careers of mayors. the cleavage is instead institutional. the centre seems somewhat keener to promote mayors under its purview than are the provinces, perhaps because it uses these large, prosperous and politically important cities as testing-grounds for officials earmarked for future critical appointments in the central bureaucracy. lin shusen's recent promotion in guangdong is a case in point. after his long tenure as mayor of guangzhou, he was promoted to party secretary in guangzhou and obtained a seat as alternate member of the cc in november 2002. to be sure, a few provinces exhibit usual behaviour: for example, in hunan, hubei and guizhou, promotions seem to be rare. yet, the overall results fall short of exhibiting rampant localism in the form of large and systematic differences in the behaviour across provincial party committees. :8elbat ecnivorpyb,0002-0991,sroyamytironimfosesacfoegatnecrep ecnivorp % tebit ra 3.39 ailognomrenni ra 5.15 aixgnin ra 7.54 gnaijnix ra 6.04 uohziug 3.32 nilij 1.5 gninoail 5.4 usnag 8.3 ixgnaug ra 8.2 iebeh 8.2 gnaijgnolieh 8.2 ixgnaij 0.2 anihc 5.3 :seton .snoigersuomonotua=rasraey-royamerasisylanafostinu 51 the political management of mayors in post-deng china conclusions the chinese communist party has retained its capacity to shape political outcomes in the localities. despite decentralization, the organizational system remains firmly in control of cadre careers. on the surface, provincial party organizations are applying the broad policies laid out since the 1980s to rejuvenate the cadre corps, impose strict retirement rules, and combat the entrenchment of local elites by keeping terms of office relatively short. these achievements are rare among communist systems, or even authoritarian ones, and may help explain the durability of the chinese political system. they are even more noteworthy when one considers the high degree of decentralization that characterizes contemporary chinese institutions. unlike so many studies of decentralization in other issue areas, i find little evidence of rampant localism with respect to cadre management: the rules seem to apply evenly across provinces. party institutions may be powerful, but they are not necessarily efficient. the ccp is proving less able to develop incentive mechanisms figure 4: fitted impact of age on the probability promotion of mayors, by tenure length note: plots are based on model 1. 0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 year of birth p ro b ab il it y tenure 3-5 tenure 3-5 tenure 6+ pierre f. landry 52 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 that reward officials who perform, and penalize those who do not. in its urge to rejuvenate the cadre corps and combat corruption, the ccp's institutional response is to accelerate turnover among mayors. this decision seems to have taken precedence over the need to allow officials who perform to remain in place. to be sure, there appears to be a slight positive bias in favour of cadres who oversee quantitative growth, but the political system is not designed to promote desired qualitative changes that take place in the long run. i concur with huang (1995) and edin's (2003) view that state capacity is not necessarily declining, but i question the conclusion that beijing's core economic priorities take precedence over other political considerations. the ccp may want to govern effectively, but the preponderance of the evidence in this study suggests that other political motivations—such as the need to distribute political rewards to a greater share of secondary officials—shape the political careers of local elites much more powerfully than the regime's stated goals of improving local governance. pierre f. landry is assistant professor of political science at yale university and a research fellow at the research center for the study of contemporary china (rccc) at peking university. notes 1 by 'centre', i refer to the chinese term zhongyang which implies the leadership and institutions of the communist party and the central government, in contrast to provincial and local party and government institutions. 2 in 1978, china had only 193 officially recognized cities, including 92 county-level cities (xianji shi). by 2000, the number had risen to 663: four centrally administered municipalities (cams); 15 'vice-provincial-level cities' (fu shengji chengshi); 244 ordinary municipalities (diji shi); and 400 county-level cities (xianji shi) (dai 2000; zhongguo guojia tongji ju 2001). 3 dalian, guangzhou, xian, shenyang, wuhan, ningbo, hangzhou, chengdu, nanjing, shenzhen, qingdao, harbin, changchun, xiamen and jinan. chonqing was upgraded to a cam in 1997. 4 the literature of decentralization and central–local relations in the post-mao era is vast. (see inter alia: blecher and shue 1996; falkenheim 1980; friedman 1993; goodman 1986, 1992, 1994; goodman and segal 1994; hao and lin 1994; huang 1996; lampton 1992; liu 1996; oi 1992, 1995; oksenberg and tong 1991; park et al. 1996; shirk 1990; solinger 1977, 1996; walder 1995; watson 1984; whiting 2001; wong 1997; xie et al. 1995; yang 1990, 1994, 1997). 5 however, the practice of 'reporting for information' (bei'an) confers on the centre the right to overrule provincial decisions within a specified amount of time. 6 the latest personnel regulations explicitly stress the need to control deviant behaviour and root out corruption among the cadre corps (cui 2002). 7 in 2000, zhu rongji introduced the 'cadre responsibility system' for local officials. various types of 'responsibility systems' have been implemented in many issue areas, including family planning (chu 1999), public health and the fight against sars, as well as flood 53 the political management of mayors in post-deng china prevention and control (zhang and wang 2000). the system extends to county and township officials (o'brien and li 1999; edin 2003). 8 county-level cities are not included in the analysis. 9 this group extends beyond the well-known 'shanghai faction' (jiang zemin, zhu rongji, wu bangguo and chen zhili), including among others: li ruihuan (former mayor of tianjin); state councillor wu yi (former vice-mayor of beijing); yu zhengsheng (minister of construction and former mayor and ccp secretary of both yantai and qingdao); and chen yaobang (minister of agriculture, and former deputy ccp secretary of wuxi). 10 in addition to the biographical notices of the zhongguo chengshi fazhan yanjiuhui [china urban development research committee], leadership information was compiled from local and provincial yearbooks, issues of the zhongguo chengshi fazhan baogao [chinese urban development report] , issues of china directory, as well as municipal government websites. refer to the data sources section of the bibliography for statistical sources on municipal performance. special thanks to julie zeng, yumin sheng and shiru wang for their research assistance, and to the universities service centre for china studies at the chinese university of hong kong. 11 this part of the analysis is limited to the set of 104 cities for which all 33 performance indicators are available. unfortunately, indicators and related indices have only been by published by the cudc since 2000. the remainder of the article is based on a much broader cross-section time-series political-economic dataset. 12 namely, somebody who does not belong to any officially recognized ethnic minority. 13 li ziliu, mayor of guangzhou, was 64 when he was replaced in 1996. 14 a mayor who is removed from office to the position of chairman of the municipal people's congress is treated as an exit because the post does not imply executive authority. this was the case of jiang jin, mayor of jiangmen (in guandong) from 1999-2001. similarly, appointments to the local political consultative conference are treated as exits. 15 transfers are coded 1 (continue) when cadres are deployed to a similarly ranked city. for instance, li jianchang was appointed mayor of baoding (hebei) in march 1998. he was subsequently sent to serve as mayor of kaifeng (henan). the rule applies to transfers to provincial ccp or government bureaux. for instance, huang huahua, mayor of meizhou in 1991, became secretary general of the guangdong provincial committee in 1992. when a mayor becomes party secretary of a city or assumes a higher-ranking post in provincial or central governments, she is coded 2 (promotion). for instance, xu mingyang, mayor of jiaozuo (henan) until july 1995, was promoted to vice-chairman of the tibet a.r., a clear promotion, even though he never served as ccp secretary in jiaozuo. 16 i do not use the simple continuous measure of tenure length because it is unreasonable to assume a linear relationship. instead, the relationship is j-shaped: cadres are not expected to be replaced immediately after their appointment, but the odds of reassignment/exit increase substantially as they enter their second term (three to five years) and should be even greater beyond the end of a second term (six years and more). 17 it would be preferable to rely on foreign trade, as listed in the performance indicators of the zhongguo chengshi fazhan yanjiuhui. unfortunately, municipal-level foreign trade data are too inconsistent for the early 1990s to be incorporated in the model. 18 the baseline (omitted) is the year 2000. 19 in addition, all models use the method of robust standard errors, adjusted for clustering by municipality. 20 the simulation assumes that the mayor is male, han, was born in 1960, holds a college degree and is posted in an ordinary municipality in jiangsu province. pierre f. landry 54 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 21 the predicted probability of the highest ranked outcome (here, promotion) in ordered probit models is equal to ∏(k-xβ), where k is the last cut-point estimate, xβ the linear effects and ∏ the cumulative normal distribution (long 1997: 114-47). 22 the coefficient is not only of the wrong sign, but it is also significant at the 0.1 level, or better! 23 however, i cannot confidently conclude that the fiscal element in career prospects can be ruled in or out as a predictor of promotion, as bo does. unlike provinces, municipal statistical data do not indicate the share of fiscal revenue that cities remit to the centre, whether directly (since 1994) or indirectly through the provincial tax collection bureaux (before 1994). 24 the result does not seem to hold when the sample is split between coast and interior provinces. the very small number of observations in each sub-sample is likely to explain the larger standard error estimates. 25 wang xia's promotion as party secretary of yan'an in 2001 falls beyond the period of analysis. references blecher, m. 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[multiple issues] wang, daohan (ed.) 2000. zhongguo chengshi fazhan baogao [china urban development report] beijing: xindu chubanshe. pierre f. landry 58 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 xidneppa 1: )0002(seitic401fosrotacidniecnamrofreplapicinum rotacidni laog thgiew naem .d.s nim . .xam cimonoce -poleved tnem )stniop82( 1 )srallodsu(atipacreppdg revodna0005 stniop8 95.2 66.1 64.0 00.8 2 )%(pdgnisrotceslarutlucirga-nonfoerahs revodna09 stniop4 47.3 34.0 51.2 00.4 3 )%(pdgnisecivresfoerahs revodna55 stniop4 79.2 86.0 31.1 00.4 4 )%(pdgotssergorplacinhcetfonoitubirtnoc revodna05 stniop4 92.3 96.0 04.0 00.4 5 pdg/stropxe+stropmi revodna54 stniop4 34.1 03.1 00.0 00.4 6 )%(noitazinabrufoeerged revodna06 stniop4 18.2 51.1 64.0 00.4 latotbus 01.61 98.3 68.5 60.72 namuh latipac )stniop71( 7 )%(evobadna51degaelpoepgnomaetarycaretil revodna59 stniop3 59.2 51.0 58.1 00.3 8 lanoitacovhtiwnoitalupopehtfonoitroporp )%(evobadnanoitacudeegelloc revodna01 stniop3 60.2 49.0 10.0 00.3 9 pdgfo%saerutidnepxelanoitacude revodna5 stniop3 90.1 96.0 10.0 00.3 01 )sraey(ycnatcepxeefilegareva revodna57 stniop4 78.3 31.0 74.3 00.4 11 noitalupopehtfoetarhtworglarutanninoitcuder )dnasuohtrep( wolebdna5 stniop2 36.1 44.0 25.0 00.2 21 )dnasuohtrep(yreviledgnirudetarhtaed wolebdna01 stniop2 76.1 94.0 64.0 00.3 latotbus 70.21 91.3 73.1 69.61 foytilauq efil )stniop22( 31 )%(xednis'legne wolebdna03 stniop4 31.3 24.0 17.1 00.4 41 )2m(atipacrepecapsgnisuohelbaliava revodna81 stniop2 86.1 83.0 97.0 61.3 51 )ruohrepsttawolik(atipacrepesuyticirtcele revodna006 stniop2 30.1 65.0 02.0 00.3 61 )stinu(selpoep001repnoitartenepenohp revodna05 stniop2 33.1 85.0 81.0 00.2 71 )%(oitarnoitazilituretupmocemoh revodna02 stniop2 48.0 06.0 00.0 00.2 81 )elpoep00001rep(stnioplaicremmocforebmun revodna001 stniop2 87.1 24.0 44.0 00.2 91 )elpoep000,01rep(stnioplaicnanifforebmun revodna01 stniop2 49.0 94.0 90.0 00.2 02 rep(sertaehtdnasmuesum,seirarbilforebmun )elpoep000,01 revodna1 stniop2 18.0 66.0 60.0 00.2 12 )elpoep000,01rep(stisivs'rotcodforebmun wolebdna05 stniop2 42.1 75.0 10.0 25.2 22 )elpoep000,01rep(sesaclanimircforebmun wolebdna51 stniop2 12.1 07.0 81.0 10.2 latotbus 22.31 68.2 27.2 78.12 -nemnorivne noitcetorplat )stniop81( 32 saeraneergfoegarevoc revodna53 stniop3 83.2 57.0 90.0 00.3 42 )2m(atipacrepecapsneergcilbupfoytilibaliava revodna01 stniop3 49.1 77.0 82.0 00.3 52 )%(retawlairtsudnidesufotnemtaert revodna09 stniop3 36.2 16.0 02.0 00.3 62 )%(retawdlohesuohdesufotnemtaert revodna06 stniop3 68.1 39.0 40.0 00.3 72 )%(egabragfognildnah revodna08 stniop3 45.2 97.0 31.0 00.3 82 )edarg(levelnoitullopria wolebdnaedargdnoces stniop3 67.2 44.0 05.1 00.3 latotbus 20.31 01.3 43.2 00.81 92 )2m(atipacrepsdaordevapfoytilibaliava revodna01 stniop3 42.2 37.0 63.0 00.3 03 00001rep(selcihevdezirotomfonoitazilitu )elpoep revodna0001 stniop3 66.1 79.0 20.0 00.3 13 )%(retawgninnurfoytilibaliava 001 stniop3 28.2 64.0 18.0 00.3 23 )%(saglarutanfoetarnoitpmusnoc 001 stniop3 54.2 56.0 73.0 00.3 33 )n(setuorrialanoitanretnidnacitsemodforebmun revodna03 stniop3 98.1 81.1 01.0 00.3 latotbus 30.01 43.2 89.3 00.51 latot stniop001 54.46 61.11 5.72 33.09 :ecruos morfdelipmocatad naijnainihsgnehcouggnohz .)1002( cjas_22.pdf, page 1-124 @ normalize_2 __________________________________________________________________________ 5 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion bearing witness: maoism as religion david e. apter abstract the role of foreign witnesses in describing exceptional historical events can contribute to the way those events unfold. three examples serve to illustrate this: edgar snow, anna louise strong and agnes smedley. at the start of the chinese communist revolution each of these commentators offered personal testimony to and validation of what became a political myth and was elevated to the status of a state political religion with mao the central figure. this paper discusses the differences between political religion and religion tout court. it suggests that the former is more ephemeral while the latter is more capable of self-replenishment, leading to the ritualization of the first in the exercise of state power. it also deals with the question of socialism as proto-religion and the problems posed by its disappearance.* keywords: witnessing, presentism, political religion, testimony, discourse, maoism. introduction all great events have commentators whose accounts help shape the way these events will be remembered and understood. this is especially the case when dealing with exceptional historical moments—moments so telling that they constitute ruptures in time, thought and political structure. the chinese communist revolution was one such moment. judgements made about it on the spot, and in context, especially those that once appeared definitive, have so often been subject to periodic revision that there is now a history of different interpretations. the revolution has become a subject in itself, as succeeding generations of observers go over the ground and reinterpret its meaning. in many cases such distancing from original events has made for more judicious judgements, as the works of stuart schram attest. there is a danger though that subsequent perspectives may omit and alter facts that loomed significant at the time, especially to the actual participants. what has been called 'presentism', imposing the present on the past, becomes a problem if it distorts the perceptual universe of those who were involved at the time. 6________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ of course, over time it is inevitable that not only will interpretations change, but so too the accuracy of perception and the status of 'facts'. a good example is in the diametrically opposed points of view about mao represented by edgar snow and jung chang and jon halliday in books 67 years apart. snow presented mao autobiographically. in selecting from his notes of the interview made in bao'an, snow allowed mao to link his personal vicissitudes to his political awakening and the shaping of his radical ideas, to his views of history and the progressive nature of the chinese revolution. in snow's commentary what emerges is a picture of an exceptional intellectual-revolutionary whose 'chinese' marxism was a dialectic with history tempered by a strong sense of practical realism, and a pragmatic view of strategy and tactics. in what became a prophetic comment, snow concludes the main part of this 'autobiography' by saying that mao's account had begun to pass out of the category of 'personal history', and to sublimate itself somehow intangibly in the career of a great movement in which, though he retained a dominant role, you could not see him clearly as a personality. it was no longer the 'i' but the 'we'; no longer mao tse-tung, but the red army; no longer a subjective impression of the experiences of a single life, but an objective record by a bystander concerned with the mutations of collective human destiny as the material of history. (snow 1984: 166) to chang and halliday, looking back on virtually the whole period of communist rule in china, this is so much nonsense. in their look at the 'objective record', the real mao, that is the historical actor, was little more than a tyrant and killer whose main attribute was to be more ruthless than anyone else. the 'personality' of mao in mao, the unknown story (chang and halliday 2005) was simply such a passion for the exercise of total power that he became responsible for 'mutations of collective human destiny' of a kind that resulted in millions of deaths. from such a perspective, to look back on mao is to recognize that it is death itself that becomes the 'material of history'. so vast are the discrepancies between the two interpretations, between snow's and chang and halliday's, between the human and the inhuman mao, that they invite general speculation about the defining power of power itself on personality. one might well ask whether chang and halliday's revisionism represents an example of warranted or unwarranted presentism.1 certainly it would wipe out the earlier consideration, that of an original evolving, learning, philosophical, thinker/doer obsessed with continuing revolution as both theory and practice. instead of a fitting addition to the marxian pantheon, one finds a blemished 'mao', __________________________________________________________________________ 7 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion condemned from the start by an original sin of ruthless ambition, whose madness did not prevent him from shrewdly playing a game of pure power in the name of china's revolution. there is no definitive way to resolve such divergences. nor is it the intention here to try to balance such widely differing accounts. but there are reasons why it is useful to reconsider the early revolutionary mao in the context of his original circumstances, especially from the standpoint of those outsiders who were sufficiently dedicated to mao and his role that they contributed to what, from chang and halliday's perspective, was the myth of mao—a myth that their book tries to puncture. yet it is precisely this mythic factor that helps account for the very power mao exercised, especially in bringing about the structural alterations in character of the revolution itself, as the party evolved, first in the emergence of mao's own fraction (by no means the major one) into a virtual cult, and from there the elevation of mao's version of chinese marxism into nothing less than a secular state religion. in these terms it is useful to examine the special role in making and interpreting history of those select few among the outsiders whose writings became particularly influential in their time and who, by themselves serving as witnesses, became part of the situation as well as commentators on it. one might say that they became, to use durkheim's terms, social facts. for not only did they describe the events that they saw in definitive ways but they also included themselves in what they described.2 in good measure those selected here for discussion were those who apparently came to believe in the rightness of the chinese revolution as mao's revolution. convinced by the dramatic events they saw unfolding under their reportorial noses, they considered the chinese communist revolution not simply as a remarkable phenomenon, but in some yet undisclosed form a possible political future solution, and more hopefully even some sort of democracy, especially since the readily available alternatives appeared unappetizing, namely fascism in italy, germany and japan (not to speak of the 'proto-fascism' within the guomindang (gmd)). nor were they happy about the way capitalism played itself out, prone to both imperialism and internal crises, especially during the period which, if it was revolutionary in china, was marked by the great depression in the united states. in this context the role of mao and the evolution of the chinese communist party (ccp) under mao seemed more than a remarkable phenomenon. it became for the witnesses a way of understanding the power of maoism in more universal terms, i.e. as a belief system. this 8________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ accounts for the more general concern in this discussion, a consideration of maoism as a proto-religious phenomenon. i want to examine this aspect of maoism for two reasons. firstly, it tends to be forgotten in the context of the china of today. this is unfortunate since, despite china's astonishing economic performance, it would lead us to ignore a certain remaining moral nostalgia for maoism (which invites speculation about the possibility that in some refurbished form it could revive in the future). the second reason is that insofar as not only maoism but also virtually all forms of serious socialism have disappeared, so too has their religious dimension. this leaves a space for religious revivalism of all sorts, not least of all various fundamentalisms, evangelical beliefs and the separatist nationalism that can accompany these. i shall approach these larger matters by considering the views of several of the outsiders who were most important in framing, contextualizing and communicating the elements of this proto-religion, and most particular the americans who became complicit in what i consider to be the transcendent dimension of maoism. it is also a way of seeing how powerful this aspect of maoism was at the time. for not all of these witnesses were so easy to convince; nor were they ordinary journalists. what they saw as facts on the ground led them to portray a mao whose subsequent role virtually obliterated his early and more heroic phase. indeed, it became ritually redefined: a papal, monarchical figure so given to fits and starts of ideas and reactions that in hindsight one tends to forget his claim to reveal truths not visible to most of his compatriots, whether on the left or the right. but there, at the right moment and in the right places, these witnesses not only saw a different mao. they also validated maoism itself as a form of redemptive power based on 'higher truths' that came to be self-validating, but without analysing the 'truths' in themselves. in this way they helped to establish the mao mystique, especially in the early period, in yan'an. what impressed them most was less a matter of a chinese variant of marxism-leninism than a sense of community spirit and collective agency. there was for them no particular apotheosis but rather a real road to damascus, and with it a sense of participating in a historical, moral moment. this was a moment when mao's monopolistic truth claims seemed utterly plausible to them and commonplace knowledge seemed wrong—a space in which such truth claims were located and within which maoism became both a social and political teleology, a doctrine of the exceptional source.3 in this regard i wish to show that one can consider the later mao portrayed by chang and halliday as a case of __________________________________________________________________________ 9 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion weberian political routinization of charisma, in which political violence becomes ritualized as a structural factor in the organization of power. journalists as witnesses that commentators can serve as witnesses is of course an old story. the literary reshaping of public understanding has an antique and classic pedigree. however, for professional journalists to serve in this role is relatively modern. journalists are in this sense johnny-come-latelies whose appearance is roughly coincident with the emergence of a popular press and the spread of literacy, as benedict anderson and others have pointed out (anderson 1991). putting the tools of the journalistic trade to such purposes may be said to have properly begun in the period just prior to the great democratic revolutions—british, french and american—when as on-the-spot observers, journalists became engaged in the ideological disputes of the time. the best of them were willing to take on the great debates, trade-offs between liberty and equality as well as ways to make power accountable and responsible, i.e. debates over the nature of democracy itself. in doing so they were often reviled and excoriated. nevertheless they served as privileged witnesses to the events themselves. the most successful of the journalists-cum-witnesses were those who could supply gripping eyewitness accounts of what they saw and from which they drew preferred inferences. they combined shrewd observations with if not comprehensive than comprehensible descriptions. indeed, such an ability became the trademark of high journalism as distinct from mere reportage, the distinguishing mark of the serious journalist rather than the journalistic hack. this gave the former an aura, as benjamin called it, a truth credential and well as a claim to right of access to the movers and shakers of the events themselves. in any case, by the time the major communist and nationalist revolutions of the last century occurred, such professional high journalism had long been established. however, while revolutions might attract large numbers of reporters interested in the events for themselves, it was only the privileged few whose reportage achieved interpretive authority. moreover, in the nature of the case, at any rate vis-à-vis the russian and chinese revolutions, interpretation meant contextualization, including exposing to public view the machinations of those in high places whose views they consid10_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ ered blind and reactionary, not to speak of the role of special interests and corrupt politicians.4 in this sense these journalists-cum-witnesses acted as muck-rakers, missionaries and, above all, as interpreters. that is, they assigned to themselves the job of translating alien cultures into readily comprehensible understanding based on long sojourns rather than short visits. it is also the case that in general their analyses were quick, shrewd, intelligent and thin; that is, they lacked much intellectual depth. not for them the dense distinctions of marxist polemics and their philosophical underpinnings. indeed, to become bogged down in such matters would have destroyed the ability of quick portrayal and the immediacy of descriptive impact. in addition, remaining aloof from such matters went along with their notions of being independent-minded. these witnesses refused to be intimidated either by conventional views or by sectarian preferences. they regarded their observations as objective—a notion of objectivity that included partisanship as a means of rectifying widespread and prevailing distortions of fact and interpretation. in describing china as a place where justice had gone awry, theirs was also an appeal to a sense of fair play, in which objectivity required a rectifying partisanship, while bringing the two together was a badge of personal honour and professional pride. if the persuasiveness of their arguments had significant effects on home consumption by making them stand out as opinion makers, they were also able to exercise some influence on governments and at times to serve as intermediaries between the existing powers and those trying to replace them. the latter was a role that could engender suspicion from both sides, which gave them an added incentive to protect themselves from charges of bias or inaccuracy or the dishonest exercise of their calling. they claimed the reliability of their facts. and they believed that in some final sense it was the terms of those facts that rendered it appropriate for them to address truth to power.5 the immediate journalistic predecessors and peers of these witnesses were those who had reported on the russian revolution and its aftermath, including such figures as walter duranty of the new york times (a pulitzer prize winner), arthur ransome of the manchester guardian, albert rhys williams and eugene lyons, to name only a few. if not mentors, they were part of a larger radical pool which in terms of the chinese revolution became identified in particular with agnes smedley, anna louise strong and edgar snow. 6 _________________________________________________________________________ 11 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion it should be clear that my present interest in these writers is not so much for their specific views or even their accounts of events, fascinating as these are. rather my interest lies in the way their private access to mao enabled them to give him a defining public stamp. such private access was in effect their journalistic capital. and since it was a rare good and a scarce commodity, it was one they zealously guarded. it constituted a form of privilege that made them a part of the pantheon they themselves were describing. evidence for such speculations is based on a rereading of their very abundant writings as well as accounts and comments of those who knew them in one capacity or another. in my case an interview with harrison salisbury led to an introduction to helen snow at her home in connecticut.7 although ill, she was nevertheless extremely voluble and appeared to be as committed ever to the china she knew in the old days.8 an interview with john service led to israel epstein, whom i interviewed several times (in his rooms at the friendship hotel in beijing). i was able to come to know such figures as rewi alley, sol adler and others who had thrown in their lot with china.9 still later i came to know edgar snow's second wife, lois wheeler snow. i interviewed many others who knew strong and smedley. i select these three—snow, strong and smedley—for discussion for several reasons. all three have been canonized in china, not least of all in terms of the 'three s society' whose president, huang hua, became foreign minister of china, but who in a previous incarnation was snow's original interpreter in yan'an (and whom i was able to interview in 1986).10 it is also the case that each of these 'witnesses' to mao's revolution has been written up in extremely useful biographies (hamilton 1988; strong 1983; mackinnon 1988). in addition to their books and articles, there are abundant archival materials. however, if we concentrate on these three it should be kept in mind that they were only a part, albeit a very significant part, of a much larger circle of foreigners favourable to the chinese communist revolution, many of whom were their friends and associates. since the three have been written about on many occasions, there is little need in this discussion to go into details about their lives and works. they represented only a fraction of a much larger and very diverse group of reporters and commentators who began arriving in china in the immediate aftermath of the first world war to find plenty of political ferment. the may 4th movement inspired a whole generation of young chinese intellectuals to engage in political activism, and there was widespread 12_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ urban and labour unrest. the inheritance of sun yat-sen, which for a time had seemed capable of providing within the gmd a framework that could embrace both the nationalists and the communists, had become the provenance for internecine conflict. so much so that willy-nilly in order to do their jobs in more than a perfunctory way, journalists had to choose sides. as factional disputes intensified, partisans on the left saw chiang kai-shek becoming more and more proto-fascist while the maoist version of communism with its agrarian communalism seemed by far the more promising alternative and a radical departure from stalinism. as the gmd northern campaign to eliminate warlords was succeeded by extermination campaigns against the communists, the hinge or defining event became the now famous long march—the ultimate dramatistic accomplishment (and which in chang and halliday's reinterpretation was nothing of the sort since they were allowed to escape by the gmd). smedley, strong and snow and their friends and associates saw this event as a more or less miraculous event, one that recast the chinese communists not as a band of bandits but as heroic survivors who, when they finally holed up in caves in yan'an, founded the new jerusalem of the chinese revolution. mao became something of a robin hood with brains, his writings serving as critical guides to military and civic action. moreover his emphasis on the peasantry as a class with revolutionary chains had a romantic resonance with an earlier american heritage. mao himself could be recast as someone reminiscent of populist agrarian reformers in the united states. but he was also a self-made intellectual carrying forward the marxist-leninist-stalinist pedigree on his own terms. as to the events smedley, strong and snow witnessed, they were intrinsically dramatic enough, both in their details and in the round. to pursue them as facts and turn them into stories and narratives requires in the first instance great physical personal courage not to speak of endurance. all three witnesses were tough, restless and always on the move. they were continually on the look-out for the interesting personality, the tragic hero, and made such people metonymic for the larger principles of the revolution. by the same token they were romantic realists living for radical adventure, their accounts all the more gripping for including themselves. all were good writers. smedley, a self-made woman born to poverty in the west who had absorbed populist radicalism from the start, described incidents of murder she had witnessed first-hand, not to speak of assassination, torture and _________________________________________________________________________ 13 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion rape. china for her had abandoned all pretence of decency. its political and social institutions had become totally corrupt. she was appalled at the general indifference to the cruelty and brutality of ordinary life, where death and torture had become banal and ordinary. and she was mesmerized not only by mao himself but the chinese communist top leadership, some of whom she came to know intimately. while she wrote as a professional journalist, she had come of age as a radical in the context of the indian struggle against british imperialism and in the particular context of indian exiles in germany. as a result of this experience, she became what she remained: a professional revolutionary writing largely for german and american newspapers. although for a time china correspondent for the manchester guardian, to her great frustration she couldn't get a word in edgewise at the daily worker. anna louise strong's letters from china were widely read in the united states and england and were said to have influenced eleanor roosevelt and other highly placed figures. her articles and books were disseminated widely in the american press. she was the most intellectual of the three, with a doctorate from the university of chicago. her roots were in new england congregationalism. as she became involved in social work in the united states, she moved more and more to the left, coming to know the more bohemian left in new york as well as communists. she, perhaps more than the others, was most firmly convinced of the doctrinal rightness of communism. but it was edgar snow who gave his stamp and imprimatur to the chinese communists first in bao'an, where he first interviewed mao, and then in yan'an. he wrote regularly for the saturday evening post. perhaps no single book was more influential in china as well as the united states than his red star over china (first published 1937), which remains something of a landmark even to this day with its unforgettable portrayal of mao. if smedley was flamboyant and strong demanding, snow remained the 'man from missouri', who kept a certain distance while never pretending to be an indifferent observer. by presenting the 'reds' in a benign way, he countered the prevailing view of them as bandits. all three writers remained admirers of mao to the end of their lives. smedley died in 1950 and so did not have to confront the twists and turns of the party line that began with the great leap and the anti-rightist campaigns. the other two did come to have reservations about the intemperateness of the cultural revolution, particularly snow, who in his obituary of mao comments that the leader 14_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ could simultaneously hold in mind contradictory concepts of time and space, of strategy, of right and wrong; he could act out decisions into realities as if they were the only truth, knowing all the while that the opposite was an essential part of it. (cited in hamilton 1988: 285) throughout the 1930s each of them opened a somewhat different window to the radical side of chinese politics. their views encouraged young chinese to join the chinese communists rather than the guomindang. their opinions on mao's communism were voiced in redeeming terms: a relatively open community, locally democratic, honest and egalitarian—in short, everything that china was not. as indicated, they remained aloof from the intricacies of mao's texts and the exegetical details of wording and meaning that became so much a part of the politics of theory and the theory of politics and, above all, mao's rationale for action. they preferred the high road in every sense, that is, they were longer on heroics than the ins and outs of ideas other than in the most limited way.11 they combined in their narratives a very american view of politics as a struggle for morality, the good versus the evil and as a result captivated a quite considerable readership. they also rubbed shoulders with some of those who had come to china on official missions and who became attracted to what they saw going on yan'an in sharp contrast to the rest of china. that wider circle of witnesses included clerics, like the so-called 'pink' bishop logan roots, a few members of the american military like colonel evans carlson (of carlson's raiders fame), and general joseph stilwell.12 other journalists included israel epstein, who was a correspondent for the united press and harrison salisbury for the new york times.13 and there those who chose to cast their lot with the chinese communists in working for them, some well before and some after the communists came to power, such as rewi alley in the first instance and sol adler in the second. what then drew these people to each other? while each had his or her own reasons for going to china, all saw the revolution as a fundamental break, a disjunctive moment, one that defined a 'before' and an 'after'. 'before' was all nasty, brutish and short, while the 'after' remained a promised land. for them yan'an embodied an ideal concretized in a practical revolutionary programme, one that seemed the only plausible solution to china's chaos and suffering. whatever their particular views, they witnessed in yan'an a community that through its mode of activity appeared to be capable of transforming what was negative into something socially and politically positive, evidence for the latter provided by the success of the social reforms practised by the commu_________________________________________________________________________ 15 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion nists on a more or less daily basis. above all, the transcendence of mao seemed something of a miracle in its own right, not least of all by the circumstances of his origins. the mao they came to know and admire was the agent of a higher revolutionary consciousness and not just a superior political leader—in short a cosmocrat. one hesitates to use terms like idolatry; mao's mystique was for them never that. but mystique he certainly had, although they toned this down in their accounts. in hindsight one can only speculate about how much they actually knew of what was going on despite their mastery of events and their extraordinary access to leaders and commanders at all levels. one can only speculate too, about what they were willing to hide or at least what they preferred not to see.14 however, it seems quite clear that the mao they knew in his yan'an heyday was not the same mao they saw emerge after coming to power in 1949 and especially during the cultural revolution.15 i have mentioned the seductive aspect of personal access to mao and his immediate entourage. they regarded him as a mover and shaker of history in the fullest sense of the word, that is, in terms not only of china but of the future impact china would have on a worldwide scale. such views only intensified the value of access to and intimacy with mao himself. conscious of their roles as witnesses to high historical drama, they saw the entire atmosphere, physical and well as moral and practical, in terms of narratives and theatre, of which they were a part. this sense of theatre is present even in snow's original interview with mao in bao'an. his description is stage set and setting. even the idea of audience took on the character of ritualistic journalistic pilgrimages. it was a special occasion to interview mao, to hear his words, and not only to see but also to come to know the palpable living mao face to face. such access to mao was more than a valuable journalistic privilege; it was entry into the sanctuary. of course, this did not prevent the witnesses from taking advantage of their access in different ways: smedley to promote feminism in an age when it was just beginning; strong to clean up the unpleasant side of communism of which she herself had ample experience in the soviet union (not least when her russian husband was purged); snow in trying to make sense for outsiders of what was going on in china outside of the conventionally held views. each in exposing different aspects of conditions in china nevertheless shared a common and firmly held conclusion: mao's version of communist revolution was not like any other version and it was historically necessary. they also tried to make their 16_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ accounts and conclusions palatable to publishers and the public at large. hence the claims that their views were not ideological but assertions of fact over opinion. they portrayed themselves as individualists if not 'characters', recognizable within the tradition of forthright independent journalism in the classic american mode.16 all had authentic american pedigrees.17 but all retained a special affection for mao himself. for strong, this was explicit: 'i came because mao in yan'an invited me to return and because ever since i met him i felt that the answer to the world's revolution was here.'18 despite such convictions, and in the case of strong, residency in china, both smedley and strong retained a certain nostalgia for the united states. if the latter remained constant to communism, underlying her devotion was principled action—to enable good works from a radical missionary position.19 each believed that his or her own dissent from mainstream views represented an obligation to the chinese people (for smedley, the chinese 'masses'). all three at times marched with the red army. they provided medical care for the wounded. they gave money to help individuals on the ground. that active service component of their commitments was key to the access they obtained. yet despite such commitments, which on the whole were quite open, they were able to a surprising extent to maintain links with diplomatic circles and ambassadorial contacts. smedley and strong came to the russian and chinese revolutions as rebels who had already discovered causes. edgar snow had fewer predispositions. but he moved in circles where nationalism, socialism, anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism were the ordinary subjects of intense debate among those who defined themselves and each other according to which symbols of communism they preferred—lenin, stalin or mao—(and more occasionally trotsky) and how they felt about their corresponding lines, fractions and ideologies. if there was a previously defining event for them all it was the spanish civil war. but as well each stood for a more general set of conditions of possibility—dictatorship or democracy; private property or public; freedom rather than coercion. anna louise strong, more than the others, viewed the chinese communists as a modern version of a pervasively american kind of christian millenniarism stripped of its clericalism. agnes smedley saw in revolution the best way to shake up inequities of all kinds, those produced by imperialism, sexual and gender inequality—revolution as a thing in itself. edgar snow saw the revolution as a reaping of the whirlwind given the suffering, corruption and cruelties that prevailed. all believed that _________________________________________________________________________ 17 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion conditions in china were the result of imperialism, foreign and domestic, the most raw form of compradore capitalism, or to use mao's words, 'the patriarchal class of local tyrants, evil gentry and lawless landlords [that] has formed the basis of autocratic government for thousands of years and is the cornerstone of imperialism, warlordism, and corrupt officialdom.' in a subsequent generation they would be followed by those who were not only true believers but cultists, some of whom, knowing nothing of china, would be mesmerized by the cultural revolution.20 for strong and snow as well as a good many others the cultural revolution occurred towards the end of their lives as working journalists. it gave rise to reservations about mao that coincided with the decline of their own influence in the united states. during the mccarthy period they were branded as traitors. but something of the faith remained until the end. smedley, who had died much earlier in england, had established something of a precedent when her ashes were taken to china and buried in the cemetery for revolutionary martyrs. when strong died in china, her funeral was attended by zhou enlai, a large black banner displaying the words, 'may anna louise strong live forever in our memories'. she too was buried in the cemetery for revolutionary martyrs. snow, in self-imposed exile in switzerland, was able before he died to intervene in public affairs in an extraordinary way. he played a crucial role in arranging president nixon's visit to china (hamilton 1988: 280).21 his ashes were divided between a site overlooking the hudson river and the lake that has no name on the campus of peking university. as witnesses to revolutionary events, these commentators supplied their own testimony and provided authenticity to belief and credibility to preferred truths. they expressed those truths as outrage—outrage at conditions as they saw them in china, outrage at the violence and corruption of the gmd, and outrage at american support for it. in defining in a public and visible way what was wrong, and not only wrong but morally wrong, and describing in concrete ways the suffering this imposed upon ordinary people, they defined what can be called a negative pole in which maoism became the overcoming project. what they saw as witnesses became a form of testimony, in which they offered themselves as evidence for the evidence. such political audacity was always a dangerous game. they were in one sense incorporated in the chinese communist movement; so much so that their lives remained intertwined with the triumphs and vicissitudes of mao, even when his activities and the turbulence it set off troubled them. 18_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ yan'an and the religious moment in revolutionary politics the extent to which the witnesses contributed to the transformation of maoism into a radical sect within chinese marxism should not, of course, be overstated. their roles were in no sense decisive. what happened in china followed its own dynamics. nevertheless, in describing mao's role in reshaping the chinese communist party, and the actual events of war and revolution, the picture they portrayed was to some extent a picture invented by mao himself. in doing so he placed himself at the political centre of the party, within the territorial space of yan'an as a simulacrum for china as a whole—a miniaturization of a redemptive redoubt, civil and military, in which teaching and preaching combined in hortatory texts. the themes were explicitly moral in terms of millennial marxist solutions, nationalist in terms of transcending redemptive and libertarian themes, plus the high drama of violence, heroic acts, the individual overcoming the self by reaching to a collective apotheosis. these comments should not be misunderstood. even though one ought not equate religion and politics, they have at times certain propinquities if not properties in common. on this there is a huge literature, more of it dealing with religion as politics rather than politics as religion. among the characteristic properties of the latter is the deification of political leaders who demand obeisance and command respect: charismatics who can take many roles and play many parts whether monarchical, priestly, military or civil. what they have in common is a set of omnipotent beliefs, revelatory or theoretical, which are extensions of their own special patrimony. such beliefs have political consequences, whether secular or sacred in origin, including the mobilization of clienteles, claims to sacred territorial space, privileged affiliations, cultural identities, loyalties and commitments (cohn 1961; callois 1959). in this sense such figures play larger-than-life roles in history. in this more general sense, too, few would doubt that marxism in several of its putative forms shares similarities with religion tout court, even and perhaps because it is explicitly anti-religious. on this score there is plenty of evidence about the religious properties of communism. as one former devotee, arthur koestler, put it with respect to the soviet union: russia was merely the new occasion for the revival of an archetype as old as humanity. like its past symbols, the golden age, the land of promise and the kingdom of heaven, it offered glorious compensation for a life of _________________________________________________________________________ 19 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion frustration and the pointlessness of death. those of us who have lived in the communist movement know how completely the soviet myth fulfilled this function—not for the russians but for the worshippers outside. (koestler 1945: 125) or as sheila fitzpatrick put it: like freemasons, communists had many rituals. their status as communists was related to their mastery of esoteric language. they were brothers and their brotherhood was in some sense secret. they had symbols they cherished, like the red flag, and a history, including a martyrology, that every communist had to know. they had a body of sacred texts … (fitzpatrick 1999: 19) the witnesses in their writings and dispatches gave substance to this larger frame. the experiences they chose to describe matched mao's own discourse not in form but in descriptive characterization such as themes of descent: how far the chinese people had fallen and thereby come to inhabit a kind of nether world, a virtual hell on earth. these themes set the stage for their opposites, themes of accomplishment, miraculous military victories and social triumphs. yan'an was the special metaphor, the living version of an idealized community, a microcosmic salvational universe which gave a virtual superhuman dimension to what mao was able to achieve against overwhelming odds, providing testimony to the rightness of his logic and the correctness of his vision (frye 1976: 97-126). in this sense they served, and willingly, to define the chinese revolution as a combination of founding and transformation, the birth of a new society based on a total and totalizing revelatory metamorphosis. this morally redemptive transformation would change the attitudes and commitments of the chinese from a passive acquiescence in things as they were, an acceptance of chaos as a normal condition, to commitment and self-sacrifice for the common good. the witnesses lent their aura to mao's definition of the revolution as a truly historical disjunctive moment rather than a civil war and national response to japanese aggression. in this sense also the witnesses gave a certain universality to the events happening in china. their writings suggested that all such movements require certain conditions if revolutionary actions are to be successful by means of mass mobilizing organization. a negative pole is needed in order to define the transcending accomplishment, the projective outcome. that pole represents that period of revolutionary latency, that condition of chaos, of generalized risk, that opens the way for the 20_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ kinds of disjunctive moments described, and invites authority. the intermingling themes and contexts included those relevant elsewhere: the founding of new nations, the transformation of old ones, and the redemptive recuperation of those gone astray. all require the mobilization of transformational energies as a way to accomplish both goals. for the witnesses the way the chinese communists accomplished that mobilization of energies, individual and collective, represented the necessary if not the sufficient promethean conditions, to achieve something akin to a political promised land. in this they helped to construct what can only be called the mythic dimension of maoism. it is in these terms that classic maoism shared many of the attributes of religion. it was also a product of mao's cosmocratic capacities as chief agent requiring absolute obedience to his monopolistic claims of truth. other views were not dissent but heresy, a common feature of religions generally and politics more particularly, especially when different factions claim competing orthodoxies, with each trying to capitalize on any loose estrangements by followers of the others. in the chinese case, dissent over doctrines within the cpp intensified internal conflict and sect division in the very act of demanding total unity and a common front against common enemies. 22 i have elsewhere argued that yan'an was a discourse community with something of a chosen people quality. in present terms the yan'anites represented a semi-religious community complete with its own biblical texts, its glossators and commentators, its official interpreters and its ascetics—asceticism being a requirement of being a 'good communist'. this defined the 'inside' which contrasted with the 'outside' in china as a whole. not only could nothing in the rest of china compare with the disciplined social life of yan'an, but in this rugged terrain one found the cultivation of the arts, theatre, culture and education. its rigorous morals gave an appearance of equality between men and women. as for struggles between elements of the party, facts on the ground seemed to vindicate mao's line. so impressive were his accomplishments that it was difficult not to come under the spell of mao's vision, his ability to see past the limits of conventional wisdom, and to give events new meaning, if not turning facts into fictions and fictions into facts. the witnesses, then, accepted the events of struggle in terms of the logic he stood for without going into that logic in any detail. for them it appeared uncanny in its shrewdness. and if it seemed to spring from his own head, it also represented an extrapolation from the common experience (apter and saich 1994). in sum, the mao they came to believe _________________________________________________________________________ 21 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion in was the mao who was a master at converting events into situations, and using such situations as the structural components of his texts and his interpretations of history. he knew which situations to identify and which among them would make people sit up and take notice. he was in these respects expert at establishing promontory situations in which defeats became victories: the battle of jinggang mountains, the nanchang uprising, the autumn harvest uprising, the long march itself, the battle of luding bridge, becoming like so many stations of the cross. these became key events in a narrative that endowed mao himself with symbolic significance and provided a logic for millennial outcomes. it became the task of the witnesses to provide confirmation, indeed apostolic testimony. all religions properly speaking have their equivalents. they believed too that mao's authorizing sources derived not only from marxism but included an earlier interest in anarchism, something particularly appealing to smedley. but because mao also drew on those with authorizing historical resonance, confucianism and taoism (with perhaps a touch of the taiping leader hong xiuquan with his visions of god, and whose texts had to be learned by all) as well the grand and subversive transformations between dynasties, he drew on 'authentic' chinese cultural traditions (schram 1989: 141; wakeman 1984). mao was able to bring these down to earth and a straightforward version of dialectical knowledge, a logic of contradictions perhaps more than a true dialectic, and a notion of class struggle by means of which he stood orthodox marxism on its head. the redemptive projects he defined were grounded in the peasantry, making them the inversionary surrogates for revolutionary action and appealing to the weapon of transformational accomplishment. so, if the goal was inspirational, its authority dialectical, based on a reading of history as an evolution of inversionary stages, its consequences were entirely practical. the party was the chosen instrument for a chosen people whose enlightenment principles constituted the moral and political centre according to mao—principles that abjured liberalism and tolerance in the name of a higher reason.23 mao carved discourses out of events, just as in yan'an they carved caves out of the mountains. not only were the witnesses fascinated by mao close up, they also recognized a certain peasant shrewdness that linked him to and made him part of the rank and file. but they appreciated too his more sophisticated, if stylized, knowledge of art, literature and calligraphy, which played well with the intellectuals in the movement. they liked the way he could play several ranges within the same textual register, to make himself as much revolutionary commander as 22_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ teacher. they found his style as well as his virtuosity endearing. for them mao was their folk hero of socialist modernity, his self recruited elect an 'onward communist soldiers' equivalent of the missionaries of an earlier day. reason replaced simple belief (or so it seemed), within a movement-militant instead of a church-militant. although they would have most emphatically disavowed such a comparison, one could argue that at the very least during the yan'an days, the witnesses saw in mao something more than an exceptional reformer, or even a prototypical revolution. they recognized a figure vaguely reminiscent of a primitive jesus, not only a man of the people able to perform battlefield miracles but also a man of organization and ideas, someone of whom it could be said that he regarded himself as the universal reformer. the heavens, the earth, the whole of nature, madness, disease, and death, were but his instruments. in his paroxysm of heroic will, he believed himself all powerful. (renan 1927: 151-52) the quote, ironically enough, is from renan's life of jesus. if this seems far-fetched, all one needs to do is go back to edgar snow's description of mao. he portrays him as a man of the people, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief, a cosmocratic agent expressing doctrinal moral truths. renan's purpose was to examine the real rather than the apocryphal aspects of a figure whose hortatory preachings were realized in a mystical community, exegetically bonded, and representing a redemptive and redeeming project. and if the apostles described the magic of the events, their writings constituting biblical texts, the gospels giving rise to hermeneutic endeavour, truths pored over intently by a priesthood capable of establishing both a method of moral persuasion and an insight into privileged truths, so too with mao's texts and their interpreters—the whole reinforced in rectification campaigns that served to both endorse and punitively enforce mao's exceptional revelatory insight.24 not only did the accounts of the witnesses contribute to such myth making but also in their narratives, as in mao's, it was the mao himself who became the central authorizing figure, the knowing prophet to whose original thoughts the witnesses offered testimony and context, and by so doing privileged his role. if what renan described could apply more generally to saints or prophets, popes and bishops, fetish priests and shamans, mullahs and monks, and not least of all to political philosophers and their doctrines, one could also argue that the real mao was a bit of all these. _________________________________________________________________________ 23 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion insofar as yan'an represented a revolutionary moment, another of renan's comments also applies: 'our civilizations, governed by minute restrictions, cannot give us any idea of the power of man at periods in which the originality of each one had a freer field wherein to develop itself'. (schram 1989) the yan'an that the journalists saw was one of those periods. it was an opening, one with not only sinified characteristics of marxism but in the eyes particularly of smedley, snow and strong, a moment that paralleled the early christian communities. like them, the constituency was of the poor. like them followers were persecuted for the revolutionary content of their beliefs and principles. and like them, the revelatory was connected to the instrumental. revolution was the necessary disjunctive accomplishment—not any disjunction but a revolutionary break with previous beliefs and institutions. the witnesses also realized that such historical moments are rare and that when they occur it includes personalized expressions of power—political agents purporting to totalizing salvational solutions. insofar as agency is crucial, so the return of the exiled mao, this time to power in the party, made him the epicentre of a rome towards which all roads would lead, not only on the ground but in more general ways—symbolic, institutional, communicative and instrumental (ricoeur 1986: 235). perhaps in retrospect it is better to describe the beliefs of the witnesses as a 'now you see it now you don't' phenomenon. certainly our witnesses attributed mao's power to the effectiveness of his appeal to the deprived, marginalized, vulnerable peasants who appeared to possess the best revolutionary potential as surrogates for mao's hortatory lastshall-be-first, world-turned-upside-down, master-and-slave doctrines. they found themselves in a position that would later find resonance in nationalist and social protest movements, revolutionary and redemptive in nature (apter 1963). nevertheless, just as a church is a venue for ordinary social occasions, the human intimate side of doctrinal orthodoxy, so for them yan'an remained something of a church in that sense, and on a human scale, as was mao himself. in this regard there was something deliberately endearing about the way both smedley and strong liked to recount how they taught mao to dance and how dancing become a regular event at least for the highest cadres. the religious aspects of politics also create the conditions and characteristics of high drama with recounted events as dramatic episodes. snow in particular was sensitive to the drama associated with mao's role. just before recounting his interview with mao in red star over 24_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ china, he discusses the importance of 'red theatre', linking it to a larger radical inheritance, including the revolutionary theatre of the soviet union. as already suggested, snow's portrayal of mao is itself theatrical. his interview begins with a descriptive stage setting. he and mao are huddled in a cave lit by sputtering candles. mao speaks in a 'soft southern dialect' of his origins in a poor peasant family, the strictness of his father, his love of chinese classics, his going to work at the age of 13, his apprenticeship, his return to school in ragged clothes, his awakening to radical thought, and later, his internal exile by the party to hun'an, where he found inspiration among the peasant poor. snow's account shows a mao whose personal fortunes became an overcoming project, overcoming ignorance, poor social conditions, the contempt of intellectuals, etc. for china. the story as he told it is by now well known (saich 1996; rue 1966). what the witnesses above all tried to portray was a mao whose rise to power was not only a matter of skilful maneouvring but also an example of virtue triumphant. in this they provided a rendered offering, virtually a biblical tale. and while [t]here would never be any one 'savior' of china, yet undeniably one felt a certain force of destiny in mao. it was nothing quick or flashy, but a kind of solid elemental vitality. one felt that whatever there was extraordinary in this man grew out of the uncanny degree to which he synthesized and expressed the urgent demands of millions of chinese and especially the peasantry. (snow 1984: 66) it should be noted that of the three, edgar snow always kept something of himself in reserve.25 what the witnesses saw with considerable clarity was that mao's exceptionalism was due not least to an uncanny ability to combine a life intertwined with action, not to speak of violence, with symbolic and logical nuance. unless social life has a symbolic structure, there is no way to understand how we live, do things, and project these activities in ideas, no way to understand how reality can become an idea or how real life can produce illusions; these would all be simply mystical and incomprehensible events. (ricoeur 1986: 8) such symbolic structures realized in the acts of individuals are what snow describes in terms of individual experiences—how joining the revolution became something more than an ordinary rite of passage and more like a religious conversion, an induction into mao's army of believing militants by means of which personal insight was achieved. _________________________________________________________________________ 25 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion this made it possible to transcend the self by means of commitment to prescribed truths and beliefs, not in some intellectual way but biblically; that is, making them resonate throughout one's entire being. it was mao's ability to analyze the experience common to his generation— rather than the uniqueness of his own experience—plus his messianic belief in the correctness of his own generalizations of that experience, which distinguished him from compatriots who became his followers. (snow 1970: 165) it was in these terms that able journalists were able to persuade themselves that mao's was a version of agrarian communism, and that yan'an was socialism with a human face.26 in sum, the witnesses made more credible those aspects of maoism that share attributes of religion, including the cosmocratic capacities of its agents and the monopolistic claims of its truths, which define other views and beliefs less as dissent and more as heresy. this last is particularly important, especially when different factions claim competing orthodoxies, each trying to capitalize on any loose estrangements by followers of the others. the cultural revolution and the end of any existing socialism in these terms one can say that mao had not one but two periods of 'ascendancy': the first in yan'an, especially during the years 1938-42 and subsequently the cultural revolution, the latter both farce and tragedy. if the two events are hardly comparable, snow and strong, not to speak of other witnesses, certainly did compare them, and at first with sympathy both for mao's effort to regain power and also because they took a dim view of the economistic turn the chinese government had come to favour. for example, in red china today snow wrote that mao was personally revered by most of the peasants of china and had gone far toward winning the younger people to his banner; the cultural revolution had, in the people's eyes been necessary to prevent the formation of a corruptive (revisionist) elite; and mao had behind him the loyalty of the armed forces sufficient to handle the internal factors of disunity. mao still held the 'mandate of heaven'.' snow goes on: it was instructive to note that whereas in stalin's russia such a power struggle could have been quickly decided by the liquidation of any comrades in 26_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ opposition, that did not happen in china. despite three years of a great purge, liu shao-ch'i alone was officially named as a renegade and expelled from the party by mao's central committee … for the rest of the top revisionists there presumably remained some hope of rehabilitation. as in past rectifications efforts at reconciliation followed tension and struggle. and even more astonishing: whatever their genesis, the new organs of chinese government were bound to uphold the thought of mao as a unifying faith. once the soviet party had repudiated stalinist ikons, the chinese could no longer involve the authority of moscow's infallibility. after 1953 even liu shao-ch'i could not but help glorify mao as the personification of revolutionary creativity, independence, national self esteem, and world prestige. now, as throughout history, china put a unique sinitic stamp upon an imported ideology which at first had appeared, to many, as a kind of barbarian conquest. it was not by accident that the patriarchal mao, depicted as the red sun, hailed his people from the heavenly peace gate where the son of heaven presided for ages long predating karl marx. (snow 1971: 35) for all that, the witnesses did begin to have doubts. the question is, what kind of doubts? the problem of evaluating their belief in these terms is, as i suggested at the start, due in part to very real differences between religion itself and its political version, with religion more able to remain self-sustaining and self-replenishing, while over time political religion becomes ritualized, empty and punitive. eventually this was an aspect of the cultural revolution that strong and snow among others could not continue to ignore. for all their commitment, and despite their view of mao as redeemer, it was the practical side of collective action that most appealed to them. they were all very much in the 'learn by doing' tradition. they were believers in maoism as a system that produced collective voluntarism, which on a day-to-day basis is what a good deal of religion is about. but eventually even they were increasingly disturbed by the way the cultural revolution converted the mao they knew in yan'an into a strange, alienating, indeed almost fantastic creature of virtually mythic proportions. in place of the mao they knew, who they recognized had his limitations, they saw in his return to power a condition that detracted from that original shrewdness, tactical sense and timing that had brought him to power—qualities that had been much underestimated by his competitors within and outside the party, not least of all by the soviettrained 'twenty-two bolsheviks' to their infinite regret. the witnesses also recognized that , in keeping with their own beliefs as opposed to the more philosophically inclined marxists, maoism was not a very _________________________________________________________________________ 27 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion deep form of marxism-leninism, but because of that it was accessible to most people at some level. so, while mao was a remarkable figure of enormous talents, he was neither a superman nor the all-seeing omniscient figure he was portrayed to be in the cultural revolution (schram 1969: 171-222). nevertheless, for a considerable period of time strong and snow publicly acquiesced. for them, like a good many others, the cultural revolution appeared to be necessary because mao had lost power to those who would corrupt the revolution. strong, by now a more or less acceptable relic, allowed herself to be inducted into a group of red guards and wore a red guard armband on her uniform, although she did express misgivings that things had gotten too much out of hand. only very slowly, and well after the advent of the cultural revolution, did these witnesses and their associates begin to distance themselves from mao. but it was with great reluctance and such views remained private. publicly they were unwilling to admit that something was going terribly wrong. worst of all they began to realize that the apotheosis of mao could not have occurred without him wanting it. they saw in such idolatry a dangerous if not fatal attraction to political leaders in other countries trying to emulate and exploit an equivalent phenomenon: nkrumah's pan-african second coming in ghana had its little black book; the peruvian revolution its little blue book; and even colonel quaddafi had his little green book (apter 1963). nor could they see the renewal of yan'an principles in the events of the cultural revolution as claimed by its protagonists. they were particularly disturbed that by elevating mao to god-like proportions, he was becoming a larger-than-life caricature of himself—such levitation resulting in a mao ever more remote and inaccessible to the people themselves.27 snow wrote more explicitly of the new role of the 'chairman', the cult of personality and the 'immoderate glorification' he witnessed: giant portraits of him now hung in the streets, busts were in every chamber, his books and photographs were everywhere on display to the exclusion of others. in the four-hour revolutionary pageant of dance and song, the east is red, mao was the only hero … i saw a portrait copied from a photograph taken by myself in 1936, blown up to about thirty feet high. it gave me a mixed feeling of pride of craftsmanship and uneasy recollection of similar extravaganzas of worship of joseph stalin seen during wartime years in russia. (snow 1972: 68-69) one suspects that neither his misgivings nor his 'pride of craftsmanship' ended with the portrait. 28_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ if snow and strong as well as others continued to be great believers in calling a spade a spade, they did this best when they were comfortable reporting what they saw. when what they saw became uncomfortable, they became confused and unsure of themselves. they wanted above all to maintain their faith in the fundamental rightness of the chinese revolution. they pointed to its visible accomplishments and obscured its disasters. none would have favoured the china of today. they were anti-consumption if not anti-capitalist. they liked the ideas of communal farming, indusco, the industrial cooperative, which rewi alley and helen snow had helped to establish in the early days. they preferred the intimacy yan'an afforded. indeed, what they wanted was nothing less than the small community in the large, hoping that the contradiction in terms could somehow be overcome. theirs was then a kind of internal and hesitant revisionism. so at the end they in fact refused to call a spade a spade. but there was another and deeper reason for their discomfort than the idolatry with which mao had become endowed, and that had more to do with belief and less with particular practicalities. if one follows the line of separation between religion and political religion in terms of their relative capacities for moral replenishment, religion appeals to the hereafter, its days of reckoning are salvational. there is no final groundlevel denouement. not so with political religion, which at some point has to show results. moreover, if the moral claims have been placed higher than the stakes, even the best political results will be found wanting. in china maoism, insofar as it became a political religion, for all its practical revolutionary accomplishments, lacked staying power as a belief system. the cultural revolution was among other things an effort to reinvigorate and revive its religious side, using the myth of yan'an in the process, its very rusticity and primitivism being a crucial part of its revolutionary charm, especially to outside observers. it failed not only because political religions fail in such endeavours but also because yan'an never was and never could have been a blueprint or a model for a modern state. in the end maoism failed as political religion not least of all because of the practical tasks of eradicating illiteracy, poverty and corruption endemic in china and making ordinary life easier required practical efforts at reform rather than drastic swings in the party line and hortatory and visionary appeals that only compounded the disasters. it was precisely in order to compensate for the latter that market reforms made the most sense—a solution that was anathema to mao and his old guard associates precisely in religious terms—as apostasy. _________________________________________________________________________ 29 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion in these regards the contrast between yan'an and the cultural revolution could not have been greater.28 nor is it so surprising the latter virtually destroyed all those who had played important roles in yan'an, pulling each one down from the heroic pantheon in the name of revolutionary renewal even as it proclaimed itself the second coming, the renewal of yan'an itself. whereas in yan'an mao's writings, texts and speeches were pored over for their meaning, resulting in a form of exegetical bonding similar to that of a religious body, in the cultural revolution his excerpted sayings, especially those incorporated in various versions of the little red book, became revolutionary boiler plate.29 mao's reassertion of power was thus accompanied by canonical redemptive fantasies, the effects of which produced political, social and economic chaos. what may have started as a way of jumping generations in order to counter the growth of a bureaucracy increasingly secular, pragmatic, growth oriented and indifferent to mao resulted in a dictatorship of such fanciful proportions that well before mao died, china was plunged into deep and profound ideological estrangement. one outcome of which was to make possible the very outcome mao opposed—china totally preoccupied with growth, development and willing to employ capitalism for highly concrete and pragmatic ends (tsou 1986). such matters have been more than sufficiently documented and need no further recounting. in hindsight, if in its first coming maoism was the most successful marxist variant of radical political religion, in its second it was the least (macfarquhar 1974). schram's conclusion is that mao's political role was essentially ambiguous: eternal rebel, refusing to be bound by the laws of god or man, nature or marxism, he led his people for three decades in pursuit of a vision initially noble, which turned increasingly into a mirage, and then into a nightmare. was he a faust or prometheus attempting the impossible for the sake of humanity, or a despot of unbridled ambition, drunk with his own power and his own cleverness? (schram 1989: 206) he suggests that he was a bit of both. i would go further. in my view the surviving witnesses hoped that the cultural revolution would serve as only as an unfortunate political spasm in the long history of china. but i think they had caught a glimpse of something much bigger than that, something that if grasped at all they certainly did not want to discuss or come to grips with—that the cultural revolution itself prefigured a dying socialism. this is something that at the end mao must have realized even more than the witnesses. 30_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ how else to explain the sheer desperation of his final gesture to stave off the inevitable—an inevitable which if it succeeded would reverse the doctrinal inevitability of marxism in all its forms? in this sense the cultural revolution was a dress rehearsal for what would happen to the rest of the socialist 'camp'. the late mao had few dialectical accomplishments. the cultural revolution was a last testeronic gasp of an old man swimming upstream in a river he could never control. he began to have a schizophrenic vision of the cosmos he himself had created, an implosion that produced a fantasy of power in the will to destroy. which perhaps was a throwback to his original anarchism. if it is correct to say that mao's most extraordinary accomplishment as a visionary was to ground it in the concrete, to establish prescriptive programmes for highly structured and organized endgames, in the end it was his original successes in doing these things that would prove his undoing. he unleashed a form of idolatry that bordered on radical mysticism. in directing his prophetical claims against the organizations and structures constituting the party and state, he unleashed collective furies tearing down what had been building up. the surviving witnesses were not out of sympathy for this. they were caught up in the youthful enthusiasm of the red guards. indeed, having been disillusioned once before by stalin and the soviet union, they were not willing to be easily disillusioned again. but in the end they were and with both nostalgia and regret. an unpublished interview with rewi alley, whom my wife and i interviewed in 1986 at his home in the residence of the italian ambassador under mussolini not long before he died (a place of faded wallpaper, lost grandeur and old memories) may serve as an epitaph to both maoism and socialism. in his youth a vigorous outward-bound kind of person, now he was confined to a wheelchair and hooked up to various medications. but his mind was clear enough. alley deplored the preoccupation with money, the market and the inequalities of growth. china's burgeoning growth rate, the introduction of a stock market and the evolution of the banking system were for him pretty excruciating events. for him indusco, the old system of cooperatives, was still a valid basis for the reconstruction of society. he believed the revolution had accomplished much but he was not at all happy with the general loosening of controls. indeed in one of his last letters to mao, he decried the spread of sexually explicit literature to which he attributed the growth of drug taking among the young. _________________________________________________________________________ 31 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion above all rewi alley deplored the cultural revolution.30 it represented the destruction of an ideal—certainly his ideal—indeed his abiding faith for most of his entire life in maoism and the chinese revolution. he came to believe that mao himself had betrayed both, as he expressed in the interview: rewi alley: i don't think the [cultural] revolution was very kind to mao. it put him on a pedestal and gave him absolute power. he had a number of very grave weaknesses. one was that he allowed himself to be surrounded by very poor elements—jiang qing. i think that was very sad. as he got older, of course, old age took over. he became an old man with parkinson's very highly developed. he had parkinson's very badly. he could no longer present the front he would have liked to present. what i found so sad was that he turned on all the people who helped him make the revolution, the very cream of them, and he would have turned on zhou enlai but died before he could. apter: did he really understand what he was doing? rewi alley: he had that evil genius kang sheng at his side all the time putting thoughts into his ear.31 it was a melancholy interview ending with that final evasion. mao had desecrated the yan'an ideal all right but alley could still not bring himself to blame mao directly—rather put it down to parkinson's disease, or the wicked figure of kang sheng. interviews with israel epstein, sol adler and others told much the same story, although they varied to some extent about the effects of the turn to market capitalism in china today. all saw in china's remarkable economic success at best a very mixed blessing, and in revolutionary terms something of an admission of failure. how wrong they were if one considers how china has emerged as the most strikingly successful example of developmental change in a world where developmental failure is by far the more common condition. which brings me back to political religion and the witnesses. to emphasize the proto-religious aspect of maoism is not, of course, to obscure its military, political and social aspects. quite the contrary, these were the proving grounds of its validity. nor does it add to our understanding just to recount what an evil-doer was the real mao. more important is to account for the fervour and militancy of the chinese communists and the discipline that they were able to maintain under extremely harsh circumstances and in terms far more explanatory than a description of mao as tyrant or, for that matter, theories of rational choice and ordinary political economy. rather, exploring maoism in this fashion suggests certain crucial differences between religion and protoreligion, which is also the difference between religion properly speak32_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ ing and political religion. what the mao case suggests is that religions are capable of self-replenishment in a way that political religious are not. political religious beliefs lose their force over time. efforts to prop them up become ritualized. the more they become empty and devoid of content, the greater the need to impose orthodoxy as the rationale for authority. in terms of china, one can argue that trying to reverse such a decline was an important factor in the cultural revolution for the latter was, in addition to being a power struggle, an effort to bolster a rapidly disappearing faith in socialism altogether. in this, it prefigured a more general decline of socialism everywhere. in these terms if we look past the arguments, events and ideological claims the witnesses made, and considering how they selected the facts they 'saw' with their own eyes (and all were excellent observers), there remains a constancy of commitment which, if not in itself religious, speaks to a deeper emotional and symbolic attachment to something politically larger than themselves. this attachment, despite its alien origins, came to fit with their own american natural inheritance. in part maoism served as a substitute for the religions they had been brought up with and the faiths they had lost. it also speaks to their desire for social action. if one reads their writings carefully, one sees how important to them was the revolution itself as a venue for action and engagement. perhaps to some extent it was also a way of exorcising the fear of loneliness in the absence of belief, and of being so often out of step with prevailing opinion. such personal factors also help us understand why it is that belief in politics keeps coming back in religious forms. the chinese revolution, if nothing else, shows how deep rooted is the desire to believe and how important an ingredient in political action. it also suggests that if political religion fails, as socialism has failed, it leaves a space which real religion can fill, not least of all by its more virulent forms, most particularly of a fundamentalist and evangelical kind. it is not a comforting thought. david e. apter is henry j. heinz professor emeritus of comparative political and social development; senior research scholar, yale university. notes * an earlier version of this paper was presented at a conference on mao at the fairbanks center, harvard university in december 2003. 1 presentism as used here represents the imposition of criteria of the here and now on the then and there. _________________________________________________________________________ 33 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion 2 mostly it is historians who serve this purpose. one thinks for example of tocqueville, who was one of the defining figures in the interpretation of the american political experience. how he is reinterpreted is a way of redefining how the american experience is itself understood. much the same could be said of michelet on the french revolution. although he lived after the events, he was writing in their immediate aftermath. his monumental work on the subject served as a point of departure for subsequent revision of that revolution and also the character of historiography on the subject. 3 in effect their views of mao, maoism and the chinese communists, especially in the period roughly from 1936 to 1942, were essentially salvational with yan'an both a redoubt and a microcosm for china as a whole, and remained so in their minds long after it became apparent that yan'an could never be a model for anything other than itself. see saich (1996). 4 all the more so because in china history seemed to repeat itself. previous american intervention in russia and the refusal to recognize the soviet state they considered totally counterproductive. now in china the united states was pouring funds and armaments into the coffers of gmd in a desperate effort to forestall communism. the results were to worsen already deteriorating conditions, and with little to show for it other than corruption, warlordism and the intensification of the already severe social suffering of ordinary chinese. more to the point, much of the weaponry wound up in communist arsenals. moreover these witnesses saw in the west a punitive capitalism, democracies caught in the vice of political opportunism and paralysis, and around them rising militarism in japan, not to speak of the spread of fascism and nazism. for all three there remained the residual resonance of the america as new jerusalem with its puritan past and high moral resolve. they thought they could see in the chinese communists a similar kind of commitment. to the extent that they committed brutal acts, these were regarded as ripostes to atrocities and at worst unfortunate concomitants in the course of transforming a reactionary and feudal society. they fervently hoped that the end product would accord with universal principles: greater equality, education and freedom. for such ends they were willing to countenance the need for a tutelary party with its eye on the future and its feet on the ground, turning their eyes from its increasingly authoritarianism, its bureaucratic ruthlessness, and the purging propensities driven by party factionalism. it was only as china became more and more visibly oppressive that they began to look askance; as happened for example, with eugene lyons and freda utley among many others. 5 they were also competitive, vying for favour within china and the united states. their efforts to 'de-demonize' mao meant influencing relations between the united states and china. in this they believed they were motivated by genuine concern for the united states and where its policies were leading. purporting to offer balanced views of a polarized situation, they gained considerable political influence. strong carried on a regular correspondence with eleanor roosevelt. (smedley tried to do the same but was given the cold shoulder.) and snow was extremely influential both in mobilizing public support for china and in his contacts with china hands in the state department and related institutions. snow was less interested in marxism than was strong (although she was never a great marxist) and much less of an anarchist than smedley. in his preferred 'man from missouri' role, he gave the impression of looking circumstances straight in the face, to tell it like it was to all and sundry whether they liked it or not. perhaps better than the others, snow was keenly aware of the limits of what could be said. but all three were good at sensing the way the wind was blowing and all knew the requirements of self-censorship. 34_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ 6 later to be excoriated as apologists and fellow travellers. efforts to posthumously annul duranty's pulitzer prize were only recently rejected. 7 so much did helen snow relive the days of yan'an that her eighteenth-century house became like a cave, with shrubs covering the walls and hanging from the ceiling. 8 she was particularly good at tidbits. for example, she told me that it was at her insistence (she threatened to leave him) that the biographical materials in red star over china remained in the book, edgar snow intending to delete it because he believed it too politically sensitive. 9 it was also possible to interview some of those who had originally supported but then turned against the chinese communists, most particularly michael lindsey. 10 in accord with full disclosure i should say that, like a number of foreign observers, i am a member of the three s society. 11 for a detailed discussion of mao's thought see schram (1989). 12 rewi alley, perhaps the most devoted of all the china hands, wrote a short book on those he considered the most significant, particularly anna louise strong, agnes smedley and edgar snow. there were of course many others. see alley (1985). 13 rewi alley was himself a new zealander, a member of the new zealand communist party, who went to china to do social work when still young, and wound up establishing industrial cooperatives. israel epstein was a refugee who made his way across siberia to japan, and then to shanghai, to serve as a united press correspondent and despite rough handling during the cultural revolution remained an apologist. michael snow, speaking of the visits they made to china in the early 1970s said, 'they lied to us.' she indicated that so outraged was she by this, that she had considered disinterring the remains of edgar who had been buried in china and returning them to the united states. 14 smedley, for example, 'regarded the red army as revolutionary organization of the poor' (1970: 142). 15 their personal histories reinforced this position. all traced their families back to colonial times. those born in heartlands like nebraska and missouri, and who had come of age in colorado, california and washington among other places, were nomads in search of something, not least of all themselves. this marked them off as independent minded, whatever their political preferences. smedley remained a romantic revolutionary throughout and her clientele was at times more indian and asian than american. for her the chinese revolution was attractive less because it was communist than that it was revolutionary. it was revolution that she believed in. indeed, so revolutionary was she, particularly with respect to such bourgeois institutions as marriage, or what she regarded as the intrinsically degrading character of male–female sexual relations, that eventually she offended the puritanism of the chinese communists who expelled her from yan'an. 16 anna louise strong, with her congregationalist background, settlement house propensities, and belief that the communists were the new puritans, was shocked when she found herself an object of suspicion in the soviet union. indeed, deserted by her old friend borodin, she was expelled from the soviet union and her russian husband disappeared. for her china was thus a place of refuge. 17 cited in strong and keyssar (1983: 346). 18 as to their own beliefs, all were 'lapsed' from conventional religions—smedley and snow from catholicism, strong from congregationalism. stalinism certainly put them all off, at least at some point. so too did the cultural revolution. but religious beliefs are never only about religion. _________________________________________________________________________ 35 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion 19 such as maria-antonietta macciocci (to her later embarrassment) not to speak of the variety of mao cultists among european and american intellectuals, writers, artists, etc. see macciocchi (1971). 20 as he was dying snow received a letter from richard nixon that said he wanted snow to know that his 'distinguished career is so widely respected and appreciated'. 21 struggles within were not simply power struggles, although of course they were that, but they were also a competition over which 'truths' would prevail. the battles over the correct lines, left and right, were analogous to schisms and divisions within the church. indeed, one common link between soviet purges and conflicts within the cpp were the campaigns to root out trotskyism, a process that in china was incorporated in the early rectification campaigns. for the details of such early struggles within the chinese communist party, see saich (1996). 22 in these regards there are parallels between lenin's redemptive communism and those of russian writers and intellectuals such as dostojevsky, who believed that it was in russia that the kingdom of god on earth would arrive, and transform all mankind. as for mao, schram notes that what set him apart was his 'overwhelming confidence in his own capacity for leadership. not only did he admire strong rulers east and west, from the founders of the ch'in and han dynasties to peter the great and napoleon, but he was plainly convinced, from early manhood, of his ability to emulate them. such supreme self-confidence does not in itself guarantee that the possessor will play a significant political role, but it is very difficult to be an effective political leader without it.' see schram (1989: 7). 23 with rectification went justification. one applauded the specially created revolutionary instruments that pretended to follow institutionally recognized public procedures and gave a veneer of legality to arbitrary decisions about guilt, dissent and betrayal. moreover, although supposedly internalized by poring over appropriate texts containing mao's illuminating insights, even the orthodox could be subject to doubts. political sin and guilt, unlike ordinary crimes, were a matter of social defilement requiring purification by exorcizing and eliminating transgressors. no matter one's rank or position, one's conviction and ethical purity were always subject to suspicion. individuals, as individuals, had to be tested repeatedly in public rituals, public confession leading to self-abasement. since rectification required the elimination of doubt, the object was to locate the guilty core in each individual no matter how devoutly doctrinal he or she claimed to be. for that a standard of judgment was required, one that invoked synoptic sayings, made certain texts sacred, consecrated special cadres, all accompanied by public spectacle that was at times sheer theatre. as a process mao became a figure larger than life with justice as an expression of public 'wrath'. expressed through the party in the name of the people rather than the glory of god—and repeated on a more massive scale during the cultural revolution, maoism used on both occasions the same lord high executioner, kang sheng. 24 for example, as if to distance himself a little from the chinese communists as well as to disarm his american readers, he referred to the chinese communists as 'reds', a term conventionally less than endearing. 25 and so it seemed to be, as long as one did not support the wrong line. to do so revealed the other face of yan'an, and not nearly as kindly as snow and the other witnesses made out. indeed, snow's later accounts gloss over the fact that those in the party who chose to see mao's prescriptions as moral pretence more than marxist enlightenment, and refused to toe the maoist line, were ruthlessly eliminated, among them wang ming, zhang goato, liu zhidan and wang shiwei. see apter and saich (1994). 36_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 david e. apter _____________________________________________________________ 26 in this sense the difference between yan'an and the cultural revolution was profound and the changing role of mao was only part of it. in yan'an not even mao's most ardent admirers would have considered him in godlike terms, or even in some mystical sense larger than life. in the cultural revolution his image became both omnipresent and more remote. his actual portrayal became more and more stylized, ageless, frozen, virtually emotionless and, replicated in countless statues and portraits, buddha-like. the more public adulation attached to his person, the more remote he became, a figure of abstract personalism. 27 and one very different from the portrait of mao written during the early yan'an days by edgar snow. indeed, the latter ignored the process even though it was going on while he was in yan'an itself. see snow (1971: 35). 28 schram calls it a breviary (1989: 174). 29 he too had been savaged along with virtually all the other significant figures of his generation (and losing his lifetime collection of chinese antiquities). 30 interview, july 1986. references alley, rewi, 1985. six americans in china. beijing: international culture publishing corporation. anderson, benedict 1991. imagined communities. london: verso. apter, david e. 1963. 'political religion in the new nations'. in clifford geertz (ed.), old societies and new states. new york: the free press of glencoe. apter, david e. and saich, tony 1994. revolutionary discourse in mao's republic. cambridge: harvard university press. callois, roger 1959. man and the sacred. glencoe: the free press. chang, jung and halliday, jon 2005. mao, the unknown story. new york: alfred a. knopf. cohn, norman 1961. the pursuit of the millennium. new york: harpers. fitzpatrick, sheila 1999. everyday stalinism. new york: oxford university press. frye, northrop 1976. the secular scripture. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. hamilton, john maxwell 1988. edgar snow. bloomington: indiana university press. koestler, arthur 1945. the yogi and the commissar. new york: macmillan. macfarquhar, roderick 1974. the origins of the cultural revolution. new york: columbia university press (3 volumes). mackinnon, stephen r. 1988. the life and times of an american radical. berkeley: university of california press. macciocchi, maria-antonietta 1971. de la chine. paris: editions du seuil. renan, ernest 1927, the life of jesus, new york: modern library. ricoeur, paul 1986. lectures on ideology and utopia. new york: columbia university press. rue, john e. 1966. mao tse-tung in opposition 1927-1935. stanford: stanford university press. saich, tony 1996. the rise to power of the chinese communist party. armonk, ny: m. e. sharpe. schram, stuart r. 1969, the political thought of mao tse-tung. new york: praegers . — 1989. the thought of mao tse-tung. cambridge: cambridge university press. smedley, agnes 1970. china correspondent. london: pandora press. snow, edgar, 1970. red china today. new york: random house. _________________________________________________________________________ 37 __________________________________________ bearing witness: maoism as religion — 1971. red china today. new york: random house. — 1972. the long revolution. new york: random house. — 1984. red star over china. 4th printing. new york: bantam books [1st edn 1937]. strong, anna louise (1885) letters from china. peking: new world press. strong, tracy and keysser, helene 1983. right in her soul. new york: random house. tsou tang 1986. the cultural revolution and post-mao reforms. chicago: university of chicago press. wakeman, frederic 1984. the great transformation. berkeley: university of california press (2 volumes). 50 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ managing change in asian business: a comparison between chinese educated and english educated chinese entrepreneurs in singapore thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah abstract against the background of the current rapidly changing business environment, the article examines the organizational change management behaviour of the owner-managers of small and medium sized enterprises (smes) in singapore. the analysis of survey data is aimed at ascertaining whether there are any differences between chinese and english educated small (ethnic chinese) businessmen in terms of change management (cm), a dichotomy that is of great historical and politico-cultural significance in singapore. the survey data show that there are indeed differences between the subgroups (eg with regard to the initiation of a more participatory people management style) but these variations turned out to be far less pronounced than expected. access to information and actionable managerial knowledge appears to be a key precursor to the various change management approaches used by both groups. chinese educated businessmen in particular seem to be somewhat disadvantaged in this respect, as modern change management literature is still largely only published in english1. keywords: ethnic chinese, small and medium-sized enterprises (sme), republic of singapore, organizational change management. introduction and context of problem most enterprises operating in asia are small and medium-sized (family) firms (chong 1987; buchholt and menkhoff 1996; tsui-auch 2003, 2004; menkhoff and chay 2006). their economic success has often been attributed to the so-called 'chinese cultural heritage'. 'there is a worldwide recognition that ethnic chinese, wherever they have sunk new roots, have contributed significantly to the wealth of their adoptive lands and in the process, to nation-building. they were able to overcome severe odds and difficulties through thrift, hard work, perseverance, tolerance, and above all, their entrepreneurial spirit – which constitute part of the _________________________________________________________________________ 51 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business core values of the chinese cultural heritage' (encounter, singapore chinese chamber of commerce and industry). since the asian economic crisis, culture-centric explanations of chinese business behaviour have been replaced by an alternative proposition according to which cultural factors alone are inadequate in understanding the organizational peculiarities and economic (success) patterns of chinese business. the 1997-99 crisis served as a reminder that the economic behaviour of these entrepreneurs, is also determined to a large extent by social, economical and political factors in each of their respective host countries as well as external factors (lasserre 1988:117; vasil 1995; menkhoff 1998:253; chan and ng 2000, 2001; menkhoff and gerke eds. 2002; tsui-auch and lee 2003; tan ed. 2006). previous explanations to this situation, which highlight the cultural traits of ethnic chinese in asia, arguably imply that ethnic chinese entrepreneurs are members of a homogenous group of people. this is clearly not the case as evidenced by the dichotomy of 'chinese educated' and 'english educated' chinese. the implications of the above will be spelled out in this paper with reference to the republic of singapore (kwok 1998). in the case of singapore with its chinese majority, it is interesting to note that chinese small and medium sized enterprises arguably played a secondary role in the city-state's rapid economic development after it had become independent in 1965. the success of singapore has mainly been attributed to the strategy of the leading people's action party (pap), whose aim was to develop the country with the help of multi-national corporations (mncs) based on exportled growth (low 1999). british colonial rule represented a strong pull factor for the migration of ethnic chinese to singapore. at the end of the 20th century, the percentage of chinese descendants represented over 70 percent of the total population. due to the structure of the colonial school system, a certain section of the chinese population attended schools where english was used as the main medium of instruction. the rest, initially the majority but subsequently the minority, attended chinese schools at least till the late 1980s (pakir 1991). this situation led to internal challenges. the government, the majority of which were english educated intellectuals and professionals, focused its post-independence (1965) economic development strategies on the demands of mncs and government-linked companies (glcs). at least until the recession in the mid 1980s, the small indigenous private business sector of which the majority was chinese educated – did not gain much prominence (low 1999; ng 2002). how52 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ ever, this situation changed drastically after the recession in the 1990s, when numerous sme friendly initiatives and policies were introduced to encourage the development of local enterprises (bjerke 1998). policymakers have realized that local smes represent the backbone of the national economy and that they need help to master the transition to a knowledge-based economy, a key strategic goal of singapore's government. all this requires the modernization of traditional structures and mindsets which explains why the topic of this paper, namely organizational change management, is so important in singapore's business and society (mti 1998; tsui-auch 2003; hussey 2005; pfeffer 2005). against the background of a very dynamic business environment and rapid external change, the study is aimed at analyzing how local smes cope with these demands and requirements. the core objective is to ascertain empirically whether there is a difference between the change management (cm) behaviour of chinese and english educated (chinese) business people in singapore or not, and to examine possible reasons. theoretically, the study is informed by (i) child's strategic choice theory (1972, 1997) which has puts primary importance on the ability of business managers and leaders to embrace change proactively, relating differences in managerial decision-making processes and approaches to individual cognitive reference frameworks and (ii) the emerging theory of chinese enterprise management (tong and yong 1997; gomez and hsiao eds. 2001; menkhoff and gerke eds. 2002; yao 2002; yeung 2004) that postulates more or less substantial differences between 'traditional chinese' and 'modern western' management methods. in the context of singapore, differences that have developed historically between chinese and english educated businessmen within the chinese community with regard to their management behaviour (chong 1987; lau 1999; ng 2001), are also theoretically important. from this, it is perhaps necessary to ask what the social-cultural and political implications and dimensions of the difference between chinese and english educated chinese people are in singapore (badibanga 2002). as far as singapore is concerned, there is the widespread perception that chinese and english educated chinese people have different cultural values and world views which is often explained with reference to their different upbringings and educational paths. as has been stated, generally, the chinese educated regarded the english educated as arrogant, open, modern, westernized and easygoing. the english educated thought of the chinese educated as conservative, parochial, chauvinistic, politicized (as in the 1940s and 1950s) and hard-working (lau 1999:201). _________________________________________________________________________ 53 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business despite mutual stereotypes and prejudices, hardly any empirical evidence can be found about the differences between the two groups. in fact, there is a dearth of empirical research studies on the subject, which is somewhat surprising given the latent interest conflicts between both groups as evidenced by historical reflections and the renewed interest in singapore's 'chinese ground' (straits times 3/9/2005:s8). possibly a key factor in this respect is the heritage of the insufficiently integrated colonial school system with its different language orientations. since singapore's early days, english and chinese educated chinese developed certain (often contrary) stereotypical perceptions of each other, which was arguably manifested in different lifestyles and consumption habits caused by different cultural programmings (lau 1999; siddique 2004). subsequently, diverging political interests and social class disparities emerged. in the 1920s, this mental divide became even bigger and politically disruptive, due to the rise of nationalism that ignited an intense interest in chinese education. at the same time there was a steep increase in the dissemination of communist ideologies and political movements in several chinese schools (i.e. those where chinese was used the main medium of instruction), which resulted in discriminating sanctions imposed by the ruling british colonial government. social class differences along language lines began to harden, as it was easier for the english educated to secure a job in the civil service (and later in mncs) due to their language competence (tan 1996). consequently, many chinese educated chinese people found employment in independent micro-enterprises and smes. they were also known as the 'reluctant entrepreneurs'. in 1965 when singapore became independent, the ruling elites consisted primarily of english educated professionals, yet a large proportion of singapore's chinese population was chinese educated. as far as the current situation in singapore's sme sector is concerned (tan, tan and young 2000), the research was guided by the following broad assumptions: a) chinese educated entrepreneurs form the majority of all sme managers; b) they are generally older and have a lower educational level than english educated entrepreneurs; c) as argued by some key informants, chinese and english educated chinese entrepreneurs can be differentiated according to their 'traditional chinese' (ie chinese educated) and 'modern-western' (ie english educated) managerial behaviour (see table 1). 54 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ exploratory research questions included: 1. are there differences between chinese and english educated businessmen when it comes to strategic decisions on whether or not to initiate organizational change measures? if yes, in what ways? if not, why not? what is the implication of this dichotomy with regard to change management approaches (see section 3.4)? 2. what is the implication of this dichotomy with regard to change management approaches in general? 3. do chinese educated businessmen adopt more traditional (chinese) management and organizational practices when it comes to change management (e.g. unsystematic, muddling through approaches) while english educated businessmen use more modern, western change management methods? if yes, how can such differences (if any) be explained? methodology there is hardly any empirical material available in singapore, which can shed light on the change management behaviour of small firms and possible differences between chinese and english educated business people. there is also limited literature concerning the socio-economic dynamics and specifics of chinese and english educated ethnic chinese (pakir 1991; kwok 1998; lau 1999). to tackle these issues, the research was focused on firstly literature reviews and secondly, qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs, management consultants and representatives from monetary institutions and academics. through these interviews, some general hypotheses were generated. the majority of the interviewees were identified with the help of the singapore chinese chamber of commerce & industry (sccci) and the singapore institute of management consultants. the study employed a questionnaire survey of a population of singapore smes found on the register of membership in the singapore chinese chamber of commerce and industry and was across industries and business type. as singapore smes are reluctant to respond to surveys, the authors employed both postal and face-toface interviews to secure completion of the research instrument. the smes were randomly selected from the membership database. a team of research assistants then followed up this initial research with phone calls to secure their cooperation. the final survey form (questionnaire) was divided into the following sections: (i) demographics of respondent, (ii) business characteristics, _________________________________________________________________________ 55 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business (iii) organizational change (iv) personality traits, (v) firm performance and (vi) external management consultants. two versions of the survey questionnaire (english and chinese) with mostly closed questions were developed. to ensure the survey was easy to understand, different pilot tests were conducted. as indicated above, the initial response rate was very disappointing. we finally managed to obtain a sample of 101 smes. this is a notable sample size considering the disclosure reservations of chinese entrepreneurs. the smes surveyed were represented by the following sectors: manufacturing (28.7 percent), commerce (23.8 percent), professional services (20.8 percent), retail (8.9 percent) and other sectors (17.6 percent). the sme criterion used in the study corresponds to the definition used by singapore's economic development board (edb): • 30 percent local ownership; • fixed assets investments (fai) of less than s$15 million; • employment size of less than 200 (less than 500 in manufacturing) quantitative data analyses were conducted with the help of spss based on descriptive analyses, using chi-square tests and correlation measures such as cramer's v-coefficient. theoretical framework in view of the contested issue of chinese enterprise management (gomez and hsiao 2001) with its various schools of thought such as the so-called 'culturalists' (redding 1993) or the 'revisionists' (yao 2002), it is perhaps pertinent to stress that both 'oversocialised' and 'undersocialized' perspectives of economic action (granovetter 1985) are important to understand business behaviour of ethnic chinese in asia (see menkhoff and gerke eds, 2002). in terms of theorizing chinese change management behaviour, this paper attempts to build a case for a contingent institutional perspective (clegg 1990:150-151; tong and yong 1997) which ties both cultural and market forces together. such an approach rests on the belief that both organizational forms and management behaviour reflect what tong and yong have termed 'institutional belief systems' and individual cognitive reference frameworks, which can enable or constrict action (child 1972, 1997). such an approach also considers the importance of history, which is often ignored by market and even cultural approaches. tong (1996) has compared the 'typical' centralized organizational characteristics of chinese enterprises with the concept of 'centripetal 56 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ authority'. often, the company founder is also the owner and manager. the decision process is centralized around the owner and a core group of family members. there is a low degree of delegation of authority or responsibility because information pertaining to the company is usually considered a trade secret and distributed solely among the close employees (usually the family members). the organization structure is informal. the management of chinese family enterprise has been described as in analogy to the traditional chinese family system – as paternalistic, personal and authoritative (tong and yong 1997; chong 1987:136). the employer has obligations vis-à-vis his or her employees in return for their respect and loyalty. for example, he/she will ensure the well-being of employees, which could include influencing aspects of their private lives. selective (paternalistic) remunerations in the form of certain privileges or monetary gifts, are used as management instruments, which may lead to vast internal differences between employees and negative group dynamics (herrmann-pillath 1997:116). chinese entrepreneurs typically believe that they are well informed. this overconfidence (herrmann-pillath 1997:117) may explain why decisions are often made intuitively and why systematic strategic planning is sometimes neglected. relationships (guanxi) are paramount for business initiations as the trustworthiness of a business partner is of the highest priority. oral agreements are seen as equivalent to contractual ones, particularly among the older generation. this partly explains the important role of middlemen and networks as well as (in)formal interest groups in the chinese business community, as this guarantees, more or less, a 'moral' code of business behaviour and the honouring of business deals (chan and ng 2000:291). another reason for the importance of trust, middlemen and networks, is the hostile (institutional) environment in asia in which chinese entrepreneurs traditionally had to do business (redding 1993; menkhoff 1993; tan 2000; menkhoff and gerke eds. 2002). _________________________________________________________________________ 57 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business table 1: comparison of 'traditional chinese' and 'modern western' organization and management 'traditional chinese' 'modern-western' ownership structure family-owned owner is usually director of company various forms of ownership professional management / directors leadership style authoritative participative planning intuitive strategic decision making centralized with minimum participation decentralized, participation and delegation information management information is considered as a secret / little information and knowledge sharing more systematic information sharing staff development/ training no proper staff development / concern that 'welltrained' employees might leave the company low budget for training training is seen as a form of investment into human capital relatively large budget for training and development change management not handled systematically as it is not seen as an area of great concern (muddling through) more awareness that change is imperative and that cm should be based on a systematic approach sources: lassere (1988); redding (1993); menkhoff (1993); tong (1996); hermann-pillath (1997); anderson consulting & economist intelligence unit (2000); menkhoff and gerke (2002) organizations and management characteristics table 1 illustrates potential differences between a typical 'traditional chinese organization and management style' compared to a more 'modern western corporate approach'. it can be argued that these characteristics have implications for the respective change management practices of chinese and english educated entrepreneurs. child's (1972, 1997) strategic choice theory represents a suitable analytical framework for the study for two reasons: (i) it complements the theory of chinese business as it puts an emphasis on the role of the organization's top decision-maker(s) in change processes and their network contacts; (ii) it highlights the cognitive framework of individual actors vis-à-vis the historical dimension and dichotomy of chinese and english educated chinese business people and their potentially different cm approaches. a key proposition of the strategic choice perspective is that top organizational decision-makers have a significant influence on the strategic direction and associated change / adaptation processes of their 58 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ organization. respective individual decision processes are influenced by several factors such as action determinism and the individual cognitive reference framework, access to relevant, distinct and complete information and internal political processes. while political processes within organizations are difficult to examine, it is relatively easier to examine the cognitive reference frameworks of corporate decision-makers that represent potential core antecedents (or barriers) of organizational change measures. according to child, the cognitive reference framework also influences the interpretation of information as well as competence in information processing (provided that information is accessible at all in adequate form). important cognitive variables include one's own ideology and demographic traits: … that decision-makers' cognitive evaluations of the situation would be shaped by their 'prior ideology', and this drew attention to the ways that class, occupational and national socialization may shape managerial beliefs about action choices (child 1997:51). the 'demography' of top management teams, such as the age and educational level of their members, has also been found to exert an influence on the extent to which companies initiate strategic change […]. age and education, although they locate people within social categories which can generate common identities and beliefs, are likely to affect action determinism not only though the medium of ideology but also through competence. thus, other things being equal, one would expect a young, highly educated person to be more aware of and / or to seek out a wider range of action alternatives than would an older, poorly educated person (child 1997:51). regarding the meaning of the information used in the decision making process, child said: action determinism can lead to an unwillingness to consider information that does not fit preconceived ideas, but the scarcity of information as a resource can also inhibit the range of choices considered. there are two issues to note here. the first concerns the problem of securing relevant information that is timely, in an analyzable form and not prohibitively expensive. the second concerns the problem of coping with information that is ambiguous, of questionable reliability and incomplete. decision making, especially of the non-routine kind considered within strategic choice analysis, is thus liable to be conducted with uncertainty (child 1997:52). both chinese business theory and strategic choice theory provide conceptual tools for addressing the primary concerns of the study as specified above (see 'research questions') and in form of the model below. _________________________________________________________________________ 59 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business research model as illustrated in the research model (see figure 1), the individual cognitive reference framework of managers was put into operation as follows. the variable chinese versus english educated is regarded as a sort of proxy for the overriding ideology in line with child's ideas while the variables age and educational level represent key demographic characteristics. in addition, two control variables were looked at in relation to the cm behaviour of the surveyed managers, namely information measured by examining whether research subjects participated in a cm training and the size of the organization in terms of number of employees. these 5 variables were also investigated with regard to their relationship to the cm behaviour of the surveyed managers. as far as the cm behaviour is concerned, the research distinguishes between two factors. a) initiation of change – with the independent variables introduction of change (yes/no) as well as the targets (or objects) of change measures: organizational structure, systems and work processes, technology, people (including task behaviours), organization culture, and organizational strategy. b) cm approach with the corresponding variables as well as scale of change measure (e.g. reactive vs. anticipative change), degree of planning the change measure before the start of implementation, resistance a. introduction of change b. change management application change management behaviour information participation in cm-training size of organization number of employees individual reference framework chinese versus english education age education level figure 1: research model: individual reference framework and control variables, information and size of organization as influencing factors of cm behaviour 60 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ towards change, urgency of change, change leadership style, evaluation of change benefits and ability to overcome resistance to change. the study tried to understand and evaluate the relationship between the variables chinese versus english educated and the actual change measures (in terms of number, scale of change and so on) adopted by the sme owner-managers as well as internal and external forces of change. hypotheses h1: there is a significant relationship between the variable chinese versus english educated and the initiation of organizational change in ethnic chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (smes) in singapore. the paper argues that english educated chinese sme owner-managers are more likely to initiate change measures than their chinese educated counterparts (h1a), that they do this with regard to a larger number of change targets (h1b), and that there is a clear difference between both groups with regard to the actual change measures (h1c) implemented. h2: chinese and english educated chinese sme owner-managers differ in terms of their change management approaches. the research expected significant differences between both groups with regard to people-oriented change initiatives. in particular, it was expected that chinese educated sme owner-managers hardly ever initiate changes concerning (enhanced) training and development measures, (improved) information flows as well as (greater) participation. furthermore, the research expected differences with regard to the assessment of the forces of change, resistance to change initiatives and success in overcoming these barriers. h3: chinese educated chinese sme owner-managers have a tendency to adhere to 'traditional chinese' management and organization techniques, while english educated managers tend to adopt 'modern-western' ones. it was expected that there is a positive association between being english educated and change management related variables such as _________________________________________________________________________ 61 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business the number of people related organizational changes, the scale of such changes in terms of (enhanced) training and development, (improved) information flows and (greater) participation, a larger degree of planning and control, a higher perceived urgency for change, a larger magnitude of change, and a more participatory leadership style. consequently, negative associations between being chinese educated and the variables above were expected. furthermore, it can be argued that being chinese educated is positively associated with reactive change, while english educated business people embrace change more proactively. research findings demographic characteristics of sme owner-managers the average chinese educated businessman surveyed was 47 years old, male and tended to have a secondary or tertiary education. english educated business people averaged 41 years old, male and tended to have a tertiary education (see table 2 as well as figures 2 and 3 in table 2: frequencies of selected variables frequencies of selected independent variables frequencies of control variables for chinese vs. english educated owner-managers chin. vs. engl.educated chinese educated: 40% english educated: 60% chin.-educated engl.-educated age ≤ 42 years: 49% > 42 years: 51% ≤ 42 years: 34% > 42 years: 66% ≤ 42 years: 60% > 42 years: 40% educational level primary/secondary: 30% junior college/uni: 70% pr/sec.: 40% jc/uni: 60% pr/sec: 20% jc/uni: 80% cm-training participated: 20% not participated: 80% yes: 20% no: 80% yes: 20% no: 80% size of enterprise ≤ 50 employees: 75% > 50 employees: 25% ≤50 employees: 70% >50 employees: 30% ≤50 employees: 80% >50 employees: 20% control variables only a fifth of the managers in both groups had participated in a cmrelated training measure. the majority of the surveyed businessmen had less than 50 employees (see table 2). 62 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ the appendix). as expected, the chinese educated businessmen in the sample were older and significantly lower educated than their english educated counterparts. typical characteristics of smes except for the year the company was founded, there were hardly any differences between both groups as far as company characteristics are concerned. the typical sme in the sample was a private limited company (pte. ltd.) in which 90 percent of the managers had stakes. external investors beyond the family circle were almost non-existent. the majority of the smes employed less than 50 employees. in almost two-thirds of all cases, the annual income in the reporting year was more than five (5) million singapore dollars. chinese educated business people had typically established their own enterprises in the mid 1970s. the main activity, which accounted for almost a third of the enterprises, was manufacturing, followed by trade or professional services. english educated chinese businessmen had typically established their firms in the early 1980s. main activities, comprising almost a third of the businesses, were professional service provision, followed by manufacturing and trade. figure 4: quantity of change measures initiated by chinese vs. english educated sme owner-managers 23 29 49 11 13 76 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 no change (23%) 1-3 objects changed (29%) 4-6 objects changed (48%) fr eq ue nc ie s chinese education english education frequency distribution for initiation of change the data indicate that english educated chinese sme owner-managers initiate change more often than their chinese educated counterparts. in total, 89 percent of the english educated sme owner-managers had initiated change measures compared to 77 percent of the chinese _________________________________________________________________________ 63 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business educated ones. however, significant differences emerged only in terms of the quantity of initiated change initiatives. 76 percent of the english educated sme owner-managers reported that they had implemented 4-6 change initiatives compared to 49 percent of their chinese educated counterparts (see figure 4). frequency distribution for cm-approach with regard to the type of change, 19 percent of the chinese educated chinese sme owner-managers and 10 percent of the english educated ones, stated that their change measures were of a reactive nature. the rest claimed that they had implemented proactive as well as reactive change management practices in anticipation of future prospects or risks. about 60 percent of the chinese educated businessmen had embarked on a detailed planning exercise before the start of the implementation, compared to 70 percent of the english educated respondents. 70 percent of the chinese educated smes had experienced little resistance, as compared to 63 percent of the english educated ones. both groups rated the urgency of change as high (70 percent). 60 percent of the surveyed chinese educated businessmen assessed the nature of the change measures implemented as incremental, as opposed to 40 percent who felt that it was radical in nature (the percentages were 80 percent and 20 percent for the english educated subjects respectively). surprisingly, 74 percent of the chinese educated sme owner-managers stated that they had adopted a participatory leadership style and 80 percent of them felt that they had been successful in their change efforts (compared to 65 percent and 70 percent respectively of the english educated business people). about 60 percent of the interviewed sme owner-managers in both groups felt that they had been successful in overcoming barriers to change. people related change measures and forces of change almost 90 percent of the surveyed entrepreneurs in both groups reported that they had introduced between 7 and 9 people related changes. the majority (70 percent in each group) initiated change measures such as more intense consultation with employees, stronger participation of employees in decision-making and wage increases. however, other potential change measures, such as the introduction of a stock option scheme and profit sharing, turned out to be irrelevant. there was one important difference between both groups: english educated chinese sme owner-manag64 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ ers felt very strongly that more consultation with employees is critical. as the survey data show they had implemented respective measures significantly more often (cramer's v=0.3; p=0.04) than their chinese educated counterparts. both groups assessed the internal forces of change impacting upon their businesses as important and critical, but showed pronounced differences with regard to the evaluation of the magnitude of external forces of change. statistically significant differences, however, could not been established. key results h1: partially verified english educated chinese sme owner-managers turned out to be more active initiators of change measures compared to their chinese educated counterparts (cramer's v=0.16; p=0.13) as they had implemented significantly more change measures (cramer's v=0.29; p=0.03). h2: partially verified people related change measures initiated by both groups turned out to be quite similar in terms of quantity and type. however, english educated managers perceived stronger consultation with employees as a critical change measure in contrast to chinese educated business people (cramer's v=0.3; p=0.04). while the surveyed managers viewed the impact of the internal forces of change on their businesses in a similar way, external forces of change were evaluated differently, especially with regard to the changing economic and trading conditions as well as distribution patterns. no important differences were found regarding the barriers to change and the degree of success in overcoming such hurdles. h3: not supported statistically relevant differences between both groups with regard to their respective cm approaches could not be established. the change management data indicate, that there is no empirical support for the argument that chinese educated chinese sme owner-managers adhere to more 'traditional chinese' management and organizational techniques, while english educated managers employ 'modern western' ones when it comes to people-related change, the scale of change, planning intensity or the magnitude of change. _________________________________________________________________________ 65 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business central results for demographic and control variables. a strong (anticipated) relationship between age and the initiation of change measures could not be established. regarding the cm approach, however, age mattered as older managers in particular had developed a detailed plan before the implementation of the change measure (cramer's v=0.35, p ≤ 0.01). they also rated the urgency of change higher than younger businessmen. in addition, the more experienced businessmen stated that they were more successful in overcoming barriers to change compared to their younger counterparts. there was also no significant correlation between the educational levels of the surveyed sme owner-managers and the initiation of change variable. with respect to the actual change measures implemented, however, the data analysis revealed that entrepreneurs with higher educational levels had more often initiated changes in the area of employees and their task performance than managers with lower educational levels. with regard to the cm approach, the survey showed that managers with lower educational levels had initiated a significantly higher extent of change measures in their organizations (cramer's v =0.29; p ≤ 0.01). the data also suggest that managers with higher educational levels exercise a more participatory style of change leadership. as far as the relationship between the size of the enterprise and the initiation of change is concerned, managers of large enterprises turned out to be more active initiators of change measures than leaders of smaller firms. moreover, there were differences concerning the actual change targets and initiatives implemented. in large enterprises, people-related change measures were more profound (cramer's v=0.3, p ≤ 0.01). no statistically relevant relationship could be established between any participation in cm training and the initiation of change. however, there were significant relationships as far as the actual change targets and measures are concerned. participants of cm training measures had initiated significantly more change measures with regard to organizational structures (cramer's v=0.22, p ≤ 0.05), systems and work processes (cramer's v=0.24, p ≤ 0.05) as well as employees and their task performance (cramer's v=0.27, p ≤ 0.025) than non-participants. a similar trend could be established with regard to technology related change measures. up-to-date and clear-cut information, i.e. formal knowledge of cm, turned out to be very crucial for the chosen cm approach. participation in cm training was related to almost all cm approach variables, except 66 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ for urgency of change and extent of change. participants of cm training measures had conducted significantly more change impact studies than non-participants (cramer's v=0.29, p ≤ 0.01). they were also significantly more successful in overcoming barriers to change (cramer's v=0.32, p ≤ 0.01). with regard to the nature and type of change initiatives, the study revealed that cm participants in particular had initiated proactive, anticipative change measures based on detailed plans and a more participatory change leadership style. contrary to non-participants, they also experienced lesser barriers to change and claimed to be more successful in overcoming barriers to change. summary and conclusions the assumption that english educated chinese sme owner-managers are more likely to initiate change measures than chinese educated (h1) was partially verified. the same is true for h2, i.e. the assumption that there are differences between both groups with regard to their cm approach. h3 in contrast, i.e. the assumption that potential differences between both groups with regard to their cm behaviour can be traced back to cultural specifics (e.g. in terms of their 'traditional chinese' and/or more 'modern-western' managerial orientation) could not be ascertained. in fact, the study found contradictory statistical trends and percentage differences for some variables, e.g. in the form of chinese educated chinese business leaders with (for us surprisingly) democratic change leadership styles. with regard to the research model, the results of the study can be summarized as follows. there is a relationship between the individual cognitive frame of reference of sme owner-managers and the initiation of change. the variable chinese versus english educated does play a central role, and more empirical research is required to examine its business implications. as far as the cm approach related variables are concerned, age and education turned out to be of significant importance (they mattered less in terms of the initiation of change). there were also close connections between the control variables and the initiation of change with company size playing a key role. information and participation in cm training measures were closely related to all cm-approach related variables. the difficulty still lies in how it is possible to explain the fact that h3 was not supported. one reason might be the biased sample structure with regard to age (one-sided age distribution; 70 percent of the partici_________________________________________________________________________ 67 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business pants fell into the age group of 35 45 years of age), the high education and language proficiency of the respondents (many of the younger entrepreneurs sampled are probably bilingual due to the implementation of bilingualism in singapore's education system a few years ago). another possibility is that time contingencies may have reduced possible differences between both groups and that there is a convergence of styles (triandis & gelfand 1998; hornidge 2004; quinn mills 2005; yeung 2006). due to the significant relationship between the variable participation in cm training and the cm behaviour of the survey participants, as well as their different assessments of the external forces of change, it can be argued that differentiating chinese and english educated smes is less relevant as a result of an overriding ideology which influences their individual frames of reference. however, it does matter when it comes to getting access to crucial information resources, depending on the dominant language used. in the context of change management and business, access to modern english business media, the integration in regional/global network relations and/or professional change management expertise from consultants are crucial. further research is necessary to substantiate this argument. with regard to this, future research would expand the analytical range of strategic choice theory in the area of cm by incorporating group-specific information gathering strategies and their effects. due to the lack of representative data and comparison opportunities with other research projects, the survey has the character of an explorative baseline study. a generalization of the results is not possible without further research. one tentative conclusion is that there are differences in the cm-behaviour of chinese and english educated chinese business people in singapore. in firms owned and managed by chinese educated business people, the type of change seems to be more reactive; the planning of change is at times rather unsystematic; the nature of change more incremental and the change leadership approach surprisingly participatory. despite this, all these differences are less pronounced than commonly expected. cultural specifics of the two groups play – at least statistically no visible role in their cm-behaviour. while the results contradict the perceptions of many local interviewees, businessmen and academics, they are in line with the arguments of contemporary chinese management researchers who have argued that culturally based explanations are insufficient in accounting for the business practices of ethnic chinese entrepreneurs (tong and yong 68 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ 1997; chan and ng 2000, 2001; menkhoff and gerke eds. 2002; yao 2002; yeung 2004, 2006). the data emphasize the dynamics and rapid modernization of smes in singapore. most important for a better understanding of sub-ethnic dimensions in the cm-behaviour of singapore's ethnic chinese smes, appears to be the role and meaning of information. the survey data suggest that both groups have different sources of retrieving information and that english educated entrepreneurs possess an advantage over chinese educated businessmen through their relatively easier access to international media and networks. therefore, future 'cm studies in the chinese business world' that intend to utilize child's strategic choice framework should expand the analytical scope beyond the cognitive reference framework of actors by examining structure and function of 'chinese' information and knowledge management approaches (menkhoff, evers and chay eds. 2005; menkhoff, pang and evers 2007). china's rise and its implications for the competitive edge of singapore's 'new chinese ground' (straits times 3/9/2005:s8) whether they are bilingual and passionate about chinese culture or 'fair-weather chinese' (i.e. english speakers who are rediscovering their roots, including speaking mandarin and often driven by economic motives) represent other interesting topics for future research. thomas menkhoff is practice associate professor of organizational behavior at lee kong chian school of business, singapore management university (thomasm@smu.edu.sg); ulrike badibanga (badibanga_ulrike@freenet.de); chay yue wah is associate professor of psychology at school of science and technology, sim university, singapore (ywchay@unisim.edu.sg) notes 1 this is a revised version of a paper presented by thomas menkhoff at the third international conference of institutes & libraries for chinese overseas studies, singapore, 2005 on 'maritime asia and the chinese overseas 1405-2005' held at the relc international hotel, singapore, 18-20 august 2005. the authors are indebted to two anonymous reviewers who helped to streamline the paper references badibanga, ulrike 2002. subethnische dimensionen im management des wirtschaftlichen wandels 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'change leadership in small enterprises: evidence from singapore (in german: die durchfuehrung von veraenderungsprozessen in kleinunternehmen: anhaltspunkte aus singapur).' zeitschrift für kmu und entrepreneurship 54(2): 116-140. menkhoff, thomas, pang eng fong and hans-dieter evers 2007. 'what makes chinese knowledge cultures tick? introduction to 'the power of knowing – studies of chinese business in asia.' in thomas menkhoff, pang eng fong and hans-dieter evers (eds.). the power of knowing: studies of chinese business in asia. special issue of the journal of asian business 2007 (forthcoming). mit=ministry of trade & industry 1998. committee on singapore's competitiveness. ministry of trade & industry, singapore. ng beoy kui 2002. 'the changing role of ethnic chinese smes in economic restructuring in singapore.' in leo surydinata (ed.). the chinese in singapore and malaysia: a dialogue between tradition and modernity. singapore: times books 2002: 255-275. pakir, ann 1991. 'bilingualism in singapore: tradition and change among the chinese.' journal of the institute for asian studies 18: 316-404. pfeffer, jeffrey 2005. 'changing mental models'. in m. losey, s. meisinger and d. ulrich (eds.). the future of hr: 50 thought leaders call for change. new york: john wiley 2005: 163-171. quinn mills 2005. 'asian and american leadership styles: how are they unique?' harvard business school working knowledge (june). redding, gordon 1993. the spirit of chinese capitalism. walter de gruiter & co., berlin. review of book written by lee, g.k.: three men, three models, the chinese divide as quoted by chen, k. avaliable from: <http://www.wspc.com.sg/chinese/bookshop/59_61d.html> accessed 10.08.2005. siddique, sharon 2004. 'an outsider looking in at chinese singaporeans'. in: leo suryadinata (ed.). ethnic relations and nation-building in sea. singapore 2004: 220-229. the straits times (15.4.1998) 'sme's can turn to 60 schemes'. the straits times (20.08.2001) 'new strategy for a new singapore', p. h4 and h2. the straits times (25.8.2001) 'in search of global champs in backyard', p. h12 and h13. the straits times (3.9.2005) 'who is afraid of chinese poetry?', p. s8. tan chee-beng ed. 2006. chinese transnational networks. richmond: routledgecurzon. tan hock 1996. 'state capitalism, multinational corporations and chinese entrepreneurship in singapore'. in gary hamilton (ed.), asian business networks. berlin: walter de gruiter 1996: 157-170. tan kheng-boon, eugene 2000. 'success amidst prejudice: guanxi networks in chinese business.' journal of asian business 16(1): 65-84. tan teck meng, tan wee liang and john e.young 2000. 'entrepreneurial infrastructure in singapore: developing a model and mapping participation'. journal of entrepreneurship 9(1): 1-25. _________________________________________________________________________ 71 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business tong chee kiong and yong pit kee 1997. 'personalism and paternalism in chinese business'. in hans herrmann wald (hrsg.), thomas menkhoff. konfuzianischer kapitalismus in ostund suedostasien. schriftenreihe der zentralstelle für auslandskunde (za), deutsche stiftung für internationale entwicklung (dse), vol. 25. dse-za, bad honnef 1997. tsui-auch, lai si 2003. 'learning strategies of small and medium-sized chinese family firms – a comparative study of two suppliers in singapore'. management learning 34(2): 201-220. tsui-auch, lai si and yong-joo lee 2003. 'the state matters: management models of singaporean chinese and korean business groups'. organization studies 24(4): 507-534. tsui-auch, lai si 2004. 'the professionally managed family-ruled enterprise: ethnic chinese business in singapore.' journal of management studies 41(4): 693-723. triandis, harry c. and michele j. gelfand 1998. 'converging measurement of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism.' journal of personality and social psychology 74(1): 118-128. ussu education project, singapore undergrad 1979. history of education in singapore. in education in singapore, singapore, pp. 7-10. ussu education project, singapore undergrad 1979. teaching values in the school. in: education in singapore, singapore, pp. 57-60. vasil, raj 1995. asianising singapore: the pap's management of ethnicity. singapore: heinemann asia. yao souchou 2002. confucian capitalism: discourse, practice and the myth of chinese enterprise. richmond: routledgecurzon. yeung, henry w.c. 2004. chinese capitalism in a global era towards hybrid capitalism. london: routledge. — 2006. 'change and continuity in southeast asian ethnic chinese business'. asia pacific journal of management 23(september): 229-254. 72 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 thomas menkhoff, ulrike badibanga & chayyue wah __________________________ appendix figure 2: age distribution of chinese educated and english educated sme owner-managers 29 51 20 66 42 40 9 4 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 25 years old 35 years old 45 years old 55 years old 65 years old pe rc en ta ge f re qu en cy chinese education english education figure 3: highest attained educational qualification of chinese and english educated business people 6 35 21 38 4 18 24 55 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 1 2 3 4 5 pe rc en ta ge f re qu en ci es chinese education english education no formal education university & above primary school secondary school /vocational institution junior college _________________________________________________________________________ 73 __________________________________________ managing change in asian business figure 5: significant relationships and trends between initiation of change and selected variables figure 6: significant relationships and trends between change management approach and selected variables individual reference framework chinese-/ english educated age education level a. initiation of change change yes/no number of change targets and measures choice of object and change agents organizational structures systems and work processes technology employees and task performance organizational culture strategy information participation in cm training size of enterprise number of employees ` 0.16* 0.29** 0.18* 0.2* 0.2* 0.19* h1c h1a h1b 0.17* 0.29* 0.22* 0.24** 0.2* 0.27** 0.31** 0.17* **cramer's v at a significance of p=0.05: a significant relationship of the variables is assumed * cramer's v at a significance of p=0.25: a trend is assumed due to the small sample size. chinese-/ english educated age education level b. change management approach nature of change detailed planning before implementation barriers to change information participation in cm training size of enterprise number of employees 0.22* 0.17* 0.2* urgency of change extent of change change leadership style degree of success ability to overcome barrier 0.22* 0.2* neg 0.19* 0.17* 0.35 ** 0.29** 0.29** 0.32** 0.17* individual reference framework ** cramer's v at a significance level of p=0.05: a significant relationship of the variables is assumed. * cramer's v at a significance level of p=0.25: a trens is assumed due to the small sample size. cjas_22.pdf, page 1-124 @ normalize_2 38_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism: debates over the character of the political economy james falkin abstract this is a study of those chinese political economists and political philosophers in the early 1950s who sought to distance china's transition to socialism from the soviet model for development. writing for the leading economic and philosophical journals, xin jianshe [new construction] and xuexi [study], these theorists attempted to apply mao's 1937 call for a sinified marxism to their contemporary reality by insisting upon a national strategy for socialist construction. their arguments provided a source for the later break with the soviet command economy. and it is the emphasis upon chinese solutions to national problems that forms a line that connects this past with china's present.* keywords: state capitalism, new economy policy, sinification, cooperativization, transition to socialism, soviet model. introduction this is a study of the arguments of a group of party theorists in the early 1950s who insisted upon the uniqueness of china's socialist transition. writing for the leading journals of marxist political economy, xin jianshe [new construction], and marxist political philosophy, xuexi [study], these economists and philosophers insisted upon a contrastive path to the soviet paradigm of development. though it has been generally assumed that during this period china was simply following the soviet model of a command economy (schurmann 1966: 220-308; teiwes 1993: 5-86), it was abandoned in the late 1950s. in fact, the search for a chinese road to economic construction may be traced back to the reassessments of party theorists at the beginning of the decade. in this search for a national definition of the political economy, these theorists sought to balance political and economic demands through a stress upon originality. it was in the early 1950s that a somewhat experimental approach to the economy, incorporating the market, was _________________________________________________________________________ 39 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism first advanced. in this regard there is a line of continuity between the past and china's present. china's movement to a market economy has been a product of a nationalist approach. as has been noted, it has been neither founded nor guided by any well-established theory. china's movement from a planned to a market economy has been as experimental as it has been gradual and particularistic (lin et al. 1996). at the same time these economic reforms have continued to be defined (however loosely) within the more general vocabulary and framework of a transition to socialism. though evidence suggests otherwise, there still is formal political adherence to a goal of a more advanced form of socialism. there is then an apparent tension between the exigencies of political legitimacy and the requisites of economic construction. since the justification of communist rule may not be found in a capitalist economy, economic reforms have to be seen, officially at least, as part of something else: elements of a movement towards socialism. it is to be expected that china's contemporary approach would be unique both as regards pace and direction. the search for 'real market socialism' suggests an originality to approach (brus and laski 1989). yet within this distinctive strategy for growth there is an aspect of ideological continuity: there is a dialectic of continuity within discontinuity. the early 1950s were also characterized by an attempt to define a political and economic programme of national design. this was the time when theorists first sought to create a consensus as to a national road within the strictures of ideology. though it is clear that there has been a qualitative break in china with its economic past, it is important to look back at the arguments of party theorists in the early 1950s. to do so is to highlight a line of constancy where a nationalist perspective has always had to balance economic and political reality with the demands of the formal expression of purpose. 'state capitalism': the tenet of separation in 1953 the chinese communist party declared a general line on the transition to socialism (mao 1977: 102). with an emphasis on first, the development of heavy industry at the expense of light industry and agriculture; second, on speed; and third a reliance on imported machinery, equipment and technical assistance from the soviet union, it seemed that china was following a soviet path for economic development. this was the model of the command economy that had evolved from the 40_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ particular circumstances of the soviet union in the late 1920s to become a general prescriptive pattern for growth (brus and laski 1989).1 though nicholas lardy (1987: 160) asserts that the adoption of this model was surprisingly uncontroversial for the ccp, this was not the case. there was a group of political economists who were intent upon emphasizing the need for a gradual and specific approach to china's transition. these political economists drew a distinction between their contemporary moment and that of the soviet union during the early days of lenin's new economic policy (nep) in 1921. their point of contrast was not with the origins of the command economy, rather they went back much earlier to the state capitalist policies of lenin in order to highlight the particular character of china's underdevelopment. as shen zhiyuan, one of the three editors of new construction wrote: the fundamental nature of our country's political power and that of the soviet union is identical. however our country's historical conditions and those of the soviet union are not the same. thus the form and function of state capitalism in our transition period and that which occurred in the soviet union are also different. (shen 1953: 1) it is important first to understand the idea of state capitalism in the nep. the nep was essentially an agricultural programme designed to stimulate the supply of basic foodstuffs and raw materials through internal trade. state regulation was to be relaxed as requisition was replaced by a tax-in-kind. trade in general was to be conducted through the 'formation of an internal market' and the development of monetary exchange. heavy industry was to be de-emphasized in favour of small industry, which would either be private or run as a cooperative. state enterprises were thus to compete with private traders and cooperatives through the market. as lenin wrote in 1921: now the struggle between communist and private management is transferred to the economic plane, to the market, where nationalized industry, concentrated in the hands of the workers' state, must, by applying itself to the conditions of the market and to the methods of competition in it, win for itself decisive mastery. (quoted in carr 1950: 334) this is what lenin referred to as state capitalism: market capitalism under the power of the soviet state. freedom and rights or cooperatives in present conditions in russia mean freedom and rights for capitalism … but 'cooperative capitalism', as distinct from private commercial capitalism is under soviet power a species of state capitalism, and as such is beneficial and useful to us at present. (ibid.: 336) _________________________________________________________________________ 41 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism the idea of state capitalism was critically important to china's political economists. they saw it as a starting point and as a portal through which they could develop a more extensive discussion concerning the state of the economy. as a general concept signifying the process of transforming capitalism into socialism, it could be traced back both to the common programme and to the draft constitution. indeed mao had characterized the economy in 1953 as state capitalist, and had talked of 'various' forms of state capitalism (mao 1977). but it was unclear as to what he meant by all this, and it seemed at best simply a statement of fleeting significance. this certainly was not a description of an economic policy committed to rapid industrialization. still, cloudy as it seemed to be, state capitalism was a legitimate political notion open to interpretation. and as those who wrote for new construction were intent upon limiting the pace of economic reform, they read into this phrase a statement of complexity, a recognition of a lengthy process. this was brought about through contrast, through the particularization of the universal. state capitalism became raised to the level of an abstract noun, a historic stage that all transitions were to pass through in a specifically determined manner. in this regard, uniqueness was made manifest through the particular function of state capitalism within each economy. shen, for example, argued that whereas state capitalism was an external relationship in the soviet union, in china the relationship was internal: the state participated directly in the management of private enterprises: the principal form of state capitalism that the soviet union adopted at that time [1921] was to follow a system of leasing and hiring. but today the principal form that our country adopts is one of public and private partnership. we do not lease or rent. (shen 1953: 1) at the same time, qian jiazhu stressed that while state capitalism in the soviet union acted as the mediation between small production and socialism, in china it served as the link between capitalism and socialism: can we compare our economy today [1954] with that of the soviet union in 1921? without a doubt we consider we cannot. although we are also a country where small production is supreme, we already have today a strong state economy and a rapidly developing cooperative economy. and from our state industrial enterprises and cooperative enterprises we have already established a link with the agricultural economy. therefore our state capitalism is a transition from capitalist industry towards socialism, and is not a transition from small production towards socialism. (qian 1954a: 38) 42_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ though china's economy might be more advanced than that of the nep of 1921, it was still far too underdeveloped to emulate the soviet command economy. 'at present,' qian wrote, 'our economy is relatively backward' (qian 1954b: 18). and thus both qian and shen fixed upon the concept of state capitalism, and interpreted it as a somewhat epochal process consisting of three lengthy stages. with respect to industry and capital accumulation, china was to move gradually from a situation where private capitalists were beginning to depend upon the state to that of an external alliance between the state and private capital, until that moment when the state would directly control all industry. concomitant with the development of the productive forces, there would be an evolution in the thinking guiding production. ideological consciousness would grow with the improvements in technology. it should be pointed out that going through the practice of state capitalism to transform private industry involves the transformation of private industry and the transformation of the private industrialist. these two aspects are unified and cannot be separated. the transformation of industry means going through each kind of state capitalism to make industry prosper, so that it is able to suit the needs of the national economy. to make, that is, industrial productive relations correspond to the developing requirements of the productive forces. the transformation of the individual occurs by going through state capitalism under the direct leadership of the socialist economic sector, to teach and transform the private industrialists, to make them become patriotic industrialists. (qian 1954c: 16) this sanguine approach to ideological reformation was shaped by a distinct view of the position of national capital in china. according to qian, a violent struggle against this counter-revolutionary class was not necessary because these capitalists did not dream of restoration. nurtured under the yoke of semi-feudalism and semi-colonialism, this specifically chinese class was weak, and yet progressive in that it was willing to aid national construction. this was why they could be peacefully transformed (qian 1954b: 16). for qian and shen this point was critical because it underscored the uniqueness of china within the generality of the socialist experience. they argued that china might avoid the kind of forced liquidation of capital that had occurred in the soviet union. the historical responsibility for the progressive transformation of state capitalism is the special responsibility of our socialist revolution. it did not previously exist in the soviet union, and it does not exist in today's eastern european democracies. (qian 1954a: 38) _________________________________________________________________________ 43 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism the key here was the idea that difference was the necessary expression of the general prescriptions of marxism. the universal truth that all socialist states needed to go through a transition to socialism only had meaning as the concrete, specific experience of each state. qian was not trying to celebrate the achievements of china's economy in comparison to that of the soviet union at a similar stage of development; rather he was emphasizing the particularity of historical experience. [it] severs the historical condition to quote a section from lenin's 'on the grain tax' to try and explain the function of state capitalism in our transition period. without question his analysis of the why and wherefore of small production is completely unsuited for our contemporary practice. (ibid.: 39) this stress on specificity was itself the reassertion of the cardinal principle of maoist ideology: the sinification of marxism. mao's claim to power had been based upon the axiom that marxism required a national form. as he said in 1938, at the 6th plenum of the central committee: what we call concrete marxism is marxism that has taken on a national form, that is marxism applied to the concrete struggle in the concrete conditions prevailing in china, and not marxism used abstractly … consequently, the sinification of marxism—that is to say, making certain that in all of its manifestations it is imbued with chinese characteristics, using it according to chinese particularities—becomes a problem that must be understood and solved by the whole party without delay. (schram 1989: 70) the point here is that though shen and qian saw china's economy as far too backward to sustain a rapid drive for industrialization, and though they disagreed with the line of the 1st five-year plan, their argument was, in its assertion of the need for an economic policy of national design, a restatement of the principle of sinification. thus, while the ccp was formally accepting a foreign model for development, political economists, following from the tenets of maoist ideology, were emphasizing that the meaning of marxism was dependent upon a particular realization. as shen wrote: within our life, within our practical struggle, according to this time here and now, in these concrete situations and conditions we adapt all workable methods. this is a matter for china's people themselves. the responsibility of creative marxism is to utilize the ideological method of marxism, based on the spirit and essence of marxism, and unite it with china's concrete situation. (shen 1953: 4) this stress upon the particular seemingly implied a complete freedom to marxist interpretation. the idea that meaning was dependent upon a specific realization clearly encouraged notions of subjectivity. and 44_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ it was precisely to prevent voluntarism, and to see china's specificity in terms of economic gradualism that shen began to re-emphasize the precepts of the objective laws of marxism. he used stalin's 'law of correspondence' for socialist transitions (namely that the relations of production must always correspond to the level of the productive forces), to argue that china's economy needed to be overhauled in a steady and particular fashion. what he said was that the requirements of this law justified both a primary emphasis upon the development of the productive forces, and a prior transformation of these productive forces to make all this possible. in other words, he used this law to legitimate whatever he wanted. he began by stating that the general line for the transition was based upon, 'the objective law and affirmation that the relations of production must be in conformity with the character of the productive forces' (shen 1954: 11). this meant that, 'to realize the thorough transformation of the economic form, or to realize completely the transformation of the productive relations of each economic sector, it is necessary to strive to transform the technical conditions' (ibid.: 13).2 at the same time he wrote: within our present small agricultural economy there is little possibility of being able to improve the situation of technology. the key determinant to such an improvement in agricultural technology lies in transforming the productive relations of the small agricultural economy; transforming the small agricultural system. (ibid.: 18) shen, who had written on hegel in the 1930s in shanghai, knew that this argument was illogical. the relations of production may not precede the very level of the productive forces that they are supposed to suit. but what shen was searching for in all of this was an injunction against subjectivism. 'correspondence' had to signify restraint. 'in the end,' he said, the line demands that under the prerequisite of the possible and the necessary there be a gradual process of going through each kind of state capitalism to realize gradually the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commercial enterprises. this does not require, for example, the use of a paper law to nationalize immediately. (ibid.: 18) shen's circular argument showed the difficulty of attempting to adapt the tenets of classical marxism to what was, in these terms, an unanticipated situation. whatever the spin of stalin's law, it could not replace the axioms of nineteenth-century marxism, with its stress upon the primacy of the productive forces. yet in non-capitalist formations such as china in the 1950s, a stress on the determinacy of the productive forces _________________________________________________________________________ 45 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism undercut the party line that the transition to socialism would be guided by already existing socialist relations. to stress the backward level of the productive forces seemingly mocked the idea of a correspondence between base and superstructure. how could socialist relations suit an underdeveloped economic base? and yet to give meaning to the overall political line while offering recommendations as to course required that statements of substantive intent manoeuvre through a field of structural imperatives. the singular approach of the translator of marx's capital shen and qian tried to manipulate the notion of objective law in order to put a brake on excess. the fear was that of a sudden chiliastic movement to try and transform the economic reality, a leap to create a marxist rectification of names where socialist relations truly suited a newly realized socialist base. their differences over policy, whether immediate in relation to the soviet model for industrialization, or immanent in relation to the swing of voluntarism, were nevertheless expressed through the categorical framework of sinification. in this regard, it was to be expected that the injunction to adapt marxism to china would lead to a more creative attempt than that of trying to balance objective law with economic reality. instead moving within the same categorical framework, the next step would be to try and redefine the discourse of political economy in terms of novel constructs appropriate to its new moment. the idea would be to relocate the concepts and categories of political economy within new laws and contradictions. ironically, or perhaps logically, it was the translator of capital, wang xuewen, a member of the central committee and an editor of new construction, who attempted to redefine the discourse of china's marxist political economy. the economy, wang said, comprises five very loosely connected sectors. these included the socialist system of the state-owned economy, the semi-socialist system, the capitalist system of private ownership, the individual system of ownership, and state capitalism. in fact, they were basically self-sufficient entities governed by their own distinctive laws. 'the cooperative economy has its own principal laws, [and] the state-run economy has its own principal laws' (wang 1954a: 35). there was no overall definition of the economy. indeed he chastized those who 'see a link between each kind of sector in the transition period, but who do 46_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ not recognize the particularity and the certain kind of independence of each kind of economy' (ibid.: 35). the question was not one of emphasis, of stressing the parts rather than the whole. on the contrary, wang was arguing that the nature of these sectors prevented a workable concept of unity. this meant that there could not be a fundamental economic law that could characterize this period. this was not an epoch or an era such as feudalism, capitalism or socialism. this was instead a moment distinguished by complexity, with a concomitant series of principal laws. and thus the state-run economy could not define the method or function of distribution and exchange in these other economies. 'there are those comrades,' wang wrote, 'who do not recognize that the cooperative economy and the individual economy have their own economic laws' (ibid.: 35). because each economy has its own different conditions, the guiding function of the state-run economy receives, in one respect, the limitations and strengths of its [own] economic situation. at the same time, it also receives the limitations of other economic conditions. although the state-run economy has as its basis the guiding economic laws of socialism, it certainly is not as it is in socialism where it constitutes the fundamental law determining the whole society. (ibid.) wang's point was to try and redirect analysis towards what was truly specific abut this economy. this is why the denial of a fundamental law was so important, because it prevented the reincorporation of diversity within the more traditional nomenclature of capitalism and socialism. instead, it focused concepts and categories upon china's present. to wang, theorists who looked to the soviet past to find a contemporary meaning for china failed to grasp the reality of china's uniqueness. they do not understand that lenin's analysis arose from concrete economic conditions. they do not understand that it indicated the transition to socialism. our situation in the transition period is very complicated, and cannot be seen simply as a transition from capitalism to socialism, from these two kinds of constructs, each with its own [economic] tendency. it certainly does not summarize the five kinds of economic forms of our present. (ibid.: 36)3 where shen and qian had compared china favourably in relation to the nep, wang saw china as lagging behind. and critically, this led him to argue that the party had misunderstood the entire character of the individual economy. it was not, he said, simply a small producing sector; it also comprised a large self-sustaining sector. the same terms were being incorrectly applied to what were in fact two distinct groups: one that produced for the market and one that tried merely to survive. _________________________________________________________________________ 47 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism 'within our small peasant economy there are two sectors whose characters are different and cannot be mixed … it may not be said that the commodity producing sector has killed the naturally producing sector' (ibid.: 37). this was a unique argument for a party theorist. to the degree that the party admitted that there was an individual economy, it was seen as a commodity-producing sector. mao had noted that there were forms of communal ownership in china, but they were in the national minority areas (mao 1977: 144). to suggest otherwise, to follow wang's thesis that the individual economy was a complex economy in itself, independent of any overriding determination, undercut the idea of a rapid transition to socialism. the productive forces would have to be considered as far too backward to admit to anything other than a very gradual process of transition. most importantly, and of immediate concern, to confuse a commodity-producing economy with a self-subsistent individual economy meant that the state would be purchasing grain from those who needed it to survive. the refusal to separate the subsistence and marketing sectors would mean that in the compulsory purchase of grain, the state would unknowingly extract that which many peasants needed simply to exist. if one mistakenly believes that the small peasant economy is equivalent to small commodity producers, it will lead to the effect that there will be a purchase of residuary food stuffs, and a compulsory purchase of the daily intake of the peasant will be inevitable. (wang 1954a: 37) he was right. within a year there was a grain supply crisis caused by the system of unified purchase (lardy 1987: 162).4 after some time, the party admitted that there were cases where peasants did not have sufficient food. this was blamed on a variety of factors: cadre inefficiency, bureaucratism, and hoarding by rich and middle peasants (bernstein 1969: 365-99). clearly, this was also caused by the lack of an objective and detailed understanding of the countryside. ultimately, it was far easier, and certainly politically more palatable, to see the small producing economy as coherent, whole and manageable, to see it as an element within the capitalist economy to be utilized, than to understand it as a primitive economic form subject to its own laws. wang's argument thus redefined the concept of transition in chinese marxism. the process now involved the transformation of a small producing sector and a subsistence-level economy. our country is not simply in a transition towards socialism but is still in transition from an individual economy towards socialism. within our state economy, the individual economy occupies the moving force, and it is not 48_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ simply a commodity producing sector. there are still many kinds of selfsufficient sectors. (wang 1954a: 36) in turn, this idea of the economy as a composite series of economies, each characterized by their own principal laws, seemed to suggest a need for new analytic constructs. the particularity of china's underdevelopment appeared to demand a more novel approach to marxist political economy. this was after all, as was noted, mao's call for a sinified marxism. the problem for wang, as it was for shen and qian, was that a stress on specificity not only risked endorsing voluntarism, it also seemingly detached china's road from the more general suppositions of a transition to socialism. what wang needed therefore was an economic sector that he could identify as either semi-socialist or socialist. this would permit him to emphasize a gradualistic process whereby he could locate china's unique situation within the more universal framework of marxist economic precepts. this wang found in the cooperative movement, which he characterized as semi-socialist. this allowed a subsistencelevel economy to be seen positively, to have a place within the marxist continuum. though specifically chinese, the economy shared a more generally planned future as a socialist economy. this act of conceptual balance was brought about through contrast. the transitional period in the soviet union had a primitive form of a small commodity agricultural economy. in our country this is the individual economy (it contains the natural economic sector and the small commodity sector). in the beginning of the soviet union's transition period, the cooperative economy was a state capitalist economy, afterwards it was a socialist economy. our cooperative economy certainly is not a capitalist cooperative economy, and is not a state capitalist economy, but is a semisocialist and socialist cooperative economy. (wang 1954b: 10) wang's concern was not with the extent of socialism within the cooperative movement. his point was that a new moment required new ideas. and this gave rise to and became the expression of more contemporary norms. marxist-leninist political economy is without a study of semi-socialist cooperative economies. it is of course without a study of the laws of semisocialist cooperative economies. china's revolutionary practice created the semi-socialist cooperative economy. this kind of economy possesses its own economic conditions, naturally it produces its own laws. (wang 1954a: 36) to attempt to realize the consequences of particularism within original concepts threatened the discursive order. it stated that the intellec_________________________________________________________________________ 49 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism tual moorings of the grid needed to be rethought. and to the degree that this could ever occur, this certainly was a prerogative of the elite. moreover, the specific emphasis upon the complex status of the individual economy clearly undermined state intention, as this demanded a separate understanding of the transition to socialism. the irony was that this was precisely the kind of creative adaptation of marxism that sinification presupposed. given that wang was both a member of the central committee and the translator of capital, his argument demanded a response. and in a long and considered article, 'several problems concerning the essence and laws of our country's transitional period', two political economists, du ruji and yu shudong, restated a more orthodox position by arguing that wang had misunderstood the character of the economy (du and yu 1954: 19). du and yu began with the critical assertion that there was only one law governing the economy. laws, they said, exist within a hierarchy, unified and defined by that which controls. one rules, the rest are ruled. 'and the ruling economy influences the other economies in such a way that they lose their independent developing character' (ibid.: 20). in the transition period, led by a unified communist party, the ruling sector was the socialist economy. it was thus to be seen as that which sharpened the antagonism between capitalism and socialism. indeed, the very meaning of the transition was made manifest in the imposition of state will upon the private sectors. as long as it was accepted that the socialist economy, or socialist economies, determined the complexity of unity, then clearly the contradiction with capitalism was the key to this period. conversely, wang's approach, his emphasis upon discrete laws and sectors, understated this antimony in favour of concomitant tensions. and it was this that du and yu found intolerable. 'if it is taken that in the transition period, each economic sector has 'its own principal laws', then by considering all these laws as equal, the struggle between fully developing socialism and dying capitalism is destroyed' (ibid.: 20). wang had made a serious mistake: 'our transition period's particular contradiction is between socialism and capitalism' (ibid.). this brought everything back to more familiar ground. it also restored the more conventional insights of lenin and stalin. and according to du and yu, it was precisely the leninist heritage that wang had ignored. he 'exaggerates the distinction between china and the soviet union, and thereby destroys the universal significance of lenin's proclamations 50_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ concerning the transition period' (ibid.). although china's particular form of underdevelopment required the stage of 'new democracy', in terms of a macro view, especially with regard to commodity production in the countryside, china's situation was comparable to that of the soviet union in the late 1920s when rapid industrialization began. the difference between the commodity production of our small agricultural economy and that of the soviet union at that time [1928] is not that great; thus, from the aspect of the individual economy the difference between the soviet union and us is one of degrees. it is not a qualitative difference. (ibid.) everything depended upon how the individual economy was to be seen. wang understood it as a separate economic sector with its own laws and character, while the more traditional view was that though a natural self-sustaining agricultural sector did exist as 'unsurmounted remains', they were too small to matter. previously peasants treated produce as ground rent payable to the landlord, now this same produce became a commodity to be sold. theoretically, the mistake was to see this category in absolute terms. 'it is not necessary to have a 100 percent commodity production to call an economy a small commodity economy' (ibid.: 21). in turn, each position carried with it a severe consequence. for wang, to ignore the obvious and instead to rely on shibboleths meant agricultural policies resulting in starvation: a grain crisis. to du and yu, not to impose state will upon a commodity-producing economy engendered capitalism. for them this was the all-embracing conflict that characterized the whole transition process. we must guide the individual peasant economy towards socialism, and not allow its spontaneous development towards the road of capitalism. and it is because the individual economy is a small producing economy that in the transition period we utilize the circulation of commodities to promote trade between the state and cooperative societies, promote the circulation between town and country, and strengthen the alliance between workers and farmers. (ibid.: 22) wang's attempt to recast the theoretical discourse so that it might be more appropriate to its political reality opened up the possibility for a different commitment to the idea of socialism. this represented both an achievement and a threat. for the effect of grounding the principle of specificity in a federated economic base was to demand the postponement of all substantive discussion regarding the transition as a somewhat immediate and recognizable goal. but this denied the very certainty which was not only an assumed right of state, but which had already _________________________________________________________________________ 51 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism been summarized and classified in the constitution. the state of the individual peasant economy had already been officially defined. wang's argument was unique and prescient. at the same time he also shared with his colleagues on new construction an approach that stressed the particularity of china's experience. in this regard, their ideas represented a direct line to mao's speech at the 6th plenum in 1937. for the first time since the seizure of power there was now substantive theoretical support for the belief that china's transition was fundamentally a matter for the chinese people themselves. the political philosophers weigh in political economists offered critical interpretations of the economic base. their concern was less with the political and ideological superstructure than with the complexity of economic definition. but in order to develop their points, these economists had to adopt the basic discursive framework of chinese marxist political theory. this was the categorical ground that shaped the attempts at conceptual breakthrough of those who wrote for the journal new construction. in this regard, wang's argument represented a decisive effort at shifting that ground at a categorical level. whatever the success or failure in this regard, these economists had contributed to moving the argument back to the specificity of china. in this they were not alone. political philosophers were also arguing over the character of this political economy and over the suitability of soviet models. and corresponding to discussions of the base, these ideological controversies were expressed through a conceptual framework that emphasized the particularity of chinese marxism. to make this clearer, it is important to look at the major dispute among political philosophers as to the nature of this transitional political economy. the question of the state of this political economy was the subject of a bitter argument which took place in the marxist-leninist institute over two years, 1953-55, between two philosophers, ai siqi and yang xianzhen. the two basic paradigms that they offered represented two opposing lines as to where china was, and how it could and should develop socialism. yang xianzhen saw the base as a unity, as a whole constructed from the sum of its productive relations. 'the theory of the sum total of the relations of production is that there are all kinds of productive relations, and these co-exist at the same time' (yang 1981a: 11). in turn, each pro52_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ ductive relation was composed of three aspects: the form of ownership over the means of production; the method of exchange; and distribution. but in themselves these did not constitute a separate or quasi-independent system. irrespective of difference or complexity, each productive sector was simply an element within the general order. within a society where the exploiters have not yet vanished, the 'base' itself just has the character of synthesis. to deny the character of synthesis to the transitional period is without basis, because marx was very clear that the base was the social economic form. and the social economic form is the sum total of the productive relations. and is not the sum total synthesis. (yang 1981b: 57) if marx is the arbiter here, the answer is no. marx was writing from the stance of capitalism, analysing its dialectical underpinnings. he made it clear that in its beginning phase capitalism contained pre-capitalist economic formations. but as there had been a qualitative change in the dominant mode of production, these 'unsurmounted remains' only survived in a transfigured way. bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historic organization of production. the categories which express its relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allows insights into the structure and relations of production of all the vanished social formations out of whose ruins and elements it built itself up, and whose partly still unconquered remnants are carried along within … [s]ince bourgeois society is itself only a contradictory form of development, relations derived from earlier forms will often be found within it only in an entirely stunted form, or even travestied. for example, communal property. (marx 1973: 105-6) in this regard, marx's emphasis on the dynamic of continuity and discontinuity, his promised dictum of ineluctable economic change and conflict, seemingly had little in common with yang's view of a static, integrated economy of equal parts. as china's economy had been officially characterized in terms of five productive relations, it was these forms that yang understood to be the base. 'in the end the social economic formation of our transitional economy is constituted from five kinds of economic sectors' (yang 1981b: 42). and quoting from the 7th plenum of the 7th party congress, he listed them as: 1. the socialist system of the state-owned economy 2. the cooperative or semi-socialist system of ownership 3. the capitalist system of private ownership 4. the system of individual ownership 5. state capitalism. _________________________________________________________________________ 53 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism this was where he saw china to be at present. concerning the achievement of socialism, he thought that the key lay with the extraordinary potential of the peasantry, particularly in their ability to forge a creative alliance with state industry. indeed he went so far as to see this sector, which he also referred to as the individual economy, as the basis for socialist construction: 'in the practice of the transitional period, small agriculture must be the foundation of the socialist state' (ibid.: 48). and in this argument he found support from lenin and stalin: lenin and stalin were very clear on this point. in the transitional period, before collectivization, to build a socialist economic basis meant uniting agriculture and industry into one integrated economy, subordinating agriculture to the leadership of socialist industry or using the products of large-scale industry to exchange for the products of the peasants. this agriculture referred to is individual agriculture and the peasants referred to naturally are individual peasants, not a collectivized peasantry. (ibid.: 47) in light of what followed in the soviet union, this celebration of the pre-collectivized peasantry is somewhat odd. and of course, irrespective of historical circumstance, it is strange to find a marxist panegyrize the peasantry. but it is perhaps less mystifying when it is made clear that for yang, existence implied acceptance. the real was simply nothing more than the rational expression of immediately recognizable truth. 'that is to say, we must honestly recognize the world as it is, by its true colours: is thus is, is not thus is not, the earth just is the earth, to have just is to have, and to be without just is to be without' (yang 1955a: 147). thus the peasantry, the largest sector in the economy ('quite clearly, straight through till today, within our agriculture, individual agriculture still occupies the tendential force') had to be the foundation of what he saw as an integrated economy (yang 1981b: 47). the predominant part of the whole had to be understood as the basis of that whole. to suggest otherwise, moving towards an emphasis upon antagonism and conflict, would have undermined his principle of synthesis. but here the philosophical underpinnings of this idea are less important than the fact that he felt that this argument had historical precedent. yang believed that china's present was actually contemporaneous with the early stages of the nep. and therefore he relied on lenin's on co-operation, which set the policy for the socialist transformation of agriculture in 1921, to justify the concept of the composite base. in on co-operation lenin argued that since the working class controlled the means of production and monopolized political power, the basis of agricultural production should be peasant cooperatives. these voluntary institutions, which he had previously labelled as 'petty-bourgeois', but 54_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ had now been raised to a 'third type of commercial enterprise', were to be seen as the foundation of socialism. the power of the state over all large-scale means of production; political power in the hands of the proletariat, the alliance of this proletariat with the many millions of small and very small peasants, the assured proletarian leadership of peasantry, etc.—is this not all that is necessary to build a completely socialist society out of cooperatives; out of cooperatives alone which we formerly ridiculed as huckstering …? it is still not the building of socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for it. (lenin 1975: 708) it is not clear how serious lenin was about this. as moshe lewin notes, lenin had a tendency to connect the idea of socialism to any pressing task in order to motivate the populace (lewin 1975: 95). when electrification was the target, for example, socialism was defined as 'soviet power plus electrification'. and thus it is possible to see the identification of socialism with cooperatives as an exaggerated attempt to mobilize the peasantry. yang nevertheless took lenin's words as a statement of principle for the transitional strategy: lenin's theory of co-operativization was the guiding principle for the movement of the labouring peasants towards socialism. it was the most important ideological weapon of the party and the government in the work of advancing the socialist transformation of the small peasant economy. it was the basis of the party's policy towards the peasants. (yang 1955b: 2) most importantly, yang argued that underlying lenin's conceptualization was the affirmed tenet of synthesis, the belief in the seemingly inviolate link between the sectors. it is this that allowed for a somewhat blithe attitude towards the non-socialist sectors. otherwise, in the sense of real class struggle, they would have to be seen as potentially counter-revolutionary, demanding suppression through, for example, collectivization. 'lenin recognized that within the enterprise of socialist construction, the principle of socialist transformation is that the organizational parts cannot be split' (ibid.: 2). since yang also assumed that state power in china was secure, it seemed clear that china's peasantry should serve as the rallying point for the transition. this now non-threatening class could be trusted to support all state efforts. in addition, what yang saw as lenin's tolerance of self-interest among the peasantry seemingly endorsed a somewhat static view of them. cooperatives offered a gradual controlled process, in which personal gain could be combined with the overall good of the collective. their value was that they were not an imperative for quick change. _________________________________________________________________________ 55 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism lenin considered that in the transition to socialism, all cooperative systems, especially the agricultural system were the easiest form for the individual peasant to receive and understand … it was the best form to unite private interest with that of the whole. (ibid.) this theme of social assembly, where state control mitigates conflict, was in turn extended by yang to the private and semi-capitalist sector. as with peasant cooperatives, so the policy towards industry was to be a mixed form, a state capitalism, where ultimately profit and activity would be determined by the state. 'our present policy towards the capitalist industry of "utilize, restrict and transform" … is the concrete utilization in china of the policy which lenin pointed out concerning state capitalism' (ibid.). in arguing that rural policy should be seen in terms of the requirements of the peasantry, in particular the individual peasant, and that industry should adopt a state capitalist form, yang felt that he had captured the essence of lenin's transitional programme. in this regard, with his stress on the nep and state capitalism, he was clearly echoing the arguments of those who were writing for new construction. at the same time, in general yang could also be seen as following the line of bukharin. though yang did not talk of 'ultimately riding into socialism on the backs of the rich peasantry', and though he did not discuss the principle of equilibrium, the downgrading of class struggle, the idea of a 'third form' of production, placed yang firmly within a bukharinist approach. and in this, in historically parallel fashion, yang shared an interpretation that separates lenin from the later history of collectivization (cohen 1975, chapters 4-9). this is significant because it represents a change that had occurred in chinese political discourse. the former understanding of soviet history as a complete model was now superseded by a view that saw soviet history discretely, as relatively independent moments offering different sources for recommendation. yang could not possibly have been unaware of the stalinist collectivization campaign, and yet he chose simply to ignore it. and that he did so makes clear the lifting of any sense of prohibition to do otherwise. the logic that salvages lenin by divorcing him from later practice is here founded upon an analysis that defines all of the soviet past as basically data to be separated out for conceptual support. it is a reason that has confidently moved beyond one particular form of categorical imperative. though yang's analysis was clearly out of the mainstream in respect to soviet orthodoxy, this created no problem for him in china. the discursive territory had shifted. in maoist terms, the arrow of marxism was now falling on chinese ground. 56_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ this use of soviet history as citation for more novel interpretation may also be seen in the writings of yang's main philosophical and political opponent ai siqi, who was one of the leading editors of xuexi [study], and zhexue yanjiu [philosophical research]. ai was a theorist of revolution. whereas yang seemingly legitimized his reality through somewhat circular reasoning—what is should be; and it should be, because it is—for ai, all moments were historically conditional, factors within an ongoing process. within this historical flux there was a centre of gravity, this was the transcendent idea of socialist construction. thus all events could be broken up into a contingent relation, as to whether or not a given economic sector aided or obstructed the transition to socialism. china's economies would now be defined in terms of whether they aided or obstructed a socialist base. what does our state have as its own economic base? is it formed simultaneously of the four different systems of ownership, or is it formed only of the productive relations of the system of whole people's ownership, and the system of collective ownership that are being established? (ai 1964: 6) ai's question was not what was real; rather it was what was real for socialist construction? this meant that while capitalism and the individual peasant economy were part of the transitional period, they were not part of the base. the problem with yang's argument, ai said, was that yang misinterpreted supervision for acceptance. in order to utilize the productive forces of capitalism, it was necessary … to show adequate concern for its productive relations, but it would be a mistake to think that this amounts to regarding capitalist relations as our own economic base. (ibid.) to yang this was apparently inexplicable, since it excluded that which was obviously there. and this is why he asked rhetorically: 'how do socialists eat? do they not depend upon the very produce of those peasants whom they seemingly ignore?' (yang 1981b: 50). but to ai this was an equally fatuous question, because it was empirical. his concern was with the realization of an idea. the state helped the peasants out of need, 'for the purpose of obtaining material supplies from their productivity … and not because we want to consolidate and develop their productive relations' (ai 1964: 10). this restriction of the concept of the economic base to the relations of production was critically important because it provided a theoretical justification for a socialist transition within conditions of underdevelopment. by narrowing the definition of the economy to the state of its productive relations, to its political or administrative situation, thereby _________________________________________________________________________ 57 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism removing the forces of production and technology from the equation, ai was now able to explain how socialist relations could precede economic development, and continue to direct the economy. the more traditional idea that a socialist transition presumed an achieved level of productivity was here replaced by an insistence that ultimately the state determined the character of the economy. the reduction of the economy to its productive relations allowed ai to regroup the various forms of ownership into the two antagonistic bases of socialism and capitalism. the economy of the transition period is transitional … because the socialist base is only in the course of its formation. in its midst there still exists the capitalist base, though this base is steadily declining and dying. (ibid.: 5) non-socialist economies or non-socialist forms of ownership stood in relation to the socialist economy as productive forces, as instruments of production. they existed simply as use-value. 'not everything which we can and must manage is the economic base of our state regime, and only that which we have to form and consolidate can be our own economic base' (ibid.: 9). the emphasis was thus on transformation, upon supplanting that which was. in this regard, his argument followed the party line in seeing the command economy and rapid industrialization as the key to construction. indeed he saw china's situation as analogous to that of the soviet union in the late 1920s when, as he understood it, class struggle was rife (ai 1954: 3). it helps to recall that during this time in china there were a number of ongoing campaigns to eradicate 'counter-revolutionaries' and 'classcollaborationists'. the sufan movement to purge anti-party elements, the excoriation of hu feng and the idea of 'bourgeois humanism', and the start-up of the criticism of liang shuming and the philosophy of pragmatism, lent support to the idea that this was a period characterized by antagonistic contradictions. the gao gang affair had only recently been resolved, and as mao had noted, this was a manifestation of 'intense class-struggle at the present stage' (mao 1977: 155). to ai, the method to overcome class conflict seemed clear: collectivization and a concentration upon heavy industry. this is the way that stalin 'defended and developed lenin's thoughts on socialist industrialization' (ai 1954: 4). this policy continued to be appropriate, ai said, because in china heavy industry is the 'pivot capable of driving all socialist industrialization forward' (ibid.). at the same time, collectivization was the foundation of industrialization. though 58_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ collectivization was stalin's specific response to the grain crisis, it still had general application. stalin pointed out that in developing the construction of socialist industry, it's necessary to guide the individual peasant in an orderly fashion towards the road of collectivization, to construct a socialist basis in the villages. (ibid.). to refer to the soviet collectivization campaign as orderly was designed to reassure a domestic audience that adaptation did not suggest exact duplication. not even the strongest supporters of rapid industrialization were suggesting that china reintroduce a soviet-style forced collectivization. and other than setting out what might be called the general laws of entry into socialism, viz. collectivization and industrialization, ai had little to say concerning detailed economic or political strategy. this is not surprising; as a political philosopher his central concern was more with the role of consciousness in shaping the material base than it was with a detailed analysis of the political economy. in this regard, the fact that he did not simply repeat the basics of the soviet method was significant. it represented further evidence that theorists were now assuming the new categorical ground of china's specificity. at the conceptual level, in the arena of explanation, analysis and suggestion, where controversies attempted either to endorse or to anticipate the 'correct line', soviet experience had a definite place. it offered evidence for dictums, and proof for contentions. this is why soviet history could be broken up so easily into a series of periods, each almost a clear and discontinuous moment, for their use-value was determined by china's theorists. ai and yang could each have their lenin and their stalin. the statements of lenin and stalin were thus citations, references for policy recommendations. indeed the principle of difference was so rooted in china's political discourse that ai had to reassure his readership that this did not imply an abandonment of socialism. our present line for the transition period has its own particularity, and is distinct from the general line for the transition period in the soviet union. nevertheless both are concerned with the transition to socialism. therefore it may not be said that because china's general line for the transition is possessed of its particularity, and is dissimilar to that of the soviet union, it is not a general line for the transition to socialist society. (ibid.) the stance of particularism had created its own equivalent truths within the worldview of marxism-leninism. _________________________________________________________________________ 59 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism conclusion it is now clear that during the period when china was following soviet economic strategy, mao was having serious doubts as to its efficacy. indeed, his argument for a more balanced approach, signified by the 'ten great relationships' marked the beginning of a break with the soviet approach. as he said in 1955 in presenting the 'ten great relationships' to ministers: 'it made a start on proposing our own line for construction' (mao 1958: 101). economically, the desire to look inward could be traced in part to a general disappointment with the slow pace of agricultural growth (lardy 1987: 160-74). this frustration led in part to the famous speed-up in collectivization in 1955-56, which was almost immediately followed by a movement to reverse its excesses (ibid.). but this break with the soviet model had of course a more longstanding source, namely mao's enmity towards the soviet union (schram 1989). without going through the entire history of this stormy relationship, here it may simply be noted that his rise to power had ultimately come at the expense of the 'returned students' from moscow. this was the context for mao's speech of 1937 emphasizing the sinification of marxism. in this regard, mao's nationalist ideas in the mid-1950s fell on a ground that was shared or had already been worked by political economists and philosophers. it was not that he followed them, indeed intellectually they followed him; their arguments were the realization of his call for chinese marxism. but it might be suggested that the theories of those who wrote for new construction and the political philosophers formed a tributary that flowed into a stream of thought that was insistent that china's future was a matter for the chinese people themselves. the argument was that the soviet model of a command economy was ill suited to china's reality. the point of contrast with lenin's nep programme of state capitalism made it clear that for theorists such as shen zhiyuan, qian jiazhu and wang xuewen, china's transition demanded a road of specific design. and it is this stress on national solutions to national problems that forms a line that connects this past with china's present. james falkin is adjunct assistant professor of political science at the college of staten island, city university of new york. 60_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 james falkin _______________________________________________________________ notes * the author would like acknowledge the contributions made by the anonymous reviewers. 1 on the changing character of the command model, see brus and laski (1989, chapters 4-7). 2 'somewhat surprisingly, the adoption of a soviet-style big push industrialization strategy involving massive resource mobilization for manufacturing and neglect of agriculture does not appear to have been controversial within the ccp. here there is no evidence that prior to the 1st fyp there was anything approaching the industrialization debate in the 1920s in the soviet union, which pitted e.a. preobrazhensky's theory of a 'big push' industrialization program against n.i. bukharin's theory of balanced growth of industry and agriculture.' (lardy 1987). 3 the discussion above is drawn from carr (1950). 4 lardy dates the beginning of the crisis to 1953. 'there were several symptoms of that crisis, but these can be traced primarily to a single cause-state intervention in grain marketing.' (lardy 1987). references ai siqi 1954. 'xuexi sidalin de xueshuo wei zai woguo jianshe shehuizhuyi shehui' [study stalin's theory of the state in our fight to construct socialist society], xuexi [study] 3: 3-5. — 1964. 'in refutation of comrade yang hsien-chen's "composite base theory". selections from china's mainland press, nov. 6, 1966, no. 3337: 3-12. bernstein, thomas p. 1969. 'cadre and peasant behavior under conditions of insecurity and deprivation: the grain supply crisis of the spring of 1955.' in a. doak barnett (ed.), chinese communist politics in action. seattle: university of washington: 365-99. brus, wlodzimierz, and kazimierz laski 1989. from marx to the market. oxford: clarendon press. carr, e. h. 1950. the bolshevik revolution, vol. 2 1917-1921. middlesex: pelican books. cohen, stephen f. 1975. bukharin and the bolshevik revolution. new york: vintage press. du ruji and yu shudong 1954. 'guanyu woguo guodu shiqi jingji xingzhi he jingji faze de jige wenti' [several problems concerning the essence and the laws of our country's transitional economy], xin jianshe [new construction] 12: 19-26. lenin, v. i. 1950. 'on state capitalism.' in e. h. carr (ed.), the bolshevik revolution, vol. 2 1917-1921. middlesex: pelican books. — 1975. on co-operation quoted in r. tucker (ed.), the lenin anthology. new york: w. w. norton press: 707-14. lardy, nicholas 1987. 'economic recovery and the 1st five year plan.'. in r. macfarquar and j. k. fairbank (eds), the cambridge history of china, vol. 14. cambridge: cambridge university press: 144-85. lewin, moshe 1975. political undercurrents in soviet economic debates. london: pluto press. lin, justin yifu, fang cai and li zhou 1996. the china miracle: development strategy and economic reform. hong kong: chinese university press. mao tse-tung 1958. 'talks at the chengtu conference' quoted in s. schram (ed.), mao tse-tung unrehearsed: talks and letters 1956-71. middlesex: penguin books. — 1977. selected works vol. 5. peking: peking language press. _________________________________________________________________________ 61 _____________________________________________ the renewal of chinese marxism marx, karl 1973. grundrisse. foundations of the critique of political economy. trans. martin nicolaus. middlesex: penguin books. qian jiazhu 1954a. 'zai lun guojia zibenzhuyi jingi de wenti' [again on the theory of state capitalism]. xuexi 8: 37-40. — 1954b. 'zhonghua renmin gongheguo xianfa cao'an yu shehui jingji zhidu' [the draft constitution of the people's republic of china and the socialist economic system]. xin jianshe 8:13-20. — 1954c. 'lun guojia zibenzhuyi' [on the theory of state capitalism]. xin jianshe 2: 11-17. schram, stuart 1989. the thought of mao tse-tung. cambridge: cambridge university press. schurmann, franz 1966. ideology and organization in communist china. berkeley: university of california press. shen zhiyuan 1953. 'guanyu guojia zibenzhuyi de xingzhi wenti' [concerning the character of the problems of the state capitalist economy]. xin jianshe 12: 1-6. — 1954. 'zong luxian yu shenchan guanxi yiding yao shihe shengchanli xingzhi de faze' [the law of the general line that the relations of production must conform to the character of the productive forces]. xin jianshe 4: 11-18. teiwes, frederick c. 1993. 'the establishment and consolidation of the new regime.' in r. macfarquhar (ed.), the politics of china 1949-1989. cambridge: cambridge university press: 5-86. wang xuewen 1954a. 'guanyu woguo guodu shiqi de jingi faze wenti' [questions concerning the economic laws in our transition period]. xuexi 7: 35-39. — 1954b. 'xianfa cao'an yu woguo guodu shiqi de jingi' [the draft constitution and our transitional economy]. xin jainshe 9: 7-10. yang xianzhen 1955a. 'liening guanyu guodu shiqi de xueshuo' [lenin's theory of the transition state]. renmin ribao [people's daily], march 22. — 1955b. 'siwei dui cunzai de guanxi zhege zhexue shang zui genben de wenti ye shi women yiqie shiji gongzuo zhong zui genben de wenti' [the relationship between thought and existence is the most fundamental problem in philosophy]. zhexue yanjiu [philosophical research] 2: 138-56. — 1981a. 'guanyu zhongguo xin-minzhuyi shehui de jichu yu shangceng jianzhu de wenti' [concerning the problem of the base and the superstructure in china's new democracy]. in yang xianzhen, wo de zhuxue 'zui'an' [the details of my 'criminal philosophy']. beijing: 3-29. — 1981b. 'guanyu zhonghua renmin gongheguo zai guodu shiqi de jichu shangceng jianzhu de wenti' [concerning the problem of the base and the superstructure in the transitional period of the people's republic of china]. in yang xianzhen, wo de zhuxue 'zui'an'. beijing: 29-61. 28 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china: on delineating social and political constraints among southeast asian chinese entrepreneurs michael jacobsen abstract taking a point of departure in the fluid political and economic landscape of east and southeast asia, this paper focuses on ethnic chinese sme entrepreneurs in southeast asia, who are gradually becoming the focus in a discussion of whether a rising mainland chinese economy is a positive or negative force in asia. contrary to the coherent nature usually associated with this particular ethnic group, this article argues, that in fact it is divided into many smaller factions. this differentiation of the ethnic chinese community in southeast asia, it is argued, is a reflection of many different influences from, especially, colonialism, and different contemporary social and political developments within the individual southeast asian countries. this increasing societal complexity makes ethnic chinese entrepreneurs vulnerable in the wake of a rising mainland chinese economy, as they await to see if the latter impacts positively or negatively on the various southeast asian economies, thus indirectly influencing how they are embedded within their societies. keywords: china, southeast asia, indonesia, malaysia, chinese entrepreneurship, national politics, ethnicity. assessing china's economic impact on southeast asia according to observers, it is critical for southeast asian economies to understand china's economic development, and to understand how to counter potentially devastating and predatory competition from that country. the main background for such a statement is based on the fact that china, in 2002, emerged as the world's largest recipient of foreign direct investment (fdi), thus diverting some of the fdi flows that might otherwise have gone to southeast asia (yeung 2006: 7-8). furthermore, roughly 75 percentt of china's cumulative incoming fdi has come from asian economies. almost 80 percent of all fdi into asia in 2001 _________________________________________________________________________ 29 _______________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china went to china. china was earlier competing with malaysia, thailand, the philippines and indonesia, since they were the countries most dependent on foreign investment and technology. however, capital now flows into china, thus restraining the southeast asian countries from moving up the value-added ladder. this means that asian economies with the technical capabilities to stay ahead of china, will benefit from china's economic growth, whereas those that rely on foreign technology, will find their positions threatened by china (wanandi 2002: 231, bolt 2000: 111). arguably, the economies that will benefit the most from china, are those that can penetrate the growing chinese market, develop complementary relations with the chinese economy, attract investment from china and create development partnerships with china. mari pangesty adds that given greater openness, growth in chinese domestic demand, coupled with growth of its labour intensive exports (which are still dependent on raw material and intermediate inputs) certain imports from southeast asian countries are likely to increase. these products are oil, gas, wood, rubber, agriculture based products, together with manufactured products such as electrical machinery. indonesia is a case in point here, due to its large amount of natural resources. it is up to each individual southeast asian country to ensure competitiveness when supplying these products to china and so benefit from a rising chinese economy (pangesty 2002: 85). the rising economic power of china, when combined with japan and korea, threatens to turn southeast asia (except for singapore) into an 'economic sideshow'. jusuf wanandi stresses that it would be wise for southeast asia to commit china to a regional web of rules and institutions so as to be able to contain, and partly control, the economic might of china (wanandi: 2002: 232-33). mari pangesty also stresses the importance of creating regional networks based on free trade agreements such as the asean free trade area (afta), asean+3, combined with bilateral trade relations between china and each of the different southeast asian countries. compared to regionalism in the americas and the enlargement of europe, east and southeast asia are still searching for their own institutional identity (pangesty 2002: 81). the implication here is that it is imperative to prevent the development of a rigid centre-periphery structure between east and southeast asia with all the bilateral patron-client relationships that this entails. from the perspective of southeast asia, the means to contain china economically, and to a lesser extent, east asia in general is thus through 30 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ regional cooperation, where free-trade agreements are the means, and equality in partnership, the goal. china's ascendance to economic superpower status does not, however, only mean doom and gloom for the southeast asian economies. becoming a big economy also brings with it a growing domestic demand for (imported) goods, and thus an expanding home market. for example, according to bloomberg news1 the asia-pacific region exported 44 per cent to china in the 10 months before october 2004, equivalent to us$219.7 billion. malaysia alone sent 16.2 percent of its foreign shipments to china in the first half of 2003, five times as much as in 2000. due to annual growth rates of 8.5 percent in 2003, 9.3 percent in 2005 a further 9.4 percent in 2006 and a predicted 9.5 percent in 2007, china is now the fastest growing economy within the group of ten biggest economies in the world. china is also a new source of income for the developing economies in other parts of asia. the bloomberg news2 agency reports that the downside to this, however, is that these growth rates, which attract a huge amount of fdi, may reduce the prospects for growth in such countries as south korea, singapore, malaysia and thailand,. the combination of low inputs of fdi, and a china oriented export economy, carries the potential threat for at least some of the southeast asian economies, in that it makes them even more dependent on china's ability to drive export-led recoveries, thus reinforcing the emerging centre-periphery structure. this potential negative development is, however, more or less outweighed by the acknowledgment that a growing china is also bringing its trading partners along with it. it is against this background of a fluid, and potentially volatile, economic landscape in east and southeast asia, that this paper focuses on one particular ethnic group that has become a centre piece in the discussion of whether a rising chinese economy is a benevolent or predatory force3, that is, ethnic chinese in southeast asia. first of all we have to debunk the general stereotypes applied to this particular ethnic group. contrary to notions of a coherent ethnic and cultural nature ascribed to this particular group, this paper argues that in fact it is divided into many smaller and non-affiliated fractions both economically, politically as well as culturally. this is due to a question of national loyalty, combined with a host of different economic and cultural preferences in connection with the countries in which the ethnic chinese reside. second, this differentiation within the ethnic chinese community in southeast asia, is furthermore reinforced by _________________________________________________________________________ 31 _______________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china multi-dimensional impacts emanating from colonialism, as well as different types of social and religious constraints found in the different communities and nations of residence. third, this combination makes the ethnic chinese vulnerable to the negative effects of a rising chinese economy, especially those that hit southeast asian national economies. for the purposes of this paper, the study will focus on ethnic chinese who live in indonesia and malaysia. finally, this paper does not centre on major ethnic chinese controlled firms and conglomerates, but rather on small and medium sized enterprises (smes), as they exhibit a greater divide between national loyalties and local constraints, not only towards other ethnic chinese, but also towards their non-chinese local and national compatriots. chinese entrepreneurship in a southeast asian context the impact of the ethnic chinese in southeast asia has been documented since the 14th century. it was, however, not until the beginning of the 18th and 19th centuries, that migrants and travellers, especially from the southern part of mainland china, fujian, guangdong, hainan and guangxi provinces, began in earnest to settle down in southeast asia, especially in today's malaysia and indonesia. here they worked as either indentured labourers in the european owned plantation and mines, or settled down as traders of various kinds. these migrants used already existing chinese networks. these were based on transplanted conceptions of common religious denominations, language or dialect, and descent affiliations together with guilds, which were sometimes organised like secret societies. the common denominators behind these modes of organising were group identification and principles of guanxi, xinyong and kongsi, for example.4 in particular, guanxi affiliations appear to be the longest lasting. for example, several observers have argued that guanxi affiliations5 within a chinese network were, and still are, a kind of modus operandi for doing business within the ethnic chinese business community.6 the allencompassing nature attributed to guanxi-affiliated networks is also prevalent in discourses on the chinese diaspora, that is, the generic name for overseas chinese networking practices.7 for kotkin (1992), for example, the chinese diaspora is characterised by an enduring sense of group identification and global linkages, and for callahan (2002) the comparative advantage of the diaspora's confucian reading of capitalism, is that cultural ties lower the transaction costs of doing business in 32 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ china and southeast asia, compensating for ill-developed legal system in this region.8 these perceptions of capitalism in a chinese context, as constituting a kind of non-grounded transnational flow of ethnic capital, that mainly thrived within close-knit circles, and maintained by age-old chinese kinship, language or even philosophical affiliations, have an orientalist feel attached to them.9 however, when taking a critical look at the literature on the relationship between contemporary chinese business enterprises and guanxi affiliated networks in east and southeast asia, an absence of a deep influence of the latter on the former, together with a lack of cohesiveness within the chinese diaspora per se, are revealed. wong (1998), gomez and hsiao (2001) and jacobsen (2006) all have problems finding evidence for a dominance of chain-related guanxi affiliated business deals within the diaspora, based on ethnic affinities or shared identities. on the contrary, profit driven motives seem to prevail, be it with intra-ethnic or inter-ethnic business relations, thus also linking up with domestic, non-chinese, business communities in the host country. this flow between the chinese diaspora, governed partly by personal strategies and partly by contextual circumstances, is a practice that riggs (2001) has defined processes of 'diasporisation' and 'de-diasporisation'. this occurs when switching from mono-ethnic to multi-ethnic spatial relations, be they local, national or international cribb (2000). gomez and hsiao (2004) furthermore contest the thesis that the institutions, norms and practices of the ethnic chinese are the main reason for the growth of their enterprises. moreover, they question whether chinese entrepreneurs have depended primarily on business networks based on shared identities to develop their corporate base. this argument is further expanded by qiu liben (2000) who writes that if one examines contemporary southeast asian chinese networks in an historical context, it can be seen that they were not products of the economic and cultural expansion of china, but rather the product of a global capitalist expansion. she continues: 'the chinese networks themselves have changed with the needs of time; they developed from the networks of bangs (organisations based on guanxi like connections, mj) to the networks of the overseas chinese and then to the open and multi-cultural networks shared by citizens of various countries. this has enabled them to play an important role in the sustained economic development of southeast asia and in integration of the region' (qiu 2000: 203). _________________________________________________________________________ 33 _______________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china this confirms arif dirlik's (1996) proposition that guanxi business practices are an 'ethnicisation' of universal capitalist practices and not specifically chinese economy paralleling global capitalism. returning to the discussion of the cohesiveness generally attributed to the chinese diaspora, this paper agrees with the idea that a diaspora constitutes a decentred, multi-levelled and fractious, generally ethnically affiliated, ideational network which allows people to move in and out of a given diaspora depending on their current social and political situation.10 the adherence to a perceived relevant diaspora thus depends on relative social, economic, and political contextual givens. an understanding of a given diaspora does therefore not depend on systemic network approaches. that is, theoretical constructs underpinning the empirical and geographical constraints, as indicated by ong and nonini (1997), but rather by analysing de facto socio-political contexts, that delineate the positioning of an individual in an appropriate diaspora. by taking such an approach, it is imperative to focus on those social, political, and economic forces that have the capacity to generate changes in the societal embedding of the ethnic chinese. home country or country of residence? chinese entrepreneurs and the dominant 'other' the above discussions, result in the main question asked in this paper: having disentangled chinese network practices and having stressed how imperative it is to focus on the social, political, and economic factors that have a capability of generating changes in the societal embedment of the ethnic chinese, how have the ethnic chinese have reacted towards the growing mainland chinese economy? arguably, by focusing on ethnic chinese smes and stressing the importance of analysing them in relation to their societal embededness, the importance of the mainland chinese market comes second to those entrepreneurs. they have to secure primarily their freedom of manoeuvre in their communities of residence, a freedom that is guided just as much by social and cultural strategies as by cynical economic calculations or emotional or ideological attachments to 'the old country'. this argument becomes more important as the rising mainland chinese economy influences, positively or negatively, the economic performances of the various countries in the southeast asian region. moreover, this again influences the domestic attitude towards the ethnic chinese in 34 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ their respective communities of residence11. arguably, the ethnic chinese in southeast asia do not unilaterally embrace the expanding chinese economy, as it has a certain impact on their freedom of manoeuvre in their communities of residence. instead we see a careful balancing of how to achieve the better of the two worlds, which result in the increased potential for expanding one's business without jeopardising the relationship to the dominant non-chinese social and political environment. before further discussing this through two case studies (both from the provincial capital manado in north sulawesi province in eastern indonesia and from johor baru in the state of johor in southern malaysia), the paper highlights an important non-economic concomitant effect of an economically strong mainland china, namely a further visualisation of the southeast asian chinese conceived of as a minority group in the respective countries of residence, a visualisation that carries the potential for a further negative stigmatisation of this already exposed group. here the discussion refers to the relationship between a generational conditioned division within the ethnic chinese communities themselves, namely a distinction between peranakan and totok ethnic chinese. this generational conditioned is reflected in the fact that peranakans have lived for five to six generations in southeast asia, whereas totoks have mainly one or two generations behind them in a southeast asian context. as the latter has much closer relationships to mainland china than the former, a process of re-sinification is taking place between the two categories of ethnic chinese, a process that is fuelled indirectly by a growing economic impact from mainland china. as this has a destabilising effect on the relationship between these two groups, a further differentiation within, and additional visualisation of, the different ethnic chinese communities is gradually taking place in their respective countries and communities of residence. the following discussion draws mainly on indonesian material, but some more general political and economic ramifications of this problem, for the ethnic chinese across the southeast asian region will be considered. in indonesia and malaysia, peranakans were formerly known as baba, or early immigrants to the region. babas used their local position to claim higher status compared to the sinkeh, the newly arrived chinese immigrants (tan 1997: 25–6). a derogative usage of the term baba can be found when coupling it with the term ali. ali-baba refers to a joint indonesian-chinese business venture, or more specifically, to an indonesian front figure or sleeping partner in an enterprise owned and financed by an ethnic chinese. _________________________________________________________________________ 35 _______________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china according to william skinner (1996: 78–9) peranakan refers to those ethnic chinese who have developed a creolised or mestizo-like culture with strong indonesian characteristics. the most important characteristics of the peranakans were, and still, are that they marry local indonesian women and speak bahasa indonesia within the family. proficiency in chinese languages and knowledge of traditional chinese culture has gradually disappeared and today, most peranakans do not speak, read or write chinese. the other main group of indonesian ethnic chinese is the totok. this term refers to 'full-blooded' chinese in indonesia. they are relatively recent immigrants or children of recent immigrants, who speak one or two chinese languages, and practice traditional chinese customs within the family (skinner 1996: 86, 88–92). the totoks generally represent hokkien, cantonese, and hakka speaking areas in southeast china. speech-group identification is an important means for identifying group membership. because of laws implemented by the indonesian government in 1959 and onwards, forbidding non-indonesian people to engage in retail trade outside towns, many totoks moved from the outer islands to the commercial centres, especially around jakarta and the other main cities in indonesia, where some of their most important markets were. leaving aside this distinction for a moment, the indonesian authorities and the society in general, have always been ambivalent towards the ethnic chinese, peranakans and totoks alike. this can be observed by studying the anti-chinese riots through indonesian political history. here the paper alludes to comparison of negative social, economic, and political developments with the appearance of anti-chinese riots. a main precondition for this correlation is that the ethnic chinese are generally conceived of as a foreign minority, and are thus classified as non-pribumi or 'not sons of the soil', that is, non-indigenous people. furthermore, international political developments have also helped in fuelling anti-ethnic chinese resentments within the indonesian community, thus reinforcing the above mentioned grievances towards the ethnic chinese. for example, in the early 1950s, the newly established communist government in mainland china opened an embassy in jakarta's chinatown, which was followed up by a number of consulates in other major cities throughout indonesia. the diplomats were very active in contacting the ethnic chinese. this resulted in a 're-sinification' of the chinese communities in terms of an increasing flow of chinese literature, the opening of many chinese language schools, and a resurrection of 36 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ chinese religions, together with the building of temples throughout the country. the main aim of these activities was to help establish the ethnic chinese as a recognised ethnic group that was on an equal footing with other ethnic groups in indonesia. it was thus a process of integration and not one of assimilation. these developments brought the chinese communities to public attention, and questions of political loyalty and national belonging became a hotly debated topic. according to mely tan (1997), of the 2.45 million ethnic chinese believed to live in indonesia during the 1950s, about one million could be considered having dual nationality, that is, having citizenship in both mainland china and indonesia. in order to correct this, the indonesian government decided to force the ethnic chinese to make a choice between citizenship in one or the other country. this resulted in the sino-indonesian treaty on dual nationality, signed in bandung on 22 april 1955, when it was decided that ethnic chinese had to choose which nationality they preferred during the period january 1960 to january 1962. most of the about one million ethnic chinese with dual nationality registered and out of those about 65 percent opted for indonesian citizenship. in practice this meant a huge exodus of ethnic chinese, about 400,000 people, from indonesia, heading towards the new chinese nation (tan 1997: 33–5). however, problems for the ethnic chinese had, only begun. in 1957, the authorities demanded that all indonesian citizens attended indonesian schools. this meant that thousands of chinese schools were closed. the period around 1965–6 was a particular difficult one, as many chinese were killed and driven out of, for example, aceh, north sumatra, and the rural areas in west kalimantan. the main reason for this was that it was thought, especially by the political elite and the military, that the ethnic chinese were collaborating with the indonesian communist party (pki) and that the first president sukarno was relying too heavily on the chinese and pki for political support. this situation further changed when president suharto's new order regime (1966–98) replaced what was left of sukarno's guided democracy in 1965. the new regime initiated an intense programme of assimilating the ethnic chinese into the indonesian community by forbidding chinese names, signs in chinese characters in public places, publications, cultural and religious practices, constructions of new temples, etc. so as to domesticate and pull the chinese into mainstream new order indonesia. nonetheless, despite these assimilatory initiatives, the ethnic chinese were still discriminated against both in terms of education (they _________________________________________________________________________ 37 _______________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china could not join the majority of universities) and could not get employment in the bureaucracy and military. even the most assimilated ethnic chinese were marked out, as all chinese had a code in their passport indicatung they were of chinese descent, and thus not 'blue-blooded' pribumi indonesians.12 after president suharto was toppled on 21 may 1998 things changed again. the interim president habibie and the following two presidents, abdurrahman wahid and megawati sukarnoputri, allowed the ethnic chinese to practice their traditions, especially the chinese new year, learn chinese languages, publicize newspapers and books in chinese, and generally make chinese culture more visible in indonesian society. the forced assimilation programme was thus formally abolished. this new zeitgeist was seen in a presidential decree issued in 1998, that instructed ministers and chiefs within the bureaucracy to scrap all discriminatory practices against the ethnic chinese. in may 1999 chinese initiated political parties such as the chinese-indonesian reform party were formed, and the renowned economist kwik kian gie became deputy chairman of megawati sukarnoputri's indonesian democratic party of struggle (pdi-p). later on the same year, he became coordinating minister for economy, finance and industry in the abdurrahman wahid/megawati sukarnoputri administration. he was thus the first ethnic chinese to attain a ministerial portfolio in the post-suharto era. after sizing power in july 2001, megawati sukarnoputri's administration, represented by the minister of religious affairs, issued decree no. 13 stipulating that imlek or the chinese new year was a public holiday. the inauguration of the current indonesian president susilo bambang yudhoyono, who took office in october 2004, has seen a continuation of the ethnic policies of the previous presidents, thus furthering the establishment of the chinese as an integrated part of the indonesian society. on the basis of these changes, life for the indonesian ethnic chinese has become somewhat easier. these changes, however positive they may be, also pose new challenges for the chinese communities. the remaining discrimination against them, especially in terms of obtaining indonesian citizenship and having to state their ethnic origins in their passport, still lingers on, not forgetting the general anti-chinese sentiment in indonesian society, encouraged by the new order regime through the years it held power. what is more problematic, however, is a growing split within the ethnic chinese community itself, a split that revolves around the question of identity. although not an entirely new problem, the ques38 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ tion of how to designate themselves has particularly come to a head in the post-suharto era. labels such as overseas chinese, ethnic chinese, chinese nationals or nationals of chinese descent have been applied to the ethnic chinese, not only in indonesia, but throughout southeast asia, indicating a tense relationship amongst the ethnic chinese, their respective nation states, and their relationship to mainland china thus turning an ethnic label into a problematic political signifier. for example, leo suryadinata (1997: 20) writes that for recent migrants their ethnic identity is stronger than their national identity. this is not a problem when mainland china's relations with the individual southeast asian states are cordial. however, when china–southeast asian relations turn sour, as in the case of, for example, the spratly islands issue, then the ethnic chinese generally become the focus of resentment from the indigenous populations. the tendency in many parts of the region to classify the ethnic chinese as nationalized foreigners with a doubtful political loyalty towards their respective community of residence, also poses tremendous problems for the ethnic chinese themselves. if labelled 'overseas chinese', they are not thought of as true nationals in their community of residence, only visitors with perceived strong ties to mainland china, who might pose a national political threat. if individuals are labelled as 'ethnic chinese', and with many generations in their community or residence behind them, then they are more or less socially and politically marginalized. this can be seen especially in indonesia, malaysia, and the philippines. the dual nature of the ethnic chinese identity thus represents a national security liability. as a counter move towards such negative stigmatisation, tan chee beng (1997: 29) states: 'overall, the chinese in southeast asia should not be called “overseas chinese” as it is a label which is appropriate only for citizens of china living overseas'. he continues: 'as proud citizens of our respective countries, we feel insulted to be called or even referred to as “overseas chinese”. we are overseas in china but not when we are at home in malaysia, indonesia, the philippines, and so forth' (tan 1997: 25). the main question here is whether the southeast asian states will let the ethnic chinese themselves decide how they prefer to be labelled. as we have seen in the case of indonesia, the foundations of this lie within national politics that decide what label to apply to the ethnic chinese. _________________________________________________________________________ 39 _______________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china parallel to these external discourses, internal divisions from within the ethnic chinese communities themselves are gradually surfacing, the previous distinction made between peranakans and totoks. today the relationship between peranakans and totoks highlights the heterogeneity of the ethnic chinese community. they have never been a homogeneous group as maintained by suryadinata (1997), as the ethnic chinese reflect different social and political circumstances in their respective communities of residence, as well as different circumstances under which they became ethnic chinese in a southeast asian context. the continued difference between peranakan and totok chinese thus represents a deep differentiation of the ethnic chinese community. the first stands for assimilation into the communities of residence, the latter, trying to accommodate policies of assimilation, but with due respect towards chinese culture and traditions. this leads us back to the main thrust of this paper, namely how an economical powerful mainland china is being perceived by the ethnic chinese communities in southeast asia. for example, in the shadow of mainland china's ascendance towards economic superpower status, totoks try to're-scinicise' peranakans and to make them acknowledge their ethnic and cultural background, thus making them more visible as a distinct ethnic group in relation to other ethnic groups in the host community. the reason behind this strategy, is to put them in a better position to link up to mainland chinese' domestic markets through, for examples, diasporic linkages, or to act as guanxi or go-betweenpartners to either bumiputra or pribumi economic parties, in malaysia and indonesia respectively, with a similar interest in entering mainland chinese markets. this strategy might, however, backfire on the ethnic chinese communities themselves. apart from the possibility of generating a further negative stigmatisation of the ethnic chinese per se, as those who are in charge of initiating economic revitalisation at the expense of the indigenous entrepreneurs, it might also increase tensions between the two groups, especially as the peranakans have deep-rooted vested interests in the local communities. in fact, these vested interests are their insurance for a positive acceptance by the 'dominant other' in their community of residence. ultimately, the totok initiated 're-sinification' initiative carries the potential negative impact that the host communities become even more suspicious towards the ethnic chinese in general: what are they up to, whom do they represent, and are they really the loyal citizens they claim to be? 40 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ the paper now turns to two small case studies of ethnic chinese sme business communities in manado, the provincial capital of north sulawesi, indonesia, and in johor baru in the state of johor, southern malaysia. in particular, it will focus on how they relate to their respective communities of residence and whether the current economic events in mainland china have any influence on their current economic performance. on the societal embedding of southeast asian chinese entrepreneurs: two case studies manado in north sulawesi province, eastern indonesia two things stand out when studying the manadonese chinese business community. the first is a high emphasis placed on assimilating into the minahasa community13, a preferred societal positioning that is underlined by referring to oneself as a peranakan. stressing assimilation instead of integration and categorising oneself as peranakan, is similar to stressing both a diachronic and synchronic sense of belonging. being a peranakan emphasises having roots in the local community and being assimilated refers to an abolition of ethnic differences. at face value, these two main aspects of being manadonese chinese could be one of the factors that explain why there have not been any violent clashes between ethnic chinese and the minahasa before, during and after the fall of the new order regime. the second thing about the manadonese chinese is that they do not stand out as a distinct ethnic group among the minahasa. on the contrary, even the minahasa stress the almost total assimilation of the chinese into the local communities. it seems as this can, to a certain degree, be attributed to the fact that the mechanisms for marking oneself out as a distinct group do not influence the current inner functioning of the manadonese chinese. for example, guanxi affiliations do not play an important role within the ethnic chinese business community even though they can still be identified as a social signifier amongst the manadonese chinese. as such, this study subscribes to gomez and hsiao's critique of guanxi practices in a modern economy. as previously stressed, it is the profit motive that plays the greatest role for the chinese entrepreneurs when conducting business, not ethnic factors or cultural preferences, a fact that also goes for the manadonese chinese entrepreneurs. as a result, the paper argues that dirlik's point that guanxi is more about a _________________________________________________________________________ 41 _______________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china rhetorically dictated ethnification of capitalist practices, is not a practical one. kongsi practices and guanxi affiliations are thus only invoked if they can lead towards higher or more stable profit margins. in this sense, continuing to stress guanxi as a dominating aspect of chinese business practices, in at least manado, can be categorised as a kind of cultural chauvinism within a specific business environment. an interesting consequence of the non-dominant position of guanxi in the manadonese chinese business community is that, because it is so weak, it actually undermines the functioning and effectiveness of kongsi organised businesses. arguably, guanxi affiliations can be conceived of as reinforcing the inner workings of kongsi organised businesses, as both strive towards reinforcing relations between the chinese partners and thus indirectly promote a distinct chinese-ness in terms of business practices. however, guanxi only constitute but one out of several business strategies when establishing kongsi based companies. this de-linked relationship between guanxi and kongsi therefore reinforces processes of assimilation and down plays the development of a distinct ethnic identity. such a development is reinforced by yet another factor, namely religious affiliations. christianity, the dominant religion in north sulawesi, is generally seen as a facilitator between non-buddhist chinese and christian minahasans. christian chinese by far outnumber buddhist chinese, so processes of assimilation are further reinforced. however, taking processes of assimilation to their ultimate limits, leads towards the assumption that ethnically distinctive features become hybridised to such an extent that the original ethnic identities involved are gradually dissolved and a new, commonly agreed upon cultural denominator, arises. such a perspective can only be an illusion. assimilation processes are always based on asymmetrical relationships. in the case of the manadonese chinese and the minahasa, the latter is the dominant half, and it would be difficult to imagine that they would give away any of their perception of ethnic supremacy in relation to the ethnic chinese. as such, assimilation processes are about stipulating power relations that are manifested in social integration and more or less peaceful co-existence. ethnic distinctions remain despite these processes, but descend towards a lower level of social practice. they only resurface during ceremonial occasions, which are socially detached and socially accepted by the dominant 'other'. a somewhat unexpected consequence of these processes is that the manadonese chinese become separated from the chinese diaspora. by far the greatest numbers of informants have detached themselves from 42 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ their ancestral root in either fujian or guangdong province. mainland china is currently being conceived of as either a potential promising target for doing transnational business, or as an interesting tourist destination. the 'home' part of the chinese diaspora has thus been separated from the otherwise classical triangular perception of diasporic constellations, namely the 'home-host-migrant' construct. this points towards the fact that diasporas are multi-dimensional entities that are contextual defined. even though the manadonese chinese have currently cut off the 'home' part of the chinese diaspora, the linkages are still there, but dormant. this means that when not activated, diasporic links descend into a deeper layer within peoples' minds, and remain there until various social and political events jolt them back into existence. on the basis of this, it is possible to say that a diaspora is a latent structure, that is, not a permanently established ethnic oriented national or international path for migrants and travellers. a diaspora only becomes alive locally when certain social, political or economic events highlight or squeeze a certain ethnic group. this confirms riggs's (2001) notion of diasporasation and de-diasporasation as people utilise a given diaspora when they need it., otherwise it does not exist for them. north sulawesi provides them with a social and political safe heaven, and the minahasa accepts the chinese in their midst as they constitute an important economic factor in the province. therefore, the manadonese chinese are highly localised, that is, 'assimilated' and thus de-linked from the chinese diaspora. for how long these positive inter-ethnic relationships will last, depends on a whole range of things from economic performance, locally as well as nationally, to religious harmony, and amicable and non-competitive inter-ethnic relationships. when and why a shift in these relationships might occur, thereby giving rise to a potential relinking of the manadonese chinese to the chinese diaspora, can only be determined through empirical studies, not theoretical predictions.14 johor baru in the state of johor, southern malaysia contrary to the manadonese chinese entrepreneurs in north sulawesi, there is a clear perception among the ethnic chinese sme entrepreneurs in johor baru (jb) of being distinct from other ethnic groups in the state of johor, and of being treated accordingly by the community of residence. the blame for this state of affairs is laid on the official bumiputra policy that favours the malay population at the expense of the indian, and in particular the ethnic chinese, population. a consequence of this policy is an official discrimination against them: malaysian people got most _________________________________________________________________________ 43 _______________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china of the public benefits in terms of education and financial support from the government, both the state and national governments. seen from an ethnic chinese point of view, they are more or less left to care for themselves. in terms of education, this results in most chinese students going abroad or attending the many private schools and higher education institutions to be found throughout malaysia. there are several in jb, but many young people prefer to cross the johor strait in order to get their education in singapore. the negative consequence of this is that many do not return to jb, but choose instead to settle down and marry in singapore. as can be seen, the relationship between ethnic chinese and the bumiputra are not governed by policies of assimilation, but rather by a policy of a peaceful co-existence based on a framework of mutual interdependency. in a sense, this relationship is perhaps more honest,, as it is not dressed up in a rhetoric of assimilation, as in north sulawesi. this proves the previous view on the relationship between integration and assimilation, in that the latter is but a 'cover up' for an asymmetrical power relationship between the two groups. in jb, this power relationship is by no means covered, but played out in the open. due to the officially sanctioned practice of ethnic discrimination, not only in the state of johor but throughout malaysia, ethnic chinese identity contrasts sharply with that of malay identity, and is spelled out in specific chinese cultural and religious associations and trade organisations, such as the chinese chamber of commerce and industry and other professional or non-professional organisations, mainly designed to serve ethnic chinese interests. a somewhat negative consequence of this, is that the ethnic chinese feel superior towards the malay and indian communities in terms of economic performance, but pragmatically recognise that the malays in particular have the political power to impose their aspirations and ambitions on them, thus forcing them to support a status quo, as defined by the malays. an example of these ethnic chinese organisations are the clan-based language groups. there are a variety of ethnic chinese languages spoken in jb, unlike the situation in manado in north sulawesi, where hokkian speaking chinese predominate, representing about 85 percent of the population. in jb there are teochius, hokkians, hainans, hakka, and cantonese-speaking chinese in almost equal proportions. in this sense it looks like totoks prevail in this part of southern malaysia. representatives from these language groups mix, but are nonetheless divided into clans that provide each other with help when doing business amongst 44 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ themselves, with bumiputra entrepreneurs, and when linking up to business contacts in mainland china. in fact, all five language groups have formed their own associations. these are mostly social associations and not specifically oriented towards economic or political ends. these associations are interest groups, which means that they can exert pressure on politicians and parties alike by giving 'advice' about the needs and demands of the ethnic chinese community. they maintain strong ties to mainland china and see it their main concern to be to uphold the ties to the old country in terms of culture and language. they are especially active within the area of language, as many of the younger chinese have problems speaking the various chinese dialects or mandarin. as mentioned, the different clans are not exclusive. on the contrary, they inter-marry and initiate joint business ventures. there are, however, rather strained relations towards the bumiputra business community and the provincial and malaysian state. the two are closely related the former is explicitly supported by the latter, thus leaving the ethnic chinese (and the indians) more and less outside influence in this connection. despite these constraints, there are business related joint ventures between the ethnic chinese and bumiputra. this is actually necessary if ethnic chinese entrepreneurs are interested in getting government contracts for major projects. should the chinese companies succeed in gaining government contracts, they have to have at least one malay representative in the company's board of directors, as the law requires. such arrangements are very similar to the ali-baba arrangements in indonesia. the cantonese association is the oldest one of the five 'clans'. it was founded in around 1880, and has been active ever since. the hokkien association is the youngest. for many, especially older ethnic chinese entrepreneurs in jb, guanxi affiliations are very important for governing interaction within and between firms. this applies particularly in relation to the work done within and between the language associations. interestingly, the guanxi-governed associations do not automatically invite new migrants from mainland china to settle down in jb even though they have quite close connections to mainland china. if a newly arrived migrant who originates from, say, guangdong, he would not necessarily have contacted the cantonese association before leaving mainland china. generally, migration occurs on a personal initiative without the help of the association. the latter only becomes important when the new migrants have settled down in jb, as then the migrant may be invited to utilise the various networks of the cantonese association. _________________________________________________________________________ 45 _______________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china guanxi practices are still important, not only within these associations, but also within the business community, a fact that is reinforced by a general perception of exclusion and social marginalisation. there are, however, different attitudes towards guanxi practices within the ethnic chinese business community. in particular, it is among the older generation of entrepreneurs that guanxi affiliations are regarded as being very important, especially when initiating new business ventures. the initial meeting between new business partners, for example, is arranged along guanxi lines, that is, pre-organised by an intermediary that both parties trust. this way of initiating and conducting business is not so prevalent among the younger generation of entrepreneurs. for them, chinese entrepreneurs do not exist in a vacuum, as some of the older entrepreneurs still seem to think. they have to take account of the changing modes of doing business with the outside world not only in relation to the malaysian economy but also to the global one, strongly represented by singapore just across the johor strait. many young entrepreneurs regard a guanxi-dominated economy as a hindrance towards economic flexibility and a free flow of capital. both of these economic premises are necessary when addressing the, at times, volatile fluctuations within the global economy. as a consequence, a rethinking of business practices within the ethnic chinese business environment in jb is beginning, as stiff competition from, especially singapore, combined with a braindrain of the best young entrepreneurs to singapore, is on the rise, thus threatening the overall economic environment and performance in johor baru. interestingly, it is thus singapore and not mainland china that poses the greatest threat towards the small scale chinese economy in jb, despite the fact that singapore is also seen as a great source of income, especially in terms of consumer spending. mainland china is perceived as an opportunity not a threat or a must – that can be exploited if the opportunity to break into that market presents itself. this is due to the fact that most of jb's sme enterprises (both chinese and non-chinese) are multi-directional in their search for new markets that is, towards the domestic market, the important singaporean market, and towards other east and southeast asian markets.15 46 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ mixing the 'china factor' and local constraints one of the main purposes of this paper has been to assess the importance of the social and political attitudes towards the ethnic chinese entrepreneurs in southeast asian countries within the shadow of mainland china. the main focus has been on ethnic chinese sme entrepreneurs, as they are more vulnerable in relation to the social and political whims of their respective communities of residence, than the ethnic chinese controlled transnational conglomerates and large firms. the two latter are in a much stronger position to survive more or less problematic changes emanating from the political establishment in their respective communities of residence than the smes, as they are capable of moving their production lines and capital assets to other locations outside their southeast asian location if need be. furthermore, conglomerates and larger firms are also more likely to follow the mainstream of international capital flows in order to maximise their output. in these cases, guanxi and xinyong together with other culture specific chinese modes of doing business have little influence, as the rate of profitability within global capitalism carry much more weight16. from a general perspective, south east asian chinese smes are more or less forced to comply with rules for conducting business that are in their communities of residence. this applies particularly when dealing with non-chinese entrepreneurs. when doing business on an intraethnic basis, that is, with other ethnic chinese entrepreneurs, guanxi and other culture specific chinese modes of business practices have a much greater influence. this does not mean, however, that intra-ethnic business practices are exclusively conducted along culturally defined modes. on the contrary, as shown in particularly the manado case, the culturally informed business practices constitute but one set of practices out of other business practices, when designing various intraand interethnic business strategies. the differences between smes and the large chinese controlled firms and conglomerates are shown in their different attitudes towards the economic possibilities in mainland china. as stipulated in the beginning of this paper, the economies that will benefit the most from china are those that can penetrate the growing chinese market, develop complementary relations with the chinese economy, attract investment from china, and develop partnerships with mainland chinese entrepreneurs. _________________________________________________________________________ 47 _______________________________________ living in the shadow of mainland china large firms and conglomerates are more able of taking advantage of the opportunities offered by an expanding mainland chinese market by offering superior management expertise and technological knowhow, having access to huge amounts of capital and production assets, things that are much wanted by mainland chinese entrepreneurs and governmental development schemes. furthermore, if the big companies prefer to stay on in southeast asia, but still want to enter the mainland chinese market, they also have an advantage compared to the smes, in that they are capable of conforming and changing their production base locally, so as to be able to meet the needs of mainland chinese investors. in this sense, mainland china constitutes a major attraction. these possibilities do not apply to smes in the same way, as they are more or less dependent on local conditions such as bumiputra policies in malaysia and ali-baba relationships, combined with negative stigmatisation in indonesia. in order words, they are more dependent on contextual constraints. this also means that questions of integration and assimilation in relation to the host community, become more important and decisive for whether companies orient themselves towards mainland china or the host community. in fact, there is not much choice. the local always prevails over the international, as the former is the one who provides the individual ethnic chinese entrepreneur and his company with a framework within which to thrive a framework that is not only constrained in terms of business opportunities, but also in terms of ethnicity and negotiated identities. on the basis of this, the market in mainland china remains a distant, and possibly problematic, potential. michael jacobsen is associate professor at asia research centre, copenhagen business school (mj.int@cbs.dk). notes 1 bloomberg news 12 january 2004. 2 yeung 2006: 7-8. 3 for a general discussion, see bolt 2000. 4 for further details, see jacobsen 2005. 5 a short hand definition of guanxi is that it constitutes a form of social exchange based on sentiments and emotions and are marked by a mutual belief in reciprocity and loyalty. 6 luo (2000), yang (1994), weidenbaum and hughes (1996). 7 mckeown (2001), bolt (2000) and gipouloux (2000). 8 for a critical discussion of 'confucian capitalism', see yao 2002 and dirlik 1996. 48 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ 9 for a discussion of the inner workings of the chinese diaspora globally, see ong and nonini 1997. 10 for a fascinating discussion in this connection, see ang (2001) and riggs (2001). 11 bolt 2000: 119-25, yeung 2006: 14. 12 for further details, see pan (1999: 157–60). 13 the minahasa is the main ethnic group in north sulawesi province. 14 for more details, see jacobsen 2006. 15 for further details, see wee, jacobsen, wong 2006. 16 for a detailed account in this context, see gomez et al. 2004. references ang, ien 2001. on not speaking chinese. living between asia and the west. london: routledge. tan, chee beng 1997. 'comments on “ethnic chinese in southeast asia: overseas chinese, chinese overseas or southeast asians?”'. in leo suryadinata (ed.), ethnic chinese as southeast asians. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies 1997: 25-32 bolt, paul j. 2000. china and southeast asia's ethnic chinese: state and diaspora in contemporary asia. westport: praeger. callahan, william a. 2002. diaspora, cosmopolitanism and nationalism: overseas chinese and neo-nationalism in china and thailand. hong kong: city university of hong kong, southeast asia research centre, working paper series no. 35, november. cribb, robert 2000. 'political structures and chinese business connections in the malay world: a historical perspective'. in chan kwok bun (ed.) chinese business networks. state, economy and culture. singapore: prentice hall 2000: 176-92. dirlik, arif 1996. 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'change and continuity in southeast asian ethnic chinese business'. asia pacific journal of management 23(3): 229-54. cjas_22.pdf, page 1-124 @ normalize_2 114______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 reviews ___________________________________________________________________ brian moeran, the business of ethnography. strategic exchanges, people and organisations. copenhagen: copenhagen business school, 2005, 225 pp., notes, bibliography, index. isbn 1 84520 195 7 (paperback). this book combines what is generally thought of as three heterogeneous disciplines namely anthropology, sociology and business studies. during the last couple of decades, however, there have been several attempts to integrate the three, prompted not only by a growing rapprochement between the disciplines but also by external circumstances that deeply impact on each of them individually owing to their common subject matter, viz. human interaction in all its diversity. political and economic globalization feature as the most important of these influences, transforming the societal environments in which human action takes place. one of the prime sites where anthropology, sociology and business studies merge is in the study of ethnic chinese entrepreneurs in southeast asia. here questions of identity and ethnicity coalesce with studies of business strategies and economic performance. in a similar vein, brian moeran focuses on the relationship between social networking and business strategies in a japanese context, in which pottery production and its commodification constitute the core of his research interests. moeran states rather surprisingly that culture does not play a significant role in the relationship between pottery production, distribution and sale and that a greater influence is exerted by social networking, fashion trends and rates of profitability. from this basis he sets out to analyse the association between what is thought of as 'traditional' pottery production and the personal relationships found among producers, market agents, advertising companies and sale outlets in the form of exhibitions in major warehouses and galleries. based on an intriguing combination of first-person accounts of his own fieldwork experience dating back a couple of decades, together with theories on the relationship between frames, networking and fields (as defined by erving goffman, ulf hannerz and pierre bourdieu among others), he shows how such an approach can serve as an analytical tool when applied to traditional japanese pottery making, state of the art advertisement and sales in a highly competitive contemporary business environment. in this he skilfully combines micro and macro levels of sociological analysis with anthropological fieldwork methodology and applies it to the commodification of japanese pottery production. ________________________________________________________________________ 115 ___________________________________________________________________ reviews through this approach moeran provides us with the very important insight that professional networking, both among fellow potters and between the latter and pertinent agents within the distribution and advertising sector, is always based on interpersonal relations, that is, social relationships and not on institutionalized links between producers and companies or between companies themselves. according to moeran, institutionalized links are somewhat vulnerable compared to the flexible, open-endedness and personalistic nature of the former. for example, institutional linkages only last as long as the people managing them are employed in the companies involved. as soon as they move on to another company, the institutional network has lost a player and has thus become weakened. it is on the basis of such insights that the approach brian moeran offers us gains its legitimacy in a field that is otherwise dominated by more or less static and primordial oriented management studies and other related business readings of like sectors. there are, however, a couple of critical points to which i should like to draw attention. the most important is the rather stuffy atmosphere surrounding the theories that moeran employs in his otherwise very inspiring and individualistic way of presenting his data. for example, most of the theories on frames, networking and fields that he uses were at their height from the mid 1970s to early 1990s. it would have been interesting if these theories had been compared to or updated in the light of more contemporary readings on these same issues. the somewhat stuffy framework becomes more pronounced in moeran’s discussion of pierre bourdieu's early 1990s work on the various forms of capital—symbolic, cultural or social—which we as human beings are constantly in the process of exchanging. this is, however, not to say that the theories employed, and especially those of bourdieu, have little to teach us today—on the contrary. for example, the way in which moeran situates bourdieu's concepts within a contemporary context injects new life and meaning into the theories. moeran thereby provides us with a powerful analysis of the forces that drive human actors within the world of japanese pottery making, distribution and marketing. it would however have been interesting to see whether new approaches in this field of inquiry might have brought to light new and alternative insights. having said this, i would recommend that as many people as possible read this book. not only does it give a fascinating insight into the world of japanese pottery production, but also reveals a deepfelt understanding of how we as human beings relate to one another in terms of interpersonal networking. because of this brian moeran's 116______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 reviews ___________________________________________________________________ book is a must for the social scientist and socially inclined business theorist interested in debunking the relationship between business and ethnography. michael jacobsen associate professor asia research centre copenhagen business school _________________________________________________________________________ 95 ___________________________________________________________________ rewievs stewart glegg, karen wang, mike berrell, business networks and strategic alliances in china. cheltenham: edward elgar publishing limited, 2007, xv, 330pp, bibliography, index. isbn 978 1 84542 306 3. this volume provides the readers with a sophisticated framework based on empirical, comparative, historical and theoretical approaches so as to make the reader capable of understanding the complex nature of contemporary business networks and strategy making in china. this is spelled out in 13 chapters that constitute the basis of this book. these chapters are organised into two interrelated main sections under the headings of knowledge transfer and chinese business relations. the volume is based on a premise that takes its point of departure in a fast changing global economic. previously in world history, it is stated, where an economic power became pre-eminent in major areas of, say, manufacturing and distribution, the impetus was almost always from a core economy in the world system towards a periphery and/or semi-periphery. today such fixed power structures are gradually being undermined and replaced by a much more fluid global economic system, where more or less fixed geo-economic centres and peripheries are replaced by moving centres and peripheries that might even change place, that is, where a periphery becomes a centre and vice versa. this is, according to the editors, the case of contemporary china. here the dominant development has been that investment has flown inwards and the dominant vehicle for economic development has been international joint ventures between chinese manufactures and overseas enterprises. this development has thus made china both a periphery and a centre at the same time! do these changes in the global economy also mean that regional and local players in this new world system, to use an immanuel wallerstein idiom, do not have an impact on the way in which more localised economies are or can be run? do we here have an equivalent to francis fukuyama's end of the history prophecy, this time in terms of economic development, meaning that economic transactions, regardless of where they take place, is of the same kind carrying the same meaning? according to this study, no, this is definitely not the case. regardless of how globalised the economy or an economy becomes, local specificities have a huge impact on the way in which actual business is carried out. this to such an extend that a huge section within academic economic literature has build up ideational constructions of 'the other', in this particular case between western and eastern modes of doing business. of majors contributors to this literature one finds hofstede, gesteland, nisbeth, 96 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 rewievs ___________________________________________________________________ redding, hamilton, luo, etc. one of the outcomes of this discourse is the creation of socio-economic stereotypes based on cultural representation, ethnicity and other types of societal specific manifestations. one of the main goals of this volume, it seem to the reviewer, is to debunk such stereotypical perceptions of and within the global economy exactly because the economy is global and therefore omnipotent. the global and the local are thus thought of as being heavily intertwined. this has made some authors to coin this development as being 'glocalised' thereby stressing that a distinction between the global and local are both outdated and useless in case one wants to understand the workings of contemporary economics. even though the contemporary chinese economy is a good example of an economy that is both globalising and globalised at the same time when it comes to actual business practice, one of the most important aspect when doing business in china is, however, interpersonal relationships framed in the well-known concept of guanxi. this is not to replace one stereotype with another. no, this to replace a notion of a 'big cultural tradition' (regional based cultural stereotypes) with a 'small cultural tradition' (localised notions of culture). this means that culture do matter when doing business, not only in china but in most other countries, but the way in which culture is used is more in the form of strategic planning that fits into a specific context. for example, the notion of guanxi in chinese business practices is not the same in all parts of the chinese market. in the central and western part of the chinese market guanxi has a real impact on economic practice. it furthermore functions as a strategic asset in the hands of chinese businessmen in their dealings with, say, their western counterparts. this use of guanxi is due to a mixture of local modes of doing business with global market mechanisms. in the eastern and most developed parts of the chinese market guanxi has been reduced to an option in business transactions that can be characterised as being more 'deal oriented', which, according to prevailing regional based economic cultural stereotypes, are reserved for western business practices! taking these complex business transactions into account is one of the biggest assets of the present volume. without using the word 'the little cultural tradition' when doing business in contemporary china, the contributors to this volume stresses time and again that in terms of knowledge transfer and understanding actual chinese business relations, it is imperative for a foreign businessman to take these culture representations into account, regardless of whether they are real or are being used as strategic assets! _________________________________________________________________________ 97 ___________________________________________________________________ rewievs if the reviewer is to voice a critical comment to this otherwise well written and well structured volume it must be on the rather weak application of institutional theory in relation to chinese business practices. there are many references to the important relationship between a firm specific and institutional approach to chinese business studies, but demonstrating this very important relationship is not done in a systematic way. in relation to both knowledge transfer and more general chinese business practices the emphasis is perhaps too strong on achieving social capital that is to be used as a broker in solving problems in trans-cultural business transactions. according to the reviewer institutional frameworks are of equal importance, as they define the outer boundaries for how to perceive the chinese market per se thus stressing the impact of the endogenous and exogenous forces that shape the room in which economic transactions take place. some pertinent examples of studies in this connection can be found in m. carney (2005) and m.w. peng and zhou, j.q. (2005). a combination of an understanding of the subtle cultural specific impacts on business transactions with an understanding of how markets are changing in a local cum global context really stresses the globalised nature of the contemporary, in this case, chinese market. having this critique in mind the present volume on business networks and strategic alliances in china represents a major step forward in understanding the human aspect behind business transactions. as such it goes against that part of the business literature that objectifies business people so as to be able to position them into various stereotypical categories that interestingly enough fit into the equally objectifying economic models employed when investigation what entry mode to chose when entering, for example, the chinese market. such attempts of objectifying actual business practices are blurring the analytical optique, when approaching an emerging/transitional market like the chinese. the present volume goes against this mode of viewing business practices thus introducing the notion of 'the little tradition of culture' into a globalised approach to current business studies. i can only give my warmest recommendations to this volume. it really puts the human aspect in business transactions into focus thus negating a culturalist reading of same. michael jacobsen associate professor asia research centre copenhagen business school 74 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies: the singapore perspective ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz abstract creativity and risk-taking, widely accepted prerequisites for successful entrepreneurial behaviour, were absent for a long time from singaporean culture, where people were accustomed to well paying and readily available jobs in the public sector. as a result of the economic slowdown of the late 1990s, promoting entrepreneurial activities became a priority of the singapore government. this study analyzes the entrepreneurial characteristics of singapore's multi-racial and multi-cultural society, and attempts to find if there are any reasons as to why some people are more readily willing to engage in entrepreneurial behaviour, based on factors such as race, gender, and culture. keywords: entrepreneurship, culture, innovation, risk propensity, singapore introduction a new enterprising breed which dares to dream big and risk failure is what the country needs. lee kuan yew1 since gaining independence in 1965, labour-starved singapore has increasingly moved towards adapting capital-intensive production systems to replace the previous labour-dependent methods. moreover, the goal of many singaporeans at that time was to obtain the well-paying and readily available jobs that were available in the public sector. the economic slowdown of the late 1990s resulted in greater attention being paid to entrepreneurial characteristics such as creativity, innovation, and risk-taking. the country now aims to move another step forward, and categorize itself as a knowledge-intensive society. in the words of singapore minister mentor (mm) lee kwan yew, 'in this new phase, it is people with the imagination, drive, willingness to think big and take risks to bring their ideas into the commercial marketplace, who will make _________________________________________________________________________ 75 ______________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies the economy grow, make themselves rich, and provide jobs for our people'2. ray (1990) asserts that human resources management and local enterprise development are effective paths to economic growth in countries such as singapore that lack natural resources. singapore's minister of trade and industry, lim swee say, agrees: 'we need to turn creative ideas into the raw materials in our economy, and innovation into the driving force of economic growth'3. likewise, senior minister goh chok tong has urged singaporeans to become more entrepreneurial and less averse to taking risks if they want to succeed in the global economy4, as risk taking, innovation, and entrepreneurship have been identified as important factors contributing to success in today's highly competitive economy. although these factors are not instant remedies for all economic problems within a nation, numerous studies have identified that innovation and entrepreneurship provide benefits for individuals and companies, as well as improving a nation's economy. for the purposes of this discussion, innovation can be defined as the successful introduction and adaptation of any new structure, concept, product, approach, or process within an organization's operation. however, newness is determined by something being new to the organization, and not necessarily something completely original to the world at large. innovation is thus an economic and social concept, rather than purely a technical term. an entrepreneur, who is a profit seeking risk taker, commonly carries out innovations and introduces creativity. entrepreneurs decide which projects to undertake and how they should be undertaken. the success of an entrepreneur can also be measured by the increase in value of available resources. to be successful, an entrepreneur must convert and rearrange resources in a manner that will increase their value (duymedjian and ansart 2007), thus expanding the production possibilities of the existing resources. firms pursue new ideas, challenge different approaches and exploit change. they provide energy and flexibility to risk everything, even failure, to meet challenges. taking the view that entrepreneurship is 'an engine for economic growth', the singapore ministry of education (moe) has been contemplating various alternatives to stimulate creative thinking among students at an early stage in their education. this strategy is based around singapore's multi-racial and multi-cultural citizens, and the belief that factors that contribute to the entrepreneurial spirit are related to race and culture. in addition, the government is helping to promote an entrepreneurial spirit by developing a conductive environment for 76 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ entrepreneurial activities, through granting various incentives and assistance to business start-ups. examples of these include the business angel fund that was launched by the national science and technology board, to encourage co-investment in selective technology start-up companies. similarly, the local enterprise financing scheme (lefs) is designed to encourage and assist local enterprises to upgrade, strengthen, and expand their operations. this is administered by the productivity and standards board and offered through 28 participating financial institutions. the government also revised the bankruptcy act to encourage a higher degree of entrepreneurship and risk-taking. various demographic factors have been shown to have an influence on the entrepreneurial inclination of the individual. a few of factors in the literature include age (blanchflower, oswald, and stutzer 2001), gender (cromie 1987; fagenson & coleman 1987; sing, reynolds & muhammad 2001), perceptual experience (arenius and minniti 2005), and the level of education (cooper & cascon 1992). cultural-based beliefs and behaviour are other major determining variables. gasse (1982) suggested that some societies appear to breed entrepreneurs more readily than others, while redding (1986) noted that certain ethnic groups appear to exhibit more entrepreneurial spirit. often, the lack of entrepreneurial ventures may be the result of cultural barriers rather than the lack of economic opportunities. in the united states, for example, where entrepreneurs receive high recognition, entrepreneurship can flourish, and the entrepreneur may even be seen as a folk hero in popular culture. there it is better to have tried and failed in business than not to have tried at all. in addition to these findings, there is extensive research into the relationship of entrepreneurship to factors such as race and ethnicity, for example, in the work of rosenstien and light (1995). research into cultures and the degree of emphasis on goal attainment and success, show numerous differences among nations. although the relationship between nations and culture does not have a direct relationship, generalizations help illustrate important differences. for example, timmons et al (1985) postulated that certain chinese cultural values are in direct conflict with commonly agreed upon entrepreneurial characteristics. within the dynamic business environment, culture is the single variable that affects every facet of any enterprise. moreover, issues of culture, communication, and other related variables arise from the fact that individuals in any business firm are socialized in three dimensions _________________________________________________________________________ 77 ______________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies – into their culture, into their business, and into their corporate culture (terpstra 1991). in addition to these cultural factors, there has been a move to modernise the traditions and laws regarding women's status and opportunities in singapore. as stated, singapore is a multi-racial, multi-cultural society composed of chinese, malay, and indians as well as mixed-raced 'eurasians'. each ethnic group has retained its own culture, customs, and traditions, and have learned to live harmoniously with each other. this unique blend of cultures in singapore has motivated this research, the purpose of which is to ascertain the relationship between culture, gender, and entrepreneurial spirit among singaporeans. in summary, the primary objective of the study is to find whether distinct cultural values of the singaporean chinese, malays, and indians affect their respective entrepreneurial spirit. it is hoped that this will provide a starting point for formulating different strategies to promote the entrepreneurial spirit among various racial groups. the remainder of this study is organized as follows: the next section briefly defines entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial characteristics. the influence of culture on entrepreneurial activities is also discussed. next, the result of a survey to assess the impact of ethnic singaporean culture on entrepreneurial spirit is given. a discussion of the results follows, based on the observed cultural factors. finally, in light of the findings, recommendations are given. literature review entrepreneurship can be defined as an ability within the individual 'to locate new ideas and put them into effect'. as baumol (1968) asserted over three decades ago, the entrepreneur 'must lead, perhaps even inspire to effectively complete this function'. prior to this, schumpeter (1954: pp. 87-88) suggested 'economic development would emerge when 'new combinations' appeared discontinuously'. new combinations include the introduction of a new good or a new quality of a good, the introduction of a new method of production, the opening of a new market, the conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials and components, and the reorganization of any industries. the execution of the new combination he called enterprise, and the individuals who executed them, he called entrepreneurs. entrepreneurship has since been defined in various ways. for example, as a creative activity whereby the entrepreneur introduces 78 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ something new into the economy (setty 1980) or an act of innovation that involves endowing existing resources with no wealth-producing capacity (drucker 1985), and a process by which individuals pursue opportunities without regard to the resources they currently control (stevenson et al. 1989). the entrepreneur is viewed as an innovator who is the ultimate value-adding component in the chain of innovation from 'idea' to a commercially successful business. he perceives profit opportunities and initiates action to fill unfulfilled needs or improved inefficiencies (kirzner 1982). in short, entrepreneurs are what they do, not who they are. the hypothesis that cultural factors may enhance or inhibit the desire to express enterprise in a business context is well documented (weiss 1988; maysami and goby 1998a). according to thomas and mueller (2000) culture, representing the shared values and beliefs of a society, is an important contextual factor affecting the number of potential entrepreneurs in a given community, region, or country. they suggest that identifying the nature of the relationship between culture and entrepreneurship can provide governments with information necessary for targeted programs intended to motivate new venture creation, thereby increasing employment and adding to economic vitality and flexibility. moreover, the emphasis placed on entrepreneurship is not the same across different cultures. shapero (1984) concluded that culture is an explanatory variable for entrepreneurial activity, or the lack of it. in the opinion of long (1996), a culture that rewards and values ethical enterprising behaviour, and has markets that are open to entrepreneurial participants wishing to pursue potential economic and physical gains, will indeed stimulate entrepreneurial activity. by contrast, becker (1956) has noted that some societies consider business as an unholy activity, and so entrepreneurial behaviour is also frowned upon. the success of chinese business people, for example, has been linked to their personal characteristic (kirby and fan 1995) and management style (ng and ng 1994). according to maysami et.al (1998b), the basic values underlying chinese business ownership are networking and diligence. they also noted that personal relationships underlie the dynamics of chinese business dealings. in addition, wu (1983) has identified some chinese cultural values that that help to further explain the success of chinese business owners. these include practices such as a high propensity to save, tendency to reinvest business earnings, and a universally strong desire to secure a better education for their children, who would then be expected to carry on their business, _________________________________________________________________________ 79 ______________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies it is important to distinguish small business projects and entrepreneurial ventures. a small business may be any enterprise that is (1) independently owned and operated, (2) not dominant in its field, and (3) does not engage in any marketing or innovative practices. on the other hand, an entrepreneurial venture is often characterized by (1) innovative strategic practices, and (2) principal goals of profitability and growth. entrepreneurs also embrace innovation and engage in strategic management practices. such behaviour is not always typical for small business owners or managers. following this proposition, small business owners or managers should therefore display certain characteristics if they are to be categorized as entrepreneurs: (1) they must be innovative, (2) they should always inject new ideas and propose new ways of doing things, (3) they explore new markets, and (4) they initiate new projects. chell et. al. (1991) listed the defining characteristics of entrepreneurs to include opportunistic, innovative, creative, imaginative, proactive, agents of change and ideas-people. gibb (1985) has argued that three of the most frequently mentioned entrepreneurial attributes, flexibility, creativity, and innovation, are missing from the list of chinese cultural values. hornaday (1982) added two other attributes, positive response to change and profit-orientation, to this list. meanwhile, the entrepreneurial environment in the malay community is apparently even less vibrant compared to the chinese. in the opinion of choy and ismail (1991), the predominant reason, is the lack of a cultural tradition that supports such activities. they contend that an individual's locus of control in the malay community is external and wealth is transient, while hamzah-sendut et al. (1990) agree that malays tend to dislike materialism and seek the idea of social harmony and mutual co-operation. however, research on the relationship between indian culture and entrepreneurship is more limited. methodology and data to further examine the relationship between singaporean malay, chinese, and indian cultures and entrepreneurial spirit, a comprehensive survey was carried out. as a wide range of characteristics are attributed to entrepreneurs (capati, 1986), in designing the survey, this study has taken into account the influential works of sexton and bowman (1985), brockhaus and horwitz (1986), and begley and boyd (1987). six characteristics are 80 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ found to be more predominant in the psychology of entrepreneurs and were thus selected for the measurement of entrepreneurial spirit: (1) creativity, (2) locus of control, (3) risk-taking, (4) need for achievement, (5) determination, and (6) self-efficacy. creativity is regarded as being essential to a successful entrepreneur. entrepreneurs are frequently described as being innovators, for 'without innovations there is no entrepreneur' (mcgraw 1991). from this, the following hypothesis is formed and tested: ho: there is no significant difference in the level of creativity among the chinese, malays, and indians in singapore an internal locus of control is another commonly posited psychological character of entrepreneurs (perry 1990), for, 'entrepreneurs have confidence in their own ability to achieve their goals through their own efforts, as opposed to luck, fate or external circumstances' (rotter 1966). with confidence, comes the willingness to take risk. cunningham and lischeron (1991), suggested that risk-taking is one of the major entrepreneurial characteristics. mill (1984) has similarly suggested risk-taking as the key factor in distinguishing entrepreneurs from managers. meanwhile, according to mcclelland (1961), entrepreneurs prefer to set their own goals and are driven by their own need for achievement. according to sjaver and scott (1991), this need for achievement is a strong driving force behind human action influencing entrepreneurial behaviour, and is the driver that pushes the individual to greater efforts (capati 1986). a further important characteristic is determination, one that would be expected in an individual with high achievement needs. according to kao (1993) an entrepreneurial sprit is an aggressive and determined business attitude. cunningham and lischeron (1991) found entrepreneurs to have a higher degree of self-efficacy relative to non-entrepreneurs. furthermore, research findings by krueger et al. (1999) demonstrated a positive relationship between perceived self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention. individuals who are have high entrepreneurial self-efficacy have higher levels of entrepreneurial intention. five other hypotheses are thus formed and tested: ho: there is no significant difference in the level of [(2) locus of control, (3) risk-taking, (4), need for achievement (5), determination, and (6) self-efficacy] among the chinese, malays, and indians in singapore. _________________________________________________________________________ 81 ______________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies questionnaire design the questionnaire comprised two sections. the first identified the demographic characteristics of the sample, and the second part comprised thirty statements aiming to determine the respondents' level of entrepreneurial spirit through an assessment of the above-mentioned six characteristics. each of the characteristics was appraised using five statements adapted from the studies by levenson (1974), robinson et al. (1990), and the entrepreneurial self-assessment scale in the 'entrepreneur's handbook' (1981). the questionnaire used a 5-point likert scale to indicate the degree of the respondent's agreement or disagreement with each statement (elmore and beggs, 1975, have shown that a 7or 9-point scale does not improve the reliability of the ratings). to minimize response-set bias and the halo effect, certain statements were reverse-scored and mixed with others. before the questionnaire was finally distributed, a pilot test was conducted on a small sample of fifty respondents. minor amendments were then made to improve its format and readability. data collection the sample respondents consisted of residents from housing development board (hdb) estates. these are best described as self-contained towns that constitute the residences of almost 90 percent of singaporeans (singapore population census 2000). the ones chosen for the research were in yishun, tampines, jurong and redhill, representing the northern, eastern, western and central districts of the country. to prevent bias in selecting the best sample, five hdb blocks in each housing estate were selected randomly from the 2002 singapore street directory. beginning with the first household on each floor of the block, every subsequent fourth household was surveyed. a total of 353 responses were collected. twenty were rejected due to incomplete answers or because they were of races other than chinese, malay, or indian. the remaining 333 responses, of which 229 were chinese, 56 were malays, and 48 were indians, were used in the analysis. 82 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ table 1 depicts the descriptive characteristics of the sample in terms of gender, age, marital status, and education level. table 1: descriptive statistics. gender male 123 36.9% female 210 63.1% race chinese 229 68.8% malays 56 16.8% indians 48 14.4% age below 21 30 9.0% 21 – 30 202 60.7% 31 – 60 101 30.3% marital status single 219 65.8% married 109 32.7% others 5 1.5% education tertiary 131 39.1% non-tertiary 202 60.9% statistical methods a one-way analysis of variance (anova) test was performed to investigate significant differences in the six entrepreneurial characteristics among the three racial groups. additionally, a one-sample t-test was conducted on each of the entrepreneurial characteristics where significant differences among the three ethnic groups were deduced. here, the sample mean score for each characteristic was used as the test value. in essence, the entrepreneurial characteristics of each racial group were compared with the average respondent. a racial group was considered high on a particular characteristic when their mean score was higher than the test value. results the results of the one-way anova test, as depicted in table 2, showed significant differences among the three racial groups in creativity, need for achievement and locus of control. however, no significant differences were shown among the three racial groups as far as determination, risk taking and self-efficacy are concerned. _________________________________________________________________________ 83 ______________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies table 2: entrepreneurial characteristics – central tendencies. entrepreneurial characteristics mean standard deviation creativity 16.81 1.90 determination 18.39 2.68 risk-taking 16.05 2.65 need for achievement 18.66 2.48 self-efficacy 15.67 2.53 locus of control 16.54 2.77 table 3: summary of anova results hypothesis on differences in: test value. results significant differences among ethnic groups? creativity 0.010* reject h0 yes determination 0.158* accept h0 no risk-taking 0.243* accept h0 no need for achievement 0.033* reject h0 yes self-efficacy 0.180* accept h0 no locus of control 0.040* reject h0 yes * significance level of 0.05 table 4: summary of one-sample t-test results. hypothesis test value* race mean conclusions creativity 16.81 indian 17.46 high malay 17.07 high chinese 16.62 low need for achievement 18.66 indian 19.52 high malay 18.57 low chinese 18.50 low locus of control 16.54 indian 17.25 high malay 16.96 high chinese 16.28 low * significance level of 0.05 the results obtained from the one-sample t-test are presented in tables 3 and 4. the test was performed on characteristics of creativity, need for achievement, and locus of control that differed significantly among the three racial groups. the results showed that the mean scores for the indians in each of the three categories were the highest. for the malays, 84 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ the mean scores for creativity and locus of control were slightly above that of an average respondent. however, their mean score for need of achievement was below average. the mean scores on creativity, need for achievement, and locus of control for the chinese sample were the lowest. in brief and based on the findings from this questionnaire, this study concludes that singaporeans of indian origin are the most entrepreneurial among the country's three racial groups, and the chinese are the least. discussion these findings lead us to ask, why do the different groups show varying degrees of creativity, locus of control, and need for achievement, while at the same time there are no significant differences among them in terms of risk-taking, determination, and self-efficacy? this report postulates that specific cultural values and beliefs inherent among each ethnic group are primary contributors to these findings. the next section explores possible links between culture values and the presence, or lack of, entrepreneurial characteristics among the three ethnic groups in singapore. the indians religion plays an important role in the life of every indian. hinduism is forms the ethos of the majority of indians, including those who have migrated to singapore (srinivasan 1990). as such, religion paves the way to the understanding of indian culture. the doctrines of karma and transmigration have greatly shaped indian culture, and even today the influence is alive and active, according to sumathi (1994). indians believe that the success of a man is under his own control and that he will reap what he sows. as bose (1990) puts it, 'man is the sole and absolute master of his fate'. this internal locus of control is further supported by the belief in transmigration, in which a man's rebirth is determined by the cumulative good or bad actions of his previous lives (srinivasan 1990). hinduism believes in the eternity of soul and its reincarnations that eventually lead to final liberation or moksha (kishore 1996). hence, indians feel that they and their actions alone are accountable for their eternal liberation. in addition to having a high internal locus of control, indians possess a high need for achievement. hinduism advocates the quest for right_________________________________________________________________________ 85 ______________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies eous living, love, and happiness, and wealth and prosperity (srinivasan 1990). as asserted by kishore (1996) these attitudes encourage people to continuously seek excellence in what they do, since the path to salvation lies in one's good actions (karmas). with their thirst for knowledge, indians are universal in their outlook, according to sumathi (1994), and are receptive of new ideas and willing to learn from other people. moreover, the indians are a family-oriented community (stern 1993). according to sumathi (1994), living in and being raised among large families has endowed indians with a great sense of security and group identity, but relatively little individuality (individualism and the neglect of the wants of others in the community are indeed considered selfish). hence, wolpert (1991) argues that conformity to the family and authority becomes the first law of indian life and a major limiting factor to creative growth, radical change, or independent initiative. this statement apparently contradicts the finding of this study, in which indians have been ascertained to possess high creativity. the discrepancy may be explained by the growth of individualism as a result of urbanization, changes in employment patterns, and economic development in singapore (sumathi 1994). moreover, hinduism accepts the validity of many paths leading to the same goal (hofer 1997). this suggests that creativity and individualism may no longer be constrained, but rather, a natural characteristic of the indians. the malays bedlington (1971) argues that the malay idea of rezeki or belief in the predetermination of man's economic destiny, results in fatalism and a 'lack of will to go on striving'. in the same vein, noordin (1996) states that the malay belief in fate that allah has a predetermined plan for them may sometimes lead to the unquestioning acceptance of the order of things. everything that happens, whether good or bad, is attributed to god's will. rajaratnam (1991) reiterates the feudalistic consciousness (fatalism) of the malays. from these comments, one may be lead to believe that malays possess a high external locus of control. findings from this survey, however, were that the malays displayed higher than average internal locus of control. the findings from the survey are indeed supported by a group of educated malay elite, comprised of members of the muslim society at the national university of singapore and leaders of various other malay and muslim associations. they have argued that malay values, and in particular, incorrect interpretations of islam, are the causes of their 86 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ lag in economic prosperity. the belief in a pre-destined future without the need to make an effort (as a result of a passive attitude towards religion) may have lead to fatalism, an over concern with rituals and satisfaction with short-term results. such beliefs have been described as negative, non-progressive, mistaken. moreover, it has also been stated that non-islamic views have crept into malay's interpretation of islam (nus muslim society and nus malay society 1982), which has had a negative effect. rahim (1979) asserts that islam stresses work and effort, forbids laziness, involves long-term planning, problem solving as well as forbidding waste, arrogance, complacency, and despair. these give support for the notion of internal locus of control that may be inherent in the singaporean malay culture. malay culture may also have a role in shaping their attitude towards the accumulation of wealth through entrepreneurial activities. in the ethos of malay society, the unrelenting pursuit of an objective, like the accumulation of wealth, is not held in esteem and is thus given low status. in fact, it is condemned as inconsistent with gracious living on which they place much importance (goh 1977). according to noordin (1996), respect and status in the malay community is earned not through material possession but through friendliness, neighbourliness and willingness to lend a hand in times of trouble. furthermore, high priority is placed on personal happiness, which does not necessarily come from wealth. in the malay view, precise and explicit calculation, or the blatant pursuit of maximum profit with no consideration for the other party, negates social relationships which are developed between individuals on the basis of a mutual willingness to 'give' (li 1989). as a result of their reluctance to commercialize family relationships and the tendency to personalize commercial relationships, the possibility and acceptability of personal advancement through entrepreneurship may be inhibited. mendaki (1993) proposed that the nature of the 'singaporean' way of life demands an almost obsessive interest in economic development, whereas islam demands reasonable limits on materialism. this conflict may have lead the malays to be less influenced by pressures to assimilate into the urban, industrialized, time-conscious and competitive world of many singaporeans. this, in turn, proposes support for the ideology that malay culture does not advocate a strong need for achievement (especially in terms of monetary pursuit), a fact that is reflected in the findings of this study. _________________________________________________________________________ 87 ______________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies the chinese the most influential beliefs that form the foundation of chinese cultural traditions, and still provide the basis for the norms of chinese interpersonal behaviour, is confucianism (pye 1972). it is often pointed out that the chinese in singapore have always been confucian in their thinking and behaviour, even if only subconsciously, and that singapore chinese society is confucian in value orientation and organizational structure (kuo 1986). indeed, confucianism was revitalized in singapore in the 1970s with the 'speak mandarin' drive. this campaign may have raised the level of consciousness among the chinese population about what it means to be chinese. lian (1999) has stated that this, along with the promotion of confucian ethics in the 1980s, has resulted in singapore being an active player in the so-called re-invention of 'chineseness'. confucianism as the behavioural or moral doctrine based on the teaching of confucius, governs human relationships, social structures, virtuous behaviour and work ethics (kirby & fan 1995). the ideal man envisaged by confucius is not a successful entrepreneur, but a scholar bureaucrat. the key value is harmony and order, and taking initiative and innovation may be viewed as a threat to social harmony. this may explain why key entrepreneurial values such as creativity, initiative, and innovation are missing from the vocabulary of chinese values. entrepreneurs generally have an internal locus of control while ethnographic evidence has shown that fatalism with regard to personal economic destiny exists in the singapore chinese culture (wee 1976; leong 1978; lai 1973). this supports the result of this study, which shows that singaporean chinese have an external locus of control. the need to achieve has always been inherent among the chinese in singapore, and has become more pronounced in post independence times (cheng 1985). the chinese are easily unsettled by other people's judgements and have thus developed a defensive nature. even confident people are susceptible to being controlled by fear of shame. this fear of shame or "saving face" as commonly phrased in singapore, spurs the chinese to hunger for achievement and to seek success (tamney 1996). on the other hand, the singapore population census of 2000, revealed that chinese, with an average household income of $3,848, are the most affluent among the three races. with 58 percent of the singaporean chinese attaining secondary school or above qualifications, they also have the highest education profile. as a result of their economic and academic 88 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ success, the chinese in singapore may have been entrenched in their own comfort zone, thus reflecting their low need for achievement. similarities among the three racial groups the findings of this study show no significant difference among the three groups in terms of risk-taking, determination and self-efficacy. we postulate that ethnic and cultural factors are not strong advocates for these entrepreneurial characteristics among singaporeans. instead, there may be plausible reasons for similarities between the singaporean chinese, malay, and indians as far as risk-taking, determination and self-efficacy are concerned. first and foremost, the singapore government has channelled vast efforts into the promotion of a singaporean national identity, and has been, by most accounts, successful (tong and pakir 1996). the development of this overarching national identity seems to have resulted in different communities being encouraged to accept the same set of parameters for dealing with certain important issues in the society. in addition, the majority of singaporeans, regardless of ethnicity, are exposed to the english-medium, unified educational system, where schools use a common syllabus and students take common examinations. this may also have imparted a common set of values english was adopted as the main medium of education for pragmatic reasons according to tong and pakir (1996). the only choice available to a small, yet multi-cultural and potentially multi-lingual country such as singapore, to become a part of the international grid of business and finance, was to adopt the english language. tham (1996) supports this view by asserting that the adoption of english as the official language has been instrumental in realizing singapore's development objectives. the promotion and usage of english as an official language in the workplace has provided a common platform where different racial groups can communicate effectively with one another. this has reduced communication breakdown, and at the same time, has increased the opportunities for different races to better understand one another's culture, and perhaps develop a unified value system. finally, increased and continuous interaction among the three racial groups is brought about by the gradual 'levelling' of lifestyles, housing policies, and occupations. integrated schools and ethnic mixing in the new housing estates have indeed promoted a higher degree of social interaction, and may further explain the blurring of cultural boundaries in singapore. from this, it is necessary to ask what are the possible causes _________________________________________________________________________ 89 ______________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies of the less than desired level of risk taking, self-efficacy and determination among singaporeans, regardless of their race? in the drive for growth and economic success, the singapore system has become the epitome of meritocracy, claim wong et al., (1993). the local system rewards those who follow a tried and tested path to success. perceived to be a disgrace, failure in entrepreneurial efforts may bring shame to the individual and family, and should be avoided at all costs. the stigma of failure may have thus resulted in a society that is highly risk adverse. sm lee reiterates this point: 'we have got a society which is risk adverse because we have been too successful and we have too few failures'5. in addition, the proportion of those in managerial and professional positions has jumped from 10 percent to 24.4 percent of the labour force in the last ten years. good salaries, attractive packages and career advancements associated with positions in large reputable corporations, constitute a higher opportunity cost in risk taking. the competitive school and work environment may have also contributed to low self-esteem among singaporeans. a 1992 national survey, for example, revealed that more than half of the teenagers surveyed had low self-esteem attributed to assessment of personal worth based on academic accomplishments (gasmier 1992). career advancements and monetary achievements are the major concerns of the adult singaporeans. as suggested by yeo (1985), high flyers are singled out for mention, and achievement is the hallmark of a successful life. the continuous pursuit of excellence, characteristic of singapore society, may have adversely affected the self-efficacy of its people. the economic policies of the singapore government have been hugely successful in increasing growth and affluence. according to the singapore population census 2000, the economy expanded over the previous decade at an average gdp growth of 7.7 percent per year. the average monthly income doubled to $2,200 between the years 1990 and 2000. home ownership rate increased from 87.5 percent to 92.3 percent in the same period while car ownership by household jumped from 28 percent to 31.7 percent. these national achievements may have lead singaporeans, especially the younger generation, to be complacent, heightening their reluctance to leave their comfort zone. this, evidently, has resulted in their lack of diligence and determination. in addition, while the abundance of employment opportunities provides a safety net for working adult, it may have held back their level of determination, as they lack the motivation 90 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ to persevere in face of obstacles faced in innovative entrepreneurial endeavours. the role of women in business ventures deng, hassan and jivan's (1995) asian study note that the majority of women business owners in the region are in their 30s and early 40s. similarly, singaporean female entrepreneurs have an average age of 41 and are mostly married with two children (teo 1996). female singaporean business owners have at least 10 years schooling, while 35 percent held first or postgraduate degrees, 15 percent had professional or polytechnic qualifications, and 50 percent had completed secondary-level education. collerette and aubury (1991) showed that prior to setting up their ventures, the majority of female business owners had previous work experience. although female-owned businesses are well diversified and range from service to manufacturing, the majority of female business owners in singapore seem to be in the service and retail industries. this may be the result of the high start up costs involved in manufacturing and construction sectors, as well as prospective female business owners' lack of prior experience and technological skills in these areas. consequently, female-owned businesses in singapore usually start as small service and retail ventures with few employees, and grew over the years to become progressively more established. the majority of singapore female-owned businesses have been in operation for an average of nine years. business ownership structure seems to affect the way female business owners manage their venture as well. when run by women, businesses registered as private limited companies and sole proprietorships were more successful than partnerships (rashid 1996). perhaps it is then not surprising to find that 64 percent of female-owned businesses in singapore are private limited companies, 21 percent are partnerships, 14 percent are sole proprietorships, and only 1 percent is publicly owned. motivations, problems, and success factors in the opinion of hisrich and brush (1986), in general, women are primarily motivated by the need for independence as opposed to men who are motivated by material rewards. lee-gosselin and grise (1990) note that the idea to start a business originates almost exclusively from _________________________________________________________________________ 91 ______________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies women business owners to 'fulfill an old dream, a desire for recognition by others, the desire to put one's knowledge and skills to use, a continuity to training or work experience, or the desire to be independent and have control over one's life'. the five major factors which best motivate singaporean female business owners in particular are cited by teo (1996). these are the identification of business opportunities, the desire to put their knowledge and skills into use, the need for freedom and flexibility, the desire to achieve personal growth and recognition, and the need to make more money for financial independence. it was, moreover, the prospective female owners' own personal decision to start a business in fulfilling their sense of self-worth, and not family and friends' influences, that inspired them. as motivators in arriving at their decision, singaporean women mentioned loss of job or inability to find a suitable job, encouragement by the government, taking over the family business, and finding the previous job too demanding and stressful. this is maybe an asian trait: 66 percent of female entrepreneurs doing business in asia were motivated primarily by the desire for autonomy, and the freedom and flexibility offered in running one's own business, as observed by deng deng, hassan and jivan (1995) among this majority, 22 percent cited that money and profits were additional driving forces in their decision to set up their own businesses while the remaining 34 percent were motivated by personal crises, social considerations and family loyalty. the most common start-up problems faced by women seem to have been a lack of start-up capital, coupled with a lack of confidence in the abilities of female business owners' by banks, suppliers, and clients alike, as well as family issues. for singaporean female business owners, the most critical start-up problems are difficulties in finding labour, obtaining finance, competing with others, establishing credibility and coping with high business costs. other problems encountered at the launch of the business include marketing, pricing, management, social, interpersonal, production, knowledge, and personal issues. after the launch of the business, women owner/managers, needing to compete for limited resources could be at a disadvantage, since they may lack a track record and thus credibility when applying for bank loans or trying to obtain credit from suppliers. this would clearly affect the operational costs of their enterprises. factors that singaporean businesswomen cite as having attributed to their success are product and service qualities (77 percent), per92 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ sonal qualities (73 percent), quality of personnel (66 percent), adequate knowledge of products and services (63 percent), and customer loyalty (61 percent). other factors reported are the availability of professional advice or government assistance (24 percent), technological advantage (16 percent), and availability of financing and capital (16 percent). they generally started small sized businesses in the service and retail sectors and required limited use of technology and little initial capital. moreover, singaporean female business owners seem to have been already familiar with the area of their vocation and thus did not require any professional services. moreover, they were also capable of striving hard for success with insufficient funds. teo (1996) further found certain relationships between success6 and various general characteristics of female business owners in singapore. first, successful businesswomen seem to be more educated, and thus have more up-to-date knowledge of available technologies through university education. they may also be more aware of the operation of the business world and better trained to put their skills and knowledge to good use. when considering motivation and how they were encouraged to start, all successful singaporean female business owners stated that it was their own idea to start a business as compared to 69 percent of the less successful owners. this may suggests that women who on their own thought of starting and running a business are more driven to work hard and to make their businesses a success. additionally, successful women business owners are motivated by the need to provide financial support for the family and the desire to have control over their lives. finally, about three-quarters of successful women business owners in singapore stated that a good networking system was an important success factor, compared to less than half of the less successful ones who thought so. in the us, similarly, both woodward (1988) and kotter (1982) had earlier found that successful businesswomen spent more time developing network contacts before starting their business as well as subsequent to the start of operation. it seems vital, then, to build and maintain good relations with both staff and clients in this competitive environment. work experience, on the other hand, does not seem to have much impact on the success of the women-owned businesses in singapore: 30 percent of the successful business owners had no previous work experience compared to only 3 percent of the less successful ones. _________________________________________________________________________ 93 ______________________________ ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurial tendencies concluding comments this study shows similarities in the entrepreneurial characteristics of among three groups in singapore's multi-racial and multi-cultural society. the principal reason for this leveling out has been the government's predetermined development of a national identity. these policies have contributed to singapore's business success, as well as to changing cultures. different ethnic communities now accept the same set of values for dealing with attitudes such as risk-taking, determination, and self-efficacy. factors such as race, gender, and culture have been made almost made indistinguishable as the majority of singaporeans are exposed to a standardized, english-based, and unified educational system. not only has this imparted a common set of values within the required formal academic experience, but also in all other milieu. the selective use and modification of values from a number of cultures has been blended to form an amalgamated singaporean value system culture. moreover, the lifestyle and high degree of social interaction among singaporeans has achieved a blurring of cultural boundaries. nevertheless, some aspects of this manufactured culture are generating tension and challenging the potential opportunities gained from entrepreneurship. for example, following the tried and tested is rewarded, while there is a stigma from failure. a characteristic of singaporeans is to focus on continuous pursuit of excellence, yet this seems to have adversely affected the self-efficacy of its people. these are some of the factors to help explain a society that is highly risk adverse. this places limits in singapore's effort to shift into an entrepreneurial-driven mode of development. the cultural effects of moving to an entrepreneurial-based economic development are significant and this study finds shortcomings in changing the strategy. moreover, the history of successes in singapore's economic achievements has promoted a complacent society and people reluctant to move out of their comfort zones. for example, attractive career opportunities within large corporations offer greater rewards than entrepreneurial risk taking. younger singaporeans exhibit this behavior, which may further limit future innovative entrepreneurial endeavors. however, enterprises established by females may offer a new source of entrepreneurial potential. singapore's experience is controversial, with many perceived and real faults, yet it is undeniably unique. singapore also serves as one of 94 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 25•2007 ramin cooper maysami and christopher ziemnowicz __________________________ the models for policies to build growth opportunities in other nations. however, the significance of the unique cultural and social makeup of singapore is important because they are not as comparable with economic development focused on entrepreneurship. singapore has a particular asian context and it is substantially different from the environment and cultural experience of nations where entrepreneurial-driven growth has been successful. further research is required to establish the appropriate cultural values and administrative policies to best benefit from the changes occurring in singapore. ramin cooper maysami is chaired professor at department of economics, finance, and decision sciences, school of business administration, university of north carolina at pembroke (ramin.maysami@uncp.edu); christopher ziemnowicz is chaired professor at department of management, marketing, and international business, school of business administration, university of north carolina at pembroke (ziemnow@uncp.edu). notes 1 singapore senior minister, lee kuan yew, the straits times, 11 feb 2000, p. 1. 2 'wanted: risk-takers to add zip to economy', the straits times, 11 feb 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'buddhism in singapore'. in r. hassan (ed) singapore: society in transition. kuala lumpur: oxford university press 1976: 155-188. weiss, w. j. 1988. regional culture, managerial behavior, and entrepreneurship: an international perspective. new york: quarom book. wolpert, s. 1991. india. california: university of california press. wong, s. k., l. k. wong, y.k. kwan and v. c. gansham 1993. a conceptual model for depicting the relationship between entrepreneurship and the environmental factors in singapore. paper presented at '4th endec world conference on entrepreneurship: dynamic entrepreneurship', 1993. wu, y.l. 1983. 'chinese entrepreneurs in southeast asia'. american economic review 73(2): 112-117. yeo, a. 1985. living with stress. singapore: times books international. 57 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp interest representation and the transformation of the chinese communist party zheng yongnian abstract at the 80th anniversary celebration of the chinese communist party (ccp) on 1 july 2001, jiang zemin called on the party to admit into its ranks of 'outstanding social elements' of private entrepreneurs, professionals, technical and managerial personnel from non-state firms and mncs. party ideologues, however, have raised a great hue and cry. in order to establish his political legacy, the ccp leadership has intensified the campaign to educate its cadres and members. reform and development have bourgeoisified and benefited many party members and cadres. jiang's public support of the capitalists is not going against the tide but is a recognition of reality instead. in fact, to continue to grow and expand, the party must embrace the better educated and the most enterprising in society. the capitalists within the party will certainly be catalysts to quicken the transformation of the party. in its attempt to admit capitalists, has the ccp unknowingly let in the trojan horse? jiang zemin's original aim may have been to strengthen the party-state by broadening its social base. and as the party metamorphoses, perhaps into a kind of social democratic party, jiang will be favourably judged for paving the way for such a metamorphosis. nevertheless, it is not an easy transition: insurmountable difficulties lie ahead for the party leadership. introduction in his controversial speech celebrating the 80th anniversary of the chinese communist party (ccp) on 1 july 2001, jiang zemin called on the party to admit those 'outstanding elements' of society such as private entrepreneurs, professionals, technical and managerial personnel from various non-state sectors, including those employed by mncs.1 according to jiang, these are people who can also make a positive contribution to the rebuilding of china's socialism, and should therefore not be excluded from the party. whether they are politically progressive (xianjin) or backward (luohou) should not be judged purely on whether they are property-owning classes. 'private entrepreneurs' – actually an official euphemism for 'capitalists' or 'private businessmen' – were hitherto publicly barred from the party. the proposed membership relaxation has generated much encopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200258 zheng yongnian thusiasm from many private businessmen wanting to join the party. immediately after jiang's speech, more than '100,000 private entrepreneurs' were reported to have submitted applications to join the party. the party's organization department (headed by zeng qinghong) is planning to recruit 200,000 private entrepreneurs before the 16th congress in september 2002.2 traditionally, the ccp was supposed to represent the interests of only five major groups, i.e., workers, peasants, intellectuals, members of the pla (people's liberation army), and government officials and cadres. the majority of the original rank and file of the party was basically drawn from the 'proletariat' background. in championing the causes of capitalists, jiang's initiative has been hailed by supporters as a theoretical breakthrough, throwing off the party's old dogmas, particularly the shackle of class. at the same time, for jiang as general secretary to openly embrace capitalists – the antithesis of the proletariat class – amounts to dropping an ideological bombshell on the conservative wing of the party. naturally, the party's ideologues have raised a great hue and cry. the strength of the opposition from these party diehards seems to have taken jiang by surprise. the opposition came into the open with the publication on the chinese internet of a widely circulated wanyan-shu or 'a petition of tenthousand words,' attributed to a group of conservative party veterans led by long-time leftist critic deng liqun. prior to jiang's 'july 1 speech,' several provincial party leaders, such as deputy party secretary of jilin province lin yanzhi, had already spoken out against jiang's scheme.3 zhang dejiang, party secretary of zhejiang provincial committee of the ccp, had also strongly argued that private entrepreneurs should not be allowed to join the ccp.4 zhejiang is among the few provinces in china where the private sector has made rapid inroads and has played an increasingly important role in the local economy and even politics. zhang's strong opposition suggested that there was no consensus within the party leadership on the political role of the private sector. indeed, the arguments presented by lin and zhang are representative of and are popular among old-style leftists. in brief, apart from being accused of breaching the party's cardinal principle by courting members of the exploitative class, jiang was blamed for his failure to address the burning issues of growing unemployment and widening income disparities, and his failure to hold formal consultations within the party before making the announcement. 59 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp in response, jiang quickly ordered the closure of the two 'theoretical' (i.e. ideological) magazines, zhenli de zhuiqiu [seeking truth] and zhongliu [the central pillar], which were well-known mouthpieces of the leftists.5 subsequently, some leftist websites were also shut down.6 since then party cadres throughout china, including officers of the pla, have been instructed to hold study sessions of jiang's 'july 1 speech.'7 not too long ago, the ccp had continued to proclaim that its ultimate goal was to eliminate capitalism; and all forms of politically and ideologically incorrect 'elements' such as 'private entrepreneurs' or capitalists were not allowed to exist in the party. although it is still not certain today what political role the rising new capitalist class will play, the party seems to have begun its transformation from traditional marxism and leninism to something else. this paper attempts to examine this transformation by employing the concept 'interest' based on albert hirschman's definition. the paper is divided into sections. the first section discusses the concept 'interest.' the second section examines the rise of an interest-based social order and its impact on chinese politics. the third section highlights how the party leadership has adjusted the party to accommodate a rising interest-based social order. finally, i shall discuss what difficulties lie ahead in the process of transformation. 'interest' 'interest' has been a fundamental force that motivates the action of the actor. the concept of 'interest' used here is drawn largely from hirschman's definition.8 'interest' motivates action, but actors define 'interest' differently, including interest in honour, glory, self-respect, in an afterlife, in economic advantage, etc.9 regardless of the various definitions of 'interest,' this paper regards 'interest' as a 'methodical pursuit and accumulation of private wealth.'10 according to hirschman, an interest-propelled action is characterized by self-centredness, that is, 'predominant attention of the actor to the consequences of any contemplated action for himself,' and rational calculation, that is, 'a systematic attempt at evaluating prospective costs, benefits, satisfactions, and the like.'11 there are political benefits of an interest-based social order. first of all, an interest-based social order is more governable than one based on other non-interest-based factors, such as various forms of passion, since interest-guided individual behaviour is more predictable than a passion-guided act. as hirschman noted, 'a world where people methodically pursue their private interests was … far more predictable, and hence more governable, than one where the citizens are vying with each copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200260 zheng yongnian other for honor and glory' (emphasis original).12 second, in an interestbased social order, individual behaviour is expected to be stable and continuous. when individuals pursue 'single-mindedly material interests,' their behaviour will not experience any turbulent change. third, economic expansion and the coming of an interest-based social order can make individual behaviour increasingly peaceful. in what hirschman called the french thesis of the doux commerce, 'commerce was often regarded as a powerful civilizing agent diffusing prudence, probity, and similar virtues within and among trading societies.'13 this theme was expressed by montesquieu in the spirit of laws when he declared, [i]t is almost a general rule that wherever manners are gentle there is commerce; and wherever there is commerce, manners are gentle. [c]ommerce … polishes and softens barbaric ways as we can see everyday.14 fourth and even more relevant to this paper, the principle of doux commerce is applicable not only to democracy, but also to other types of regime such as monarchy and despotism. economic expansion can soften a regime's use of coercion. it can even lead to regime changes by eliminating arbitrary and authoritarian decision-making by the sovereign. for montesquieu, with the rise of specific new economic institutions resulting from economic expansion, the state will be largely deprived of its traditional power such as the power 'to seize property and to debase the currency at will.' for steuart, 'it is rather the overall complexity and vulnerability of the 'modern economy' that make arbitrary decisions and interferences unthinkable – that is, exorbitantly costly and disruptive.'15 furthermore, economic expansion can also empower the people. according to millar, the advance of commerce and manufacturing gives rise to a general diffusion of the spirit of liberty. this is so because it enhances the ability of certain social groups to resort to collective action against oppression and mismanagement.16 finally, many scholars have argued that the economic benefits from economic expansion will make the state soften its rule over economic activities and respect people's basic economic freedom. smith argued that economic expansion and individuals' pursuit of wealth and interest could lead to a spontaneous social order. according to him, market exchange can produce a 'natural progress of things toward improvement' because it induces individuals to consume and produce in rational ways. free market exchange thus can ensure that the consumer is 'led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.'17 in other words, the market generates a 'public interest' that encompasses national wealth, a non-coercive society, and the freedom 61 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp to choose and co-operate that emerges when individuals have the option and incentive to make rational choices.18 the logic behind the transformation of the ccp is based on the simple notion of preserving its 'interest.' it is all these advantages of 'interest' defined above that have led the chinese leadership to justify a market economy and capitalistic development and allow capitalists to join the party. from 'ideology' to 'interest' in the pre-reform era, china can be regarded as an ideologically and politically constructed society based on the concept of 'class.' it was organized in accordance with major political leaders' perceptions of what a society should be and realized by forceful organizational weapons. as schurmann correctly pointed out in the 1960s, 'communist china is like a vast building made of different kinds of brick and stone. however it was put together, it stands. what holds it together is ideology and organization.'19 the leadership under mao zedong initiated various political experiments, especially during the cultural revolution from 1966 to 1976, to reorganize china, according to mao's own utopian ideals of what society should be like. whatever mao did, his aim was to destroy all possible private space and politicize the chinese society. totalitarian state power penetrated every corner of society and coercive institutional mechanisms were used to eliminate private space and manage public space.20 the household registration (hukou) system was used to control population movement and bind people to their place of birth and work. since without a household registration booklet, no one could obtain food, clothing, housing, employment, schooling for children or the right to marry or enlist in the army, the system created a spatial hierarchy of urban places, priority of urban over rural areas, and where large cities took precedence over smaller ones in terms of the allocation of state resources.21 a related institution for controlling population was the work unit (danwei) system, in which the party-state implemented ideological indoctrination and administrative disciplining such as warning, public criticism and negative records in the dossier.22 the danwei system was also a mechanism in which the party-state solicited political compliance and allegiance from individual citizens by providing them with economic and social security such as inexpensive housing, free medical care, generous retirement pensions, and a wide range of subsidies covering virtually every household need from transportation to nutrition. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200262 zheng yongnian furthermore, enormous mass organizations were created in order to mobilize millions of people to implement public policies, and to achieve the party's and even mao's personal purposes. all these organizations were administrated and monitored by the party-state and were used to organize youths, workers, women and other social groups into bodies resembling 'a conscription society.'23 meanwhile, the party-state banned all functional organizations, which were regarded or even suspected to be 'counter-revolutionary.' all autonomous and independent organizations were prohibited. a highly organized and politicized society, together with a planned economy, enabled the party-state to mobilize numerous social groups into the political arena, and thus created new power resources within the chinese society to implement profound tasks of social engineering such as land reform, collectivization and nationalization of business and commerce. nevertheless, over time, the reach of the party-state was shortened. as shue has pointed out, the highly organized and efficacious party-state gradually degenerated into a regime obsessed with ideology and lacking almost any genuine social base beyond its partystate apparatus. no wonder then that it becomes increasingly difficult to govern either legitimately or effectively.24 in the late 1970s, the deng xiaoping leadership began to shift its emphasis to economics as a way of reorganizing the country.25 in the 1980s, china achieved high rates of economic growth by expanding its market space.26 but it was only after deng's southern tour (nanxun) in 1992 that the chinese leadership legitimized capitalism as a way of promoting economic expansion. why was the ccp not able to legitimize capitalism in the 1980s? capitalism could have been legitimized in that period. after the bitter and uncertain 30 years of experimentation following 1949, many leaders realized that learning from capitalism conforms to historical necessity, and capitalism is a stage that cannot be skipped on the way to socialism. although the party had an idea of the nineteenth-century capitalism from which marx drew inspiration, the reform and open-door policy enabled party cadres and government officials to see what had happened to capitalism recently from china's neighbouring countries, especially the four little dragons, i.e., hong kong, taiwan, singapore and south korea, in addition to japan and the united states. from all these countries, the leadership saw how capitalism had helped raise the standard of living of the vast majority of the people there, and enhanced their status in international arenas, which were goals that the ccp had 63 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp fought for since its establishment. the impact of the four little dragons on china's leaders should not be underestimated since the experiences of hong kong, taiwan and singapore showed that chinese culture was not a barrier but a catalyst to economic growth.27 the leaders realized what was important was not cultural but institutional factors, and if the country wanted to achieve rapid economic growth, its economic system had to be overhauled. this was the motivation behind the decision of the leadership to implement economic reforms. many social groups, especially young intellectuals, advocated publicly for capitalism, genuinely believing that capitalism could pave the way for china to grow into a strong and affluent nation. spurring the country on was the capitalist west, which was quite friendly to china in the 1980s, as they believed china's market-oriented economic reform and open-door policy would eventually lead to two transformations, that is, from a planned economy to a free market system, and from political authoritarianism to democracy. however, in that decade, the chinese revolutionary leaders had quite different perceptions of the market economy and capitalism.28 while at the practical level they did not oppose carrying out different forms of capitalistic experiment, ideologically, they were unwilling to legitimize capitalism.29 it was only after they saw that market economy did not harm the socialist system which they had fought for that they became willing to recognize its legitimacy. this can be seen from changes in the official definition of china's economic system. at the ccp's 12th congress in 1982, the leadership defined the country's economic system as one in which the 'planned economy is the main pillar and market economy a supplementary element.' the market economy failed to gain theoretical legitimacy then. five years later in 1987, at the 13th congress, the leadership defined the economic system as one 'combining planned and market economies'; and here the market economy gained an ideological status equal to that of the planned economy. however, with the coming and in the aftermath of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, capitalism came under serious attack. conservative leaders regarded the pro-democracy movement as the result of the spread of capitalism as an idea and as a practice.30 why then did a sudden change take place after deng xiaoping's nanxun? two important and subtle factors can be identified. first, the political interests of the regime were reconstructed in the early 1990s. second, the reconstruction of political interests created an ideological room for capitalism as a way to reorganize society. in the early 1990s, a copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200264 zheng yongnian serious political legitimacy crisis hit the ccp, following the crackdown of the 1989 pro-democracy movement and the collapse of communism in the soviet union and east european countries. initially, regime survival became the highest priority, and consequently, the leadership tightened its control by engaging in both political and economic rectification. nevertheless, chinese leaders, especially deng xiaoping, also realized that the fall of the soviet union and the collapse of east european communism was mainly due to the failure of economic development there. therefore, the party needed to achieve radical economic growth if it wanted to avoid such a misfortune and rebuild its political legitimacy. deng xiaoping chose the path of initiating radical economic reforms.31 while the leadership decided to implement radical economic reform, it also began to build a new social order in accordance with the capitalist economic changes. although the leadership tightened its political control in the aftermath of the 1989 movement, social demands for political reform were still prevalent. in order to transform popular passions for political interests to those for economic interests, the leadership had to provide social members with an economic 'exit.' while the crackdown of the 1989 movement showed social members the high cost of pursuing political interests, the opening of an economic 'exit' led them to realize that the shift from political interests to economic interests would be beneficial. in hirschman's term, this is a strategy to transform people's 'public action' (demands for political reform) to 'private interest' (economic activities).32 the political significance of such an economic 'exit' motivated the leadership to de-ideologize capitalism as a means of economic expansion. this strategy resulted in almost a decade of rapid development and socio-political stability. a rising interest-based social order an interest-based social order is not a natural result of economic expansion, but was consciously pursued by the party leadership. what the leadership wants is not only economic expansion per se, but also the beneficial political consequences arising from rapid economic expansion. economic expansion has generated enormous political benefits, not only because it has increased the regime's political legitimacy, but also because it has changed the space structure in the country. the conscious pursuit of economic expansion has led to the emergence of an interest-based social order,33 which in turn has resulted in the creation and expansion of a private arena.34 65 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp the rapid expansion of the private space is reflected in the decline of the state sector and the development of the non-state sector, as shown in tables 1 and 2. from table 1, we can see that the gross industrial output by the state-owned enterprises declined from 55 percent in 1990 to 27 percent in 1998, while that by individually owned enterprises increased from 5 percent to 16 percent during the same period. the nonstate sector has overwhelmingly surpassed the state sector. table 3 shows the economic significance of the private sector. the private sector consumed 4 percent of the total retail sales in 1996, and the figure increased to 13.5 percent in 1999. during the same period, the industrial and commercial taxes paid by the private sector in national total increased from 1 percent to 2.6 percent. the private sector has become even more important in revenue contribution at local levels. according to one calculation, as of the mid1990s, the private sector had contributed about 10 percent of the total tax revenue at the provincial level, 20 percent at the prefectural level, and 30 percent at the county level.35 for instance, in 1996, the private sector in zhejiang contributed 4.4 billion yuan industrial and commercial taxes, or 13.4 percent of the total industrial and commercial taxes in that province. in some rich areas, the private sector contributes township revenue as high as 60 percent.36 nevertheless, it is worthwhile to point out that while the private sector has become increasingly important, its motivation to pay tax revenue to the state is low. table 3 shows that in 1999, the private sector consumed 13.5 percent of retail sales of consumer goods, but its revenue contribution to the total industrial and commercial taxes was only 2.6 percent. low incentive to contribute revenue is also reflected in table 4. from 1986 to 1992, revenue contribution by copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200266 zheng yongnian the private sector was largely in accordance with its share of the total national industrial output. after 1992, the gap between the two widened dramatically. for instance, in 1998, while the private sector contributed only 7 percent of the total national budgetary revenue, it accounted for more than 17 percent of the total industrial output.37 the rapid expansion of private space has undermined, or even destroyed, the old ideologically constructed social order. the household registration system has faced gradual erosion since the introduction of a market economy in the 1980s. with basic daily necessities available through the market, the state was no longer able effectively to control population movement from rural to urban areas, from interior to coastal areas, and from small to large cities. the system was further undermined by intensive economic competition among regions. to attract 67 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp talented people, many cities have substantially relaxed the original registrations required for the employment of non-local residents.38 in russia and some other east european communist states, the collapse of the ideologically constructed social order had resulted in socioeconomic chaos. but this is not the case in china. the creation and expansion of a private arena is what distinguishes china from the fate of the other communist states. although the expanding private space is confined to the non-political arena, it is politically significant. first of all, it provides social members with an 'exit' from the public arena. without such a private exit, social members would have to struggle for what they want in a highly politicized public arena. since there was no private arena, they would have to fight to win in this public arena; otherwise, they would lose everything. this would undoubtedly intensify political conflicts among social members. therefore, the expansion of a private arena reduces greatly the intensity of political conflicts, and thus the political burden of the party and the government. second, the existence of a private arena makes it possible for citizens to remain apolitical, if they do not want to be involved in politics. in an ideologically constructed society, political indifference is possible, but politically risky. since all economic benefits are distributed through political means, social members had to engage in politics. in contrast, an interest-based social order not only allows people to pay less attention to politics, but also encourages them to devote themselves wholecopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200268 zheng yongnian heartedly to economic activities. in other words, political indifference is no longer risky, and politically indifferent citizens can obtain their basic necessities through the market. third, with the dawn of an interest-based social order, china's economic development has gained a spontaneous and natural momentum. in an ideologically constructed social order, any political change would inevitably affect economic activities. but in an interest-based social order, economic activities are less affected by political changes. an interest-based social order has an inherent capability to resist the impact of political changes. government intervention in economic activities is reduced, but economic development continues. this in turn increases the legitimacy of the government, though it is now less responsible for economic development. political order affected the rise of an interest-based social order is beneficial for the legitimacy of the party-state at an early stage. nonetheless, a continuously expanding social order has come to produce enormous unexpected political consequences that affect the existing political order. in other words, an interest-based social order has gradually undermined the existing political order and thus created pressure for interest representation. with rapid economic expansion, the private arena has become more profitable than the public arena. the nascent interest-based social order has thus attracted not only social members, but also party cadres and government officials. this is especially true in the period after deng xiaoping's southern tour. party cadres and government officials were allowed, even encouraged, by the reformist leadership to turn to business. this soon resulted in a nationwide wave of xiahai (literally 'plunging into the sea').39 as shown in table 5, in 1992, party cadres and government officials were the second largest group (25.5 percent) who established private businesses, following household-business owners (38.2 percent). by the mid-1990s, as shown in table 6, they had become the largest group in private enterprises. by encouraging party cadres and government officials to turn to business, the party leadership aimed to reduce their political resistance to radical economic reforms. to a great degree, this goal was realized. but it was achieved at great costs. first of all, many talents 'exited' from the state to the private arena, especially those who had promoted china's market reform. since they had been involved in new forms of economic activities, they were more knowledgeable than others on how to make 69 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp profits through an emerging market. such an 'exit' indeed weakened the reformist forces in the country. second, party cadres and government officials were given opportunities to utilize their public power to gain private economic benefits. for example, party cadres and government officials have attempted to build up their connections (guanxi) with the private sector. in a survey conducted in 1993, when private entrepreneurs were asked to name their closest friends, the distribution was as follows: professionals (16.6 percent), cadres in the government sector (24.4 percent); cadres in soes (18 percent), workers (1.3 percent), farmers (3.7 percent), copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200270 zheng yongnian specialized artisans (6.4 percent), staff in the service sector (9.5 percent), and small enterprise owners (8.9), and others (2.9).40 according to the study, to build their connections with the private sector, party cadres and government officials aimed to: (a) gain economic benefits for themselves and their family members; (b) search for opportunities to xiahai, i.e., to leave the government sector and turn to business; and (c) seek political support from the private sector due to its increasing political importance.41 when public power is used for economic benefits, corruption becomes inevitable and increasingly serious. while in the old days political loyalty was the most important standard used to evaluate the political achievements of party cadres and government officials, 'money' has now come to replace political loyalty. corruption has undermined not only the effectiveness of the government, but also popular confidence in the government. shoring up political legitimacy has thus become once again a serious challenge for the party and the government. the chinese state has played an extremely important role in pushing the process of economic transformation. but the close linkages between the government and businesses have led to widespread corruption among party cadres and government officials. corruption has become increasingly serious since the early 1990s, as shown in table 7. between 1993 and 2000, the number of cases investigated and handled by discipline inspection and procuratorial organs throughout the country increased 9 percent annually, and the number of officials given party and administrative disciplinary punishments went up 12 percent. between 1990 and 1998, procuratorial organs nationwide accepted and handled more than 1.1 million corruption cases, of which over 500,000 cases were placed 71 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp on file for investigation and prosecution. more than 600,000 offenders were involved.42 from january to august 2000 alone, the procuratorates throughout the country prosecuted 23,464 criminal cases involving graft and embezzlement.43 the 2000 corruption perceptions index of transparency international ranked china as 63rd among 90 countries.44 since the early 1990s, the chinese state has initiated a series of anticorruption measures. nevertheless, corruption is still rampant. even premier zhu rongji had to admit, in his work report to the national people's congress in march 2000, that 'the emergence and spread of corruption and undesirable practices have not been brought under control.'45 corruption has caused social and political instability. it also aroused people's ire against the party's inability to ensure fairness and cast doubts on its legitimacy to rule the country. all these economic and social problems have further eroded social morale. ordinary citizens see the abundance of wealth and greed of party cadres and government officials, and find it difficult to rationalize why they should hold back. gradually, they no longer regard the system in which they live as being fair to them. meanwhile, government officials at different levels have also found that it is increasingly difficult to maintain a sense of morality and social community among both urban and rural residents. moreover, as corruption becomes rampant among party cadres and government officials, crime has also become widespread among ordinary citizens.46 robbery and armed assault, which were unthinkable during mao's time, have become a part of daily life. various surveys show that since the early 1990s, 'serious corruption committed by government officials' and 'public disorder' were among the issues of concern among ordinary citizens in china.47 when the government becomes corrupt and public order becomes problematic, people tend to become discontented and anxious. according to a 1998 survey, nearly 93 percent of the respondents did not regard china as a country ruled by law. when asked what they would do if conflict or disputes with others occurred, 74.7 percent indicated that they would turn to legal means for a resolution. nevertheless, they also believed that such means would be ineffective since power was still above the law in china, so they would appeal through other non-legal means. about 49 percent said that they would seek help from the media, and 24.7 percent would turn to individual leaders. furthermore, about 16 percent of the people would turn to some form of collective action for justice such as petition, demonstration, and collective visit to higher authorities for their intervention (shang fang).48 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200272 zheng yongnian the most serious threat is that the party is increasingly facing pressure to incorporate newly rising social forces into its political order. the nascent social order has a strong justification to request that its voice be heard since government policies have an impact on its rise and fall. table 8 shows the results of two nationwide surveys conducted in 1995 and 1997 respectively. we can see that taxation policy, credit policy, government macro-economic adjustment, and industrial and commercial management, among others, have been the most important political factors affecting their business activities. more and more, private businesspeople expect to participate in policy-making or at least have some input in policy-making. moreover, the private sector has been affected not only by relevant government policies, but also by various forms of social and political practices prevalent in china. as shown in table 9, 'exchange between power and money,' 'worsening public order' and 'arbitrary collection of fees, fines and levies' have been regarded as the factors that have had the most serious impact on private businesses. to change such social and political practices is no easy task and would require the political participation of private business persons. 73 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp indeed, private entrepreneurs have been making great efforts to participate in the political process, especially in local politics. no systematic national statistics are available to show the degree of political participation by private businesspeople. but as shown in table 10, a rapid expansion of their involvement in local politics took place in the early 1990s. according to a survey conducted in 1993, on average, each private entrepreneur had membership in 2.75 organizations such as private enterprise associations, guilds, different democratic parties, youth league, and even the chinese communist party. almost 84 percent of private entrepreneurs argued that it was imperative to establish their own organizations.49 another means for private entrepreneurs to influence china's political process was for them to join the ccp. according to various surveys, more and more private entrepreneurs have become party members. in 1993, among all private entrepreneurs, 13 percent were ccp members, and this figure was 17 percent in 1995, and 16.6 percent in 1997. in 2000, this figure increased to almost 20 percent, far higher than other social groups such as workers and farmers.50 political participation by private entrepreneurs is still extremely limited at the national level. for example, only 46 out of more than 2,000 representatives of the 9th chinese people's political consultative conference copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200274 zheng yongnian (cppcc) in 1998 were private businesspeople.51 a low degree of political participation indeed has caused dissatisfaction among this sector. as shown in table 11, while self-evaluation by private businesspeople about their economic and social status has been consistent, that of their political status has deteriorated. it is worthwhile to note that their self-evaluation for political status was lowest in 1997, the year the private sector was formally legalized by china's constitution.52 accommodation and representation the response of the ccp is to co-opt rising social forces into the regime. since the southern tour, the new leadership has made great efforts not only to legitimize and institutionalize the emerging interest-based social order, but also to search for a proper political order which will be compatible with this emerging social order. while the party-state has attempted, albeit without success, to incorporate some social groups into the regime, it still remains intolerant of any direct democratic challenge, which became apparent towards the end of the 1990s, as exemplified by the attempts of chinese pro-democracy activists to organize an opposition party. in the last few months of 1998, the preparatory committees of china's democracy party were established in 23 out of china's 31 provinces and major cities. applications to register the new party were made in 14 provinces and cities.53 as long as the party-state 'refuses' to address the democratic challenge head-on, it will stay irrelevant to newly emerging democratic forces. the ccp leadership is intolerant of direct political challenges mounted by social groups, but attempts have been made to accommodate newly rising social forces. this can be shown by changes introduced into the country's constitution. constitutional changes in china could mean two things, first, a replacement of the existing constitution with a new one (1954-82), and second, making amendments to the constitution (1982-99). when the political situation changes, the old constitution is likely to be replaced by a new one. thus the 1975 constitution is called the 'cultural revolution constitution,' the 1978 constitution the 'four-modernization constitution,' and the 1982 constitution the 'reform and open-door constitution.' similarly, each revision of the constitution was motivated by strong political concerns and heavily influenced by the leadership's intention to adjust the political system to changing situations. it is worthwhile to briefly examine the constitutional changes related to the private sector. according to the 1954 constitution, the first one in the history of people's republic, china's political system was led by the working class as 75 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp its leading class and the worker-peasant alliance as its foundation (article 1). regarding the economic system, the constitution decreed that the state would aim at eliminating the exploitative system and building a socialist system. while the state sector should be in a dominant position, other sectors such as collective cooperatives, individually owned enterprises, private capitalist economy, and state capitalism were allowed to co-exist (articles 5 and 10). furthermore, the constitution also provided protection to citizens' ownership of legal incomes, savings, properties and other forms of productive materials (article 11), and protection to the right of inheritance of private properties (article 12). meanwhile, the state would collect and even confiscate land and other forms of productive materials in accordance with laws and regulations in order to meet the needs of public interests (article 13), and everyone was prohibited from utilizing his/her private properties to undermine public interests (article 14). the constitution also declared that public properties were sacred and inviolable, and it was every citizen's duty to protect public properties (article 101). many waves of political movements such as the anti-rightist movement and the cultural revolution almost completely nullified the 1954 constitution. in 1975, the party leadership under the 'gang of four' drew up a new constitution. the 1975 constitution formally nullified many articles regarding citizens' rights in the 1954 constitution, and added some articles to meet the political needs of that time. to support the party became the citizens' rights, although citizens were also granted the right to rebel. the revised constitution was reduced to 30 articles from the original 106. after the death of mao zedong and the overthrow of the gang of four in 1976, the ccp leadership under hua guofeng decided to make a constitutional revision in 1978. though the constitution was expanded to 60 articles by restoring some articles of the 1954 constitution, it was still based on the 1975 constitution. in accordance with political changes in train at that time, the use of material incentives to promote the fourmodernizations was legalized. after deng xiaoping returned to power, the ccp leadership passed an entirely new constitution, i.e., the 1982 constitution. the new constitution restored almost all the articles of the 1954 constitution. new ones were added (from 106 articles in 1954 to 138) to meet new political and economic needs. though the 1982 constitution still emphasized that the state sector had to be dominant in china's economy, it recognized that individually engaged economic activities in both rural and urban areas were complementary to the state copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200276 zheng yongnian sector (article 11). what was later called the private enterprise (which employed more than eight workers) was not legalized. in 1988, the first constitutional amendment was made. two significant changes were made regarding china's economic system. first, one paragraph was added to article 11: the state allows the private economy to exist and develop within the legal boundary. the private economy is a complement to the socialist public economy. the state protects legal rights and interests of the private economy, provides it with leadership, supervision and management (article 11, para. 3). second, para. 4 of article 10 was revised: the state recognized that 'land use right can be transferred in accordance with legal regulations.' this change was significant since it meant that the state legalized employment, capital accumulation, land commercialization and other newly rising economic activities. five years later, in 1993, the second constitutional amendment was made. the 1993 amendment gave up the planned economic system, and formally declared that a socialist market economy was to be established. the official confirmation of the market economy led to serious criticisms against capitalistic development by the leftists, both old and new, in the mid-1990s. despite controversies, the leadership decided to press on. the 15th party congress in 1997 further pointed to how a market economy could be rooted in china, and declared a programme of partial privatization of state-owned enterprises. further, based on the 1993 amendment, the second session of the 9th national people's congress (npc) in 1999 made a constitutional amendment, which, for the first time since the establishment of the people's republic, provided constitutional protection for the private economy.54 while it will take a long time for the ccp to establish an interestbased political order, all these constitutional changes in the 1990s show that the party leadership has made great efforts to adjust china's political system not only to promote further economic development, but also to accommodate capitalist economic institutions. in february 2000, jiang zemin raised a new concept of sange daibiao (literally 'three representations'). according to this concept, the ccp represents the 'most advanced mode of productive force, the most advanced culture, and the interests of the majority of the population.'55 the 'three representations' theory is undoubtedly the clearest sign yet of the ccp's affirmation of the non-state sector in the economy. more importantly, it also shows that the ccp has begun to consider how the interests of newly 77 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp rising classes or social groups can be represented. as discussed at the beginning of this paper, the ccp leadership has also legitimized party membership of private entrepreneurs or capitalists. all these changes have been warmly received by the private sector, and are widely regarded as a symbol of the ccp's transformation from a communist party to one containing some social democratic elements. transformation and political risks what the ccp has done provides clear indications that the party is jettisoning its past ideological rigidity by willingly embracing rising economic and social elites. the party's initiative is apparently motivated by pragmatic political considerations. first, admitting private entrepreneurs is a means for the party to adapt itself to china's changing political and social realities. as mentioned earlier, many private entrepreneurs are already party members. what the party leadership proposes to do today is formally to endorse their party membership while allowing others to join as new members. second, by so doing, the leadership wants to expand the party's social base in order to revitalize itself. over the years, the capitalist mode of economic development has radically changed china's class structure. with the decline of the political and ideological importance of workers and peasants, the party has to embrace the rising new elites, from industrialists and international businessmen to property magnates and 'dotcom' venture capitalists, in order to stay socially relevant. china today has 60 million registered stock and share buyers, roughly equal to the total party membership. politically, the party's initiative to embrace these new social elites or new economic interest groups is clearly calculated to bolster its oneparty domination. mao could depend on class struggle and mass movements to govern china, and he could count on the support of millions of poor peasants and workers. china was then a backward agricultural economy, with peasants accounting for 80 percent of the total labour force. today, china is a growing industrial economy, with peasants constituting less than 50 percent of the labour force and many of them not even full-time farmers. specifically, the party leadership simply cannot rule china today by mass political mobilization as mao once did, since the party's original power base has fast eroded. china is rapidly developing into a modern society, with 130 million hand-phones and close to 30 million internet users. the economy is increasingly integrated with international capitalism on account of china's growing foreign trade, foreign investment copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200278 zheng yongnian and foreign tourism. the populace is also becoming increasingly literate, especially in urban areas. furthermore, state governance in china is not yet highly institutionalized, and the rule of law not firmly rooted. for the party effectively to rule such a vast and diverse country without sound democratic foundations, it is all the more crucial for the party leadership to build up a broad social consensus and a coalition of various interests. clearly, the party cannot exclude the 'outstanding elements' of society from the private sector. for china's emerging political order to remain viable, the party has to be socially more broad-based. however, the party will have to bear some long-term costs for admitting capitalists and professionals. leftist critics have warned that the recruitment of the bourgeoisie into the party will inevitably create more corruption in the party, making it easier for the 'money for power' phenomenon to take place. some critics have even suggested that capitalists may eventually take over the party's leadership.56 this is actually already happening in many party branches in the rural areas where businessmen are reported to have used their financial power to manipulate local elections or simply take over local party branches. suffice it to say that with capitalists inside the party, they will certainly act as potential catalysts to quicken the transformation of the party. judging by the way chinese society is evolving, there is a real possibility that the party, in admitting capitalists, has also let in the trojan horse. this top-down transformation is not without any political risks. the most serious challenge for the ccp is to determine whose interests it should represent. during mao zedong's time, the ccp was genuinely a revolutionary party with its members drawn overwhelmingly from workers and peasants, who constituted 83 percent of the total membership in 1956. but this figure dropped to 52 percent in 1994.57 after his return to power, deng started what may be called a 'technocratic movement,' replacing revolutionary cadres in party leadership positions with technocrats, with an essential proportion increasingly coming from the non-state sector.58 when the party associates itself with capitalists, workers and farmers tend to feel alienated. scholars have found that soe workers and rural farmers are rapidly becoming the two biggest losers of capitalistic development.59 rapidly growing new leftists are fearful that the party might favour these new entrepreneur-members at the expense of its traditional clients, i.e., workers and farmers. while in the past the party protected the workers, the present may see the party colluding 79 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp with the entrepreneur to clamp down on the workers. they argue that being wealthier and wielding greater influence, these capitalists would exert an unhealthy bias in the formulation of party policies. worse, the close links between the ccp and the capitalists would breed new types of cronyism and corruption. new leftists thus have called on workers and farmers with democratic mechanisms to articulate their interests. can 'voice' mechanisms be established? so, the key question is: what choices does the party-state face in transforming itself into a democratic mechanism? this question can be answered in different ways, but in terms of the representation of class interests, three options can be identified. multi-party system this is the alternative that most scholars have called for. it has been argued that democracy means a multi-party system. without political competition among parties, there will be no democracy. for the ccp, this choice is to have parties outside the party (dangwai youdang). demands for establishing opposition parties were there and became apparent towards the end of the 1990s, as exemplified by the attempt of chinese pro-democracy activists to organize an opposition party. in a few months of 1998, the preparatory committees of china's democracy party were established in 23 out of china's 31 provinces and major cities. applications to register the new party were made in 14 provinces and cities.60 the unfolding of this event also shows that different opinions existed among ccp leaders regarding opposition parties. a multi-party system undoubtedly is ideal, but realistically speaking, it is less likely. except for dissidents inside and outside china, the majority of the population are not demanding a multi-party system. democratization characterized by the emergence of a multi-party system in russia, taiwan and indonesia has not enabled the regimes there to improve people's living standards. instead, social decay and economic chaos have become prevalent there. the majority is more likely to choose other alternatives, if they exist. furthermore, the party-state favours a top-down approach. the leadership is intolerant of direct political challenges mounted by social groups, although attempts have been made to accommodate newly rising social groups. to a great degree, democracy is not an option decided by social groups. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200280 zheng yongnian factional politics within the party more feasible than a multi-party system is the option to legitimize and institutionalize factions within the party (dangnei youpai). like elsewhere, factions existed within the ccp. even under maoist coercive rule, factional struggles never disappeared among top leaders. certainly, under mao, factions were unlikely to be institutionalized. since the passing of the deng-centred generation leadership, factional politics has been institutionalized to some degree and many organization-based factions have been formed, such as the party, the national people's congress and the state council. other factions have also co-existed such as the shanghai clique, the qinghua clique (those who graduated from qinghua university), the tuanpai (officials related to the communist youth league), the taizidang (the princelings), and so forth. these factions have their own interests and identity, their own ways for interest articulation. all these factions will not help in establishing 'voice' mechanisms for different social groups. to materialize interest articulation, the leadership has, first, to legalize factional politics, and second, to address class interests. without the legitimization of factional politics, factional competition can only be engaged informally. the legitimization and institutionalization of factions help make the political process transparent. social classes therefore will be able to identify their interests with certain factions. certainly, more important is that the party has to allow different factions to represent the interests of different social classes. organization-based factions only represent the interests of these organizations, not those of the social classes. once factions are legitimized, these factions will appeal to different social classes in their competition for political power. power competition will further push the party to establish inter-party democratic mechanisms since without such mechanisms, the party will fall apart. while factions enable the party to represent different social interests, inter-party democracy enables the party to remain united. reforming the existing system the most feasible but less effective option in representing different social interests is to reform the existing political system. the chinese political system is not without any advantages. the problem is that the leadership never considers the issue of interest representation. many mechanisms are actually available for interest representation. among others, three reforms have to be made. first, the people's congress is the most feasible mechanism for different social classes to articulate their interests. to achieve this goal, reforms have to be introduced to transform the people's congress into a real institution for people's rep81 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp resentatives. needless to say, people's representatives have to be selected and elected by people.61 second, the people's consultative conference (pcc) system has to be re-organized and indeed re-politicized. before the people's congress was established in 1954, the pcc played an important political role in representing the interests of different political parties and functional groups. china did not have a multi-party system after 1949. the pcc, instead of political parties, played the role of interest articulation and integration. this model used to inspire the first indonesian president sukarno in designing indonesia's political system. in order to avoid political chaos and instability caused by intensive competition among enormous parties, indonesia established golkar (functional groups) for interest articulation and representation.62 in china, after 1954, the pcc was sidelined. even after the reform began, the pcc is still an institution for retired government officials and social elites. today, the pcc is only a forum for these representatives: it has the right to discuss the issues, but no right to vote. to a great degree, it is a political organization without any political significance. to revive the pcc, it has to be granted the right to vote. furthermore, it has to go back to its previous role of representing different functional groups (social interests). its relationship with the people's congress has also to be sorted out. third, at the next level, civil society and social organizations have to adjust their functions. throughout the reform period, social groups have mushroomed.63 but at present, all those social organizations are not able to aggregate and articulate social interests, even their own interests. the development of social organizations has been extremely uneven. there are more economic and social organizations are than political ones, and more urban organizations than rural ones. furthermore, all these social organizations are highly dependent on the party-state. to empower them to articulate social interests, the party-state has to, first, grant them a greater degree of autonomy, and second, allow them to form their own class identity. conclusion interest representation requires a systematic transformation of the ccpdominated chinese political system. the ccp has claimed that it would represent the interests of the majority of people. this is easier said than done. moreover, interest representation requires institutions for interest aggregation and articulation, and aggregating and articulating diverse social interests requires political participation. in the long haul, copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200282 zheng yongnian democratization appears to be the only option for the ccp to achieve interest representation and build long-term stability. the party leadership may genuinely believe that it is doing what it takes to strengthen the party-state by broadening its social base. as the party metamorphosizes, there is still the nagging question of whether it is prepared to democratize itself. no precedent exists to guide the ccp through such unchartered waters and the risks of failure are enormous. if the party falters, the breakup of the world's most populous nation is a possibility. while jiang may have taken a courageous step forward, the onus is on hu jintao and other leaders to see the democratization process through. the jury is still out on whether the ccp will succeed in this endeavour. dr. zheng yongnian is senior research fellow at the east asian institute of national university of singapore. 1 jiang zemin, 'jiang zemin zai qingzhu zhongguo gongchandang chengli bashi zhounian dahui shang de jianghua' [jiang zemin's speech at the conference celebrating the 80th anniversary of the chinese communist party, 1 july 2001), renmin ribao [people's daily] , 2 july 2001. also 'entrepreneurs from non-public sector hail jiang's speech,' beijing review, 9 august 2001. 2 ming pao, 23 july 2001. 3 lin yanzhi, 'gongchandang yao lingdao he jiayu xin zichan jieji'[the ccp must lead and control the new bourgeoisie], zhengli de zhuiqiu [the seeking of truth], no. 5, (2001), pp. 211. 4 zhang dejiang, 'yao mingque siying qiyezhu buneng rudang' [to make clear that private entrepreneurs cannot join the party ], zhengli de zhuiqiu, no. 5. (2001), p. 28. zhang's original paper was published in dang de jianshe [party constructing], no. 4, (2000). 5 'showdown of ideologies,' south china morning post, 15 august 2001; and 'party closes leftist journal that opposed jiang,' south china morning post, 14 august 2001. 6 'dissenting leftist websites taken off from internet,' south china morning post, 3 september 2001). 7 'jiang urged the armed forces to thoroughly understand the july 1 speech,' ming pao, 3 september 2001. 8 this paper focuses primarily on hirschman's definition, see albert o. hirschman, the passions and the interests: political arguments for capitalism before its triumph (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1977); and albert o.hirschman, 'the concept of interest: from euphemism to tautology' and 'rival views of market society,' in albert o. hirschman, rival views of market society and other recent essays (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1992), pp. 35-55, 105-41. 9 hirschman, 'the concept of interest,' p. 35. 10 ibid., p. 43. 11 ibid., p. 36. 12 ibid., p. 42. 13 ibid., p. 43. notes 83 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp 14 cited in hirschman, rival views of market society and other recent essays, p. 107. for a discussion of montesquieu's ideas, also see stephen rosow, 'commerce, power and justice: montesquieu on international politics,' review of politics, vol. 46, no. 3, (1984), pp. 346-67. 15 hirschman, the passions and the interests, p. 87. 16 ibid., pp. 89-93. 17 adam smith, wealth of nations (oxford: oxford university press, 1976), pp. 443, 456. 18 similar ideas are also expressed by milton friedman, capitalism and freedom (chicago: university of chicago press, 1982). 19 franz schurmann, ideology and organization in communist china (berkeley, ca: university of california press, 1968), p. 1. 20 for example, tang tsou, the cultural revolution and post-mao reforms: a historical perspective (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1986). 21 tiejun cheng and mark selden, 'the construction of spatial hierarchies: china's hukou and danwei system,' in timothy cheek and tony saich (eds.), new perspectives on state socialism in china (armonk, ny: m. e. sharpe, 1977), pp. 23-50. 22 all organizations in urban china where people worked such as enterprises, retail shops, hospitals, schools, civil associations, government organs were called 'danwei.' roughly speaking, three types of danwei can be identified: 1) enterprise units, including all units engaged in making profit; 2) non-profit units, including scientific, educational, professional, cultural, athletic and healthcare organizations; and 3) administrative units or governmental organs. for a discussion of the danwei system, see xiaobo lü and elizabeth j. perry (eds.), danwei: the changing chinese workplace in historical and comparative perspective (armond, ny: m. e. sharpe, 1997), pp. 3-7. 23 for a discussion of 'conscription society,' see gregory j. kasza, the conscription society: administered mass organization (new haven, ct: yale university press, 1995). 24 vivienne shue, 'state power and social organization in china,' in joel s. migdal, atul kohli and vivienne shue (eds.), state power and social forces: domination and transformation in the third world (new york, ny: cambridge university press, 1994), pp. 65-88. 25 on 18 december 1978, the chinese communist party held the historic third plenum of the 11th party congress in beijing. the third plenum shifted the party's priority from maoist class struggle to economic modernization. officially, the third plenum marks the beginning of china's market-style economic reform and the open-door policy. 26 for a discussion of china's economic reform and development in the 1980s, see barry naughton, growing out of the plan: chinese economic reform 1978-1993 (new york: cambridge university press, 1996). 27 wang gungwu, the chinese way: china's position in international relations (oslo: scandinavian university press, 1995). 28 for a discussion of different perceptions on socialism and capitalism, see yan sun, the chinese reassessment of socialism, 1976-1992 (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1995). 29 wang gungwu discussed why the leadership used the term 'socialist market economy' rather than capitalism, see wang, the chinese way, part one. 30 yan sun, the chinese reassessment of socialism, 1976-1992. 31 deng xiaoping, 'zai wuchang, shenzhen, zhuhai, shanghai dengdi de tanhua yaodian,' [main points in the speeches made in wuchang, shenzhen, zhuhai, and shanghai,' 18 january-21 february 1992], in deng, deng xiaoping wenxuan [selected works of deng xiaoping], vol. 3 (beijing: renmin chubanshe, 1993), p. 379. 32 hirschman, shifting involvements: private interest and public action (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1982). 33 this is not the place for a full discussion of this rising interest-based social order. but it is worth noting that terms associated with economic interests such as 'interest' (or 'interests') and 'class' have been increasingly used by scholars in china to analyse the chinese society copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200284 zheng yongnian since deng's nanxun. see, zhu guanglei et al. (eds.), dangdai zhongguo shehui ge jieceng fenxi [an analysis of social strata in contemporary china] (tianjin: tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1998); liang xiaosheng, zhongguo shehui ge jieceng fenxi [an analysis of social strata in china] (beijing: jingji ribao chubanshe, 1998); lu xueyi and jing tiankuai (eds.), zhuanxing zhong de zhongguo shehui [chinese society in transition], (ha'erbin: heilongjiang renmin chubanshe, 1994); qin shaoxiang and jia ting, shehui xin qunti tanmi: zhongguo siqing qiyezhu jieceng [a study of a new social group: china's private enterprise class] (beijing: zhongguo fazhan chubanshe, 1993). 34 for discussions of increasing autonomy of social groups, see wang ying, et al. (eds.), shehui zhongjian ceng: gaige yu zhongguo de shetuan zuzhi [intermediate social strata: the reform and social groups in china] (beijing: zhongguo fazhan chubanshe, 1993); deborah s. davis et al. (eds.), 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, 1995); timothy brook and b. michael frolic (eds.), civil society in china (armonk, ny: m. e. sharpe, 1997); gordon white, jude howell and shang xiaoyuan, in search of civil society: market reform and social change in contemporary china (oxford: oxford university press, 1996). 35 li qiang, 'guanyu siyingjingji de ruogan ziliao' [data on the private economy], zhengli de zhuiqiu no. 5 (2001), pp. 18-19. 36 ibid., p. 19. 37 hu angang (ed.), zhongguo tiaozhan fubai [china: fighting against corruption], (hangzhou: zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 2001), p. 49. 38 hein mallee, 'china's household registration system under reform,' in alan hunter and kim-kwong chan (eds.), protestantism in contemporary china (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1993), pp. 10-16. 39 for a description, see john wong, 'the xia hai phenomenon in china,' ritsumeikan journal of international relations and area studies, vol. 6 (march 1994), pp. 1-10. 40 li qiang, 'guanyu siyingjingji de ruogan ziliao,' p. 23. 41 cited in ibid., pp. 23-24. 42 'major corruption cases,' beijing review, 22 may 2000, p. 14. 43 renmin ribao, 15 september 2000, p. 1. 44 zou keyuan, 'why china's rampant corruption cannot be checked by laws alone,' eai background brief no. 74, east asian institute, national university of singapore, (2 november 2000). 45 china daily, 6 march 2000. 46 børge bakken, 'state control and social control in china,' in kjeld erik brødsgaard and susan young (eds.), state capacity in japan, taiwan, china and vietnam (oxford: oxford university press, 2000), pp. 185-202. 47 the annual survey reports are organized by the institute of sociology of the chinese academy of social sciences; see its annual report, ru xin et al. (eds.), shehui lanpishu: zhongguo shehui xingshi fenxi yu yuce [social bluebook: analysis and forecast of social situation in china], various issues. (beijing: shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe). 48 wang chunguang, '1997-1998 nian: zhongguo shehui wending zhuangkuang de diaocha' [a survey on social stability in 1997-1998], in ru xin et al. (eds.), shehui lanpishu 1998 [social bluebook 1998] (beijing: shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 1998), p. 127. 49 cited in li qiang, 'guanyu siyingjingji,' p. 27. 50 ibid., p. 26. 51 jiang nanyang, 'lun siying qiyezhu de zhengzhi cenyu' [political participation by the owners of private businesses], in zhang houyi and ming zhili (eds.), zhongguo siying qiye fazhan baogao 1978-1998 [a report of the development of private enterprises in china, 1978-1998] (beijing: shehui kexue wenxuan chubanshe, 1999), pp. 103-17. 85 interest representation and the transformation of the ccp 52 keyuan zou and yongnian zheng, 'china's third constitutional amendment: an assessment,' in a. j. de roo and r. w. jagtenberg (eds.), yearbook law and legal practice in east asia, vol. 4, 1999 (the hague, london and boston: kluwer law international, 2000), pp. 29-42. 53 john pomfret, 'why "beijing spring" cooled: dissidents overstepped,' international herald tribune, 4 january 1999, pp. 1, 7. 54 for a discussion of this constitutional amendment, see zou and zheng, 'china's third constitutional amendment: an assessment.' 55 the xinhua news agency, 'jiang zemin tongzhi zai quanguo dangxiao gongzuo huiyi shang de jianghua,' 9 june 2000 [comrade jiang zemin's talk in national party schools working conference, 9 june 2000], renmin ribao, 17 july 2000. 56 lin yanzhi, 'gongchandang yao lingdao he jiayu xin zichan jieji.' 57 ignatius wibowo, 'party recruitment and the future of the chinese communist party,' eai background brief no. 101, east asian institute, national university of singapore, 7 september 2001. 58 hong yung lee, from revolutionary cadres to party technocrats in socialist china (berkeley: university of california press, 1991); and cheng li and david bachman, 'localism, elitism, and immobilism: elite formation and social change in post-mao china,' world politics, vol. 42, no. 1, (october 1989), pp. 64-94. 59 shaoguang wang, 'the social and political implications of china's wto membership,' journal of contemporary china, vol. 9, no. 25, (2000), p. 380. 60 john pomfret, 'why "beijing spring" cooled.' 61 for some recent discussions of china's people's congress system, see kevin o’brien, 'chinese people's congresses and legislative embeddedness: understanding early organizational development,' comparative political studies, vol. 27, no. 4, (1994), pp. 80-107; o’brien, 'institutionalizing chinese legislatures: trade-offs between autonomy and capacity,' legislative studies quarterly, vol. 23, no. 1, (1998), pp. 91-108; and murray scot tanner, the politics of lawmaking in post-mao china: institutions, processes and democratic perspectives (new york: oxford university press, 1998). 62 david reeve, golkar of indonesia: an alternative to the party system (singapore: oxford university press, 1985). it is worthwhile to note that the fall of the golkar was not because of its institutional design, but because of the lack of internal democracy within the organization. 63 for example, gordon white, jude howell and shang xiaoyuan, in search of civil society. _________________________________________________________________________ 91 ___________________________________________________________________ rewievs i. alon and j. mcintyre (eds.). globalization of chinese enterprises. new york: palgrave, 2008. 240 pp. isbn 0-230-51562 not only western international firms, but also chinese domestic firms are exposed to what is nowadays called global mega-competition. china is extremely well prepared for such a competitive environment. with $1.5 trillion foreign exchange reserves, china is increasingly active in investment activities, albeit still overall conservative, but with such an amount of foreign exchange held by the state-owned banks and other funds held by a large variety of investments corporations, china's outward fdi has great growth potential. the theoretical approach in most chapters of this book, (explicit or implicit) is the resource-based view that is often combined with institutional theory. in order to understand the outward fdi, as well as many other economic phenomena in china, we cannot ignore its unique institutional setting. the book analyzes the globalisation of chinese enterprises by differentiating asset exploitation and asset seeking. asset exploitation refers to investments in oil and other raw materials. asset seeking investments refer to the fact that chinese firms need to acquire assets such as advanced technology and managerial expertise in order to exploit international markets. asset seeking is therefore a route of chinese enterprise globalisation, including 'internal globalization' in which companies acquire competences for example through forming joint ventures. the book consists of 15 chapters and they are grouped into four parts. the last chapter consists of case studies of chinese multinational enterprises (mnes). part i is titled resources and outward fdi from chinese companies. in the first chapter, deng develops a framework based on the resource-based view to understand chinese outward fdi into developed countries. the next chapter is written by three professors from qinghua university (tang, gao and li). it describes the learning processes in chinese international business. based on their analysis, they suggest that the chinese government should strengthen its assistance to chinese firms in learning from non-chinese international business. finally, alon, herbert and monõz focus on chinese firms' deficiencies that prevent them from being competitive in global markets and on what should be learned in order to overcome these deficiencies. the chapter calls for more comprehensive strategies for chinese multinational companies. 92 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 rewievs ___________________________________________________________________ part ii titled institutional considerations: new pathways consists of three competent chapters, all stressing that institutions matter. in this part, it is emphasized that institutions include not only chinese government bodies, but also supranational institutions such as wto. chapter 5 by yang and stoltenberg gives a detailed description of changes in both internal and external institutions from a historical perspective. the question of whether globalization of chinese firms follows western models of internationalisation or rather a 'later-comer' model similar to korea and taiwan, is discussed in chapter 6. the chapter by sun, peng and tan further sets forth the challenging task of discussing what strategy late-comers use. it builds on a comprehensive empirical study of more than 2000 chinese listed companies. as shown by their research, chinese firms tend to follow a focused (versus diversified) externalization strategy such as direct export, oem and joint ventures. the last chapter in this part, written by hui and fatt, gives an example of a state-owned enterprise involved in a joint venture in malaysia. this case study indicates the price and non-price (e.g. technology) dimensions of competition in the process of acquiring distinctive assets part iii is called regional implications: following or leading? it examines the regional impacts of china's internationalization on electronics industry as well as over other asian countries. in chapter 8, lairson talks about the relationship between china and vietnam from a political science perspective. although historically the relations between vietnam and china are not the best, which perhaps should have been mentioned in the chapter, vietnam is benefiting from china's rise, as more and more chinese companies which produce low value-added products, are now moving their factories to vietnam. the chapter is also inspiring theoretically as the author incorporates the flying geese model (fgm) into political economics (state and networks) in both countries to demonstrate the potential benefit to vietnam from china's globalization. chapter 9, by johnson, compares chinese globalisation to that of south korea. he first draws readers' attention to the cultural features, by examining the similarities and differences between these two countries. the current chinese economy shares many similarities with the development in south korea in 1980s and 1990s. it is shown that both countries followed an export-oriented development model. however, it is emphasized that, instead of following south korea's path of incremental globalisation, chinese firms should leapfrog the incremental stages via acquisition of strategic resources, which are critical for the competi_________________________________________________________________________ 93 ___________________________________________________________________ rewievs tion in 21st century and different from those considered valuable in the 20th century. innovative managerial skills, in marketing, branding, and human resource development, have become more and more important in nowadays. china can obtain these skills from foreign partners who have invested in china, and this requires china to follow wtos intellectual property rights (ipr). accordingly, johnson suggests, chinese academics and practitioners should also lobby for ipr protection, because ultimately they will benefit from such protection as well. in chapter 10, lawton and lin investigate the importance of domestic networks for the internationalization of taiwanese smes. their empirical study shows that weak technological capabilities and deficiencies in local knowledge do not have a significant impact on the decision of involving domestic inter-firm networks into internationalization. however, their study confirms that acquiring non-financial external resources and reducing international risks were the determinants for firms to internationalize through domestic inter-firm networks. chapter 11, by kurihara, focuses on the globalisation of the electronic industry in northeast china. the chapter is inspiring in its style suggesting that dalian, with the help of japan, can become a chinese 'multilingual' bangalore. as stated in kurihara's conclusion, the stateowned enterprises dominating northeast china are forced to revitalize their corporate activities with further fdi and privatization. in order to survive, they must be ready quickly to take advantage of the incoming globalization and the information age to nurture the electronic industry in this region. this chapter provides an informative insight into regional differences in china. part iv consists of case studies, which we will not go through in detail, that covers specific industries and companies in china, including the chinese automobile industry, huawei, china's largest telecommunications equipment provider and a significant international competitor, and wuliangye, a company producing strong liquors with the same name. wuliangye, marketed and promoted by the push group, is the most profitable distiller of spirits in china. overall, china's cross border m&a almost doubled from 2004 to 2005. to some extend, leapfrogging has replaced the sequential learning process during the internationalisation. to sum up, globalization of chinese enterprises is a timely book that has both theoretical and empirical value. this book helps researchers to get a better picture of the 'rich' china, in terms both of capital and people. also, i recommend this book to those who are interested in learning how 94 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 rewievs ___________________________________________________________________ chinese firms leverage their resources to overcome the disadvantages such as lack of international experiences, brand names, and qualified managers, to mention just a few. the book builds on the scant existing literature of chinese outward fdi and expands our understanding of the internationalization of chinese firms. not only international business scholars, but also china scholars and managers will benefit from reading the book. verner worm professor of chinese business asia research centre copenhagen business school 172003 59 china's possible role in myanmar's national reconciliation china's possible role in myanmar's national reconciliation zou keyuan abstract china and myanmar have maintained their good relations for centuries. based on china's pragmatic foreign policy, china supports the current military regime in myanmar through political, strategic, economic and cultural ties and exchanges. national reconciliation is a necessary step for myanmar's future prosperity and security, including democratization in this country. because of the good relationship between china and myanmar and the former's strong influence, china has some role to play, albeit not a critical one, in myanmar's national reconciliation. the limitation of china's role stems firstly from china's foreign policy (based on the five principles of peaceful co-existence) as well as from china's perception of democracy. on the other hand, china would like to see a stable and prosperous myanmar close to its borders. this article examines these crucial issues and the ramifications for future co-operation.* historical link china and myanmar are neighbouring countries and their contact with each other dates back to 122 ad (lin xixing 1998: 4). since that time, the burmese had intermittent tributary relations with the chinese empire, but this situation was severed by the invasion of the western colonialists into the asian region in the nineteenth century. after the founding of the people's republic of china (prc) in 1949, sino-myanmar relations were generally stable, except for the anti-chinese riots which occurred in the late 1960s. the two countries established formal diplomatic relations on 8 june 1950. in the 1950s, china and myanmar jointly initiated the five principles of peaceful co-existence, namely, mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence (wang tieya 1995: 58).1 in a spirit of mutual understanding and accommodation through friendly consultation, the two countries took the lead in working out a satisfactory solution to their 60 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 zou keyuan border issues which had until then persisted as an unresolved historical legacy. leaders of china and myanmar have a tradition of exchange visits. many chinese leaders of the older generation, including chairman liu shaoqi, premier zhou enlai and vice-premier chen yi, paid their respective visits while the myanmar leaders, such as chairman u ne win, president u san yu and prime minister u maung maung kha, reciprocally visited china on several occasions. premier zhou enlai's nine visits to myanmar and chairman u ne win's twelve visits to china became a much-told tale between the two nations. because of the traditional friendship, the two peoples always call each other 'paukthaw', which means brother. china's foreign policy china's foreign policy has shifted several times since the founding of the prc (see garver 1993). the current policy is fundamentally based on the so-called five principles of peaceful co-existence. these principles include: (1) mutual respect for each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity; (2) non-aggression; (3) non-interference in each other's internal affairs; (4) equality and mutual benefit; and (5) peaceful coexistence. the five principles first appeared in the agreement between the republic of india and the people's republic of china on trade and intercourse between tibet region of china and india signed on 29 april 1954 (united nations treaty series 1958). since then, the five principles have been reiterated in china's foreign policy documents as well as agreements, declarations and joint statements signed between china and other countries who are willing to adhere to these principles. according to one source, from 1954 to 1995, there were more than 150 of such documents (wang tieya 1995: 60). thus in china's view, these principles have become the universally applicable principles among states, and thus the fundamental principles of international law. while it is reasonable for china to point out that it created the five principles and by so doing contributed to the development of contemporary international law, yet we may argue that the five principles of co-existence have been over-emphasized to some extent. if we compare the five principles with other established principles of international law, particularly those embodied in the un charter, we discover that only the fourth principle of 'equality and mutual benefit' contains some new elements because it combines equality with mutual benefit 61 china's possible role in myanmar's national reconciliation so as to emphasize the equality in economic relations. it is argued that the five principles bear little meaning in international law since they manifest only the existing basic principles of international law (focsaneanu 1956: 177-78). in response, a chinese authoritative scholar of international law justifies the chinese approach by stating that: 1. the combination of five important principles in international law has formulated a systematic integration which constitutes the basis of international law; 2. the expression of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity emphasizes the concept of mutuality so as to manifest the principle that sovereignty is not absolute, but relative; and 3. the connection of equality to mutual benefit results in the combination of legal and economic equalities, thus equality becomes one of substance rather than merely theoretical (wang tieya 1995: 62; wei min 1985: 237-52; shao tienren 1985: 334-45). it should be noted that the five principles have always been highly regarded in china, despite the changes that have occurred over time in the political and diplomatic environment since the foundation of the prc. china has pledged to pursue an independent foreign policy, which is designed to defend china's independence, state sovereignty and territorial integrity; create a favourable international environment for reform and opening-up to the outside world and for the modernization drive of the nation; and to maintain world peace and promote common development. china vows not to establish a military bloc, join in the arms race or seek military expansion.2 china's previous experiences in joining the socialist bloc have left a bitter memory. china regards sovereignty as crucial for the formulation and existence of a nation-state. china has jealously defended its sovereignty because it is still a relatively weak country, though big, and because it was exploited blatantly by western powers in the past (chan 1999: 78-79). china claims that the main thrust of its foreign policy is to oppose hegemonism and to safeguard world peace. it holds that all countries are equal members of the international community whether they are big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor. all countries should settle their disputes and conflicts through peaceful consultations instead of resorting to force or the threat of force. no country should interfere in the internal affairs of another country under any pretext, still less bully the weak, invade or subvert other countries. china holds that the diversity of the world should not be an obstacle to the development of relations between various countries but should serve as an impetus to mutual exchanges, complementarity and enrich62 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 zou keyuan ment. all countries are entitled to choose their own social system, development strategies and lifestyle to suit their particular conditions. each country's affairs should be decided upon by its own people. on this basis, china strongly opposes any form of intervention. china criticized nato's intervention in kosovo in 1999, stating that nato's action was a violation of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign country, and the principle of finding a peaceful solution to international disputes (li bian 1999: 7).3 this attitude is also reflected in china's stance toward the iraqi war launched by the american-british forces in march 2003. since non-intervention is in china's eyes a fundamental principle in international relations, china itself has to abide by it. it is recalled that in mao's era, china exported a 'communist revolution' to southeast asian countries. however, since the deng xiaoping reform era, china has adopted a more pragmatic diplomacy and no longer provides support for armed rebellion by communist parties. instead, china has enhanced its neighbourly relations with its surrounding countries as an important component of its foreign policy. china has set up or resumed normal relations with all the surrounding countries and settled the questions left over by history with most of the neighboring countries. strengthening china's solidarity and co-operation with the developing countries is the basic framework of its foreign policy. china shares common historical experiences with the developing countries and is confronted with the same goal of safeguarding national independence and developing the economy.4 china no longer regards the association of southeast asian nations (asean) as a 'jackal' of the imperialist west. recently china's own economic reform brought it closer to its neighbouring countries in terms of interdependent and co-operative development. as commented, china's policy within southeast asia has become largely governed by a rational ordering of national priorities in the interdependence context of economic interests and continuing tensions with the united states and japan (leifer 1997: 168). the southeast asian region seems to be china's backyard and is therefore critical to its vital interests and strategic security. 'stabilizing the surrounding areas' (wending zhoubian) is one of the top priorities in china's current foreign policy. recently china further appeased the asean countries by jointly signing agreements on economic co-operation and integration and, remarkably, the declaration on the conduct of parties in the south china sea in november 2002.5 in addition, china takes part in multilateral diplomatic activities. the chinese government has realized the importance of human rights and 63 china's possible role in myanmar's national reconciliation acceded to 17 international human rights conventions. china signed the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights and the international covenant on civil and political rights in october 1997 and in october 1998 respectively, and ratified the first one in february 2001. however, china attaches more importance to economic rather than political and other rights, and views basic human rights as a possible trigger to social unrest in china. that is why china has so far not yet ratified the international covenant on civil and political rights. current sino-myanmar relations over a long period of time, the bilateral relations between china and myanmar have witnessed a stable development as both sides adhere to good-neighbourly friendship and pursue a path of co-operation in both international and regional affairs. in june 1999 when secretary-1 of the state peace and development council (spdc) lt-gen khin nyunt visited china, leaders of both sides reached consensus on working towards a sustainable, stable, good-neighbourly and co-operative relationship oriented towards the twenty-first century. they also exchanged views in depth on further strengthening economic and trade co-operation between the two countries. since then the bilateral relations have achieved a positive momentum of development.6 over the years, the two countries have continued an exchange of highlevel visits. this is attested by the visits to myanmar of state councillor and secretary-general of the state council luo gan (in january 1991), state councillor and foreign minister qian qichen (in february 1993), premier li peng (in december 1994), chairman li ruihuan (in march 1997) and vice-premier wu bangguo (in october 1997). the myanmar leaders, including chairman of the state law and peace restoration council saw maung (in august 1991), secretary-1 of spdc khin nyunt (in september 1994 and june 1999), deputy secretary-2 of spdc tin oo (in november 1994), chairman of the spdc senior general than shwe (in january 1996) and vice chairman of the spdc general maung aye (in october 1996) paid their respective visits to china. president jiang zemin met with chairman than shwe in kuala lumpur, malaysia, in late 1997. sound co-operation has been maintained between the foreign ministries of both countries. diplomatic consultations at the viceministerial level have been held three times since the diplomatic consultation system was established in 1992. in january 1998, when vice foreign minister tang jiaxuan visited myanmar for diplomatic consultation, the two sides signed the agreement on mutual exemption of visa for 64 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 zou keyuan diplomatic and service passport owners. in 1993, both sides agreed to reopen their consulates-general: consequently the myanmar consulategeneral in kunming and chinese consulate-general in mandalay reopened in september 1993 and august 1994 respectively. stable military ties are maintained between the armed forces of both countries. in recent years, military leaders on both sides have sustained a momentum of exchange visits. deputy chief of general staff he qizong (in november 1991), defence minister chi haotian (in 1995), chairman of the military commission of cpc central committee zhang wannian (in april 1996), and chief of general staff fu quanyou (in april 2001) paid their respective visits to myanmar. lt-gen than shwe (in october 1989), chief of the army lt-gen tin oo (in december 1989 and november 1994) and deputy commander-in-chief senior general maung aye (in october 1996) visited china one after another.7 in the areas of economic and technological co-operation and trade relations between china and myanmar, there has been steady progress since the establishment of diplomatic relations. the first trade agreement between the two countries was signed in 1954. a new trade agreement signed in 1971 stipulated that each side should award 'most-favoured nation' status to the other side. since december 1988, when the two countries started border trade, the annual bilateral trade volume increased by a wide margin, rising from us$ 40 million to us$ 760 million in 1995. in 1997-98, the bilateral trade volume decreased, owing to the impact of the asian financial crisis, dropping to us$ 640 million and us$ 580 million in 1997 and 1998 respectively. the 2000 figure shows that the trade between the two countries reached us$ 620 million (yazhou zhoukan 2001: 17). china's main exports to myanmar include textiles, chemical raw materials, instruments and meters, machinery, medicines, etc. while the main imports from myanmar include timber, local products, jade, livestock products, etc. china has aided in constructing 22 joint projects including the yangon–thanlyin bridge, a sugar-processing plant, a textile factory, a plywood factory, a rice mill, a coal-fired powerplant, a gymnasium, theatre, etc. by the end of 1997, there had been 183 contracts for labour services and construction projects signed by chinese companies in myanmar and the total contract value reached us$ 398 million. in 1998, 103 more contracts were signed and the contract value totalled us$ 523 million. it has been reported that up to 2,000 chinese companies have cumulatively invested us$ 31.55 million in myanmar (yazhou zhoukan 2001: 17). since the state law and order restoration council (slorc), newly renamed the state peace and development council (spdc), came to 65 china's possible role in myanmar's national reconciliation power in 1988, myanmar has played the 'china card'. according to one commentator, the military junta in rangoon actually abandoned the non-alignment policy and cultivated close ties with china. thus by the mid-1990s, myanmar 'seemed to be drawn increasingly into a chinese sphere of influence' (seekins 1997: 525). myanmar began its open economic policy after 1988, practising the reform path china had embarked upon in the late 1970s. the myanmar leaders shared the same view as the chinese leaders that an open economy could enhance the country's stability and increase the nation's economic strength (lin xixing 1999b: 28). the pro-china policy resulted in a number of significant benefits for the rangoon regime. first, china helped the myanmar government to stabilize the internal situation and to consolidate the power of the military junta. after the slorc came to power, particularly after its refusal to accept the results of the 1990 general election, myanmar faced hard economic sanctions from western countries and international aid agencies. however, china provided substantial support. in addition, china stopped supporting the myanmar communist party and persuaded the old communist party leaders to go to china for a comfortable retirement.8 meanwhile, myanmar adopted a flexible policy towards the ethnic and communist rebels. between march 1989 and may 1997, the military government signed peace agreements with 19 minority anti-government armed groups (lin xixing 2000: 27). china helped myanmar to strengthen its national defence and security through three means: (1) provision of advanced weapons; (2) assistance in building military installations; and (3) facilitating the peace dialogue between the military government and the anti-government armed groups through its own influence (lin 1999b: 31). china has become the biggest provider of weapons for myanmar (see table 1). it should be pointed out here that the burmese junta may turn these weapons against its own people. china's provision of armed might for the burmese junta promoted the militarization process of the burmese society (seekins 1997: 539). one significant event to attract attention on the world stage is china's assistance in establishing naval bases on hianggyi island in the irrawaddy river delta and in the great coco island in the indian ocean, approximately 30 nautical miles from india's andaman islands. economically, the cross-border trade between china and myanmar has expanded dramatically. the two countries concluded the border trade agreement on 5 august 1988. according to statistics, trade increased to 2.569 billion and 3.084 billion rmb in 1993 and 1994 respec66 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 zou keyuan tively (lin 1999b: 30). in february 1996, myanmar set up the myanmar– china economic enhancement committee to promote economic cooperation with china. an extreme view taken by one commentator is that 'the net consequence of the free border trade with china has been a chinese takeover of upper burma' (maung 1997: 520). nevertheless, owing to the asian financial crisis, the sino-burmese border trade met with some difficulties. for example, the trade in the border town ruili, yunnan, decreased from 110 million rmb in 1996 to 40 million rmb in 1997 (lin 1999a: 14). in the diplomatic arena, myanmar, with the support of china, broke through the diplomatic blockade imposed by the west, particularly the united states. asean decided to carry out a constructive engagement policy towards myanmar and granted myanmar asean membership. japan provided large loans to rangoon. india tried to pull myanmar into the sphere of the nascent association for bangladesh–india–sri lanka–thailand economic cooperation (bist-ec) after it had witnessed china's growing influence in the bay of bengal (guyot 1998: 191). in short, china has helped myanmar substantially, arguably to the extent that without china's help, the military regime in rangoon could not have survived to date. 1elbat ramnaymotselassmra: nopaew epyt stinu deredro dereviled rethgif 7-f 4 6991 8991 kcattadnuorg 12 6991 8991 reniart 8-k 4 6991 8991 4 8991 0002 etagirf .dom uhgnaij 2 4991 8991 cpa 58-epyt 051 1991 6991 tbm 96-epyt 05 3991 6991 :yek .knatelttabniam:tbm;reirraclenosrepderomra:cpa :ecruos .)87:2002(inummorfdetpada 67 china's possible role in myanmar's national reconciliation the asean mechanism asean was formally established by the asean declaration in bangkok on 8 august 1967. its aims and purposes are, inter alia: 1. to accelerate the economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the region through joint endeavours in a spirit of equality and partnership; 2. to promote regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule of law in the relationship among countries of the region and adherence to the principles of the united nations charter; and 3. to promote active collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interest in the economic, social, cultural, technical, scientific and administrative fields (koh 1996: ii). 9 the asean mechanism includes (1) an annual meeting of foreign ministers; (2) a standing committee under the chairmanship of the host country; (3) ad-hoc committees and permanent committees of specialists and officials on specific subjects; and (4) a national secretariat in each member country. in 1993, asean countries agreed that asean should consider the establishment of a regional human rights mechanism. they realized that the lack of an asean mechanism allows the asean countries few opportunities to take stock of human rights developments. the establishment of an asean mechanism with government support could help to redress such an unfavourable situation, so that the asean perspective would be better understood by outsiders. for this purpose, a working group for an asean human rights mechanism formulated a policy initiative for the asean governments in 1998. the working group made the following suggestions: 1. to promote and support human rights activities, in particular, those in commemoration of the 50 th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights; 2. to regularize its contacts with the working group and acknowledge it as an important catalyst for the promotion of human rights in asean, and to sustain the momentum for the eventual creation of a regional human rights commission; and 3. to create a task force to examine the issues of form, substance and procedure related to the establishment of a regional human rights commission; etc (defensor santiago 1999: 389). 10 though the mechanism has not yet come into being, the human rights situation in myanmar is no doubt within the common concern of the asean member countries. since myanmar has joined asean, it is obliged to enter into dialogues relating to human rights within the framework of asean. 68 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 zou keyuan on the other hand, asean has established six basic principles to govern their relationships and resolve any differences. they include the mutual respect of (1) independence, (2) sovereignty, (3) territorial integrity, (4) national identity; (5) mutual non-intervention in internal affairs; and (6) resolution of differences and disputes through peaceful means (yang guanghai 1999: 66-70). by upholding these principles, other asean countries agree not to interfere in the domestic affairs of myanmar, although they are seeking to promote a dialogue between the military regime and the opposition forces. unlike the approach taken by west and led by the united states, which applied sanction measures, the asean members conducted a constructive engagement with rangoon. further, they admitted myanmar's participation in asean in 1997. in asean's view, constructive engagement and support toward economic development do more to advance democracy and improve human rights conditions than can be achieved by an isolationist and retributionist approach (seekins 1999: 17).11 constructive engagement is also an avenue of influence. aung san suu kyi's release from prison was viewed by asean as a positive step both toward dialogue and reconciliation between the two adversaries as well as for the democratization of myanmar, and an achievement of its constructive engagement policy (mya maung 1999: 272).12 furthermore, asean attempted to show its independence and the 'asean way' of dealing with issues within this region. it would not subject itself to the pressure from the west led by the united states. in this respect, asean's stance is quite similar to china's. the asean role can also be seen in the appointment of the special un envoy to myanmar (for the bilateral dialogue between the un and rangoon on democracy and human rights), since this envoy is from malaysia, an asean member country. china's possible role myanmar's national reconciliation is a necessary step towards democratization for this country. it has been at the heart of the democracy movement since 1988. there are two main components of the national reconciliation: (1) reconciliation between the military junta and the democratic forces led by aung san suu kyi; and (2) reconciliation between burmans and ethnic groups. the ethnic reconciliation began in december 1990, when the karen national union agreed to the formation of the national coalition government of the union of burma (ncgub) in karen territory. since then, several agreements have been concluded in this respect, including the 69 china's possible role in myanmar's national reconciliation 1991 manerplaw agreement to establish a federal union of burma; the 1997 mae tha raw hta agreement regarding ceasefire and work with democracy movement; and the 1998 toemwe khaloe agreement regarding ethnic and pro-democracy groups agreeing to work together to restore democracy and establish a federal system of government. however, a stalemate has been reached in the dialogue between the pro-democratic forces and the military government, despite the call from the united nations for tripartite dialogue to resolve myanmar's future.13 the secret talks between the two sides since october 2000 have failed to produce any fruitful results. in order to push forward the democratic process in myanmar, the pro-democratic groups supported by some foreign funds launched the national reconciliation programme in may 1999,14 but so far there have been no substantial achievements. it should be realized that without the endorsement of the government, such a programme can hardly be implemented in practice. on the other hand, the recent secret talks between the military junta and the nld annoyed the ethnic groups. they regarded such a dialogue 'as a meeting between two factions of burmans' to redistribute the state power (wain 2001: 6). they fear that their interest and rights might be compromised by such a secret dialogue without their participation. thus, national reconciliation would be out of question without the involvement of the ethnic minorities. national reconciliation, in china's eyes, is purely a matter of domestic affairs in myanmar. to adhere to the principle of non-intervention in state-to-state relations, china will not express any view about how the myanmar regime should launch a dialogue with the opposition forces. china should not and will not have the right to interfere. this is china's basic position. china has shared the same view as myanmar with regard to bilateral relations, international situations, human rights and western values. they were both invaded and exploited by western colonialists and are highly averse to the western ideology. both countries strongly oppose any interference in the domestic affairs of other countries on the pretext of religion or human rights. they have supported each other in the meetings of the un commission on human rights. china strongly protested nato's military intervention in kosovo, regarding it as a grave violation of international law and a source of human disaster. china thus will not be happy to see any country interfere in myanmar's domestic affairs. however, on the other hand, china acknowledged the positive result of dialogues on human rights issues. china itself has 70 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 zou keyuan such regular dialogues with the united states and the european union. on 20 november 2000, china signed a memorandum of understanding with the office of the un high commissioner for human rights to strengthen co-operation on human rights protection. vice-primer qian qichen reiterated china's consistent willingness to participate in international co-operation in this field and stressed that the dialogue was the only way to solve disputes relating to human rights issues (china daily, 21 november 2000). for this reason, china will not oppose rangoon's dialogue with any other countries regarding the human rights issues in myanmar. likewise, china will hold the same attitude towards the dialogue between the military regime and the opposition forces in myanmar. china's view about aung san suu kyi is likely to be quite similar to the position it holds on the military junta in rangoon. china usually regards the nobel prizes in peace and/or literature as political instruments of the west to humiliate or insult the countries that the west does not like. hence those prizes, once given, contain subversive elements. this has been well illustrated by the chinese negative attitude towards the peace prize given to dalai lama in 1989 and the literature prize awarded to gao xingjian in 2000 respectively. second, china does not regard aung san suu kyi as a potential minlawn (contender to the throne) in myanmar. in the view of one chinese scholar, aung san suu kyi does not command sufficient talents to accomplish her aims and would be incapable of becoming the next leader of myanmar. in her struggle, she faces not a few military leaders, but a strong, well-organized, unified and experienced myanmar army, which cannot be easily overthrown (mu 1997: 20). for that reason, china is very reluctant to push forward the dialogue of reconciliation between the rangoon government and aung san suu kyi.15 however, on the other hand, it should be noted that for the sake of the regional stability as well as for the interest of china in myanmar, china does not like to see any domestic turmoil within that country. a friendly and stable myanmar is very important for china. for that reason, china was the first to offer its congratulations to the national league for democracy immediately after the 1990 general elections (yawnghwe 2000: 80). if the military junta is willing to arrive at a compromise with the opposition forces, china will be only too glad to see such an occurrence, and will possibly provide some kind of assistance upon the request of the myanmar government. as reported, the military government has been actively seeking advice from china and vietnam on how 71 china's possible role in myanmar's national reconciliation to refashion itself into a more acceptable form (clark 1999: 787). the success of economic reform in china has encouraged the rangoon regime to begin its own reform in recent years, and the china model may be regarded by rangoon as the most suitable for the economic reform in myanmar, which can develop economy on the one hand, while maintaining authoritarian control on the other. furthermore, since china is a regional big power, its influence over the surrounding countries is inevitable and natural. in addition, because of the good relationship between china and myanmar, if china expresses its willingness to see the national reconciliation in myanmar, the myanmar government would be more likely to listen to china rather than yielding to pressures from other countries, particularly some western hardliners. there are other issues for china to consider. first, with regard to democratization, china faces the same problem. china would think of the possible impact from myanmar on its own democratic process. at the present stage, china suppresses all the democratic movements, and political dissidents can only operate outside china. there is no such person as aung san suu kyi within the chinese territory. the tolerance of aung san suu kyi and the national league for democracy (nld) in myanmar may indicate the mercy of the military junta. in may 2002, aung san suu kyi was released from home arrest and was allowed to visit places beyond the capital city of myanmar, though harassment from the government occurs from time to time. in this sense, myanmar is more democratic than china. on the other hand, whether myanmar becomes democratic or not is purely a domestic matter of that country. according to china's pragmatic foreign policy, china will have to respect the choice of the myanmar people. second, if there is a mechanism to be established within asean in dealing with the issue of myanmar, china will no doubt be willing to participate in the relevant process, as illustrated in the current asean+3 and asean+1 dialogues. china's attitude could be more supportive. since the 1990s, the sino-asean relations have developed on a sound track with increasingly close political ties. the year 1995 saw the establishment of senior official political consultation mechanism, through which both china and asean engage in talks regarding political and security issues every year. in july 1996, the status of china as a consultative dialogue partner of asean was elevated to that of a full dialogue partner, the asean committee of beijing (acb) was established by the asean heads of missions in beijing (song 2000: 28). in decem72 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 zou keyuan ber 1997, president jiang zemin and asean leaders held their first ever summit and issued a joint statement, in which they announced their decision to establish a twenty-first century oriented partnership of good neighbourliness and mutual trust between china and asean. in february 1997, the asean-china joint cooperation committee (acjcc) was formed and it was agreed that a round-table dialogue be established, to consist of five parallel mechanisms as follows: • china-asean senior officials political consultations, • china-asean joint committee on economic and trade cooperation, • china-asean joint committee on science and technology, • china-asean joint co-operation committee and • asean committee in beijing (acb). in addition, china and asean have signed the framework agreement on mutual co-operation. as a result, china has enhanced mutual understanding and trust with asean in the political and security fields. the close tie between china and asean may well indicate that china would prefer a dialogue regarding myanmar within the framework of asean. it is obvious that china has a stake in asean. if the myanmar issue damages the relationship between/among the asean members, it will also damage sino-asean relations. third, the 'china card' is no doubt important for the rangoon regime. it has brought many benefits vis-à-vis the relations with the united states and asean countries, particularly thailand (lin 1999b: 32). however, as stated by some scholars, rangoon has now realized that it is placing too much reliance on china for political, military and economic support. to maintain its independence and diplomatic strategy, it has balanced the chinese influence by using the 'asean card' and the 'west card', particularly the japanese card. since the accession to asean and the asian financial crisis, china's influence in myanmar has declined. at some point rangoon may seek to balance reliance on china by improving ties with india (garver 2001: 274). it is obvious that increased contacts with other members of the world community, will lessen the dependence of the rangoon regime on china's support. myanmar may choose to return to u nu's old foreign policy of strict neutrality and non-alignment. in 1999, foreign observers reported a cooling of beijing– rangoon ties (see davis 1999: 30-34). for this reason, china's role in myanmar's national reconciliation is limited, though china's influence in other areas is immense. 73 china's possible role in myanmar's national reconciliation prospects the military junta in rangoon still faces pressures from both inside and outside the country. domestically, the opposition forces will continue to voice their demands for democracy in myanmar. the minority armed rebels, despite having signed truce agreements with the government, may step up their demands. however, the most pressing matter is how to transfer the state power from the military junta to a civilian government. as promised by the military government in 1990, once the new constitution had been formulated and the state order had been restored, then the power should be handed over to a civilian government. the developments in the 1990s showed that the military government was very reluctant to make such a handover. the demise of the suharto regime in indonesia may have dealt a heavy psychological blow to the rangoon military regime because the latter had tried to follow the indonesian model for its survival as well as development (seekins 1999: 18).16 the military junta has to consider other alternatives. hence, the domestic situation in myanmar remains tense and uncertain unless a national reconciliation takes place as soon as possible. the external pressure is at present largely coming from the united states. it has maintained its economic sanctions against myanmar, though whether the sanctions could play a critical role is unknown. the available data indicate that to date such a hardline approach has not been been effective in pushing the myanmar government to change its policy (clark 1999: 783). despite this, it is still a pressure tormenting the rangoon regime. pressures may also come from other asean member countries. in 1998, thailand and the philippines openly criticized myanmar's violation of human rights (li bian 1999: 17). as to china, it will continue its firm support of myanmar. china criticized the united states' ’hegemonistic behaviour ’ when it declared its second economic sanctions against myanmar in april 1997 (zuo et al. 1997: 18). on the other hand, china was concerned about whether myanmar would yield to the american pressure. it is suggested that china should continue to reinforce its economic and trade co-operation with myanmar, to promote the friendly relationship between asean and myanmar, and to support the myanmar government, particularly in the human rights field (zuo et al. 1997: 19). economic co-operation can increase china's stake in myanmar. as the commercial councillor at the chinese embassy to myanmar admitted, the investment in myanmar is not purely based on commercial interests, but rather on 74 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 zou keyuan political considerations (yazhou zhoukan 2001: 17). no doubt china will continue to maintain the traditional friendly relationship with myanmar. from the myanmar side, the close political, military and economic ties with china are a major source of comfort to the spdc, particularly when it faced sanctions and isolation from the west. 'they are a critical factor in the government's belief that, in a worst case scenario, it would be able to survive, and indeed prosper, on the basis of its bilateral activities with that nation' (clark 1999: 786). one thing is clear: if the united states and possibly other countries continue to impose sanctions against myanmar, this country will continue to choose to rely heavily on china. while we have seen the close relationship between the two countries, we should be aware that problems and issues exist in their relationship. it is reported that many burmese view the chinese 'as a new crop of colonists' (roy 1998: 174). one commentator has predicted that 'local resentment of immigrant chinese is potentially a serious problem, and it could lead to a replay of the anti-chinese riots of 1967' (seekins 1997: 530). that author even concluded negatively that the rangoon regime was playing with fire in having such close ties with china (ibid.: 539).17 while it might be argued whether these negative conclusions are well founded, it has to be admitted that potential problems and issues exist. their resolution will depend on the wisdom and actions of the two countries. on the other hand, the sino-myanmar relations will continue to develop. a plan for a 'golden quadrangle' encompassing yunnan province of china, upper burma, northern thailand and laos has been discussed by these four countries (yang xiaohui 1999: 25-30, 35). if this plan comes to fruition, it will no doubt enhance the economic development of the region as well as the co-operation among the countries concerned. it should be noted that no matter who is in power, the sinomyanmar relationship will be maintained and developed in a friendly and stable manner, as manifested by their historical transactions. national reconciliation is necessary for myanmar and dialogue is the only avenue of hope and success. we have to wait and see whether the military junta is willing to sit together with the nld members and aung san suu kyi as well as ethnic groups to build a democratic society in myanmar. it may yet take some time to reach this goal. zou keyuan is senior research fellow, east asian institute, national university of singapore. 75 china's possible role in myanmar's national reconciliation notes * the author is grateful to two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions on the previous version of this article. however, the author assumes the sole responsibility for any error or omission. 1 they were contained in the sino-burmese joint declaration dated 29 june 1954, and adopted as guidelines of the bilateral relations between the two countries (wang tieya 1995: 58) 2 see http://www.fmprc.gov.cn (accessed: 18 november 2000). 3 the nato intervention is regarded as an analogy of the aggression of the eight powers alliance against china in the late 1800s (see ma yuezheng 1999: 5). 4 see http://www.fmprc.gov.cn (accessed: 18 november 2000). 5 texts are available in http://www.aseansec.org/13495.htm (accessed: 7 april 2002). 6 see http://www.fmprc.gov.cn (accessed: 18 november 2000). 7 ibid. 8 it is noted that china stopped its 'export of revolution' to southeast asia after 1978 except for the burma communist party (to about 1988) and the khmer rouge (to 1991) (hinton 1994: 352). 9 the asean declaration, 8 august 1967, reprinted in koh (1996: ii). 10 working group for an asean human rights mechanism, 'synopsis of a policy initiative for the establishment of an asean human rights mechanism', reprinted in defensor santiago (1999: 389). 11 thai foreign minister surin pitsuwan once proposed the concept of 'flexible engagement', a franker, more critical discussion of the internal problems of member states which challenged asean's 30 year-old policy of strict non-interference.'flexible engagement' was rejected by a majority of foreign ministers attending the july 1998 asean summit in manila, though surin was supported by the host country's foreign minister, domingo siazon (seekins 1999: 17) 12 however, mya maung denied any positive effect resulting from the constructive engagement policy by stating that 'a constructive engagement policy can only lead to a prolongation of the military's stranglehold on power to the detriment, in this case, of the democracy movement led by daw suu kyi and the nld' (maung 1999: 285). 13 the united nations urges the government of myanmar to take urgent and meaningful measures to ensure the establishment of democracy in accordance with the will of the people as expressed in the democratic elections held in 1990 and to engage immediately and unconditionally in a genuine and substantive dialogue with the leaders of political parties and of ethnic minorities with the aim of achieving national reconciliation and the restoration of democracy. see un doc. e/cn.4/res/2000/23 (situation of human rights in myanmar), 18 april 2000. 14 national reconciliation program (revised november 1999), kindly provided by mr. harn yawnghwe, director of the european office for the development of democracy in burma, brussels. 15 it should be noted that china has never openly criticized aung san suu kyi, and the latter has never done that either, though she once complained about china's support of the rangoon regime. it seems that both sides maintain some degree of flexibility for future dialogue. 16 as is pointed out, soeharto's resignation in may 1998 may have exposed the bankruptcy of the 'indonesian model' of army-directed state building, which the national convention incorporated into its new constitution (seekins 1999: 18). 17 he listed three reasons: first, abandonment of burma's traditional neutrality may draw the country into conflicts between china and other asian countries by the beginning of the next century. second, chinese involvement in, and even domination of the domestic economy, especially in upper burma, may spark communal violence similar to the anti-chinese riots 76 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 zou keyuan of 1967, or mob attacks on burmese muslims in 1997. third, china's large-scale contributions to slorc's armed force, in the form of weapons, infrastructure aid, and training, might promote the ongoing militarization of burmese society, which will only lead to more violence and instability as the generals turn away from non-violent alternatives that alone can bring the country social peace and development (seekins 1997: 539). references chan, gerald 1999. chinese perspectives on international relations: a framework for analysis. london: macmillan. clark, allen l. 1999. 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'an san su ji zai dangqian mian dian zhengzhi zhong de zuoyong' [aung san suu kyi's role in the present burmese politics]. dongnanya yanjiu [southeast asian studies] 1. muni, s. d. 2002. china's strategic engagement with the new asean: an exploratory study of china's post-cold war political, strategic and economic relations with myanmar, laos, cambodia and vietnam. singapore: institute of defence and strategic studies, nanyang technological university. roy, denny 1998. china's foreign relations. lanham: rowman & littlefield. seekins, donald m. 1997. 'burma–china relations: playing with fire.' asian survey 37 (6): 525-39. — 1999.'burma in 1998: little to celebrate.' asian survey 39 (1): 12-19. shao tienren 1985. 'heping gongchu wuxiang yuanze––dangdai guojifa de jichu' [five principles of peaceful co-existence––basis for contemporary international law]. zhongguo guojifa niankan [chinese yearbook of international law]: 334-45. song dexing 2000. 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'an analysis of the quadrilateral economic co-operation program of mainland china, laos, myanmar and thailand', dongnanya yanjiu [southeast asian studies] 2. yawnghwe, harn 2000. 'eu–asean relations: a burmese/myanmar perspective.' panorama 2. yazhou zhoukan [asian weekly] 2001. 'real friends help each other', 23-29 april. zuo xiao'an et al. 1997. 'meiguo dui mian zhicai dui dongnanya de yingxiang' [the influence of american sanctions against myanmar on southeast asian situation] dongnanya yanjiu [southeast asian studies] 4. preface this first issue of copenhagen papers in east and southeast asian studies brings together three papers presented at the conference "ten years after: the post-mao development", held, with a grant from the danish social science research council, november 7-9, 1986, in elsinore, denmark. they deal with post-mao economic and political reforms in china. the contributors are professor stuart schram, school of oriental and african studies, london; dr. erhard louven, institute of asian affairs, hamburg; and the editor. professor stuart schram's contribution deals with reform of the economic and political system as it has been discussed and to a certain extent put into practice in china since 1978. his conclusion is that the predominant trends in the various economic, political, intellectual, and cultural domains tend to converge and reinforce each other. he believes that economic reforms will be maintained in the foreseeable future, provided the reform process will continue to include the implementation of concomitant political reforms. dr. erhard louven analyzes basic trends and perspectives in the economic arena in the post-mao period. he points out that the economy, in industry as well as in agriculture, has performed very well in the period, with record-high growth rates. he concludes, however, that sooner or later agricultural per formance will have reached a plateau, requiring new massive investments from the industrial sector, and that the urban reforms seem to meet resistance from traditional power elites in the party and in the planning apparatus. my own contribution addresses the overall economic and political reform process in the post-mao era. it argues that the chinese reform process is cha racterized by the introduction of reforms which seek to improve particular aspects of the economic and political system rather than to change the system itself. in this sense, the chinese have not gone beyond the borderline to struc tural reform that changes the very parameters within which the decision making process and the political-economic patterns of behaviour operate. copenhagen papers in east and southeast asian studies is part of the publica tion program of the center for east and southeast asian studies, university of copenhagen. it is planned to publish 2 issues a year. our hope with this se ries is to demonstrate the breadth and depth of modern east and south east asian studies in this part of the world. nevertheless, as the first issue shows, contributions will not be limited to scandinavian scholars. forthcoming issues will include "chinese intellectual life post-mao", "east asian security in the 1 9 8 0 ~ " ~ "decentralized water resource management in the p r c , "science and technology reforms in the prc", "reform and read justment in the chinese economy with particular reference to the post-mao period", and "the role of the state in the east asian modernization process". kjeld erik brddsgaard freire.indd _________________________________________________________________________ 67 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? motorbikes against ho chi minh? or the consumption icons of a social transformation in vietnam alexandre dormeier freire abstract the motorcycle is an unavoidable item in contemporary vietnam. since the renovation policy (doi moi) in 1986, it has become the most visible consumption good. this article questions the utilitarian and symbolic use that is made of it by the urban populations of hanoi. this article addresses the question of the values and social transformations within the post-socialist society in vietnam, symbolized by the consumerism practices of motorbikes. it also explores the process of classification and differentiation and the consumerism significance related to motorbikes. furthermore, the use of the motorcycle procures some form of intimacy and privacy for people in a society where the state still widely shapes domestic and public spaces. certain ritual phenomena associated with the use of motorcycles are addressed as well, such as illegal races. these races contribute to the construction of the masculine identity and the article questions whether they are an act of social defiance. keywords: vietnam, social transformation, consumerism, motorbikes, social values. introduction in vietnam, motorbikes1 are literally everywhere and seem to be perfectly integrated into the social and economic life. even more, they appear to be the icon of the renovation policy launched in the country in 1986, known under the name of doi moi, although the introduction of motorbikes into the country goes back to the 1960s when us and japanese mopeds were imported into south vietnam. a regular visitor to vietnam can easily observe the richness and the complexity of social behaviours related to the use of motorbikes in this country. given the surprising lack of literature2 on the sociological aspects of motorbikes in vietnam, this article is an attempt to deconstruct and analyse this richness as well as a first step towards the comprehension of their sociological role within the society. 68 ____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 27(1)•2009 alexandre dormeier freire ___________________________________________________ the aim of this article is to understand the behaviours, social statuses and values as well as consumerism significance related to the motorbikes in urban areas of vietnam. from that perspective, is it possible that in a society in transition like vietnam, the motorcycle also symbolizes the emergence of new hedonistic values, more individualistic, with which the young urban populations not only identify themselves but also call for? can the reclaiming of these new values be seen as a form of symbolic violence in opposition to the older generations' values? for instance, are the illegal races of motorbikes, which can be observed at night in cities, a new form of social contestation? what is the social logic behind these races—the construction of a new masculine identity or a form of symbolic violence relating to 'political consumerism'? people driving by the thousands, during the evening, at the heart of cities or around the hoan kiem lake in hanoi, as well as on the le loi avenue in ho chi minh city, or even these young couples ready to have intimate contact on their motorbikes (which is socially not very acceptable in public spaces). do people seek, in the use of their motorbikes, some form of privacy and intimacy? in a country where the state still remains rather intrusive in domestic spaces, where the density of the population is high and privacy is scarce and controlled, we could assume that the motorbike is used to enjoy some forms of privacy difficult to find elsewhere. to understand the social transformations that motorbikes symbolize in vietnam and to answer the multiple questions above, this article consists of two parts. the first briefly returns to the emergence of mass consumption in the doi moi period and proposes some theoretical background and evidence on consumerism, social differentiation and the notion of 'intimacy' or privacy in the use of the motorbikes. it analyses the new social values and practices of differentiation related to the emergence of consumerism in vietnam. the second part of the article illustrates some consumerist practices and social-related behaviours, such as the emergence of the concept of pleasure, the search for some 'intimacy on the motorbike', and the phenomenon of illegal races. it is based on eight semi-directive interviews with two men and two women under 35 years old, and two men and two women over 35 years old held during january 2007 in hanoi. the interviewees are owners of at least one motorbike and belong to the middle class of hanoi. this sample is not representative. people were selected according to the 'snowball' technique. this paper3 is not only based on interviews conducted with urban users but also on observations carried out during the numerous stays of the author in vietnam. _________________________________________________________________________ 69 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? background and evidence on consumerism, social differentiation, spaces of intimacy and the context of vietnam background: the emergence of motorbikes and mass consumption in vietnam many books4 and articles describe the 'miracle' of vietnamese economic development that appeared with the doi moi (renovation) policies launched in 1986. this economic takeoff allowed a general increase in living standards. for example, the gdp per capita rose from us$ 300 in 1994 to us$ 750 in 2006. in this new environment, former key economic actors like agricultural cooperatives and governmental enterprises seem to belong to the past. businessmen are the new symbols of a dynamic private economy, replacing party cadres. a social urban middle-class has developed subsequently. as philippe papin (2003: 11) observes, this class remains very much related to the state apparatus, however it does not mean that there is no social transformation affecting the country on all levels. through its gradual exposure to international brands (through media such as the internet and cable television or through contact with tourists) as well as increased income, the middle class fully entered into the mass consumption society. the accession of vietnam to the world trade organization (wto) in january 2007 after more than ten years of negotiations is another symbol of the emergence of a marketand consumption-oriented economy. among common consumption goods, which best illustrate these transformations, one could point to mobile phones, televisions, and of course, motorbikes. today, vietnam counts more motorbikes per capita than neighbouring countries: nearly 169 per thousand inhabitants, against 44 in china and 79 in indonesia. nearly 16 million officially recorded motorbikes circulate throughout the country. in 1990, there were only 1.2 million motorbikes in vietnam. this figure was thus multiplied by ten over a 14 year period although similar motorbikes can be twice as expensive in vietnam due to taxes applied to imports. undeniably, motorbikes became one of the most visible goods and a symbol of mass consumption in the doi moi society. social differentiation, values and consumerism 'consumption' and 'consumerism' obviously have various meanings. each may refer to different theoretical backgrounds and disciplines. 70 ____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 27(1)•2009 alexandre dormeier freire ___________________________________________________ a general and straightforward distinction can be made: consumption refers to the 'volume and taxonomy of all spending that was in any way potentially variable or discretionary' and consumerism to 'broader motivational drives to consume in particular ways' (glennie 1998: 928). it can be understood as a focus on meanings and on the construction of 'an independent identity through consumption' (glennie 1998: 928). as for any definition, the two terms are subject to debate and other notions and concepts have appeared lately in the literature such as 'consumer society' or 'postmodern consumerism' to describe both phenomena. as any consumption good, the motorbike is first an object of social differentiation and positioning (implicit or explicit). in order to address the phenomenon of social differentiation, bourdieu proposes a framework in particular related to the questions of distinction and symbolic differences observable in the practices of consumption (bourdieu 1996). the practices of consumption, 'the choice of the necessary', present the 'habitus of the working class as the learned outcome of their material situation' (trentmann 2004: 375). in other words, the manner of consuming is statutory and takes part in the social reproduction processes. the distance with the consumed object (e.g. in vietnam, among the urban populations, one describes the motorbike as something of almost no importance, whereas rural population see it as an 'investment') differentiates people from a certain socio-economic category and marks their social status. the differences in the practices of consumption that one notes here become 'differences in symbolic systems' (bourdieu 1996). baudrillard (1996) offers some additional consideration on social differentiation processes with regards to consumerism. the dimension of a symbolic system is expressed through various practices that baudrillard refers to as the 'process of classification and differentiation', such as statutory values in a hierarchy (1996: 79). in other words, it is not the object that one consumes but its significance in order to be a member of a society without inevitably feeling its constraints (baudrillard 1996: 80). however, consumerism brings different signification. social relations are driven by hedonistic and individualistic patterns, which are primarily related to modern consumers in a market (migone 2007). modern capitalistic markets and societies are characterized by individualistic relations in the sense that the process of exchanges between consumers are impersonal (simmel 2004). the literature also shows that the emergence of 'modern' consumption not only means the 'growing autonomy of a consumerist mentality' but also the erosion of traditional social relations, as in postmodern consumerism people tend to be more individualistic _________________________________________________________________________ 71 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? rather than class oriented (trentmann 2004, 2007). other sociologists such as bauman have described consumerism as being part of a new 'liquid society' in the sense that it transcends national identities and territories and modifies identities based on work and locality (bauman 2001). consumerism is then driven by 'distraction' (bauman 2001: 12): but neither pascal nor kierkegaard—not even max scheler—could anticipate the advent of consumer society which would transform distraction, once an individually contrived hide-out from fate, into something socially constructed: a society in which 'constantly finishing and beginning again from the beginning' would no more be a sign of monstrosity, but the way of life available to all and the only way of life so commonly available. the consumer society changes the nature of the construction of social identity. bauman gives plenty of examples on how social identity and image are reshaped by consumerism processes in a 'liquid society' (bauman 2005). mass production and the capitalist economy have profoundly changed needs, perceptions and attitudes towards consumption practices. mass consumption is not new per se; it appeared with fordism. however, the difference between the 'postmodern' mode of consumption and the fordist one is the hedonistic value to be found in postmodern consumerism. lebow described the buying of goods as a 'ritual' made for seeking 'spiritual satisfaction and ego satisfaction' (cited by migone 2007: 177). the literature also shows that since the 1980s consumerism is related not only to accumulation of goods but also to a permanent search for new or unusual experiences modifying social values (campbell cited by glennie 1998: 928). motorbikes and consumerism a lot of 'values' can be identified in relation to consumerism. among others, the acceptance that the 'ephemerality' of products is 'better' than their durability may be other key values of consumerism, with as a consequence a permanent unsatisfied and renewed needs triggered by mass consumption practices (bauman 2005). after the second world war, arvidsson (2001) demonstrated in an article that motorbikes (in his case the vespa) had become the icons of 'youth international culture' linked to a vision of 'lifestyle choice' and hedonistic values. notably, vespas were introduced in south vietnam in the 1960s along with japanese and american motorbikes and are now some of the most popular (and expensive) to be found on the market. it is interesting to 72 ____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 27(1)•2009 alexandre dormeier freire ___________________________________________________ make a parallel between the situations in contemporary vietnam and in italy. arvidsson argues that vespas are a key component of a new material culture that emerged in italy after the second world war (2001: 48): in many ways, the story of the vespa supplies an ideal case study: presented as a central component of the material culture of a new, modern, post-fascist italy in the immediate post-war years, vespa soon become something of a fetish for the emerging transnational counterculture. however, contrary to the italian case described by arvidsson, in vietnam motorbike producers were not capturing the codes of counterculture values but were displaying instead signs and symbols of mass consumption modes. as older role models related to communist values could not prevail anymore as being the only core values of the doi moi society, consumerism values have implicitly emerged as being key in contemporary vietnam. but in a certain sense, one could also argue that they belong to a 'counterculture' because they were clearly opposed to the 'socialist' values. the mass consumption-related values resulted from the success of the doi moi policies and have introduced a new form of social control.5 bauman explains the social control and order in a consumerism society (2001: 17): 'the fragility and precariousness endemic to pleasure-and-distraction-seeking life has been reclassified from major threats to the stability of social order into its chief support'. in the case of vietnam, motorbikes served as the central component of a material and pleasure-seeking culture that emerged with the implementation of the renovation policies in 1986 and served the stability of the social order. for young people it soon became the symbol of an ideological gap between them and the older generation, the former 'citizen model' (promoting an image of a standardized citizen following certain 'socialist values and attitudes' common also in other former socialist countries6). the consumer in centrally planned economies like vietnam before 1986 was rather ascetic. the communist consumer 'was being called upon to make sacrifices' in order to focus on the needs of production with the promise, despite recurrent shortages, of a brighter standard of living through meeting the material needs of populations as in many former communist countries (mazurek and hilton 2007: 916). the egalitarianism and the uniformity preached by the authorities through its 'citizen model' are overtaken by the emergence of individual values, consumer society, consumerism, and visible social classification processes, in particular among the young vietnamese. the younger generation is embracing these new values of consumption, which is also an act of symbolic violence against previous generations. the lack _________________________________________________________________________ 73 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? of attention to consumption matters was one of the root causes of the collapse of the eastern bloc (mazurek and hilton 2007), and it is certain that after 1989 in order to survive the vietnamese government had no other choice than to open its economy and society to foreign influences and to welcome market-based mass consumption practices. consumption practices are not totally deprived of political significance: certain practices have political content. thus, buying certain brands or boycotting others has been considered a form of political participation in western countries. the meaning and effectiveness of this form of political participation as underlined by stolle et al. (2005: 248)is not clear: 'a growing number of citizens are turning to the market to express their political and moral concerns, but do not tell us whether political consumerism can also be considered as a meaningful or effective form of political participation.' from that perspective, consumption practices would be in a new arena of political expression giving birth to a 'political consumerism', which certain authors have termed 'lifestyle politics', or seeing 'political meanings in recreational experiences, entertainment choices, fashion decisions, and other personal happenings' (shah et al. 2007: 219). certain practices related to motorbikes, such as the illegal races taking place during the night in urban areas in vietnam, are an expression of both the construction of a social male identity and an act of defiance linked to a political dimension of consumerism. by using a mass-consumption symbol of a pleasure-seeking society inverting the long-promoted ascetic socialist moral values, the 'night racers' also display a tacit political message going beyond simple outlawed practices. doi moi society and the motorbikes in a society in transition such as vietnam, the motorcycle symbolizes the advent of new hedonist values, a shift from a culture of discipline towards a culture of pleasure. it translates the desire of the youth to find more urban values, or even 'pop', as illustrated by thomas (2004, 2002), drummond (2000), lloyd (2003), or nguyen anh phuong (2006) or like the post-war generations in italy as related by arvidsson (2001). in vietnam today, the youth (60 percent of the population is under 30 years of age) neither experienced times of deprivation (from 1975 to 1986) nor the war periods of the country and they are searching for other lifestyle experiences in a context that has witnessed tremendous changes since 1975. to describe this transition using the values perspective, the motorbike 74 ____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 27(1)•2009 alexandre dormeier freire ___________________________________________________ reflects the desire of people 'to consume' by expressing a certain form of individualism, which clashes in a sociocultural context rather than tending to reject individual values and behaviours. hence, except the founding figure of modern vietnam, ho chi minh, the vietnamese society does not put forward individuals and does not encourage people to affirm their personalities. the communist regime, in addition, always claimed these national traditions and 'values' and have not created or claimed a radical rupture with history, as the red khmers did, for example, in cambodia. with regards to the emergence of new values, thomas and nguyen bich thuan (2004: 135) evoke the changes among young women, while underlining the role of the state in the modelling of social values: asserting its control through purging pleasure, the state's power to define popular culture has a contradictory effect: the state is developing a new relationship with consumers, testing the ground of possibility by simultaneously authorizing and disallowing. working in tandem with mass culture, a new mass-oriented state has become the mark of the postsocialist era. as described by these two authors, the state, as a new form of social control, thus tries to incorporate such emergent values in a new mass culture centred on consumerism. motorbikes belong to this tendency to promote new popular culture enclosing new values of pleasure. they also fit in the emergence of a commercial economy where leisure activities gain a new importance through certain consumer goods (mobile telephones, televisions, motorbikes, etc.). adam fforde (2003) mentions another amusing example that fits this pattern: in vietnam, the market for cosmetic products is one of most important of the region. its size exceeds that of other asian countries, which however have higher per capita incomes. other indicators, such as the increasing rate of divorce, rural-urban migration trends and changes in family structure also show that new values are emerging. the motorbike symbolizes, at least in the urban areas, these social changes. the notion of intimacy on motorbikes in the light of public/private spaces regarding the notion of 'intimacy' or privacy on a motorbike, it refers to the discourses on public/private space. let's reconsider briefly the relations between private and public spaces in vietnam as a first step before coming to the principal hypothesis claiming that motorbikes are considered by people as places where they can get some intimacy and _________________________________________________________________________ 75 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? privacy. it was already mentioned that the state remains somewhat intrusive in various social spaces, including family relations. drummond (2000: 2385) summarizes this phenomenon as follows: the state's involvement with domestic or private spaces centres mainly around attempts to organize household relations and structure social roles within the family. the state is extremely active in attempts to formulate domestic identity. the state thus organizes and intervenes in all aspects of social life: in the birth-rate (by family planning), in the private sphere (for example the system of merit for the households in the 1980s, the registration of the households and their members, etc.), and in domestic ritual spaces (each household must have a bust or portrait of ho chi minh, etc.). private as well as public spaces are places where the state expresses its authority, as anh nguyen pham (2005: 1) indicates: 'space has often been used as a form of social control and an exercise of power to impose a specific social order.' what about public spaces? for a common visitor to vietnam, it is difficult to believe that the busy sidewalks, occupied by all kinds of activities—small shops, sports, french style 'cafés', etc.–were empty before the doi moi. the informal sector seized this territory once the doi moi was launched, which authorized private trade and profit. since the 1980s, the public authorities in large cities have tried to limit the too-anarchistic development of activities on the streets. for instance, according to koh (2004), the decree 36/cp from may 1995 in hanoi was instigated in the purest style of propaganda campaigns, with posters and audio messages broadcast by the innumerable loudspeakers of the city. the objective was to domesticate activities in public space and to overcome urban traffic. this decree also ended the activities of 35 illegal markets, but these attempts had poor results. why? drummond (2000) shows that if private spaces are the places of social reproduction, public spaces belong to the community but are strongly controlled by the state. in public spaces, broadcast messages (by posting or public loudspeakers) and organized events are under the strict scrutiny of the authorities. the appropriation of public space remains tolerable for economic activities (handicraft, 'cafés', informal work, etc.) and even sporting activities or entertainment (such as badminton). but the problem is that today, a victory of the national vietnamese football team brings many more people into the streets than an official procession, and this type of spontaneous demonstration overlaps with the control exerted by the state. actually, there are plenty of occasions for people to occupy public spaces. an illustration is the visit of former us president bill clinton 76 ____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 27(1)•2009 alexandre dormeier freire ___________________________________________________ in november 2006, who gathered an unexpectedly large, young and lively crowd on the streets of hanoi during a private walk close to hoan kiem lake, as a real rock star7 would do! the appearance of this type of transgressive gathering is related to the 're-appropriation' of public spaces. perhaps nowadays, as anh nguyen pham (2005) suggests, even if public spaces in the cities in vietnam do not enjoy the same importance as elsewhere because of their recent existence (which date back to colonial times), the level of control existing before the doi moi has disappeared. the same author (anh nguyen pham 2005: 7), supported by others, argues that such spaces become almost sites of contestation: in many ways the streets and sidewalks in contemporary vietnamese cities such as hanoi and ho chi minh city (hcmc) have been sites of continued contestations. on the physical dimension, they are extremely crowded and bustling with activities. . . . yet state attempts to impose social order on public spaces in hanoi and ho chi minh city have often been ignored and resisted by the people in both subtle and blatant ways. furthermore, in these two large vietnamese urban centres there is little or no private space available. for example, population density reaches high levels: 3,500 habitants/km2 for the capital, and 2,800 for ho chi minh city in the south. by way of comparison, the national average in vietnam is 250. one of the consequences of these high densities relates to the low living space per capita. thus, in hanoi, each person has only 5m2 of habitable surface; it is approximately 6.2m2 in ho chi minh city (guidebooks to french co-operation in vietnam 2002). in comparison, in geneva people have on average 47m2 (statistique de genève 2000) and 30m2 in paris. it seems that there is a noticeable contradiction: private space is deprived and strongly controlled, and public space is almost a place of quasi-contestation. where is the motorbike in this contradiction? the assumption of this article suggests that because spaces of intimacy are rare, motorbikes would be places where people could have some privacy without feeling the constraints of the domestic space. the motorbikes and the doi moi society: new values and places of intimacy? a tool of multiple purposes and an object of social classification more than a simple tool for transportation, certain vietnamese even consider them 'as their legs!' according to the expression of one of the persons met in hanoi. the interviewees confirm that all their journeys, _________________________________________________________________________ 77 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? even short ones, are carried out on motorbikes, easily beating any other transportation means, including walking. as a consequence, in urban arteries the flow of traffic can reach up to 10,000 bikes per hour. in one of the very rare comparative analyses between various countries (vietnam, taiwan and malaysia) available, the author hsu tienpen (2003: 22) affirms that ho chi minh city inhabitants and hanoians respectively make 3.0 and 2.6 trips per day on their bikes, against 2.2 in manila, 1.7 in jakarta and 2.3 in bangkok. according to kengo mizuno and naohiro kitano (2000: 137), the most used means of transportation would be the motorbike with nearly 95 percent and 92 percent (of journeys) for hanoi and ho chi minh city respectively, the remainder being distributed between car, taxi, bus and other means of transportation. in bangkok and jakarta motorbikes account for only approximately 25 percent of trips. compared to other countries, motorbikes are more used in vietnam. there are no huge differences in the public transport infrastructures between these various cities (except for bangkok). on the contrary, hanoi and ho chi minh city have a decent network of reliable and affordable buses, unlike some large indonesian cities, for example. in other words, the use of the motorbike in vietnam is related to a variety of activities, whether economic, social or recreational, explaining the above-mentioned daily travel figures. for poorer households, the motorbike is seen as an investment and is used as a tool to increase their incomes. the motorbike is like a 'swiss multi-functional pocket knife' for its multiple applications: it is used to transport any kind of merchandise,8 or to provide a service to people (xe ôm), a very popular solution for travel within urban areas. nguyen xuan dao and nguyen huu duc (2003: 3) have highlighted the importance of motorbikes as economic instruments: in vietnam motorbikes serve not only as transportation, but as a means to earn income by transporting products. the mobility provided by the motorbike is obvious and it has contributed to improved access of farmers to markets and has played therefore an important role in the diversification of rural activities. another example of a rather unexpected motorbike 'service delivery' is prostitution. thus, in hanoi, on pham ngu lao and its adjacent streets close to the opera and trang tien str., prostitutes come in the evening to look for possible pedestrian or motorized customers. once hooked, the prostitute takes the customer along to cheap hotels on the other side of the bridge in the gia lam district. there is, hence, a multitude of observable activities pursued on motorbikes. but only a 78 ____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 27(1)•2009 alexandre dormeier freire ___________________________________________________ few studies exist that measure the exact role of motorbikes in income generation. as said earlier, in low-income or rural households, people generally describe their two wheels as an 'investment'. in this respect, it is interesting to note the difference in perception between them and the urban sample of this article composed of wealthier social classes for whom motorbikes do not constitute an economic tool or an investment. the wealthier social classes depict their motorbikes as a usual or sometimes even as a 'fashionable' device. linh, a 25 year-old young woman met in hanoi, first says that all her family members have a motorbike, except her little brother. and she makes it immediately clear: 'we use it to go to work, but do not work with it!' if motorbikes remain an object of social classification, an 'investment of economic value' for some, a simple fashion item for others, the forms of social distinction and the consumerism significations have also evolved in urban areas. for sure, the price, the brand and the model count. but as a 'lifestyle' object in cities now, it is not enough to travel around on a shimmering japanese scooter. to emphasize a social status, people customize their bikes, and in doing so they do also express certain individualistic and pleasure-seeking values linked to modern consumerism. thus, customization reinforces the image of a fashion device for young urban classes by adding value and meaning and distances them from its utilitarian dimension. the youngest female respondents have, on an average, repainted their motorbikes twice in one of the many specialized shops located on cao ba quat or hue streets in hanoi. each new colour costs nearly us$ 250 to 300, according to the model. to affirm themselves as 'urban', young women follow the 'trend' of the moment, which animates the streets of hanoi, from pink, to white, red, and nacreous white today: 'i have only two friends who have the same model as me, and nobody has it in this colour!' claimed one young female respondent. but colouring is not enough. nowadays, some subtle decorative details, such as representations of flowers or dragons come to embellish and further customize the motorbikes, to make them, eventually, even more unique and to accentuate a distinction, a status, and a social class flag. for male respondents under 35 years of age, the customization process operates differently as it is partly linked to the phenomenon of illegal races. they usually replace parts of the engine and add accessories to win either on power or on 'stability' according to the expression used by cuong and linh. men regret that the scooter models take an increas_________________________________________________________________________ 79 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? ingly important place compared to standard motorbikes, since 'they are unusable to race' and they regard them as 'motorbikes for women'. there are significant generational differences. young motorbike owners, both male and female, are keen on spending considerable amounts for their two wheels, but the elder interviewees do not have the same social behaviours. one among them, hahn, 50 years old, doesn't see the utility and the fun of spending money for his motorbike, apart from the gasoline. his example shows well the shift existing at this level between generations. those under 35 (the 'post-war' generation) spend on average more than dongs 200,000 (us$ 12.5) per month for maintenance and customization, against a few thousands for the elders. the amount spent for the purchase of a motorbike can reach very high levels compared to living costs, especially among younger people. thus, cuong (24 years old), an office clerk earning approximately us$ 180 per month, with the assistance of his family, spent almost us$ 2,200 to get a yamaha exciter. this example proves that the whole family seems somehow to benefit from the symbolic capital and social status of such an acquisition. if motorbikes are common objects on the streets of the country, displaying an expensive one returns a positive image and acts as a social marker. likewise, another 44 year-old woman, owning a modest 50cm3 scooter, whose price hardly exceeds us$ 900, reported that some of her relatives lecture her by saying that her motorbike does not reflect her social position (she is working in a foreign higher education institution and holds a ph.d.). these few stories, taken from interviewees, confirm what one can read in popular vietnamese newspapers. hence, the press has widely reported the story of a minister's daughter who diverted money from her parents to offer six of her friends the same scooter she had, a honda dylan, costing us$ 5,000. the people interviewed for this article drive motorbikes whose value ranges between us$ 2,200 and 5,000. this confirms the trend that from 80 percent in 2001, the low-cost motorbikes represent less than 50 percent today in urban areas (courrier du vietnam 2007). each of the interviewees has a recent model; the notable exceptions were a man and a woman aged above 35 years, the only ones to own basic and cheap bikes. the age factor of the interviewees indicates already some differences in the social behaviours, demonstrating differences in the social values between generations. twenty years ago, before the doi moi, no one would dare to display ostentatious signs of richness, whereas today, there's no embarrassment. to drive a us$ 5,000 motorbike becomes a desirable and statu80 ____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 27(1)•2009 alexandre dormeier freire ___________________________________________________ tory behaviour. in certain cases, the origin of the money used to acquire motorbikes, which in the case of cuong for example represents several years of wages, remains turbid. admittedly, households have savings and sometimes remittances (reaching approximately two or three billion us dollars per year at the national level). people may also have several jobs or income activities. but it is likely that a part of these sums comes from corruption-related activities or from the underground economy. finally, it does not matter; no one seems to attach any importance to it. the amounts spent on some consumption goods (motorbikes, mobile telephones or televisons) are almost acts of symbolic violence with respect to the old generations and values they conveyed. thus, for the 'old guard', these new behaviours can be experienced almost as a provocation, or at least as a deviance compared to the 'citizen model'. some intimacy on motorbikes? one of the assumptions of this article is that people see the motorbike as a place where privacy could be found and that the generalization of the use of motorbikes has enabled urban people to express new behaviours within the context of the above-mentioned lack of space. this assumption is supported by the figures given at the beginning of this article on the high number of daily journeys made by the vietnamese. the interviews confirm a certain number of points: first of all, motorbikes appear to be important in the search for some intimacy. all users mention that being on a motorbike offers the 'luxury' of isolation. thus, several people choose the motorbike to find some privacy, 'to think', 'to reflect' and even 'to depress' or 'to cry'. moreover, it goes without saying that the motorbike is a privative space where people can converse freely. a young woman even affirms that the motorbike is 'a more open' space to discuss than a café, for example. the way it works is quite simple: one takes on board a person with whom he or she maintains relations of proximity. the choice of the person who sits behind the driver is thus based on the nature of the relationship, a strong tie according to mark granovetter (1973). often, these 'chat tours' are done with intimate people and confidants. the destination of the tour has hardly any importance, even if respondents acknowledge preferring to drive in very crowded places such as the large avenues of the hoan kiem lake, located in the historical heart of the city. the topics discussed during these tours can vary, but concern intimate topics, as says a young female respondent: _________________________________________________________________________ 81 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? i often chat on the bike with my cousin; we speak about family, work, marriage. it is the atmosphere on the motorbike, which is pleasant to discuss: we drive, we see people, and we get some fresh air. in fact, work and love are the topics that i discuss more often with my cousin. we'd rather talk on the bike than in a coffee shop because it's less crowded. however, the nature of the conversations can also be more casual. it is worthwhile noting that among the interviewees, the youngest have expressed more intensively these perceptions of intimacy and freedom. here again, we can observe the emergence of new values among the younger generations moving away from what is preached by the authorities. thus, it is hardly surprising that the oldest respondents do not share this enthusiasm, arguing that it is 'sad to drive all alone' or that the motorbike 'does not represent a place of intimacy or privacy'. the motorbike becomes a place to liberate certain frustrations difficult to express elsewhere, like a 35 year-old woman who confessed 'to kiss other boys, to speak about my husband', while other respondents answered 'when i feel stressed or sad, or want to cry, i take a ride on my motorbike'. it seems that the use of motorbikes allows individuals to express themselves differently. this is applicable to men and women under 35 years, but much less, again, for those who belong to the older generation. here the age factor plays an important role in the social behaviours related to the use of motorbikes. undeniably, the motorbike significations vary between older and younger generations, the latter expressing not only 'pleasure-seeking and distraction' values but also 'social freedom'. while walking around in the streets of hanoi, particularly at night, one can easily observe the couples holding each other while driving on the motorbike. at traffic lights, one can distinguish the younger couples fondling. occasionally, couples can even be spotted kissing and cuddling in the dark around the numerous lakes around the city or in parks. this is particularly striking, since it is uncommon for people to show signs of affection in the streets. it illustrates the perfect integration of the motorbike in the 'modern and urban' values and lifestyle, as flirting on motorbikes is a widespread practice. the bike became a place or a tool and a symbol of libertinage. among the younger respondents, the practice of flirting on the bike is quite common. nonetheless, not all the respondents share such flirting practices on the motorbikes and there is a certain sense of limitations on the perception of the privacy offered by the motorbike. thus, a young woman emphasized that she doesn't do anything more than she does elsewhere in public. signs of affection in a public place are impolite for her. people above 35 years give less importance to the 82 ____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 27(1)•2009 alexandre dormeier freire ___________________________________________________ motorbike as a flirting place and device, yet without rejecting it. here again the gap between generations is clearly observable. motorbike races at night, a form of social contestation and identity construction motorbike races are a common phenomenon in hanoi (seemingly less in ho chi minh city) and concern primarily young men. there are no studies available on the subject. the following lines are an attempt to describe a rather undocumented phenomenon. yet, it is totally by coincidence that the two young men, cuong and linh, met in hanoi, rather quickly agreed to discuss it, and even showed their scars caused by accidents during races. revealing their gashes so ostentatiously during the interviews, adopting 'masculine postures and attitudes' such as smoking intensively when speaking about the races, are various signs indicating that this practice is related to the construction of a male social identity similar to a ritual of passage between the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood. during the discussion with the two young men, races were often associated with alcohol and their 'gang' of friends converging towards a rite of passage analysis. how are the races organized? first of all, they are held almost every weekend, between ten o'clock in the evening and one o'clock in the morning, or after an important event or a social celebration, such as the victory of the national football team. (for example, in december 2008, after the first-ever victory of vietnam in a regional football competition, a large crowd of motorbikes gathered in the city with, as a consequence, 65 accidents and several dead in few hours.) 'alcohol is mixed with a pleasure feeling' says one of the two young men referring to hedonistic values and unusual life experiences. often, the mobile phone is used to fix an appointment with friends. races are also organized simply by waiting for other runners at a corner of one of the city's main streets, and 'it is enough to drive around to find other racers'. the codes are clear: one seeks a glance to start the discussion then the racers look for a street to begin the race. generally, racers drive through the city with friends in search of other racers and compete with unknown drivers, almost never with people considered 'friends'. cuong, the youngest of the two, uses the term 'gang' in english to indicate that the races are done between 'gangs'. races are sometimes almost like a code, or a ritual, to mark the membership of a gang. 'when i hang around with my friends, we all do _________________________________________________________________________ 83 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? races' says cuong. certain places where the races take place are more interesting than others: 'hoan kiem is to show off, the true races are done in ba trieu or dao co viet', tells linh (all these places are located in the downtown area). thus, it seems that dissensions exist between those who describe themselves as the 'genuine runners' and the others who are perceived by the first ones as imitators. for the sake of 'balance', the pilot takes a co-pilot (a close friend) on the back seat. speeds exceed 100km/h even in downtown areas and 'when one falls, the motorbike skids over thirty meters' explains one of them. in certain races, some bets are placed even if the bets do not constitute the principal incentive for the runners. accordingly, only one of the two openly admitted to having bet up to one million dongs (approximately us$ 70) for a race. as we initially assumed, the practice of races falls under a logic of identity construction for young males. hence, linh, the oldest of the two, 30 years and an engineer, talks about the races using and emphasizing carefully the past tense. that way, he clearly shows that he is not a 'young man' but a grown-up adult. as a preamble to our discussion, linh stressed that the races concern 'youngsters' and that he himself, a married man and a father, does not take part in it anymore. conversely, cuong uses the present tense when he talks about this topic. the difference is noteworthy. both men evoke bluntly the reasons for which they have participated in these races: 'to affirm themselves' and 'to show off'. the notion of pleasure also emerges in the discussion. in addition, it evokes the construction of the identity by imitation: 'because others did it', argues one of them. in other words, it is possible to consider these races as a way for young men to affirm their masculine social identities. and they do so with a motorbike, the symbol of new emerging values. as mentioned previously, races are illegal and they refer to a certain political dimension of consumerism described in the introduction. thus, taking part in such 'races' is also an act of defiance towards the authorities: 'to tease the police' as the two young men claim. provoking the police force is a rather widespread practice. one can easily observe in the evening what happens when a traffic light turns red and when police officers stand nearby. certain young people do not respect the red light in a very ostentatious way. this particular use of the motorbike, symbol of the opening of the country, is rather singular as a means of contestation. already in the 1990s, quiet and unusual gatherings were taking place on some avenues in ho chi minh city on saturday evenings: groups of young people drove around, silently, at the same speed, always taking the same itinerary. it's impossible to 84 ____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 27(1)•2009 alexandre dormeier freire ___________________________________________________ say if all that was organized or spontaneous, and what was the nature of the political content if any. but in any case, it was a manner of claiming more opening, which occurred with the lifting of the us embargo in 1994 eventually. there is no doubt that the races have partly to do with the same social pattern. certainly it is an expression of a message from a generation wishing to move away from the 'citizen model' that the regime has promoted for many years. in order to do so they use a consumption good, a symbol of social changes—the motorbike–like the youth have done in other places around the world. conclusions this article on the use of motorbikes and its consumerism practices by urban populations enables us to understand some outstanding features of the social changes that have taken place in vietnam since 1986. first, the motorbike is the 'economic tool' of the doi moi, the symbol of the reforms and the economic transformations recognizable everywhere in the country. second, the motorbike is an object of social classification conveying new values such as pleasure and hedonism, demonstrating that the former communist country has entered into a 'pleasure-seeking' and 'distraction-oriented' phase as a society linked to the market economy. third, the motorbike is perceived as a place of intimacy but also, and somehow paradoxically, it must be 'visible' so that social marking can be effective. fourth, the motorbikes belong to the lifestyle of a young urban generation claiming other values and 'unusual experiences' than those promoted by the previous generations. the way in which they have been appropriated by the youth shows that a gap exists between the image of the 'citizen model' that the authorities still try to promote and, on the other hand, the claims of those who see in their motorbike a means of claiming other values . these various points strengthen the feeling that the motorbike became a kind of 'liberal, libertine and libertarian' symbol for a category of the population, making it possible to break certain social constraints, although as evidence on consumerism theories suggests, it also introduced a new form of social control. this article is an attempt to describe a wide range of social behaviours related to motorbike consumerism. thus, it was not possible here to fully discuss the entire range of social practices, such as the illegal races, whose construction of male identity and political consumerism or 'lifestyle politics' remains to be further analysed. however, the ritual of the races shows that the underlying symbolic use of the motorbike _________________________________________________________________________ 85 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? differs according to sexes: races for men, and displaying urban and 'pop' values based on appearances for women. nevertheless, such an osmosis with a technological object is astonishing and definitely deserves further research, for it perfectly reflects the social forces at stake in vietnam. dr. alexandre dormeier freire is a senior lecturer at the graduate institute of international and development studies, geneva, switzerland (alexandre.freire@graduateinstitute.ch) notes 1 the motorbikes (xe may) existing in vietnam have small engines with a cylindrical capacity of 150cm3 maximum. these machines can develop an interesting weight/ power ratio, which enables them to reach decent speeds. they include motorbikes of vespa type or scooters (i.e. with a flat bottom). big-engined bikes are quasi nonexistent in the country because their importation remains particularly regulated and their price prohibitive, and the road infrastructure not adapted. old 'vintage' russian motorbikes (minsk) are also to be found but are mainly popular among foreigners or can be spotted in rural areas. vietnam assembles most of the motorbikes that are available in its market. 2 the questions of traffic and its consequences, particularly in terms of accidents, are the only aspect relatively well covered by the literature (such as linh c. le and al. 2002). this is why i will not look further into these aspects here. 3 i wish here to express my gratitude to dr alessandro monsutti (graduate institute of international and development studies) and dr philippe papin (french school of the far east) for their valuable comments and contributions to this text, and to ms my for her kind help in hanoi. 4 to mention only one of them here, see for example melanie beresford and dang phong, economic transition in vietnam (2000). 5 social control through consumerism practices has been widely described in the sociological literature, notably by neo-marxist authors such as adorno, horkheimer and marcuse. they considered mass culture and new forms of consumption practices at the centre of social control. reification was to become a main characteristic of modern industrial societies leading to the alienation of human beings. 6 the 'socialist morals', just like the mass culture, cannot be separated from the influence of confucianism in vietnam. in this respect, see in particular the articles of philippe papin or see alexandre woodside 1983, 'the triumphs and failures of mass education in vietnam.' pacific affairs 56(3): 401-27. 7 clinton remains particularly popular in vietnam because he is the american president who standardized the bilateral relations between the two countries. he lifted the embargo in 1994 and was also the first us president to return to vietnam (in 2000) since the end of the war. an example of bill clinton's popularity: 'there are no words to describe how happy i am', shouted 17-year-old nguyen thu hang . . clutching clinton's freshly signed autograph. 'i'm going to frame this and hang it on my bedroom wall!' (cnn, december 2006). 8 the famous photographic book of hans kemp called bikes of burden nicely illustrates this aspect. for a quick look: http://www.bikes-of-burden.com 86 ____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 27(1)•2009 alexandre dormeier freire ___________________________________________________ references arvidsson, adam 2001. 'from counterculture to consumer culture: vespa and the italian youth market, 1958-1978'. journal of consumer culture 1(1): 47-71. asia times online 2007. 'vietnam's restless youth rev up' [online]. available from: http://www.atimes.com/ [accessed 22 january 2007]. baudrillard, jean 1996. la société de consommation [the consumption society]. paris: coll. folio, gallimard. bauman, zygmunt 2001. 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'hedonistic consumerism: patterns of consumption in contemporary capitalism'. review of radical political economics 39(2): 173-200. anh nguyen pham 2005. public spaces, state-society relations, and planning in vietnam. paper presented at the 8th 'international conference of the asian planning _________________________________________________________________________ 87 _____________________________________________motorbikes against ho chi minh? schools association', singapore. nguyen an phuong 2006. 'state-society relations in contemporary vietnam: an examination of the arena of youth'. asia pacific viewpoint 47(3): 327-41. nguyen xuan dao, nguyen huu duc 2003. 'study on the ownership of motorcycles in vietnam'. draft paper for 'eastern asia society for transportation studies', bangkok. papin, philippe 2003. viêt-nam : parcours d'une nation [vietnam: the course of a nation]. paris: la documentation française, editions belin. shah, dhavan et al. 2007. 'political consumerism: how communication and consumption orientations drives lifestyle politics'. annals of the american academy of political and social science 611: 217-34. simmel, georg 2004. the philosophy of money. london: routledge, 3rd edition. statistiques de genève 2000. la ville de genève vu par le recensement : ménages et conditions d'habitation [household survey and living conditions in the city of geneva]. ville de genève: genève. stolle, dietlind et al. 2005. 'politics in the supermarket: political consumerism as a form of political participation'. international political science review 26(3): 245-68. thomas, mandy, bich tuan nguyen 2004. 'young women and emergent postsocialist sensibilities in contemporary vietnam'. asian studies review 28: 133-49. thomas, mandy 2002. 'out of control: emergent cultural landscapes and political change in urban vietnam'. urban studies 39(9): 1611-24. trentmann, frank 2007. 'citizenship and consumption'. journal of consumer culture 7(2): 147-58. —2004. 'beyond consumerism: new historical perspectives on consumption'. journal of contemporary history 39(3): 373-401. tien-pen hsu 2003. a comparison study on motorcycle traffic development in some asia countries – case of taiwan, malaysia and vietnam. the eastern asia society for transportation studies (easts): tokyo. cjas_22.pdf, page 1-124 @ normalize_2 92_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 kjeld erik brødsgaard _______________________________________________________ the fifth plenary session: a note on recent policy initiatives and china's 11th five-year plan kjeld erik brødsgaard keywords: personnel changes, political institutionalization in china, five-year plan, sustainable development, "new socialist countryside". in october 2005 the 16th central committee of the chinese communist party (ccp) held its 5th plenary session. the central committee usually meets every year in the fall in a plenary session that sets out major policy guidelines for the chinese leadership. this time the most important task of the plenum was to review a draft proposal for 11th five-year plan covering the period 2006-11 (ccp central committee proposal on formulating the 11th five-year programme for national economic and social development). the 5th plenary session marked the first time that hu jintao was undisputably in charge of heading a major meeting of the top leadership in china. hu jintao assumed the position as party general secretary at the 16th party congress in november 2002, when jiang zemin stepped down after having served as party head since 1989. in march 2003 jiang also handed over the post as president to hu jintao, but only in november 2004, at the 4th plenum, did jiang step down as chairman of the central military commission (brødsgaard 2004). in short this was the first plenary session where hu jintao appeared as formal head of both party and state as well as the military. prior to the conference it was rumoured that major personnel changes would be announced. hong kong sources reported that hu jintao would use the opportunity to consolidate his power by having li keqiang appointed to the politburo (holbig 2005). the 50 year old li keqiang is party secretary of liaoning province and widely believed to be one of the most likely candidates to form the core of the new fifth generation that will take over when hu jintao retires at the 18th party congress in 2012. li holds a phd in economics from peking university and has made a career in the communist youth league, which is regarded as hu jintao's power base. li keqiang is former party secretary of henan _________________________________________________________________________ 93 ____________________________________________________ the fifth plenary session province and was in december 2004 brought to the crisis-stricken liaoning province. he seems to have succeeded in restructuring the province and is apparently ready to move on to new assignments. for some months there have also been speculations that hu jintao would fire the shanghai party leader chen liangyu, who belongs to jiang zemin's so-called shanghai faction. by retiring chen, hu jintao would weaken jiang zemin's power base and further consolidate his own position. the most obvious candidate to succeed chen liangyu is liu yundong, who currently heads the ccp's united front department. in the end, no major personnel changes took place in connection with the plenum. this can be taken as an indication of continued strength on behalf of jiang zemin and his shanghai faction. however, it may also indicate that it is wrong to assume that there is a latent power struggle between hu and jiang. so far the transition from jiang's third generation to hu's fourth generation has taken place in an orderly and peaceful fashion without any major clashes. this is not to say that hu is copying jiang's urban and coastal-based strategies, but apparently policy differences can now be handled in a more professional and regularized fashion in china. 11th five-year plan the draft to the new five-year plan reflects the new development strategy of hu jintao and wen jiabao. it is a strategy that is based on three important concepts that have been formulated and elaborated since the 16th party congress. these concepts are the 'scientific development concept' (kexue fazhanguan), 'taking the people as the foundation' (yiren wei ben) for development, and 'harmonious society' (hexie shehui). the new strategy acknowledges that the one-sided focus on growth in recent years has had negative social, political and ecological consequences. a huge income gap between rural and urban areas, between rich coastal provinces and between new and old social groups has opened up, threatening the social fabric and political stability. the focus on quantitative development indicators has also resulted in a blind use of natural resources with adverse consequences for the environment. instead a policy of balanced and coordinated development between rural and urban areas, between the economy and society, and between different regions will be adopted. this policy of balanced and coordinated development forms the core of the 'scientific development concept' and is closely related to the concept of 'taking people as the main foundation', 94_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 kjeld erik brødsgaard _______________________________________________________ which focuses on the qualitative and human-related aspects of social and economic change (communiqué of the 3rd plenary session of the 16th central committee of the chinese communist party). the departure from the previous emphasis on the speed of gdp growth also involves a new focus on sustainable development. this means that in formulating economic policies, attention must be given to both short-term and long-term costs and gains and to the views and interests of all sections of society. otherwise it will be impossible to achieve the new overarching social and political goal—a harmonious society (hexie shehui). the concept of harmonious society was first propagated in the resolution of the 16th party congress in november 2002 and further elaborated at the 4th plenary session of the 16th central committee in september 2004.1 in an important speech by hu jintao from february 2005, but only published in july 2005, the chinese leader argues that harmonious society is the 'foundation for the consolidation of the governing capacity of the party and the realization of its leading role' (hu jintao 2005). associated with the new focus on a 'people-centred' development strategy are plans to implement a green gdp index system. the new system intends to provide a measure of the relationship between economic growth, welfare and environmental changes and it will place a premium on local cadres' success in addressing issues concerning medical care, education, recreation and environmental protection. objectives and goals concrete objectives for economic and social development during the '11-5' period, as the 11th five-year plan period is called in chinese publications, include the following measures (ccp central committee proposal on formulating the 11th five-year programme): 1. doubling the 2000 per capita gdp in 2010. 2. markedly improving efficiency in utilizing resources, including reducing energy consumption per unit of gdp by 20 percent by 2010. 3. developing a number of major enterprises into internationally competitive companies with well-known brands. 4. improving the market economic system and achieving a basic equilibrium in the balance of international payments. 5. universalizing and consolidating nine-year compulsory education _________________________________________________________________________ 95 ____________________________________________________ the fifth plenary session and developing a sound social security system. 6. improving the income levels and the quality of life for urban and rural residents and keeping the overall price level stable. 7. significantly improving living, transportation, educational, cultural, health and environmental conditions for the population. 8. progress in building democracy, legal institutions and spiritual civilization. 9. further advancing social order and production safety and making progress in building a harmonious society. per capita gdp in china in the year 2000 amounted to 7,086 yuan and given the present economic growth rate, it seems likely that the goal of doubling this figure to 14,172 yuan is realistic. in fact, at the end of 2004, the per capita gdp had already increased by 51 percent to 10,561 yuan (zhongguo tongji nianjian 2001: 49; zhongguo tongji nianjian 2005: 51). with the recent adjustment of the china's gdp, which has resulted in an increase of about 17 percent, the goal will undoubtedly be reached well ahead of 2010. more efficient use of resources might be more difficult to attain. however, given the present shortage of global energy resources, it is imperative to pay attention to this issue. according to official statistics, china consumes 4.3 times as much coal and electricity to produce us$1 worth of gdp as the united states, 7.7 times as much as germany and france and 11.5 times as much as japan. already green gdp and sustainable development have become part of the official policies and an integral part of the concept of harmonious society. however, it is doubtful whether the chinese government would be willing to prioritize sustainable development over continued high growth. the chinese leadership realizes that economic competition between nations is in fact between each nation's large enterprises and groups. wu bangguo formulated the government's position in 1998 when he claimed that the us relies on general motors, boeing and dupont and a batch of other multinational companies and stated that china's position in the international economic order to a large extent will be determined by whether or not china's large enterprises can develop a position in the international economic order. however, china's big soes are still comparatively small in terms of market capitalization, revenues, r&d outlays etc. china only has three companies in the ft 500, which ranks firms by market capitalization and not a single one among the world's top 300 companies by r&d expenditure (nolan 2004: 19-20). however, the chinese government has not given up, even though cnooc's failed 96_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 kjeld erik brødsgaard _______________________________________________________ attempt to acquire the california-based oil company unocal in the summer of 2005 shows the difficulties involved. the government has now put extra resources into helping their soes become big global players. 'building a new socialist countryside' one of the major historical tasks for the chinese leadership is to improve conditions in the countryside. it is high time, since the situation in many rural areas is tense due to low income, lack of land and an appalling lack of basic health services. the five-year plan stipulates it is necessary to build a new socialist countryside (jianshe shehui zhuyi xin nongcun). measures to achieve this goal include increasing investment at all levels in agriculture and the rural areas, including expanding the scope of public finance. the new five-year plan also calls on government at all levels to provide the necessary public services and introduce a new type of cooperative medical system. there is also a focus on universalizing a nine-year compulsory education system in rural areas and exempting students in rural areas from miscellaneous fees and providing them with free textbooks and boarding allowances. the plan also calls for an effort to increase farm income. since 1985 income differences between rural and urban areas have increased significantly, overturning the gains from agricultural reform in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. the widening income gap between city and countryside has turned china into one of the most unequal societies in asia and has the potential of undermining the regime's legitimacy among the peasants. the new hu–wen leadership has put the issues of the so-called 'three rural issues' (agriculture, rural areas and the farmers) at the top of its agenda, and in march 2005, in his report to the national people's congress, wen jiabao announced a nation-wide exemption of agricultural taxes in 2005. the plan is to abolish all agricultural taxes within three years. already many provinces have passed measures exempting the levy of agricultural tax. the five-year plan confirmed these attempts to alleviate the situation in the countryside. the most pressing issue in the rural areas concerns the land. rapid industrialization and urbanization have caused the availability of arable land to drop from 113 million hectares in 1998 to 100 million hectares in 2003 and average per capita availability of farmland is below the food and agriculture organization's (fao's) critical threshold (0.05 ha). as a consequence of more and more arable land being expropriated by the _________________________________________________________________________ 97 ____________________________________________________ the fifth plenary session authorities for industrial and housing construction and infrastructural projects, issues related to the use of land have become a major source of dispute. in 2003 alone 160,000 cases of illegal and arbitrary land requisition were uncovered and unauthorized construction activities encroached on 35,000 km2 of land—equivalent to the surface area of taiwan. in some cases the disputes turned violently as, for example, in april 2005, when 20,000 peasants drove off 1,000 riot police in zhejiang province to defend their land from being expropriated by the authorities. or when on 6 december 2005 the police opened fire against peasants in dongzhou, who were protesting against the building of a power-plant on agricultural land; at least 20 protesters were killed. on this most pressing issue in the rural areas, the five-year plan stipulates that 'it is necessary to uphold the most rigorous farmland protection system, accelerate the pace of reforming the land expropriation system, and strengthen the mechanism for paying reasonable compensation to farmers whose land has been expropriated' (central committee proposal on formulating the 11th five-year program: 5). although a latecomer in global trade and commerce, china's economic performance in the last two decades has been phenomenal. china's average growth rate was on average 9.4 percent between 1979 and 2003 and increased to 9.5 percent in 2004 and 2005. new official estimates even mention growth rates of 10 and 10.1 percent in 2004 and 2005 respectively. china is now the world's fourth largest economy and will without doubt surpass the uk to become the world's third largest some time during 2006. it is also the third largest trading nation in the world and may at the end of next year surpass japan to become the largest holder of foreign exchange reserves in the world. china has during this period of time introduced many elements of a market economy. however, there are still some remnants of the old command economy. one of those remnants is the five-year plan. before the reform, five-year plans were mandatory and set rather detailed production targets. now the five-year plan serves only as a framework for policies or as a catalogue of issues that need to be addressed. all the other five-year plans were called 'jihua' in chinese, whereas the term 'guihua' has been used this time. while both can be rendered as 'plan' in the english language, 'guihua' has a connotation of a draft or regulatory guidelines subject to reinterpretation and change, whereas 'jihua' often refers to a set of concrete plans. 98_______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 22•2005 kjeld erik brødsgaard _______________________________________________________ conclusion rather than focusing on the numerical reductions and quantitative changes of the past, the hu–wen leadership has chosen to focus on qualitative change in its approach to governance and social and economic change. as a result a new development strategy has crystallized, based on a new concept of 'taking people as the foundation' (yi ren wei ben). taking people as the main foundation underlies another important recent idea: the 'scientific development concept' (kexue fazhanguan). the new concepts reject the idea that the physical growth of gdp is the sole basis on which to assess the success of development. instead they propose a 'people-centred' development strategy that recognizes that the ultimate purpose of growth is to meet people's material and spiritual needs. the fulfilment of this strategy demands the implementation of a comprehensive and coordinated development designed to correct imbalances in key areas, including gaps between urban and rural areas, between regions, between economic and social development, between human development and environmental preservation and internal development and external affairs—the so-called five overarching plans (wuge tongchou). china has on earlier occasions adopted a strategy of balanced development and 'macro-economic readjustment', most notably during the so-called readjustment and consolidation period in the early 1960s, when deng xiaoping and chen yun succeeded in putting the economy back on track after the disastrous great leap forward of 1958-60. also during this period there was an attempt to address imbalances in the economy and to privilege agricultural incomes and correct a one-sided focus on the industrial sector. however, the stress on sustainable development is new, as is the official emphasis that economic policies should be based on considerations that prioritize human development and a number of green issues, such as environment, health and general material and spiritual welfare rather than continued high growth rates. kjeld erik brødsgaard is professor and director of the asia research centre, copenhagen business school _________________________________________________________________________ 99 ____________________________________________________ the fifth plenary session notes 1 in line with the concept of 'harmonious society', the chinese leadership also advocates the so-called 'new three people's principles' (xin sanmin zhuyi) which is a play on the famous 'three people's principles' formulated by sun yatzen and constituting the ideological core of his guomindang party. references brødsgaard, kjeld erik 2004. 'jiang finally steps down: a note on military personnel changes and the party's governing capability'. the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19: 82-88. 'ccp central committee proposal on formulating the 11th five-year programme for national economic and social development' 2005. xinhua news, 21 october. 'communiqué of the third plenary session of the 16th central committee of the chinese communist party' 2003. xinhua news, 14 october. holbig, heike 2005. 'wissenschaftliches enwicklungskoncept', 'harmonische gesellschaft' und 'eigenständige innovation': neue partipolitische prioritäten unter hu jintao'. china aktuell, xxxiv (6): 13-19. hu jintao 2005. 'zai shengbuji zhuyao lingdao ganbu tigao goujian shehuizhuyi hexie shehui nengli zhuanti yantao banshang de jianghua' (19 february 2005) (speech for a special study group of leading cadres at the provincial and ministerial level on increasing the capacity to build a harmonious society). renmin ribao, 27 june 2005. nolan, peter 2004. china at the crossroads. cambridge: polity press. zhongguo tongji nianjian 2001. beijing: zhongguo tongji chubanshe. zhongguo tongji nianjian 2005. beijing: zhongguo tongji chubanshe. chao 6 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min the national people's congress oversight power and the role of the ccp chao chien-min abstract the urbanization and the structural and institutional changes that have taken place in china in the past two decades have resulted in the collapse of the old system and the germination of a tremendous number of irregularities. to redress the malfeasance brought about by the new decentralization of economic resources, the people's congresses (pcs) are taking the lead in another round of incremental political reforms. the combination of specialization and centralization of leadership has led to an augmentation of legislative oversight. measures developed by the legislative institutions, such as pingyi (evaluation) and zhifa jiancha (inspection of implementation of laws), have enlivened a lethargic local political scene and given rise to the committee autonomy. these political reforms have transformed local politics forever, forcing the central government to follow suit. the urgent need for institutional mechanisms to counter the vices associated with socialist market reform has prompted the party to turn its attention to the people's congresses. consequently, a leninist party-state system has been transformed into a new system in which the party is allied simultaneously with the executive and the legislative branches. a preliminary and limited balance of power is now emerging in which the party is not totally immune. the newly accrued legislative powers have not only redefined the tenets of party leadership, but also rewritten its relations with the executive branch. although the pcs are still often barred from vital decision-making, new devices such as pingyi and zhifa jiancha are forcing some local officials to have second thoughts before straying too far from legal boundaries. introduction how to gain more autonomy by insulating itself from executive branch interference while at the same time representing the interests of the constituency––these have been the central issues of western legislative governments, which have a strong tradition of checks and balances. however, these two goals are constantly at odds, as is demonstrated by the united states congress. as kenneth a. shepsle (1988) observed, before the 1970s, house standing committee members focused on insulating the house from the executive branch, rather than on representing constituents' interests. similar trade-offs have been noted in other 7 the national people’s congress oversight power and the role of the ccp legislatures, too. while writing about the german bundestag, for instance, schuttemeyer (1994: 51) suggests that policy-making by an increasingly professionalized parliament has been stressed at the cost of ties between representatives and constituents. studies of newly emerging legislatures have manifested an analogous trend in that legislators are devoting more attention to law-making at the expense of their engagement with voters (colton 1996). facing this dilemma, most scholars agree that institutionalization is a key indicator of legislative change, since institutionalization inevitably brings enhanced autonomy to a legislature (canon 1989; polsby 1968; squire 1992). whether a parliament can develop an identity of its own has long been a focus of legislative attention. typically, scholars use measures such as membership turnover, competition, and difficulty of entry to leadership as a gauge of a legislature's autonomy and its success at 'boundary-maintenance'. china's national people's congress (npc) is known for functioning as a rubber-stamp institution. this body has proved unable to create an autonomous niche for itself, in order that interventions from other power sources, such as the communist party, can be effectively reduced to the minimum. however, reforms have been undertaken since the 1980s to revitalize the institution's functions. amid the raging wave of corruption and malfeasance caused by the decentralization of resources for the sake of developing the economy, the people's congress is increasingly viewed as a formidable organ to combat the irregularities. how far has the npc travelled down the road towards institutionalization? can the npc evolve into a representative body similar to its counterpart in the west? has the relationship between the npc and the ccp changed over the years as the economic reforms progress? this article will try to provide answers to these questions. the article first examines the theory of legislative institutionalization as extrapolated from the us experience, and then goes on to examine china's national people's congress. there can be no doubt that the autonomy of the national people's congress has increased greatly since the 1980s. with regard to the issues of strengthening functions, institutionalizing organizational structures and supporting facilities of the npc standing committees, here too one finds evidence of increased professionalization. the article concludes by reinforcing the observation that the legislature in china is more professionalized and therefore more autonomous. the traditional function of the npc as a representative body of the people's democratic dictatorship is downplayed in the study. 8 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min from rubber stamp to the 'third power centre'? contrary to the prevalent view that representative assemblies in communist countries are no more than rubber-stamp organizations, deprived of the real power of policy-making (skilling 1973: 96), scholars generally agree that the people's congress (pc) in china has begun to perform some concrete functions since the 1980s, when the country reversed its development course by adopting an open-door policy and reforming its economy. one hong kong scholar even goes so far as to suggest that the pc has become 'a third power centre' in addition to the communist party and the executive branch of government (wu 1999: 32738). some recent studies on the prc's legislative establishments concentrate on the pc's new autonomy and assertiveness (nathan 1996; o'brien 1994, 1998, 1990a, 1990b, 1988), especially in the area of lawmaking and the decrease in the communist party's control over the legislative organ (tanner 1994, 1995). other studies are attracted by pc's institutionalization (o'brien 1990; mccormick and unger 1996), or they discuss the opposition and contention that pcs have manifested while in session (solinger 1982), or stress the importance of pc's representation (o'brien 1998; mccormick and unger 1996: 36-38). one topic conspicuously missing from the academic discourse has been the representative assembly's supervisory power. owing to the communist party's overwhelming dominance, the supervisory power has been considered either as being 'seldom exercised' (nathan 1996: 49) or as having an uneven record unworthy of further study (o'brien 1994: 97). this article argues that a new round of political reforms has quietly started at the provincial legislatures and that pcs, especially those at the provincial level, have managed to develop rights to check the executive administration and to some extent the party itself. and these locally initiated reforms have often become part of the reformation drive at the central level after their effectiveness has been proven. this is not happening, moreover, at the expense of party authority; on the contrary, this change has been underwritten by the party itself and the party has benefited accordingly, with its authority enlarged and bolstered. with the mounting need for the rule of law and anti-corruption measures, and in view of the fact that pcs and people's congress standing congress (pcscs) have in the past been largely inactive for structural reasons, specialization in the legislature in the form of a differentiation in committees and subcommittees has become a political exigency. as a newly invigorated set of institutions still struggling to define their po9 the national people’s congress oversight power and the role of the ccp sition, the pcs are nevertheless weak in the triad of power distribution vis-à-vis the other two institutions—the communist party and the executive branch of the government. what has been germinating in the legislative bodies is that both of the specialized committees are groping constantly for more responsibilities as well as a powerful and centralized leadership. the trends of specialization and centralization of leadership have contributed not only to the rise of oversight in the previously insipid legislative assemblies, but also to a redistribution of power in the local political arena. in the end, the central government often is forced to adopt a bottom-up approach and continue reforms initiated and experimented with at the local level. specialization, differentiation and the growth of committees it has been argued that control of the administration is one of the most important functions of legislative bodies in all modern democracies (loewenberg et al. 1985). the value of legislative monitoring of the executive branch, many contend, is to ensure the triumph of representative government by lines of accountability running through the organ that embodies popular sovereignty. therefore, representativeness rather than effectiveness is the irreducible core (ibid.: 546). the perceived goals of legislative oversight are to check dishonesty and waste, guard against harsh and callous administration, evaluate implementation in accordance with legislative objectives, and ensure administrative compliance with statutory intent (ibid.: 547). in his seminal work on the us congress, samuel p. huntington (1990) concluded that structurally this organ has become more specialized with less leadership since its creation. the tendency of the weakening of central leadership and the dispersion of power to the committees have shifted the function of the us congress to that of oversight. other studies confirm the theory that knowledgeable oversight is being promoted by committee and subcommittee layouts. it is further contended that members' aspirations tend to strengthen committee government at the expense of executive autonomy and, to some degree, of party discipline (loewenberg et al.1985: 556) committees have existed intermittently in china's npc since 1954, when the first constitution was promulgated, but without great effect. committee members could not 'thoroughly, specifically, and rigorously' examine financial matters, nor did they take part in drafting legislation or oversight (o'brien 1988: 364-65). the 1979 constitution used the term 10 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min 'special committee' (zhuanmen weiyuanhui), for the first time, a phrase that was retained in the 1982 constitution. in february 1979, the npc set up a committee on bills and proposals and a committee on minorities with the authority of drafting and revising regulations.1 the 1982 constitution further set up six permanent committees on law; nationalities; finance and economics; education, science, culture, and public health; foreign affairs; and overseas chinese affairs. these committees gained the right to draft legislative proposals and to examine bills and inquiries referred by the npc or npcsc (o'brien 1994: 365). in april 1988, one more committee—the committee on internal and judicial affairs—was created. in march 1993, the committee on environment protection was set up at the eighth npc congress.2 finally, at the ninth npc congress in march 1998, the committee on agriculture and villages came into existence. since 1988, all npc committees have enacted their own organic rules and in addition to the permanent (or special) committee, the npc also has ad hoc committees and provisional committees. the preparatory committee for the special region of hong kong, set up by the npcsc in january 1996 in accordance with authorization from the npc, was designed to cope with the legal aspect of hong kong's reversion to china. though a late development, the committees have rapidly emerged as the core of the npc. at the sixth npc meeting held in 1983, leaders decided that bills must be sent to the law committee or relevant committees for review after the first reading. this heralded the arrival of the legislative reading system and six committees were created as a result. the new development also effectively changed the old legislative process in which the npcsc took the central seat. the year 1986 was pivotal in terms of specialization when chen bixian, an npc vice chairman, announced that the six committees were to become a permanent part of the npc institution. at the same time, it was decided that those npcsc members residing in beijing should, in principle, join committees. a reinforcement plan was executed when over 40 members of the npc standing committee were assigned to committee responsibilities, constituting 63 percent of the entire npcsc membership committee members. at the seventh npc meeting held five years later, the number rose to 80 percent. ever since the eighth npc meeting, virtually all npcsc members—save the chairman—have joined committees. this is a significant increase compared with the first three npc congresses held in the 1950s and 1960s, when the npcsc members were a rarity in the two committees.3 11 the national people's congress oversight power and the role of the ccp instead of ideologues, committee members are now almost exclusively former government functionaries, party secretaries, state council officials, researchers, provincial leaders, and representatives of the major mass organizations, including the chinese women's federation, workers' federation, and youth corps. along with institutionalization, professionalization has been a conspicuous component of legislative development. nelson polsby stated that the internal complexity of the us congress can be measured by growth in the autonomy and importance of committees, in the growth of specialized agencies of party leadership, and in the increase in the provision of various emoluments and auxiliary benefits to members in the form of office space, salaries, allowances, staff aid, and committee staffs (polsby 1968: 153). :1elbat eettimmoccpnehtfotnempolevedpihsrebmem seettimmoc ts1 4591 dn2 .tpes 4591 dr3 lirpa 9591 ht4 .naj 5691 ht5 .naj 5791 ht6 enuj 3891 ht7 lirpa 8891 ht8 hcram 3991 ht9 hcram 8991 seitironim 58 48 411 18 41 22 52 32 *wal 33 73 14 63 31 12 81 92 dnalanretni sriaffalaiciduj 02 91 02 dnaecnanif scimonoce 41 82 92 12 ,ecneics,noitacude dna,erutluc htlaehcilbup 71 03 13 43 sriaffangierof 01 81 51 51 esenihcsaesrevo sriaffa 9 71 12 61 tnemnorivne noitcetorp 71 12 dnaerutlucirga segalliv 62 dr3dna,dn2,ts1ehtrofslasoporpdnasllibrofeettimmocehtdemansaweettimmoceht* ehtecnis.9791nidetcerrusersaweettimmocehtnehwtpeksawemaneht.sessergnoccpn .eettimmocwalehtdemanersawti,ssergnoccpnht6 :secruos cscpn;0991).de(ihsuijnaygnitgnognabiuhiewgnahcadnerougnauq .89-1991,éuqinummoc 12 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min in the case of china, not only has the number of standing committees increased steadily, but subcommittees have also been created to help with drafting and reviewing responsibilities assigned to the committees. legislative hearings have been introduced in the process of legislative deliberation. new ad hoc institutions have been formed within the party to help with the work of pcs. it was decided in 1983 that a bill would have to be sent to the law committee or relevant committees for review after first reading. however, the npcsc meeting rules passed in 1987 and npc meeting rules :2elbat seettimmoclaicepscpnehtfoerutangnignahceht ssergnoc fo.on seettimmoc cscpnfo% pihsrebmem srewopderiuqca-ylwen ht6 6 36 ;detaeniledseettimmocfonoitcidsiruj ;metsysgnidaer;weiverevitalsigel ;noitutitsnitnenamrepsemoceb;noitagitsevni detcaneselurgniteemcscpn ht7 7 08 raehotthgir;detaercnoitutitsniyrailixua selurcinagroeettimmoc;stropertnemnrevog ;noitcepsnilagel;noitalopretni;detcane selurgniteemcpn;demrofseettimmocbus detcane ht8 8 eritneehtylraen pihsrebmem noitalsigelerom;weiverevitalsigeltnioj ht9 9 eritneehtylraen pihsrebmem :ecruos .591:0002gnaish-nuhcgnahcdnaoahcnim-neihc 3elbat : eettimmoccpnehtfosrewopgnidnapxe deweiversllib krowtnemnrevog draehstroper dnadessapswal dednema cpn .seettimmoc cscpn cscpn cscpn 1 0 04 53 2 0 68 7 3 0 32 3 4 0 2 1 5 0 36 91 6 731 56 24 7 861 96 84 8 665 372 56 57 secruos .63-123:7991gnay;1991gnehcdnauy,uil: 13 the national people's congress oversight power and the role of the ccp in 1989 require that all bills in the npc and npcsc be reviewed by the law committee and relevant committee(s) simultaneously. in order to better understand the feasibility of bills, the law committee in june 1984 started an investigation into the reviewing of bills. since then, legislative investigation has become an important and integral part of the committee's legislation. legislative hearings or lunzheng (to discuss and substantiate) first begin as meetings and then seminars are held. usually a bill is reviewed by the law committee and a relevant committee at the same time (tanner 1995). committees have the power to decide whether lunzheng is necessary. the procedure is as follows: after being briefed by the drafter at a plenary meeting at the npcsc, a bill is sent to the law committee and a relevant special committee for review. the law committee then sends the draft bill, as a required step, to the provincial people's congress (ppc), the minorities' autonomous regions, concerned departments at the central government (national people's consultative conference, the supreme court, the supreme prosecutor's office, relevant departments of the state council, the chinese federation of unions, chinese federation of women, and the youth corps) for advice. the law committee also decides, according to the importance and conten:4elbat erutcurtseettimmoccpn cpn seettimmocfo.on ezis )s(eettimmocwen 1 2 811 2 2 121 3 2 551 4 5 2 711 2 6 6 77 4 7 7 851 1 8 8 571 1 9 9 502 1 :secruos ,éuqinummoccscpn;0991).de(ihsuijnaygnitgnognabiuhiewgnahcadnerougnauq 51-412:8991).de(ihsuijnaygnitgnognabiuhiewgnahcadnerougnauq;89-1991 . 14 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min tiousness of the bill, if a hearing (lunzheng) is needed. for an ordinary standing committee, the first half of the legislative investigation is missing, but lunzheng is often exercised when bills are examined. although a bill is examined simultaneously by the law committee and a relevant committee, the effectiveness of the opinions expressed do differ. for ordinary committees, the opinions are given, in printed copies, to members of the npc, npcsc and the law committee for reference. it is the law committee that has the ultimate power of deciding whether to incorporate those opinions and bring them to the attention of the praesidium of the npc or the npcsc plenary meeting. without this procedure of tongyi shenyi (to examine indiscriminately),4 a bill is not allowed to progress to the second reading. the role of the law committee is especially significant for the npc owing to its large size and short meeting time (only a couple of weeks per annum). because of the issue of duplication and redundancy (that is, a bill being reviewed by two committees at the same time), the committee on internal and judicial affairs started to work with the law committee in 1994, thereby ushering in a new era of joint hearings and deliberations. publication in the mass media is often required for major bills to seek responses from the masses. the opinions solicited are periodically printed in a newsletter fazhi gongzuo bao [newspaper for legal work], published by the working committee on legal affairs, a supporting institution under the npcsc, and forwarded to the npcsc and its leadership, members of the law committee, and relevant agencies of the central government. one case that stands out is the contract law passed at the eighth npc congress. altogether there were 12 universities and research institutes that took part in the drafting process. another example is the company law, where 210 agencies or departments were consulted before the bill passed into law (quanguo renda changweihui bangongting yanjiushi (ed.) 1998: 24). since the idea of a market economy was imported from overseas, foreign experience is often sought in the enactment of economic legislation. outside influence can be detected in laws such as the company law, accounting law, law for commercial notes and checks, and law to prevent improper competition. in addition, the litigation law, the law for civil administration, and the hearing system in the administrative punishment bear the hallmarks of a non-indigenous legalistic influence. 15 the national people's congress oversight power and the role of the ccp to cope with the increasing diversity of legislation, some localities have gone one step further by setting up advisory boards to help with drafting. the law committee of the chongqing people's congress has a panel of 29 legislative consultants, and most of these legislative assistants are professors at southwestern university of politics and law, among them four professional lawyers. when the chongqing pc proceeded with the task of evaluating the 24 laws one year after enactment in 1999 (a practice started in 1986 when the organic law of the local government was amended), 12 of these legal advisors were asked for assistance.5 structurally, npc committees have been growing in number as well as in membership. in the first two npc congresses, the two committees—the committee on minorities and the committee on bills & proposals—had a joint membership of 118. the fact that racial equality was upheld as one of the founding tenets of the new republic had a lot to do with the impressive size. when the same two committees were resurrected in 1979 (as the committee on nationalities and the law committee), the tradition was basically kept. the large size warranted the symbolic status of the committees. when four additional committees were created in 1983, the size was drastically reduced with a combined membership of 77 for all six committees. with the addition of three new committees and enlarged functions, the number increased nearly threefold to a total of 205 at the ninth npc. in yet another move of further differentiation, subcommittees have also been brought into existence. the increasing demand for legislation and the infrequent and short meeting times for the committees (once a month for a meeting that lasts no more than a couple of days) are two reasons behind the rise of the new organizations. there are two kinds of subcommittees at present: ad hoc and permanent. a subcommittee, or a xiaozu (small group), can be formed if deemed necessary by the committee. the organic rules of the committee on finance and economics and the committee on education, science, culture, and public health allow such a formation (npc committee on internal and judicial affairs 1992). since 1989, two subcommittees—the group on women's and children's affairs and the group on adolescence—were created on a permanent basis under the jurisdiction of the committee for internal and judicial affairs. ever since then, strengthening the functions of the subcommittees has been one of the central tasks of the npc reforms. 16 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min the group on women's and children's affairs has a membership of 22 while the group on adolescence has 27. a close scrutiny of the structures of the two groups substantiates professionalization as the central principle of organization: only a paltry 18 percent of the aggregate membership are npcsc members while the remaining 82 percent are outside recruits with expertise (zhou 1998: 78). the subcommittees have the power to review bills and proposals, to propose motions and bills, and to research issues of concern and come up with solutions. alternatively, a legislative group may also function solely as an advisory body to the special committees or as a frontline reviewer of bills and proposals, as is the case of the committee on finance and economics. centralization of leadership the centralization of leadership in the legislature is also considered more appropriate to meet the needs of the modern environment. a centralized leadership can forge closer connections between the legislative institution and major external forces and groups. while dispersion of powers to the committees is definitely a new development in china's people's congress system, the past leninist tradition of party-state dictatorship has certainly helped in forging a strong leadership in the legislative assembly. the head of the pcs is in many ways a powerful position. li peng was the number two man in the ccp hierarchy. directors of lpcs most likely also hold the post of secretary of the local party committee. the chairmanship group meeting is a very important forum in formulating the npcsc agenda and in screening bills and proposals. in a typical directorate group meeting for an lpc, the agenda is basically set by the permanent committees––a sign of the importance of the committees. the chairmanship group meeting is composed of the npcsc chairman and vice chairmen (up to 19 in number) and the secretary-general. theoretically, decisions are reached collectively and the chairman refrains from making unilateral decisions. in reality, though, the power of the chairman/director is very much dependent on the stature of the individual. this is especially the case after a directive was passed down recently demanding that all the local party secretaries concurrently serve as lpc directors. as such, a dominant party secretary can almost single-handedly dictate the agenda.6 the chairman of the npcsc and the directors of the lpcs wield tremendous statutory as well as hierarchical power within their organizations. they can revise the opinions expressed by the committees in their 17 the national people's congress oversight power and the role of the ccp reviewing of bills and proposals. the chairman also wields a lot of influence in setting the committee agenda, by initiating an investigation into the process of legislative review, deciding if a proposal should be tabled, and determining if a bill should go to the law committee or other relevant committee. in addition to these statutory powers, the opinion of the chairman carries much weight in terms of personnel management for those associated with the pcscs. the fact that only about one half of the lpcsc membership work full-time and the meetings of the pcscs last no more than a few days have also rendered additional powers to the chairmanship. according to the organic law, the npcsc chairman is charged with coordinating the day-to-day work of the legislative body as well as its special committees. the same regulation is vague, however, as to what exactly constitutes the daily work, nor is the chairman held accountable to the npcsc or otherwise under its supervision. in some provinces, the director alone is responsible for setting the entire agenda of the pcsc meetings and some directors are even granted power to permit the arrest or to detain deputies by law enforcement agencies, provided that the decision is later sent to the chamber for approval. the opaqueness of the stipulation evidently gives the chairman more liberty in this capacity. the fact that many of the lpcs directors are also the secretary or deputy secretary of party committee has bolstered the chairmanship vis-à-vis that of the pcs as an institution. a case in point is li peng. li was slighted in his capacity as premier in the state council, but has been acclaimed as one of the most productive chairmen in npc history. his past experience as premier and the fact that he outranked zhu rongji (former premier) in the ccp has definitely enhanced li's credentials.7 party-state political tradition and the institutional design have led some observers to the conclusion that the chairmanship group may become an 'authoritative and efficient organ of power' and a base for the chairman to expand his influence. some even go so far as to suggest that the chairman may become a 'formidable political figure,' perhaps even one of the four pre-eminent leaders in an interlocking party-state directorate and that the npcsc is a 'legislature-within-a-legislature.' (cheng 1983; o'brien 1988: 364; weng 1982). it is common now to place the pc meetings, pcsc meetings, and the directorship group meetings on a par and collectively address them as the three meetings of the lpcs (zhang yuankun 1997:1). 18 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min it was decided at the sixth npc meeting that to facilitate effective functioning, the committee chairmanship should be concurrently served by the vice chairmen of the npcsc––the committee vice chairman would also have to be a member of the npcsc. since the eighth npc, however, npcsc vice chairmen no longer serve as committee chairmen. when the committee is not in session, it is the committee chairmanship group—composed of the committee chairman and vice chairmen (numbered four to six)—that makes the decisions on behalf of the committee. the committee chairmanship group meets once every month and committee vice chairmen form the committee office work meeting (weiyuanhui bangong hui). the meeting is held once every two weeks to discuss day-to-day affairs. the work of subcommittees is also coordinated at the meeting. committee chairmen and vice chairmen are forces to be reckoned with as they have the final word in the deliberations by the committee regarding a bill or proposal. the chairman is usually the agenda-setter for the committee and he can also participate in the npcsc chairmanship group meeting and express opinions on behalf of the committee. committee and vice chairmen are also the most important factors in the positioning and repositioning of personnel in the committee. legislative oversight the legislative oversight of the npc has been developed in line with its institutionalization and specialization, and again it is local legislatures that took the initiative. in 1984, in a law approved by its pcs––the provisional regulation on the pcsc's work––the city of tianjin first legalized the work of legislative oversight. now almost all provinces have similar enactments (zhang wei 1996: 64). although a draft of the supervisory law has been contemplated by the npc for quite some time, its passage is still not in sight. among the supervisory powers that the pcs have invented, the most effective have been the pingyi, a measure to evaluate and discuss the work of government agencies and officials, and zhifa jiancha, inspection on the implementation of laws. nanan prefecture people's congress of the city of chongqing organized deputies in 1984 to review the work of officials approved by the congress, however superficial, upon appointment. the system has quickly spread to other places and, in many cases, been made into law. in november 1991, marking acceptance of the excellent method developed from below, a meeting was convened by the npc committee on 19 the national people's congress oversight power and the role of the ccp internal and judicial affairs to summarize experiences of the pingyi. the new tool subsequently won acclaim by npc vice chairmen peng chong in 1992 and tian jiyun in a work report to a npc meeting in 1995 (du 1998: 59-60). pingyi can be used to inspect the work of government departments (gongzuo pingyi) or officials whose appointments need pc approval (shuzhi pingyi). it can be aimed at a specific policy implemented by the government or at the work of a xitong (system).8 it can be carried out at a single level of the bureaucratic hierarchy or at all levels of the government from the province down to the township (xiang). it can be implemented by pc delegations, or by the pcscs, the committees, or the pcs. a pingyi motion can be initiated by deputies, pc delegation, special committees, or the directorate group meeting. it can also be proposed by the masses. once a motion is approved by the directorate group meeting and concrete proposals framed, a pingyi leading group is established, led usually by the director or a deputy director, composed of a few members selected from the pcscs and pc deputies. relevant committees are the driving force throughout the entire process. at the second stage, members of the investigation team have to engage themselves in an educational and self-learning session, where relevant laws and regulations are studied. at the third stage, an investigation is carried out. the pingyi group travels to the targeted department and holds a plenary meeting, attended by all employees as well as officials, and goals of the inspection are pronounced. interviews are conducted with the employees of the targeted department, employees working at concerned agencies, and selected masses who had dealings with that particular department. documents are reviewed and confession sessions held. at the fourth stage, a pingyi meeting is held to ping (to criticize) and yi (to opine) the targeted. opinions organized by the inspection group are expressed at the plenary meeting in which employee attendance is required. at the fifth and final stage, the targeted department is required to come up with a written proposal of rectification within a month and report in writing the results to the pcsc within two to six months. the pingyi leading group then pays another visit to the targeted department to check up on the situation. if the results are less than satisfactory, then compulsory measures may be considered. over the years, the law enforcement agencies––the so-called zhengfa xitong (political-legal system)—have been the prime targets of gongzuo pingyi. the reason for the emphasis is simple—to fight corruption. al20 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min most all provinces have launched pingyi inspections in the past few years to oversee the work of the police, the prosecutor's office, and the court system. the commerce and taxation departments also have become priorities. because of the scale of people mobilized in the process, normally gongzuo pingyi is carried out once a year. on the other hand, officials subject to shuzhi pingyi, usually in the form of being given a work report by the requested official, have been extended to include those whose appointments need approval from the pcs, including heads of the departments and agencies and sometimes deputy provincial governors. in addition to inquisitions, this group of officials may sometimes face a written examination, conducted by the law committee or committee on legal work (a supporting institution working for the pcscs rather than a special committee), before getting approval from the pcscs. pcs at different levels have enacted hundred of laws and regulations,9 however, the implementation of those legal documents has been less than comprehensive. it is estimated that only 15 percent of the laws enacted have been faithfully implemented (zhang yuankun 1997: 39). consequently, zhifa jiancha (inspection on the implementation of law) has emerged as one of the major elements of pcsc oversight in the past decade. heralding the much-touted new practice, the lpcs were given the power to supervise the implementation of the constitution as well as laws when the organic law of local people's congress and local people's government (hereafter organic law) was amended in 1986. npcsc, collaborating with pcs down the line, carried out inspections of over 21 laws and relevant legal decisions made at the eighth npc session between 1993 and 1998, while its committees inspected twice as many in the same period (quanguo renda changweihui bangongting yanjiushi 1998: 33-34). according to the law 'some regulations on the improvement of inspections of the implementation of law', ratified by the npcsc in 1993, zhifa jiancha seeks to tackle 'major problems engendered in the process of socialist modernization' and other 'issues strongly expressed by the masses.'10 for the sake of specialization, legislative committees have once again become the backbone of newly acquired power. much like pingyi, zhifa jiancha was a local initiative, developed out of the need to combat vices brooked in the modernization of the socialist economy. as also is the case with pingyi, zhifa jiancha is not exempt from the strong tradition of mass mobilization inherited from a former 'move21 the national people's congress oversight power and the role of the ccp ment regime'.11 once a law is targeted, a task force is formed. the inspection team is headed by one of the deputy chairmen/directors of the npc/pcs, with members of the pcscs constituting its bulk. an education session and then investigation soon follow, while masses are mobilized and meetings held. to underscore the importance of legality and broaden its effects, propaganda is emphasized. in an inspection organized to check the efficacy of the laws related to the work of the legal-political system, the putien pc, in a small city located in the vicinity of fuzhou, launched a 'big discussion' session to 'erect viewpoints of the masses and to enforce the laws rightfully and in a civilized way'. telephone numbers were advertised in the press. a reception office was created to receive those who wanted to come and relay their stories. as it turned out, 221 letters along with 243 visitors were received with over 100 cases being raised. at the end, 56 cases were selected and relayed to corresponding agencies for reference (zhang yuankun 1997 : 42). in what is known as a strategy of shangxia liandong, a vertical mobilization of pcs, targets are broadened to maximize effect. as in the case of pingyi, the most critical phase of the zhifa jiancha lies in 'rectification and improvement' (zhenggai). criticism and self-criticism are heavily involved. interpolation, investigation and removal from duty are possible means at the sponsor's disposal. the supervision act passed by the guangdong ppc in 1994 stipulated that a 'legal supervisory paper' with the signature of five pcsc members and approved by the directorate group meeting can be issued to an official guilty as charged. the official is obliged to report to the pcsc within a specified timespan or must face punitive actions.12 here again, a political reform process starting from below and slowly working its way upward is discernible. after being introduced by local pcs in 1986, the seventh npc (1988-93) and its standing committee incorporated and brought the practice to the central government. during that period, in cooperation with lpcs, the npcsc and its committees organized 53 inspection tours with 31 laws and six legal decisions targeted for inspections (zhang wei 1996: 57). new party–executive–legislative relations while many believe that the there is an institutional decentralization of party control over law-making (tanner 1994: 384-88) and a growing weakness of the chinese apparatus of the state (scalapino 1993) there is no academic discourse on the changed executive–legislative relations. the invigorated legislative oversight is bound to herald a new era for 22 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min the bilateral relationship between the two branches of the government. rather than being stymied in the party-state dyad, the new relations have begun featuring a limited accountability in the previously rigid political system. an institutionalized channel of communications has been established between the party and the two branches of the government. now it is routine for government officials to be present at meetings held by the pcscs. to avoid superficiality, some ppcs even require heads of the government (rather than their deputies) to take part in these sessions and give the work report. a new development has been that the government work report, instead of being distributed and reviewed in its entirety, is broken into several reports in accordance with their nature and then reviewed by different groups of deputies organized by their spheres of interest and specialization. the new division of work is basically being drawn in line with the legislative committees such as finance; legal affairs; agriculture & forestry; municipal construction; education, science & culture, etc. since 1991, the pc of the city of chengdu decided to request reports on those subjects most discussed by its citizens. a feedback system has also been established by many pcs so that the executive branch is forced to respond to decisions and resolutions adopted by the pcscs and to opinions expressed after reviewing a bill. the huchen county pc has come up with a tracking system, whereby the opinions expressed by its pcsc after reviewing a proposal are written in a cuebanka (a memorandum for action) and signed by the office director of the relevant legislative committee or by the committee vice chairman in charge of the investigation. the memorandum is then forwarded to the executive branch. the official who holds the ultimate responsibility for the case, the head of the government or his deputy, is required to give a progress report to the pcsc at the next session. normally a case is allowed a three-month grace period with an additional three months for particularly difficult ones. in the end, the memorandum has to be co-signed by the responsible official and returned to the pcsc for conclusion (zhang yuankun 1997: 12). another innovation that is reshaping executive–legislative relations is the creation of liaison offices. in dague county, liaoning province, a deputy county magistrate designated as the liaison officer meets every quarter with his counterpart (a deputy director at the pcsc) to discuss issues of mutual concern. heads of the county's pc are invited to the magistrate's work meeting and the government work meeting. a reso23 the national people's congress oversight power and the role of the ccp lution entitled 'regarding the serious acceptance of pc supervision' was passed by the county government to show deference to the pc work (zhang wei 1996: 66). it is now common practice after each lpc session for the executive branch to convene meetings to reflect motions and proposals previously raised at the legislature. the country's economic performance over the last two decades has led some observers to conclude that china is capable of transforming its leninist political system and discarding marxism-leninism in favour of a 'developmental nationalism.' (mccormick and unger 1996: 2). while decisions over important matters are still made by the party, the party is said to involve itself less with the day-to-day administrative duties while the legislature is used as a proxy (o'brien 1989: 62). another observation is that the party is decentralizing its control over law-making (tanner 1994: 384-88). an interesting development is that the party is actually gaining strength by delegating powers to the legislature. the party has been the most important supporting as well as inspiring force behind the new expansion of supervision, but ironically, it is also the biggest deterrent. as early as 1994, former npc chairman peng zhen demanded that local party committees at all levels discuss the pc work on a regular basis. in a decree entitled 'the party must resolutely maintain socialist legality', released in july 1986, the party asked all its cadres to recognize the importance of the legality and support the work of the pcs and their resolutions. on the other hand, an equal number of resolutions have been passed by the party demanding stronger leadership over the pcs. the resolution entitled 'a decision to strengthen the linkage between the party and the masses' which was adopted at the sixth central committee plenary meeting of the thirteenth party congress held on march 1990, is one example. consequently, what has emerged is not a weaker party leadership in the legislature, as some have suggested (tanner 1994: 384-88). on the contrary, while being involved less with day-to-day legislation, the party has nonetheless strengthened its leadership at the legislative chamber level, with its communication network having been revitalized. the new party–legislative relations are as follows. first, local party committees regularly convene meetings, with representatives from both the executive and legislative branches attending, to co-ordinate work in the sphere of the political-legal xitong and to mobilize support for the legislature. before each pingyi, zhifa jiancha, and inspection mission is launched, the party organization within the pcsc (the dangzu)—com24 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min prised of the pcsc director, deputy directors, and secretary-general who are also members of the party—has to report the plan to the party committee at the same level in detail and ask for approval and endorsement. limitations the increasing specialization and the embryonic oversight function that the pcs possess have fundamentally changed party–executive–legislative relations. some even argue that this change may gradually lead to a system that would essentially render a mighty communist party to be checked and balanced to some extent by the legislature.13 this argument seems valid at first glance. despite the fact that the party still enjoys overwhelming control over the nomination and management of cadres, those at the second tier of officialdom have to face interrogation before appointment and, sometimes, downright rejection.14 these officials occasionally face scrutiny after assuming office as well. there is no doubt that the party is gradually easing out of the day-to-day decisionmaking in the new political machinery, leaving the executive branch responsible for daily operations. the party's retreat has also paved the way for the surge in legislative power. through mechanisms (mostly newly-invented or resuscitated) including interpolation, pingyi and legal inspections, the lpcs are no longer powerless institutions. as anthony dick observes, the legal system in china remains a tool of the ccp (dick 1989: 542). the party-state conglomeration is still in place, and the closer one is to the bottom of the bureaucratic hierarchy, the worse the situation gets. what we have is a new party-state system in which the party no longer makes all the decisions. organizationally, the overwhelming overlap between the party and the state characterized by the old leninist party-state system is now a thing of the past. it was not unusual previously for the party organization to be staffed more than the administration of the organization. today, the party remains strong, but is much smaller in size relative to that of the state. notwithstanding, the party's dominance remains supreme. for example, nearly one-third of the ppc chairmen in 2000 were also concurrently secretaries of the party committees (http://www.peopledaily.com.cn). the crux still lies in the party and the issue is over the right of decision-making. the constitution and the organic law give the lpcs powers to decide on the 'vital issues' in areas including politics, economics, education, science, culture, hygiene, civil affairs and minorities. how25 the national people's congress oversight power and the role of the ccp ever, decades of stalinist tradition have moulded the party as the ultimate and uncompromising source of vital policy-making. it has been suggested that 'vital decisions' be further divided into 'issues with overall implications' and 'with limited implications'. for issues like major reforms, development strategies, and large-scale construction projects, it is urged that the tradition of party command be sustained. as for such matters as regional planning, educational reforms and the protection of the minorities, it is suggested that the party had better step aside and provide leadership by guidance (won and fu 1991: 52). despite academic discussion, major decisions are still reached through the party machine. it is not uncommon for the party to make decisions unilaterally and then forward them to the executive branch for implementation, thereby bypassing the legislature. joint decrees between the party and the executive remain problematic, rendering legislative oversight impossible. a laughable case often cited is the one issued jointly by the state council and the ccp a few years back resetting the summer clock. which commands supremacy, law or superior? the case remains open. the permanent committees at the npc and many ppcs have undoubtedly become key players in their institutions, but specialization there is still a goal to be fully realized. the nine committees in the npc, although this represents a major step towards differentiation and specialization, are far from sufficient to be a national legislature for a country the size of china. furthermore, the committee system is still under development and efforts are being made to allow them to function better. besides, all legislative acts are subject to examinations by the law committee before being tabled by the chairman's meeting for readings. this practice has also cut the effectiveness of other committees. at the provincial level, the committee is an even weaker institution. among the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, there are a total of 164 committees, with an average of 5.4 committees per province15 among them, nearly three-quarters are 'working committees,' a weaker institution compared to the 'committees' both in statute and in reality, subject to the pcscs rather than the pcs, while pcs at the lower levels hardly have any committees (zhang wei 1996: 78-79). as for the xiang and township pcs, a lack of standing institutions has nullified the pc institution as a whole. lately, a new development has been the creation of a standing chairman at the praesidium and a full-time staff to handle daily affairs. 26 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min another major problem obstructing the legislative specialization has been a lack of professionalization. two-thirds of the npc committee members are newly recruited from its congress held once every five years. usually those posted for the job at the pcs are cadres nearing retirement, as the average age for npc committee membership is between 60 and 70. some committees have less than half of their membership working full-time and many of them are living in places across the land mass of china. an institution staffed with a 'second line of cadres', which meets no more than a couple of days per month, is not going to be taken that seriously. at the provincial level, full-time ppcsc members usually constitute a little less than half of the entire membership. it is no wonder that a lot of important policies made by the party or the administration are not brought to the pcs for approval. the rights of interpolation and acquisition, investigation and dismissal are also rarely utilized in many places. it is not uncommon for the officials who are required by law to be present at the pcsc meetings to refuse to show up. this recalcitrance has prompted some county pcs in shandong and hubei to adopt stringent measures by refusing substitution when writing their government work reports (zhang yuankun 1997: 15-16). pingyi is another case in point. it has remained a local initiative. many ppcs have started to review the work of the administrative and the judicial branches of the government and sometimes local officials are 'tested' before appointment. however, these practices remain primitive and their results mixed. consequently, praise rather than censure is often the outcome of these 'inspections'. conclusion while the attention of china studies has focused on grassroots elections (a practice that has effectively remoulded the lives of many villages), less attention has been paid to developments in legislative transformation, especially at the provincial level. however, the urbanization and the structural and institutional changes undergone in china in the past two decades have been nothing short of spectacular. to redress the malfeasance brought by the new decentralization of economic resources, ppcs are taking the lead in another round of incremental political reforms. this paper confirms the theories that legislative specialization is indeed an institutional adaptation to the complex needs of a new environment cultivated by the industrialization started by the late paramount leader deng xiaoping. 27 the national people's congress oversight power and the role of the ccp contrary to the experiences of many industrialized countries in the west, a centralized leadership has been retained in the chinese legislature. the combination of specialization and centralization of leadership has led to an augmentation of legislative oversight. measures developed by the legislative institutions, such as pingyi and zhifa jiancha, have enlivened the previously lethargic local political scene and given rise to the committee autonomy. these political reforms, though underpublicized, have transformed local politics, forcing the central government (the npc) to follow suit. the urgent need for institutional mechanisms to counter the vices associated with socialist market reform has prompted the party to turn its attention to the pcs. consequently, a leninist party-state system—one in which the party constantly overrode the executive branch of the government and one in which the legislature was totally stymied— has been transformed into a new system in which the party is allied simultaneously with the executive and the legislative branches. a preliminary and limited balance of power is now emerging in which the party is not totally immune. the exclusive right to personnel management is challenged, though in a preliminary way, by the pcs in the name of legislative oversight. the newly acquired legislative powers have not only redefined the tenets of party leadership, but have also rewritten its relations with the executive branch. although the pcs are still often barred from vital decision-making, new devices such as pingyi and zhifa jiancha are forcing some local officials to have second thoughts before venturing too far from legal boundaries. dr chao chien-min is professor at the sun yat-sen graduate institute for social sciences and humanities, national chengchi university, taiwan. abbreviations ccp communist party of china lpc local people's congress lpcsc local people's congress standing congress npc national people's congress npcsc national people's congress standing committee ppc provincial people's congress pc people's congress pcsc people's congress standing congress 28 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 17•2003 chao chien-min notes 1 the committee on bills and proposals is one of the two committees (the other is minorities) set up by the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd npc. the npc was destroyed during the cultural revolution period. when the committee system was revived in 1979, the name was kept, but it was renamed as the law committee in 1983. 2 the committee was renamed the committee for the protection of environment and resources in 1995. 3 there were 3, 4, and 15 npcsc members that joined the two committees, law and minorities, at the three congresses (zhou 1998: 34). 4 'tongyi shenyi' is stipulated in article 24 of the npc meeting rules and article 16 of the npcsc meeting rules. 5 author's interview with chongqing pc's senior legislators in july 2000. 6 author's interview with personnel working with the zejiang pc. 7 this opinion is shared by almost all the scholars and local legislators whom the author has interviewed in many places across china over the past few years. 8 chinese use the term 'system' to divide bureaucracies into different groupings ( see lieberthal 1995: 194-207). according to lieberthal, there are six major xitongs. the six-xitong divide is basically confirmed by yan huai, but with slight differences (see yan 1995: 39-50). 9 during the eighth npc session (1993-1998), 85 laws and 33 legal decisions were approved. in the same period, 4,200 local regulations were approved by the npc also. see quanguo renda changweihui bangongting yanjiushi 1998: 2-7. 10 the stipulation can be found in a handbook for the work of pc oversight edited by npc committee on internal and judicial affairs 1996. 11 some scholars use the term 'movement regime' as a substitute for the totalitarian regimes, because of their inclination and love for mass mobilization and political movements (tucker 1967: 343-58). 12 article 13 of the act (npc committee on internal and judicial affairs 1996: 220-25) 13 interviews with pc deputies from various parts of china. 14 among the 573 cadres recommended for approval by the provincial party committee in 1988, 94 or 16.4 percent of them were rejected by the ppcs (won and fu 1991: 51). 15 ppc committees are numbered between two to eight, with five and six the medium. 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foundation launched a new japan studies initiative with the aim of upgrading studies on contemporary japan at nordic universities and degree awarding institutions. a survey showed a general lack of expertise within this field among nordic universities and think tanks. in general, scholarly knowledge on japan in the nordic countries is scattered and fragmented among relatively small research environments across the nordic region. in many universities there will only be two-three experts among the regular faculty, in some only one. especially regarding faculty who combine social science expertise with solid japanese language capacity, they are almost non-existent. this seriously limits the capacity for research and teaching in a wide area of social science topics in the study of japan. it also has adverse effects on the quality of public debate on japan in electronic and print media. traditionally, the study of japan in the nordic countries was embedded in an area studies structure, most commonly as a sub-section of a department of east asian studies, which had its focus – in terms of tenured faculty and state-allocated financial resources – on aspects of japanology such as historical phonology, philosophy, classical religion and linguistics. beginning in the 1980s, studies of modern japanese society and history also began to emerge. unlike the china field, social science-oriented studies of japan in the field of economics, politics, international relations, etc., were very few as universities did not train and hire specialists in the field. in recent years, there has been a notable increase in the number of students enrolled in japanese studies in nordic universities. however, on the part of university administrations there has been a reluctance to follow up on the increased interest by hiring more full-time faculty. area studies are often bypassed by traditional disciplines when it comes to new faculty and funding. unlike the situation in the usa, nordic universities rarely employ area studies specialists in social science departments such as economic, politics or anthropology. this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v41i1.6889. © kjeld erik brødsgaard published under the creative commons license (cc by). 6 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 kjeld erik brødsgaard instead, they prioritise faculty who are oriented towards theoretical work, rather than empirical-based work. another important reason is a general lack of funding. in recent years, many nordic universities have had to save on their expenditures on faculty. there has been no funding available for expanding into areas such as japanese studies. instead, departments engaged in east asian studies have tended to focus on chinese studies where there has been a greater political pressure for knowledge generation. in prioritising scarce resources, it has often been forgotten that japan is actually the world’s third largest economy and an important political and cultural factor, and it must be in the interest of nordic countries to have the capacity to generate knowledge about this important part of the world. the nordic japan studies program was launched with the goal of addressing the deficiencies in nordic social science studies on contemporary japan. realising the budget constraints many nordic universities were experiencing, the sjsf in cooperation with the nippon foundation decided to provide funds for establishing nine fully-funded lectureships in the nordic region. the subject area was social sciences in a broad sense, including aesthetics and architecture. after a round of open competition, three positions were allocated to denmark (university of copenhagen, aarhus university and copenhagen business school), two to finland (university of turku and university of helsinki), two to norway (university of bergen and the norwegian university of science and technology), one to iceland (university of iceland), and one to sweden (the european institute of japanese studies at the stockholm school of economics). lecturers were employed during 2019 and 2020. the initiative also involved financial support for phd students tra velling to japan for field research. so far twenty research scholarships have been granted to phd students enrolled at nordic universities. furthermore, the sjsf and the nippon foundation have allocated funds to networking in order to facilitate cooperation among the new lectureships in the form of working groups and joint seminars. the goal is to create synergies and linkages among existing knowledge nodes in nordic japan studies. sjsf has done a survey which shows that the sasakawa lecturers on average teach 50 per cent of their working hours; research accounts for 38 per cent and outreach 12 per cent. the numbers show that the lecturers are not only engaged in teaching and research. they also 7 foreword communicate their knowledge and expertise on japanese affairs to the wider society in the nordic countries. to celebrate the japan studies initiative, sjsf, supported by the nippon foundation, arranged an international conference on japanese studies in the nordic countries entitled ‘japan and japanese studies in the 21st century’. the conference took place at the copenhagen business school, 24-25 march 2022. there were 65 participants from the nordic countries as well as from japan, france and the uk. the sasakawa lecturers and phd students who had obtained phd scholarships from sjsf presented papers on their research topics. in an online keynote speech, mr. yohei sasakawa, the chairman of the nippon foundation, opened the conference. this issue of the copenhagen journal of asian studies publishes two of the presented papers from the conference. they include a paper by phd student oshie nishimura-sahi, tampere university, finland, and assistant professor jens sejrup, university of copenhagen. in addition, the issue contains a paper by associate professor aike rots, university of oslo, which is based on his keynote lecture at the conference. the papers fall within the scholarly scope of the journal and have all been through a thorough peer-reviewed evaluation process. nishimura-sahi’s paper, ‘fudo in foreign language learning in japan and finland: an autoethnographic study of a phd journey’, discusses the possibilities, limitations and pitfalls of knowledge production projects that adapt a conceptual ‘insertion’ from japanese philosophy, in casu watsuji tetsuro and his notion of fudo and the dual nature of human existence. the paper uses the author’s own experiences in the form of a diary adopting an autoethnographic approach of careful self-reflection. sejrup’s paper, ‘past and the present: iconicity and authentication at two reconstructed heritage sites in japan’, analyses cases of reconstruction from archeological evidence of two lost historical landmarks: the great audience hall at the japanese historic city of nara and the old dutch trading station on the artificial island of dejima. by way of these two cases, the author analyses the japanese contribution to the global phenomenon of reconstruction. he wishes to connect the reconstruction taking place at these two sites to larger place-making and rebranding strategies in contemporary globalising cities. aike rots’ contribution, ‘beyond methodological nationalism: three directions for japanese studies’, discusses the concept of methodological nationalism in japanese studies. the author argues 8 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 kjeld erik brødsgaard that to avoid or overcome methodological nationalism, scholars of japan need to reconsider their choice of subject matter and to reflect on their use of the adjective ‘japanese’. rots also suggests that in order to abolish the notion of the nation-state as an etic unit of analysis, it would be useful to approach the notion as an emic category that may or may not carry meaning to the actors involved. moreover, he suggests that the field should move towards intra-asian comparative studies that focus on particular places and practices instead of essentialising the nation-state. rots’ arguments are relevant in a wider discussion on areas studies. area studies have been blamed for focusing on the cultural, political and social characteristics of a particular nation and neglecting how academic knowledge production should transcend national and disciplinary boundaries. in short, it is important that scholars break out of the methodological and theoretical confinement of traditional area studies by applying concepts and methods of an interdisciplinary nature. although deep empirical knowledge of japan is needed in order to understand the country in its social, cultural, political and economic complexity, insight and understanding must be part of an inter-civilisational dialogue. it is a tall order as scholarly studies of japan and other asian countries require language competencies and cultural understanding. for scholars there is not much time left to engage in methodological and theoretical studies, which is the focus of the traditional social science disciplines. clearly, contemporary japan studies need all the support and encouragement they can get to survive and perhaps advance in an extremely competitive university environment. the copenhagen journal of asian studies gratefully acknowledges financial support from the nippon foundation in preparing and publishing this special issue. kjeld erik brødsgaard chair of conference committee vice chairman, scandinavia-japan sasakawa foundation _hlk127006650 _hlk126914105 _hlk127006732 _hlk126672848 _hlk95234318 __________________________________________________________________________ 5 ___________ international relations theory in flux in view of china's 'peaceful rise' international relations theory in flux in view of china's 'peaceful rise' gordon c. k. cheung abstract this paper attempts to examine the fact that the conventional theoretical approaches used to understand international relations, especially hegemonic stability theory, have been witnessing consistent problems arising both from the experiences of the current hegemon, the us, and the challenge posed by the rise of china, a power which is increasingly willing and able to project and promote its historical and cultural position in the east asian region through community building and soft power development. by analyzing both the theoretical discussion on hegemonic stability and constructivism, as well as criticism of the cultural dimensions of chinese soft power, it concludes that china's cultural factors have become more useful and increasingly will be perpetuated more extensively as long as they fit into the political dynamics and economic changes in east asia. key words: china, hegemonic stability, confucianism, soft power, constructivism introduction this paper attempts to examine the fact that the conventional theoretical approaches used to understand international relations, especially hegemonic stability theory, have been witnessing consistent problems arising both from the experiences of the current hegemon -the usand the challenge posed by the rise of china, a power which is increasingly willing and able to project and promote its historical and cultural position in the east asian region through community building and soft power or simply 'peaceful rise (heping jueqi)' (zheng 2005). hu jintao first used the term 'peaceful rise' in autumn 2003. yet, the theoretical foundation was built by zheng bijian, vice-president of the central committee's central party school. the notion of peaceful rise, according to zheng, rests on three principles: perpetuating economic and political reform through the promotion of a socialist market economy, seeking cultural support for china's peaceful rise and balancing the interests from different sectors internally and externally to support its rise. (glaser and medeiros 2007: 294-295) the term 'peaceful rise' is either considered a reflection of china recognizing 'america is even stronger' or projecting 6 _______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 gordon c.k. cheung ________________________________________________________ china as 'a hidden threat.' (the economist, 24 june 2004) the peaceful rise is manifested via business and trade deals, confucianism, soft power and east asian education cooperation rather than more traditional mechanisms of war and military alliances. china has been trying to solidify its regional hegemony and historical relations in east asia with a view to project its position as the establishment status quo power by redeeming her east asian historical/cultural relations, so as to confront the current system (from economic to political) of east asian international relations established by the us. some new chinese textbooks also outline the grand strategy of china in asia. for instance, pang zhongying has been trying to 'normalize' the east asia region through chinese effort. (2004: 189-190) ikenberry and mastanduno argued that 'despite the robustness of american power, the ability of the united states to extend the frontier of its liberal hegemonic order further into asia is problematic.' (2003: 8) jia qingguo, a professor from beijing university, also emphasized the notion that external construction plays a crucial role in the formation and projection of chinese nationalism: [e]xternal factors are at least as important as historical, psychological and political factors in shaping the development of contemporary chinese nationalism. if one accepts constructivism's argument in international relations, i.e. that a state's behavior is in part a product of the interaction between nationstates, current chinese nationalism is also in part a product of the interactions between china and the outside world. (2005: 17-18) this paper will first critically assess the notion of hegemonic stability through examination of joseph nye's depiction of the paradox between the power construction of the us and the exercise of soft power. the second section of the paper will examine the social construction of the concept of chinese soft power through the influence of the economic values of confucianism across east asia, and the historical and cultural influences of text books, media (allowing international media to cover the earthquake in sichuan in may 2008, for instance) and academic dissemination to enhance its power construction process. the final section will be a critical assessment of these measures in relation to the perception of china's peaceful rise. contested us power relations the united states has long been regarded as the hegemonic successor to great britain after second world war. however, joseph nye disagreed with this assertion. he argued that 'the united states never enjoyed a __________________________________________________________________________ 7 ___________ international relations theory in flux in view of china's 'peaceful rise' general hegemony after the war, so hegemony can be neither lost nor regained in the future.' (2002: 108) charles kindleberger's book (1973) first used the concept of hegemonic stability to assess us procrastination in exercising its financial leadership after the great depression in 1929. however, it was robert gilpin who systematically theorized the ups and downs of hegemonic succession through marginal cost analysis. he states that 'these successive dominant states have changed the system, expanding until an equilibrium is reached between the costs and benefits of further change and expansion.' (1981: 156) the hegemon will either cease to exist in that position, or being heavily criticized by the other states, shift from the role of being a balancer to that of a beneficiary, if not predator, of the system. the opening up of the us market for goods from hong kong in the 1960s was said to be beneficial to hong kong in the face of the large number of immigrants from communist china. (us senate 1962). in order to tackle the immediate problems of a large influx of refugees, the us opened its market to hong kong's exports. it was both a careful calculation of the containment strategy as well as a way in which economic hegemonic function was maintained. however, the inability of maintaining the bretton woods system in the early 1970s (us dollars pegged with gold) foretold the weakening of the us as a monetary hegemon. (komiya, okuno and suzumura 1988: 318) the trade disputes between the us and japan over the semi-conductor industry in the 1980s revealed that national interests prevailed and the marginal cost of being a hegemon was too large in relation to the economic benefit. (prestowitz 1988: 121) the current demand by many in the international community on the chinese government to allow the chinese currency (yuan or renminbi) to appreciate, was a result of the persistent trade deficit experienced with china. the us has experienced a growing trade deficit with china, increasing from about us$83 billion in 2000 to us$237 billion in 2007.1 the us's role as a facilitator in maintaining its monetary hegemony was further discredited during the asian financial crisis. joseph stiglitz, nobel prize winner 2001, asserted that pushing korea to liberalize its immature financial market before 1997 was beneficial to the us, and especially us firms. (2003: 221-222) by pursuing an economic policy of 'fishing in the troubled waters', however, the us displayed behaviour seen by those in the region as below the standard expected of a hegemon. nye later modified his idea on the development of hegemony in the paradox of american power (2002). the so-called american hegemonic 8 _______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 gordon c.k. cheung ________________________________________________________ leadership should be analyzed through further examination of globalization and transnational relations. it can be graphically depicted as follows: figure 1: three levels of power structure: a critique of hegemonic stability power of what? power structure dominated actors military unipolar u.s. economic multipolar u.s., europe, japan and china transnational relations outside government's control non-state actors: bankers, electronic herds source: compiled from nye (2002: 39). as can be seen from figure 1, the current hegemonic leadership of the us is predominantly exercised through preponderance of military power. in terms of economic power and transnational relations, the us has to share power with regional entities as well as non-state actors. among different economic issues, the us has to work with some international organizations, such as world trade organization (wto) and world intellectual property organization (wipo) to facilitate policy co-ordination. following this line of argument, john odell developed the idea that states needed to negotiate within the framework of an international economic chessboard of transnational relations (2002). increasingly, the us has been excluded from some very important regional decision making processes in east asia. (for example, the association of southeast asian nations (asean) + 3 (china, japan and korea) and east asian summit (eas) did not even include the us as member (dent 2008: 18)). on issues related to high politics or military confrontation, such as the six-party talks in 2003 and 2004 over the north korean nuclear crisis, the us had to work collectively with russia, china, japan, south korea and north korea in order to develop a kind of institutionalized political framework for regional security issue. (choo 2005: 39-58). in terms of transnational actors and relations, the us, rather than being a hegemon, has become the target for criticism in areas such as environmental policy (refusal to sign the kyoto protocol), transnational migration and drug trafficking. after many years serving in the pentagon as assistant secretary of defence during clinton's administration in the 1990s, nye eventually grew disillusioned with the narrow focus of the military strategies used __________________________________________________________________________ 9 ___________ international relations theory in flux in view of china's 'peaceful rise' in the formation of us foreign policy. more alarmingly, he suspected that the us might lose its friends and influence because power was defined too narrowly among the decision-makers. later, he bowed out and returned to the kennedy school of government at harvard university to devote himself to the study of 'soft power' which, according to him, can rescue the us from isolation. long before the materialization of the concept of soft power, keohane and nye were working on the ideas of power and interdependence during the height of the cold war in the 1970s to search for ways of international cooperation under which they calculated that interdependence could be maintained through multiple channels in dealing with international affairs, non hierarchical world relations and non-military means were a priority (1989: 24-25). the term soft power was first coined by joseph nye to suggest the importance of the us maintaining soft power in the age of globalization because 'the presence of multiple cultures creates avenues of connection with other countries and helps create a necessary broadening of american attitudes in an era of globalization' (2002: 119). the concept of soft power was the culmination of various ideas and themes nye had expressed in the past. in short, soft power refers to 'attractive power' instead of coercive power (nye 2004: 5-6). nye worried that 'the united states' most striking failure is the low priority and paucity of resources it has devoted to producing soft power' (nye 2004: 19). nye hinted at the importance of the us in maintaining soft power in the age of globalization when he stated, 'the presence of multiple cultures creates avenues of connection with other countries and helps create a necessary broadening of american attitudes in an era of globalization'(2002: 119). in this sense, china has seized the opportunity (if not hijacking the concept) to facilitate soft power capital in the implementation of its proclaimed peaceful rise, thereby creating the graduate deterioration of us influence in east asia. the social construction of chinese soft power social constructivism was heavily drawn from the sociologist's understanding of social interaction between individuals and societies. peter berger and thomas luckmann (1967) first pointed out the importance of individual behaviours in relation to social changes and development. individual is not a priori derived, which means one's behaviours can actually be modified through social changes. along some similar lines, george herbert mead once stated that 'what we have here is a situation in which there can be different selves, and it is dependent upon the 10 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 gordon c.k. cheung ________________________________________________________ set of social reactions that is involved as to which self we are going to be' (1934: 143). nicholas onuf first applied social constructivism to the understanding of global relations with a view to examining social interactions and non-material based elements and ingredients rather than hard power context and military struggle. in the world of our making, he contended that 'it does not draw a sharp distinction between material and social realities – the material and the social contaminate each other, but variably – and it does not grant sovereignty to either the material or the social by defining the other out of existence' (1989: 40). the climax of social constructivism came with alexander wendt's heavy scale attack on the realist school, focused on two issues: identities and interests (1992 and 1999). he clearly stated 'my objective … is to build a bridge between these two traditions (and by extension, between the realist-liberal and rationalist-reflectivist debates) by developing a constructivist argument, drawn from structurationist and symbolic interactionist sociology, on behalf of the liberal claim that international institutions can transform state identities and interests.' (wendt 1999: 391) his ideas on the challenges posed by the materially based arguments of the realist school became clear in social theory of international politics, which juxtaposes the argument of social construction of ir in a larger context, concerning culturally based elements (wendt 1999). as wendt continued, one very important function of culture is to create collective memories: '[o]nce collective memories have been created it may be hard to shake their long-term effects, even if a majority of individuals have ''forgotten'' them at any given moment.' (wendt 1999: 163). in this sense, wendt augmented the notion of international relations theory, forcing it to take into consideration the importance of interaction, learning and epistemology seriously as core arguments underpinning international studies (wendt 1992: 399 and 416). in a later critique on mearsheimer's article, wendt elaborated further, '[c]onstructivists argue that material resources only acquire meaning for human action through the structure of shared knowledge in which they are embedded.' (wendt 1995: 73; mearsheimer 1995). in east asia, social constructivism has been modified to extend the argument beyond the identity building among southeast asians, given their truncated colonial history and cultural diversity. as benedict anderson wrote in his seminal work imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism 'nations, however, have no clearly identifiable births, and their deaths, if they ever happen, are never natural. because there is no originator, the nation's biography cannot _________________________________________________________________________ 11 ___________ international relations theory in flux in view of china's 'peaceful rise' be written evangelically, ''down time,'' through a long procreative chain of begettings.' (1991: 205). if the imprints of history can facilitate social changes, other nations with a much stronger cultural heritage can be most effective in such cultural embedding, for example between china and east asian countries. the missing gaps between ideas and culture between china and east asia were first bridged by david kang. his controversial article 'getting asia wrong' strongly suggested that china's historical weakness was the result of the chaos and disturbance in east asia in its contemporary history, not the other way round. according to kang, 'historically, it has been chinese weakness that has led to chaos in asia. when china has been strong and stable, order has been preserved' (2003: 59). obviously, he did not subscribe entirely the notion of constructivism being eclectic. nor did he want to make 'a plea for research that includes a touch of realism, a dash of constructivism, and a pinch of liberalism.' (kang 2003: 66) by bringing history and culture, peter hays gries depicted a path through language as a means for the re-construction of chinese identity. he contended 'culture does matter: cultural differences clearly played a major role in the sino-american apology diplomacy of april 2001 (2005: 109). more importantly, historical identities are being used and constructed as ways to rescue the communist party from losing 'hegemony over chinese nationalist discourse.' (135) as david campbell successfully indicates, us cold war security can be re-written through the 'reconceptualization of identity and the state' (1992: 8). china apparently has been facilitating its historical legacy (in terms of historical, culture, social capital and ideational advantages) to further enhance and create a soft power base to motivate neighbouring east asian countries to develop more cordial relations with china. confucianism the economic values of confucianism have been discussed widely by those who examine the economic activities of the chinese overseas in southeast asia. gordon redding contended that 'directly confucian ideals, and especially familism as a central tenet, are still well enough embedded in the minds of most overseas chinese to make confucianism the most apposite single-word label for the values which govern most of their social behaviours' (1993: 2). this common cultural trait integrates economic and social relations among the overseas chinese to form the foundation of working habits and the craftsmanship of business activities (cheung 2004). 12 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 gordon c.k. cheung ________________________________________________________ the extent of confucianism, according to peter berger and michael hsiao, may help trace the ideas in which cultural consensus can be articulated through the 'odyssey' of cultural history among some asian states. their personal encounters and interviews conducted in various asian countries such as south korea, taiwan, japan, singapore and hong kong have allowed them to derive an 'east asian development model' (berger and hsiao 1988: 4). the assumption or the major ingredient of the asian model maintained that 'both japan and the newly industrialized countries of east asia belong to the broad area of influence of sinitic civilization, and there can be no doubt that confucianism has been a very powerful force in all of them' (berger and hsiao 1988: 7). the powerful force underneath confucianism is interpreted further by hsiao as the 'confucianist moral definition of the state' (1988: 18). the confucian tradition of asian countries, therefore, enables the state to mobilize human resources more freely, as well as the use of bureaucratic authority. furthermore, the confucian ideal of strong family tradition is used extensively by siu-lun wong (1989) as a model to analyse the modernization of hong kong's economy. admitting the tradition of family ties and subordination of paternalism, wong suggests that so called 'paternalistic management' (wong 1989: 174) is the core successful mode of hong kong's economy. in particular, the emphasis on entrepreneurialism among hong kong people also gives rise to a vibrant and vigorous economic and industrial structure for the growth of hong kong. the above mentioned factors are some representative opinions of scholars who use confucianism as a way of understanding asian economic growth. many of them extensively use such doctrines as family relations, respect, hierarchical structure of kinship, management of society, etc. as a foundation for their argument. soft power of china in china, the use of soft power to facilitate the peaceful rise of china has gained momentum. ding and saunders' studies force us to think about the obsolescence of using traditional balances of power or force to deter china from rising. on the contrary, the chinese language, along with globally established confucian values are gradually being accepted as symbols of chinese soft power (2006: 3-33). huang and ding further explained that global perceptions of china's cultural importance and the contest of soft power are actually quite positive (2006: 22-44). 'china's patience, confidence, and rising economic power translate into a _________________________________________________________________________ 13 ___________ international relations theory in flux in view of china's 'peaceful rise' growing pool of ''soft'' power', according to jean garrison, 'giving china increasing influence in east asia and the global economic system' (2005: 25). in charm offensive: how china's soft power in transforming the world, joshua kurlantzick argued: 'china's soft power indeed has proven successful in many cities [in east asia] like mandalay, allowing china in some cases to supplant the united states as the major external cultural and economic influence' (2007: 107). li ying-chun (2006) echoed zheng's aforementioned notion of peaceful rise. by strengthening china's soft power capabilities over historical culture, li argues, involving it in global affairs with a view to accommodate chinese interests, developing a communication industry, and promoting a 'beijing consensus' or 'chinese model' to challenge the washington consensus (ramo 2004). another way to facilitate chinese soft power is to substantiate 'public diplomacy,' including media diplomacy, educational exchange, organizing international events, etc, in order to create a responsible image (huang 2005). in contrast to the double-act between the us and imf measures toward east asian countries before and after the asian financial crisis, china did something less expected by the west, which proved to be another strong case for the maneuverability of soft power. after the asian financial crisis in 1997, china did not capitalize immediately from the dilapidated financial chaos across the east asian region by devaluating its currency, the renminbi. senior leaders such as zhu rongji, dai xianglong and li lanqing made explicit and coherent statements on their refusal to devalue the renminbi. these statements were made in many international forums and on important occasions after the crisis, such as the insurance and securities system conference on 14 january 1998, the press release of national affairs department on 23 january 1998 and the annual meeting of world economy forum on 1 february 1998.2 another way in which china could conjure up a collective historical memory across east asia, is to re-interpret east asian history in a way which reinforce a cultural and regional consensus for the education of the next generation. this process of socialization, according to g. john ikenberry and charles a. kupchan, is crucial because 'at the international level, the emerging hegemon articulates a set of normative principles in order to facilitate the construction of an order conducive to its interest' (1990: 284). a team of academics from china, japan and korea, for instance, have been working on a collaborative project to create a textbook on the history of east asia dongya sanguo di jinxiandai shi [the contemporary and modern history of three east asian coun14 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 gordon c.k. cheung ________________________________________________________ tries] (dongya sanguo … 2005). the reason for such collaborative effort, according to their main argument, was to reconcile their historical disagreements on the contemporary history of east asia. these differences were due to differing view points, national interests and interpretations. through historical documentation, they were trying to focus on several historical pieces such as the japanese aggression and the demonstration of the importance of the confucian influence across this region. (dongya sanguo... 53) however, as i argued previously (cheung 2008: 197): apart from providing the basic cultural and historical development of these three countries, the narrative of their contemporary history was almost stopped around the time of world war ii (with only a flimsy final chapter about the future east asian trajectory), leaving the history of the cold war un-touched. if the history of the cold war was basically constructed by the us, the omission of this big chunk of history is trying to erase the presence of the us in east asia via soft educational power. in addition to scientific contributions, chinese social sciences have also witnessed an integration with the main stream academic channels through the publication of various academic journals, which effectively opened up a window of opportunity for china to penetrate into the international academic discourse, a field which has always been preoccupied by us ideas (hix 2004: 298; o'leary 2005: 3).3 for instance, china & world economy, the official journal of the institute of world economics and politics, chinese academy of social sciences (cass) has been successfully linked up with the main stream english publishers.4 in hong kong international airport, you can find china & world economy displayed side-by-side with other media books, business books or general magazines in the book stores. placing an academic journal such as china & world economy in an international airport inevitably brings some pro-china ideas (economic and political) to the attention of global travellers, business people, academic workers, etc. secondly, a group of scholars from tsinghua university established a journal entitled the chinese journal of international politics which was aimed at 'providing a forum for academic papers and articles on problematic issues. most of its articles are either related to china or have implications for chinese foreign policy.'5 obviously, such development will not replace the dominance of the us in the academic discourse. nevertheless, the intention is to disseminate chinese academic (both cass and tsinghua are relatively more pro-government) viewpoints through english language media, a powerful soft power element that can gradually influence people's thinking. _________________________________________________________________________ 15 ___________ international relations theory in flux in view of china's 'peaceful rise' a recent example of the so-called peaceful rise of china was when china central television (cctv) (the mouthpiece tv channel)'s tv series daguo jueqi [the rise of great powers] a 12-part tv series on the study of the rise and fall of nine historical great powers was aired on tv from 13 to 24 november 2006. the countries profiled in the series-portugal, spain, holland, great britain, france, germany, japan, former soviet union and the united states of america-were selected and heavily documented to pave the way for the call of the rise of china in the future. according to yazhou zhoukan's analysis (a hong kong-based chinese magazine), this tv series looked at the rise of great powers from a positive angle, not necessarily from the conventional notion of victim/victor, or marxist view of exploitation. to put it simply, this so-called 'general education' tv show gave the impression that china will naturally take its place as one of the world's great powers in time (10 december 2006, 68-75). by the same token, the relaxation of the media coverage (local and overseas) of the earthquake in sichuan province in may 2008 further perpetuated the established notion of chinese soft power (yazhou zhoukan, 1 june 2008 , 24-31). such gestures help reinforce the openness of chinese politics, allowing international society to assess through global medias. cultural assessment and the peaceful rise of china the post-cold war world economy has witnessed a more pluralistic distribution of power among different nations of various sizes and capability. if a nation tries not to be drawn into the swamp of the contemporary world politics, or even attempts to be included in the existing situation, it has 'to obtain a broad measure of consent on general principles principles that ensure the supremacy of the leading state and dominant social class and at the same time to offer some prospect of satisfaction to the less powerful' (nye 1991: 32). if power is defined as an act of influence, the instrument should not be seen as too coercive, or as having the result of jeopardizing too much the position of less powerful states. the notion of a chinese peaceful rise, does not mean that china is moving towards a frontal assault with the us through direct competition in a zero sum manner, which, according to, thomas christensen, would imply that 'china's deepening economic and diplomatic ties to the region have come at a high price for the united states because, by necessity, those newly developed ties increase china's power in the region' (2006: 82). in fact, china openly refused to be the hegemonic successor, contradictory to many realists who assumed that should be a 16 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 gordon c.k. cheung ________________________________________________________ logical outcome of sino-american relations. neither did china want to sacrifice three decades of economic development after 1978, which has now become almost the only reserve of legitimacy left to rationalize the continued monopoly of power of the chinese communist party (rossi 2005, pei 2006 and cheung 2006). although hu jintao has pointed out the importance of 'scientific development' and 'harmonious society' in his 17th party congress report in october 2007, the focus of the report was intended to convey a continuation of deng xiaoping's idea on economic development.6 nor does it make any difference if the rise of china has turned into an economic force that has challenged american economic hegemony, providing competition to us economic interests regarding acquisitions, and more generally competing with economic sectors that are considered to be very critical and sensitive in maintaining us power and prosperity (marchick 2006). in addition, the extent of the use of confucianism is not without limitation. its concept goes beyond the two founding fathers' (confucius and mencius) ideas. as a concept, confucianism has a well-established meaning. the analects of confucius (1992) contains the dialogues between confucius and his students, aiming at fostering the proper way of governance and the crux of human relations.7 for instance, in book 16, ji shi, confucius has substantiated his idea of equality by saying that 'for when wealth is equally distributed, there will be no poverty; when the people are united, a small population will not matter much; and when there is stability throughout the land, there will be no such things as peril and subversion' (the analects of confucius 1992: 281). it is clear that his idea of government concerns the fairness of society. the connotation is much closer to socialism than capitalism. again, the sense of growth and economic development is less transcendent in the original spirit of confucius. furthermore, in practice, if confucianism has such a profound effect on economic development, how come north korea, thailand and burma were suffered from poverty before world war ii, given that korea subscribed to confucianism and thailand and burma had substantial chinese populations? finally, to put it more bluntly, ezra f. vogel argued that 'if confucianism alone explains why countries modernize, why should the confucian motherland lag behind? it is true that after 1949, failure can be attributed to socialist planning, but china had not achieved widespread industrialization before 1949, either' (1991: 84). finally, confucianism entails other dimensions of social and economic interactions, which perhaps should also be taken _________________________________________________________________________ 17 ___________ international relations theory in flux in view of china's 'peaceful rise' into consideration in a comprehensive assessment on the cultural explanation of political economy. by ignoring 'the historical processes and specific relations of political power,' according to lisa wedeen, 'the treatment of culture in political science has downplayed the heterogeneous ways in which people experience the social order within and among groups…' (2002: 715). china's soft power relations are inevitably useful in the current debate on the discussion of us power relations and the rise of china's economic and political profile. as william callahan argues 'china is not merely trying to use its new economic power to transform its political status from that of a third world country to that of a great power. in addition to catching up to the west economically, china now aims to narrow the ''normative gap'' in international relations theory' (callahan 2004: 570). from in-depth interviews and analysis on chinese nationalism, peter hays gries concluded that there is a general feeling in china that 'china's sun will rise as america's sets' (2005a: 406). using culture and civilization within the soft power approach, is one way to view chinese culture as the historical lynchpin. the key question is not its usefulness, but a matter of acceptance, especially from the points of view of the existing hegemony. in the keynote address delivered in the national bureau on asian research in november 2006, kenneth pyle, henry m. jackson professor of history and asian studies at the university of washington, rightly pointed out the importance of the use of history and culture in the making of us foreign policy. he reminded us that 'the ability of the united states to pursue its traditional goals of maintaining a balance of power, keeping the region open to trade and investment, and pressing for the expansion of democracy is more constrained because this is now a region in some ways much more pro-active and resistant to us influence' (pyle 2006: 11). the regional and global institutions that the us helped create, however, remained intact and will be sustainable even when the us hegemonic power has eclipsed. similar arguments came along in the same vein by chinese watcher in the us. susan shirk in china: fragile superpower, clearly stated that 'the best way for china to rise peacefully is to behave like a responsible power and accommodate to the current superpower, the united states' (2007: 219). on another occasion, john ikenberry echoed the point 'it may be possible for china to overtake the united states alone, but it is much less likely that china will ever manage to overtake the western order' (2008: 37). he concluded that the us may be weakened, but china has to comply with the established world order created by the us and its partners. china is a follower after all. 18 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 gordon c.k. cheung ________________________________________________________ conclusion in conclusion, this paper demonstrates that the theoretical notion of hegemonic stability needs substantial improvement through which the current hegemon—the us—is increasingly less able to facilitate most of the functions which were taken for granted for decades. with the approach of a more interdependent and diversified global environment, international affairs are perhaps less suitable to be carried out by a single dominant power. many agendas and issues are transnational in nature, with more countries sharing different parts of it. the peaceful rise of china within the arena of foreign policy cumulates with the unique nature of chinese economic and social changes. however, these factors do not necessarily coincide with the established power relations in the east asian region. yet, east asian economic development and the regionalization of many economic, political and international relations allow countries in this region to augment its sphere of influence which, nevertheless, enables some historical and cultural discourse to penetrate into the consensus building process. china's cultural past, therefore, has become more useful and, increasingly, will be exploited more extensively, as long as it fits the political dynamics and economic changes in east asia. gordon c. k. cheung is lecturer in international relations of china in the school of government and international affairs at durham university, united kingdom (g.c.k.cheung@durham.ac.uk). he is also the editor-in-chief of east asia: an international quarterly. acknowledgments part of the paper was first presented in 'china in the international order: integrating views from outside-in & inside-out' of the china policy institute international conference, university of nottingham, 18-19 september 2006. thank you for zheng yongnian's invitation. the current paper has been extensively revised, in particular with thanks to the two anonymous reviewers and the editor from the cjas for very useful comments. thank you for justin orenstein's editing. thanks are also due to lee foundation (singapore) and the universities' china committee in london's support to my previous research activities done in hong kong, taiwan and china to enable the consolidation of various ideas and research materials for this paper. _________________________________________________________________________ 19 ___________ international relations theory in flux in view of china's 'peaceful rise' references analects of confucius. 1992. trans. lao an. shandong: shandong friendship press. anderson, b. 1991. imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: verso. berger, peter l. and t. luckmann 1967. the social construction of reality: a treaties in the sociology of knowledge. london: allan and lane. berger, p. and m. hsiao (eds.) 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'the chinese economy: risky reporting.' chatham house briefing paper, 1-10. _________________________________________________________________________ 21 ___________ international relations theory in flux in view of china's 'peaceful rise' shirk, s. l. 2007. china: fragile superpower. new york: oxford university press. stiglitz, j. 2003. the roaring nineties: why we're paying the price for the greediest decade in history. london: penguin. us senate 1962. senate committee on the judiciary, refugee problem in hong kong and macao: hearings before the subcommittee to investigate problems connected with refugees and escapees, 87th cong., 2nd sess., may 29; june 7, 8, 28; and july 10, 1962, u.s. government printing office: washington, 1962. vogel, e. f. 1991. the four little dragons: the spread of industrialization in east asia. cambridge: harvard university press. wedeen, l. 2002. 'conceptualizing culture: possibilities for political science.' american political science review. 96(4): 713-28. wendt, a. 1992. 'anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics.' international organization 46(2): 391-425. — 1995. 'constructing international politics.' international security 20(1): 71-81. — 1999. social theory of international politics. cambridge: cambridge university press. wong, s. 1989. 'modernization and chinese cultural traditions in hong kong. in h. tai, confucianism and economic development: an oriental alternative? washington, d.c.: the washington institute press, 166-186. zheng, b. 2005. 'china's 'peaceful rise' to great power status.' foreign affairs 84(5): 18-24. notes 1 u. s. census bureau 2000-2007 [http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/ c5700.html] (accessed january 26, 2007) 2 people's daily, january 15, 1998: 1; people's daily, january 24, 1998: 1 and people's daily, february 2, 1998: 1. 3 for instance, nine of the top ten (measured by impact score) political science journals are american journals. 4 http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/cwe (accessed may 3, 2007) 5 http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/ (accessed february 23, 2008) 6 report of the 17th npc [http://cpc.people.com.cn/gb/104019/104099/6429414. html] (accessed on october 15, 2007). 7 all together, there are twenty books in the analects of confucius. they are all dialogues. those dialogues distill many abstract ideas of governance into workable disciplines of day-to-day practical norms. see (analects of confucius 1992). ok-cjas23.pdf, page 1-144 @ normalize 8 ____________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 marc rerceretnam __________________________________________________________ the 1987 isa arrests and international civil society: responses to political repression in singapore marc rerceretnam abstract the penalizing of prominent opposition figures via the singaporean legal system has made many weary of confronting the ruling people's action party (pap) government on their own turf. unwilling to take up this challenge, some singaporeans appear more willing to push for change overseas – beyond the clutches of the pap government. this article will trace the development of political dissent from abroad and how such actions played a formidable role during the so-called 'marxist' conspiracy arrests in 1987 and how such alternative political viewpoints will continue to play a large role in shaping criticism and opposition to the present repressive political climate in singapore. keywords: southeast asia, non-government organizations, singapore, politics and government, political participation, opposition. introduction the penalizing of prominent opposition figures via the singaporean legal system has made many wary of confronting the pap government on their own turf. unwilling to take up this challenge, some singaporeans appear more willing to push for change from overseas – beyond the clutches of the pap government. while it is undeniable that a considerable number of singaporeans opposed to the pap government continue to work for a more open and democratic society from inside singapore, this paper argues that many people are prepared to take this course of action overseas. by the late 1970s and 1980s, prominent personalities within various expatriate singaporean communities had already become involved in overseas campaigns, which largely resulted from their own experiences of crackdowns on dissenters, when in singapore. recent academic research in related areas has primarily examined internal aspects of singaporean civil society. gary rodan recently looked at the singaporean government's efforts not only to control media but __________________________________________________________________________ 9 _____________________________ the 1987 isa arrests and international civil society also to prevent the emergence of organized social and political forces that could lead to a functional civil society (rodan 2003). ho, baber and khondker have examined the use of information technology and role of the internet and their implications for the unintended restructuring of singaporean state and social relations (ho et al. 2003). michael barr has examined the limits of change in singapore, taking a more positive look at attempts made by the former prime minister goh (1990-2005) in light of the continuing influence of the restrictive influence of lee kuan yew (barr 2003). in addition, analysis of expatriate singaporean communities largely focuses on the role of globalization and economic liberalization and how this relates to occupational relocation (willis and yeoh 2000; wan et al. 2003). to date there has been little research relating to the external aspects involving expatriate singaporean communities and the role of singaporean-based civil society outside singapore. this paper aims to contribute towards the current academic debate on the role of not only domestic but also international civil society and politics in singapore and southeast asia. the primary objective of this paper is to look at how a loose network of singaporean exiles and expatriates developed as a result of the events of 1987. this event played a major role in arousing suppressed feelings of injustice among a new generation of singaporeans, many of whom were living or studying outside singapore at the time. the paper also hopes to shed some light on resistance to pap regimes by expatriate singaporean communities and international civil organizations. methodology there is clearly little official information available on operation spectrum1 from the perspective of the singaporean government. even the then prime minister, lee kuan yew, amazingly makes only two fleeting references to the whole event in his official memoirs (lee 2000: 137, 152). consequently much of this paper is reliant on non-governmental sources such as contemporary pro-detainee publications and on interviews with persons directly or indirectly involved in its events. many interviewees have preferred to remain anonymous, largely due to a fear of singaporean governmental direct or indirect reprisals. many still hold singaporean passports or are concerned for family members and their financial interests in singapore. this paper also highlights the pivotal role played by a group called the emergency committee for human rights in singapore (echrs). the 10 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 marc rerceretnam __________________________________________________________ echrs newsletter played a disproportionately large role in publicizing the plight of the isa detainees at the time. unfortunately much of this publication has been lost, even by its authors, but an almost complete set of copies was found in kuala lumpur in 1997 by the researcher, and this gives an accurate political and even chronological analysis of the events. the comprehensive list of supportive organizations in the appendix was collated from information provided by the echrs newsletter. pap attitudes towards international ngos and expatriate singaporean communities the pap has subtly woven into the singaporean psyche the myth of singapore's unnatural existence as a non-malay, non-muslim nation-state in a malay and muslim region. the implied hostility of this relationship massages the insecurity of the largely immigrant chinese ethnic majority (76 per cent) and stokes their dependency on the pro-chinese pap. as christopher lingle insightfully notes, this relationship is 'the outcome of a careful weaving of reality alongside fable' (lingle 1996: 96). this should not be mistakenly viewed as a uniquely post-colonial phenomenon. indeed, these myths can be directly linked to the british colonial period when racial, national and gender identities were manipulated, resulting in an 'inferiority complex' on a national level. for example, racial 'identities' were used by colonial authorities to justify arbitrary action and policy. racial groupings were conveniently given positive and negative traits, which were in turn used to justify differences in treatment by colonial authorities. this unnatural social climate cultivated a racially charged environment, where different communities were encouraged to compete with each other for the attention of colonial governments and the interests they represented. these supposed identities were never truly challenged even after the departure of colonial governments. pro-british elites like the pap, supplanting their colonial rulers, often found it politically useful to maintain existing misconceptions. consequently racialist social, economic and political policies continue to play an important role in how post-colonial communities rule and perceive themselves (rerceretnam 2003: 2-3). taking into account this singaporean 'inferiority complex' and 'fear' of outsiders, the pap has expanded this notion to include the 'incompatible' western culture into this equation. christopher lingle calls this the 'white peril', which is largely a one-sided projection of images of 'western decadence' used to prove that liberal democratic ideals can drag _________________________________________________________________________ 11 _____________________________ the 1987 isa arrests and international civil society down the successes enjoyed in singapore. however, more importantly, international and domestic political opponents are portrayed as 'political lepers' spreading the unwanted proclamations of western-inspired individual freedoms (lingle 1996: 38). within the context of eastern versus western, individual versus so-called collective rights, comes the strange paradigm of 'asian values' and the justification to ignore some basic democratic and human rights (rahim 1998: 56). it is within this larger context that attitudes towards expatriate communities and international civil society should be viewed. non-government organizations (ngos) have long been discouraged from taking root in singapore, based on the premise that 'anyone who wants to make a statement on politics should join a political party' (chee 1995: 53). as early as 1968, the then lee kuan yew government implemented the amended societies act, inherited from the british colonialists, to limit political engagement to groups formally registered with the government for that specific purpose. this stymied collective political expressions outside party politics, making it illegal to do so. as rodan explains, it also meant that 'opposition political parties and reformist social groups have no legal way of forming alliances or drawing on each other to mobilize support for their causes' (rodan 2003: 507). almost four decades on, few ngos operate from inside singapore. the very few that exist work within a very restrictive platform, so as not to annoy the pap regime. hence many tend to be largely ineffectual and do not create or play a significant role within singaporean civil society. the pap has a very thorny relationship with many prominent international ngos. prominent examples of external organizations that challenged the pap during the 1987 isa arrests are the world council of churches, asia watch, international commission of jurists (icj) and amnesty international. these ngos played pivotal roles rallying support for the 1987 detainees. naturally, ngos of such ilk find it difficult to gain entry or to operate even on an ad hoc basis in singapore. an example of this was the denial of the prominent icj barrister's access to singaporean courts to do pro-bono work for an opposition politician (lloyd-smith 2002). there is a strong view among some expatriates and community leaders that the singaporean embassies and their foreign missions try to control the activities of expatriate communities and their community organizations, be they singaporean students studying overseas or migrant communities.2 cognisant of their lack of control over expatriate communities, the pap decided to embark on several initiatives, most 12 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 marc rerceretnam __________________________________________________________ prominently the formation of the singapore international foundation (sif) in the early 1990s. according to the sif website, the foundation aims to 'connect singaporeans in the international community'. the effectiveness of the sif is though highly debatable and their influence among expatriate communities overseas is equally questionable. for example, a community leader based in australia claimed that no one knows of or has contact with the sif in australia. this author strongly feels this to be the case in many countries.3 hence, while the pap may enjoy almost complete control of social, economic and political facets of singaporean life, the same cannot be said of expatriate communities and foreign-based ngos. the pap's control of ngos and especially foreign-based student groups and community organizations, was and is sporadic at best. resistance in an authoritarian landscape in addition to the notorious internal security act (isa), which allows for detention without a judicial trial, citizens fear that any criticism directed towards the pap will be punished in ways that can directly affect their income or way of life (selvan 1990: 300). challenging the status quo is therefore not an option open to the vast majority of people. by the late 1970s, the pap government adopted a more discreet line of attack against its local critics: the state-controlled judiciary came to be used, via spurious defamation suits, to discredit and more importantly to bankrupt opponents. this tactic was so successful that the pap government even began using it against international publications like newsweek, far eastern economic review, asian wall street journal, time, the economist and the international herald tribune (chee 2001: 173-80). by the 1980s most elements of resistance to the authoritarian rule of lee kuan yew and the people's action party (pap) had been largely neutralized. the political outlook and any ensuing responses by the ordinary singaporean citizenry was at best muted. the fear of governmental retribution was constant. consequently many felt the price for dissension was far too high and accepted whatever conditions were dealt to them. singaporeans felt the pap's political, social and financial power very deeply. the whole process was primarily an 'interaction' between the 'powerful' and the 'powerless' (foucault 1980: 119). put simply, what was gained from this 'interaction' was employment and a standard of living unattainable in any other southeast asian country. _________________________________________________________________________ 13 _____________________________ the 1987 isa arrests and international civil society political purges political purges in post-independence singapore occurred throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and most recently in 2002. the infamous 'operation cold store' isa arrests of february 1963 showed how the pap government, with the support of the british authorities, was prepared to take any and all measures to curtail political threats, no matter how legitimate. in contrast to the earlier isa arrests, the purge of 1987 acted as a catalyst for local and expatriate singaporeans alike and their many overseas supporters to challenge the pap's anti-democratic hegemony. the strong international interest shown during the 1987 isa arrests compares markedly to other pap crackdowns past and present. even the recent use of the isa in 2002 to arrest 21 alleged terrorists did not stir similar levels of protest, despite the fact that the government has made no attempt to prove their case in a court of law. there is one striking difference between the 1987 isa detainees and their counterparts that came before or after them: the latter appeared not to have strong links with regional or international organizations. for example, detainees from 'operation cold store' were primarily local trade unionists, opposition politicians, student and civic groups (minchin 1986: 127-28). the recent 2002 arrests were centred around muslim-based groups, arguably with limited connections to influential ngos. this problem is compounded by the prevailing anti-islamic, post-9/11 environment which discourages support for such groups (rahim 2003: 209). conditions leading up to 1987 by the 1980s, major changes were taking place regionally. regional perceptions and concerns began to widen and become more inclusive. this worked hand in hand with the emergence of ngos in many countries in the region. by the 1980s, modern media such as television, video and facsimile machines were cheaper and international telephone services accessible. back in the early 1960s, such aids to communication were but a 'pipedream' for many an activist. the accessibility to new communications technology helped various advocates create and strengthen links outside their domestic circle. these links played a pivotal role in the protest campaign against the 1987 isa arrests. in addition to this, many of the 1987 isa detainees were english-language proficient and professionally trained; indeed, some had worked 14 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 marc rerceretnam __________________________________________________________ in regional ngos in places like hong kong. many also personally knew or were acquainted with earlier groups of exiles like tan wah piow who lived in western europe.4 background to the 1987 'marxist conspiracy' in may 1987, singapore's ministry of home affairs (mha) claimed that a 'marxist conspiracy' threatened to overthrow the singapore government. they claimed arrests had averted this international conspiracy, based in london, to establish a communist state in singapore (straits times [hereafter st], 27 may 1987). the accused 'leader' of this scheme was mr tan wah piow, who at the time was living in london. his singaporean agent was reported mr vincent cheng, a lay worker in the local catholic church. together tan and cheng reportedly controlled a network of idealistic agents that extended far beyond catholic church circles. this included a number of solicitors, former uk-educated returned students and therefore associates of tan wah piow in london, some student activists, and persons connected with local drama circles (st, 27 may, 21 june, 20 july 1987). 1987 isa arrests: initial reactions the arrests began in the early hours of the 21 may 1987, and within weeks 22 people had been detained, for varying periods of time. most were social workers, dramatists, and catholic church welfare workers, detained on the pretence that they were part of a 'marxist conspiracy' intent on overthrowing the government (echrs, 20 july 1987: 7; seow 1994: 67). while there is little doubt that the 1987 arrests had a big impact on the lives of the detainees and their families and friends, its influence was felt much farther afield than this. outside singapore a myriad of individuals, informal groups and ngos for the first time found themselves united by a common cause. overseas attention was particularly strong in the 1987 arrests, compared to arrests in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. major regional publications such as asia week, far eastern economic review and even the kuala lumpur-based the star newspaper followed the isa arrests very closely. articles in these publications were generally critical of the pap government and cynical of the marxist allegations, as many were in fact practising christians. a mere five weeks after the initial arrests, then foreign minister s. rajaratnam complained that over 200 organiza_________________________________________________________________________ 15 _____________________________ the 1987 isa arrests and international civil society tions from around the world had sent protest letters to the government (echrs, 31 august 1987: 3). apart from the very active role played by detainee support groups and several opposition political parties in singapore, overseas singaporeans, small and large international groups, and even malaysians (their support predates the malaysian government's own detentions several months later) played a disproportionately large role in highlighting and publicizing the inequities of the pap government arrests. why did foreign organizations and expatriate singaporean communities play such a prominent role? previous political purges and the development of a loose network of singaporean exiles former student leaders of the university of singapore students' union from the early 1970s, some of whom had been implicated as ringleaders of the 'marxist conspiracy', were instrumental in drumming up opposition to the singaporean government during the 1987 arrests. mr tan wah piow, long exiled in london, mr tsui hon kwong, in hong kong, and several other ex-student union activists living in the netherlands and france acted as catalysts for the growing resistance to the pap government.5 this network formed in response to the 1987 arrests was named the european committee on human rights in malaysia and singapore or 'kehmas' for short. according to the netherlands-based international institute of social history website, kehmas was initiated as part of a malaysia/singapore workgroup, the latter group set up in 1974.6 unlike earlier political purges, this group of tertiary-educated individuals was more professionally mobile in comparison to their earlier political counterparts. over the years, many relocated to first world countries where they established themselves professionally. tan wah piow played a prominent role in arousing pro-democratic sentiments when he fled to london in the mid-1970s. according to one interviewee who was a uk-based student at the time, tan loomed large over progressive circles in the singaporean and malaysian student communities of the day.7 the trend continues with the likes of mr tang liang hong in 1997 and mr zulfikar mohamad shariff in 2002 (straits times interactive, 24 july 2002). a large number of past and present activists continue to make an effort to leave singapore, even for a short period of time, usually for further studies or employment. this constantly feeds small but grow16 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 marc rerceretnam __________________________________________________________ ing enclaves of anti-pap resistance in the asia-pacific region, the usa and europe. so far we have discussed secular-based opposition to the pap; however the issue of religious opposition, particularly from the roman catholic church, should be taken seriously. the borderless nature of any international belief system must worry the pap government immensely. unlike a religion, the control of the pap government is confined to the limits of its small 660 square kilometre island. in contrast, the reach of organized religions like that of the roman catholic church is global, therefore the pap control of singaporeans could be tenuous in some scenarios. in addition, the solidarity that came to the fore during the 1987 isa arrests, including support from other non-affiliated christian groups, shows that religion is a force to be reckoned with. more significantly, the line between religion and secularism appeared rather blurred among prominent people involved in the 1987 isa arrests and their support groups. while many had a strong belief system based on religious doctrine and teachings, they also appeared to be strongly rooted in the realities of modern secularist society. this multifaceted approach gave them a formidable advantage and shows clearly through the substantial support accorded to them in the aftermath of the arrests in may 1987. the rise of an outspoken, english language-proficient middle class the economic ascendancy of singapore in the 1960s brought in its wake a new affluent generation in the 1970s and 1980s. for example, between 1960 and the 1992, the per capital gross national product increased seventeen fold (rodan 1996: 19). by 1988, 503 respondents to a press survey claimed to identify themselves as 'middle class' – statistically 75 per cent of singaporeans8 (rodan 1996: 29). indeed, lee kuan yew acknowledged in 1987 that 'our society has become 80 per cent middle class' (rodan 1996: 30). unlike their parents, this new generation looked to other areas for socio-economic and political inspiration. familiarity with post-colonial concepts of equality, justice and democracy played a large role in how many comprehended the world around them. despite government policies that economically, socially and politically segregated communities along racial lines, among the english-educated middle classes, issues such as race, religion, language or gender were to some extent losing their significance in post-colonial singapore. growing _________________________________________________________________________ 17 _____________________________ the 1987 isa arrests and international civil society economic success in the southeast asia region in a similar way broke down barriers between fellow regional, middle-class compatriots. this led many to question the contradictions and inequities long accepted by previous generations. with economic success in singapore and the rise of the new middle class, many families found they could afford to send their children to study abroad. the popularity of overseas tertiary studies in the 1980s coincided with the commercialization of education in many englishspeaking western countries. the usa, canada, the united kingdom, australia and new zealand were (and still are) the countries of choice for tertiary education (mazzarol and hosie 1999). misgivings about the singaporean tertiary educational system, plus the high government-imposed second-language requirements for acceptance into local universities, forced many more abroad. more importantly when based overseas, many singaporeans began to see through the naïve pap view of society and the world. away from the constrained singapore media, government infrastructure and political system, they began to see gaping holes in the traditional authoritarian rationale of lee kuan yew's pap.9 when abroad many young singaporeans found themselves left in a much more politically plural, multicultural, multinational and multiracial environment than in singapore. their social circles, while still often within the context of a local singaporean student clique, often included students from southeast asia or the wider asian region. this inculcated a new affinity between students, inspiring a pan-asian identity on campus. unfettered by the real or imagined prying eyes of the police and isd, and inspired by youthful optimism and exuberance, some began working (to varying degrees) in support of causes outlawed or frowned upon at home. western colonial cultural barriers crumble away in the 1980s in the 1980s massive changes were taking place in countries such as australia, canada, new zealand, the uk and the usa. large-scale immigration from the asia-pacific region began in earnest around this period, and this facilitated the dismantling of long-held barriers to socialization with persons of asian descent. it was also during this period that local community and political organizations began taking an interest in the region and began supporting pro-democracy causes. 18 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 marc rerceretnam __________________________________________________________ the interaction between the host countries and the overseas student communities played a very important role in influencing singaporean and other overseas students. political views, lifestyles, philosophies and practices were adopted and brought back to singapore. use of new technologies in the 1980s new technologies that facilitated global communication were fast become affordable. fax machines, videos, personal computers/word processors and cheaper direct dialling phone services were now far more accessible to students and community organizations alike. many student groups also had easy access to university-funded facilities. local student government bodies were often very supportive and would not only provide political support but also give open access to a full range of modern office, telecommunications and even sometimes tv and radio facilities. a perfect example of this was a publication called the emergency committee for human rights in singapore. this fortnightly newsletter was relayed around the world via a simple office fax machine from christchurch in new zealand and was one of the main sources that helped garner international support for the 1987 detainees. in australia local singaporean support groups such as the network of overseas students collective in australia (nosca) enjoyed extensive use of university union facilities. facsimile machines, photocopying and computer-based desktop publishing technology allowed for the rapid production of high-quality literature, publications and media releases. this helped facilitate the organizing of public meetings and the co-ordination of protest actions in support of the isa detainees. internationalization of non-governmental organizations the broadening outlook of the professional and middle classes in the 1980s was facilitated by the concept of the 'pacific community', which gained popularity mainly via governmental, business and intellectual circles. this vernacular naturally seeped into community circles soon after and was taken up in earnest by some non-governmental organizations (ngos) based in various capital cities in the region. growing regional economic success brought with it greater economic interdependence between communities, which in turn fuelled local versions _________________________________________________________________________ 19 _____________________________ the 1987 isa arrests and international civil society of regionalism (yamamoto 1995: xi). in this new climate and driven by the new professional and middle-class communities, many new and existing ngos formed linkages that formerly would not have been possible, due to differing nationalist or domestic concerns. however by the 1980s, these concerns began to encompass issues outside traditional boundaries. this new incipient ngo movement helped to highlight the plight of the singaporean detainees in 1987. this paper has compiled a list of organizations and influential individuals that officially supported the 1987 isa detainees. to date a total of 64 organizations and opinion makers have been identified – many ad hoc organizations alongside more established religious, academic, governmental, student and professional bodies; these are listed in the appendix to this paper. this list should however be much longer. as pointed out earlier in this article by the then foreign minister s. rajaratnam, probably well in excess of 200 organizations and individuals sent protest letters to the government of the day. as the pap government presently holds this information, there is little likelihood of this listing ever being made public. who were these groups? the groups and individuals contained in the listing (see appendix) can be broken down into six broad categories; ad hoc, church, student, professional, governmental/political groups, and miscellaneous entries for groups and individuals. ad hoc groups 3 church groups 20 ngos 20 student groups 5 professional/academic 6 government/political groups 4 miscellaneous entries for groups and individuals 10 there are far too many organizations to examine individually, so this paper will be picking out specific organizations that played a significant role at the time.10 20 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 marc rerceretnam __________________________________________________________ ad hoc groups these groups were set up to address the 1987 isa arrests and in most cases were disbanded soon after 1988. they were located in malaysia, philippines, kyoto, hong kong, sydney and various west european cities. however, the more prominent groups appeared to be operating out of europe, sydney, hong kong and malaysia. in this category the emergency committee for human rights in singapore (echrs) played a disproportionately large role in publicizing the plight of the isa detainees. the echrs was based in christchurch, new zealand and published a fortnightly newsletter between 26 may 1987 to (approximately) 3 october 1988. according to one interviewee, this christchurch-based group were 'friends' with some of the isa detainees. however, this was definitely not their sole motive for support. they apparently had strong views on the poor state of human rights and democracy under the pap government. the echrs was funded by a church organization, probably the christian conference of asia, which was later expelled from singapore in december 1987.11 another group worthy of mention is 'kehmas'. according to interviewees, this group was set up solely in response to the 1987 isa arrests. the group was established jointly by mr tan wah piow, the supposed 'ringleader' of the accused marxist plotters, and several other pro-democracy singaporeans based in various european cities. according to the pap government, tan master-minded the 'marxist conspiracy to subvert the existing social and political system in singapore through communist united front tactics to establish a communist state' (seow 1994: 69). despite its ad-hoc beginnings, 'kehmas' was still active on indigenous penan issues as late as 1992. church groups numerically the largest group in this list is that of church-based organizations; a total of 19 altogether. malaysian church leaders were quick off the mark with a pastoral letter (2 june 1987) signed by the three malaysian bishops supporting their singaporean counterparts' right to involve themselves in social and economic matters.12 support from this category was extensive with protest letters coming from the hong kong, south korea, new zealand, the uk, australia, philippines, sri lanka and japan. _________________________________________________________________________ 21 _____________________________ the 1987 isa arrests and international civil society non-government organizations (ngos) these groups played a significant role in publicizing and highlighting the unlawful nature of the arrests. for example, various amnesty international offices 'adopted' 12 singaporean detainees as 'prisoners of conscience'. the international commission of jurists (geneva), the international federation of human rights (paris) and the asian human rights commission (hong kong) were part of a prominent international delegation calling itself the international mission of jurists. they collectively went to singapore between 5 and 9 july 1987 to investigate circumstances surrounding the arrests.13 such initiatives by prominent professional and ngo bodies helped embarrass the pap government internationally. student groups the student groups appeared to be mainly based in sydney, australia and cambridge (uk). the cambridge university-based singaporean student group was still active in the early 1990s and was described by a contemporary as primarily being a political discussion group. however, a protest letter was sent by the cambridge university students union not the singaporean student group. one can only assume the issue was put to the student union by its singaporean members. in sydney, various singaporean and malaysian student groups appeared more willing to directly express disapproval at the 1987 isa arrests. the network of overseas student collectives in australia (nosca) also known as the overseas student collective (osc) was set up by two malaysian architecture students at the university of nsw in 1980. for the next five years the group was, like its cambridge university counterpart, a rather ineffectual discussion group. however, by the mid-1980s the group began to grow in size and influence. nosca did not limit itself to malaysian or singaporean issues and adopted a very regional perspective, cultivating extensive links with regional ngos, international activists groups and other like-minded australian organizations. nosca was involved in campaigns on environmental deforestation and human rights in malaysia, china, indonesia and the philippines. they also advocated against the exploitation of foreign students, particularly in substandard australian private 'colleges', and were supportive of local australian aboriginal communities during the bicentenary celebrations in 1988. nosca organized its activities via various sydney-based student union groups at sydney university, the university of new south wales 22 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 marc rerceretnam __________________________________________________________ and the new south wales institute of technology (later renamed the university of technology, sydney). between 1987 and 1988, the group held numerous public meetings on the 1987 isa arrests, produced literature, ran media campaigns and also lobbied student organizations and australian politicians in support of the detainees. during this period nosca formed the malaysia singapore human rights commission, which was utilized as a body to address the isa arrests in singapore and the later arrests in malaysia the following year. in 1989, nosca even 'crashed' an informal singaporean expatriate buffet attended by the then brigadier-general lee hsien loong (now prime minister) at the former regent hotel at sydney's cities circular quay district. a few non-singaporean supporters unknowingly handed anti-isa leaflets to the younger lee and chanted anti-pap slogans very much to the embarrassment of lee and the embassy staff.14 miscellaneous entries for groups and individuals this group was difficult to categorise as many were simply identified ambigiously as a set of unidentified groups or a collection of individual from a larger body. for example, 55 members of the united states congress 'condemning the detentions' was reported in december 1987. in another case, 'one third' or 34 members of the new zealand parliament 'expressed … extreme concern' in april 1988.15 in other examples 14 members of the japanese diet and 39 'legal academics and lawyers' from the united kingdom, australia and new zealand signed a letter opposing the arrests.16 conclusion this paper has sought to demonstrate how the isa arrests of 1987 acted as a catalyst for local and expatriate singaporeans and their supporters, to challenge the pap's anti-democratic hegemony. unusually intense international interest shown during the 1987 arrests compares significantly to other pap political crackdowns, past and present. the circumstances surrounding this event had one distinct difference in comparison to earlier political purges. international support was much easier to garner after the 1980s, owing to a growing climate of regionalism. linkages between different ngos pushed many to encompass issues outside their traditional boundaries. the associated groups and arrestees had strong links with regional and international organizations. even recent isa arrests, such as the one involving the accused _________________________________________________________________________ 23 _____________________________ the 1987 isa arrests and international civil society jemaah islamiyah (ji) conspirators in 2002, judging by international reactions, arguably have limited connections to influential ngos. it is difficult to accurately measure the influence of ngo actions in the wake of the 1987 isa arrests. it is undeniable, judging by the sheer weight of criticism levelled by a large number of ngos and other organizations that there was a massive sea change in how such issues were perceived internationally. taking into account the ineffectual status of indigenous ngos as a result of the amended societies act (1968), the ensuing pressure placed on the pap government showed that expatriate communities, when working together, can wield considerable political clout. these internationally based communities were outside the control of the pap regime and played a strong role in pressuring the regime. for example, student groups such as the nosca worked from different sydney-based university campuses'. similarly, khemas – a collection of singaporean activists and dissidents then based across western europe – criticized and questioned the legitimacy of claims made by the pap regime. and last but not least, the emergency committee for human rights in singapore (echrs), based in new zealand, was the primary source of information for the international press and ngos. the pap, cognisant of their worsening state of control, especially over expatriate singaporean communities, launched a programme to strengthen vital links. it is noteworthy that these linkages are supervised largely through their foreign embassies or consulates. for example, the singapore international foundation (sif) was set up to 'connect' with singaporean communities overseas. it is more likely, judging from the pap's poor public relations experience during the 1987 arrests, that their primary aim was also to monitor, influence and where possible attempt to control expatriate singaporean communities. however judging from feedback from some present-day community leaders, to date these initiatives appear to have been rather ineffectual. apart from the fundamental changes to the regional political landscape, the 1987 isa campaigns were aided by several other important elements. accessibility to new media-related technology, the upsurge in social and economic mobility among dissenting professionals, a growing acceptance of democratic ideals, the breaking down of traditional cultural and language barriers, and the increasing awareness by host communities of foreign issues such as the 1987 arrests, helped strengthen opposition to the pap regime. 24 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 marc rerceretnam __________________________________________________________ hence while the pap may enjoy almost complete control within the island state, this does not apply to expatriate singaporean communities and sympathetic, foreign-based ngos. judging by the outcomes from the 1987 isa arrests, the pap's control of ngos, and especially foreignbased student groups and community organizations, has proved to be sporadic and ineffectual. dr marc rerceretnam is a research academic at the university of western sydney, australia. appendix: list of organizations that officially supported the 1987 isa detainees. the following information was collated from various issues of the 'emergency committee for human rights in singapore', published from 26 may 1987 to 3 october 1988 and from observations made by interviewees. 1. emergency committee for human rights in singapore (christchurch, new zealand) 2. human rights support group for the singapore 18 (m'sia) 3. christian conference of asia (based in singapore, expelled on 30 dec. 1987) 4. archbishop of malaysia, soter fernandez (m'sia) 5. national union of journalists (m'sia) 6. free singapore 16 (philippines) 7. perak education and research assoc for consumers (m'sia) 8. various catholic organizations and regional asian organizations (hong kong) 9. '9 human rights, religious affairs and student work led by … lawyer mr thongbai thongpao'' (thailand) 10. 'churches and ecumenical bodies … coalition of lawyers, academics and community leaders' (kyoto, japan) 11. national council of churches (s korea) 12. network of overseas students collectives in australia (also known as the oversea student collective) (sydney, australia) 13. uts sa overseas student dept (sydney, australia) 14. unsw su overseas student services (sydney, australia) 15. sydney university src overseas student dept (sydney, australia) 16. malaysian & singaporean human rights commission (sydney, australia) 17. national council of churches (nz) 18. catholic commission for evangelisation, justice & development (nz) 19. university of auckland, law faculty (nz) 20. university of canterbury, law faculty (nz) 21. american friends' service committee (hawaii, usa) 22. asiawatch (washington, usa) _________________________________________________________________________ 25 _____________________________ the 1987 isa arrests and international civil society 23. national council of churches (new york, usa) 24. amnesty international (london, uk) 25. 'various church groups' (london, uk) 26. international commission of jurist (geneva, switzerland) 27. international league of human rights (paris, france)17 28. australian catholic bishop george pell (melbourne, australia) 29. australian anglican archbishop david penman (melbourne, australia) 30. kansai emergency committee on human rights in singapore (kyoto, japan) 31. international mission of jurist; — icj (geneva) — international federation of human rights (paris) — asian human rights commission (hk) — lawasia (sydney)18 32. tan sri dr tan chee koon, ex-leader of msian parliamentary opposition (m'sia) 33. japan civil liberties union 34. 'eight legal academics and lawyers from australia' (australia) 35. philippines catholic bishop francisco claver (p'ppines) 36. friends of singapore (hk) 37. presbyterian church (atlanta, usa) 38. bishop bede heather (parramatta, sydney, australia)19 39. national council of churches of christ (usa) 40. church committee for human rights in asia (chicago, usa) 41. harvard university alumni (usa) 42. '30 religious … women's, peasants', workers', development, media, theatre, and civil rights groups' (sri lanka) 43. christian workers' fellowship (sri lanka) 44. archbishop of perth, most rev w foley (perth, australia) 45. corso (nz)20 46. '14 members of the japan diet' (japan)21 47. '39 legal academics and lawyers from the uk, australia and new zealand signed a letter' (aust, uk, nz)22 48. amnesty international (fitzwilliam college, cambridge uni, uk) 49. cambridge university students' union (cambridge, uk) 50. us dept of state 51. amnesty international (saskeatchewan/ontario/winnipeg, canada) 52. 'letters signed by 55 members of congress condemning the detentions' (usa)23 53. 'one third … nz parliament (34 mps) … expressing … extreme concern' (nz) 54. amnesty international (canada) 55. amnesty international (hong kong)24 56. american bar association (usa) 57. the lawyers' committee for human rights (usa) 58. nelson riis, new democrat house leader (canada) 59. s'pore and m'sian british association simba (uk) 60. 'tokyo's catholic community' (japan) 61. the national christian council in japan (japan) 62. international young christian workers (hk) 63. korea christian action organisation (s korea)25 khemas (various european cities) 26 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 marc rerceretnam __________________________________________________________ notes 1 'operation spectrum' is the official name given by the pap government to the isa arrests in 1987. 2 interview with mr m. [anonymous], 9 august 2004; interview with mr lim teik hock, 20 august 2004. 3 interview with mr lim teik hock, 20 august 2004. 4 interview with ms y. [anonymous], 4 july 2004, sydney. 5 interview with ms y. [anonymous], 4 july 2004, sydney. 6 mehmet bilgen, undated, accessed 16 october 2004. 7 interview with mr lim teik hock, 20 august 2004, sydney. 8 the general conception of the middle classes being; earning at least s$2,000 per month, owning a threeor four-bedroom flat, and having a person in the family with a tertiary education. 9 interview with mr m., 2 january 2006. 10 these organizations were categorized according to their affiliations. much of this information was provided in the echrs newsletter and where not forthcoming, was backed up via internet searches for the purposes of this study. after two decades, many listed organizations no longer exist; however their names indicate their purpose or affiliation. 11 interview with ms y. [anonymous], 4 july 2004, sydney, australia. 12 'marxist plot revisited: reactions of the church in singapore'. accessed 16 oct. 2004: singapore-window.org/sw01/010521m3.htm. 13 ibid. 14 interview with mr m. [anonymous], 9 august 2004, sydney, australia. 15 echrs, 21 december 1987: 9-12 and 25 april 1988: 6-9. 16 echrs, 31 august 1987: 3 and 2 october 1987: 3. 17 echrs, 13 june 1987: 3-6. 18 echrs, 2 july 1987: 3. 19 echrs, 15 july 1987: 2-9. 20 echrs, 12 august 1987: 6-9. 21 echrs, 31 august 1987: 3. 22 echrs, 2 october 1987: 3. 23 echrs, 21 december 1987: 9-12. 24 echrs, 25 april 1988: 6-9. 25 echrs, 3 october 1988: 9-12. references barr, m. 2003. 'perpetual revisionism in singapore: the limits of change'. the pacific review 16 (1). london: taylor & francis. bilgen, mehmet. 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'class transformations and political tensions in singapore's development'. in r. robison and d. goodman (eds), the new rich in asia. london: routledge. — 2003. 'embracing electronic media but suppressing civil society: authoritarian consolidation in singapore'. the pacific review 16(4). london: taylor and francis. selvan, t. s. 1990, singapore the ultimate island: lee kuan yew's untold story, melbourne: freeway books. seow, francis t. 1994. to catch a tartar: a dissident in lee kwan yew's prison. new haven, ct: yale university southeast asian studies. — 1998. the media enthralled: singapore revisited. boulder, co: lynne rienner publishers. straits times. 27 may 1987; 21 june 1987; 20 july 1987. straits times interactive. 2002. 'singapore muslim activist flees to australia'. 24 july. wan, d., hui, t. k. and tiang, l. 2003. 'factors affecting singaporeans' acceptance of international postings'. personnel review 32 (6). willis, k. d. and yeoh, b. s. a. 2000. 'gender and transnational household strategies: singaporean migration to china'. regional studies 34(3). yamamoto, tadashi (ed.) 1995. emerging civil society in the asia pacific community singapore: iseas. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. 62 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 oshie nishimura-sahi fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland: an autoethnographic study of a phd journey oshie nishimura-sahi abstract while the japanese education system and policy have been studied extensively, japanese philosophy and thoughts have rarely served as a theoretical and methodological resource in the field of comparative and international education. resonating with a current scholarly attempt to explore the possibilities and limitations of using japan as an epistemic resource, i have experimented with drawing upon japanese philosophical thinking, namely watsuji tetsurō’s (1889-1960) comparative phenomenological study, to analyse the current foreign language education reforms in japan. in this paper, i tell the story of my thought experiment in which i explore autoethnographically how my epistemic mindset has changed during my phd journey through a slow dialogue with watsuji’s study on milieu, relationality and ontological inquiry into human beings. aiming to multiply the epistemological resources for educational research, i analyse reflexively the way in which i was destabilised by japanese philosophy in (un)learning educational practices in japanese contexts. in so doing, i explore how ‘foreign’ educational comparativists might be able to move beyond the storyteller role in foreign contexts or the expert role in home contexts and, accordingly, contribute to promoting a pluralistic knowledge production. keywords: comparative and international education; knowledge production; policy transfer; watsuji tetsurō introduction in the field of educational research in general, and comparative and international education in particular, japan has been extensively studied in terms of prominent reference societies in asia (see santos this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v41i1.6886. © oshie nishimura-sahi published under the creative commons license (cc by). 63 fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland and centeno 2021), a point of comparison (e.g. takayama 2012; takeda and williams 2008) and a comparative link in global educational governance (e.g. willis and rappleye 2011; yonezawa et al. 2018). while the japanese education system and policy have been studied extensively, japanese philosophy and thoughts have rarely served as a theoretical and methodological resource for educational research in the large body of international english-language literature. to put it differently, japan has been a data source or an ‘empirical other’ where ‘theories are applied, revised or domesticated’ (takayama 2019: 147) rather than an ‘epistemic other’ that provides a source of new theoretical insights and develops alternative theories (ibid.:153). a group of scholars recently explored the possibility of using japan as an epistemic resource in conducting comparative education, aiming to multiply the epistemological framework to study and highlight the more pluralistic worldview in education (e.g. hayashi 2021; komatsu and rappleye 2017; rappleye 2020; takayama 2020). resonating with this recent scholarly attempt, i have experimented with the use of japanese philosophical thinking, namely watsuji tetsurō’s (1889-1960) comparative phenomenological study in examining the current foreign language education reforms in japan. in this paper, i explore autoethnographically how my epistemic mindset has changed during my phd journey through a slow dialogue with watsuji’s study on milieu, relationality and ontological inquiry into human beings. aiming to increase the epistemological resources for educational research, i tell the story of my thought experiment in which i was destabilised by japanese philosophy in (un)learning educational practices in the japanese contexts. i took a particular interest in watsuji among other prominent japanese scholars, such as nishida kitarō, kuki shūzō and minakata kumagusu, as watsuji’s phenomenological comparative approach addresses a current scholarly need in comparative and international education. recently, educational comparativists have utilised their biography or lived experiences of visiting or living in a foreign country, aiming to extend the ways of academic knowledge production (see kim 2020). for instance, scholars have attempted to go beyond the foreign researcher’s role as a storyteller of a system abroad or an expert in their home context (takayama 2011; unterhalter 2020). scholars have argued that it is not enough for travelling researchers with experiences of sojourn to bring the implications and lessons ‘home’ to those who lack experience abroad to improve the home system. it is also not 64 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 oshie nishimura-sahi enough for foreign researchers to provide ‘authentic’ information as local experts. instead, researchers living within transnational mobility are required to proactively participate in knowledge production by not only comparing the home system and foreign systems but also reflexively analysing their own lived experiences (see kim 2020). i perceive an inherent potential in watsuji’s phenomenological comparative study that enables comparativists to expand the epistemological potential of comparative educational research by other means. in this paper, engaging in autoethnography, i explore how foreign educational comparativists could further contribute to promoting a pluralistic knowledge production, going beyond the role of itinerant storytellers or foreign experts. it is worth mentioning here that watsuji is just one example with which to start a thought experiment toward enriching the ‘frames of references’ (chen 2010) for educational research. i do not argue that watsuji is the best option to proliferate frames of reference adopting japan as the epistemic other.1 i acknowledge that using watsuji as an alternative reference entails a risk of promoting cultural essentialism that categorises people within a distinct, fixed and unchangeable ‘culture’ and being labelled as a nationalistic and conservative educational researcher (see lafleur 1996).2 however, given these risks and the limitation of using watsuji, this study attempts to start from scratch and explores the possibility of salvaging watsuji’s art of phenomenological comparison from the nationalistic and essentialist nature that was used for japanese fascism during the asia-pacific war. in this regard, this paper does not primarily aim to proclaim the conceptual and theoretical effectiveness of watsuji in terms of comparative educational research. rather, it calls on researcher colleagues to engage in further discussion on the use of japanese philosophy as an ‘epistemic other’ in general – not limited to watsuji but also extending to other japanese thinkers and shinto cosmology, among others (e.g. see jensen and blok 2013; jensen, ishii and swift 2016; takayama 2020) – toward increasing the epistemic resources for social studies. in sum, this paper attempts to raise a question among readers, especially those who work on japan-related topics, on the possibilities, limitations and pitfalls of knowledge production projects that adapt a conceptual ‘insertion’ from japanese philosophy. the nature of this paper is thus experimental: it ultimately aims to open a space for fruitful discussions between researchers living in our own scholarly 65 fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland community so that we can find a new way of collaboration between japanese studies and the wider disciplines in social studies such as education.3 policy transfer and foreign language education reform in japan in this paper, i reflect autoethnographically on how my epistemological perspective has changed during the course of my phd journey while revisiting my familiar research topic through the lens of watsuji. in the following, i briefly introduce the topic and the initial research ideas of my ongoing doctoral dissertation. in 2018, i commenced my doctoral studies on policy transfer, taking japan as an empirical case to examine how the common european framework of reference for languages (hereafter cefr) was adapted to foreign language education reforms in the non-european context. the cefr is one of the global education policies in language education which exerts ‘unquestionable influence’ (figueras 2012: 477) on language learning, teaching and assessment in europe and beyond (byram and parmenter 2012). japan is one of the countries where the cefr has been increasingly adapted to educational reform projects at the national and institutional levels to shift the ‘old’ grammarand translation-oriented pedagogy to ‘modern’ communicative language teaching (nishimura-sahi 2020). in the initial dissertation writing stage, i was interested in analysing why and how japan ‘failed’ to borrow the cefr in the reform of foreign language education. in retrospect, i had taken for granted a prolonged criticism of foreign language education in japan that assumes it as a failing system and thus one to be improved and modernised. since the late 1980s, effective communicative language teaching – particularly english language teaching – has been on the national policy agenda in japan, based on an understanding that the international economic competitiveness of the country can be enhanced by improving the english language proficiency of japanese people (erikawa 2018; kubota 2018). despite persistent efforts by the government, particularly the ministry of education, and the demands of the business sector for cultivating communicative english language proficiency since the 1980s (see erikawa 2018), post-war english language teaching in japan has been often perceived as a ‘failure’ due to the low level of english proficiency of a large group of japanese people (see aspinall 2013; 66 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 oshie nishimura-sahi horiguchi, imoto and poole 2015). seeking a solution to this educational and political challenge, researchers of comparative education have studied foreign language education policies, systems and curricula in different countries to learn from successful cases elsewhere, for instance, finland (see e.g. imai 2020; ito 2014; yonezaki 2020). in the initial phase of my doctoral study, i also attempted to learn from the ‘successful’ finnish case of foreign language education, having lived in finland for over a decade. in addition to the finnish success in communicative foreign language teaching, i was interested in finland’s foreign language education policy, which upholds the european idea(l)s for language education. the cefr’s primary educational idea(l) or the guiding philosophy (rappleye, imoto and horiguchi 2011) is to respect and promote plurilingualism, that is, ‘the dynamic and developing linguistic repertoire of an individual user/learner’ living in a multilingual society where different languages coexist at the social or individual level (council of europe 2020: 30; see also coste, moore and zarate 2009). in contrast to finland, in japan, the cefr has been adapted largely as a technical reform instrument (nishimura-sahi 2020). scholars problematise how the european ideology of plurilingualism accompanied by the cefr is not fully reflected in the cefr-oriented reform of foreign language education in japan (e.g. hosokawa and nishiyama 2010; torikai 2018). having followed this scholarly discussion, i was first interested in why and how the european idea(l) of plurilingualism ceased to appear in the course of policy transfer of the cefr to the japanese context. reading literature attempting to decolonise social thoughts (e.g. chen 2010; connell 2007; mignolo 2011), however, i became dissatisfied with my initial research questions, which were built on the eurocentric understanding of modernisation and civilisation. i had eventually come to the understanding that i had been taking the liberty of positioning the japanese system as ‘developing’ and the european and global education policy as ‘advanced’, while encouraging the value of progress, improvement and global competency (silova 2019). the literature on decolonialism in education motivated me to examine the japanese case of policy transfer from a different perspective, drawing upon a different epistemological base. searching for alternative concepts and analytical tools to study the japanese education system, i started reading japanese philosophy, including 67 fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland watsuji, and, accordingly, i became more interested in exploring how the power of the so-called ‘global’ is assembled in the course of policy transfer. in this autoethnographic study, i tell an autobiographical story of transformation through dialogues with the ‘epistemic other’, namely, watsuji’s study on fūdo (milieu) and dual characteristic of human existence. watsuji’s art of phenomenological comparison before starting my story of transformation, i will briefly introduce watsuji’s notions of fūdo and the dual nature of human existence which destabilised my perspective on the ‘unsuccessful’ policy transfer and ‘failing’ foreign language education system in japan. fūdo in the study on fūdo, watsuji (1991 [1935]) comparatively explored the emergence of cultures, societies and religions in different climatic regions. taking the three main climate types – monsoon, meadow and desert – as an example, watsuji described the ways of shaping fūdo in each region, by which he meant a socially and historically assembled entity of human beings, artefacts (e.g. architectures, household items and clothing), the social structure (e.g. industrial structure) and the natural environment (watsuji 1991 [1935]). in his book fūdo, reflecting on his experience of fourteen months’ sojourn in europe, watsuji attempted to shed new light on ‘japaneseness’ or the taken-for-granted tenet of japanese culture rather than to adapt external european models as a reference to improve the japanese system. using his experience of becoming a ‘foreign comparativist’ (rappleye 2017), watsuji revisited the domestic context in comparison to european urban scenes and explored how they have been constructed in time and emerged in the form of artefacts such as urban scenes, architects and living tools. on his return to japan at the end of his tour of europe, watsuji was made aware of the mezurashii (strange and valuable) character of japan and explored the nature of and the reason for the ‘strangeness’ (watsuji 1991 [1935]). he discovered the incongruity or the ‘absence of balance’ in the imported materials from the west, such as trams and cars. taking the sense of absence as the starting point of his comparative analysis, watsuji explored where the strange absence of proportion comes from and continued to reflect on what characterises japan’s modern civilisation. looking at the layout, function or character and circumstances 68 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 oshie nishimura-sahi of the japanese house, watsuji analysed how they involve (and are involved in) the ways of life in japan, comparing these to what he observed in the european urban scene. watsuji explained how he (re)discovered mezurashisa (strangeness and valuableness) in japan through a sojourn in europe as follows: [t]he normal condition in which i had lived and which i had grown used to seeing through the years remained identical; but there was exposed a much more fundamental condition lying underneath the surface which i had failed to perceive hitherto and which was now interpreted as rare or abnormal in contrast to what i had come to understand previously as normal. (watsuji 1988: 157) watsuji calls our attention to the materiality and explores the complex interplay of human beings, the natural environment and the society in which the environment has shaped our styles of living, architectural styles, house interiors, food culture and dōgu (tools) such as technological apparatuses and clothing. our need for textiles to make clothing and for charcoal to heat our houses causes the charcoal burners to produce charcoal in the mountains and the factories to manufacture textile products. in this way, we come to engage with each other individually and socially through various measures for protecting ourselves from the cold (watsuji 1988: 5). the status quo of society and cultures is not established by human beings as the subject but has been assembled through the inseparable interconnection with their environment. the entire interrelated network that exercises influence on our individual and social life is what watsuji means by the concept of fūdo. watsuji expands his discussion beyond the relationality between human existence to materials, the social structures and the natural environment in fūdo. watsuji points out that the phenomenon of cold is as much subjective as it is objective in that the cold air does not press upon us from the outside, but we exist out in the cold and discover the feeling of the cold. the experience of feeling the cold is not individual but collective and occurs in relationality because we do not experience the cold ‘i’ alone but ‘we’ experience the same cold in common with other people. this can be seen in our exchange of daily greetings in which we talk about the weather (watsuji 1988: 4). following the heideggerian phenomenological approach, watsuji expanded its analytical eye to spatiality, relationality and social aspects of human existence from individualism and temporality. 69 fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland the dual nature of human existence largely inspired and influenced by heidegger’s sein und zeit, watsuji elaborated his study of the relational nature of human existence with a focus on japanese terms. analysing the japanese term aidagara (interconnectedness between people), watsuji describes a cultural space that consists of interrelations among humans and the ties between humans, materials and their environment (heisig et al. 2011). referring to another japanese word ningen (a person, a human being) which literally refers to interspace or the relationship of one person to others, watsuji explains that we human beings are individuals, but simultaneously, social beings that can only exist in relationality. human beings have a dual nature as individuals and members of various social groups – such as family, local community and society – and that makes us inevitably social and relational beings. pointing out the limitation of individualism that heidegger’s dasein conveys, watsuji discussed the need to adequately explain ‘the vast network of interconnections that serves to make us what we are; individuals inescapably immersed in the space/time of a world, together with others’ (carter 2013: 134). watsuji points out the need to capture the social, temporal and cultural dimensions of human beings, and, more importantly, the interrelation or interconnectedness between these dimensions. watsuji’s discussion of these japanese terms touches upon kuan-hsing chen’s conception of translation, or a ‘a long process of negotiation’ in which ‘[t]he object to be translated has to be subjected to existing social forces and must negotiate with dense local histories if it is to take root in foreign soil’ (chen 2010: 244). watsuji argued that ningen, anthropos, homo, man and mensch refer to the same entity, but that the conceptions or social ontologies underlying these terms are different (watsuji 2007 [1934]: 20). that is, the ontology of so-called human beings is multiple. having introduced watsuji’s notions that enabled me to explore an alternative approach to studying foreign language education, i will now move on to explain my research data and autoethnographical methodology. autoethnography this paper uses my own experiences documented in the form of a diary from january 2015 to december 2021, situating its writing genre in autoethnography (ellis et al. 2011; maréchal 2010). using deep and 70 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 oshie nishimura-sahi careful self-reflection or reflexivity, i explore how my understanding of foreign language education in japan, european idea(l)s of plurilingualism and successful/unsuccessful policy transfers changed through reading watsuji. in so doing, i attempt to illustrate a sense-making process through telling a story about doing research (adams, holman jones and ellis 2021). i also explore the possibilities and the limitations of using japanese philosophy in educational research. autoethnography is a qualitative research method that draws upon different scholarly traditions such as autobiography, narrative studies, ethnography and art-based research (cooper and lilyea 2022). autoethnographers reflect their own lived experiences and write stories about the self, placing personal – insider – experiences within the social, cultural and political context. inviting readers/audiences to engage in the unfolding story of experience and seeking for their responses, autoethnographers offer nuanced and specific knowledge of particular lives rather than general information (adams, holman jones and ellis 2015). while the advantages of autoethnography have been increasingly recognised in academia, the reasons for engaging in autoethnography often vary depending on the researcher (adams, holman jones and ellis 2015). here, autoethnography is a way of inquiry to challenge norms of research practices and accordingly contribute to a scholarly discussion. engaging in reflexivity to ‘identify and interrogate the intersections between self and social life’ (adams, holman jones and ellis 2015: 3), i explore how personal experience became imbued with watsuji’s notions and destabilised my initial perception of japan’s failing policy transfer. fūdo in foreign language learning a day in japan in early summer 2017, i visited my hometown in southern osaka with my two sons. during our short stay in osaka, we spent a busy but enjoyable four weeks with our loved ones. while staying at my parents’ house, my sons attended a local elementary school. on the weekends, we went out to see our relatives and friends. my sons found new interests – such as nintendo games, japanese tv programmes and collecting pokemon cards – while spending time with their cousins and new friends from school. the more time the boys spent together with their japanese friends, the more they became interested in what others talked about and played with. i felt glad and relieved 71 fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland that my sons’ japanese language skills improved remarkably during that summer. reflecting on this experience in light of watsuji’s study on fūdo (milieu), i have come to see the significant role of dōgu (tools) in foreign language learning. dōgu or, namely, nintendo games and pokemon cards played a crucial role when my sons created and sustained aidagara (interconnectedness) with their japanese friends. these entertainment products served as the crucial tool which brought my sons into the japanese community. using these tools required them to acquire japanese abilities because most games, anime and manga distributed in japan are available only in japanese. nintendo games, pokemon cards, anime and manga are the products of the vast japanese games and publishing industry. the large scale of the japanese industry enables a wide selection of japanese entertainment contents. for instance, japan has world-famous game companies such as nintendo that produce a considerable amount of japanese language content targeting japanese consumers as a matter of course. in finland, in contrast to japan, the selection of finnish-language entertainment for teenagers, such as video games, music and youtube videos, is rather limited. the small population of finnish speakers may be the reason why the industry is not willing to produce much content in finnish language. much of the entertainment content distributed in finland is available only in english. thus, my sons need to be fluent in english so that they can join the conversation on the newly released games and viral tiktok songs and memes. if my boys do not improve their english, they will not be able to enjoy full membership in their community in finland. as watsuji discussed, human beings or ningen are individuals but simultaneously social beings. that is, ningen can only exist in a relationship or in connection to others. during our stay in japan, my sons enjoyed playing nintendo games and pokemon cards individually, but more importantly, collectively. my sons came to appreciate that to find their place in their japanese community, japanese is the ‘mustlearn’ language to connect them to the wider society, to allow them a social existence and to make them exist socially in the new world. a foreign language to be learned was collectively found by my sons and their friends rather than imposed by an education policy agenda. foreign language proficiency grows in an interconnectedness between people which is sustained by tools such as video games and card games. and these tools are the product of the industrial system that provides 72 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 oshie nishimura-sahi items according to people’s needs. there is a continuum of connections between the languages we learn, the tools we use in our everyday lives and the wider societal structure where such tools are manufactured. the fūdo of foreign language learning consists of social connectedness, various materials or ‘things’ (e.g. games, manga comic books) and the wider societal dimensions (e.g. the game and publishing industry). in this regard, the feasibility of the japanese ministry of education’s agenda, including improving the communicative english skills of all the japanese people, comes into question. achieving such a policy agenda in the japanese fūdo of foreign language learning would necessitate significant structural changes on various societal dimensions and a fundamental change in our way of life. it seems to me that such a drastic social change would not be welcomed by the majority of the people, and this would thus be rather unfeasible. instead, looking at the japanese system ‘failing’ differently, there emerges an alternative way: that is, to accept the status quo as part of fūdo and call for a reconsideration of the progressive reform-oriented discussion on english language teaching in japan. as watsuji discovered the mezurashii (strange and valuable) character of japan through a phenomenological comparison, i also identified another way of understanding the foreign language education system in japan. the japanese system is not necessarily a failure, and the finnish system is not necessarily the ‘best practice’ of foreign language education. through the lens of watsuji’s phenomenological comparison, the hierarchical positioning of these two systems could be conceptualised simply as a difference in fūdo. seeking a working educational reform model from elsewhere and imposing it as a policy recommendation to improve the domestic system is not the only contribution by educational comparativists. our contribution could be to propose an alternative perspective based on our lived experience as itinerant researchers, aiming to break the political discussion currently at an impasse and find a new pathway. a day in finland living in finland, i encounter various languages other than finnish and swedish.4 for instance, at the shops, i come across spanish, italian or french, among others on a daily basis. in finland, as in other nordic countries, vegetable farming is rather costly during the cold winter, if not impossible. many colourful vegetables, such as the tomatoes, 73 fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland cucumbers and paprikas sold in supermarkets are imported in wintertime from southern european countries. a vast selection of cheese and wine is also available at a reasonable price because of eu legislation, such as the treaty establishing the european economic community (eec), and the developed logistics system that enables cross-national mobility of goods and people. on the packages of many of these imported groceries, foreign languages – such as english and/or the language of the country of origin – are printed. i also spot multilingual signs printed on the packages of groceries and everyday household items. for instance, when i take a look at the cereal box on my kitchen shelf, there are multilingual signs written in finnish, swedish, norwegian and danish. in such a language landscape, spanish on a bag of leaf lettuce, french on a container of cheese, italian on a wine bottle and multilingual signs on a cereal box become part of my everyday life. consuming these imported goods, i sense a direct connection between myself and the country where the vegetables grow and where the cheese and wine are produced. the sense of connection arouses my interest in learning the languages which i see every day, intertwining with the multilingual landscape surrounding me. it is not only a matter of expanding my language repertoire for practical purposes but of building a new identity as a european citizen: ‘respecting linguistic and cultural diversity as a new european citizen, i should be able to speak more languages than english and finnish’. the sense of plurilingualism sinks into my thoughts as being inextricably linked to the sense of belonging to europe. it may be difficult to get many people to agree that the presence of several foreign languages printed on commercial products constitutes european plurilingualism. some would pay no heed to the foreign languages surrounding us. others would point out that they rarely call an imported product by its foreign name. while foreign words come into one’s view, these words are just there encased in a scenery of mundane moments of life. nothing more, nothing less. although the multilingual landscape is nothing special or meaningful to many europeans, it is quite mezurashii (strange and valuable) to me, having been born and brought up in japan. at a supermarket in japan, fresh domestic vegetables and fruits are available regardless of the season. the warm and humid climate enables the production of different kinds of domestic vegetables and fruits such as napa cabbages, mandarin oranges and shungiku or 74 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 oshie nishimura-sahi garland chrysanthemum even in winter. there is also a wide selection of groceries imported from elsewhere at some stores in japan, but most of them are ‘japanised’; that is, the exotic nature of the imported item is erased by re-packaging with japanese language and adding a sales presentation explaining how to use or ‘adapt’ the item to the japanese table. although many scholars disagree on the conception of japan as a monolingual society regarding the increasing population who speak a language other than japanese, the existence of the indigenous ainu and ryūkyū languages and the wide variety of dialects (ostheider 2010; shōji 2010; yasuda 2014) spoken in japanese society, there is only limited exposure to foreign languages in everyday life in japan.5 thus, i wonder if the sense of mezurashii i gained in finland has enabled me to see the language landscape differently than europeans do. i see the european language landscape as materialised plurilingualism rather than a set of product information written in foreign languages, compared to the monolingual landscape which i saw in japan. my foreignness might allow me to find mezurashisa in a mundane setting in a european country and to identify a tiny but integral piece which constitutes plurilingualism. i have always found value in linguistic and cultural diversity in a multi cultural society and believed that learning foreign languages enriches our lives not only for its practical benefit, but because it also enables us to learn new concepts that a foreign language contains. i therefore found it problematic that the japan ministry of education borrowed the cefr without the european idea(l) of plurilingualism. however, in comparing the fūdo of foreign language learning in finland and japan, i became sceptical about the assumption that plurilingualism can be ‘borrowed’ and thus should be properly ‘adapted’ to the japanese context. i have since come to think of the relevance of the criticism against the ignorance of the european ideology of plurilingualism in the current adaptation of the cefr to the japanese system. given that plurilingualism is formed in a particular fūdo, what is the significance of a normative-oriented policy transfer study which aims to examine a better practice of transplanting european plurilingualism into the japanese context? conclusion this paper explored how my epistemic mindset had become destabilised and transformed during my phd journey through a conversation with watsuji. watsuji’s notions of aidagara (interconnectedness between 75 fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland people), ningen (a person, a human being) and fūdo (milieu) allowed me to find alternatives to normative-oriented policy transfer research which aims to learn from somewhere else and adapt the learned ‘best practices’ to the japanese system for the sake of improvement. this thought experiment enabled me to reimagine comparative educational research in several ways. firstly, given watsuji’s conception of the dual nature of human beings, i have come to explore language learners not only as individuals but also as social beings who co-construct the environment of language usage. and drawing upon watsuji’s insight into the materiality and relationality in fūdo, i have come to take materials (e.g. groceries, games, tv programmes) and the societal structures (e.g. the culture industry and the climatic conditions) into account in my analysis to describe how they together constitute the fūdo of foreign language learning. taking school education as only one dimension that shapes one’s language proficiency, i have come to think more about the social aspect of language learning and identified a way to study the japanese case of policy transfer as something other than a case of malfunctioning policy borrowing and educational reform. secondly, drawing upon watsuji’s phenomenological notion of fūdo, i have come to think that plurilingualism is essentially not a reform idea that can be ‘borrowed’ from elsewhere to be adapted and implemented in another context. rather, plurilingualism can be conceptualised as a state of being that emerges in everyday practices in relation to the climatic conditions, the geopolitical settings and one’s own sense of identity. accordingly, i became uncertain of the significance of a normative-oriented study which critically examines how the idea(l) of plurilingualism ceased to appear in the course of policy transfer. watsuji’s notions allowed me to reflect and (un)learn the familiar context and critical approach to eurocentric progressivism in my epistemic mindset. this thought experiment enabled me to imagine further possibilities of foreign comparativists as comparative autoethnographers with a profound awareness of mezurashisa or strangeness. however, i also recognised a limitation or potential pitfall in drawing upon japanese philosophy for decolonialising knowledge production. using japanese philosophy stimulated my unconscious nationalistic sentiments. such sentiment, on the one hand, has encouraged me to contribute to developing epistemological resources by using otherness in myself from decolonial stand points. on the other hand, it makes a pitfall of thinking and speaking 76 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 oshie nishimura-sahi with an air of superiority that i know what others – europeans – do not know and i see what others cannot see. such an epistemic pride or arrogance should be critically and reflexively reflected upon when using our own otherness and foreignness for purposes of analysis. to conclude, i hope that this paper will serve as a modest invitation to researcher colleagues to reflect upon the use of their own biography and knowledge resources developed by the ‘epistemic other’, aiming at a pluriverse of epistemic resources. acknowledgments oshie nishimura-sahi received funding for conducting her fieldwork from the scandinavia-japan sasakawa foundation under grant rg19-0003. the author warmly thanks dr. vera skvirskaja for her generous editorial support. her deep appreciation also goes to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive comments. oshie nishimura-sahi is a doctoral researcher at the faculty of education and culture, tampere university in finland. her dissertation is concerned with the transnational mobility of educational reform ideas. her research interests include education export, multicultural and intercultural education, foreign language education policy and education systems in japan and finland. email: oshie.nishimura-sahi@tuni.fi notes 1 neither do i see watsuji as the representative of japanese thinkers embodying japaneseness or praising japanese indigenous knowledge. rather, i see watsuji’s notions – such as fūdo and aidagara – as eclectic knowledge. watsuji’s dialogue with heidegger and other western thinkers is based on his wide and informed reading in the classics of asia such as early indian buddhism, confucianism and many of the prominent works in sociology and ethnology of his time (carter 1996). 2 there is one major issue about watsuji’s discussion that has been criticised by researchers of japanese philosophy. watsuji seemed problematic or ‘irrelevant’ (lafleur 1996: viii) to japanese intellectuals for his ‘cultural conservatism’ (ibid.) and contribution to the rise of japanese fascism during the asia pacific war with ideological underpinnings, until the early 1980s (carter and kasulis 2013; lafleur 1996). after the publication of a study on watsuji by yuasa yasuo, watsuji’s last major student, the value of watsuji’s work was once again recognised, although still problematic, for its insights that challenge the colonisation of thought (lafleur 1996). 77 fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland 3 this paper is based on a conference presentation given at the 2022 sjsf japanese studies conference at copenhagen business school on 25 march 2022. 4 in finland, native speakers of languages other than finnish, swedish and sami account for 7.8% of the population (statistics finland 2021). respecting the idea of a multicultural and multilingual society (okm 2017a, 2017b), promoting labour based migration (bäckgren 2021) and using english terms for branding a city to the international market (saarikivi 2021), proficiency in foreign languages – especially english – is seen as a strength, resource and asset for both an individual and society to meet future needs (okm 2017b). according to a study by statistics finland (2018b), at least one foreign language is spoken by 93% of finns aged 18-64. in addition, 90% of finns aged 18-64 answered that they are proficient in english, 67% in swedish and 31% in german (statistics finland 2018a: 4). 5 drawing on the dataset of social surveys, terasawa (2015) points out that the need to use english in japanese society is limited to a tiny minority of the people contrary to current political discourse, popular sayings and beliefs on the importance of english in the ‘globalising’ world. references adams, tony e., stacy holman jones 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watsuji tetsuro‘s rinrigaku: ethics in japan, trans. s. yamamoto and r. e. carter, albany: state university of new york press, pp. vii-ix. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank 80 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 oshie nishimura-sahi maréchal, garance 2010. ‘autoethnography’. in a. j. mills et al. (eds.), encyclopedia of case study research. london: sage, pp. 43-45. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412957397 mignolo, walter d. 2011. the darker side of western modernity: global futures, decolonial options. durham: duke university press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822394501 nishimura-sahi, oshie 2020. ‘policy borrowing of the common european framework of reference for languages (cefr) in japan: an analysis of the interplay between global education trends and national policymaking’. asia pacific journal of education 42 (3): 574587. https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2020.1844145 okm 2017a. opetusja kulttuuriministeriö (okm) (ministry of education and culture, finland). monikielisyys vahvuudeksi: selvitys suomen kielivarannon tilasta ja tasosta (multilingualism as a strength: procedural recommendations for developing finland’s national language reserve). https://julkaisut.valtioneuvosto.fi /bitstream/handle/10024/160374/okm51.pdf (accessed 5 january 2022). okm 2017b. opetusja 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comparative education 56 (1): 39-56. https://doi.org/10.1080 /03050068.2019.1701247 rappleye, jeremy, yuki imoto and sachiko horiguchi 2011. ‘towards “thick description” of educational transfer: understanding a japanese institution’s “import” of european language policy’. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank 81 fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland comparative education 47 (4): 411-432. https://doi.org/10.1080 /03050068.2011.559698 saarikivi, janne 2021. turun keskusta on nyt turku center, ja sen mukana meni suomen turku ja suomi (the center of turku is now turku center, and turku of finland and finland are gone). yle news, 19 april, https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11871662 (accessed 22 february 2022). santos, íris and vera g. centeno 2021. ‘inspirations from abroad: the impact of pisa on countries’ choice of reference societies in education’. compare: a journal of comparative and international education [published online]. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2021.1906206 shōji, hiroshi 2010. nihon no tagengoka to imingengo: fukugengoshugi to no kakawari o shiten ni irete (multilingualisation and immigrant languages in japan: from the perspective of the relationship with plurilingualism). paper presented at ‘a kyoto university international conference “daigaku no gurōbaruka to fukugengoshugi” (globalisation of higher education and plurilingualism)’, kyoto university, 5 november, pp. 160-165. https://www.jstage.jst.go .jp/article/rjdf/6/2/6_kj00009936970/_pdf (accessed 22 february 2022). silova, iveta 2019. ‘toward a wonderland of comparative education’. comparative education 55 (4): 444-472. https://doi.org/10.1080 /03050068.2019.1657699 smith, david woodruff 2018. ‘phenomenology’. in e. n. zalta (ed.) the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (summer 2018 edition). metaphysics research lab, stanford university. https://plato.stanford.edu 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of japanese education’. comparative education 47 (4): 449470. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2011.561542 takayama, keita 2012. ‘exploring the interweaving of contrary currents: transnational policy enactment and path-dependent policy implementation in australia and japan’. comparative education 48 (4): 505-523. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2012.721631 takayama, keita 2016. ‘deploying the post-colonial predicaments of researching on/with “asia” in education: a standpoint from a rich peripheral country’. discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education 37(1): 70-88. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2014 .927114 takayama, keita 2019. ‘radical potentials and predicaments: reimagining japanese education in postcolonial/decolonial times. in kyoto university global education office (ed.) a ‘japanese model’ of education culture in a global era? retrospect and prospect: inaugural symposium of the global education office. hosted by the graduate school of education, kyoto university, pp. 142 -158. takayama, keita 2020. ‘an invitation to “negative” comparative education’. comparative education 56 (1): 79-95. https://doi.org/10 .1080/03050068.2019.1701250 takeda, nazumi and james h. williams 2008. ‘pluralism, identity and the state: national education policy towards indigenous minorities in japan and canada’. comparative education 44 (1): 75-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050060701809441 terasawa, takunori 2015. ‘nihonjin to eigo’ no shakaigaku: naze eigokyōikuron wa gokai darake nano ka (sociology of english language and the japanese: why do we have so many misunderstandings about english education?). tokyo: kenkyūsha. torikai, kumiko 2018. eigokyōiku no kiki (english language teaching in crisis). chikuma shinsho. unterhalter, elaine 2020. ‘an other self? education, foreignness, reflexive comparison and capability as connection’. comparative education 56 (1): 3-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2019 .1701245 willis, david, blake and jeremy rappleye 2011. reimagining japanese education: borders, transfers, circulations and the comparative. oxford: symposium books. https://doi.org/10.15730/books.76 yasuda, toshiaki 2014. ‘tagengoshugi no kako to genzai: kindainihon no ba’ai’ (past and present of multilingualism: the case of modern japan). ritsumeikan gengobunka kenkyū 26 (2): 3-20. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank 83 fūdo in foreign language learning in japan and finland yonezaki, michi 2020. finrando jin wa naze ‘gakkōkyōiku’ dake de eigo ga hanaseruno ka (why finns can speak english only with ‘school education’). aki shobō. yonezawa, akiyoshi, yuto kitamura, beverley yamamoto and tomoko tokunaga, eds. 2018. japanese education in a global age: sociological reflections and future directions. singapore: springer singapore pte. limited. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1528-2 watsuji, tetsurō 1991 [1935]. fūdo: ningenteki kōsatsu (climate: a humanological inquiry). tokyo: iwanami shoten. watsuji, tetsurō 2007 [1934). ningen no gaku to shite no rinrigaku (ethics as the study of man). tokyo: iwanami shoten. watsuji, tetsurō 1988. climate and culture: a philosophical study. new york: greenwood press. about:blank _hlk127006650 _hlk126914105 _hlk127006732 _hlk126168662 _hlk103924642 _hlk126672848 _hlk95234318 in chinese rwd education after mao stig thdgersen university of aarhus ''it does not matter whether the cat is white or black, as long as it is able to catch mice". this much quoted phrase of deng xiaoping's has become the symbol of the rational and pragmatic attitude of the chinese leadership after the death of mao zedong and the fall of the "gang of four". during the decade of the cultural revolution, educational policy was presented in the media as the scene of constant class struggle between the proletarian and the bourgeois line. in deng's china little is heard of class struggle. in the words of the new leadership the focus has shifted to economic construction because the "prin cipal contradiction ... is that between the growing material and cultural needs of the people and the backwardness of social p r o d ~ c t i o n " . ~ in accordance with this shift of focus, the leaders of the deng era present themselves primarily as modernizers. while the "four basic principles" (marxism-leninism-mao zedong-thought, socialism, the proletarian dic tatorship and the leading role of the party) are still official state ideology (as it has been stressed ad nauseam in the campaign against "bourgeois liberaliz ation" in early 1987) the chinese as well as the foreign public are most often presented with an image of state and party leaders ruling rationally and pragmatically in the common interest of all strata of chinese society. just like the 'line-struggle" model was formerly accepted by many western observers as the most relevant conceptual framework for explaining chinese politics, the new image of chinese leaders tearing off their ideological blinkers to "seek truth from facts" is now widely accepted by the western press as well as by s c h o l a r ~ . ~ the aim of this paper is to show that the post-1977 reforms carried out within clunese education cannot be fully explained as pure, value-free adaptations of education to economic realities: but that the guiding ideology of the reformers as well as their need for support from the administrative, technical and intellectual elites have dictated much of the content of the reforms. rural education in particular has been negatively influenced by some of the new central policies. to use the imagery of deng xiaoping, the cat has stig thagersen been chosen at least partly because of its colour and most of the mice are still alive and well. though rural secondary education shall be the emphasis of this paper, as problems present themselves most clearly at this level, other parts of the educational system will be touched on as well. enrollment before discussing the content of the reforms, we shall briefly look at their quantitative results. in primary school, enrollment has been little influenced by the reforms. in 1986, as many as 96.4% of all children in the relevant age group entered primary scho01.~ this is roughly equivalent to the enrollment ratio of ten years before (1976: 96.0%)5and shows that enrollmentis onits way up again after dropping to 93% around 1980.6 the law creating nine years compulsory education, which was passed in 1986, is meant to maintain this high enrollment level, but it is worth noting that enrollment rose to its present heights not during the reform period but during the campaigns of the mid sixties and of the cultural revolution period, when it went up from around 60% in the early sixties to 85% in 1965 and 95% in 1975.7 it is often claimed that enrollment figures of the seventies were grossly exaggerated, but the literacy statisticspublished from the 1982 census made it clear that the figures were not just empty boasting.8 if literacy can be used as a measure for the quality of education, these figures show that the most impressive progress in rural education was made during the "years of turmoil" from the outbreak of the cultural revolution to the late seventies. while about 30% of the age group that should have attended primary school in rural areas during the years from 1955 to 1964 are illiterate, illiteracy among the age group attending school between 1970 and 1979 was only found to be around 10°/o. the situation of the girls in particular was improved during the seventies as a result of centrally directed campaigns. it is too early to draw conclusions about the most recent years, but it seems that the 90% literacy rate has at best been stabilized for the age groups entering primary school after 1978. the dropout problem is serious already at the primary school level. according to world bank statistics, only around 62% of the 1979 school entrants completed the five years of primary school.9 in 1985, only around 60% of those in rural areas who did complete primary school were able to pass the final test, while the corresponding figure for urban students was 94%.1° copenhagen papers 1 8 8 10 the importance of the colour of the cat the literacy level of the present generation of rural primary school students can therefore not be expected to rise above the level reached in the seven ties. the above statistics can be summarized in the 9-6-3 formula, which is often used by chinese experts to describe the state of education in rural areas: out of ten school age children, nine enter primary school, six remain until its completion and only three pass the final test with satisfactory results. it should be added that the extension of primary education from five to six years could lead to an improvement in the long run.ll in 1983 less than 10% of those who completed grade five continued to grade six,12 but this may change as many schools have added an extra year since then. the above figures show, however, that the post-1978 reforms have so far made almost no contribution to solving the quantitative problems in chinese rural primary education. while the status quo has been preserved in primary schso~, enrollment in junior secondaiy school has dropped considerably since the reforms were first introduced. according to the world bank, 63% of the relevant age group were enrolled in china's junior secondary schools in 1979 but only 46% by 1983.13 since then enrollment has slowly been on its way up again, reaching 53% in 1986,14 but as junior secondary education is almost universal in most of the larger cities, it must still be well below half of the children in mral areas who enter junior secondary school, probably only around 40%. the same kind of drop in enrollment has taken place at the senior secondary school level, but on a larger scale. according to suzanne pepper, this drop was initiated in 1978 by the issue of a set of "internal guidelines" ordering a reduction of student intake.15 as senior secondary school in most places has been extended from two to three years, absolute enrollment figures are not directly comparable, but the world bank estimates that the percentage of the relevant age group enrolled in senior secondary schools dropped from 36% in 1979 to 16% in 1983.16 though absolute enrollment figures now show an upward tendency because of the extension from two to three years, it seems that the enrollment ratio has in fact continued to drop as an official chinese source mentions a ratio of only 13% of the age group for 1986.17 the fall in enrollment has been particularly evident in the villages. while mral schools enrolled 66% of all senior secondary school students in 1977, their share had fallen to 42% in 1981 and to 29% in 1984.18 i have not come across more recent figures, but there is no sign that the position of the rural schools is strengthen ing at this level. even when we take into consideration that both primary and senior stig thergersen secondary schools have been extended by one year each during the reform period, children in rural areas thus seem to attend school for fewer years on average now than they did before the reforms. what sort of pragmatic rationality lies behind this cutback? two arguments are often put forward in this connection. first, the reduction is said to have been necessary in order to raise the quality of education and, secondly, it is explained as part of a readjustment of secondary education, whereby more students are being directed into vocational track schools. in the following we shall look closer at these two arguments. the quality of rural education according to reform leaders, enrollment increased during the early seventies at a much faster rate than china could afford. schools were set up without qualified teachers, teaching materials or even tables and chairs, and the quality of teaching consequently dropped to an unacceptably low level. according to official statements, the present level of enrollment represents a readjustment of the educational sector to china's economic capability, and the human and material resources freed by the cuts made particularly in senior secondary education have been spent on strengthening schools at the lower levels. there is little doubt that the quality of many rural schools was indeed very low before the reforms, but have the resources made available after the closing of huge numbers of secondary schools really been spent on improving the quality of education in the remaining rural schools? while the quality of education is difficult to measure objectively, it is possible to get an impression of how it is judged by students and parents by looking at the schools' dropout rates, which according to many reports have reached alarming proportions in recent years, particularly in junior secondary schools. according to a recent chinese survey of an economically healthy county in heilongjiang province, which has popularized primary education, only around 40% of elementary school leavers in that area continue their education in junior middle school, and among these students the dropout rate has risen dramatically during the last couple of years. of those entering junior middle school in 1979,44% did not graduate three years later. for the next year of students the dropout rate went up to 67%, and of the students entering middle school in 1981 as many as 72% had dropped out before 1984. this phenom enon was, according to the report, quite new. during the decade of the cultural copenhagen papers 1.88 12 the importance of the colour of the cat revolution, dropout rates had been only slightly above 20%. the large majority of the dropout students left school during their second year, and had thus had ampie time to realize what secondary school was like.lg the world bank dropout rate estimates are lower though still considerable at this level: 12% between grades one and two and 22% between grades two and three,2o but these are average figures for the 1979-83 period, and they furthermore include city schools, where few students drop out, as they know that they will be unable to find a job without a junior middle school certificate. in rural areas the dropout problem does seem to be massive. several recent reports from different provinces have spoken of dropout rates from rural junior secondary schools of around 50%,21 and rates of 4o-50% have been officially admitted to be quite common even for whole districts (including the alarming dropout rates can be partly explained by the influence of the contract system in agriculture, where individual families are allowed to sell surplus products from their plots and increase their income by engaging in sideline productions. as it is mainly labour intensive production methods that are used, many peasants could be tempted to order their children (girls, in particular) to leave school in order to help in the work or look after younger children at home. this is, for example, how the world bank explains the decrease in students' attendance in rural areas.23 it is doubtful, however, that this is really the most important source of the problem. the heilongjiang survey mentioned above finds that the contract system can only bear a small part of the blame for the high dropout rates, as most families in the area under survey already had ample labour power. the reason, according to the survey, is rather to be found inside the schools, where teachers concentrate only on the students who have a chance of passing the entrance examination to senior secondary school and ignore the rest, a problem discussed below. the same trend is found in a hunan survey, which claims that neglect from the teachers and lack of motivation for study due to low marks account for 55% of all dropout cases in the schools surveyed, while less than half of the cases can be explained by one or more objective factors such as high tuition fees, long distances to school and parents' need for children's participation in produc t i ~ n . ~ * in most cases several of the factors mentioned are probably jointly responsible, and many reports put most of the blame on the contract system. however, the chinese debate on the subject reflects a growing conviction that the main reason for peasant children's escape from middle school is the fact that they feel they benefit very little from the teaching takmg place there, or, in other words, that the quality of education, as they conceive it, is too low. stig thagersen effects of the elite strategy one of the main reasons why the quality of at least rural secondary educationis still so low is to be found in the many negative side effects of the examination system, or to use a chinese phrase, in the "onesided pursuit of transition rates" (pianmian zhuiqiu shengxuelii), a phrase portraying the situation in most schools after the introduction of the university entrance examinations in 1977. the syndrome shall just be briefly summarized here: the return of selection of university students through competitive examinations, the scarcity of institu tions of higher education, and the permanent high status job that a university education guarantees all combine to create a situation of fierce competition between students, parents, teachers and schools for access to universities. to place their own students better in this competition, local authorities (encour aged by central directives) have set up an elite sector inside the educational system, the so-called key-schools and key or "fast" classes, where the most competent teachers, the highest scoring students and the majority of economic resources have been concentrated. rural counties have carried this strategy to even further extremes than cities, because their backward conditions force them to highly concentrate their resources, if they want to send just a few of their young people to university. this trend is reinforced by the traditional chinese respect for exams and degrees, and by the traditional idea that the purpose of studying is to raise one's own social position to that of a state bureaucrat. the concentration on a small elite further leads to the neglect of and general disillusion among the remaining students, who in great numbers choose to stop attending classes. their schools often directly encourage them to drop out, as this allows them to allocate even more resources to the elite on which their prestige and often also economic welfare is based. in addition they can then improve their transition rate (the percentage of graduate students who get accepted by schools at the higher level) if students who would not have been accepted by a higher level school anyway drop out before the final examination. the "transition rate syndrome" does a lot to explain what happened to the economic and human resources set free by the enrollment cut: they were largely spent on the training of the relatively small number of students who had a chance of winning a place in a higher level school. the irony of the situation is that while the few rural students who make it into university are the pride of their family, their school and their county, they actually represent aloss to their local community, because they rarely return to copenhagen papers 1.88 14 the importance of the colour of the cat the countryside after graduation. in yi county, a poor county in liaoning province, 1400 students qualified for lugher education from 1977 to 1986, an impressive transition rate of 18%. but only 205 university graduates, 15% of the students who left, were allocated work in the district during the same years, and most of these were school teachers, who rank lowest in prestige among graduates.25 in the poor, mainly rural, province of guizhou a similar "brain drajm" is reported to take place the return rate of university students is here 40'/0.~~ this loss is, however, partly compensated for by the students'feeling of loyalty towards their home district. this can potentially benefit the local community if the students later advance to influential posts. the increase in educational expenditures, a highly publicized part of educational reforms in recent years, has also gone primarily to the elite. as pointed out by stanley rosen, the funding of basic educationisnow left to local initiative, while central investments go to key institutions mainly at the tertiary furthermore, most of the increase that has takenplace has gone to raise the wage level of the teachers, a much needed step, but one which does not immediately improve conditions for the students. in sichuan province, for example, 90% of the increase in educational spendings from 1984 to 1985 was spent on higher salaries, 6.7% on construction work and only 3.3% for pedagogical purposes. though an increase in total expenditure per student was measured in primary and secondary education that year, salaries ate up so much that the sum per student left for teaching purposes actually fell, even without accounting for i n f l a t i ~ n . ~ ~ the pedagogical and economic concentration on elite education is, how ever, not the only way in which the "'transition rate syndrome" has negatively influenced rural schools. just as important is the total adaptation of teaching methods and content to the demands of the examination system. what is taught is not what the students need to know in order to fill their future roles as citizens and producers, but what they must learn in order to pass the next exam. chinese educators have repeatedly pointed out that memorizing equations and formulas will be of little help to rural students in their later lives as peasants. the power of the examination system (and of the chinese tradition for rote learning) has, however, been too strong, and, as a recent wave of very critical reports on rural education in renminjiaoyu (people's education) and jiaoyu yanjiu (educational research) s h o ~ s , 2 ~ the authorities have had little success in trying to change the situation. it can be concluded that the post-1978 educational reforms have meant that fewer rural students receive secondary level education, while the quality of the stig thclgersen education offered still seems to be far from satisfactory in the eyes of the rural population, mainly due to its being fundamentally out of touch with the needs of the villages. to quote an editorial comment in educational research on a devastating criticism of rural education in heilongjiang: 'the social benefit of rural secondary education is currently low. when secondary school graduates return to their villages, their ideological consciousness~ academic knowledge, productive skills and work ability lag far behind the demands of the political and cultural life of the villages and of the need to develop commodity produ~tion".~~ post-1978 reforms may have raised the quality of elite edu cation, but secondary education in rural areas is today, ten years after the first reforms, in a state of acute crisis. the vocationalization of rural secondary education the enrollment cut was never presented in the chinese media as a reform per se. it was mentioned in educational magazines under the comprehensive headline of ',reform of the structure of secondary education", and in this context it was overshadowed by the intense interest in the vocationalization of senior secondary education. this program has in a few years transformed thousands of general secondary schools into vocational schools and has radically changed the balance between general and vocational education. the proclaimed aim is to let vocational schools enroll 50% of all senior secondary level students by 1990. the arguments for the vocationalization reform again appear to be prag matic and rational: the economic modernization drive demands an increasing number of skilled workers, middle level technicians and peasants witha better knowledge of agricultural technology. as tertiary education is able to absorb only a small fraction of all senior secondary school graduates, leaving the rest to find their place in production, china now prefers, so the argument goes, to provide the latter group with some practical, vocational skills while they still are in school, thereby improving their chances of finding a job after graduation. this should be seen in contrast to the cultural revolution decade, where, according to the present leaders, almost all formal vocational training in schools was stopped. in quantitative terms the reform has been a success. the number of students in "skilled worker training schools" and "secondary specialized schools" was beginning to rise already before 1978, and this development further accel copenhagen papers 1.88 16 the importance of the colour of the cat erated in the early eighties. the number of students in "skilled worker training schools", which are under the sector ministries and train future skilled workers mainly for industry, rose from less than 9,000 in 1971 to 221,000 in 1976 and increased still further after the fall of the "gang of four" to 628,000 in 1984.31 "secondary specialized schools", responsible for the training of for example primary school teachers, hospital nurses, accountants and medium level technicians in industry and agriculture, have raised their enrollment from 147,000in 1971 to 690,000 in 1976 and furtherto 1,332,000in 1984.32 by farthe largest enrollment expansion, however, has taken place in "vocational middle schools" and their rural counterparts, the "agricultural middle schools". these types of schools were very common before the cultural revolution, particu larly in rural districts, but when middle schools reopened in the late sixties, the division between general and vocational schools was abolished. vocational secondary schools did not reappear in the statistics again until 1980, but by 1984 they already had an enrollment of 1,745,000 students.33 if the latest statistics are reliable their enrollment reached 4,800,000 students in 1986.34 in the cities, vocational middle schools train people for anumber of different jobs in industry and particularly in the senice sector, where most of the work force has traditionally been either unskilled or trained on the job -kindergarten teachers, tailors, radio repairers, waiters, etc. curriculum planning is decentra lized and flexible, costs are low, only around one third of the cost per student of a "skilled worker training school",35 and by cooperating closely with enter prises in their vicinity schools are often able to train types of manpower which are in demand locally.36 it is debatable whether this kind of specialized training is a better preparation for work in industrial and service trades than general education,37 but judging from the chinese debate and from my own visits to such schools in different provinces, vocational schools in the cities do seem to have found a role for themselves. in rural areas, however, the vocationalization process has been more complicated and its logic is harder for the observer to grasp. seen in the perspective of the last twenty years it seems more precise to talk about a de vocationalization reform which began in 1978 and which is now being partly reversed. before 1978, china's rural schools had won international recognition for their ability to adapt curriculum and teaching methods to local needs and conditions. mao's directives on combining theory with practice and inte grating study and productive labour were praised by educators in many third world countries as well as in the westa3* historically the yan'an period, the stig thogersen years of the great leap forward and the decade of the cultural revolution are especially noted for implementing these principles. "half-work half-study" schools were established to lighten the economic burdens of schooling on the peasants, and the content of all school subjects was adapted to local conditions and to the needs of local agricultural production. this was, at least, the picture presented in official chinese propaganda during those periods. there is much evidence, not only from the present leaders, who have their own reasons for discrediting all cultural revolution practices, but also from ordinary village school students of the cultural revolution decade which shows, however, that "theory" (which meant book learning) and practice were rarely combined in real life. too much time was often spent on memorizing quotations from the works of chairman mao and "practice" frequently just meant simple manual labour from which students learned no new production skills. still, it is important for later developments that rural schooling was described in official propaganda as not only a political but also a professional preparation for living the adult life of a chinese peasant. in this sense, rural schooling was perceived as vocational education for all village children. it was possible for rural students to follow other careers and even to go to university, but they were to qualrfy through hard work and political devotion, not only through achieving high academic merit, and they all had to take classes in agricultural subjects and do manual labour. the post-1977 reforms introduced academic admission criteria to higher education, and as a consequence the curriculum was unified nationally, with all teaching materials being centrally authorized. the unification of the content of education was a precondition for holding nationwide examinations, but it meant that adaptation to local needs became almost impossible. rural and urban students, future peasants, future workers and future nuclear scientists all had to study identical textbooks. these were primarily geared towards the needs of the last group, and the tight time schedule left no time for practical work. as the new general school curriculum evidently was irrelevant to many students, particularly at secondary school level in rural areas, many general secondary schools were now transformed to vocational schools. in most counties one high quality secondary school was selected as a county or provincial level key school, a few schools of reasonable standard remained ordinary (i.e. non-key) general schools, a number of mediocre schools were transformed to agricultural secondary schools, while the majority were either turned into junior secondary schools or simply closed down. in agricultural copenhagen papers 1 8 8 18 the importance of the colour of the cat secondary schools, students spend half of their time studying general subjects and the other half on subjects directly related to agriculture and on practical work. already in 1981, fifty-two different specialities inside agriculture were being taught. after graduation, students should be qualified to either work as basic or medium level agricultural technicians (tractor drivers, basic level veterinarians, etc.) or to establish "specialized households" (zhuanye hu), where they could utilize a speciality studied in school, suck as fish breeding or fruit growing e.g. this is how the system ideally works. it is often stressed, however, that the principle of half-work-half-study should be implemented in these schools, and in lower quality schools this seems to be done in the same way as in earlier decades: students go to school half of the time and do ordinary manual labour only loosely related to their studies during the other half. agricultural secondary schools have encountered many problems. as it is normally schools of a rather low quality that are transformed, they often lack qualified teachers and relevant teaching materials. some graduates have difficulties finding jobs, and the social prestige of the schools is low. however, the most fundamental problem, which is only now beginning to attract attention in china, is that the establishment of agricultural schools has been used to just@ the de-vocationalization of general track schools. almost all vocational and agricultural schools have been established at senior secondary school level, but only 10-1 5% of a particular age group receive schooling at this level, and at most half of these are in the vocational tracks. this means that over 90% of all rural students follow a curriculum throughout their educational career that is designed to meet the needs of the few, mostly urban students striving for an academic career. it is striking how present criticisms of this phenomenon resemble, not in form but in content, cultural revolution attacks on what was called, in the more militant language of that time, "liu shaoqi's black line in education". in mid-1986, for example, a shanxi official described the situation in mral schools as follows: first of all, the whole educational system works for the sake of the university entrance examinations. curriculum, content and admission practices in mral primary and secondary schools have not yet been changed. teaching materials serve the purpose of preparing students for advancing to the next level of education. even students who go to junior and senior secondary school feel that their education is of no use if they cannot go to university. we must add some agricultural knowledge to the textbooks used in the senior years of primary school and in secondary stig thagersen school, so that students know a bit about what is going on around them in agricultural production .... at present, the large majority of village second ary school students want to "jump out through the village gate" (tiao nong men) and leave the countryside. if schools provided them with some basic skills that would enable them to change the backward conditions of their village fewer people would want to leave....39 other writers equally familiar with the situation in rural schools have pointed out, subject by subject, how the content of the textbooks used is totally out of touch with students' lives and needs and therefore also very difficult for the students to ~ o m p r e h e n d . ~ ~ seen in this light, the vocationalization reform in rural schools must be regarded as a defensive measure meant to limit the negative consequences of the "de-vocationalization" wave sweeping through china's village schools in the wake of the post-1977 reforms. ideology and educational reform the present crisis in rural education cannot be explained without considering the ideology that the reform leaders have been promoting. two aspects deserve particular attention: the attitude to china's educational history in the period of the people's republic and the strengthening of meritocratic values in chinese society after 1977. an important part of the power base of the post-1977 chinese leadership is the group of cadres forced from power during the cultural revolution and later rehabilitated. deng xiaoping himself reappeared as vice-chairman of the communist party in 1977, and the highest ranking target of the cultural revolution, china's president up to 1967, liu shaoqi, was posthumously rehabilitated in the spring of 1980. when hua guofeng in 1981 was replaced as party chairman by hu yaobang it marked the final victory of the people associated with the pre-1966 period over the mao loyalists. the political verdict was thus spelled out clearly: the cultural revolution had been a disaster to china's development in all fields, while pre-1966 policies were "basically" correct and the period before the anti-rightist campaign: was pictured as a paradise lost. on the educational front a parallel development could be observed. one of the first signs of change was a vehement attack on the so-called "two esti copenhagen papers 1 8 8 20 the importance of the colour of the cat mates". during the cultural revolution, it was now said, the pre-1966 educational line was described as bourgeois and "black, and the majority of the intellectuals were seen as enemies of the people. both of these "estimates" were fundamentally wrong. chinese educational policies had been basically correct even in the most ziuist" period in the early sixties, and the large majority of chinese intellectuals had been loyal to the party and to socialism. this viewpoint led to the rehabilitation of educational cadres and teachers criticized during the cultural revolution and the anti-rightist campaign and to a positive reevaluation of the educational policies of liu shaoqi. concurrently, "new-born things" and model units of the cultural revolu tion came under attack, and so did the heroes of that period. zhang tiesheng, who had become famous by handing in a blank examination paper as a demonstration against the examination system, was now called "an ignorant, reactionary clown" by deng x i a ~ p i n g . ~ ~ the rehabilitation of pre-1966 leaders and policies and the corresponding total rejection of all phenomena associated with the cultural revolution have thus been prominent features of the political and ideological development since 1977. this does not mean, of course, that the last ten years simply have been a return to the pre-cultural revolution state of affairs. many policies are genuinely new, but it has been of major importance to the rehabilitated cadres that the pre-1966 period, where they last held political power, is seen as a prosperous and harmonious time, while the cultural revolution, when the same cadres suffered political and personal humiliation, is remembered as an unjustifiable and disastrous event. it was only by making this ideology widely accepted that they could regain their former power and prestige, and only this interpretation of history was therefore acceptable to the highly heterogeneous group of dethroned cadres. in the educational field the pressure on the post-1977leadership to return to the legacy of the period before the "ten years of turmoil" and totally reject the achievements and experiences of the cultural revolution was even stronger than in other spheres, because the teachers, or at least a considerable part of them, had been through the same or even worse sufferings and humiliations as the cadres. to secure their cooperation it was necessary to convince them that the new leadership was fully on their side and intended to correct all wrongs against them. the campaign style of chinese politics thus stoodin the way of a careful and objective assessment of both the positive and negative aspects of the educa tional experiments that took place during the cultural revolution. the stig thegersen cultural revolution had had such a tremendous impact onitsvictims that they, once back in power, were determined to wipe out all traces of the preceding decade. this led to a tabooing of a number of problems that now have to be readdressed, particularly the question of how to make education relevant to rural youths. in some fields, however, the post-1977 educational reforms have moved beyond the limits of the pre-1966 model. making academic tests and exams the all-important selection criteria is one such example. the new method of selection was of prime importance to an indispensable part of the con stituency of the new leaders: the technological and intellectual elites. to these groups it was intolerable that access to the higher levels of the educational system and thereby to the top of the job hierarchy should any longer be based on political and class criteria and thus be controlled by party cadres. they demanded the introduction of academic selection criteria that would give their children an even opportunity in competition with the offspring of other social though this reform was probably welcomed by the majority of parents who had lost faith in the cultural revolution system, where nepotism seems to have been ~idespread:~ it also led, as we have seen, to severe problems in rural areas, where it merged with traditional chinese attitudes towards education to produce an atmosphere filled with ruthless competition and uninspiring rote learning. rural youths have not increased their chances of gaining access to university after the introduction of the new selection but they have paid much of the price for them. conclusion loyalty to pre-1966 educational models, distaste for all policies associated with the cultural revolution, total acceptance of meritocratic arguments in the discussion on the selection of "talented personnel", and extensive consider ation for the interests of the elite seem to be important obstacles to a more rational attitude on the part of the chinese leaders to the problems facing rural education. one encouraging fact about this process is, however, that almost all the problems mentioned in this paper are now under open and lively discussion in chinese educational circles in a way unprecedented in the copenhagen papers 1.88 22 the importance of the colour of the cat history of the people's republic. this could lead to the emergence of a new type of "rationality" able to incorporate the experiences of the past forty years and the viewpoints and demands of the rural population. --- stig thogersen is an associate professor, institute of east asian studies, university of aarhus 1 resolution on cpc history (1949-81) (bejing: foreign languages press, 1981) p. 76. 2 "pragmatism rules the day", was, to take just one of the most recent examples, the sub-headline of newsweek's latest "special report" on china (no. 36, september 8, 1986). lucian w. pye, in his article "on chinese pragmatism in the 1980s': the china quarterly, no. 106 (june 1986), pp. 207-234, points out that academic circles have also accepted the idea that the new leadership is pragmatic and rational. pye's view is that several cul tural factors set limits to this pragmatism, whereas my objective is rather to point to ideological and socio-political factors. 3 more detailed discussions of recent developments in education can be found in ruth hayhoe (ed.), contemporary chinese education (london: croom helm, 1984). the relation between education and itconomy is discussed in marianne bastid, "chinese educational policies in the 1980s and economic development", the china quarterly, no. 98 (june 1984), pp. 189-219. 4 guangming ribao, february 22, 1987, p.3. 5 zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian 1949-1981 (beijing 1984), p. 1024. 6 ibid. 7 ibid. 8 illiterates and semi-illiterates as ijercen tage of rural (xian) population age primary m school 1982 years total male female source: zhongpo 1982 nian renkou pucha 10% chouyangziliao, dianzi jisuanji huizong (ten percent sample survey of the chinese 1982 census: a computerized selection), beijing 1983, table 29, pp. 320-21 9 world bank, china: long term issues and options. annex a: issues and prospects in education, 1985, p. 57. 10 jiaoyu yanjiu, 1986, no. 8, p. 72. 11 there is presently a debate going on in china as to whether the nine years of compulsory education should consist of six years of primary school and three years of junior secondary school or rather be a five plus four system with the extra year of junior secondary school spent on vocational subjects. the last model is being practised in some rural areas, but the former is still by far the stig tbgersen most common. see for example jiaoyu yanjiu, 1986, no. 8, for a defense of the five plus four model. 12 world bank, op.cit. p. 57. 13 ibid., p. 7. 14 renmin jiaoyu, 1986, no. 11, p. 21. 15 suzanne pepper: china's universities (ann arbor, mich.: university of michigan press, 1984), p. 35. 16 world bank, op.cit., p. 8. 17 renmin jiaoyu, 1986, no. 11, p. 21. 18 zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian 1949-1981, p. zoo6 and zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian 1982 1984, p. 69. it should, however, be kept in mind that only 9% of senior secondary schools were placed in rural areas in 1965 (ibid.) seen in this perspective rural schools have far from lost all they gained in the early seventies. 19 jiaoyu yanjiu, 1985, no. 8, p. 33 ff. 20 world bank, op.cit., p. 8. 21 see jiaoyu yanjiu, 1986, no. 10, p. 17; renmin jiaoyu, 1986, no. 11, p. 9; zhongguo jiaoyu bao, may 21, 1987, p.2. 22 renmin jiaoyu, 1987, no. 5, p. 2. 23 world bank, op-cit., i-ii. 24 zhongguo fiaoyu bao, may 21, 1987, p. 2. 25 renmin jiaoyu, 1987, no. 5, p. 29. 26 bmge bakken, "bakvendtreform i ki nesisk utdanning" (backward reform in chinese education), materialisten, no 3, 1986, pp. 7-38. 27 stanley rosen,"recentralization, decen tralization and rationalization: deng xiaoping's bifurcated educational pol icy", modem china, vol. 11, no. 3 (1985), pp. 301-346. 28 jiaoyu yanjiu, 1986, no. 9, pp.17-22. 29 in renmin jiaoyu, 1986, no. 7/8, a discus sion on the question "how can rural primary and secondary education meet the needs for development of agricul tural production" was initiated. in jiaoyu yanjiu, 1986, no. 4, the theme of discus sion was phrased 'reorienting educa tional thinking and defining educa tional goals" (from 1986, no. 4). both discussions are still running (by spring 1987) and give excellent insights into the seriousness of the problem. 30 jiaoyu yanjiu, 1986, no. 10, p. 17. 31 zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian 1949-1981, p. 188 and statistical yearbook of china 1985, p. 586. 32 zhongguo jiaoyu nianjian 1949-1981, pp. 982-83 and statistical yearbook of china 1985, p. 587. 33 ibid., p. 586. 34 guangrning ribao, february 22,1987, p. 3. this figure is official but appears to be exaggerated or, perhaps, the definition has been changed. 35 jihua jingji yanjiu, 1982, no. 10, pp. 32 36. 36 for a detailed discussion of the different types of vocational schools see joachim miinch & matthias risler, vocational training in the people's republic of china. structures, problems and recommendations (berlin: cedefop, 1987). 37 even the world bank, which supports the vocationalization program, is scep tical on this point. see world bank, op. cit., pp. 28-29. 38 ronald p. dore, for example, in his influential study, the diploma disease. education, qualifications and development (london: allen & unwrin, 1976), saw the chinese model as superior to other third world educational systems. 39 renmin jiaoyu, 1986, no. 7/8, p. 14. 40 renmin jiaoyu, 1986, no. 11, p. 11. 41 selected works of deng xiaoping (1975 1982) (beijing: foreign languages press, 1984), p. 107. 42 once implemented, the new system actually seems to favour the children of intellectuals and cadres over other groups. see suzanne pepper, op.cit., particularly pp. 107-116 and stfg the gersen, "chinese senior middle school in a social perspective: a study of yantai district, shandong province", the china quarterly, no. 109 (march 1987), p. 72 100. copenhagen papem 1.88 24 the importance of the colour of the cat 43 jonathan unger's interviews with canton education under mao (new york: colum youth, for example, show how widebia university press, 1982), pp. 193 ff. spread corruption and nepotism was 44 see note 41. during this period. see jonathan unger, 9 beyond methodological nationalism: three directions for japanese studies aike p. rots abstract this article discusses the problem of lingering methodological nationalism within japanese studies. it argues that methodological nationalism remains widespread not only in research but also in university teaching and public dissemination, which legitimises popular conceptions of japan as a singular, unified entity that is essentially different from both the west and continental asia. this methodological nationalism is a consequence of the ways in which disciplinary structures contribute to the reification, demarcation and naturali sation of ‘japan’ and ‘things japanese’ as distinct objects of study in need of their own guild of specialised interpreters. the article argues that to overcome methodological nationalism, scholars of japan need to reconsider their choice of subject matter and reflect more upon their use of the adjective ‘japanese’. it proposes three research agendas for the academic study of japan. first, we should study discursive and institutional processes of japan-making instead of being complicit in them. second, we need to rethink ‘japan’ as our main spatio-cultural unit by focusing on diversity within the japanese isles and beyond (including migrant and indigenous perspectives). third, we should conduct and contribute to comparative research that focuses on both local particulars and transnational connections, rather than using the nation-state as our main unit of analysis. keywords: area studies; diversity; essentialism; japan-making; transnational comparison introduction: things japanese (or not?) in 2022, the korean drama series extraordinary attorney woo was one of the most popular shows globally on netflix. it portrays the struggles of a brilliant, autistic lawyer in a society that has little tolerance for neurodivergent disorders. researchers have credited the series for raising awareness of autism in south korea,1 but it also addresses other this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v41i1.6883. © aike p. rots published under the creative commons license (cc by). 10 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots social issues, such as institutionalised corruption, gender inequality, discrimination and the destruction of natural heritage. this last theme is explored in episodes seven and eight, which take place in a semi rural town on the outskirts of greater seoul that is destined to make way for a new highway. when visiting the town, the urban lawyers are deeply moved by the sight of a sacred tree on top of a hill, overlooking the town. the tree in question, a magnificent old hackberry (celtis sinensis; k. paengnamu; j. enoki), has ropes tied around it, showing its sacred character (see figure 1). evoking feelings of nostalgia and harmony, the tree is instrumental in making the lawyers take on the case. in the end, they manage to preserve the town by listing the guardian tree as a natural monument. heritage law thus serves to protect this idyllic place from encroaching ‘development’. although set in south korea, viewers familiar with modern japanese religion, society and heritage will no doubt feel a pang of recognition when watching these episodes. japan, too, is home to ancient sacred trees marked off by ritual rope (shimenawa). as in korea, many agricultural communities, hybrid nature-cultural landscapes and suburban green spaces in post-war japan were destroyed in order to make way for concrete and asphalt—a trend that has reversed only recently. similar to korea, trees, animals and plants in japan that are listed as natural monuments (tennen kinenbutsu) are subject to special legal protection. the jokes made by the citizens of this fictional rural town about their ageing population also resonate with experiences and debates in rural japan today, while the ideal of a harmonious, caring rural figure 1: the sacred hackberry tree in extraordinary attorney woo (isanghan byeonhosa uyeongu). produced by astory; directed by yoo in-shik; distributed by ena and netflix. release date: 29 june 2022. 11 beyond methodological nationalism community is reminiscent of furusato nostalgia in japanese popular culture (robertson 1988). even the fact that the real hackberry tree that was used for the tv series—located in a farming village in south gyeongsang province—has become a popular tourist destination2 reminds one of japan: in both countries, iconic sacred sites that appear in tv shows, films and cartoons often become popular ‘pilgrimage destinations’ for fans (okamoto 2015). in sum, these episodes could have easily been set in japan. how many scholars of japan are aware of the fact that all these seemingly japanese phenomena—sacred trees marked off with ropes, natural monument preservation law, the power of the ‘construction state’, fan pilgrimages to fictional sacred sites (seichi junrei), furusato nostalgia and debates about rural depopulation—are common in south korea as well? because of my earlier research, i was vaguely aware of the fact that some korean communities worship sacred trees (lee 2011), and i knew that heritage legislation in both countries is similar (pai 2014), without being familiar with the details. however, my knowledge of these topics in the korean context is limited, and before watching these episodes, i had never really reflected upon them. others may be more familiar with the similarities between japan and korea than i am. nevertheless, within japanese studies, the number of scholars who discuss these and other important contemporary topics with a comparative perspective in their writing, juxtaposing japan with cases elsewhere in asia, remains low. why is this the case? why do few scholars of japan venture beyond the borders of the nation-state they have chosen to study? and why is this a problem? this article addresses these questions. it discusses the problem of lingering methodological nationalism within the academic discipline usually referred to as japanese studies (or, alternatively, japanology). i define methodological nationalism as academic practices that take the nation-state for granted as their main unit of analysis, tacitly assume the self-evidence of naturalised national adjectives such as ‘japanese’ and overlook the historical and contemporary significance of transnational or regional connections. i argue that, within japanese studies, the adjective ‘japanese’ continues to be used mostly non-reflexively, as if it were a natural given and we all know what is meant by it. metho dological nationalism thus remains widespread, not only in research but also in university teaching and public dissemination, which affects common perceptions of japan as a singular, unified entity that is essentially different from both the west and from continental asia.3 12 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots this methodological nationalism is not so much a deliberate choice on the part of researchers as it is an unfortunate consequence of the ways in which disciplinary structures (study programs, conferences, journals and funding bodies) contribute to the ongoing reification, demarcation and naturalisation of ‘japan’ and ‘things japanese’ as distinct objects of study in need of their own guild of specialised interpreters. this has led to academic parochialism and, consequently, institutional vulnerability. today, japanese studies programs are surviving in many countries primarily by virtue of comparatively high student enrolment, but if student interest were to decline, they could go the same way as other language and culture programs in academia worldwide: down the drain. the key question, therefore, is as follows: if we believe that the study of language, history, culture and politics in the japanese archipelago matters—which i do—how can we preserve and, indeed, strengthen this field of study in the face of a global attack on the humanities and social sciences?4 of course, japanese studies is by no means the only academic field that is characterised by methodological nationalism, although i do believe it is more common in area studies disciplines that focus predominantly on a single nation-state (e.g. chinese studies) than those that have a larger regional focus (e.g. southeast asian or middle eastern studies). this article primarily discusses japanese studies, but some of the issues and suggestions also apply to area studies more generally. for instance, other area studies disciplines also struggle with the question of how to define their subject matter and how to navigate their position vis-à-vis other, more thematically or methodo logically defined disciplines such as social anthropology or history.5 in fields like south asian or southeast asian studies, which are confronted with dwindling student numbers and the discontinuation of study programs, such questions are of imminent concern. the fact that japanese studies programs have been relatively stable economically, at least compared to other area studies subjects, may well have prevented us from taking seriously some lingering epistemological and ideological problems. however, there is no reason to assume that the global crisis of the humanities will not affect our field of study as well. for the study of japan to remain viable and relevant, we must engage in debates about our disciplinary raison d’être, if only because twentieth-century justifications no longer suffice in this time of global academic, democratic and ecological crisis. what is the need for the academic study of japan 13 beyond methodological nationalism in the 2020s, now that the popularity of ‘cool japan’ appears to have waned—or, at least, is increasingly problematised (mclelland 2017; stanislaus 2022)? does japanese studies have a future as a discipline— and, if so, in what shape? several scholars of japan have addressed these questions recently. after a period of relative stability—the age of ‘cool japan’, characterised by high student enrolment and a continuous supply of japanese funding, which started in the early 2000s and may have ended around 2020—there is currently a sense of looming crisis within japanese studies, which has been exacerbated by the country’s closed borders during the covid-19 pandemic.6 in response to this and other challenges, several scholars have addressed the question of japanese studies’ present-day significance. recent initiatives include the provocatively titled aas conference panel ‘the death of japan studies’ organised by john treat and karen nakamura in 2019, the ‘rebirth of japanese studies’ series of roundtable discussions and digital responses organised by paula curtis (2020),7 and the roundtable discussion on ‘the future of japanese studies’ at the 2021 eajs conference. the present article contributes to these ongoing debates by adding some new insights and suggestions. it argues that we have to confront the methodological nationalism that is lingering within japanese studies departments, publication venues, conferences and funding schemes. one way to do so is by seriously reconsidering our choice of subject matter and by reflecting more actively upon our use of the adjective ‘japanese’. in particular, i propose three research agendas for the academic study of japan: 1) study processes of japan-making (instead of being complicit in them); 2) rethink japan as a spatio cultural unit by focusing on diversity within the japanese isles as well as transnational connections; and 3) develop an intra-asian comparative perspective focusing on particulars rather than nation-states. this article is divided into two parts. in the first part, i discuss metho dological nationalism, give some examples of ways in which it can lead to distorted or incomplete knowledge and explain why this is still a problem today. in the second part, i present my three suggestions for today’s research agenda in more detail. readers familiar with the field will notice that my argument is not particularly new—others made similar diagnoses and proposed similar solutions decades ago (e.g. harootunian & miyoshi 2002; morris-suzuki 2000), but at the time their words did not lead to the far-reaching transformation of institutional and epistemological structures. the present article constitutes 14 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots an attempt to reconsider some of these earlier debates about the relevance (or lack thereof) of japanese studies in the light of present-day concerns. it argues that methodological nationalism is still a problem, but it also identifies some promising new research trends that deserve more institutional support. by mapping these trends, i hope to contribute to an increased awareness of both the shortcomings and the opportunities of japanese studies today. the problem of methodological nationalism japan is not pre-given. what counts as japan today is the outcome of historical processes of territorial conquest, state formation and nation-building—of historical contingencies, in other words, not necessity. the islands that now constitute the territory of the japanese nation-state were historically characterised by profound cultural, linguistic and geographical diversity, but in modern times, this diversity has been appropriated and subsumed under the banner of a unified and reified national ‘japanese culture’. even the cultural traditions of the ainu and the ryukyu islands, which are strikingly different from those of honshu, shikoku and kyushu, have been forcibly incorporated into the japanese nation-state. twentieth-century scholarship has played an important part in this process. for instance, influential cultural theorists such as yanagita kunio (1875-1962) and umehara takeshi (1925-2019) appropriated diversity by means of social-evolutionist frameworks, redefining divergent cultural traditions as remnants of an imagined primordial japanese culture supposedly characterised by social harmony, animism and sustainability (morris suzuki 1998; rots 2017; umehara 1995). western scholars of japan, likewise, played an important role in the construction of a unified and essentialised ‘japanese culture’. orientalist academic narratives portraying japan as something diametrically opposed to an equally essentialised ‘west’ (e.g. benedict 1946) and twentieth-century japanese nationalist imagery (nihonjinron) thus mutually reinforced each other (befu 2001). japanese studies was one of the main discursive fields where such imagery took shape and gained academic legitimacy. few scholars of japan today subscribe to nihonjinron-type narratives of japanese uniqueness and superiority. nevertheless, the legacy of this discursive tradition is visible in news media, advertising, fan culture and the entertainment industry, all of which reproduce flat-yet-evocative images of japan as ‘the quintessential other, a land of paradox, a land 15 beyond methodological nationalism simultaneously characterised by hidebound tradition and radical futurity’ (thomas 2019: 2). as an academic field, japanese studies continues to struggle with this legacy and to make sense of diversity that does not fit easily within the parameters of a reified, singular national culture. certainly, most scholars of japan are aware of the fact that the country japan is home to ethnic minorities and migrant communities, and they acknowledge the existence of some hybrid groups such as nikkeijin (migrants with japanese ancestry) and hāfu (people with one japanese parent). however, this awareness has not given rise to widespread critical scrutiny of the underlying category formation. in other words, we realise that what does or does not count as japanese may be subject to change, but we hardly question the validity of the category itself. in japanese studies, ‘japan’ usually appears as a natural given. as a discipline, japanese studies is certainly not committed to promoting orientalist stereotypes. however, it does preserve the underlying classification model that reifies japan as a distinct entity and ‘things japanese’ as a separate category of social or cultural phenomena that must be studied on their own merits, rather than in an explicitly comparative manner. simply put: by reifying japan as a unit of analysis that needs its own academic discipline and a distinct group of qualified interpreters (‘japanologists’) in order to be understood, the academic construct ‘japanese studies’ arguably justifies popular perceptions of japan as essentially other, unique and internally coherent. and even when many scholars of japan reject simplistic binary oppositions and stereotypes in their own work, they are still conditioned by the academic epistemological and institutional structures that contribute to such othering. the question is, of course, how we can overcome this catch-22 situation. how can we preserve the specialised academic study of things taking place in japan without contributing to the reification of japan as a distinct unit of analysis? as mentioned: these questions are not new. harry harootunian and miyoshi masao (2002) pointed out twenty years ago that few japanese studies scholars have a significant impact on the disciplines (sociology, literature, religious studies, philosophy or political science) that they supposedly represent, because few of them do theoretically or methodologically innovative work. likewise, around the same time, tessa morris-suzuki (2000) argued that area studies unwittingly contri butes to popular nationalist notions of uniqueness and superiority. unfortunately, not much has changed since they wrote their critiques. of course, as before, excellent research is conducted by japanese 16 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots studies scholars on specific historical or cultural phenomena. generally speaking, however, the impact of these studies outside the field of japanese studies has been limited. this is not only because many of us, myself included, are confined to teaching in japanese studies departments for livelihood reasons. more importantly, it has to do with the fact that ‘japan’ continues to be taken for granted in most scholarship within the field. we use the adjective ‘japanese’ continuously, for instance to refer to a particular canon of fictional texts (japanese literature), a mosaic of ritual and doctrinal traditions (japanese religion), a body of moral and metaphysical texts (japanese philosophy) or a genre of video games that are produced and consumed transnationally yet purportedly have some unique national features (japanese games). while we may ask what we mean by literature, religion, philosophy or even games, only rarely do we question the meaning of the adjective ‘japanese’ in these compounds. the adjective is as elusive as it is ubiquitous. japan-making in practice: some examples taking the ‘japanese’ in ‘japanese religion’ or ‘japanese culture’ for granted has unfortunate consequences. the seemingly neutral adjective functions discursively to set apart certain phenomena as national, while excluding others. this is essentially an ideological operation, but because the term is so naturalised and so common in everyday speech (like the adjectives of other nation-states), few people recognise it as such. furthermore, methodological nationalism is problematic because it leads to the compartmentalisation and, at times, distortion of knowledge. it often prevents us from seeing the obvious: japan is not special. as the vignette from extraordinary attorney woo in the introduction illustrates, many things that are framed as uniquely or typically japanese in popular discourse and academia are surprisingly common throughout continental asia. the sacred hackberry tree is a concrete example. as i have demonstrated in my earlier work, shinboku (sacred trees) and chinju no mori (sacred shrine groves) are central to contemporary imaginations of shinto as an ancient, indigenous japanese tradition of nature worship and feature prominently in romantic nationalist imaginations of japan as a nation of nature lovers (rots 2017). journalists, scholars and religious actors repeatedly state that worship of sacred trees is a typically japanese tradition that goes back to prehistoric times and has survived until today 17 beyond methodological nationalism (e.g. hosoi 1976; moore & atherton 2020). it is certainly true that designated sacred trees are subject to special care, ritual as well as horticultural. however, contrary to what most western and japanese authors assert, there is nothing uniquely japanese about this (see figure 2). people worship sacred trees and groves throughout asia and africa—not just in rural or indigenous communities, but also in modern metropolises such as bangkok or delhi. tree veneration is extraordinarily normal—yet somehow, in popular and academic discourse, it has come to be associated with a presumed japanese nature aestheticism and ancient environmentalism. such representations are misleading, because they turn everyday local practices into a reified national culture. they are, in effect, instances of japan making. a transnational comparative perspective allows us to see that figure 1. a sacred tree in the old port town of hội an in central vietnam. source: photo by aike rots, 2023 18 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots there is nothing uniquely japanese about the worship of immanent deities residing in trees, rivers or other natural phenomena (sahlins 2022). i use this example not only because it relates to my own research, but also because scholars of religion in japan have long engaged in discursive japan-making practices, so it illustrates my point about the difference between academic japan-making (using the nation as an explanatory or classificatory principle) and the academic study of japan-making (applying a meta-perspective).8 significantly, the compound term ‘japanese religion’ constitutes a core category within japanese studies as well as religious studies. compared to other asian countries of more-or-less similar size—such as korea, vietnam, thailand or the philippines—the academic study of religion in japan is a well-established and sizeable subdiscipline, with its own specialised journals and sections (or units) at major conferences. possibly as a result, among scholars of religion, there has long been a tendency to perceive ‘japanese religion’ as a distinct set of practices within a singular ritual-cosmological-institutional system that transcends denominational diversity. this notion was widespread in both japanese and anglophone scholarship until at least the early 2000s.9 a prominent example of a work applying this one-national-system approach is the well-known study practically religious by ian reader and george tanabe (1998), which describes ‘the pursuit of this-worldly practical benefits’ (genze riyaku) as ‘the common religion of japan’. it is a rich and informative study, which rightly challenges earlier academic accounts of religion in japan that focus too strongly on doctrine or institutional histories. its problem, however, is that it postulates the existence of a singular, nationwide ‘religious system’ defined by some core features. people in japan worship in different ways, but they are unified by a commonly shared focus on this-worldly benefits, the authors argue. in effect, they highlighted one aspect of ritual behaviour and turned this into the common denominator of a reified ‘japanese religion’. national belonging thus becomes a core variable for predicting ritual behaviour. the problems of such a single-system approach are manifold. first of all, it does not do justice to internal diversity, conflict and change. if one posits the existence of a singular religious system, it is easy to overlook practices that do not fit within the framework and downplay the impact of historical transformations. second, such approaches not only group together a variety of disparate practices under the rubric 19 beyond methodological nationalism of the nation-state—which, in the case of pre-modern practices, is arguably anachronistic—but also deny the fact that some practices are profoundly different from the purported mainstream, while their practitioners are just as japanese as others. obvious examples include the lay buddhist movement sōka gakkai and christianity, which are deeply ingrained into the fabric of modern japanese politics and economy, but do not adhere to some of the basic features of ‘japanese religion’ often identified by scholars (e.g. mclaughlin 2018). third, like japanese studies in general, the subdiscipline ‘japanese religion’ has a serious problem with ainu and ryukyuan traditions, which do not fit easily within this reified, singular system. as mentioned, during the imperial period, ainu and ryukyuan practices were discursively incorporated into the national framework by means of ethnological scholarship describing them as the ‘primitive’ remnants of prehistoric japanese religion. in academia, such social-evolutionist models are now considered outdated, and most scholars acknowledge the fact these traditions are and were profoundly different from those of mainland japan. as a result, however, scholars of japanese religion typically shy away from studying them, thus overlooking diversity within the archipelago. and fourth: reifying certain practices and beliefs as ‘japanese’ and juxtaposing ‘japanese religion’ with western or abrahamic traditions makes us overlook the multiple similarities that exist between worship practices in the japanese archipelago and elsewhere in asia. a single visit to ciyou temple in taipei, phủ tây hồ in hanoi or erawan shrine in bangkok is enough to realise that a focus on genze riyaku is not ‘the common religion of japan’, as reader and tanabe suggested (1998), but constitutes a core feature of ritual worship throughout east and southeast asia, and probably beyond. for most ritual behaviour, national belonging is not a relevant variable. why, then, would academics want to construct a ‘japanese’ religious system, when the practices they discuss are widespread also beyond japan? why this national framework? today, scholars in the field of japanese religion are increasingly aware of the fact that worship traditions in japan have been shaped by transnational influences as much as by local dynamics. in recent years, therefore, it has become less common in scholarly literature to make generalised statements about ‘japanese religion’ as a whole. instead, most monographs in the field now zoom in on the histories of particular temples, shrines or devotional movements. however, the categories ‘japan’ and ‘japanese’ continue to be used widely, often 20 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots escaping critical examination. interestingly, in the past fifteen years, the academic study of ‘japanese religion’ has contributed significantly to a growing awareness of the historical formation, adaptation and diversity of the term ‘religion’. scholars have made significant progress in re-historicising the category religion (shūkyō) and investigating its genealogy in relation to nineteenth-century state formation and imperialism (hoshino 2012; josephson 2012; maxey 2014). they have not yet subjected the category ‘japan’ to similar scrutiny, however. the noun has received much more critical attention than the adjective. my suggestion is that scholars of ‘japanese religion’ should study not only the historical formation and competing definitions of ‘religion’, as many have done in the last decade, but also ask how certain practices and worldviews have come to be classified as japanese religion, while others are excluded. only in the last few years have some of us started asking critical questions about the ways in which the academic study of religion has been complicit not only in religion-making, but also in japan-making processes—and not only in the category’s foundational period, the late nineteenth century, but also in post-war society and today (e.g. thomas 2019). this is a promising development. i hope more researchers will follow up on this and investigate ways in which the formation of core modern societal categories (not only religion, but also heritage, art, economy and more) interacts with, affects and is shaped by processes of nation-making—and what is excluded and erased in the process. from making japan to studying japan-making how can we continue to study and analyse cultural practices and texts without using the nation-state as our main interpretive framework? how can japanese studies become more self-reflexive, acquire a wider academic relevance and overcome the pitfalls of methodological nationalism? in this and the following sections, i make three suggestions for future research directions. first, as mentioned, instead of taking japan for granted as a natural category, japanese studies should study processes of discursive and physical japan-making—not unlike the ways in which scholars in other disciplines have started investigating processes of heritage-making (weiss 2007) and religion-making (dressler & mandair 2011). clearly, disposing of ‘japan’ as an analytical category altogether is no option. japan is a reality: it exists as a modern nation, as a state with corresponding 21 beyond methodological nationalism physical territories and not least as an ideal that carries meaning for large numbers of people. that does not mean, however, that it is fixed. what counts as japanese is a function of discourse, and it is our task as scholars of japan to investigate the processes by which certain things come to be classified as japanese—and, at least as importantly, by which they are excluded from that category. we have to examine those processes instead of being complicit in them. that means we should take japan seriously as an emic category that may or may not carry meaning to the people we study and investigate processes of classification and identification on the ground. but it also means that we can no longer take it for granted as a natural given and should stop imposing scholarly abstractions such as ‘japanese religion’ (and ‘japanese art’, ‘japanese philosophy’, etc.) upon a variety of disparate cultural expressions and texts, many of which have been shaped by continental and global influences as much as by local particularities. again: this argument is not new. there are several excellent studies of constructions of japaneseness in the late nineteenth and twentieth century (e.g. befu 2001; gluck 1985; morris-suzuki 1998). so my point here is not that excellent research on japan-making does not exist. what i find puzzling, however, is that these books, although widely read, have not had a greater impact on the institutional structures and category boundaries of japanese studies itself. that is, despite such critical interventions, scholars within the discursive and institutional formation ‘japanese studies’ continue to operate with mostly implicit understandings of their core category, and study programs continue to set apart ‘japan’ as a distinct and demarcated entity. few japanese studies scholars today reproduce stereotypes or nationalist ideals. however, my point about methodological nationalism is that it is often implicit and non-reflexive. it is expressed in truisms such as ‘the religious life of japanese people is characterised by ‘born shinto, die buddhist’, which is often repeated in textbooks and classroom settings. such a statement presents a common feature of popular devotion throughout asia—ritual complementarity and diversity—as something uniquely japanese. another example is a common claim such as ‘japanese visual popular culture is different from popular culture in the west because japanese characters are morally ambiguous’, which places cultural products into an essentialist dichotomy and denies the transnational nature of film production and consumption today. commonplace statements such as these are examples of japan-making in practice. they reconfirm national belonging as the main independent variable that 22 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots governs things such as ritual behaviour or storytelling technique. but what if, for most everyday practices or products, nationality does not matter? identifying a particular phenomenon as a japanese thing turns it into a national defining feature, while obscuring individual agency and diversity. this is exactly what japan-making entails. in sum, japan-making is not merely something that happened in the past. most university students who take a degree in the humanities these days learn that nations are ‘imagined communities’ (anderson 1991 [1983]) built on ‘invented traditions’ (hobsbawm & ranger 2012 [1983]). in japanese studies, too, they learn that much of what counts as traditional culture today was largely the product of meiji-period myth-making (gluck 1985). this is correct, of course, but it is equally important to teach them that nation-building, discursive and institutional, is not just something that happened in the nineteenth century; it is an ongoing process of reinvention, negotiation and exclusion. as academics, we are involved in this process. therefore, when writing or teaching about ‘things japanese’, we should always question our own implicit and explicit notions of japaneseness. we also need more critical investigation into and reflection upon the ways in which the institutions of japanese studies—university programs, publication venues, academic gatherings and funding opportunities—take part in, shape and challenge wider japan-making agendas. taking diversity seriously second, we should start taking diversity much more seriously—not in a unity-in-diversity kind of way, subsuming local differences under the banner of a reified national culture, but by realising that there may not always be a common denominator. the islands that constitute japan today have historically been home to a wide variety of practices and worldviews, some of which have very little in common. just as there was no unified italian, french or german culture prior to nineteenth-century nation-building, there was no japanese culture until scholars started inventing it in the late edo and meiji periods. cultural traditions, therefore, do not necessarily respect modern-day national boundaries. in the 1990s, historian amino yoshihiko (1928-2004) was one of the first to seriously challenge common nationalist historiography and show how modern understandings of the nation and its culture have been shaped historically (amino 1991). focusing on maritime networks in the east china sea instead of telling the paradigmatic yamato-centric historical 23 beyond methodological nationalism narrative, amino’s scholarship quite literally re-centred the periphery, showing that kyushu was in many ways closer to continental asia than to northern honshu. in pre-modern times, ritual and aesthetic practices in kyushu may have been more similar to those of the ryukyu islands or the korean peninsula than those of the tohoku or kanto regions. a sea-centric perspective, therefore, can help us overcome implicit notions of japan as a more or less isolated, naturally bounded and transhistorical entity. this is not just a matter of historiography; it also applies to the study of contemporary society. today, too, local practices do not necessarily correspond to normative scholarly or popular accounts of ‘national’ tradition. the question then becomes: how do local actors relate to such notions, and how do traditions change in response? this interaction (and, possibly, friction) between local, national and transnational actors and ideas on the ground is arguably the most fascinating and offers the most promising material for theoretical reflection (cf. tsing 2005). yet in order to analyse such interactions, it is essential that we ask ourselves how japaneseness is produced, negotiated or subverted. in other words: what types of diversity are sanctioned by the state, mass media and academia? and what types of diversity are perceived as problematic, denied or even suppressed, because they challenge particular power structures and dominant ideological constructs? when saying that our discipline should investigate diversity more, i am not talking about, say, the marketing of rural agricultural commodities or intangible cultural heritage such as kagura and tiger dances for tourism purposes. these are legitimate research topics, of course, but such curated and depoliticised diversity is not at odds with common perceptions of japanese culture as essentially unified and unique. there are other kinds of diversity, social and political, that present more profound challenges to nationalist and orientalist projects of differentiation and reification. this is the kind of diversity related to class—e.g. the growing precariat, who are missing out on the promises of post-war affluence and stability (allison 2013). it is related to migration and ethnicity—the reality, for instance, that the japanese economy depends upon the structural exploitation of south and southeast asian migrant workers, many of whom are subject to violence and racist abuse (e.g. tanaka 2020; trần 2020). it is related to gender and sexuality—e.g. the ongoing discrimination of lgbt+ people and their vulnerability in the face of disaster (yamashita, gomez & dombroski 2017). and it is related to pollution, toxicity and ecolo gical loss—e.g. the structural marginalisation of groups that have fallen 24 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots victim to corporate ecocide, in minamata, fukushima and elsewhere (kimura 2016; kirby 2011; walker 2010). japan is not a neatly bounded, internally coherent entity. it is a messy reality, home to structural racism, gendered inequalities and violent boundary-policing. the good news is that scholars of japan are becoming increasingly aware of this. perhaps most importantly: until recently, japanese studies seemed disturbingly oblivious of the fact that contemporary japan is a colonial state. the standard historical narrative, taught in history textbooks and university courses, is that colonialism ended when japan lost the war in 1945. this narrative denies the lived reality of indigenous communities in hokkaido and the ryukyu islands.10 hokkaido is a settler colonial society built upon the displacement and dispossession of ainu communities. okinawa is a de facto us military colony, managed by tokyo, where the will of the people is ignored if it does not comply with us military-strategic interests.11 considering the fact that two of japan’s prefectures are colonial societies, not just in pre-war times but today, the relative absence of postcolonial and indigenous theory within the field is puzzling. it is symptomatic, however, for the lack of interest in indigenous cultures within japanese studies: until recently, the study of indigenous communities within japan was, at best, a peripheral affair. few university programs in japanese studies offer courses in ainu or okinawan studies. few textbooks, handbooks and sourcebooks of ‘japanese culture’ or ‘japanese religion’ contain chapters that discuss ainu or ryukyuan experiences. thus, these experiences have been excluded from higher education about japan and have not featured in the construction of ‘japan’ as an academic category. recent years, however, have seen an increase in high-quality scholarship on indigenous cultures in japan (e.g. hudson, lewallen & watson 2014; lewallen 2016). this is a promising trend. it remains to be seen if this also leads to changes in university curricula and editorial choices for handbooks. i can only express my hope that more (early career) researchers choose to study diversity in the japanese isles in-depth— focusing on indigenous issues, migration, social and economic inequalities and political ecology—and, by doing so, challenges established conventions and classification models. transnational comparison third, i advocate a radical comparative approach that seeks to move beyond the nation-state as an analytical category altogether, focusing 25 beyond methodological nationalism on practices and localities in different parts of asia (and beyond). in her aforementioned essay ‘anti-area studies’, tessa morris-suzuki (2000) argued that ethnocentrism and nationalism are serious problems within area studies, preventing in-depth interaction between regional (e.g. japan) specialists and other social science or humanities disciplines. in response to such criticism, some scholars only focus on specific cases and no longer conceptualise practices as national, instead emphasising ‘the absolute particularity of the data in question’ (smith 2000: 36). however, such localism—only focusing on particulars and avoiding comparative approaches—cannot be the solution, because it ultimately reinforces notions of uniqueness and untranslatability and leads to academic parochialism. on the other hand, as morris suzuki argues, purportedly universalistic theories that impose a single explanatory model upon a variety of cultural and social contexts (e.g. rational choice theory) are not a solution either, because they deny and erase difference. her suggestion: a radically transnational comparative approach that studies particular cases in different places, with the linguistic and historical expertise characteristic of area studies, but without the disciplinary compartmentalisation into designated geographical ‘areas’ or nations. in other words: we need a comparative, multi-sited historical anthropology that allows for local particulars while acknowledging the existence and significance of transnational flows. such an approach allows us to see similarities and connections among, say, indigenous movements in ainu mosir, sápmi and aotearoa. in response to my earlier essay (rots 2019a) and guest lectures on this topic, some senior colleagues have pointed out that japanese studies and its various subdisciplines (literature, linguistics, political science, history, anthropology and more) are, and have always been, inherently comparative. according to them, comparison is nothing new. however, the approach i advocate for does not use nations as its main units of comparison. in other words, i do not suggest that we juxtapose japanese or korean practices qua japanese or korean, as if these practices are somehow representative of their respective nation-states. numerous articles in the quantitative social sciences do exactly this: compare policies or demographics in japan or korea (or other states) and explain what they have in common and where they deviate. such comparison arguably contributes to methodological nationalism, rather than challenge it, because it uses the nation-state as the main category of analysis. by contrast, i suggest that we abolish the 26 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots notion of the nation-state as a foundational, etic unit of analysis, and that we start to approach it as an emic category that may or may not carry meaning to the actors involved. i think we should move towards intra-asian comparative studies that focus on particular places and practices, and examine the various local, intra-regional, national and transnational forces by which these are shaped. among other things, this will allow us to study nation-building practices comparatively. such an approach will help us recognise similar developments in different parts of asia—the simultaneous reinvention of shinto and daoism as national ‘green religions’ by state actors and ngos (rots 2017), for instance, or the ways in which the universal category ‘heritage’ functions to re-establish state control over sacred sites across the region (rots 2019b)—which are otherwise overlooked. another scholar who has argued for the importance of non-essentialist, cross-border comparative research in different places in asia is peter van der veer (2014; 2016). as van der veer makes clear, comparison is not the same as generalisation; like morris-suzuki, he states that the growing tendency to perceive generality as the main criterion for good science is problematic for methodological as well as ideological reasons. rather than explaining difference in terms of large, totalising categories such as national culture, religion or even civilisation, he suggests that we adopt ‘a necessarily fragmentary approach to social life, in which the study of a fragment is used to gain a perspective on a larger whole’ (2016: 9). laurel kendall (2021) has recently demonstrated what such an approach can achieve in an ambitious and highly engaging study of sacred objects in bali, korea, myanmar and vietnam. inspired by these scholars, my own current research investigates some of the ways in which local actors shape their collective identities in relation to natural environments, gods and spirits and the nation state, in different parts of the maritime sinosphere (e.g. rots & lu rots forthcoming). to be clear: i am not arguing for a move away from specialised area knowledge, neither in research nor in teaching. if there is one thing area studies programs should preserve, it is their focus on intensive, multi-year language training. for the time being at least, there is a clear demand for such language education on the part of our students; eliminating language from study programs would be counterproductive. i think area studies is valuable exactly because it offers specialised knowledge of local languages, cultural practices and historical contexts. my point is simply that knowledge production within area studies 27 beyond methodological nationalism should contain critical reflection upon category formation (i.e. study japan-making), that it should illuminate (intrinsically political) processes of inclusion and exclusion and that specialised area knowledge need not be confined within the boundaries of a particular nation-state. this is not only a matter of choosing research topics, but also classroom pedagogy. i am of course aware of the fact that most students in asian studies—some exceptions notwithstanding—probably do not have the time or capacity to master two east asian languages. however, it is certainly possible to introduce more in-depth comparative elements into general courses on east asian politics, history, culture or religion. in some places, such courses already exist. as one reviewer of this article pointed out, various universities offer combined study programs in east asian studies. according to them, even if study programs contain transnational comparative elements, students do not necessarily appreciate those. while i acknowledge that motivating students can be challenging, i do object to the belief—shared by many japanese studies professors, but grounded in little more than anecdotal evidence—that ‘our’ students are a priori uninterested in studying japan comparatively. i have made various attempts to introduce comparative and transnational elements into courses on japanese culture—e.g. comparing heritage-making in japan to other asian countries or discussing how ainu activists interact with indigenous communities elsewhere—and i have found that, when invited, many students in japanese studies do express a strong interest in these topics. furthermore, when i conducted a small survey questionnaire among current and previous students of japanese and chinese studies at my university in 2021, a vast majority stated that they appreciated transnational perspectives in courses, and more than half of the 170 respondents wanted to learn more about other asian countries than they do today, not less.12 while i do not claim this survey to be representative for japanese studies globally, it does indicate that common claims à la ‘students in japanese studies are not interested in other countries’ are in need of further scrutiny and should not be taken at face value. in sum, after years of increasing particularism and the fragmentation of knowledge, it is good to see that the pendulum is swinging back, and that an increasing number of scholars are acknowledging the importance of research that transcends boundaries and has a comparative character. japan is no isolated entity, but an integral part of asia, not just in terms of international politics and trade but also culturally. 28 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots developments in japan are shaped by developments elsewhere, and vice versa. by now, the anthropocene should have made us all aware of the fact that, notwithstanding our diversity, we are all connected; but it also shows us that people in different parts of the world contribute to, interpret and suffer from climate change and ecological loss in profoundly different ways (hudson 2014). therefore, there is still a need for specialised place-based knowledge, today as much as ever. the point is that academic knowledge production should transcend disciplinary and national boundaries, not enforce them. scholars of japan should contribute to such knowledge production not only by interpreting, translating and analysing ‘things japanese’ to the rest of the world, but also by engaging in explicitly comparative collaborations and conversations. concluding thoughts as i have argued in this article, if we want japanese studies to be relevant, we have to move beyond ‘japan’ as our main unit of analysis and stop using the adjective ‘japanese’ as if it were a natural given. however, we cannot simply focus on particular case studies and completely ignore the nation-state either. as scholars of japan, we have to engage with our discipline’s master category—not by reifying it, but by studying its formation and by investigating the processes (past and present) by which certain phenomena are included in or excluded from this category. a transnational, intra-asian comparative perspective will help us realise that many of the cultural expressions often identified with japan can be found elsewhere and will shed new light on those expressions. japanese studies has been slow to respond to the epistemological critique of scholars like harootunian and miyoshi (2002) and morris suzuki (2000) around the turn of the century. the ‘cool japan’ wave led to high student enrolment and relative institutional stability in the 2000s and 2010s, and few scholars felt the urgency to take up debates about disciplinary identities, structures and agendas. however, methodological nationalism has not disappeared, even though it is less visible today than twenty years ago. there are still many tacit assumptions about what is and is not part of japan—and, correspondingly, what does or does not constitute proper research and teaching material for scholars hired in japanese studies departments. these assumptions constitute the discipline’s doxa, but they are not discussed widely. 29 beyond methodological nationalism questioning the formation and demarcation of our core category remains a risky business, as it may lead to accusations of undermining the discipline as a whole—or, worse, of jeopardising job opportunities. needless to say: arguing that scholars of japan should study the formation of their own core category and conduct more transnational comparative research does not mean that the discipline as a whole has no raison d’être, nor that study programs should be discontinued. it does mean they need some rethinking and, in some places at least, changes in study curricula. the three suggestions for research agendas outlined in this article are not novel inventions. much of this is already taking place. the purpose of this article is to identify these trends, explain why they matter and argue for more structural institutional support. the list is not exhaustive: there are several other promising initiatives and new research fields not discussed in this article—environmental humanities and digital humanities, for instance—which likewise deserve institutional support. in any case, now that the humanities are in a highly vulnerable position globally, we cannot shy away from the question of japanese studies’ wider academic and societal relevance. as i am writing these sentences, the world is facing a climate crisis, an energy crisis, high inflation, the rise of anti-democratic parties and even the threat of nuclear war. like elsewhere, humans and non-humans in the japanese isles are affected by and respond to these crises in multiple ways. the academic study of japan matters, because it sheds light on some of these responses and, potentially, can contribute to cross cultural understanding and the preservation of diversity. but this requires that we break down some boundaries. acknowledgments this article builds upon my essay ‘the elusive adjective: beyond methodological nationalism in japanese studies’ (rots 2019a) and the keynote lecture at the conference ‘japan and japanese studies in the 21st century’ (copenhagen, 2022). i would like to thank the scandinavia japan sasakawa foundation and organisers of the conference for inviting me to give the keynote lecture and the other conference participants for insightful questions and lively discussions. many thanks also go to kjeld erik brødsgaard, vera skvirskaja and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and encouragement. research for this article was supported by the erc-funded project whales of power: aquatic 30 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 aike p. rots mammals, devotional practices and environmental change in maritime east asia (erc starting grant 2018, grant agreement no. 803211). aike p. rots is associate professor at the university of oslo. his research has focused on religious environmentalism, heritage-making and religion, religion in contemporary vietnam, okinawan sacred groves, modern shinto and japanese christianity. he is currently the pi of the erc-funded project ‘whales of power: aquatic mammals, devotional practices and environmental change in maritime east asia’. email: a.p.rots@ikos.uio.no notes 1 jin yu young 2022. ‘in south korea, a hit show brings autism into the spotlight’. the new york times, 4 september, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/04 /world/asia/south-korea-autism-extraordinary-attorney-woo.html (accessed 6 september 2022). 2 kim rahn 2022. ‘hackberry tree in “extraordinary attorney woo” draws visitors to small village’. the korea times, 25 july, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr /www/art/2022/07/688_333295.html?utm_source=tw (accessed 6 september 2022). 3 similarly, akihiro ogawa and philip seaton have observed that ‘because of methodological nationalism, japanese studies has limited its audience as well as its academic potentiality’ (2020b: 12), and argued for a more explicitly transnational approach. the chapters in their edited volume provide examples of such an approach, focusing primarily on the asia-pacific region (ogawa & seaton 2020a). 4 sadly, cutting funding for the humanities and social sciences and restricting academic freedom are global trends, not only in authoritarian countries but also in so-called liberal democracies. on the us, see joy connolly 2021. ‘the assault on the humanities and social sciences’. medium, 6 april, https://medium.com /acls-in-depth-today/the-assault-on-the-humanities-59af07a362ed (accessed 21 september 2022). on japan, see jack grove 2015. ‘social sciences and humanities faculties “to close” in japan after ministerial intervention’. times higher education, 14 september, https://www.timeshighereducation.com /news/social-sciences-and-humanities-faculties-close-japan-after-ministerial -decree (accessed 21 september 2022). on the uk, see alex preston 2015. ‘the war against humanities at britain’s universities’. the observer, 29 march, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/29/war-against -humanities-at-britains-universities (accessed 21 september 2022). on southeast asia, see bryan w. van norden 2021. ‘the global fight for the humanities: why a liberal arts college in singapore matters’. medium, 22 september, https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-global-fight-for-the-humanities -5ab58ea8bfff (accessed 21 september 2022). 5 see ben-ari 2020 for a more in-depth discussion of the similarities and differences between japanese studies and social anthropology. 6 kanako takahara 2022. ‘border restrictions causing shift away from japan studies, survey finds’. the japan times, 30 august, https://www.japantimes 31 beyond methodological nationalism .co.jp/news/2022/08/30/national/japanese-studies-border-restrictions -impact-survey/ (accessed 22 september 2022). 7 paula r. curtis 2020. ‘embracing the rebirth of japanese studies.’ #asianow, 18 may, https://www.asianstudies.org/embracing-the-rebirth-of-japanese -studies/ (accessed 21 september 2022). 8 in this essay, i use the example of ‘japanese religion’. the same case can be made for similar compounds—e.g. academic constructs of ‘japanese philosophy’ as a distinct body of thought defined by some elusive ‘japanese’ qualities (cf. rots 2012). 9 representative examples include earhart 1998; ellwood 2016; kitagawa 1987. for a more elaborate genealogy of the compound term ‘japanese religion’, see isomae 2005. see also my discussion in rots 2019a. 10 the ainu were formally recognised as an indigenous minority by the japanese state in 2008. this recognition has not led to the return of landor fishing rights to ainu communities or repairs for past atrocities (morris-suzuki 2020). okinawan and other ryukyuan communities are not recognised as indigenous minorities, and opinions differ as to whether this is a status worth striving for (see yokota 2015). in this article, i use the term ‘indigenous’ in a broad sense, referring to linguistic and cultural minorities placed under japanese colonial control in their own lands, i.e. both ainu and ryukyuan. 11 i am referring first and foremost to the construction of a large new us military base in henoko bay, despite the fact that a large majority of okinawans opposes it. this is the latest in a long series of events and decisions made by washington and tokyo that do not consider okinawan opinions and concerns. see for instance hein & selden 2003; mccormack & norimatsu 2018 [2012]. 12 i conducted this survey together with my colleague erling hagen agøy. it has not been published, but the report was shared internally within my department. references allison, anne 2013. 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our voice only in proportion to the strength they know we have. jawaharlal nehru: speech in lok sabha leaders of all the historic movements are aware of the dynamics of the interaction between the internal and the external dimensions of the processes in which they were involved. in the social science writings, however, several mechanical notions regarding such relationship persist. in this essay, there is an attempt to explain the dynamics of the internal and the external in the light of the chinese revolutionary experience. there are two objectives of this exercise which are taken up in the two parts of the paper. first, it is argued that rather than engage in the empiricist exercise of listing the roots or sources of a foreign policy, it is more fruitful to place a national or regional experience in the world process and discern the character of both the world process and the distinct process at the lower level. secondly, we seek to identdy the principal problems in china's development experience in terms of three contradictions in socialist construction. handling of those contradictions has implications at several levels including foreign policy. china in the world process the literature on foreign policy generally presents a discussion on the roots manoranjan mohanty or sources of foreign policy listing a number of factors like culture, history, geopolitics, economic resources, and ideology. the importance of these factors cannot be doubted.' cultural legacies have not only an influence on the outlook of the leaders of the state but may also contribute to the shaping of a worldview having sigruficant consequences for foreign policy. as will be seen there is a continuing debate among china scholars on the validity of the hypothesis that china continues to have a sino-centric worldview. historical experience of suffering at the harids of colonialism and pursuing an anti colonial struggle do have a serious bearing on the policies of the post colonial state. the dominant ideology and strategy of the liberation movement and the nature of the social base of it are also significant. some scholars consider india's policy of non-alignment an extension of the freedom struggle which under mahatma gandhi's leadership evolved in the direction of relatively peaceful str~ggle.~ china's armed revolution is often linked to its periodically militant international behavior, and the latter with domestic militancy.3 geopolitics of a region is another important dimension. having a long border with a major country, large coastline and the overall physical character of a region do affect a country's foreign policy. so do the level of natural resources. countries like china and india which are rich in minerals and other natural resources but backward in technology particularly look upon the advanced industrial countries for help. finally, ideology of the state leadership both in terms of broad orientation like liberalism or socialism and in its concrete formulation in terms of a political line operates through the process of decision-making. a foreign policy is a part of the international strategy which like all other strategies is a dialectical synthesis of ideological and environment factor^.^ therefore, ideology is one of the components of decision-making. if the foreign policy is totally derived from environmental pressures then it loses the capacity to achieve long-term goals. if it is mechanically formulated on the basis of ideological goals then it would be ineffective in the specific environment. there are two problems in this kind of exercise. first, one can go on listing such factors and all of them are important elements in the making of foreign policy. however, there is an empirical fallacy in this approach. the list can never be exhausted. nor does it indicate which factors are more important than others at apoint of time. secondly, each of these factors presents several options in foreign policy. as can be seen in the case of china, the same leadership may carry out sigruficant changes in the foreign policy line. copenhagen papen z88 8 domestic dimensions of china's foreign policy between culture and foreign policy, toof there is no direct correspondence. therefore, it is desirable to seek alternative ways of explaining the linkages between the internal and the international dimension and identdy a perspec tive of analysis. among china scholars there are three lines of thinking on explaining china's contemporary experience in world perspective. they are: (i) civiliza 6ional interaction; (ii) modernization process; and (iii) democratic and social ist transformation. even though they are related, there still are sigruficant differences in approach and consequently different policy implications. on the civilizational plane, too, there are two views. one is a powerful view in the west which argues that chinese civilization, as distinct from western civilization, has certain specific characteristics emanating from confucianism and mandarin bureaucratic tradition. despite several revol utionary movements during the past two centuries the basic features of the civilization p e r ~ i s t . ~ this view points at several instances of 'restoration' of earlier practices. it creates a prototype image of the chinese people which westerners carry with them. while some scholars consider this civilization inhospitable to western-type development others regard it as vulnerable to revolution. the latter argue that in this civilization certain rigidity developed which made the elite incapable of adapting to the changing material conditions, thus paving the way for violent o ~ e r t h r o w . ~ the general assumption underlying this perspective is that the contact with the west has made little dent on the chinese civilization. on the same plane there is another view which takes into account multiple strands in the chinese civilization. it sees chinese civilization carrying continuing tension between the harmony ethics of confucianism and the struggle ethics of buddhism which had gone from india to china.7 since the middle nineteeth century both the streams have been challenged by european values of the industrial revolution. the struggle involving these three streams was intensified during the may fourth movement. the communist party of china under mao zedong's leadership tried to resolve the conflict among these forces in the course of the new-democratic revolution. but mao's later policies, particularly during the cultural revolution, overemphasized the struggle ethics and led to the breaking of the balance. according to this argument, deng xiaoping was engaged in restoring the balance. but there were limits to the application of the european development model to china, because that model was born out of the geopolitics of the small european states. their experiences could not apply to manoranjan mohanty the countries of continental size like china. therefore, the problem of development and democratization in china has to be tackled basically within the framework of harmony-conflict and absorbing the european influence to enrich it. this is what deng seems to be doing though difficulties in practice produce moments of crisis. in this framework, too, the multiple value streams are not fully accounted for. besides confucianism and buddhism there were other currents in the chinese history which had no inconsiderable influence. in the modern times the intervention by marxism does not figure prominently either, even though it is considered as reinforcing the conflict ethics. the cpc analysed the situation applying marxist catagories and in the process innovating forms of political and organizational practice. it gave nationalism a social content and mass character. to see the chinese experience in terms of the harmony-conflict framework is helpful in the context of the recent debates on maoist line; but it is incomplete without taking into account the various value movements in history. the second perspective, the modernization perspective, is inspired by the weberian approach which sees the evolution of societies in terms of their march on the path of industrialization and increasing rationality. much of western social science accepted this approach until functionalism came under attack in the late 1960s. there is a revival of this perspective with the conscious proclamation of the "four modernization" program in post mao china. the transition from traditional agrarian society to modem industrial society that has advanced technology and productive capacity is regarded as the universal process. it first happened in the west and other countries are following suit at varying pace. then the modernization argument branches off into two separate lines. some see the modernization process as having been successfully initiated by maors early new-democratic policies and after a long interruption resumed by deng xiaoping. but the fact that china is ruled by a communist party is seen as a stumbling block to this process, because it restricts free flow of information and operation of market force^.^ according to this framework, under the present system there is bound to be periodic suspension of "open doorff. a centralized leadership controlling the levers of modernization has the propensity to commit errors. thus there is a necessary contradiction between modernization and the rule by a communist party. according to this line of thought, even though building a modern and powerful china has been the goal of all streams of the reformers during the past hundred years, the lack of a democratic framework has been a persistent constraint. copenhagen papers ?88 10 i i domestic dimensions of c h a r s foreign policy 1 i others see soots of the modernization process in the western cultural sphere. transplantation in the chinese or indian culture areas does not work; they have very different views of life and s ~ c i e t y . ~ western contact has i of course produced new value processes; but has not displaced their i , worldviews. confucianism, for example, is seen as deeply embedded in the psyche of the chinese people. according to this line of thought, mao and deng were trying to do the impossible by initiating alien processes. many of the crisis points, twists and turns in policy thus can be attributed to the tension between modernization and the chinese culture. both these lines of the modernization argument are based on a narrow i , view in the sense that they identdy modernization with the particular western experience in the period of the industrial revolution. that gave rise i to a complete theory of modernization in terms of differentiation of roles, i secularization of identities and politicization of a population int.0 citizenship i of a pluralist democratic state. its ideological and cultural bias was built into the theory, though the theory itself was proclaimed as a trans-cultural process. secondly, this approach in its latter line of argument has a static view of culture. it posits that china's culture got formed at a point of history and has been so frozen in the consciousness of the chinese people that new elements could not creep into it. on the other hand, one can argue that alternative streams of value movement have persisted with new currents emerging and some declining all the time in history. the civilizational and the modernization perspectives, however, alert us to the fact that cultural dimensions of change are extremely important and one must look deeper into the processes to understand them. moreover, modernization or transition to an industrial society has western roots and each country may have its specific experiences of transition. but the task for the social scientist is to define the world processes in such a way that it can sufficiently allow for the cultural, ideological and situational specificity in the various geographical areas. with that in view a perspective on trans formation, democratic and socialist transformation, is proposed in this contribution.lo the era of democratic transformation to start with, it is assumed that history of the modem world is characterized by the rise of capitalism and challenges to it. during the phase of imperialism manoranjan mohanty it became a world process affecting the political economies all over the world. no doubt, different countries went through different experiences in responding to european expansion. the important point to note is that contradictions arose in this process challenging capitalism in some areas and imperialism in the colonies. this era of "imperialism and revolution" is the era of expanding democracy both in europe and in the rest of the world. the growth of productive forces and libertarian ideas in europe had accom panied the period of imperialist expansion. the struggle against colonialism accelerated the process of democratization in the asian and african societies. thus the modem era could be called the era of democratic transformation. after achieving freedom the former colonies made it their prime objective to realise full-scale democratic goals in social, economic, cultural and political spheres. while the liberals take liberal democracy within a capitalist framework as the terminal phase in history symbolizing the attainment of the highest values, the socialists seek to advance it further towards socialist democracy and perhaps beyond. but with the hindsight of the experience of the socialist countries of the twentieth century it should be stressed that the agenda of democratic transformation is fairly long and it extends through the socialist revolution. besides, the movement towards democracy in each country carries its stamp despite the fact that capitalist era and modem technology and communication have integrated the modern world far more than ever before. the situational specificity in a country and the particular ideological frame within which its leadership works have their impact on the operation of the world process in a particular country. even though the transformation is generally regarded in two stages democratic transition from feudalism to capitalism and socialist transition from capitalism to socialism (and further to communism) modem world experience presents a more complex picture. in the developing countries of asia and africa one finds the persistence of feudal and semi-feudal social formations even in a situation of capitalist development. even in the advanced industrial countries where capitalism has matured there are serious shortfalls in democratic performance. the elitist monopoly of power and resources which has made participative democracy a remote ideal has been a subject of interesting debate. and in the socialist states the centralization of political power in the communist party leadership among other things has created a gap between the people and the party. there are new arenas of centralized power in both types of countries. in the context of the new industrial revolution, the micro-electronic one, the cdpenhagen papers 248 12 domestic dimensions of china's foreign policy instruments of manipulation and control have been multiplied, individuals, groups, deprived classes and cultural identies today seek democratic self determination everywhere. therefore the current world process is still mainly one of completing democratic transformation and moving towards socialist objectives. it is interesting to note that the cpc had characterized the revolutionary process since 1919 as new democratic revolution or people's democratic revolution. mao defined it as an intermediate stage between bourgeois democratic and socialist revolutions. after several trials and errors the chinese leadership at the thirteeth congress of the cpc defined the current stage of their development as "primary stage of socialism", even though this notion has not been propounded in full by the chinese theorists, it also shows the incomplete dimensions of democratic transformation. it not only involves democratic political practice, but also appropriate economic conditions for it. the necessary democratic climate in culture to promote moral and aesthetic fulfilment among all identity groups is another dimension. this means that ethnic domination embedded in certain systems even covertly in the normal structure has to be curbed. thus the agenda of democratic transformation is more than what it is usually conceived as. those systems which pride in democratic practice have a long way to go just as the socialist countries which often boasted of having completed the democratic revolution also must realize their deficiencies now. the latter have only to prove that they are better equipped to fulfill the democratic goals. thus the present world process of democratic transformation very much reflects itself in china which, however, presents its peculiar features. in the particular context of socialist contries like the soviet union and china there are certain common problems arising out of their post revolutionary practice. these are at three levels: politics, economy, and the world environment affecting practically all arenas of society. they are the three contradictions in the dialectics of socialist construction. three contradictions in socialism the first contradiction is between people and the state and it relates to the phenomenon of rising mass consciousness. the second contradiction is between political economy and technology which responds to the need for manoranjan mohanty higher productivity. the third at the level of the world environment is the contradiction between socialism and world capitalism. it relates to the press ures of self-adjusting capitalism in the west. all three contradictions arise from forces whose magnitude was not sufficiently anticipated at the time of the foundation of the socialist states. handling of these contradictions involves a range of possibilities for reconciling conflicting demands. therefore, perspective of a leadership bears its own stamp on policy. mao zedong did begin to notice these problems and the cultural revolution perspective was his response to them. in practice, however, it led to large scale anarchy. the deng xiaoping leadership has evolved an alternative approach to handling these problems. the modernization line of the post mao leadership is thus located also in the dynamics of the internal and the external and leaves many possibilities open to the prevailing leadership.ll people and the state every victorious party in a revolution had assumed that the state power that it had seized was on behalf of the people. a communist party like the cpc which had mobilized vast masses of the peasantry and had carried the banner of chinese nationalism had even more reason to believe that it had indeed set up a people's democratic dictatorship. this was the four class united front of workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie which consisted of 95 percent of the population, as mao put it. after 1956-58 there were further attempts to transform the character of the state into a socialist state of dictatorship of the proletariat. this process was accentuated during the period of the cultural revolution with an all-out campaign against the bourgeoisie. but it was never realized that the people's state with its centralized organs of power, coercive apparatus of the army, and militia and police may actually have contradictions with the people. what a revolutionary seizure of state power accomplishes is a possibility of building a people's democratic state; but its actualization is a process that involves building participatory institutions, curbing sources of alienation and evolving structures of socialist legitimacy. in socialist states in their various forms centralization, elitism, and bureaucratic control became the norm. this was at a time when the rise of mass consciousness was a worldwide phenom enon. in the twentieth century, if one were to identify one single item of political development, it is the growth of popular consciousness. the demand for political participation acquired additional meaning in the context of ethnic consciousness. a han-dominated chinese state had to guarantee copenhagen papers '2.88 14 domestic dimensions of china's foreign policy practical methods of effective involvement in the affairs of the state to the non-han minority nationalities. being ruled from a distant centre in a large state was resented by all. bureaucratic mode of functioning both in the government and the communist party was accompanied by nepotism and corruption. hence a process of alienation set in. gradually the store of goodwill inherited by the ruling party from the revolution began to shrink the claim that the party alone could ensure national pride for the citizen did not any longer appeal in the same way as it did in the past. human rights became a live issue. the belief that all these democratic promises could be realized better in socialism than in capitalism needed to be vindicated in practice. to this demand for democracy, mao's answer was cultural revolution. a package of measures consisting of ideological education in socialist values, mass participation as against bureaucratic management, and encouragement for popular movements, among other things, was his response. as against them, deng proposed a set of policies consisting of institutional politics under party leadership, politics of a broad united front, discouragement to campaigns and an ideology of modernization seeking to fulfill democratic rather than socialist tasks. in many ways, it is a retreat to the phase of people's democracy of the 1950s and the argument is that the objective conditions were not ripe for launching the kind of socialist policies which mao hastened with. the level of economic growth was low; productive forces were backward. therefore, mao zedong committed idealist deviation by promoting this line. the suspension of campaigns involving mass demonstrations and big public debates has created a situation of stability in the normal working life. several laws have been passed to ensure legal channels of adjudication replacing arbitrary action by party cadres. the freedom given to intellectuals has created an atmosphere of academic work which was vitiated by constant political interference before. non-communist political parties and groups have been allowed to function. this atmosphere of relaxation has promoted exchange of students and scholars with foreign countries. yet political reform has just begun in china. the student demonstrations of 1986-87 demanded greater democratization and even though there were several trends among them the dominant current was for democratization on socialist lines. deng xiaoping found his protege hu yaobang going too far with the demand and consequently hu was removed from the post of the general secretary of the cpc. the thirteenth party congress does indicate manoranjan mohanty an unfolding of the process of democratization, but the details are not yet formulated. there are still elements of the old structure, centralization and bureaucracy and at the same time emergence of managerial autocracy is visible. dissent is still discouraged, even supressed, though in some cases mildly. deng xiaoping still plays the central role, even though he gave up some key posts at the thirteenth congress. what is most significant is whether china is evolving a mode of socialist democracy or whether it is merely borrowing some practices of liberal democracy. thus while many of the steps do demonstrate a serious concern for democratization, there is no comprehensive response yet to the contradiction between people and the state. in fact, in several ways this is related to the problems in the economy and how the contradiction between the political economy and technology is handled. whether the economic process generates alienation or curbs it is a critical issue affecting people's perception of the state. political economy and technology with the growth of population and people's needs there is always the demand for increasing productivity. therefore, the human effort has been geared towards discovering new ways of producing goods and services or evolving new technology for production, simultaneously, there is the effort to create appropriate social conditions to foster productivity. according to the liberal viewpoint, if individuals are encouraged to compete with each other and try to maximize profit by responding to the market they would achieve greater productivity. that would also facilitate technological progress without which productivity cannot be raised. marxism challenged this position by pointing out that after the initial push to productivity and science, capitalism creates obstacles to the growth of productive forces, by generating alienation of labour, creating inequalities in society, and by empowering an exploitative capitalist class. thus the relationship between technology and the political economy which includes technology as a component of it affects production, distribution, and political organization. this classical debate has now acquired interesting dimensions in the world and even more so in the socialist countries. there are two positions among marxists on the political economy of technology. some believe that since primacy in the forces of production belongs to the techniques of production and forces of production have a determining effect on the relations of production, technology is the most important driving force in the production process. this is the position which copenhagen papers 288 16 domestic dimensions of cluna's foreign policy is advanced by the post-mao leadership in contemporary china. several im portant documents in china emphasize the class neutrality of technology and plead for bridging the technological gap between the advanced western countries, mostly the capitalist countries, and china. the open door policy of china allowing the entry of foreign capital and technology to china, sending students abroad and having joint projects are part of this approach. the other view is that technology is part of the mode of production and therefore serves the interest of the dominant class. once the objective knowledge is communicated and put to use in any form it is related to the class situation or, for that matter, to any social order characterized by domination and dependence. therefore, technology always possesses a social character. this view was shared by mao zedong which explains his reluctance to open china to capitalist economic and technological influence. his emphasis on distribution on socialist lines and orienting technology to achieve that purpose contrasts with the line of deng xiaoping. presentday debates can perhaps be construed to have questioned both the above positions. technological determinism, almost believing in the mystique of technology, has been exposed by the fact that consequences of technology are matters of debate. some technology destroys environment more than others, disrupts people's cultural experience more severely than others, generates greater disparities than others and causes alienation at several levels. therefore, all forms of technology are subject to evaluation and choice. and the choice involves political and ideological considerations in addition to economic considerations. yet once a certain technology is chosen it has its own logic to some extent. besides, growth of knowledge, including technological knowledge, is a part of the world process and that itself presents certain imperatives for choice. the nature of the world process imposes certain limits to the choice. therefore, we are placed in a situation where autonomy of technology is relative, not absolute. the modernization line under deng has generally accepted the class neutral view but is bound to be driven towards the relative autonomy view. this is because of the first contradiction which involves reducing inequality through better distribution to curb alienation. it also warrants greater econ omic well-being of the people which requires pushing production further. this draws china towards getting advanced technology and capital and i modernizing the economy and carrying out economic reforms. thus china will have a degree of opennes in order to handle the contradiction between manoranjan mohanty technology and the political economy, but it will always be regulated, it is possible that the dependence on foreign capital and technology and over emphasis on technology and market generate a climate of "acquiescent socia lism" that settles for levels of inequality and alienation for some time, but it cannot go very long on that path because of the first contradiction.12 also because the legacies of the chinese revolution will not easily allow the third contradiction to be reduced to an acquiescent socialism. socialism and world capitalism the magnitude of this contradiction now looks far more serious than it appeared to be at the end of the world war i1 or earlier. it was believed by communist parties that world capitalism was moving from crisis to crisis and was decaying fast. the great depression, the world war 11, the end of colonialism, the oil crisis of the 1970s, etc. were clear signs of the decline of capitalism. this notion was magrufied during the cultural revolution in china when lin biao stated that the contemporary era was the era when imperialism was heading towards its total doom and socialism was advancing towards worldwide victory. this line of thinking has consistently underestimated the power of capitalism and has overlooked the fact that in the decades since the depression capitalist systems have periodically readjusted their structures and survived crisis after crisis. there is no doubt that an overall decline is evident in their reduced influence worldscale. but they still dominate world economy maintaining their superiority in terms of capital and technology. the recovery in the western economies in the 1980s is a demonstration of this process. the communist parties of china a f ~ d the soviet union have begun to acknowledge this situation, albeit reluctantly, only recently. in this china has been ahead of the ussr and has opted for forging economic and technological links with the west, the world's fund of capital and technology, wherever they may be, has to be utilized and this reasoning underlies the open door policy of the people's republic of china. this also gives a new dimension to china's foreign policy which has to serve china's socialist transformation. china has opted for creating a peaceful environment for it to carry out the modernization pro gramme. towards the end of the cultural revolution, china's obsessive anti sovietism had drawn it closer to the usa. slowly china retrieved the situation and in 1982 it declared that it was pursuing an "independent" foreign policy. indeed, it began to normalise its relation with the ussr and develop economic relations with it. there was considerable improvement in copenhagen papers 288 18 domestic dimensions of china's foreign policy the china-india relations. peaceful coexistence became the main orientation of china's policy. it was no longer a principle applicable to the relations between countries with different social systems. it now applied to every country including socialist countries. the principle has now been extended even to the relations between communist parties having differences on ideological issues. the chinese communist party now has political relations with more than one communist party in india. while the cpi-m re established relations in 1982 the cpi began its interaction in 1987. the pressures of the movement for peace and nuclear disarmament in the past decade have also influenced china to change its stand on war and peace. china still blames the two superpowers for tensions in the world, but has now admitted that it is possible to strive for peace by disarmament and a new international economic order. thus, sharing the capital and technology of the capitalist countries, pursuing peaceful coexistence, and participating in the peace and world order movement are part of the new approach to handle the contradiction between socialism and world capitalism. but unless the other side of the contradiction is handled simultaneously this might cause problems. the fact that the world process is that of democratic and socialist trans formation and the chinese revolution was part of that process will continue to generate a political pressure in china. if there is a total integration of the socialist systems with the world capitalist network then the capacity of the socialist systems to defend the character and legacies of their revolutions will diminish. there is also a worldwide trend of post-colonial transformation to restructure the world political economy and curb the domination of the western capitalist powers. the movement for a new international economic order is part of that process. china has to remain an important part of this campaign alongside the other countries of the third world. thus the pressure of the movement for democratization of the world political economy will link china's open door policy with the socialist objectives. these objectives have served the nationalistic urge of china as well. but sometimes they were stretched too far giving rise to an isolationist foreign policy or militant interventionist policy. both these policies adversely affected the process of democratic and socialist transformation. the present line of pragmatic and peaceful foreign policy behavior, however, cannot be detached from the objective of promoting the worldwide process of transformation. but now the chinese government realizes the important lesson which had emerged from their own revolution that revolution was manoranjan mohanty essentially the business of the people of the country concerned and outside help can only play a secondary role in it. no doubt, this formulation is far more complex today in a world of greater integration. still the primacy of the internal factor remains.13 hence there has to be a new and more sophisticated approach to the promotion of worldwide transformation while consolidating one's own democratic or socialist development. therefore, the challenge facing the socialist countries, including china today, is how to negotiate with the capitalist powers for sharing capital and technology and working for peace while at the same time participating in the world process of transformation. conclusion these three contradictions between people and the state, political economy and technology and socialism and world capitalism characterize the dialectics of socialist construction in china today. in order to avoid political stagnation of a n acquiescent socialism china has to handle them creatively so that it effectively contributes to the world process. manoranjan mohanty is professor, depament of political science, university of delhi, and vice-president of the indian academy of social sciences. notes 1 a. appadorai, the domestic roots of india's foreign policy (delhi: oxford university press, 1981), p. 6. 2 actually jawaharlal nehru himself of ten spoke of this linkage while making a strong political case for non-alignment. see his selected speaches september 1946 april 1961 (new delhi: publications division, 1961). see also k.p. karu nakaran, india i n world affairs august 1947 januay 1950 (calcutta: oxford university press, 1952). 3 v.p. dutt talks about the link between the "hard line" in foreign relations and tough internal policies. china's foreign policy (bombay: asia publishing house, 1962), p. 1. this link is placed in a wider theoretical perspective by mira sinha in 'the maoist world system and india's place in it", the institute of defence studies and analyses journal, vol. 111, no. 3 (january 1971). see also manoranjan mohanty, the political philosophy of mao tse-tung (new delhi: macmillan, 1978), chapter 3, "contradictions in the mod ern world: the maoist world-view". copenhagen papers 2.88 20 domestic dimensions of china's foreign policy 4 manoranjan mohanty, revolutionary vi olence (new delhi: sterling, 1977) chapter 1 presents this notion of strat egy. 5 john king fairbank's many works pre sent this view. see the great chinese revolution (london: chatto and windus, 1987). 6 s.n. eisenstadt, revolution and transfor mation of societies: a comparative study of civilizations (new york: free press, 1978). see also s.n. eisenstadt (ed.), the origins and diversity of axial age civiliz ations (albany: state university of new york press, 1986). 7 tan chung, triton and the dragon: studies on nineteenth century china and imperi alism (delhi: gian publishing house, 1986). 8 the bulk of western social science writings in the 1980s makes this point. scepticism on china's capacity to carry on economic reforms is pervasive in the western media. 9 "tradition and transformation in india and china: a total society approach", in erik cohen (et al. eds.), comparative social dynamics (london: westview press, 1985). 10 manoranjan mohanty, "l'olitical com prehension of the post-colonial world", foreign affairs reports, vol. xxxvi, no. 5 (may 1987). 11 antecedents to this formulation are suggested in manoranjan mohanty, "mao, deng and beyond: dialectics of early stage of socialism", china report, vol. xx, nos. 4 & 5 (july-october 1984). another paper applying this approach to the changes in the ussr is 'three contradictions in socialist construction", in zafar imam (ed.), restructuring soviet society (new delhi, 1987). 12 for a discussion of "acquiescent socia lism', see manoranjan mohanty, 'to wards a political theory of inequality", in andre beteille (ed.), equality and inequality (new delhi: oxford univer sity press, 1983). 13 manoranjan mohanty, "dynamics of the internal and the external in the revolutionary environment", china report, vol. xxi11, no. 2 (april-june 1987). vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. ok-cjas23.pdf, page 1-144 @ normalize 28 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ selling security: the war on terrorism and the internal security act of singapore damien cheong abstract the internal security act (isa) of singapore has been transformed from a security law into an effective political instrument of the singapore government. although the government's use of the isa for political purposes elicited negative reactions from the public, it was not prepared to abolish, or make amendments to the act. in the wake of september 11 and the international campaign against terrorism, the opportunity to (re)legitimize the government's use of the isa emerged. this paper argues that despite the isa's seeming importance in the fight against terrorism, the absence of explicit definitions of national security threats, either in the act itself, or in accompanying legislation, renders the isa susceptible to political misuse. keywords: internal security act, war on terrorism. people's action party, jemaah islamiyah. introduction in 2001/2002, the singapore government arrested and detained several jemaah islamiyah (ji) operatives under the internal security act (isa) for engaging in terrorist activities. it was alleged that the detained operatives were planning to attack local and foreign targets in singapore. the arrests outraged human rights groups, as the operation was reminiscent of the government's crackdown on several alleged marxist conspirators in1987. human rights advocates were concerned that the current detainees would be dissuaded from seeking legal counsel and subjected to ill treatment during their period of incarceration (tang 1989: 4-7; frank et al. 1991: 5-99). despite these protests, many singaporeans expressed their strong support for the government's actions. this latter view contrasted sharply with the negative public reaction toward the 1987 arrests, which stemmed from the belief that the government had misused the isa (hor 2002: 30-31; tan 2002). following the 1987 arrests, _________________________________________________________________________ 29 _____________________________________________________________ selling security the isa was widely perceived as an instrument of the people's action party (pap) regime to curtail dissent, rather than as an instrument to protect singapore from security threats. in the 'new security environment' that followed the september 11 attacks, many western democracies have rushed to enact or fortify national security legislation. the features common in such anti-terrorism laws included: (i) a concentration and expansion of power in the executive arm of government; (ii) an erosion of political and civil liberties; (iii) a weakening of judicial procedures; and (iv) a focus on pre-emptive action against suspected terrorists (barker 2003: 556; hocking 2003: 355). for instance, under section 412 of the usa patriot act, a non-us citizen may be detained if the attorney general has 'reasonable grounds to believe' that the suspect is or has been involved in terrorist activity.1 a person, who is defined as a terrorist in section 411 of the act, is subject to indefinite detention regardless of whether he/she has in fact committed an act of terrorism or engaged in terrorist activity.2 the attorney general is not compelled to provide the detainee with evidence supporting his/her detention or to grant an opportunity for the detainee to contest the evidence through administrative review procedures. the detainee's only recourse is to submit a writ of habeas corpus3 to the supreme court, a federal district court or the court of appeals, to seek his/her release from detention.4 such draconian prescriptions have made global anti-terrorism legislation strikingly akin to the internal security act of singapore. countries that had in the past been overtly critical of the isa were now enacting similar legislation in their own jurisdictions. this prompted a singapore commentator to remark: 'has the rest of the world come to appreciate singapore's position?' (hor 2002: 31). the ironic turn of events has not prevented critics of singapore's isa from asserting that the singapore government's use of the act is still dictated by political considerations rather than security concerns. in the opinion of geoffrey robertson, an international human rights lawyer, the singapore government is obsessed with 'prosecuting liberals instead of worrying about the people who are running unlawful arms and explosive shipments which would cost hundreds of lives in the region'.5 the singapore government has defended its actions, arguing that: we are not obsessed with crushing dissidents. you can disagree with us. we will accept the arguments. but when somebody poses a threat to our security, we take very stern action against them and when you're dealing with terrorists, it takes a long time. it requires intelligence networks, to 30 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ co-operate with one another, to know who they are and then you have just got to arrest them to prevent a bomb from going off. you can't work like the police – let the bomb go off first and then you catch them and put them on trial … the internal security act has not been used against the liberals. i mean, you have so many of them running around in singapore. they are free to air their views. they are not persecuted.6 as controversy perpetually surrounds the singapore government's use of the isa, even in the new security environment, an examination of the reasons behind this phenomenon seems warranted. this paper will provide an analysis of the politicization of the isa in singapore. it will trace the evolution of the act from a colonial security law into an instrument of political control. it will also examine the recent attempts by the singapore government to recast the isa as anti-terrorism legislation, with the intention of emphasizing the isa's function as an effective defence against security and not political threats. i argue that despite the isa's utility in the fight against terrorist threats, the absence of explicit definitions of national security threats, either in the act itself or in accompanying legislation, does make the isa susceptible to political misuse. national security and the isa the inherent difficulties in conducting research on the isa have resulted in a dearth of academic literature pertaining to the subject. although the act is part of the singapore statutes, its extraordinary status, as granted by the singapore constitution, places it beyond the responsibility of the judiciary. researchers from the field of legal studies pioneered attempts to conduct comprehensive studies on the isa (rawlings 1983: 324-50; tan 1987: 237-53; yee et al. 1989: 66-103). such studies were concerned mainly with the effectiveness of judicial review, which, prior to 1989, was the main legislative recourse for a person detained under the isa. until the late 1980s, there were no published accounts or reports of a detainee's treatment while incarcerated under the isa. following the 1987 arrests, several former detainees began speaking publicly about their experiences during preventive detention (tang 1989: 4-7). such accounts became the basis of investigative reports by international human rights groups, such as amnesty international, which aimed to expose the absence of safeguards that resulted in the ill-treatment of isa detainees (amnesty international 1988: 1-15; frank et al. 1991: 5-99). in addition to such reports, francis seow's to catch a tartar provides a first-hand account of the former solicitor-general's incarceration _________________________________________________________________________ 31 _____________________________________________________________ selling security under the isa (seow 1994). these published accounts of ill-treatment intimidated many singaporeans, and this has invariably affected their societal and political behaviour. as a result, contemporary research on the isa has not been carried out independently from studies that relate to singapore politics and/or society (rodan 1996: 95-127; tay 2000: 17089; chua 2004: 78-101). singapore's national security paradigm a brief examination of the city-state's national security paradigm is a useful starting point in the analysis of the singapore government's use of the isa. economic sustainability is a major component of singapore's national security paradigm. this is because singapore's survival as a nation-state and the political survival of the pap regime are both highly dependent upon the economy. singapore's small stature, geographical location and lack of natural resources have made it overly reliant on international trade including basic necessities, such as food and water (tan 2004: 67). the city-state is therefore extremely sensitive to internal and external conditions that might adversely affect its trade and economy. for this reason, 'singapore was quick to embrace export-led industrialization and a pro-west, pro-capitalist orientation' following its independence from malaysia in 1965 (tan 2004: 67). as part of its plans to minimize potential threats to its economy from external elements, singapore sought trade alliances with regional and international partners in the 1970s and 1980s. it was envisaged that if singapore established strong trade links with regional and international players, the city-state's trading partners would have a vested interest in ensuring that she continued to prosper (da cunha 2002: 136). such economic policies proved successful, as singapore was transformed by the 1990s into an economic powerhouse that rivalled taiwan, hong kong and japan. the pap has a vested interest in maintaining singapore's economic vibrancy. low unemployment rates, positive growth rates and a general prosperity have been the key performance indicators used by the pap to demonstrate its competence in governing the city-state. the pap's impeccable performance on economic matters has been one of the main reasons for its continued re-election into power (perry et al. 1997: 71). as such, a failure to produce economic benefits would have a negative effect on its political legitimacy. in view of this, the singapore government has adopted certain domestic policies that are designed to maintain singapore's attractiveness to foreign investors. the government believes that social and political stability facilitate a sound commercial sector, which 32 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ in turn forms the bedrock of singapore's continued economic growth. it has thus enacted a set of laws to regulate business, state and societal relationships such that threats to the domestic social and political order can be minimized (ganesan 1998: 588). the rule of law there appears to be a contradiction in the way the singapore government applies the rule of law (rol) to the commercial and non-commercial sectors.7 while singapore's rol has gained international accolades for its ability to attract foreign investment and stimulate trade, it has also been criticized as unduly harsh toward political dissent, crime and other social misdemeanours. as local constitutional lawyer kevin tan observes: what human rights groups and international non-governmental organizations criticize is our [singapore's] public law record, meaning things such as constitutional law, criminal law, anything involving the state. they are not concerned with the commercial areas, as our [singapore's] record is very good for dealing with these matters.8 the rol has been an instrumental part of singapore's economic development; creating a sound business environment that facilitates trade. as james cotton writes: the people's action party regime recognised early that international business would not regard singapore as a profitable field of investment without the protections for contracts, property and labour controls that were to be found in the system of law, which had been bequeathed to the island by the british. the government was careful, accordingly, to retain those elements of the system, which fulfilled significant commercial purposes. (cotton 1999: 17) the effectiveness of the rol in sustaining investor confidence in singapore was evident during the asian financial crisis of 1997. the crisis, which crippled the once formidable 'tiger economies', was caused by economic mismanagement which occurred in the absence of adequate legal standards and endemic corruption (dibb et al. 1998: 9). the hard lesson learnt was that 'economic globalisation was feeding the rule of law imperative by putting pressure on governments to offer stability, transparency and accountability that international investors demand' (carothers 1998: 98). in comparison with her neighbours, singapore remained relatively unscathed. while massive withdrawals of foreign capital occurred throughout the southeast asian region, singapore was able to retain the majority of its foreign investments (pillbeam: 2001: 125). this was due to investor-friendly policies, which included a reliable set _________________________________________________________________________ 33 _____________________________________________________________ selling security of laws that investors could depend upon to protect their investments. singapore's economy continues to be robust, as it has maintained 'a commercial and economic framework that is designed to provide economic freedom so that singapore can compete at the highest levels within the global economic and trading system' (worthington 2003: 104). the continued economic success of singapore has in turn contributed positively to the pap's political legitimacy (ganesan 1998: 589). the singapore government has also utilized the rol as 'a social, political and cultural legal framework that is designed to provide maximum control over society to enforce social and ethnic harmony, minimise sources of political opposition and dissent and impose a conservative framework' (worthington 2003: 104). in terms of social control, misdemeanours such as spitting, chewing gum, littering, and failing to flush toilets, are regarded as crimes by the state and hence, are subjected to heavy penalties.9 media control is enforced through the newspaper and printing presses act, and the undesirable publications act, which prohibit publications that the government deems harmful to the public and political interest (tay 2000: 175). the public entertainment act is used to regulate public performances to ensure that government-defined moral and political standards of propriety are not breached. in the era of information technology, the internet has not escaped state policing. this is achieved through the singapore broadcasting authority act and the computer misuse act (gomez 2002: 33-48). in its attempts to discourage political opposition, the pap has used civil defamation suits against its political opponents. members of opposition parties, as well as foreign journalists, have been taken to court over statements or articles that have allegedly besmirched the reputation of cabinet ministers (worthington 2003: 140; seow 1997). the internal security act the internal security act is singapore's foremost national security legislation. the isa empowers the internal security department (isd) to deal with security threats, such as espionage, subversion and terrorism, but also activities that have been classified as threats by the singapore government (rodan 1993: 91-96). the main prescription of the isa is detention without trial or preventive detention. a person may be subject to preventive detention if it is believed that he/she poses a security threat or that his/her detention can facilitate investigations. 34 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ although the authority to order preventive detention is vested in the president of singapore as head of the executive, the decision to order preventive detention is made collectively by the cabinet. section 8 (a) of the isa states: if the president is satisfied with respect to any person that, with a view to preventing that person from acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of singapore or any part thereof or to the maintenance of public order or essential services therein, it is necessary to do so, the minister shall make an order — (a) directing that such person be detained for any period not exceeding two years at the enforcement level, section 74 (1) of the isa allows: any police officer may without warrant arrest and detain pending enquiries any person in respect of whom he has reason to believe — (a) that there are grounds which would justify his detention under section 8: and (b) that he has acted or is about to act or is likely to act in any manner prejudicial to the security of singapore or any part thereof. the initial detention period can be extended to 28 days following a maximum 48-hour limit if 'an officer of or above the rank of superintendent of police' believes it is necessary.10 thus, the total time spent in detention pending investigations may last up to 30 days. as decisions to order preventive detention and make arrests are based on the president's 'satisfaction' and a police officer's 'reason to believe', there is a high degree of subjectivity in the decision-making process. the courts have in the past allowed such subjectivity in light of the necessity for the executive to move quickly against security threats (tan 1987:247). moreover, the courts have held that as the cabinet bases its decisions on the advice of the minister of home affairs, who in turn is advised by the isd, decisions to order preventive detention are not based on personal considerations but on substantiated facts (rawlings 1983:337).11 as a result, the judiciary prior to 1989 was reluctant to conduct reviews of cases that involved the isa. this effectively made preventive detention, as tan yock-lin observes, tantamount to 'executive detention' (tan 1987: 238). the judiciary's ability to exercise its powers of review of isa-related cases was repealed by the singapore government in the late 1980s. the isa and all matters pertaining to national security, including the ability to define national security threats, enact national security laws, and enforce such laws, have now become the exclusive responsibility of the _________________________________________________________________________ 35 _____________________________________________________________ selling security executive, which is dominated by the pap.12 the isa can thus be said to function as the legislative instrument that binds singapore's national security to the survival of the pap regime. and not surprisingly, the wide powers granted to the executive through the isa have been jealously guarded ever since (tan 2004: 71; hor 2002: 42). according to article 149 of the singapore constitution, the isa should not be interpreted as a normal act of parliament. measures set out in the act to deal with offences prejudicial to national security, such as preventive detention, supersede considerations of fundamental liberties guaranteed by the constitution under sections 9, 11, 12, 13, and 14.13 there are nonetheless safeguards set out in section 9 (18) of the isa and section 151 of the constitution that allow a detainee to obtain recourse against wrongful detention and to be protected against ill-treatment during incarceration (amnesty international 1988). briefly, a detainee may engage legal counsel to appeal his/her detention to an advisory board. the board considers the representations and is free to make further investigations to assist in its deliberations. the board's recommendation to either continue with or cease the detention is made to the president of singapore. the board's recommendation is only implemented if the president concurs. should detention continue, the board is required to undertake an annual review of the case and make further recommendations. to prevent the physical assault of detainees, a doctor is present before and after each interview session to examine the detainee. the examinations are recorded and complaints of the detainee are noted on his/her medical sheet. discoveries of physical abuse are reported and investigations are subsequently carried out. furthermore, a board of inspection may be convened to make unscheduled inspections to ascertain the well-being of detainees. the existence of these safeguards has not placated civil society groups, opposition parties, former detainees and human rights groups, which have vociferously argued that the isa should be abolished as it is susceptible to political misuse (south china morning post 1998; agence france-presse 2000). misuse of national security legislation in asia, the rol functions as an instrument of governance that enables state actors to pursue political objectives, such as facilitating economic development, exercising social control and enhancing national security (jayasuriya 1999: 13). national security in asia is framed within the context of political stability, economic development and social welfare 36 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ (harris and mack 1997: 3-4). as a consequence, asian governments have been able to justify their use of the rol to ensure social, commercial and political order, which, they argue, is tantamount to ensuring the security of the state. for example, the asian legal resource centre (alrc) has observed that: 'national security' has been incorporated within national legal frameworks. although known by different names, 'emergency' acts have deliberately incorporated a common flaw: vital concepts such as 'terrorism', 'subversion', 'state/public security', have not been clearly defined to describe the precise nature of the perceived threat. it is this ambiguity that has given governments wide scope in exercising such legislation, whether or not within an emergency situation, and thereby protect themselves from public scrutiny and criticism. in this militarized scenario, popular dissent is stifled and condemned as 'subversion'. the 'enemy' is among and within the population and consequently the people themselves are perceived to be a threat.14 in the singaporean context, the city-state's national security paradigm similarly intertwines economics, law and order, and regime survival (thio 2004: 185). as the demarcations are usually blurred, the government's use of national security measures, and in particular, the isa, has resulted in accusations of misuse. critics have argued that the isa has been used not to contain actual security threats, but instead to suppress political dissent and opposition (the straits times [hereafter st] 1999b). the singapore government has strongly defended itself against these allegations, reiterating that its use of the isa is governed by preventive and not punitive considerations (agence france-presse 2002b). however, as long as singapore's national security paradigm is couched in terms of regime survival, the controversy over the government's use of the isa will remain. the evolution of the isa from security measure to political instrument the emergency regulations, from which the isa is derived, were enacted in 1948 by the british colonial administration to deal with the communist insurgents that threatened the state. however, since the end of the malayan emergency in 1960, the successive governments of singapore have not made any attempts to abolish the isa. instead, they have sought to incorporate the isa into the legislative framework, thereby ensuring the retention of 'exceptional and executive prerogative power' (jayasuriya 2001: 93). the ability to exercise such powers has enabled the singapore government to use the isa to contain political _________________________________________________________________________ 37 _____________________________________________________________ selling security threats, which it perceives as national security threats. this evolution is linked to singapore's historical development. the emergency regulations although the malayan communists fought alongside the british against the japanese in the second world war, their political objectives after the war put them on a collision course with the british colonial administration. the malayan communist party (mcp) revived its plans to supplant the british administration and establish a malayan people's republic (pillai 1976: 592; turnbull 1989: 225). the mcp's initial strategy was to mobilize the trade unions, but when these attempts proved futile, a strategy of armed struggle was advocated (pillai 1976: 591; chin 1995: 28). the armed struggle aimed to disrupt the economy, drive the british forces to vulnerable strategic positions, and 'liberate' geographic areas from british control (pillai 1976: 592). mcp guerrillas attacked remote police posts, plantations, railway lines, and even succeeded in assassinating the high commissioner, sir henry gurney, in 1951 (pillai 1976: 592-95). in this time of crisis, the high commissioner was granted extraordinary powers to defend the colony and move against the insurgents (lee 2002: 56; ministry of home affairs 2002: 17). the emergency regulations, which were enacted as a result, enabled the authorities to use preventive detention, impose curfews and restrict publications for the purpose of eliminating the communist threat (lee 2002: 57). the british also conducted mass arrests, carried out deportations, expanded their security apparatuses, and destroyed the homes of communist sympathizers (hack 1999: 102). the adoption of such draconian counter-insurgency measures, coupled with an effective propaganda campaign, resulted in a reduction of communist attacks (hack 1999: 123-25). the preservation of public security ordinance (ppso) (1955) the demands for an independent singapore, which had been delayed as a result of the malayan emergency, were revived in the 1950s. the labour front (lf) under david marshall scored an impressive victory in the 1955 elections, and became the first local government in the postcolonial era. the people's action party (pap), which was formed in 1954, was elected into opposition. the pap had formed an alliance with two prominent communist trade unionists, lim chin siong and fong swee suan, in order to increase the party's appeal to the broader chinese-educated electorate (mauzy and milne 2002: 39). the communist 38 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ alliance proved extremely risky. the pap was not only held responsible for communist firebrands who preached and mobilized violent civil disobedience campaigns, but the party itself was also in danger of succumbing to a communist takeover (fong 1979: 38; yee et al. 1989: 70). from 1954 to 1956 a series of riots erupted throughout singapore, which compelled the labour front government to act. the preservation of public security ordinance (ppso) was enacted in 1955 to replace the emergency regulations (yee et al. 1989: 70). and although david marshall had misgivings about retaining the ordinance, he acknowledged that the ppso would be instrumental in curbing the disruptive activities of the communists (drysdale 1984: 115; yee et al. 1989: 71). although marshall had the ppso at his disposal, he demonstrated a reluctance to use the ordinance to quell the unrests and apprehend the ringleaders. this angered the british, who had grown increasingly impatient with marshall's inability to restore law and order. marshall resigned in 1956 and was succeeded by lim yew hock. lim was not averse to utilizing the draconian measures granted by the ppso, to purge the unions of communist influence. in october 1956, a student sit-in escalated into widespread rioting. the lim yew hock government summarily carried out island-wide raids of union and mcp headquarters, and detained many people under the ppso, including the communist leaders of the pap. the pap detainees included devan nair (the former president of singapore but then adviser to the stc employees union), lim chin siong, fong swee suan, sandra woodhull, chan chiaw thor and james puthucheary (drysdale 1984: 157; fong 1979: 50). the government conducted a similar purge of communist leaders in august 1957, which resulted in the arrest of 11 pro-communist pap members (fong 1979: 60-61). the reduction of communist leaders in the pap coupled with the loss of the lf's political legitimacy resulted in the election victory of the pap in 1959 (mauzy and milne 2002: 16). the pap's first act was to secure the release of all political detainees before it was officially sworn in on 5 june 1959 (drysdale 1984: 221-25; fong 1979: 77-79). the internal security act of malaysia (1960) following the end of the malayan emergency in july 1960, the pap leadership began to lobby for singapore to enter into a federation with malaysia. this was because malaysia could provide the much-needed security, economic and political opportunities that would ensure singapore's survival (mutalib 2003: 59). on 27 may 1961, tunku abdul rahman, the _________________________________________________________________________ 39 _____________________________________________________________ selling security prime minister of malaya, suggested the establishment of a federation comprising malaya, singapore and the borneo states. lee kuan yew and the moderate pap leadership expressed genuine interest over the tunku's proposal, but were challenged by the communist wing of the party, led by lim chin siong. the communists were eventually dismissed from the pap and established the barisan socialis party on 13 august 1961 (fong 1979: 101). as the barisan sosialis became increasingly antagonistic in their orientation, their participation in the malayan / singapore political arenas became a cause for concern (drysdale 1984: 314). although the special branch compiled dossiers on political leaders who were regarded as potential threats, the british, malayan and singapore representatives of the internal security council could not reach a consensus on who to detain (drysdale 1984: 314). the disagreement stemmed from an inherent difficulty in distinguishing between those leaders that posed a genuine security risk and those who were deemed political threats. an armed uprising in brunei on 8 december 1962 convinced the internal security council to move against the barisan sosialis. on the 2 february 1963, 'operation coldstore' was launched. the special branch conducted raids on barisan sosialis headquarters, the rakyat party and singapore association of trade unions (satu) premises, and other 'open-front communist organizations' (abisheganaden 1963). approximately 107 politicians and trade unionists, including lim chin siong, were detained under the internal security act of malaysia (which had replaced the ppso in 1960), to prevent 'subversives from establishing a communist cuba in singapore and mounting violence' prior to federation (abisheganaden 1963). with the barisan sosialis severely weakened by the arrests and detentions of its leaders, the plans for the inclusion of singapore in the federation of malaysia proceeded (turnbull 1989: 274). on the 31 august 1963, singapore became part of the newly established federation of malaysia. singapore obtained her independence from malaysia on 9 august 1965. the barisan sosialis was still active in singapore politics but seemed to be facing an internecine crisis. in a dramatic move that signalled the change in strategy of the barisan sosialis, all its nine members of parliament resigned in october 1966. the party leader, chia thye poh, announced that the barisan sosialis would be taking their struggle outside parliament where protests, strikes and demonstrations could be expected (mutalib 2003: 106). the pap, now firmly entrenched in government, perceived that the activities of the barisan sosialis posed a threat to stability. moreover, skirmishes between police and barisan supporters at a rally 40 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ in aid of vietnam, convinced the government that the barisan had to be stopped. on the 28 october 1966, 30 barisan sosialis cadres and unionists were arrested and detained under the isa (sam 1966b). chia thye poh was among those arrested as the government opined it was 'necessary to arrest and detain the principal culprits involved in the planning and execution of these illegal activities to impress upon barisan sosialis leaders and other communist united front operators that resort to violence will not advance their cause' (sam 1966a; the sunday times 1966). chia thye poh remained incarcerated under the isa for 23 years, excluding the eight years he spent under house arrest (amnesty international 1998; st 1998). chia was not released earlier because he had refused to recant communism or violence, which he maintains he never advocated in the first place (south china morning post 1998). the internal security act (1970) in 1970, the isa of malaysia was incorporated into singapore's legislative framework as the internal security act of singapore (yee et al. 1989: 70). the singapore government continued to use the isa in its campaign to eliminate alleged communist subversives and other potential threats. during the 1970s, the government used the isa to detain journalists, lawyers, university lecturers and students whom it suspected of having communist inclinations (see appendix 1). notable detainees included g. rahman, arun senkuttuvan and ho kwon ping (lee 1978: 231-34). the government believed that preventive detention and a strong internal security force were a necessity against insidious communist threats (goh 1967: 53-54). in the 1980s, the singapore government claimed that a more insidious form of communist subversion had been detected. in addition, communalism had seemingly emerged as a potential threat to the social fabric of the city-state. both threats were regarded as serious enough for the government to employ the isa to detain the suspects.15 four malays were detained on 24 april 1987 for spreading false rumours of an impending race riot (st 1987d). on the 27 may 1987, the ministry of home affairs revealed that a plot had been uncovered to 'overthrow the government and establish a communist state' (st 1987c). sixteen people were initially arrested, and another six were arrested in subsequent raids. of those detained, four were full-time social workers of the catholic church, six were volunteer workers with the geylang catholic centre for foreign workers, four were part of the third stage drama group, and two were members of the workers' party editorial com_________________________________________________________________________ 41 _____________________________________________________________ selling security mittee. the alleged mastermind was tan wah piow, a former student union activist who was pursuing a law degree in the uk. according to authorities, tan had collaborated with vincent cheng, a volunteer worker, to infiltrate student unions and catholic groups and to use these organizations as a platform for political agitation. as all the detainees were english-educated professionals, the ministry of home affairs claimed that singapore had to 'contend with new hybrid pro-communist types who draw their ideological inspiration not only from maoism and marxism-leninism, but also from the ideas of contemporary militant leftists in the west' (st 1987c). in september 1987, four of the alleged marxist conspirators were released from preventive detention. together with five other former detainees, they issued a joint statement protesting their innocence in april 1988. their release orders were summarily revoked and they were re-arrested on the grounds that they continued to pose a security risk. the detainees then lodged an appeal under habeas corpus to challenge the validity of their re-arrests and detention. the court of appeal found that the minister of home affairs had not demonstrated sufficient grounds to order the re-arrests, and thus, issued a judgment in favour of the detainees. in doing so, the court of appeal demonstrated that it was willing to challenge the executive on national security matters. the government reacted swiftly by amending both the constitution and the isa to exclude judicial review on decisions relating to preventive detentions under the isa. despite the government's claims of a 'marxist conspiracy', and the detainees' public confessions, many singaporeans were unconvinced that the detainees posed a real security risk. furthermore, accounts of illtreatment of the detainees during interrogation and detention provoked international outrage, which tarnished singapore's global image (mitton 1993: 46). many observers came to the conclusion that the arrests were in fact politically motivated (haas 1989: 48-77). for instance, former singapore solicitor-general francis seow opined that: the plain unvarnished truth was that the prime minister had marked this group of sixteen young professionals, augmented by the later arrests of another six persons, for retributive action because of their effective assistance to opposition mp j. b. jeyaretnam and the workers' party in snatching victory in the 1981 by-election and the 1984 general election. (seow 1994: 79) in 1988, francis seow was himself detained for 72 days under the isa (seow 1994). the government alleged that seow had colluded with an american diplomat to contest the forthcoming elections, and it regarded 42 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ this act as interference in the domestic affairs of singapore (st 1988). the diplomat was formally expelled, while seow was detained by the isd for questioning. a rumour surfaced that seow was incarcerated to prevent him from taking part in the 1988 general elections. however, his release and consequent participation in the elections did not dispel the perception that the isa had once again been used for political purposes. as t. j. s. george, former political editor with the far eastern economic review, remarked: indeed, the colonialists had administered the act [isa] … with a degree of grace; detainees were released after a decent period of time and often brought to trial under the due process of law. under lee [lee kuan yew], the grace disappeared. he consolidated the act and made it the permanent base of political life in singapore. if a gandhi had arisen to lead a popular civil disobedience movement against the lee government in singapore, he would have found the asian premier a harsher overlord than faraway westminster, and he would simply have disappeared behind the high walls of changi prison. (george 1984: 116-17) during the 1990s, the singapore government used the isa to detain six people suspected of espionage. although details are vague, the 1997 arrest involved a female civil servant who was caught forwarding classified documents to an agent of a foreign intelligence agency (st 1999a; ministry of home affairs 2002: 11). in 1998, four singaporeans were arrested for gathering information on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency (st 1999a; ministry of home affairs 2002: 11). the government's increasing use of the isa to combat political threats in the name of security had a profound impact on singapore society, and in particular, on political and civil society groups (tremewan 1994: 209). as the government's level of tolerance towards political dissent was not always clear, prudence dictated that criticism of the government had to be done tacitly or not at all. as the singapore electorate grew more sophisticated, the constant practice of 'self-censorship' became common (gomez 2000). as a result, some dissenters chose to launch their protests from overseas, while others opted to stay in singapore and operate within the ob ('out-of-bound') markers that delineated the level of political participation accepted by the singapore government (lee 2002: 108-10; rerceretnam 2006). the singapore government found it increasingly difficult to justify the retention of the isa, but that did not imply that it was prepared to abolish the act (st 1999b). notwithstanding, the events of september 11 and the resulting global war on terrorism have precipitated a refocus on the isa as a law that defends the state against national security threats. _________________________________________________________________________ 43 _____________________________________________________________ selling security the isa as anti-terrorism legislation and a return to security in december 2001 and august 2002, the internal security department (isd) arrested and detained 37 people in connection with terrorist activities (ministry of home affairs 2003; nirmala 2004). most of the detainees belonged to the singapore branch of the jemaah islamiyah (ji) network. according to the ministry of home affairs, the ji's prime objective was to create a pan-islamic state in the region through the use of armed struggle. the ji had forged links with other southeast asian and international militant groups, such as the moro islamic liberation front (milf) and osama bin laden's al-qaeda in order to pool and share resources (ministry of home affairs 2003). as such, the ji was able to tap the expertise of its more experienced counterparts to conduct training programmes, procure weapons and obtain finance (abuza 2002: 428). in order to evade detection, the ji established small cells with specific responsibilities in malaysia, indonesia, the philippines and singapore (ministry of home affairs 2003: 6-9). the singapore cell was set up as an operational unit that was tasked with planning and co-ordinating attacks against western, and in particular american targets in singapore (abuza 2002: 456-57). investigations revealed that the cell was planning to attack the us embassy, naval vessels, schools, commercial buildings and the yishun substation (the substation is frequented by many us armed forces personnel) (ministry of home affairs 2003: 11-14). it was also discovered that the cell was planning to attack local targets, such as the singapore–malaysia water pipeline, the changi international airport, the ministry of defence and other civilian establishments (ministry of home affairs 2003: 30-31). following the ji arrests and ongoing efforts to cripple the ji network, local politicians and academics predicted that the threat to singapore from terrorism would remain unabated for many years (latif 2002; singh 2002: 6; wong 2004). this was because the terrorist organizations in the region were not only highly resilient, but also because singapore was closely aligned with the united states (reuters 2002). in view of this, singapore's leader advocated a policy of constant vigilance against potential security threats (ramesh 2004; ahmad 2004). such terrorist threat assessments were given credibility in the wake of the ji attacks in indonesia on two bali nightclubs (2002), the marriott hotel in jakarta (2003), the australian embassy (2004), and a bali shopping strip (2005) (agence france-presse 2002c; wroe 2003; mapes et al. 2004; ramakrishna 2004: 54; quijano et al. 2005). 44 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ constant threat assessments, the ji attacks in neighbouring indonesia, added security measures, and increased government spending on defence, have collectively contributed to the 'climate of fear' that has tacitly pervaded the city-state (chia 2002; ho and pardesi 2004; lee 2004). it is in this context that the justification for retaining the isa, as an integral part of singapore's defence strategy against terrorism, was successfully achieved. by empowering the isd to pre-emptively move against the local ji cell, the isa was deemed to have indirectly prevented the perpetration of the planned attacks.16 to further strengthen its arguments for retaining the isa, the singapore government undertook a promotion campaign designed to recast the isa as a vital tool to combat terrorism (rodan and hewison 2004: 13). recasting the isa direct promotion of the isa and isd the isa and the isd have in the past always evoked a sense of apprehension. indefinite detention, maltreatment, physical and mental abuse, and public humiliation were common images associated with the law as well as the department (tremewan 1994: 202). in an effort to dispel such negative perceptions, the ministry of home affairs launched a series of public awareness campaigns, beginning with the publication of two documents that provided detailed information on the ji arrests, the isa and the isd (agence france-presse 2002a; st 2002b). the publications were also complemented with other initiatives that were designed to raise the profile of the isd. this resulted in a partial removal of the 'veil of secrecy' that had surrounded the inner workings of the department since its establishment (st 2000). for instance, the isd heritage centre was set up to 'showcase the operational history of the department', and although the centre was a designated training facility for isd officers, members of the public were allowed to view the displays and exhibits.17 a mobile version of the heritage centre exhibits also toured schools and community centres (koh 2003). isd officers were present at the exhibitions to respond to public queries. also, isd officer promotion ceremonies, that had in the past been conducted internally, were celebrated in public venues such as hotels (st 2002b). _________________________________________________________________________ 45 _____________________________________________________________ selling security indirectly promoting the isa: the economic dimension as singapore's economic growth and development have always been 'couched in terms of survival and security', the economic dimension of the 'war on terrorism' enabled the government to indirectly promote the isa (tan 2004: 72). linking terrorism, and in particular the ji arrests, to the economy in a 'trade–security nexus', was a recurrent theme in many ministerial speeches (rodan and hewison 2004: 9). for instance, former prime minister goh chok tong, noted: the ji episode is a threat to our economy. foreign investors might become worried about the safety of their investments. and if changi airport and jurong island had been attacked, that would have done actual harm to our economic interests. if foreign investors keep away from singapore, there would be fewer jobs for singaporeans. our livelihood would be affected.18 implicit in such statements was the necessity for the singapore government to maintain order and political stability through the isa, in order to ensure the sustainability of singapore's economy (tan 2004: 72). this argument was validated with the conclusion of a free trade agreement between singapore and the united states in 2002, which had resulted from singapore's assistance to us anti-terrorism efforts. the us–singapore free trade agreement (ussfta) was perceived as a reward for the city-state's unequivocal support for the us in the 'old' and 'new' security environments (mitton 2003). the republic had in the past granted the us access to military facilities, was fervently supportive of the us-led war in afghanistan and iraq, and was instrumental in preventing the ji attack on american interests (rodan and hewison 2004: 10-11). in light of these actions, us congressmen pete sessions affirmed: 'singapore supported us not only on the day of the terrorist attacks, but has since been very involved in our war on terror … countries which are our friends are those who will continue to reap the rewards of a closer relationship.'19 the advantages to singapore stemming from the ussfta were both economic and strategic (koh, y. 2003: 3). in economic terms, the ussfta would reduce the initial amount of singapore's export tariffs by 92 per cent with further reductions made in subsequent years. all impediments to e-commerce would be removed and service providers would be granted access to both federal and state governments (washington 2003). the overall profits accruing to singapore companies from such measures were predicted at s$200 million. strategically, the singapore government was anxious to 'entrench the us presence' in the region to ensure the continued security and stabil46 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ ity of southeast asia (mitton 2003; hadar 2002). it was envisaged that bilateral co-operation between the two countries would be enhanced in terms of 'counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, joint military exercises and training, policy dialogues and defence technology' (acharya 2004). in short, linking strategic, social and economic benefits to the singapore government's 'war on terror' enabled the pap to allude to the isa as having indirectly facilitated these benefits. furthermore the us, a once ardent critic of the isa, had expressed its support for the government's use of the isa to neutralize the local ji cell (the sunday times 2002). as richard boucher, a spokesman for the us state department, noted: 'we're cooperating very closely with the singaporean authorities. we welcome the active engagement that singapore is taking against terrorism, and we've applauded the arrests that they've made in these matters” (channel news asia 2002). such support has provided a measure of international legitimacy for the government's use of the isa. the government's promotional campaigns aimed to recast the isa as anti-terrorism legislation. this was designed to lend credence to the government's argument that the isa was still relevant and should not be abolished. as home affairs minister wong kan seng argued: some people continue to be critical about the internal security act. but for most singaporeans today, they now know the value of the isa … without the isa and isd … they would not have enjoyed this sense of safety and security today ... [i]t is because of the home team that singaporeans can sleep well at night, in the comfort that there are thousands of home team officers keeping watch for them.20 some opposition politicians even recanted their former objections to the pap's use of the isa. for example, chiam see tong of the singapore democratic alliance (sda), noted: my party, the singapore democratic alliance (sda), welcomes the government's decision to introduce the white paper on the ji detentions. the white paper provides the factual background to the detentions and show how appropriate the internal security act is in dealing with threats to national security.21 human rights advocates and other opposition parties though remain sceptical about the government's use of the isa, since the pap's conception of national security does include an element of self-preservation (agence france-presse 2004). _________________________________________________________________________ 47 _____________________________________________________________ selling security the inherent limitations of the isa the new security environment has enabled the singapore government to recast the isa as an integral tool to defend the state against terrorist and other national security threats. the isa has seemingly obtained a new lease of life and gained international and domestic legitimacy through the government's use of the act to detain the ji operatives. notwithstanding, the inherent limitations of the isa suggest that the act remains susceptible to misuse. the fundamental flaw of the isa is that it does not contain a clear definition of a national security threat (chua 2004: 84). the singapore government has defended the act as 'a critical legal instrument of last resort to counter security threats such as racial and religious extremism, espionage, terrorism and subversion' and is 'not used to suppress political opposition but to counter extremist groups or radical groups that threaten singapore's internal security or do harm to our people'.22 however, with the exception of terrorism (defined in the united nations (anti-terrorism measures) regulations 2001), other forms of national security threats have not been explicitly defined either within the isa or in accompanying regulations/legislation. as threats to national security remain in definitional ambiguity, the responsibility for defining such threats remains the responsibility of the executive. this allows the executive to interpret certain types of political dissent as national security threats, which could result in the detention of the activists. as the isa is singapore's foremost national security legislation, and since national security is intimately connected to the political legitimacy of the regime, the isa invariably becomes a law that protects the pap from political attack. as the safeguard of judicial review on executive decisions to order preventive detention has been absent since 1989, this removes any legislative recourse for individuals who may have been wrongfully detained.23 and although the advisory board review exists to prevent wrongful detention, the process itself has limitations. for example, the board cannot secure a detainee's release without the consent of the president and the cabinet. 48 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ conclusion the isa has been transformed from a security law into an effective political instrument of the singapore government. as hugh hickling, who drafted the isa in 1960, observes: since i drafted the original act, the isa has been tightened up and tightened up until now there's no provision for judicial review. unfortunately over the years the powers have been abused. instead of locking up people suspected of organizing violence, which is the phrase used in the permeable to the isa, it's been used to lock up political opponents, quite harmless people.24 although the government's use of the isa for political purposes elicited negative reactions from the public, it was not prepared to abolish, or make amendments to the act (st 1999b). in the wake of september 11 and the international campaign against terrorism, the opportunity to (re)legitimize the government's use of the isa arose. as the isa had been instrumental in preventing several terrorist attacks on domestic and foreign targets by empowering the isd to move quickly against the organizers, the isa has been heralded as an effective piece of anti-terrorism legislation. the government's recent use of the isa also gained international and domestic validity, which further strengthened their resolve to retain the isa. despite the support for the government's use of the isa, human rights advocates continue to voice their opposition to the isa. while the issue of human rights concerns used to dominate any discussion regarding the isa, the new security environment has effectively weakened their impact. the spectre of international terrorism has vindicated the use of harsh national security legislation by governments, and drowned out demands for such legislation to be abolished based solely on human rights or civil libertarian concerns (de castro 2005: 229). it cannot be expected that non-democratic governments would have any incentive to abolish national security laws, since liberal democracies have themselves enacted anti-terrorism legislation that contravenes human rights in some way. hence, it is clear that draconian anti-terrorism laws will be a feature of both western democracies and neo-authoritarian asian states in the foreseeable future. if so, then the current strategy of human rights advocates, that is, to strenuously demand the abolition of anti-terrorism legislation, will be a futile gesture. in light of these circumstances, it may be prudent for human rights advocates to amend their strategies accordingly or risk being labelled as terrorist sympathizers.25 _________________________________________________________________________ 49 _____________________________________________________________ selling security in singapore, human rights and civil libertarian concerns do not resonate as loudly as in the west. singaporeans are however intimidated by the threat of indefinite incarceration and ill-treatment, and have concerns that national security threats will adversely affect their financial standing. this has deterred many from engaging actively in political debates for fear of incurring the wrath of the government; it has also resulted in expressions of support for the government's use of the isa against the local ji cell. this does not imply that the younger generation of singaporeans who are highly educated and more exposed to international trends are politically apathetic or are content with the limited level of political participation. there is a genuine eagerness to participate more actively in politics and a desire to express their criticisms of government policies without fear of being detained under the isa. the singapore government has arguably made subtle changes in its policies regarding the isa. the differences in treatment of the isa detainees in 2001/2002 and 1987 are a case in point. this is however, not to naïvely suggest that a fair degree of 'psychological pressure' 26 was not applied during the interrogation of the ji detainees. rather i simply wish to highlight that the government does realize that it cannot simply 'lock people up indefinitely' without experiencing a backlash. nevertheless, the isa and the isd will remain part of the political landscape in singapore for the foreseeable future. damien cheong is a phd candidate at the school of social and political inquiry, monash university, australia 50 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ a pp e n d ix 1 : t im el in e: r es pe ct iv e si ng ap or e g ov er nm en t u sa ge o f t he is a d at e le gi sl at io n m ea su re s/ a rr es ts in cu m be nt r ea so n 19 48 st at e of e m er ge nc y d ec la re d in m al ay a en ac te d 19 48 e m er ge nc y r eg ul at io ns o rd in an ce l eg al iz ed b ri ti sh c ou nt er -i ns ur ge nc y m ea su re s ag ai ns t t he c om m un is t m al ay an n at io na l l ib er at io n a rm y (m n l a ), in cl ud in g m as s ar re st s, d ep or ta ti on s, th e ex pa ns io n of s ec ur it y fo rc es a nd th e d es tr uc ti on o f t he h om es o f c om m un is t s ym pa th iz er s. b ri ti sh c ol on ia l a d m in is tr at io n se cu ri ty th re at en ac te d 19 55 pr es er va ti on o f p ub lic s ec ur it y o rd in an ce 26 o ct ob er 1 95 6: p ol ic e ar re st a nd d et ai n un io n le ad er s in cl ud in g pa p’ s d ev an n ai r an d l im c hi nsi on g. 21 /2 2 a ug us t 1 95 7: 3 5 pe op le d et ai ne d to p ur ge c om m un is t i nfl ue nc e in th e un io ns a nd th e th en o pp os it io n pa p. l ab ou r fr on t ( l f) g ov er nm en t un d er l im y ew h oc k po lit ic al th re at po lit ic al th re at 19 59 pa p w in s el ec ti on s 19 48 -6 0 m al ay an e m er ge nc y en d s 19 63 si ng ap or e en te rs th e fe d er at io n of m al ay si a 19 65 si ng ap or e ga in s in d ep en ce fr om m al ay si a en ac te d 19 60 in te rn al s ec ur it y a ct o f m al ay si a 3 fe br ua ry 1 96 3: 'o pe ra ti on c ol d s to re ' – 1 07 le ft -w in g po lit ic ia ns a nd tr ad e un io ni st s d et ai ne d in p re -e m pt iv e m ov e ag ai ns t c om m un is ts . 28 -3 0 o ct ob er 1 96 6: b ar is an s os ia lis c ad re s an d u ni on is ts , i nc lu d in g c hi a t hy e po h, d et ai ne d to 'c ri pp le e xt re m is t e le m en ts '. in te rn al s ec ur it y c ou nc il: r ep s fr om th e b ri ti sh g ov t., p a p, a nd fe d er at io n of m al ay si a. pa p go ve rn m en t u nd er p ri m e m in is te r l ee k ua n y ew . po lit ic al / se cu ri ty th re at po lit ic al / se cu ri ty th re at en ac te d 19 70 in te rn al s ec ur it y a ct (i sa ) o f s in ga po re 19 74 : t t r aj ah a rr es te d a nd d et ai ne d fo r 18 m on th s. 10 f eb ru ar y 19 77 : g op al an r ah m an (a ka g . r ah m an ) a rr es te d a nd d et ai ne d fo r pr om ot in g co m m un is t a ct iv it ie s. m id -f eb ru ar y 19 77 : a ru n se nk ut tu va n an d h o k w on p in g ar re st ed fo r al le ge d ly p ub lis hi ng m at er ia l t o d is cr ed it th e go ve rn m en t. 19 79 : u ni ve rs it y le ct ur er a nd u ni ve rs it y of s in ga po re c hi ne se s oc ie ty m em be rs d et ai ne d fo r co m m un is t a ct iv it ie s. 24 a pr il 19 87 : f ou r pe op le d et ai ne d fo r sp re ad in g fa ls e ru m ou rs o f a n im pe nd in g ra ce r io t. 21 m ay 1 98 720 ju ne 1 98 7: 2 2 pe op le d et ai ne d fo r 'm ar xi st c on sp ir ac y' to o ve rt hr ow th e go ve rn m en t. 6 m ay 1 98 8: f or m er s ol ic it or -g en er al f ra nc is s eo w d et ai ne d fo r al le ge d c ol la bo ra ti on w it h an a m er ic an d ip lo m at to in te rf er e in s in ga po re ’s in te rn al a ff ai rs . 19 97 : t w o pe op le a rr es te d fo r es pi on ag e. 19 98 : f ou r si ng ap or ea ns d et ai ne d fo r co lle ct in g an d s up pl yi ng in fo rm at io n to a fo re ig n in te lli ge nc e ag en cy . d ec em be r 20 01 , a ug us t 2 00 2: 3 7 pe op le a rr es te d a nd d et ai ne d fo r te rr or is t a ct iv it ie s. pa p po lit ic al / se cu ri ty th re at po lit ic al / se cu ri ty th re at po lit ic al / se cu ri ty th re at po lit ic al / se cu ri ty th re at po lit ic al / se cu ri ty th re at po lit ic al / se cu ri ty th re at po lit ic al / se cu ri ty th re at po lit ic al / se cu ri ty th re at se cu ri ty th re at se cu ri ty th re at _________________________________________________________________________ 51 _____________________________________________________________ selling security notes 1 s 412 usa patriot act – amendment to s 236 of the immigration and nationality act, s 236a (a)(3). 2 s 412 usa patriot act – amendment to s 236 of the immigration and nationality act, s 236a (a)(2); s 412 usa patriot act – amendment to s 236 of the immigration and nationality act, s 236a (a)(6). 3 a writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. 4 s 412 usa patriot act (b)(2). 5 hard talk, british broadcasting corporation, 23 september 2003. 6 interview with goh chok tong, hard talk, british broadcasting corporation, 23 september 2003. 7 in a western context, the rule of law exists as a framework for governance, whereas in an asian context, it exists as an instrument of governance. 8 kevin tan, cited in chua mui hoong, 'is singapore's legal system getting a bad name?'. the straits times, 25 october 1997. 9 this has given rise to the characterization of singapore as a 'fine-city'. 10 s.74 (3) (4) isa. 11 it is assumed that the evidentiary materials, supplied by the investigating department (the internal security department [isd]) to the executive to assist it in its decisions, are devoid of personal considerations or unsubstantiated facts. 12 article 149 of the singapore constitution, s 1 (e). 13 see article 9: liberty of a person, 11: protection against retrospective criminal laws and repeated trials, 12: equal protection, 13: prohibition of banishment and freedom of movement 14: freedom of speech, assembly and association. 14 statement submitted by the asian legal resource centre (alrc) to the un commission on human rights, civil and political rights, including the questions of states of emergency, e/cn.4/2002/ngo/78, (31 january 2002). accessed 31 october 2004: http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/0/ea32e95eddaefad3c12 56b64004199de?opendocument 15 lee kuan yew, prime minister's new year message, 1988. 16 wong kan seng cited in 'book on isa to be released this year', the straits times, 14 april 2002; 'priority to neutralise terrorist network not try accused'. agence france-presse, 29 september 2002. 17 internal security department, 'security education', available: http://www.mha. gov.sg/isd/se.htm 18 opening remarks by prime minster goh chok tong at the dialogue with community leaders on the arrest of the second group of jemaah islamiyah members, on 14 october 2002. 19 us congressman pete sessions, cited in jennifer lienin washington, 'singapore firms set to reap s$200m a year from us trade pact'. the straits times, 8 may 2003. 20 speech by mr wong kan seng, minister for home affairs at the isd intelligence service promotion ceremony, 3 april 2003. 21 chiam see tong, parliamentary speech on ji whitepaper. accessed 15 august 2005: http://www.spp.org.sg/sp200103.html. 22 vanu gopala menon, letter from the permanent representative of singapore: question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world. office of the united nations high commissioner for human rights, (19 march 2002). accessed 31 october 2004 http://www.ohchr.org/english/ 52 ___________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 damien cheong ____________________________________________________________ 23 s 8b (1) (2), internal security act; s 149 (3), constitution of the republic of singapore. 24 hugh hickling, cited in roger mitton, 'the long story: keeping the streets safe'. asiaweek, 28 july 1993: 46. 25 us senate, 'testimony of attorney general john ashcroft', department of justice oversight: preserving our freedoms while defending against terrorism, hearings before the senate committee on the judiciary, 107th congress, 1st session, 2001. cited in nancy v. barker, 'national security versus civil liberties'. presidential studies quarterly, september 2003, 33 (3): 547-48. 26 in the marxist case, the then deputy prime minister, lee hsien loong, 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'judicial review of preventive detention under the internal security act – a summary of developments'. singapore law review, 10: 66-103. 84 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 alessandro rippa, borderland infrastructures: trade, development and control in western china. amsterdam: amsterdam university press, 2020. 282 pp. isbn 9789463725606 alessandro rippa’s book offers an instructive conceptualisation of the relationship between development and state control in western china’s borderlands as it unfolds under the auspices of the belt and road initiative (bri). drawing upon archival research and ethnographic fieldwork from 2009 to 2018, the book presents six case studies of development processes linked to infrastructural projects in xinjiang and yunnan. the case studies are assembled in an elegant narrative composition. in three parts of the book – each divided into two chapters, an interlude and a coda – rippa discusses three key concepts, namely proximity, curation and corridor. each part of the book outlines historical cross-border mobilities in xinjiang and yunnan, policies and imaginaries of transnational connectivity and modernity in china’s bri era, as well as processes of inclusion and exclusion of borderland inhabitants. while each chapter could be read as an independent case study, the combination of the three key concepts renders the book in its entirety a productive conceptual toolbox for understanding development in western china’s borderlands and beyond. the first part of the book introduces the concept of proximity, which characterises local historical forms of cross-border mobilities that are often based on shared kinship, culture and language. in the current era, this informal form of proximity is often ignored and eroded by the chinese party-state’s future-oriented visions of large-scale infrastructures as tools for development. chapter one discusses how state visions of connectivity, which are materialised in bri projects such as the china-pakistan economic corridor (cpec), are reshaping a network-based cross-border shuttle trade between tashkurgan in xinjiang and pakistan. chapter two then first outlines a history of cross-border connectivities that have linked yunnan to neighbouring burma. in the historical context of what enze han (2019) calls ‘asymmetrical neighbouring’ between china and burma, both chinese kuomintang (kmt) troops, the chinese-backed communist party of burma (cpb) and chinese traders from tengchong in yunnan have this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v41i1.6888. © henrik kloppenborg møller published under the creative commons license (cc by). 85 book review shaped the contemporary configuration of often illegal resource extraction in northern burma and its concurrent ethnic conflicts. the chapter suggests that after a chinese logging ban in 1998, private chinese importers and traders of illegally logged burmese timber facilitated the construction of roads and border crossings to burma. rippa does not provide much concrete information about the character and extent of private initiatives in advocating and/or funding this infrastructure to back up this claim. however, this is a minor shortfall, because rippa focuses on the ensuing consolidation of chinese state presence in the yunnan-burma borderlands, which highlights a productive relationship between illegal economies and state power that is often overlooked. part two of the book introduces the concept of curation to show how state power in china’s borderlands works to produce and stage ‘modern’ subjects that are loyal and grateful to the party-state. curation (lat. curare) has the connotations of ‘curing’ and ‘preserving’, which rippa convincingly brings to bear upon how the chinese state seeks to transform or eradicate certain aspects of ethnic minority culture while preserving others for heritage showcasing and tourist consumption. chapter three discusses how forest preservation policies, discourses on population ‘quality’ (suzhi), government aid and resettlement in the remote dulong valley in northern yunnan combined make the ethnic drung people there almost entirely dependent on state subsidies. the drung previously practised swidden agriculture, but are given rice, cash and new housing in return for reforesting their fields, and state policies and discourses materialise as an ‘economy of dependence’ (p.118) and a ‘paternalistic discourse of care’ (p.121). curation here signifies how development is showcased as a ‘healing’ process that lifts ‘primitive’ ethnic minorities out of poverty and into modernity. development thereby bolsters the control and legitimacy of the party state, while modernity entails increased dependency on government support for the drung. the impression of totalising state power might have been balanced by information about alternatives to complete reliance on state subsidies for drung livelihoods (small-scale farming and black cardamom trade are briefly mentioned). also, rippa quotes stéphane gros (2010: 42 in rippa 2020: 126) for arguing that drung claims to power must be validated by generosity and that state aid is therefore an integral part of its legitimacy. here, a consideration of whether drung political cosmology holds arsenal for counter-claims to state legitimacy could have been added for nuance. 86 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 henrik kloppenborg møller chapter four discusses how the almost complete reconstruction of kashgar’s old town aimed to render the xinjiang city a modern hub on china’s belt and road and created an ‘islamic disneyland’ in which the local xinjiang uyghurs were commodified for mainland chinese tourist consumption. curation here involves preserving innocuous exotic aspects of local ethnic culture through heritage-making while suppressing aspects associated with terrorism in the chinese post-9/11 security paradigm. as rippa notes, ‘uyghurs can sing and dance […] but should not pray, fast or refuse alcohol’ (p. 160). foucault’s concepts of power, governmentality and subject underpin rippa’s analysis of policies, propaganda material and visual displays as manifestations of a state power aimed at transforming particular subjects. accordingly, it almost becomes difficult to imagine the drung and uyghurs outside state power. while imaginaries of kashgar as a bri hub led to real-estate investments, security concerns and restrictions of mobility eventually curbed economic opportunities for many. this process encapsulates the central argument of the book, namely that development in china serves political purposes of control more so than economic ones. the third part of the book discusses how the corridor – a key concept in many large-scale infrastructural projects under the bri and beyond – enables movement and channeled control while removing and blocking what is outside its path. chapter five focuses on kashgaris (uyghurs in pakistan), who have historically conducted cross-border trade with xinjiang through the karakoram highway. after 11 september 2001, chinese authorities began to interact with the kashgari community in pakistan through the overseas chinese association and the xinjiang overseas exchange association. the association aided in visa applications and sent loyal kashgari’s children to chinese top universities while establishing databases of overseas xinjiang uyghurs and aiding in ‘finding terrorists’ in pakistan. increased security measures, such as checkpoints and stricter visa regulations meant that many kashgaris and xinjiang uyghurs lost their advantages in the karakoram highway cross-border trade. while the bri is promoted to foster cross-border ties, state control and securitisation result in restricted mobility and exclusion of groups like the kashgaris and xinjiang uyghurs. chapter six brings us back to the yunnan-burma borderlands; more precisely to the houqiao border trade zone, which was developed due to illegal timber trade. while beijing put an end to the bulk of the illegal timber trade to appease naypyidaw, timber was replaced by burmese amber and other gemstones. the categories legal, illegal, 87 book review licit and illicit are often separated in official discourse but are fluid in practice. burmese gemstones commonly enter china untaxed by means of smuggling or bribing of border guards, but are generally considered legal once in china. as in the case of timber, rippa argues that private amber traders ‘brought in’ the state, in this case through the establishment of the tengchong amber association. members of the association hoped formalisation of the trade would help stabilise prices, eradicate counterfeit amber, mediate disputes and set low taxes. elsewhere, rippa quotes john osburg’s (2013) study of the intimate entanglement of chinese private entrepreneurs and government officials in elite networks (p. 133). if the tengchong amber association is similar in composition to the ruili gemstone association in the nearby border town of ruili, some members of which are both elite jade traders and government officials, the reader might question the extent to which the state can be considered an entirely distinct entity to the elite gem trading networks it was ‘brought into’. however, as in chapter two on timber trade, rippa’s focus is on the nexus of informal trade, infrastructure and state control, which here leads to the formalisation and institutionalisation of informal economies. in this respect, rippa offers a compelling conceptualisation of how ‘corridor-isation’ – in this case through the bangladesh-china-india-myanmar (bcim) economic corridor – was imposed upon an infrastructure established to cater to one illegal trade (in timber) and then served to institutionalise another illegal trade (in amber). as in the cross-border trade of other burmese gemstones such as jade, this process benefits yunnanese elite traders, while rendering burmese smugglers and small-scale traders replaceable. the overall argument in borderland infrastructures is that while state policies and discourses on infrastructure fuel imaginaries of transnational connectivity and economic prosperity, development serves economic goals less so than it is a political process aimed at making china’s borderlands and their inhabitants legible to state control. in many cases, current borderland development of infrastructures, such as highways, border trade zones and economic corridors, ignores and does away with a pre-existing proximity that is based on shared cross-border kinship, culture and language. while this process often marginalises local ethnic minorities, the formalisation and institutionalisation of illicit trade along new infrastructure benefits elite traders with political connections. the goal and ideal effect of this development process, the book argues, is a consolidation of state territorialisation 88 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 henrik kloppenborg møller that produces and displays ‘modern’ borderland citizens that are loyal to the chinese party-state. borderland infrastructures is in that sense a study of chinese state power as it materialises in the margins of the nation, where it is often most visible. the study makes ample use of analysis of policy documents and visual materials such as murals and architecture, but is also supported by the voices of a plethora of border land interlocutors, who have created informal forms of proximity that precede the current era of state curation and corridor-isation. such marginal borderland histories, which are proficiently detailed in the book, are important for understanding the ambiguities that unfold in the implementation of china’s belt and road initiative. providing a rich and original conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between development processes and state power in china, borderland infrastructures is a highly recommended read for students and scholars across disciplines, including political and economic anthropology, borderland studies, development studies and asian studies. henrik kloppenborg møller carlsberg visiting research fellow global sustainable development university of warwick references gros, stéphane 2010. “economic marginalization and social identity among the drung people of northwest yunnan”. in j. michaud and t. forsyth (eds.) moving mountains: highland livelihood and ethnicity in china, vietnam and laos. vancouver: university of british colombia press, pp. 28-49. han, enze 2019. asymmetrical neighbors: borderland state building between china and southeast asia. oxford: oxford university press. osburg, john 2013. anxious wealth: money and morality among china’s new rich. stanford: stanford university press. _hlk127006650 _hlk126914105 _hlk127006732 _hlk126672848 _hlk95234318 ok-cjas23.pdf, page 1-144 @ normalize _______________________________________________________________________ 105 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech restricting free speech: the impact on opposition parties in singapore james gomez abstract although there has been a great deal of publicity surrounding the restriction of free speech with regard to opposition parties in singapore, in real terms, the value of free speech for such parties is limited. first, defamation laws in singapore require the opposition parties to exercise extreme caution to ensure political comments do not result in costly defamation suits or even imprisonment. second, free speech in itself is of limited use politically for opposition parties if the content of this speech is not disseminated widely by the local media. as a result, both the fear of legal suits and the limited dissemination of content continue to restrict the potential of free speech for opposition parties in singapore. this means the contribution of free speech activities to inter-party debate is low in singapore, thereby undermining the fundamental role of democracy premised on fair inter-party competition. keywords: singapore; politics, opposition parties; free speech. introduction there are more than 20 registered opposition political parties in singapore and a handful have consistently secured more than a quarter of the votes in the singapore general elections since 1984 (mutalib 2003). some commentators believe that the opposition is also important in exercising a crucial 'checks and balances' role, theoretically curbing any authoritarian excesses that the ruling party might be tempted to introduce (the sraits times [hereafter st], 29 november 1990). although the opposition's role is described as weak in singapore, its continued presence to some extent serves to 'legitimize' singaporean democracy. however, very little academic work has been produced on opposition parties in singapore. the most significant body of work has focused on a review of general elections (josey 1972; mutalib 1992, 1993; singh 1992; rodan 1996; da cunha 1997). other analyses of general elections that discuss opposition parties have been presented as year-in-review studies (lee 1985; lew 1989; vasil 1993; koh and ooi 2002). another 106 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ body of work that incorporates a discussion of opposition parties focuses on the rules and regulations that govern the elections, in particular the history of constitutional amendments (tremewan 1994; thio 1997; ooi 1998; lam and tan 1999; tan 1999; yeo 2002). to date, only one book exclusively devoted to opposition parties in singapore has been published (mutalib 2003), and this is still largely an analysis of various general elections and constitutional amendments. although these writings are important and offer information about the challenges of the electoral process and constitutional matters, they do not present us with a full picture of the nature and performance of opposition parties in singapore. an approach that examines other aspects of opposition parties, in addition to looking at election results, is needed to broaden our understanding of inter-party competition in singapore. in the period before the people's action party (pap) came to power, there was a freer political environment which was more conducive to the free-speech activities commonly associated with multi-party democracies (chia 2005). for the purposes of this paper, free-speech activities can be defined as those attempts by opposition parties to directly communicate with voters and citizens. the singapore constitution provides for free speech, but with restrictions. clause (1)(a) of article 14, declares that citizens of singapore have the 'right to freedom of speech and expression': however, this right is subject to clause (2) which states that parliament may by law impose: (a) on the rights conferred by clause (1) (a), such restrictions as it considers necessary or expedient in the interest of the security of singapore or any part thereof, friendly relations with other countries, public order or morality and restrictions designed to protect the privileges of parliament or to provide against contempt of court defamation or incitement to any violence. (constitution of the republic of singapore) singapore is unique in the sense that its constitution's article 14 on rights begins by focusing on restrictions of freedom of expression – the right of freedom of expression is itself relegated to a secondary role. therefore, in singapore, the right to freedom of expression is not absolute, but can be curtailed by parliament, which has the power to legislate restrictions on these freedoms. therefore parliament, and not the courts, dictates the extent of the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution (hickling 1992: 186). since 1959, the singapore parliament has been dominated by one political party – the pap. hence, in some ways, the pap through its control _______________________________________________________________________ 107 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech of parliament dictates the extent of freedoms in singapore, including the rules of inter-party competition. in fact, the rules of the game were changed to ensure the dominance of the pap. opposition parties currently operate in a restricted communications environment. the situation is one where electoral rules are constantly revised and tightened, political party fundraising is only allowed under strict conditions, constitutional innovations are undertaken to reduce the growth of opposition parties, the national trade union movement is affiliated with the ruling party, grassroots organizations are politically supervised, and the media is either directly controlled, intimidated, or practices self-censorship. this has led freedom house to claim that singaporeans 'cannot change their government democratically' (freedom house 2005: 562). in such a restricted environment, one method open to opposition parties is the use of direct verbal communication to get their message across to both small and large groups of people. however, the existence of several key pieces of legislation, which have been revised over the years, does have an impact on opposition parties' effective use of direct verbal communication. it is important to understand that such rules apply equally to all political parties, but in reality the opposition parties are most disadvantaged by these rules. often there are exceptions for the ruling party in government; alternatively the ruling party uses all the communication tools at its disposal to control speech; this is an advantage that opposition parties do not enjoy. when it comes to direct political communication, opposition parties have been denied permits to hold public events or to make political speeches; they have been charged with defamation of pap officials both during and outside of election periods; moreover they often risk arrest. even when they are elected to parliament, their speaking time is limited and their speech is not protected. we shall see later in the paper, on two separate occasions, how opposition politicians were disciplined through the committee of privileges. this paper has chosen to focus on the impact that three key pieces of legislation – the public entertainments and meetings act (2000), the defamation act (1957, 1997), and parliamentary privileges found in the parliaments (privileges, immunities and powers) act (1962, 2000) – have had on opposition party communication. these are the laws that have been most frequently used to restrict the freedom of opposition parties' direct verbal communications. even though the free speech of opposition politicians is curtailed, such restrictions in themselves are not all that important. it is rather the impact on the content of free speech (tempered by the fear of defamation 108 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ suits), and the non-reportage or misrepresentation of opposition parties' free speech content, especially by the local media, that remain the more important issues. the barriers to the free dissemination of the content of political speech through the local mass media remain an important communications setback for opposition parties. although the laws under examination in this paper have been revised, this paper will show that nothing really has changed to substantially improve this situation. the reality of these restrictions and incidents convey the message to all citizens, and not just opposition politicians, that it is very difficult to challenge or change the laws set down by the ruling pap government and that the ruling party is not above using the laws to suppress oppositional voices. the pap does not acknowledge that free speech and freedom of expression are basic human rights, instead it promotes them as a privilege allowed only to the ruling party. in such a political climate, how do the existing laws affect the free speech activities of opposition parties? if the free-speech environment is so restricted and opposition parties are unable to change the current laws, what options are available for opposition parties? this paper pulls together the different strands of legislation and history of the free-speech repression of opposition parties, scattered across a variety of works, into a single and coherent focus. apart from a preliminary analysis, the paper aims to provide a useful empirical reference point for future writings on singapore politics by introducing free speech as a specific subtheme of research. in doing so, the paper seeks to add to the small but growing number of studies on opposition parties in singapore and to contribute to a more textured understanding of the extant political environment. the public entertainments and meetings act (pema) and free speech the public entertainments and meetings act (pema) of 2000 is the most important legislation affecting free speech in singapore1. the act has its origins in an ordinance dating back to 1958, with direct consequences for political parties, especially those of the opposition. the current act has been the result of several changes and amendments, but its key provisions have remained the same and restrict organized outdoor political communication activities by opposition parties. the act governs the conduct of public events and meetings, requiring groups or organizations to apply to the police for a permit in order to _______________________________________________________________________ 109 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech hold gatherings that are open to the public. in other words, the police must sanction all public gatherings in singapore (south china morning post, 10 november 2002). the public entertainment licensing unit (pelu) is the government department, and part of the police force, tasked with administering the pema. opposition parties have frequently complained about pelu and its licence approval process. amongst their main complaints are: pelu's lack of transparency and the way it enforces the act to 'violate the right to freedom of speech, assembly and association guaranteed by the constitution' (st, 18 november 2000); plus the lengthy and bureaucratic process necessary to obtain a licence (which can take up to three or four weeks, and several more to appeal against a rejection). rejections have also been inconsistent, argued opposition mp chiam see tong from the singapore progressive party (spp) in parliament in 2000, where he raised the issue of his being denied the opportunity to speak during party-organized dinners in his ward. he noted that in the past, he had been able to obtain permits to speak in public at events run by his town council or his former party the singapore democratic party (sdp) (st, 18 november 2000). one writer had this to say about the public entertainment laws in singapore: the pap continued to use the threat of 'mischief' to prevent political parties from holding rallies outside elections into the next millennium, making the singapore constitution's guarantee of freedom of assembly a provision honoured more in the breach than in the observance. of course, the restrictions applied to the pap as well as to the opposition parties – but again, the pap hardly needed to hold rallies. it held power. (lydgate 2003: 105) according to the law, opposition party mps need to apply for licences each and every time they speak in public, even in their own wards, whereas mps from the ruling pap do not have this obligation. the singapore police force explains the law as follows: 'all speeches require a public-entertainment licence, even when given by an mp in a community event. however, the act exempts public entertainment provided by or under the auspices of the government.' for example, pap mps do not require a permit when they are speaking in their capacity as advisors to the people's association grassroots organization at organized events (st, 18 november 2000). this inconsistency in the application of the act was illustrated when the workers' party was fined s$800 in 1986 after a constituency dinner and auction held as part of the lunar seventh month celebrations, at 110 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ which the wp's then chief j. b. jeyaretnam made a speech unrelated to the festivities. the pelu decreed that because his speech 'had nothing to do with the festivities, and was delivered in public, it needed a separate licence from the dinner itself', and should be considered a separate entertainment item (st, 18 november 2000). when opposition mps do apply for a permit to speak at constituency functions, the applications are often rejected. chiam see tong of the singapore progressive party (spp) has also been refused permission to speak at dinners held by his party in his ward. for example, in 1999 he was denied a licence to make his prepared speech, and was only allowed to make a ten-minute thank-you speech. he handed out copies of his intended speech to the attendees (the west australian, 22 november 1999). he raised this issue in parliament twice in 2000, and was told by the home affairs ministry that 'political meetings, with political speeches, are never permitted outdoors, because the speeches could turn inflammatory and lead to law-and-order problems' (st, 18 november 2000). this, however, was not always the case. in 1961, david marshall, the elected workers' party assemblyman of anson, staged open rallies which he dubbed 'report to the people' in his constituency to report to his constituents on parliamentary proceedings (chan 2001: 254-55). but since then things have changed. for the last several decades, the pap has been able use this legislation to deny opposition parties the opportunity for direct, large-scale communication. such restrictions affect both elected and non-elected opposition politicians. over the years, opposition politicians have experienced a number of difficulties associated with the entertainment licence. table 1 shows how opposition party figures have been penalized under the public entertainments act. opposition leaders first ran foul of the act for simply breaching it, but thereafter the law was infringed deliberately, especially through the civil disobedience acts of chee soon juan of the sdp. opposition leaders' arguments in court that their political speeches and meetings did not constitute 'entertainment' led to amendments to the act in 2000, and to its renaming as the public entertainments and meetings act (pema) with heavier fines. table 2 illustrates the denial of permits to opposition leaders. permits are required for events like outdoor political events, but they are seldom or never issued to opposition parties. the denial of permits has applied to three types of outdoor political events organized by the opposition – non-election rallies, dinners with political themes, and marches. _______________________________________________________________________ 111 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech table 1: infringements of the pema by opposition parties name party date of offence activity sanction j. b. jeyaretnam wp 1986 lunar seventh month dinner in own ward fine of s$800 j. b. jeyaretnam wp 30 may 1987 civil disobedience protest against arrests of 22 professionals accused of a 'marxist conspiracy' against the government charged with attempting to hold an assembly without a police permit and obstructing the police. chee soon juan sdp 29 december 1998 speech in open space (raffles place) fine of s$1,400 chee soon juan and wong hong toy sdp 5 january 1999 speech in open space (raffles place) 12 days' jail for both men after refusal to pay fines amounting to s$2,500 for chee and s$2,400 for wong. the amount of the fines was later retroactively reduced to s$1,900 each to enable both men to run for the next parliamentary elections. chee soon juan sdp 15 february 2002 speech at speakers' corner fine of s$3,000 and barred from contesting in elections for the next five years from the time of conviction. chee soon juan and gandhi ambalam sdp 1 may 2002 may day rally in front of presidential palace jail for 5 weeks for chee after he refused pay fines of s$4,500, and disqualified from contesting in elections for the next five years from the time of conviction. ambalam spend one night in jail and was released after he paid the fine of s$3,000 the next day. sources: agence france presse (2002) 'dr chee challenges police to charge him over speech', 4 march; agence france presse (2002) 'opposition rally no threat to law and order': defence lawyer, 1 october; lloyd-smith, jake (2002) 'singapore activist defiant after jail term', 10 november; lydgate, chris (2003) lee's law: how singapore crushes dissent, scribe publications, australia; south china morning post (1999) 'chee heads to jail for unauthorised public speech', 2 february; reuters (1999) 'chee released from jail, will fight on', 6 march; reuters (1999) 'chee's fine reduced, can now run for office', 25 may; reuters (2002) 'fined politician loses chance to stand in poll', 30 july. changes and amendments to the act came about when a series of civil disobedience activities were undertaken by the singapore democratic party secretary-general chee soon juan to highlight the unconstitutional nature of the public entertainments act. two of these acts took place at raffles place. the first one was on 29 december 1998, when chee was duly charged with giving a talk without a licence. j. b. jeyaretnam, who represented chee in court for the 29 december 1998 incident, wrote to the president in january 1999, arguing that chee's talk was not public entertainment in the popular meaning of the word 'entertainment'. he also asserted that the act 'violated dr chee's rights as a citizen, as well as the constitutional right of every citizen of singapore to freedom of information and assembly', and he further argued it was a very appropriate case to be referred to a constitutional tribunal (st, 30 january 1999). 112 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ nonetheless, his arguments were not accepted, and chee stood trial in court. there, he said his constitutional right to free speech was 'violated by the requirement for public speaking permits', and jeyaretnam told the court that chee's offence 'fell outside the scope of the act and constitutional violation voided the charge'. the judge however said he was 'powerless' to deal with the issue because he did not have the 'power of judicial review' when it came to constitutional matters (reuters, 1 february 1999). the judge subsequently rejected chee's argument that the law was unconstitutional, and chee opted to spend seven days in jail rather than pay the fine of s$1,400 (south china morning post, 2 february 1999). in march, chee was put on trial for again violating the act by making a speech on 5 january 1999, again at raffles place (chee soon juan, 5 january 1999). he was found guilty of breaking the public speaking laws and was fined s$2,500. again he refused to pay the fine and opted for 12 days' jail instead. in addition, sdp official wong hong toy was found guilty of assisting chee and was fined s$2,400. both appealed against the convictions and made a request for a british queen's counsel, a senior lawyer, to argue their cases before singapore's high court (reuters, 6 march 1999). these cases made international news and became the advocacy focus for many international free speech organizations. chee had more run-ins with the authorities after he publicly stated that police had refused him permission to hold two public rallies in late 1999. he accused them of 'discrimination and violating the right to free speech after refusing his application to hold rallies' in august. according to the head of the police licensing division in a letter to chee, the application was rejected because the venues were outdoors and there was 'a potential for trouble' and public 'inconvenience'. in a letter to the home affairs ministry, chee said officials and mps from the ruling pap 'routinely give political speeches in outdoor areas', and asked 'why should the law not treat all parties equally?' (agence france presse, 5 august 1999). as a result of these highly publicized disputes and civil disobedience acts against the licensing regime, a government concession to free speech was made when it established a speakers' corner in september 2000 (reuters, 28 february 2001). this came about because the roundtable, a political discussion group, suggested through a series of exchanges in the press the setting-up of free-speech venues. although then-prime minister goh chok tong was initially not ready for this development because he was worried about managing unbridled free _______________________________________________________________________ 113 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech speech in such a venue, it was eventually set up (financial times, 27 march 1999). however this venue is governed by strict rules: speakers must register to get prior approval at the police station next to the park, and their speeches are recorded by the government and kept for six years. in addition, speeches may be subsequently used in defamation and criminal proceedings in courts of law. other restrictions include the banning of certain topics dealing with matters such as race and religion (see gomez 2002). shortly after the speakers' corner was introduced, the public entertainments act of 1973 was amended to include the term 'meetings' and become the public entertainments and meetings act (pema) in late 2000 (st, 14 november 2000). the fines for holding public talks or delivering political speeches without a police permit were doubled from s$5,000 to s$10,000. singapore people's party (spp) secretary-general chiam see tong stated that 'as far as the law is concerned, it is against the opposition and nothing has changed'. opposition mps said the new law remained restrictive, in that it allowed them to hold public events in their constituencies without a permit but not to give speeches (reuters, 28 february 2001). no change regarding this issue has since been officially announced, but opposition mps can speak outdoors at a constituency event provided it is organized by the town council2 but not by the mps' political party.3 further, at political events organized by political parties, such as anniversaries of political parties, the only type of speeches allowed are those kept succinct and limited to seasonal greetings and best wishes.4 in march 2001, a number of individuals from the think centre5 applied to hold a rally in a stadium, in support of j. b. jeyaretnam, who was in danger of becoming bankrupt and losing his seat in parliament. the application for the permit was rejected by the police on the grounds of potential law-and-order problems, including the stipulation that the think centre would be required to raise its own 'significant resources to manage the crowd' (think centre, 26 march 2001). a subsequent appeal to the ministry of home affairs was also rejected, again citing 'law-and-order problems' and a clarification that it was not permitted for individuals to file requests. the organizers then decided to file another application under the name of an organization, which the ministry agreed to consider (agence france presse, 29 march 2001). this application was accepted and the 'save jbj rally' was finally held in late april 2001, under the auspices of local non-governmental organization think centre ('jeyaretnam targets next election', 3 may 2001). 114 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ other kinds of permits were also required for the selling of jeyaretnam's books and for displaying banners at the rally. the organizers had to apply for a permit at the hawkers' department to sell books, t-shirts and stickers (think centre, 19 april 2001), and eventually received an exemption for it. another layer of bureaucracy involved getting permission for some banners to be approved for use at the stadium that was the venue of the rally. this was granted after the singapore sports council — which managed the stadiums — endorsed the banners in accordance with the rules set by the building and construction authority (think centre, 22 april 2001). the changes in the act did not result in any significant increase in support or facilitation of free speech for opposition parties. in august 2001, the singapore democrat party applied for a permit to hold an outdoors national day rally. it was granted after some delay, but the police stipulated that the party would need to hire a specified number of security guards at its own cost (st, 15 august 2001). another example was when chee and sdp official gandhi ambalam were arrested after they tried to hold a may day rally in front of the presidential palace in 2002 without the necessary permit from the pema. during the trial, a lawyer for the defence argued that the 'crowd' which was presented by the prosecution as a potential law-and-order problem was actually made up of journalists (agence france presse, 1 october 2002). however, they were found guilty and jailed in october 2002. chee was jailed after refusing to pay fines totalling s$4,500: this was broken down as s$4,000 for breaching the act, and s$500 for 'wilful trespass'. ambalam was fined s$3,000 for the lack of a permit and for 'disorderly behaviour'. the authorities had denied the sdp permission to hold a rally, but chee and ambalam tried to carry on with it and both were arrested. chee was jailed for five weeks after refusing to pay the fines, and ambalam served one night in prison before settling his fines the next day (south china morning post, 10 november 2002). in 2002, chee soon juan, secretary-general of the singapore democratic party, spoke at the speakers' corner urging singaporeans 'of different races and religions to tolerate each other's views and boost religious harmony and social cohesion'. even though he maintained that he was not breaching the 'no religion and disharmony' rules (st, 27 july 2002), he also spoke on the 'tudung issue', a controversy regarding the barring of three muslim girls from state schools after they had worn headscarves – or 'tudungs' – to class. chee, in his defence, argued that his speech was neither religious nor aimed to 'cause enmity, hatred, _______________________________________________________________________ 115 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech hostility and ill-will about any racial or religious group', and that he was within his right to speak at the speakers' corner and therefore did not require a separate public entertainment licence (chee 2002). nevertheless, he was charged with breaking the law of not applying for a public entertainment licence and was fined s$3,000, as the judge ruled that chee's speech 'clearly constituted public entertainment as defined in the act' (reuters, 30 july 2002). so when singapore's third prime minister, lee hsien loong, announced during a national day rally speech a partial relaxation of the rules on the expression of political views in 2004, it was greeted with limited enthusiasm. lee in his speech announced that singaporeans would no longer need police approval to speak at indoor gatherings (agence france presse, 22 august 2004). some days later, the singapore police clarified that indoor talks would, from 1 september 2004, no longer require licences provided they were held in an enclosed space 'which is not within the hearing or view of any person who is not attending or participating' in the meeting. they further stipulated that only singapore citizens were allowed to organize and address such gatherings; and a public entertainment and meeting licence would still be required under the act if a foreign speaker were involved. in addition, the police said that the lecturers and speakers must not deal with any matter 'which relates, directly or indirectly, to any religious belief or to religion generally' or 'which may cause feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different racial or religious groups in singapore' (agence france presse, 27 august 2004). hence, it was no surprise that opposition mp and workers' party secretary-general low thia khiang criticized these moves as simply 'opening up within a confined space'; and said that such measures would have a limited impact on the rest of society. low said if the government was serious about encouraging diverse views, 'it should have free speech venues in all hdb neighbourhood parks' and that 'a mature society can and should allow people to discuss such issues and the audience should be able to make judgments for themselves'. he added that this relaxation was being promulgated as 'real change' to convince singaporeans and overseas critics that singapore was now an open society in which democratic rights would be protected by the current prime minister (st, 25 august 2004). long-time constitutional expert and academic kevin tan had this to say about the amendment: 116 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ i think the recent announcement of waiver of permits for indoor meetings goes a long way to reduce the impact of the public entertainments and meetings act (pema). however, the pema still gives the police too much power to decide how the right to free speech and assembly are to be exercised in singapore. they have much discretion to decide whether or not to grant a permit and to designate where the meeting or speech will take place.6 the waiver of permits does reduce a layer of administration for political parties, but the fact that this waiver applies only to indoor venues means that these generally remain small or else there is a high cost of rental involved for larger indoor venues. some political parties such as the workers' party, which held a public consultation exercise with its members as speakers in march 2005, did so without any consideration to changes in the public-speaking guidelines. but many political commentators remain sceptical as to how far this will affect the freedom of expression of opposition politicians and political parties so long as permits for outdoor activities continue to be denied by the police (see table 2 for a listing of applications of outdoor activities that were denied). table 2: denial of permits name party date of proposed event activity j. b. jeyaretnam wp 9 january 1982 rally in anson low thia khiang wp 1993 democracy day dinner in open space (i.e. outdoors). chee soon juan sdp 12 & 15 august 1999 outdoor political rallies to speak on 'the need for political openness in singapore' chiam see tong spp 20 november 1999 political speech at party anniversary dinner j. b. jeyaretnam former secretarygeneral of the wp 5 january 2003 protest march against goods and services tax hike j. b. jeyaretnam former secretarygeneral of the wp 17 april 2005 protest march against casino sources: agence france presse (1999) 'singapore bars outspoken opposition leader chee from holding rallies', 5 august; agence france presse (2002) 'jeyaretnam slams police refusal to allow protest march', 30 december; lydgate, chris (2003) lee's law: how singapore crushes dissent; scribe publications, australia; reuters (2005) 'singapore rejects bid for casino protest march', 31 march; the west australian (1999) 'police stop party talk', 22 november. _______________________________________________________________________ 117 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech this scepticism was borne out when the open singapore center7 organized a public meeting on the subject of the death penalty and ran into several problems. first, their foreign speaker, amnesty international representative tim parritt, was declined a professional visitor's pass by the immigration and checkpoint authority. this meant that he was effectively banned from speaking at the meeting (singapore democratic party, 9 may 2005a). second, during the meeting, a police officer in plain clothes identified himself as a policeman and asked for the identity and nationality of the moderator. during the forum two uniformed policeman even entered the room8. quite clearly the waiver for a licence for indoor activities did not mean that the police would cease to monitor such activities to check for infringements. the police presence seems to be guided by the belief that such activities may infringe other laws. so in spite of the 'relaxation', the police continue to monitor and intervene in public-speech activities in order to exercise control, thereby diluting these so-called measures of liberalization. election rallies: defamation laws and other regulations although permits have frequently been denied for outdoor political meetings, even under the revised pema when the police cite law-andorder issues as pretext, the police do issue special guidelines during election time. according to these guidelines, outdoor election rallies or meetings for mass direct communication can be held from nomination day until the eve of polling day. they can be held from 7 am until 10 pm. lunch-time rallies can only be held between 11.30 am and 2.30 pm. in order to hold an election rally or meeting, a permit still needs to be obtained. a candidate or an authorized election agent must apply personally in writing for the permit not later than 2.30 pm one day before the rally. written permission for the use of rally sites is also needed from the respective authorities. such rallies can only be held in sites approved by the police. election meetings can also take place indoors but these too require a police permit and the permission of the owner of the premises (st, 20 december 1996). but even this limited provision during elections is not without its problems. the space allowed political parties during election periods has been affected by the use of defamation laws to prosecute political opponents, by both the pap government and individual pap politicians.9 the legislation governing defamation laws comprises the defamation 118 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ act (1957, 1997), which deals with libel, slander and falsehoods. civil libel or slander suits – or the threat of them – have often been used by government leaders to intimidate opposition leaders and political opponents. the penal code also provides for criminal defamation offences. even the internal security act can be used against someone who speaks in a manner likely to incite violence. other provisions include those that rule certain subject matters in speeches as being in contempt of court. defamation suits have been used against opposition politicians during election rallies, notably in the cases against j. b. jeyaretnam, tang liang hong10 and chee soon juan for allegedly defaming pap figures in speeches made during election time. the peculiar nature of these suits has been highlighted in reports submitted to organizations like lawyers' rights watch canada. these reports have expressed concern that 'defamation proceedings against mr. jeyaretnam and other government critics have impaired the right of singaporeans to fully engage in professions that carry with them the duty or responsibility to, when necessary, be critical of government'. one of the observers believed that 'there has to be some leeway granted in law to political candidates in elections'. this is called the 'defence of qualified privilege', which permits political candidates 'to raise issues of concern to the public' (davidson and rubin 2001). this means that an opposition politician should be entitled to raise issues of concern and that there needs to be some response from the government. however, in singapore there is no such defence, and the courts 'will presume that the speaker intended to assert the truth of the matter being raised', and prosecute accordingly. speakers thus run the risk of being sued for defamation, especially during election time in the cut and thrust of political speeches. the defence of qualified privilege is precluded in section 14 of the defamation act, which is designed to severely restrict the freedom to discuss 'questions in issue'. conversely, this section of the act focuses on protecting a plaintiff's reputation rather than protecting fair comments by politicians in any political discussions or debate (upon which an election usually depends). in this area, the defamation law in singapore sets itself against the laws in other commonwealth countries (davidson and rubin 2001) and makes a 'radical departure from its common law roots' (bryan and rubin 2004: 1). however, in singapore, it is the case law made by judges that shapes the parameters of free speech, not the act itself. this is very different from the laws of the pema, which are very restrictive but at least have the benefit of being quite clear because they are in statutory form. _______________________________________________________________________ 119 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech pap government leaders thus use court proceedings and defamation suits against political opponents and critics. such suits that are often decided in favour of pap plaintiffs have created the perception that the ruling party uses the judicial system for political purposes. costly judgments in libel suits do lead to bankruptcy, and under the law, bankrupt persons are ineligible to sit in parliament. this has been the fate of the first post-independence opposition mp j. b. jeyaretnam; other prominent cases include tang liang hong and chee soon juan. it has had a stifling effect on the full expression of political opinion and has disadvantaged the political opposition. one of the early cases of defamation was brought against both an opposition-connected newspaper and an opposition politician in 1973. the chern sien pao was successfully sued by then-prime minister lee kuan yew for publishing 'slanderous remarks' made by barisan sosialis electoral candidate harban singh. singh himself was jailed for one month for 'criminal defamation of the prime minister' (seow 1998: 130). three years later in 1976, ho juan thai of the workers' party (wp) was accused by the pap of making speeches 'inciting the chinese-speaking to violence on the language issue' during the general election. a warrant for his arrest was issued under the internal security act, and ho fled to london as soon as the result of the poll was announced. after the elections in that same year, the then-secretary general of the wp was sued for defamation by then-prime minister lee kuan yew for saying during an election rally 'that a bank of which his [lee's] brother was a director had been given a banking licence when other companies applying for banking licences had not been able to get their licences'. jeyaretnam was found guilty in the high court, and ordered to pay damages of s$130,000, with total costs amounting to s$500,000 (low et al. 1997). in the 1980s, an election rally during the 1988 general election was the venue at which jeyaretnam questioned the pap government's investigation of the suicide of the minister for national development, teh cheang wan. he 'also asked whether the prime minister had replied to a letter written to him by teh'. lee kuan yew commenced a case against jeyaretnam for slander, because 'his words at the election rally were understood to mean that lee had aided and abetted teh cheang wan to commit suicide, which was a criminal offence'. again, jeyaretnam was found guilty and ordered to pay lee damages of s$260,000 together with interest on the amount and costs (low et al. 1997). the 1990s began with more charges against workers' party electoral candidates. gopalan nair was charged with contempt of court 'for mak120 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ ing a speech at an election rally in which he was alleged to have cast aspersions on the system of promotion of judges in the subordinate courts'. he was found guilty and fined s$8,000 by a judge of the high court, and later ordered to pay s$13,000 to the government for legal costs. on the few occasions where permits were issued for a rally in an enclosed space (e.g. a football stadium), wp member wee han kim apologized publicly to the then-senior minister lee kuan yew and his son, then-first deputy prime minister lee hsien loong, for making a speech at a party labour day rally 'implying that the latter had gained his pre-eminent public office not on his own merits but due to the nepotistic influence of his father' in mid-1992. before any writ could be issued, wee agreed to pay damages for defamation of s$100,000 to each of the lees, plus legal costs and other charges amounting to approximately s$223,000 (low et al. 1997). in 1997, tang liang hong, formerly of the workers' party, was hit by 13 libel suits from pap ministers and mps, including the then-senior minister and then-prime minister, when he called them liars after they had labelled him an 'anti-christian, chinese chauvinist and a dangerous man'. tang left singapore for johor, malaysia after receiving death threats. he also faced charges from the inland revenue authority for evading taxes. after tang left, the plaintiffs 'obtained an injunction against tang to restrain him from disposing of his assets and requiring him to disclose the whereabouts of all his assets'. the plaintiffs obtained default judgments against tang in all their suits after tang 'failed to file an affidavit disclosing his assets'. a judge at the high court assessed tang's incurred damages at s$8,075,000 (low et al. 1997). related to this case was that of j. b. jeyaretnam in that same year, who faced nine defamation suits by 11 pap ministers and mps 'for saying at an election rally that tang liang hong had just handed him two police reports made by tang liang hong 'against goh chok tong and his people'. the judge at the trial found that jeyaretnam's words were defamatory 'but of a much lesser meaning than that claimed by goh'. the judge awarded goh 10 per cent of the s$200,000 damages claimed by him, and also ordered jeyaretnam to pay 60 per cent of goh's costs (low et al. 1997). jeyaretnam in april 2002 formally apologized to thensenior minister lee kuan yew and other pap members for the remarks made during the 1997 campaign. in exchange for the apology, the men dropped defamation lawsuits against jeyaretnam and agreed to forgo damages (agence france presse, 2 april 2002). this offer was though of no consequence, as jeyaretnam had already _______________________________________________________________________ 121 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech been declared bankrupt in 2001 and had lost his seat in parliament. he had lost a final appeal against the bankruptcy order, which stemmed from a lawsuit filed against him by pap officials who claimed that he had defamed them in the workers' party newspaper the hammer in 1995, when jeyaretnam was its editor. an article there had criticized the organizers of a campaign promoting the use of the tamil language (south china morning post, 24 july 2001). accordance to singapore law, bankruptcy disqualifies a person from holding public office. the latest of the election-related defamation suits took place at the end of 2001. then-senior minister lee kuan yew and then-prime mintable 3: defamation and other criminal offences during election campaigns name party date charge nature of penalty harban singh barisan sosialis 1973 criminal defamation of the prime minister jail – 1 month ho juan thai workers' party 1976 accused by the pap of making speeches inciting the chinesespeaking to violence on language issue (during elections) warrant for arrest issued under the internal security act. ho fled to london as soon as the result of the polls was announced, and is still residing in the united kingdom. j. b. jeyaretnam workers' party 1976 sued for defamation by lee kuan yew for things said at general election rally damages of s$130,000 awarded to lee. j. b. jeyaretnam workers' party 1988 sued for defamation by lee kuan yew for things said at general election rally damages of s$260,000 awarded to lee, plus interest and costs gopalan nair workers' party 1991 contempt of court for casting aspersions on system of promotion of judges in speech at election rally fined s$8,000 and ordered to pay s$13,000 to government for legal costs wee han kim workers' party 1992 accused of defaming lee and lee at labour day rally damages paid to plaintiffs plus legal costs and advertisement charges totalling s$223,000. j. b. jeyaretnam workers' party 1995 accused of defaming pap officials in party newsletter article when he was the editor damages of s$235,000 awarded to plaintiffs. declared bankrupt and barred from parliament after failing to pay the final instalment. tang liang hong workers' party jan. 1997 civil defamation suit accused of defaming pap members through police reports s$8,000,000 in damages awarded to pap plaintiffs. j. b. jeyaretnam workers' party jan. 1997 accused of defaming goh chok tong at election rally civil defamation suit by goh and 10 other pap politicians were dropped after jeyaretnam apologized. chee soon juan singapore democrat party nov. 2001 accused of defaming thenpm goh and then-sm lee during 2001 election campaign ordered by the high court to pay a total of s$500,000 in damages to goh and lee. sources::agence france presse (2001) 'opposition mp files appeal against bankruptcy order'. 22 february; agence france presse (2002) 'jeyaretnam says sorry, defamation charges dropped'. 2 april; low thia khiang, huang seow kwang, k. mariappane and rahim osman (1997) the workers' party 40th anniversary magazine; the workers' party, singapore; mutalib, hussin (2003) parties and politics: a study of opposition parties and the pap in singapore, eastern universities press, singapore; st (2005) 'sdp chief could be declared bankrupt'. 17 march; seow, francis t. (1994) to catch a tartar: a dissident in lee kuan yew's prison; new haven, conn.: yale university southeast asian studies. 122 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ ister goh chok tong sued chee soon juan, leader of the singapore democratic party (sdp), for defamation based upon comments chee had made during a campaign stop in the november 2001 general election. chee had allegedly accused them of 'misleading parliament over an alleged s$17 million (us$10 million) loan to former indonesian president suharto' (agence france presse, 6 september 2004; st, 17 march 2005). in march 2005 it was reported that sdp chief chee soon juan 'failed to meet a demand by lawyers acting for mr goh chok tong and mr lee kuan yew that he pay s$500,000 in damages awarded to them by the high court'. the court had ruled in january that chee had to pay s$300,000 to goh and s$200,000 to lee for defaming them during the 2001 election campaign (st, 17 march 2005). in spite of the guarantees of freedom of speech, as laid out in article 14 of the singapore constitution, opposition figures have borne the brunt of the defamation charges during election rallies. table 3 provides an overview of defamation suits brought against opposition figures by pap officials, mainly arising from speeches made during election rallies. a pattern has emerged whereby these suits have become a tool to attack opposition leaders and candidates during election times, and the fines have been especially heavy and aimed at bankrupting them. policing speech in parliament in the preceding sections we saw how the work of opposition politicians and parties ran into difficulties because of strict legislation surrounding public speaking. what is interesting about the singapore case is that such restrictions in some ways also extend to speech in parliament. article 63 (privileges of parliament) of the singapore constitution states: 'it shall be lawful for the legislature by law to determine and regulate the privileges, immunities or powers of parliament.' this 'merely allows parliament to regulate its own privileges, immunities and powers' (tan et al. 1991). such privileges and procedures are recorded in the standing orders of the parliament of singapore. the standing orders among other things offer guidance on how debate is to be conducted in parliament. for instance, there are clear and distinct time limits for mps when answering questions, when addressing specific committees of parliament, and for proposing motions. in respect to replying to questions, the orders state that 'no member shall be entitled to speak to any question in parliament _______________________________________________________________________ 123 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech for more than 30 minutes, or to address a committee of the whole parliament for more than 15 minutes at any one time'. for motions, the 'mover of an original motion shall be entitled to not more than one hour for his opening speech and another hour for his reply' (standing orders of the parliament of singapore 2004). overall the rules about speaking times favour a minister more than an ordinary backbencher. the time limits indicated in the current standing orders are sparse compared to speaking times in earlier parliaments. for instance, david marshall spoke for six hours during a debate on constitutional proposals in 1957. in 1961, lee siew choh of the barisan sosialis spoke for more than seven hours, lasting until almost four o'clock the following morning (chan 2001: 239, 255). like the pema and the defamation act, these rules apply to all mps of all parties. however, the requirement that at least a certain number of mps are needed to move a motion in the current standing orders does impact primarily on the opposition mps, as in the present parliament there are only two elected opposition mps from two different parties, and one ncmp11. when the standing orders are amended to either reduce the time allowed for a member to speak, or to curtail opportunities for speaking, it not only impedes the opposition's ability to communicate their constituency's concerns, it also erodes their ability to be effective. parliament is essentially a numbers game. with few opposition politicians from different parties, the total time allocated to them will be correspondingly reduced when time is reduced. the incumbent can still spread the time around, especially when they have so many members in the chamber. further, apart from the rules contained in the standing orders, how the speaker applies these rules are also important.12 one key provision within the standing orders of the parliament of singapore relates to the powers and operations of the committee of privileges. the committee consists of eight mps who conduct hearings into cases of alleged parliamentary misconduct by other mps (standing orders of parliament of singapore 2004). the committee is composed of mostly mps from the ruling pap, with usually just one opposition mp. there has been at least one instance of the use of this committee in the history of the singapore parliament, namely when it was used against mp david marshall in 1962. like jeyaretnam, marshall was a criminal defence lawyer who wanted to raise in parliament an issue that was related to one of his cases. the committee of privileges presided over this and concluded that because marshall was a lawyer involved in the case, he was not entitled to raise it in parliament, even in general terms (lydgate 2003: 109). 124 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ when j. b. jeyaretnam was elected in the anson by-election, this tool was more visibly deployed as a form of disciplinary action against the opposition politician. he was referred to the committee the first time in 1982, and received no punishment after the speaker accepted his apology (lydgate 2003: 110-14). the second time was in 1986, when the speaker of the house again referred him to the committee of privileges for disciplinary action (lydgate 2003: 160). jeyaretnam was accused of making an unsubstantiated statement in parliament concerning a member of the public's wrongful arrest, and for 'failing to declare his pecuniary interest in a matter raised by him in parliament' (low et al. 1997). in late 1986, two weeks before jeyaretnam's hearing by the committee, parliament had rushed through a special amendment increasing the punishment of errant mps. dishonourable conduct, abuse of privilege and contempt were now punishable by a fine of up to s$50,000, from a previous maximum of s$1,000. members could also be stripped of their privileges and be liable to face civil lawsuits. the new penalties were not retroactive, but they would apply to anything jeyaretnam said during the hearing (lydgate 2003: 169-70). although mps were usually protected by law from defamation in parliament, in practice, however, the nature of his questioning during the committee hearing indicated that this protection was being retroactively stripped away (lydgate 2003: 172). in other words, what jeyaretnam said before the amendment would not be taken into account, but what he was to say henceforth was to be governed by this new ruling. by december that year jeyaretnam had been fined a few more times after being referred to the committee of privileges for more offences related to alleged misconduct regarding parliamentary issues. these fines added up to a substantial amount (low et al. 1997). a second such incident occurred nine years later in november 1996, when the committee found four members of the singapore democratic party (sdp) 'guilty of contempt of parliament'. the four, including the sdp secretary-general chee soon juan, were 'found guilty of perjury, wilfully giving false answers, prevaricating and misconducting themselves as witnesses' over data on healthcare (st, 12 december 1996). earlier that year, the sdp had stated in a report that the government's share of healthcare spending had dropped from 27 per cent in 1989 to 5 per cent in 1990. they reiterated this claim during a select committee hearing in july 1996, but later said this was a typing error and that the number should be 25 per cent instead of 5 per cent. charges were filed by the health minister against four members of the sdp, and they were summoned to appear before the committee of privileges (st, 26 october 1996). _______________________________________________________________________ 125 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech the four were sdp secretary-general chee soon juan, wong hong toy, s. kunalen and kwan yue keng. charges against them included 'perjury, prevarication, misconduct and wilfully giving false evidence' before the health select committee convened earlier that year. during the 12-hour session with the committee of privileges, chee said that 'he was only human and so had made errors in a report the party had presented to the select committee' (st, 1 november 1996). they were variously fined between s$5,000 and s$25,000 each, but as parliament was not a court of law, 'the fines do not bar the sdp members from contesting in the coming general election [of 1997]' (st, 23 november 1996). low thia khiang, the only opposition mp in the committee of privileges, tried unsuccessfully to reduce the fines recommended for the sdp members (st, 24 november 1996). this shows that even if an opposition politician wins a seat in parliament or is involved in any proceedings initiated under the authority of parliament, he or she runs the risk of breaching 'privileges' and could suffer punitive actions. the impact of free speech restrictions on opposition parties the presence of several layers of rules that govern free speech influences the ways in which free speech is perceived and executed by opposition parties in singapore. it also affects how free-speech activities are deployed, or whether they are deployed in the first place. for instance, it is not uncommon to hear members of opposition parties who insist that there is actually free speech in singapore as long as one seeks to exercise free-speech activities within the framework of current rules, although they acknowledge that there is a certain layer of administration that exists for obtaining licences and permits. with announcements made by lee hsien loong in 2004, at least one layer of administration has been removed. however there is agreement that outdoor political speeches are not free, nor are the rules fair. but such interpretations also lead to other issues regarding the type or quality of opposition politicians. some opposition politicians are viewed as moderate, e.g. chiam see tong and low thia khiang, whose existence in the parliamentary system is often cited by the ruling party to underscore the legitimacy of the political system under its rule (st, 12 october 2005; see also conclusion). on the other hand, opposition politicians such j. b. jeyaretnam or chee soon juan are often berated 126 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ because they are more robust in their criticism of the ruling pap, especially when it comes to free speech. another factor that affects free speech is the impact of defamation laws. some writers have observed that defamation laws create a climate of fear, which frequently results in self-censorship of speech (lydgate 2003; davidson and rubin 2001). this forces opposition politicians to be ultra-careful with regard to what they say in public. at the party level, this slows down decision-making about engaging in public-free speech activities such as rallies and forums13. it may even limit the number of free-speech activities that opposition parties are willing to undertake. on the other hand, some argue that the indirect consequences of such defamation laws may be positive: that they may improve opposition communications and make opposition politicians more responsible for what they say.14. for instance, more strenuous efforts will be made to verify facts and figures before making statements on political matters. however, there remains the concern that not only does the defamation act restrict free speech, for example through self-censorship, but that even if opposition politicians exercise caution, they may infringe the law through some obscure technicality. in real terms, the political value of free speech for opposition parties is limited. many commentators argue that how singaporeans view the opposition depends on how the media reports on the opposition.15 free-speech activities such as forums and rallies, and the content of what is said during those activities, can only have limited impact if the media, especially the local media, choose not to report it. thus, the wider dissemination of content is kept in check, either by the non-reportage or sometimes negative reporting of such activities by the media. the mainstream local media, by nature largely pro-pap, sometimes ignore and even distort opposition parties' viewpoints. although there has been some dissemination of such information by international ngos and media watch organizations, their reach has been limited given the fact that such international ngos do not have an effective local partner (gomez 2005). civil disobedience as an option the various obstructions to freedom of expression, electoral fairness and the impact of other laws have led opposition politicians like chee soon juan to advocate the concept of non-violent civil disobedience as being the only avenue left, given that the parliamentary process is not viable because of the pap's dominance. chee has said that he 'sees non-violent _______________________________________________________________________ 127 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech civil disobedience and protest as a viable long-term strategy to change the present system in singapore' (st, 10 july 2005). when there are criticisms of singapore's laws from opposition politicians like chee, spokespersons from the pap government have a number of stock responses. one example goes like this: 'if any singaporean disagrees with our tough laws … the proper and democratic way to proceed is to contest and win an election, and press to change the law in parliament' (st, 27 november 2005). alternatively, they will point out that there are 'established avenues for reviewing and changing' unjust laws, and that other opposition mps (such as chiam see tong and low thia khiang) did not have to resort to civil disobedience in order to get themselves elected (st, 12 october 2005). however, the laws governing singapore's electoral process are themselves biased in favour of the ruling pap, and are aimed at making opposition parties 'ineffectual and unable to challenge the pap' (chee 2005: 45) by creating a playing field that is far from level. it is these uncertainties and a sense that nothing will change that prompted opposition politician chee soon juan to cite civil disobedience as the only option left to change the laws. chee soon juan's acts of civil disobedience since 1998 are based on this belief and have sought to highlight how these laws disadvantage and are selectively used against the opposition (singapore democratic party, 28 june 2005b). chee has officially mounted a civil disobedience campaign, beginning with flouting public speaking rules, refusing to pay fines and going to prison (st, 10 october 2005). his actions have drawn attention to laws like licensing rules for public events, and were instrumental in leading to some limited liberalization by the government, for example in establishing a speakers' corner and a relaxation of the licensing rules for indoor talks (george 2005: 23). even with limited liberalization, there are other levels of monitoring and controls that prevent full implementation of these laws. an incident illustrating this took place on 9 july 2005, during the launch of chee soon juan's new book on civil disobedience the power of courage at a local hotel. plain-clothes policemen seized a video disc which had been playing a film in the background while chee was autographing his book. the police officers stated that they were seizing the disc because it did not have a certificate for public exhibition, an offence under the films act. the police officers were caught on film recording the entire book launch with a video camera, and the incident was reported on the singapore democratic party's website (singapore democratic party, 128 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ 9 july 2005c). this shows that in spite of official liberalization of the laws, in practice the activities of certain opposition politicians are still being closely watched and have come up against the repressive tools of authority. this means that freedom of expression requires considerable freedom of movement, assembly and association in order to render political expression meaningful. this is certainly not the case in singapore under the ruling pap government. chee's promotion of civil disobedience activities using methods of non-violence as an opposition strategy (st, 10 october 2005) is an attempt to effect change in singapore. however, the pap government has begun to counter the strategy by emphasizing that political change must be brought about through 'constitutional and lawful means', and that 'singaporeans are free to express themselves politically within the law' (st, 17 september 2005). it is too early to tell if civil disobedience can make a dent in singapore's free-speech laws. but the pressure from such civil disobedience acts has certainly been felt by the singapore political system. conclusion the nature of restrictions surrounding free speech in singapore serves to keep opposition parties weak since they are not able to robustly challenge the ruling party. this keeps competition between political parties at a very low level, with the opposition being unable to change the present rules and regulations. this situation relegates singaporean democracy to an existence in name, but not in substance. james gomez is a phd candidate at the monash asia institute, monash university, australia. notes 1 the public entertainment licensing unit (pelu), a sub-unit of the singapore police force issues and regulates permits for public entertainment (st, 18 november 2000). 2 in 1988 the town councils were established and took over some of the roles from the public utility services. 3 email response from steve chia, non-constituency mp, national solidarity party, 7 june 2005. 4 email response from yaw shin leong, former executive committee member, workers' party, and former hougang town councillor, 7 june 2005. 5 the think centre was founded in 1999 as a sole proprietorship which organized _______________________________________________________________________ 129 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech events and published books on topics of politics and human rights. in 2001 it registered as a society and continued to organize activities around human rights themes. 6 email response from kevin tan, singapore constitutional law expert and academic, 20 may 2005. 7 a civil society organization co-founded by opposition figures j. b. jeyaretnam and chee soon juan. 8 interview with chee soon juan, secretary-general, singapore democratic party on 18 april 2005 in singapore. 9 the use of defamation is not restricted to speech during election rallies. defamation laws have been used against opposition politicians during non-election-related activities as well as against content contained in party publications. 10 tang liang hong was a workers' party candidate for the cheng san grc during the 1997 general elections. after the elections, he was sued for defamation by the then prime minister goh chok tong, then senior minister lee kuan yew, and nine other current or former mps. most of the lawsuits arose from responses tang had made to the pap leaders' claim, that he was an 'anti-christian, anti-english-educated, chinese-language chauvinist'. immediately after the election, tang fled singapore, citing death threats. in may the singapore high court ordered him to pay the pap leaders s$8.08 million in damages. 11 the non-constituency member of parliament (ncmp) scheme was introduced in 1984, just before that year's elections. under this scheme, the top three opposition candidates in a general election with the highest percentage of losing votes would be allowed into parliament. ncmps have limited voting powers and play no role in the running of town councils. the introduction of the ncmps was to provide for some form of opposition in parliament, even if none was directly elected. 12 email response from low thia khiang, workers' party member of parliament, 20 may 2005. 13 email response from melvin tan, workers' party central executive committee member, 30 may 2005. 14 email response from low thia khiang, workers' party member of parliament, 20 may 2005. 15 email response from tan chong kee, founder of sintercom and member of now defunct singapore mediawatch community initiative, 16 may 2005. references agence france presse, 5 august 1999;.22 february 2001; 29 march 2001; 4 march 2002; 2 april 2002; 1 october 2002; 30 december 2002; 22 august 2004; 27 august 2004; 6 september 2004. chan heng chee 2001. a sensation of independence. singapore: times books. international. da cunha, derek 1997. the price of victory: the 1997 singapore general election and beyond. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. financial times, 27 march 1999. george, cherian 2005. calibrated coercion and the maintenance of hegemony in singapore. asia research institute working paper series no. 48, national university of singapore, singapore, september. gomez, james 2002. internet politics: surveillance and intimidation in singapore. bangkok: think centre. 130 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 james gomez ______________________________________________________________ — 2005. 'international ngos: filling the civil society "gap" in singapore'. in sojourn: journal of social issues in southeast asia 20 (2) october, special focus on 'democracy and civil society: ngo politics in singapore'. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. hickling, r. h. 1992. essays in singapore law. petaling jaya: pelanduk publications. josey, alex 1972. the singapore general elections 1972. singapore and kuala lumpur: eastern universities press sdn bhd. koh, gillian and ooi giok ling 2002. 'singapore: a home, a nation?' southeast asian affairs 2002. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. lam peng er and kevin tan (eds) 1999. lee's lieutenants: singapore's old guard. singapore: allen & unwin. lee boon hiok 1985. 'singapore in 1984'. southeast asian affairs 1985. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. lew eng fee 1989. 'singapore in 1988'. southeast asian affairs 1989. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. low t. k. et al. (eds) 1997. the workers' party 40th anniversary magazine. singapore: the workers' party. lydgate, chris 2003. lee's law: how singapore crushes dissent. australia: scribe publications. mutalib, hussin 1992. 'singapore's 1991 general elections'. southeast asian affairs 1992. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. — 1993. 'singapore's december 1992 by-elections: interpreting the results and signals.' round table (commonwealth journal of international affairs) 326: 159-68. — 2003. parties and politics: a study of opposition parties and the pap in singapore. singapore: eastern universities press. ooi can seng 1998. 'singapore'. in wolfgang sachsenröder and ulrike e. frings (eds) political party systems and democratic development in east and southeast asia. volume i: southeast asia. aldershot: ashgate publishing: 343-402. reuters, 1 february 1999; 6 march 1999; 25 may 1999; 28 february 2001; 30 july 2002. rodan, garry 1996. 'elections without representation: the singapore experience under the pap'. in robert h. taylor (ed.), the politics of elections in southeast asia. cambridge: cambridge university press; and washington: woodrow wilson center press. seow, francis t. 1998. the media enthralled. boulder, col.: lynne rienner publishers inc. singh, bilveer 1992. whither pap's dominance? an analysis of singapore's 1991 general elections. petaling jaya: pelanduk publications. south china morning post, 24 july 2001; 10 november 2002. straits times, 26 october 1996; 1 november 1996; 23 november 1996; 24 november 1996; 12 december 1996; 20 december 1996; 30 january 1999; 14 november 2000;18 november 2000; 15 august 2001; 27 july 2002; 25 august 2004; 17 march 2005; 10 july 2005; 17 september 2005; 10 october 2005; 12 october 2005; 27 november 2005. tan, kevin yew lee 1999. 'parliament and the making of law in singapore'. in kevin y. l. tan (ed.), the singapore legal system. singapore: singapore university press. tan, kevin, tiong min yeo and kiat seng lee1991. constitutional law in malaysia and singapore. singapore: malayan law journal. thio li-ann 1997. 'choosing representatives: singapore does it her way'. in graham hassall and cheryl saunders (eds), the people's representatives: electoral systems in the asia-pacific region. australia: allen & unwin. tremewan, christopher 1994. the political economy of social control in singapore. new york: st martin's press. _______________________________________________________________________ 131 ______________________________________________________ restricting free speech vasil, raj 1993. 'singapore 1992'. southeast asian affairs 1993. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. west australian, 22 november 1999. woon, walter (1990) 'some check is better than no check', st, 29 november. yeo lay hwee 2002. 'electoral politics in singapore'. in aurel croissant (ed.), electoral politics in southeast and east asia. singapore: friedrich-ebert-stiftung. internet sources bryan, kelley and howard rubin 2004. the misuse of bankruptcy law in singapore: an analysis of the matter of re joshua benjamin jeyaretnam, ex parte indra krishnan. document of lawyers' rights watch canada, october 2004. http://www.lrwc.org/pub2.php?sid=41 davidson, gail and howard rubin 2001. defamation in singapore: report to lrwc in the matter of joshua benjamin jeyaretnam and two appeal in the court of appeal of the republic of singapore. document of lawyers' rights watch canada, september 2001. http://www.lrwc.org/pub2.php?sid=18 chee soon juan, 5 january 1999. http://www.singapore-window.org/sw99/90105csj.htm chee soon juan, 29 july 2002. http://www.singapore-window.org/sw02/020729sj.htm chia, roderick 2005. said zahari and singapore's four presidents: the left's history. http://jamesgomeznews.com/article_options.php?aid=226 constitution of the republic of singapore. singapore statues online. http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/ defamation act (1997). singapore statues online. http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/ freedom house (2005) freedom in the world 2005 country reports, pp. 561-65. http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2005/paraguay-southkorea. pdf 'jeyaretnam targets next election' (2001) 3 may. http://www.singapore-window.org/sw01/010503af.htm public entertainments and meetings act (2000). http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/ singapore democratic party, 9 may 2005a. http://www.singaporedemocrat.org/classic/news_display.php?id=756 singapore democratic party, 28 june 2005b. http://www.singaporedemocrat.org/articlenewbook.html singapore democratic party, 9 july 2005c. http://singaporedemocrat.org/articlebooklaunch.html standing orders of the parliament of singapore as amended on 19 october 2004 (2004). parliament of singapore. accessed 6 may 2005. http://www.parliament.gov.sg/publication/htdocs/so-merge%20with%20so% 20notes.pdf think centre, 26 march 2001. http://www.thinkcentre.org/article.cfm?articleid=568 think centre, 19 april 2001. http://www.thinkcentre.org/article.cfm?articleid=670 think centre, 22 april 2001. http://www.thinkcentre.org/article.cfm?articleid=682 breaking though: literature and the arts in china, 1976-1986 bonnie s. mcdougall university of oslo one of the most notable features of the fifties and sixties in china was the public willingness of the literary and art world to submit to the dictates of the political leadership. the reasons for their cooperation, heavily qualified though it might have been, and the various methods by which the authorities ensured it, have been described elsewhere and are not the topic of this paper.' what i am interested in here is the way in which this cooperation was undermined in the seventies and openly flouted in the eighties. instead of submission, a sigruficant number of people in literature and the arts offered challenges both within the system and outside it, ranging from flagrant rejection of accepted conventions to a more cautious testing of the limits of tolerance, and from demands for professional autonomy to private arrange ments outside existing organisations. the limit-setters and upholders that is, the overlapping groups of orthodox party leaders, the entrenched cultural bureaucracy, and writers and artists claiming positions of authority found themselves restricted in their response to these challenges by the post-mao modemisation program. the reform faction in the new leadership, acknowl edging a complex relationship between the superstructure and the economic basis, found themselves to a certain extent obliged to yield ground, supporting the challengers and restraining the orthodox. the more detached of the party intellectuals might also have noticed how, with a keen grasp of marxist imperatives, the new activists began by establishing their own means of production and distribution. from underground to unofficial the key to the changes among writers and artists lies in the aftermath of the cultural revolution proper, 1971-1978. the physical removal of the old cultural leadership and its replacement by a band of extreme dogmatists had the effect of creating a vacuum in literature and the arts. at the same time, the dispersal of urban educated young men and women to the countryside and bonnie s. mcdougall the general breakdown in law and order allowed budding writers and artists a kind of personal liberty, free from neighbourhood, school or youth league supervision and control. finally, the excesses which these young people had either indulged in or witnessed brought about in some of them a deep revulsion against any form of support for the current leadership (including becoming officially-accepted writers or artists). since political activity of any other kind was not only extremely dangerous but also implied a kind of radical anarchy which few chinese have ever found attractive, the alternative activity for some of the restless youngwas to create their own kinds of literature and art and to circulate them, unobtrusively but with a great deal of pride, among friends and friends of friends. the fervour and political puritanism of this period reminds one of the early days of the may fourth movement, with one sigruficant difference: the may fourth activists were able to set up their own journals and even publish their work in existing commercial publishing houses. the activists of the early and mid-seventies had no such opportunity, and were therefore obliged to rely on private publication, either hand-copied or mimeographed individual works. for obvious reasons, the easiest kind of manuscript to circulate was poetry; and poetry enjoyed a tremendous popularity during the years 1971-78. by the time they went above ground in 1978-80, the underground writers and artists had already produced a considerable body of privately published work. varying considerably in quality and type, it included popular romances and thrillers as well as confessional and politically declamatory fiction, for largely mechanical reasons, it was chiefly in the form of shorter written literature, sometimes illustrated with line drawings, woodblock prints and other forms of visual arts that were also relatively cheap and quick to produce and to r e p r ~ d u c e . ~ participation in underground publication implied at the very least a rebel lious attitude on the part of the producers and their audiences, and though the writers generally avoided overt attacks on the system, the sense of rebelli ousness is clear in their work. they were frequently associated with or even part of other informal groups whose political disaffection was expressed more directly, and when the opportunities were seized, the two groups offered mutual support and encouragement. from this point of view, the tiananmen incident of 1976, or the april fifth movement as it later became known with self-conscious reference to may fourth, was the most spectacular demon stration of the political uses of poetry in modem chinese history. under ground publications increased in number and circulation during the excite copenhagen papers 1.88 36 breaking through ments of the death of mao and the arrest of the "'gang of four" in late 1976, the reinstatement of deng xiaoping in 1977, and the reversal of verdicts in late 1978 on the 50s'"rightists" and the tiananmen de~nonstrators.~ the democracy wall movement that surfaced in november 1978 traced its origins to the april fifth movement and exhibited a similar spontaneous expression of political concern in literary form.4 beginning with posters, the movement soon turned to magazines which circulated openly but unoffi cially above ground, even advertising subscription addresses for out-of-town readers. most of the magazines included stories and poems along with articles on politics and society, and within a month literary magazines also made their appearance. by taking this step from underground to unofficial, the young writers and artists simultaneously demanded that the authorities recognise their legit imacy and widened the audience on which their legitimacy was based. their political activities in the period 1976 to 1978 were of tremendous importance in consolidatingwithin themselves a sense of their own moral worth in society, their ability to make correct judgements on the political process in their own country, and therefore their right or even their obligation to express their views on the society around them. since 1942, few had possessed this kind of confidence in their authority as creative artists to comment on their society. the precedent was in the twenties, when the may fourth movement became the means by which the literary revolution gained its direction just as the literary revolution became the means by which the may fourth movement found its broadest propagation. reshaping the mainstream in late november 1978, when deng xiaoping expressed support for the aims of the democratic movement, some two thousand demonstrators from the democracy wall thereupon marched thirty abreast down changan boul evard towards tiananmen to express support for deng's policies. a central work conference was then in session, preparing for the third plenum of the eleventh central committee. the third plenum met in december, and on december 23 issued a communique cautiously endorsing the principle that practice be considered as the sole criterion for testingtr~th.~ two days after the plenum and on the same day that its communique was published, a statement was also published by a forum of established writers and critics urging a bonnie s. mcdougall guarantee of protection by law for writers and artists and free discussion in literature and the arts. official comment in china subsequently suggested that the third plenum "conferred on writers the right to express themselves more freely in literary works, but as far as some of the writers were concerned, this right had been seized from below rather than conferred from above.6 never theless there was briefly in 1978-80 a temporary community of interest between young activists, older writers and artists, and the emerging leadership factionunder deng xiaoping, based on a common conviction that the future of china depended on intellectual emancipation, the rule of law and the elimin ation of restrictive practices in all spheres of productivity (including literature and the arts) .7 the bold initiatives of the younger generation in practising the skills of writing, editing and publishing under their own steam therefore met with temporary toleration. the respite they continued to enjoy from supervision from their elders, including literary critics, was unprecedented in china even during the twenties and thirties, and the result was the tremendous upsurge of both official and unofficial publications in 1978-80.8 works from the whole period of the seventies were included in the unofficial press, but the very possibility of semi-open publication itself inspired a new outburst of produc tivity and e~perimentation.~ individual works, collections of works, and magazines all circulated unofficially above ground and underground, and distribution radiated from the urban centres to the provinces and back again. in addition to publishing, another important activity was the formation of poetry clubs or circles, sometimes consisting of only a few people, sometimes of several dozens in the bigger cities; poems were read and discussed at meetings, and open-air recitals were held in beijing and other cities in the late seventies. alarmed at the boldness of these initiatives and at the possible backlash they might arouse, the deng leadership shifted direction in march 1979 and t i e d to call a halt to this free flow. it seemed at the time that the activists had only two alternatives: to go back underground, risking arrest and imprisonment, or to move into the mainstream and lose their integrity. in the tense days of that spring the new writers, artists and editors prepared themselves unhappily but courageously for self-sacrifice in the cause of their principles. in fact the choice was not necessarily so dramatic. the compromise that many of the brightest talents adopted over the next few years was to continue to write or paint in their own ways independently for private distribution, at the same time taking jobs on the fringes of the literary and art world. simultaneously, especially in the copenhagen papers 1.88 38 breaking through first few years, they found it increasingly easier to get their work accepted by mainstreampublications, since the official magazines themselves were chang ing quite remarkably, in number, variety and circ~lation.~~ more importantly, the magazines were also creating and responding to a new audience that above all demanded truth and honesty in its reading but also appreciated that truth may have to come in artistically more demanding forms than the old fare. the tremendous upsurge in official publications over the five years from 1978 to 198311 was to some extent due to the recruitment of former underground writers and their sympathisers to publishing houses throughout the coun try. the participation in mainstream publication of the former underground and their influence on the publishing fever of these years was a complex phenomenon. first, at the simplest level, they were "educated youth waiting for jobs", and, unless they had become particularly notorious during the democratic movement, were thereby entitled to jobs where literacy was required. even without any particular backing, some lucky or enterprising juniors were assigned to the staff of existing magazines or allowed to set up new magazines within established publication units as part of the effort to overcome the severe unemployment problem of the post-mao years. the rehabilitation of their seniors (former "rightists" or other people who had suffered discrimination in the fifties or sixties) also required placement on editorial staffs, but their numbers were not great nor in many cases their enthusiasm. there were also cases of middle-aged people being transferred fromunsuitable positions to editorial jobsfor which they were better qualified. given the rigidity of the bureaucracy, this was not very frequent, and as the number of new publications expanded, the young but educated unemployed became even more in demand. whatever the composition of the staff, moreover, it was very often its younger members that tended to be most active in soliciting and selecting material. from the periphery, they inched in towards the centre. secondly, many of the young writers and artists were helped by family and friends to find office jobs in literature and the arts, not because of their special creative ability, but simply because they were as well qualified educationally as any other applicant. a large number of the literary and political activists of the seventies had useful family connections in the political, state or cultural bureaucracy.12 these family connections had offered a kind of safety net for their activities, and now helped them find jobs in publishing or other cultural organisations that would at least give them access to free stationary and art bonnie s. mcdougall materials, the chance to meet influential cultural personnel and the leisure in which to write or paint. compared to the furtive and indigent days of the underground, these new conditions removed some of the pressures to write but made the writing process itself a great deal easier.13 thirdly, there were many senior people in positions of authority who were at least mildly sympathetic to their cause, and believed the breath of fresh air that they brought to their work was fine if kept under restraint by responsible people such as themselves. these senior personnel hired and encouraged innovative young editors and arranged for the publication of young writersf and artists' works. although the top leadership implemented a gradual tightening of control from 1979 to 1983, there was still enough indecision or ambivalence to allow considerable discretion in publishing. fourthly, when critics were summoned to assess the newly emergent work in fiction, poetry, painting, theatre and cinema, it soon appeared that just as in publishing, the new generation had also managed to penetrate the univer sities, research institutes and professional associations where critics drew their salaries. thus, the debates over "shadows poetrynin 1981-82 and the theatre of the absurd in 1982-83 featured support for the new wave from young critics in academic or professional institutions who were often personal friends of the people whose works they defended and of the young editors who offered them publishing space to do so. fifthly, there was a committed readership that pursued the new literature and art with enthusiasm and discrimination. even the so-called "obscure" or ,'bizarreu poetry of the late seventies was read with sympathy or curiosity by an audience which may not have understood all its meanings but which appreci ated its appearance none the less. the contents of magazines were regularly listed in guangrlzing ribao, and a magazine with a poem by bei dao, gu cheng or shu ting would be sold out almost immediately upon publication. as the senior staff in publishing units began to realise this, more leeway was given to their juniors to solicit more of the same. finally the numbers were on their side: there were more than enough of the new writers and artists to keep up an oversupply of material to feed the rapidly growing young audiences of the late seventies and early eighties. as their popularity among readers became apparent, their ranks swelled correspond ingly. although in bulk their works may only have occupied a small part of any issue of any magazine, their influence should not be underestimated. the young editors who favoured the new writers and artists also selected the better from among the more conventional contributors, thus also exerting some copenhagen papers 1.88 40 _ breaking through influence over the mass of middlebrow writers and artists and their audience. not everything was ideal or ran smoothly. one very talented young poet found himself in a junior editorial post on an ag~icultural newspaper, where it was impossible for him to publishhis own orhismends'modernistic work. bei dao was employed by the esperanto magazine, for which he wrote only hackworkunder a pseudonym; nevertheless he was at times able to introduce short stories or paintings not as avant-garde as his own work but still not without merit. at its best, however, the system worked to the advantage of the new wave. young people, sent down or native to the provinces, might chafe in their small town obscurity, but as junior editors for provincial magazines they could recruit the work of the younger and more controversial writers and artists who still found it difficult to break into the national press. these provincial magazines, once they had established their reputation as publishers of the new wave, would sell well, earning the publishers money and the young editors prestige; and with their money and prestige they could then attract more writers. a somewhat astonishing phenomenon of the early eighties was to see these young editors, some of them former red guards, flying from city to city, offering their friends hospitality, travel expenses and other perks to supplement rather meagre royalties. for young writers and artists, even the royalties were of secondary import ance compared to the glamour of beingpublishedin the overground press, but the material rewards certainly helped considerably in giving them a sense of their "right" to voice their opinions. financial rewards, of whatever shape and through whatever channels, are ultimately a form of social recognition of the worth of the recipient, and their effect in boosting the morale of the recipients most of them only in their late twenties or early thirties can hardly be overestimated. in short, it was the confidence of these young writers, a confidence stemming from their personal achievements in the seventies and early eighties, that allowed them to challenge the authorities and write according to their own conscience. the avant-gmde, the reformists and the orthodox up to this point the description has been chiefly of writers and artists born since 1949 who began their careers during the underground or unofficial movements of the seventies: they form the avant-garde in chinese literature and the arts over the decade since mao's death. most of them came from bonnie s. mcdougall families of middle or low-ranking cadres and intellectuals who had suffered most during the cultural revolution. western journalists and diplomats observing the tiananmen incident and the democracy wall movement reported that the demonstrators were mostly young workers and not students, thus giving a rather misleading idea of their social background. students at that time were the offspring of high ranking cadres and intellectuals who occupied top positions during the cultural revolution; the children of disgraced intellectuals and cadres were mostlyworkers or agricultural labourers. reduc tion in social expectations was a common family history among may fourth writers, and the same was true of the new writers of the seventies' avant-garde. few in number, they nevertheless exerted a disproportionate influence due to their courage and dedication. what about other writers and artists during this complicated, unstable, dangerous and challenging period? who were they and what were they doing? both chinese and western scholars usually confine their attention to a very small group of what might be called the literary elite and their audiences. the revival of traditional highbrow and folk culture in the seventies and eighties has attracted research in china and abroad, but despite considerable concern on the part of the authorities about commercialism and vulgarity or obscenity in popular urban and rural culture, we know little about it apart from journalistic reports. regrettably, this paper is also confined to the "elite", that is, the thousand-odd writers and artists who have achieved some artistic success in the modern idiom, and their audience of maybe several million. the usual chinese classification of this elite is based on age relative to the revolution. writers are divided into three or sometimes four "generations": the young, born after the revolution; the middle-aged, whose literary careers began during or after the revolution; and the elderly, remnants from the may fourth or the yanan period.14 though there is neatness and plausibility to this scheme, it is flawed in regard to the literary values held by these writers. to begin with, there was considerable variation and change in the attitudes of elder writers and artists towards the authorities and towards the newly emergent literature and art. ai qing, for instance, as a newly rehabilitated writer in 1979 was at first eloquent about the need for new standards in honesty and integrity, but in 1983, he awarded himself first prize for the best poetry collection from 1979 to 1982; in the late seventies he was rather sympathetic towards the new poets, but possibly because of an imagined personal slight, became in 1983 one of their most vicious detractors.16 xia yan's speech at the fourth congress of writers and artists in october-november copenhagen papers 1.88 42 breaking through 1979 was one of the most moving in its self-awareness and honesty, but in 1984 and 1985 he c d e d for young writers to practise self-censorship, and bitterly opposed the new film makers.16 on the other hand, ding ling in 1983 like ai qing and zang kejia actively prosecuted the avant-garde, but by 1985 had come to regret it and included the avant-garde in her new literary journal zhongpo (china). there were also a number of senior literary figures who all along had been privately sympathetic to the avant-garde and to some extent used their high positions to help them find, if not publication, then at least sinecures in the literary and art world to give them a basic living. in china where social control is chiefly exercised through the workunit, assignment to jobs in literary or cultural bodies was one of the major ways in which the new writers were drawn into the existing literary world, influencing it and being influenced by it in turn. many of the younger generation of writers and artists in the late seventies and early eighties, in contrast, adopted a thoroughly orthodox attitude towards the authorities, either because of lack of imaghation or because sf private opportunism; it must not be forgotten that the rewards to writers and artists who conform are and have always been high. some of these younger writers and artists adopted mildly innovatory techniques in their works (for example the poet luo gengye) and sought more openlythan was possible in the past an audience of students and other young urbanites (for example the fiction writers wang anyi and tie ning), but their main connection with the avant garde was merely sympathy with its broader aims. a similar distinction can be made between two groups of writers in their forties and fifties. most of those who were already professional writers either disappeared from the limelight in the eighties or else made more or less feeble attempts at cosmetic camouflage. the other group, who though roughly the same age made their names as writers only after the cultural revolution, attracted much wider audiences than their more established contemporaries: for example, liu xinwu, chen rong (who prefers the pronunciation shen rong) and li tuo. even more notable were the rehabilitated "rightists" from the fifties writers whose early careers had been broken off in the late fifties and early sixties, but whose achievements in the present decade quickly sent them to the top: among them the most outstanding were wang meng and liu binyan. these middle-aged, highly experienced and mentally vigorous writers, together with the more emancipated of their juniors and even some estab lished writers like ru zhijuan, form a loose grouping which might best be described as reformist within the system. (the term "reformists" has been bonnie s. mcdougall chosen to parallel stuart schram's use of "reformers" for the third plenum majority)17 many of them were already party members or became party members in the early eighties, for instance liu shaotang, deng youmei and zhang jie; wang meng became an alternate member of the central commit tee in 1983. with their own experience as collaborators, witnesses and victims in the fifties, sixties and seventies, the members of this rough alliance shared many of the attitudes of the avant-garde without their rejection of authority. reaching early adulthood in the forties, fifties and sixties, they had accepted the legitimacy of party control over culture; it was excessive control, or abuse of power, that they rejected. believing that political stability was the most essential need for post-mao china and for themselves in the eighties, but also aware that the cultural revolution was to some extent an intensification of earlier party policies, they saw the deng leadership as the most promising force for reform within this framework. at the same time, encouraged by the demand for autonomy by the avant-garde, they sought the right to express their own opinions and perceptions in their professional activities, and in their works produced the effect of a continual exploration of the limits of official tolerance. sometimes in technique, sometimes in personal honesty, and sometimes in breaking into former forbidden ground, these "testers" were responsible for the transformation of the great bulk of material appearing in the literary magazines and presses. the melodramatic and self-pitying "litera ture of the wounded of 1978-79 gave way to the more restrained "engaged literature" of 1979-80, which then set the tone for the subjectively and socially analytic writing of the early eighties. because of the ready availability and also perhaps because of the less demanding nature of their work, not to mention the highly flattering publicity they received in critiques and interviews in 1979-83, the reformist writers enjoyed great prestige among readers, especially among those not so young. flaws were readily forgiven because of strengths. zhang jie's writing style is banal and her social understanding superficial, but she had a lively eye for political intrigue. wang meng was solidly orthodox in his endings but his dense, evocative prose and grasp of social reality won him respect from other writers. in society as a whole, liu binyan was the most respected of the new writers for his conviction and courage; his loyal readers never dreamed of criticising his clumsy formal structures and language. all of these writers kept firmly within the main current of the mainstream of publication and distribu tion. reformist rather than revolutionary, they saw themselves as acting copenhagen papers 1.88 44 breaking through responsibly in seeking autonomy without provocation. their conception of challenge within the system was both parallel to and supportive of the prevailing political h e of deng xiaoping and his reformers, and despite continuing suspicion on both sides, there was also mutual sympathy from the time of the third plenumup to 1983. when western commentators assert that "chinese writers" differ from dissident writers in the soviet union in being "firm supporters of the socialist system'', they generally base their judgements on the literary work or public statements sf these reformists.i8 bearing in mind the generous rewards given to officially recognised writers in china, one may believe their professions of support for socialism to be at least partly genuine. at the same time, given the severity of punishment for active hostility or even lack of overt support, one may equally wonder why such professions are so often accepted at face value, and admire the social skills of these writers in managing to convince foreign interviewers of their high moral qualities, among which patriotism, sincerity and altruism would happear to be dominant. bourgeois liberalism, spiritual pollution, and bourgeois liberalism again the sudden attack on the literary world in the campaign against "spiritual pollution" launched at the beginning of autumn 1983 gave the reformists a nasty shock, despite the warning signals of the previous few years. the deng leadership in the period 1978 to 1980 had certainly encouraged, within limits, "the emancipation of the m i n d but the "crisis of faith which this emancipa tion laid bare had been met since 1981 with repeated admonitions from the authorities against signs of "bourgeois liberalism".lg in the literary and art world, this reaction began as early as huyaobang's criticism of the playliaru wo shi zhende (if i were for real) infebruary 1980,20 and continued with the attempt to forbid writing on the problems of the cultural revolution in january 1981, the campaign against bai hua's script for the film kulian (unrequited love) from apdto november 1981 (inwhichhuyaobangtookapart, trymg to limit the campaign without denying its correctness),2l and hu yaobang's attack on '%ourgeois liberalisation" among writers and artists at the lu xun centenaryin september the same year.22 these events were taken seriously by the avant garde, who were conscious that since 1979 they had been losing as much as they had gained. reformists, however, had also been worried about the effects bonnie s. mcdougall of a backlash from unredeemed hardliners, and at the time of the bai hua criticism there were even nervous whispers about the possibilities of an army coup. to the reformists, therefore, the warnings from the top were as much comforting as threatening, especially when tempered with episodes such as the protracted debate over modernism in 1981-8p3 and zhou yang's article on alienation and humanism in march 1983.24 a general shift in published opinion was also seen in the way in which all sides adopted the democratic movement's tern tanszlo ("search or "exploration") as praise, in marked contrast to the terms of discourse in the three previous decades. more comforting still, the sense of common cause between the party reformers and the literary reformists was apparent in the manner of the party's skirmishes into the literary world in this period, which took the form of general warnings rather than specific actions against groups or individuals. in the case of bai hua, for instance, the authorities went to some lengths to stress that he was not being discriminated against personally but retained his job, his party member ship and the right to publish.26 in autumn 1983, however, the rhetoric changed appearance and at the same time became translated into concrete action.26 words like tansuo appeared within quotation marks and were no longer favourable; reference to "emanci pation of the mindvirtually disappeared from the press for the rest of the year; and a new term, jingshen wuran, became the catchphrase until the campaign was laid to rest in mid-1984. some foreign friends of the chinese authorities regretted that the standard english translations of this term, "spiritual pol lutionuand "cultural contamination", sounded so ludicrous, but in chinese the term also sounded so absurd that in the beginning it was hard to take seriously. 'tollutors", however, could expect to be punished, and they were. among the avant-garde and its supporters, young editors were transferred sideways or downwards to positions of restricted influence, or, in a few instances, sus pended from duty, while the more radical writers and artists contemplated the possibility of their arrest and imprisonment. most could rely on protection from their families or backers against more serious forms of punishment, but nevertheless suffered criticism and the curtailment of minor privileges in their jobs, and were deprived of opportunities for open-publication. some of the reformists were as bitterly criticised as the avant-garde themselves, but even those not directly targeted drew in their horns, and for about a year there was a serious dearth in the supply to literary magazines of their staple diet. leading writers were pressed to take part in the denunciation of spiritual corruption, but the response of many was at most half-hearted (e.g. wang mengjfz7 and copenhagen papers 1.88 46 breaking through some refused to take part at all (liu binyan, xiao qian). on the other hand, establishment figures like ding ling, ai qing and zang kejia pounced with undisguised enthusiasm on unfortunate writers we bei dao and dai houying, in what many people felt to be an opportunity to pour out long stored-up personal jealousy at their relative eclipse by the reformists and a~ant-garde.~~ whether justifiably or not, the reformers in the spring of 1984 managed to wind down the campaign and keep it quiescent during the summer and autumn on the grounds of its repercussions on foreign trade and domestic enrichment, and therefore of its damage to the whole modernisation program. it has been suggested that poor economic performance was a cause rather than a result of the campaign, but whatever the cause of the turnaround, it took some time for writers and artists to recover confidence in the party leadership. the widespread belief that deng xiaoping had personally been responsible for the campaign to some extent undermined former support for him as a guarantor of stability and moderate reform, especially since deng liqun remained head of the party's propaganda deparhnent despite persistent rumours of his retirement.29 nevertheless the party leadership stuck to its open door policy, and by the spring, as far as the reformists were concerned at least, culture began to profit again from the party's desire to continue with economic and political restructuring. by the summer the recovery was almost complete. one common opinion current at this time was that the failure of the campaign had demonstrated to the authorities that the public would no longer countenance this kind of bullying and manipulation; with the authorities realising that campaign politics were no longer effective, they would so the speculation went abandon this discredited weapon. even the avant-garde gradually recovered a certain amount of optimism during the latter half of 1984, and differences between them and the reformists seemed to shrink. another third plenum, of the twelfth central committee, confirmed in october a new impetus for political as well as economic reform. the fourth national congress of the writers' association held in late december 1984 and early january 1985 was seen by many of its 800-odd delegates to be an exercise in goodwill and cooperation between writers and the party.30 neither hu qiaomu nor deng liqun attended, and the keynote speech was given by hu qiliwith huyaobang looking on, in what appearedto be a definitive (though not explicit) repudiation of the campaign against "spiritual p ~ l l u t i o n " . ~ ~ it appeared that relatively few writers and artists had aquiesced in the excesses of the campaign, and the mood of the meeting was one of pride in the autonomy they had defended or at least not easily bonnie s. mcdougall surrendered. public humiliation, on the other hand, was the fate of the few active supporters of the attempted repression, and the secret elections to the new writers' association presidium almost toppled former powerful mem bers such as ding ling. ba jin, widely respected because of his refusal to take part in the campaign, was reelected president, and new council members included new writers shu ting and jia pingwa, both criticised during the campaign.32 hu qili at the opening session and wang meng at the close both highlighted "creative freedom" as the new catchword, and wang meng offered tansuo as this position may be read as an agreement reached between writers and the authorities rather than as a unilateral ultimatum from either side, and yet hu qili still upheld the dominant authority of the party: "writers'thinking and feelings and their creative activities ... must be compatible with the environment of freedom the party and the state have provided for them." the tone of threatening benevolence was especially apparent in the china re constructs report of the congress, for instance, which describes the "tears in the eyes of veteran writers" as they listened to hu qili's criticism of leftist and bureaucratic interference in relations between the party and writers, and the "electrifymg" effect of the top party leaders' presence.34 gifts can be taken away. at the end of the same year, wang meng's citations at the writers' association working conference in november 1985 of hu qili's speech carry a warning on the persistence of two unacceptable directions in freedom of expression: sex and violence on the one hand, and distance from "real life" and current policy directives on the other hand.36 bans on film (see below), drama and popular song were disturbing though not actually intimi dating.36 in response to a new upsurge in tension, people speculated on the significance of the coming year: first there was '56, followed by '66, then even more fateful '76: what would '86 bring? the hardliners retreated; the reformers offered minor compromises in return for taking major advances; the avant-garde seized the hour: and the chilly winter of late 1985 was followed by the glorious summer of '86. the remonstrances of a few months earlier fell on deaf ears, while the speculation on numbers continued but with new interpretations. 1986 became a year of explosive creative energy and independence. a new cultural leadership stood by with smiles, promising support. a special national conference of cultural officials in july 1986 heard directives for "flexible" policies in the arts from the new minister of culture wang meng, the new vice-ministers liu deyou and gao zhanxiang, and the new head of the central committee propaganda copenhagen papers 1.88 48 breaking through department, zhu houze." perhaps the most remarkable event of the summer was the appearance of a new literary critic, eiu xiaobo: in damning the new literature as well as the old, he perhaps gave the most convincing demonstra tion of the new movement's maturity. to avisitor to beijing returning after five months' absence, the change in atmosphere was remarkable: things were being said and done that had been almost inconceivable a few months earlier.38 as it turned out, they also became inconceivable a few months later. before passing to this last chapter in our story, however, let us take a closer look at some of the issues and phenomena of the middle eighties. four phenomena of the m d d e eighties the autonomy that the avant-garde and reformists had been demanding or requesting since the seventies was not a bid for direct political power-sharing in party or state organs, but referred almost exclusively to their own creative work. (the most remarkable example of this was the reluctance of wang meng in late 1985 to accept the position of minister of culture; although his involvement in the party was already considerable, he did not finally agree until the spring of 1986. the jostle for positions in the literary hierarchywasnot so much for the sake of political power as such but for improvement in generally poor economic conditions). the demand for creative autonomy, however, was not merely a quest for new forms of expression, but as indicated above, included the right to comment critically on current social and political trends, including party policy, and to offer new solutions to the "spiritual crisis" on whose existence everyone over the age of thirty seemed to be in general agreement. to this end, the first half of 1986 was dominated by renewed demands for legal protection of creative freedom.39 as of the mid-eighties, the publication of genuinely creative and original fiction and poetry was not a burning question. the avant-garde and the reformists occupied increasing space in the press, and if some of them, for instance wang meng, seemed to have run out of inspiration, others, like wang peigong and liuxinw, seemed to have found new strength. the avant-garde split into two directions, offering as analternative to westem-style modernism a kind of neo-traditionalism that in at least some of its manifestations was hopefully welcomed by the authorities. younger poets, like younger poets everywhere, complained about not getting published and were obliged to rely on privately mimeographed, handbound publications, but it seemed that this bonnie s. mcdougall kind of "underground literature" no longer attracted much attention from public security bureaux. on the other hand, the production and distribution of films and painting, and the related question of their audiences, remained a problem for the authorities as well as for the artists themselves. i now propose to focus on four phenomena that characterise the atrnos phere in literature and arts in the middle of the eighties: the bohemian challenge to the avant-garde; the debates over the so-called experimental cinema; the warm reception given to the neo-traditionalist trend in fiction; and the emergence of painting as part of the new wave in literature and the arts generally. the new bohemians after the apparent collapse of the campaigns against "spiritual pollution" in 1984-86, the challenge to the avant-garde and reformist writers came from a different direction. an even younger group of poets had appeared in the early eighties who now disputed their immediate seniorsfor the title of avant-garde. their humour, amorality and indifference to china's political fate were more or less equally shocking to the engaged writers of the "old avant-garde, the reformists and the orthodox establishment. (more precisely, one might say that it was the openness or defiance in their attitudes that was so shocking, since it should not be imagined that the moral rectitude public figures are obliged to profess is universally sincere). they mimeograph their poems then turn up at maxim's, spend long nights eating and drinking themselves silly (closing the door to swap salacious stories about the leadership), and have their girlfriends move in as they wait for a break, usually in the form of a foreign translator. some actively seek out foreigners, defining in advance the kind that can be of greatest use; others are pursued with corresponding vigour by foreign journalists and scholars. foreign recognition often though not invari ably precedes and ensures local acceptance, but there is also to be considered the delicate balance between the kind of behaviour that appeals to foreigners and the kind that can land people in jail. appearances can be deceptive: many of the bohemians in their turn are also protected by family connections and backers. the worth of their eventual contributions to literature is open to question, but to the extent that they have already established a foothold, their existence in itself is significant. inhabiting the fringe of the literary world, they constitute a self-appointed "fourth echelon" that is not exactly welcome but accepted with some resignation. in hindsight, the appearance of these independent, tough-minded, humor copenhagen papers 1.88 50 breaking through ous, often irresponsible and frequently opportunistic poets is an unsurprising reaction to the ultra-serious seventies. by the mid-eighties, many of the "old" avant-garde had achieved positions of respectability. their works were published and their material conditions greatly improved; several of them were able to travel abroad, and at home many were drawn into the pro fessional associations of writers and artists. now in their middle to late thirties, they married, had children and got divorced. in their social activities they moved with a self-conscious weight, their original sense of social and political engagement now augmented by the sense of responsibility engendered by their domestic and foreign renowx. in a society which pays so much respect to hierarchy, success very quickly leads to a rather ponderous self-regard. not unnaturally, their positions and attitudes provoked cries from their juniors that they had become part of the establishment, but strictly speaking, this was unjust: the avant-garde did not in fact moderate their demands for autonomy and independence. what the bohemians were instead seekingwas an emanci pation from the political engagement and moral seriousness of their prede cessors, just as the latter had won emancipation from the political submissive ness and moral ambivalence of theirs. the experimental cinema, 1983-84 if poetry is the easiest and cheapest of the arts to produce and circulate, then film, at least in china where the hardware is not obtainable by private citizens, is undoubtedly the most difficult and expensive. it is for this reason that the new wave of films did not break until 1984, following the graduation of the first post-sixties batch of students from the beijing film academy in 1982. many of these young graduates were sent to the small and newly established studios in the provinces, and it was not accidental that the two most controversial films, yige he bage (the one and the eight) and huang tudi (the yellow earth), came from the tiny guangxi studio in remote nanning. the former, directed by zhang junzhao and photographed by zhang yimou, was completed at the end of 1983; the latter, directed by chen kaige and photographed also by zhang yimou, was first presented to the film board in august 1984. a commentator has speculated that one reason for the more drastic censorship imposed on the one and the eight was that the repudiation of the "spiritual pollution" campaign was then still incomplete. in any event, although shown in public cinemas at the end of 1985 and twice on tv in 1986, the revised the one and the eight has stillnot beenapproved for release abroad. the yellow earth, on the other hand, though under constant attack since its first screenings, has bonnie s. mcdougall been more widely seen by foreign audiences and received more international film awards than any other film in the history of chinese cinema. what the two films have in common is a fresh approach to film as an art form in combination with an unorthodox approach to sensitive questions of chinese political history and national identitye40 to take the yellow earth as the more outstanding of the two films, one can list among its original artistic achievements: the relative absence of dialogue, understated acting and unorthodox characterisation in the four leading roles; the emphasis given to environment and atmosphere rather than to plot and characterisation; the influence of traditional chinese landscape painting in the picture composition, especially in the depiction of human figures against the yellow earth and muddy yellow river; the daring use of fixed camera and natural interior light; and the balance between stasis and movement (often stylised and exaggerated) in individual shots and whole sequences. all this would have been sufficient to make the film controversial. what kept it out of the cinema for most of 1985 was the content, or, more accurately, the treatment of the innocuous-sounding subject-matter. the film was accused firstly of glorlfylng the backwardness and ignorance of the peasants by showing, with great brilliance and evident respect, peasant ritual and superstition, even thoughamajor theme of the film was the cruelty of feudal customs. the second charge, usually made in disguised and indirect terms, was that the film implied a failure of the party to solve the problems of the peasants. given the location of the film, "the cradle of chinese ci~ilisation~~, and its historical setting, the sacrosanct yanan period when the party first achieved substantial political power, this failure is by implication extended to the whole of china and to the whole period of communist party power in china. the film makers have never denied these charges, though there has been heateddebate between the film's supporters and detractors as to whether the film does in fact glorify rural (or national) backwardness or rather expose and denounce it.41 the first public screening of t h e yellow earth was in september 1984, a month after its completion. the initial hostile reaction of the film authorities prevented any advance publicity for the film, and box office returns were low. once the controversial nature of the film began to be known, however, and especially after the film's sensational reception in hong kong in april 1985, it was rereleasedin beijingand other major citiesandattracted biggeraudiences. together with a handful of other films by the same graduating class, it had already been dubbed "experimental cinema" at the annual assessment of the year's films at the end of 1984.42 when the yellow earth came up for consider copenhagen papers 188 52 breaking through ation for the golden rooster film awards in april 1985, the question of the audience for art films formed a major part of the panel d i s c ~ s s i o n . ~ ~ as noted by the film critic luo yijun, the term "experimental" is not really appropriate for films like the yellow earth and the one and the eight; unlike western experimental films, they are not low-budget experiments in form for limited audiences of film representing the oldtime hardliners, however, xia yan, without any apparent sense of the absurdity of what he was saying, claimed that the audience for chinese cinema was the whole population of china in all its millions, and that film makers must direct their efforts towards these millions.45 given the considerable financial investment in film, it was reasonable that the authorities wanted both tangible and intangible returns in audience outreach. on the other hand, it was equally apparent that in the past, when political criteria were primary, financial returns and audience enthusi asm were alike disregarded, and that at the current time, when box office returns were carefully assessed, the actual composition of the audience (in this case, maybe students and intellectuals instead of students and young cadres and workers) was irrelevant; and that with the possible exception of current kongfu movies, at no time was there a cinema in china that attracted the vast bulk of china's rural audience. unfortunately, the sensitivity of the question prevented frank discussion, and no statistics were even given on actual and ideal box office returns and audience sizes and composition. in the end, most of the panelists agreed, reluctantly or otherwise, that the yellow earth would not attract a mass audience and was therefore not qualified for a "best film" award. the director's award went to one of the panelists, ling zifeng (as ai qing had given himself a prize two years earlier), for his biancheng (the border town), a film which had equally low box office returns in 1984. following this fiasco, a general debate on the experimental films of 1984 tookplace in the press in the summer of 1985. insome quarters, the debate was reduced to the question of generations again. as one reporter noted, a common saying of the day was that the film audience were people in their twenties and thirties, the film makers were people in their forties and fifties, and the film critics and judges were people in their sixties and seven tie^.^^ at the same time, the film industry became conscious of pressure from another direction. as empty cinemas inurban centres reported plunging revenues, the chinese film distribution and exhibition corporation was finally forced to carry out an investigation of the figures and reasons for declining a~diences.~7 tv serials and smuggled videotape pornagraphy rather than highbrow art films were found to be the major villains, and faced with the prospect of turning bonnie s. mcdougall cinemas into skating rinks, the film industry tried a new strategy. abandoning the pretence of a single unitary audience, the corporation announced in august its decision to open up special cinemas for showing "experimental films" in major cities, starting with shanghai and moving on to guangzhou (canton) in the autumn. by the end of 1985, however, the revolutionin the film world seemed to have fizzled out. the new wave films of 1983-84 were not followed by equally startling movies in 1985, only a batch of moderately controversial but artistically undemanding prize winners such as ye shan (wild mountain) and heipao shijian (the black cannon incident) .48 the special experimental cinemas never reached beijing at all, despite initial plans, and none have been set up elsewhere. (it is said by beijing residents that audiences in commercial shanghai and guangzhou are culturally much below beijing audiences, so that beijing did not need special highbrow cinemas. it was in shanghai, however, that the stereotyped, boring old films of director xie jin were first criticised in wenhui bao in july 1986.) the most controversial movie of 1985 was chen kaige's second film, da yuebing (the grand parade). first presented in spring 1986, it was immediately sent back for revision. a revised version was completed in august 1986 and finally passed for release in november. not a word about the controversy over the grand parade appeared in the public press in these h7o years. the small number of films produced annually in china has always made central censorship over the cinema possible in a way denied organizations involved in written literature. with the expansion in the number and size of film studios and the addition to the work force of the new batch of graduates from the beijing film academy in the early eighties, this figure peaked in 1984 with 144 feature films as the main fare. of these a rather large number was attacked by the upper bureaucracy as either vulgarly commercial or artistically weird. reacting to the criticism, the studios produced only 127 feature films in 1985. film officials were falling down on the job, in the eyes of even higher authorities, and in january 1986 it was decided to shift control of the film industry from the ministry of culture to a new, expanded ministry of radio, cinema and televi~ion.~g since party control over the mass media had always been even stricter than over the arts, this move provoked considerable unease in the film world. as writers went on the offensive in 1986, film makers remained tense. attempts at private fund-raising were made in 1985 and 1986, but the film makers'best bet remained an enlightened studio head, such as wu tianming in xan, or a small studio in the sticks. guangxi no longer spread out copenhagen papers 1.88 54 breaking through the red carpet to the class of '82, and in the summer of '86 chen kaige's third film was contracted to xian. neo-traditionalism in fiction the best new writing from the early seventies to the early eighties can broadly be characterised as modernistic in form and humanist in spirit, representing a return to urban intellectual values after the cultural wasteland of the cultural revolution. by 1983 and 1984, however, disillusionment with modem urban life began to make itself felt among former sent-down youth and intellectuals. one sign of this was the number of suicides by returnees to the city who were unable to bear the changes in social life from comradeship in adversity to opportunism in the new struggle for private enrichment that accompanied the new reforms. these changes were a frequent topic of conversation in the early eighties, especially among people whose adolescent years coincided with the cultural revolution. under the impact of this disillusionment, some writers and artists began to reexamine their experiences during the cultural revolution and reassess the knowledge they gained at that time of village life and traditional customs and beliefs. since this trend seemed to give a more positive view of recent chinese history, its first products were initially welcomed by the authorities; later instances were not treated so kindly. by 1986, interest in "rootsf', or "primitivism", as it was less favourably termed, was ranked as one of the problem areas in modem literature and the arts.50 briefly, primitivism or neo-traditionalism may be defined as a search for meaning in neglected areas of traditional chinese culture. its origins lie in the rustication and self-education of urban youth and intellectuals during the cultural revolution, to whom it appealed as an alternative to the bankruptcy of orthodox or maoist communism, the crass materialism of the tour modernis ations", and the alienation of western-style modernism. from its first mani festations in yin guangzhong's sculptured masks of 1983-84, it spread to the theatre in gao xingjian's ye ren (the wild man; 1985), to the cinema in chen kaige's the yellow earth and tianzhuangzhuangls liechangzhasa (the hunting ground; 1984), and to painting in ding fang's rural landscape oils from 1983 and mi qiu's abstract ink paintings incorporating primitive scripts from 1985.j1 the best known examples of primitivism were in fiction, in works such as shi tiesheng's 'wo de yaoyuan de qingpingwan" (my faraway qingping wan; 1983), zhang chengzhi's 'wei junma" (black stallion; 1984) and "beifang de he" (rivers of the north; 1984), jia pingwa's "layue, zhengyue" bonnie s. mcdougall (december, january; 1984) and ah cheng's "qi wang" (the king of chess; 1984). although described by sympathetic critics as inhabiting the same world as the yellow e~rth,"~ these stories at first gained a very favourable reception, and several managed to win prizes in 1983-84.g3 above all it was ah cheng who attracted most attention and became the most discussed author of the middle eighties.64 the evaluation of ah cheng's fiction has several aspects. overseas chinese readers have been particularly struck by his original and versatile use of language, which combines phrases from traditional chinese vernacular fiction with modern chinese urban slang and local peasant dialect. in contrast to the beautiful but formal poetic language in the first-person narratives of zhao zhenkai's "bodong" (waves),s5 the first-person narrative in ah cheng's stories echoes the dialogue in its liveliness. at home, at the same titne as the yellow earth was being criticised for glorifying rural backwardness, critics were praising ah cheng for introducing a new perception of rural life and its impact on urban other readers have been most impressed with the underlying themes of his stories, which differ significantly from both the modernist literature of the avant-garde and "the wounded" of the late seventies. it is significant that ah cheng, despite his early experience as a storyteller in the countryside, did not write fiction for publication in this period. ah cheng's narrators are, like the author, urban youth who suffer materihl and spiritual privation in the remote jungles of southwest china during the cultural revolution, but instead of bewailing their lot, they reach a new understanding of life in discovering through bitter experience man's real needs: basically food, and as a bonus, friendship the rest, by implication, is hollow. the buddhist and daoist overtones in the stories, although picked up by some critics, are slight and subtle, while the narrative style appears so naive, and the surface is sketched with such meticulous attention to physical detail, that any subversive underlying message is easy to overlook. in their philosophical outlook, one may perhaps compare zhao zhenkai and ah cheng as reflecting confucian and daoist attitudes towards society. zhao zhenkai's characters want to join and influence society, but society is so hostile that they are left facing various forms of alienation, including suicide, barrenness, and insanity; despite the cynicism forced on them by the corruption around them, nevertheless they retain a surprisingly moral seriousness. ah cheng's characters, in contrast, are outsiders who create a kind of harmony in self-awareness and self-sufficiency. in terms of the search for new means of artistic expression, "the king of copenhagen papers 1.88 56 breaking through chess" lies equally far from both 'waves" and the yellow earth: the latter are self-conscious artistic innovations, whereas ah cheng's stories are almost "anti-art". nevertheless in several very significant areas, 'the king of chess" and the yellow earth have much in common. first, by portraying in detail and with great respect the lives of people beyond or outside the political process, they imply the irrelevance of politics in the most basic aspects of people's lives. secondly, by finding in the past a powerful tradition now absent from the present, they offer an alternative to the party-prescribed vision of a socialist civilisation. in ah cheng's story, it is not so much the ancient game of chess itself that is the alternative, but rather the mystic, daoist idea of the integrity of things, and in his other stories one finds a similar respect for intuitive knowledge and ability, especially among peasants. it is hardly a coincidence that most of the neo-traditionalists, although natives of beijing or shanghai, have spent long period sin the remoterparts of the chinese countryside. chen kaige and ah cheng (real name zhong acheng) attended the same high school in beijing (where ah cheng was in the same class as bei dao, two years ahead of chen kaige), and their parents are well-known figures in the beijing film world. both young men spent several years in the mountains of xishuangbanna in southwest china during the cultural revolution, and despite personal ties with the unofficial literary movement in the late seventies, did not find their own aesthetic perceptions until the middle of the eighties. to complete the link, chen kaige returned to xishuangbanna in the autumn of 1986 to shoot his third film, based on ah cheng's story "haiziwang" (the king of the children). returning to the yellow earth and 'the king of chess", one may conclude by noting the many layers of meaning in both works. chen kaige likes to say that both are about hunger. it is also possible to say that they are also about the inadequacy of politics versus the power of artistic creation (reading chess as a symbol for art). it is further possible to say, as suggested above, that they are both very subtle and indirect criticisms of party policies, not only in its 'left" phases from the forties to the seventies, but also in the modemising phase of the current leadership. these three statements are perhaps only different expressions of the same idea. what makes it possible for such subversive ideas to find ready publication is the strain of populism in mao's thinking which can justify reference to primitive life. the new painting in regard to the production and distribution of their work, painters and bonnie s. mcdougali sculptors lie somewhere between writers and film makers. in as far as their work can appear in magazines and books as illustrations and reproductions, they are in much the same position as writers; in as far as they need public displays of their work and financial recompense for the cost of materials, they are similar to but not as hampered as film makers. during the late seventies and early eighties, it was impossible for most younger painters to hold one man or group shows in suitable surroundings, since virtually no private galleries existed and the public galleries were too few and too stuffy to show the work of young and unorthodox artists. they therefore took the initiative in seeking their own exhibition space and their own buyers. in the days of the democracy wall, two groups of painters held unofficial exhibitions at xidan and contributed illustrations to the unofficial magazines. the most well known of these two groups, xingxing (stars), favoured an abstract but comprehensibly angry style, and soon found an audience and customers in beijing's small foreign community. most of them (ma desheng, huang rui, li shuang, shao fei (bei dao's wife), yan li and the sculptor wang keping) are now permanently or temporarily abroad.57 the other group consisted of five young men from guizhou, including yin guangzhong. without a residence permit but with help from friends, yin guangzhong i managed to stay on in beijing and in december 1984 took part in a privately sponsored joint exhibition in beihai park. the exhibition was closed down by the authorities within a few days, but not before a highly favourable review had appeared in the china daily.58 similarly, a younger painter, lin chunyan, held an exhibition of landscapes and abstracts in oils and woodblock prints at the yuanmingyuan in november 1984, which was closed by the police a few hours after it opened. by 1985-86, the situation had improved considerably. yin guangzhong's further experiments with masks and settings were viewed by large numbers of beijingfs young intellectuals in his stage designs for the beijing art theatre production of gao xingjianfs the wild man in may 1985, the season's most sensational p r o d ~ c t i o n . ~ ~ some of his work was also included in an exhibition that toured the united states in the summer of 1986.60 yin guangzhong returned to guizhou, where he now lives as a local celebrity within the shelter of the art department in the minoritiesf university. mi qiu (penname for mi qiuling) and you si (penname for you siqun) showed particular ingenuity and enterprise in hunting up hanging space, displaying their work in the exhibition room of the old observatory in beijing (conveniently close to the foreigners' quarters in jianguomenwai) in january-february 1986, at qinghua copenhagen papers 1.88 58 breaking through university and beijing university in november 1986g1 and (mi qiu sep arately) at the canadian embassy in december 1986. on the other hand, ding fang, a serious young man from nanjing who lacks the opportunities offered in the capital, won major prizes and found security like yin guangzhong in the academy. in the late seventies and early eighties, there was hardly any domestic market for private sales by young painters, but by the mid-eighties this had also changed. an important step forward was the publication in 1985 of zhongguo meishu bao (chinese art), an alternative to meishu yuekan (art monthly), the official art magazine. chinese art featured the work of the new painters as well as the establishment, and also gave space to broader debates on the new issues. its readership was small but select, andits many unsolicited contributions helped make newpainting one of the liveliest andbetter known of the new artmovements. more concretely, private companies were set up to act as dealers for young artists with collective or private enterprises such as hotels that need decorative effects, and also to act as middlemen for foreigners seeking to buy chinese paintings outside official channels. with the increas ing ease of contact between locals and foreigners, it became possible even for newcomers to china to set up meetings with young artists in hotels or in private homes. some young painters therefore managed to become indepen dent of official patronage; while they enjoyed little security or material comfort, their general situation was not so much unlike any struggling young painter in any big city around the world. future prospects this study has looked at three major issues in contemporary literature and art in china: the changing relationships between writers and artists of the elite, and the authorities; their search for new forms of expression to convey their personal and unorthodox experiences and reflections; and the difficulties they encounter in the production and distribution of their work. in the ten years since the death of mao, there have been several changes in political line that have affected the literary and art world very drastically, but it remains very sensitive both in the eyes of the authorities and in its direct vulnerability to fluctuations in the economic climate. perhaps because of the tensions engendered by political swings and economic vulnerability, and also because of differences in production and bonnie s. mcdougall marketability, different arts and personalities seemed to take their turn under the spotlight, and fashions changed quickly. a poet may be famous one year and old hat the next; theatre may be explosive one year, cinema the next. suddenly painting was the big topic for 1986;62 modernistically primitivist music by composers like tao dun and qu xiaosong which baffled audiences in 1985-86 found enthusiastic acceptance in 1987. in beijing and other big cities, there was a tremendous sense of things happening in these two years, an atmosphere of sustained excitement and confusion hardly witnessed before in most people's lifetimes. the excitement was created mostly by men between the ages of twenty and fifty: there were several new women writers but few among the new painters, sculptors, playwrights, composers or directors; the over-fifties of both sexes mostly restricted themselves, if they participated at all, to recapitulation of old glories or encouragement from the sidelines. the encouragement given by foreigners, in the form of critical appreciation, financial support or opportunities to go abroad, was a crucial element in the scene, but it is hard to gauge its importance to those not directly affected and to the authorities. while many of the elder generation shake their heads over the obvious westernisation of their young, western observers, especially perhaps sinologists, might well wonder at the strong survival of national or traditional traits in the creative work, manners and personal attitudes of chinese writers and artists in the eighties. this, however, is another topic. the events of early 1987 were a heavy and perhaps fatal blow to the exuberance of 1986. again, in hindsight, we can trace the muttered warnings which preceded them, but at the time few had paid much heed to them: they seemed, as it were, a semi-permanent part of the background which could be ignored, like m u ~ a k . ~ ~ the initial reaction from bohemians, avant-garde and reformists in early january ranged from deep shock to confusion, resentment and distress. the role that wang meng and deng youmei may have played in the spring sacking of their old colleague liu binyan is a matter of speculation, but they clearly had the authority to move against their former protege liu xinwu, who had clearly offended some of the reformists now consolidating powerful positions, as a secondary level victim. with reformists thus playing an active role in the new campaign against "bourgeois liberalisation", it was commonly believed that the effects would be even more devastating than its predecessor of 1983. over the next few months, as it became apparent that the new campaign was going to be relatively restricted in its targets compared to 1983, shock copenhagen papers 188 60 breaking through gave way to a kind of numbed gloom. many people had been badly fright ened in 1983, but the collapse of the campaign then had persuaded them that the leadership would not dare try again. the fact that the very same leader ship did, less than four years later, produced the feeling that these campaigns would henceforth come again, and again, and again offering life as a constant succession of campaigns. the chief response was a kind of negative passivism which even affected the upholders of cultural orthodoxy (with the exception of zang kejia). in 1983 they had seen a chance to reassert their authority, but in 1984 they were attacked in turn, and now in 1987 they cannot be sure what might happen in 1988 ... at the centre of the problem is the sense that the cultural world, including cultural bureaucrats as well as creative writers and artists, had lost confi dence in the political leadership, and that the political leadership had lost confidence in the cultural world. the unwritten contract of 1978-80 had finally been damaged beyond repair. to the party, writers and artists had misused their freedom, not just in their criticism of the party but in ignoring or misunderstanding the fundamental problems of agricultural productivity, population control, urban growth andnationalidentity. to writers and artists, the party had lost its credibility as an authority able to provide a stable environment of flexible control, of predictable rewards and punishments, in which they could pursue their private and public concerns. one natural consequence of loss of confidence was simply withdrawal, in some cases quite literally: getting out of china, or getting one's children out of china, is seen as the only chance for a less threatened existence. relatively few people were directly affected by the blows of 1987, and the world of chinese literature and arts, from bohemians to the old garde, is not a big one. there are more pressing problems in china than their personal wellbeing and produc tivity. but their dispersal or submission is still surely a sad loss for china, and also for the world culture to which they were beginning to contribute so boldly. bonnie s. mcdougall is professor of modem chinese, department of east asian studies, university of oslo. notes 1 see t.d. huters, "critical ground: the transformation of the may fourth era" and ronnie s. mcdougall, "writers and performers, their works, and their audiences in the first three decades", both in bonnie s. mcdougall (ed.), popular chinese literature and pevforming arts in the people's republic of china, 1949 1979 (berkeley, calif.: university of california press, 1984), pp. 54-80, 269 304, esp. pp. 270-80. 2 bonnie s. mcdougall, "dissent litera ture: official and nonofficial literature in and about china in the seventies", contemporary china, vol. 3, no. 4 (win ter 1979), pp. 49-79, esp. pp. 50-58. 3 a good sense of the excitement of these two-three years is conveyed in roger garside, coming alive: china after mao (new york: new american library, 1981); for the tiananmen demonstra tions, see pp. 101-26; for the events since mao's death and the fall of the "gang of four", see pp. 154-95. 4 see for instance david goodman, beijing street voices: the poetry and politics of china's democracy movement (london: marion boyars, 1981). eyewitness ac counts by western journalists of the democracy wall movement include garside, coming alive, pp. 195-277; john fraser, the chinese: portrait of a people (london: fontana, 1982), pp. 203-71; fox butterfield, china: alive in a biffer sea (new york: times books, 1982), pp. 405 15 et passim. 5 renmin ribao, december 24,1978; sum marised in china quarterly, no. 77 (march 1979), pp. 166-73. 6 see for instance comments by reformists even in the warmth of summer 1986: wang meng, beijing review, 1986, no. 27, pp. 14-19, esp. p. 17; liu zaifu, reported in china daily, september 11, 1986, p. 3. bonnie 5. mcdougall copenhagen papers 1.88 62 7 see stuart r. schram, ldeology and policy in china since the third plenum, 1978-84 (london: contemporary china institute, school of oriental and african studies, 1984), pp. 16-19. an earlier and briefer version of this pamphlet was published as "'economics in command?' ideology and policy since the third plenum, 1978-84", china quarterly, no. 99 (sep tember 1984), pp. 417-61. 8 see perry link, "fiction and the reading public in guangzhou and other chinese cities, 1979-19801', in jeffrey c. kinkley (ed.), after mao: chinese literature and society, 1978-1981 (cambridge, mass.: council on east asian studies, harvard university, 1985), pp. 221-74. 9 bei dao, poet and co-editor of the unofficial literary magazine fintian (to day), for instance, began writing fiction again and revised his short novel "bodong" (waves) for publication. 10 by the end of 1980 there were 180 literary magazines at the national and provincial level; in addition, literary magazines were also published by municipal and local cultural bureaux, the armed forces and universities. some of the national level publications had a circulation of up to a million. 11 in 1983, despite the campaign against "spiritual pollution", 5,000 titles in litera ture and the arts were published, a rise of 8.4% over the previous year. 12 see deng xiaoping's complaint about security leaks because of these connec tions, quoted in schram, ideology and policy in china stnce the third plenum, 1978-1984, p. 18. 13 in a recent interview with john gittings, bei dao described how on the pretext of developing photographs of buildings he used to lock himself in the factory darkroom to write "waves"; many still consider it his best work of fiction. see the guardian, may 11, 1987, p. 15. 14 for an example using four "genera tions'', see feng mu and liu xicheng, "recent trends in chinese writing", china reconstructs, january 1982, pp. 16 18. 15 see for instance jingji ribao, november 1, 1983, p. 1; beijtng ribao, november 2, 1983, p. 4; guangmingribao, november 2, 1983, p. 1; also below, in the section on "bourgeois liberalism, spiritual poilu tion, and bourgeois liberalism again". 16 compare 'my hopes" and "closing address to the fourth congress of chinese writers and artists", translated in howard goldblatt (ed.), chinese literature for the 1980s: the fourth con gress of writers and artists (armonk: sharpe, 1982), pp. 148-56, 161-68, with his remarks in renmin ribao, june 15, 1985, p. 1 and his call for self-censorship in renmin ribao, november 4, 1985, p. 1. in 1981 the 81 year old critic went on record as complaining that too many of the year's films were on love themes; see xinhua news bulletin, december 26, 1981. 17 schram, ideology and policy in china since the third plenum, pp. 9, 12. 18 for example kyna rubin, "an interview with mr wang ruowang", china quarterly, no. 87 (september 1981), pp. 501-17, esp. p. 502. in the case of wang ruowang, disillusionment with social ism probably went back to the fifties but could not be publicly proclaimed until the middle of the eighties. 19 schram, ideology and policy in china since the third plenum, p. 30. 20 see geremie barme, "a word for the imposter introducing the drama of sha yexin", renditions, no. 19/20 (spring & autumn 1983), pp. 319-32. 21 summarised in paul clark, "film- making in china: from the cultural revolution to 1981': china quarterly, no. 94 (june 1983), pp. 304-22, esp. pp. 318 21. 22 september 25,1981; see also speeches at the standing committee of the national people's congress and at the special meeting of writers and artists earlier the same month, xinhua news bulletin, september 9, 1981. hu qiaomu's long speech attacking bourgeois liberalism, delivered in august 1981 and printed in the december issue of hongyi, indicates the continuing nature of the concern in 1981. 23 see d.e. pollard, 'the controversy over modernism, 1979-84': china quarterly, no. 104 (december 1985), pp. 641-56. 24 summarised in schram, ideology and policy in china since the third plenum, pp. 41,44-45. the speech became one of the first targets in the campaign against "spiritual pollution" later that year; see for example guangming ribao, novem ber 5, 1983, p. 1. 25 on the day that one overseas broadcast was asking 'where is bai hua now?" he was actually having dinner at the foreigners' friendship hotel in the western suburbs of beijing. 26 for a brief summary of the rhetoric, see china quarterly, no. 97 (march 1984), pp. 160-63, 169-70; no. 98 (june 1984), pp. 399-400; no. 99 (september 1984), pp. 663, 672; no. 102 uune 1985), p. 366. 27 see guangming ribao, november 7,1983, p. 1. 28 much of this went on behind closed doors and was not reported in full in the press. for press reports, see for instance renmin ribao, october 31, 1983, p. 8; guangming ribao, october 29, 1983, p. 1; guangming ribao, october 30, 1983, p. 1; beijing ribao, november 9, 1983, p. 4; guangming ribao, november 11,1983, p. 1; beijing ribao, november 11, 1983, p. 4; renmin ribao, november 12, 1983, p. 4; guangming ribao, january 26, 1984, p. 3. 29 china quarterly, no. 99 (september 1984), p. 663. breahng through 63 bonnie s. mcdougall 30 see announcement in wenyi bao, jan uary 1985, p. 3. for a brief summary, see china quarterly, no. 102 (june 1985), p. 379. 31 hu qili's speech is given in full in wenyi bao, february 1985, pp. 3-5. see also the summary of initial proceedings in china daily, december 31, 1984, p. 1. 32 wenyi bao, february 1985, p. 10; partial listings in guangtning ribao, january 8, 1985, p. 1 and china daily, january 9, 1985, p. 1. 33 wenyi bao, february 1985, pp. 8-10; see also the report in china daily, january 7, 1985, pp. 1, 4. 34 china reconstructs, may 1985, p. 34. 35 guangmingribao, november 5,1985, p. 1; november 6, 1985, p. 1; china daily, november 9, 1985, p. 4. see also china quarterly, no. 105 (march 1986), p. 190. 36 for a general impression of the cold wind at this time, see the special feature in far eastern economic review, decem ber 26, 1985, pp. 36-47. 37 see china daily, july 15, 1986, p. 3; july 17, 1986, p. 1; july 18, 1986, p. 3. 38 for a n outsider's impression of the range and variety of culture at the time, see the economist, august 30,1986, pp. 65-66; not all details are accurate but the atrnos phere is nicely caught. 39 china quarterly, no. 106 (june 1986), p. 393; no. 107 (september 1986), p. 582. the first demands date from the time of the third plenum. 40 for a more detailed discussion, see bonnie s. mcdougall, the yellow earth: a film by chen kaige (forthcoming). 41 for a selection of articles about the yellow earth, see chen kaiyan (ed.), huashuo <huang tudi> (taking of the yellow earth) (beijing: chinese film press, 1986). 42 xiao ou, 'duocai de xinxi, kegui de tansuo zai jing bufen yishujia, ping lunjia tan 84 nian guochan gushipian" (richly varied news, valuable explora tion artists and critics from beijing discuss domestic feature films of '84), dianying yishu, march 1985, pp. 2-7. 43 "diwujie jinjijiang pingweihui bufen pingwei guanyu yingpian <huang tudi> de fayan zhailu" (extracts from speeches evaluating the film the yellow earth at the fifth golden rooster ad judication commitee), in chen kaiyan, huashuo <huang tudi>, pp. 1-36. 44 ibid., pp. 31-32. 45 ibid., p. 6. 46 dong xin, '%a dianyingjie bancheng chuangzuo ziyou de xin tiandi ji gushipian biandao chuangzuo huiyi" (make the film world into a new uni verse of creative freedom notes on a meeting on creative writing and direct ing in feature films), wenyi bao, may 1985, pp. 4-5. 47 see the series of articles in the septem ber, october, november and december issues of dazhong dianying in 3 985, under the general heading "dianying shang zuolii di de yuanyin he zai?" (wherein lies the reason for the low attendance rate for films?). further discussion can be found in bonnie s. mcdougall, the yellow earth. 48 for a more favourable outside impres sion of the chinese cinema in 1984-85, see for instance the economist, novem ber 22, 1986, pp. 96-99. 49 china quarterly, no. 106 (june 1986), p. 375. 50 see for instance wang meng inter viewed in beijing review, 1986, no. 27, pp. 14-19, esp. p. 15. 51 for an impression of the interrelated ness of these different manifestations of primitivism, see the may issue of zhong guo qingnian with a review of the yellow earth, an article on shi tiesheng, and a review of the wild man with illustrations of yin guangzhong's masks. 52 see for instance zheng dongtian, "<huang tudi> suixiangqu" (random thoughts on the yellow earth), dangdai copenhagen papers 1.88 64 breaking through dianying, february 1985; reprinted in chen kaiyan, huashuo <huangtudi>, pp. 37-47, esp. p. 41; and ni zhen, "qitiao de gao du" (leaping heights), beijing dian ying xueyuan xuebao, 1985, no. 1; abridged version reprinted in chen kaiyan, huashuo <huang tudi>, pp. 67 81, esp. p. 67. 53 shi ti~sheng's 'wo de yaoyuan de qingpingwan" won a writers' associ ation short story award in 1983 and his "nainai de xingxing" (grandmother's star) won again in 1984; zhang cheng zhi's '13eifang de he", ah cheng's "qi wang" and jia pingwa's 'tayue, zheng yue" all won short novel awards for 1983-84. 54 see for instance china daily, july 19, 1985, p. 5. in 1987 the overseas edition of renmin ribao ran a series of articles about ah cheng, in acknowledgement of his overseas fans. see also zhong cheng xiang, "a note on ah cheng", chinese literature, winter 1986, pp. 78-81. 55 definitive version in zhao zhenkai, bodong (hong kong: chinese university press, 1985), pp. 1-138; translation in zhao zhenkai, waves (hong kong: chinese university press, 1985), pp. 1 146. zhao zhenkai is better known under his penname, bei dao. 56 see for instance ye zhongqiang, "zhigen yu chuantong wenhua he xianshi sheng huo de wotu" (planted in the fertile soil of traditional culture and real life), wenxue bao, october 30, 1985; li ziyun, "huashuo ah cheng" (talking of ah cheng),jiushi niandai, june 1986, pp. 92 93. 57 for ex-xingxing in new york, see alisa joyce, "obstacles to expression", far eastern economic review, november 27, 1986, pp. 40-42. most ended up in europe, e.g. ma desheng, wang keping, li shuang and shao fei; huang rui went to japan. 58 china daily, december 6, 1984, p. 5. the china daily seemed to take a particular interest in the work of the avant-garde (especially in the plastic and performing arts), partly because many of the re porting staff were of the same gener ation, and partly because such news appealed to foreigners. 59 see review in china daily, may 21, 1985, p. 5. 60 see report in china daily, december 12, 1986, p. 5. 61 see report by carroll bogert, washington post, december 10, 1986, p. b4; china daily, november 25, 1986, p. 5. 62 see for instance bai jieming (geremie barmk), "zhongguo meishujie xinrui de houshe" (a keen new voice in the chinese art world), jiushi niandai, july 1986, p p 92-93. 63 there is, for instance, in china quarterly a hint of the coming campaign in the report o n political developments in the quarter october-december, but not in regard to literature and the arts; china quarterly, no. 109 (march 1987), pp. 149 50, 164. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. east and southeast asia in the world economy: issues, problems and prospects edward k.y. c h e n hypergrowth in asia economic growth in the western pacific basin or east and southeast asia or the asian pacific region which comprises economies running from korea in the north to indonesia in the south has been phenomenal in the last two decades. in the 1950s and 1960s, japan surprised the world with economic growth rates of 10% or more. in the 1960s and 1970s, asia's newly industrialized economies (nies) which include hong kong, singapore, taiwan and south korea demonstrated that they were also able to achieve similar or even greater success in rapid economic growth. since its open ing up in 1977, the economy of china has also been growing at an average rate close to 10%. of the asean countries, the rate of economic growth of thailand and malaysia has in fact not been slow in the past two decades, attaining an average rate of 6% to 7% per annum. the performance of the thai economy in the past two years has of course been very outstanding, achieving an economic growth rate of 11% in 1988. even in the case of the philippines and indonesia, their performance has been somewhat better than many developing countries in other parts of the world. these 10 asian economies mentioned above, viz. china, japan, the asian nies, and the asean-4 (malaysia, thailand, indonesia, and the philippines) are undoubtedly the most dynamic developing economies in the world in the post-war years. in this paper, emphasis will be on these 10 asian econo mies, or the asia-10, in general and with reference to the asian nies in par ticular. the economic success of the asian nies is surely the envy of other de veloping countries and it is the interest of researchers and policy makers to find out whether the experiences of the asian nies canbe generalized into a model for other developing countries to follow. as a first step, one would naturally try to look for the special characteristics of the experiences of the asian nies. interestingly, at least in five aspects the experiences of the asian nies are unconventional in the sense that their experiences were not in line with the prevalent economic thinking at that time. edward k.y. chen first, the development strategy adopted by the asian nies is open-door policy and not self-reliance. specifically, they encouraged the export of manufactured products and the inflow of foreign capital. thus, the ex periences of the asian nies contradict the thesis of the neo-marxian de pendency school that the periphery developing countries will continually be exploited by and be dependent on the core developed countries if de veloping countries do not withdraw themselves from the international economy. the experiences of the asian nies, on the other hand, demon strate that integrating with the world economy in trade and investment have contributed significantly to their economic success. furthermore, the asian n ~ e s demonstrate that a developing country can depend on export orientation instead of import substitution as a strategy for industrializa tion. this issue will be further discussed later in this paper. second, to some extent, the exp'eriences of the asian nies endorse the neo-classical assertion of the superiority of competitive market forces over a protective economic environment. but given initial imperfect market conditions in the developing countries the hands of the governments, with perhaps the exception of hong kong, are far from being invisible in the economic development of these economies. in hong kong's case, the dominance of the rule of law and the less imperfect initial market condi tions perhaps explain the relatively smaller role of the government, but even in hong kong's case, the role of the government in infrastructure building and in allocation of land shoald not be understated. thus, western observers are largely wrong in their remarks that the success of the asian nies is based on laissez-faire free market forces without govern ment intervention. as a matter of fact, the experiences of south korea, tai wah and singapore (if not hong kong), reject the view that government policies cannot overcome market failures because government failures are often evefi more serious than market failures. if we wish to generalize and sum up the nature of economic policies in the asian nies, it would be ap propriate to use the term neo-classical interventionism to describe them. third, the experiences of the asian nies provide a counter-example to the weberian hypothesis about the rise of modern capitalism and chris tian ethics. about 80 years ago, the renowned german sociologist, max weber, wrote about christianity and the rise of modern capitalism as well as confucianism and the underdevelopment of china. but today if we look at the economic powers in the asian pacific region, we find that the big dragon japan and the four little dragons, hong kong, singapore, copenhagen papers 4.89 8 east and southeast asia in the world economy: issues, problems and prospects i south korea, and taiwan share one commonality. they all use chopsticks. i i their success story is the success of chopsticks economies. the use of i chopsticks symbolises chinese culture which is fundamentally confucian values. we can therefore now have doubts about the weberian hypothesis on the basis of the experiences of the asian nies. this subject matter of culture and economic development is later dealt with in greater de tail. fourth, it is of interest also to observe that experiences of the asian nies show that political institutions might be an important factor explaining their economic success. but in this case, it is an autocratic political regime which has accompanied the rapid economic growth in these economies, while in the western countries democratic political institutions go hand in hand with modern economic growth. in this connection, it is of course im portant to note that it is not autocracy per se that explains economic suc cess; what is important is the presence of a development-oriented "hard" state. it can further be argued that an authoritarian government might be inducive to the early economic development stage if (1) there is the presence of a charismatic ruler, (2) the government aims at the improve ment of the people's standard of living as a means of maintaining legitimacy, and (3) the authoritarian government is supported by an effi cienct and effective bureaucracy. fifth, the experiences of the asian nies also provides a counter-example to the kuznet inverted-u hypothesis which states that income inequality will increase with economic growth at the early stage and will only decrease at the later stage. generally speaking, we observe in the asian nies that economic growth and increasing income equality have been achieved concomitantly. in other words, economic growth is not at the expense of equality even at the early stage of economic development. thus, it is not only that development strategies, cultural values, economic policies, and political institutions are different in the asian nies, com pared with other developing countries in the course of economic growth and development. moreover, even in terms of the consequence of eco nomic growth, the asian nies show that a relatively equal distribution of the fruits of economic growth can be achived right from the very begin ning. these special characteristics of the experiences of economic growth in the asian nies give us some clues to formulate a general model of eco nomic development in the nies. edward i<.y. chen export-oriented industrialization of the five characteristics of economic growth in the asian nies, the de velopment strategy of openness of the economy in general and exporting manufactured products in particular is certainly the key factor for their economic success. the statistics presented in table 1 support this asser tion. table 1. comparative economic performance. average annual growth rates, 1960-85. gnp per capita manufactured income exports asian nie-4 asean-4 china south asia latin america africa north america eec japan australia in the past 25 years, the asian nies have enjoyed by far the fastest eco nomic growth in the world, an average annual rate of 9.0% against 6% in the asean-4, 4.1% in south asia, 3.9% in latin america, and 3.2% in africa. looking at the statistics on the export of manufactured products, we also find that the asian nies had the fastest rate of growth. of course, this association of rapid economic growth with manufactured export growth is no definite proof of export-led economic growth in the sense that the direction of causation runs from the growth of manufactured exports to the growth of income. but, on the basis of some econometric and time series causality analysis i have done, there is strong evidence that eco nomic growth in the asian nies was export-led. thus, the asian nie phenomenon can simply be described as rapid economic growth on the basis of the export of labor-intensive products such as textile, clothing, consumer electronics, toys, and footwear. it may seem to be common sense to-day that export-oriented industriali zation is a better strategy than import substitution. and indeed it is the teaching of the classical school that free trade on the basis of each coun copenhagen papers 4 . 8 9 10 east and southeast asia in the world economy: issues, problems and prospects 1 try's comparative advantage is the best for everybody and for the world as i i a whole. but we must bear in mind that in the 1940s, 1950s and even the i 1 i early 1960s, development economists and policy-makers almost without 1 exception regarded export-oriented industrialization at the early stage of economic development unthinkable. the reason is obvious enough. how can the products of infant industries in a newly developing country be able 1 to compete at world prices with the developed or more advanced develop i ing countries? import substitution in the form of protecting infant indus i tries behind a high tariff wall was therefore the norm of industrialization strategy. protectionism is usually accompanied by a low interest rate policy i for the encouragement of the use of capital and an overvalued exchange i i li rate for the encouragement of the import of capital goods. all these meas i 1 ures are unfortunately price-distorting. i have classified the stages and i types of industrialization into the following: i 1. import substitution 1 (isl), producing consumer goods; using protectionist measures to groom in fant industries. 2. import substitution 2 (is2), producing capital goods and consumer durables. 3. export orientation i (eoi), producing labor-intensive light manufactured goods. 4. export orientation 2 (e02) and export orientation 2 complex (e02 complex), producing technology, capital, knowledge-intensive industries; de veloping services, esp. financial; undergoing technological and eco nomic restructuring. the economic take-off and rapid sustained growth of the asian nies took place during the stage of e01. but it does not imply that a developing country can leapfrog the import substitution stages all together. the ex perience of the asian nies, however, suggests that the is2 stage should be skipped. both taiwan and south korea went through is1 which certainly laid the foundation for their successful export-oriented growth. both tai wan and south korea however switched to e 0 1 after a short period of is2 during which serious difficulties were encountered. this was simply be cause comparative advantage had yet to be built up in the production of capital and technology intensive products. the experience of the asian edward k.y. chen nies suggests that such a stage of is2 development should only be at tempted after at stage of rapid growth under e 0 1 . hong kong and singa pore because of the small size of their domestic markets did not even go through is1, not to mention is2. but one must realize that hong kong and singapore are special rather than general cases. their long period of en trepot trade experience in international marketing serves the purpose of a substitute for is1 as a precondition for export-oriented growth. even if export-orientation is in theory a better development strategy, there is no assurance that a country adopting this policy will experience fast economic growth. on the basis of the five characteristics of the eco nomic growth of the asiannies we can argue that the success of an export oriented strategy depends on the right kind of economic policies, cultural environment and political institutions. it is therefore of no surprise to us that the economic success of the asian nies has been explained by many on the basis of right economic policies, by some on the basis of cultural values, and by others on the basis of political institutions. as can be expected, it did not take long for the neo-classical economists to realize that the economic success of the asian nies demonstrates a great victory of neo-classical economics which emphasizes automatic adjust ments and free market forces. it is true that the adoption of an export oriented industrialization strategy implies getting the prices right so that the products can be competitive in the world market. but it is not true that this can be achieved through automatic adjustments. the role of the government has been important in getting the prices right, in setting ob jectives, and in implementing policies. for example, monopolies have to be destroyed, labor and capital market imperfections have to be removed, overvaluation of exchange rates has to be corrected, trade restrictions have to be reduced, and incentives for exporting have to be established. thus, what is important is a kind of neo-classical interventionism rather than the invisible hand of the classical' school. but the experience of the asian nies does lend strong support to the classical and neo-classical conviction that competition is better than protection, and therefore export-oriented industrialization is better than import substitution. but it is certainly no easy task for a developing country to adopt export oriented industrialization at the early stage of development. as indicated earlier, the role of the government is important. and above all, the response of the people to government policies is even more crucial. if suc cessful economic development is as simple a matter as export-orientation copenhagen papers 4.89 12 east and southeast asia in the world economy: issues, problems and prospects and getting the prices right, there would have been very few low income i countries left to-day. besides economics, some begin to believe that there must be some non-economic elements in bringing about the economic success of the asian nies. the cultural factor would of course come to our mind. but as i have said the cultural commonality of the asian nies is confucian culture which for decades is accepted as an inhibiting rather i than moving force for economic development. thus, one has to have the courage and determination to challenge the academic giant, max weber, if i one attempts to associate the economic success of the asian nies with confucianism. the futurologist, herman kahn, was the first one who had i the courage to explicitly explain the economic success of east asia on the i basis of confucian ethics in his 1979 book. this was soon echoed by rode i i rick macfarquhar and moreover elaborated by peter berger in his 1983 ad i 1 dress at a conference in japan. philosophers, notably tu wei-ming and i i i historians like yu ying-shih have given the confucianism explanation of economic success in east asia further insights. following peter berger, one gets around weber's hypothesis by arguing that the old imperial or state confucianism has evolved gradually over time because of changing political, economic and social circumstances into a new form called vulgar or secular confucianism which is much more inducive to economic de velopment and the rise of modern capitalism. in essence, the culturalist school has emphasized the following aspects of confucianism: work ethics and self-discipline. hierarchy and obedience. respect for scholarship. familism. thriftiness. flexibility and adaptability. the adaptability of entrepreneurs within a confucian culture can be related to the world attitudes and the dimension of rationalization of con fucianism. confucianism is world affirmation in the evaluation of the world, uses adaption to the world as the method for pursuit of the highest good, and is cognitive with regard to the dimension of rationalization. christianity is on the other hand world abnegation, ethical and uses mastery of the world for pursuit of the highest good. most recently, political scientists have participated actively in the analy edward k.y. chen sis of the economic success of the asian nies from their point of view. the beginning of this trend can be traced to a paper by chalmers johnson presented at a conference in early 1984, johnson attempted to establish a link between political institutions and economic development. this sub ject of economics and politics is of course not new. but its application to east asia and johnson's conclusion that an autocratic government is in ducive to economic development are most interesting. it is argued that a development-oriented autocratic ))hard(( state is necessary for economic development because it provides a stable environment for investment and a machinery for the effective implementation of policies. besides these systematic economic, cultural and political theorizations of the economic success of the asian nies, there are also other less formal explanations which emphasize pre-conditions (i.e. japanese occupation in taiwan and south korea, british presence in hong kong and singapore), geographical location, country size, natural resource endowment, etc. however, while these factors might be of some significance, their domin ant role has largely been refuted on the basis of historical, empirical and theoretical analysis. the chen model the explanations i have just discussed in terms of economics, culture and politics suffer in my view from two weaknesses. first, each theory is a par tial explanation in the sense that it does not give due consideration to other factors. even if it does recognize the significance of other factors, no at tempts have been made to show the interactions. secondly, each theory is supposed to be universally true, applicable to all types and stages of eco nomic development. for example, if confucianism is inducive to eco nomic development, it does not matter whether it is import substitution or export-oriented industrialization. in this paper, a model which does not suffer from these two weaknesses is presented. it is an integrated or eclectic model which shows the impor tance of economic and non-economic factors and how these factors are inter-related. more importantly, it is argued that the take-off and the most rapid growth of the asian nies took place under e01, i.e. export-oriented industrialization on the basis of labor-intensive manufactured exports, and hence any development model explaining the economic success of the copenhagen papers 4 . 8 9 14 east and southeast asia in the world economy: issues, problems and prospects asian nies should be confined to the stage of e01. any attempt to over generalize will invaribly encounter serious difficulties. the starting point of this model is that in the stage of e01, the most im portant factors of production are entrepreneurship and labor. capital is of course necessary for any production, but is relatively less important be cause the scale of production is generally medium or small in the stage of e01. technology used is of the standardized category and production is not land-intensive because factories can be housed in multi-storey indus trial buildings. the characteristics of e01 can be summarized as (1) export ing labor-intensive manufactured products based on realizing the existing comparative advantage, (2) demand-determined export growth in the sense that exports react passively to what the markets want, (3) continuous export growth is sustained by a process of rapid adaptations of en trepreneurs resulting in rapid product diversification. figure 1 a nic model under e 0 3 development-oriented autocratic government i consistent economic investment economic controls pro-market pro-market policies i i over trade wage and monetary, public i private unions manpower fiscal, savings political enterprise policies and i exchange rate public po1l'"s ownership entrepreneurship 7 1 1 /i t adaptability t more educated t pursuit of to chtnges i wea!th i docile and prompt decisions disciplined i thriftiness in family firms i i i flexibiiity in industrious business practices i i private financing based on familism imperial confucianism edward ky. chen essentially, the success of e01 depends on the supply of a class of flexi ble and adaptable entrepreneurs, the supply of a class of skill and docile labor, and an adequate supply of capital and standardized technology. the structure of this model illustrated by figure 1 can be explained in terms of how the interplay of economic and non-economic factors facili tates the type of factor supplies which are essential for the success of e01. entrepreneurship 1. an autocratic government provides a stable political environment and a set of consistent economic policies for entrepreneurs to grow and to in vest. 2. neo-classical interventionism provides a framework of economic free dom and private enterprise system. 3. vulgarized confucianism gives rise to a class of entrepreneurs who are flexible and adaptable. the existence of family firms enables prompt decisions to be made. informal (very often verbal) contractual agree ment facilitate flexibility and confidentiality in business transactions. labor 1. only an autocratic government can effectively keep trade unions under control so that wage increases will not increase out of line with increases in labor productivity. 2. neo-classical interventionism provides a set of policies to ensure the labor market is working under competitive conditions and that no un realistic minimum wage laws are legislated. 3. confucian values such as self-discipline, obedience, commitment to work and family, old-age protection dependent on family ties, etc. give rise to an industrious, docile and productive labor force. moreover, the labor force of confucian societies has shown to have a higher educa tional attainment than that in other societies in the developing world. higher educational standards generally result in greater productivity and adaptability. capital 1. an autocratic government is in a better position to mobilize public sav ings through schemes such as the central provident fund, and to take copenhagen papers 4.89 16 east and southeast asia in the world economy: issues, problems and prospects i up public ownership in activities where large capital investment is re quired. an autocratic government is also in a better position to promote foreign investment by giving concessions to foreign investors in the ab sence of strong opposition parties. 2. neo-classical interventionism provides a set of competitive market, monetary, fiscal and exchange rate policies which are inducive to domestic saving and capital accumulation. 3. in a confucian society, thriftiness is a virtue. moreover, in a society where autocratic government prevails, the pursuit for political excel 1 lence is substituted by the pursuit for greater wealth and business excel i , lence. familism also facilitates the private means of financing invest i i ment through pooling resources together; such a means is already i adequate for the establishment of small and medium-sized firms. i i 4. lastly one would further argue that confucianism helps reinforce an i autocratic government and enhance the supply of able technocrats to the government for the effective implementation of neo-classical inter ventionist policies. prospects the asian nies are now in the transition from e 0 1 to the next stage of de velopment, e02 and e02 complex in which capital, technology and knowledge are intensive, produced for both exports and domestic con sumption. at the same time, other developing countries in the asian pa cific region have taken over some of the e01 industries and have increas ingly embarked on the export-oriented industrialization. nonetheless, these developing countries (asean-4 and china) have also at the same time engaged in import substitution and the development of agriculture and agro-business industries. this is understandable because of their greater abundance in natural resources than the nies. the questions that remain are (1) whether the asian nies would be able to maintain the past record of rapid growth in their transition to e02 andlor e02 complex, and (2) whether the other developing countries in the asian pacific region can still count on export-oriented industrialization despite the fact that markets in developed countries will be increasingly difficult to penetrate. with regard to the asian nies' transition to a higher stage of economic development, one can certainly be optimistic, despite the fact that e02 edward k.y. chen is very different from e 0 1 and in consequence the environment inducive to rapid growth under e 0 1 may no longer be favorable to economic growth under e021e02 complex. the basic differences between e 0 1 and e021e02 complex are summarized in table 2. table 2 . e01 vs e02 export labor-intensive light manufac tured products based om existing com parative advantage growth is largely demand-determind growth sustained by adaptions (products & techniques) tourism might be of some importance capital goods and intermediate products mainly imported export capitalltechnologylknowledge intensive light and heavy manufactured products based on the acquisition of dynamic comparative advantage growth is substantially supply determined growth sustained by rapid transforma tions (industries and technology) rising importance of the service sector, especially financial services some degree of secondary import substitution in the new stage of development, a different type of neo-classical inter ventionism is necessary for the acquisition of an economy's dynamic com parative advantage; a class of entrepreneurs of a different calibre is called for to face the problems imposed by a type of economic growth which is based on the supplier's ability to direct the market; and there is the need for a class of entrepreneurs who are not only able to adapt but also to create and transform. technological creation and transformation and highly trained and educated manpower will become essential for the second stage of export-oriented industrialization. if all these are true, one can no longer have as much optimism as before about the economic future of the asian nies. for instance, confucianism may be too soft a cultural system to effect transformation; the autocratic political institution may be too closed a system to formulate and implement policies for the emergence of a complex industrial structure. but we must not fall victim to such a static analysis. the whole world is constantly changing, not to mention that the asian nies have been most dynamic and resilient. we anticipate that political institutions will change and cultural systems will undergo evolutionary processes when the copenhagen papers 4.89 18 east and southeast asia in the world economy: issues, problems and prospects economy moves towards a higher stage of development. the political democratization and economic liberalization movements in south korea and taiwan are part of this dynamic process. if confucianism has already evolved once from imperial confucianism to vulgar confucianism, there is every reason to believe that it will undergo another evolution to cope with the changing needs of a higher level of export-oriented growth. thus, from a dynamic point of view there is no reason not to believe that the rapid economic growth of the asian nies can be sustained in the future. it is more difficult to predict whether domestic reforms and changes in other developing countries in the asian pacific region will continue in the right direction to cope with their export-oriented industrialization. but generally speaking, one should have an optimistic outlook for the asian pacific economy as a whole. this optimism is usually based on the predic tion of the pacific century. by the pacific century, we mean a shift of the world's centre of economic activities away from the two coasts of the atlan tic to the two coasts of the pacific. while the prediction of the pacific cen tury is now so widely accepted and indeed many people believe that the pacific century has already started, very few have given convincing rea sons to support why the pacific century is coming. as stated above, the economic success of the asian pacific region in the last two decades is largely based on export-oriented industrialization. the continued eco nomic prosperity in this region therefore hinges on whether export oriented industrialization can be spread out to all over the region. in other words, we want to ask the question whether export-oriented industrializa tion is a zero-sum game. some economists believe that export-led growth is a zero-sum game, confining to only a few dynamic economies such as the asian nies. the world market, especially in the present age of preva lent protectionism, cannot support the economic growth of all countries in this region based on manufactured exports. it is, however, comforting to know that in the past few years new de velopments have taken place in this region such that export-oriented industrialization in the region as a whole may not be a zero-sum game. for example, thailand and malaysia have been growing at relatively high rates on the basis of their more outward looking policies, and yet, there has been no indication that the economic growth of the asian nies has in conse quence slowed down. the four major factors explaining a changing inter national and regional economic environment for the possibility of a posi tive sum game for export-led economic growth are: (1) an increasing edward k.y. chen degree of complementarity among countries in this region in their indus trial production, (2) increased intra-regional trade, (3) increased intra regional investment, and (4) increased opportunity for greater regional economic cooperation. flying geese pattern of economic development the increasing degree of complementarity in industrial production among countries in this region can best be explained on the basis of the so-called "flying geese" hypothesis. in today's context, we can explain this hypothesis in terms of a group of countries in this region flying together in layers, signifying the different stages of economic development achieved in different countries. the idea is that countries in the higher layer will pass on their out-dated industries to the next layer of countries because of changing comparative advantage over time. today, this division of labor is not only horizontal in the sense that the entire industry or product is passed on, but also vertical in the sense that the sub-processes may be passed on to other countries in the production of a particular product. in consequence, a regional product is often produced in the sense that the fi nal product goes through production processes in many countries in the region. figure 2 flying geese hypothesis australia , i japan new zealand a / i south korea taiwan e/ hong kong singapore / i i thailand , / malaysia phillippines i indonesia 1 1 pakistan ' india sri lanka bangladesh the leader of the flying geese is undoubtedly japan which is followed by the asian nies. of the asean-4, malaysia and thailand not only have a copenhagen papers 4 . 8 9 20 east and southeast asia in the world economy: issues, problems and prospects higher per capita income level than the philippines and indonesia, but also a much better economic and political infrastructure for industrializa tion. in the 1950s, the philippines had the greatest degree of industrializa tion but has been falling behind the others in the course of time. china is not a goose but a huge bird flying side by side with the geese. china has the potential of complementing and competing with the various layers of the flying geese at various levels of industrial production. south asia as a group is far behind the others in the level of development and the degree of industrialization. but india is in much a similar situation as china. it is a big country and has the capability to compete with the developed and more advanced developing countries in many capital and technology in tensive productions, and, at the same time, has many labor intensive productions competing with the least advanced developing countries. in dustries can be classified into early (food, textile a n d leather goods), mid dle (non-metallic minerals, rubber products, wood products, chemical and petroleum refining) and late (for example, clothing, consumer durables, capital and intermediate goods). now, we can add o n top of these three stages of industries the fourth stage, viz. high-tech industries which en compass industries associated with information technology, hi-technol ogy and material sciences. we can envision a flying geese pattern as depicted in figure 2 and table 3. china is at present in the early, middle, table 3. stages of industrial growth i n asian pacific countries country indonesia philippines china thailand malaysia hong kong south korea taiwan singapore japan stage 1986 2000 early to middle middle to late middle late early, middle and late late to high-tech middle late to high-tech middle to late late to high-tech late late to high-tech late to high-tech high-tech late to high-tech high-tech late to high-tech high-tech high-tech high-tech and late stages and will be in a late to high-tech stage in the year 2000. south korea and taiwan are now ahead of hong kong and singapore in technological capability, and will certainly attain the high-tech stage by the year 2000. it is expected that most of the countries in this region, even edward k.y. chen the less rapidly growing ones, will be able to reach the late stage of indus trialization by the year 2000. we can then see that different countries in this region will engage in different stages of industrial development. even for countries in the same stage of development, specialization is normally possible for achievement of complementarity. when one country gradu ates in a particular type of production or production process, countries in the next layer will take it over. as a result, the degree of complementarity among countries in the region will increase and the extent of wasteful com petition be reduced. let us take the case of the manufacture of semi-con ductors. in the past few years, a very sophisticated pattern of specialization has emerged. taiwan and south korea have specialized in wafer fabrica tion, a production process which is highly capital and technology inten sive. hong kong and singapore have become specialized in the design and testing stages which are highly skill and equipment intensive; on the other hand, the philippines, thailand and malaysia concentrate in the as sembling stage which is highly labor intensive. intra-regional trade the limitation imposed by overseas markets is certainly the most signifi cant obstacle to export-led economic growth. while it is true that the ex pansion of world trade has slowed down and the extent of protectionism has increased in most of the developed countries, it is however reassuring to observe that intra-regional trade in the asian pacific region has in creased significantly in the past few years. in this connection, the follow ing factors will help to enhance further intra-regional trade in the future. first, the intra-regional market has become larger as a result of the in creased income level in the asian nies, the opening up of china, and the restructuring of the japanese economy. the aggregate gnp of the 4 asian nies, china and asean-4 will soon come to about one-half of japan's and should therefore not be underestimated. while the per capita income level of china is very low at only about us$300 and the potential of the china market has proved to be a myth rather than reality in the past two hundred years or so, the purchasing power of china's one billion people should now no longer be neglected. this is because the nation-wide average in come is misleading as china is a very large country. along the coast and in the more developed areas, per capita income is in fact very much within the range of the middle income countries in the world bank classification. for example, many areas along the coast now enjoy a per capita in copenhagen papers 4 . 8 9 22 east and southeast asia in the world economy; issues, problems and prospects come of more than us$ 1000. also, china's consumers are very name brand and quality conscious. in addition, china has recently opened up its domestic market for foreign production in china. as long as foreign firms operate in china on the basis of converting the local currency at the market rather than the official rate, they have little problem in repatriating its profit out of china. the japanese market is of course huge in terms of the purchasing power. the problems in the past were related to the in ward looking attitude of their consumers and the highly restrictive policies imposed on imports in the form of harsh requirements on standards and specifications. the multi-layer distribution system in japan has also caused foreign products having no easy entry to the japanese market. however, the whole situation has changed very drastically. since 1986, af ter the appreciation of the yen and the recommendations made in the maekawa report, japan has switched from its conventional export-led eco nomic growth to a new form of domestic demand-oriented type of eco nomic growth. it seems that japan has been able to cope very well with this structural change and it is anticipated that this policy of japan will con tinue. table 4 gives some evidence on the increased import of manufac tures by japan in the past two to three years. table 5 further shows the drastically increased penetration ratios of some selected products im ported by japan. secondly, besides lack of complementarity in the demand for industrial products, an important reason for the lack of growth in intra-regional trade in the past was the protectionist trade policy adopted by the asian de veloping countries themselves, especially towards labor intensive con sumer products. it is, however, noticed in recent years that a movement of significant liberalization of trade has occured in many of the asian pacific countries. in the case of taiwan and south korea where huge trade sur pluses have been generated in recent years, measures have been taken to lower their tariff rates and liberalize many other trade restrictions. even in the case of the philippines, thailand and indonesia, we also observe the undertaking of similar measures to remove trade barriers. it is therefore anticipated that in the future, intraregional trade will increase and the de pendence of asian developing countries on western markets will decline gradually in relative terms. intra-regional investment generally speaking, empirical evidence suggests that foreign direct invest edward k.y. chen table 4. import of japan by commodity and region value (million us $) 1985 1986 1987 from asian nies total manufactured textiles chemicals metal prod. machinery others from asean-4 total manufactured textiles chemicals metal prod. machinery others from world total manufactured textiles chemicals metal prod. machinery others source: japan tariff association, the summary report on trade of japan (april, 1988). ment or transnational corporations have played a positive role in the eco nomic development of developing countries in the asian pacific region. traditionally, foreign direct investment in this region comes mainly from the developed countries in the west. later on, japanese investment, of course, became important. most recently, the asian nies have increas ingly become important foreign investors in other developing countries in the region. in fact, the direct investment of japan and the nies in this region has been a major factor bringing about a sophisticated sub-regional division of labor in industrial production in this region. table 6 shows the increasing amount of intra-regional foreign direct investment in this region with special reference to the japanese and nies investment. although there are at times complaints about the reluctance of japan to transfer tech nology, the importance of japanese investment is undeniable. it is copenhagen papers 4.89 24 east and southeast asia in the world economy: issues, problems and prospects table 4. import of japan by commodity and region share of commodity (+) increasing rate (+) 1985 1986 1987 1985-86 1986-87 table 5. penetration rate of selected products into the japanese market 80 .... 85 86 87 photo film auto tyre fraize (excl. nc) lathe 35mm camera calculator telephone radio radio casette b&w tv vtr electric fan note: penetration rate = importsidomestic demand (quantum basis) edward k.y. chen table 6. direct iizvestment to anies and asean from japan and anies one million us dollars at current prices countries of origin host year total japan subrep. taisingahong countries total of wan pore kong anics korea rep, of 1984 422 165 4 4 korea 1985 532 360 13 13 1986 354 138 13 13 1987 1,060 494 69 2 24 43 taiwan 1984 519 114 total 1985 go64 616 anies 1986 1,606 618 (n.a.) (n.a.) (n.a.) (n.a.) (n.a.) i h k . 1987 3.180 1.232 philli1984 234 34 13 1 2 10 pines 1985 132 26 6 1 2 3 1986 78 22 7 '7 1987 137* 24* 20" 1" 4* i* 14" malaysia 1984 117 29 23 3 16 4 1985 131 33 30 4 19 7 1986 203 23 49 1 2 35 11 1987 298 92 112 1 47 53 11 thailand 1984 407 109 64 2 47 15 1985 161 56 ill 6 t 4 1 24 1986 262 116 56 5 15 36 1987 .686* 295* 139" 8* 126* 4* 1" indonesia 1984 1,107 112 55 3* 4" 48" 1985 859 127 102 52* 50" 1986 826 329 159 13" 70* i* 75" 1987 1,468 524 283 23 125 1 134 sub1984 1,865 284 155 3 6 69 77 total 1985 1,283 242 127 56 7 i 2 0 84 ase1986 1,369 490 271 14 77 51 129 an 1987 2,589 935 554 33 302 59 160 1984 3,432 641 total 1985 2,887 858 note: * denotes "estimates" sources: republic of korea: approval basis, ministry of finance taiwan area: investment commision, ministry of economic affairs singapore: investment commitment basis, economic delveopment board philippines: approval basis, board of investment malaysia: approval basis, malaysian industrial development authority thailand: net flow of direct investment, bank of thailand indonesia: approval basis, board of investment copenhagen papers 4.89 26 east and southeast asia 11-1 the world economy: issues, problems and prospects however often overlooked that the asian nies are also very important agents of technology transfer in this region. the technology transferred by the nies is probably more appropriate for other developing countries in this region. as a result of the changing pattern of comparative advantage and the need of the nies to phase out and relocate many of the conven tional industries, foreign direct investment of the nies in other asian de veloping countries will surely increase over time. similarly, japan has to relocate many of its industries as a result of the drastic appreciation of the yen and also to recycle its trade surpluses. regional economic cooperation the movement of economic cooperation in the asian pacific region started relatively late, compared with other regions. today, the only formal or ganization is the asean consisting of just six member countries. in the 1980s, other informal economic cooperation organizations have emerged. these include the pecc (pacific economic cooperation conference) and the pbec (the pacific basin economic council). the former is too large an organization that it has remained to be an issue deliberating rather than policy formulating body. the latter is too much a business oriented organi zation. the lack of economic cooperation in the asian pacific region in the past should not be a surprise to us in view of the fact that there were very significant differences among countries in this region in terms of history, culture, economic strategies adopted, economic system, and the level of income and the stage of economic development. in addition, for those countries which are export-oriented, the external relations are usually ex tra-regional biased because of the dominance of western trading partners or because of the relationship with their former sovereign countries. significant changes have however occured in the past few years. nota bly, a tendency in the convergence of different economic systems and de velopment strategies adopted can be observed. specifically, we observe a trend of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization in most countries in this region. at the same time, an increasing number of countries have switched to outward looking policies of industrialization. as a result, the differences in the type and level of economic development have become smaller among countries. with the development of a sub-regional division of labor and an increased intra-regional trade and investment, the degree of inter-dependence among countries has become much greater. above all, the asian pacific developing countries are facing a common external edward k.y. chen economic threat. the emergence of greater protectionism against the ex port of developing countries, and regionalism in the form of trading blocks has made it necessary for the asian developing countries to have a closer cooperation and coordination among themselves so that their bargaining power can be enhanced when they have to deal with such trading blocks. it is therefore anticipated that a greater degree of economic cooperation will occur in this region. some kind of formal organizations consisting most of western pacific rim countries and focussing on trade and invest ment issue will emerge. at the same time, taiwan, mainland china and hong kong will become a de facto economic block which can be labelled as "the greater china': in view of their rapidly increasing economic inter action in trade and investment and their high degree of complementarity in their economic resources. in consequence, asian pacific countries as a whole will be able to play a much more important part not only in interna tional trade and investment, but also in the coordination of macroeco nomic policy for the international economy. final remarks on the basis of the analyses presented above, there is little question that the global and regional economic environment is favorable to the further rapid economic growth and development in the asian pacific region as a whole and in the asia-10 in particular. what is still in question is perhaps whether domestic developments will continue and move in the right direc tions. edward k. y. chen is professor and director of the centre of asian studies, university of hong kong. references b. balassa, t h e n e w l y industrializing countries i n t h e world economy (new york: pergamon press, 1981). p. berger, "secularity: east and west," in cultural identity and modernization i n asian countries: proceedings of kokugakuin university centennial sympo s i u m (tokyo: institute for japanese culture and classics, kokugakuin university, 1983). copenhagen papers 4 . 8 9 28 east and southeast asla in the world economy. issues, problems and prospects m. bienefeld, "dependency and the newly industrializing countries: towards a reappraisal," in dudley seers, ed., dependency theoy: a cri tical reassessment (london: frances pinter, 1981). e.k.y. chen, "the empirical relevancy of the endogenous technical progress function," kyklos, no. 2 (1976). e.k.y. chen, "factor inputs, total factor productivity and economic growth: the asian experience," the developing economies (june 1977). e.k.y. chen, "domestic saving and capital inflow in some asian coun tries: a time-series study," asian survey (july 1977). e.k.y. chen, hyper-growth in asian economies (london: macmillan, 1979). e.k.y. chen, "export expansion and economic growth in some asian countries: a simultaneous-equation model," in r.c.o. matthews, ed., measurement, history, and factors of economic grozvth (london: macmillan, 1980). e.k.y. chen, "the newly industrializing countries in asia: growth, ex perience and prospects," in r.a. scalapino, ed., asian growth (berkeley, institute of east asian studies, 1985). e.k.y. chen, "export-led economic development in chinese societies: the existence and transferability of the nic model," paper presented at the symposium on economic development in chinese societies, hong kong, december 1986; to be published by the hong kong university press. e.k.y. chen, "economic development and technological revolution," in productivity through people in the age of changing technology (tokyo: asian productivity organization, 1987). e.k.y. chen, "industrial development. foreign direct investment and economic cooperation: a study of the electronics indu-stry in the asian pacific," paper presented at escap seminar economic co-operation through foreign investment, bangkok, may 1987. edward k y . chen e.k.y. chen, "the newly industrializing countries as exporters of tech nology in asia-pacific," in fu-chen lo & kamal salih, eds., the challenge of asia-pacific co-operation (adipa, kuala lumpur, 1987). e.k.y. chen, "economic development under export-oriented industriali zation: the asian experience," paper presented at conference on com parative development experiences in asia and latin america, april 1988, east-west center, honolulu. e.k.y. chen, "the changing role of the asian nics in the asian pacific region towards the year 2000," in m. shinohara & fu-chen lo, eds., global adjustment and the future of asian-pacific economy (institute of developing economics, japan, 1989). v. corbo, et. al., eds., export-oriented development strategies: the success of the five nics (boulder: westview, 1985). w. galenson, foreign trade and investment: economic growth in the newly in dustrializing asian countries (madison: university of wisconsin press, 1985). s. haggard, "the nics in the international system," world politics (january 1986). g.l. hicks & s.c. redding, "the story of the east asian economic mira cle: the culture connection," euro-asia business review, no. 4 (1983). r. hofheinz & k.e. calder, the eastasia edge (new york: basic books, 1982). c. johnson, miti and the japanese miracle (stanford: stanford university press, 1982). c. johnson, "political institutions and economic performance: the governmentbusiness relationship in japan, south korea, and taiwan," in r.a. scalapino, ed., asian economic development (1985). h. kahn, world economic development: 1979 and beyond (boulder: westview copenhagen papers 4.89 30 east and southeast asia in the world economy: issues, problems and prospects press, 1979). w. kraus & w. lutkenhorst, the economic development of the pacific basin (st. martin's press, new york, 1986). s. kuznets, "economic growth and income inequality," american eco nomic reviezu (march 1955). r. macfarquhar, "the post-confucian challenge," the economist, febru ary 9, 1980. m. morishima, why has japan "succeeded"? (london: cambridge univer sity press, 1981). g. ranis, "can the east asian model of development be generalized: a comment," world development, no. 4 (1985). j. riedel, "economic development in east asia: doing what comes naturally?," paper presented at anu industrialization workshop, 1985. tu wei-ming, confucian ethics today: the singapore challenge (singapore: federal publications, 1984). l. turner & n. mcmullen, the nezvly industrializing countries: trade and ad justment (london: george allen & unwin, 1982). m. weber, the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (trans. talcott par sons) (new york: schribner, 1930; german original l9o5). vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. nationalism and national self-assertion in the people's republic of china: state patriotism versus popular nationalism? abstract nationalism and national self-assertion have been core values of the chinese communist party throughout its history and also represent a key narrative of chinese history in the 20th century, although the social bases from which the nationalism derives and the manner in which this nationalism is expressed have changed over time. from the 1990s onwards, the party-state's preferred discourse on nationalism has been couched in terms of patriotism, while a popular nationalism has emerged, which at times goes beyond and challenges that of the party-state. the implications of this are addressed in the present pa per with regard to the prc's relations with taiwan and japan and with regard to the debate on ideology and asian values. it is argued that rising popular nationalism increasingly challenges state autonomy in the first two areas, but tends to be supportive of the state with regard to the third. introduction national self-assertion has been a core value of chinese political elites since before the formation of the people's republic in 1949. however, only since the 1990s has the chinese state been able to exert sustained influence over regional and global politics. the 1990s witnessed an in crease in the economic, political and military capabilities of the chinese state, together with the emergence of a discourse of popular national ism in china which at times goes beyond the aims and objectives of the chinese communist party (ccp). nationalism is understood here to be a series of domestic political and social forces and sentiments, whereas national self-assertion is the translation of those forces into state policy and state action. while the ccp has always sought to mobilize nationalism to secure its legitimacy, the new 'popular' nationalism is phi1 deans increasingly a constraint on, and a potential threat to, its leadership. in the context of self-assertion, this leads to a reduction of state autonomy in a range of areas, including policy toward taiwan, the united states and japan. one area where self-assertion is less problematic for the ccp is the chinese challenge to the liberal ideology of key international financial institutions and the universal aspirations of the human rights regime. what has emerged in recent years is a tension between the state nationalist project and the aspirations of popular nationalism, and the key issue for the future is whether the 'fourth generation' of leaders under president hu jintao will act as a moderating influence on growing popular demands for china to assert itself, or find themselves forced to be its representatives-the 'fourth' representation. this paper locates the tradition of chinese self-assertion through a consideration of the nationalist discourses that have emerged in china in the 20th century. it is argued that a consideration of contending national isms offers one possible explanatory narrative for political change and action in china. it is suggested that nationalism in china has emerged as a response to imperialism and modernity and can be useful categorized into two discrete forms. on the one side is a conservative nationalism, rooted in the cities and amongst the chinese bourgeoisie, which sought inspiration from western liberal and democratic thinking. on the other is a radical nationalism, rooted in the countryside and amongst the peasantry and working classes and seeking inspiration from the western tradition. these two nationalist responses to modernity coalesced in the chinese civil war, which saw the communists victorious on the chinese mainland (deans 2005). subsequently, chinese nationalism in the prc remains dominated by state objectives because of the pervasive control of society that resulted from the authoritarian leninist structure of the prc. however, the economic and political reforms in china since 1978 have seen the ccp transform itself into a conservative nationalist party. so while radical nationalism has withered, the ccp now confronts a popular nationalism from chinese society which increasingly acts as a constraint on its ability to pursue rational and coherent strategies. this paper addresses three areas where the changing dynamics within chinese nationalism are having an impact on chinese self assertion: the relationship with taiwan, relations with japan, and the prc's relationship with international regimes and organizations. with regard to taiwan, it is argued that the 'wait and see' policy pursued by the chinese leadership since the late 1990s may be challenged by growing popular demands for the taiwan issue to be resolved, and 46 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 nationalism and national self-assertion in the people's republic of china the chinese leadership's ability to compromise with the taiwanese authorities is constrained by popular sentiment. a similar argument is developed with regard to sino-japanese relations, where strong anti japanese sentiment in china already places limits on the ccp's ability to improve relations with japan for the sake of the economic reform programme. popular demands for greater national self-assertion against japan threaten the ability of the ccp to pursue a rational and mature relationship. finally, self-assertion is less problematic with regard to the prc's participation in international regimes, although this may lead to a degree of conflict with other countries, particular the united states of america and member countries of the european union. the chinese government's emphasis on the principle of sovereignty and its criticism of the western approach to human rights and the economic ideologies of some international financial institutions garner domestic support from important sectors within china, in addition to support from developing countries in asia and africa. the ongoing dynamics of chinese nationalism do not lend themselves to straightforward categorization. data are contested and interpretations have become highly politicized. this is due to a number of factors, such as the pressures of the cold war on western scholarship or because of ongoing debates regarding china's changing political and economic significance since the end of the cold war, and the implications of this for europe, north america and china's asian neighbours. the analysis here tries to recentre china within discourses on chinese history and nationalism, as suggested by paul cohen (cohen 1984). this discourse will be straightforward (although not necessarily uncontroversial) to most readers familiar with the contemporary scholarship on chinese history (pepper 2004), although such discussion rarely features in the literature on china during the cold war (saull2001; westad 2000). this paper suggests one possible heuristic narrative which identifies a spec trum of nationalist responses. moreover it suggests that political agency focuses these into two dominant strands: a conservative and a radical nationalism, which comprise the two key forms of chinese response to modernity in the 20th century. in turn this narrative helps elucidate issues bound up with contemporary chinese nationalism. phi1 deans nationalism and legitimacy in the reform period: state patriotism versus popular nationalism since the foundation of the prc, the ccp has derived a key source of its legitimacy from its nationalist credentials and its pursuit of a nation alist project. of course, the ccp's legitimacy derived from more than just this source its programmes of social and economic reform were also vital but these programmes were inseparable from the national ist agenda (pepper 2004). from the early 1950s until the 1980s the ccp routinely mobilized nationalism as a vehicle to maintain its power and achieve its objectives. the prc in this period (with the possible excep tion of the chaotic first two years of the cultural revolution, 1966-68) was a strongly authoritarian leninist regime in which the party-state aspired to exercise almost total control over society. however, by the late 1970s and following the death of mao, the ccp faced increasing problems with its legitimacy. the mistakes within the great leap forward and the cultural revolution, the death of the charismatic revolutionary leader, and the visible reconfigurations of the prc's international relations all combined to undermine the authority of the ccp. deng xiaoping's response was to begin a series of political and economic reforms to reinvigorate the economic credentials of the ccp. while economic legitimacy was the key strategy for deng, appeals to patriotism remained important throughout the 1980s, and pye, zheng and others have argued that nationalism increasingly replaces marx ism-leninism as the underlying ideology of ccp rule (pye 1996; zheng 1999). nonetheless, as the leninist authoritarianism of the mao period declined, the ccp faced increasing challenges from chinese society, especially during periods of economic difficulty. the ccp leadership continued to appeal to chinese nationalism (minzuzhuyi) to legitimize its role, using state media and the education system to promote a particular vision of china and its future. however, disagreements within the leadership over emphasis and tensions over nationalist aspirations within the chinese periphery (most notably in taiwan and tibet) saw a shift towards a more inclusive patriotism (aiguozhuyi). patriotism in this context is inspired by a 'love of country' that is accessible to all citizens of the state, whereas nationalism is typi cally a more narrow ideology centred on a specific ethnic group. in this way, 'patriotism' should be seen as the officially sanctioned discourse of nationalism in china (zheng 1999: 88). immediately after the tur moil of the student-led reform movement in 1989, the ccp under the direction of jiang zemin and li ruihuan initiated a series of patriotic 48 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 nationalism and national self-assertion in the people's republic of china campaigns which focused on china's past humiliations and on the role of the ccp in defending china (zhongyao wenxian zhaibian 1990). as xu demonstrates, anniversaries of 'public humiliations' such as the opium wars were commemorated with a very high profile by the senior leader ship (xu 2001), and this culminated in 1994 with the publication of the 'outline for the implementation of patriotic education' (renmin ribao, 6 september 1994). significantly, nationalism and patriotism became the rallying cry of those who challenged the ccp on a range of issues. in the 1980s many chinese intellectuals paid great attention to western countries as po tential models for china, and there was widespread criticism of many aspects of china's past as being a hindrance to china's development. however, the 1990s saw the emergence of a growing rejection of the west and western models and focus on 'chinese' solutions to china's problems (xu 2001). the student-led reform movement of 1989 is per haps the turning point in the emergence of a new, popular nationalist discourse in the prc to exist outside the control of the communist party. the excellent analysis of china's new nationalism by peter hays gries shows how growing nationalist sentiment in chinese society during the 1990s increasingly became a problem for the chinese leadership (gries 2004). the mid-1990s saw a growing expression of popular nationalism through the publication of books such as song e t al.'s zhongguo keyi shuo ' bu ' [the china that can say 'no'] (song et al. 1996) and the widespread use of the internet as a vehicle for discussion by chinese nationalists (deans 2004b). while the ccp has continued to mount patriotic cam paigns and engage in the promotion of nationalism as a mechanism for promoting legitimacy, a popular nationalist discourse has increasingly offered a challenge to the ccp, as was seen in popular reaction to the dispute with japan over control of the diaoyutai/senkaku islands, the bombing of the chinese embassy in belgrade, and the death of a chinese pilot following a collision with an american spy plane (gries 2004). what is interesting about the prc is that the end of the cold war, an event that dominates the politics and international relations of europe and north america, is relatively unimportant with regard to china's relations with other asian countries. it is significant mainly in the context of the prc-usa relationship, but the fundamental shift in the prc's relations with other asian countries takes place in the 1970s. there has been a tendency in the literature to overstate the significance of the end of the cold war for the prc. in the 1990s it has been the internal dvnam ics of the reform process and the unresolved tensions within chinese nationalism, rather than change in the international system, that has had most significance for chinese self-assertion. complementarity between the economic goals of the reform pro gramme and national self-assertion is not guaranteed. the greatest ten sions exist when more narrowly defined nationalist objectives conflict with the wider economic priorities of the reform programme. this is visible in a number of policy areas, including the prc's approach to cross-strait relations and bilateral relations between the prc and the united states and japan. conflicts exist in the chinese leadership over the relative emphasis that should be placed on national self-assertion and economic growth, and these tensions, combined with growing popular nationalist aspirations, may significantly hinder the autonomy of the chinese state to pursue rational and coherent strategies in this regard. the chinese state remains very powerful, but it is no longer able to exercise the all-pervasive power of chinese society that it enjoyed be fore the start of the reform programme in 1978. the reform programme has seen a gradual and ongoing reduction in both state autonomy (the ability of the central government to make planning decisions without excessive or undue influence over these decisions) and state capacity (the ability to physically implement a decision once it is taken, i.e. to enforce the law, make local authorities follow central directives and to extract, regulate, legitimate and coerce) (deans 2004a). as was shown in 1989, when faced with serious levels of unrest, the ccp is able and willing to use lethal force to ensure its continuing rule, but the costs of this are well understood by the leadership. the costs must be counted not just in human terms, but in potential damage to the party's cred ibility, economic costs in terms of the impact of falling investment and possible sanctions, and the damage done to the prc's international reputation and prestige and pursuit of a peaceful and stable interna tional environment. maintaining high levels of surveillance and control over society, especially in the context of new forms of media such as the internet, is expensive and possibly unsustainable (deans 2004b). the senior chi nese leadership fears that public pressure over an ostensible 'patriotic' concern-such as the desire for national reunification with taiwan or holding japan to account for its past abuses of china-may result in direct attacks on say, american or japanese interests in the prc. even more troubling, the criticism could be directed at the ccp's handling of these events, and snowball into mass anti-government demonstrations that mobilize nationalism as a mechanism to attack the ccp. controlling 50 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 nationalism and national self-assertion in the people's republic of china and policing this kind of unrest is possible in the short term, but the mediumto long-term costs could be highly damaging, especially if, as in 1989, the protestors seek legitimacy though appeals to nationalism. it is in this area that state patriotism could clash with popular nationalism, and where societal demands for greater self-assertion by the chinese state could lead to conflict, both within the prc and between the prc and other members of international society. self-assertion and the unresolved civil war: cross-strait relations there is little doubt that tensions exist between, on the one hand, the ccp's use of nationalism and patriotism and the objectives of the eco nomic reform programme and, on the other, the calls for a peaceful and stable international environment to foster china's development. these tensions are manifest in a number of policy areas, particularly in the cross-strait relationship with taiwan, where the unresolved chinese civil war continues to challenge the ccp's legitimacy, albeit in new ways. the recovery of taiwan is of fundamental importance to the nationalist project of the ccp. indeed, reunification with taiwan represents the key remaining component of the ambition of national reunification and bringing down the curtain on the 'century of shame and humiliation' that the chinese people suffered at the hands of western and japanese imperialism (deans 2005). prc policy toward taiwan has undergone significant shifts since 1949, and the key strategy at present appears to be one of attempting to lock the taiwanese economy into the chinese developmental trajectory while maintaining a hard line on taiwan's in ternational status. taiwan has become a major investor into the prc, and a vibrant and dynamic economic relationship has developed over the last 15 years. however, the emergence of a separatist taiwanese nationalism challenges the overarching ccp objectives, and the chinese leadership's response to the changes on taiwan could threaten the key aspects of the reform process by generating a regional military conflict. cross-strait relations from the early 1990s to the present demonstrate an intrinsic contradiction. by most quantitative measures, taiwan and the chinese mainland have never been closer. trade, investment and ex change of peoples across the strait have boomed since official restrictions on indirect trade and travel were lifted. there is more exchange across the taiwan strait today than at any time in the past-whether compared to when taiwan was on the periphery of the qing empire or when the phi1 deans island was a colony of japan. added to this, the economic differences between taiwan and the wealthier parts of the prc such as shanghai and guangdong are far less apparent than they were when cross-strait exchanges resumed in 1988. however, by most qualitative measures the two sides have never been further apart. although the economic system in the prc increasingly resembles the strong-state capitalist system of taiwan, the political systems register a strong divide, with an increas ingly democratic taiwan offering a contrast to the soft authoritarianism of the prc. most importantly in the context of chinese nationalism, the political differences between the chinese leadership in beijing and the current democratic progressive party regime of chen shui-bian have never been greater. in particular, a growing number of people on taiwan no longer identify themselves with china (or, at least, the prc's vision of china) and there is a growing sympathy for the idea of establishing an independent taiwanese state. the conservative nationalism of the chiang kai-shek and chiang ching-kuo eras has given way in the 1990s to an assertive taiwanese nationalism which has seen identity politics hijack the emerging democratic institutions and electoral discourse (shih 2003a). political competition in taiwan has been increasingly defined around the dynamics of taiwanese identity and the future status of the island vis-2-vis its relationship with the people's republic. for the ccp the national mission of reunification is central to its le gitimacy, and taiwan is the most important element in this programme. while the taiwan issue was peripheral to ccp concerns before it came to power, since 1949 it has repeatedly made public claims that taiwan and the chinese mainland will be reunified. the official position is clear and direct: the chinese government and people absolutely have the determination and ability to safeguard china's sovereignity and territorial integrity, and will never tolerate, condone or remain indifferent to the reslization of any scheme to divide china. (the taiwan question and reunification of china 1993) any survey of chinese government statements and announcements on the taiwan question makes it clear that the issue is of the highest importance to the chinese leadership and that all methods, including the use of military force, will be used to prevent taiwanese independence or to ensure eventual reunification. in 1995 and 1996 the chinese leadership found it necessary to engage in a series of military exercises to demonstrate to both the taiwan and the united states the seriousness with which the ccp regarded the question of reunification (zhao 1999). however, despite its occasional martial public rhetoric, since the 1996 crisis the chinese leadership has followed a passive 52 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 nationalism and national self-assertion in the people's republic of china policy of 'wait and see' toward taiwan (zhao 2003) and has avoided pro voking pro-independence sentiment on taiwan. the 'wait and see' policy and attempts at accommodation by the ccp have continued in the face of concerted efforts by former president lee teng-hui and then by president chen shui-bian to delay, stall or derail attempts at restarting the dialogue across the strait that began in the early 1990s (deans 2005). however the extension of the discourse on patriotism to hong kong, and the use of the term 'unpatriotic' being applied to critics of beijing, have generated concerns in both hong kong and taiwan over the use of this agenda to define the politically acceptable and unacceptable (kyodo, 13 february 2004). while the senior leadership of the ccp has pursued a cautious strategy toward taiwan, it has found itself confronted with growing dissatisfac tion at the speed and pace of the quest for reunification. for popular nationalists in the prc the taiwan issue brings together all the key ele ments of the 'century of shame1-china's weakness in the 19th century, japanese imperialism, and us interventionism in the cold war. added to this are the psychological issues of rejection that are generated by the refusal of many taiwanese to 'return to the motherland'. the ccp still retains considerable mechanisms for asserting and maintaining control over popular dissent in the prc, but the levers of control are not as per vasive as they were under mao. the ccp's uncertainty that it would be able to control popular anger over the taiwan question means that its ability to pursue a strategy of 'wait and see' and to offer compromises to the taiwanese over the time and terms of reunification are constrained. clearly, taiwanese investment in the chinese economic development agenda is important, and the goal of a peaceful international environ ment within which to promote economic growth remains central to the ccp's current objectives. however, the dangers to the ccp's authority of moves toward independence by taiwan are such that the chinese lead ership may find that it can only retain authority if it responds militarily to unilateral attempts by the taiwanese to change the status quo in the strait. moreover, opinion in the prc toward the taiwan question ap pears to be hardening (straits times, 15 june 2004). the anti-succession law that was passed by the national people's congress in march 2005 should be viewed in this context-although it must be remembered that this law did not change prc policy toward taiwan, it merely provided a legal framework which recognized a long-standing policy position. this leaves the chinese leadership in the precarious position of hoping that the us can constrain an increasingly erratic taiwanese leadership from provoking conflict (shih 2003b). phi1 deans the limits of pragmatism: self-assertion, popular nationalism and sino-japanese relations it is a common assumption in liberal readings of international relations that growing interaction and contact, and in particular increased com mercial and business exchange, increase mutual understanding and deepen interdependence between countries. this is turn is expected to lead to improved relations (yahuda n.d.). however, this has not been an obvious result of growing sino-japanese interaction, and it appears that the opposite may be the case with anti-japanese sentiment being increasingly apparent in the prc and anti-chinese sentiment also on the rise in japan. for example, it is reported that the growing number of chinese students studying in japan are leaving the country with their prejudices reinforced (taipei times, 29 march 2004). self-assertion and popular nationalism have generated clear problems with regard to the prc's relations with japan. the relationship with japan has been the prc's most difficult partnership as the relationship exists in the shadow of a tragic history of japanese aggression in china before 1945, and this history has been contested and exploited for political purposes by the government and nationalist groups on both sides. fifty years of japa nese aggression and imperialism have become central to the ongoing discourse of chinese identity and chinese nationalism, and popular anti japanese sentiment in the prc appears to be growing (shih 2000). japan and the people's republic of china established diplomatic rela tions in 1972, and the first 15 years of relations were marked by growing economic interaction and a degree of common political cause, with some commentators regarding the period 1972-89 as the 'golden age' of sino japanese relations (vogel et al. 2002). nonetheless, this period was not without problems as the historical legacy of poor relations continued to factor in the relationship. disputes over the portrayals of history in japanese school textbooks (rose 1998), the visit of japanese leaders to the yasukuni shrine (yang 2002), the nature of any official japanese apolo gy for its aggression against china (gries 2004), the territorial dispute over control of the diaoyu/senkaku islands (deans 2000), and japan's informal relations with taiwan (deans 2002) ensured a background of disaffection throughout this period. one important issue was the way in which intra-elite conflict in the chinese leadership often used the issue of japan as a cloak for opposition to the reform programme-the dismissal of hu yaobang in 1987 was surrounded by an atmosphere that hu was too sympathetic to the japanese. 54 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 nationalism and national self-assertion in the people's republic of china the japanese government took a pragmatic approach to the events of 1989 in china and the suppression of the student-led reform move ment in tiananmen square, and was the first g7 country to lift sanctions against beijing. in the 1990s japan, along with the untied states, was the most important foreign player in china's rapid economic growth and was the most important single provider of overseas development assistance. however the political climate, at the popular if not the gov ernment level, continued to deteriorate. writing some five years ago, rose suggested that because the nationalism apparent in both china and japan was 'inward-oriented', it was unlikely to have a seriously negative impact on the bilateral relationship (rose 2000). however, subsequent events have shown that the popular antagonism in the relationship has constrained the ability of the government to allow the relationship to develop in a more mature manner, and one influential japanese inter pretation places responsibility firmly with jiang zemin and the patriotic education campaigns of the 1990s (torii 2004). while the chinese state's attempts at promoting nationalism and patriotism to secure its legitimacy have been significant, popular na tional self-assertion over relations with japan has far exceeded what the leadership regards as acceptable and has become a serious problem in maintaining a stable relationship with japan. nationalism has always been the key motor of the territorial dispute over the diaoyu/senkaku islands (deans 2000). while remaining resolute in their stated position of claming sovereignty over the islands, both the chinese and japanese have been at pains to downplay the dispute in the context of the wider political and economic interests at stake in the bilateral relationship. nevertheless, the islands are the subject of frequent clashes between nationalists on both sides and the ongoing dispute over the diaoyu/ senkaku islands has continued to threaten the relationship. the visit of japan's foreign minister kawaguchi yoriko to beijing in april 2004 was overshadowed by a group of chinese nationalists landing on the islands. the japanese government responded by arresting the chinese and then sending them back to china (kyodo, 4 april 2004) which in turn angered japanese nationalists who believed the chinese should have been subjected to legal process. in 2003 angry chinese responses to a series of incidents, ranging from the discovery of japanese chemical weapons stockpiles left over from the war against china to the activities of japanese sex tourists in the prc, demonstrated the depth of popular hostility toward japan. chinese activists used the internet to organize petitions demanding apologies phi1 deans from japan and compensation for those who had suffered as a result of japan's action before 1945, and it was reported that over one million signatures were obtained (bbc online, 18 september 2003). the serious nature of the popular swell of anti-japanese opinion was demonstrated clearly during the asian cup football tournament where the japanese team was subjected to abuse by chinese supporters, with japanese flags being burnt and players threatened (bbc online, 7 august 2004). the problem posed by rising anti-japanese sentiment in china is recognized by the chinese government, and the visit to beijing in april 2004 by the japanese foreign minister kawaguchi yoriko is reported to have expressed her concern about the possible negative impact of 'patriotic' material on chinese web sites. the chinese are understood to have responded that the japanese government must do more to prevent incidents that damage the bilateral relationship (kyodo, 4 april 2004). where attempts have been made by chinese intellectuals to improve the climate of the debate over relations with japan, there has often been a furious backlash from popular nationalists in the prc. perhaps the most important case was that of ma licheng, a high-profile writer and critic associated with liberal and progressive politicians. ma wrote an article in the influential journal zhanlue yu guanli [strategy and management] calling for 'new thinking' on china's relations with japan, in particular suggesting that the issue of history be put to one side (ma 2002). a heated debate followed in scholarly journals over ma's analysis, but the popular reaction was one of fury, especially on the internet. as with the case of taiwan, anti-japanese popular sentiment in the prc is not able to determine policy, but it can restrict the arena avail able for public debate and discussion about japan. in turn this may limit the ability of the chinese leadership to improve relations with its key regional trade and investment partner. as in the case of taiwan, popular demands for growing self-assertion against japan threaten to reduce state autonomy. while the chinese leadership appears to want to pursue a pragmatic policy toward japan, the mobilisation of the his torical legacy in the context of popular chinese nationalism constantly limits the ability of the chinese leadership to develop and maintain a coherent relationship. 56 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 nationalism and national self-assertion in the people's republic of china self-assertion versus universalism: ideology and asian values there are areas of self-assertion by the chinese state which may meet with a degree of popular acceptance but that can lead the prc into disagreements and possible (non-military) conflict with the west; one such area is in the ideological (or ideational) realm. self-assertion on the international stage can be seen as the prc exercising soft power in inter national society. however, the ccp's normative preferences are likely to be significantly different from those of the dominant western states. self-assertion by the chinese leadership therefore may bring the prc into conflict with some of the norms and values expressed by western states, while generating support for the prc from other non-western developing countries. chinese self-assertion in the ideological realm has manifested itself in criticism of the aims and logic of the 'universal ism' that underpins many western claims about human rights. it also brings the ccp into conflict with the liberal economic philosophy that underpins much of the development discourse of institutions such as the world bank and the international monetary fund. international organizations and international regimes have become key institutions in international society since the end of the second world war. international organisations (10s) are institutions usually with formal bureaucracies and established rules and procedures. typically membership comprises states, and the highest profile i 0 is the united nations (un). kim has argued that, 'most of the time, on most global issues, chinese international organisation behaviour is symbolic rather than substantive' (kim 1994: 407). kim is correct to highlight the impor tance of symbolism in chinese behaviour but perhaps oversimplifies the extent to which symbolism is substance for the chinese leadership, par ticular in the context of national self-assertion. a very important subset of international organizations is the international financial institutions (ifis) such as the world bank (wb), the international monetary fund (imf) and the world trade organization (wto). it is important to note that none of the major international organizations is value neutral-the un operates entirely through the system of sovereign statehood, and the ifis are dominated by their major donors, in particular the united states. as such, the ifis tend to promote economic ideologies which concur with the key objectives of the united states, typically favouring economic liberalism, privatization and deregulation, a position which in the 1990s became known as the washington consensus (helleiner 2003). phi1 deans the chinese leadership appears to have embraced multilateralism in recent years, especially with regard to economic fora. the highest profile move has been joining the wto, but since 2000 the prc has also increased its participation in a number of regional fora, especially with southeast asian countries (cheng 2004). however, it is still not clear the extent to which the prc has begun to internalize the norms of these institutions. it does appear that the prc leadership views these institutions in instrumental terms, and is most concerned with how china can benefit from participation in a 'realist' way, rather than viewing the institution in terms of the wider goals that institutionalism may provide (wan 2001). the chinese government has been effective at avoiding many of the more stringent demands on funding that the imf has placed on other developing countries, and has taken a principled position in international fora of criticizing the liberal assumptions of imf and world bank practice. indeed, china's pursuit of an economic strategy in direct contravention of the washington consensus has led one economist to describe the emergence of a 'beijing consensus' among developing countries (foreign policy, 2004). while demonstrating a clear preference for anglo-american economic norms, perkins argues that the prc remains a very long way from complying with the standards prescribed by the imf and wto but suggests that these if1 recognise china's achievements to date (perkins 2003). greater reintegration into the world economic system is likely to further undermine the autonomy of the chinese state to pursue independent economic strategies (deans 2004a). indeed, self-assertion by opponents of china's growing integra tion in the world economy is already significant, as is most clearly dem onstrated in the high-profile book qianqiuhua yingjingxia de zhongguo zhi lu [china's road in the shadow of globalization] (fang e t al. 1999). another area where china may find that self-assertion leads to con flict with other countries is in its approach to international regimes. an international regime is typically defined as, 'sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations' (krasner 1983: 2). one of the most important regimes in current times is that which addresses human rights, with a key document being the united nations declaration on human rights (dunne and wheeler 1999). the chinese leadership has been critical of a number of the as sumptions that underlie the human rights agenda as developed by the west, and has consistently followed a line of pointing to the primacy of second-generation socio-economic rights over first-generation political 58 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 nationalism and national self-assertion in the people's republic of china rights (progress in china's human rights cause, 2003). as xu has shown, the 1990s -especially before the asian financial crisis of 1997saw sig nificant criticism of western approaches to human rights and attempts at applying 'universal' standards to the region (xu 2001). inside the prc an increasingly lively academic debate exists around the useful ness and applicability of the idea of rights (weatherley 2001). to some extent, china's criticism of the international human rights regime is self-serving and seeks simply to deflect criticism. however, it is also underpinned by a significant and sophisticated philosophical position that challenges many of that assumptions that inform liberal thinking on rights (bell 2000; brown 1999). chinese self-assertion with regard to rights has manifested in the prc's international diplomacy, most notably in the preparatory meetings which preceded the 1993 vienna world conference on human rights. the chinese delegation played a lead role in the pre-meeting in thailand which resulted in the 'bangkok declaration'. the bangkok declaration outlined a significant number of issues that question the western approach to the human rights regime, in particular by its added attention to socio-economic rights and by reference to the importance of sovereignty in international society. china's position on the human rights question is important because it has an international and external dimension. as wachman has shown, the attempts to 'shame' china into complying with western human rights standards have not only been of limited effectiveness, but may prove counterproductive and lead to increasing disaffection with west ern human rights proponents (wachman 2001). therefore the chinese government's criticism of the international human rights regime may be a mechanism for exploiting popular anti-foreign sentiment. further more, by taking a lead role in criticizing aspects of the international human rights regime, the chinese leadership can be seen as engaging in the construction and exercise of 'soft power'. nye explains thatl[s]oft power is the ability to get what you want by attracting and persuading others to adopt your goals' (nye 2003). the chinese leadership has been able to use its position on rights to gain the respect of other asian and african countries which are troubled by the approach the west takes on human rights questions. implications and conclusions all indications are that the fourth-generation leadership in the prc in tends to focus on creating an environment that will promote economic growth and development. however, the legitimacy of the ccp is lever phi1 deans aged not solely on generating improved living standards but also on promoting the chinese nationalist project. increasingly the chinese leadership is under pressure from elements within chinese society, not only to deliver the economic goods, but also to satisfy growing nationalist aspirations. at times these objectives may be complementary, however on occasion there will be significant contradictions between the two, and popular pressure may reduce state autonomy. in terms understood and developed by mao zedong, the party must ensure that when contradic tions arise between economic reform and nationalist aspirations, that these remain non-antagonistic contradictions. in this context self-asser tion may be a demonstration of weakness, rather than strength. where self-assertion is more likely to be dynamic is in ideological realms, such as criticism of the western universal pretensions or american unilateral ism. this is less likely to generate problems within the domestic realm, and may also win support for the prc from other developing and less developed countries. however, arguments about the liberal economic assumptions that underpin the world bank and international monetary fund may damage china's relations with these institutions, and china's willingness to challenge the claims of western human rights advocates is likely to further complicate dialogue with western states. the prc leadership is keen to reassure its regional neighbours and global partners that china's rise is peaceful, as can be seen in a series of public statements by fourth-generation leaders since late 2003 (jiefang ribao, 26 april 2004). furthermore intellectuals and commentators linked to president hu have been promoting the 'peaceful rise' (heping jueqi) theory in chinese media, although not without some opposition from the third-generation leadership (suettinger 2004). with reference to prospects for greater regional cooperation, the prc leadership is likely to pursue this only where it will not antagonize popular nation alist sentiment. recent years have seen the chinese leadership engage increasingly with regional multilateral institutions, particularly eco nomic institutions, and the chinese leadership has skilfully managed to ease fears in much of southeast asia over china's growing economic strength. however, the issue of sovereignty is so deeply connected to the nationalist agenda that any political changes will be very cautious. as such, it is unlikely that the chinese leadership would promote any form of greater co-operation that envisaged a dilution of sovereignty, such as that pursued by western european countries since the 1950s. national self-assertion in china and the rise of popular nationalism have important implications for non-regional powers such as the united 60 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 nationalism and national self-assertion in the people's republic of china states and the european union. chinese nationalism is likely to respond negatively to outside involvement or intervention, and therefore outside powers are best advised to wait for invitation rather than threaten in tervention. it is likely that any attempts by outside powers to intervene in what the chinese people regard as domestic matters will generate a significant domestic pressure on the chinese government. this was seen most starkly following the death of a chinese pilot following a collision with a us spy place in 2002, but also manifests itself in the growing antagonism that western condemnation of human rights in china has generated. for the prc's partners and china's neighbours, a weak chinese leadership and a weak china poses a much greater chal lenge than a strong and coherent china. the greatest challenge faced by the leadership of the ccp does not come from pressures for democracy and openness, but from reactionary and chauvinistic popular national ism. the 'three represents' campaign 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'zai xin de lishi tiaojian xia jicheng he fayang aiguozhuyi chuantongshiyi jie san zhong quanhui yilai youguan zhongyao wenxian zhaibian' [continue to promote the traditions of patriotism in the new historical era-ex tracts from important documents since the third plenum of the llth party congress]. beijing: hongqi chubanshe. pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy abstract on the last frontier of the cold war, nothing is what it seems any more. on the surface, the old alliances still hold, but underneath a new order is gradually taking shape. this article analyses the various historical processes that have contributed to seoul's redefinition of its international role. as the international political and economic context changed following the end of the cold war in europe, new challenges and opportunities also appeared on the horizon on the korean peninsula. these were met by a revitalized korean nation, where a tainted elite was gradually driven from political and economic power. proud of its democratic institutions and content with its economic success, seoul engages the world with dignity, looking to wards the future with confidence, but sensitive over historical legacies. of shrimp and whale: reality and its perception one look at a map suffices to understand the korean predicament. the korean peninsula is hardly more than an appendix of the vast asian continent. this geographical reality has had its obvious consequences on the history of korea. small in comparison to its three bigger neigh bours, china, russia and japan, korea's room for political manoeuvre has always been circumscribed by the intentions of the regional powers. at times, skilful diplomacy could hold them at bay, but on other occa sions, korea fell victim to the grand schemes of territorial aggrandise ment of either china or japan. when by the end of the 19th century modern imperialism washed up on its shores, korea was ill-prepared to face that challenge. after several hundred years of seclusion from the world, and domestically in crisis, the korean court failed to respond adequate1y.l korea's self-imposed international isolation disintegrated under the forceful pressure of japan. in the wake of the 1876 unequal kanghwado treaty with japan, korea successively entered into treaty 64 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy relations with the us, britain, germany, france, russia and china. ko rea's political leaders sought to maintain national sovereignty by playing off one neighbour against the other. any skilful diplomacy was offset by the ongoing domestic political crisis. during the nearly three decades between the opening of the country and colonization by japan, korea stumbled from one reform government to another. political in-fighting, but above all successive political purges, left the country by the end of the 19th century in need of visionary politicians who could both win and keep the heart of king, later emperor, kojong. unable to steer a steady reform policy, the court and the country were left adrift. the resulting power vacuum on the peninsula created an international struggle for supremacy over korea (kim key-hiuk 1980; deuchler 1977). a traditional korean saying has it that when whales battle, shrimps get hurt. when japan went on the warpath over korea, koreans felt like the proverbial shrimp. korea was the war bounty that japan fought over with china (the first sino-japanese war, 1894-95), and with rus sia (the russo-japanese war, 1904-05). alongside these two military campaigns, the japanese government sought diplomatic acquiescence from great britain (the anglo-japanese alliance, 1905) and the us (the taft-katsura agreement, 1905) for its control over korea (kim and kim 1967; duus 1995). internationally uncontested, korea had to endure 35 long and harsh years of japanese colonization. no matter the suffering, koreans failed to come up with a credible challenge to colonial rule. liberation came as a gift, granted by the allies when japan capitulated on 15 august 1945. despite attempts to take over control of the country, koreans were denied full independence at the time of the japanese capitulation. the allied powers did not think the korean people capable of managing an independent state. their suggestion was to put korea under interna tional trusteeship for an indeterminate period of time, until they consid ered koreans fit to govern themselves. eventually, nothing of the sort happened. korean demands for immediate independence and growing disenchantment between the two occupying powers (the ussr in the north, the us in the south) led to the organization of free, un-super vised elections in the south, and the establishment of an independent republic of korea on 15 august 1948. the north followed suit with the establishment of the democratic people's republic of korea on 9 sep tember 1948 (cumings 1981 & 1990). neither state accepted the division, instead claiming legitimacy over the other half. political posturing and military bravado eventually spilled over into outright war. koen de ceuster reminiscent of late 19th-century politics, both korean states aptly used their international relations during the korean war (1950-53) to further their domestic goals. the internationalization of what in essence was a domestic conflict led to a stalemate that endures through the armistice agreement until today.2 the korean war merely confirmed the status quo ante. the cold war regime strengthened their international alliances and allowed ideological intransigence. what resulted was a situation where both states leaned back in blissful ignorance of each other. their positions only shifted when the security alliances of both states suffered from some strains. at such times, a strange diplomatic ballet of inter korean rapprochement started. with both sides highly self-conscious, one could hardly speak of dialogue. inter-korean encounters were not meant to seek an improvement of relations, nor to find solutions to pending issues, but to prove one right, and to gain the upper hand over the other. progress was almost non-existent, and whatever slight progress was made failed to reach fruition (gills 1996). europe may have been the continent where the cold war ended, but its effects were felt globally. along with the fall of the berlin wall, the containment-based stability of the post-second world war order crumbled. along with new opportunities, new threats appeared on the horizon. east asia seemed largely unaffected by this groundswell of change. on the korea peninsula, the last frontier of the cold war formally still holds and long-standing security alliances still guarantee the status quo. seen from a distance, it looks as if this lingering cold war sore continues to fester, and nothing has changed in the decades long north-south stand-off. visitors to the truce village, panmunjom, come away with a vivid sense of the military tension that still reigns along the demilitarized zone. despite the continuing military stand-off, major changes have occurred over the last 15 years on both diplomatic and political levels both in north and south korea and in the region, changes that have not been sufficiently highlighted by the international media. this is in part due to the fact that media are event-driven, not to say crisis-driven. they are less able to pick up and decipher a gradual but incremental process of change. the trade of global press agencies leads to short-sightedness; only the obvious, eye-catching event raises eyebrows and becomes newsworthy. the steady dynamic of change is often too subtle to be marketable, not tangible enough to be easily presentable to today's consumer, who is considered to have a short attention span. another factor that leads to short-sightedness is the self-centredness of the media and their home 66 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy market. only news that directly impacts on the home constituency is deemed to be worth reporting. foreign news tends to focus on bilateral relations and overlooks the multilateral intra-regional relations that have been evolving over the years. since the anchor or editor speaks for the paradigmatic consumer, it is the latter's vantage point that is adopted. asia gets hidden in a myopic blur where distance clouds distinction. the anecdotal tends to prevail. but anecdotes only thrive when exist ing images are confirmed over and over again. hence news is filtered, highlighting those parts that validate the cliche, corroborating and strengthening what can only be described as an 'orientalist' gaze of an 'immutable east'. complexity falls victim to easily digestible pieces. even in the rare instance when local experts are asked to contribute, their input more often than not validates the prevalent image and viewpoint, leaving out or giving less prominence to any deviant views or reports. news thus tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy (sigal 1998: 207-28). commentators and political scientists seem trapped in the same mindset. holding on to a threat-driven, security-based discourse, they tend to focus on bilateral relations, very often the relations of a spe cific country with the united states, and fail to capture the regional, multilateral framework of cooperation and consultation that has been taking shape over the last decade^.^ obsessed with the cold war, and constantly reminded of it by each new crisis that erupts, they have failed to notice that these crises are nothing but the remnants of a cold war regime. underneath the convulsions of a bygone age, a new structure has gradually been taking shape. in the end, the cold war lives on as a mental state more than anything else, a paradigm applied to interna tional relations to make the world comprehensible. this paradigm also ruled the minds of south korean politicians."f the cold war is coming to an end on the korean peninsula, then this is not only because the international situation has changed, but also be cause a new generation of politicians is at the helm in seoul. a regained awareness of agency is what makes all the difference. the unquestioned deference towards the us has been replaced by a strong sense of national dignity. the belief that the international interests of the us overlapped with south korea's national interests has been replaced by the conviction that identical goals may hide different purposes and methods. rather than to let the us speak for rok interests, south korean politicians now speak up in their own name for the interests of the whole of korea.; the shrimp is wagging its tail. koen de ceuster regional dynamics, nationalism and national self-assertion in the east asian region, the end of the cold war and the relaxation of ideological confrontation in international relations have led to a shift in the balance of power. rather than continuing to hide behind any of the major powers, the east asian nations stepped up their mutual dialogue and forged ahead with the construction of a new regional power equilibrium, all the while maintaining their traditional alliances (yi 2005). in the case of the korean peninsula, new partnerships based on mutual economic and strategic benefits emerged, gradually over ruling the ideology-based alliances dating back to the korean war. south korea benefited most from this de-ideologization. its economic prowess charmed both the soviet union and the people's republic of china into establishing diplomatic relations with their erstwhile foe. the pragmatic foreign policy of president roh tae woo lured russia and china away from the rigidly dogmatic and confrontational foreign policies of north korea. nor did the north's rapid economic decline improve its international appeal. on closer scrutiny, it becomes apparent that not only did seoul cash in on the opportunities offered by the end of the cold war, but there was also a domestic push factor at work. the way seoul reacted to the changing international environment can only be understood by taking into account the momentous changes occurring at the same time within south korean society. rapid economic development, a peaceful democ ratization and a generational shift in political personnel all contributed to a marked change in the self-perception of south koreans. the new generation at the helm seemed unburdened by the past, exuding a radi ant self-confidence. as a representative and a spokesperson of this na tional self-confidence, the south korean government is positioning itself internationally with greater self-assertion than ever before. at the same time, a vibrant civil society helped by a much freer press has made the government more accountable than at any time in the past (shin 2004). although the affirmation of national self-assertion should be con sidered an aspect of an evolving korean nationalism, i prefer to avoid this term. the lack of agreement on a common definition of national ism on the one hand, and the frequent flippant usage of the term on the other, make this a black-box concept. used randomly in an often undefined common-sense meaning, speakers and listeners alike project their respective cognitive and emotive biases, blurring the clarity of the 68 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy argument. furthermore, in a multi-disciplinary context, scholars from different disciplines bring different traditions and assumptions to the study of nationalism. historians and political scientists talk differently about nationalism. functional communication on such a vague and ill-defined concept as nationalism thus becomes quite hazardous. us ing the less common term 'national self-assertion' avoids some of these pitfalls. the uncommonness of the term not only begs definition, one might also hope the reader will be more open to the specific meaning the author implies. admittedly, i come to 'national self-assertion' in an attempt to describe a political dynamic at work in south korean society. in the social sci ences, individual self-assertion presupposes the notion of individual agency within a context where the individual rights of a citizen are re cognized and institutionally protected. this, in turn, implicitly suggests that the social conditions of a market economy and a liberal democracy prevail. given these assumptions and conditions, self-assertion refers to the conscious and active engagement of an individual in a process of making claims and/or entitlements when these are not transparently or clearly defined in the organization or the system to which this individual belongs. applying this notion to a collective level, 'national self-asser tion' builds on the notion of a modern nation-state and the existence of a collective 'national' consciousness as it is expressed through strategic engagements in international affairs by the nation's representative government or by less official entities as ngos in an attempt to affirm specific national claims and/or entitlement^.^ national self-assertion, as i use it in this article, refers to a specific phase of a specific form of korean nationalism. the historical develop ment of korean nationalism is a field of study in its own right. korean nationalism has a long, but hardly uniform history. competing forms of nationalism have confronted each other in pitched ideological bat tles, first over the course of korea's struggle for national sovereignty, and later between and within rival korean states. not only did both korean states use nationalism to further their popularity in the south, but the authoritarian state also confronted a popular nationalism that challenged its nationalist credentials. south korean state nationalism was internationally always quite subdued and rather defensive, as if korea were a proud but frightened nation. the national self-assertion i discern in south korea's current foreign policy is the international face of a new stage in the develop ment of the korean nation.'neither defensive, nor offensive, it is the koen de ceuster expression of a democratic government that seeks to further the national interests of the korean nation while recognizing the legitimate interests of other states. it is not the expression of a confrontational nationalism, but the illustration of a newly discovered pride and self-confidence in the viability of the korean nation in an international environment of peaceful co-existence and co-operation with its neighbours. tracking national self-assertion national self-assertion is the culmination of a long historical process of nation formation. in hindsight, the korean nation awoke to the beat of modern nationalism at the end of the 19th century, but was caught in the stranglehold of japanese colonization. it was torn apart by ideological divisions at the time of the liberation, and following the korean war frozen into political sclerosis by cold war intransigence. with political culture stifled under authoritarianism, south korean society eventually regained power over its own history through the (gradual) democratization of the state structures. the south korean authoritarian state had attempted all along to impose its form of state nationalism, but continuously found its nationalist credentials contested. in any case, the democratization of the south korean state lessened the importance of nationalist mobilization in support of the state. democrati cally sanctioned, state legitimacy was found in popular representation, just as popular allegiance shifted to democratic institutions. in the course of the same democratization, the core component of the korean nation, as it was implicitly understood, shifted from the political entity of the south korean state towards a more cultural definition of an inclusive, people based korean national realm. with democracy secure in the south, the state no longer behaves in a frightened, wronged and vindictive way, but upholds an image of a confident, proud and magnanimous nation that reaches out to the world. thus the democratization of korean politics has led to a shift in the international position of south korea. driven by a strong sense of national identity and pride, the democratically elected government of the south korean state, carried by a groundswell of popular support, advocates the interests of the korean nation in an international context in a non-confrontational way. just as the cold war was born out of second world war, so too was the division and the foundation of two separate and ideologically opposed states on the korean peninsula a consequence of the post-second world war international balance of power. the division grew out of much more 70 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy than just a security concern; it essentially shaped the political reality in the south. political and economic development cannot be fully under stood without acknowledging the depth of the division. intellectually, the two states have quite distinct historical lineages rooted in different branches of the nationalist movement confronting japanese coloniza tion. this in turn relates to the development of modern nationalism in korea from the end of the 19th century onwards. national self-deprecation and international patronage modern korean nationalism developed in tandem with the historical denouement of korean sovereignty. the concepts of modern national ism had reached asia along with western imperialism. korean reform minded intellectuals acknowledged the imperialist notion that coloniza tion was the result of the inherent weakness of the korean nation. they opted for a wholesale surrender to western liberal ideas, an openness to the world, and recognition of world capitalism. another more populist tradition was explicitly seclusionist in attitude, and adopted a direct and violent method. to these radical nationalists, korean independence was an absolute and unconditional good. confronted with the military might of japan, however, they stood no chance. during korea's 35 years of colonial rule, the nationalist movement further splintered into various factions, covering the whole panoply from left to right, from moderate to radical, both in korea proper and in exile. except for some futile attempts, no unity was ever reached. instead, ideological confrontation among the various nationalist factions sapped the strength of the resistance move ment, and weakened the credibility of the resistance among the allies. following japanese capitulation in 1945, fierce political battles were fought, eventually bringing to power syngman rhee in the south, and kim i1 sung in the north. although both leaders, and the states they founded, claim ancestry in the national resistance movement, syngman rhee belongs to the moderate nationalist lineage, whereas kim i1 sung's nationalist pedigree is much more radical. crowned with the aura of 'father of the nation', syngman rhee's nationalism was what ken wells (1990) has termed 'christian self-reconstruction nationalism'. intellectu ally, syngman rhee belonged to a generation of nationalists in east asia who at the end of the 19th century interpreted international relations as a social darwinist struggle for life among nations. he shared the conviction that the loss of independence was ultimately a consequence of the weakness of the korean nation. koen de ceuster following the annexation, rhee went into exile to the us, where he tirelessly worked for the cause of korean independence. he sympa thized with the plight of his supporters who stayed behind in korea, counselling caution in opposing japanese rule. he was no believer in armed resistance, but rather supported a gradualist course of cultural and educational edification in preparation of future independence. rhee recognized chances for korean independence once japan got entangled in its war craze and started confronting the big powers. he trusted the big powers would eventually grant korea its independence. small wonder he did not blame moderate nationalists for succumbing to japanese pressure, for losing hope, and for ending up collaborating. the 'qualified' nationalism that he shared inevitably led his followers into collaboration. after liberation, he stood by his erstwhile allies and returned them to positions of social and political dominance. the korean colonial elite formed the core of south korea's social elite. despite the loudly proclaimed nationalism of the likes of syngman rhee and his successors as president, the south korean elite was intellectually heir to the conviction that korea was a weak state, and that the autonomous survival of the korean nation was under permanent threat. they shared the political culture of 19th-century sadaejutii-the doctrine of 'serving the great1-which made korean rulers buy big power protection in return for political sub~ervience.~ following the korean war, the main threat to south korea was still emanating from the north. the democratic people's republic of ko rea had lost no time in rebuilding its war-ravaged infrastructure with the help of its allies. unlike the situation in the south, where a lot of american aid was diverted into slush funds used for buying political support, the north's centrally planned economic structure proved most effective in kick-starting the economy. the atmosphere in the south was depressed, without much hope. given the north's proud historical roots in the armed resistance against japanese imperialism, such reticence was utterly absent. instead, a strong sense of historical legitimacy and an ideology of pride in what can be achieved single-handedlythe essence of north korea's juch'e ideology-gave rise to an unflinching self-confidence. south korea's post-korean war history is fundamentally shaped by the looming presence of north korea. the willingness of the us to pump endless amounts of aid money into the south korean economy is contextualized by south korea's unique position as a capitalist outpost on the edge of the 'free ~ o r l d ' . ~ behind the facade of such ideological 72 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy sloganeering hid a quite different reality. democracy was a farce in south korea, always conveniently qualified and curtailed by referring to the threat north korea posed. following syngman rhee's abdication in 1960, a 13-month democratic interlude was cut short by a coup d'etat staged by park chung hee. park is a clear example of the despots that ruled south korea for nearly half a century. a nationalist zealot, he defended his coup by pointing out that the social turmoil that had gripped the country in the wake of rhee's overthrow might have provoked an attack by north korea. he also blamed corruption among politicians for the dismal state of the economy and promised that his rule would lift south korea out of its endemic poverty into the ranks of 'civilized nations'. like rhee, he was nationalist with a colonial past service in the japanese imperial army, training at a japanese military academy in manchukuo-and he shared the pre-democratic nationalist tradition of 19th-century korean intellectuals. an enlightened nationalist, park force-fed modernization on an unen lightened, lethargic nation. his goal was mobilization of the people for economic development, not just to win the competition with the north, but also to raise the standing of korea in the world. park loathed south korea's dependency on international developmental aid, he wanted to raise the international reputation of the country. in order to do so, he mobilized the population in a program of state-controlled economic de velopment. the message was made palatable by appealing to nationalist sentiments. he was obsessed by the idea that korea was backward. the nation he had in mind was 'modern', where cultural superstition was replaced by rational thought, where efficiency replaced lethargy, and where steel mills and shipbuilding wharfs were the nation's pride. as a true nation builder, he was shaping a national identity, lambasting the people for their backwardness, holding out the prospect of a first rate nation, heralding the goal of self-reliance in an economic fortress besieged by predator nations.1° total mobilization and unquestioning obedience were the hallmarks of his regime, justified by raising the spectre of a northern threat and foreign domination. rather than the self-confident, open nationalism that south korea exudes today, the country was gripped by a fearful, closed nationalism. park turned korea into a fortress, a garrison state, where total control was imposed (kim, jai-hyup 1978). the well-developed and ruthless security apparatus prevented dissenting voices from being heard; nevertheless, resistance continued to smoulder. koen de ceuster following the murder of park chung hee, six months of relative freedom ensued. a care-taker president relaxed the stringent controls on society, and the demands for democratic reform resurfaced. once again, a military intervention prevented democracy from blossoming. chun doo hwan's phased coup d'etat culminating in the bloody suppression of the 1980 kwangju uprising pushed the genie back into the bottle.ll it would take another seven years for the opposition to muster enough sup port to be able to topple the authoritarian state. the memory of kwangju lingered on, and prevented chun from establishing true popular cred ibility. the shock of kwangju was also the catalyst that strengthened the resolve of the anti-authoritarian opposition movement and allowed it to formulate an ideological critique of the authoritarian state. this led to the development during the 1980s of a counter-culture movement that undermined the legitimacy of the south korean regime. in the midst of such political stagnation, the south's economy powered ahead. the contrast with the north could not be starker. stubbornly clinging to its juch'e ideology, the dprk economy ground to a disastrous halt. by the time the rok was granted membership to the oecd in 1996, the north was on an international aid lifeline. it had been deserted by its former friends and allies, its industrial base was obsolete, the agricultural sector was haemorrhaging, and to top it all, amid natural disasters and a gruesome famine, the great leader passed away in july 1994. with the economic gap between the two koreas widening by the year, the threat perception from the north was sharply reduced. the south's economic development also allowed seoul to upgrade its mili tary capabilities, thereby reducing its dependence on the us military's technological might. seoul to the world the economy may have provided the right conditions, but radical changes in the political landscape in south korea were the trigger to a reshaping of its foreign policies. authoritarian regimes had forced the country into rapid economic development, but a resilient society grew exasperated with authoritarianism and demanded democratic reforms. in the summer of 1987 the authoritarian state gave in to mounting public pressure by acceding to direct, free and democratic presidential elections. in retrospect, this largely cosmetic concession proved to be the start of a decade of an ever-deepening democratization of society (saxer 2002). through successive parliamentary and presidential elec 74 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy tions, the entrenched elites were gradually pushed aside, the state was reappropriated and made more accountable (shin 2004). the lingering legacy of backroom dealings, corruption and political bickering may not have increased popular trust in politicians in general, but support for the democratic institutions is considerable. this was quite apparent when the opposition-dominated national assembly tried to unseat president roh moo hyun by impeaching him on very slim charges in march 2004. dubbed a 'parliamentary coup d'etat', citizens took to the streets in defence of their president and the democracy they had fought for in 1987, against the vengefulness of old-style politicians. sensing that the achievements of the democratization struggle were challenged, the parliamentary elections of 15 april, in the midst of the impeachment imbroglio, saw a remarkable voter turnout, following years of declining participation rates in presidential and particularly parliamentary elections. the party supporting the president won a landslide victory, securing roh moo hyun a majority in the national assembly and allowing him to pursue his reform policies. that citizens were mobilized in support of their embattled president is testimony to the vibrant civil society that has developed in the wake of political democratization.12 if democracy has deepened in south korea, this is certainly a result of the ever-watchful eye of various civil society organizations who, in tandem with a much freer press, have made politi cians more accountable for their actions.13 building on the legacy of the anti-authoritarian political struggles of the 1980s, civil society organiza tions have become the hallmark of the maturing of korean democracy. the activists who had toppled the authoritarian state resurfaced in the 1990s in various civil society movements to ensure that democratization meant more than a cosmetic institutional change (kim, hy6n-mi 2003). covering the entire gamut of subjects from consumer interests (includ ing environmental issues), to social and economic justice, human rights and political transparency, civil society groups critically followed the working of south korea's democratic institutions (kim, hyuk-rae 2004: 422-5). cases of corruption and backroom dealings made a mistrustful public highly critical of the functioning of the political institutions and their personnel. it is a lasting legacy of civil society movements that they pushed the democratization of korean society beyond the country's political institutions. ngos saw their role in society recognized during the presidencies of kim dae jung and roh moo hyun, who formally integrated the civil society organizations in the institutional framework of south korea's 'participatory democracy'. this in turn was part of koen de ceuster the political project of both these presidents to sever and replace the old state-business nexus and increase the transparency of the political decision-making process (ahn and lee 2003).14 this development coincides with and is a result of a generational shift in korea, both among politicians and the electorate. the so-called 386-generation-koreans in their (late) thirties, born in the 1960s, and fighting for democracy on university campuses during the 1980s-are the ones who represent the majority vote in korea today.15 they are also a coveted human resources pool tapped by the administrations of both kim dae jung and roh moo hyun. their obsession had never been the korean war or the north korean communist threat, nor pov erty or destitution, but the illegitimate and politically inept regime of chun doo hwan and his alleged american sponsors. more than just a political struggle, they had fought a social struggle for democracy, a fight against government-business collusion which had not only engen dered a tradition of corruption, but which had also distorted economic development in favour of the large conglomerates (chaebo'l). these they viewed as bulwarks of nepotism that stifled free initiative. just as they distrusted politicians, so too did the 386-generation doubt the chaebo'l. both were seen as a self-serving elite who pretended to speak and work for the nation, but ultimately only had their own interests at heart. civil society organizations both held politicians accountable for their actions, and were highly critical of chaebo'l dominance of the korean economy. the 1997 financial crisis was the watershed that finally disqualified the old generation. while the chaebo'l hung in the ropes, knocked out by the blow of the 1997 crisis, the 386-generation saw an opportunity for venture projects in it and other businesses. politically, kim dae jung opened up the channels of power to them. roh moo hyun's presidency is even more outspoken in that regard. (kim, p a n g h ~ i 2003; kim, by ung-kook 2003: 236-8). the empowerment of the people and the accountability of south ko rea's political personnel have, in turn, led to a remarkable redefinition of south korea's international p~sition.~~following decades of submissive ness, a towering pride has taken control of koreans. they feel proud of their peaceful democratization and secure in their economic success, both of which they realized single-handedly. gone are the days when koreans felt small and powerless. gone are the days when the korean govern ment could cow the people into frightened submission. the struggle for (economic) survival in an unforgiving world has been won. between the 1988 seoul olympics and the 2002 soccer world championship, korea 76 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy underwent a facelift from pubescent insecurity to mature adulthood. in the course of 15 years, a new generation, unburdened by the past but shouldering the historical mission of bringing north and south korea together again, gradually invaded and undermined the old establish ment. back in 1988, korea showcased itself to the world as a successful asian nic, a model of state-led rapid industrialization. by 2002, korea had grown into one of the largest trading nations in the world, embrac ing globalization as an opportunity rather than a threat. the success of the 1988 olympics had been realized under a stern authoritarian state that had workers in constant tow and held political freedom at bay. by 2002, korea was a beacon of peaceful democratization in asia, a nation at ease with itself, proud of its success and confident in its future. in contrast to the seoul olympics, when the state led the people in a sports celebration for the world, the 2002 world cup was carried by grassroots support. the spontaneous outburst of support for the national team during late-night rallies in front of city hall in seoul and across other cities in the country was an expression of this new confidence and proud self-image. most remarkable of all was the composed, peaceful nature of the gatherings, and the absence of any animosity towards the nation's opponents (on and off the field). the positive self-image and radiating pride that imbues koreans today, allows them to step out towards the world, magnanimously.17 both the government, through development aid and co-operation, and the civil society, through in ternational networking, have moved beyond the confines of korea's borders to reach out to the region and the world.18 economic success has allowed korea to speak internationally with its own voice. the presidency of k m dae jung-dubbed the 'nelson mandela of asia' because he seemed the personification of opposition against the authoritarian regimes-proved a turning point in korea's international positioning. coming to politics from a different background than previous presidents, and building his power on a different political constituency, kim dae jung marked the clearest break ever with korea's post-liberation tradition.19 confident in the strength of korean democracy and proud of its economic success, he turned to the future rather than being bogged down by the past.20 kim dae jung took a bold initiative to once and for all lay the colonial past to rest and to build a strong future-oriented relationship with japan as a close neighbour and important trading partner. at the same time, he moved to open korea's market for japanese (cultural) products, much to the dismay of recalcitrant anti-japanese diehards. kim dae jung's message, however, was clear. the government would no longer play off koen de ceuster the anti-japanese trump card whenever it served domestic mobilization. the president's innovative and forward-looking diplomacy contributed to a formidable change in south korean relations with japan, laying the lingering prejudice and grudges over japan's political inability to atone for its colonial wrongdoings to r e ~ t . ~ l t h e success of the joint organization of the 2002 soccer world championships can be seen as a symbol of this new relationship. symbolism aside, anti-japanese friction reappears from time to time. the seoul government continues to express regret whenever japanese prime minister junichiro koizumi visits the yasukuni shrine, but this is no longer allowed to become a stumbling block in their bilateral rela tions. although the state may have compartmentalized relations with japan so as to prevent outstanding historical friction from impeding the development of its relations with japan, some segments in society still raise a tantrum whenever they deem that the national honour, territorial integrity, or historical legacy of korea is being tarnished.22 kim dae jung's overtures towards japan were motivated by two concerns. as a responsible participant in a globalized world economy, unjustifiable impediments to free trade had become unacceptable. on a diplomatic level, south korea needed japanese support and co-operation in its audacious overtures towards north korea. kim dae jung had bro ken the diplomatic deadlock with north korea and was moving doggedly beyond the imposed confines of traditional south korean diplomacy in an attempt to open a new era of inter-korean relations. convinced of the sterility of the traditional confrontational strategy towards north korea, he opted for a policy of co-operation and engagement, dubbed the 'sunshine policy'. the most palpable success of this approach was the summit meeting he arranged in pyongyang with the north korean leader kim jong i1 in june 2000. ever since, relations with the north have been expanding and interaction with pyongyang increasing. in pursuing his sunshine policy, kim dae jung was building on the groundwork that had been laid by roh tae woo's 'nordpolitik'. what was however fundamentally different was the acknowledgement that the south did not seek the collapse or overthrow of the northern regime. he explicitly stated that the aim of his policies was not the absorption of the north, but a gradual process of co-operation and reconciliation. he also uncoupled political progress from cultural, academic, people to-people and economic exchanges. it took pyongyang nearly two years and some (financial) inducement to cast off its suspicion and finally accept his offer.23 78 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy particularly interesting in respect to south korea's changed interna tional positioning was the fact that kim dae jung had proactively sought support for his policies among south korea's allies. never before had a south korean government so prominently taken the lead in engaging the north. more than ever, seoul now decides on how to conduct inter korean relations on its own terms, and with its own interests (rather than the interests of its defence ally, the us) in mind. whereas kim dae jung publicly confirmed the continuity of the rok-us security alliance, roh moo hyun declared his adherence to the alliance, while seeking a more reciprocal and equitable relationship with the us.2' although washington finds it difficult to adapt to this changed korean attitude, particularly at a time when unilateralism rules its foreign policy, it is equally clear that south korean diplomacy is leaning heavily on the bush administration to soften its hard-line approach towards north k ~ r e a . ~ j s e o u l does so in tandem with its regional partners. convinced that seoul's allies had to speak with one voice, kim dae jung promoted the co-ordination of the north korea policies of the us, japan and south korea through the creation of the trilateral oversight and coordination group in 1999. such co-ordination serves multiple purposes. lack of policy co-ordination had in the past led to needless friction among the allies. suspicions flared in particular when either japan or the us entered into direct dialogue with pyongyang without prior consultation with seoul. comprehensive trilateral co-ordination was also an improvement on the traditional bilateral security dialogue that the us separately maintained with japan and south korea respec tively. the clarity reached in such a trilateral forum also cleared the dialogue channel with pyongyang. north korea could no longer play off one ally against another, nor could there be any misunderstanding of what the allies had to offer to the north, both in terms of carrots and/or sticks. kim dae jung paid attention to more than seoul's traditional security alliances which dated back to the cold war era. in the rapidly chang ing security environment following the end of the cold war, and in the context of china's increasing economy boom, seoul sought to position itself as an active player in the region through expanding both its bilat eral and multilateral contacts. in particular, sino-korean relations have never been so close. in a remarkable twist of history, the two former foes have turned, in little more than a decade since the establishment of diplomatic relations, into de facto allies. on the one hand, there is a clear economic imperative. china is currently seoul's main trading partner, koen de ceuster and the prime receiver of korean fdi. on the other hand, there are also obvious diplomatic reasons behind these improved relations. as seoul is developing a more proactive diplomacy anchored firmly in regional co-operation, it is obliged to seek peking's co-operation.26 seoul's diplomacy is not only driven by a strong dose of pragmatism, but also by the fundamental desire to accomplish-or at least further-the historical task of reunification of the korean nation. following the suc cessful democratization of the south, the process of national rehabili tation will not be accomplished until the reunification of the nation is achieved. after wresting the state from the hands of a tainted elite, the nation now has the task of reuniting the two divided halves of the pen insula. the division was the consequence of foreign intervention, the unification will be the doing of koreans. politicians are well aware that a chasm looms between such fine ideals and the difficulties of bringing the two widely divergent political systems of north and south korea closer to each other. nonetheless, since the presidency of kim dae jung, the south korean government has persevered in its single-minded ef forts to improve relations with the north. not even the second nuclear crisis surrounding north korea, which has been unfolding since october 2002, is capable of derailing inter-korean relations. seoul stubbornly sticks to its own agenda, acknowledging along the way that the nuclear crisis needs to be solved peacefully. in pursuing this course, it finds a surprisingly willing partner in the north, as both states discover ever more common ground in their awkward mating game. contrary to what many observers suggest, the north is not just motivated by the material benefits it gains from increased trade and investment, there is also a real and deep sense of the historical imperative for reunification. looking at the ongoing nuclear stand-off between north korea and the us (and by extension the rest of the world), it is small wonder that a chasm was opening up between washington and seoul. while seoul, along with peking, wanted to see a peaceful and negotiated settlement, the bush administration maintained an intransigent and to pyongyang largely unacceptable position: the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement (cvid) of all its nuclear programmes before the us was willing to enter in any real negotiation^.^' pressure from the other parties in the six nation negotiations certainly contributed to the fact that washington eventually seemed to soften its stance. it was quite remarkable to see the south korean delegation table a roadmap dur ing the second round of talks in february 2004, which held out cvid at the end of the negotiating process, but would start with a verified 80 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy freezing of all existing nuclear programmes (basically the status quo ante october 2002). it is towards this position that washington moved during the third round of talks in june 2004, when the us proposed a verifiable commitment by the north to fully declare its programmes, to verifiably halt its nuclear activities, to disable its nuclear weapons, and to make preparations for the elimination of its nuclear f a ~ i l i t i e s . ~ ~ seoul counterbalances this ongoing american reluctance to engage pyongyang by engaging its partners in the region in its efforts to induce the north out of its isolation. despite the regularly repeated avowal of its security pledge, lingering doubts about washington's commitment to the defence of south korea are providing a further impetus to the nation's leaders to pay particular attention to the regional balance of power.29 fear of american disengagement following the end of the cold war made seoul's strategists look towards regional multilateral security co-operation. awakening to the need for a regional power equilibrium, seoul now considers the solution of the korea question within a regional context of checks and balances. the first concrete step in the direction of a regional security forum was the establishment of the asean regional forum (arf) in 1994. kim dae jung for his part promoted co-ordination between japan, china and south korea in the asean plus three frame work, and he proposed the establishment of a northeast asian security co-operation regime (moon and kim 2004: 263-4; yi 2005). maybe the most promising forum to date is the stalled six party talks. the north korean nuclear stalemate has brought all the strategic players in the region together. an earnest effort is underway to find a peaceful solu tion to this specific problem, but it might set a precedent and become a more permanent forum, not unlike the organization for security and cooperation in europe (osce). though initially intended as an ad hoc response to a crisis that was dangerously spiralling out of control, this forum now has the possible bearings of a future institutionalized security co-operation and co-ordination platform, with the potential to outlast the present north korean crisis (yun 2005: 51-2). conclusion south korea's first and foremost foreign policy concern remains north korea. over the last two decades, the threat assessment of north korea has shifted from a military towards a more comprehensive security concern. with a new generation of politicians in command, and after five years of 'sunshine' engagement on various fronts, ideological con koen de ceuster frontation has become secondary to the acknowledgement of national unity. the realization that relations with the north cannot improve in isolation, but inevitably must take place in a regional context, has caused seoul to adopt a much more outspoken regional profile, commensurate with its economic and political standing. at a time when an intransigent us administration is hampering seoul's endeavour towards improved relations with the north, cracks are appearing in the traditional security alliance. although seoul has made it clear that it still values this security alliance and considers it crucial to the geopolitical equilibrium, it is equally firm about a much needed redefinition of the specific role each partner plays in the alliance. if cracks appear, then probably this is because the sitting administra tion in washington is not sensitive enough to the feelings that reign in south korea. seoul is committed to contribute to the easing of tensions in the region. it does so in both bilateral and multilateral contacts with its partners in the region. realizing that even a united korea still moves in the shadow of its larger neighbours, it is working for a multilateral security regime where a comprehensive approach to security issues in mutual recognition and respect of national interests can be addressed. the free direct presidential elections of december 1987 opened up a new era in the history of korea. since then, koreans have again learned to speak with their own voice. both the people and the leaders they elect defend their rightful national interests. more than just institutional democracy, they have regained an agency that they had long forgotten. rather than stand by and watch developments unfold around it, seoul has awoken to the challenge of shaping its own future, a future for the korean peninsula. seoul is determined to prove that even a shrimp, if moving shrewdly, can move among whales. koen d e c e u s t e r i s associate professor a t the c e n t r e for korean s t u d i e s , leiden u n i v e r s i t y . notes the taewbn'gun, father of the infant king kojong (r.1864-1907) and for nearly a decade the de facto regent of korea, was the first to face u p to the crises confront ing the country. domestically, central state power was severely curtailed through bureaucratic incompetence and in-fighting, through corruption and peasant unrest, and through a dwindling revenue base. his attempts at reinvigorating the state through a comprehensive dynastic restoration clashed with institutional opposi tion. when in 1873 kojong reached adulthood, the taewbn'gun was removed from 82 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy power, and the rigidly isolationist foreign policy was gradually abandoned (palais 1991). the korean war has received its fair share of scholarly attention. brune (1996) presents a good overview of the available literature. whereas cumings (1981 & 1990) stresses the domestic roots of the conflict, william stueck (1995,2002) focuses more on the international ramifications of the korean war. a very good example of this style of work is the latest spate of publications on the north korean nuclear threat and how the us should deal with it. the focus of these is almost exclusively on what us strategies should be, as if the south korean government should have no voice in the debate over north korea, let alone the acknowledgement of any chinese agency in the issue. see, for example, cha and kang (2003) and o'hanlon and mochizuki (2003). prior to the end of the cold war, international affairs were a simple thing for south korean politicians. surrounded by more or less inimical states, the bilateral rela tions with the us were of paramount importance. cha (1999) gives an interesting analysis of how distorting and ultimately detrimental to korea's own interests such an attitude was. a telling example of this changed attitude can be found in the frankness with which south korean president roh moo hyun recently criticized the north korea policy of the bush administration. to make sure that his message was heard loud and clear, he used the opportunity of a speaking engagement before the world affairs coun cil in los angeles on 12 november 2004 to vent his conviction that north korea's security fears were legitimate and had to be addressed. not only did he say this on american soil, but also prior to a scheduled meeting with us president george w. bush during the apec meeting in santiago de chile some days later. (roh moo hyun's speeches can be found on www.korea.net). i wish to acknowledge the theoretical clarifications michael mau-kuei chang brought to our discussions in the course of the preparation of the iias workshop on 'emerg ing national self-assertion in east asia' (amsterdam, 25 may 2004). jager (2003) offers an insight on how divergent perceptions of korea's history lead to different attitudes to korea's place in the world. syngman rhee's position in korean history has come under scrutiny recently. for a long time, he stood aloof of any criticism as father of the fatherland. democratization spurred a historical revisionist movement that tried to understand the authoritarian past. as part of this revisionist reflex, syngman rhee's unwavering nationalism is now very much contested. one good example of this reappraisal of syngman rhee is chdng (2001). on historical revisionism, see de ceuster (2001). in 1961, the us still contributed more than 90 percent of south korea's national budget! (kim, byung-kook 2003: 237). for a comprehensive treatment of the us-rok economic ties in the pre-park chung hee era, see woo (1991: 45-60). park chung hee was moved by a near-messianic zeal. he spared no effort to con vince and mobilize the population, but also preach his revolution abroad. for a good example of this, see park (1971). following the murder of park chung hee on 26 october 1979, formal political power was taken over by the then prime minister choi kyu ha. chun doo hwan remained in the wings, first securing total control over the military, and in the course of the spring of 1980, wresting control over the political institutions by having a revised constitution accepted in a referendum. on 17 may, amid growing popular unrest, he imposed a nationwide martial law regime, suspended all political institutions, and had political and student leaders arrested. citizens of kwangju protested against the imposition of martial law in general and the arrest of their political hero, kim dae jung. chun koen de ceuster responded to this public defiance by sending in special forces who went on a three day rampage through this provincial capital. rather than quelling the protests, this intervention led the people to storm weapons depots and drive the special forces out of the city. after a stand-off of nearly a week, regular army troops entered the city and ended the insurrection. the official-mortality count stands now at nearly 250, a figure that remains contested. this episode forever tarnished the legitimacy of chun doo hwan. the legacy of kwangju became a rallying cry for all opposition forces against the authoritarian state (oh 1999: 73-86; shin and hwang 2003). l2 no less than 551 citizen groups joined an appeal to stage rallies against the impeach ment procedure following the parliamentary vote that suspended the president from duty (na, jeong-ju 2004). l3 the april 2000 national assembly elections offer a good illustration of the specific role that civil society plays in south korean society today. despite the fact that the state has a national election commission to oversee campaign and elections procedures, there were doubts about its independence and effectiveness. a total bf 412 citizen groups united into a citizens' ~ i l i a n c e to oversee and double-check the fairness of the election campaign. they blacklisted 86 candidates who they claimed were unsuited for the job given their past (parliamentary) record. given that 59 blacklisted candidates did not make it into the 16th national assembly, their campaign can be considered a success (shin, myung-soon 2004: 14-20). there is a downside to the proliferation of ngos. south korean civil society movements tend to be issue-driven, reacting to immediate causes. institutional weakness is an inevitable consequence of such volatility (kim, hyuk-rae 2004: 420). l % y u k ~ a e kim (2004: 421) sees a development away from 'conventional state-centric governance' paradigm towards a social governance paradigm where, in response to the authoritarian legacy of korean politics, civil society is granted an institutional ized role thereby breaking the monopoly of parties and politicians over legislation and its enforcement. l' coined by the press, the 386-generation is now a common concept used in such di verse fields as political analysis, marketing and popular culture. google korea comes u p with more than 67,000 hits when searching for 386sedae. (www.google.co.kr, ac cessed on 14 march 2005). this 386-generation compares with the 5060-generation, people in their fifties/sixties, but also meaning, when read in korean, those people identified with the fifth (chun doo hwan) and sixth (roh tae woo) republic. in his analysis of the 2002 presidential election, car1 saxer (2003) questions the often proclaimed 'generational earthquake', stressing instead the continued importance of regional voting patterns. by focusing on regionalism as an enduring factor in the 2002 elections, saxer seems to under-estimate the developments that are appearing on the horizon. regionalism should be qualified. roh moo hyun's success in the cholla region, which was the power base of the millennium democratic party of outgoing president kim dae jung, provides already a political lining to the regional voting pattern. roh moo hyun has his roots in the rival city of pusan, home ground of former president kimyoung sam. roh moo hyun, in fact, sought the mdp nomi nation in order to break the spell of regionalism in korean politics (kim, hybn-mi 2003: 212). the regionalist voting pattern is seen here as diluted and overlapping with a clear 'opposition' or even 'anti-establishment' vote. such 'anti-establishment' l a feelings have a long and well-founded tradition in korean history, and should be taken for what they are: political attitudes. furthermore, the demographic shift in korean society is inevitably leading to changing voting patterns. already during the 2002 presidential election, 48 percent of the electorate belonged to the 20-30 age bracket. while their participation in elections may not have been overwhelming 84 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy (hovering around 50 percent), this generation votes more out of political motivations and convictions than any previous generation. given the different political/histori cal context in which they grew up, they vote differently. as a recent poll indicated, they are at ease with a globalizing economy, they support the engagement policies towards north korea, and have a critical attitude towards the international role of the us (na, sbn-mi 2005; see also kim, byung-kook 2003). l6 ore than any other age group, this 386-generation is marked by a strong sense of anti-americanism, the result of a common perception that the us government condoned the suppression of the kwangju uprising (kim, byung-kook 2003: 236-8). chun doo hwan misled the kwangju people into believing that us government had agreed to the dispatch of special forces to kwangju. despite a formal protest at the time by the us ambassador, this story was never retracted. ever since the kwangju uprising, the us government has been less than forthcoming in clarifying its role at that critical time in korean history. this attitude indirectly strengthened the perception popular among students and dissidents that the us had always been on the side of the oppressor (oberdorfer 1997: 128-30). democratization and liberalization of the korean economy went hand in hand. the traditionally closed economy was gradually opening up. not only us pressure to open the domestic market, but also the desire to play a more responsible role in inter national trade agreements made the korean government open to the world economy. import barriers were gradually lifted, and korean companies began investing in distribution and production facilities abroad. in the 1990s, south korea also began to play a more prominent role in international politics, both globally and regionally. furthermore, in 1988, free foreign travel was made possible by the relaxation of the rules to acquire passports. korean citizens began spending part of their wealth on discovering the world. finally, the press also played an important role in bringing the world to seoul. with press restrictions lifted, international reporting in korean media increased and improved in quality. l8 south korea developed from an aid recipient in the 1950s to 1960s into an interna tional aid donor in the 1990s. president roh tae woo launched the korean overseas volunteers (kov) programme in 1989 and established the korean international cooperation agency (koica) in 1991 to co-ordinate under the supervision of the ministry of foreign affairs korea's overseas development aid (see http://www. koica.go.kr/). having been on the receiving end of international aid, seoul is mo tivated by a strong sense of moral obligation to repay an international community that made the survival of south korea possible during and after the korean war. hence seoul's eagerness to contribute to international aid programmes and to play a responsible role in the un. l9 the gradual process of democratization can be discerned by looking at the bio graphies of the successive presidents since 1988. roh tae woo (1988-92) was chun doo hwan's hand-picked candidate for president. not only did he have a military background, but he had stood by chun doo hwan in his ascension to power in 1980. kim young sam (1992-98) may have had a long parliamentary career of opposition to the authoritarian state, but he was part of the political establishment working within the boundaries set by the state. in 1990, he brokered an alliance with the government democratic justice party, heir to the authoritarian state, in an attempt to strengthen his presidential bid in the 1991 elections. although this move allowed him to reform the system from within, it is equally true that his alliance with the old elite curtailed his ability to reform the state apparatus and remove the entrenched elites. kim dae jung was the first opposition candidate to win a presidential elec tion. despite his strategic alliance in the run-up to the election with kim jong pil, koen de ceuster the former right-hand man of park chung hee and founder of the infamous kcia, his was the clearest break to date with the authoritarian past. more than anything else, his political power base was utterly different from the previous governments. the financial crisis of 1997 which seemed to confirm the bankruptcy of the old boys' network of state-business collusion, allowed the incoming president to act swiftly (gills and gills 1999). roh moo hyun's election in 2001 was another step in the deepening of democratization in korea. with his 'new kid on the block' populist image, he rides a wave of popular support which sustains him in power over and against the distrust and disgust of the establishment. 20 in domestic politics he did so by not only granting a presidential pardon but even inviting two former presidents and past foes, chun doo hwan and roh tae woo, to his inauguration on 25 february 1998. during kirn young sam's presidency, both chun and roh had faced various charges (including embezzlement and graft), and were convicted to respectively life in prison and 17 years on charges of an illegal army mutiny (the 12 december 1979 coup d'etat that opened chun doo hwan's route to power) and the bloody suppression of the kwangju uprising. 21 during his landmark visit to japan in august 1998, president kirn dae jung came away with a remarkably upfront apology from the japanese government. during his presidency, the import ban on japanese cars and cultural products was lifted, and bilateral contacts were increased and diversified, including even joint military rescue operations at sea. while the south korean government moves away from the past, the future holds new challenges. pressure is growing in japan to amend the peace constitution. already, the role of the self defence forces has been increased in order to respond swiftly to the new threats of the post-9/11 world order where non-state entities seem to pose graver dangers than states (yun 2005: 21). 22 a number of outstanding issues (japanese history schoolbooks, tokdo/takeshima, compensation for 'comfort women') cloud from time to time south korean-japanese relations. the south korean government's attitude is by and large reactive, both to provocations from certain quarters in japan, and to pressure from civil society groups in korea itself. march 2005 saw a sudden flare-up of the tokdo/takeshima territorial dispute, leading to considerable diplomatic friction. in april 2005, gov ernmental and popular dismay over the approval of revisionist history textbooks further clouded bilateral relations. since raw emotions dominate at this stage, neither government can afford to concede. once the dust settles and the air is clear again, the focus will shift towards the long-term policy goals of good neighbourly rela tions and multilateral security arrangements. only such arrangements can contain the possible threat posed by a japan that is moving towards amending its peace constitution and redefining the role of its self defence forces (pak 2005). 23 kim dae jung announced his 'sunshine policy' during his inaugural speech in february 1998. pyongyang was hesitant, but eventually got its act together. as we know now, the june 2000 summit meeting between kirn dae jung and kirn jong i1 was made more palatable to the north through a major (illegal) donation of us$500 million. a major breakthrough in north-south relations came during the last weeks of roh tae woo's presidency, when on 13 december 1991 both koreas adopted an 'agreement on reconciliation, nonaggression and exchanges and co operation between the south and the north', followed later that same month by a north-south denuclearization agreement. kirn young sam was much more scepti cal about relations with the north. following kirn i1 sung's death in july 1994, his refusal to send condolences to the north korean people made pyongyang slam the door on any further governmental contact with seoul during his presidency. since the north was gripped by a severe food and economical crisis, kirn young sam 86 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 pride and prejudice in south korea's foreign policy did not mind because he was convinced that it was only a matter of time before the north korean regime would collapse. on the 1991 agreements and kirn young sam's attitude towards the north, see oberdorfer (1997: 260-408) and sigal (1998). a most unflattering portrait of kirn young sam is found in wit e t al. (2004). one of the reasons why pyongyang hesitated to respond to kirn dae jung's offer was initial distrust. even in the best of circumstances, negotiations with the north are a difficult balancing act. following kirn young sam's presidency, with pyongyang rattled by the death of kirn i1 sung, famine and economic crisis, kirn jong i1 may have doubted the true intentions of kirn dae jung. 2"n his inaugural address on 25 february 2003, roh moo hyun declared: 'this year marks the 50th anniversary of the korea-us alliance. it has made a significant contribution in guaranteeing our security and economic development. the korean people are deeply grateful for this. we will foster and develop this cherished alli ance. we will see to it that the alliance matures into a more reciprocal and equitable relationship. we will also expand relations with other countries, including traditional friends.' coming on top of strong anti-american sentiments vented in the run-up to the presidential elections in december 2002, some press reports have described this demand for a more balanced and equal partnership as a lack of gratitude towards the us, going as far as to call for the withdrawal of us forces from south korea. 25 the drifting apart of south korea and the us is not just a consequence of the poli cies pursued by the kirn dae jung-roh moo hyun governments. a major break in us foreign policy followed the coming to power of george w. bush. whereas kirn dae jung had found a willing partner in the clinton administration for his sunshine policy, he was cold-shouldered by the incoming bush administration in march 2001. following 9/11, the two alliance partners drifted further apart. obsessed with terror ism and weapons of mass destruction (wmd) proliferation, the bush administration followed a confrontational policy towards north korea, whereas the south korean government persevered in its policy of engagement and co-operation. as the two governments are drifting apart, so too are the public perceptions in both countries. an april 2003 fox news/opinion dynamics opinion poll in the us found that 54 percent of respondents thought north korea posed a direct threat to the us, com pared to only 10 percent for iraq. in contrast, a january 2004 research & research poll found that 39 percent of south korean respondents felt the us posed the big gest security threat to korea (33 percent north korea, 12 percent china, 8 percent japan). a 1993 gallup poll had found 44 percent of respondents pointing to north korea, and a mere 1 percent pointing the finger at the us (yun 2005: 13-14). 26 ~ e o u l strategists warn of the risk that overdependence on china may revert the geopolitical equilibrium in the region to a 19th-century pattern of dependence. the chance that economic dependence on china might in the future curtail the room for political manoeuvre of the south korean government is a real worry. it explains why south korean diplomacy is paying so much attention to multilateral diplomacy, and why the chances for an end to the security alliance with the us remain remote (yun 2005; yi 2005). as korea rides a wave of national pride and steps up its interna tional profile, some 'irredentist' mavericks in korea are raising their voices to claim the ancient territory of koguryd (4th to 7th centuries ad) in present manchuria. in response, chinese historians are involved in attempts to present koguryd as a chinese state. this attempt to establish the chineseness of koguryd can also be seen as a move to quell any illusions among the korean minority in manchuria about a possible incorporation into a future unified korean state. 27 this was the attitude taken during the first round of six party talks in august 2003. from october 2002 until this peking-mediated diplomatic initiative, washington koen de ceuster had been basically looking the other way, rather than to seek a direct and negoti ated settlement to the ongoing crisis. the six party talks bring russia, china, japan, north and south korea and the us to the negotiating table. 28 twice north korea declined to participate in a fourth round. in the run-up to the american presidential elections, it came as no surprise that pyongyang declared it was not interested at that stage in participating in the talks. the expected february (2005) meeting did not materialize either. instead, pyongyang increased the pressure on washington by officially stating that it not only possessed a nuclear weapon, but also that it felt no longer bound to adhere to its self-imposed missile test moratorium (declared in september 1999). washington for its part seems to have shifted to a more pragmatic position, with secretary of state condoleeza rice going as far as orally acknowledging north korean sovereignty. 29 south korean governments have often in the past been confronted with american faits accomplis. the most recent examples are the unilateral announcement in june 2003 of plans for us troop redeployment away from the demilitarized zone (dmz), and in june 2004 the unilateral announcement of a scheduled reduction by one-third of us troops in the south. the timetable of the reduction of us troops was extended so as to allow the south korean armed forces sufficient time to upgrade their weaponry to compensate for this reduction in manpower. references ahn, byung-young and lee, yeon-ho 2003. 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and oxford: colombia university press. yi, sd-hang 2005. a r f t i i palcksbn p a n g h y a n g : tongasia taja a n b o hysbpnysbkch'e s i l t ' a e punssbk-kzua kzvallysbn kaysb [the direction of arf's development; in relation with the analysis of the state of multilateral security co-operation structures in east asia]. seoul: oeguk anbo ybn'guwbn (consulted online). yun, tbk-min 2005. h a n ' g u k u ' i chsbllyakcksbk ssbnt'aek: t o n g m a e n g , ckaju, taja a n b o [korea's strategic choices: alliance, autonomy, multilateral security]. seoul: oeguk anbo ydn'guwdn (consulted online). 90 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' abstract taiwan's growing calls for independence have provoked china and heightened the risk of military conflict in the region. this paper addresses two issues: first, it seeks to provide a short historical overview of the development of taiwan ese nationalistic self-assertion; second, it questions the commonly held notion of keeping the 'status quo', which is in effect always changing and dynamic. the paper uses a historical-institutional framework for its interpretation. it explores the origin and rise of taiwanese nationalism in its relationship to taiwan's past, and the changing geo-political contexts in which it is situated. it then analyses the importance of electoral institutions and the struggles to broaden political participation and legitimation. several disparate sources of taiwanese identity are also discussed, namely: (i) taiwan as a frontier terri tory of the manchu empire, which was later colonized and modernized by the japanese; (ii) unification with the republic of china under authoritarian rule since 1945; and (iii) the transformation of the roc regime, its indigenization and grounding in taiwan in the context of its long separation from china and its international isolation. this indigenization process has been gradually ac complished through electoral struggles and by revising the electoral system and the con~titution.~ introduction the recent growth of taiwanese nationalist sentiment has caused wide spread alarm and raised the spectre of military conflict in the region. it is not that taiwan's nationalism is expected to lead to strategic or territorial expansion, but that in the eyes of the beijing government, it is seen as a 'provocative' step in the direction of 'permanently sepa rating' from china. during the last decade, beijing's efforts to subdue taiwan's move towards independence, which have included the use of military exercises and threatening remarks, have been unsuccessful in dampening its growth. sometimes stern reactions from the prc vis mau-kuei michael chang a-vis taiwan's domestic politics just helped to add fuel to the fire. the dark cloud of war has been looming since 1996 over the taiwan strait (friedman 1999). beijing has offered taiwan the terms known as 'peaceful unifica tion, one country two system^'.^ very briefly, this means that taiwan could enjoy a very high degree of autonomy, including maintaining its military force, but must remain a special territorial government under the prc. hong kong was at one time the often-cited model to persuade taiwan to accept this concept, though less so now, partly caused by rising discontents among hong kong citizens for their government. the prc firmly believe that if taiwan were to accept this offer, both sides of the taiwan strait would benefit from a peaceful and prosper ous future, a true 'win-win' situation. one needs to enquire why the political trend in taiwan has been edging in the opposite direction by choosing to promote independent sovereign statehood, 'separating' from china. why is it that more and more taiwanese people and their political leaders have, in their political manoeuvrings, continuously declined china's unification proposal, and defied china's warning of war? political analysts also wonder why taiwan does not grasp the op portunity while it still has the chance, since time is on the side of china, whose economy is booming and which is swiftly rising to become the major regional player. one simple answer to these questions is that taiwanese nationalism is 'protected' by the us in the name of maintaining peace in the region and defending democracy. in the eyes of its opponents, taiwan has been regarded as the 'protectorate' of the us since the 1950s, when the korean war broke out. at that time, taiwan was occasionally referred to as an 'unsinkable' carrier of the west pacific to contain the spread of communism. and now it is vital to the strategic interests of the ja pan-us alliance in the region to balance and check the surging chinese influence. despite its affirmation of the 'one-china' policy, and its as sertion that it does not support taiwanese independence, the us has a vested interest in a 'separate' taiwan, especially when engaging with china. opponents of taiwanese nationalism question its authenticity, and believe that without us backing, taiwan would have lost its status quo and caved in very quickly. from the viewpoint of realpolitik, this explanation may not be far from reality. but this is also an oversimplistic view because it takes little ac count of what the citizens of taiwan actually practise in their routine political life: namely what the concepts of 'democracy' and 'nation', 92 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' 'independence' and 'unification' actually mean to them for their identity making process. it also overlooks how different historical trajectories and political institutions have exerted various influences on taiwan's nationalism and capacity for self-assertion, and how this has ironically divided and united taiwan at one and the same time. it is fair to argue that taiwan has developed its own zig-zag na tion-building course under the geo-political constraints set by global and regional powers beyond its borders. though the nation has many adversaries, including the recent threat of incursion by china, taiwan is de facto an independent country. indeed, in 2003 it ranked as the 17th largest trade country of the world, boasting a fully-fledged democracy and government. though it does not have enough power to shake up the big geo-political picture, significant events do take place within taiwan's domestic political agenda, such as combining a disputed ref erendum with a heated presidential election at the same time, proposing to revise its constitution and its national title, lobbying to enter un as a nation-state at the assembly, and revising the curricular of history and geography in national education contents. all these developments have the potential to exert a significant pressure on concerned parties and people, both inside and outside of taiwan, and to impact on its neighbouring countries through 'provoking' chinese military actions and hence forcing the us and japan to take a stand on the issue. the purpose of this paper, therefore, is to provide a 'balanced' inter pretative framework to examine taiwanese politics and its significance. the paper attempts to look at issues that concern many taiwanese, and explain why have they been occupying a salient position in taiwan's political arena.3 i contend that taiwan's nationalistic drive has its origin in the complex and powerful functions and influences of colonialism, nationalism and the state apparatus. the pursuance of national mod ernization and development has been confined to geo-politics. and nationalism, be it taiwanese or chinese, has been a crucial element in the institutional formulation of the roc's constitution and in the evolution of its electoral politics. it cannot be discredited as political manoeuvring and strategic mobilization by some cunning political elites and opportunist political parties. nationalism, once it has arisen, develops and transforms itself through major events and critical his torical conjunctures. its capacity to grow is also constrained by the range of probable actions set by the constraints in institutional politics. according to its relative strength at a particular juncture, it may either follow or contravene the rules of the game imposed at that time by mau-kuei michael chang powerful interests. thus its developmental course is often non-linear and not predetermined; rather it is path-dependent, meaning that the latter developments are led and influenced by earlier developments or events with a degree of uncertainty. the framework of this paper will be mainly historical-institutional. i wish to demonstrate the impact of the past on the present, and that the present can only play itself out within the boundaries set by the past. in other words, when political change takes place, it tends to occur in crementally, unless the power structure or major institutions have been seriously disrupted. moreover, incremental changes, some big and some small, are also completed through the pre-existing institutional set-ups. besides regulating the possibilities and providing rationalizations for political actions, institutional set-ups are also situated at the centre-stage of contentious politics, becoming the target for political struggles. thus they constrain and energize political changes almost simultaneously. the first part of this paper explores the historical background of tai wanese national self-assertion. for most people, trying to make sense of the present and look toward the future, the past can provide ration alization~ and meanings either through direct lived experience (of the older generation) or through narrating and using the past to educate the younger generation. what we see in today's taiwanese nationalism has a long historical trajectory, originated in its colonial legacy of the early 20th century. this legacy persists in the current political scenario, and is repeatedly narrated by today's political actors. the paper then focuses on three major sources of political energy to explain taiwan's drive for nationalism and independence: (i) the early phase of taiwanese national self-assertion under the japanese, (ii) the historic building of nationalist authoritarianism in taiwan by the roc government, and (iii) the movement from the grassroots to transform the regime into a representative polity through the struggles to enlarge the existing electoral system and for 'political indigenization'. but first, it is helpful briefly to examine the current complexities surrounding the issue of nationalism in taiwan. the complexities of the current national status figure 1 gives an indication of the range of taiwanese attitudes (1998 2004) towards taiwan independence versus unification with china. over the years, compared to other choices, over 50 percent of the taiwanese public favours preservation of the 'status quo'. the majority view helps 94 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' to stabilize the current regime and to inject a degree of self-restraint in domestic politics, as against any hasty move. the corresponding percentages for the pro-independence camp, consisting of those who want independence as soon as possible, and those who perhaps would prefer independence at some future date, have increased steadily in recent years, from under 20 percent to almost 26 percent. but the sup port for immediate independence is still relative low, hovering around 5-6 percent. on the other hand, the support for unification with china shows a more fluctuating and declining percentage. a recent 2004 poll suggests that about 11.4 percent favour unification some time in the future, with only 1.6 percent opting for immediate unification. figure 1: opinion poll (1998-2004) on whether taiwan should seek independence or unification with china (%) status quo now/ decide later +efor status quo indefinitely status quo now/ independence later status quo now/ unification later +independence asap -0others j a n aug may jul jul aug sept unification, asap 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 source: mainland affairs council, executive yuan, and taiwanese government. the data were collected through telephone interviews by random sampling of the national adult population. the poll was done by the center for election studies, national cheng-chi university, taiwan, and a private polling company. another way to explain the complexity is to look at the formation of the 'status quo' in taiwan. for many chinese, the term 'china' is so natural that it appears to be unequivocal and seemingly eternal. but in reality and in history, 'china' has many different faces and meanings to different peoples. and the territory and people of 'china' through out history have also varied according to the period in question. to mau-kuei michael chang explain just how complicated the issue of national identity is in taiwan today; we can begin with its official title and constitution. the official title of taiwan today is still the republic of china (the roc), which was established in 1911 in nanjing (in mainland china), following the overthrow of the manchu monarchy. and the constitution of roc was passed only towards the end of 1948 in nanjing a few months before the fall of the nationalist government. this event occurred during the period of heightened civil war between the government and the 'rebel' communist army. later, that constitution was taken to taiwan when the central government went into exile. never fully implemented (for obvious practical reasons), the constitution became a token for the 'legiti mate and truthful china', which is also the pro-us and us-backed 'free china'. the constitution was upheld as an intrinsic part of democracy, against the 'communist dictatorship regime'. and it was also used as a 'cosmetic disguise' for the authoritarian rule that persisted in taiwan for nearly 40 years. in more recent times, the roc constitution has be come the focus of political contention. in the debate over which political model to adopt to set taiwan on its future path, different political forces engaged in a power struggle to control the revision of the constitution, which needed to be attuned to the new political situation.' ironically, although the constitution can be viewed as an obsolete and ineffective instrument to confront the new political realities of present day taiwan, it remains the main legitimizing organ. this in respect to: institutional governance, the separation of powers, the structure of gov ernment, national representation, the national title and the requirement of loyalty from its citizens. any violation of, or attempt to redraw the roc constitution (especially those parts that are implemented, added and revised in taiwan) can stir up political crises and cause serious protests over its legitimacy. however, 'constitutionally' speaking, the roc still holds territorial claim over the entire area of china, including outer mongolia (the re public of mongolia since 1946). this particular 'china', prescribed by the roc constitution, therefore, is definitely not the 'china' that is prescribed by the chinese communist party and the constitution of the people's republic of china (the prc).j this complexity is also fully illustrated in a recent interview given by taiwan's pro-independence president chen shui-bian, in the midst of his tense presidential campaign for his second term. describing the complicated historical process of confront ing political realities, chen said: 96 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' a simple way to describe the status quo of taiwan is this: first the republic of china was on mainland china, then the republic of china came to taiwan, then the republic of china was on taiwan, and now the republic of china is taiwan. ... taiwan has never been part of mainland china. mainland china is mainland china. taiwan is taiwan. taiwan is part of the republic of china, but not a part of mainland china. taiwan has always existed. it's just that the republic of china before 1949 was on mainland china, and then it came to be taiwan. it existed on taiwan, and now it is taiwan? (time, 16 february 2004) chen's statement may accurately summarize his pro-independence party's official line: namely, to entrench the country's independent sov ereignty while avoiding military confrontation with china by upholding the roc's formal titles and constitution. even if chen is correct in stating the 'reality', that taiwan has never been part of the prc, there is no justification in denying that, viewed from the mainland chinese perspective, taiwan is an inseparable part of china. the chinese people in general believe that the prc has inherited and represents the entire china, as a timeless notion with boundaries always clearly drawn, while both pride and shame passed on to them along with its past. there is no question in their minds that taiwan be longs to this seemingly eternal china; and that it was only taken away by imperialists in the past. taiwan thus represents unfinished business left over from the civil war; it is about strengthening a unified country, and about redeeming the humiliation caused by foreign incursions on chinese soil. in this regard, unification with taiwan is equal to recover ing the lost honour of the chinese people. it is sacred, and is bound up with chinese dignity in world affairs. so the 'status quo' iterated by chen shui-bian may be one-sided, and not nearly as simple as it may at first appear. in defiance, since august 2002, chen has re-appropriated lee teng-hui's 'two-country' argument, which originated in the late 1990s, by stressing the 'separation reality' of the two places.' in 2004, during taiwan's heated presidential election campaign, taiwan's pro-independence camp (led by the incumbent president chen shui-bian) for hoping to get more support for their campaign had manoeuvred to mobilize the independent sentiments to such an extent that chen angered both beijing and taiwan's strongest ally-the us. president george w. bush, who was prompted to send the strongest signal yet to discredit chen's campaign strategy for holding an unnecessary referendum, suspecting that it was a plot to 'change the s t a t u s q ~ o ' . ~ mau-kuei michael chang just how did this head-on collision between the two places ever hap pen? what are the historical and institutional reasons that led to these current complexities? the beginning of taiwanese self-assertion: sandwiched between traditional roots and the modern japanese empire g taiwan became the place of exile for some ming loyalists after the manchu conquered most parts of the mainland around the 1660s. in 1683, manchu, already the ruler of china, annexed a portion of taiwan island after it had defeated the last ming resistance group holding in taiwan. for most of the time, taiwan was not a vital part of the empire's interests until the late 19th century. then taiwan's strategic importance increased because of the advancement of the western powers (e.g. the british and the french) and the ascendancy of japan in the region. in 1885, the manchu emperor granted taiwan full provincial status to strengthen its maritime defences against other countries. nine years later (1894) the manchu dynasty went to war with japan because of the political crisis that arose in korea. defeated by japan, taiwan was severed from the manchu empire and given to japan as part of the truce contained in the shimonoseki treaty of 1895. present-day taiwanese national identity can be traced back at least to the resistance against japanese colonialism in the early 1920s, when nationalistic and liberalizing ideas inspired colonized peoples throughout the world. in the early part of the 20th century, taiwanese elites and educated youth were influenced by a progressive japanese education system, and by a number of historic developments, such as the republican revolution in mainland china and the irish home-rule movement and its 'rebelling' against the great britain during in early 20th century, the wilsonian call for self-determination in the 1920s after the first world war, and later by the communist and leftist calls for class warfare and national liberation from imperialism. the most important progressive ideologies of the early 20th century all contributed to dif ferent discourses and strategies of the taiwanese resistance movement in one way or another (chang 2003: 30-42; wu 2004). a famous taiwanese activist, jiang weishui at one time said that the taiwanese owed their ethno-cultural roots to their chinese ancestors, but they were also citizens belonged to japan, although treated with discrimination. another taiwanese writer, wu zhuoliu, who travelled 98 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' to mainland china (and later became disillusioned) wrote a famous novel in japanese in 1956 (recently translated in english; see wu 2005) entitled orphan of asia. in this work he lamented the fate of taiwan: its marginalization in the world, its lack of recognition, its search for belonging in a world torn by wars, resentments and discriminations.1° such was the moving and compelling novel derived from the 'sand wiched condition' felt by most enlightened and educated taiwanese youth under japanese colonialism. but this early phase of taiwanese nationalism did not evolve into its present form automatically. the resistance camp during the era of japa nese colonialism was divided between the left-wing movement (which made its appeal in name of revolution and liberation from imperialism) and the more moderate reform movement (which called for the estab lishment of a representative council though indirect election), although both camps were carefully monitored and suppressed by the japanese authorities. the japanese were relatively more successful in eliciting patriotism for the emperor among the younger generation through modernization measures. these included a broad and carefully crafted spectrum of plans ranging from modernizing the education system, to improving public health, extending life expectancy, and promoting industrialization and urbanization, which led to the rise of a new ur ban-based middle class. in the late 1930s, when the second world war was at its height, efforts to promote japanization also peaked. some taiwanese youth had chosen to side with the government because of practical needs and the influences from the carefully crafted 'japaniza tion' process. in the face of heavy competition, they eagerly tried to fulfil japan's stringent criteria to enter the armed forces and may well have felt pride in defending the empire.ll in an exemplary work on this period, wu rwei-ren (2003) argues that taiwan could have been turned into another newly annexed territory (not a 'colony') like okinawa, through japan's strenuous efforts to integrate and absorb it, were it not for japan's ultimate defeat and surrender in 1945 (see also ching 2001). it would be fair to say that the majority of taiwanese people had not won their freedom from japanese colonization by the end of the second world war. liberating taiwan came with its return to the 'homeland' represented by the kmt and the nationalistic republic of china in 1945.12 though some were confused and uncertain about their future status and identity, the taiwanese people in general had high hopes for post-war peace and reconstruction, freedom and self-autonomy. mau-kuei michael chang in 1947, less than two years after taiwan's return to china, clashes broke out. the taiwanese rose up in riots and formed guerrilla units to rebel against the chinese government in taiwan (appointed by the homeland) for its mistreatment, corruption, discrimination and mismanagement of the general socio-economic conditions. the nation alistic government in nanjing, led by chiang kai-shek, sent in troops who brutally suppressed the uprising after the 'february 28 incident', which is commemorated today as part of the long-suffering history of the taiwanese, caused by 'outsiders' and ' c o l ~ n i z e r s ' . ~ ~ these early experiences including resisting but also collaborating with japanese, the ensuing 'liberation' and confusion, the unification with the 'homeland', the illusion and the atrocities-left deep scars on the early generations of the taiwanese people. some activists and indigenous leaders, who were lucky enough to survive, felt so alien ated that they relapsed into a long silence. others went into exile and formed overseas organizations to campaign for taiwanese independence by advocating the overthrow of the nationalistic chinese government imposed upon taiwan. thus, in a historical context, a combination of many factors rendered the situation conducive to the beginning of the modern taiwanese na tional self-assertion that reiterates the fundamental 1920s nationalistic idea: that taiwan should belong to the taiwanese people. today some taiwanese still feel resentful at being mistaken as 'chinese', or even at the mention of any 'unification with homeland', especially coming from the mouths of mainlander chinese or the beijing government.14 many identify the 'february 28 incident' in 1947 as the watershed for the taiwanese independence movement. but one should not think of this incident as 'the cause' of the modern taiwan independence move ment; indeed, the body of scholarship that has examined the causes of this incident have failed to prove this connection. the incident was rather the culmination of a clash between two different historical tra jectories, which had projected taiwan and mainland china on different roads to modernization, nation-building, and self-identity since 1895. in that year, taiwan and china had been forced to split and to embark on different and unknown routes. taiwan and china even waged war against each other because of japan's intensified military actions in china since 1926. being separated from each other, the combined forces of wars, revolution, colonialism, nation-building, and the pursuit of modernization in general, had propelled both the people and the society in different directions and imbued them with different outlooks. the 100 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' practice of institution-building, the formation of cultural codifications (such as different languages), and the symbolic power for defining patriotism, developed differently in two separate, albeit historically re lated geographical locations. in 1945, when japan surrendered, chinese nationalists went into taiwan with the power and legitimacy to rule. when the two were reassembled, victorious chinese nationalism was clearly positioned above the 'sandwiched' and differently imbricated taiwanese identity, thereby depriving taiwanese, especially the more educated of the population, of any opportunity for self-redemption. resentful sentiments arose quickly as the taiwanese found taiwan's new overall social, economic and political order swiftly deteriorating, in contrast to their high expectations. taiwanese political leaders were also angered by chinese officials who either consciously or unconsciously discredited them as ill-equipped for home rule because they lacked the proper sense of patriotism or affinity towards china in their sentiments. in retrospect, clashes like the rebellion in february 28,1947 could hardly have been avoided. however, since the 1950s the taiwan independence movement has been largely a movement in exile. it could hardly survive in taiwan under the authoritarian regime. the movement was unorganized and had lit tle resources or practical means to overthrow the roc government that retreated to taiwan in 1949. the growing support for the development of present-day taiwanese nationalism came into existence at a later time, roughly during the late 1970s after the so-called 'formosa magazine inci dent' (which will be discussed later). its evolution has its roots in specific historical conditions, in the struggles between political activists and the authorities within the confines of institutional politics, and it centres on partisan struggles and on revisions to the electoral institutions. in the following three sections, i shall discuss first, the establishment of an imposing socio-political structure on taiwan; second, the reasons for the lack of recognition of the roc as the true and authentic china in international regime, and third, the institutional setting of the intricacy of electoral politics and the push for democracy 'from the local to the national'. the establishment of authoritarian chinese rule on taiwan, 1949-70 when chen shui-bian said that 'the roc came to taiwan', he was refer ring to the vast and violent structural changes occurring in china during mau-kuei michael chang 1948-50, which taiwan was impotent to resist but only could accept the consequences. losing to chinese communists in the mainland, the roc's central government, including the kmt party, the military, the national assembly, legislators and loyal intellectuals, which became the so-called yatong' (a reference to the authentic legitimacy and the holy codes of the chinese grand tradition) withdrew to taiwan. exiles regrouped on the island under the dictatorship of chiang kai-shek. the newcomers numbered between one and one and a half million, while taiwan's original population was about six million. today they are identified as the first generation of the 'mainlander' group in taiwan. mainlander elites in taiwan enjoyed relative advantages, privileged access and monopoly to government power and the national cultural apparatus, such as the media and education. the basic power structure of politics was framed in two tiers. one was the national or central government, the roc, sitting on the top rungs of the political hierarchy, with the kmt controlling the army and secu rity, and directing economic development. the other was the local and regional taiwan tier prescribed to support the nationalistic mission of the central government. the former (i.e. the roc tier), representing the whole of china and dominated by the mainlanders, was not account able to the local people. since taiwan was seen as just a part of china, the political and cultural priorities, national symbols and significant historical meanings were assigned to the whole of china, and taiwan was assigned a base position for national restoration, to pay back the homeland, and to retake mainland china. taiwan was thus regarded as a local or a portion that could not represent the whole. and it is thus on the 'lower' position vis-a-vis the symbolic making of china. with us backing, coupled with the cold war ideology, the roc's rule in taiwan from 1950 to 1978 was viewed as 'hard' authoritarian ism (winkler 1984). the constitution was frozen in the name of national emergency and martial law was decreed for internal security. people were only allowed limited room for political participation at the local government level. the party controlled education and the media in order to portray itself as genuine guardian of the country. loyalty to the party and patriotic love for the country were strongly promoted in an almost indistinguishable way. the government promulgated the absolute importance of unity. representative government, separation of powers, and freedom of expression were interpreted as not befitting chinese culture and societv. dissidents such as the leftists and inde pendent activists were tracked down, punished or expelled overseas. 102 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' a small number of the taiwanese elites were recruited by the kmt, but as they were considered to have only 'local' importance, they were relatively marginal to the centre of power. during this period, the two chinese governments on either side of the taiwan strait had proclaimed their respective determination to ac complish the unification mission by eradicating the other. they engaged in hostile actions despite the nationalistic dream they shared. they used not only propaganda warfare tactics, but also military manoeuvrings to intimidate the other side. however, because the roc was under the military umbrella of the us, and the prc was preoccupied with do mestic troubles in building 'socialist new china', the regional remained relatively uneventful up until the late 1970s.15 continuous setbacks on the international front and the 'softening' of authoritarianism, 1971-86 from the 1970s onward, the kmt-roc government began to remove some of the constraints that had deterred taiwan's grassroots opposi tion, though apprehensively. 'authoritarian softening' meant that the government would allow local taiwanese interests to participate in national politics providing this was conducted under careful scrutiny. in this tactic there was, to be sure, a gradual shift in the mode of domina tion, from brutal suppression to more sophisticated legal punishment and harassment, using blatant propaganda to smear the enemy (rigger 1999,2001; wu 1995: 78-80; dickson 1996: 53-8). this change in ruling tactics was prompted by the continuous set backs, which the government suffered in international affairs. the kmt-roc government was gradually losing its long-term legitimacy claim to represent the whole of china in international business, and the rationale for upholding the hierarchical relation between the central and the national government of the roc and local government of taiwan. by far the most debilitating setback was the roc's loss of its seat in the un (1971). this was confirmation of the international shift that now recognized the prc as the legitimate government of china. this frustration was complicated by the fact that the us was redi recting its foreign policy and normalizing its relations with the prc to contain the threat from the soviet union. president nixon visited beijing in 1972. coming in the wake of this dramatic volfe face in us foreign policy was the sudden upsurge in chinese nationalistic and patriotic sentiment in both taiwan and mainland china. it was stirred up by mau-kuei michael chang a territorial dispute with japan over a small and uninhabited island called diaoyufai (or senkagu) which was situated between taiwan and okinawa. these two events galvanized the call for increased national assertiveness, dissatisfaction with the government, and for greater political reforms. combined with the rise to power in 1970 of chiang ching-kuo (who was about to succeed his father) as leader of the next generation, the government hesitantly responded, with liberal measures in handling new political demands, and by allowing intellectuals and activists more freedom of expression. this was not the end of roc's legitimacy problem. after years of be hind-the-scene negotiation, the prc and the us finally agreed in 1978 to establish formal diplomatic relations. the us announced this to the rest of the world and agreed to comply with the prc's insistence on its 'one-china' claim. the simplistic version of this claim is that there is one china, represented by the prc, of which taiwan is an inseparable part, and therefore a domestic concern of beijing. after this came the severance of the mutual defence treaty between the us and the roc, and the us agreement to phase out its weapon sales to taiwan. this constituted a serious crisis for the roc government, since the us was a powerful ally and the only country left in the world still backing up its claims.16 these changes impacted on taiwan's domestic politics. now the previous excuses for preventing the taiwanese people from having a 'normal' political system and 'accountable' central government for tai wan (and only for taiwan, not including mainland china) drew heavy criticism. the demand for political reform arose in association with the continuing social pluralism since the mid-1970s, which followed on the heels of rapid economic development. the relationship between economic development and democratization in the third world (or in the socialist countries) cannot be dealt with here. suffice it to suggest that at early stages of economic growth, early beneficiaries were more likely to support the government for moderate political reforms in order to further or protect their hard-earned interests. and later, if economic success continues to be sustainable, then people are more likely to de mand large-scale systematic and institution reforms, either because of rising social inequality or relative deprivation. the last incident of brutal suppression against political dissidents the 'formosa magazine incident' -took place in december 1979. mass arrests and courts martial were handed out to taiwanese dissidents accused of treason and subversion, linked to chinese communists.17 the 1979 crackdown, ironically, helped to boost overseas taiwanese 104 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' independence groups, attracting younger taiwanese (overseas students and businessmen) who became sympathizers for taiwan's independ ence. the incident also 'awakened' some of the post-war generation of taiwanese youth. sympathizers interpreted this incident as a brutal as sault on taiwanese identity by an outside regime. but this did give the younger generation of taiwanese activists first-hand experience of the suppression previously meted out to the older generation of taiwanese activists? because of the formosa magazine incident, the domestic dissidents and the overseas activists could now finally support each other in questioning the legitimacy of the roc. thus, together they obtained in 1991 the freedom to openly express support for taiwan independence.19 the weakness of the authoritarian measures forced the government to comply with increased demands for political liberties, social justice and accountable politics. in the period 1980-86, taiwan's opposition continued to grow with a blend of three sets of interrelated discourses. the dominant one was of course, democratization, for example, protect ing human rights, legalizing party politics and broadening the scope for political participation. the second discourse was for social reform, which comprised a mix of progressive grassroots social movements from women to aborigines, and some pro-labour and farmers' leftist ideas. and the third discourse was self-determination: the right for taiwanese people to decide their own future. this last one was not yet a blunt statement for taiwan independence, since this was still strictly forbid den. advocates for self-determination resorted to the phrase 'taiwanese need to be their own master' in a suggestive and milder way, to test the regime's tolerance levels. 'long live the election!'the characteristics of taiwan's democratization process taiwan's democratization process since the 1970s is generally seen as relatively peaceful and incremental (tien 1989; chu 1992; copper 1998; rigger 1999; alagappa 2001). but this also reveals the painfully slow process through which the kmt yielded to the democratic movement. the institutional reason for this slow process was the continued exist ence of elaborate election schemes established since early 1951. in the beginning it was designed to suppress communist insurgents and to enhance the dominant position of the kmt government. but soon it evolved into setting the 'game rules' that would prescribe the probable political actions to take place. it served two important functions: one, mau-kuei michael chang to provide a relatively practical (though still very risky) instrument of last resort and the only possible venue to challenge the authority, compared to going underground or into exile to advocate toppling the government. two, it worked to help the kmt to stabilize the regime by letting the pressures and discontents to go off periodically under close watch during election times. a comparison between taiwan, the philippines and south korea would reveal the extent to which taiwan's political changes have been surrounded by revisions to the regulations governing electoral institutions and the winning of significant posts in major elections. it is fair to say that taiwan had election(s) long before it had democracy; and elections even as it helped the push for democracy from the bottom-up during the authoritarian era, excluding other more radical means to topple the regime. this is not to say that elections in taiwan had thus far been fair or that political participation was guaranteed. in fact, the building of electoral institutions has been a difficult and contentious political process. every election has been fought not only as one battle to win a post, but also as a battle to enlarge the theatre of war, meaning to test the tolerance limits set by the authorities for full political participation and protec tion of human rights. elections have also provided the opportunity to challenge the system, in the face of a legacy of monopolistic and unfair practices wielded by the kmt's supreme power. table 1 provides a chronology of changes in electoral institutions since the 1950s. several conclusions can be drawn from the changing process. first, it should be noted that these institutions have developed bottom-up, from levels of low significance and competition, to those of high significance and party competition. this trend is reflected in the gradual expansion of the electoral system and an increased number of posts at the higher levels. by 1992, the public had elected all their representatives to different con gresses. former 'permanent' congressional members were finally forced into retirement. by 1994, all significant city-provincial magistrates' posi tions were open for competitive election also. and by 1996, after waves of political struggle, the office of the head of the state became an elected one. the paper will later elaborate on the significance of this change. second, we should take note that the significance of elections for dif ferent political activists and parties has developed differently. it would be fair to say that in the period before 1970, elections were more like window dressings of the roc. even when supplementary election(s) to the ageing congress began in 1969 and 1972,20 and was further extended 106 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' table 1: the evolution of electoral institutions in taiwan, 1950-200021 years 1950-71 (only local elections) 1972-90 (gradual opening at the national level) 1991-92 (establishing the new representative congress 1994 (three more important posts) 1996-2000 (presidential election) posts open to political competi tion significance for the ruling party, the kmt (until 20001 1) village and dis trict head, district 1) showcases demo cracv for 'free china1 representative 2) county-city magi strate and councils (excluding the two major cities, taipei and kaohsiung since 1966) 3) taiwan provin cial council 2) co-opting and con trol rural farmers after land reform success 3) pacifying the land lords 4) expanding local support for the party supplementary elections for natio 1) improving kmt's legitimacy claim by nal representati ves since 1972; expanded in 1981 (but old congress members remained in the majority) allowing taiwanese representatives enter ing the central level 2) recruiting more taiwanese politicians in the ruling party new national as sembly and legis lature (replacing the old members elected in 1949) 1) to compete to win and to retain power 2) to transform from a vanguard party into a democratic party 3) to become indigen ized and rooted in taiwan 4) internal power struggle leading to break-uo 1) taipei and kaoh siung city mayors 2) taiwan provin 1) deepening indi genization of km7 and internal vower cial governor and internal power struggle 2) competing for lead ing taiwanization (the silent revolution1) 3) spinning off the two ends of the extreme from the kmt struggle 2) competing for leading taiwanization (the silent revolution1) president and vice oresident significance for opposition (later the dpp in 1986) until 2000 1) deepening indigeni zation of the km7 1) isolated and mild protest, unorganized dissidents 2) slim chance for winning and high personal costs to compete against the km 1) expansion in election holidays. forming organized opposition movement, leading to the founding of the dpp (1986), demanding political freedoms 2) elevating the opposition from local to the central government 3) advocating fundamental rights to the taiwanese people to decide on their own future 1) pressing social and political changes for better and more accountable government 2) indigenization and promot ing taiwanese identity 3) competing for the majority for self-legitimating 1) competing for the majority 2) competing for leading taiwanization 1) self-transformation, inclin ing to the middle to win 2) competing for leading tai wanization to guarantee the room for self-determination 3) competing for presidency, looking to regime change hand, and win taiwan back from outsider1 4) resisting incorporation into the 'greater china'. mau-kuei michael chang in 1983, the kmt was still in complete domination and no election result could topple the power structure.22 the kmt used elections to recruit younger-generation taiwanese into the ruling party, and therefore to legitimize the regime's authoritarian sway. but this new supplementary electoral system was viewed differently way by the opposition. now they not only had room to manoeuvre but also influence at the national level to strive for. they took the opportunity to speak out to test the limit of the authorities' tolerance and their determination for reform (and for suppression as well). in the 1970s and the 1980s, the results of supplementary elections, though skewed, were used as political barometers, to measure how 'unpopular' (not 'popular') the kmt was among taiwanese people. thus, during this period, the kmt government felt compelled to mo bilize its security and propaganda machine to intimidate and smear its adversaries (tien 1989). during the late1970s, the opposition alliance in taiwan was networking as a semi-political party, emerging in the name of dangzoai (meaning outside the kmt party). they seized the brief and periodic interstices of political openness during the election season. this was the background for well-known expressions like 'election holidays' and 'long live the election' slogans of the late1970s and early 1980s. the 'holiday' metaphor was to suggest the temporary slacking in repression by the government during election time. thus the dissidents used these interludes to express their ideas and political positions with less fear and restraint. the second expression suggested the importance of the election, and the striving for election fairness, as a time for the dissidents to challenge the authority and to push for reform.23 by 1986, the opposition had gained about 30 percent or more of the votes in most of the quasi nationwide elections, despite the kmt's manipulation and smears against the dangzoai members. as support for the opposition grew, in a daring move, it formed the democratic progressive party (dpp) in september of that year. much to the surprise of the electorate, dictator chiang ching-kuo decided to lift martial law to allow the dpp to exist (asserting that they should adhere to the policy of 'one china', without supporting independence for taiwan). thus, the 'liberalization' process speeded up in his last two years of his office. the political momentum in taiwan shifted towards democratization and the dpp.2" it is still a mystery why chiang chose to liberalize; he left no personal records to explain his decision. but it is possible to view the context in which chiang was governing as offering few alternatives. one of the main reasons lay in taiwan's continuous downslide in international 108 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' status, despite its economic success. added to that was of course the prc's increasing pressure for peaceful unification along its new national course in the pursuit of modernization and self-tran~formation.~~ the kmt acutely felt the pressure of propaganda emanating from the chinese communist party. also the us government had often criticized taiwan for its mistreatment and suspected murder of political dissidents. but, in the final analysis, it must be chiang's unsurpassed power that made him secure enough to almost single-handedly change the course of kmt. the death of chiang ching-kuo in 1988 marked the beginning of the end of the fatong of the roc in taiwan, and triggered more demands for electoral political reform in the name of democratization and indi genization. chiang left his presidency, including the roc's legacy, to lee teng-hui who succeeded him from the position of vice-president. lee came from the taiwanese background of a japanese family. he became the first native taiwanese to assume such a top position. according to lee himself, the succession was not carefully designed or promoted by chiang, but took place as a passing event along the institutional chain of s u c c e ~ s i o n . ~ ~ lee, though a native taiwanese, was an 'outsider' of the old kmt ruling circle dominated by mainlanders. in lee's early years of govern ment, he co-operated with the old circle by following chiang's previous strategy in dealing with the opposition (chang 1994). he manoeuvred to fence off the dpp, trying to keep the kmt and the fatong to preserve its dominance, and he yielded to pressure only when strictly necessary. but he and the kmt party were now facing not only a rising, stronger and more defiant dpp, but also other social movements demanding progressive ideological reforms for 'self-determination', democracy, environment protection and welfare reforms. the self-determination principle was inserted into the dpp's various party planks, upholding the statement that taiwan's future was to be decided by the people of taiwan. for instance, in 1987, it said that people of taiwan should have the right to pursue national independence. in 1988, it stated that taiwan was a sovereign independent nation, which did not belong to 'the prc led by beijing'.27 in 1990, it stated that taiwan's sovereignty would not extend to mainland china or to outer mongolia. at the same time, the political power of the kmt's old circle was pushed back because of ris ing domestic pressures, especially by the 'march movement' (or march student movement) of 1990, and also indirectly by the suppression of the democratic movement in tiananmen square in june 1989. mau-kuei michael chang taiwan's opposition movement rose to another level in march 1990. a burgeoning social protest from college students, various organizations and dpp supporters galvanized the movement. they objected to the attempted manipulation of the presidential election by the permanent members of the national assembly (consisted of mostly mainlanders elected in 1949, who never retired). these members were part of the fatong, who supposedly possessed the institutional power to elect the president on behalf of the entire people of china. the old guards had networked to favour a particular pair of candidates instead of its chairman, lee, the incumbent and the popular taiwanese president. waves of students and the general public protested in uproar. but the drama ended peacefully as the old national assembly caved in at the last minute under mounting pressure. and lee teng-hui was elected as the more popular new president as the victor emerged out of the chaotic situation. by comparison, ten months earlier the tiananmen democratic move ment, also led by the youth, emerged in beijing. if it appeared familiar and seemed to parallel the movement in taiwan, the overall result was strikingly opposite. the mass killing of demonstrators had repercussions on taiwan. though the lesson may have many meanings to different people, the consensus of opinion was that the communist party could be 'deadly' serious if it was threatened. after years of propaganda from the kmt, most people in taiwan had finally experienced an eyewitness account of the brutal suppression committed by the chinese communist party. in comparison, taiwan has earned its democracy through civil disobedience, and taiwan and mainland china are worlds apart. now the call for national unification with china looked even more uncon vincing because of the comparison. these movements and changes in both taipei and beijing politics set the background for the following major revisions in the roc constitu tion, including the removal of the old guard in the central representative bodies after some 42 years in power. after the old mainlander repre sentatives loyal to the kmt were retired, more vacant posts to be filled by elections created sudden opportunities for upward political mobility (chang 19%). this trend was a welcome one for the newly rising taiwanese within the kmt. and the newer and younger kmt members felt free from the burden of defending the party's unjustifiable old legacy. in fact, despite the retiring of the old guard, the kmt was always able to win in the national elections because of its tremendous resources and vested inter 110 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' ests amassed throughout the years. the taiwanese voters for some time were concerned with the images of the dpp and their lack of credibility to manage the country's national security and economy. the inability of the dpp to obtain a sweeping victory throughout the 1990s must be accredited to the leadership of kmt, or the 'silent revolution' led by taiwan's former president and kmt chairman, lee teng-hui. now we turn to a final important point that emerges from tablel: the 'silent revolution' linked to the direct election of the president of the roc since 1996. roc's first taiwanese president lee served as the kmt's party chairman from 1988 until 2000 before his forced expulsion from the party by mostly mainlander loyalists in mass protests.28 lee in many ways described the process for the transformation of the roc, taiwan, under his leadership as a 'silent revolution'. this could be interpreted to mean all-out and co-ordinated efforts to make the kmt, the roc and its constitution, adapt to the new political, economic and global situa tion. it also included aggressive diplomacy, lobbying foreign dignitaries for their support, programmes to re-socialize the general public in the name of 'love of community and soil', and to build the 'common fate of the community' among all the people of taiwan. the political and cultural transformation of the 'silent revolution' was the 'indigenization' process, which had no precise meaning. lee used it interchangeably with 'democratization'. broadly speaking, 'indigeniza tion' could be understood as affirming taiwanese interests, historical sentiments, and self-identity in contrast to those that had previously been imposed by chinese nationalistic traditions. specifically, it was about shifting political power and cultural domination from the main landers' hands and chinese interests to that of the native taiwanese. it also entailed assigning the cultural and historical experiences of taiwan to a prominent position in framing the people's passionate love for the land and the country of taiwan. it was also therefore known as the 'de sinicization' process, which meant replacing 'china' with 'taiwan' in substance and in name. and this was done also in the context of expand ing and intensifying electoral politics, democratization and ousting the defensive old kmt constituency from the political centre. the most important change on the institutional level, besides the elec tion of national representatives and legislators in the early 1990s, was the direct election of the president in 1996. like the other institutional changes that had taken place throughout the democratization period, this change succeeded amidst much protest and political conflict. on the one hand, the pro-dpp and pro-taiwan independence camp thought that mau-kuei michael chang this change would give them the long-awaited opportunity to rule the country through winning the presidency. on the other hand, the kmt conservatives criticized the proposed change as violating the symbolic representation of the whole of china, and of yielding to the taiwan in dependence cause. lee teng-hui accomplished this major reform with shrewd strategic moves, allying his support from outside of the kmt, especially with the dpp's constituency, to overcome opposition, which mainly existed within his own party. lee's success also boosted his already high popularity among tai wanese voters. he became the first directly elected president of the roc in 1996 with a decisive majority.29 because of lee and his silent revolution, the kmt, which originated from the mainland, now be came indigenously transformed, and was therefore able to rule taiwan continuously between 1994 and 2000.30 it has been argued that without this indigenization process, which began in the early 1990s, the kmt would have lost its legitimacy and domination much sooner. moreover, taiwan would have been plunged into a more chaotic situation with further political turmoil. allowing citizens to choose their own president in 1996 through direct voting can be seen as a decisive turning point in the roc government's drive to become fully 'taiwanized', for the roc to become fully merged into taiwan, although this was not achieved without creating internal divisions. now all parties and candidates, despite their nationalistic tendencies, would have to join the institutionalized political system if they wanted to be taken seriously. and a president of the roc directly elected by taiwan citizens definitely legitimized the roc's existence in taiwan. from now on there could be no alternative other than to take part in institutional politics, unless more radical means were resorted to, such as toppling the roc government. so far we have outlined the uneven course of present-day taiwanese nationalism. it started out primarily as a domestic conflict, resisting the domination of the taiwanese by the kmt-roc polity; later forcing the roc government to become accountable to taiwanese. but soon after political liberation and democratization began, taiwanese nationalism became a viable option for partisan struggles for national representa tion and power structures. of course, these changes did not occur over night; they were achieved gradually through major electoral struggles, the expansion of elections, geo-political changes, and regional events related to changes occurring in mainland china. one led to another, incrementally. taiwanese nationalist supporters would now have to 112 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' directly face the ccp-prc's intimidation against pro-taiwan inde pendence parties. and to do this and to forge itself a secured political future, the pro-independence parties would need to win continuously and decisively in nationwide elections against its arch nemesisthe traditional constituency of the old kmt-china still existing in taiwan. (so far they have not been able to accomplish this at all). repercussions of taiwan's 'indigenization': domestic and cross-strait politics by the 1990s, the political changes discussed in this paper, including democratization and indigenization, had resulted in two serious reper cussions. the first, on the domestic front, was that the issue of taiwan's national identity began to rise to the top of major policy debates, over shadowing routine politics and other social activities. not surprisingly, the 'silent revolution' and taiwanese affirmation drew counter-attacks from mainlander constituencies in taiwan from both the liberal and the conservative camps. the battlefield of taiwan's domestic politics thus became much more ruthless and vicious. for instance, the power struggle within the kmt, the expulsion and marginalization of mainlander elites from influential positions, and the de-sinicization process resulted on two occasions in the break-up of the kmt. on the first occasion this led to the emergence of the new party in 1993, which allowed the dpp candidate chen shui-bian to win the post of mayor of taipei city. the second occasion in 2000 was marked by an acrimonious split between its die-hard supporters, which allowed the dpp candidate, chen shui-bian, once again to win the presidential elections in march of that year. the dpp not only encouraged but also benefited from the kmt-promoted indigenization campaign. they allied with lee teng-hui in his intra-party squabbles, tactically criticizing the 'old' china power base on important issues. by march 2004, after three national presidential elections in eight years, party politics became much more complicated (albeit also sim plified since all political parties now are divided and measured on a simple political gauge marked by their standings on taiwan's future and identity issues. two new political parties surfaced because of the dissolution of the power base of the kmt in 2000-01, related to the presi dential election of 2000. losing the presidency to dpp's chen shui-bian forced the kmt to hand over the government to the dpp. this marked the first ever regime transition in taiwan, drawing loud applause for the mau-kuei michael chang success of the democratization process. but lee was criticized heavily and held responsible for 'destroying the kmt and selling out the country (to the dpp)'31 after this second major loss. protesters rallied and force him to quit from the party and he stepped down as party chairman with bitterness. later his supporters and sympathizers regrouped to form a new party, the taiwan solidarity union (tsu), which has been the most outspoken party for taiwanese independence and for de-siniciza tion. in 2004 the tsu held 13 seats, or 6 percent of the total seats in the legislature yuan. the second spin-off was the people's first party (pfp), also formed in 2001. the pfp was represented by some hardliners of the kmt who strongly opposed taiwanese independence. they first felt betrayal by lee teng-hui's nomination of lien chan, rather than their own favoured candidate, james soong, who had represented the kmt in the presi dential elections of 2000. they believed that soong, who had enjoyed high popularity in pre-election polls, should have been nominated and that his victory would have been assured. because of this intra-party conflict and soong's determination to run as an independent candidate outside of the kmt, which effectively split the vote, both soong and lien lost to the dpp's chen shui-bian. afterwards, they blamed lee for forcing them to walk out from the kmt in the 2000 elections, which had disgraced the roc and had opened the way for the dpp to take power. consequently, in 2001 the pfp was established with soong as their chairman. they managed to win 46 seats, or 20 percent the total seats in the legislature in 2004. entering the 2004 presidential elections, taiwan's political map was clearly marked with two colours: the pan-blue and the pan-green. the former, kmt loyalists and the hardliners of the people first party, become the blue camp. they spoke strongly and passionately against surging taiwan independence, and proposed a more practical approach towards the prc, aimed at improving cross-strait relations. as for the green camp, represented by the dpp and tsu, both are firm supporters of the pro-taiwanese independence movement, opting for strong defence and taiwanese nationalism to resist the prc's unification tactics. the second major repercussion centres on the worsening and hostile relationship with the prc. this formed the backdrop to the taiwan strait crisis from august 1995 to march 1996 (zhao 1999a, 199913; chen 1999). the trigger was lee teng-hui's unprecedented visit (dubbed as 'ice-breaking') to the us in june 1995. this was followed by lee's abrupt change in tone when speaking of the future of china. the media 114 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' nicknamed his new standing on cross-strait relation as the 'two-coun try statement', which denied 'one-china' ever existed and claimed the roc's long existing sovereignty since 1911. he also refused to accept 'one-china' as the presupposition or the predetermined result for the two sides to negotiate with each other. fearing that the us may be reneging on its commitment to 'one-china', and angered by taiwan's move and lee's remarks on sovereignty, china decided to chastize taiwan by sending stern warnings. the crisis was marked with four large-scale military exercises in southern china in less than a year, combined with the launching of ballistic missiles into areas close to taiwan's waters. china made grave threats to invade if taiwan should delay unification or pursue independence. china's warning came at a time when taiwan's first presidential campaign was just about to take place. the crisis ended with the us sending in two carrier battle groups near taiwan waters, and publicly reaffirming its support for the 'one-china' policy but also its commitment to its domestic act, the taiwan relations act. on the other hand, the intimidation had to end since it proved to be a misreading of taiwanese public opinion and its political culture. lee teng-hui was able to win with a strong majority over other candidates (including those who looked more acceptable to beijing). the victory represented a robust endorsement for lee's policy, and some believe that china may even have indirectly helped lee by attacking him for being a 'villain'. following lee's victory as the people's first elected national leader, beijing intensified its campaign known as wen gong wu he (verbal attacks plus intimidating actions). it launched a global campaign known as fan du cu tong (oppose independence and support unification) against the taiwanese government, lee, the dpp and other political factions that favoured separatism. to back u p its warning, beijing has since stepped up the modernization of its military machinery, obtaining a new mili tary arsenal from the former soviet union in an attempt to deter us intervention if an invasion of taiwan became necessary. china's tough stance appears to have given them few positive political gains as far as national unification is concerned. it could not even stop the pro-independence democratic progressive party and its leader chen shui-bian from winning the presidential elections twice in 2000 and 2004. but beijing has something to look forward to: the sharp divisions of in terests and worldviews existing among taiwanese citizens. on the one hand, beijing has been successful in isolating taiwan on the international mau-kuei michael chang stage by playing up its hostility against the taiwanese government. international isolation can hurt taiwan's business interests and taiwan is clearly anxious not to become marginalized from the international community in this age of globalization. how are the taiwanese to solve this isolation and political hostility? so far the taiwanese government has elected to maintain its opposition and to break through the imposed constraints, trying (without much success) to direct its business interests to south east asian regions instead of mainland china. but the citizens are divided; some are willing to adopt a more pragmatic and concilia tory position to negotiate with beijing, and to renounce what they see as a hopeless drive for taiwanese independence. this pragmatic stance is based on taiwan's growing economic depend ence on china. beijing has attracted taiwanese capital (into the prc) and is alluring as a market. in 2003, about one-quarter of taiwan's trade surplus came from trade with china (including hong kong), and about one-half of taiwan's foreign investment went to china. thus, china has gradually (and ironically) become taiwan's most valuable trading 'partner' since the mid-1990s, when it was also under the constant threat of a chinese incursion. to complicate matters further, it is estimated that there are a million taiwanese (out of a population of 23 million) living, studying, doing business or travelling to china every day, while some have chosen to live there permanently. cross-strait marriages are also on the rise and are becoming quite a sensitive political issue. these two opposing forces, political hostility and economic interde pendence, are creating divergent interests and dividing public opinion in taiwan. at one extreme, there are those who wish to defy china, resist the pressure emanating from beijing, and go all the way to strive for taiwan's national status and independence. the other practical view supports a more moderate position towards china. and taiwan's politi cal parties and their representatives are about equally divided. since political hostility and economic need, or national security and economic interdependence, contradict each other, china can now play taiwan's domestic political ball game more easily by both manipulating people's vested interests (or future interest) in china by playing with taiwan's internal politics and political rivalries, and by exerting pres sure on the taiwanese government on questions of national identity and unification. 116 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' conclusion: defining and resolving the difficult 'status quo' in this paper i have presented an outline of taiwan's resistance to 'china'. the word has at least two faces: one relates to the lingering legacy of the roc, the 'old china', and the other relates to the prc china, the 'new china'. from a historical-institutional framework, i have discussed reasons that have led to the roc-taiwan being what it is today. i have also focused on the interactions between the international environ ment, taiwan's national status, and domestic politics. the crucial point is taiwan's long-established self-assertion through its early history, its democratization movement and lee teng-hui's 'silent revolution', which is now largely inherited and capitalized upon by the green camp. these factors read together have transformed the roc which settled in taiwan since 1949. and during this transformation process, two major historical developments are crucial. one is the roc's dwindling inter national status since the 1970s; and the second is china's emergence as a major player in world affairs and in the global marketplace since the late 1980s. there is little here that taiwan could have changed, since both contingencies were created beyond taiwan's (or roc's) border by bigger and stronger global movers. and this analysis has also found that taiwanese nationalism has not always been a viable choice or the prime driver in the political agenda. it surfaced slowly in late 1970s, developed quickly in late 1980s, and became a fully-fledged force only in the late 1990s. its growth is embed ded in taiwan's electoral and partisan struggles, and hence its progress has been incremental through political re-shufflings, especially in im portant elections. there is little doubt that taiwan has nearly completed its sovereignty construction process from its own internal political viewpoint. it has built a clear political hierarchical system with an elected, accountable and democratic leadership. what is surprising is the roc's constitution, which is still in effect and is regarded as the foundation of power, even though it is constantly criticized for being 'foreign' and 'out of date'. the many elections and reforms of electoral institutions that have taken place under the umbrella of the constitution have allowed the people participating in these processes to build an 'imagined community' of a de facto taiwan. today, international relations analysts and politicians believe that retaining the 'status quo' may be the best bet for keeping peace in the mau-kuei michael chang region for some time. public opinion in taiwan also supports this idea. but what 'status quo' has ever been static? it is dynamic in global affairs, regional relations, geo-politics and, of course, domestic politics. what is the 'status quo' after all? recent official statements from the us have rendered the meaning of the term, status quo, intriguing if not problematic. in december 2003, president bush stated that he opposed chen shui-bian's campaign stra tegy by holding a referendum calling on china to remove its missiles aimed at taiwan, since he saw chen intending to 'change the status quo unilaterally'. later, in may 2004, when testifying in the us congress, the assistant secretary of state for east asian and pacific affairs, james kelly, stated that the bush administration would 'oppose any unilateral move from taipei or beijing aiming at changing the status quo', adding that the status quo should be 'as we define it' (devan 2004). as kelly understood and admitted, the 'status quo' is not an object reality out there, but is defined and framed from the viewpoint of dif ferent interests. and this has worked well as far as the us interests are concerned. the us has said it would support 'one china' since 1972 but has not aided and abetted unification. it has been more positive in dealing with china except insisting on its arms sales and commitment to defend taiwan, which really irritates beijing. the us also warned taiwan not to provoke beijing on the issue of sovereignty, or not to count on us support as unconditional (pan 2003). the prc has its own idea of status quo, though this is much more transparent than that of the us though. from its unique historical per spective, taiwan has 'always' belonged to china. at present, the prc represents the whole of china governed by the chinese communist party, and taiwan is a renegade province of prc. the status quo is, therefore, not regarded as normal. it would become a great humilia tion for beijing if it could not resolve this problem. the prc leaders have had little option other than proclaiming that taiwan should and must be reunited, regardless of cost. if peaceful means are not enough to carry out unification, then forceful means must be used. thus, any political moves from taiwan, the us, any other countries or interna tional organizations, multinational companies, even individuals (such as academicians or scholars) are carefully watched and monitored. so the ccp-prc's basic assumption of 'status quo' is biased in favour of its interests in the unification with taiwan, or the stopping of taiwan independence. any move against this interest is seen as an intention to change the 'status quo', and therefore to be rebutted. 118 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' the roc, or taiwan government under chen shui-bian, has its own idea of 'status quo'. the status quo is roc, and that is taiwan. to be sure, the roc title and legacy it carries is not something the taiwan president wants to embrace, but it is far more acceptable compared to other alternatives. and, to the dpp and his administration, taiwan has no need to declare independence since it already enjoys independent sovereign status. chen shui-bian has promised more than once that taiwan would keep the roc as its national title unless beijing decides on invasion. but the status quo also means that taiwan is not recog nized as a sovereign nation by most of the countries of the international community. it is excluded from many of the world organizations, and sidelined in matters that may affect its trading prospects in the global marketplace. it also needs to invest a high proportion of its gdp for national self-defence, suffers from inefficiencies in government for lack of a suitable constitution, and, without decisive national direction, is politically rent asunder by internal divisions. though most taiwanese support a 'status quo', some feel this is also not normal; that the rem edy should be either building a completely sovereign and independent taiwan, or accepting the 'one country two systems' deal offered by beijing. it is certainly unrealistic to expect taiwanese citizens to feel indifferent to the issue of determining their country's future and forging a clear national direction, or to be insensitive to necessary reform of its political institutions through democratic processes. in short, to expect them not to do anything to change the status quo-not to negotiate the possibilities, and not to struggle against the limits imposed by the prc may be asking too much. since both the prc china and many in taiwan believe that this so called 'status quo' is really not desirable, and since the us's notion of the 'status quo' accords with its own interests, attempts to modify and redefine the term are bound to occur. for taiwan's domestic politics, forceful attempts in this direction are most likely to be drawn up in the next election battle. epilogue in march 2005, during submission and revision of this paper, the na tional people's congress of the prc passed the anti-secession law, which especially targeted taiwanese independence. the law reiterates the prc's position against taiwan's independence, and the 'non-peaceful means' (now legalized and prescribed in codes) it will use against taiwan mau-kuei michael chang if other peaceful measures fail. taiwan government's official reaction was moderate, heeding to the advice of the us government, for fear of heightening the tension, while hundreds of thousands of citizens, some responding to the call by the dpp and the tsu, marched into taipei city to protest against prc's threat by expressing their belief in democracy and support for taiwan patriotism. given this new development, the main thesis of this paper still holds true. taiwanese nationalism is here to stay, to transform, within the range of the possibilities inscribed in taiwan's domestic politics, which are also structured by geo-political powers outside of its borders. peace may be preserved against all odds, but the status quo is always dynamic. m a u k u e i michael c h a n g i s research fellozo and professor at the i n s t i t u t e of sociology, acadenzia sinica, n a n g a n g , taipei. notes i began this paper during my visit to the international institute for asian studies (iias), leiden university. i am grateful to all concerned for the friendly working environment and the opportunity to organize and participate at the workshop on the national self-assertion of east asian countries. i must thank also the gener ous support of the n w 0 (netherlands organization for scientific research) from 1 december to 30 may 2004. colleagues (too many to name) at the sinology institute of leiden university have been very helpful and supportive during my stay there. i am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and critiques, which have resulted in major revisions to the original paper. this idea of 'heping tongyi, yiguo liangzhi' [peaceful unification, one country two systems] was originally attributed to deng xiaoping in 1983, and was formalized in 1984 in deng's government report to the prc's people's assembly. the guidelines of this principle have been elaborated or modified by various high-ranking leaders such as jiang zemin in 1995, which includes the famous 'eight points', and by qian qisen in 2003. from beijing's standpoint, this guideline is flexible and generous, and extends to 'all' chinese people. i wish to emphasize the importance of taking a 'balanced' view. partisan or national political interests, either hidden or professed, always affect interpretations of the past and current conflicts. no one is immune. but i think pursuing an analytical purpose and maintaining logical argument can help to evoke a more balanced view, which prevents one from falling into chauvinistic, ethno-centric and opportunistic biases and misinformation. my adopted position centres on interpreting the taiwanese condition. some reviewers may suggest that i need to cover the prc's or the us's view more fully. i would agree if it were not for the limits of space and the specific focus of this paper. and i think the prc's view will be presented fuller in phi1 dean's article, which also appears in this special issue. for recent publications on chinese nationalism, see also: zheng (1999), zhao (2004) and gries (2004). for instance, the roc constitution has gone through six revisions since 1990. and 120 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' each revision has entailed a major political battle associated with a continuous power struggle. ' likewise, though the prc does not recognize the roc and its constitution, it was also ambivalent about the extent to which taiwan could revise the roc constitution. for instance, when taiwan's pro-independence president chen shui-bian suggested that the roc constitution needed re-drafting in order to abandon its territorial claims over the entire mainland of china, beijing reacted with outrage and warned against such moves would be a step moving from d e f a c t o to d e j u r e independence. the emphasis is the author's. lee's notion of 'two countries' in the late 1990s still held out the idea for a unified china in the future. he set the recognition of the roc as an equal political entity by the prc as the premise for negotiating the future. in the second half of 2002, chen stepped u p its criticism against china. chen was quoted as saying that 'our country cannot be bullied, dwarfed or marginalized, and we are not a part or a province of another country', and that 'there is one country on each side' ( t a i p e i t i m e s , 4 august 2002). his rhetoric is much stronger and held little room for negotiating a future one-china. i am referring to the event when president bush 'chastized' chen for wanting to 'change the status quo unilaterally'. this took place during a joint press conference with prc's premier wen jiabao on 9 december 2003. i have written on this topic in a different article (see chang 2003) in this paper i will only outline and address the key points of the early phase of taiwanese nationalism. the point is that present-day taiwanese nationalism is different from the earlier one in both discourse and strategies. but the past can always help to explain and rationalize present political actions. in this regard, the past serves to influence the present. l0 wu zhuoliu (1900-76) was a taiwanese writer who grew u p under japanese rule, his most famous novel being t h e ol-phan o f a s i a (1956). it is a first-hand account of a taiwanese youth who found himself stranded in a hostile world shaped by a variety of influences: japanese colonialism, chinese nationalism, traditionalism and enlightenment. the main protagonist of the novel went insane and finally committed suicide. the novel has recently been translated into english (see wu 2005). l1 the japanese government reported that about 17,000 young men who had competed to meet the rigorous screening to join the ranks of voluntary soldiers. one of them, now listed in the yasukuni shrine in tokyo, was the elder brother of taiwan's former president, lee teng-hui. the total number of taiwanese that served in the japanese military units, either voluntarily or drafted, reached 200,000 or more. l* for many taiwanese independence supporters, taiwan was not returned to china, but was occupied by china. the legality for the 'return' to the motherland is based on the portsmouth declaration (august 1945), which supported the cairo confer ence agreement (december 1943), which stated that territories such as manchuria, taiwan, and the pescadores islands, which had been 'stolen' from china by japan, should be returned to china. but taiwan independence advocates who aegui for 'taiwan status undecided' suggest that these declarations were not ratified by the more formal and more comprehensive san francisco peace treaty signed in 1951. that peace treaty stated that japan should renounce its previous occupied territo ries but did not specify to whom they should be returned. this was caused by the turmoil and political uncertainty associated with the civil war in china. l3 for an apologetic account of the incident, from the government's perspective, see lai tse-han e t al. (1991). '"n 28 february 2004 an estimated one and half million people in taiwan turned mau-kuei michael chang out to form a human chain to express their 'love for taiwan', and the need for 'self salvaging' to commemorate their previous sufferings. the high turnout was also triggered by a very intensive presidential campaign between the pro-independence candidates of the dpp and the anti-independence candidates of the other camp. l' the last major battle fought between the prc and the roc was in 1958, when que moy i in-men) was besieged with heavy shelling. l6 to compensate its breach of the security of taiwan, and the potential loss in the region, the us passed the taizuan relations act in 1979 very swiftly. the act is de fined as a domestic law, prescribing the us responsibility toward taiwan's defence capability and its need for prosperity and development. today, this act is regarded as one of the cornerstones of us diplomacy in dealing with both the prc and tai wan, despite its public acknowledgement of the 'one-china policy' (see metzger and mvers 1996). l7 forty-five arrests were made. eight of those arrested were sent to military court on charges of treason. these eight received heavier sentences ranging from 12 years to lifetime imprisonment. is readers can consult hsiau (2000) for an exposition of the significance of the incident on the rise of taiwanese sentiments. l9 in that year the taiwanese government abolished the infamous 'criminal law article loo', which had provided the legal basis for charging with treason against those giving speeches and organizing for taiwan's independence. 20 taiwan began its first 'supplementary' election in 1969. members elected were still given life-long guarantee for the posts they won, but this was modified in 1972. unlike the older members, all 'supplementary' members were now given limited terms of office and subjected to relelection. 21 there are at least two useful sources for comprehensive analysis on this subject: tien (1996) and wu (1995). 22 take the legislature yuan (the most influential representative body in real politics in the roc constitution). for example, even in 1989, the newly elected legislature members occupied less than one-third of the seats. 23 'long live the election' was a title of a book written by a well-known opposition leader hsu hsin-liang in 1979. he was campaigning for the importance and mo rality of having fair and large-scale elections. more importantly, he described the strategy to challenge the authoritarian government by using 'edging toward close to violence' tactics; by which he meant using mass rally and legal campaign tactics as much as possible until violent clashes were about to happen. 2"t should not be lost sight of that even in 2004, when the dpp had been the 'ruling party' of taiwan for four years, it still could not manage to win a decisive major ity. 2' in january 1979, ye jianying (1897-1986) gave an important speech on terms for peaceful unification with taiwan (dubbed the 'nine points'), immediately after china and the us had established formal didomatic relation. 26 lee was not chiang's 'unquestioned' heir, according to lee's own interpretation (lee, teng-hui 2004). the fact is that chiang let lee succeed him as vice-president by default, and left other matters open to interpretation and struggle without any clear instructions. 27 this refers to 'decision statement item 417', stating the 'four ifs': the dpp will advocate taiwan independence if kmt and the ccp join for unification talks by themselves; if the kmt sell out the interests of taiwanese people; if the ccp unify taiwan; and if the kmt refuses to implement true democracy in taiwan. 122 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 taiwan's nationalistic politics and its difficult 'status quo' 28 lee admitted in 1994 that he thought of himself as japanese until he was 20 years old. this confession quite angered his mainlander opponents from both sides of taiwan strait. 29 lee won with 54 percent of the vote. peng ming-min of the dpp, the closest con tender, received 21.1 percent of the vote. about 25 percent of the votes supported other independent candidates. 30 some critics will say that this period was also the high tide for 'black-gold' politics, meaning rent-seeking behaviour by politicians through illegal means such as inside information and privileged financial practices. losing the moral high ground in ruling taiwan, the kmt became reliant on corrupt politicians and cronies to win seats in the legislature to maintain its political majority. 31 after his forced resignation from the kmt party, lee teng-hui switched from ex-kmt party chairman to become the prime spokesman for taiwanese independence. he also accepted the role of honorary chairman of the newly formed taiwanese party, the taiwan solidarity party, which has been both a strong ally and a competitor of the dpp. references alagappa, muthiah (ed.) 2001. t a i w a n ' s presidential politics: d e m o c r a t i z a t i o n a n d cross s t r a i t relations i n t h e t w e n t y f i r s t c e n t u r y . armonk: m. e . sharpe. chang, mau-kuei 1994. 'toward an understanding of the sheng-chi wen-ti in taiwan.' in chen chung-min, chuang ying-chang, and huang shu-min (eds), e t h n i c i t y i n taizuan: social, historical, a n d c u l t u r a l perspectives. taipei: institute of ethnology, academia sinica: 93-150. 2003. 'on the origins and transformation of taiwanese identity.' in paul katz and murray rubinstein (eds), religion a n d t h e formation o f t a i w a n e s e identities. new york: palgrave macmillan: 23-58. chen, qimao 1999. 'the taiwan straits crisis: causes, scenarios, and solutions.' in zhao, suisheng (ed.), a c r o s s t h e taizuan strait: m a i n l a n d c h i n a , taizuan, a n d t h e 1 9 9 5 1 9 9 6 crisis. new york: routledge. ching, leo t. 2001. b e c o m i n g japanese: colonial t a i w a n and t h e politics o f l d e n t i t y forma t i o n . berkeley: university of california press. chu, yun-han 1992. c r a f t i n g d e m o c r a c y i n taizuan. taipei: institute for national policy research. copper, john franklin 1998. t a i z u a n ' s m i d 1 9 9 0 s elections: t a k i n g t h e final s t e p s t o de mocracy. westport: praeger. devan, janadas 2004. 'the lure of status quo over taiwan.' s t r a i t s t i m e s , 1 may 2004. http://straitstimes.asial.com.sg/columnist/0,1886,145-248758--1084744740,00. html dickson, bruce 1996. 'the kuomintang before democratization: organization change and the role of elections.' in tien, hungmao (ed.), t a i z u a n ' s electoral politics and democratic t u n s i t i o n : r i d i n g t h e t h i r d w a v e . armonk: m. e. sharpe. friedman, edward 1999. 'the prospects of a larger war: chinese nationalism and the taiwan straits conflict.' in zhao, suisheng (ed.), a c r o s s t h e t a i w a n strait: m a i n l a n d c h i n a , taizuan, and t h e 1 9 9 5 1 9 9 6 crisis. new york: routledge. gries, peter hays 2004. c h i n a ' s nezu n a t i o n a l i s m : pride, politics, a n d d i p l o m a c y . berkeley and london: university of california press. mau-kuei michael chang hsiau, a-chin 2000. contemporary taizuanese cultural nationalism. london and new york: routledge. lai, tse-han, ramon h. myers and wei wou 1991. a tragic beginning: the taiwan upris ing offebruary 28, 1947. california: stanford university press. lee, teng-hui 2004. president iiang jingguo and me. taipei: yuchen. metzger, thomas and ramon myers (eds) 1996. greater china and u . s. foreign policy. stanford: hoover institute. pan, zhongqi 2003. 'us taiwan policy of strategic ambiguity: a dilemma of deter rence.' journal ofcontemporary china 12(35): 387. rigger, shelley 1999. politics in taiwan: votingfor democnlcy, london and new york: routledge. 2001. from opposition to pozuer: taizuan's democratic progressive party. boulder: lynne rienner publishers. taipei times, 4 august 2002, accessed 1 october 2004. http://www.taipeitimes.com/ news/archives/2002/08/04/0000158901. tien, hung-mao 1989. the great transition: political and social change in the republic of china. stanford: hoover institution press, stanford university. (ed.) 1996. taizuan's electoral politics and democratic transition: riding the third wave. armonk: m. e. sharpe. time. 16 february 2004. http://www.time.com/ time/nation/article/0,8599,591348,00. html winkler, edwin 1984. 'institutionalization and participation on taiwan: from hard to soft authoritarianism.' the chinese quarterly 99: 481-99. wu, jaushieh joseph 1995. taizuan's democratization: forces behind the nezu monzentunz. hong kong and new york: oxford university press. wu, rwei-ren 2003. tke forinosan ideology: oriental colonialism and the rise of taizuanese nationalism, 1895-1945'. dissertation, university of chicago. wu, zhuoliu 2005. orphan of asia. translated by ioannis mentzas. new york: columbia university press. (originally published in 1956 in japanese.) zhao, shuisheng 1999a. 'economic interdependence and political divergence: a back ground analysis of the taiwan straits crisis.' in zhao, suisheng (ed.), :across the tai zuan strait: mainland china, taizuan, and the 1995-1996 crisis. new york: routledge. 199910. 'changing leadership perceptions: the adoption of a coercive strategy'. in zhao, suisheng (ed.), across the taiwan strait: mainland china, taiwan, and the 1995 1996 crisis. new york: routledge. 2004. a nation-state by construction. dynamics of modern chinese nationalism. palo alto: stanford university press. zheng, yongnian 1999. discovering chinese nationalisin in china: modernization, identity, and international relations. cambridge: cambridge university press. 124 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 21 2005 vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200230 heike holbig the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc heike holbig abstract in july 2001, party secretary jiang zemin announced that private entrepreneurs, among other 'outstanding' representatives of the new social elites, were welcome to join the chinese communist party (ccp). the move led to controversial ideological debates as it was widely interpreted as a clear signal that the communist party was finally turning capitalist. things become less clear, however, when we look not so much at ideologies but at the actual facts. realizing how little we know about the reality of relations between the ccp and private entrepreneurs, the aim of the paper is two-fold: the first is to collect and critically assess the information available on current developments of the 'private economy' (a vague notion in itself), and on the proportion of entrepreneurs who are already ccp members. second, based on this analytical 'deconstruction' of statistical data and categories, the article delineates motives and strategies that might lie behind the new policy of formally admitting private entrepreneurs into the party. as will be argued, one important reason could be that the ccp, by co-opting entrepreneurs, attempts to (re-)gain access to the ever larger labour force employed in the growing non-public sector of the economy and thus to strengthen its organizational presence at the grassroots level. however, while we know something about the ccp's policy, much more needs to be known about the political preferences, attitudes and behaviour of private entrepreneurs. therefore, instead of drawing macropolitical conclusions, the paper ends with an outline of relevant microscopic aspects of the relations between entrepreneurs and the ccp that deserve more indepth analysis in the future. admitting private entrepreneurs into the ccp: does it make a difference? in his now legendary speech of 1 july 2001, to mark the chinese communist party's 80th anniversary, party secretary jiang zemin announced that the ccp would open its doors wide to admit 'outstanding elements' from the 'new social strata'. many observers were surprised by the ideologically acrobatic speech which was purported in the international press to signify a eulogized invitation of private entrepreneurs into the ccp. particularly in western countries, the step was interpreted as a heartened acknowledgement by the communist party leadership that the 31 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc country had finally found its way home back into the capitalist world. strong criticism voiced by alleged 'hardliners' such as deng liqun and others who accused jiang zemin of betraying the ccp by admitting 'capitalists' and 'exploiters' seemed to confirm that this indeed represented a major breakthrough in the party's ideological and organizational design.1 conventional wisdom had it that the party leadership finally had decided to acknowledge the enormous contributions of the private sector and to broaden its own social base by representing the interests not only of the 'proletariat' but also of the new social elites. this move was said to aim at preventing the defection of a new bourgeois middle class, pre-empting the emergence of a potential political opposition and bolstering the power of the one-party state. with this 'revolutionary' step, jiang zemin was seen to have created a personal hallmark that would stand out in party history before handing over the reins to the next generation of leaders. however, when the moment of surprise was over, observers who looked more closely at the event had to realize that the admittance of entrepreneurs into the party was, after all, not such a new thing. in fact, quite a number of private entrepreneurs seem to have joined the party before, indicating that the ccp doors had actually been open to this group for a while already. as jiang zemin's proposal is going to be enshrined officially as the ccp's new policy, it seems worthwhile to test the conventional assumptions and to ask whether it really does make a difference, and, if so, what kind of difference. to address this question, this paper first seeks to analyse in some depth the various statistical categories and numbers to elucidate the not so clear-cut notions of 'private entrepreneur', 'private enterprise', 'private sector', etc. a second section will piece together the information we have about ccp membership among various kinds of entrepreneurs. based on these findings, a third section will then discuss various motives and strategies which may be behind the decision of the party to admit private entrepreneurs, and their implications for representing the interests and political participation of the new economic elites. here, ideological, financial and organizational aspects will be taken into account. it will be suggested that, although there are serious ideological barriers to the inclusion of 'capitalists' into the party, the move can be seen as a rational organizational strategy to secure the ccp's status as 'vanguard of the working class' – albeit with an extended definition of the term. yet, the main goal of this paper is not to answer questions but to identify relevant new questions and analytical copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200232 heike holbig topics which could or should be addressed in future research on the relations between the party and private entrepreneurs. deconstructing the private sector: categories and numbers at first glance, it seems quite clear what is meant by the 'private sector' in china. as the english language service of xinhua reported in april 2002, 'the share of the private sector in china's gdp has reached 33 percent, a little lower than the 37 percent of the state-owned economy'.2 unfortunately, as is the case in many english media reports, a definition of the 'private sector' or of 'private enterprise' is not given. traditionally, prc statistics used to differentiate four sectors of the economy by the criterion of ownership of the means of production, namely the state-owned, the collective, the private and the foreignfunded. among them, the category 'private' was always the hardest to define. in the chinese language, the term that comes closest to 'private enterprise' is siying qiye, a notion that was sanctioned for official use in 1988 to signify enterprises with privately owned assets employing at least eight people. the latter criterion was to distinguish them from the smaller geti gongshanghu (getihu), the 'single industrial and commercial proprietors' or 'self-employed entrepreneurs' who employ less than eight persons and do not represent formal enterprises in the sense of legal entities. together, these two categories form the core entities of what is understood as the 'private sector' proper, reported to comprise more than 20 percent of china's gdp.3 these 'private entrepreneurs' are still today often imagined as rural and urban self-made men, stereotypically lowly educated but with lots of entrepreneurial wit who have braved the storms of the emerging chinese market economy. statistical numbers for the private enterprises (siying qiye) are the most unambiguous and easy to access. according to official statistics, at the end of 2000, 1.76 million siying qiye were registered across the country, employing 24.06 million persons.4 the most recent figure reported for the end of 2001 is 2.03 million private enterprises, an increase which continues the rapid growth trend of the 1990s when the number of private enterprises on average increased by 35 percent per year (see figures below).5 concerning the numbers of self-employed individuals (getihu), official statistics reported a decrease over the past two years: while the number of registered getihu had been growing steadily over the past two decades to reach 31 million in 1999, the figure decreased to 25.71 million at the end of 2000, and further to 24.23 million at the end 33 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc of 2001.6 this reversal of the trend – which seems to be caused by a technical change in statistical recording – has produced no little confusion. some chinese sources tend to ignore the decrease and instead extrapolate the former figures; others seem to treat getihu as a residual category; still others exclude the category of getihu altogether without making clear where the 'self-employed individuals' have gone.7 less unambiguous are the data available for the number of people employed in the siying jingji, the 'private economy', comprising both figure 1: number of registered private enterprises (siying qiye), 1989 2001 (in millions) 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 source: data made available by the administration for industry and commerce (gongshangju) in july 2001; data for 2001: renmin ribao website, 15 september 2002. figure 2: number of employees in private enterprises (siying qiye), 1989-2000 (in millions) 0 5 10 15 20 25 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 source: data made available by the administration for industry and commerce (gongshangju) in july 2001. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200234 heike holbig private enterprises (siying qiye) and self-employed individuals' (getihu) enterprises. official statistics reported 82.63 million people employed by siying qiye and getihu at the end of 1999, and 74.77 million one year later – the decrease being due to the shrinking number of getihu in the same period.8 a recent report published in the official media gave a figure of 74.74 million employees in the private economy for the end of 2001.9 quite differently, an article published in late 2001 in zhonggongdangshi yanjiu puts the total of people working in private enterprises and self-employed enterprises (jiuye renshu) at 130 million – without explaining how this high number is derived.10 concerning the number of employees in private enterprises (siying qiye), there is also some ambiguity. according to the statistical yearbook, in late 2000, one private enterprise employed 13.66 persons on average.11 a recent study of the private sector presented by the chinese academy for social sciences (cass) reports a ratio of 11.38 employees per private enterprise, based on official registration figures. the same source, however, also cites a nationwide sampling survey which found that one private enterprise employed 55 people on average (with more than 90 percent of them working as low-skilled blue-collar workers in labour-intensive sectors).12 nobody really seems to know how many people are employed in the private economy. things become even more ambiguous when alternative concepts of the 'private economy' are taken into account. as a rule, the more ideologically correct a term is, the more statistically vague it becomes. while the term siying jingji (literally 'privately operated economy') is used without much reservation in coastal regions, representatives from less developed regions often prefer the term minying jingji, or 'economy operated by the people', to avoid the capitalist connotations of the word si, private.13 should the minying jingji, at some point in the future, account for the largest share of gdp, then this would be much more palatable than a dominant 'private' (siying) sector. an ideologically still more cautious notion is the term fei gongyouzhi jingji, or 'not publicly-owned economy'. it defines the private sector in a negative manner, including all ownership forms that are not stateowned, thus comprising not only getihu and siying qiye, but also foreign-invested enterprises and a large variety of mixed ownership forms (among them shareholding companies, 'red hat' and other forms of nominally collective enterprises which will be discussed below). although these latter types are in many cases actually run as private enterprises, they are not formally acknowledged as belonging to the 'private 35 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc economy' (siying jingi), a term that still is reserved for enterprises with private capital assets of at least 90 percent. thus, the term fei gongyouzhi jingji is ideologically more correct but statistically less transparent. as parts of the hybrid ownership forms are included, the category produces much higher figures than the category siying jingji. already in 1996, the fei gongyouzhi jingji was reported to account for 31 percent of industrial output value and 53 percent of consumer goods retail sales; the shares are said to have been growing year by year since then.14 according to recent word-of-mouth information, the figures have risen to 38 and 62 percent respectively in 2001. the statistical deviations between these various categories reflect a high degree of ambiguity in the classification of enterprises. of course, to some degree the deviations result from the reformulation of statistical concepts in the official process of diversification of ownership forms. however, they are also the outcome of strategies used intentionally by entrepreneurs to cover themselves in a cloak of ambiguity. various strategies have allowed them to circumvent the discriminations against private firms which, to a greater or lesser degree, are still prevailing today, such as limited access to finance, regulatory restrictions of enterprise size and operation, and ideological harassments by the party-state. among the most popular strategies have been the following: • leasing collective firms: starting from the early 1980s, many ailing collective enterprises were leased out for private operation. the entrepreneur paid the collective a fixed rent and operated the firm as if it were his own private enterprise. quite often, these entrepreneurs accumulated large capital assets, thus gradually reducing the share of the collective assets. in some cases, this led to the transformation into a solely privately owned firm. others, however, preferred to stay in disguise and to continue to operate as leased collectives. • 'wearing a red hat': particularly in the countryside, many firms that were actually privately owned were registered as collectively owned enterprises, among them most township and village enterprises (tves, chinese: xiangzhen qiye). this prevalent strategy of 'wearing a red hat' (dai hong maozi) secured them access to land, assets, finance and markets, as well as tax breaks, favourable contracts, loans on preferential terms or other forms of subsidies by the local governments who, in turn, participated in the profits these firms made. although local governments started in the middle of the 1990s to encourage the transformation of these firms into private copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200236 heike holbig enterprises in order to reduce the budgetary costs, 'red hat' enterprises still exist in large numbers today, owing to the continuing advantages of local government involvement. • 'roundtripping' of domestic capital: other domestic entrepreneurs (re)invested their capital on the mainland through offshore companies – often existing as mere 'letterbox companies' in hong kong – in order to qualify as foreign investors. as the chinese government decided very early in the reform process to offer significant tax breaks and other advantages to foreign enterprises (joint ventures or sino-foreign co-operation enterprises with domestic state-owned or collective enterprises), the roundtripping of capital allowed domestic entrepreneurs to partake in these privileges. with china's accession to the world trade organization in 2001 and the application of the 'national treatment' requirement, however, privileges to foreign investors should be reduced considerably over the next years, and with them the incentives for this kind of roundtripping of domestic capital. • co-investing with state and collective firms: last but not least, many private entrepreneurs have decided to co-invest with state or collective firms to create larger mixed-ownership companies, mostly under the legal form of limited joint-stock or shareholding companies. co-investing with public sector actors may have the advantage of overcoming entry barriers set for private firms in particular sectors (industries considered vital to the national economy; industries whose products entail certain public hazards; and industries using scarce resources – though some restrictions have been abolished during the past two years). giving shares to local government and party cadres or paying them positions as advisors or board members may also induce other more informal advantages. a jiangsu entrepreneur explained in an interview in spring 2001 how he had tactically and elegantly distributed the shares of his firm between his wife, various other family members and key figures in the local government, not neglecting the local community authority which obtained 0.5 percent of his company's shares. 15 these strategies demonstrate that the private sector in china is far from presenting a clear-cut entity. instead, the regulatory and ideological restrictions confronting private entrepreneurship have produced many incentives to create tactical ambiguity about the firm's ownership form. the more successful private entrepreneurs are, the more they will be inclined to obscure their categorization as part of the 'private 37 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc sector' and to join the hybrid sector of mixed ownership and management forms. to tackle this ambiguity, administrators have started to give up the increasingly obsolete ownership categories and instead to lump the various categories together by simply distinguishing between 'small and medium enterprises' (zhong xiao qiye, which are reported to make up 80-90 percent of chinese enterprises) and 'large enterprises' (most of which are state-owned enterprises).16 although this might be a more realistic approach, it does not help to clarify the existence of 'true private entrepreneurship' in china. david goodman presents an even more disturbing message. in a study on entrepreneurs conducted during 1996-98 in shanxi province, he argues that a complex sector of the economy has emerged between the state-planned and the privately owned sector which has to be acknowledged as a key feature of provincial economic development. apart from the traditional state-run enterprises on the one side and the formal private sector enterprises on the other, a hybrid variety of ownership structures, management systems, registration and incorporation systems and scales of operation has sprung into existence over the past decade. goodman characterizes this hybrid sector as the new 'public sector' of the economy in the sense that it is relatively open to market forces and public equity. among them, he identifies: • urban enterprises including collectives and share-based companies established by state-run enterprises and social units, as well as urban collectives of more pre-reform types; • rural enterprises including collectives and stock companies established by townships, villages and rural districts, taking advantage of the rural sector's preferential economic regulations; • wholly or partly foreign-funded enterprises, often former private sector or state-run enterprises which have been transformed into larger firms through foreign investment; • so-called 'public sector private enterprises' private enterprises which have become either collective enterprises through co-operation with local governments or which have become share-based public companies, but where the original individual entrepreneur remains in the senior management position. 17 looking at the personal backgrounds and risk-taking approaches among the entrepreneurs and managers of the different types of staterun, private and 'public sector' enterprises, goodman concludes: copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200238 heike holbig indeed, whilst entrepreneurship is certainly to be found in the private sector of the economy, the more successful entrepreneurship is located outside the formal private sector in the new hybrid series of arrangements that exists between the state-run and private sector.18 with this finding, goodman indeed shakes the myth of the dynamism of the private economy contrasting with the inertia of the public economy. according to his study, the most outstanding entrepreneurs are to be found not in the private sector but in the hybrid public-private ownership sector. if his observation is true not only for shanxi province but for other regions too, then the question arises: who exactly does the ccp leadership have in mind when extending the invitation to join the party? the question becomes all the more tricky when we realize that a large number of entrepreneurs are already in the party. who is co-opting whom? party background of entrepreneurs statistics on the percentage of party members among entrepreneurs are available but rather scattered. relevant data can be found in the secondary literature of the past years and in some recent official and semiofficial chinese publications. starting at the bottom end of percentage shares, andrew walder found in a nationwide representative sample conducted in 1996 that 2.6 percent of those classified as getihu and 14.8 percent of private entrepreneurs (obviously siying qiye) were party members.19 these numbers seem quite low, but things look different when we take the firms' scale of operation into account. as various business associations are competing with one another at the local level to induce the larger and more 'representative' enterprises to become members, their membership data are quite revealing here. in particular, the all-china federation of industry and commerce (acfic) and its provincial and local subsidiaries (also called minjian shanghui or 'non-governmental chambers of commerce'), which have been mandated by the ccp's united front department specifically to represent the private sector enterprises, offer relevant information. thus, recent acfic data reveal that the share of ccp members among its own members has already increased beyond 20 percent. for anhui province, the provincial chamber data set for 2001 gives a number of 22 percent of member entrepreneurs who belong to the party.20 these numbers are confirmed by other recent chinese data. the almanac of private economy in china 2000 reported that 19.8 percent (or 4.3 million) of china's private entrepreneurs (obviously siying qiye) in 1999 were party members.21 39 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc still higher shares of party members have been reported by bruce dickson, who conducted a survey in eight counties in zhejiang, shandong, hebei and hunan in 1997 and 1999 which included, among others, more than 500 private entrepreneurs. in this survey, which was not conceived as a random sample but intentionally designed to represent the local economic and political elites, dickson found that almost 40 percent of all responding entrepreneurs were already ccp members; among them, 24.6 percent were xiahai entrepreneurs, or former officials who had left their posts and 'plunged into the sea' of the private economy; 13.4 percent were formal private entrepreneurs who had been co-opted into the ccp as a result of their business success at some point in the past. among the members of various business associations, he found the highest percentage shares of ccp members among members of local subsidiaries of the acfic; among them, 34.7 percent had a background as xiahai entrepreneurs and 16.8 percent as private entrepreneurs who were later co-opted into the ccp. together, more than half of the responding acfic members were ccp members when the survey was conducted. also quite strikingly, more than one-quarter (26.7 percent) of the entrepreneurs in the sample responded that they wanted to join the party, with about the half of them having applied for ccp membership already.22 as we understand now, growing numbers of entrepreneurs had de facto been admitted as party members at the local level by various 'flexible methods' (biantong fangshi) since the 1980s23 – despite the fact that article 1 of the ccp statute excludes entrepreneurs as possible ccp members, and despite a central committee document of 1989, which explicitly banned private entrepreneurs from joining the party (see below). municipal and county party committees decided high-handedly to recruit local magnates for pragmatic reasons – be it to participate more effectively in the wealth of private entrepreneurs, or because they realized that they could not find enough competent people to run as village party secretaries if they excluded private entrepreneurs. in order to circumvent the official ban, some private entrepreneurs signed their firms over to their spouses and applied for party membership as 'employees' of their own firm.24 percentage shares rise further when we do not focus on the formal private sector, but look at the various hybrid enterprise forms identified above. many of these hybrid enterprises are not run by entrepreneurs in the sense of private owner-operators but by managers taking entrepreneurial risks and contributing with entrepreneurial skills. it seems to be this wider group of managers and entrepreneurs in the copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200240 heike holbig hybrid private-public sector which jiang zemin had in mind when he invited into the ccp 'outstanding elements' of the 'new social strata'. in his speech, he named 'among others, entrepreneurs and technical personnel employed by scientific and technical enterprises of the non-public sector, managerial and technical staff employed by foreign-funded enterprises, the self-employed, private entrepreneurs, employees in intermediaries, and freelance professionals'.25 in the above-mentioned study conducted by david goodman among shanxi business people, he found that 39 percent of owner-operators in the formal private sector (many of them confirming the stereotype of young and lowly-educated self-made men) were ccp members. while this share is already high, he found significantly larger shares among the generally better educated, and sometimes older, managers and entrepreneurs in what he identified as the hybrid 'public sector'. thus, 71 percent of urban enterprise managers, 77 percent of rural entrepreneurs, 73 percent of joint venture managers and 56 percent of 'public sector private entrepreneurs' were found to be party members. also, among the mostly young and highly educated people who were hired by formal private enterprises as managers due to their specialized professional skills, 66 percent were ccp members; all of them had entered the party after 1978.26 the above-mentioned research report on social strata in contemporary china published by cass in late 2001, which is based on samples from four different localities in china, offers some revealing and somewhat surprising information in this context. the study found that the share of ccp members ranged between 5.2 and 13.7 percent among self-employed entrepreneurs, and between 0 and 24.4 percent among private entrepreneurs (with 85.2 percent of private entrepreneurs in shenzhen found to be members of the communist youth league, the ccp's traditional recruitment pool). strikingly, the figures are significantly higher among managers (jingli renyuan): here, shares of ccp members vary from 35.7 to 58.8 percent (with a record high of 97.1 percent of managers in hefei, anhui province, found to be present or former members of the communist youth league). clearly, these percentage shares are much higher than among industrial workers, where the share of ccp members ranges between 5.9-13.3 percent, and among agricultural workers with a range of 4.3-5.2 percent).27 confronted with these figures, and recollecting the fact that the ratio of ccp members among the overall populace is less than 5 percent, the party seems to have attracted managers and entrepreneurs quite successfully in the past already. why, if the new economic elites – or, at 41 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc least, their most outstanding representatives – are already party members, should the ccp be interested in 'opening the doors wide' to the 'new social strata' in the future? ex-post legitimization of a long-standing fact: ideological strategies the simple answer to the question why private entrepreneurs are now officially admitted into the ccp is that the party leadership is attempting to legitimize what has already been occurring for many years. the need for an ex-post legitimization might have seemed all the more pressing as the ideological revaluation of private entrepreneurs has been increasingly lagging behind the rise of their constitutional status in recent years. since the start of economic reforms, the most important steps in the constitutional career of the private sector were the recognition of individual economic activities as being complementary to the state sector in 1982, the recognition of the private economy as being a complement to the socialist public economy in 1988, and the recognition of the private economy (feigongyouzhi jingji) as an 'important component of the socialist market economy' (shehuizhuyi shichang jingji de zhongyao zucheng bufen) plus the provision of constitutional protection of this sector (art. 11) in 1999. party ideology with its inbuilt safeguards against 'capitalists', 'exploiters' etc. found it hard to parallel the steady economic and constitutional rise of the private sector, although there were some earlier attempts to bolster the ideological status of private entrepreneurs. during the 13th party congress in 1987, zhao ziyang, then general-secretary of the ccp, arranged for the 'guan guangmei phenomenon' to be presented as a showcase to the public. guan guangmei was a liaoning party member who had taken the lead in leasing an ailing state-owned enterprise and turning it into a profitable private enterprise. since then, private entrepreneurs started to join the party in significant numbers, provoking an intra-party controversy on the topic of 'exploitation'.28 the tiananmen protests in 1989 caused a setback; in august of this year, the central committee published its document 1989 no. 9, which explicitly banned private entrepreneurs from joining the ccp (jiang zemin, then incoming party secretary, supported the ban explicitly at the time). starting in the early 1990s, deng xiaoping helped to step up the political status of private entrepreneurs. in his theory of the 'three benefits' (sange liyu), which was also incorporated in the official document of the15th party congress in 1997, he argued that the standard to measure whether an copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200242 heike holbig ownership system was good or bad was 'whether or not it benefits the development of productive forces in a socialist society, the improvement of overall national strength, and the improvement of people's lives.'29 what he refrained from doing, however, was establishing criteria for representatives from the private sector to qualify as ccp members. since early 2000, when jiang zemin introduced to the public the socalled 'requirements of the three representations' (sange daibiao), he has paved the way for a full ideological emancipation of private entrepreneurs. claiming that the ccp has always to 'represent the development trend of china's advanced productive forces (1), the orientation of china's advanced culture (2), and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people in china (zui guangda renmin de genben liyi) (3)', he builds upon deng xiaoping's 'three benefits'. by putting the stress of the argument on the development of the 'productive forces' (1), attention is shifted away from the notion of the 'relations of production', which, according to marxism-leninism, creates the contradictions between classes and determines whether a social system is either capitalist (exploitative) or socialist (non-exploitative). by actively supporting the development of the most 'advanced' production forces, class struggle becomes irrelevant. the other crucial manipulation of party ideology is the notion of the 'overwhelming majority of the people' which the ccp is required to represent. as sensitive readers in china seem to have understood very early on, this notion – which at first glance simply seems to reaffirm the ccp's 'mass line' idea – has been intentionally formulated by jiang zemin to include basically all social classes, or, as the concept of 'class' has been made irrelevant, all social strata.30 also, obviously in an effort to bolster the image of private entrepreneurs who are still widely seen as stingy rustics with a low 'cultural calibre' (wenhua suzhi), a hierarchy is being created among new social strata: situated at the top of this hierarchy are 'entrepreneurs and technical personnel employed by scientific and technical enterprises of the non-public sector'. next come 'managerial and technical staff employed by foreign-funded enterprises', and only then are the self-made type of private entrepreneur, the self-employed and others mentioned. this preoccupation with the higher realms of science and technology (s&t) seems to resonate with older mystical beliefs in the modernizing power and scientistic debates of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries in china. this aspect becomes very obvious in a qiushi article of november 2001, which describes the 'key contribution' of the new social strata to the 'building of a socialist economy': 43 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc the broad masses in the new social strata are all engaged in economic operations to adapt to the objective needs of the development of a socialist market economy. private s&t enterprises and their leading technicians with their flexible and efficient operating forces are engaged in market economy operations, with their entrepreneurs and technicians applying leading s&t to the development of new products. … the broad masses in such new social strata are playing a key role in promoting s&t progress, revitalizing the market, optimizing the disposition of resources, expanding job avenues, meeting diverse social needs, and increasing overall social productivity, to promote the development of the national economy.31 perhaps the most important element in this legitimization strategy is the establishment of a set of criteria for admitting entrepreneurs into the party. here, the somewhat tautological formula presented in jiang zemin's july speech goes: 'the main criteria to admit a person into the party are whether he or she works wholeheartedly for the implementation of the party's line and programme and meets the requirements for party membership.'32 this formula obviously was regarded as too vague; consequently, party organs in the following months set out to clarify the criteria for party membership. thus, at the end of august, a much more specific set of requirements was made public. according to a xinhua report, entrepreneurs who wanted to join the party would have to (1) be law-abiding patriotic citizens, (2) not be guilty of tax-evasion, (3) reinvest the major part of their profits, and (4) to repay society out of the wealth they have accumulated.33 here, the delegation of socio-economic responsibilities to the 'new rich' appears as an important rationale behind the move to invite entrepreneurs into the ccp. another qiushi article of november 2001 offers a major discussion of the criteria of party membership, recommending rules to establish a person's qualification to join the party. the core passage goes: the introduction of these principal criteria for recruiting new party members requires that we be strict in guarding the gates to the party as well as the gates of ideology. … the two basic requirements of “wholeheartedly struggling for the implementation of the party's line and programme” and of “meeting the requirements for party membership” should be handled as one single criterion; observation of practical performance, as well as the motive for joining the party, should be integrated, while one-sidedness should be avoided. … efforts should be made to strictly prevent those with impure motives from being admitted into the party and to avoid using erroneous methods to measure the new requirements for party membership, such as admission based on economic strength, on the amount of material donation to society, and on personal reputation.34 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200244 heike holbig the main thrust of this argument seems to be to pacify those who fear that the ccp might admit persons simply for the sake of their wealth and business success, or persons whose main motive is to abuse the party's organizational network for their own commercial interests – a fear that seems quite reasonable. the attempt of ideological justification comes very close to more pragmatic motives of admitting entrepreneurs into the party, which will be discussed below. the ccp leadership is conscious of the fact that many regard the party's efforts to justify itself ideologically as highly cynical. as børge bakken points out, the 'three representations' imply the revision of the marxist theory of labour and labour value which has formed the core theory of marxism and thus lie at the heart of the ccp's identity as the 'vanguard of the working class'.35 the fundamental contradiction between 'capitalists' and 'proletarian masses', between 'exploiters' and 'exploited', which has been internalized in china's socialist discourse over decades, clearly stands in the way of accepting the ccp's new claim to represent both – labour and capital, workers and entrepreneurs. party theorists and social scientists have recently collaborated intensively to find a formula to reconcile the contradictions, at least rhetorically, and they have come up recently with a pair of innovatively coined concepts. workers and peasants are classified as 'basic labourers' (jichu laodong), while entrepreneurs and managers, the new economic elites, are coined as 'management labourers' (guanli laodong, or jingying guanli laodong) with their specific, and in fact, qualitatively more valuable contributions to social and economic progress. the ccp of course, according to its traditional mission as the 'vanguard of the working class', has to represent all workers of the modern economy, basic labourers as well as management labourers.36 whether one reads this formula as an enlightened departure from marxist dogmatism or as pure cynicism depends on one's own ideological standpoint. theoretically, the concept of social(ist) democracy, which has been debated in chinese leadership circles for several years, could offer a framework for a broad representation of all social strata in the ccp. yet, acceptance of the new formula should hinge not so much on the adequate use of ideological labels but on the perception of real opportunities. even those social groups who have lost out most in the reform process would probably not cite the classical marxist concepts of exploitation of surplus value to prove the party regime wrong, but rather demand that they themselves, or their children, get better chances to participate in the country's economic growth and catch up with the 45 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc new economic elites whatever they are called. here, i would argue in line with torstein hjellum that the party regime will have a basis of legitimacy as long as it allows sufficient upward mobility for workers and peasants to enter the elite ranks.37 however, should the 'three representations' aim not so much at opening the party up to the 'new social strata' but rather, as børge bakken suggests, at 'closing the door to groups further down in the social hierarchy',38 then the ccp's basis of legitimacy may indeed crumble rapidly. repaying society: material motives considering more pragmatic reasons for the ccp to invite entrepreneurs, of course, one would first of all think of financial motives. as it is always advantageous to be in the company of rich people, local party committees might wish to participate more in the wealth of the new economic elites and the charisma that radiates from it. more specifically, while the party-state as a whole will not have any difficulty in financing its own activities, it should be interested in devolving some of its social tasks to the newly rich. thus, in the first half of 2001, chambers of the all-china federation of industry and commerce mobilized their members to take part in a public relations campaign titled 'two think-ofs' (liang si). with its motto 'being wealthy, yet think of the sources [of wealth], enjoying prosperity, yet think of development', the campaign appealed to private entrepreneurs to be cognizant of their social responsibility and pay their share for social, educational, cultural and infrastructure projects in their communities or in other parts of the country – some in the far west. the so-called 'glorious cause' (guangcai shiye) activities organized by party and mass organizations and financed by more or less voluntary philanthropists among the newly rich have, in the meantime, grown into a nationwide network which involves significant 'private' financial transactions.39 also, by inducing more private entrepreneurs into the reach of the party-state, some might hope to improve the tax discipline of the new economic elites. while tax evasion seems to have been a kind of sport among private and self-employed entrepreneurs since the 1980s, the state has tried since the mid-1990s to consolidate the legal basis of tax collection in the private and the hybrid public-private sector, but with mixed success. although private enterprises and individually owned enterprises together account for more than 20 percent of gdp, they are reported to contribute less than 10 percent (in some places less than 5 percent) to the local coffers.40 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200246 heike holbig connected with these financial aspects is the fear of some that admitting private entrepreneurs into the ccp will strengthen the role of 'money politics', making corruption even more widespread than it already is.41 as the above-mentioned cass report complains, there are already quite a number of private entrepreneurs who regard themselves as 'special citizens' (teshu gongmin) or are so regarded in their local communities. thus, they bribe local officials in order to obtain 'political loans' (zhengzhixing daikuan) and other preferential treatment, and show off their wealth through conspicuous consumption, which leads to moral decay. some of them even link up with triads and other criminal organizations, exerting a very bad influence on local politics.42 of course, with more financial capacity entering the party, to fear that this will inflate corruption seems a legitimate concern. on the other hand, one could argue that, compared to the bribery and red-tape practised at present, corruption will not necessarily increase in the wake of more entrepreneurs joining the party. as entrepreneurs will not have to 'take the back entrance' (zou houmen) but will be able, as party members now themselves, to 'take the front entrance' ('zou qianmen') to realize their goals, overall corruption may well diminish and 'money politics' may become more transparent than it used to be in the past. co-opting the new elites: strategies of inclusion another prevailing argument is that the admission of entrepreneurs into the ccp is to be interpreted as a strategy to co-opt the new elites: a strategy of inclusion that allows an organization to add new skills and resources, enhance its performance, increase political support etc., thereby 'avert[ing] threats to its stability or existence'.43 according to this interpretation, by incorporating private entrepreneurs, the party mitigates the political pressures from these people. by bestowing on entrepreneurs the prestige of being part of the ruling party and giving them a say in decision-making, the ccp ultimately aims at preventing the emergence of a bourgeois middle class which could form an autonomous political force and thus challenge the ccp's power. in a word, the co-optation of new economic elites is designed to pre-empt a potential political threat which a future middle class or bourgeoisie could pose to the ccp's one-party dominance.44 this argument is used by ccp ideologues, too, whose mission is to promote the admission of the new 'outstanding elements'. thus, some of them warn that if the party does not reach out to the new elites, they could, at some point in the future, form an organized oppositional force 47 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc challenging the party's authority. as one article published in late 2001 in zhonggongdangshi yanjiu argued, the ccp has to learn a lesson from the worldwide decay of communism: the reason why the power of the soviet union's and other countries' communist regimes collapsed was the fact that they had failed to adapt their social base in accordance with the structural change of the social strata, thus 'losing the support of the youth, particularly of young entrepreneurs active in the new economy and of young intellectuals'. to prevent a collapse of power similar to that of the soviet union, the ccp should follow the trend of the more successful socialist democratic parties worldwide and adapt its social base to absorb outstanding elements from the newly emerging middle strata (xinxing zhongjian jieceng), among them entrepreneurs, white-collar workers and intellectuals. should the party fail to do so, the author warns, these people 'will necessarily develop this or that idea' (shibi hui chancheng zheyang nayang de xiangfa), some will join one of the democratic parties, or even join forces with other parties to form an opposition party (chengwei yige fanduipai)'.45 now, we should ask ourselves how realistic such a scenario is indeed. more specifically, is there really something like a new middle class in the making, with an independent bourgeois mindset and political ambitions of its own, which the party has to prevent from taking over its power? as we have seen above, there are large differences in the social, educational and professional backgrounds of the various groups of entrepreneurs and managers, with the sidewalk shoeshine getihu at one extreme, and the us-trained manager of a modern 's&t' enterprise, investment corporation or foreign-invested firm at the other. also, the oft-cited discrimination against the private economy does not apply uniformly across the various ownership and management forms. while some enterprises may find it hard to access bank credit, land or raw materials, others may have found a viable mode of symbiosis with the local authorities which secures them privileged access to finance and other resources as well as political insurance. with the enormous differences in mind, it still seems hard to imagine the emergence of a homogeneous social group pursuing a collective set of strategies in a consistent manner, at least for the time being. as bruce dickson maintains: 'so far, china's private entrepreneurs have not asserted themselves as an organized or coherent interest group.'46 yet, according to the cass report, a social identity of private entrepreneurs is in the making. although they do not yet form a political force of their own, private entrepreneurs are found to gradually decopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200248 heike holbig velop a sense of common bonds and belonging. what binds them together is, after decades of repeated class struggle, the desire to regain full social and political acceptance as well as legal protection of their properties and activities. only if they can trust that the severe ideological discrimination against 'capitalists' in the past will not be repeated in the future, the report argues, will entrepreneurs be ready to reinvest substantial parts of their profits. also, the study finds, while the majority of entrepreneurs are restricting their activities to speaking business (zai shang yan shang), aiming just to protect or promote their individual status, a minority has become politically active, articulating specific political demands. thus, for example, they lobby for a positive business environment and a stable implementation of economic policies, for the enhancement of their social and political status (e.g. for the right to be eligible as 'model workers'), for legal guarantees and for more direct participation in the party-state's decision-making process.47 if these findings are true, a rationale might indeed have taken shape in ccp leadership circles to include the more active and articulate elements among the new social strata into the party rather than risk their political defection. however, we have to ask ourselves again whether the new policy of admitting entrepreneurs into the party does indeed make a difference here. inclusionary politics have been practised by the party-state in the past. various mechanisms of inclusion have existed for a long time, such as 'arranging' (anpai) for entrepreneurs to serve as delegates to people's congresses or the political consultative congresses at all administrative levels, to let them articulate their interests via the acfic and its local subsidiaries, or via other associations and mass organizations, etc. strikingly, many of these traditionally 'arranged' political representatives of the private economy are already ccp members – which can be easily explained by the fact that it is always the most prestigious entrepreneurs who are selected for 'political' posts. as bruce dickson found in his sample of eight counties, 78 percent of private entrepreneurs in people's congresses and 61 percent in political consultative congresses were party members.48 therefore one could argue that the strategy of co-optation has been applied quite successfully already. given such a high degree of overlapping political roles among private entrepreneurs, the question arises whether the admission of more entrepreneurs into the ccp might not merely lead to a duplication of leverage of those groups who have already been politically active in the past. of course, the new policy would make a difference if it were to allow representatives of the private sector to take over politically influ49 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc ential party or government posts. otherwise, bestowing the most prestigious private entrepreneurs with ccp membership, for them could just mean another honorary ornament without much significance for political participation. much more detailed information will be needed to find out more about the reality of inclusionary politics vis-à-vis the private sector. stretching the ccp grassroots: organizational motives another – more tangible and perhaps more decisive – motive for inviting private entrepreneurs into the ccp may be the steady decline of the party's organizational influence in the economy which has been recorded over the past two decades. in the traditional state-owned sector the party was not only omnipresent but in most cases dominant in the firms' management. with the growth of the private and hybrid sectors, however, the party's presence has been reduced quite dramatically. while the total number of party members has developed proportionally with the increase of population (june 2002: 66.4 million members, which equals about 5 percent of the population), the ccp's organizational reach has been shrinking significantly in the growing private sector of the economy. as the establishment of ccp grassroots organizations has not been obligatory here, the mobilizational capacity of the party seem to have been severely reduced in this sector. with it, the party has, over the years, been cut off from access to ever larger parts of the country's workforce. to tackle this problem, jiang zemin announced in may 2000 that party grassroots organizations should be established in those firms of the nonpublic economy where 'conditions were ripe'.49 according to the plans of the ccp's organization department, enterprises with at least three party members among their employees were expected to establish a ccp grassroots organization (jiceng zuzhi), those with more than three but less than 50 party members should form a regular party branch (dang zhibu), and those with more than 50 party members should establish a general branch (zong zhibu). if 'conditions were not ripe yet', trade unions, youth leagues and other mass organizations' branches should be set up first to pave the way for the later establishment of party cells in private firms.50 according to an article published in zhonggongdangshi yanjiu in the autumn of 2001, among the 1.76 million private enterprises registered in late 2000, 86 percent had no party members among their employees at all, and only 0.9 percent had established ccp grassroots organizations in their firms. the author lists various reasons for this dire situation: first of all, it is hard for party organizations in private enterprises copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200250 heike holbig to play their proper role. although some firms have established party cells, they did so only to get access to party channels for the recruitment of qualified personnel; some party cells were 'dependent on the entrepreneur' (yifu yu qiyezhu) – obviously a euphemism for being an instrument of the entrepreneur – while others existed on paper only.51 the case of zhang ruimin, director of the famous hai'er joint stock company, is a case in point: when asked by a foreign journalist about who was the party secretary in his company, and whether there weren't any contradictions between the party's goals and the shareholders' interests, zhang replied: 'well, the party secretary, that's me … there won't ever arise any contradictions, 'cause how can i be in contradiction with myself?'52 our own interviews with private and 'red-hat' (hongmao) entrepreneurs in jiangsu in may 2001 have revealed that this type of entrepreneur-cum-party secretary has indeed become quite widespread in recent years.53 thus, often, where there are party cells, they seem to be instrumentalized as a mere management tool by the laoban, the 'boss'. in a sense, one can recognize here a strategy of 'counter co-optation' where the entrepreneur co-opts the party in order to safeguard the organizational stability of his firm. the zhonggongdangshi yanjiu article offers another reason for the troubles of establishing party cells in private firms, which is the 'incomplete ideological understanding' (sixiang renshi bu daowei) on the side of some party members. for example, some believe (wrongly, of course) that the principle of striving for profits is fundamentally incompatible with the overall goals of the party, and therefore lack self-confidence to do a good party-building job. others believe that although private entrepreneurs have experienced a rapid development, they still hold a marginal position in social respects. from this perspective therefore, whether party organizations are active there or not does not really matter so much. still others believe (again, wrongly) that private entrepreneurs only strive for economic success and do not care at all about the development of party cells. on the side of the private entrepreneurs, the article finds the following 'one-sided opinions' which can be explained by their 'different personal backgrounds and knowledge levels': first, some entrepreneurs fear that party grassroots organizations, once they are established in their firm, could 'use their political influence to interfere with the economic decision-making and disturb the regular production order of the firm, thus impairing the profit goals'. second, some believe that there are too many non-economic activities being initiated by grassroots or51 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc ganizations, increasing the financial burden and driving up the firm's expenditures. third, some associate the party mainly with lavish banquets, red-tape and corruption in general and therefore 'have no trust in the party' (dui dang mei you xinrengan) – a peculiar reversal of orthodox party members' fear that admitting private entrepreneurs into the ccp could increase corruption.54 as these observations demonstrate, the author is quite sensitive to the potential barriers hindering the establishment of party grassroots organizations in private enterprises. the precautions found on the side of entrepreneurs seem all the more realistic as the prescribed tasks of party organizations in private firms comprise not only ideological education and the protection and mediation of workers' interests, but also participation in the firm's decision-making on crucial production and operation matters. the article emphasizes over and over again that the party organizations, in order to win the trust of the entrepreneurs, should refrain from old-style 'commandism', bureaucratic interference and compulsion. rather, they should play a participatory role by making suggestions and giving advice, co-operating with the management to ensure a healthy development of the firm. the relation between party organization and entrepreneur should not be 'hierarchical' (dengji) or 'antagonistic' (duili), but rather one of 'compatibility' (xiangrong) – whatever this might signify in terms of power relations. what we find in this description is a potential source of growing problems, tensions and contradictions between the laoban and party representatives inside private enterprises. as the article states explicitly, if the entrepreneur is not willing to recruit party members as employees, he cannot be forced to do so. thus, to attain the goal of establishing party cells and increase the ccp's organizational presence in private companies, it is crucial to win the sympathy of the entrepreneurs at first hand. the nexus between the inclusion of entrepreneurs and the mobilization of private sector's workforce outlined seems very important and might have significantly motivated jiang zemin's july speech: while the co-optation of private entrepreneurs into the ccp is often seen to work at the expense of the traditional focus of party-building on workers and peasants,55 one could also make the reverse argument: in line with the logic just presented, co-optation of the new elites is not so much an end in itself, but rather a necessary precondition for ensuring the continued success of traditional party-building measures among the working masses. as an ever larger share of the country's workers is and will be employed by the private or hybrid sector of the economy, the copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200252 heike holbig ccp needs to secure its foothold in these sectors in order to gain access to these parts of the workforce. in this sense, co-opting the new 'management labourers' can be seen as the best and only strategy for the party to reach out to the masses of the 'basic labourers' who otherwise would go astray. paradoxical though it may sound, in order to uphold its nature as the 'vanguard of the working class', the ccp might have decided to tolerate 'capitalists' within its own ranks. conclusion: what we do not know concluding this paper, it would be a very satisfying thing to sum up the results and use them to philosophize about the outlook for the party's future development. suitable topics for discussion might include: the possible evolution of the ccp into a 'people's party' or whatever other labels one might invent; the change in the party's identity and the ideological and psychological reverberations of this change; the future political role of entrepreneurs and other new economic elites; or the prospects for democracy inside and outside the party. however, for the time being, it seems premature to tackle these 'big questions' when our knowledge of the 'small questions' remains insufficient. thus, as i hope to have shown, some assumptions concerning basic concepts and categories of the 'private sector', as well as motives and strategies of the party, should be (re-)tested on the microscopic level before drawing macropolitical conclusions. according to my understanding, conceptual vagueness or insufficient knowledge prevails regarding the following aspects: • the concepts of 'private sector', 'private entrepreneur' etc. are not such clear notions in chinese discourse as the english-language media coverage seems to suggest. this is not only due to statistical inconsistencies, but, more importantly, to inbuilt incentives for actors in the chinese political economy to disguise what is 'private'. looking only at the formal private sector (getihu and siying qiye) seems substantially to misrepresent the dynamics of entrepreneurial activities. therefore, it would be highly desirable to get more concrete insights into the hybrid public-private sectors of the economy, particularly at the local level, and to understand better which among the various types of entrepreneur-managers the ccp in fact wishes to co-opt. • to speak of 'private entrepreneurs' as a homogeneous group, suggesting that they have similar backgrounds and pursue consistent interests and strategies, seems to ignore the large 53 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc divergencies in personal, educational and occupational backgrounds of entrepreneurs as well as in their attitudes and behaviour. therefore, the notion of an emerging 'middle class' seems somewhat premature, particularly if it is ascribed the mythical role of a harbinger of pluralist democracy. before lumping everybody together to form a 'bourgeoisie with chinese characteristics', it seems more promising to analyse in more detail the variations in backgrounds, interests and strategies among the different groups of entrepreneurs and managers active in present-day china. some recent studies of social scientists inside and outside china have done pioneering work in this field which can form a fundament for further research. • analysing the ccp's strategies of inclusion, we should take into account the various modes of co-optation and organizational linkage which exist inside and outside the party (as scholars such as bruce dickson, thomas heberer, kellee tsai, zheng yongnian and others have already been doing). to remind ourselves, various formal channels of political representation of entrepreneurial interests have already been in existence for many years, such as serving as delegates in people's congresses and political consultative congresses, or lobbying through business associations and mass organizations. realizing that most entrepreneurs who have been politically active via these channels are already ccp members, the question arises how the admission of more entrepreneurs into the party will impact on those formal channels of participation. will party membership of new groups of entrepreneurs indeed increase their leverage, or will it merely duplicate existing structures of political participation? • besides the formal channels, there are many informal ways of representating group interests, which entrepreneurs seem to have found effective in the past. among them are, of course, various timehonoured networking (guanxi) strategies, but also some innovative methods. the emergence of the 'private entrepreneur-cum-party secretary model' is but one example of what i would call a 'counter co-optation' strategy pursued by entrepreneurs to cope with the ccp's co-optation strategy. if we want to understand the motives and strategies behind the party's attitude toward entrepreneurs, we should analyse the entrepreneurs' motives and strategies as well. hopefully in the wake of the 16th party congress, when more entrepreneurs might be admitted into the ccp, more detailed information will become available about their role in the game. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200254 heike holbig dr. heike holbig is a research fellow at the institute of asian affairs in hamburg, germany. 1 zhang dejiang, 'several issues to be studied and resolved in strengthening the work of party building in non-public enterprises', originally published in dangjian yanjiu [research on party building], no. 4 (2000), excerpted in zhenli de zhuiqiu [pursuit of truth] (may 2001), translated in bbc monitoring global newsline asia pacific political file, 15 july 2001; lin yanzhi, 'how the communist party should “lead” the capitalist class', in shehui kexue zhanxian [social sciences battlefront] (june 2001), translated in bbc monitoring global newsline asia pacific political file, 16 july 2001, deng liqun et al., 'deng liqun dengren pi jiang zemin gongkai xin' (open letter by deng liqun and others critizing jiang zemin), unpublished document, cited by joseph fewsmith, 'is political reform ahead? – beijing confronts problems facing society – and the ccp', china leadership monitor, no. 1 (2002), p. 9, fn. 8. the contents of these critical articles have been purported widely; cf. fewsmith, 'is political reform ahead? – beijing confronts problems facing society – and the ccp'; heike holbig, 'die kpch öffnet sich für privatunternehmer. jiang zemins theoretischer “durchbruch” und die praktischen konsequenzen' [the ccp opens its doors to private entrepreneurs: jiang zemin's theoretical „breakthrough“ and the practical consequences], china aktuell, no. 7 (2001), pp. 739-46; see also zheng yongnian, 'interests, interest representation and the transformation of the chinese communist party'. paper prepared for the conference 'bringing the party back in: how china is governed' held in copenhagen, june 2002. 2 http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200204/07/print20020407_93626.html. 3 renmin ribao [people's daily] website, 19 march 2002. 4 zhongguo tongji nianjian 2001 [china statistical yearbook 2001] (beijing: zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2001), pp. 128-31. 5 lu xueyi (ed.), dangdai zhongguo shehui jieceng yanjiu baogao [research report on social strata in contemporary china] (beijing: shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2001), pp. 21315. i would like to thank torstein hjellum and kjeld erik brodsgaard for making the report available to me. 6 zhongguo tongji nianjian 2000, p. 140; zhongguo tongji nianjian 2001, p. 131; renmin ribao website, 19 march 2002. 7 for example, zhang yuanbao, 'xiang shehui youxiu fenzi zhangkai damen shi jiaqiang dang de jianshe de zhanlüe jucuo' [to open the doors wide to outstanding elements of society is a strategic move to strengthen party building], zhonggongdangshi yanjiu [research on the ccp's contemporary history], no. 6 (2001), p. 11. 8 zhongguo tongji nianjian 2000, pp. 138, 140; zhongguo tongji nianjian 2001, pp. 130, 133; renmin ribao website, 19 march 2002. 9 renmin ribao website, 19 march 2002. 10 zhang yuanbao, 'xiang shehui youxiu fenzi zhangkai damen shi jiaqiang dang de jianshe de zhanlüe jucuo', pp. 10-15; see also xinhua news agency, 22 may 2002; even if the official figures for private entrepreneurs and self-employed entrepreneurs, whose incomes are generated on the private economy, are included in the term 'jiuye renshu', this would only amount to 102.26 million persons for late 2000 – still a large gap to the figure of 130 million. 11 zhongguo tongji nianjian 2001, p. 132. 12 four sampling surveys conducted by the ccp united front department, the all-china federation of industry and commerce, the china private economy research group and notes 55 the party and private entrepreneurs in the prc the chinese academy of social sciences since 1993 are mentioned in lu xueyi, dangdai zhongguo shehui jieceng yanjiu baogao, pp. 216-17. 13 see, for example, renmin ribao, 19 march 2002. 14 zhang yuanbao, 'xiang shehui youxiu fenzi zhangkai damen shi jiaqiang dang de jianshe de zhanlüe jucuo'. 15 see international finance corporation (ifc), china's emerging private enterprises. prospects fot the new century, (washington, dc: ifc, 2000), pp. 7-44; organization for economic cooperation and development, china in the global economy. reforming china's enterprises, (paris: oecd, 2000), pp. 17-32; interviews with private entrepreneurs conducted with thomas reichenbach in wuxi, may 2001. thomas reichenbach is my project partner in a research project on the all-china federation of industry and commerce and its role in the changing structures of interest representation of entrepreneurs in various regions of china. the project, which is funded by the volkswagen stiftung, commenced in april 2000. 16 see, for example, 'report on expanding smes' in zhongguo jingji shibao [china economic times], 19 april 2001, p. 7; xinhua news agency, 20 february 2002, 26 june 2002. 17 david s. g. goodman, 'the emerging public sector in shanxi. entrepreneurs and enterprise as risk under reform'. paper prepared for unsw-uts centre for research on provincial china, provincial china workshop, taiyuan, october 2000, pp. 7-11. i would like to thank prof. goodman for making the paper available to me. 18 ibid., p. 5. 19 email correspondence with prof. andrew g. walder in may 2002; percentages cited from bruce dickson, 'economics as the central task: do entrepreneurs matter?' paper prepared for the 'china's leadership transition: prospects and implications' conference, virginia, december 2001, p. 20, fn. 9. i would like to thank prof. walder and prof. dickson for sharing their data. 20 data obtained from my project partner thomas reichenbach. 21 cited by ignatius wibowo, 'party recruitment and the future of the chinese communist party', eai background brief no. 101 (september 2001). 22 dickson, 'economics as the central task', pp. 13-15, and seperate table 5. 23 this is a term used in a recently published party source: shi zhongquan et al., 'guanyu youxiu qiyezhu rudang wenti de diaocha' [investigation into the question of outstanding entrepreneurs joining the ccp], zhonggong dangshi yanjiu, no. 3 (2002), pp. 66-75. 24 cf. thomas heberer, 'die privatwirtschaft als wachstumsmotor. weshalb öffnet sich die kommunistische partei chinas privaten unternehmern?' [the private economy as motor of growth. why does the ccp open its doors to private entrepreneurs?], frankfurter algemeiner zeitung, 25 march 2002, p. 8; yeguang xinwen, 17 august 2001, accessed 24 may 2002 via: news.1chinastar.com/news.shtml?l=chinese&a=express&p=1090047. 25 cited from the official english translation by xinhua news agency, 1 july 2001, section 29. 26 goodman, 'the emerging public sector in shanxi', p. 17. 27 lu xueyi, dangdai zhongguo shehui jieceng yanjiu baogao, p. 36; an overview of the report is given in the hong kong monthly guangjiaojing, no. 2 (2002), pp. 14-17; and no. 3 (2002), pp. 14-17; see also the straits times, 15 may 2002. 28 washington post, 31 october 1987. see also fewsmith, 'is political reform ahead?'. 29 interestingly, the 'three benefits' theory of deng xiaoping has been cited in recent articles in the official press. see, for example, renmin ribao, 19 march 2002; zhonggong dangshi yanjiu, no. 5 (2001), p. 52. 30 for an analysis of the 'three representations' concept, see holbig, 'die kpch öffnet sich für privatunternehmer'. 31 'new social strata play bigger role in china's economic development', qiushi, 16 november 2001, translated in bbc monitoring global newsline asia pacific political file, 4 december 2001. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200256 heike holbig 32 english translation by xinhua news agency, 1 july 2001, p. 29. 33 xinhua, 28 august 2001, cited from news.1chinastar.com/news.shtmal?l=chinese &a=express&p=1092012 (visited 12 may 2002). 34 song haiqing, 'zenyang lijie nengfou zijue de wei shixian dang de luxian he gangling er fendou, shifou fuhe dangyuan tiaojian, she xishou xin dangyuan de zhuyao biazhun?' [how to understand that the most important criteria for absorbing new party members are whether they struggle wholeheartedly for the implementation of the party's line and programme and whether they meet the requirements for party membership?], qiushi, no. 22 (16 november 2001), pp. 35-36. 35 see børge bakken, 'norms, values and cynical games with party ideology'. paper presented at the conference 'bringing the party back in: how china is governed' in copenhagen, june 2002, pp. 14 ff. 36 for the use of this new concept see lu xueyi, dangdai zhongguo shehui jieceng yanjiu baogao, pp. 233-38; south china morning post, 30 july 2002. 37 torstein hjellum, 'features of capitalism and the restructuring of ruling classes in china', the copenhagen journal of asian studies, no. 14 (2001). accessible via: www.uib.no/people/ sspth/capitalistclasschina.htm (visited on 21 may 2002). 38 see bakken, 'norms, values, and cynical games with party ideology', p. 33. 39 information from interviews with private entrepreneurs and representatives from all-china federation of industry and commerce subsidiaries in may 2001. 40 hu angang (ed.), zhongguo tiaozhan fubai [challenging corruption in china] (hangzhou: zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 2001), pp. 49-50; see also, lu xueyi, dangdai zhongguo shehui jieceng yanjiu baogao, p. 215. 41 increasing corruption is one of the consequences zheng yongnian sees as arising from the admittance of private entrepreneurs into the ccp; see zheng yongnian, 'interests, interest representation and the transformation of the chinese communist party'. 42 lu xueyi, dangdai zhongguo shehui jieceng yanjiu baogao, pp. 242-43. 43 definition by philip selznick, cited from ignatius wibowo, 'inducting capitalists into the ccp: a case of hobson's choice', eai bulletin, vol. 3, no. 2 (september 2001), pp. 1-2; see also bruce j. dickson, 'cooptation and corporatism in china: the logic of party adaptation', political science quarterly, vol. 114, no. 4 (winter 2000/01), pp. 517-40. 44 ibid.; similar arguments can be found widely in the secondary literature. 45 zhang yuanbao, 'xiang shehui youxiu fenzi zhangkai damen shi jiaqiang dang de jianshe de zhanlüe jucuo'', pp.10-11. 46 dickson, 'economics as the central task', p. 4. 47 lu xueyi, dangdai zhongguo shehui jieceng yanjiu baogao, pp. 219-24. 48 dickson, 'economics as the central task,' p. 16. 49 xinhua news agency, 16 may 2000. 50 cited from yin fuying, 'jiaqiang siying qiye dangjian gongzuo, cujin siying jingji jiankang fazhan' [strengthen party building in private enterprises and promote the healthy development of the private economy], zhonggong dangshi yanjiu, no. 5 (2001), pp. 51-56, at p. 53. 51 ibid., p. 51. 52 'hai'er: dangyuan laoban bu maodun' [hai'er: being a party member boss is not a contradiction], yeguang xinwen, 5 july 2001, accessible via: http://news.1chinastar.com/ news.shtml?l_fanti&a=express&p=1081115 (visited on 24 may 2002). 53 interviews conducted with my project partner thomas reichenbach in may 2001. 54 yin fuying, 'jiaqiang siying qiye dangjian gongzuo,' pp. 51-52. 55 similar arguments are made by dickson, 'economics as the central task', p. 15, or by bakken, 'norms, values and cynical games'. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200210 david shambaugh civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? david shambaugh abstract this article examines the changing dynamics of relations between the chinese communist party (ccp) and the people's liberation army (pla). it argues that while the pla remains politically loyal to the ccp, there is evidence of important changes in the institutional relationship between the two institutions. the partyarmy relationship is no longer as intertwined and symbiotic as it has historically been; rather, this article argues that there is evidence of a 'bifurcation' between the two. the catalysts for this change have been the professionalization and relative depoliticization of the military, as well as the leadership transition in the ccp. these changes raise important and central issues for the future of chinese politics.* introduction as the chinese communist party (ccp) has had to adapt to changes in chinese society during the reform period and in the wake of the collapse of communist party-states elsewhere,1 it has also had to adjust and renegotiate its relationship with other key organs of state power.2 among these has been the party's relationship with the people's liberation army (pla). yet the renegotiated relationship has occurred not just between party and army, but also between both and a third party: the state. since the mid-1990s there has been an evident, if subterranean, three-way struggle over the jurisdictional control of the military being played out among the army, party and government in china. the army has sought greater autonomy from party control so as to better pursue its redefined professional missions, which has forced the party to redefine and adjust its instruments of control over the army, while the government (state) has tried to increase its own jurisdictional control over the armed forces while continuing to delineate its sphere of responsibilities distinct from the party (dang-zheng fenkai). while this subterranean struggle has been evident to careful observers, because of their inherently political and highly sensitive nature, these changes have been only incremental and subliminal. they rarely spill over into the public domain. no explicit and radical restructuring 11 civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? of party-army relations has been undertaken. to do so would call into question the very legitimacy of the ccp as a ruling party. the longstanding maoist paradigm that the 'party controls the gun' remains standard mantra (tifa) and is, in fact, still the case. we certainly cannot claim that the army has gained its 'independence' from party control. the army would certainly follow orders from the party leadership to use force against external threats and most likely against internal ones as well. the army does remain loyal to the party. there is no danger of a military coup d'état of the army against the party, as is often the case in other one-party authoritarian states. nonetheless, as this paper argues, there do exist growing signs of 'bifurcation' between these two institutions – which cumulatively add up to a significant, and ongoing, redefinition of the institutional and jurisdictional relationship between the ccp and pla. from party-army to civil-military relations western analysts of the pla have long considered it more appropriate to use the term 'party-army relations' rather than the more generic term 'civil-military relations,' as commonly used elsewhere in the world. this was so because of a number of important historical considerations that set the pla's relationship to the ruling chinese communist party apart from its counterparts in other countries. it was recognized that militaries in communist political systems are intrinsically and inherently different from other one-party authoritarian systems, to say nothing of militaries in democratic polities. in communist party-led political systems (the people's republic of china included) the military is an institutional and armed instrument of the party. communist militaries do not exhibit the degree of 'corporate' identity and political autonomy characteristic of western militaries. this is so for a number of reasons. the first is that the act of seizing – and maintaining – power is usually a violent one, in which armed force is used for political ends. this fact intrinsically places the military (and other coercive security services) in the position of being an armed adjunct of the party rather than as an autonomous force charged with defending the nation against external threat.3 as such, a communist military's national security mission is a dual one – to be used against both internal and external enemies. moreover, communist militaries (including the pla) are institutionally penetrated by the ruling communist party – particularly through a network of political commissars, party committees and other mechanisms. this is the essence of leninist parcopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200212 david shambaugh ties – to penetrate institutionally all key organs of state and society. yet it is not simply an issue of zero-sum penetration, but also a positive sum relationship whereby the army is given an important stake in the ruling party. one way this is done is to co-opt the military elite into the party elite. in the pla, all officers above the rank of senior colonel are party members. this is even more evident at the top of the political system through the 'interlocking directorate,' where there is usually a high percentage of senior serving military officers on the party's elite organs (the central committee and political bureau), with many more senior party officials having previously served in the armed forces (trading their uniforms for civilian garb but maintaining close factional ties with military elites). in such communist militaries, 'political work' and ideological indoctrination of the officer corps and the rank and file are prominent and occupy considerable time (net time not spent in training). in short, in communist militaries (including the pla), there exists an essential symbiosis between the army and ruling communist party. sometimes this symbiosis is reflected in party attempts to assert greater control over the military, while at other times communist militaries have become more politically assertive vis-à-vis the ruling party – although in such systems, because of the essential symbiosis, militaries do not engineer coups d'état against their ruling parties (although they may become involved in intra-party factional manoeuvring). such a model of party-army relations was wholly applicable to china until the second half of the 1990s, although i argue in this paper that it has been only partially applicable since that time. for a variety of reasons and judged by a variety of indicators, the relationship between the pla and the ccp is evolving significantly and possibly transforming fundamentally. to be sure, it is still a party-army in important respects, but a number of the criteria noted above no longer characterize the ccp– pla relationship. the military's mission today is almost exclusively external, to protect national security rather than internal security (the people's armed police has been created to take primary responsibility for this mission). importantly, the 'interlocking directorate' has been completely broken by generational succession, whereby not a single senior party leader today possesses a single day of military experience and, currently, only two senior pla officers in the high command (generals chi haotian and wang ruilin) have any significant experience in high-level politics – a trend that will become more pronounced with the transition to the 'fourth generation' ccp leadership. the party-army elite has clearly become 'bifurcated' from each other. 13 civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? another change is that the criteria for career advancement in the pla are no longer as dependent on political factors. senior pla officers from the central military commission down to group army commands are now promoted on meritocratic and professional criteria, while political consciousness and activism count for very little. the officer corps is becoming increasingly professional in classic huntingtonian terms. indeed, recruitment into the pla is now based almost exclusively on technical criteria. the role of the ideology is virtually nil and political work has declined substantially; concomitantly the general political department's mission has become more oriented to providing welfare for soldiers and their families than to indoctrinating them. time formally spent in political study (approximately 30 percent in the past) is now spent in training. political work (zhengzhi gongzuo) itself is now much more oriented towards welfare, morale and living issues than to ideological indoctrination. this is also true of curriculum content in institutions of professional military education (pme), now mandatory for all officers above the division level. officers spend time learning the intricacies of doctrine, strategy and tactics rather than communist doctrine. with commercial divestiture, time formerly spent in business is now also spent increasingly in training, as pla units have been ordered to divest themselves of their commercial holdings. the military is also now subject to control by a large number of formal laws and regulations, instead of the informality and personalization of command and control. the state council and ministry of finance are now exerting much stronger control over the pla budgeting process, and at least on paper (the national defence law) the president and national people's congress possess command and oversight responsibilities over the pla. accordingly, for these reasons, it is now more analytically appropriate to consider civil-military rather than party-army relations in the prc. the driving catalyst for all of these changes has been the professionalization of the armed forces.4 to be sure, as is argued below, this evolution is ongoing and incomplete. the former model has not, and is not likely to, replace completely the latter model. yet, along a number of criteria, it does seem clear that the pla is moving away from its traditional communist institutional ethos into a new stage of limited autonomy from the ruling party. theoretically, in terms of the comparative study of civil-military systems, this new stage may also be viewed as the intermediate stage in a transition from a party-army to a 'national army'. china and the pla are clearly not there yet, and it is very questionable whether a national copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200214 david shambaugh army can exist within the context of a political system dominated by a single, ruling communist party. yet there have been, and continue to be, subterranean discussions in china and the pla about greater state control of the military, a military that serves the nation and not just the ruling party, and a military controlled by civilian rule and governed my legislative oversight. as if to put a fine point on the sensitivity of such considerations, there has been a series of ongoing condemnations of such 'bourgeois' concepts in the party and military media from time to time. it is clearly a sensitive issue that cuts right to the core of pla identity and ccp legitimacy, if not the efficacy of the prc itself. is it feasible to have a national army in a leninist system? or can such a military only exist in a democratic system? given the evidence of economic and educational reforms in china, to take but two issue areas, it is not inconceivable that a hybrid relationship of a professional national military could co-exist with a ruling communist party, but within a framework of state and legislative control. yet, on the other hand, many of the elements necessary to proclaim the pla a 'national army' seem anathema to the ccp and its rule. for example, it would require at least the following: a 'real' ministry of national defence (not the hollow shell of the mnd at present); a civilian minister of defence; presidential chairmanship of the central military commission; thorough control of military by the state president, national people's congress, and state council; a series of established laws and procedures governing the use of force and mobilization of the military; strong legislative oversight of the armed forces; complete budgetary control over the military by the legislature and no extra-budgetary revenue; and no political content in professional military education. judged on these criteria, it is clear that the pla and china are a long way from becoming a national army, yet there are discussions and tendencies in this direction taking place in china and the pla today. to understand how the pla and the ccp got to this stage, it is appropriate to understand some historical context, before considering the implications of recent changes that have occurred in civil-military relations. historical and comparative considerations any consideration of civil-military relations in china as it enters the twenty-first century must proceed from clear cognizance of the past. over the last century, individual military actors and the military as an institution have played key and active roles in the chinese regime and nation. this has taken a variety of forms over time, but the military has 15 civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? never been fully isolated from the political arena. both military and party elites have viewed military involvement in politics, domestic security, society and even commerce as legitimate. while the political involvement of the chinese military is distinct from the western tradition of military corporatism and separation from the political arena (based on the ottoman, european and american experiences5 ), it is hardly unique among developing or socialist countries. many post-colonial and developing nations have experienced sustained military rule and praetorian intervention,6 while most former communist party-states were based on the 'interlocking directorate' of party and military elites and the penetration of the military and security services by party control mechanisms.7 more recently, scholarly attention has been paid to the military's withdrawal from politics and subordination to civilian control in the process of the transition to democracy across the developing and industrializing world.8 an interesting literature has also begun to address civil-military relations in the chinese context of a democratizing taiwan.9 scholars specializing in post-1949 chinese military politics would do well to tap into all of these studies, as the pla shares many commonalities with these other cases. as professionalism and corporate identity rise in the pla, and greater efforts are made to subject the military to state control, comparing other national experiences will be increasingly pertinent to understanding the future evolution of the pla.10 understanding the interrelationship among party, state and army in the prc today must also recognize several long-standing and unique features of civil-military relations in china historically. throughout the past century, from the late imperial to the post-deng era, the chinese military has played an active role in the political and economic life of the nation (even if soldiers, along with merchants, were at the bottom of the confucian social order). key late-qing reformers, such as li hongzhang, were military men who believed that the path to 'wealth and power' (fu-qiang, the cardinal tenet of all subsequent chinese elites) lay in mastering military technologies and building a strong self-defence capability in order to rebuff foreign encroachment and regain china's unity and lost greatness. li's policy of 'building shipyards and arsenals' and dispatching students to europe and america to study in defence colleges and scientific institutes bespoke this bias. to be sure, heated debate existed among qing elites over the wisdom of this policy – some argued that it was a distorted path to development which disproportionately emphasized military modernization over the need for copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200216 david shambaugh a more comprehensive technological base; others opposed the inherent 'westernization' and cultural contamination implicit in the strategy; while still others believed that the 'sources of wealth and power' were less technological and more civic, political and intellectual in nature. these debates have resonated over the past century, and echoes of them are still present today. after the republican revolution of 1911, military elites remained prominent in the new government (not the least of which was general yuan shikai, who became the first president of the republic) and an emphasis on building a modern military remained a high priority. with yuan's death in 1916, the ensuing constitutional crisis and failure of the new regime to consolidate national power, china slipped into a prolonged period of territorial division, national fratricide and rule by an ever-shifting variety of military warlords. this bloodthirsty period was halted only when force was met with force during generalissimo chiang kai-shek's 1928 northern expedition, which united the country under the civil-military rule of the nationalist party and army (kuomintang and kuominjun). the new kmt elite during the 'nanjing decade' (192737) contained a large proportion of military officers, secret police and intelligence operatives – many trained under chiang at the whampoa military academy and in military and paramilitary institutions in germany and the soviet union. this regime would only become more militarized following the outbreak of the sino-japanese war in 1937.11 meanwhile, in the communist-controlled base areas of china's interior, a similar militarily dominant political regime was also taking shape. the red army was born not only of necessity, out of the need literally to fight for survival against japanese and kmt forces, but also as a result of the strong soviet and german influences on the politicization of the military and militarization of the party. throughout the revolutionary period an essential symbiosis existed between party and army in pursuit of state power.12 the chinese communists' ultimate victory in 1949 was at least as much a military as political one – as the red army fought the japanese invaders and defeated kuomintang forces on the battlefield, pacified the countryside, and occupied the cities.13 so closely intertwined were the institutions of party and army historically, that one must recognize the unique and often dominant roles that the military has played, as a normative and institutional actor, in the life of the nation. as chairman mao astutely observed, 'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun!' yet, as early as 1929, mao also warned that, 'our principle is that the party commands the gun, and the gun 17 civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? must never be allowed to command the party.'14 mao's edict actually obscured the organic party-army symbiosis – a condition that obtained until the 1980s when deng xiaoping and yang shangkun began to implement reforms that had the net effect of incrementally increasing the corporate autonomy and separate identity of the armed forces vis-à-vis the ccp. as a result of this symbiosis, the military came to the party's aid in suppressing civil unrest at several key junctures after 1949 (not the least of which during the cultural revolution). the ccp may have been born in the shanghai underground and jiangxi soviet, but it had militarist parentage and was reared on the battlefield. its formative years were spent at war, and it matured in a society with a strong militaristic tradition. it was precisely because of this symbiotic relationship that the military never balked when instructed to maintain social order, suppress 'counter-revolutionaries,' arrest the gang of four, or perform other internal security duties. in other words, involvement by the army in 'political' affairs and domestic security was considered normal and legitimate, rather than a matter of intervention. this perspective also goes a long way towards explaining the pla's role in the 1989 suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators and other citizens of beijing, although the questioning by some senior military elites of this action and insubordination in the ranks at the time suggests the previous predominant identity of symbiosis had begun to give way to one of greater 'autonomy' of the armed forces vis-à-vis the communist party. following the tiananmen crackdown there was a renewed attempt by the party (and its constituent organs inside the pla) substantially to increase control over, and ensure the loyalty of, the military. but this only lasted a year or two, and subsequently disparate signs of increased pla 'autonomy' became apparent. as is discussed below, one dimension of this increased autonomy has been the tentative moves to increase state (i.e. government and legislative) control over the military, as distinct from party control. on the one hand, this does not mean that the longstanding party-army symbiosis is inert; nor, on the other hand, does it mean that a new era of a 'national army' (guomin jundui) or 'state army' (guojia jundui) has dawned. but recent changes do indicate that the interrelationship of party, army and state are in flux, and that the demands of 'professionalism' are redefining civil-military relations in china in directions more familiar in other modernizing nations. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200218 david shambaugh the impact of the past on the present this background has profound implications for understanding chinese communist civil-military relations after the ccp came to power and in the present period. scholars in pla studies have devoted substantial analysis, and have had a lively discourse, on this issue in recent years. unfortunately, this discussion has taken place almost entirely among pla specialists, and has been largely sidelined to the periphery in the field of chinese political studies. in this discourse ellis joffe has noted three schools of thought and lines of argument that have emerged over time: symbiosis, party control and professionalism.15 too often analysts have juxtaposed these approaches whereas, as joffe astutely notes, they should be viewed as complementary. these are not mutually exclusive categories of analysis. professionalism has been an ongoing process since the 1950s and marshall peng dehuai's tenure as minister of defence. even under marshall lin biao in the 1960s, and contrary to conventional wisdom, the military continued to professionalize and modernize in several dimensions. if there has been a tension, it has been between party control and limited military autonomy. while the norm of a symbiotic partyarmy relationship has been sustained over time, in different periods over the last 50 years (notably 1959-62, 1971-82 and 1989-92) the ccp has taken extra efforts to exert control over the armed forces, while at other junctures the military has sought to increase its corporate autonomy from the ccp. on several occasions the military sought to exert its role in the high-level party affairs (notably 1967, 1976, 1989 and to a certain extent in 1996), but it can be plausibly argued that this had more do with certain elites 'pulling' the military into politics during periods of social unrest and party weakness.16 in other periods (1954-59, 197475, 1982-89) the armed forces have sought to increase their autonomy from the party, but this must be carefully distinguished as limited autonomy, as at no time has the pla ever sought fully to separate itself from the ccp (or vice versa). the military has simply sought greater autonomy over affairs it considers to be fully in its corporate domain – training, doctrine, force structure, personnel appointments, military education and protection of national security. meanwhile, professional tendencies have been more or less persistent over time, although with a particular emphasis in the late-1950s, mid-1980s and late-1990s. the pla has been, in joffe's apt phrase, a 'party-army with professional characteristics'.17 thus, the army's relationship with the party-state has evolved and fluctuated over time. harry harding has astutely noted that this fluctuation correlated 19 civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? as a function of the strength or weakness of the party-state.18 that is, during periods when the party-state was strong and the society stable, the military tended to act as a corporate bureaucratic lobby. when the party-state was weakened, the military tended to act either as a political arbiter between competing factions, support one faction against another, or intervene more broadly to stabilize society. joffe's characterization remains partially apt today, although since the mid-1990s we may have witnessed increasing military autonomy from the party in general, as well as nascent signs of increased state (i.e. government) control of the armed forces.19 this would suggest a slight variation on his typology: a more linear evolution from symbiosis to control to limited autonomy. this is discussed at greater length above and below, but suffice is to note here that increased state control need not imply, ipso facto, the zero-sum displacement of the party's relationship with the army. from one perspective, the relationship of the military to the state and party can be seen as complementary. that is, the state may be increasing its mechanisms of control and lines of authority over the armed forces, while the party withdraws to a more 'elevated' position. this has certainly been the case during the last decade in terms of the party-state relationship with respect to economic management, whereby the ccp sets forth the broader policy direction (fangzhen) while the state formulates more concretely the policy line (luxian) and implements specific policies (zhengce). the issue here is really one of relative autonomy and jurisdictional distinctions between institutional hierarchies and within functional policy spheres (which some political scientists refer to as the 'zoning of authority'). as the party has increasingly 'withdrawn' from its former totalistic and monopolistic influence over society and economy, greater 'space' and relative autonomy have been created for institutional and civic actors in china. while the tight symbiosis of party and army was forged early on, it is necessarily one of the last bonds to be broken in the reform process. the changing rules of civil-military relations since the 1990s the 'rules of the game' in civil-military relations in china have changed as a result of several developments: • the institutional narrowing of the arenas of interaction (to the cmc); • the more limited range of issues on which pla leaders have a legitimate right to voice opinions, and their increasing reluctance to do so; copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200220 david shambaugh • increased professionalism in the senior officer corps and a concomitant decline in the promotion rates of officers with backgrounds as political commissars; • a pla desire to concentrate solely on issues of 'army building' and a generally non-interventionist approach to non-military issues; • the creation of the pap and concomitant disengagement of the pla from internal security functions; • an implicit bargain struck between jiang zemin and the pla high command that as long as he supports pla budgets and professional goals, they will defer to his leadership status. the 'rules of the game' have also been changed fundamentally as, for the first time, there now exist rules that define the military's functions and roles. these have been codified in several laws, documents and regulations in recent years. their promulgation has been instrumental in advancing the twin goals of regularization (zhengguihua) and professionalization (zhiyehua) of the armed forces. the npc has passed 12 laws and regulations, including: the national defence law, military service law, military facilities protection law, civil air defence law, reserve officers law, hong kong special administrative region garrison law, military service regulations, and military officers ranks and regulations.20 the state council and cmc have jointly adopted 40-odd administrative laws and regulations, and the cmc has implemented 70-odd on its own, while individual pla departments, service arms and military regions have formulated more than one thousand military rules and regulations.21 taken together, the roles and functions of the pla are now specified as never before. the national defence law (ndl) has significant implications for civilmilitary relations. adopted as law by the fifth session of the 8th national people's congress in march 1997 and authorized by presidential decree no. 84, the national defence law is important for a number of reasons.22 the law went through five years of drafting and revision prior to its promulgation. this drafting process took place entirely within military legal circles, as co-ordinated by the military legal office of the cmc.23 the ndl provides an overall framework for 'administering the army according to law' (yifa zhijun). the ndl elaborates in some detail various aspects of the armed forces organization, duties, 'construction' and legal responsibilities. it contains specific information about mobilization for war, maintenance of the armed forces during peacetime, leadership over the armed forces, the defence industrial and scientific establishment, military education and training, and many other aspects. 21 civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? these details are set forth in a lengthy document of 12 chapters and 70 articles. associated publications interpret and spell out in further detail the content and meaning of the provisions of the ndl.24 among these areas of importance, the ndl is particularly striking for one notable fact: the subordination of the military to the state. in chinese the clear connotation of the term for state (guojia) is government, as distinct from the party. in china, this is operationalized to mean the state council and its constituent ministries and commissions, the prc president, as well as the national people's congress (npc). beginning in the 1980s there was a conscious and deliberate attempt more clearly to demarcate the jurisdictional responsibilities of the ccp, state council and npc – particularly the policy of 'separating party from government' (dang-zheng fenkai) in economic policy-making and commercial management. of course, this general process required the promulgation of numerous laws and regulations which had the cumulative effect of strengthening the npc as a fourth institutional pillar of the prc, along with the party, army and government. in the process, the npc itself gained increased oversight functions vis-à-vis the government. state council policies, budgets and appointments became at least nominally subject to legislative review by the npc. however, the communist party as an institution has always insisted that it should police itself and its own membership, and this remains unchanged. this has included party members in the armed forces, who are subject to the ccp's discipline inspection commission system. the ccp accordingly has its own constitution and its own 'election' procedures for its leadership. the party is clearly separated from the state. its relationship to the armed forces has always been one of symbiosis and/or control. certainly, the party has institutionally penetrated the military to ensure this relationship. however, the 1997 national defence law suggests some fundamental departures in the relationship of the military to the party and state. in a number of its articles, and in several significant respects, the ndl clearly subordinates the 'armed forces' (which is defined as including the people's armed police, militia, and reserves) to the state. the term 'state' (guojia) is mentioned no fewer than 39 times in the law. lest there be any ambiguity about the implications of this term, and the institutional subordination of the armed forces to state control, it is specified in some detail. only in a single clause is the relationship of the army to the party mentioned (article 19): 'the armed forces of the people's republic of china are subject to leadership by the communist party, and ccp organizations in the armed forces shall conduct activities in accordcopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200222 david shambaugh ance with the ccp constitution' (i.e. presumably with regard to party committees and discipline inspection work). everywhere else in the ndl the military's subordination to the state is made abundantly clear, e.g.: • (article 5): 'the state shall exercise unified leadership over national defence activities.' • (article 7): 'the chinese people's liberation army and the chinese people's armed police shall carry out activities to support the government... .' • (article 10): 'the standing committee of the national people's congress shall decide on the proclamation of a state of war and on general mobilization or partial mobilization in accordance with provisions of the constitution, and shall exercise other functions and powers in national defence as prescribed by the constitution.' • (article 11): 'the president of the people's republic of china shall proclaim a state of war and issue mobilization orders in pursuance with the decisions of the national people's congress and its standing committee... .' • (article 12): 'the state council shall direct and administer the building of national defence and exercise the following functions and powers' (nine categories of responsibilities, including fiscal appropriation). • (article 13): 'the central military commission shall direct the armed forces of the country and exercise the following functions and powers' (ten categories). • (article 14): 'the state council and central military commission may call co-ordination meetings according to circumstances to solve problems concerning national defence.' in numerous other articles, the ndl stipulates responsibilities of the state for national defence matters. the absence of mention of the ccp is striking in this important law, which signals an important shift in civilmilitary relations. the shift signalled in the ndl was explicated further in the 1998 national defence white paper. while the white paper includes the single clause that 'given the new historical conditions, the chinese army upholds the absolute leadership of the ccp...,' greater emphasis is placed on the npc, state council and cmc as the institutions controlling the pla, e.g.: in accordance with the constitution, the national defence law and other relevant laws, china has established and improved its national defence system. the state exercises unified leadership over defence-related activities. the npc of the 23 civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? prc is the highest organ of state power. it decides on questions of war and peace, and exercises other defence-related functions and powers provided for in the constitution ... the state council directs and administrates national defence work, and the cmc directs and assumes unified command of the nation's armed forces ... the active components of the pla comprise the state's standing army ... the state exercises unified leadership and planned control over defence research and production. the state council leads and administrates defence research and production, as well as defence expenditure and assets. the cmc approves the military equipment system of the armed forces and military equipment development plans and programs ... in co-ordination with the state council, and manages defence outlays and assets jointly with the state council. the state practises a state military supplies order system to guarantee the acquisition of weapons and other war materials. the state practises a financial allocations system for defence spending. it decides the size, structure and location of defence assets and the adjustment and disposal of these assets in accordance with the needs of national defence and economic construction. the state council and cmc jointly lead mobilization preparation and implementation work.25 [emphasis added by author] the adoption of the ndl provides evidence that the pla is being placed increasingly under state control with the concomitant removal of party controls. to be sure, ambiguities remain. for example, it is unclear if references to the central military commission mean the state or party cmc. this may be a moot point given that the membership composition of these two bodies is currently identical, although the language describing the cmc strongly suggests that its relationship to the armed forces is either one of joint administration with the state council or merely 'line authority' to implement decisions, whereas broad decision-making authority seems to rest ultimately with the state council, npc standing committee and president of the republic. but, here, ambiguity exists insofar as jiang zemin concurrently holds the offices of president, ccp general secretary, and cmc chairman. only when the president no longer heads the party but directs the cmc (as may occur in 2002 at the 16th party congress) will we know for sure that the partyarmy link has been fully severed. another sign would be if the cmc were to become a body solely composed of military officers (similar to the joint chiefs of staff) and the minister of defence were a civilian. while one should have little doubt that the chinese communist party and its leadership remain the ultimate source of political power and authority in china, it does seem clear that these steps taken in 1997-98 and subsequently are efforts to disentangle the military from party control. while the 1975 and 1978 national constitutions both explicitly subordinated the armed forces to the command of the ccp and its chairman, that is no longer the case. even much of the ambiguity of the early copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200224 david shambaugh 1990s is being clarified.26 of course, it is difficult to determine the extent to which these reforms are taking root normatively and psychologically in the army, state and society. interviews with pla officers in the late-1990s still suggest substantial ambiguity over the issue of state versus party control. in fact, to many it remains a non-issue. when asked whether the armed forces are subordinate to the state or party, some officers have a puzzled look and respond, 'what do you mean? of course, the pla is loyal to the party! the party rules the country and the pla defends it!'27 for many in the pla, as this officer's response illustrates, the issue is precisely one of loyalty rather than constitutional control, and many still see the ccp as synonymous with the state and country! if orders came to defend the nation against an external opponent or enforce internal security, few officers or soldiers would question whether the order ultimately came from the cmc, state council, npc standing committee, prc president or ccp general secretary. while there have clearly been attempts to demarcate the parameters of authority between party, army and state by law, there still exists an essential fusion of the three – with ultimate party control – in the minds of most chinese citizens. after 70 years of party control and symbiotic fusion between the three, it is not easy to redefine these interrelationships. the continued ambiguity is also reflected in pla publications and materials used by the general political department(gpd). authoritative materials published to explain the new national defence law tend to emphasize the state's control over the armed forces, while gpd materials tend to take the opposite tack and emphasize party leadership. the standard textbook used for 'political work' in the armed forces, published after the promulgation of the national defence law, is quite explicit about the ccp's relationship to the pla.28 it states unambiguously: the party's absolute leadership over the army is a fundamental feature of army building ... the ccp should be our army's only and independent leader and commander ... at no time can the ccp share authority over the military with other parties or organizations ... if the communist party loses its military authority, it will have no status ... our army is an armed group to carry out the party's political tasks.29 the gpd volume is also explicit that the pla is organizationally subordinate to the ccp central committee and party's cmc.30 this runs in direct contradiction to the ndl and line of authority discussed above. nowhere does the volume mention the role of state president, npc, state council, or state more generally. perhaps most interesting is the extent to which the 'bourgeois' notion of state control of the armed forces is sharply criticized: 25 civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? bourgeois liberal elements' advocacy of the military's “non-party-fication” (jundui feidanghua) is nonsense. in modern society there is no army that is not involved in politics and, essentially, there is no army not controlled by a ruling party. in western capitalist countries, which practise the multi-party system, armies superficially do not belong to the party but to the state. but, in essence, it is a military that is led by the capitalist class and its ruling agents, the party ... therefore, behind the state there are always capitalist parties that lead and command armies, and carry out capitalist dictatorship. capitalist parties are never neutral in politics ... the basic content of this involvement is to oppress the proletariat and people's revolutions internally, and carry out invasion and expansion externally ... we must never allow ourselves to copy the western capitalist countries' model, and never allow the excuse of the state's leadership over the army to deny the party's leadership over the army. political work in our armed forces should criticize the absurd theory of a “non-party-fied army”, and should emphasize and consistently insist on the absolute leadership over the army and ensure that our army is under the party's absolute leadership forever.31 in contrast, pla materials used to explain the national defence law to troops take a very different approach by emphasizing state control.32 unlike the gpd source above, this volume states unambiguously, 'national defence is one of the state's functions, and therefore the leadership and management of national defence is an important expression for state organs to realize their state functions.'33 this volume explicates in 550 pages the various ways and justifications for state control over the military in china. it states that the head of state exercises 'commanding power over the armed forces,' but subsequently states that this 'commanding power' is 'exercised by the cmc chairman'.34 this is not a problem at present as jiang zemin occupies both positions, but this has not historically always been the case (perhaps it is to indicate that the cmc chairman and state president will henceforth be one and the same individual). it states clearly that the npc standing committee is the 'highest organ of state power' and that the 'cmc is subordinate to the highest organ of state power,' but then confuses matters by stating that 'it is also subordinate to the ccp central committee.'35 in a telling paragraph (that should not be surprising but makes mockery of efforts to separate and strengthen state power), the volume explains: 'insisting on the party's leadership over the army is important in realizing the party's leadership over the state ... due to historical reasons, the army is actually led by the party's cmc.'36 the volume then goes on to define and justify various mechanisms that have been put into place to increase state supervision over various aspects of the military matters. discussions in the chinese military media, such as the army newspaper liberation army daily, also continue to indicate that the debate over party vs. state control of the armed forces remains alive. a sharp copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200226 david shambaugh unsigned article in april 2001 attacked 'western hostile forces that vigorously advocate the armed forces should be “separated from the party” (fei dang hua), “depoliticized” (fei zhengzhi hua) and “placed under the state” (guojia hua).' the article went on to add that, 'this is a corrosive agent that vainly attempts to weaken and do away with the ccp leadership and tries to disintegrate the soul of our armed forces, and is the great enemy of our party, state, and armed forces.'37 prospects for the future despite efforts to legislate and codify increased state/government authority over the pla, the essential control by the ccp remains apparent (even if the symbiosis has become attenuated). if anything, there appears to be an ongoing struggle between the party and the state, but the winner is likely to be the military as it exerts increased autonomy from both. changes in the interrelationship of party, army and state in contemporary china must also be viewed in the context of emerging patterns of civil-military relations across asia. with few exceptions (north korea, vietnam), civil-military relations in east, southeast and south asia have been fundamentally redefined in recent years in the process of democratization. in a number of countries that have known harsh authoritarian and military rule (south korea, taiwan, the philippines, indonesia, thailand, bangladesh and pakistan), the armed forces have been removed from political power and influence, made accountable to sovereign legislatures, and returned to the barracks. militaries in mufti have been replaced by democratically elected civilians. in all of these countries, the emasculation of political power and praetorian tendencies of the militaries has been a crucial element in establishing democratic institutions and rule. the trend in asia follows that of latin america and africa. the experiences of these countries, but particularly taiwan, are suggestive for future civil-military relations in china. thus far, the emerging literature on the process of democratic transition in asia has paid relatively little attention to the civil-military dimension,38 although it is viewed as an important variable in the comparative literature.39 more comparative research needs to be done on asian militaries and civilmilitary relations.40 scholars of the pla and chinese politics need to place the recent changes in civil-military relations in the prc outlined above in this broader regional context, while comparativists need to look more closely at the chinese case. the current state of politics in the prc certainly does not suggest that a creeping transition to democracy is silently taking place,41 as the ccp retains its grip on power. but, at 27 civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? the same time, we must not mistake the potential significance of the legislative efforts to subordinate the pla to state control. the chinese case must also be placed in the comparative context of former socialist states led by communist parties.42 broadly speaking, the experiences of the former soviet and east european militaries suggest that professionalization and party control are by no means mutually exclusive, but in not a single case were these militaries consciously placed under state control via legislative means. indeed in many cases, they fought (unsuccessfully) to save their ruling communist parties.43 the problem for the chinese military has never been to subordinate itself to civilian authority, but rather to state control. also, unlike the soviet and east european experiences, the pla has exhibited a long-standing tension between professionalization and attempts of politicization by the ccp.44 in these respects, the chinese military is moving – or rather is being moved – into an entirely new era of civil-military relations and corporate professionalism. as such, one would surmise that the pla will not shirk from the task of defending national security against external enemies – but will it do so again against internal enemies that may threaten the rule of the communist party? this will be the ultimate test of the redefined relationship of the army to the party and state in china. david shambaugh is professor of political science and international affairs, and director of the china policy program, at the george washington university. notes * this paper draws and expands upon a chapter in my forthcoming book modernizing china's military: progress, problems & prospects (berkeley and london: university of california press, forthcoming 2002) 1 for further explorations on this topic see my 'remaining relevant: the challenges for the party in late-leninist china,' in david finkelstein (ed.), china's new leadership (armonk, ny: m. e. sharpe, forthcoming 2002). 2 this will be the subject of my forthcoming book hanging on: the chinese communist party since the collapse of global communism. 3 for further elaboration of this concept see my 'building the party-state in china, 1949-1965: bringing the soldier back in,' in timothy cheek and tony saich (eds.), new perspectives on state socialism in china, 1949-65 (armonk, ny: m. e. sharpe, 1997). 4 this is also recognized by you ji in his 'china: from revolutionary tool to professional military,' in muthiah alagappa (ed.), military professionalism in asia: conceptual and empirical perspectives (honolulu: east-west center, 2001), pp. 111-36. 5 the classic typology is, of course, samuel p. huntington, the soldier and the state: the theory and politics of civil-military relations (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1957). also see morris janowitz, the professional soldier (new york: the free press, 1960). 6 the pertinent literature here is extensive. see, for example, timothy colton and thane gustafson (eds.), soldiers and the state (princeton: princeton university press, 1990); abraham f. lowenthal and samuel j. fitch (eds.), armies and politics in latin america (new york: copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 200228 david shambaugh holmes & meier, 1986); alfred stepan, rethinking military politics (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1988); viberto selochan, the military, the state, and development in asia and the pacific (boulder, co: westview press, 1991); amos perlmutter, the military and politics in modern times (new haven, ct: yale university press, 1977); eric a. nordlinger, soldiers in politics (englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall, 1977); catherine m. kelleher (ed.), politicalmilitary systems (beverly hills, ca: sage publications, 1974). 7 this sub-field has also generated a substantial, if somewhat dated, literature. see, for example, dale herspring and ivan volges (eds.), civil-military relations in communist systems (boulder, co: westview press, 1978); jonathan adelman (ed.), communist armies in politics (boulder, co: westview press, 1982); dale r. herspring, russian civil-military relations (bloomington: indiana university press, 1996); kenneth m. currie, soviet military politics (new york: paragon press, 1991). 8 see larry diamond and marc f. plattner (eds.), civil-military relations and democracy (baltimore: the johns hopkins university press, 1996). 9 monte bullard, the soldier and the citizen: the role of the military in taiwan's development (armonk, ny: m. e. sharpe, 1997); cheng hsiao-shih, party-military relations in the prc and taiwan (boulder, co: westview press, 1990); bruce j. dickson, democratization in china and taiwan: the adaptability of leninist parties (oxford: clarendon press, 1998); david shambaugh, 'taiwan's security: maintaining deterrence amidst political accountability,' in david shambaugh (ed.), contemporary taiwan (oxford: clarendon press, 1998); lu-hsun hung, 'observations on civilian control of the roc armed forces following the passage of two laws concerning national defense,' taiwan defense affairs, vol. 1, no. 2 (winter 2000/01), pp. 7-38; and chin-chiang su and ming-shih shen, 'taiwan's political warfare system and civil-military relations,' taiwan defense affairs, vol. 1, no. 2 (winter 2000/01), pp. 39-64. 10 recent efforts to do this are thomas bickford, 'a retrospective on the study of chinese civil-military relations since 1979: what have we learned, where do we go?;' and david shambaugh, 'commentary on civil-military relations in china: the search for new paradigms,' in james c. mulvenon and andrew n. d. yang (eds.), seeking truth from facts: a retrospective on chinese military studies in the post-mao era (santa monica, ca: the rand corporation, 2001). 11 hans van de ven, 'the military in the republic,' the china quarterly, no. 150 (june 1997). 12 david shambaugh, 'the soldier and the state in china: the political work system in the people's liberation army,' in brian hook (ed.), the individual and the state in china (oxford: clarendon press, 1997); harlan jencks, from muskets to missiles: politics and professionalism in the chinese army, 1945-1981 (boulder, co: westview press, 1982), chapters 1-3. 13 this assertion does not obviate the important roles played by land reform and nationalism. 14 mao zedong, 'problems of war and strategy,' selected works of mao zedong, vol. ii (beijing: foreign languages press, 1975), p. 224. 15 ellis joffe, 'party-army relations in china: retrospect and prospect,' in david shambaugh (ed.), china's military in transition (oxford: clarendon press, 1997). interestingly, this typology mirrors the debates among scholars of civil-military relations in the former soviet union. albeit in a different context, timothy colton articulated the symbiosis thesis, roman kolkowitz the control thesis, and william odom the autonomy thesis. 16 s ee ellis joffe, the military and china's new politics: trends and counter-trends (taipei: chinese council on advanced policy studies, caps papers, no. 19, 1997). 17 ibid. in his landmark study, harlan jencks tends to juxtapose the two as he argues that, 'chinese officers, especially those below corps level, are strongly disinclined toward political involvement.' see jencks, from muskets to missiles, p. 255. 18 see harry harding, 'the role of the military in chinese politics,' in victor falkenheim (ed.), citizens and groups in contemporary china (ann arbor: university of michigan center for chinese studies, 1987), pp. 213-56. 29 civil-military relations in china: party-army or national military? 19 many analysts are dubious that this process is underway, and some – such as jeremy paltiel – believe it to be a false dichotomy. paltiel asserts that 'the chinese armed forces have never faced a choice between loyalty to the state and obedience to the party.' see jeremy paltiel, 'pla allegiance on parade: civil-military relations in transition,' the china quarterly, no. 143, september 1995. paltiel is correct in this observation, but i would argue that increasing state authority and control over the armed forces does not ipso facto imply a zero-sum displacement of the party's relationship with the army. they may be seen as complementary. 20 see thomas a. bickford, 'regularization and the chinese people's liberation army: an assessment of change,' asian survey (may/june 2000), pp. 456-74. 21 china's national defence (defence white paper), issued by the information office of the state council, (july 1998). 22 for an excellent evaluation of the national defence law, see samantha blum, 'the national defence law of china – the dragon's head of military law,' unpublished paper (may 2001). 23 interview with sr. col. zhu jianye and sr. col. shen qiuchao of this office (april 1999). 24 the most important of these is xu jiangrui and fang ning, guofangfa gailun [survey of the national defense law] (beijing: junshi kexue chubanshe, 1998). 25 ibid, pp. 15-17 (english edition). 26 for excellent and learned discussions of the legalities during this period see jeremy paltiel, 'pla allegiance on parade' and 'civil-military relations in china: an obstacle to constitutionalism?,' the journal of chinese law, (september 1995), pp. 35-65. 27 interview with academy of military sciences officer, (september 1998). 28 national defence university party history and party building research office (ed.), zhongguo renmin jiefangjun zhengzhi gongzuoxue [a study of political work in the chinese people's liberation army] (beijing: national defence university press, 1998). 29 ibid, pp. 197-98. 30 ibid, pp. 198-200. 31 ibid, pp. 203-04. 32 xu jiangrui and fang ning, guofangfa gailan. 33 ibid, p. 114. 34 ibid, pp. 122-23. 35 ibid, p. 118. 36 ibid. 37 no author, 'clearly understanding the essence of “separating the armed forces from the party, “depoliticizing them“, and “placing them under the state“,' jiefangjun bao, 18 april 2001, in fbis-chi, 18 april 2001. 38 see larry diamond and marc f. plattner (eds.), democracy in east asia (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, 1998); and diamond, plattner, yun-han chu and hung-mao tien (eds.), consolidating the third wave democracies (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, 1997). 39 see diamond and plattner , civil-military relations and democracy. 40 for a significant effort in this direction see muthiah alagappa (ed.), coercion and governance: the declining role of the military in asia (stanford, ca: stanford university press, 2001). 41 for one view to the contrary see minxin pei, '“creeping democratization” in china,' in diamond, plattner, chu and tien (eds.), consolidating the third wave democracies, pp. 21327. 42 to be sure, there is no small literature in this field. see the sources noted in footnote 13. 43 see gerald segal and john phipps, 'why communist armies defend their parties,' in richard h. yang (ed.), china's military: the pla in 1990/91 (kaohsiung: national sun yatsen university, 1991), pp. 133-44. 44 in the large literature on this subject, see in particular harlan jencks, from muskets to missiles. pasts of the present: iconicity and authentication at two reconstructed heritage sites in japan jens sejrup abstract in light of today’s global boom in landmark architecture, urban megaprojects and reconstructions of cultural heritage buildings, this paper analyses two large-scale reconstruction projects at iconic historical locations in japan: the heijō palace in nara and dejima in nagasaki. since the 1990s, the two projects have recreated long-lost built environments, gradually transforming the sites, turning them into museums and exhibition spaces and giving rise to thorough reform of the surrounding urban fabric. in this paper i trace the involved agents’ motivations to engage in historical reconstruction from early-phase experimental efforts to legitimise the sites’ protected status to present-day politico-economic mobilisations of important historical locations to boost city attraction values. in this way, i link these two unfolding projects in nara and nagasaki to issues of urban boosterism, heritage production and the facilitation and commodification of tourist experiences of past realities. approaching the reconstructions as contemporary heritage in traditional guise, the paper argues that both sites revolve materially, spatially and thematically around the master-metaphors of flow, growth and intercultural connectivity that characterise the present age. elucidating processes of authentication and intersections of ideological and economic interests in and around the two sites, the paper asks in what ways japanese cities exploit lost iconic localities and reconstructed heritage under post-industrial conditions marked by globalisation and intense cultural-economic competition. keywords: cultural heritage; historical reconstruction; nagasaki; nara; place branding; urban development introduction a monumental hall, white and dark vermilion, towers majestically over a grassy field at the western end of the japanese historic city of nara. 36 this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v41i1.6885. © jens sejrup published under the creative commons license (cc by). 37 pasts of the present the imposing edifice known as the great audience hall (daigokuden) appears to have survived intact the thirteen centuries since nara, then known as heijōkyō, was the capital city in the early centralised japanese state. the two-storied tang-style wooden hall rises gracefully from its stone foundation, reaching over 20 metres in height before ending in a massive terracotta-tiled roof crowned with gilded ornaments. the daigokuden, however, is not an eighth-century structure; it is a full-scale reconstruction which was finished as recently as 2010. meanwhile in nagasaki, japan’s westernmost main city, the small downtown site that once held a dutch trading station on the artificial island of dejima now hosts a rebuilt incarnation of its own historical self. although the dutch abandoned dejima a century and a half ago, an atmospheric collection of wooden townhouses and storage facilities occupies the site today, part of an ongoing, meticulous reconstruction of historic dejima. as these two examples illustrate, japan has been at the forefront of a cultural heritage boom unfolding internationally since the late 1980s, leading, among other things, to expensive large-scale reconstruction projects of lost historical landmarks. affecting not only parts of europe, where the fall of the berlin wall and the break-up of the soviet union led to numerous monumental reconstructions in germany, russia and other parts of central and eastern europe, the recent surge in recreations of lost architecture has made itself felt across the world, including the yongdingmen gate in beijing (2005), the hurva synagogue in jerusalem (2010) and shakespeare’s globe in london (1997). this global development attests to ‘the enormous popular appeal of reconstructed buildings’ (stanley-price 2009: 43), but, as mager (2015: 1) notes, despite ‘the phenomenon of reconstruction being poorly investigated, no other recent architectural trend can claim comparable persistence along with global validity’. in this paper, i analyse the gradual reappearance and expansion of dejima and the heijō palace site (heijōkyūseki) as representatives of japanese contributions to this global phenomenon and seek to analytically connect the redevelopment efforts at the two sites to larger place-making and rebranding strategies in contemporary globalising cities. i aim in this analysis to connect the two projects to architectural iconicity, a well-known component in urban boosterism (sklair 2010, 2012) and entrepreneurial strategies to reinvigorate post-industrial cities (jones 2009). sklair (2012: 349) attributed the recent international surge in iconic architecture and urban megaprojects to cities’ 38 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup aspirations for global status and recognition, noting that the process is primarily driven by the urban affiliates of ‘the transnational capitalist class’ and the commercialisation and profit-maximising interests it represents. sklair (2010: 147) takes special note of landmark projects meant to boost civic pride and strategically ‘turn cities that were once centres of productive labour into sites devoted to the culture-ideology of consumerism’. as jones (2009: 2526) notes, cities around the world compete for inbound investment and increased attraction value in a ‘highly contested symbolic economy of cities’, in which iconic architecture plays a central strategic role. this phenomenon has been especially pronounced in museums and cultural institutions, where investments in ‘starchitectural’ exhibition buildings have led to increased visitor numbers and city attraction values, a development often referred to as the ‘bilbao effect’ (macleod 2013; skot-hansen 2019). while most of this literature is concerned with new modern-looking landmarks, i argue that, similarly, these historical reconstructions are products of local and national ambitions to boost their cities and communities, enhance their cultural and historical brand values and increase their potential for inward investment, tourism and big events under conditions of regional and international competition. i have argued elsewhere (sejrup 2019) that unrealised ‘starchitectural’ projects present a lacuna in theorisations of the architectural dimension of capitalist globalisation. in this paper, i approach recreations of lost icons as efforts to exploit the resource that historic environments represent in japanese post-industrial development and adaptation to experience-economy conditions. here, i use the term ‘iconic’ in accordance with sklair’s (2012: 349) overall definition as ‘buildings and spaces that are famous for professional architects and/or the public at large and have special symbolic/aesthetic significance attached to them’. my argument is that these reconstructions can be approached as contemporary heritage in traditional guise. i draw inspiration also from macdonald’s (2013) idea of ‘past presencing’ and her discussion of anthropological viewpoints on the societal meaning of memorialising and re-establishing past structures. in her words, ‘past presencing is the empirical phenomenon of how people variously experience, understand and produce the past in the present’ (2013: 52). the main agents organising, funding and promoting these two japanese sites are national and local agencies, authorities and elected officials. corporate and commercial agents have contributed in various ways over the years as well, much as they have in developments of 39 pasts of the present foreign-country theme parks (gaikokumura) (hendry 2000), in addition to castles (benesch and zwigenberg 2019), rural architecture museums (ehrentraut 1995), idyllic hot-spring resorts (mcmorran 2008) or other heritage-related (re)construction projects in japan. much of the reconstruction work is performed by agents in the private sector, construction companies and entrepreneurs, often with specialised knowledge of traditional building techniques and preservation. in nara, shifting governors have consistently supported and championed the palace reconstruction project. however, the central government is the main funder, channelling resources through either the ministry of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism or the agency for cultural affairs (bunkachō) and its sub-departments for cultural heritage maintenance and on-site research. in 2008, the heijō palace site was upgraded to national park status, and the national government took over the financial responsibility for maintaining and continuing the reconstructions there, largely based on expert reports and research conducted by the nara national research institute for cultural properties (nabunken). in nagasaki, the most active proponents of the reconstruction project have been shifting mayors and city council majorities who have provided most of the funding while attracting central-government funding and lobbying prefectural officials and local business associations for additional contributions. thus, the central government and its relevant agencies play an important role as sources of funding and as regulators and controllers of the two nationally protected sites. in both cities, however, local initiative was crucial for the reconstruction projects, not least in providing and attracting support and resources for their continuation, growth and maintenance. in a japanese museum context, the projects are only two prominent examples of a larger trend towards recreation and musealisation of lost buildings and environments. the heijō palace project recalls other reconstruction efforts, including the prehistoric settlements at sannai maruyama in aomori prefecture (part of the 2021 unesco world heritage inscription ‘jōmon prehistoric sites in northern japan’), yoshinogari iron age historical park in saga prefecture and the shizuoka city toro museum in shizuoka prefecture. the dejima project resembles other reconstructed early-modern and modern monuments across japan as well. nagasaki prefecture especially hosts museum sites focused on historical exchanges and interconnections with the west, including the reconstruction of the 40 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup dutch trading post (oranda shōkan) in hirado (destr. 1640, rec. 2011). furthermore, dejima is thematically connected to several nearby sites that recently obtained world heritage status as part of either ‘hidden christian sites in the nagasaki region’ (inscribed in 2018) or ‘sites of japan’s meiji industrial revolution’ (inscribed in 2015). the latter nomination included the abandoned coalmine island of hashima off nagasaki as well as glover house (1863), the private residence of scottish merchant thomas blake glover (1838-1911) which is now part of the open-air glover garden museum in nagasaki. in addition, nearby sasebo city hosts the large resort city huis ten bosch (1992), a so-called ‘foreign-country village’ (gaikokumura) featuring replicas of old buildings from the netherlands (hendry 2000). in other words, dejima and the heijō palace are indicative of a significant development in contemporary japan towards reconstructing and/or heritagising built environments of the past. what defines historical reconstruction, and how does it differ from other types of building maintenance? it is important to make such a terminological distinction, especially in japan’s case where most traditional buildings are made of wooden constructions that require comprehensive care. the relevant vocabulary is often used inconsistently and somewhat confusingly, in english as well as in japanese, so i will briefly clarify the term ‘reconstruction’ as i use it here. this paper does not concern itself with architectural preservation, which in this connection refers to the act of disassembling a weakened or damaged structure and replacing compromised parts or sections with new ones (kaitai shūri, ‘dismantle-repair’). this is the most common method of preserving traditional wooden architecture in japan (fukuda 2017, gfeller 2017). traditional preservation practices gave rise to japan’s involvement in challenging the authenticity paradigm enshrined in the venice charter (1964) and the unesco world heritage convention (1972) in the 1990s, which led to the adoption of the nara document on authenticity (1994) and a subsequent turn from a eurocentric to a more pluralistic and contextual understanding of material authenticity in a world heritage context (brumann 2021). nor do i analyse cases of restoration (saiken, ‘rebuilding’), by which i mean the act of recreating a demolished or severely damaged building. in such cases, the building’s appearance is usually well known and documented, and the destruction likely took place within living memory. famous examples include the restoration of the main hall at hōryūji temple in 1954, the kinkakuji golden pavilion (brumann 41 pasts of the present 2008) in 1955 and the ongoing restoration of shuri castle after a 2019 fire.1 in addition, the japanese term fukko (‘restore-old’) mainly refers to returning an altered or modified edifice to its earlier appearance. instead, this paper analyses cases of reconstruction (fukugen, ‘restore-origin’), the act of recreating in their original locations lost buildings, structures or environments ‘primarily from archaeological evidence’ (okamura and condon 1999: 63) but with a different function in mind. such buildings were lost many generations ago, outside living memory, leaving many aspects and details of their former appearances unknown. one could say, in this connection, that while the purpose of preservation and restoration is in most cases to retain or reinstate a compromised structure in its existing or previous function, reconstruction seeks instead to recreate a long-lost (and often only partly known) structure in order to make it serve a new and different function. unlike restored or preserved buildings, i argue that reconstructions occupy a complex cultural and attitudinal space in japan, deriving authenticity not from their presumed originality or restored integrity, but from past-presencing authentication processes enacted on site. the empirical data for this paper is a combination of published sources and observations from the field. reflecting the longue-durée character of the two projects, i sought to combine impressions and insights from the field with media coverage and publicised discussions of the two projects since the first large-scale construction phases began in the 1990s. i have made visits to both sites – the nara site in late 2018 and dejima on an annual basis between 2016 and 2018. unfortunately, the covid-19 travel bans made follow-up visits impossible while i was working on this paper. i have studied the japanese news-media sources and articles in the original japanese language, though i quote from them here in my english translation. the two sites: why reconstruct? nara and nagasaki are famous historical cities, in and beyond japan. nara/heijōkyō was an urban receptacle of select importation of chinese technology, culture, religion and state administration in the nara period (710-794). nagasaki/dejima was the only place open to foreign trade in most of the edo period (1603-1867). however, both historic sites had subsequently lost their original function, and no particular efforts had been made to maintain them after they became examples of what ehrentraut (1995: 216) termed ‘obsolete architectural forms’. 42 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup by the turn of the 1990s, both sites led quiet lives under national protection, but neither contained buildings nor environments from their respective peak periods. they were little more than archaeological sites for specialists. completely integrated into the surrounding urban landscape by land reclamation projects since the meiji period (18681912), dejima was even known as ‘the most disappointing tourist sight in japan’.2 indeed, some locals were hard pressed to point out its exact location when asked by the occasional interested tourist where nagasaki’s famous dutch trading station might be. for its part, the nara site was an open grassy field, used by locals as a neighbourhood park for picnics, ballgames and midsummer fireworks, and it sported only a few unremarkable stone foundations and other archaeological marks where once its majestic tang-style palaces, wide boulevards and ornate city gates had been. it was located rather far from downtown nara, as the city centre had historically moved eastward. in fact, some locals considered the grassy parkland a ‘black hole’ that might be put to better use either as residential development or perhaps even as a golf course.3 the reconstruction projects sprang from a desire in local and national political and cultural-bureaucratic decision-makers to enliven the historical sites and raise public interest and ‘understanding’ of them and their protected status. in due course, both sites grew to become strategic instruments for attracting tourists and commercial revenue, as i discuss towards the end of this paper. the reconstruction efforts have been carried out alongside archaeological excavations, so these sites have become archaeological field sites, museum spaces exhibiting excavated artefacts and reconstructed historic environments at the same time. the two projects represent all five ‘justifications for reconstruction’ that stanley-price (2009: 35-37) identified in reconstruction projects around the world: ‘national symbolic value’, ‘a new, different function’, ‘combined research and popular education roles’, ‘tourism promotion’, and ‘site preservation’ to help ‘protect it from development pressures’. importantly, over the course of history, these environments were lost but never forgotten. both places held high symbolic value, but their physical and material constitution was out of sync with their popular image and cultural significance; thus, the sites were perceived as disappointing to visitors and wasteful to some locals. consequently, the reconstruction efforts can be viewed as organisational efforts to bring the physical sites up to par with their symbolic weight and resonance and to anchor connotative value in a correspondingly 43 pasts of the present poignant built environment. essentially, the reconstructions are a way for the sites to live up to their own historical reputations. consequently, the expensive, meticulous projects have unfolded in several phases since the 1990s. both projects seek to recreate built environments from another era with the use of techniques, materials, colouring and tools believed to have been available to craftsmen and artisans at the time. new architectural landmarks and building ensembles have emerged, appearing for all the world as historical structures, although they are in fact contemporary architectural interpretations of lost localities. in accordance with japanese regulations, once archaeological excavations had uncovered and documented the remains of individual structures, the plot was carefully reburied with the material remains intact. only then could a contemporary reconstruction be produced above the plot, at times leaving a small section of the excavated remains visible under a glass floor in the reconstructed building for exhibition purposes. as such, the reconstructions are fundamentally different from the buildings that once preceded them on the same site, built for different purposes, creating a different atmosphere and figure 1. dejima. reconstructed streetscape. source: photo by jens sejrup, 2017. 44 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup representing a different historical reality than the lost structures. as stanley-price (2009: 42) puts it: ‘reconstructions are new buildings; they do not reproduce original conditions’. although they look old, these buildings are new. they conform to current building standards and regulations regarding access and safety, structural reinforcement and earthquake proofing. but the fact that they are new does not make them ‘fake’ or necessarily less authentic as items of cultural heritage; it is just a different, contemporary, heritage that they embody. authentication: forging engagements with the past a millennium younger than the heijō palace, historical dejima is the less obscure of the two, and the reconstruction project there placed the first quarter of the 1800s as its point of reference. the outer appearance of most buildings at that time is fairly well documented, but precious little is known of the interiors. the site is small and compact, roughly 200x50 metres, and centres on a reconstructed streetscape along the western half of the former trading colony’s main thoroughfare, lined on both sides with wooden dwellings and warehouses in an edo period townhouse style (see figure 1). the island was financed and constructed by local ‘town-elder’ (otona) merchants, originally in order to house portuguese traders. the tokugawa authorities ordered the vereenigde oost indische compagnie (voc) to relocate to dejima from hirado in 1641 after the portuguese had been expelled from japan (nao 2006). the buildings here thus appear more japanese than european in their general design, materials and structure. they are, for the most part, wooden timber-frame houses with white plaster walls and tiled roofs. the timber elements are painted dark brown, with the more prominent buildings sporting turquoise-coloured façade elements. in addition, there are european decorative features on some buildings, such as carved balustrades and mounted glass lanterns. the most important reconstructed buildings are the sea gate (suimon, 2006) where arriving cargo and crew used to land, the chief factor’s residence (kapitan-beya, 2006) and the first ship captain’s quarters (ichibansensendō-beya, 2000). interspersed between these main structures on the former island’s western half are reconstructed japanese officials’ quarters, kitchen facilities and several warehouses now used for commercial or practical purposes and for thematic exhibitions. the eastern half houses a number of protected buildings from a later period, including the former nagasaki international club 45 pasts of the present (kyū nagasaki naigai kurabu, 1903) and the former dejima protestant seminary (kyū nagasaki shingakkō, 1878). the presence of these meiji period buildings is temporally and stylistically incongruous with the reconstructed edo-period environment, and the eastern half holds a number of additional idiosyncratic elements including a large open-air model of edo-period dejima and a lawn area featuring a cut-out billboard of dutch cartoonist dick bruna’s rabbit character miffy holding a dutch flag and the word ‘holland’ written in large orange letters. the main attraction, however, is the townscape on the western half with the japanese-style wooden townhouses and european-inflected building elements. the nara site, by contrast, is vast and occupies approximately one square kilometre, coinciding more or less with the imperial enclosure in heijōkyō, a palace structure that contained the capital’s ceremonial state buildings, administrative offices and imperial residences. the reconstruction project aimed to recreate the palace as it appeared in its first thirty years of existence, as that configuration best illustrates the characteristic symmetry of the continental-style urban design (aoki 2006). the reconstruction project here has not created a townscape but figure 2. heijō palace. the reconstructed daigokuden. source: photo by jens sejrup, 2018. 46 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup rather selected the largest and most imposing individual structures for reconstruction. as a consequence, a few tang-style imperial buildings stand fully reconstructed in (ahistorical) isolation from the urban environment that once surrounded them. the most striking reconstruction is the daigokuden which used to be the central edifice in the imperial state architecture (see figure 2). a reconstruction of the building was completed on the occasion of nara’s 1,300th anniversary in 2010. measuring 44x20 metres, the two-storied edifice took nine years to complete and carried a price tag of over 18 billion yen. the other most important reconstructions are the suzakumon (1998), the former main gate to the imperial enclosure and the tōin garden (1998), once part of an aristocratic villa located east of the imperial palace. in 1998, the heijō palace site was inscribed on the unesco world heritage list as one of eight constituent properties in the ‘historic monuments of ancient nara’ nomination. however, the site’s main attraction is the meticulous reconstructions of the daigokuden and the suzakumon that lend the site a distinctive historic-monumental feel. in both sites, visitors are invited to engage with the location affectively, to experience, wonder and be charmed by the reconstructed buildings and environments by imagining and stepping into the historical periods they represent. the atmosphere in both sites is somewhat less reverent than in many history museums in japan or elsewhere. the museum element in both these places is complemented by the encouragement to feel the sites, imagine the past and relive the realities of the people who once lived and worked in these spaces. as macdonald (2013:94) notes, ‘place is bound up with a wide range of affects, (…) and it is central to heritage – which is always emplaced. in heritage it is through place – and its specific physical elements, such as buildings or natural features – that the past is made present’. the dissemination of historical and archaeological information and artefacts is correspondingly set off by activities, technologies and place-making acts that appeal to experiential, aesthetic and emotive registers. on the nara site, the main technique for eliciting emotive responses is the spatial mise-en-scène of the reconstructed palace buildings, stressing their size and symmetrical grandeur. in this way, the site engages and moves its audience by means of a ‘starchitectural’ vocabulary, reproducing impressions of the nara period and capital as primarily one of technical, organisational and aesthetic accomplishment, scale and sophistication. 47 pasts of the present the iconicity of reconstructed dejima, by contrast, lies in its meticulous rendering of the architectural and material framework for everyday life. the artificial island was a quintessentially functional and mercantile environment with no monumental buildings. frequent fires, rebuilding and alterations meant that the built environment was neither particularly stable nor very clearly fixed. instead, the reconstruction offers a feeling of intimacy, bringing the dejima site to life through a combination of its hybrid euro-japanese material culture and the picturesque compactness of its streetscapes, warehouses and interiors. everything is human scale, and visitors can peek into reconstructed dining rooms, bedrooms, kitchen facilities and servants’ quarters furnished mostly with antique objects that the dejima museum acquired for the purpose (see figure 3). both sites invite visitors to engage in embodied forms of experience. such registers include not only seeing and feeling the materiality of the reconstructed buildings but also participating in various acts of embodied past presencing. in dejima, visitors can rent kimonos and period garb from a private costume-rental business housed in one of figure 3. dejima. interior in the reconstructed first ship captain’s quarters. source: photo by jens sejrup, 2018. 48 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup the reconstructed houses or join various events on the site, including the annual ‘dejima festa’ (dejima fesuta) and dejima music heritage festivals. likewise, at the heijō palace site, numerous events and festivals stage performances of nara-period imperial rituals and various other thematic activities that invite participants to experience and enjoy historical dishes, music, craft-making, etc. in addition, both sites organise guided tours and thematic walks with research staff or volunteers. the two reconstructed environments come alive as heritage spaces through these processes of authentication: through carefully coordinated interweaving of, on the one hand, material and architectural reconstruction enabled by expert knowledge and craftsmanship, and, on the other hand, encouraging affect and discovery through facilitating visitors’ emotive and experiential engagement with the sites. these authentication processes are intellectually as well as emotionally charged, at the same time temporally transposed between present and past, belonging overtly and professedly to both temporal dimensions. this is especially evident in dejima, where visitors come across two types of guides and volunteers. dressed in orange construction-site jackets, one type disseminates information about the buildings and the reconstruction process, stressing firmly the present, reconstructive moment, while the other type imitates tokugawa officials and townspeople dressed in period costume, posing for photographs and delivering anecdotes about everyday life on the island, thus clearly embodying the past, reconstructed moment. similarly, the dejima museum maintains a functional distinction between objects acquired for museum display and objects excavated on site. while the former type is part of the reconstructed interiors, the latter is presented as material documentation of dejima’s past reality: exhibited behind glass and disconnected from daily use and other object categories inside restored or extant warehouses dedicated to that particular purpose. as such, the two sites heritagise present-day mastery of past forms, institutionally encouraging different types of affective and embodied engagement across two temporal dimensions to authenticate their recreated symbolic iconicity. but what is it about them that invites such careful reconstruction in the present day? how do these two particular sites reflect contemporary concerns and circumstances? 49 pasts of the present japan in circulation: localising transformative flows and exchanges ‘given that historically heritage has been entangled with attempts to forge and maintain bounded, homogenous identities, especially of the nation-state’, writes macdonald (2013: 162) in memorylands, ‘a major question is whether heritage is capable of accommodating other kinds of identities, especially those that might be considered, variously, “hybrid”, “open” or “transcultural”’. these two sites suggest a way to answer that question from a contemporary japanese perspective. whether nationally designated as ‘important cultural property’ (jūyō bunkazai) or ‘national treasure’ (kokuhō) or internationally acknowledged, for instance, in a unesco world heritage context, much cultural heritage in japan contains elements of international interaction. however, these two sites emphasise movements and processes of the intercultural and global more directly and powerfully than most. both sites represent influxes and exchanges of culture, goods, capital and technologies, and they both function symbolically as spatial and material interfaces of japanese past encounters with powerful external figure 4. dejima. exhibition of excavated artefacts in the archaeology pavilion. source: photo by jens sejrup, 2018. 50 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup agents. both sites generate japanese heritage by linking the archipelago to larger cross-continental and global geographies and processes, the effect of precisely such processes being the master metaphors of the contemporary phenomenon known as globalisation (tsing 2000). i argue that these emerging sites are iconic heritage of the contemporary globalised era. the focus in both sites is on contacts and exchanges with the outside world that transformed japan. by consequence, visitors are introduced to a vision of transcultural exchange as one taking place between discrete cultures, those of japan and external others. the main narrative at reconstructed dejima is one of global movement, encounter and circulation of people (voc merchants and sailors sojourning at dejima, japanese scholars, traders and officials engaging with the foreigners there, the chief factor’s ceremonial passages from dejima to the shogun’s court in edo, etc.), of objects (commodities, resources) and of knowledge (western learning flowing into japan, knowledge of japan flowing into the west). the reconstructions and exhibitions at dejima represent japan as a receiver of capital, knowledge and intercultural exchange. this motif is especially pronounced in the so-called ‘archaeology pavilion’ (kōkokan), a space dedicated to displaying western everyday objects excavated on the site, such as jars, bottles, utensils, ceramics and even a rusted handgun (see figure 4). another building is dedicated to displaying western scientific items introduced to japan through dejima, primarily in the form of devices and contraptions of so-called ‘dutch learning’ (rangaku) such as clocks, a projector, a stethoscope, a hearing aid, etc. reversely, the narrative in the heijō palace depicts japanese crossing the seas in search of foreign knowledge. here, japan is the extroverted party, sending off envoys and individuals eager to absorb and reproduce advanced continental culture. this motif comes through in multiple references to the silk road and efforts to position heijōkyō as its end station. over the years, top officials at the nara site have publicly communicated messages to the effect that heijōkyō was built ‘as the end point of the silk road, aiming to absorb foreign cultures and institutions and to establish a full-fledged national governance system’.4 indeed, as tseng (2015: 97) points out, the act of reconstructing the heijō palace reiterates the site’s own history of ‘cross-cultural repetition, replication, and reproduction’ of continental forms and ideas. furthermore, although nara is not a coastal city – it lies in a basin surrounded by mountains a good 25 kilometres from osaka bay – the exhibitions at the heijō palace are remarkably maritime in theme. 51 pasts of the present the site prominently exhibits a reconstruction of a so-called ‘envoy ship to the tang’ (kentōshisen), in itself a 200-million-yen project, 30 metres long and made with traditional shipbuilding techniques.5 thus, the two reconstructed sites share a thematic preoccupation with waterborne exchange and circulation of objects and people, fluidity, sailing and global flows. as such, the sites appear ideologically as anchor points of transformational global contact and as historical gateways to the larger world. they are amalgamated hybrid locales, emphasising the globalised roots of a present-day japan founded on native absorptions of external stimuli. this ideology of ‘japan as cultural synthesizer’ (lincicome 2020: 1) is well-established in japan. indeed, as lincicome (2020: 4) notes in a study of japanese pursuits of international cultural recognition, the country has a long intellectual tradition of considering japanese culture a unique outcome of native processes of ‘cultural hybridity, that is, its talent for selectively adopting, adapting and synthesizing the superior attributes of foreign civilizations’. as iwabuchi (2002, 53-54) has argued, such an understanding of cultural adaptation and vernacularisation rests on an exclusivist logic: foreign origin is supposed to be purged by the japanese tradition of cultural indigenization. japan’s hybridism strategically attempts to suppress ambivalence generated by the act of cross-fertilization, relentlessly linking the issue of cultural contamination with an exclusivist national identity, so that impurity sustains purity. certainly, it is a very particular narrow kind of ‘adopting, adapting and synthesizing’ that these two sites commemorate: both exhibit historical instances of firm japanese control over circulation and exchange, whether the tightly regulated dejima trade or the select importation of continental culture by the nara-period elite. the material and exhibitionary messages at each site arguably ‘sustain purity’ by not fundamentally challenging or dislocating conservative japanese notions of national ‘identity as a sponge that is constantly absorbing foreign cultures without changing its essence and wholeness’ (iwabuchi 2002: 54). nevertheless, what stands out in both sites is their exhibitionary framing and presentation of the two localities as inherently globalised. the two sites seem to ground and fix transformative movements and channel the flow of external contact into a continuous trans-historical process of becoming contemporary japanese. thus, 52 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup both sites are shaped, framed and promoted ideologically as globalising nodal points, ideally suited, retrospectively and for the future, to attracting and accelerating contemporary influx by linking up to domestic and international networks of flow. boosting value: inviting contemporary influx the trope of exchange and accumulation in the exhibitionary framing of dejima and the heijō palace find reflection in the extra-archaeological ambitions that drive their physical and material expansion, decade after decade, building phase after building phase. increasingly over the years, the projects have lent themselves to promotional efforts meant to boost local revenue and rebrand the two host cities. the reconstruction projects have expanded far beyond the original aims of legitimising the underutilisation of attractive land plots. today, the sites are part of larger place-branding and value optimisation efforts, enmeshing, as tseng (2015: 109) phrases it, ‘often contradictory priorities of heritage management and commercially-driven educational entertainment’. mcmorran (2008: 350) notes ‘the complex relationship between the ideological and economic aspects of heritage’, and shows how the two elements intersect closely in the empirical field. okamura and condon (1999: 72) emphasise that ‘reconstruction sites have started to be increasingly employed for a political and economic purpose. (…) simply put, modern, socio-political demands are dictating which image of the past should be presented to the present’. but why would nara and nagasaki desire further promotion? despite their, for japan, relatively small populations (around 400,000 inhabitants), both cities welcome millions of domestic and international visitors annually. nara prefecture holds many national treasures and world heritage-listed properties, and the city is home to sublime continental-style temple architecture. nara park attracts well over 15 million visitors a year, hosting the nara national museum, the kasuga grand shrine, the impressive tōdaiji and kōfukuji temples and about 1,200 tourist-friendly sika deer. the picturesque landscape around the city is dotted with ancient keyhole-shaped megalithic tumuli (kofun), and just a few kilometres south are the historic towns of asuka and sakurai and the yoshino mountains, one of the archipelago’s most famous areas for cherry-blossom viewing. likewise, nagasaki has much to offer visitors. its main attraction is the atomic bomb museum and associated monuments in urakami just 53 pasts of the present north of the city centre, drawing in almost 2 million annual visitors. but the city also stands out for its rich multicultural history. apart from glover garden, world-heritage-listed ōura church and the fin-de-siècle grandeur of the former foreign settlement area, nagasaki hosts japan’s oldest chinatown – today, a colourful plethora of narrow streets, red-and-gold storefronts, eateries and trinket shops. private tour operators whisk visitors off to the abandoned industrial ruins on tiny hashima, another world heritage site. beyond nagasaki city, tourists can enjoy sasebo’s huis ten bosch, and further afield are historic sites in hirado and the shimabara peninsula, picturesque islands, natural hot springs and the active volcano mt. unzen. in all respects, nara and nagasaki are generously endowed with top-level cultural and natural attractions. the real picture is less rosy, however, and both cities struggle with challenges caused by their respective locations. nagasaki sits on the western edge of japan’s southernmost main island of kyushu, far away from the country’s main urban centres. in fact, nagasaki is geographically closer to seoul and shanghai than it is to tokyo. a two hour train ride from kyushu’s main city of fukuoka, nagasaki has yet to be included in the ever-expanding national shinkansen bullet-train network. although a new high-speed line opened to nearby takeo onsen in 2022, passengers still have to change trains to access the main kyushu shinkansen line and larger national network. due to nagasaki’s inconvenient location, the bulk of atomic-bomb tourism descends upon hiroshima on the main island of honshu instead. rebranding the city to de-emphasise its dark image of death, defeat and nuclear destruction has been a priority for shifting nagasaki governors and mayors, city-hall officials and local businesses for decades, along with a wish to attract more visitors from continental east asia6 beyond shortstay cruise tourists. in the accelerating domestic and international competition for tourism revenue and brand value, nagasaki found itself disadvantaged by the historical loss of dejima, lacking a heritage space to represent the unique history of (japanese control over) globalised encounter, exchange and connectivity during the centuries of national near-seclusion. the reconstruction of the trading station reflects local interests in diversifying the city’s heritage attractions in temporal and thematic terms. nara’s problem is the opposite of nagasaki’s. reaching nara is too easy for the city to reap the full potential of its tourism sector. although not connected to the shinkansen network either, nara lies centrally in 54 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup the kansai region, a mere 30 kilometres from downtown osaka. kyoto and kobe are not far away either, and nagoya can be reached in about 2 hours. the very large number of visitors to nara park clearly reflects this geographical convenience. however, convenience has the unfortunate consequence that the majority of tourists visit nara on day trips from bases in larger nearby cities. day-trippers generate significantly less revenue at a destination than overnight guests, and so glaring was the mismatch between tourist numbers and accommodation demand in nara that before the daigokuden opened in 2010, nara prefecture had the lowest total number of overnight guests of all japanese prefectures.7 so, while nagasaki’s challenge is to attract more tourists, nara’s problem is to make its many visitors stay longer. and unlike nagasaki, nara had no particular interest in diversifying the temporal reference points of its built heritage: the nara brand associated with being japan’s first ‘permanent’ capital, its monumental architecture and the history of selective japanese importation of continental culture is consistently strong. what the reconstructed heijō palace added was secular state architecture to supplement nara’s tang-style religious monuments. in thematic terms, the political and business interests in the reconstruction of the heijō palace were reduplicative and cumulative rather than image-adjusting or diversifying. the logic of growth and value accumulation that drives the politico economic interests in the reconstruction projects finds spatial reflection on the reconstruction sites, as the projects continue to grow and expand. this is true also for the urban and infrastructural fabric surrounding the sites. in 2018, nagasaki inaugurated the pedestrian dejima gate bridge (dejima-omotemon-hashi) across the nakashima river, a steel bridge marking a new, grander, main entrance to the dejima site. furthermore, only about 100 metres separate dejima from the downtown harbour front, a section of which has been recently overhauled and turned into the dejima wharf (dejima wāfu) shopping and dining facility, a picturesque marina lined with wooden buildings vaguely reminiscent of the reconstructed warehouses in nearby dejima. the city has ambitious midand long-term plans for further development in and around the site. more buildings and gardens are to be added, ‘building interiors fully utilized, and exhibition facilities expanded’.8 furthermore, a busy tram line and route 499, the city’s main thoroughfare, currently dissect the narrow stretch between dejima and the wharf, cutting off a corner of the historical site right where voc ships used to land. the city plans to divert these major transportation 55 pasts of the present arteries and reconstruct the historical landing jetty. on top of that, there are plans to revert the courses of the nakashima and dōza rivers to create a waterway around the site and finally make dejima an island again. when the national government took over responsibility for the heijō palace site in 2008, nara prefecture and city shifted their focus to developing the surrounding urban area. inside the protected site, the current phase of reconstruction efforts most recently recreated the daigokumon gate to the daigokuden (inaugurated in 2022) and is bringing back the towers and fences surrounding the grand ceremonial hall in an architectural arrangement known as the daigokuden’in (see figure 5). meanwhile, the city and prefecture have overhauled the large area south of the suzakumon where heijōkyō’s main thoroughfare, suzaku avenue (suzaku-ōji), once began. much of this land belonged to the sekisui chemical company, and only after years of negotiations did the company agree to evacuate the land, allowing a major transformation of the area to take place: in 2018, the suzakumon square (suzakumon hiroba) opened – a large multipurpose complex figure 5. heijō palace. reconstruction work on the daigokumon. source: photo by jens sejrup, 2018. 56 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup of low-rise modern buildings on both sides of a resurrected suzaku avenue hosting museums and exhibition halls, an observation deck, restaurants, cafes and a well-stocked gift shop. in effect, establishing suzakumon square represented a spatial expansion of the site, annexing a whole city block and transforming it into a supporting facility for the flow of visitors to the reconstructed buildings. arguably, the nara city centre seems to be slowly gravitating back toward the west, moving closer to the heijō palace site, as a sleek new prefectural convention center with a jw marriott hotel, the first international luxury hotel in nara, now sits across the street from nara city hall, one block from suzakumon square. and further reform seems to await the wider heijō palace neighbourhood: a section of the busy osaka-nara kintetsu railway still runs across the palace site, having been laid shortly before the area was designated a national historic site in 1922. comprehensive plans to optimise the site by getting rid of the railway tracks have materialised at different points, most recently in 2017, but have yet to be realised. what all these efforts and plans illustrate is the centrality of the two reconstructed sites for large-scale urban development, unfolding as japanese cities follow a global post-industrial trend, reconfiguring and transforming their central districts and built environments in order to better profit from competition in the globalising experience and culture economy. as evidenced by the recent global boom in acts and places of ‘past presencing’, it is an economy where heritage and iconicity take on important strategic functions. significantly, the urban developments around the sites are not historical reconstructions, and they do not compete for iconicity with the protected historical sites. instead, their role is to emphasise, accentuate and support visitors’ feelings of recreated historical reality and optimise their experience of the reconstructed sites and the authentication processes enacted there, as well as facilitate increased consumption of site-related commodities and services. these redevelopments reflect a desire, especially in local and prefectural decision-makers, to boost the brand value and attraction of their cities, taking advantage of large-scale historical reconstruction similar to how other cities have constructed contemporary ‘starchitecture’, as ‘architectural capital projects to maximize their global attraction and marketable iconicity’, and stimulate civic pride and economic growth in the national and global competition for ‘inbound investments, tourists and accelerated consumption’ (sejrup 2019: 825). 57 pasts of the present clearly, in these two japanese cities, the added attraction value of the historical localities derives from the symbolic/aesthetic iconicity and two-layered authentication processes that the expert-sanctioned heritage reconstructions enact. the logic is that reconstructing a lost iconic environment increases the attraction value of the historic site, provided that the reconstructions undergo site-specific processes of authentication that invite trans-temporal affective engagement with past realities. conclusion analysing authentication processes and thematic motifs of global flow and interconnection at two high-profile historical reconstruction sites in japan, i have argued that the ongoing reconstructions of dejima in nagasaki and the heijō palace in nara are examples of contemporary japanese heritage-making in traditional guise. furthermore, i have linked these two long-term projects to ongoing discussions in museum and urban studies of iconic architecture and urban boosterism and to anthropological conceptualisations of past presencing and metaphors of flow and interconnection in globalisation rhetoric. i argue that the current global boom in reconstructions of lost landmarks is related, and effectively parallel, to similar efforts around the world to boost city images and reputations through contemporary-looking ‘starchitectural’ statements and megaprojects. doing so, i have attempted to elucidate the ways in which post-industrial japanese cities today mobilise lost iconic monuments and authenticate their material resurrection in order to better capitalise on accelerated global exchanges and to boost their destination brand values in the intense regional and global competition for increased revenue in the tourism and experience sectors. although these reconstructed buildings look old, they are contemporary structures. they derive their heritage authenticity from embodied site-specific processes of authentication, enacting past presencing by strategically framing the sites as exhibitionary spaces of emotive engagement and trans-temporal convergence of the reconstructing and the reconstructed moments. reflecting such contemporary dynamics, a logic of growth and expansion permeate both sites, a logic repeated in three distinct dimensions: -materially, as the sites gradually fill up with more reconstructed 58 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 41(1)•2023 jens sejrup buildings and features, phase after phase, despite limited expert knowledge as to their exact historical appearance; -thematically, as museum exhibitions, activities and events stress the inherently globalised nature of the localities and their ultimate roots in transformative processes of circulation, exchange and accumulation; -politico-economically, as the two cities reform the urban fabric around the sites to boost attraction values and revenues in the regional and global competition. the reconstruction of historical buildings remains informed by professional input from expert knowledge workers reporting to the bunkachō and its central cultural-administrative bureaucracy in tokyo. but the reconstruction projects and the heritage buildings they continue to spawn are no longer mainly directed towards legitimising the sites and their protected status. even with their traditional and historical appearances, these sites have also become important strategic instruments in larger, thoroughly contemporary, politico-economic endeavours to develop, transform and enhance their host communities’ civic pride, intercity competitiveness and marketable attraction value. acknowledgments the author thankfully acknowledges the valuable comments and constructive suggestions from margaret mehl, aike rots, federico scaroni, anja simonsen, beata świtek, bo ærenlund sørensen, henrik vigh and morgaine wood during his work on this paper. the author is very grateful also to the two anonymous reviewers and the editors. this research was made possible through a generous grant from the japanese studies lectureship grant program administered by the scandinavia-japan sasakawa foundation and supported by the nippon foundation. jens sejrup is assistant professor of japanese studies at the university of copenhagen, dually appointed by the department of cross-cultural and regional studies and the department of anthropology. his research interests include contemporary japanese museum exhibitions and architecture, cultural heritage and present-day instrumentalisations of the historical past. email: sejrup@hum.ku.dk about:blank 59 pasts of the present notes 1 arguably, another example of restoration is the famous shikinen sengū renewal process of the ise grand shrine repeated every 20 years. 2 nihon keizai shinbun 2000. ‘nagasaki de fukugen-chū no dejima o miru, rekishi no kaori tadayou machinami’ (visiting dejima under reconstruction in nagasaki, a townscape fragrant with the scent of history), nihon keizai shimbun, 28 october, nikkei purasu wan section, p. 15. 3 nihon keizai shinbun 1993. ‘kansai torendii – saidaiji, kaihatsu, hozon… omoi chirijiri’ (kansai trendy: scattered thoughts on preserving or developing saidaiji [area]), 1 april, osaka evening edition, p. 30. 4 yomiuri shinbun 1998. ‘tanaka migaku, nara kokuritsu bunkazai kenkyūjo-chō – iseki o gendai shakai ni saisei no kokoromi’ (tanaka migaku, director of nara national institute of cultural properties: attempts to bring the ruins back to life in modern society). yomiuri shinbun, 23 april, osaka evening ed., p. 9. 5 yomiuri shinbun 2010. ‘kentōshisen – shu azayaka – fukugen hobo kansei’ (envoy ship to tang, bright vermilion, reconstruction almost completed). yomiuri shinbun, 11 march, osaka evening ed., p. 10. 6 asahi shinbun 2000. ‘nagasaki-shi kankōbuchō, taguchi shūzō-san: tō-ajia chūmoku’ (taguchi shūzō, nagasaki city tourism manager: we have an eye on east asia), asahi shimbun, 19 august, morning ed., p. 22. 7 nihon keizai shinbun 2009. ‘nara no kankō-gyōkai, miryoku-zukuri honsō, sento 1300-nensai semaru: shukuhaku-kyakuzō e shoku o migaku’ (nara tourism industry in strenuous efforts to create attraction as 1,300th capital relocation anniversary approaches: improve food to increase number of overnight guests), nihon keizai shinbun, 14 september, 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richmond and a. bracker (eds.), conservation: principles, dilemmas and uncomfortable truths. oxford: elsevier, pp. 32-46. tseng, alice y. 2015. ‘refracted copies of the imperial city and the great audience hall in east asia’. in t. mager (ed.) architecture reperformed: the politics of reconstruction. farnham: ashgate, pp. 97-115. tsing, anna 2000. ‘the global situation’. 15 (3): 327-360. _hlk127006650 _hlk126914105 _hlk127006732 _hlk126168662 _hlk103924642 _hlk126672848 _hlk95234318 vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. ok-cjas23.pdf, page 1-144 @ normalize 132 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 reviews ___________________________________________________________________ chris lydgate lee's law: how singapore crushes dissent. melbourne: scribe publications. 2003. 318 pp. isbn: 090801189x historical accounts usually run the gamut of differing degrees of interpretation. there are variations of the facts and nuances of the truth. however, in some cases the essence of the matter is the same. chris lydgate's journalistic account of one of singapore's most important political figures captures the essence of his subject – joshua benjamin jeyaretnam, or jbj – in lee's law: how singapore crushes dissent. jeyaretnam's portrayal as a venerable, erstwhile lawyer cuts a tragic figure in the history of singapore's social and political development. the book traces jbj's origins and life within the context of the city-state's development, especially through the backdrop of his family upbringing, british colonialism, the second world war and its aftermath, the political and social upheaval that followed, and the events leading up to singapore's independence. the main theme of the book is jeyaretnam's fight for justice and fairness – first as a lawyer and then as an opposition politician – in the singapore judiciary, as well as against the pap government at the polls and in the courts. he became the sole opposition parliamentarian in 1981 after winning the anson by-election, breaking the pap’s monopoly of all seats in parliament. lydgate's book has the almost-deceptive subtitle of how singapore the state crushes dissent. it is in fact about one dissenter, j. b. jeyaretnam. it chronicles the key events of his life, from his rise in the civil service and his break from the state's dominant party system, to his foray into opposition politics. in the same vein, lydgate also exposes the lack of political rights and civil liberties that should normally come with a developed country such as singapore. this should give food for thought to academically inclined readers who may not have a practical appreciation of the hard realities of being an opposition politician in singapore. although lee's law is written in a journalistic style, lydgate provides a valuable ground-level account of the workings of the pap regime as personified by lee kuan yew and how it treats any serious opposition to its control. lydgate's incisive insights neatly summarize the truths as well as ironies of a given event or incident, even to the moment. this is too often ignored or missed in many academic works on politics. among the memorable incidents recounted are those of the court cases involving jeyaretnam against members of the regime or its vested interests. lydgate relates key exchanges and uses them to illustrate the manner in which j. b. jeyaretnam faced his opponents in court, while also _______________________________________________________________________ 133 ___________________________________________________________________ reviews commenting on and summarizing the crux of these cases. they show, with varying degrees of clarity, how the singapore judiciary acted and reacted, as well as the political influences and pressures placed upon them. these cases also revealed more of jeyaretnam's character and the dynamics with which his vocation as a trial lawyer sometimes clashed, in later years, with his role as an opposition politician. more often than not, they reverberated off each other with unenviable consequences. the writing contains prodigious usage of language and trenchant statements which bring out revealing facets of human behaviour in the various political actors; for instance: 'and while goh aimed several jabs at jeyaretnam, he never showed a knack for the vicious form of political ju-jitsu that came so naturally to lee.' although not an explicit, blow-by-blow critique of singapore's political evolution, lydgate manages to capture important aspects of singapore's political life: the gradual erosion of human rights, the rise of a powerful 'nanny state' and the creation of a political system that imposes its will on the people on behalf of an elite, and which tries to persuade its citizens that this is for the greater good of the country. it shows, for instance, how a country can develop into a first world state without the accompanying civil and political liberties that would normally be associated with such development. along the way lydgate does not hesitate to criticize and point out jeyaretnam's faults. there are a few important ones, among them his misplaced idealism and his infamous tendency to want to seek confrontation based on the principles of his beliefs. there was also his stubbornness and faith in the law, ultimately found to be misplaced. however, this does not detract from the basis of his actions, showing his commitment to fighting for the 'common man'. it is these actions that highlight the true nature of the pap regime through its persecution of jeyaretnam. the strength of this book is its engaging, journalistic style that brings out the tension and themes of the period. for example, in summing up singapore's political climate, lydgate writes that the 'atmosphere of crisis', though legitimate, 'provided intellectual camouflage for the government's efforts to dictate the destiny of its citizens'. although it serves as a good primer or popular history of jbj's life, it could also have been a more serious work if it had contained, for instance, more details and background of the laws that jbj ran afoul of, or some technical aspects of the parliamentary jousts and other processes that could have painted a fuller picture of jeyaretnam's struggles. however, it captures the pathos and even engenders anger at lee's pap regime for its treatment of 134 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 reviews ___________________________________________________________________ jeyaretnam, something that may contribute to academics' understanding of how the singapore government crushes dissent. at times reading like a political pot-boiler, at other times reading like popular history, but never quite either, lee's law is never mundane. indeed, rather than merely recounting a politician's life story, it recounts his struggles. jeyaretnam's story is sadly also the story of many of those who suffer quietly under the pap-dominated system, which is all the more tragic for being both highly pragmatic and subtly oppressive. in spite of the book's journalistic style of writing, it holds academic value and academics should read and consider it when studying singapore. academic studies of opposition parties and politicians in singapore have been few and far between. although more are needed to increase the depth of singapore studies, books such as lee's law provide a valuable resource that helps to fill in important gaps and increase insights into the political history of singapore. roderick chia information & communications coordinator bangkok, thailand. carl a. trocki, singapore: wealth, power and the culture of control. 2006. london and new york: routledge. 211 pp. isbn: 0415263867 what makes singapore history boring is the way in which the stories are usually narrated. singapore history tends to be explained in terms of two representative figures: stamford raffles and lee kuan yew. raffles is the founding father of the port of singapore while his reincarnation, lee kuan yew, is founding father of the singapore nation-state. the author of the present book, carl trocki, is fully aware of this pitfall. to avoid it, he demonstrates singapore history through an interesting theme: the power of the chinese masses pitted against an alliance of other powers. these powers comprise the local english-educated chinese elites and the forces of global euro-american capital (p. 185). the book can be broadly categorized into two sections. the first section (chapters 1-3) narrates stories about singapore from the pre-raffles era until the second world war. the second half of the book (chapters 4-6) is about independent singapore, from the time of transition after the second world war until today. 10 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 john clammer crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia: constructing and deconstructing 1997 john clammer abstract the events of 1997 in southeast asia have been largely interpreted as a financial crisis, as a momentary problem in an otherwise smoothly operating development model. this paper takes issue with this interpretation and argues that in fact it indicated the extent of the penetration of globalization in the region and threw into stark relief the underlying sociological transformations that have accompanied and been created by the developmentalist policies of regional states. the paper attempts to indicate what the major sociological issues generated by the crisis are, to argue for the continuing salience of class analysis in interpreting social transformations in contemporary southeast asia and to propose the elements of a fresh sociological model for examining post-crisis southeast asian societies encapsulated in a pattern of globalization that is having profound but not yet fully mapped cultural and social consequences. the paper in other words attempts a sociological interpretation of what has been mostly read as an economic problem, and indicates necessary linkages between the economic, the sociological and the cultural in the interpretation of social change in the region. theorizing 1997 prior to 1997 the non-socialist societies of southeast asia were, with the exception of myanmar (burma), widely held up as examples of the success of 'development' understood in its conventional sense as economic growth accompanied by some level of poverty alleviation, urbanization and the expansion of infrastructure, both physical (roads, bridges, airports) and social (in particular education and medical care). many scholars have argued that, despite the human and ecological costs of such development and its disruption of sociological and cultural patterns and more traditional ways of life, on the whole the balance sheet is positive and that compared with the experiences of many societies in latin america and africa, southeast asia is a success story (rigg 1997; maidment and mackerras 1998). 11 crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia in 1997 however, began the worst economic crisis in postwar southeast asian history. while a number of commentators have examined the massive social fallout of this crisis and its political implications in terms of what it might say about the states of the region, their real political autonomy in the world system, local political cultures and the possibilities of more genuine democratization (acharya 1998; johannen, rudolph and gomez 2000), for the most part it has been largely interpreted as a failure of regulatory policies and institutions, and to a lesser extent of the political systems managing these institutions (arndt and hall 1999). it has in fact been almost exclusively read and presented as a financial crisis, as a technical problem in the smooth running of the international capitalist system, and a whole literature has emerged presenting the massive economic disarray as a 'problem' of capital and exchange markets and as a loss of confidence on the part of international investors (corden 1999), as a problem of weak financial institutions (jackson 1999) and as a problem of policies (montes 1998). most of these analyses are themselves written from within the framework of assumptions of the very economic system that itself caused the crisis. as a result many of these (often virtually instant) analyses are partial and theoretically flawed. this paper will attempt to re-read the 'crisis' and the post-crisis societies of southeast asia from a sociological and theoretical viewpoint in an attempt to ask more searching questions about what the 1997 crisis 'means' when it comes to conceptualizing or reconceptualizing processes of social transformation in contemporary southeast asia beyond the conventional paradigms that have tended to dominate interpretation hitherto. the paper in other words is a theoretical one that does not purport to add new data, but wishes rather to pose the question of the interpretation of the crisis from a sociological rather than from an economic angle. here there are two key issues: what a sociological reading of the crisis might look like, and how this might contribute to our understanding of patterns of social change in turn of the century southeast asia on the one hand, and on the other what the study of the sociology of southeast asian transformations might contribute to broader sociological theory, in which southeast asia is not seen simply as a case study but as the source of input into much wider debates in sociology in general and the sociology of development in particular. the origins of the economic meltdown that began in thailand and spread rapidly throughout the rest of the region with particularly dire effects in indonesia, serious effects in malaysia and significant 12 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 john clammer but less damaging consequences in singapore, brunei and the philippines, has been attributed to a number of factors. amongst the longer term background factors were weak financial institutions, corruption, manipulation of regional economies by local elites (crony capitalism in other words), weak fundamentals ('growth' in some cases, as in japan, being attributable to rapidly inflating real estate values, the selling off of assets to foreign investors or the export of non-renewable resources, rather than to the development of real productive forces) and the illadvised restructuring of regional economies along lines dictated by the international monetary fund and the world bank, advice which had previously done immense damage to the mexican economy and shortly after the asian crisis led to the virtual collapse of argentina, another hollow economy that had been touted as a latin american success story parallel to that of the 'little dragons' of southeast and east asia. the immediate cause has been seen as the sudden huge fluctuations in capital flows and deliberate currency manipulations of international financiers and currency traders. underlying sociological fundamentals have however received little attention. in fact the crisis of 1997 and its subsequent social fallout have highlighted three major dimensions of the social forces underlying southeast asia's collective social transformation. the first of these is the depth of the penetration of globalization into the regional societies. the extensive theoretical and ideological literature on globalization often fails to examine its concrete manifestations in particular places or the full range of its effects, which in practice include the sociological and the cultural as well as the 'purely' economic, a category that in fact does not exist. the full range of these effects however was made starkly visible in post-1997 southeast asia (yamashita and eades 2003). the second is the question of the real success of 'development'. after years and in some cases decades of high levels of economic growth fuelled by the very forces that engineered the subsequent collapse, the crisis demonstrated the hollowness of development built upon volatile and amoral capitalist/globalized foundations and its absolute dependency on those foundations. the conventional argument that the crisis wiped out or set back a decade at least of development (especially in areas such as poverty eradication) is only partly true. the case rather is that this 'development' was arguably a chimera that was inherently unsustainable. what the crisis demonstrated from a more radical viewpoint was not an unfortunate regression, but much more fundamentally the limits of 'development' as it has been largely pursued by the developmentalist states 13 crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia of southeast asia in the last three decades, and the environmental and socio-cultural consequences and uncontrolled transformations promoted by this economism based largely on some local varieties of neo-liberal thinking combined with the soft authoritarianism so characteristic of regional political cultures. the third, and from the perspective of this paper the most important, is that southeast asian social structures were not just 'damaged' by the crisis, but were implicated in it from the beginning, or at least certain class factions were. those classes (a minority in much of the region) that have benefited from the globalized capitalism that has certainly transformed their societies have, by pursuing a social restructuring that has encouraged consumerism, the motor-car, hyperurbanization, individualism, secularization, mcdonaldization and the hollywoodization that have undermined local cultural integrity and autonomy, created precisely the kinds of social conditions most easily shaped by globalized capitalism and hence most vulnerable to its vagaries and its comings and (as the crisis epitomized) goings. the question then becomes, what are the sociological aspects of southeast asian capitalist societies (clearly a different argument would be necessary in relation to the socialist or post-socialist states of vietnam, laos and cambodia, and for different reasons for myanmar) that the crisis highlights and which are implicated in it? identifying these has substantial implications for development sociology generally. the first of these i will argue is class, a notion not widely used in the sociological analysis of the asean countries (probably because of its marxist and ideological connotations), although the term 'social stratification' is widely used (e.g. ko 2002). i have recently argued elsewhere (clammer 2003a) that class is still a salient category of sociological analysis in southeast asia and that the failure of analysts to name the crisis for what it is – a crisis not of but brought about by a fully functioning international capitalist system – points to the occlusion of this category that once again needs to be brought out into the open. in that earlier paper i argued both that class is a pervasive structuring factor in contemporary southeast asian societies, and that it is a paradoxical phenomenon in that the very (upper/middle) class factions that are most active in promoting globalization, consumption and civil society are those with least in common with those (lower/working) class factions that they purport to serve through their involvement in social movements and their desire for access to an expanding social infrastructure. class factions (including new ones) are not only generated by and subsequently 'effected' by economic transformations, but also actively contribute to them and may 14 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 john clammer indeed even benefit from what is certainly experienced as a crisis by the underclass. other factions however may be badly damaged by the very forces to which they have, quite literally, hitched their fortunes, and both dimensions of this class impact can be seen as the crisis differentially effected social categories within the same countries, depending largely on their concrete relationship to or dependence on globalization. the sudden burgeoning of studies of the so-called new middle classes almost a decade ago is symptomatic of this (robison and goodman 1996). this class was both a product of and an active promoter of the kinds of economic forces that had brought them into being. what those piecemeal studies indicated was the need for a more systematic theorizing of the larger context in which such emergent social elements appear – that is to say the nexus between class, state, globalization and development. while all these terms retain an analytical value, the new configurations of the relationships between them post-1997 need to be mapped out and related in turn to other new social forces in the region (especially religion, new social movements and civil society and changing notions of citizenship). when this is done it will be possible to return again to these concepts, possibly to redefine them, and certainly to rethink their contemporary utility. but while i am arguing here for the salience of class analysis in understanding the sociological impact of the crisis and equally importantly the differential relationship of different class factions to it, class is not the only relevant sociological parameter. it is a good starting point because my argument here is that the crisis uncovered actual class alliances and interests that had been suppressed in the high growth years preceeding the meltdown. this is significant because it shows the hollowness of much recent talk in the region of the 'recovery' from the crisis. this talk represents an attempt at the normalization of a situation that has in fact revealed social divisions and gross inequalities that still exist even though they may be once again submerged at the level of discourse. this is also to point up once again that this paper is about discourse and the ideological constructions of social 'reality', the 1997 crisis being the most revealing recent event in southeast asia for illuminating this process at work. class analysis also makes it possible to explore new configurations of ethnic relations that have been emerging as an aspect of social change in the region. the explosion of ethnic or ethno-religious conflict in many parts of the region in the immediate past (in indonesia, southern thailand, myanmar, the southern philippines) has complex causes. one of the major ones has been the ways in which national govern15 crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia ments, committed to a statist model of political organization that has been one of the outcomes of the institutional convergence promoted by globalization and modernity and intensified by the socio-cultural normalizing tendencies of capitalism and consumption, have attempted to assimilate minorities not only to a common centralized political state, but also to an integration into the developmentalist model (bertrand 2004; duncan 2004). in other words, i am suggesting that while many regional explanations of ethnic conflict have taken a conventional view based on ideas of race and of centre-periphery tensions, the 1997 crisis in fact reveals both the extent to which ethnicity and class have become entangled and often reflections of each other, and the extent to which the de facto pursuit of a common commodified culture and the social relations implied by such a culture (the nuclearization of the family, monogamy and so forth) has promoted resistance to this homogenization. this resistance then comes to be reflected through one of the only available channels available to many agents, notably ethnicity, this being the only socio-political vocabulary available to them. while from the actor point of view this is entirely understandable, here i am arguing that, from a structural or macroscopic viewpoint, in fact both class and ethnicity are encapsulated in a larger and different framework of commoditization, and that a fresh sociological language is needed regionally to talk about this new configuration implicitly highlighted by the events of 1997, although they were clearly existent long before the crisis to which they were in fact a contributing factor. the relationship between class/ethnicity and the patterns of resistance to and incorporation in the transformations of culture engineered by politically led developmentalism that began to emerge in the 1970s came to fruition in the 1990s, and were both revealed and implicated in the social basis of the events of 1997 (zawawi 1998). as de koninck persuasively argues, for example, one of the major effects of agricultural modernization in malaysia has been the displacement of many of the rural poor from the productive process altogether, while the mechanization of agriculture has in particular marginalized women who are increasingly excluded from work and are consequently forced into unemployment, or for the younger women into migration to cities into domestic labour or factory work in the export-processing zones of penang or even as far afield as singapore (de koninck 1992). combined with this kind of major shift in the composition and geography of the labour force (and examples can be multiplied for indonesia and thailand in particular) has been the parallel but mostly ignored growth of 16 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 john clammer consumerism and the radical life-style and cultural changes that this has brought about (chua 2000). these in turn have substantial effects on gender relations which of course in turn influence patterns of the household consumption, child socialization and subjectivities of all the actors involved, many of which no longer fit older anthropological assumptions about the ways in which gender and family relationships are structured in southeast asia (stivens 1991; karim 1995). the political/economic structures that had been set in place before the crisis and which made it sociologically difficult to resist have had fundamentally transformative effects across the region, influencing class, ethnicity, gender, lifestyles, subjectivities, rural-urban relationships, labour-force composition and distribution, property relations, spatial patterns and rights and freedoms (scott 1998). far from being a purely financial crisis, the events of 1997 signaled major sociological shifts in southeast asia that had not been fully noted, pointed up the complicity in the events of certain social strata in the region and suggest radical revisions in the sociology of development, which is shown to have been asking many of the wrong questions as a result of clinging to an outmoded paradigm of the forces that shape the social make-up of the region. class, state and crisis the 1997 crisis was for southeast asia the equivalent of the fall of the berlin wall in europe almost exactly a decade before. the crisis has confounded many of the rosy expectations about the permanent growth and stability of the asia-pacific region. almost nowhere has it occasioned a rethinking of sociological fundamentals and of the long term consequences of continuing to attempt to pursue the same path, except amongst many of the regional social movements and a few of the public intellectuals associated with them (e.g. camilleri and muzaffar 1998), whose work tends not to spill over into academic discourse. a new road map of contemporary sociological configurations is, as suggested above, urgently needed, the outlines of which are futher developed below, pointing to the elements of an alternative model. the assumptions of economic dynamism and political stability touted by many commentators on the region have now to be closely questioned and deconstructed. what emerges instead is a sorry picture of weak states, many of them with a political culture of either authoritarianism and corruption, or both, either unable to devise regulatory mechanisms to protect their own people from the worst ravages of globalization, or riven by factionalism in which domestic special interest elites were able 17 crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia to prevent the passage of legislation or regulations which would have benefited the bulk of their populations when those regulations might have damaged the financial interests of those elites (e.g. macintyre 1999). moreover, those governments which followed imf instructions (most notably indonesia) fell even deeper into crisis and recession, suggesting that most regional governments exist for the sake of international capitalism and the world order framed by the three dominant international pro-globalization bodies – the imf, world bank and the wto – rather than for the bulk of their often impoverished populations. the class interests of local elites most closely aligned with the world view of neo-liberal economics were consistently allowed to take precedence over the well being or long term future of the average citizen. the very representation of the crisis as a financial one itself indicates how it has been constructed drawing attention away from the underlying sociological realities. this representation requires deconstruction before any movement towards reconstruction of our understanding of social transformations in southeast asia. but before returning to the sociology, a number of background factors that are deeply implicated in the genesis of the crisis and which constitute the frame into which the sociological factors must be fitted need to be identified more fully. firstly, economic globalization turns out to mean not only the interdependency of economies linked by fair patterns of trade, but also the massive self-interested control exercised by international capital and particularly the unrestrained flows of liquid capital and the manipulation of exchange rates, suggesting that the analysis of many critics of globalization (e.g. greider 1997) are essentially correct in their view that capitalist economics is now the dominating force in the structuring of societies, and that it remakes societies in its own image, regardless of the costs in terms of cultural erosion and the relentless reconfiguration of what goran hyden, speaking of africa, has called 'economies of affection' into economies of greed, consumption, profit and competition (hyden 1980). secondly, we see actual if not formal loss of sovereignty on the parts of regional governments to economic managers of private foreign companies and to the multilateral institutions. while nation-statesare certainly not in any immediate danger of disappearing this is not because they remain powerful, but because they are useful agents of globalized capital. the most superficial investigation of any state in the region indicates quite clearly that politics now means basically the management of the economy and that calls for the recognition of cul18 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 john clammer ture and values in development are in reality for the most part shunted aside in the pursuit of growth (clammer 1996). the weakness of local political, social and cultural integrity in the face of globalization and under the banner of 'development' was clearly revealed during and after 1997. the state in southeast asia has largely become a regulatory state with a diminishing agency of its own as it is itself embedded in a globalized environment. the state is needed because it promotes or protects capital, not because it defends its citizens against the worst excesses of capital: it takes on what immanuel wallerstein has aptly called the 'night watchman' role, a far cry from its once touted function as the promoter of liberty, equality and fraternity. amartya sen's (1999) much discussed notion of development as freedom in reality takes on a meaning that i doubt that its author intended – the freedom to consume, to have one's culture transformed and to see one's social structure rearranged. indeed it has been the transformation of southeast asian societies in the direction of becoming consumer societies that marks one of the most fundamental shifts in socio-cultural organization since the demise of colonialism (clammer 2003b) while regional states may indeed be autonomous vis-à-vis their local labour, environmental and other social movements, they are accountable ultimately not to their electorates, but to international capital and the multilaterals. the traditional political science conception of sovereignty, frequently invoked by regional states against their critics, evidently needs fundamental rethinking in the light of the real world that 1997 has so starkly revealed. it is evident that the crisis showed the fallacy of basing development on foreign-finance-led growth. while the situation varies from country to country (with indonesia being the worse effected) significant increases in poverty, malnutrition and unemployment were registered across the region. what has not been publicised are the knock-on effects of these on gender relations, morale and psychological stability, access to educational opportunities and the housing market, and purchasing power for domestic as well as imported products. while export-oriented companies may have benefited from the sharply declining values of their local currencies (hill 1999: 6) this is not good news for the rest of the population, as other societies such as mexico and argentina have also found as a result of 'liberalizing' their economies and following imf prescriptions. in such circumstances the urbanization of much of the region proves to be a liability, for while agricultural incomes, being less exposed to what hill blandly calls the 'modern financial system', were 19 crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia less effected by the crisis or even benefited from currency depreciations, the urban poor were very hard hit and have not recovered. unwillingness on the part of economists linked to the world bank to recognize any sociological or political dimensions to the crisis has led some such people to argue, quite fantastically, that 'a large negative shock to confidence and a weak financial sector rather than deep fundamental flaws across the crisis economies can explain much of the onset of the crisis' (mckibbin 1999: 126). more informed analysis of the region, alert to the underlying problematics of mal-development, lack of serious attention to poverty alleviation, uncontrolled urbanization (itself led by real-estate 'developers'), aids, widespread ecological degredation, proletarianization of the work force and the erosion of the agricultural sector, has come to radically different conclusions. indeed in the country in which the crisis began (thailand) all these features of 'development' and more (including unregulated international tourism) were in place as the 'crisis' broke. in fact there was already a crisis, but one unnoticed by the international press as it was not a 'financial' one that threatened to spread to the rest of asia and possibly the rest of the world (bello, cunningham and li 1998). this silent crisis includes widening social inequalities, religious violence, the massive spread of hiv/aids, uncontrolled urbanization, local resource depletion (including forests and natural gas), rising crime, child labour, abuses of human rights, serious environmental pollution falling on everybody but especially on the poor, cultural erosion, a spreading drug culture and massive shifts in gender and other social relationships. this is the real crisis and it was there before 1997, was in large part created by the very forces that engineered the financial meltdown and will remain unaddressed by the post 1997 attempts to return things to 'normal'. the question must consequently be raised as to what extent colonialism is really over in southeast asia and to what extent new forms of domination have simply replaced the older forms of direct foreign rule. while the case can certainly be made (as it was in outline above) that globalization has led to the decline of effective national sovereignty, two further points need also to be made. the first is the extent to which the nationalism which succeeded formal colonialism was itself in the interests of the mass of the local populations, or was in fact the replacement of foreign elites with domestic ones, which continued in practice many of the policies of the colonial era. nationalism and democratization are not synonymous, and the pervasive authoritarianism, militarism and corruption of many regional political regimes, combined with indebted20 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 john clammer ness to the imf and wb, the encouragement of foreign direct investment and often subservience of foreign policy to powerful outside interests (the united states in particular) have meant that talk of national 'autonomy' is hollow. the second point relates to culture and the extent to which globalization has not only meant the erasure of effective national economic autonomy, but also implies the erosion of autonomous local cultures and the increasing globalization of social structures, which come to resemble each other more and more. the emergence of the 'new middle classes' and their common consumption patterns is a prime example of this. while the loss of national sovereignty is seen by some as being the main problem, i would wish to modify this by arguing firstly that the crisis indicates that the nation may not be the best unit to protect and enhance the interests of the majority population of a given area, being frequently if not always riddled with class and elite interests (something thrown into high relief by the crisis) as well as the interests of dominant ethnic groups. it is quite easy to buy off the working class for example through the expansion of consumption without fundamentally transforming their actual conditions of labour. secondly, the globalization of social structures and cultural practices is as serious a problem as economic globalization (tomlinson 1999). in fact the two are intimately linked, as the penetration of consumerism and the spread of what robert heffner and collaborators call 'market cultures' (in which issues of morality and society are closely tied to economic transformations in the new asian capitalisms) indicate that forms of capitalist culture have become the everyday cultural reality for virtually everybody in the region (heffner 1998). what the crisis has highlighted is the power of this nexus and the consequent lack of cultural and sociological resources to withstand the effects of that crisis or to modify the form and definition of 'development' that it has created and actively promotes. talk of 'asian capitalisms', as if they were somehow more benign than their western originating models, simply obscures the local forms of social transformation imposed by the market, intensified by the fact that these capitalisms are, in a semi-dependent way, integrated into a total world-system the nature and functioning of which they do not and cannot determine (wee 2002). the editors of a relatively recent volume of critical essays on southeast asian development (dragsbaek-schmidt, hersh and fold 1998: 1), the publication of the original 1997 edition of which coincided exactly with the timing of the crisis, argue, rightly in my view, that it is misleading 21 crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia to make what they call an 'artificial division between state and market' in seeking an accurate analysis of the actual agents of social change in southeast asia and the emerging structures of unequal distribution of social, political and material rewards, in which the class paradigm must continue to play an important role as new forms of ('asian') capitalism emerge and as the advanced capitalist economies export more of their offshore production to the cheaper labour markets of southeast asia. in such a context, even though the concept of class itself has become somewhat elastic, as dragsbaek-schmidt and collaborators argue 'it is difficult if not impossible to grasp in any meaningful way the economic and social contradictions between strata and social groupings without reconsidering the concept of class' (ibid.: 2). this is because as processes of production change and economies create wage-labour and a bourgeoisie, owners and workers, and as labour becomes a commodity, so social relations between the elements in a society also change. the continuing and indeed intensifying social relations between 'producers and appropriators of surplus labour' (ibid.: 2) make class not a less salient category in southeast asia, but one of increasing significance, as i have suggested earlier. with so much attention having been given and continuing to be given to ethnicity in southeast asia as the major category for exploring social differentiation, the crisis strongly suggests that we once again direct attention to class, but also to the connections between class and ethnicity. these classes (both old and emergent) are themselves a product of the economic transformations of southeast asia since 1945. the varieties of local colonialism had of course also introduced new forms of stratification into what, it must be remembered, were already highly stratified societies. new forms of agricultural practice (plantations and agribusinesses) and export-oriented manufacturing, together with the subsequent growth of services, bureaucracy and the military made possible by the rising surplus, lead naturally to new social categories, the interests of which may certainly not be identical and which may be further internally segmented and may have very different internal cultures and consumption patterns. what the 1997 crisis has highlighted is the presence of this social differentiation and the very different corresponding relations to the world system on the part of the different social strata, some of whom continue to benefit from it even under conditions of crisis and others who have rapidly been devoured by it. conflicts and alliances between these strata that were largely latent pre-1997, when a common language of growth and development tended to submerge 22 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 john clammer actual social differences, have become clear as a result of the crisis, as has been true in other asian societies such as japan with the collapse there of the 'bubble economy' that began to deflate around 1996 and might even be causally related to the 1997 southeast asian collapse. class, then, continues to be a central sociological category for the understanding of contemporary southeast asian societies. it throws into relief both the social differentiation of regional societies and the ways in which some of these have been intensified and revealed in stark ways by the sociological fallout from the crisis. externally the southeast asian economies are dependent and internally this dependency is strengthened by the presence of (middle and capitalist bourgeoisie) classes wholly reliant on the continuation of this path and as such working in close tandem with the political-bureaucratic strata (mcvey 1992). the result of such elite policy making has been what dragsbaekschmidt terms 'growth without welfare' (dragsbaek-schmidt 1998: 40) or what slightly earlier was being termed 'uneven development' (jomo 1988). that 'unevenness' has proved to be not merely potholes in the road, but the absence of a road at all, or at least of one constructed out of sustainable local materials. this requires close engagement with the position of commentators such as jonathan rigg, who wishes to have his cake and eat it by arguing both that development has had 'very real failures and inconsistencies' which he lists as 'widening human and regional inequalities, severe environmental problems, the exclusion from development of certain groups in society, and cronyism and corruption, for example', and that the growth/modernization model works (rigg 1997: 286). this inconsistent position should alert us both to the failure of much academic commentary to name the real problems and the ideological investment that many scholars who like to pose as critical in fact have in the continuation of the very development process that produced the crisis in the first place. reconceptualizations after the crisis up until this point this essay has been one essentially concerned with naming what i would argue is the true nature of the 'crisis': not as a mere financial distortion of an otherwise smoothly functioning system, but as a crisis of (a) globalization, (b) 'development', (c) regional political systems, the inefficiency and class-bias of which has been clearly exposed, and (d) sociological convergence or complicity of social strata themselves created by the very system that engineered the crisis itself and who are now so enmeshed in that system that they are dependent upon it for their own 23 crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia future. but what does this point to? what lessons for sociology in general and the sociology of development in particular might be derived from this as they might apply to contemporary southeast asia? firstly, new forms of southeast asian cultural politics are emerging from the recognition that even local cultures are connected to the global. this can lead to new conceptions of citizenship, which, while no doubt still rooted in the individual nation-states, come to take on both a regional and a global aspect as well. while 'culture and development' theorists (e.g. schech and haggis 2000) have argued that culture needs to be put back into the (economistic) understanding of development, the stronger thesis is being advanced here that culture is development. the crisis has highlighted the theoretical poverty of a conception of development built on purely economistic assumptions that turn out to erode or destroy the very cultures of the people who are supposed to benefit from that development. even the provision of schools and healthcare is of little meaning if the real intention is to turn children into middle class consumers and to keep their bodies fit for capitalist labour and military service. some commentators who have argued, rightly i think, for the centrality of cultural analysis in the understanding of southeast asian societies (e.g. kahn 1998a) have gone as far as to suggest that in reality southeast asia is in a post-nationalist phase, not only because of the effects of economic globalization, but also because of (a) the cultural and political linkages that now tie the regional societies to each other and to international civil society organizations, social movements and religions, (b) the widespread access to information technology and (c) the increasingly common language of human rights. by focusing attention on financial concerns the crisis has been constructed in exceedingly narrow terms when in fact it involves not only states, but supra-state actors (international capital and the multilateral institutions that protect its interests in the guise of promoting development and fair trade and which have as a consequence profound sociological effects), and subnational actors (actual local cultures). what links them is the ways in which identities are constructed and reconstructed not any longer out of indigenous local soils, but out of the forces of globalized capitalism that are now the major and almost only source of 'culture' (reynolds 1998), despite the attempts of regional social movements and ngos, religious leaders and intellectuals to redefine socio-cultural reality in more nativist terms (sulak 1985). secondly, to focus only on the 'effects' of the crisis is to normalize its true nature and the conditions which allowed it to occur. to do this 24 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 john clammer is not only to fail to name the actual factors involved, but is also the failure to understand the underlying social conditions – the remaking and transformation of regional societies in forms that far exceed the wildest excesses of colonialism and is ultimately far less beneficial. the crisis has been constructed in a certain way, and consequently needs systematic deconstruction. thirdly, an attractive way of looking at indigenous resources for social change is to turn to the 'new social movements' in the region. but as dragsbaek-schmidt (1998: 11) points out, the tendency is to locate these within the sphere of 'civil society' rather than of property relations. in fact, as was noted above, civil society in the region is closely linked to class structures and many civil society organizations are the middle classes organizing to defend their own interests rather than intending to transform their societies. a culturalist emphasis on cultural differentiation (and southeast asian studies has a whole vocabulary for this – plural societies, multiracialism, 'instant asia', 'malaysia, truly asia', unity within diversity), while rightly identifying the cultural diversity and richness of the region, fails to make the connection between culture and class and the systemic inequalities that the notion of culture can hide (kahn 1998b). this is not of course to deny the centrality of culture in class analysis (which this paper is in part intended to restore) or to argue (as jonathan rigg does for example) that the new social movements are not important vehicles for social change and for the generation of new thinking about development and values. rather it is to argue for a new conception of what used to be called political economy in which the economic and the social are analysed together and in their mutual interconnections in a holistic model of social processes and of global-local ones. as james goodman has argued at length (goodman 2003), the shifting impact of neo-liberal globalism has radically altered what he terms the 'mobilization framework' of social movements in southeast asia. the weakening of the national development projects of the past decades, new or sharper sub-national or cross national inequalities, and an altered international environment in which transnational capitalism, multilateral institutions and globalization are the key factors or actors, have changed the environment of social mobilization movements throughout the region. the collapse of socialism in all but name in indochina has similarly contributed to new regional configurations. what 1997 has sharply revealed however is the massive disruption of developmentalism and of the forms of political legitimacy that regional governments attempted to generate for themselves by the single-minded pursuit of 25 crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia that agenda. while the destabilization that the crisis revealed (rather than created) has changed the basis of mobilization for older style social movements, it has of course also created new openings. 'crises delegitimize the status quo, destabilize elite patronage and politicize social life' (goodman 2003; 34) and potentially at least create a new 'democratic moment' (acharya 1998) in the political cultures of the regional societies. but even goodman in his analysis of the impacts of neo-liberal globalization on southeast asia persists is seeing the 1997 crisis as a financial one, even though his own argument points to much wider implications and causes, the deepening inequalities that are the focus of his essay being the main symptoms of this. it is precisely to cover up this underlying truth that so much effort has been expended on constructing the 1997 crisis as a financial one. the real crisis is far wider, deeper and more fundamental, but the recognition of this would of course force some equally fundamental political and policy changes that are profoundly unpalatable to the governments of the region, the multilaterals and the corporate interests which themselves are driving the globalization that is at the root of the crisis. the crisis has of course had its 'effects' – on poverty alleviation, employment, housing, education, provision of health care and gender relations. these effects, however, while they have certainly damaged the new middle classes as the stratum most closely identified with the dependent development that has created the crisis, have fallen most heavily on the already disadvantaged and on the poor in particular. the construction of the crisis as essentially a financial problem pointing up the weakness of regulatory regimes in southeast asia has entirely missed this point. it has also failed to take into account the long term sustainability of the dependent development that the region's governments are committed to – in particular environmental impact, resource depletion and long term energy issues. in their rush to build new airports or to add new terminals to already half empty ones, governments appear to be paying little attention (although the west's incursions into iraq may suggest another interpretation) to the well-documented expectations that known oil reserves will be largely exhausted by 2030 (mason 2003; rifkin 2003). it may well be that the history of the region will ensure that the poor and marginalized will get their revenge and that within many of our lifetimes it may be the peasants and hunter-gatherers of southeast asia's forests who (re)inherit the earth. what has happened in the region has been fast capitalist economic growth outstripping the development of political institutions and 26 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 john clammer processes. authoritarianism, weak democratic institutions, electoral manipulation, corruption, controlled media, a dependent judiciary and an underdeveloped civil society (johannen, rudolph and gomez 2000: 8) have provided exactly the conditions for the penetration of unrestrained capitalism, have excluded the articulation of political and social alternatives and have fundamentally weakened the ability of individual nation-state actors in the region to respond to the pressures of globalization, even if they wanted to. so far i entirely agree (that one major and neglected factor in the genesis of the crisis is governance) but where i depart from this analysis is the assumption that existing capitalism is the only system available to the societies of southeast asia, or as rudolph puts it 'successful market economies require political freedom to provide a barrier against economic cronyism and other anti competitive and inefficient practices' (ibid.: 13). for here we have a critique that shares the basic assumptions of the engineers of the crisis: that globalized marketization is inevitable and all that can be done is to improve its working to make it more 'efficient'. in fact there are more moderate positions between slavish acceptance of 'free' market capitalism and the outright rejection of globalization, for example the thesis of george monbiot that the challenge is not to overthrow globalization but precisely to capture it for democratic, egalitarian and genuinely internationalist progressivism that would allow and indeed encourage international cooperation and the huge benefits of access to one another's cultures while avoiding the equally huge damaging effects of the capitalist/imf version (monbiot 2003). southeast asia after 'modernity' let me conclude by recapitulating my main thesis and briefly suggesting where it points in terms of future analysis and action. i have argued essentially that the 1997 crisis has largely been constructed as a financial problem, caused by weak regulatory bodies and regional governments and to be solved or prevented from happening again by more and stronger regulations, largely imposed from the outside by the imf. i have suggested that this analysis is fundamentally wrong and theoretically impoverished, not least because it ignores the sociological factors at work throughout the region that have silently transformed southeast asia into one of the foremost areas of the world in which capitalist production relations and their social and cultural consequences have been given the freest rein under the labels of developmentalism and modernization. accordingly i have advanced 27 crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia the argument that the crisis is an outcome of both globalization and a false conception of development and represents a profound form of neo-colonialism masquerading as modernity, a point developed at length by zygmunt bauman (1999), who has argued that in the west the outcome of modernity was not emancipation, but the holocaust; in southeast asia the outcome has been 1997. underlying and largely concealed by this globalization have been new social patterns that have emerged in southeast asia in the past three decades or so, many of which have not been fully mapped or identified, but which i have argued provided the social context in which a crisis could so easily erupt. the real nature of this historical process can be seen not only in its ecological unsustainability, but sociologically in its effects on class formation and social differentiation, and its remaking of regional cultures as consumer cultures which are, by virtue of becoming part of the 'inside' of global capitalism, unable to resist that globalization or in extreme cases even to conceptualize alternatives to the 'reality' in which they find themselves. this has a number of implications for the analysis of southeast asian societies. firstly, while by no means unimportant, social movements and civil society organizations can have little fundamental effect on positive social transformation unless they are both aware of and can detach themselves at least to some degree from this hegemonic discourse and practice. secondly, while the examination of culture is equally important, it cannot be separated from class analysis, the generation and expression of culture being itself in part a function of class position as pierre bourdieu has demonstrated for european societies (bourdieu 1984). thirdly, a more accurate understanding of the fundamental nature of the crisis allows engagement with many of the ideological obfuscations that in the past have clouded the determination of the actual relationships between rapid capitalist-led economic growth, authoritarian government and lack of deep democratization, such as the so-called 'asian values' debates and their connection with limited support for human rights and suppression of a free media (jacobsen and bruun 2000), and fundamental sociological shifts, often unnoticed for some time because of the persistence of older categories of social analysis such as the use of plural society models and the privileging of ethnicity over class. an accurate understanding of the nature of the crisis permits constructive debate on alternative futures, other conceptions of development and relationships between peoples and governments. as david harvey has so cogently argued, contemporary globalization and the deeply unequal geographical development that it 28 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 john clammer has promoted – a whole geography of inequality – have historical roots and hence are contingent not necessary (harvey 2000). furthermore, deeply implicated in patterns of economic change are the parallel changes in culture, subjectivities, morality and identity that accompany the transformations that southeast asia has experienced in the last three decades. if in modern history colonialism was the first such seismic shift and decolonization the second, it has undoubtedly been the absorbtion of the region into the international capitalist system that has been the third. many of the socio-cultural effects of this were occluded until the 1997 crisis threw them into stark relief and called into question the whole notion of 'miracle economies', so celebrated by the adherents of neo-liberalism and the washington consensus (jomo 2003). if the crisis is simply normalized and business-as-usual continues, the lessons of 1997 will not have been learnt and the next asian crisis will be even bigger and less manageable. its positive effects if correctly read will be to lead to the development of a new paradigm for southeast asian studies. this paradigm (a) will bring together the analysis of the economic and the social, (b) will be alert to the quiet but fundamental shifts in sociology and subjectivity and the subtle cultural expressions of class that have accompanied economic transformations, (c) will situate southeast asia within the larger framework of globalization, and (d) will build on the possible gains of the crisis. these can be (a) a strengthened labour movement and movements for increased democratic and electoral participation and the corresponding visibility of arguments for human and environmentally responsible development (malhotra 2002), (b) the weakening of developmental authoritarianism as its credibility has collapsed, and (c) the resisting of issues of values at the centre of debates about the meaning of development in a region where religious affiliation and commitment to traditional forms still remains strong. cultural conflicts will then appear as what they often are – the outcome of unresolvable tensions between the culture of the state and the culture of the as yet half-digested culture of the market and of consumption, expressed in the language of ethnicity, but in fact the leading symptom of the vast socio-cultural shifts that southeast asia has experienced in its recent postcolonial history and of which the crisis of 1997 was the most dramatic, but by no means the last, expression. john clammer is professor of comparative sociology and asian studies at sophia university, tokyo. 29 crisis, states and the sociology of southeast asia references acharya, a. 1998. democratizing southeast asia: economic 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(p. 28) the second part of the book develops the frame in which today's opposition parties have to operate. it delineates the rise of the pap from its early internal struggle under british colonial rule until it finally had eliminated its last antagonist, the barisan sosialis, when it decided to leave politics. the chapter retells the original positions of the anti-colonial pap. the battle against the radical left would provide the basis for later conflicts with rising opposition parties. the crucial event in this regard, mutalib recounts, is the 'operation cold store' on february 2, 1963. more than 100 people were charged with communist activities and 138 __________________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 23•2006 reviews ___________________________________________________________________ jailed without trial. many of those arrested were leaders of the barisan sosialis, which paralysed the only other main contender for political office at the time. this led to the party's decision to boycott parliament and consequently disappear from politics. the most important part of the study elaborates four case studies of oppositional parties. extensive interviews were conducted to retell the development of the barisan sosialis, the workers' party, the singapore democratic party and the singapore malays national organization (pkms). each chapter details the beginning of the party, its development and its decline. this suggests a cyclical development of political parties, which, except for the barisan sosialis, may be slightly too pessimistic and too premature. the chapter on the workers' party demonstrates the remarkable ability of this party to survive the many adversities of singaporean politics. as one of the longest surviving political parties (founded in 1957), the party has captured the attention of singaporeans when it was the first opposition party to win a seat in the 1981 by-election for the anson constituency. the author, furthermore, sees the 1984 general elections as the watershed in singapore's political development, which demonstrated to the ruling pap that oppositional politics had reappeared. while the formations and motivations of the various opposition parties differ significantly, mutalib sees similarities in their decline. most importantly, he emphasizes the government's tactics and strategies in diminishing or even eliminating any kind of opposition. the other denominator can be found within the political parties. the author reveals the numerous disagreements within and between different opposition parties, which often exacerbated the already stringent conditions that were set by the ruling party. the conflict between chiam see tong and dr. chee soon juan of the singapore democratic party (sdp) is perhaps the most glaring example of inner-party rivalry, which led to the split of the party. the sdp consequently lost all its political campaigns in the 1997 general election and even its two seats in parliament. the fourth part of the book presents the challenges a viable opposition faces in singapore's restrictive political system. this part is comprised of four main arguments. the first discusses the problem of the weakness of opposition parties resulting from, among other things, an affluent and effective government. mutalib states that 'it must be clear by now that an affluent singapore is a major factor to explain the opposition's failure to undo the pap's popular mandate' (p. 252). rules and regulations of the government as well as systemic obstacles to opposition _______________________________________________________________________ 139 ___________________________________________________________________ reviews parties are another challenge. the pap has been able to effectively use the bureaucracy, mutalib correctly argues, to hinder political opposition. the final two arguments deal with the pap's tactic of changing the rules, such as changes to the law, the nominated member of parliament or the elected presidency, and with singapore's political culture, which is dominated by what he sees as a 'caution syndrome' and the 'subject' mentality, which means that people have some knowledge of the political process but prefer not to participate in politics. the author concludes with a rather dismal view of the future of oppositional politics in singapore. various scenarios, however, are suggested that could enhance the prospects of oppositional politics, such as the departure of senior political figures or economic decline. while it is true that the opposition parties must realize the changing trends in singapore, it may be too one-sided to claim that 'otherwise, they will have nobody else to blame but themselves for their on-going state of paralysis' (p. 399). in conclusion, one can only agree with the author that hegemonic rule will not be helpful for singapore in the long run. stephan ortmann phd candidate friedrich alexander university of erlangen-nuremberg 89 methodology for understanding indian culture methodology for understanding indian culture jai b. p. sinha and rajesh kumar abstract methods of understanding cultures, including indian culture, are embedded in a broad spectrum of sociocultural approaches to human behavior in general. the approaches examined in this paper reflect evolving perspectives on indian culture, ranging from the starkly ethnocentric to the largely eclectic and integrative. most of the methods herein discussed were developed in the west and were subsequently taken up with or without adaptations to fit the indian context. the paper begins by briefly reviewing the intrinsic concept of culture. it then adopts a historical view of the different ways and means by which scholars have construed the particular facets of indian culture, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each. the final section concludes with some proposal about the best ways of understanding the complexity that constitutes indian cultural reality. facets of culture there are a large number of definitions of culture (hofstede 2001). drawing on their common components, a composite view of culture may posit that the core of a culture consists in the shared assumptions, beliefs and values that the people of a geographical area acquire over generations. assumptions, beliefs and values serve to establish and reinforce the norms that people (viz. society) adopt to judge what is appropriate behaviour in a particular situation or setting. assumptions, beliefs, values and norms are intermeshed and mutually interactive; they constitute the directional force behind human behaviour, which creates physical artefacts, social institutions, cultural symbols, rituals and myths. the latter in turn reinforce people's beliefs, norms and value systems and thereby enable the society of which they are part, to maintain cultural continuity (sinha 2004). an essential feature of a culture is that its basic assumptions, beliefs and values are historically derived, traditional worldviews, transmitted from generation to generation. these temporal sociocultural links signify the distinctive achievements of a human group, thereby enabling them jai b. p. sinha and rajesh kumar 90 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 to condition their future actions (kroeber and kluckhohn 1951: 181). by implication, culture is adaptive and changing – changing more rapidly and radically at its outer layers – artefacts, institutions and patterns of behaviours – than at its core which is primordial. major changes in environment compel people to behave differently, to modify and create new artefacts, institutions, myths, rituals, symbols and so on, which then induces them to entertain new norms, beliefs, values and assumptions. the new and the old create varying degrees of disparities, only some of which are mitigated. others persist to cause diversities; parts of which remain dominant leaving others as relatively marginal (holden 2002: 27). the degree and nature of diversities vary from culture to culture – rendering them more or less complex (triandis 1995). indian culture is indeed a complex one. indian cultural traditions can be traced back at least five thousand years. immigrations, invasions, colonial rule and modernization have brought with them streams of alien influences, only parts of which were assimilated into the primordial indian worldviews; the remaining ones coexist withing the overarching indian worldviews. how these cultural traditions are investigated by various scholars depends to some extent on their own culturally rooted approaches to indian culture. the approaches 1. the culture-personality approach early attempts to understand indian culture had their origins in the culture-personality studies that began in the west in the 1940s (hsu 1961; kardiner 1945; linton 1945). the culture-personality approach combined psychoanalytic methods to interpret adult's behaviour in terms of underlying psychodynamics (which had its roots in childhood experiences) with the anthropological methods of field observations in order to identify the basic personality (mead 1953), modal personality (wallace 1952) or national character (benedict 1946; mead 1953) of the people of a culture.1 it was shown that a culture, by fostering uniform child-rearing practices, shapes the personality structure of its people and that this can be profiled by tapping their projected thoughts and feelings expressed in responses to rorschach and thematic apperception tests (tat). personality was believed to be a replica of a culture to the extent that field observations in a caste, community or tribe were considered an adequate basis upon which to identify the attributes of the modal personality in a culture (whiting and child 1953; wallace 1952). 91 methodology for understanding indian culture following the culture-personality tradition, a number of western scholars made field observations of the child-rearing practices, social behaviour, rituals, myths and so on to construct the indian personality (e.g., hitchcock and minturn 1963). indians, for example, were believed to be authoritarian (lewis 1962), narcissistic with a weak super-ego (spratt 1966), obsessive-compulsive, infantile and neurotic (berkeley-hill quoted by hartnack 1987: 242). the core of their personality consists of 'an inner sense of instability and insecurity' to the extent that 'nothing and nobody can be relied upon, not even one's own self' (carstairs 1971: 54). this insecure and unstable personality was alleged to express itself in poor emotional involvement, callousness towards others especially lesser men, mock hospitality, a supremely self-centred attitude, and utter collapse of self-control in the face of strong emotions (carstairs 1971: 46). interestingly, these samples of western construction of indian culture and personality were shared by a number of indian researchers (taylor 1948). narain (1957) examined indian history, political slavery and child-rearing practices to delineate the following national characteristics of indians: • absence of commitment, which at an individual level expresses itself in freely made but unfulfilled promises, and an absence of sustained efforts for realizing collective objectives; • absence of masculine qualities as a result of and identification with the mother; • dependence on and distrust of authority because of inconsistent rewards and punishments handed out during childhood; • inability to handle emotions that are either suppressed or burst into uncontrolled temper tantrums; and above all • contradictory behaviours that manifest themselves in a 'tremendous gap between ideals and performance. truth is extolled, but all kinds of falsehood are practised; honesty is valued, but dishonesty is rampant; kindness is virtue, but indians laugh at others' physical deformity or discomfiture; … indians are spiritual, but their greed for material things is insatiable' (narain 1957: 130). the values and behaviour which are frequently attributed to indians, according to a review by d. sinha (1988), include fatalism, passivity, dependency, paranoid reaction, narcissism, insecurity, anxiety, authoritarianism, submission, indifference to contradictions (i.e., lack of rationality) and so on. the trend of relating personality and culture has continued in india (nandy and kakar 1980) and elsewhere (d'andrade 1990; lee, mccaulay and draguns 1999). jai b. p. sinha and rajesh kumar 92 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 2. inferences from texts and scriptures running parallel to culture-personality studies is the analysis of the ancient indian texts and scriptures of a religio-spiritual nature which many indian and western scholars viewed as highly indicative of an essential indian personality and culture. it is interesting to note that their such scholars' descriptions varied; while some delineated many negative attributes; others identified idealistically positive facets of indian culture. hsu (1963), for example, posited that while the chinese are situation-centred, and americans individual-centred, indians are supernaturally centred. lannoy (1971) observed that indians follow a non-sequential logic whereby actions are judged for their own sake rather than for the effects that they produce (i.e., nishakam karm) and that they do not separate the actual and the ideal. nakamura reported that indians engage in fantasizing that is 'free, boundless, and extravagant, and often goes to extreme' (nakamura 1964: 142). a number of scholars have drawn on the ancient texts to construct a portrait of indian culture that is characterized by three major themes, each having its own polar opposite, and a synthesizing mindset that enables people to entertain seemingly incongruent and contrasting thoughts, feelings and action orientations. the three dominant themes are the following: cosmic collectivism, hierarchical order, and spiritual orientation. cosmic collectivism reflects a worldview that the universe consists of diverse forms of animate and inanimate elements that are compatible as well as conflicting. but they all are interconnected and held together by an underlining sense of unity derived from being parts of the ultimate reality, the brahman. further, the whole cosmos and everything within it is arranged in a hierarchical order of being, where each thing is ranked superior to some and inferior to others. in other words, plants, trees, rivers, insects, birds, animals and human beings are all parts of the cosmic collectivism, and are arranged hierarchically. animates are superior to the inanimate; human beings are superior to both. among human beings, hierarchical order is based on castes and within castes on age and gender. within a human being, the head is superior to the middle parts of the body, which are superior to the feet. the body itself has five layers ranging from the gross body (the lowest) to the subtle body/ soul (atman) (the highest). even food, weather, states of mind, and all conceivable phenomena have layers of hierarchy, one superior to another. contrary to the belief in hierarchical order is a school of thought that posits a strong egalitarian worldview (lokayat tradition). 93 methodology for understanding indian culture spirituality is built into the indian psyche (roland 1988: 294), although animal impulses and material strivings are very much a part of life. human beings tend to live through and then transcend them by rising on a moral scale that leads to a transformed, healthy (swastha – which means stability for a person), composed and detached mind-set that can maintain a balance between the person and the environment, between body and mind, between the states of mind and so on. striving for perfection through spiritual pursuits, however, is an individual endeavour that has to follow one's natural temperament and stations in life. in other words, it is essentially individualistic in nature (paranjpe 1988). bhawuk described the way the conflicting demands from contrasting dispositions and orientations are held together in hindu thought by quoting from one of the philosophical texts, upanisads, wise people of india could partition the world in opposites, then put them together into one whole, and then again partition them. people who have a worldview that can deal with such a system of logic and concepts are likely to choose different problems to study, define problems differently, and then use different methodology to study those problems. (bhawuk 2003: 11) the method of differentiating, integrating, differentiating and integrating again requires fine-grained logic that is cultivated through discursive dialogues by those who have acquired the capability through introspection, yogic exercises and meditation. the hindu method is thus experiential (paranjpe 1988). kumar (2004) concludes that this mode of thinking is rooted in the fundamental principles of brahmanical idealism. thus, according to the ancient indian worldview, people seek to attain the unattainable, and embed their search for the perfect solution in a highly moral approach to problem solving. indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that indian managers possess a strong moral orientation (england et al. 1974) and that indian negotiators often seek to take the high moral ground (cohen 1997) which often lacks pragmatism. 3. the reductionist-positivist approach both trends – culture-personality and drawing inferences from texts and scriptures – were critiqued on several grounds. besides being ethnocentric and sweeping in generalization, they lacked scientific rigour and defied the positivistic paradigm of research. social sciences adopted a reductionist and positivistic approach in which a complex phenomenon was reduced to its simplest forms, which were operationalized and investigated with precision, accuracy and reliability (bernard 1957: 72). jai b. p. sinha and rajesh kumar 94 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 the axiomatic assumption was that a scientific method must be objective, impersonal, quantifiable and preferably manipulable in order to derive universally valid laws (campbell 1952: 27), although the evidence did not entirely support this assumption (bhawuk 2003; churchman 1961; kuhn 1962). this reductionist-positivistic approach, when applied to social sciences, tended to cleanse culture from behaviour in order to demonstrate pan-cultural generalizability of the laws and principles of behaviour. the approach was coupled with the belief that all societies, whatever their differing levels of economic development and modernization, evolve in the same direction by adopting western values, attitudes, habits and lifestyles, and thereby converge into a single pattern characterized by the industrialized cultures of the west (kerr 1983; meyer 1970; weinberg 1969). by the same token, the cultural differences are either temporary or unimportant. 4. the human relations-oriented approach in tandem with the reductionist-positivistic approach, another method that gained ground and claimed to possess greater potential to help understand human behaviour was the human relations-oriented approach. it drew explicitly on the western worldviews that all human beings are born equal, and are internally directed, growth oriented and autonomous individuals having unique qualities that can be harnessed by allowing them both the freedom and opportunity to realize their potential. methods shared by both approaches the human relations approach, along with the reductionist-positivistic approach, relied for its methodology principally on surveys, interviews, and experimentation – or a combination of these – to construct a scientific epistemological model for western society that could be applied with equal validity to the rest of the world. surveys are the most frequently employed method in cross-cultural comparison, particularly in the context of values and managerial practices. researchers using the survey methodology take care to render the items equivalent in their meaning by back translations; they solicit items at various cultural locations in order to avoid culture-specific biases; and control response-sets by having both positively and negatively worded items. interviews, however, have the potential to yield information that is both quantitatively and qualitatively superior by including both respondent and operant questions. while respondent items are structured 95 methodology for understanding indian culture with fixed alternatives, the operant ones raise open issues and allow respondents to express themselves in the way they want and to elaborate their responses further, if necessary. this enables the researcher to understand the dynamics of the relationships between the various aspects of the culture, to relate the qualitative and quantitative data, and to develop cultural profiles which can then be compared with profiles in other cultures. experimentation suits the reductionist-positivistic approach because the culturally relevant variables are neatly arranged into independent, dependent and intervening variables, thus allowing the researcher to establish causal relationships between culture and behaviour. employing these methods in different combinations, a raft of theories and concepts have been advanced to claim universal validity. introduced into indian settings, the theories and concepts were replicated in some but not in other cases (see pareek 1980, 1981). initially, inconsistent and unexplained findings were brushed aside and attributed to lack of rigour in research, faulty translation of western instruments and/or their inappropriate administration, or sampling weakness (d. sinha 1998). however, the inconsistent findings kept piling up: a participative leader was perceived to be weak because he abdicated responsibility to take decisions; an autocratic leader was effective in some and preferred in some other situations; the distinction between motivators and hygiene factors was proved to be an artefact of methods that herzberg used; maslow's needs hierarchy did not exactly hold true, t-groups did not work in many cases, and the socio-technical approach by and large failed to make any impact in indian management practices (pareek 1980, 1981). modernity, for example (defined in terms of western values and orientations such as an openness to new experiences; an ability to learn how to exert control over one's environment; high aspirations; respect for personal dignity; rationality in decision-making; low respect for the elderly, including one's parents; political participation; and rights for women) was surveyed in six countries including india and (now) bangadesh to show how family and kinship cohesiveness and religion prevented people from embracing modernity (inkeles and smith 1975). achievement motivation was recommended for economic growth (mcclelland and winter 1969). j. b. p. sinha (1968) tested the validity of the theory in an experimental study by creating limited and unlimited resource conditions and manipulating the level of respondents' need for achievement (nachv). the findings showed that high nachv respondjai b. p. sinha and rajesh kumar 96 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 ents achieved the most in unlimited resource conditions, but created interpersonal conflicts that reduced collective gains in the limited resource conditions. the conclusion was that the theory is valid for the usa but not for a resource-limited country such as india. the roots of the inconsistent findings was partly located in the use of alien concepts (e.g., caste was equated with race, communalism with anti-semitism, and untouchables with american blacks, see nandy 1974) and was partly methodological (j. b. p. sinha 1973). the reductionist approach of the west took a narrow microscopic view that could be focused only on the fragments of indian reality and, and hence, yielded findings that were often trivial and meaningless. meanwhile, the universal validity of western theories and concepts in the indian cultural context proved doubtful. 5. the etic approach cultural dimensions by the 1970s, it was generally realized that culture plays a crucial role in determining human behaviour and that one fruitful methodological strategy might be to adopt an etic approach to identify the dimensions on which cultures vary (triandis 2000) without positing the superiority of one culture over another. the strategy required (a) to compare and contrast cultures and (b) to show the impact of cultural differences on human behaviour. the two publications, handbook of cross-cultural psychology (triandis and berry 1980) and culture's consequences (hofstede 1980) proved to be landmarks in the plethora of emerging crosscultural studies (chinese culture connection 1987; diener 1996; hall 1981; hofstede 2001; inglehart 1997; ronen and shenkar 1985; schwartz and bilsky 1987; triandis and bhawuk 1997; smith et al. 1996). the etic approach adopts an 'outside view' of individual cultures by delineating dimensions that were considered to be universally applicable. because most of the studies in this approach were designed and conducted by western scholars, the dimensions were conceptualized in the western literature. cultures in these studies were either located on polar dimensions or clustered into groups. further, the dimensions were related to various other indices (e.g., individualism was correlated with economic affluence of a country). not all studies aimed to give detail information about individual cultures. some that did showed that indian culture was fairly high on power distance, was inclined towards collectivism and masculinity, was low on uncertainty avoidance (hofstede 1980), high on context orientation (hall 1981), high in helping 97 methodology for understanding indian culture behaviour (levine et al. 2001) and high on vertical collectivism (triandis and bhawuk 1997). the etic approach suffers from a number of limitations. the approach that is started from one culture and 'imposed' on other cultures is likely to turn ethnocentric (nisbet 1971) and may be guided more by the desire to prove the universality of theories and concepts than by their relevance (d. sinha 1998). further, the etics do not always have construct and metric equivalence (hulin 1987). construct equivalence means that the concept carries the same meaning and its measurement holds the same relationship in all the sampled cultures. metric equivalence implies that the individuals having the same score on a dimension, irrespective of the level of their cultures on that dimension, have the same probability of endorsing that dimensions. there was plenty of evidence that neither of the two criteria was always met. achievement goals in india, for example, include social concerns such as being a good person, considering the well-being of others, fulfilling one's duties, helping others, and being able to gain affection from elders. they can be realized by such means such as respecting others, helping others, obtaining elders' blessings, observing social codes of conduct and so on (agarwal and misra 1989; misra and agarwal 1985). participation of subordinates amounts to being consulted by the superior. there was also evidence that cultural dimensions neither matched with organizational dimensions, nor predicted organizational practices, nor the behaviour of people in a culture. indian culture, for example, was rated as collectivist, but indians were found to be both collectivist and individualist and that they combined collectivist and individualist behaviour and intentions in different ways to suit a situation (sinha et al. 2001; sinha et al. 2002). ecological dimensions another limitation of the etic approach is that it derives cultural dimensions by aggregating the self-ratings of individuals belonging to culture. thus, the approach suffers from the circular logic of deriving dimensions from the responses that they are used to explain. in order to overcome this limitation, georgas, vijver, van de and berry (2004) collected cultural-level information for cross-cultural comparisons of the impact of culture on behaviour. the information pertained to levels of precipitation and temperature, economic affluence (per capita gross national product, daily calorie per capita supply as percentage of requirements, per capita consumption of energy, percentage of populajai b. p. sinha and rajesh kumar 98 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 tion employed in agriculture, industry, and services), education (adult literacy and pupil/teacher ratio), mass media (telephone, radio, tv, and daily newspaper circulation per 1,000 inhabitants), demography (infant mortality, life expectancy at birth, death and birth rates and rate of population increase) and religion. viewed from this perspective, india is a continent of over 1 billion people having 16 recognized and over 1,600 other languages and dialects, thousands of castes and tribes, all the major religions (although hinduism dominates) and ethnic groups of the world, varied geography and climatic conditions, extreme and pervasive poverty, a low human development index, the largest democracy that elevates members of the religious minority to the highest political positions, and so on. according to the world bank, it is the fourth biggest economy, after the usa, china and japan on its ppp index (purchasing power parity index), with a higher gross national income than that of germany, canada and russia.2 etics that stimulate emics despite limitations, the etic approach has been able to stimulate studies that generate more culture-specific, emic, concepts and methods. triandis (1995) distinguished between contents and process in crosscultural research; the contents being generally more culture-specific than process, the latter being often transcultural and hence etic in nature. for example, reward enhances motivation universally, but determining what constitute the most appropriate and adequate rewards depends on cultural preferences (mendonca and kanungo 1990). encouraging participation on equal terms could be rewarding in an egalitarian culture, whereas nurturing in terms of taking personal care of subordinates and guiding, directing and even reprimanding them may be viewed as motivational in the indian cultural context. pandey (1981) found that indian employees ingratiate themselves with their superiors by employing the techniques of self-degradation, instrumental dependency, name-dropping and aligning their views with changing persons and situations, which can often backfire if deployed as a technique in the west. the deservingness of employees for a promotion in india is judged on the combined bases of merit and seniority (virmani and guptan 1991). kakar (1982) profiled indian conceptualization of mental health and healing practices by observing the traditional healers and conducting interviews with them. he then placed the profiles in the psychoanalytic framework in order to highlight certain universality in the domains of mental health and healing. thus, the purely emic approach verged on yielding etic insights. 99 methodology for understanding indian culture although the capability to realize a composed, stress-free and detached approach to life is experiential and involves yogic exercises and meditation (bhawuk 2003; chakraborty, 1987; paranjpe 1988 among others), the impact of yoga and meditation has been shown by employing experimental as well as survey methods. one review (orme-johnson et al. 1997), for example, of over 500 experimental studies conducted in over 200 universities in 33 countries revealed that transcendental meditation helps to expand consciousness, decrease oxygen intake and stress levels, increase basal skin resistance and coherence in eeg, and can even virtually suspend breathing up to one minute. all these are crucial for the health and well-being of people. similarly, there is empirical evidence that people having strong orientation to nishkam karm (working sincerely without getting preoccupied about outcome) experience less work-related stress (pande and naidu 1992) and the traditional construct of three gunas (temperamental qualities) was confirmed in a factor analytic study that showed that while sattva (purity in thoughts and action) and positive rajas (composed of love for fame, passion, and power) had a facilitating effect, tamas (inertia or darkness) and negative rajas (consisting of strife and stress) had a debilitating impact on the work ethic, and on managers' personal effectiveness and organizational effectiveness (kaur and sinha 1992). the complexity of the indian culture the multifarious pieces of indian culture collected through a variety of approaches adopting a whole range of methods reveal the culture to be a highly complex one in which the indigenous perspective still holds a primary position encompassing (dumont 1970) and enfolding (schulberg 1968) other cultural traditions. the encompassing and enfolding process first involves distinguishing the people, ideas and things that do not fit into the known cognitive categories and, therefore, creating new categories in order to allow them to retain their distinctive attributes. however, the new categories are placed in the hierarchical order, their locations depending on the functional proximity to the indigenous categories. in other words, deviations of any kind, instead of being totally assimilated or rejected, were allowed to retain their distinctiveness, and were treated somewhat differently, but were still considered to be part of the indian cultural totality. thus, indians are collectivists, but they also have a well-protected secret self that contains highly individualistic thoughts, feelings and fantasies (roland 1988) as well as a striving to serve self-interests and 100 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 achieve individual distinctions. expressed differently, the indians possess both an 'independent' as well as an 'interdependent self' (markus and kitayama 1991). the 'independent self' is associated with a desire to pursue individualistic goals whereas the 'interdependent self' is always concerned with fulfilling the expectations of others. the 'other' is highly evident in the consciousness of the 'interdependent self' and this leads to a preoccupation with fulfilling the obligations of significant others (higgins 1987). they have strong hierarchical orientation, and yet have reverence for persons with high integrity, altruism and superior human qualities (roland 1988). which of the contradictory or incongruent thoughts and actions are invoked depends on the particular context. indians place a premium on context sensitivity and the balancing disposition. contrary to westerners, they have radar-like sensitivity to the specificities of a situation and the long-range implications of their response to it (roland 1988; j. b. p. sinha and kanungo 1997). they balance their responses by avoiding extremes in action and thought or by incorporating even seemingly opposite ideas in a complex way. contexts are specified in terms of place (desh), time (kaal) and person (paatra). public places such as a job evoke different norms and values to private settings such as a family. a crisis-like situation allows people to deviate from the code of conduct or to put in extra-ordinary performance. personally related friends, family members and relatives are trusted and favoured while strangers (out-group members) are distanced, mistrusted and discriminated against. conclusions and implications for future research a comprehensive understanding of indian culture requires a holistic and multi-method approach, integrating both etics and emics. the relative primacy of the etic and emic approaches will depend on the researcher and the aim of the research. those who are outside india are most likely to adopt an etic approach whereby they compare and contrast indian culture according to the dimensions, concepts and theories that interest them by employing whatever methods they consider to be most appropriate. however, they need to incorporate emic details in order to flesh out the methodologies that they consider to be universally relevant. construct and metric equivalence have to be ensured to a reasonable degree. those who want to start with an emic approach by identifying indigenous concepts, theories and methods will tend to develop holistic profiles that should make sense even to outsiders. this requires qualitative comparison of profiles across cultures. both will employ the whole jai b. p. sinha and rajesh kumar 101 range of methods that are universally available in the behavioural sciences, the relative salience of which, however, would vary depending on the two approaches. methods available in the current western literature need to be radically adapted to be able to capture the indian cultural complexity. for example, a serious limitation of a survey is the context-free nature of the items. for context-sensitive indians, a better approach may be to adopt complex scenarios with a hypothetical person making a choice between alternatives. respondents give much more reliable information when they adopt the role of informants predicting the response of the hypothetical person or groups in such scenarios, rather than when they selfrate on context-free items. in certain instances, group interviews yield better results because the participants feel free to express their feelings and thoughts, stimulate each other to come up with more information, and express the collectively held view of the social reality. the primary data need to be combined with the secondary source information in order to yield a more integrated picture of the reality. dr jai b.p. sinha is professor of psychology and management at the assert institute of management studies, patna, india, and dr rajesh kumar is associate professor of international business at the aarhus school of business, denmark. notes 1 while basic personality or national character consisted of characteristics that were attributed to all members of a culture, modal personality was defined as the configuration of the most frequently appearing characteristics in the people of a culture. 2 world development indicators data base, 2003, world bank, washington, dc. references agarwal, r. and g. misra 1989. 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'culture theory and meaning of relatedness'. in p. c. earley and m. erez (eds), new perspectives on international industrial/organizational psychology. san francisco: new lexington press: 13-54. virmani, b. r. and s. v. guptan 1991. indian management. new delhi: vision. wallace, a. f. c. 1952. the modal personality structure of the tuscarora indians, as revealed by the rorschach test. washington: bulletin 150, bureau of american ethnology. weinberg, i. 1969. 'the problems of convergence of industrialized societies: a critical look at the state of a theory'. comparative studies in society and history 11: 1-15. whiting, j. w. m. and i. child 1953. child rearing and personality. new haven, ct: yale university press. world bank 2003. world development indicator database. washington, dc. jai b. p. sinha and rajesh kumar everyday forms of resistance everyday forms of resistance james c . scott a pestilent pernicious people . . . such as take the oaths to the government, but underhand . . . labor its subversion. bishop trelawny, 1717 the hidden realm of political conflict descriptions and analyses of open political action dominate accounts of political conflict. this is the case whether those accounts are presented by historians, political scientists, journalists, statesmen, or leaders of popular movements. some of the most telling analyses of conflict are in fact designed precisely to explain under what circumstances groups in conflict resort to one or another kind of open political action. thus, why some groups under certain conditions are likely to employ violent forms of polit ical action -e.g. riots, rebellion, revolutionary movements rather than less violent forms e.g. petitions, rallies, peaceful marches, protest voting, strikes, boycotts -has occupied center stage. as aresult of careful historical comparisons social scientists have begun to grasp how certain social struc tures, state systems, cultural values, and historical practices help shape political action. the undeniable advances made along these lines, however, are fataliy compromised by a damagingly narrow and poverty-stricken view of politi cal action. there is a vast realm of political action, described below, that is almost habitually overlooked. it is ignored for at least two reasons. first, it is not openly declared in the usually understood sense of "politics." se cond, neither is it group action in the usually understood sense of collec tive action. the argument to be developed here is that much of the politics of subordinate groups falls into the category of "everyday forms of resistance," that these activities should most definitely be considered po litical, that they do constitute a form of collective action, and that any ac count which ignores them is often ignoring the most vital means by which lower classes manifest their political interests. the balance of this essay is devoted to sustaining and elaborating this claim. james c. scott the brechtian or schweikian forms of resistance i have in mind are an in tegral part of the small arsenal of relatively powerless groups. they in clude such acts as foot-dragging, dissimulations, false compliance, feigned ignorance, desertion, pilfering, smuggling, poaching, arson, slander, sabotage, surreptitious assault and murder, anonymous threats, and so on. these techniques, for the most part quite prosaic, are the ordi nary means of class struggle. they are the techniques of "first resort" in those common historical circumstances in which open defiance is impos sible or entails mortal danger. when they are widely practiced by members of an entire class against elites or the state, they may have aggregate conse quences all out of proportion to their banality when considered singly. no adequate account of class relations is possible without assessing their im portance. that they have been absent or marginal to most accounts of class relations is all too understandable. the purpose, after all, of many such techniques is to avoid notice and detection. resistance of this kind is ironi cally abetted by both elites and social scientists whose attention is largely concentrated on those forms of resistance which pose a declared threat to powerholders: social movements, dissident sects, revolutionary groups, and other forms of publicly organized political opposition. such groups, of course, are also far more likely to leave the written records manifestos, minutes, membership lists, jounalists' descriptions, and police reports that help ensure them a firm place in the historical record. here it may be useful to distinguish eve y d a y forms of class resistance from the more typical forms of political conflict which dominate the historiography of the peasantry and other subordinate groups. the easiest way to highlight the distinction is to contrast paired forms of resistance. the first in each pair is "everyday" resistance in my definition of the term while the second is a more direct, open confrontation having the same ob jective. thus in one sphere lies the quiet, piecemeal process by which peasant squatters or poachers have often encroached on plantation and state forest lands; in the other a public invasion of property that openly challenges property relations. each action aims at a redistribution of con trol over property; the former aims at tacit, de facto gains while the latter aims at formal, de jure-recognition of those gains. in one sphere lies a process of cascading military desertion; in the other an open mutiny aim ing at eliminating or replacing officers. in one sphere lies the pilfering of public and private grain stores; in the other an open attack on markets or granaries aiming at the redistribution of the food supply. the contrasts copenhagen papers 4 . 8 9 34 everyday forms of resistance illustrate that those who employ everyday forms of resistance avoid calling attention to themselves. such techniques are relatively safe, they often promise vital material gains, and they require little or no formal coordina tion let alone formal organization although they typically rely on a vener able popular culture of resistance to accomplish their ends. in each of these paired comparisons, the presumed objective is similar. both squatters and land invaders hope to acquire the use of property; both deserters and mutineers may wish to end a costly battle or war. the rela tive safety and it is only a relative safety of everyday forms of resistance has much to do with the small scale of the action. squatters virtually seep onto the land in small groups, often at night to avoid calling attention to themselves; deserters are likely to slip away unnoticed when the opportu nity arises. each of these small events may be beneath notice and, from the perpetrator's point of view, they are often designed to be beneath notice. collectively, however, these small events may a d d u p almost surrepti tiously to alarge event: an army too short of conscripts to fight, a workforce whose footdragging bankrupts the enterprise, a landholding gentry driven from the countryside to the towns by arson and assault, tracts of state land fully occupied by squatters, a tax claim of the state gradually transformed into a dead letter by evasion. it is not far-fetched to suggest that the difference between everyday forms of resistance and more open forms of political conflict may often boil down to tactical wisdom. peasants who consider themselves entitled to land claimed by the state may choose to squat rather than to invade openly in force because they know that an invasion will probably be met with armed force and bloodshed. when, on the other hand, the political cli mate makes a more open occupation of land comparatively safe, some thing closer to a land invasion becomes plausible. certainly, peasants and subordinate groups generally may find largescale collective action inher ently difficult owing to their geographical dispersion, ethnic a n d linguis tic differences, a lack of organizational skills and experience, and so forth. it is no less likely, however, that their preferences in techniques of resistance may arise from the knowledge of surveillance, a realistic fear of coercion, and a past experience that encourages caution. if, as is some times the case, the same results may be achieved by everyday resistance, albeit more slowly, at a vastly reduced risk, then it is surely the more ra tional course. the invariably fatal results of slave uprisings in the ante-bel lum u.s. south suggest that the long-term slave preference for flight, pil james c. scott fering, foot-dragging and false compliance was largely a matter of tactical wisdom. a skeptic might grant the argument made thus far and nevertheless claim that everyday forms of resistance do not belong in an account of class struggle because they are individual, not class strategies, and because they benefit individuals not classes. the first claim is largely untenable. it can be shown that most forms of everyday resistance cannot be sustained without a fairly high level of tacit cooperation among the class of resisters. this will become more apparent in examples described later. the second claim is true, but the personal benefit arising from everyday forms of resistance providing it does not come at the expense of other members of the class1 can hardly disqualify them from consideration as a form of class conflict. most forms of everyday resistance are, after all, deployed precisely to thwart some appropriation by superior classes and/or the state. if the resistance succeeds at all, it of course confers a material benefit on the resister. the disposition of scarce resources is surely what is at stake in any conflict between classes. when it is a question of a few poachers, ar sonists, or deserters, their actions are of little moment for class conflict. when, however, such activities become sufficiently generalized to become a pattern of resistance, their relevance to class conflict is clear. consider the following definition that focuses on the process of ap propriation: lower class resistance among peasants is any act(s) by member(s) of the class that is (are) intended either to mitigate or to deny claims ( e g rents, taxes, deference) made on that class by superor dinate classes (e.g. landlords, the state, owners of machinery, moneylenders) or to advance its own claims (e.g. to work, land, charity, respect) vis-8-vis these superordinate classes. three aspects of the definition merit brief comment. first, there is no re quirement that resistance takes the form of collective action. and yet some level of cooperation is generally evident in everyday forms of resistance since even the slave who pilfers or shirks depends on the complicitous si lence of other slaves to escape detection. the same is, of course, true for the poacher who believes he and others like him have a right to the fish, game, and fuel of the nearby forest. each depends for his success on a minimal level of group cohesion. second and this is a nettlesome issue inten copenhagen papers 4.89 36 everyday forms of resistance tions are built into the definition. this formulation allows for the fact that many intended acts of resistance may backfire and produce consequences that were entirely unanticipated. finally, the definition recognizes what we might call symbolic or ideological resistance (for example, gossip, slander, the rejection of demeaning labels, the withdrawal of deference) as an integral part of class-based resistance. from a broader perspective this definition recognizes, as i believe any convincing definition must, the role that self-interested material needs must play in any realistic definition of peasant resistance. to do so affirms the fact that class conflict is, first and foremost, a struggle over the appropriation of work, property, production, and taxes. consumption, from this perspective, is both the goal and the outcome of resistance and counter-resistance.' petty thefts of grain or pil fering on the treshing floor may seem like trivial "coping" mechanisms from one vantage point; but from a broader view of class relations, how the harvest is actually divided belongs at the center. varieties of practice, unity of purpose the various practices that might plausibly be claimed to represent every day forms of resistance are legion. to an outside observer it might appear quixotic to assemble them under the same heading. their variety is noth ing more than a mirror image of the variety of forms of appropriation; for every form of appropriation there is likely to be one or many forms of everyday resistance devised to thwart that appropriation. what gives these techniques a certain unity is that they are invariably quiet, disguised, anonymous, often undeclared forms of resisting claims imposed by clai mants who have superior access to force and to public power. a brief anal ysis of four forms of everyday resistance will help illustrate this unity as well as delineate more sharply the circumstances that favor such resistance, the results it may achieve, the disguises it wears, the complicity it requires, and its limits. the examples are selected both for their representative diversity and for the complementary analytical light they shed on the phenomenon of everyday resistance. poaching for roughly two centuries from 1650 to 1850, thc most popular crime in en gland was almost certainly poaching. although poaching is usually un derstood to refer to the "theft" of someone else's property in wild game, james c. scott fish, and perhaps firewood, it comprises a vastly greater range of practices. cottagers, laborers, and yeomen might encroach on gentry or crown property to take turf, peat, heath, rushes for thatching and lighting, brush wood, clay, stone, chalk, coal, to graze their own livestock, pick medicinal herbs, or to till land. both the objects and volume of poaching varied over time in keeping with the proximity of "poachable" resources, how hard pressed the rural population was, the need for certain commodities, the risks of being apprehended, the likely punishment if apprehended, and the traditions animating the local c ~ m m u n i t y . ~ the issue came to be of such concern to large landowners and the crown that in the 18th century, draconian laws were passed specifying capital punishment for poachers. more precisely, it became a capital offense merely to be caught in disguise (hence the name, the "black" act) in the woods, the assumption being that anyone so attired was a poacher. for our purposes, the most important fact about poaching is that the ac tivity itself was part of the traditional subsistence routine of the rural population, an activity embedded in customary rights. poaching as a crime, therefore, entails less a change of behavior than a shift in the law of property relations. it is the state and its law which suddenly transforms these subsistence routines into everyday forms of resistance. the process has, of course, been repeated for most colonial societies in which the state redefined the forest as government property and then imposed a whole series of regulations and officials to enforce them. it was unlikely that the surrounding population would accept the logic by which unimproved, natural environments and their resources might suddenly be declared state property and willingly relinquish their traditional practices. michel foucault has, in the context of post-revolutionary french history called at tention to such state-created "crime." it was against the new regime of landed property set up by a bourgeoisie that profited from the revolution -that a whole peasant illegality developed . . . ; it was against the new system of the legal exploitation of labour that workers' illegalities developed; from the most violent such as machine breaking . . . to the most everyday such as absenteeism, abandoning work, vagabondage, pilfering raw materials . . . copenhagen papers 4.89 38 everyday forms of resistance in a comprehensive history of everyday forms of resistance, the section on poaching would n o doubt be substantial. the nature of the forest (in other cases wastelands, commons, etc.) as a resource subject to competing claims is part of the explanation. compare, for example, the relative ease of spiriting away firewood from a vast forest to the pilfering of grain from a well-guarded central granary. any resource or good so geographically dispersed poses nearly insurmountable problems of enforcement. forest guards, gamekeepers, are unlikely to make much of a dent on poaching when the possible sites of poaching and the potential poachers are legion. this means, in turn, that when a forest guard or gamekeeper does encoun ter a poacher, he is likely to be outnumbered. as e.p. thompson describes it, the threats, beatings, torchings of cottages, and occasional murders of gamekeepers frequently intimidated them into inactivity. the problems of enforcement, however, are not entirely attributable to geography and demography; they are due at least as much to tacit complic ity, and, occasionally active cooperation among the population from which the poachers come. consider the difficulties that poachers would face if local residents were actively hostile to them and willing to give evi dence in court. poaching as a systematic pattern of reappropriation is sim ply unimaginable without a normative consensus that encourages it or, at a minimum, tolerates it. otherwise it would be a simple matter to appre hend offenders. the forms such coordination and cooperation might take are extremely difficult to bring to light. as thompson notes, there might, indeed, have been something in the nature of a direct tradition, stretching across centuries, of secret poaching fraternities or associations in forest areas.5 what is significant is that such coordination can typically be achieved through informal, rural social networks and that, when an "association" is formed its adherents have every reason and often the means to conceal its existence from the authorities and the historians. peasant tax resistance if everyday resistance via poaching is the attempt to assert traditional ciaims to resources in the face of new property relations, tax resistance is a more defensive effort to defeat or minimize a direct appropriation. the successful resistance of the malaysian peasantry to the state-collected is james c. scott lamic tithe (zakat) can provide a closer look at the importance of normative complicity, deception, the nature of the state, and the importance of long run analysis.' the islamic tithe itself, like its christian and judaic predecessors, is a tax of one tenth of the gross harvest, collected in kind, intended to promote is lamic charity and education. until 1960 tithe contributions were entirely local and voluntary; since then the provincial authorities have centralized its administration and mandated the registration of acreage and yields in order to enforce its collection. opposition to the new tithe was so unani mous and vehement in the villages where i conducted research that it was a comparatively simple matter to learn about the techniques of evasion. they take essentially four forms. some cultivators, particularly small holders and tenants, simply refuse to register their cultivated acreage with the tithe agent. others underreport their acreage andlor crop and may take the bolder step of delivering less rice than even their false declarations would require. finally, the grain handed over is of the very poorest quality -it may be spoiled by moisture, have sprouted, be mixed with straw and stones so that the recoverable milled grain is far less than its nominal weight would suggest. the unannounced achievements of this resistance have been impres sive. a local, but probably representative sample, revealed that the grain actually delivered to the state averaged less than one-fifth of the ten per cent mandated by the law. most notable, however, is the public silence maintained by the protaganists in this struggle. there have been no tithe riots, no tithe demonstrations, no petitions, no violent confrontations, no protests of any kind. why protest, indeed, when quieter stratagems have achieved the same results at minimal risk? unless one compared actual yields with tithe receipts, the resistance itself would remain publicly invisi ble, for it is the safer course for resisters to leave the tithe system standing in name while they dismantle it in practice. this activity may not qualify as a form of collective action or a social movement but it has nevertheless achieved comparable results without affording the state an easily discer nable target. there is no organization to be banned, no conspiratorial leaders to round up or buy off, no rioters to haul before the courts only the generalized non-compliance by thousands of peasants. the tacit coordination that abets this resistance depends on a palpable "climate of opinion," a shared knowledge of the available techniques of evasion, and economic interest. a purely economic interest account of such copenhagen papers 4 . 8 9 40 everyday forms of resistance resistance, however, is inadequate. for one thing, the peasantry has a host of principled reasons for evading the tithe. there are gross inequities in its assessment (cultivators of crops other than rice, non-cultivating landlords, businessmen, officials, and wealthy chinese all escape the tithe), its col lection (irregularities in weighing and crediting), a n d above all, in its distri bution (not a single sack of grain has ever come back to the village for poor relief). a skeptic might regard such arguments as rationalizations design ed to put a principled facade on crass calculations of advantage. if this were the case it would be hard to explain why most villagers still voluntarily give "private" tithe gifts to poor relatives, neighbors, religious teachers, and harvest laborers. in other words, there is convincing evidence that it is not so much parting with the grain alone that is resented so much as the unjust manner in which it is appropriated. the same consensus about fairness that sustains resistance to the official tithe simultaneously impels most peasants to make tithe gifts within the village and extended family. the success of tithe resistance, or any resistance for that matter, is contin gent on relationships of power. in this context, there is little doubt that the authorities could extract more of the tithe if they were determined to prosecute thousands of cases, raise the penalties for non-compliance, and appoint more enforcement personnel. it might not be cost-effective as a revenue measure, but it could be done. it is, however, not done because the ruling party faces electoral competition for the muslimvote and the po litical costs of alienating many of their rural electoral allies would, it judges, be prohibitive. two aspects of the dilemma faced by the govern ment are worth emphasizing. first, the effective resistance of the official tithe was initially made possible by the peasantry's tacit use of its political weight, in the knowledge that the government would hesitate before proceeding against them. it is for similar reasons that peasants avoid taxes and default on agricultural loans under regimes which depend on their ac tive support in one fashion or another. the second, and ironic, aspect of the resistance is that once it has become a customary practice it generates its own expectations about what is permissible. once this happens it raises the political and administrative costs for any regime that subsequently de cides it will enforce the rules in earnest. for everyday resisters there is safety in numbers and successfui resistance builds its own momentum. resistance of the kind described here may be pursued for centuries over a terrain of power that favors now the authorities and now the peasantry. thus, for example, peasant resistance in france to the catholic tithe, j a m e s c . scott abolished only after the revolution, provides an account of varying tech niques of resistance over more than three ~ e n t u r i e s . ~ those who have exa mined this record have been struck by the techniques, persistence, and long-run success of resistance. although there were indeed occasionally tithe strikes, riots, and petitions, it is clear that the less visible forms of eva sion were of greatest significance in reducing the actual tithe collection to manageable proportions. leroy ladurie and gay, surveying the evi dence, advise historians to "study the ingenuity of peasants faced with disaster and explain why for centuries the tithe remained at a level which was just t~lerable."~ marc bloch has taken the case for the significance of everyday forms of resistance and expanded it to the history of agrarian class relations gener ally. bloch would direct our attention away from the rebellions which hold pride of place in the archival record and toward the non-spectacular forms of class struggle. as he wrote: almost invariably doomed to defeat and eventual massacre, the great insurrections were altogether too disorganized to achieve any lasting result. the patient, silent struggles stubbornly carried out by rural communities over the years would accomplish more than these flashes in the pan.9 desertion accounts of poaching and tithe evasion inevitably suggest that everyday forms of resistance are a matter of nibbling, of minute advantages and op portunities which can have little effect on overall relationships of power. acts which, taken individually may appear trivial, however, may not have trivial consequences when considered cumulatively, from a state-centric, historical view, many regime crises may be precipitated by the cumulative impact of everyday forms of resistance that reach critical thresholds. this is perhaps most strikingly evident in the case of desertion from armies. as armstead robinson has carefully documented, everyday forms of resistance played a key role in the collapse of the confederacy during the u.s. civil war.'' incensed by laws which exempted many sons of plania tion owners from conscription, impelled to save their families from the subsistence crisis of 1862, and, in any case, having little stake in defending slavery, the poor, hill country white yeomanry deserted the confederate army in great numbers. robinson estimates that as many as 250.000 c o p e n h a g e n papers 4 . 8 9 42 everyday forms of resistance deserted or avoided col~scription altogether a figure that is five times higher than the number of whites from the confederate states who actu ally served in the union armies. their refusal to participate in what they termed "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight" was decisive in lee's defeat at antietam and in eastern tennessee. as a southern clergyman noted, "our army has melted like a snow wreath, and chiefly by deser tion."ll defections from the ranks were compounded by massive shirk ing, insubordination, and flight among the slave population which deprived the confederacy of the food supplies and revenues it needed to prosecute the war successfully. neither the defections nor the shirking and flight could have been sustained unless there had been a consensus that sustained it and prevented the authorities from bringing it to a halt. these "mutinous" activities were not part of a rebellion; they were not or ganized or coordinated by anyone -and yet their aggregate impact was deadly, if not more so, than any large open movement of sedition might have been. comparable cases abound. how is it possible, for example, to explain the collapse of the czarist army and the subsequent victory of the bolshe viks without giving due weight to the massive desertions from the front in the summer of 1917 and the accompanying unorganized land seizures in the countryside? few, if any, of the rank-and-file participants intended a revolution, but that is precisely what they helped precipitate.'' r.c. cobb's account of draft resistance and desertion in both post-revolutionary france and under the early empire are, in the same vein, compelling evi dence for the role of everyday resistance in bringing down regimes.13 quite apart from military desertion, the social historian could profitably examine the role of petty tax resistance in producing, over time, the "fiscal crisis of the state" which frequently presages radical political change. here too, without intending it, the small self-serving acts of thousands of petty producers may deprive a regime of the wherewithal to maintain its ruling coalition and prevail against its enemies. short of revolution, there is little doubt that massive peasant non-compliance has often been responsible for major shifts in agrarian policy in the third world. agrarian resistance to state socialism. the property relations prevailing in a society closely determine the politi cal shape the struggle over appropriation will take. in a liberal regime of private property in land, the struggle will typically pit the direct produ james c. scott cers, whether smallholders, laborers, or tenants, against the owners of the other factors of production (landowners, moneylenders, banks, etc.). con flict with the state, when it occurs, is likely to focus on its fiscal and mone tary policy or, at more radical moments, on the distribution of property in land. under state socialism, by contrast, all the vital decisions about com modity prices, the prices of agricultural inputs, credit, cropping patterns, and under collectivization the working day and the wage, are direct matters of state policy. conflicts that might have been seen as private-sec tor matters, with the state not directly implicated, become, under state so cialism, direct clashes with the state. the peasant meets the state as em ployer, buyer, supplier, moneylender, foreman, paymaster, and tax col lector. given the state-centric orientation of political studies, it is hardly sur prising that everyday forms of resistance should seem so rife under such regimes. part of this is simply an optical illusion created by the state having assumed the role of direct owner of the means of production and direct ap propriator. part is not illusion at all. though it may occasionally improve his welfare, the aim of state socialism is invariably to reduce the autonomy of a stratum previously classifiable as petite bourgeoisie. the loss of auto nomy by itself has been a source of ferocious resistance. state farms and collectives often break the direct link between production and consump tion typical of petty bourgeois producers and this in turn creates a new ter rain of resistance. for the small peasant, a reduction of labor in production is likely to be reflected on the dinner table whereas, for the laborer of the state farm, a withdrawal of labor effort is not neccesarily reflected directly in consumption. finally, a major reason why everyday forms of resistance are so common in state-socialist forms of agriculture is because such sys tems allow little else in the way of opposition. controlling directly the means of coercion, the state typically forecloses open protest, except in ut ter desperation, and the formal bodies that purport to represent the in terests of agriculturists are, as often as not, transmission belts for instruc tions from the authorities.14 over the long run, and frequently at tragic costs to themselves, everyday forms of resistance can provoke a fiscal crisis that leads to a change in policy. the massive economic reforms implemented beginning in 1978 and associated with the rise to power of deng xiaoping are a case in point. from one perspective, the dismantling of the collectives, the inauguration of the "family responsibility system: the encouragement of petty trade copenhagen papers 4 . 8 9 44 everyday forms of resistance and markets, may be viewed as a rational centrally-made decision to en courage growth by far-reaching reforms. while such a view is not precisely wrong, it entirely misses the fact that everyday forms of peasant resistance over nearly two decades were instrumental in forcing this massive policy change.'' following the policy-induced famine of the great leap forward which claimed between 10 and 20 million lives by current estimates, it ap pears that the desperate peasantry, assisted often by local cadres, redou bled its resistance against fearful odds. a host of strategies emerged which included the underreporting of land, misreporting of cropping patterns and yields, making exaggerated claims about thefts and spoilage of grain, illegal procurements, hoarding of grain for local welfare funds and so on. in addition, since one's working day belonged to the collective and since this work was heavily taxed (through pricing and delivery regulations), the re-appropriation of time from the collective for private economic activi ties became a significant means of resistance and survival. the goal of most of these stratagems was to minimize the grain which the local brigade or commune would have to hand over to higher authorities. underreport ing and other techniques were frequently encouraged by local team leaders and cadres who had learned the bitter lessons of compliance with planned targets. if he [the team leader] reported too honestly on our income to the brigade, then the orders that would come down each year would be for us to turn over more to the brigade. and that would mean less income for the team members. so the team leader would just tell them what he had to; he wouldn't let them know the real si tuation.16 the aim of china's peasantry in denying grain to the authorities was subsistence and survival. when all these petty acts were aggregated, however, their consequence was, by 1978, a procurement stalemate be tween the state and rural producers. population growth and sluggish yields owing to low procurement prices meant that per capita consump tion was steady or declining. unless production was reorganized, the state could only invest more in industry and administration by risking serious disorders. local and occasionaily provincial authorities were tacitly en couraging the resistance both to revive local production and to protect local consumption needs. many of the "reforms" instituted in 1978 were nothing more than the ex james c. scott post facto legalization of practices that peasants and local cadres had been quietly pursuing. although their objectives were seldom more than "working the system to their minimum disadvantage" their persistence contributed greatly to an abrupt reversal of economic policy, the historical significance of which is still being played out.17 such tacit conspiracies of a good part of the countryside against the en croaching socialist state are by no means confined to china. thus when hungarian peasants defended their interests in the late 1940s and early 1950s against subsistence-threatening crop deliveries to the state, they avoided any direct confrontations.18 although they farmed their own smallholdings (or in cooperatives that were formally independent) the system of forced deliveries imposed a de facto serfdom upon them, deter mining what they might plant, how much they had to deliver, and the price they would receive. one stratagem that might lessen their burden was the underreporting of cultivated acreage. whenever land came under a new jurisdiction (e.g. inheritance, transfer to cooperatives, confiscation from "kulaks") a fraction of the land mysteriously disappeared; by 1954 it was estimated that 1.3 million acres of arable equivalent to the cultivated surface of one of the nation's largest counties had evaporated in this fashion.19 it was impossible to recover. black markets for production con cealed from the state grew apace. birth certificates were forged so that more of the local population was above age 65 and thus eligible for quota reductions. local authorities abetted these evasions since any reduction in the local quota made it that much easier for them to fulfill the plan targets. livestock was, administratively speaking, spirited away as well. the kulaks transferred their animals to the small peasants, small peasants to their relative in the cities. they had special techniques for hiding sheep in the well, for slaughtering pigs at night by the light of a floating wick, for milking the cows secretly, for keeping chickens and even pigs under the bed.20 the net result of these defensive strategies from below was declining procurements. by 1954, the least successful procurement year/ there ap peared no way to extract more from an increasingly bold and recalcitrant peasantry. as rev notes, it may not quite be correct to say that the peasan try overthrew the government in 1956 but it is reasonable to claim that the liberalization after 1954 came about primarily as a result of peasant resi copenhagen papers 4 . 8 9 46 everyday forms of resistance stance. the subsequent economic and social reforms enacted in hungary and, for that matter in central europe generally, he claims, are little more than the legalization of the practices of resistance given a new policy guise by professional reformers." the parallels with china are striking. this achievement, once again, was not won by open political opposition but rather through the aggregated acts of millions of agriculturalists. although there was no secret conspiracy among them, they knew they were not alone. like other central european peasantries, they shared a tradition of centuries of resistance and they knew that a generalized resistance reduces the risk to which every single resister is exposed. even so, the cost was not negligible; by 1953 the proportion of peasants who had been imprisoned and sent to internment camps exceeded 20 percent of the total village p o p ~ l a t i o n . ~ ' there is no assurance, however, that everyday forms of resistance and the procurement crises they can provoke will lead to concessions by the state. nowhere is this so apparent as in the history of the soviet union. in 1921, the peasantry had fought the leninist state to a bitter and costly standstill which was followed by the liberalization of the nep period. by 1929-30 cultivators had, by hiding, privately selling (e.g. grain requisi tioned for delivery) or destroying their produce and livestock, brought the stalinist state to a similar procurement impasse. they themselves were on the brink of starvation. this time the response was stalin's decision to fully collectivize. the deport~itions, executions, and famine which followed cost, at a conservative estimate, ten million lives.23 when the prize-win ning author sholokhov wrote reporting impending famine and complain ing about the brutalities of collectivization, stalin replied caustically about the forms of "quiet" resistance practiced by the peasantry. n d the other side is that the esteemed grain growers of your dis trict (and not only of your district alone) carried on an "italian strike" (sabotage!) and were not loath to leave the workers and the red army without bread. that the sabotage was quiet and out wardly harmless (without bloodshed) does not change the fact that the esteemed grain growers waged what was virtually a "quiet" war against soviet power. a war of starvation, dear com rade s h o l ~ k o v . ' ~ by using the full might of the soviet state, by sending urban party cadres to supervise collectivization (many being replaced when they champi j a m e s c . scott oned peasant interests), executing or deporting to labor camps those who resisted collectivization, and seizing grain regardless of the consequences for local subsistence, the authorities prevailed. the results for production were ruinous but the soviet state now controlled more of that production as well as the life of the producers. although public use of the term "fa mine" was strictly forbidden in this period, one candid official made it clear what kind of war was being fought. a ruthless struggle is going on between the peasantry and our re gime. it's a struggle to the death. this year was a test of our strength and their endurance. it took a famine to show them who is master here. it has cost millions of lives but the collective farm system is here to stay. we'we won the war.25 this official declaration of victory serves to emphasize that direct con frontations of power nearly always favor the state whose coercive power can be more easily mobilized and focused. a far longer historical view of this war of attrition in state appropriation might, however, yield a less straightforward assessment. contemporary collective farm workers, react ing to near subsistence wages in the state sector, respond by shirking, by the concealing of production, by sideline activities often using state property by diverting labor to their personal plot. once again, the producers pay a high cost for this resistance. they work a second work-day on their private plots for a marginal return that is nearly zero and which is "a colossal exploiter of children, the aged, and the invalid."26 to an out side observer it appears that a petty bourgeoisie is attempting to reconsti tute itself, but in such cramped conditions that the results look like the self-exploitaiion described by the hammonds for english weavers or by chayanov for russian artisanlflax-growing peasants of an earlier date. the effects of this resistance reach gorbachev in the form of aggregate produc tion statistics from a perenially weak state farm sector. it could not occur, however, without the tacit or active complicity of petty officials all the way down to clerks, drivers, agronomists, foremen, and technicians who sel dom resist the temptation to treat their small corner of state power as pri vate property. non-cooperation by the producers is something of a daily plebescite on the confiscation of their labor in the state sector but it cannot, by itself, force a reorganization of agriculture along less exploitive lines. what the producers can do, though, is to determine what will not elicit their active cooperation and productive effort. c o p e n h a g e n papers 4 . 8 9 48 everyday forms of resistance evading the written record the perspective urged here suggests that the historiography of class strug gle has been enormously distorted in a state-centric direction. the events that claim attention are the events to which the state, the ruling classes, and the intelligentsia accord most attention. thus, for example, a small and futile rebellion claims attention all out of proportion to its impact on class relations while unheralded acts of flight, sabotage, theft which may have far greater impact are rarely noticed. the small rebellion, the doomed slave uprising, may have a symbolic importance for its violence and its revolutionary aims, but for most subordinate classes historically such rare episodes were of less moment than the quiet unremitting guerilla warfare that took place day-in and day-out. everyday forms of resistance rarely make headlines. but just as millions of anthozoan polyps create, willy-nilly, a coral reef, thousands upon thou sands of petty acts of insubordination and evasion create a political and economic barrier reef of their own. and whenever, to pursue the simile, the ship of state runs aground on such a reef, attention is typically directed to the shipwreck itself and not the vast aggregation of actions which make it possible.27 it is very rare that the perpetrators of these petty acts seek to call attention to themselves. their safety lies in their anonymity. peasants succeed in their small stratagems to the extent that they do not appear in the archives. this is not to say that their resistance leaves no traces; it is rather that the traces must be teased out of the record by the historian who knows what he or she is looking for. changes in the volume sf grain deliv eries from certain districts, mysterious declines in livestock holdings, failures to realize conscription quotas, demographic shifts that may indi cate flight, complaints by authorities and landowners about an increase in shirking andlor pilfering may point to a key area of political activity in which vital territory is being gained or lost by antagonistic classes. even here the evidence is most likely to signal significant changes in the level of resistance, not the slower, grinding, background resistance which is likely to go unnoticed. it is also comparatively rare that officials of the state wish to publicize the insubordination behind everyday resistance. to d o so would be to admit that their policy is unpopular and, above all, to expose the tennousness of their authority in the countryside neither of which most sovereign states james c. scott find in their interest. the nature of the acts themselves and the self-in terested muteness of the antagonists thus conspire to create a kind of com plicitous silence which may all but expunge everyday forms of resistance from the official record. this anonymity contributed to an earlier view of the peasantry as a class that vacillated between abject passivity and brief, violent, and futile explo sions of rage. it is, of course, true that the "on-stage" behaviour of peasants during periods of quiescence yields a picture of submission, fear, and cau tion. by contrast peasant insurrections seem like visceral reactions of blind fury. what is missing from the account of "normal" passivity is the slow, silent struggle over crops, rents, labor, and taxes in which submission and stupidity are often no more than a pose a necessary tactic. the public record of compliance and deference is often only half of the double life that w.e.b. dubois understood all subordinate groups were obliged to lead. such a double life with double thoughts, double duties . . . must give rise to double works and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretense or revolt, to hypocrisy or r a d i c a l i ~ m . ~ ~ the flexplosions" of open conflict which typically dominate the official record are frequently a sign that normal and largely covert forms of class struggle are failing or, alternatively, have succeeded so well as to have produced a political crisis. such declarations of open war, with their mor tal risks, generally come only after a protracted struggle on different ter rain. what counts as resistance it can and has been objected that the activities grouped under the term everyday resistance hardly merit attention. from this point of view they represent trivial coping mechanisms that are either non-political forms of self-help or, at best, prepolitical. i take this to be basically the position of eric hobsbawm, eugene genovese and others.2g the case against moving everyday forms of resistance closer to the center of the analysis of class relations rests on the claim that these activities are marginal because they are 1) unorganized, unsystematic and individual; 2) opportunistic and self-indulgent; 3) have no revolutionary conse quences andlor 4) imply in their intention or logic an accommodation with copenhagen papers 4.89 50 everyday forms of resistance the structure of domination. an argument along these lines necessarily implies that "real resistance" is organized, principled, and has revolution ary implications. the question of opportunism and self-indulgence was treated earlier. it is sufficient to recall that if class domination is a process of systematic ap propriation, then the measures devised to thwart that appropriation con stitute a form of resistance. all class struggle must necessarily join self-in terested material needs with conflict. turning to the consequences and intentions of everyday forms of resistance, it is certainly true that the "resisters" rarely intend to make a revolution and their actions do not openly challenge existing power ar rangements. it can also be demonstrated convincingly, however, that the motives of peasants and even proletarians who are part of revolutionary movements are rarely, if ever, aiming at revolutionary objective^.^' revolutionary action, in other words, is typically undertaken by rank and-file actors who do not have revolutionary aims. beyond this, however, actions such as pilfering, desertion, poaching, and foot-dragging do im ply, by the very fact that they avoid open confrontations, a certain accom modation with existing power relations. this position has some merit. it is rather like the claim that the poacher, by his secretiveness, recognizes the norm of law-and-order. the poacher in his case might be contrasted with, say, a revolutionary appropriation in which property is openly seized in the name of justice. to dismiss poaching with this argument, however, is to overlook entirely the vital role of power relations in constraining forms of resistance open to subordinate groups. the mortal risks involved in an open confrontation may virtually preclude many forms of resistance. if only open, declared forms of struggle are called "resistance; then all that is being measured may be the level of repression that structures the availa ble options. more than one peasantry has been brutally reduced from open, organized, radical activity at one moment to sporadic acts of petty resistance at the next. what has changed in such cases is typically not the aims of the peasantry but the effectiveness of domination. there is, however, an additional problem deriving from a restricted con ception of what constitutes organized activity. while much of everyday resistance is comprised of individual actions, this is not to say that these ac tions lack coordination. a concept of cooperative activity, derived largely from formal, bureaucratic settings is of little assistance in understanding actions in small communities with dense informal social networks and james c. scott rich,historically deep, subcultures of resistance to outside claims. it is, for example, no exaggeration to assert that much of the folk culture of the peasant "little tradition" amounts to a legitimation, or even a celebration, of precisely the kinds of evasive forms of resistance described earlier. in this and other ways (e.g. tales of bandits, tricksters, peasant heroes, reli gious myths, carnivalesque parodies of authorities) the peasant subcul ture helps to underwrite dissimulation, poaching, theft, tax evasion, eva sion of conscription and so on. while folk culture is not coordinational in any formal sense, it often achieves a "climate of opinion" which, in other more institutionalized societies, might require a public relations cam paign. one of the striking things about peasant society is the extent to which a whole range of complex activities fromlabor-exchange to wedding preparations, to rituals are coordinated by networks of understanding and practice. it is the same with boycotts, with techniques for evading taxes and forced crop delivieries, with the conspiracy of silence surrounding thefts from landlords. no formal organizations are created because none are required; and yet a form of coordination is achieved which alerts us that what is happening is by no means merely random individual action. nor is it too much to suggest that the historical experience of the peasantry has favored such forms of social action because they are opaque to outside surveillance and control31 everyday forms of resistance are, it should be clear, not a peasant mo nopoly. anyone who has analysed the measures taken by landowners in the face of an announced land reform to evade its application to their hold ings by dispersing titles, bribing officials, changing cropping patterns will recognize the pattern. here it is worth noticing that, as in the case of peasants, everyday resistance is being used against a party of greater for mal power: in this case the state. generally, then, such resistance is virtually always a stratagem deployed by a weaker party i n thwarting t h e claims of a n in stitutional or class opponent w h o dominates t h e public exercise of power. several objections could be made against so inclusive a definition. the term, it might be claimed, ought only to be applied to classes at the bottom of the social stratification. by itself, this objection carries little weight since such an analytical concept should, in principle, be applied to any be haviour that meets its definitional criteria. two more serious and related objections remain. the first is that classes higher in the social stratification typically have a variety of other political resources that allow them to in fluence elites and officials. thus the middle and upper classes in a liberal copenhagen papers 4.89 52 everyday forms of resistance democracy have a variety of channels, including political campaigns, lob bying, and legal assistance by which they can influence power. for the peasantry and other subordinate groups, through much of history, every day forms of resistance have been the only resort short of rebellion. a se cond issue is the question of the intention behind the resistance. implicitly, the definition presupposes a situation in which those who use everyday resistance find the claim or exaction they are resisting unjust and yet are in timidated by the fear of retaliation from any open, public protest of that in justice. it is this sense of injustice that is responsible for the tacit coopera tion that develops among the resisters. evidence of intention is, naturally, hard to come by when there are strong incentives to conceal one's inten tions. but when it is a question of both a systematic, established pattern of resistance undergirded by a popular culture that encodes notions of justice and anger encouraging that resistance, and a relation of domination that seems to preclude most other strategies, then, it almost certainly satisfies the d e f i n i t i ~ n . ~ ~ subordination and political dissimulation the control of anger and aggression is, for quite obvious reasons, a promi nent part of the socialization of those who grow u p in subordinate groups. much of the ordinary politics of subordinate groups historically has been a politics of dissimulation in which both the symbols and practices of resistance have been veiled. in place of the open insult, the use of gossip, nicknames and character assassination; in place of direct physical assault, the use of sabotage, arson, and nocturnal threats by masked men (e.g. captain swing, the rebecca riots, les demoiselles); in place of labor defi ance, shirking, slowdowns, and spoilage; in place of the tax riot or rebel lion, evasion and concealment. all of these forms of political struggle can be conducted just beneath the surface of a public realm of deference, compliance, and loyalty. no public challenge is ventured; no field of direct confrontation is volunteered. to be sure, such forms of struggle are best suited to those realms of conflict where the problems of control and supervision by authorities are greatest. the state finds it far simpler to collect an excise tax on imported luxury ve hicles coming to the major port than to patrol its borders against smuggling of grain or to collect an income tax from its peasantry. the advantages of everyday forms of resistance lie not merely in the james c. scott smaller probability of apprehension. their advantage lies at least as much in the fact that they are generally creeping incremental strategies that can be finely tuned to the opposition they encounter and that, since they make no formal claims, offer a ready line-of-retreat through disavowal. tenant farmers who are in arrears on their rents to a landlord are in a different po sition from tenant farmers in arrears to the same extent who have declared also that they are not paying because the land is theirs by right. state authorities and dominant elites will naturally respond with greater alacrity and force to open defiance which seems to jeopardize their posi tion. for this reason, subordinate groups have attempted, when possible, to assert their resistance on the safer terrain of undeclared appropriation. their stratagems minimize the maximum loss. squatters, for example, un less they have political support, will typically move off private or state lands when faced with force, only to return quietly at a later date. what everyday resistance lacks in terms of gestures and structured claims, it compensates for by its capacity for relentless pressure and the safety and anonymity it typically provides its users. perhaps the most striking characteristic of normal resistance both sym bolic and material by subordinate groups is the pervasive use of disguise. the disguise is of two main types, with many intermediate possibilities. first and most common is the concealment or anonymity of the resister. the poacher, the pilferer, the deserter, the tax evader, hopes that he and his act will be undetected or passed over. similarly, the propagators of rumor and gossip are, by definition, anonymous; there is no apparent producer but scores of eager retailers. the use of disguises is often not just metaphorical but literal. peasant and early working class protest in europe provides innumerable examples of collective action where the message was clear but the messengers disguised. in the captain swing ',distur bances" in the 1830's it was common for farm laborers to come at night in disguise with torches and insist on the destruction of threshing machines. everything about the protest was quite specific except for the personal (not the class) identity of the protesters. the tradition of lower classes wearing disguises in order to speak bitter truths to their superiors is, of course, firmly institutionalized in carnival and a variety of other rituals of folk cul ture. by contrast, a great deal of symbolic resistance by peasants and other subordinate groups reverses this arrangement. instead of a clear message delivered by a disguised messenger, an ambigous message is delivered copenhagen papers 4.89 54 everyday forms of resistance by clearly identified messengers. many of the folktales of peasant and slave culture fall into this category. the enourmously popular trickster figures among such groups (e.g. till eulenspiegel, brer rabbit, the mouse deer of malaysian culture) are taken both as disguised forms of aggression and implicit strategic advice. because they are veiled, however, they do not offer the authorities a clear-cut occasion for retaliation. slave spirituals stressing old testament themes of liberation and justice or what have been called the "world upside down" broadsheets (e.g. woodcuts depicting a serf being led on horseback by his lord) might be seen in the same light. and it has always been common for peasants, when making threats against elites or authorities to deliver those threats in the form of euphe misms. thus, for example, arsonists threatening wealthy farmers or aristocratic landholders in the early eighteenth century france would use known formulas for their threats: "i will have you awakened by a red cock!," "i will light your pipe," "i will send a man dressed in red who will pull everything down."33 the meaning of the message was, of course, per fectly transparent, but the use of euphemism offered an avenue of retreat. many forms of resistance in dangerous circumstances are intended to be ambiguos, to have a double meaning, to be garbled so that they cannot be treated as a direct, open challenge and, hence, invite an equally direct, open retaliation. for this reason it would be instructive to devise a theory of political masking by subordinate groups. an analysis of the pattern of disguises and the forms of domination under which they occur could con tribute to our understanding of what happens to "voice," in albert hirsch man's meaning of that term, under domination. open declarations of defi ance are replaced by euphemisms, metaphors; clear speech by muttering and grumbling; open confrontation by concealed non-compliance or defi ance. this brief exposition of everyday forms of resistance is hardly the place to develop a theory of political disguises but the table below is in tended to suggest one possible line of inquiry. form of domination forms of disguised resistance material domination everyday forms of resistance (appropriation of grain, e.g. poaching, squatting, deserting, eva taxes, labor, etc.). sion, foot-dragging. direct opposition by disguised resisters e.g. masked appropriations, carnival. james c. scott denial of status (humiliation, disprivilege, hidden transcript or anger, aggression, assaults on dignity) and a discourse of dignity e.g. rituals of aggression, tales of revenge, creation of autonomous social space for assertion of dignity. ideological domination development of dissideizt subculture (justification by ruling e.g. millenial religion, slave "hush ar groups for slavery, borsy folk religion, myth of social ban serfdom, caste, privilege), ditry and class heroes. gestures, resistance, and rebellion to understand better the context and function of everyday forms of resistance it may be helpful to contrast them to political gestures. the poacher, who hopes to escape notice, may further his aim by making a public show of deference and devotion to those on whose property claims he is secretly encroaching. a practical act of resistance is thus often accom panied by a public discursive affirmation of the very arrangements being resisted the better to undermine them in practice. when the act of every day resistance is meant to be noticed meant to send a signal as in the case of arson or sabotage, then the resisters take special care to conceal them selves, often behind a facade of public conformity. we may contrast this pattern with acts of resistance in which the empha sis is reversed. if everyday resistance is "heavy" on the instrumental side and "light" on the symbolic confrontation side, then the contrasting acts would be "light" on the instrumental side and "heavy" on the symbolic side.34 a few examples may help sharpen the contrast. during the span ish civil war anti-clerical supporters of the republic invaded churches and cathedrals in order to disinter the remains of priests, bishops, cardinals, and nuns who were buried in the their exhumed remains were then spilled onto the steps of the churches by the crowds to be publicly seen by the population most particularly by the enemies of the republic. it would be hard to imagine a more powerful act of anti-clerical symbolism, amore extreme act of public desecration and contempt. to this day the epi sode is remembered and invoked publicly by the right in spain as an ex ample of left-wing barbarism. what is notable about the revolutionary copenhagen papers 4 . 8 9 56 everyday forins of resistance exhumations in spain is that they approached the limit of pure symbolic action. no property was redistributed, no one was murdered,36 nor was the balance of military force altered in any apparent way. the objective was rather to publicly exhibit the outmost contempt for the spanish church, its symbols, and its heroes. as a declaration of war, symbolically speaking, revolutionary exhumations belong at the opposite end of a continuum of forms of resistance from the low-profile poacher. a huge realm of political conflict belongs to the same genus of public, symbolic confrontations. the wearing of black armbands to commemorate a political martyr, hunger strikes, not to mention the cultural confronta tions invited by various counter-culture groups are precisely intended as discursive negations of the existing symbolic order. as such, they fail un less they gain attention. if everyday resistance represents disguised forms of struggle over appropriation, then revolutionary exhumations represent public, open forms of confrontation over the symbols of dominant dis course. both forms of action are integral to political conflict. most "everyday resisters" are rather like opponents of a law who esti mate that it is more convenient to evade it or bribe their way around it rather than to change it. in the case of the peasantry, of course, the state and its laws are typically inaccessible, arbitrary, and alien. the notion of collective public action to change the structure of, say, property law or civil rights, is confined largely to the literate middle class and the intelligentsia. directing attention to the strategic reasons for the symbolic low profile of everyday resistance may cast some light on how changes in the forms of political action occur. first, it is undeniable that everyday resistance is less threatening to public domination precisely because it avoids an engage ment at that level. if squatters invaded private or state lands publicly, and declared their right to use it as they saw fit, they would, in effect, be declar ing that they were not squatters and, instead, directly challenging property arrangements. this is more menacing to political authority and it is exactly what the diggers did during the english revolution when the balance of power temporarily freed them to act openly. everyday resistance, then, by not openly contesting the dominant norms of law, cus tom, politeness, deference, loyalty and so on leaves the dominant in com mand of the public stage. inasmuch as every act of compliance with a nor mative order discursively affirms that order, while every public act of repudiation (e.g. failure to stand during national anthems in the united states) represents a threat to that norm, everyday resistance leaves dominant syrnboiic structures intact.37 james c. scott if, however, the perceived relationship of power shifts in favor of subor dinate groups, everyday resistance may well become a direct and open po litical challenge and surreptitious or disguised symbolic dissent may be come a public renunciation of domination. aesopian language may give way to direct vituperation and everyday forms of resistance to overt, collec tive defiance. the prehistory of many large rebellions and revolutions might be retrospectively recast along these lines. a pattern of quiet resistance both symbolically and materially suddenly becomes generalized, massive and open as the political situation presents new possibilities that previously seemed utopian. the french peasantry who burned chateaux and abbeys in 1789 were presumably not perfectly allegiant retainers to their kings and lords in 1788. the shifts in power that make possible new forms of resistance may often originate outside the immediate domain we are con sidering as in cases of world-wide trade slumps, defeat in war, and so on. they may also originate in the very process of resistance and counter resistance. balzac, though his disapproval is apparent, captures the process with respect to poaching and gleaning. do not imagine that tonsard, or his old mother or his wife and children ever said in so many words, "we steal for a living and do our stealing cleverly," these habits had grown slowly. the family began by mixing a few green boughs with the dead wood, then, emboldened by habit and by a calculated impugnity.. .after twenty years the family had gotten to the point of taking wood as if it were their own and making a living almost entirely by theft. the rights of pasturing their cows, the abuse of gleaning grain, of gleaning grapes, had gotten established little by little in this fashion. by the time the tonsards and the other lazy peasants of the valley had tasted the benefits of these four rights acquired by the poor in the countryside, rights pushed to the point of pillage, one can imagine that they were unlikely to renounce them unless compelled by a force stronger than their audacity.38 balzac, it should be added, observes that many of these new "rights" were entrenched by peasants taking advantage of the revolution and the politi cal vacuum that followed it. everyday forms of resistance may be thought of as exerting a constant copenhagen papers 4.89 58 everyday forms of resistance pressure, probing for weak points in the defenses of antagonists, and test ing the limits of resistance. in the case of poaching, for example, there may be a fairly stable tension over time between poachers and gamekeepers. but when, say, it turns out that over the past few months the taking of rab bits is much less frequently punished or prevented, the volume of poach ing and the number of participants is likely to swell to a point where a cus tom or even a right to take rabbits threatens to become e ~ t a b l i s h e d . ~ ~ alternatively, any number of events might impel poachers to r u n more risks e.g. a crop failure, an increase in meat prices, higher taxes so that their boldness and numbers overwhelm the existing capacity of those who enforce game laws. there is strength in numbers, and poaching that be comes generalized to whole communities may, as balzac notes, require new levels of coercion to re-establish the old balance.40 the hydraulic metaphor implicit here of water of variable pressure, straining against a (moveable!) retaining well having certain strengths and weaknesses is necessarily crude but, perhaps, suggestive. much the same approach might be applied to symbolic defiance. slaves, serfs, tenant farmers and workers say in public pretty much what their masters, lords, landlords, and bosses expect them to say. yet, there are likely to be hidden transcripts of what subordinates actually think that can be recovered in off-stage conversation in slave quarters, veiled cultural per formances (e.g. folk-tales, carnival). these hidden transcripts may be pic tured as continually testing the line of what is permissable on-stage. one particularly intrepid, risk-taking, angry, unguarded subordinate says something that just touches or crosses the line. if it is not rebuked or punished, others, profiting from the example, will venture across the line as well, and a new de facto line is created, governing what may be said or gestured. in revolutions, one is likely to see unbridled anger the entire hidden transcript spoken openly and acted openly. it is unlikely that we can account for the content of this action by reference to outside agitators, their ideology, or even the aspirations engendered by a revolutionary process. the revolutionary actions might well have been prefigured in their practices of resistance and in their off-stage discourse. what had changed was above all the conditions which had previously confined the public expression of these actions and sentiments. james c . scott is professor of political science and c h a i r m a n of t h e council on southeast a s i a n studies, yale u n i v e r s i t y james c . scott notes 1 from whom the appropriation is ex8 emmanuel leroy ladurie, tithe arid tracted makes all the difference in the agrarian history from the 14th c e n t u y to world. a poor peasant who extends his the 19th centuiy: a n essay in compam field by ploughing furrows into tive history, translated by susan burke another poor peasant's land or secretly (cambridge: cambridge university harvests some of his neighbor's grain is press, 1982), p. 27. surviving at his neighbor's expense. so 9 marc bloch, french rural history: a n es is the sharecropper who obtains his say on its basic characteristics, translated share-tenancy by outbidding other by janet sondheimer (berkeley: would-be sharecroppers and agreeing university of california press, 1970), p. to hand over more of the harvest. 170. note bloch's implicit characteriza everyday forms of class resistance tion of the "patient, silent struggles" as must, by definition, have at least the inin some sense more organized than the tention of improving the balance of apgreat insurrections. propriation for members of the subor10 armstead l. robinson, bitter fruits of dinate group. bondage: slavery's demise and the col 2 see utsa patnaik, "neo-populism and lapse of the confederacy: 1861-65 (new marxism: the chayanovian view of haven: yale university press, forth the agrarian question and its funcomming), ch. 5. damental fallacy," journal of peasant 11 ibid, ch. 8. studies, vol. 6, no. 4 (1979), pp. 398-99. 12 marc ferro, "the russian soldier in 3 see e.p. thompson, whigs and hunters: 1917: undisciplined, patriotic, and the origin of the black act (new york: revolutionary," slavic reviau, vol. 30, pantheon, 1975) passim and thompno. 3 (september 1971), pp. 483-512. son, "poaching and the game laws in 13 the police and the people: french popular cannock chase," in douglas hay, eds., protest, 1789-1820 (oxford: clarendon albion's fatal tree: crime and society in press, 1970), pp. 96-97. eighteenth c e n t u y england (london, 14 in the cases considered below we are 1975), pp. 189-253. see also john also dealing with marxist parties which brewer and john styles, eds., a n unhave a decided view of the role of the governable people: the english and their peasantry in the revolutionary alliance law in the 17th and 18th centuries (new with the proletariat. as lenin ob brunswick: rutgers university press, served, "petty bourgeois proprietors 1980). are willing to help us, the proletariat, to 4 michel foucault, discipline and punish: throw out the landed gentry and the tke birth of the prison, translated by capitalists. but after that our roads alan sheridan (new york: vintage, part." 1979), p* 274. 15 see daniel kelliher, peasant-state rela 5 thompson, whigs and hunters, p. 58. tions in china during rum1 reforms: 6 for a far more detailed analysis see my 1978-1984 (ph.d. dissertation, yale "resistance without protest and university, 1985) on whose argument i without organization: peasant opporely heavily here. for other parallels see sition to the islamic zakat and the goran hyden, beyond ujamaa in tanza christian tithe," comparative studies in nia (london: heineman, 1980) and society and histo y, vol. 29, no. 3 (july christine pelzer white, the role of col 1987), pp. 41236. lective agriculture in rural development: 7 ibid. the vietnamese case, research report copenhagen papers 4.89 60 everyday forms of resistance 3592 (institute of development large numbers of people as it did with studies, university of sussex, 1984), the "wreckers" and "kulaks" in the mimeo. u.s.s.r. in the late 1920s and early 16 from an interview with an emigre ex1930s or the "ltulaks" in hungary dur team leader in hong kong reported by ing collectivization. vivienne shue in t h e reach of t h e state: 28 w.e.b. dubois, "on the faith of the sketches of t h e c h i n e s e b o d y politic (stanfathers," pp. 210-25, in dubois, t h e ford: stanford university press, 1989). s o u l s of black folks (new york: new 17 the phrase comes from eric hobsamerican library, 19691, pp. 221-22. bawm, "peasants and politics," ]ournal 29 inasmuch as i have made the case of peasant s t u d i e s , vol. 1, no. against this position in much more de 18 istvan rev, "the advantages of being tail in weapons of t k e weak: e v e ~ y d a y atomized: how hungarian peasants forms of peasant resistance (new haven: coped with collectivization," d i s s e n t yale university press, 19851, i confine (summer 1987), pp. 335-49. myself here to a few schematic com 19 ibid., p. 338. ments. 20 ibid., p. 342. 30 the main exception, and it is undenia 21 ibid., p. 344-45. bly an important one, is the case of 22 ibid., p. 342. millenial movements whose objectives 23 see, particularly, the analysis of the huare revolutionary. see ch. 8 of w e a p o n s man toll in the ukraine in robert conof t h e weak for a more elaborate exposi quest, t h e h a r v e s t of sorrozu: soviet coltion of the case made in this paragraph. lectivization and t h e terror-famine (new 31 and not just the peasantry. in this con york: oxford university press, 1986). text see the fine article by william m. 24 quoted in i b i d . , p. 232. for more on the reddy, "the textile trade and the lan patterns of peasant resistance to guage of the crowd of rouen, 1725 "dekulakization," forced requisitions, 1871," past a n d present, no. 74 (february and collectivization see the careful 19771, pp. 62-89. reddy argues that it judgements of moshe lewin, t h e m a k was precisely the lack of organization in i n g of t h e soviet s y s t e m (new york: pancrowd behavior that was helpful and theon, 1985). that the crowd came to value and use 25 m . m . khateyevich, quoted in robert spontaneity in the knowledge that it conquest, tlze h a r v e s t of sorrozu: soviet was the most effective, least costly, collectivizatioiz and t h e terror-famine, p. means of protest. the cultural under 261. emphasis added. standings were so well developed that 26 see the remarkable descriptions reany just grievance could, he claims, cently translated from the sainizdat bring together a crowd without any manuscript of lev timofeev (a pseudoplanning or organization, let alone for nym), soviet peasants: ( o r t h e peasants' mal leadership. a r t o f s t a r v i n g ) , translated by jean alex32 it would be difficult, though perhaps ander and alexander zaslavsky, edited not impossible, for middle-class tax and with an introduction by armando resistance to satisfy the same condi pitassio and victor zaslavsky (new tions. york: telos press, 1985), p. 80. 33 andre abbiateci, 'arsonists in 18th 27 the search for public scapegoats is, of century france: anessay in the typol course, quite common as a means of ogy of crime," translated by elborg for coping with such failures. but it is rare ster, in robert forster and orest ra that the search for scapegoats touches num, eds. d e v i a n t s a n d t h e a b a n d o n e d i n james c. scott french society: selections from the an nales: economies, societb, civilisations, vol. iv (baltimore: john hopkins, 1978), p. 158. 34 it goes without saying that symbolic ac tions can have large instrumental con sequences and vice versa. 35 bruce lincoln, "revolutionary exhu mations in spain, july 1935," compnm tive studies in society and history, vol. 27, no. 2 (april 1985), pp. 241-60. 36 in the course of the civil war in repub lican-held areas many thousand clerics were, in fact, killed -either killed by an gry crowds or executed for anti-repub lic activities. 37 for moral norms, the importance of public confirmation or repudiation is magnified. take, for example, the com mon norm of a religiously sanctified marriage as the only legitimate basis for family life. compare, then, a pattern of unsanctified, common law marriages that are widespread but unannounced and undeclared as public acts, to a so cial movement against sanctified marri age that openly repudiates the norm it self. the latter is, of course, a more immediate threat to the norm although the former pattern may well, by accre tion, eventually bring the norm into question. 38 honor6 de balzac, les paysans (paris: pleades, 1949). 39 in his account of poaching in the hampshire forests, e.p. thomson reports that when bishop peter mews, who had had a particularly antagonis tic relationship with his tenants over their rights, finally died, the tenants took full advantage of the brief vacancy before a new bishop was appointed. "the tenants; he writes, "appear to have made a vigorous assault on the timber and deer."; thompson, whigs and hunters, p. 123. 40 the process i am describing of cumula tive non-compliance is a form of social action familiar to any motorist faced with speed limits. if the official speed limit is 55 miles per hour, no one is con cerned about being fined for driving 56 m.p.h. well, what about 57, 58, 60, 65? let us imagine that, on the basis of ex perience, motorists know they can "get away with" 60 m.p.h. the flow of traffic is then likely to move at this speed; the police can't arrest everyone so they sin gle out only the most egregious viola tors of these informal norms. once a 60 m.p.h. practice is established, the process continues. a few (intrepid, rushed, wealthy?) drivers are always testing the limits and threatening to es tablish a new "tolerated informal limit. responses are of course possible; the state may choose to raise the speed limit lest its formal regulations become an object of derision or it may redouble its enforcement. like all social action, such patterns to be more accurate would have to be thoroughly reflexive. thus, one might ask, wouldn't a clever state, knowing all this, set the official speed at 55 m.p.h., planning on the fact that the actual traffic flow will be roughly 65 m.p.h. this is true but fails to be sufficiently reflexive, for the cal culations of such a state are based on assumptions about non-complicance which have been inferred by actual pat terns of past resistance. copenhagen papers 4.89 62 86 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002 kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun abstract in recent years, the community development programme called 'shequ construction' has been making rapid progress in china. the discussion surrounding the programme focuses on how to adjust the relationship between the street offices (which fall under the jurisdiction of the government) and the shequ residents' committees (defined as the people's self-governing entity). the programme has also led the debate over the position and role of the chinese communist party (ccp) in the newly reconstructed shequ. while the party's organization department proposes the unification of the shequ party branches and shequ residents' committees, others maintain that the shequ party branch should be differentiated from the shequ residents' committee, which is still viewed as an agent of government. they say 'the greatest advantage of the ccp is that it is the embodiment of social power and it is not a non-socialist external force like the administrative organ'. their proposal raises further questions: how should the party change its direction and guidance within the framework of the separation of government and society? will this affect the party's ability to continue to provide society with effective 'guidance' and become representative of society? this paper will provide some clues to help answer these questions. introduction: governmental and social sectors in 'shequ construction' in recent years, the community development programme called 'shequ construction' has been making rapid progress in china. this paper analyses the position and actions of the chinese communist party concerning the shequ construction programme as an essential process from the viewpoint of political science. shequ is a chinese word for 'community' and it means a co-operative unit of people who live in a certain defined area. although the word shequ itself does not formally define size or scale, since the founding of the people's republic of china, each shequ governance has been handled by a 'street office' (jiedao banshichu), an outpost agency of a district government and by a 'residents' committee' (jumin weiyuanhui) under 87 the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party table continues overleaf the street office, governed by residents. however, under the planned economy system, administering residents and providing services for residents was actually handled by work units (danwei) of government offices and enterprises to which the residents belonged. in reality, the authority and roles of street offices and residents' committees were very limited. since the street offices are the outpost agencies of district governments, and are segmented according to the established vertical chains of command into sections and departments, they hardly played a role in policy management as united entities. the residents' committees, consisting of several elderly ladies who worked without monetary compensation, got no further than to publicize government propaganda and to mediate disputes among residents. in the market economy, however, the work unit management system no longer functions well due to diversified corporate structure, reforms of state-owned enterprises, housing reforms and increased population mobility. as a result, the shequ began to gain attention as an alternative unit to the work units that used to fulfil various important roles. for example, payments of various social benefits such as the pensions for the elderly and unemployment insurance as well as daily management of the insured that were formerly handled by the work units became one of the important duties of shequ.1 regarding the urban residents' minimum living allowance payments, the roles of the street offices and the residents' committees have already been stipulated in statutory pro88 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002 kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun visions.2 also, managing migrated workers, maintaining public order, medical and public health, environmental issues, care for the elderly, daycare centres, household management, employment agencies and a wide range of other needs and functions are expected to be provided by the shequ. under these circumstances, the major concern of the chinese government is how to extend the functions of the street offices and the residents' committees and allow them to play an important role administering residents and providing services for residents. as shown in table 1, various shequ construction programmes have been attempted throughout the 1990s at various places. 89 the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party based on the results of test cases in various areas, the 'opinion of the ministry of civil affairs (moca) on promoting shequ construction nationwide' (hereafter referred to as 'the opinion' was made public with the approval of the central party and the state council in december 2000.3 regarding the scope of the shequ, the opinion stated that the area covered by a residents' committee (100-700 family units in accordance with the residents' committee organizing act) should be adjusted to facilitate the administrative needs, conveniences and people's sense of attachment. after such adjustments, residents' committees should be renamed the 'shequ residents' committees' and the area covered by shequ residents' committees as shequ (with 1,000-3,000 family units). in addition, 'the opinion' stated that a shequ members' representative congress (shequ chengyuan daibiaohui) as a policy-making entity, should be established in each shequ, formed by representatives of residents and of work units within each shequ, and the shequ residents' committee should act as the administrative entity with members elected by people after soliciting their candidacy publicly.4 each district is independently setting its own standards to operate and manage its shequ efficiently, by preparing its budget and asking for financial provision and increments for shequ residents' committee officers for their supplementary income and better working environment from the district government. as stated before, a uniform policy for shequ construction seemed to be finally established by the end of 2000, but each district has its own way of meeting the specific needs of the district. what had been tried in the city of shanghai, the city of shenyang in liaoning province, jianghan district in the city of wuhan in hubei province, and the city of qingdao in shandong province are often quoted as the four models for shequ construction.5 after reviewing the four different models, the discussion focused on the issue of the relation between the street offices under the jurisdiction of the government and the residents' committees which form the people's self-governing entity. in other words, the issue raised is whether shequ construction should proceed with a 'governmental' or 'social' entity at its helm, and whether 'control' or 'autonomy' should have priority. for example, shanghai adopted the 'two-tier government' (district and city), 'three-tier management' (street, district and city) and 'fourtier network' (shequ residents' committee, street, district and city). under this system, the function of the street offices was reinforced, and the function of the autonomous shequ residents' committees was expanded for the street offices actively participating. and as a result, improve90 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002 kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun ments have been made on administrative matters and resident services. 'shequ construction' using the method of 'consolidating governmental (street) and social (resident) sectors' (jieju yitihua), which has been adopted in shanghai, is also under way in beijing, chongqing, hangzhou, shijiazhuang, xi'an and chengdu. in shanghai and beijing, staff members that specialize in shequ services (called 'shequ workers') are sent from the street offices to the shequ residents' committee.6 under the policy of 'consolidating governmental and social sectors', it remains normal practice in certain places for the street offices to appoint elected persons as the members of shequ residents' committee. this is one of the ways in which the street offices are involved in the personnel affairs of the shequ residents' committee. in the case of the city of shenyang, its 'shequ construction' has an established record of establishing strong self-governing shequ. the city has made large-scale reforms of its shequ system, starting in 1999 when the term of offices of the members of the residents' committees expired. by means of this reform, shequ with 1,000-2,000 family units were created by combining several residents' committees. the newly created shequ were allowed to have rights to self-govern, administer, manage and supervise in accordance with the 'opinion to establish clear-cut lines of authority and responsibility of shequ', and 'shequ construction' with the principle of 'residents' autonomy' is under way.7 in shenyang, it is not allowed to send personnel from the street or district offices to shequ except for civil law enforcement personnel. in the case of the jianghan district of the city of wuhan, a clear division of functions between the street offices and shequ residents' committee was made in order to build a relationship that is mutually complementary between government-controlled functions and the shequ's autonomy.8 owing to changes in their functions, the street offices transferred 17 of their duties and authorities to the shequ, i.e., 1) personnel matters; 2) control of funds; 3) management of shequ service networks; 4) minimum living allowance, social relief funds, special reduction of rents for poor families, preliminary hearings on various applications such as application for certificates for the disabled, etc.9 transfer of appropriate authorities and duties from the city to districts, from districts to streets and from streets to the shequ, as witnessed in jianghan, seems to have become the prevalent practice. however, the process of transfer does not always run smoothly, as each section or office tries to protect its acquired rights and interests. on the contrary, under the pretext of making the shequ's functions substantial, several 91 the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party government offices and departments at all levels are creating their own clique or groups within the shequ, and are forcing upon the shequ a number of jobs and duties as well as various quotas that must be fulfilled by the governmental sectors. as a result, it is said that the shequ residents' committees are overloaded with hundreds of duties. some members of the moca are voicing their concern over this situation, warning that the shequ residents' committee may become a part of government, and may lose its autonomous character.10 however, those actors and agencies who could make the autonomous shequ successful have not been fully developed or matured. even if the process of transferring authorities from the street offices to the shequ takes place, the 'shequ construction' programme will face financial difficulties without the support of work units providing human and material resources. in this case the 'shequ construction' programme will not be able to remain autonomous without the support and participation of the residents at large. what all the districts and areas that have been proceeding with the 'shequ construction' first face is the harsh reality that there are insufficient financial and human resources as well as knowhow, while duties such as urban administration and resident services pile up. under these circumstances, being dependent on the governmental sector is unavoidable at the initial stages, even though it is not consistent with the administrative reforms and the change to the market economy. wang sibin, a professor of department of sociology at the peking university, speculates that the process of 'shequ construction' from shequ managed by the administration to shequ with autonomy will take place as follows:11 • pre-'shequ construction': in choosing the shequ system instead of the danwei (unit) system, the government expands the duties and responsibilities of shequ and transfers authorities. • primary stage of 'shequ construction': under the government directives, grassroots organizations such as the street offices and the residents' committees become the administrative bodies of shequ management, and organize shequ residents to participate in 'shequ construction'. • developing stage of 'shequ construction': the street offices, the residents' committees and shequ members co-operate in services and management; consequently social elements in shequ mature at a remarkable pace. 92 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002 kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun • maturity of 'shequ construction': a relatively strong shequ autonomous system will be formed and the street office as the government's agency will become a separate entity from the autonomous residents' committee. a co-operative/mutual control system will be established among the street offices, the residents' committees (autonomous entity), shequ social organizations and shequ members (residents and work units within shequ). a further essential factor (player) cannot be excluded when examining the issue of whether the constructed shequ is a 'governmental' or 'social' entity. we refer here to the chinese communist party (ccp), whose comprehensive network reaches all over the country beyond the boundary of 'governmental' and 'social'. it is clearly stated in the organizing rural residents' committee act that the ccp should take the leading role in the rural community's autonomy, but the organizing urban residents committee act has no such stipulations. however, the aforementioned 'opinion' formulated the following cohesive policy concerning various players and their roles to push forward the 'shequ construction'. the basic policy stated in 'the opinion' is as follows: under the guidance of the party committee and the government, shequ residents' committees are to take the helm for "shequ construction", supported by the society and with the participation of the people at large, under the leadership of the department of civil affairs and the assistance and co-operation of all concerned sections of the government. here, the role of the ccp in the 'shequ construction' is clearly stated as 'the guidance core'. to understand how the ccp plays this role effectively, the following observations were noted when reviewing several publications:. the background and history of 'shequ party construction' under the planned economy system, the grassroots organizations of the ccp were divided into two systems, i.e., work units and the street offices. incumbent party members residing in a shequ belonged to the party organization within their work units and had no direct contacts with shequ party organizations in the street offices. those who were under the shequ party organizations were limited to: retired and elderly party members; party members who worked for private corporations or for foreign corporations in the shequ; party members in the mobile population; and unemployed party members. but shequ party organizations did not have sufficient organizing ability to manage those party members. shequ was a kind of 'void' for the party, so to speak. as the 93 the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party market economy began to flourish and private enterprises, foreign companies and various social organizations have increased since 1990s, unsettled party members, laid off and/or unemployed party members increased drastically, and the 'void' was further enlarged.12 in the mid1990s, alarmed by the trend that could threaten the maintainance and expansion of the party leadership, the central party began to build up shequ party organizations and strengthen their functions. especially as the falun gong became so popular and widespread among people and party members, the central party strongly felt the need to strengthen the party members' organizations at the grassroots level of society, as well as the management capacity and influence of party organizations. in 1996, the odoccp (organization department of the ccp) issued the 'opinion to strengthen the street party organizations'. it specified the duties of the street party organizations and shequ party organizations and urged measures to strengthen the party organization. various conferences and symposiums were conducted to actively promote 'shequ party construction', e.g. in shanghai in 1999, beijing in 2000 and the city of haikou in hainan province in 2002. the themes of conferences and symposiums included: 'national street and shequ party construction workshops'; 'national symposium on building-up street and shequ party organizations in municipalities under the direct control and other municipalities'; and 'national conference and exchange of experiences of organizing street and shequ party organizations in mediumto small-size cities'. based on cases in different cities, the following is the summary of main policies in 'shequ party construction': improving the systematization rate according to the 'charters of the chinese communist party', a party committee should be formed wherever there are more than 100 party members who belong to organizations within the jurisdiction; a party main branch should be set up wherever there are more than 50 party members; and a party cell should be established wherever there are more than three party members. in order to adhere to the charter, shequ party cells were established at many places. as a result, the percentage of party cells established under the jurisdiction of the residents' committees nationwide increased to 78 percent in 2001 compared to 65 percent in 1993.13 94 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002 kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun improving the quality of party organization officers one of the major elements that hinder the organizational ability and leadership of any shequ party organization is the low quality of its officers. many of them are elderly without higher education and the necessary management skills. in order to resolve the problem, each area is trying to secure capable party members for its key positions. the following methods are used in selecting persons for the position of secretaries of shequ party cells. first, capable officers of the residents' committees who are trusted by the people at large and popular among them are selected as secretaries of shequ party cells. according to year 2000 statistics, 56 percent (196 persons) of the shequ party branch secretaries in the city of jinan in shandong province were chosen in this way (officers of the residents' committees holding concurrent posts in the shequ party branch as secretaries will be explained later). second, the district party committees choose young and capable party members in the districts/street agencies or companies who are familiar with the tasks of the shequ and have them assume the position of the shequ party branch secretaries. in other words, the higher-level party organizations appoint members to the lower-party organizations. third, they recruit party members who are laid-off labourers, retired military personnel and university students to take qualifying examinations and appoint to the positions.14 to secure highly qualified personnel, remuneration for the party branch officers has been improved. previously, while the party main branch secretaries were full-time personnel, the party branch secretaries under them held concurrent posts and were not remunerated. therefore, whether the work at the party cells could be carried out successfully or not depended on the personal relationship between the party main branch secretaries and the party branch secretaries. but grievances for working without compensation have been reported. according to the survey taken in xihu district of the city of hangzhou in zhejiang province, the shequ party branch secretaries, dissatisfied by the fact that they were not given any remuneration while doing the same job as the residents' committee officers who were remunerated, became demotivated in carrying out their duties.15 to avoid this type of situation and to recruit capable party members for shequ activities from all areas and fields, the organization department of the party committee in the city of jinan (shandong province) came up with provisions, by which the party members recruited to work in the shequ party branch or the residents' committee who are officers of national agencies or col95 the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party lective-owned agencies receive the same remuneration and are allowed to receive additional compensation offered by the residents' committee. the provision also stipulated that in the case that collective-owned agency officers are employed by shequ and apply to qualify as civil servants, they should take priority for appointment.16 as the remuneration for the residents' committee officers is improved, the compensation for the shequ party branch secretaries is being revised to be on a par with residents' committee directors. improved work environment difficulties that the shequ party organizations used to face were the shortage of office space and an insufficient budget to manage their offices. in order to improve this situation, several measures have been taken together with the current reforms, e.g. offices of the shequ party cells are constructed with the co-operation of the urban construction sections, and telephones are installed in offices. increasing organizational strength through network building the street party organizations being the core, building the network of all party organizations in government agencies and work units within the shequ is taking place so that the vertical chain of command by work units and the horizontal ones rooted in the community can come together and co-operate. members of shequ party organizations used to be retired and elderly members, members in private enterprises or foreign corporations, members in mobile population and unemployed members. according to the re-organization plan, those who were laidoff are included in shequ party organizations and the incumbent party members under the jurisdiction of municipalities and of districts are placed under the co-operative control of party organizations by work unit and shequ. thus these party members can be mobilized to participate in various activities in the shequ.17 for example, in 2001, the kecheng district of the city of quzhou in zhejiang province issued an 'opinion concerning mobilizing incumbent party members to organize and participate in shequ works'. in it, incumbent party members residing in the district were encouraged to go to the party branch to register in the 'registration of incumbent party members' and to participate in one or two shequ service activities. they were also asked to volunteer for propaganda education, environmental hygiene, crime watch patrol, medical and public health, the repair of household appliances, maintenance of housing environment, etc., through such initiatives as 'party member 96 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002 kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun volunteer service groups', 'apartment buildings in the responsible area of party members', 'act as the spearhead of the communist party', etc. as a result, more than 3,000 incumbent party members in the district registered at the shequ party branch by the end of 2001, more than 100 service groups of various sorts were set up, and more than 2,000 incumbent party members are able to participate in the shequ services at all times.18 in order to encourage the incumbent party members to participate in voluntary activities, the party committee of xuanwu district in the city of nanjing reports the party members' rate of activity participation to their work unit every year, and has implemented a measure to use these data as a criterion for the evaluation of advanced units. 19 this progress is not limited to the activities of party members; the systematic building of co-operative networks combining the vertical and horizontal chains of control has also been successful. party construction joint meetings and party construction seminars have been held. for example, the party committee of xueyuan street in the xiling district of the city of yichang (hubei province) started the shequ party construction joint meeting involving 59 agencies and party organizations of work units in the shequ. the party members come together to decide the party's work plan and other matters.20 also, the party work committee of yinxing street in the yangpu district in shanghai initiated the shequ party construction joint meeting system with the participation of 32 units in the shequ (the street party work committee; four government departments and agencies; six work units; five group units; twelve schools and scientific research centres, and four public utility units). intensifying theoretical study for party members educational activities are intensified for party members to strengthen their ideology and conviction as communist party members so that they are successful in accomplishing their role in the shequ. shequ party organizations hold study sessions at least once a month and are encouraged to hold a seminar every 6 months for party members, inviting leaders of cities or districts, or members of the organization department, the propaganda department and the party school as guest speakers. what they study is mainly marxism-leninism, mao zedong thought, deng xiaoping theory, important strategies and policies of the party and the nation, various issues concerning china's entry into wto and reforms of state-owned enterprises, improvement of knowledge and skills, etc. in addition to these study sessions, some are conducting ideological political projects in several organizations within their 97 the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party jurisdiction. for example, the party committee of the xueyuan street in the district of xiling, yichang city, is sending 24 party construction coordinators to 58 shequ economic, business and social organizations to assist their ideological political activities. 21 active participation in services for residents in order to have a wide range of residents recognize the party leadership in shequ, services for residents are provided by the shequ party organizations. 'the opinion' issued in september 1996 stipulated that one of the main duties of the street party organizations is to discuss issues such as the dissemination and implementation of party lines and control of party members, as well as issues concerning the street's urban management, social services, economic development, social safety and general management, etc. the shequ party organizations are obligated to work with the general public and provide various services. providing services for residents is done through the shequ party members' service volunteer society, shequ party members' security service group, shequ party members' environment protection and hygiene group, shequ party members' crime watch patrol group, and shequ party members' support and assistance for the poor. party branch secretaries holding concurrent positions as the shequ residents' committee officers according to the complete book of administration, published in june 2000, out of 300 shequ party cells of a certain district in a certain city, 133 (44.3 percent) were not in the residents' committees and 122 party branch secretaries (40.7 percent) were not holding concurrent posts as director or committee member of residents' committees. as a result, activities of the shequ party cells were rather stagnant. in many areas, one person's concurrently holding two posts: shequ party branch secretary and director of the shequ residents' committee is encouraged for long-term stability and to ensure continuous party leadership in the shequ party organizations. holding a concurrent post as shequ party branch secretary and director of the shequ residents' committee was normal practice when the members of residents' committees used to be chosen by the street party organizations and when party cells were organized by party members who were also officers in the residents' committees. but in recent years, as the party centre's guidelines call for election of officers of shequ residents' committees by the direct vote of residents, it becomes risky to 98 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002 kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun continue this practice. if the party members sent by the district or street party organizations to assume the position of secretary of shequ party cells do not reside in the shequ, they are not entitled to run for election. on the other hand, there is a greater possibility that non-party members may be elected. according to a survey taken (probably in the year 2000), the majority of 56 secretaries of the shequ party cells of yinxing street in the yangpu district in shanghai responded that the direct election of residents' committee officers should take place but that the time was not ripe; or that direct elections would be disadvantageous for the leadership of the party and should not be allowed. some also responded that reasons should not be revealed but that these direct elections should not be conducted.22 a comprehensive book on shequ published in june 2000 refers to this issue as follows: in other words, the street offices should lay the groundwork firmly for the election of residents' committees so that residents elect party members as directors or members of residents' committees. street party committees (or shequ party main cells) should lay the groundwork so that party members will elect officers of the residents' committees as branch secretaries or branch committee members.23 the aforementioned fundamental idea that supports the 'shequ party construction' programme by the party's organization department can be summarized as follows: to maintain long-term stability and continuous leadership of the shequ party organization, all the party members should be organized into the street party branches, and the personnel and duty aspects of the party branches should be unified into shequ residents' committees. under the policy, the holding of posts concurrently as shequ party branch secretary and director of the shequ residents' committees is aimed at in many areas. party cells are established in the shequ residents' committees and party branch secretaries who hold concurrent posts as directors (or committee member) of shequ residents' committees are managing residents and providing services for residents. for example, in yinxing street of yangpu district, 41.5 percent of the 56 party branch secretaries hold a concurrent post as director of the residents' committees, and 9.4 percent of those who do not hold concurrent posts stated that their job title may be different but the work itself is the same. likewise, 5.7 percent stated that they are mainly engaged in the administrative work of the residents' committees and there is less party administrative work.24 99 the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party at the 99 long shequ of zhongyuan lu in the same street, all activities of the party branch except the party's organizational work are basically identical to those of the residents' committee. the job of ms. jin cheng hong, who is the party branch secretary, is general management of the shequ and she assumes responsibility for a great many of the residents' committee's activities, e.g. as group leader for safe area construction group, public health group, etc. she is also in charge of managing seven floors of a certain residential unit with a residents' committee officer. she has her desk inside the office of the residents' committee where she works with the residents' committee officers and attends all meetings of the residents' committee. there is no clear division of work between the party branch and the residents' committee.25 unification in the personnel and duty aspects naturally leads to financial confusion. under the policy, which encourages the party branch to be engaged in the resident management and service activities that were originally the duties of the shequ residents' committee, some areas have begun to pay the party branch secretaries remuneration equivalent to that of directors of shequ residents' committee. and it should be noted that the activity expenses of the party branches, including labour costs, are covered by the contributions from district/street offices' finances as well as by the party expenses.26 the current reform calls for an increase in the office expenses of shequ residents' committees as well as budget increases for activities of shequ party branch by means of financial support from districts and street offices. this gives the impression that the unification of the party, the government, and the shequ residents' committee is proceeding in all of the personnel, fund and duty aspects. issues of 'shequ party construction' in the preceding section, the shequ construction policies of odoccp were introduced. some members of the ccp, however, have raised objections against these policies, as follows. first, ccp members who have little interest in shequ activities make the point that many incumbent party members are preoccupied with their own lives and do not have time to spare for the activities of shequ party organizations. according to a survey made in yinxing street of yangpu district, the sense of attachment to shequ of incumbent party members was weak and they seemed to be indifferent toward the issue of 'shequ construction'. some of the party members do not transfer their membership to street party organizations even after retirement, for fear of getting involved in problematic situations.27 in surveys of incumcopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002100 kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun bent party members, 24.5 percent of 56 party branch secretaries met party members who tried to hide the fact that they were party members. consequently, shequ party branch secretaries in general are rather cautious in urging incumbent party members to participate in branch activities. when asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement that 'the activities of shequ party organizations were basically for unemployed or retired party members and it would not be necessary for incumbent party members to participate', 56.6 percent responded that they did not agree. but 37.8 percent responded that they agreed or they agreed basically. furthermore, 86.8 percent agreed or basically agreed that 'it would be difficult to control incumbent party members as their organizational relationship was based on their work units'. the findings of these surveys show that many branch secretaries are aware that incumbent party members should be involved in 'shequ party construction' but feel that this is unrealistic.28 moreover, it is very interesting to find that people who are not party members are more aware of activities of street party work committees and of shequ residents' committees.29 the ratio of party members for open candidates for shequ workers is less compared to non-party members. in the survey taken in the xihu district of the city of hangzhou, out of 343 who passed the open test of candidates for shequ workers, only 50 persons (14.58 percent) were party members.30 as shown in the data, many party members have neither the time to spend on the shequ work nor have greater interest than non-party-members in shequ work. at the national conference and exchange of experiences of street and shequ party constructions in medium to small size cities, held in january 2002, some representatives expressed their opinions in the discussion titled 'strengthening and improving the street shequ party construction works' that the shequ was the place for people to live and rest and it would not be desirable to organize shequ patrol units by party members, etc.31 the other objections are raised by those who are reconsidering the ideal stand of the party. as the personnel of shequ party cells and shequ residents' committees are either duplicated or have no distinction in their functions, shequ party cells have to deal with various matters including mediation of civil disputes, maintenance of public order, civil administrative services, environmental hygiene, women's affairs, etc. and they hardly have any time to spare for the duties they are supposed to perform for the party and to organize and develop party organizations. moreover, the results of the studies made by lin shangli indicate another major problem brought about by the unification with 101 the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party shequ residents' committees. the greatest advantage of the communist party essentially is that it is the embodiment of the social power and it is not the non-socialistic external authority or power like the administrative organ. but the positioning of the party becomes vague by carrying out administrative functions at shequ. under these circumstances, organizing party cells in the shequ is seen as the government's intervention into societal affairs, contradicting its position to make the shequ autonomous. additionally, as residents cannot make a clear distinction between party cells and the shequ residents' committees, they may not associate the efforts made by the party for public interests with the successful infiltration of the party's authority or with improving their opinion with respect to the party. in fact, surveys taken via interviews show that most residents identified the party cell secretary as 'another director of their residents' committee' and did not know whether the director was a party member or not.32 this is why lin shangli proposes that a clear distinction should be made between the shequ party organization and the shequ residents' committee. in other words, as long as the circumstances allow, holding concurrent posts, being party cell secretary and shequ residents' committee director at the same time should be avoided and shequ party organizations should stay away from cumbersome public services and administrative activities. by doing so, shequ party organizations, not being entangled in the dispute as to whether the 'shequ construction' should be led by 'governmental' (the administration) or 'social' (or autonomy) directions, can demonstrate their leadership as the social power in 'shequ construction' by building up the organizational ability of the shequ party members and by expanding their network in shequ. indeed, the intention of organizing shequ party cells meets the goal of residents' autonomy and democracy at the grassroots level.33 at the national conference and exchange of experiences of street and shequ party constructions in mediumto small-size cities, mentioned earlier, the role of the party for the shequ residents' autonomy was discussed and the proposal was made to have the content of the discussion included in the written document. what had been said is that the party's directives should be considered as 'guidelines' and that the party and the shequ residents' autonomous organizations are two independent organizations in the streets and shequ; and that the party should not undertake all the activities of the residents' autonomous organizations.34 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002102 kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun conclusion: some observations the role of the chinese communist party in 'shequ construction' has not yet been defined. one direction is to aim for coalescence with the shequ residents' committee. the other is to differentiate itself from the shequ residents' committee, which is still viewed as the arm or agent of the district or street administrations and to adhere to the standpoint as a driving force of society. the discussions being made regarding the ccp's position related to the 'shequ construction' have brought into relief some points of contention as to the specific direction and guidance for the future and the ideal state of the party. the first point is on the separation of party and government. the aforementioned two opinions are presented based on the same recognition of the current situation where the shequ residents' committee has, at this point, a stronger function as terminal agent of the government to determine whether the party should directly perform the administrative duties of shequ residents' committees or whether the direction and guidance should be indirectly given through the model roles demonstrated by individual party members. the argument is similar to those related to the separation of party and government that have been repeatedly made in the political system reforms. however, the ideal state of the party that has been presented by lin shangli et al. introduces a second question: in what way should the party change the course of its direction and guidance under the conditions for separation of government and society? the separation is slowly but constantly taking place, and the shequ residents' committees and social associations will gradually lose their characteristics as the proxies of the government and strengthen the functions as representatives of social forces. to this question, lin et al. answers: 'the greatest advantage of the communist party is that it is the embodiment of the social power and it is not the non-socialistic external authority or power like the administrative organ.' then, when the separation of party and government is accomplished, can the party really provide society with direction and guidance effectively? this third point is a difficult question to answer. however, considering only the attitudes of incumbent party members toward the shequ work introduced in this text, the claim that the party has a persistent organizational power that enables provision of effective direction and guidance to society is unconvincing. 103 the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party notes dr. ryosei kokubun is director of centre for area studies and professor of political science department at keio university, tokyo, japan. dr. kazuko kojima is an assistant professor at the college of international studies, university of tsukuba, japan. 1 for example, the method of the payments of pensions for the elderly had changed, i.e., it used to be paid through work units to which people belonged, but payments are now made at banks or post offices in the neighbourhood. and for those who are retired and cannot go to banks or post offices on their own, the social insurance agency has decided to deliver pension payments directly to the payee or ask the shequ service agency to deliver the payments. renmin ribao (wangluoban), 26 april 2000. 2 article 4 of the 'urban residents minimum living allowance act' (effective as of october 1999) states that the county departments of civil affairs, street offices and township authorities should be responsible for administration and evaluation for the urban residents' minimum living allowance. it also states that upon request of the administration and evaluation agencies, the residents' committees can provide daily administration and services. 3 renmin ribao, 13 december 2000. 4 although it is not stated in 'the opinion', there are many cases whereby, during the period when the community members' representative congress is not in session, the shequ consultative councils are established as the consultative supervisory agency, consisting of representatives of residents, units and members of people's congress and the chinese people's political consultative conference. 5 see for example mao minghua, 'shequ guangli moshi zhi xuanze' [choice of shequ construction models], shehui [society], no. 3 (2001); hu zongshan, 'quanguo shequ jianshe moshi pingxi' [evaluation of shequ construction models], zhongguo minzheng [china civil affairs](june 2001). 6 in beijing, for example, the street offices hire one shequ business staff member per 300 family units to serve in the shequ. those who are hired run for elections of the shequ residents' committees as directors, deputy directors or committee members. once elected, they enter into contracts called 'beijing shequ business staff employment contracts' with the street offices. 7 in the case of quanyuan street of dongling district in the city of shenyang, 16 shequ within the street office are given (a) the right of self-government (the right of democratic election, the right of decision-making in internal affairs, the right to manage daily affairs, financial/ budgetary autonomy, the right to reject unreasonable allocation and the right to internal supervision); (b) the right to co-operate with the government and manage affairs (the rights to co-operate in carrying out duties/jobs such as urban development, environmental protection, garbage collection/disposal, affairs of the elderly, medical and public health, public safety, jurisprudence, family planning, employment, social welfare. in co-operating with the government, they are to be compensated financially); (c) the right to supervise the government (supervising government offices of all levels, street offices, personnel and their work and operations, as well as supervising public utilities such as water, gas, electricity and heating, including the activities of the real estate management firms and public remarks made by the key communist party members within the shequ). see the director of civil affairs agency of liaoning province, zhang yongyin, 'shenyang songbang fangquan kan copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002104 kazuko kojima and ryosei kokubun zizhi' [city of shenyang transferred its authorities downward and lays stress on autonomy], shequ (january 2001), p. 8. 8 (a) tasks of the street offices include: establishing and evaluating administrative goals, enforcement of administrative matters, improving the investment environment, providing care and support to poor families, receiving and dealing with grievances, registration of corporations, etc.; (b) tasks of the street offices in which the shequ co-operates include: education and dissemination of lawful acts, propaganda of the national policies, managing influx of people, family planning, payment of minimum living allowances, etc.; (c) joint tasks of the street offices and shequ include: mediation/arbitration of civil disputes, marital status certificates, etc.; (d) tasks to be carried out by shequ under the leadership of the street offices include: shequ service works, managing shequ service groups, etc. similar attempts can be seen in other districts. 9 jing yao, 'jiedao fenquan de jixiao yu jiazhi – jianghan qu shequ zizhizuzhi ceping jiedao de diaocha' [the street offices and shequ – the case of jianghan], zhongguo minzheng [china civil affairs] (november 2001), p. 22. 10 for example, li baoku, the deputy minister of the moca stated during the conference on shequ construction in beijing. shequ (january 2001) p. 6. 11 wang sibin, 'tizhi gaige zhong de chengshi shequ jianshe de lilun fenxi' [analysis related to urban community constructions during the system reform], shehuixue [sociology], no. 2 (2001), pp. 64-65. 12 according to a handbook published in april 2001, sample research conducted in shanghai indicates that less than 5 percent of employees in shanghai's private science and technology corporations were party members. out of 8,326 foreign corporations in shanghai, only 2,557 had party organizations. out of more than 80,000 private enterprises, less than 10 percent had party organizations. it is said that those party organizations are rather inactive. zhong xiangting, jiedao shequ dangjian gongzuo shouce [handbook of party construction in shequ] (shanxi renmin press, 2001), p. 16. 13 zhong shu, 'shequ dangjian shi jianqiang de zuzhi baozheng' [shequ party construction guarantees the party's organizational strength], shequ (may/june 2001), p. 8. 14 bureau for the organization, odoccp, 'jiedao shequ dangjian gongzuo zhidao' [directives in street and shequ party construction] (dangjian duwu press, 2000), pp. 135-36. party committee of shijingshan district in beijing, 'yi "liumin" gongcheng wei zaiti jiaqiang shequ dangjian' [strengthen the activity toward shequ party construction by means of six projects for the people], dangjian yanjiu neican [internal reference material of the party construction study], no. 1-2 (2001). 15 office of the party committee of xihu district in the city of hangzhou, 'dangjian daodi zenme nan' [why is party construction difficult?], shequ (december 2001), p. 14. 16 jiedao shequ dangjian gongzuo zhidao, pp. 141-42. 17 liang shan, 'shequ dangjian zenyang changhao "sanbuqu"' [how can shequ party construction sing trilogy well?], shequ (december 2001), p. 15. 18 jiang wenxian, 'shequ dangjian juqile renxin' [shequ party construction occupied people's minds),shequ, no. 2-3 (2002), p. 9. 19 organization department of the party committee in the city of nanjing, 'redian zhuazhule dangjian gaohuole' [if you have a knack for it, the party construction can be vitalized], shequ, no. 3-5 (2002), p. 9. 20 jiedao shequ dangjian gongzuo zhidao, p. 39. 21 ibid., p. 40. 22 lin shangli et al., shanghai shequ jianshe yanjiu baogao congshu, shequ dangjian yu qunzhong gongzuo, shanghai yangpu qu yinxing jiedao yanjiu baogao [reports on shequ construction in shanghai] (hereafter referred to as shequ dangjian yu qunzhong gongzuo) (shanghai: shanghai daxue chubanshe, (2000), p. 73. 105 the 'shequ construction' programme and the chinese communist party 23 du zhiming, xin shiqi jiedao juweihui gongzuo shiwu quanshu [complete administrative book of street office and residents' committee works in new era] (zhongyang dadi press, 2000), p. 175. 24 shequ dangjian yu qunzhong gongzuo, p. 61. 25 ibid., p. 92. 26 as for the budget or financial resources to cover activities and expenses of party branches, the handbook for shequ party construction works, published in april 2001, affirms that the districts, party and street offices share this responsibility. jiedao shequ dangjian gongzuo shouce, p. 152. 27 shequ dangjian yu qunzhong gongzuo, p. 282. 28 ibid., p. 60. 29 ibid., p. 74. 30 'dangjian daodi zenme nan'. 31 shequ, no. 2-3 (2002), p. 8. 32 shequ dangjian yu qunzhong gongzuo, p. 95. 33 ibid., pp. 42, 95 and 102. 34 shequ, no. 2-3 (2002), p. 8. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002106 børge bakken norms, values and cynical games with party ideology børge bakken abstract the chinese communist party is based on an ideology that was once fundamentally linked to social norms and values. the original charisma of the party and its leaders seems to have gone in the direction predicted by max weber: that charisma cannot stand the test of everyday routines; it will eventually be rationalized and bureaucratized. the party's slogan of 'three representations' seems to reach out to the 'new social strata,' allowing entry to those who 'became rich first,' namely the entrepreneurs. at the same time, the party struggles to redefine the marxist paradigm of exploitation in a situation where workers increasingly live under conditions akin to those in england at the time of the industrial revolution. sweeping changes are being implemented but without any modification to the verbal baggage of socialist propaganda. losing the mandate of history it has been argued that the 'mandate of heaven' that represented legitimacy for the imperial dynasties was superseded by the chinese communist party's 'mandate of history.' it is further posited that the ccp is vulnerable in the event that popular perception should deem that they have lost this authority.1 this paper will look at the ideology of the party, and raise the question whether the ccp is about to lose its mandate. it is possible that a bureaucratized party founded on an ideology that lacks any firm linkage to social norms and values, and divorced from any social movement, could be moving towards breakdown. the party is trying to renew and modernize itself, seeking new social moorings and support. it might succeed in reconstructing its 'mandate of history,' but there is a clear danger that it might lose its grip on the hearts and minds of the people. ideology is to a great extent linked to the image-making capacity of a power structure; indeed, it is a means of defending the prestige structure of a regime. such a prestige structure depends on the creation and maintenance of an image that will inspire the admiration, fear, hopes and fortunes of its adherents. people must feel that the organization or 107 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology party that carries this mandate is necessary for their own lives and fortunes. as pointed out by mark elvin: 'once the image begins to suffer damage, little will happen for a while, but then a process of negative feedback develops, leading to a startlingly sudden collapse.'2 the rituals of ideology gain in significance viewed from this perspective. they bolster the façade of the party, and this is key to its success and survival, and its capacity to stay in power. however, there are both ideological and structural processes that have the potential to erode the power of the party. subversive elements might threaten the party from the outside, but there is also a structural threat which comes from within. the generation that grew up with the chinese communist party, those who were young and malleable in the 1950s and 1960s, were fired by a communist ideology that enjoyed a moral power in some ways similar to that of the great religions of christianity, islam or buddhism. we should bear this in mind when we examine the state of ideology and the much commented upon moral decline in contemporary china. i shall argue that the power of ideology is to a great extent, although not exclusively, built on moral beliefs, social norms and values, and that its effectiveness is linked to the ethos of the society in which it operates. consequently, when the social fabric starts to erode, so too does the power of ideology. i shall argue that the party's links to social norms and values have fractured in two crucial places. first, in terms of its being anchored to general social norms and values, unconnected with any social movement as such. second, it is broken in terms of what weber called charisma. the party, or its representation through the ultimate leader, has been emptied of heroic charisma. what mao zedong had in abundance, and deng xiaoping had to a lesser extent, does not apply to a jiang zemin. jiang's popular nickname, qiang toucao, is a reference to the grass blowing in the wind, connoting opportunism and unprincipled pragmatism or bureaucratism. jiang does not possess the charisma won through armed struggle in war and revolution, nor is his name linked to the grand narratives of heroism in any way. both these 'broken links' point in the direction of a waning normative power. ideology has lost its social and charismatic moorings. i have elsewhere written on the uses of the norm as the basic element of a control system, pointing out the recurring patterns of chinese 'exemplary norms' of confucian as well as communist heroism and selfsacrifice.3 these have always been ideal norms orchestrated from above and used for ideological purposes. however, despite the many examples of resistance against such 'exemplary norms,' the ethos of collec108 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16•2002 børge bakken tivism and the hopes of communism did find support and resonance among the general public to a much greater degree during earlier periods in the history of the people's republic of china. it is hardly a controversial standpoint to claim that we have seen an erosion of this ethos during the reforms. in the latest important ideological campaign (the 'three representations' [san ge daibiao]) leading up to the 16th party congress, jiang zemin addressed the role of the chinese communist party, stating that: 'it is essential to have the strong leadership of the communist party of china. otherwise, the country will fall into disunity and break up.'4 i have gone back to franz schurmann's now classical ideology and organization in communist china to see whether his description can give us clues about the present state of the party, and its future direction. schurmann questions whether the complex structures of organization in a socialist society could continue to function without the communist party: [i]s the communist party the keystone to the whole structure, so that its disappearance would mean the collapse of the structure? the weight of evidence, in my opinion, is that it is so; given communist-type organization of state power, a communist party would have to be created if it did not exist.5 it is the scenario of breakdown which haunts as well as legitimizes the leadership of the ccp. the party has utilized this breakdown scenario in their propaganda, trying to convince people that the ccp is china. from this perspective, if the party collapses, the whole nation will surely disintegrate and break up. this warning, together with the frequent references to the disintegration of the soviet union, has clearly been one of the party's strongest arguments of legitimacy over the last decade and more. the regime is constantly reminded of the possible breakdown in everything from the nation's own dynastic history to the more recent events of cultural revolution, via the breakdown of the soviet union, to their own experiences of mounting social unrest and disorder. li tieying, politburo member and leader of the chinese academy of social sciences (cass), addresses the question by describing the disintegration and final breakdown of the soviet union as the 'most painful lesson of socialism' ever, and urges the party to avoid such an experience in china. li sees a need to prepare and renew the party for the road ahead and the dangers to come, and advocates purely pragmatic 'constant change and renewal' as the way out for the party.6 li tieying's position recognizes that the charisma of the great leader is gone, and that ideology is the medium through which a routinized party can regain unity and achieve renewal. 109 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology this utilitarian scenario claims that 'constant change and renewal' and pragmatic readjustments to the realities of a rapidly changing china will save the party and keep it in power. in this sense, reaching out to new groups becomes a rational way forward for the party. ideology may have been downplayed since the time of the great campaigns, but it has not lost its validity as a unifying and renewing force. ideology is played out, however, against the backdrop of an alternative breakdown scenario. in such a development, the very processes and techniques implemented to uphold power will instead contribute to its demise, paradoxically leaving the party 'like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom it has called up by its spells.'7 schurmann defined ideology not as a thinking characteristic of a class or individual, but as a manner of thinking characteristic of an organization.8 as we shall see, the definition fits well with the present situation, and we therefore need to look at the party's organizational rationality and techniques of management. the transforming effect of ideology is an important issue. any party or organization must eventually face the moment of routinization, schurmann argued, pointing out that communist parties had always resisted routinization; 'sometimes by purges, more often by renewed outbursts of ideological activity.' this is the case, he claimed, both with younger revolutionary parties as well as the more bureaucratized ones: '[i]deology remains a latent instrument which can be reactivated if the leaders and the external situation call for it.'9 in other words, ideology does have the rational function of renewal, and in addition, a potential unifying function countering the dangers of growing routinization and stagnation. ideological change stands out as the preferred solution if we think of the alternative massive purges that plagued the party for so many years. they may have renewed the party, but in the end wore out both the organization and the people. the purges made people cynical and destabilized china as a result. cynicism is, however, an aspect of ideology too, and this fact should not be overlooked. schurmann maintained that legitimacy flows from the leadership's ability to link decisions to the broad and accepted values and norms in society at large. in organizations based on powerful values and norms, consciousness is important. values can only be held consciously, and norms can only be acted on, if people understand them, schurmann contends.10 consequently he warns that: 'cynical playing with ideology has often had disastrous results for those who saw it simply as a useful tool.'11 we shall argue that such cynicism originates in the lack of social moorings of the new ideology and in the manipulacopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002110 børge bakken tion of social norms and values that follows. while reaching out to new elites, the party keeps its original legitimizing norm of being the 'vanguard of the working class.' one important aspect of the current ideological campaigns, however, is that they are linked to norms of an order other than the social – these can be termed exemplary norms. such exemplary norms may prove to be a rather unstable substitute for the real thing. we shall later look more closely at how ideology is reactivated – and how it could possibly backfire – through the campaign of the 'three representations.' party ideology, exemplarity and the social norm one need not look for an internally consistent ideology in post-mao china, because the socialist rhetoric is no longer promulgated as a credible ideology. the principal tenet is rather to uphold the party's prestige structure. while the party is reaching out to include new economic elites, it still utilizes its former social values of serving the people. according to the latest definitions of ideological correctness, the party represents 'the people's democratic dictatorship' (renmin minzhu zhuanzheng) led by the working class and based on the worker–peasant alliance.12 the party is fast developing into a self-proclaimed national and socialist party, with an emphasis on the 'national,' but a strengthening in the rhetoric of the 'socialist' element. ideology has increasingly become a heterogeneous mixture of nationalist, socialist and capitalist strands, played to the tune of outworn socialist soundbites. the focus is not on internalizing specific social norms and values, more about defining a set of 'standards' of correct behaviour, or rather correct ways of defining the world. one observer has seen in this development a transformation of the party 'from a principle-oriented party to a utilitarian party' and goes on to define it as a corporate party.13 while this may be an oversimplification (the party was always pragmatic and utilitarian), it does say something about the relative strength of its approaches. perhaps one could argue that the cloak of ideology is threadbare and that the utilitarian undergarments are becoming more and more visible. at least the idea of a corporate party or a managerial party serves as a good description of the present situation. the party has realized it must change, but is unwilling to let go of some of its socialist verbal baggage. there is a striking contrast between the realities of reform and the continuing invocation of communist ideals. maintaining control and upholding power have always been important aspects of the ideology, but ideological campaigns now seem to 111 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology be played out without striking any deeper resonance with the basic norms and values of society. maoism became increasingly ritualized after the cultural revolution, and people, as well as the state and party bureaucracy, increasingly came to doubt official ideology. the political demobilization experienced after the cultural revolution may have effectively curtailed the penetration of ideology into the everyday lives of the people, but it could not stop the general disillusionment about the party ideology as such. people are now merely going through the movements, and for the party it has been particularly important to control those movements. the party battle-cry to 'become rich first' was crucial in kick-starting the economic reforms, but at the same time increased the opportunity for corrupt operations. cynicism about ideology and increased opportunities for private enrichment gradually enhanced private rationalities both within and outside the party. the game of ideology led to a 'moral order' full of disillusion and simulation. possessing the correct definitions of the present order seems to be the stuff of which power and careers are made. few chinese sincerely believe they are developing a socialist society fundamentally different from and superior to capitalism. for the party and its ideology, it is just a matter of defining any development as a renewed and advanced form of socialism. at the same time the party still bases its legitimacy and power on its traditionalist communist identity. consequently, to 'let someone get rich first' must be defined as a valuable contribution to socialist collectivism and solidarity, while the market has to be redefined as a socialist invention of 'market socialism,' and the good capitalist must become a 'model worker.' according to official chinese propaganda, it is 'spiritual civilization' that makes the system different from and superior to the capitalist west. this is in reality not so much about moral superiority as it is about the ways to uphold social order. legitimacy flows from the dual ability of the regime to uphold order and sustain growth. the present ideology is full of nationalist hints about the advanced state of chinese history and culture. socialist rhetoric and exemplary models are formed into new legitimizing narratives of growth and order to defend the fading grand narratives of a once-orderly socialist past. in both the memories of past greatness and the dreams of greatness to come there are integrative elements – and in both there are dangers. according to official chinese thinking, the best way to cope with such danger lies in the 'exemplary norm.' copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002112 børge bakken it is one of the fundamental assumptions in the chinese theory of learning that people are innately capable of learning from models. in addition, rule by morality was more widespread in traditional china than rule by law. chinese society is undoubtedly a disciplinary society in many senses, but it is also an educative society. a combination of the disciplinary and the educational constitutes what could be termed an 'exemplary society.'14 a discipline based on social norms and values is more durable than one based on outer force only, because it seeks to bind people to society with their own ideas. this is also reflected in the power of the party. it remains strong only as long as its élan vital derives from the values of the grassroots of society. it is linked to power in a way less likely to manifest force or violence. regulation through the norm is based more on willed consent, and functions as a positive restraint. one should not forget that the communist party was once based on strong mass movements and popular support, and that its initial success originated from such social moorings. when ideology and the social norms are closely linked, one may refer to ideology as something one is, in the sense of being part of one's identity. this is a rare phenomenon, perhaps one resembling religion. more generally, ideology would normally be defined as something one has or as something one uses. when the norm is not allowed to fluctuate naturally like a social norm, or when a norm prescribed from above no longer has a basis in social practice, then it turns into an exemplary or 'super-social norm.' this norm is prescribed from above and, in the case of today's china, it merely represents the party's power to define reality. the party no longer represents the social norm, it defines and stands above the norms of society. the enforced exemplary norm might be crucial in upholding order and maintaining the rule of the party for a shorter or longer period. at the same time, the inflexibility and the lack of social moorings represented by the 'super-social' norm can lead to a general erosion of order. in terms of the party's power, we might talk of an eggshell theory. on the outside the egg looks nice and fresh, but inside it could be rotten. the shell becomes more and more brittle, but this may be hard to detect on the surface. change may come suddenly and dramatically. indeed, as soon as the eggshell cracks, the party humpty-dumpty will be impossible to put together again because there is no longer a cohesive social normative basis, nor an economic incentive for upholding its leadership. of course, the party's power is not solely predicated on the normative social fundamentals of that organization. the party apparatus has a string of organizational and structural power bases that allow it to 113 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology stay in power and uphold order by coercive means for a long period without recourse to any normative mass base. the point here, however, is to focus on the importance of such a base, and show how the lack of social moorings could weaken and challenge the entire organizational structure. like schurmann, i want to stress this fundamental social aspect of party power without harbouring any illusions that there exists a one-toone relationship between this base and the actual power of the party. countering the bureaucratization of charisma the exemplary norm is about guaranteeing order and stability in a society through the prediction of people's behaviour. the quest for order and predictability is the very core of the 'spiritual civilization' presented in party propaganda. the ideological campaign is about how to bind people to new definitions of exemplary norms. these definitions represent a means to counter the effects of bureaucratization as well as oiling the rusty machinery of the party, updating it and making it more effective in carrying out sweeping economic reforms. at this juncture we need to make a detour to educational theory to look at some of the basics tenets of party ideology and how it is supposed to function. our focus will be on how model images are administered, which is a central theme in the three spheres of education, ideology and propaganda. models can be seen as a way of ordering a society. they may be part of a culture and be based on commonly held social norms; however, models can also be imposed from above. while cultural heroes may endure for centuries, others come and go virtually unnoticed. the ideal of chinese modelling theory, however, is still that models should emerge from below and not from above.15 models emanating from below have social and cultural moorings that render them extremely stable and effective in holding society together. the imposed model, by contrast, lacks such moorings: it is a figure constructed 'outside' society itself. in china, we can find examples of both these types of models and modelling, but the new models increasingly resemble constructed images, considerably reducing their importance. according to worried chinese educators, 'a devaluation (bianzhi) of models has taken place' as models become further and further removed from people's own daily experiences.16 the most important function of ideology and its exemplary models has been to represent an alternative to bureaucratic authority. modelling in itself is a technique for achieving authority based upon the charismatic character of the model or the hero. models represent chariscopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002114 børge bakken matic authority in chinese society, and can take the place of charismatic leaders in their absence. what is happening in china today is an example of what weber characterized as the 'routinization of charisma.' in his description max weber applies the term charisma to a personality 'regarded as of divine origin' or as 'exemplary' (vorbildlich) or as one possessing mythical and therapeutic wisdom.17 cultural heroes, leaders and organizations all initially possess elements of charisma, but as time drags on and bureaucracies expand, this process is subject to the erosive effects of daily life and reality. weber described the general routinization process that befalls charismatic authority thus: in its pure form charismatic authority has a character specifically foreign to everyday routine structures. the social relationships directly involved are strictly personal, based on the validity and practice of charismatic personal qualities ... indeed, in its pure form charismatic authority may be said to exist only in the process of originating. it cannot remain stable, but becomes either traditionalized, rationalized, or a combination of both.18 the last sentence here is particularly important. neither the charisma of the 'great leader' nor the exemplary model has proven stable in today's china. as in weber's description of charisma, chinese propaganda circles are now grappling with the problem that charismatic authority only seems to exist in the process of originating. traditionalized charisma comes back as nostalgia of past greatness, and nationalism can sometimes be seen as an attempt to regain that type of charismatic power with all its rhetoric about the great chinese past, the more than 5,000 years of chinese civilization, etc.19 as for the present, there is the problem of routinization and rationalization, and the attempts at renewal and unity through ideology do not possess the stability inherent in original charisma. there is another trait of the chinese past, not mentioned in the exemplary accounts of ideology and great harmony – namely, that of rebellion. chinese historian jin guantao observed that chinese feudal society was repeatedly shaken by social upheavals.20 violent and apparently successful rebellions repeatedly made old dynasties collapse and new ones appear. the typical historical scenario described by jin is that, after an initial period of rest and popular support, the bureaucratic apparatus is gradually blown up. corruption, disintegration and finally great chaos set in, leading to rebellion and a collapse of the dynasty. a new emperor then ascends the throne, and the crisis is met by a reform. the bureaucracy is simplified, and a restoration of the authority of the dynasty takes place as the new emperor apparently reinstates the basic social values of the past. the peasant uprisings had a cleansing effect as they got rid 115 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology of bureaucracy and its power plays, but then started to restore the same structure, trying to build the new with the old. we cannot here discuss jin's work in detail, but one point he implicitly underlines is the effects of the routinization or rationalization of charisma. his work was thoroughly condemned in china in the late 1980s, and it was read into the present as a comment on the moribund state of the party during the 'deng dynasty.' as a chinese intellectual, jin found no hope in mass rebellion, which he saw in the picture of endless repetitive cycles of feudal reproductive ultrastability, but his work nevertheless centred on the feared scenario of breakdown, a still lingering source of anxiety during the present 'jiang dynasty.' the 'three representations' and the importance of the party jiang zemin's campaign on the 'three representations' (sange daibiao), was first presented in february 2000, and was consolidated in his 1 july speech at the ccp's 80th anniversary in 2001. this central campaign has been presented as 'a new development of the marxist theory of party building' and as a campaign for 'strengthening the party in the new period.'21 jiang's speech was acclaimed for 'creatively enriching and developing marxism,' and the same party commentary has focused on its intent to counter 'western hostile forces' in their attempt to 'westernize and break up our country.'22 the central tenet is about the communist party modernizing the nation by representing the 'development of advanced productive forces,' 'china's advanced culture,' and the 'fundamental interest of the overwhelming majority of the people.' the 'three representations' can be seen as an extension of the theory of 'two civilizations' applied to the party. the 'two civilizations' campaign is addressed in jiang's speech. the outline of that campaign was originally formulated as early as in 1982, and presented by hu yaobang at the 12th party congress. in that campaign, material civilization (wuzhi wenming) stood for the productive forces or economic growth, while spiritual civilization (jingshen wenming) referred to china's advanced culture, in effect social order and stability.23 the task of serving the people follows from the successful implementation of the two civilizations.24 the theme of culture, morality and the 'spiritual' remains a central motif within the party. ideology is still viewed as the cohesive element of the party, although we sometimes find economistic interpretations of spiritual culture along the lines of the dengist emphasis on the productive forces. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002116 børge bakken li tieying gives such an interpretation of the present campaigns when he defines 'advanced culture' first and foremost as 'enterprise culture,' in particular the 'advanced cultural achievements of foreign enterprises,' emphasizing how much the party can learn from such an approach.25 li's point is interesting, and we are well advised to follow his line of thinking and regard the party ideology as some sort of enterprise culture linked to the efficiency of the corporate party. we have already quoted li's emphasis on 'constant change and renewal'; indeed, 'adapting to the situation' has become the watchword in the 'three representations' campaign. the major reason why the party has been able to maintain its power up to this point is that it 'retains its advanced nature,' according to one xinhua report. the description of its advanced nature is very pragmatic and businesslike: '[t]he party is able to judge the times and seize upon situations, advance with the times ... [and] make efforts to suit the needs of the times.' 26 the campaign is about streamlining the party to face the challenges of a modernizing china. the 'mass line' gets a pragmatic interpretation of order in the 'three representations' campaign. if corruption is not effectively punished, so goes the argument, the party will lose the confidence and support of the masses. this might upset order, and in its turn destroy the party and the country.27 the party's theoretical journal qiushi focuses on the chaotic public order, in particular in the rural areas, reminding us again of the importance of social order and fear of rebellion.28 the 'three representations' have further links to the anti-crime campaigns, and are said to be effective in cracking down on criminal syndicates and 'evil forces' as well as guaranteeing rural stability.29 a crucial theme of the campaign is the criterion for party admission. the ccp used to be seen as the organized expression of the will of the proletariat. in jiang zemin's 1 july speech there is due reference to the old slogans of the party being the 'vanguard of the working class' (jieji xianfengdui). at the same time there are many references to the 'new social strata' (xin de shehui jieceng), who have 'contributed to the development of the productive forces'; most notably consisting of 'entrepreneurs and technical personnel employed by scientific and technical enterprises in the non-public sector (minying keji qiye de chuangye renyuan he jishu renyuan), managerial and technical staff employed by foreignfunded enterprises, the self-employed (getihu), private entrepreneurs (siying qiyezhu), and freelance professionals.'30 with a twist of its original meaning, we might say with lasch that the party has indeed seen a 'revolt of the elites.'31 while the ideological façade still describes the 117 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology working class as the 'masters' of chinese society, a more realistic picture was presented in a book issued by the academy of social sciences in january 2002.32 the book operated with five categories, from the upper social strata (shehui shangzeng) to the lower stata (dizeng), placing the working class in the two lowest categories, the middle-lower (zhongxiazeng) and lower (dizeng) strata. the book was first sold on the open market, but was soon withdrawn and circulated for 'internal distribution' only. rumours in beijing tell us it had a potentially destabilizing content. perhaps even more important than the formalized entry of entrepreneurs into the party (they have to some extent already been admitted since the 13th party congress), could be the announced revision of the marxist theory of labour and labour value. in the old party statutes it was explicitly stressed that members should 'not exploit the labour of others.' the conditions facing the chinese leaders of today is, according to jiang: quite different from those the founders of marxism were faced with and studied. in light of the new conditions, we should make a thorough study of the theory on labour and labour value in a socialist society with a view to achieving a better understanding of this theory.33 the party's wielded power over theory, together with the lack of censorship by an absent international marxist movement, allows it to impose any exemplary organizational norm on its members without resistance. the party can no longer be accused of being dogmatic or even marxist, but should rather be seen as a managerial or utilitarian party where 'practical ideology' may even lead to the revision of its 'pure' marxist basis. many would welcome such a utilitarian approach to pure ideology, and the chinese leadership sees in this renewal the basis for upholding and enhancing its power. these congratulatory statements should, however, be subject to further analysis. the labour theory of value lies at the very core of marxism and its theory of surplus value and exploitation. jiang's 'better understanding' of the theory is clearly in line with admitting capitalists into the party, and is aimed at accommodating the paradox of exploitation within an allegedly socialist china. on the one hand, this can be conceived as a realistic approach to the changing realities and class relations in today's china. on the other hand, it will be a massive task to legitimize the party as a communist party if the basic theories of exploitation are eliminated. the economic reforms have created a new type of factory worker as millions of migrants pour in from the rural areas and as workers in the state-owned enterprises lose their jobs. in the rural areas between 150– copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002118 børge bakken 200 million peasants have failed to be absorbed into agriculture and rural industries, thus creating a vast tide of labourers streaming into the cities. unlike the zhigong zhi, who enjoyed lifetime employment provided through the work unit, the new workforce is often made up of people who have travelled long distances to work on a temporary basis 'for a boss.' the new type of workers are referred to as dagong zhi, or for lack of a better word in english, as 'migrant workers.' there has been severe discrimination against such migrant workers. they suffer the abusive consequences of the invisible hand of the free market as well as the all too visible hand of disciplinary control, and experience something akin to urban apartheid. accounts of the living conditions of these workers reveal shocking details of abuse and exploitation reminiscent of the primary stage of capitalism described by marx in the footnotes to das kapital, or in charles dickens' novels and stories dating back to the industrial revolution.34 the unemployment rate in urban china in the late 1990s was 7.5 percent.35 some senior chinese economists have estimated joblessness rates as high as 20 percent in urban china in the near future, and massive regional imbalances exist.36 at the same time, the differences between classes as well as between urban and rural areas have increased dramatically. depending on the source of income data, the gini coefficient in china has just reached 0.50, moving the country rapidly towards the category of countries with the level of most unequal income distribution.37 social inequality has become a public concern, and a recent survey showed that more than 80 percent were 'dissatisfied with the general mood of society,' and the 'widening gap between the rich and the poor.' the same high percentage, in particular workers and women, had felt 'increasing pressures in their lives' over the last year.38 the legitimate rule of the party seems to reside in its ability to deliver in terms of economic growth and social order. signs of an incipient economic crisis are however alarming. premier zhu rongji recently claimed that the chinese economy would have collapsed in 1998 without the state-initiated spending that is currently taking beijing's government debt to record levels. not all economic analysts concur with the mainstream view that the chinese economy is a success story. like professor krugman, who saw the warning signals before the asian crisis, professor thomas rawski has argued that china's economy may actually have been contracting since 1998.39 the high official growth rates seem strangely out of touch with certain evident trends in chinese society. the migrant population camp out under bridges and at railway sta119 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology tions, many of them already suffering the effects of long-term unemployment. block after block of abandoned construction projects in cities strongly suggest that the money is drying up. moreover, how can it be the case, rawski argues, that energy use is falling in a booming economy? this phenomenon is unprecedented in economic history. numerous reports of protests and violent clashes between police and civilians also attest to an emerging breakdown in social stability.40 stability and exploitation are interlinked phenomena. it will take a massive amount of 'spin doctoring' to eradicate the issue of exploitation in line with marxist theory. here we encounter the core of the problem. the power to define what marxism is about is much more important in terms of ideological 'ordering' and party power, than are the real issues of factual exploitation. the real problem of exploitation will certainly not disappear through an ideological revision of marxism, and after all, the communist party is still legitimized by the 'support of the labouring masses.' one obvious alternative for the party would be to rid itself of marxism altogether and create a minzu dang, a 'people's party.'41 the gains would not be substantial, however, since the party will never cease to be a 'marxist party' as long as marxism continues to be defined according to the realities formulated by the party itself. in this sense it does not really matter that politics is losing its links with orthodox marxist ideology. the 'three representations' is not about the problems of exploitation and about 'serving the people' at all, it is simply about keeping the 'corporate party' with its prestige structures in power. some who believe the party is moving towards greater openness and pluralism may be disappointed. according to one analysis of the 'three representations,' in solving the more complicated inherent contradictions among the people, 'the ideology absolutely should not become pluralistic.'42 one might argue that the party now represents the interests of capital, insofar as party membership is used as an important instrument to develop capital. such membership is now sold as a commodity, and paid by exemplary obedience to the party statutes. the party has swelled its ranks at an impressive pace over the last decade: from 50 million members in 1990 to 66 million in 2002. this figure constitutes nearly 5 percent of the entire chinese population.43 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002120 børge bakken the communist ethic and the spirit of capitalism jiang zemin is not interested in the concept of class as such. he is letting the capitalists into the ccp while upholding the party slogan of being the vanguard of the working class. however, the main admission criteria are becoming more and more technical and pragmatic: the main criteria to admit a person into the party are whether he or she works hard wholeheartedly for the implementation of the party's line and programme and meets the requirements for the party leadership.44 this person should be judged 'mainly by his or her political awareness, moral integrity and performance.'45 these are routinized technical and organizational criteria that reward exemplary loyalty rather than emphasizing the class line. we have, of course, always seen such criteria for admission to the party, but now they seem to be standing alone without any reference to class or class consciousness. an article in qiushi stresses technical as well as managerial skills, and emphasizes the behaviour-oriented criteria for party admission: the two basic requirements of "conscientiously struggling for the party's line and guidelines" and of "meeting the criteria for party membership" should be handled as one single criterion: observation of actual performance (xianshi biaoxian).46 in addition, entrepreneurs should pay their taxes according to regulations and reinvest in production to be admitted. the will to reinvest for the good of the nation seems to represent for the entrepreneur class some sort of weberian predestination – not in heaven, but as success inside the party. according to the new admission criteria, a benjamin franklin would surely have been admitted although his protestant ethic would have been redefined as a communist one. the stress on exemplary conduct is also made clear by jiang's remark that governing the country by the rule of law (fazhi) should be combined with the rule of virtue (dezhi).47 'evil' seems to be a very useful political concept in contemporary politics, not only in the simplified worldview of the bush administration. people with 'evil minds and unhealthy conduct' should be kept out of the party, according to a political commentary in the people's daily. the article goes on to claim that the party 'must ensure that good defeats evil, good never brokers a compromise with evil, and that good cannot be defeated by evil.'48 since exploitation is soon to be abolished with one stroke of the brush, then the good cadre and the good party member are the only 'guarantees' left to secure the well-being of workers and peasants. the many references to high ethical standards, moral integrity, and high political121 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology ideological consciousness (sixiang zhengzhi juewu) are replacing the social basis of the party.49 class consciousness has become a no-word, and exemplarity has become the important factor of management control. the stress on morality has of course a long tradition in china, and confucian as well as communist morality have continuously been important elements of social control. the phenomenon now reappears in new forms. jiang's new ideology means the final abolition of the class line while upholding its rhetoric. the heavy doses of morality that characterize the recent campaigns are supposed to bridge or harmonize the increasing distance between reality and ideology. it remains to be seen whether this gap can still be bridged. rituals of ideology and the mantra of 'serving the people' it would be tempting to see the ideological campaigns of the party through the satirical eyes of an aleksander zinoviev, as the techniques of a machine recycling its own absurdities, and just look at the emptiness of their rhetoric. however, to confine the analysis to that level is to underestimate the serious game of ideology.50 one fruitful approach to analyse the mechanisms and contents of ideological campaigns is to use the language of games, theatre and simulation. it is necessary to look at the empty forms of the campaign, and to distinguish its vacuous and bombastic presentation from what remains valid and important in its content. ideology has become a vital power game of using the right words to describe things of importance. perhaps there is a parallel here to the confucian term zhengming. the zheng, however, in this case no longer refers to the correlation between the name and the object, but that between the name and what is in the more powerful listener's head.51 to uphold the façade of the party, there is a pressure to make public statements that express what should be rather than what is.52 an inflated use of superlatives and ritualistic optimism about the present and the future situation of the party and the country have come to characterize the language of an ideological campaign. the campaign language has its own rules and internal logic, and at times may sound repetitive and even comical to an outsider. it is a language of power, and the script needs to be read between the lines. first of all there are always realities to be identified and described. after all, without stating the problem to be rectified, there is no need for an ideological campaign. the existing problem is presented in a somewhat modified form, indicating the real problems without taking the description to excess. the gravity of the copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002122 børge bakken problem is always formulated in the hypothetical question of what would occur if the problems were not to be addressed in the right manner. through the party's presentation of the 'three representations,' we get a faint glimpse of the lack of enthusiasm and the absence of charisma in a bureaucratized organization. to justify rectification, the party admits that ideological and political work is hard to do in the new situation, and that the campaign has run into problems leading it to become a mere formality.53 they also admit that 'some comrades have weakened their communist ideals,' and that they have started doubting whether marxism and socialism work at all. it touches on the bureaucratic arrogance of leading party cadres, pointing to the phenomenon that 'the worse their temper, the higher their posts.'54 it is also admitted that the party's ideological work is facing challenges from western values and the diversification of economic factors and interests as well as from the internet.55 lastly, it admits that: 'the task of educating and administering party members and cadres is harder than at any time in the past,' owing to the fact that 'many party members and cadres are substantially inferior to the older generation.'56 the situation has been deteriorating for many years already, and even people in charge of ideological education have developed cynical attitudes towards such education. according to one survey, only 8 percent of them bother at all about ideological education.57 let us here return to the empty rhetoric, and what could be called the 'game of the always excellent situation.' despite the described gravity of the situation, the severe difficulties are as a rule summed up by pointing to 'the extremely favourable conditions for properly carrying out ideological and political work.'58 this game is followed up by another ritualistic way of staging the campaign: the game of successful implementation. ideological campaigns are nearly always summed up in ritualized notions of success and enthusiasm. in a typical example, the participants of one recent campaign on party member conduct, the 'three stresses' (san jiang), (stressing politics, studies and healthy trends) had 'improved their spiritual status, become more enthusiastic, made new progress in their work,' etc.59 the florid descriptions of success and 'ground-breaking improvements' are well known, and few believe that such reports mean anything other than that the educated participants can now breathe more freely again. the message has been disseminated, and the things of importance have been made clear for everyone to obey and to use. 123 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology there is a lot of ritualized talk in jiang zemin's speech on the 'three representations' about the importance of 'sharing the common faith with the masses' and 'taking the fundamental interests of the people as the starting point and purpose.'60 ideology is said to represent an important contribution in facilitating china's development and stability, and the methods reveal a fundamental belief in the power of example. the people's daily urges leaders to set the example in showing good conduct, and urges the party to 'improve the party's construction of conduct.'61 emulating and admiring advanced models, and striving to become advanced models persist as fundamental tenets of ideological campaigns. during the sange daibiao, special efforts were to be made to carry out such political work among laid-off workers to help them solve difficulties.62 in line with the new practice of assimilating capitalists and entrepreneurs into the party, they are even included in the working class. it was recently suggested that representatives from these groups be awarded the title of model workers. han xiya from the official allchina federation of trade unions argues that this is a bad idea, and suggests that praise should perhaps be given in a different form, and the entrepreneurs be awarded another title of honour.63 it should not be difficult to imagine that the enthusiasm involved in emulating your boss as a model worker for sacking you in order to strengthen the nation might prove of limited value for a recently laid-off worker. a commentator in hong kong sums up the situation for workers and peasants in china by stating that 'in jiang zemin's "new age", workers have been reduced to real "proletarians" and peasants to "hoodlum proletarians"... workers and peasants have been reduced to a weak group in chinese society, to whom the least attention has been given.'64 continued failure on the part of the chinese administration to confront the problems of laid-off workers and reduced peasants' livelihood have led many from these labouring classes into desperate circumstances not easily to be remedied through ideological campaigns. rationalization or traditionalization in less routinized organizations, the charisma of the 'great leader' can have immense importance, as history has shown us with devastating clarity. at this 'moment of origin,' however, it is still the values and norms of revolutionary movements or organizations which are powerful enough to make people act in strict compliance. will the fading of revolutionary fervour and mounting routinization and bureaucratization lead to a stronger, legally based and less person-centred rationcopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002124 børge bakken ality? will the utilitarian state simply be drawn towards rational solutions and legal reason? not necessarily. schurmann argued that in a bureaucratized and highly routinized organization, it is not so much charismatic personalities or revolutionary values but human relationships of a non-charismatic kind that provide the dynamics which the organization needs to function. [s]uch organizations often continue to function precisely because of the particular individuals in it who play the leading roles – if they are transferred, it usually has significant consequences for the functioning of the organization; men are more important than the roles they are required to perform.65 personal relations between party leaders, their guanxi, subsequently do not become less important, but rather more important for the daily functioning of the organization. schurmann goes on to explain that: 'routinization of such an organization would simply make the party into an elite club in which the political leaders meet to renew their solidarity.'66 we see a traditionalization of charisma here. weber seems right in his claim that charisma cannot remain stable, but becomes either traditionalized, rationalized, or a combination of both. we see the attempts of the campaign to revitalize past charisma by elevating jiang zemin to a higher level in order to enter the hall of fame together with mao and deng, but there is also talk of a united leadership. the repeated references to safeguarding the core of the party has much to do with the particular individuals' relevance for the perceived stability of the nation and the party.67 jiang zemin is now constantly referred to as being at the core (wei hexin) of the party, as were deng and mao before him. still, however, only marxism-leninism represent an 'ism' (zhuyi), mao holds the position of mao zedong 'thought' (sixiang), and deng's ideas are referred to as deng xiaoping 'theory' (lilun). jiang might be at the core, but he is merely 'holding the banner of deng xiaoping theory.'68 in drafting the selected works of comrade jiang zemin, the drafting group has drawn up a document listing jiang's 'ten major achievements,' and the 'three representations' campaign is being elevated into a 'development of marxism and deng xiaoping theory.' in the army, we have recently seen a faint resemblance to mao's little red book, namely the 'selected important exposition of mao zedong, deng xiaoping and jiang zemin on strengthening ideals and convictions.'69 there is apparently opposition to jiang zemin's newest campaign, and the attempts to strengthen jiang's position.70 in particular, the opposition against these developments comes from the old guard of elder statesmen (perhaps 125 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology belonging to an earlier status quo that jiang already has left behind) like wan li, bo yibo, yang baibing, wang enmao and wang hanbin who are claimed to be 'extremely disgusted with the lavish praises of jiang zemin.' the criticism here seems to be concentrated against the person of jiang zemin more than against any particular ideological or political issue. the opposition has used extremely harsh words to describe the campaign, but the critique is phrased in very general and sweeping statements. it is claimed that it has been implemented without the test of practice, that it is confusing and not easy to grasp, and worst of all, that the whole campaign is aimed at developing a feudal personality cult around jiang zemin. more principled and less person-oriented criticism has been heard. recent warnings against de-maofication should be seen as a reaction against jiang's ideological campaign straying too far away from the old ideology.71 jiang zemin took action and suspended the leftist journals zhenli de zhuiqiu [seeking truth] and zhongliu [midstream] which propagated such ideas and generally opposed jiang's definition of the truth. yu quanyu, the editor-in-chief of zhenli de zhuiqiu said in the final issue before suspension that a 'faction of capitalist roaders' inside the party would lead to its disintegration.72 private rationalities and cynical games of 'actual performance' let us go back to the techniques of ideology in the former soviet union, and look at the chinese ideological inventions of the capitalist model worker and the dawning eradication of exploitation in the light of those techniques. mikhail epstein, based on experiences from the former soviet union, has defined the concept of ideology in terms of the tactics involved in obtaining or enhancing political power, claiming that the only value left in the language games of ideology is that of power. the recent game of chinese party ideology seems close to what epstein identifies as 'ideologemes.' the term describes the use of ideological expressions containing contradictory elements from both left and right, black and white, expressing the definitions of the present situational truth, a form of orwellian 'new speak.' could this be termed marxism? in epstein's view, soviet ideology developed beyond any particular rational or irrational system, and became reality itself.73 soviet marxism lost its specificity as a particular ideology and became instead 'an allencompassing system of ideological signs that could acquire any significance desired.'74 copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002126 børge bakken it has been observed that in china too, ideology has survived only by absorbing a mixture of communist and capitalist ideals. in addition such ideologemes have expanded to shape and pollute debates both inside and outside the party.75 the ideology of ideologemes no longer depends on particular views and ideas as such, but turns into a power game of how to say things in a correct way at the correct time. the power to be able to define becomes the ultimate power, and at the level of ideology evaluations based on personal judgements desires or preferences seldom enter into the process of communication. a cadre can truly say with wittgenstein, 'the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.' mastering the language of ideology – the language of the party – becomes the way through which power is gained and careers are shaped. in other words, ideology becomes a form of social or ideological capital or a moral economy where 'correctness' or 'exemplarity' can be shored up and used for all kinds of political transactions. this is not a language to be believed or a truth to be internalized, nor a value or a social ideal to be cherished, it is merely an exemplary language to be obeyed and to be used. it is a pure instrument of power. let us go back to the party admission criteria, and the remarks on actual performance mentioned earlier in connection with the management character of such criteria. the actual performance (xianshi biaoxian), says jiang zemin, is what defines the quality of the cadre, not his class background, nor his material wealth or lack of such, nor his ability or lack of ability to exploit the working classes.76 performed exemplary conduct thus becomes the main qualification for a party member regardless of class background. the concept of biaoxian is central here. jiang deliberately refers to a concept that stands at the centre of chinese ideological-political discourse (a point that does not survive in the english translation of the speech) as it connotes a person's moral-political manifestations or outer conduct. biaoxian is a controllable entity too, and that type of behaviour is even measurable on a point scale.77 biaoxian can also mean to 'show off.' good biaoxian involves showing off virtue manifesting exemplary views or values, and thus describes a behaviour that contributes to the overall spectacle of virtue. bad biaoxian is showing off self, disregarding the rules and norms of exemplarity or personal authority. in biaoxian we find the cell of the disciplinary system. through biaoxian, all kinds of 'little things' come under the surveillance of the exemplary norm, and discipline can be exercised over all types of behaviour. a regime of disciplinary power is established, and the issues of reward and punishment spread into the banalities of every127 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology day life. biaoxian comes very close to what foucault has termed the 'micro-penalty' of power.78 within such a system the slightest departures from the exemplary norm are open to surveillance because it threatens the prestige structure of the party. it serves as effective organizational cement when spiritual civilization (read exemplarity) is linked to material civilization (read economic management) in a powerful control system. the power of discipline turns productive, so one point about this system is that human energies are channelled in more productive directions, making people calculable and useful at the same time. this is what the corporate view of party admission criteria and the utilization of party cadres is about. it is the usefulness in terms of organizational exemplary and super-social norms that counts, not any social value or norm that might originate in some ideal conception of society. it is attachment to the ideologemes rather than the social norm that matters. the party needs ideology to constantly 'change with the times,' not because it is advanced, but in order to maintain its power. people in china recognize the falseness and cynicism produced by the biaoxian approach. in a survey asking people to give their opinion about why people applied for party membership, only 4 percent answered: 'they believe in communism and want to make a contribution.' in total, 59 percent said: 'in reality they want a "party card" which they can use as capital to receive future benefits.'79 in other words, it is a truism in china that the 'exemplary' way bears a price tag – that of simulation. even premier zhu rongji admits the problems of bureaucratism and the emerging traits of a culture of deception in his speech at the 9th national people's congress: 'formalism and bureaucracy run rife and deception, extravagance and waste are serious in some localities... and with some leading cadres.'he urges officials 'to check bad practices, such as false reports to deceive one's superiors or subordinates.'80 zhu, however, simply moralizes over the problem, and urges everyone 'to speak the truth,' failing to see that there is a more structural problem here, that of private rationalities within the organization. we may talk of structural 'ways of lying' inherent in an exemplary society that force people to behave in prescribed ways, prone to simulating exemplary objective standards. this type of control is different from a control based on shared social norms and values, and represents a counterproductive consequence of exemplarity. biaoxian is about guaranteeing predictability and smooth running for the party machinery. the possibility for rational calculation and planning on a larger scale runs, however, the risk of being destroyed in the process. the rationalcopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002128 børge bakken ity of the system has a tendency to be reduced to the private calculations of benefit that the system has to offer. the process described serves as a signal of disintegration, a pointer to the internal contradictions of the system and the limits of exemplary control. outwardly, this simulated behaviour might give the impression of a society resting on unity and stability. an order based on simulation, however, is a superficial one, and the art of ruling loses its power by leaning too heavily on the mechanisms to elicit formal overt obedience. underneath the veneer of formal obedience and apparent harmony we discern eruptive conflicts that may suddenly break through the surface in surprisingly violent ways. we have seen recurring peasant uprisings throughout chinese history. in addition the cultural revolution conjures up images of recent disorder still experienced as an ultimate trauma for the present party leadership. at the same time, the many clashes between police and people all over china are seen as a potential and very real threat to the power of the ccp. waves of conflict are always close at hand in the apparent sea of tranquillity that is china's surface, and there is no reason to think that china's membership in the wto will lessen that problem. jiang's 'xianshi biaoxian' represents a situationalist form of behaviour where the situation defines an individual's action more than inner values do.81 sociologists talk about a 'situated identity' where strict social definitions and forms of conduct make it easier to enhance one's own influence and decide what to do or what to expect another person to do, be it inside or outside an organization.82 situated identity might thus be seen as social maps according to which an individual can orient himself, closely linked to, in our example, the all-embracing ideological 'standards' of conduct. in this sense, the 'standards' are not moral standards, but instrumental standards or standards of situational definition. this might represent a streamlining of the organization and the managerial culture, but again represents the danger of cynicism. it might seem an effective disciplinary and ordering technology, but that technology bites back through its lack of social moorings in a value system. there is another word – biaoyan – that actually describes the process of biaoxian better. biaoyan means to perform or to act and can stand for performance and exhibition.83 129 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology ideological ways of lying and erosion from within it is important to emphasize that the exemplary society, and thereby the party, is attacked from within. in fact, exemplary control and order produce their own non-exemplary uncontrollability and disorder. the emergence of private rationalities and lack of predictability is a true paradox of exemplary order. exemplary control produces the seeds of its own breakdown rather than describing a form of total control. exemplary society can be regarded as a thin veneer of order only, formalized and paraded to 'hold' a populace that is actually in constant movement, and which does not really see the party as the vanguard of their interests. the party slogan of 'moving with the times' becomes hollow seen in this perspective, as people and party move in different directions. organizational simulation suggests a structural lie – and has been described as a situation where one is forced to lie to survive or cope with society or any other type of social or organizational setting for that sake.84 this is a defensive type of lying. religious dissimulation was found among the reformation protestants who, far from openly committing themselves to the new faith, dissembled their beliefs by a feigned conformity to catholicism – a phenomenon called nicodemism.85 in china the practice of feng pai (wind style) is illustrative of simulative action. after the purge of the gang of four in 1976, it had already become a rule that one should always lean in the direction of the present political wind whether it was blowing eastward or westward. far from coping with that problem, jiang zemin's managerial party has just continued that tradition. the biaoxian and simulation of party operators, however, is more about using power than hiding from it. there is a difference between hiding for survival and hiding for opportunity, but both hiding and attacking are part of the daily strategies of the party. the party might be accused of being orwellian; it probably describes the situation better to call it machiavellian. in the european tradition, machiavelli's book the prince is of course the work on simulation and dissimulation par excellence.86 in chinese culture there is an even richer literature on strategy and deception.87 sunzi's work on the art of war is well known, han fei's less so, but more recent books like li zongwu's thick black theory [houheixue], written in 1911, are probably even more important. the book applies well to the existing climate in the party, and it should come as no surprise that this deeply cynical book, banned until 1989, had the central party school in beijing as its leading publisher. li's theme is: 'when you conceal your will from others, that is thick. when you impose copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002130 børge bakken your will on others, that is black.'88 this is the actual performance of the party that fits reality more than the alleged exemplary deeds. to understand the logic of actual performance, and its inclination towards private rationality within the organization, we need to look briefly at the ideological campaign. the well-organized and well-rehearsed political campaign, the yundong, is the medium through which ideology is propagated. the participants of a campaign can be divided into instigators (shandong) and spectators (kanke), and this categorization might help us understand the internal logic of the campaign.89 some calculate that by playing the role of the instigator they can obtain personal advantage, and perhaps attain prominent political positions as well as economic benefits. these strategists might not be so dominant in numbers, but they form a core of key participants. the spectator is not necessarily a passive onlooker to campaign events, but his or her activities tend to be less calculated and have less of a strategy to them. enthusiasm for a campaign project is again linked to real existing norms and values. even if less enthusiasm has been shown for recent campaigns, it is wrong to state that enthusiasm has always been absent from political campaigns. on the contrary, enthusiasm has led to one 'craze' after another. the history of the people's republic is full of frenzied activities related to ideological campaigns. somewhat broadly, we might say that a campaign lies between a craze and a career, and the career system was always linked to the 'enthusiasm of the masses.' the career ladder and the party's reward system combined with the cynical attitude towards ideology in itself represents the new opportunity structure of corrupt activities inside the party. the organization and the campaigns are increasingly utilized for private gain. the ideological campaign has brought change, but was always a ladder for career-minded instigators. a campaign represents the time to move up in the organization, and increases the opportunity structure for deception, power and private gain. since morality and loyalty lie in the doing, the logic for the instigator to follow is that of any effective bureaucrat. the instigators are the ceremonial masters of overt correct behaviour – the models of super-social norms. instead of stopping a campaign that does not prove effective, instigators escalate it to reach their own aims. such inner logic of course may prove highly counterproductive for the organization as a whole. simulation is thus embedded in a structure of bureaucratic careerism where the parts become more important than the whole, and private rationalities gradually replace the organizational rationality. without a viable value system at the base, soaring cynicism has replaced the occa131 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology sional enthusiasm for ideological campaigns. the element of craze is gone in terms of support for campaign ideas, and party instigators are more and more 'going it alone' without the cheers of campaign spectators. the number of enthusiastic spectators might shrink even further as the new social strata enter the gates of the party, since the new admission criteria are as much about leaving someone out as letting someone in. opening up to the new social strata in practice means closing the door to groups further down in the social hierarchy. rebellion from down below is the dangerous scenario of ideological cynicism. if the party does not deliver in terms of social stability and economic growth, the brittle shell of the organization might instantly snap and break into pieces. the party would probably no longer survive a disaster along the lines of a 1950s great leap forward. even far smaller steps backwards might be devastating in the present situation, as the party is no longer crisis resistant. it is at the same time immensely powerful and immensely vulnerable. the very mechanisms used to forge and renew the party machine produce its own slag products, and utility might paradoxically turn to breakdown. cynicism at the top level produces cynicism throughout the organizational system. one problem is the lack of predictability linked to the party's exemplary norm and the career structure attached to it. this dilemma describes the problematic order of exemplary xianshi biaoxian. you cannot make good decisions unless you can continually monitor their effects. for this you need people who can inform you about the real problems, in particular about the errors of the organization. such negative feedback, however, is the last thing the leadership is likely to hear about. the bureaucrat or the lay party member will always be afraid of the judgement of higher levels, and whole careers are built on denying error. lower levels, not being stupid, will routinely sugar-coat the information or just plain lie, delay the truth, or play all kinds of other games with the information.90 if people cannot participate directly in making decisions and have no responsibility for them, it is the best strategy to tell the leaders what they want to hear. every planner needs internal devil's advocates, critics and 'nay-sayers' who have nothing to lose by talking back and opposing the leader. without such mechanisms, the leader runs the obvious risk of ending up in isolation, in a world of lies, illusions and anachronisms. not only do such games prevent predictability, they provide at the same time an ideal climate for corruption. jiang and his people are aware of the destabilizing effect of corruption within the party, and the concopenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002132 børge bakken trol aspect of the theory of the 'three representations' is therefore linked to the 'three stresses' (san jiang) campaign, typically focusing more directly on the conduct and the morality of party members. there are explicit warnings here against 'criminals' and 'evil forces' protected by 'connection networks' (guanxiwang) and 'protective umbrellas' (baohu san), linking the problem of corruption to more structural and cultural issues.91 there is, however, an overall unwillingness or inability to see the solution to corruption in a more systematic structural and organizational manner. when addressing the problem of private rationalities and corruption, the suggested solutions do not themselves exceed the logic of exemplarity. everything seems to rest with jiang's rule of virtue and the morality of the cadres' so-called official virtue (guande). in particular, leading party cadres should possess such official virtue and become exemplary models (biaoshuai) for the masses.92 the answer is once more to cultivate the socialist 'new man' in order to prevent evil from happening.93 this is of course not addressing the main problem of new opportunity structures and private rationalities which have become new realities of everyday life in the party. the new opportunity structures for corrupt activities are logically enhanced with higher placement in the party hierarchy. the higher the position, the better the opportunity for deception and corruption. the people's daily, like premier zhu, simply prescribes new doses of morality, repeating over and over again the mantra that leaders should set the example and be models in exhibiting good conduct.94 the party journal qiushi, however, stumbles over the real issue. noting that people in leadership posts have proven to be the most corrupt, the journal correctly blames leading party cadres for the culture of corruption.95 again, no effective checks and balances are suggested, except for urging lower levels to be on the alert and exercise their duties of moral supervision. concluding remarks with the memories of their own culture and history in mind, today's ruling elites gradually seem to be losing faith in their own exemplary control system, resorting to more open means of policing the populace. on the surface everything may look calm and stable, but underneath, eruptive resistance and potential breakdown are building up. that the exemplary society is fading and that it produces resistance, however, does not necessarily mean that it will bring about its own demise; that is one just scenario among others. even if an order built on exemplary norms with increasingly weak social moorings might be a potential time133 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology bomb, resistance and rebellion can be halted. jin guantao's picture of armed insurrections overthrowing dynasty after dynasty is not likely to repeat itself, says liu binyan, suggesting a scenario of disorder where the peasants make use of the weapons of the weak to pillage and sabotage the regime and the cities.96 in some ways the chinese system is highly effective in bringing about order overall. the 'dangerous' fragmentation represented by the modern can be halted by another, 'ordering' fragmentation. andrew walder has noted that factionalism and private vendettas were striking features of worker involvement in the cultural revolution. he found such personalized struggles to be highly unusual among workers' movements in industrial societies where collective demands are usually made to institutions and groups. walder looked at the phenomenon from an organizational point of view, stating that 'this personalization of conflict was a direct outgrowth of the system of officially-organized patronage that personalized social control and rewards to an extent unusual in other industrial settings.'97 even if the exemplary order is in many ways an inflexible order, the simulation strategies fostered by the system provide flexibility within inflexibility. private rationalities might destroy the party from within, but private solutions to social problems among the masses might be sought without the mobilization of collective support. instead of the scenario of breakdown, we witness a scenario of overall order on a background of local conflicts. the system might prove effective, not in keeping exemplary order, but in preventing collective action, easily wiping out local disorder wherever it occurs. in this scenario we see neither the successful utilitarian solution of realistic pragmatism, increased democracy and impartial rule by law, nor the scenarios of total breakdown. instead we see the continuing power of the party based not on broad social support, but on a repressive system bolstered by social fragmentation. what we might see in china is not so much an exemplary elite serving the people, but rather the strengthening of a lawless elite, looting china in the interests of its members. 1 mark elvin, 'how did the cracks open? the origins of the subversion of china's latetraditional culture by the west,' thesis eleven, no. 57 (may 1999), pp. 1-16. 2 ibid., p. 3. 3 børge bakken, the exemplary society. human improvement, social control, and the dangers of modernity in china (oxford: oxford university press, 2000). dr. børge bakken is a fellow at the division of pacific and asian history at the research school of pacific and asian studies, the australian national university. notes copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002134 børge bakken 4 jiang zemin, 'speech at the meeting celebrating the 80th anniversary of the founding of cpc,' 1 july 2001, beijing review, no. 29 (documents, part two) (19 july 2001), p. i. hereafter referred to as jiang zemin, speech (part two). 5 franz schurmann, ideology and organization in communist china (berkeley, ca: university of california press , 1966), p. 105. 6 li tieying, 'makesi zhuyi yao suizhe shidai de fazhan yu er fazhan' [marxism should develop along with the times], qiushi website, www.cass.net.cn/chinese/y/cn.html, 8 february 2002. 7 karl marx, manifesto of the communist party, in samuel moore's classic translation from 1888, authorized and edited by friedrich engels. 8 schurmann, ideology and organization, p. 18. 9 ibid., pp. 107-8. 10 ibid., p. 107. 11 ibid., pp. 108-9. 12 jiang zemin, 'speech at the meeting celebrating the 80th anniversary of the founding of cpc,' 1 july 2001, beijing review, no. 28 (documents, part one) (12 july 2001), p. xii. hereafter referred to as jiang zemin, speech (part one). 13 he baogang, 'in search of the mixed regime: regime change and regime maintenance in china.' invited paper presented at the workshop on 'regime change and regime maintenance in asia and the pacific,' the australian national university, canberra, 12-13 february 2002, p. 11. 14 for a more thorough discussion on the exemplary society and its norms, see bakken, the exemplary society. 15 sun xiting, jin xibin and chen xiaobin, jianming jiaoyu xue [concise pedagogy] (beijing: beijing shifan daxue chubanshe, 1985), p. 231. 16 qian mingfang, 'bangyang jiaoyu xiaoying ruohua de yuanyin yu duice' [the weakening of the model education effect and its countermeasures], pujiao yanjiu, no. 3 (1990), p. 13. 17 max weber, grundriss der sozialökonomik, iii. abteilung. wirtschaft und gesellschaft, 3. auflage, (tübingen: verlag von j. c. b. mohr, 1947), p. 140. translation taken from weber, the theory of social and economic organization, trans. a. m. henderson and talcott parsons (new york: free press, 1964), pp. 358-59. 18 ibid., pp. 142-43. english edition, pp. 363-64. 19 jiang zemin, speech (part 1), p. iv. one of china's most distinguished archeologists, su bingqi, even claims that 'china's culture is an indigenous one with a tradition of nearly two million years.' see w. j. f. jenner, 'race and history in china,' new left review, no. 11 (september/october 2001), p. 56. 20 jin guantao, zai lishi de biaoxiang beihou: dui zhongguo fengjian shehui zhao wending de tansuo [behind the phenomenon of history: a discussion of the ultrastable structure of the chinese feudal society], (chengdu: sichuan renmin chubanshe, 1983). 21 journal's commentator, 'yixiang zhongyao de jichu jianshe' [build an important foundation], qiushi, no. 3 (1 february 2001), pp. 49-51. 22 zhong xuan, 'zhengque renshi 'san ge daibiao' de kexue neihan' [correctly understand the scientific intensions of the 'three representations'], renmin ribao, 11 september 2001, pp. 1, 2. 23 see hu yaobang, 'create a new situation in all fields of socialist modernization: report to the 12th national congress of the communist party of china, 1 september 1982,' beijing review, vol. 25, no. 37 (13 september 1982). 24 jiang zemin, speech (part one), pp. viii-ix, xii. xinhua report, 19 july 2000, quoted in swb-fe/3898, 21 july 2000, p. g/7. 25 xinhua report, 20 june 2000, quoted in swb-fe/3881, 1 july 2000, pp. g/8-10. 26 xinhua report, 11 july 2001, in bbc monitoring, 24 july 2001. 135 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology 27 xinhua report, 19 july 2000, quoted in swb-fe/3898, 21 july 2000, p. g/7. 28 journal's commentator, qiushi, no. 3 (1 february 2001), pp. 49-51. 29 xinhua report, 21 august 2000, quoted in swb-fe/3927, 24 august 2000, pp. g/4-6 and xinhua report, 4 december 2000, quoted in swb-fe/4021, 21 july 2000, pp. g/3-6. 30 jiang zemin, speech (part two), p. v. 31 christopher lasch, the revolt of the elites and the betrayal of democracy (new york: w. w.norton, 1995). 32 lu xueyi (ed.) dangdai zhongguo shehui jiezeng yanjiu baogao [research report on the social stratification in today's china], (beijing: shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2002). see figure on p. 9 for an overview of the stratification data. 33 jiang zemin, speech (part one), pp. v-vi. 34 see anita chan, china's workers under assault. the exploitation of labor in a globalizing economy. (armonk, ny/ london: m. e. sharpe, 2001). 35 renmin ribao, 16 february 2001, p. 5. 36 x. l. ding, 'from big social problems to explosive political troubles? the challenges of managing a huge society under rapid transformation at a politically difficult time,' in john wong and yongnian zheng (eds.), china's post-jiang leadership: challenges and adaption (singapore: singapore university press, 2002). 37 data given by china center for economic research, beijing university in invitation document for the international symposium 'equity and social justice in transitional china,' beijing, 11-12 july 2002. for a more detailed discussion on inequality in china and the use of the gini-coefficient, see the discussion by chris bramall, 'the quality of china's household income surveys,' the china quarterly, no. 167 (september 2000), pp. 689-705, and carl riskin, zhao renwei and li she (eds.), china's retreat from equality, income distribution and economic transition (armonk, ny/london: m. e. sharpe, 2001). 38 zhongguo qingnianbao, 23 december 1999, p. 1. 39 thomas rawski, 'what's happening to china's gdp statistics?,' china economic review, vol. 12, no. 4 (2001), pp. 347-54. see also arthur waldron, 'china's economic facade,' washington post, 21 march 2002, p. a35. 40 a scan through the bbc summary of world broadcast for just over a year from 2000-2001 revealed violent clashes between civilians and police and military forces involving all kinds of groups, often including thousands of protestors. see swb-fe/3734, 3738, 3837, 3842, 3896, 3903, 3908, 4017, 4026, 4031, 4077, 4099, 4102. some of the reports commented on several incidents. 41 some observers tend to see jiang's admission of broader social strata into the party as an attempt to rebuild the party precisely as a 'national party,' comparing the approach to sun ping's earlier call in 1990 for nationalizing the ccp into an 'all people's party' (quanmin dang). see he baogang, in search of the mixed regime: regime change and regime maintenance in china, p. 11. 42 xinhua report, 2 april 2000, quoted in swb-fe/3814, 4 april 2000, p. g/8. 43 already in 1990 there were 700,000 party branches in china. the mere size of the organization makes it vulnerable to bureaucratization. see zhongguo nongye nianjian [china agricultural yearbook] (beijing: nongye chubanshe, 1991), p. 141. see also he baogang, in search of the mixed regime,' p. 8. 44 jiang zemin, speech (part 2), p. v. 45 ibid., pp. v-vi. 46 qiushi website, www.qsjournal.com.cn, in chinese, 16 november 2001. see also: chinese journal on criteria for new party members, bbc monitoring, 6 december 2001. 47 jiang zemin, speech (part one), pp. xiii-xiv. 48 renmin ribao website, 11 october 2001, 'china: party daily commentary urges leaders to "set the example",' bbc monitoring, 15 october 2001. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002136 børge bakken 49 jiang zemin, speech (part two), p. v. 50 aleksander zinoviev, the yawning heights [ziiaiushchie vysoty], trans. by gordon clough (london: bodley head, 1979). 51 thanks to james greenbaum for pointing out the connection to me. 52 see mark elvin, 'how did the cracks open?,' p. 3. 53 the 'three stresses' campaign is closely linked to the 'three representations,' but focuses more directly on the conduct of the party members. see xinhua reports 8 november 1999, quoted in swb-fe/3688, and 10 november 1999, pp. g/9-10. 54 zheng hongfan and chen yan in a xinhua report 9 january 2000, quoted in swb-fe/3734, 11 january 2000, pp. g/4-7. 55 xinhua report 3 april 2000, quoted in swb-fe/3814, 4 april 2000, p. g/7. 56 zhong xuan, 'zhengque renshi 'san ge daibiao' de kexue neihan,' renmin ribao, 11 september 2001, pp. 1, 2. 57 while only 8 percent of teachers in charge of ideological education cared about political education at all, 27 percent said they had no interest in such education. more than 50 percent paid ritual heed to such education. li shuli, 'cong chongyang diaocha kan wo sheng zhengzhi jiaoshi duiwu' [a sample survey look at the province's political teachers], zhengzhi jiaoyu, no. 10 (1986), pp. 33-35. 58 these are the very words used to describe the climate in which the recent 'three representations' campaign took place. see xinhua report 2 april 2000, quoted in swb-fe/ 3814, 4 april 2000, p. g/8. 59 xinhua report in swb-fe/3614 16 august 1999, pp. g/8-9. 60 jiang zemin, speech (part one), pp. xiii-xiv. 61 renmin ribao website 11 october 2001, 'china: party daily commentary urges leaders to "set the example",' bbc monitoring, 15 october 2001. 62 xinhua report in swb-fe/3688, 10 november 1999, pp. g/7-8 63 zhenli de zhuiqiu, 11 december 2000, quoted from swb-fe/4063, 6 february 2001, p. g/6. 64 xin bao, hong kong, 22 march 2001, p. 27, quoted in swb-fe/4103, 24 march 2001, pp. g/ 6-9. 65 schurmann, ideology and organization, pp. 106-7. 66 ibid., p. 107. 67 see for instance the speech by defence minister chi haotian, quoted by xinhua, 20 august 2001: 'chinese defence chief tells army to study jiang's 1 july speech,' in bbc monitoring 20 august 2001. 68 see for instance jiang zemin, speech (part 1), p. vii, and zhu rongji, website of people's daily, 6 march 2002, www.english.people.com.cn/ 200203/05/eng20020305 _91438.shtml 69 xinhua report, 27 february 2001, quoted in swb-fe/4081, 23 february 2001, p. g/7. 70 cheng ming, hong kong, 1 july 2000, pp. 14/16, quoted in swb-fe/3918, 14 august 2000, pp. g/3-5. 71 see zhenli de zhuiqiu, 11 june 2000, quoted in swb-fe/3925, 22 august 2000, pp. g/8-9. 72 see 'analysis: chinese media in party ideology split,' bbc monitoring research, 30 august 2001, bbc monitoring, 30 august 2001. 73 mikhail n. epstein, after the future: the paradoxes of postmodernism and contemporary russian culture, trans. by anesa miller-pogacar (amherst: university of massachusetts press, 1995), pp. 6, 153-61. 74 ibid., p. 155. 75 geremie barmé has shown how the techniques have spilled over to the opposition, in describing the language and the techniques of debate found among the student leaders at tienanmen in 1989, most notably that of chai ling and her supporters. geremie r. barmé, in the red. on contemporary chinese culture (new york, columbia university press, 1999), pp. 326-33. 137 norms, values and cynical games with party ideology 76 jiang zemin, speech (part two), pp. v-vi. 77 børge bakken, the exemplary society, particularly pp. 255-68. 78 michel foucault, discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (new york, vintage books, 1979), p. 178. 79 stanley rosen, 'political education and student response: some background factors behind the 1989 beijing demonstrations,' issues and studies, no. 10 (1989), p. 19. 80 website of people's daily, 6 march 2002, www.english.people.com.cn/ 200203/05/ eng20020305 _91438.shtml 81 francis k. hsu regards the chinese as 'situation-centred' in his analysis. from a sociological standpoint, not only chinese but also japanese culture can be considered as manifesting a situational ethic as opposed to the more universal ethic built around moral absolutes found in western christian thought. see george devos, 'the relation of guilt towards parents to achievement and arranged marriage among japanese,' psychiatry, vol. 23, no. 2 (1960), p. 288. of course, one might argue that 'maintaining power at all costs' represent an 'inner value' as well, complicating the text's assumption. 82 norman c. alexander and pat lauderdale, 'situated identities and social influence,' sociometry, vol. 40, no. 3 (1977), pp. 225-33. 83 he xin, 'gudu yu tiaozhan: zai hei shehui de bianyuan qu' [loneliness and challenge: on the edge of black society], zixue, no. 3 (1989), p. 16. 84 perez zagorin, ways of lying (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1990). 85 ibid. 86 niccoló machiavelli, the prince (toronto: bantham books, 1981). 87 see alastair iain johnston, cultural realism. strategic culture and grand strategy in chinese history (princeton, nj, princeton university press, 1995). 88 li zongwu, houheixue [thick black theory] qiushi houheixue, (hong kong: baicheng chubanshe, n.d.), and houheixue xubian [thick black theory continued] (beijing: tuanjie chubanshe, 1990). for excerpts from the book, see geremie barmé and linda jaivin (eds.), new ghosts, old dreams (new york: times books, 1992) pp. 448-50, and barmé, in the red. 89 he xin, dongfang de fuxing [the revival of the east], (heilongjiang jiaoyu chubanshe, heilongjiang renmin chubanshe, harbin 1991), pp. 285-86. barmé, in the red, p. 106, quotes he's first approach towards explaining the campaign mentality in he xin, 'zhongguo dangdai beiwanglu. wode kunhuo yu youlü' [a contemporary chinese cultural aidemémoire. my perplexities and concerns], jingjixue zhoubao, 8 january 1989, p. 5. 90 see alvin toffler, previews and premises (london: pan books, 1984), p. 97. 91 xinhua report, 13 december 2000, quoted in swb-fe/4024, 15 december 2000, pp. g/4-5. 92 luo suying, 'yi dezhi guo zhong zai 'guande' ['official virtue' is the key link to ruling the country by virtue], qiushi, no. 12 (16 june 2001), pp. 43-44. 93 yang zhonghua, 'zuo hao 'san jiang' gongzuo peiyu yi dai xinren' [carry out work on 'three stresses' well, and foster a generation of new men], qiushi, no. 19 (1 october 2000), pp. 45-47. 94 renmin ribao, website, 11 october 2001. 95 according to qiushi; 'most corruption such as graft and bribery occurs among party-member cadres holding leadership posts; it is not at all easy to get them to supervise themselves, and this requires that the lower-level organizations and party members exercise their duties of supervision as equals within the party,' qiushi website, beijing, in chinese, bbc monitoring, 16 january 2002. 96 liu binyan, 'another "rural encirclement of the cities" campaign?,' china focus, no. 1 (1994), p. 4. 97 andrew g. walder, 'communist social structure and workers' politics in china,' in victor c. falkenheim (ed.), citizens and groups in contemporary china, michigan monographs in chinese studies, no. 56, (ann arbor, university of michigan press, 1986), p. 84. binder1 st.pdf, page 1-153 @ normalize_2 __________________________________________________________________________ 5 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china administrative reform and rule of law in china zou keyuan abstract rule of law has become popular jargon in chinese society since its adoption in the third amendment to the chinese constitution in 1999. after the transition of the chinese leadership from the third generation to the so-called fourth generation, a significant new document, issued in april 2004, ushered in a new era of administrative reform in china. china's pledge is to have established a rule-of-law government by 2015. this article discusses new developments and legal aspects of administrative reform and evaluates whether the rule-of-law concept has been fully endorsed in china. finally, it presents a brief discussion on the relationship between the chinese communist party and the law, which is intrinsic to the success of china's administrative reform.1 introduction the 'rule of law' (fazhi) was first endorsed by the people's republic of china (prc) at the time of the adoption of the 1999 third amendment to the chinese constitution (article 5, 1999 amended constitution).2 shortly afterwards in november 1999, the state council issued a decision on comprehensively pushing forward administration in accordance with the law,3 requesting local governments at all levels and subordinated departments of the state council to strengthen institutional building, tighten administrative law enforcement, deepen supervision for administrative law enforcement, and increase the capacity of the administration in accordance with the law. the most significant event took place just after the fourth generation of the chinese leadership came to power, when in april 2004, the implementing program of comprehensively pushing forward administration in accordance with law (yi fa xing zheng) was issued (people's daily, 21 april 2004:6). there are several reasons that account for china's decision to introduce this change in approach. first, since the economic reform and open-door policy of 1978, chinese society has undergone fundamental 6 _______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ changes both in its economic development and in the reconstruction of its legal system. economic reform, which transformed the old planned economy into a longer-term, more market-oriented paradigm, has brought prosperity to the chinese society. the watershed occurred when the national people's congress (npc) made a significant amendment to the constitution by endorsing the term 'socialist market economy' to replace the old term 'planned economy' in march 1993 (people's daily, 30 march 1993). to support this constitutional change, the 3rd plenum of the 14th congress of the chinese communist party (ccp) adopted the historic decision on issues concerning the establishment of a socialist market economic structure in november 1993 (china daily, 17 november 1993).4 it is commonly said that a market economy is a rule-of-law economy. for this reason, law is indispensable for the development of the chinese market-oriented economy and the new type of governance over economic activities. the legal field has also witnessed many significant changes. the 3rd plenary session of the 11th ccp central committee, held in december 1978, adopted the communiqué setting out the goals of the legal construction and re-establishment (quarterly chronicle and documentation 1979: 172). as a result, a legal system has been gradually built up alongside the economic reform. as officially pledged, china will have established a comprehensive legal system by 2010. the requirements from the world trade organization (wto) constitute a second main factor for the transformation in china's legal environment and law enforcement rationale and methods. as a wto member, china has to bring its relevant laws and regulations in line with those of the organization; those that are in conflict with wto rules have to be revised and/or abolished. the wto effect is therefore fundamental to the change in chinese legislation that is presently taking place, and this will continue for some years to come. also, the wto requires its member governments to behave in accordance with its requirements, including transparency and accountability. third, china has carried out its 'popularizing law program' for more than 20 years since 1985. it is designed to give ordinary people a basic legal knowledge so as to raise their legal awareness and help them to act within the law. teams of lecturers from universities and other work units were set up to give lecture tours around the country.5 even the chinese top leaders invited law professors to give seminars on current legal issues for the members of the chinese communist party (ccp)'s central committee and the standing committee of the national people's __________________________________________________________________________ 7 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china congress (npc).6 despite these efforts, it is admitted that of the 6.3 million or so civil servants, a large number of local cadres including law enforcers do not have a good grounding in legal matters (people's daily, 5 december 2006:10). some even perceive administrative officials to be 'one of the major obstacles to the rule of law' since “[they] regularly abuse their authority, ignore central laws, and pass inconsistent administrative regulations that promote their own institutional interests' (perenboom, 2006:66-7). thus administrative reform geared towards the rule of law is becoming a matter of urgency along with the strengthening of china's economic reform and reforms in other areas. finally, the chinese government has learnt a lesson from the severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars) incident in 2003. the poor administration and management in the early period of the crisis contributed to the escalation of the disease within and outside china. for example, the relevant government department tried to conceal critical information from the public. however, the chinese government finally realized the importance of law and used the 1989 law on prevention and control of infectious diseases to combat the epidemic. measures were accordingly taken to set up quarantine zones in affected areas and to activate the system of reporting and publicizing sars cases. information on sars was given to the public in time.7 the change of the chinese leadership may also have some impact on the advancement of the legal reform process and the raising of legal awareness within chinese society. it is to be recalled that hu jintao, before he took over all the top posts from jiang zemin, emphasized the importance of abiding by the constitution and called in december 2002 for all cadres to respect its legal authority – the occasion was the twentieth anniversary of the promulgation of the 1982 constitution. hu has often expressed his belief in governing the country by establishing the party for the public and using the power for the people. implementing law-based administration for the administration to be in accordance with the law, several key components are required. while the implementation program provides basic guidelines, administrative laws are also indispensable to its successful adoption. 8 _______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ the implementation program according to this document, china will spend ten years constructing a rule of law government, with the target set for around 2015. several objectives have been delineated: 1. to separate government from enterprises and public institutions (shiye danwei) in order to: (a) improve the relationships between the government and the market and between the government and the society; (b) differentiate clearly the functions and responsibilities between, on the one side, the central and local governments and, on the other, the respective government departments; and (c) to formulate an administrative management system which becomes normative, coordinative, transparent and efficient. 2. to put forward and adopt local and administrative laws and regulations and normative documents in conformity with the competence and procedures prescribed by the constitution and relevant national laws. 3. to implement laws and regulations in a comprehensive and accurate way so as to effectively maintain economic and social order. 4. to formulate a scientific, democratic and normative decision-making mechanism to reflect the wishes and needs of the people. 5. to formulate a mechanism to resolve social conflicts. 6. to link administrative power to responsibility and to improve the supervision mechanism 7. to heighten the legal awareness of administrative personnel, particularly leading cadres (2004 implementation program). the document provides six basic requirements for law-based administration, including lawful administration; reasonable administration; rightful procedure; efficiency and provision of convenience for the people; honesty; and power and responsibility combined. it offers guidelines on other areas of administration to deepen the institutional reform in compliance with relevant laws. it is understandable that in the post-wto era, governments at all levels in china are having to rethink and change their methods of administration and governance. law will become more and more important in government management. law is designed to limit the government's power, to establish adequate administrative procedures, and to foster the concept of responsible governance. there are a number of special laws regarding administration in china, which will be discussed later. the most important one in the present context is the law on administrative __________________________________________________________________________ 9 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china licensing, which was passed in august 2003 and came into force on 1 july 2004 (people's daily, 28 august 2003:13; meng 2004; china daily, 1 july 2004). a recent development has been that local governments are beginning to hire lawyers to assist them in their work. for example, in november 2003, the government of shenzhen set up an office of legal counsels, who participate in big project negotiations and in finalizing contracts, in addition to litigation work. in early 2007 it invited applicants to compete for 18 positions as government lawyers (ming pao, 16 january 2007). law on administrative licensing this law defines 'administrative licensing' as the conduct of an administrative body to examine and approve a specified activity which is being applied for.8 in the economic field, public health, macro-economic adjustment and control, ecological environmental protection, and the development and utilization of limited natural resources all require administrative licensing. any regulation on administrative licensing has to be publicized, in order to become the basis for the granting of such a license.9 a citizen, legal person or other organization enjoys the right to presentation and explanation, the right to apply for administrative review, or to launch administrative litigation. the new law explicitly forbids government agencies from assuming the right to grant permits or collect fees not required by the law. in order to prevent localism, the law specifically provides that any administrative licensing at a certain locality should not restrict individuals and enterprises from other regions from conducting operations or providing services, nor can it restrict commodities from other regions being brought into the local market.10 the new law is regarded as an attempt by the chinese government to facilitate the start-up of more small and medium-sized enterprises (smes), which help to boost employment (the straits times, 30 august 2003:1). through the implementation of the law, the amount of administrative licensing will be greatly reduced and departments under the state council will no longer have the right to determine whether a particular economic activity requires an administrative permit. in order to reduce the number of items subject to administrative examination and approval, the state council established a group office for the reform of the administrative examination and approvals system to conduct a comprehensive review. through this rigorous process, between october 2002 and may 2004 the state council decided to remove or modify 1,795 items on the list, accounting for half of the original amount. 10 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ the state council and its departments still retain 1,799 items which are divided into two categories: administrative licensing items and non-administrative licensing (people's daily,6 february 2005:4). as for the whole country, 60% of the total number of items for administrative examination and approval are prescribed by state council department regulations and rules (huang and han 2004), so that the reduction of the items by the state council and its departments in fact reduces the same items at the local level. while the law has been hailed as 'a great help in china's efforts to build a market economy and check corruption' (china daily, 1 september 2003), its implementation will meet a series of challenges. first, the law only provides general principles which result in ambiguities and may in practice result in unenforceable legislation. second, the progressive legal spirit embodied in the law may not be endorsed by local governments at all levels. officials have tended to retain administrative power as long as they can, and 'the implementation of the law will inevitably conflict with vested interests' (china daily, 6 september, 2003). law on administrative punishment this law governs the administrative activities relating to punishment for violations. it sets out several principles: 1. no punishment shall be ever imposed when there is no express stipulation for such punishment. 2. the power to prescribe in terms of punishment for personal rights or property rights only belongs to the law. 3. the procedure for administrative punishment is for the first time detailed in the law, particularly the hearings system which is quite new in china. the measures on administrative punishment adopted by the banking supervisory committee in 2004 provide that the person concerned has the right to apply for a hearing under certain circumstances (for example, if the punishment involves a large fine or a cessation order to stop business, or a revocation of a banking licence) before the punishment is imposed (international financial daily, 4 january 2005:2). for these reasons, it is a major milestone for the rule of law in china (ying 1998:19-20). following this law, other major laws were also enacted, such as the law on administrative review procedure adopted in april 1999 and the law on civil servants adopted in april 2005. the latest development in administrative law is linked to the wto requirements. on the one hand, governments at all levels should ad_________________________________________________________________________ 11 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china minister by law and on the other they should follow the transparency principle set forth by the wto law. the publicizing requirement stipulated in the administrative licensing law is a typical example. in addition, after its admission to the wto, china can no longer use a large number of normative internal documents to govern the society. instead, the government documents, when needed and in line with the wto regulations, have to be reflected in the form of laws and regulations. for that purpose, during the sars period, various government departments passed a large number of administrative regulations concerning public health, transportation, protection of wildlife and environment, prices, etc. problems, however, still persist in the law-based administration. first, not all officials and/or government departments are familiar with this new governance method, as evidenced by the fact that some still issued internal documents during the sars period. that is why there is a saying in china that too many 'red dotted documents' (hongtou wenjian) are based on administrative discretion, and therefore may be subject to an abuse of administrative power. in order to avert this, the role of people's congresses should be strengthened and the government power endorsed through legislation (cheng 2003). in a transitional society like china, such old practices may co-exist for a time alongside the new practices, but the new one will eventually replace the old one completely. some deficiencies also remain in the implementation of the law on administrative licensing since it came into force in july 2004: • the mentality of some leading officials has not changed; they still stick to the old administrative method or do not clearly understand the law. • it is a difficult task to balance the various implementation measures including the freedom of information system, the hearings system, and the responsibility system. • there has been no effective clean-up of unapproved items. • there is a lack of unified standards for non-licensed items subject to administrative approval. • there have been unlawful fee charges for administrative licensing (legal daily, 1 july 2005). as for the improvement of administrative laws, there was a call in 2006 by npc deputies for a law on administrative organization and law on administrative bianzhi (people's daily, 5 december 2006:10). 12 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ law on civil servants china's civil service was established in the early 1990s. according to one source, there were about 6.37 million civil servants and more than 30 million personnel working in public-funded organizations in china by the end of 2003.11 each year a national examination to recruit new civil servants takes place. in order to regulate the increasing body of civil servants, china adopted the law on civil servants in april 2005, which took effect on 1 january 2006 (people's daily 28 april 2005:10). it is designed to define officials' rights and responsibilities. according to the law, a civil servant is a person who performs his/ her public service in accordance with the law, is recruited into the state administrative bianzhi, and enjoys salary and benefits from the state finance (article 2). he/she should meet the following qualifications: be a chinese citizen, be at least 18 years old, uphold the chinese constitution, be of good conduct and good health, and have the education and working skills required for the position (article 11). this law sets out the requirement for public servants to be recruited through just, open and fair examinations. officials should take the blame and quit their posts if their mistakes or negligence should cause major losses or serious social repercussions. precise procedures have been delineated for civil servants to appeal against decisions they disagree with in order to determine their legal responsibilities. a stable salary system ensures that salaries are in line with the local economic levels and that they increase in line with the economic growth. the ccp ministry of organization and the ministry of personnel issued the regulations on the performance evaluation of civil servants (trial) in january 2007. it contains six chapters and 31 clauses. according to its provisions, performance will be evaluated annually and divided into four levels: excellent, good, satisfactory and unsatisfactory. the number for excellence should be normally within 15 percent and not exceed 20 percent of the total in a government body (people's daily, 18 january 2007:4). the evaluation is an important part of the civil service. the take the blame and resign' system in addition to the law-based administration, a 'take the blame and resign' regime (yinjiu cizhi zhi) has been established. it began during the sars period when the mayor of beijing and minister of health resigned due to their ineffective performance. in april 2004 the provisional regulations on the resignation of leading cadres of the party and the gov_________________________________________________________________________ 13 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china ernment were adopted. the scope of resignation has been expanded to all party and government organs. in the same month, premier wen jiabao chaired a state council standing meeting which dealt with three serious accidents, namely the chuandong blowout accident; the miyun hongqiao stampede; and the jilin zhongbai shopping mall fire. the state council approved the resignation of ma fucai, general manager of the sinopec for the blowout accident. some of the responsible persons for the miyun accident were brought to the court on criminal charges including negligence.12 the milk powder scandal in anhui province in april 2004 is a new addition to the previous cases: 97 people in local governments and supervision departments were held responsible for the inferior quality milk products which caused the death of at least 12 babies in fuyang (china daily, 8 november 2004:1). the songhua river pollution incident in november 2005 caused several officials to be sacked13 and the head of the state administration of environmental protection took the blame and finally resigned. the 'take the blame and resign' system is now incorporated into the newly adopted law on civil servants. according to article 82, leading civil servants may resign for personal or other reasons; those who have acted improperly or caused serious loss or social impact as a result of accidents should assume the responsibility and resign, otherwise they will be ordered to do so.14 this can be seen as a further step of the chinese government to institutionalize the wto requirement of accountability in its legal system and governance. the state council issued the certain opinions on carrying out the responsibility system for administrative law enforcement in july 2005 (people's daily, 28 july 2005:2). it was based on three considerations: (a) to implement the 2004 implementation program; (b) to govern and supervise law enforcement activities of the government; and (c) to meet the urgent need to implement the responsibility system.(people's daily, 28 july 2005:2) the document stipulates three main requirements: 1. to strengthen the law enforcement basis, i.e., to refine and make clear relevant laws and regulations as well as the 'three fixes' (san ding) 15 regulations which are used for administrative law enforcement. 2. to break up law enforcement authorities, i.e., to allocate statutory authorities to actual law enforcement institutions and posts. 3. to set out law enforcement responsibility, i.e., to determine the responsibilities of law enforcers at different departments or posts and to determine the categories and contents of responsibilities that law enforcers should assume.(people's daily, 28 july 2005:1) 14 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ to enhance the implementation of the law enforcement responsibility, an assessment mechanism has been established. the opinion also provides clear details on how to investigate and deal with illegal or improper law enforcement undertakings. punishment is to be imposed too for administrative omissions. administrative transparency transparency plays a vital role in administration in accordance with law; it is not only a requirement from the wto, but was also called for during the sars period. as a result, the new regulations on public health emergencies were enacted in may 2003 (people's daily, 13 may 2003:8). these stipulate that any individual or organization has the right to report emergencies and to accuse governments of not performing their duties according to law. the regulations have for the first time established the freedom of information system at the governmental level. the 2004 implementation program of comprehensively pushing forward administration in accordance with law requires the openness of government information. accordingly, administrative bodies are required to release government information except for state secrets, legally protected commercial secrets and matters concerning personal privacy. the public has the right to consult the released information on the basis of the conditions set out by the government. (2004 implementation program) among the local governments, the government of guangzhou was the first to adopt the freedom of information regulations in early 2003. the rapid development of government internet websites has enhanced government transparency. as of july 2005, there were more than 10,000 government websites registered under gov.cn (people's daily, 28 july 2005:10). there was an interesting case recently in shanghai regarding access to government information. dong ming, a 70-year-old woman, sued the housing and land administration bureau of xuhui district after she was refused access to archived documents pertaining to the villa she used to live in. the legal basis of her case is the provisions of the shanghai municipality on the openness of government information, which took effect on 1 may 2004. according to dong, her father bought the villa in 1947, but her family was expelled from it in 1968. the bureau said that, based on a 1998 regulation, only the owner of the villa could read the original documents of the property (cao 2004). since it is the first case regarding access to government information, it attracted a high level of _________________________________________________________________________ 15 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china attention within china, in particular from the legal sphere. the case has been discussed in the mass media as well as in law journals.16 it is suggested that the process of administrative transparency and openness should be added to some major laws that are of vital interest to the chinese people, such as the law on government procurement, the agricultural law and the law on production safety. the 1998 revised law on land management does not provide an open and transparent procedure for land appropriation (tudi zhengyong). this affects the interests of peasants who are only informed of the government decision after it has been taken (wen 2004(2):3-4). another problem in administrative transparency is related to the implementation of the law of confidentiality.17 according to that law, regulations and laws related to national security and interest are deemed state secrets; indeed, the law sets out seven categories which are regarded as confidential and to be kept from the public. however, the relevant provisions in that law are not detailed enough; consequently a large amount of government information which is open to the public in other countries is kept secret from the chinese public. for example, the regulations on state confidentiality and scope of confidentiality in auditing work, which was jointly issued by the state audit administration and the state confidentiality bureau in june 1996, classifies 'auditing investigations and results regarding leading cadres at the provincial level' as a confidential item (wen 2004(2):11). it is also suggested that 'administration openness' (zhengwu gongkai) should be incorporated into the chinese constitution so that it can bind the ruling party and change the governance method (wen 2004(6):38-40). on the other hand, since there is no law on administrative transparency at the national level, it is still unclear to what extent administrative information should be open to the public, who should take the responsibility for concealing the information, and who can exercise the power of supervision or make amendments (yue 2004:1). it is reported that the regulations on government information openness will be published in the near future and that the right of citizens to government information will be guaranteed (people's daily, 28 july 2005:10)18. although these new regulations will be welcomed generally, many government departments and local governments are still not accustomed to this new practice of administration. it is worth mentioning the 'audit storm' which took place in june 2004. li jinhua, chief of the state audit administration, reported to the npc regarding the implementation of the 2003 central budget and other financial revenues and expenses. his report revealed illegal activities by 16 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ some government departments and officials. no matter whether these illegal activities are linked to corruption or embezzlement, they are all related to the compliance of the law in administration. according to the plan of the state audit administration, all the auditing results except for state or commercial secrets have to be accessible to the public by 2007 (shen 2004). independent auditing in china is not an easy job. the state audit administration was only established in september 1983 and being a quasi-ministerial level department under the state council, it is not regarded highly by other government departments. the 2004 audit report created resentment from relevant departments and encountered difficulties in tackling the illegal activities. however, the audit process assists in the realization of law-based administration as well as providing administrative transparency. transparency is also a response to the development of the internet. formerly, the government was able to monopolize and control the flow of information, but with the development of the internet, the public information platform has become much broader. government control is becoming extremely difficult, thus making transparency an inevitable choice. as of 2004, the number of internet users in china was 94 million (shi and wang 2005:13). the internet has therefore become a new challenge to the ccp as the sole ruling party in china. the anti-corruption campaign corruption can cause social instability. more importantly, it can cause people to question the fairness of the ccp and even to challenge its legitimacy to rule the country. it is imperative therefore for the ccp to launch an anti-corruption campaign. it should be noted that before the economic reform, corruption was not a big problem. however, the emphasis on economic development in past decades has encouraged the spread of corruption in china in various forms, giving rise to what has been called 'systemic corruption'(klitgaard 2000:2-5). facing such a serious problem, china has to use the law to crack down on corruption, particularly after it had introduced the rule of law. the ccp has also come to a realization that the use of ideology to crack down on corruption is ineffective, as revealed in the so-called 'three stresses' (san jiang) campaign.19 realistically, it is impossible for china to completely eliminate corruption; what it can do though is to curb its growth.20 one reason for this lies in the fact that china is a one-party country. as long as the power of _________________________________________________________________________ 17 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china the ccp is not effectively checked and supervised, such power can still give rise to corruption. anti-corruption campaigns have been carried out in china from time to time since the founding of the prc, particularly after the economic reforms. however, after more than 20 years of reform, the situation has become more severe. the reason is simple: corruption is inextricably linked to power. when power is unrestricted, corruption breeds quickly (li 2000:13). a robust system of checks and balances needs to be established urgently. as has been rightly pointed out, 'the more checks and balances exist within a society, and the more strong institutions are in place to protect such checks and balances, the fewer opportunities there may be for corrupt practices which remain unchecked or unpunished' (ibrahim 1997:467). a number of adopted measures to fight corruption are detailed below. recent measures with economic leverage economic sanctions are necessary for a crackdown on corruption since economic benefits provide the original momentum for the spread of corruption. the state audit administration has prepared a plan to audit all government and party officials, including those at ministerial level, when they leave their posts. according to the plan, the auditing system focuses on two areas: (a) an investigation to determine whether or not the official has ever violated the country's financial regulations and rules and (b) an attempt to establish whether or not the official has fulfilled his/her duties. one of the aims is to help uncover clues of corruption which will serve as a warning to officials who are still at their posts. while the problem of corruption cannot be solved by this post-departure audit, given that there are a number of difficulties in implementation, the audit system can still play an important part in the anti-corruption campaign (liu 2000).21 it is reported that over the past two years, the auditing process has accomplished its task and discovered that three deputy-ministerial level officials had been involved in corrupt practices (legal daily, 11 july 2005). the other economic measure is the 'two separate lines in revenue and expenditure' (shouzhi liangtiao xian). the main provisions of this system are as follows: 1. all items and standards for fees must be approved by the state council or the government above the provincial level; no unauthorized items for fees shall be made, and the scope of fee-collection should not be expanded. 2. when charging fees or fines, the unified receipts printed by the 18 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ central or provincial financial departments should be used, and certificates of identify should be shown. 3. the collection of fees and fines should be made strictly in accordance with the law, and fine and fee collection should be administered separately. 4. the opening of bank accounts should be approved by finance departments and the people's bank. no bank account should be opened without authorization and no 'small treasuries' (xiaojinku) should be established in private. 5. all administrative fees and revenue based on fines should be handed over to the national treasury; no amount should be taken in secret. 6. when arranging the budgets for the law enforcement departments, the finance departments should separate the hand-over administrative fees and revenue from fines from their expenditure, and the administrative fees should be used with priority given to the necessary expenditure of any relevant work ('circular of the national audit office' 1999:1216-18). it is obviously another important measure to prevent and control corruption at the source. administrative measures the recent measures to combat corruption in china include the reform of personnel and the introduction of a rotation (lun gan) mechanism in the civil service. in 1996 the ministry of personnel prepared the provisional measures of position change among civil servants in accordance with the regulations of state civil servants. based on these measures, from 1996 to the end of 1998, 400,000 civil servants in 27 provinces undertook the rotation. the mechanism has proved to be effective in reinforcing the supervision of civil servants, in raising morale and efficiency, and in improving the integrity of governmental bodies. it is an important measure to prevent the spread of corruption. the reform program to deepen the cadre system of personnel in 2000 sets out the following measures: 1. to reinforce the process of open selection of leading cadres and to allow official positions to be awarded through competition; 2. to introduce the 'open show' system (gongshi zhi) for leading cadres before they take up their positions. this is designed to put in the public domain the personal details of the appointees for comment and evaluation. the appointment will take effect after a period of _________________________________________________________________________ 19 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china time provided that there is no negative feedback from the public. 3. to take various measures to resolve the problem of cadres stepping down. 4. to develop cadre work exchanges. 5. to reinforce the supervision of selecting and appointing leading cadres and other cadres.(people's daily,21 august 2000; legal daily, 23 august 2000) it should be pointed out that though the above reform of the personnel system is necessary, other supplementary measures should also be introduced, such as adequate pay for civil servants and improving the civil service recruitment system. transparency international's corruption perceptions index and bribe payers index show that bribe-taking in many developing countries is extensive, primarily because of low public salaries, and senior public officials' and politicians' de facto immunity from prosecution (pope and vogl 2000:6). the professionalization of the civil service is thus a key element to curb official corruption. accordingly, high-ranking governmental officials should be appointed through the open recruitment system rather than by the ccp department of organization whose operation is often shrouded in secrecy. after the change of the chinese leadership, the ccp has tightened up its anti-corruption campaign. based on the requirement put forward in the ccp decision on strengthening the construction of the governing capability of the party, the ccp issued the implementation program on the establishment of the system of punishment and prevention of corruption in early 2005. it attempts to establish a preventive system to curb rampant corruption in china and targets eight areas: 1. to implement the law on administrative licensing and reform the administrative examination and approval system. 2. to deepen the reform of financial management system and to realize the goal of 'two separate lines in revenue and expenditure'. 3. to implement the state council decision on the reform of the investment system and to strengthen the supervision of governmental investments. 4. to enhance the reform of the cadre/ personnel system and to establish a supervisory mechanism for cadre selection and appointment. 5. to undertake the reform of the supervision system in accordance with the ccp (trial) regulations on the intra-party supervision. 6. to continue the reform of financial enterprises and improve supervision of the banking system. 20 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ 7. to enhance the judicial reform and strengthen the judicial supervision. 8. to manage and supervise various social organizations, including professional organizations and intermediary agencies (liaowang news weekly, january 2005). despite all these new measures and initiatives, corruption remains a serious problem in chinese society. the recent cases reveal that more and more corrupt officials fled overseas before their criminal activities could be unearthed. it is reported that in fujian province alone, 69 corrupt officials fled abroad during the first half year of 2004. the year of 2006 witnessed the downfall of a number of high-ranking officials including chen liangyu, former party secretary of shanghai, liu zhihua, former deputy mayor of beijing and qiu xiaohua, former head of the national statistics bureau. in a speech given to the plenary session of the ccp central commission for discipline inspection in january 2007, hu jintao stressed that the anti-corruption campaign should be developed on four major fronts: to step up ethics education, to keep up the momentum of the campaign by routing out key offenses and high-level suspects, to address the problems that pose a great threat to the public interest, and to mend the official system and its procedures (china daily, 10 january 2007). judicial remedies the law on administrative review makes provision whereby any citizen who feels that his or her rights have been infringed by a decision from a government organ, has the right to request an administrative review. however, since administrative review is usually carried out by the same administrative organ that made the original decision, this kind of administrative remedy is insufficient; there is a need for recourse to other channels. the 1989 law on administrative litigation for the first time set out the detailed standards to determine which administrative activities are to be considered legal or illegal. chinese courts have the right to repeal illegal administrative activities. it is reported that since the implementation of the administrative litigation law, and as of april 2004, courts throughout the country had accepted and handled more than 910,000 'min gao guan' (ordinary people suing governmental officials) cases of first instance, covering more than 50 different administrative areas. for closed cases, the rate for plaintiffs wining the _________________________________________________________________________ 21 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china case is about 30 percent.22 despite the low success rate, more and more ordinary citizens are resorting to the judicial channel for legal remedy. it shows remarkable progress that chinese peasants have now learnt how to use administrative litigation against local governments, usually collectively (yuen 2005:24-49). it may be recalled that 15 years ago, when the law on administrative litigation was drafted, some government departments objected to the use of such terms as 'defendant' and 'plaintiff' because in their minds a government could not be a 'defendant'. they believed that if the government and ordinary people were to sit before the court on an equal footing, the authority of the government would be undermined (wu 2004:6). however, after the implementation of this law, the mindset of the government departments as well as government officials began to change. in the case of the inner mongolia jinsui food company v. the trademark bureau of the state administration for industry and commerce in 2004, fan hanyun, executive deputy director of that bureau, as representative of the defendant, appeared at the court. up until then, relevant departments of the central government only appointed an ordinary staff member and a lawyer to be present at the court hearing (china daily, 2 april 2004). this indicates the sea-change in the attitude of the government departments from passive to proactive regarding administrative litigation, which is linked to the development of the rule-of-law process in china. it can only be hoped that the previous three common 'fears' in administrative cases may eventually disappear: (a) ordinary people being afraid to sue government officials for fear of reprisals; (b) administrative bodies being reluctant to respond to the lawsuits for fear of losing face if they lose the case; and (c) courts being reluctant to hear the administrative cases for fear of offending the administrative bodies concerned (wang 1998). however, some of the provisions in the law on administrative litigation are out of date and in need of urgent revision. as suggested, there are at least five areas that need to be revised: 1. expansion of the scope of administrative litigation and removal of the exclusion of entities in its scope; 2. expansion of the qualification of plaintiffs; 3. safeguarding the right to lawsuit of the interested parties; 4. establishment of the administrative court; and 5. strengthening of the imposition of legal liability on the administrative chief.23 22 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ the revision of this law has been incorporated in the five-year legislative plan of the 10th npc standing committee. in the implementation of the administrative litigation law, there are also difficulties for ordinary citizens to bring government departments and/or officials to court. a paper published in a recent issue of the china journal examined administrative litigation in rural china and found that: to offset the many advantages enjoyed by the government offices that are sued, including the propensity of judges and other officials to protect one another, plaintiffs often need to secure support from advocates from officialdom or in the media. collective action, or the threat of it, can also increase the likelihood of winning (o'brien and lianjiang 2004:93). the 1994 state compensation law,24 through its establishment of a compensation system for victims, is a major supplement to the law on administrative litigation. it provides that victims who have suffered damages caused by state organs or their personnel have the right to claim compensation from the state. it establishes two categories of compensation and their remit: (a) administrative compensation applicable to illegal activities committed by state organs or their personnel and (b) criminal compensation applicable to illegal activities undertaken by public security departments, judicial bodies, or prison management departments. to cite a typical case that took place on 9 april 2001, 25 repatriated people were burnt to death in a minibus, on the way from haifen to guangzhou in guangdong province. the families of 11 victims were not satisfied with the treatment they had received after the accident and decided to sue the shanwei bureau of civil affairs in january 2003. on 18 april 2004, the court of first instance ruled that the shanwei bureau had to pay compensation for the amount of 187,000 rmb to each of the victims' families. the intermediate court of shanwei upheld the above ruling in the appeal case afterwards.25 as of november 2004, from the effective date of the law in 1995, procurators at all levels throughout the country registered and handled 7,823 compensation cases. of these, 3,167 cases involving compensation for more than 58 million rmb.26 in order to improve the state compensation system, the 2004 implementation program of comprehensively pushing forward administration in accordance with the law requires the administrative compensation to be undertaken in strict accordance with the measures on the management of state compensation funds. this is to safeguard the right of citizens, legal representatives or other organizations to obtain compensation under the law (2004 implementation program). _________________________________________________________________________ 23 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china finally, it is worth mentioning the decision on certain issues of handling administrative cases of international trade, which was issued by the supreme court in august 2002, and which concerns foreign investors and entrepreneurs. it is the first such regulation relating to handling trade cases in line with the wto regulations. according to article 10 of this regulation, foreigners and foreign entities have the same litigation rights as chinese citizens and entities in administrative cases relating to international trade. however, if a certain foreign country sets limits against chinese citizens as to the same right, then the reciprocity principle applies. in fact, the regulation embodies the rule of judicial review required by the wto law. in china's legal framework, judicial review refers to administrative litigation and administrative trial. under the new regulation, any person, whether foreign or local, has the right to request a review of certain administrative activities through litigation. the relevant court will examine the case by looking into seven aspects: whether the evidence is genuine and adequate; whether laws and regulations are applied correctly; whether there is a breach of statutory procedure; whether there is ultra vires; whether there is an abuse of power; whether administrative punishment is obviously unfair; and whether there is omission and delay of performing statutory duties.27 the regulation assists chinese courts in supervising the conduct of governmental bodies involved in international trade administration (china daily, 30 august 2002). while such a judicial review is limited to cases relating to international trade, it will be a good indication as to how the chinese courts function to curb government abuses and illegal practices. it is indicative that more and more social upheavals have occurred in recent years due to official corruption and/or social injustice and inequality. therefore remedies are even more important to maintain the stability of the chinese society, particularly when the chinese leadership is calling for the building of a harmonious society. rule of law: a new communist ideology? in 1991, the party central committee stressed that: in the new historic period, one of the most important areas for the party to lead the state affairs is to turn the party's policy into state will, then into behavioural norms with universal binding force for the whole society through the state legislature and in accordance with legal procedures. the party leads the people to make the constitution and law and the party leads the people to comply with and implement the constitution and law. this is the important political principle in our legal construction and also an important guarantee for the continuing development of the legal construction.28 24 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ this paragraph is open to various interpretations. first, it indicates that the party has realized the importance of the law and would like to rely on it for state governance and social control. the party has decided to use the law to implement its policy, instead of using internal documents as was previously practiced. this may be a positive step towards the realization of the rule of law in china. second, it can be interpreted as instrumentalism in its use of the law as a social control instrument: it emphasizes the leadership of the party, rather than the people, in society. however, through legal procedures, when the party policy is wrong, then there will be bad laws which can only damage public attitudes toward the rule of law. furthermore we need to be aware that wrong policies often occur often in history. third, although the era has now passed when party policy was considered law, the party still exerts a significant influence on the chinese legal system, particularly as reflected in the chinese constitution. it is doubtful whether 'red-dotted documents' that set themselves above the law can now be considered things of the past. a recent case illustrates the point. towards the end of 2003, the legal and political committee of hebei province issued a decision on creating a better environment for perfecting the socialist market economy system. this effectively decriminalized private entrepreneurs who had committed crimes when they started up their businesses. this document has been criticized by the party department as encouraging illegal and/or criminal activities and interfering in normal judicial procedures.29 government policy continues to emerge in legislation, as it did in the past, and policy jargon is also evident occasionally, in phrases like 'the state encourages, or supports, or grants'. the state constitution itself is used by the party as a policy document (cai and liu 2000:91). in contradistinction to constitutionalism, the chinese constitution contains provisions regarding the socialist economic and political systems. recently, there has been an argument that the party's general policy is the soul of the law and that the law is the reflection of the party's general policy, instead of the previous perspective that policy is the soul of law and law reflects policy (zhou and deng 2002:136). reliance on policy is basically a manifestation of the rule of man and the realization of the rule of law requires that state law should be above the party policy. optimistically, we predict that in the process of the rule of law, policy will be gradually subordinated to the constitutional norms, rather than the constitution continuing to be a dependent on party policy, as jiang zemin once pledged that '[w]e should never treat the party as the gov_________________________________________________________________________ 25 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china ernment, or as the law. i think we must abide by the guideline of the rule of law' (people's daily, 27 september 1989).30 it is also recalled that peng zhen once responded to the question as to the superiority of law to the party. he maintained that the law is superior to the party committee and the party secretary; and that if there is inconsistency, the law should be abided by (selected works of peng zhen 1991:389). there are a number of provisions in the 1982 constitution that aim to reduce the party control of the legal system, such as the provision that: all state organs, the armed forces, all political parties and public organizations and all enterprises and undertakings must abide by the constitution and the law. all acts in violation of the constitution and the law must be looked into. no organization or individual may enjoy the privilege of being above the constitution and the law. another provision states that: the people's courts shall, in accordance with the law, exercise judicial power independently and are not subject to interference by administrative organs, public organizations or individuals'.31 the above provisions seem to conflict with other provisions contained in the same constitution, such as: [the party] must see to it that the legislative, judicial and administrative organs of the state and the economic, cultural and people's organizations work actively and with initiative, independently, responsibly and in harmony . . . if the party is subject to the state's laws, it cannot legitimately supervise the state as a lawmaking body. . . when contradictions between the party policy and law exist, it is not clear whether such contradictions will be resolved by following the party policy, the law, or handling them on a case-by-case basis (folsom et al.1992:91-2). under the constitutional 'four fundamental principles', the supreme authority of the ccp cannot be fully curbed and supervised by the law, despite the relevant constitutional stipulations mentioned above. for the party, the basic line is the maintenance of its leadership over the legal developments and legal reform in china. as is commonly said in china, the rule of law is the unity of the party leadership with the mastery of the people. law is the reflection of the party's position and people's will, so that the rule of law is an important mode of party leadership with the mastery of the people. it is also the best mode to integrate the insistence of the party leadership with the enhancement of the people's mastery (li 2003:9). it is reported that zhang yinghong, a cadre working at the department of party organization of hunan province, published an essay 26 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ entitled 'political-legal committee hampers judicial independence' on a chinese website in july 2003. he was then criticized heavily by zhou yongkang, vice secretary of the central political-legal committee and minister of public security, who said that the article had caused a very negative impact overseas. as a result, zhang yinghong was forced to leave his post (ming pao, 9 september 2003). this incident indicates that the party will not tolerate any challenge to its leadership over the law. that is why it is argued that it is the party's economic agenda, rather than its political agenda, that requires the rule of law (giri 1998:266). it is proposed that since the governance of the state is now in accordance with the law, the governance of the party should also be in accordance with the law. however, the term 'governing the party in accordance with law' (yifa zhidang) has been rejected by the ccp. instead the party has accepted a modified term 'ruling in accordance with the law' (yifa zhizheng). does this rejection imply that the party is still above the law? the current picture in china is mixed: it contains rule-of-law elements and also rule-of-party elements. while the party has undoubtedly exerted a great influence over the legal system, we should realize that with the economic reform and the development of the legal system per se, such influence may be weakened, particularly when the 'rule of law' has been enshrined in the constitution. the other point we have to bear in mind is the paradox that lies at the heart of china's current legal reform, i.e., the rule-of-law process was initiated by the ccp but the ccp itself could become the target to be trimmed and constrained as a result of such reform. in this sense, the party may not survive the legal reform if it does not reform itself in correspondence with the legal developments. a relevant positive endeavour recently made by the ccp is its requirement that 'the party should govern the party' (dang yao guan dang). law is regarded as a useful tool in this respect. as early as 1986, the ccp central committee called for its organizations and members at all levels to study, understand and observe the constitution and laws. 'no party organizations and members, from the central committee down to the grass roots, are allowed to act in contravention of the constitution and laws'('circular of the ccp central committee' 1991:530). based on this, intra-party democracy (dang nei minzu) should be improved, and through it, the leading style of the party will be transformed from 'rule of man' to 'rule of law' so that it can strengthen the party's leading and ruling capacity (lin 2002:260-2). the question here is how, and to what extent, the party can be effectively self-disciplined, without a checks_________________________________________________________________________ 27 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china and-balances force existing within chinese society? it is disappointing to note that the corruption of party officials shows no sign of abating, despite the party issuing numerous documents designed to prevent and curb corruption. conclusion law-based administration is now a requirement in china after its admission into the wto; it is also a prerequisite for the development of a market economy. the transformation from a management-type government to a service-type government is also linked to the policy of the fourth generation leadership. it is worth remembering that the government led by hu jintao and wen jiabao has promised that its government will be more attuned to the people's needs (pomfret 2003: a18). however, the question of whether the 2004 implementation program as well as the administrative licensing law can be effectively implemented remains unanswered. the main problem is whether the communist party and the government officials will be able and willing to comply fully with the laws. as pointed out, any failure on the part of the government to observe the law will seriously undermine the whole concept of the rule of law (jiang 1995:74). china may have realized that it will take a long time to reach the goals of law-based administration. clearly, the ccp does wish that '[t]he legal system could be strengthened in a number of ways that do not directly threaten the party but rather further its self-professed goals to rationalize governance, increase government efficiency, rein in local officials, and root out corruption' (peerenboom 2002:74). on the other hand, china is in a transitional period of social restructuring, in which 'rule of man' and 'rule of law', 'rule by law' and 'rule of law' coexist. the current legal reform in china can be characterized as 'rule of the party by law', which stands somewhere in the middle, departing from the 'rule of man', but not yet reaching the realm of the 'rule of law'. it is perhaps inappropriate to use the standards of a mature legislative society to measure china's legal development. although the ccp has imposed some negative constraints on the development of the chinese legal system, it is admitted that the recent achievements in china's legal reform should be attributed to the efforts made by the party, particularly when we recall that in the earlier times such as in mao's era, the ccp rejected outright the concept of the rule of law. it is interesting to note that according to some observations, the number of 28 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ chinese leaders with a training in law has increased; and the number of full members with law degrees have risen from three (2 percent) to eight (4 percent) between the last two ccp central committees (li and white 2003:581).32 the course set towards the rule of law is thus irreversible, just as china's economic reform has proved to be since 1978. zou keyuan is harris professor of international law, lancashire law school, university of central lancashire, united kingdom. notes 1 this paper is based on a lecture given at the copenhagen business school on 2 may 2006. i am very grateful to professor kjeld erik brødsgaard his kindness in inviting me to the school for an academic visit. 2 it stipulates that 'the people's republic of china implements law to govern the state and construct the socialist country with the rule of law'. 3 text is available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/lianzheng/2005-08/10/content_ 3333987.htm (accessed 17 august 2005). 4 for details on the significance of this decision, see yingyi and jinglian 2003:35-8. 5 for example, in april 1993, the senior lecturers' team for high-ranking officials to learn law was set up for leading cadres at various levels. the team consisted of law professors and legal officials above the bureau level: see xu and yu 1998:211. during the whole of 2000, a number of teachers in the china university of political science and law conducted a so-called 'ten thousand li' lecture tour covering 100 cities and towns in 32 provinces: see zhao 2000:154-5 6 since 1994, ccp has invited legal experts to zhongnanhai to give more than 10 seminars. since june 1999, the npc standing committee has held regular seminars on law and as of the end of 2001, 24 lectures had been given by legal experts. 7 for details, see zou 2004:99-122. 8 art. 2 of the administrative licensing law. 9 art. 5 of the administrative licensing law. 10 see art. 15 of the administrative licensing law. 11 'new law approved to improve china's civil servant system', 27 april 2005. accessed 28 june 2006 at: http://www.chinalaw.gov.cn/jsp/contentpub/browser/ contentpro.jsp?contentid=co2036791762 12 for details, see 'two responsible persons for the miyun stampede accident were tried and the court hearing lasted for seven hours', new beijing daily, 14 october 2004. accessed 14 october 2004 at: http://www.people.com.cn/gb/ shehui/1063/2917898.html 13 see 'state council dealt with the songhua river pollution caused by the explosion incident of the jilin petroleum chemical company', 24 november 2006. accessed 24 november 2006 at: http://politics.people.com.cn/gb/1026/5085239.html 14 text is available at: http://www.law-lib.com/law/law_view.asp?id=91802 (accessed 22 july 2005). 15 the so-called 'three fixes' refers to a plan whereby a governmental department can know what its responsibilities are, how many people it should have, and how many official positions it can assign. 16 for example, zou rong, a professor from east china university of politics and law, _________________________________________________________________________ 29 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china said that 'the bureau should provide the information to dong. what she requested is actually archives that are more than 30 years old, which should be open to the public according to the law.' however, another legal scholar does not think that the court should support dong since documents concerning housing registry are regarded as personal privacy so that the refusal by the bureau was right. see liu feiyu 2005:122-8. 17 it is adopted in september 1988 and came into force on 1 may 1989. text is available at: http://www.sdca.gov.cn/anquan/baomifa.htm (accessed 10 august 2005). 18 the regulations are expected to be promulgated in 2007 since the draft has been adopted by the standing meeting of the state council in january 2007, see people's daily, 18 january 2007:1. 19 the 'three stresses' campaign was initiated in 1999 and continued in 2000. it was an effort to revitalize party identity, but could not achieve its goal. see zheng 2000:27. 20 klitgaard asserts that it is impossible to eliminate corruption entirely, that the best any government can do is balance various considerations and determine its own 'optimal level of corruption'. see klitgaard 1988:24. 21 see liu 2000. it is reported that since april 2000, the state audit administration has audited the leaders of six major financial institutions when they left their posts. see wang 2000. 22 see 'the winning rate for ordinary people to sue the officials in china is about 30% and the revision of the administrative litigation law needs five breakthroughs', 6 april 2004, accessed 6 april 2004 at: http://www.hsm.com.cn/node2/node116/ node275/node276/userobject6ai162926.html 23 see 'the winning rate for ordinary people to sue the officials in china is about 30% and the revision of the administrative litigation law needs five breakthroughs', 6 april 2004, accessed april 2004 at: http://www.hsm.com.cn/node2/node116/ node275/node276/userobject6ai162926.html 24 text is reprinted in peng 1998:50-6. it came into force on 1 january 1995. 25 for details, see '25 people burnt to death in a repatriate bus in guangdong and victim families got state compensation', 18 november 2004. accessed 18 november 2004 at: http://www.peacehall.com/news/gb/china/2004/11/200411181354.shtml 26 see 'supreme procurator explores the reform on state compensation law, compensation of more than 58 million for 10 years of the law implementation', new beijing daily (in chinese), 3 january 2005. accessed 3 january 2005 at: http://www. people.com.cn/gb/14576/14957/3094389.html 27 art. 6 of the regulation. also see 'supreme court determines the review criteria for administrative cases relating to international trade'. accessed 7 september 2002 at: http://www.chinacourt.org/public/detail.php?id=9779 28 see 'handling well six relationships in local legislation – speech made by jiang chunyun, npc vice-chairman at the seminar on local legislation in shenzhen'. accessed 16 september 2003 at: http://www.npcnews.com.cn/gb/paper7/26/ class000700002/hwz228320.htm 29 see 'red-dotted document pardoned crimes of private enterprises and the ccp hopes to stop capital flow overseas'. accessed 11 february 2004 at: http://www. lundian.com/forum/view.shtml?p=ps200402091401001017&l=chinese 30 cited in liao 1999:5. 31 articles 5 and 126 of the chinese constitution. 32 caution should be taken when counting the number of law degrees, since in china graduates trained in political science, public administration, international relations and sociology are all granted law degrees in addition to those trained in law. 30 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ references '25 people burnt to death in a repatriate bus in guangdong and victim families got state compensation', 18 november 2004. accessed 18 november 2004 at: http:// www.peacehall.com/news/gb/china/2004/11/200411181354.shtml 'banking supervisory committee: five big administrative punishment may be subject to hearing', international financial daily (in chinese), 4 january 2005. cai dingjian and liu dan 2000. 'from policy society to rule of law society'. in huang zhiying (ed.), the road to the china's rule of law. beijing: peking university press, 2000: 91. cao li 2004. 'lawsuit over access to housing archives'. china daily, 5 july 2004. cheng jie, 'prevention and treatment of sars needs the exercise of power by people's congresses'. accessed 26 july 2003 at: http://www.iolaw.org.cn/feidian/ shownews.asp?id=790 'circular of the ccp central committee on resolutely upholding the socialist legal system throughout the party' 1991. in research department of party literature, central committee of the chinese communist party (ed.), major documents of the people's republic of china – selected important documents since the third plenary of the eleventh central committee of the communist party of china (december 1978 – november 1989). beijing: foreign languages press 1991: 530. circular of the national audit office concerning further implementation of the regulations on 'separation between revenue and expenditure' 1999. gazette of the state council of the people's republic of china 28: 1216-18 giri deshingkar 1998. 'rule of law vs. rule of man: contradictory pulls in china'. in satish saberwal and heiko sievers (eds), rules, laws, constitutions. new delhi: sage publications 1998: 266. folsom, ralph h., john h. minan and lee ann otto 1992. law and politics in the people's republic of china. st. paul, minn.: west publishing co.: 91-2. 'handling well six relationships in local legislation – speech made by jiang chunyun, npc vice-chairman at the seminar on local legislation in shenzhen', accessed 16 september 2003 at: http://www.npcnews.com.cn/gb/paper7/26/class000700002/ hwz228320.htm. huang haixia and han bingjie, 'self-revolution of the government', liaowang news weekly, 14 june 2004, no. 24. accessed 6 july 2004 at: http://www1.people.com. cn/gb/shehui/1063/2602969.html ibrahim shihata 1997. 'corruption – a general review with an emphasis on the role of the world bank'. dickinson journal of international law (15): 467. jiang ping 1995. 'chinese legal reform: achievements, problems and prospects'. journal of chinese law 9 (1995): 74. klitgaard, r. 1988. controlling corruption. berkeley: university of california press: 24. — 2000. 'subverting corruption', finance & development, june 2000 'law of confidentiality'. accessed 10 august 2005 at: http://www.sdca.gov.cn/ anquan/baomifa.htm. 'law on civil servants'. accessed 22 july 2005 at: http://www.law-lib.com/law/ law_view.asp?id=91802 liao susheng 1999. 'brief comments on comrade jiang zemin's thoughts on governing the state by law'. law science 6 (1999): 5. li cheng and lynn white 2003. 'the sixteenth central committee of the chinese communist party: hu gets what?'. asian survey 43(4): 581. liu feiyu 2005. 'case study: a link between publication of administrative information and the protection of personal data'. legal science monthly 4(2005): 122-8. _________________________________________________________________________ 31 _______________________________ administrative reform and rule of law in china liu weiling, 'new move to fight graft', china daily, 21 august 2000 li liangdong, 'deepening theoretical perception and enhancing practical development', people's daily, 25 november 2003. lin shangli 2002. democracy within the party: theory and practice of the chinese communist party. shanghai: shanghai academy of social sciences press: 260-2. li rongxia. 'inflicting severe punishment on corruption'. beijing review, 22 may 2000. meng yan. 'law alters national licensing standards'. china daily, 29 june 2004. 'new law approved to improve china's civil servant system'. 27 april 2005. accessed 28 june 2006 at: http://www.chinalaw.gov.cn/jsp/contentpub/browser/ contentpro.jsp?contentid=co2036791762 o'brien, kevin j. and lianjiang li 2004. 'suing the local state: administrative litigation in rural china', china journal, 2004 (51): 93. peerenboom, randall 2002. china's long march toward rule of law. cambridge: cambridge university press: 226. — 2006. 'a government of laws: democracy, rule of law, and administrative law reform in china'. in suisheng zhao (ed.), debating political reform in china: rule of law vs. democratization. armonk, new york: m.e. sharpe 2006: 66-7. peng liming (ed.) 1998. compendium of the existing laws of the people's republic of china. beijing: china construction materials industry publisher 1: 50-6. pope, jeremy and frank vogl 2000. 'making anticorruption agencies more effective'. finance & development, 37(2): 6. pomfret, john. 'china's slow reaction to fast-moving illness, fearing loss of control, beijing stonewalled'. washington post, 3 april 2003. 'the 2004 implementing program'. accessed 17 august 2005 at: http://news.xinhuanet. com/lianzheng/2005-08/10/content_3333987.htm 'quarterly chronicle and documentation' 1979. the china quarterly 77 (march): 172 qian, yingyi and jinglian wu 2003. 'china's transition to a market economy: how far across the river?'. in nicholas c. hope, dennis tao yang and mu yang li (eds). how far across the river? chinese policy reform at the millennium. stanford, ca: stanford university press 2003: 35-8. 'red-dotted document pardoned crimes of private enterprises and the ccp hopes to stop capital flow overseas', accessed 11 february 2004 at: http://www.lundian. com/forum/view.shtml?p=ps200402091401001017&l=chinese selected works of peng zhen (1941-1990) 1991, beijing: people's press, 1991 (in chinese). shen jianli 2004. 'audit in 2004: not storm but transparency'. new beijing paper, 30 june 2004. accessed 6 july 2004 at: http://www1.people.com.cn/gb/jingji/1037/2607051. html shi xiangzhou and wang suhuai 2005. 'look at the government at a new platform'. liaowang news week, no. 10 7 march 2005. 'state council dealt with the songhua river pollution caused by the explosion incident of the jilin petroleum chemical company'. 24 november 2006. accessed 24 november 2006 at: http://politics.people.com.cn/gb/1026/5085239.html 'supreme court determines the review criteria for administrative cases relating to international trade'. accessed 7 september 2002 at: http://www.chinacourt. org/public/detail.php?id=9779 'supreme procurator explores the reform on state compensation law, compensation of more than 58 million for 10 years of the law implementation', new beijing daily, 3 january 2005. accessed 3 january 2005 at: http://www.people.com.cn/ gb/14576/14957/3094389.html 32 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 zou keyuan _______________________________________________________________ 'the winning rate for ordinary people to sue the officials in china is about 30% and the revision of the administrative litigation law needs five breakthroughs'. 6 april 2004. accessed 6 april 2004 at: http://www.hsm.com.cn/node2/node116/node275/ node276/userobject6ai162926.html 'two responsible persons for the miyun stampede accident were tried and the court hearing lasted for seven hours'. new beijing daily, 14 october 2004. accessed 14 october 2004 at: http://www.people.com.cn/gb/shehui/1063/2917898.html wang binlai 1998. 'enhance the administrative organs to manage administration according to law (social survey)'. people's daily, 7 october 1998. wang ying 2000. 'graft war targets the top'. china daily, 27 october 2000. wen xiaoli 2004. 'basic issues in legalizing administrative openness'. legal science 6(2004): 38-40. — 2004. 'legal system of administrative openness'. chinese legal science 2(2004): 3-4, 11. wu jin 2004. 'towards rule-of-law government' (part 1). people's daily, 22 april 2004. xu, yue and yu jie (eds) 1998. twenty-year construction of china's legal system. zhengzhou: zhongzhou old books publisher: 211 yingyi qian and jinglian wu 2003. 'china's transition to a market economy: how far across the river?'. in nicholas c. hope, dennis tao yang and mu yang li (eds), how far across the river? chinese policy reform at the millennium. stanford, ca: stanford university press 2003: 35-8. ying songnian 1998. 'developments of the chinese administrative law'. zengfa luntan [journal of china university of political science and law] 5(1998): 19-20. yue furong 2004. 'why is the openness of administrative affairs so difficult?' market daily (shichang bao), 29 october 2004. yuen yuen tang 2005. 'when peasants sue en masse: large-scale collective all suits in rural china'. china: an international journal 3(1): 24-49. zhao wei 2000. 'propagandizing laws to innumerable families in every corner of the country' tribune of political science and law, 3(2000): 154-5 zheng yongnian 2000. 'the politics of power succession in post-deng china'. asian journal of political science 8(1): 27. zhou yezhong and deng lianfan 2002. new perspectives on the construction of the party style. beijing: people's press: 136. zou keyuan 2004. 'sars and rule of law in china'. in john wong and zheng yongnian (eds). the sars epidemic: challenges to china's crisis management. singapore: world scientific publishing co., 2004: 99-122. 40 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18•2003 hongyi harry lai the religious revival in china hongyi harry lai abstract since 1979, china has experienced a widespread revival of religious faith and practice. this article aims to provide an overview of this phenomenon, by examining the causes behind it, the variety and popularity of religions and the different profi les of believers. it suggests that china's religions are diverse, encompassing offi cial, unoffi cial, and folk religions, and that the revival is signifi cant and visible. according to offi cial statistics, the fi ve largest religions in 2003 counted 144 million believers, while the non-offi cial sources give the fi gure as nearer 200 million. the revival has been fuelled by a number of factors: the state's lifting of the ban to freedom of worship; popular disillusion with the offi cial ideology; economic and social uncertainties in the wake of economic reforms and modernization; and the enduring resilience of religion and tradition. for ethnic minorities like uighurs and tibetans, the revival of their religion has been accompanied by a similar cultural renaissance. buddhists and daoists among the han in hubei province come from a wide range of educational backgrounds and professions, although the majority of them are women or were born before 1956. the han buddhists and daoists turn to religion primarily for practical reasons, that is, to gain some advantage in their earthly lives rather than looking for rewards in the afterlife. for this reason, religious fundamentalism may have limited appeal to the han chinese. china's religions experienced a transformation in the post-1979 era, as evidenced by an increase in the number of places of worship as well as the rise of unoffi cial religions. this article seeks to provide an overview of religious revival in china, including its scope, variety, and causes. it suggests that china's religions are diverse, encompassing offi cial, unoffi cial, underground, and folk religions, and that their revival is signifi cant and visible. the revival has been fuelled by a number of factors: the state's lifting of its ban on freedom of worship; by widespread disillusion with the offi cial ideology; economic and social uncertainties in the wake of modernization and reforms; and the enduring nature of religious belief. data from one province reveal that han buddhists and daoists come from a wide range of educational backgrounds and professions. the majority of them are females or were born before 1956. introduction introduction 41 the religious revival in china the chinese han, especially buddhists and daoists, turn to religion primarily for utilitarian reasons, that is, to seek benefi ts in their earthly life, rather than looking for rewards in an afterlife. this article will review religions that attract the largest numbers of followers but which have drawn far less attention in the west.1 they include mahayana buddhism and a variety of folk religions. it will also survey tibetan buddhism, underground catholicism and protestantism, and falun gong, which has recently come under the spotlight in the us and european media, in western policy-making, and even academic circles. as far as tibetans and uighurs are concerned, religion has remained an inherent part of their culture and life, and the state's relaxed policies have helped to aid the revival of religion as well as their cultural heritage. different religions in china this article adopts the following defi nition of religion: religion is a set of beliefs, symbols and practices based on the notion of supernatural forces and in some cases, an afterlife, and which unites believers in a socio-religious community.2 this broad defi nition incorporates folk religions that are peculiar to china, plus the fi ve main religions.3 following recent studies on china's religions,4 this article leaves out confucianism from the discussion, largely because in present-day china it exists primarily in the form of ethical teachings, rather than religion per se. rarely is confucius worshipped in china today, nor is confucianism viewed as a religion. as liu and leung persuasively demonstrate, the growth and revival of the catholic church in china is deeply shaped by its relationship with the state as well as its indigenization (liu and leung 2002: 121-38). furthermore, political constraints on religious activities persist despite relaxed governmental policies. in a similar vein, myron l. cohen categorized chinese religions into three categories, namely: offi cial, heterodoxy, and popular. following cohen's methodology, for the purposes of this article and to facilitate the discussion (as table 1 indicates), three types of religion in china will be discussed (cohen 1992: 17-31). 1. the fi ve big, offi cially recognized religions, namely, buddhism, daoism, islam, catholicism and protestantism. these religions enjoy relatively well-demarcated places of worship and open and publicized nationwide associations. 42 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18•2003 hongyi harry lai 2. unoffi cial religions, comprising underground churches, sects related to the big fi ve yet not recognized by the state, and tibetan buddhists and xinjiang muslims who challenge beijing's control. within this category, there are three subgroups: • the clergy and followers in the underground protestant and catholic churches make up the unoffi cial protestant and catholic gatherings. a signifi cant number of believers prefer to attend the unoffi cial underground churches, which they see as independent from any government interference. • booming alongside these underground churches are unoffi cial sects. their doctrines resemble the fi ve main religions, yet their teachings and practices may differ from those of the big fi ve. some choose to maintain a low profi le in order not to invite a government crackdown. others, such as falun gong, choose instead to confront the state and assert publicly their organizational independence. • lastly, a number of tibetan buddhists and xinjiang muslims ignore or challenge the state's control and support independence of their regions. 3. indigenous religions, or folk religions. folk religions come in varied and diffused forms, including utilitarian ancestor or lineage worship (worshipping one's ancestors so that the ancestor's soul can intervene on behalf of its living descendants), local god worship, divination, geomancy (most notably fengshui), witchcraft (sorcery, exorcism and planchette writing), physiognomy, and certain taboos.5 many of the folk religions tend to vary across regions, and their followers generally believe in several at any one time. there have been a limited number of studies on religions in postmao china, but the number is growing. most of these studies focus on protestantism, catholicism, islam and folk religions in china. a few studies also survey offi cial policies and religious practices in china. these studies enrich our understanding of the state's regulations, its operation of religious institutions, and the views and practice of religious professionals. as many of these studies are anthropologically oriented and based on fi eldwork, they reveal much of the interaction on the one hand between these institutions and their followers and, on the other, between religion and the local political structure. nevertheless, these studies have noticeable limitations. first, few of them provide sound data on the popularity of all the fi ve religions as well as folk religions. while there is some analysis of the number of 43 the religious revival in china followers of islam, protestantism and catholics, yet discussion on the number of followers of daoism and the most popular buddhism and folk religions is scant. furthermore, many studies fail to take account of changes in the number of places of worship over the past two decades and the main religions among the different ethnic groups in china.6 second, there is a lack of systemic analyses backed by data on why the chinese have turned to religion in the post-mao era. third, we have yet to know who exactly the religious chinese are and what sort of profi le they have. we thus remain unsure about why the chinese embrace religion and who the religious followers are. table 1: types of religion in china and the ethnicity of followers followers offi cial religions unoffi cial religions folk religions han mahayana buddhism daoism protestantism catholicism unoffi cial sects: falun gong, zhong gong, zhusheng jiao, etc. ancestor worship, local god worship, geomancy (feng shui, etc.), fortune-telling (divination, or through reading birth statistics, faces, and palms), witchcraft and taboos ethnic minorities 1. islam: 10 minorities – hui, uygurs, kazak, dongxiang, kirgiz, salar, tajik, uzbek, bonan and tatar 2. tibetan buddhism: five minorities – tibetans, mongolians, menba, tu and yugur 3. mahayana buddhism: two minorities – koreans and bai 4. theravada (hinayana) buddhism: three minorities – blang, dai and de'ang 5. shamanism: six minorities – daur, ewenki, hezhen, manchu, orenqen and xibo 6. daoism: three minorities – monan, mulao and yao 7. orthodoxy: russians pro-independence tibetan buddhists and xinjiang muslims various primitive religions: 25 minorities – achang, bouyei, dong, dulong, gaoshan, gelao, hani, jing, jingpo, jino, lahu, luoba, li, lisu, miao, naxi, nu, primi, qiang, she, shui, tujia, va, yi and zhuang mixed ethnicities protestantism, catholicism underground churches; unoffi cial sects note: the table lists one main religion for each of the minorities, and leaves out, due to limited space, their minor religions. source: du et al. (eds) 1994: 449-52. �� ������ ������ � �������� ����������������� ��� ���� ��� � ������ �� ��� �������� � ������� �������������� �� � ���"��� ���� ��� �#����� � � � $� �%��� ���� ��� �&�� � '� � ����� ������ ��� �������!������������ �������� ����� �� ���� �"� �����#�� ���!�� �� ������$��!�� ��� � ���������� "� ���������%� ����� ��� & ���� ��� ����' ��� �� ��� �� ��� ���� %� ����' ��� � �!�� ��� "����&� �'� �����"��������� &���� � ��������& ����� � ������������ �� ��� ��� ���(�)�� �������� ��� ������������� � �� ���& ������� � ��� ���� � ������ �� ������ ���������'�%������ ��"�������� $� �� ��#�� ��������*����� ����� �� �( ��������� �� � �� �� ������� ����� �������� � ������ ���� )��� � ����!�� ���� ��������������������%� ���������!&�� +� � ��� ������� ���� � ��� ��������%�� ����� �(���� ��� ����!�� �� � ',������ � ������� ��������� � ��� ���� �� �����!&��������� '��� � �� ��&� � ���� ������������%� ���������'��������� �-�(.� ��������� ��/ � � � � ,��������'�0(1� ����������"�� ��,��������'� ����(.� ����������� & � � ,���������2 �������%�� � ���������3��� �4(�)�� ��������������� ���� ����� � ��� ���'��� � �� ���(�� �������������%� �'������%���"��5 ����$ � ���� 2�1 ������4'� �������� 2. ������4' ��6 ��� 2� ������42���� 7� � ���4( ����"� �!&��������� � ����� ������������%� �'�� ������ �������� ������� ������� ����(�8��$��!�� ������ ������ ���� ��� �� ��� "� ���� �����%� ��� ��������%�� ��� ����9���(0 ������/ � � � ,��������'� ������ �� :�!�� ��6 � ����7����%� ���������7�&��/ +� �;��� ������� �����2 �������4 ����� ��� < ����������!�� ����������;��� �������� � ��,� � �<�� �� ��� � < <(�����9�1�<�=�� ��--�9���< �� �� � >:�����?@��---<�ab�� +� ���� ���a�>;��� �����= ����@�����( 45 the religious revival in china 25 million protestants, and 10 million catholics. according to non-offi cial estimates, the number of followers of the fi ve main religions (buddhism, islam, protestantism, catholicism and daoism) in 2003 reached around 200 million, or over 15 percent of the population (see table 2). table 2: offi cial and non-offi cial estimates of believers (millions) religions offi cial, 1999 offi cial, 2003 non-offi cial, 2003 mahayana buddhism (han) 90.5 90.5 132.7* tibetan buddhism 7.5 7.6 7.6 theravada buddhism (yunnan) 2.0 1.5 1.5 daoism 3.0 3.0 3.0 islam 19.0 20.3 20.0 protestantism 15.0 16.0 25.0 catholicism 4.0 5.0 10.0 total 141.0 143.9 199.8 sources: offi cial data on 1999 come mainly from 'zhongguo zongjiao yanjiu zhongxi wenzhang toulu: zhongguo xianyou gezhong zongjiao xintu yiyi duoren' [paper from china religious research center reveals: china has over one hundred million followers of various religions] 2003; editorial department of china's religions 2000:30. offi cial data on 2003 come from 'zongjiao tuanti' [religious groups] 2003. data on mahayana buddhists comes partly from argue et al. (2000). non-offi cial data on followers of islam, protestantism and catholicism in 2003 (gladney 2003: 451; madsen 2003: 469; bays 2003: 491). non-offi cial data on followers of tibetan buddhism and theravada buddhism in yunnan are considered offi cial data, because non-offi cial data are unavailable. note: * extrapolated data based on the offi cial data in 1999, using the averaged offi cial growth rates of those of protestantism and catholicism between 1999 and 2003. these numbers should be treated with caution though for the following reasons. first, it is diffi cult to distinguish actual practitioners from self-proclaimed believers. second, even though the state permits religious activities, it refuses to endorse them, and even openly promotes atheism. therefore, many religious activities take place covertly, so it becomes problematic to estimate the numbers of followers of unoffi cial religions and sects. the offi cial statistic of 144 million followers in 2003 for the fi ve religions can only give us a very rough guide to the current status of religion in the country. the case of hubei province sheds light on the popularity of religion over the past few decades. information on the province has been published jointly by a professor of theology at the leading provincial university and a deputy secretary general of the provincial legislature, who had ready access to both religious survey data and internal gov46 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18•2003 hongyi harry lai ernmental data. since hubei is at a medium level of socio-economic development among the 31 provinces in china, it can be regarded as an average chinese province. in the early 1980s religion was still on the wane as a result of devastation caused by the cultural revolution of 1966.8 after the late 1980s, religious groups expanded, as refl ected in the rise of buddhist and daoist followers in hubei (see table 3), and this was matched by a similar trend nationwide. the numbers of places of religious worship nationwide for all the fi ve mainstream religions, especially daoism, buddhism (among the hans), protestantism and catholicism rose rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s (see table 4). by the late 1990s, the number of religious centres and churches established by the fi ve main religions nationwide rivalled the period immediately after the chinese communists came to power. religious places of worship include churches, monasteries, mosques and make-shift meeting places. they totalled over 100,000 in 2003. in addition, the number of clerics of the fi ve religions also expanded, reaching 300,000 in 2003 (see table 5). in table 5, buddhist and daoist meeting places are fewer than those of other religions for two reasons. first, the number of buddhist and daoist temples may be under-estimated. in hubei in the 1990s, for example, only 476 buddhist and 206 daoist temples were registered, table 3: number of buddhists and daoists in hubei province year buddhists daoists 1966 98,000 65,300 1982 93,000 46,000 1996 800,000 300,000 source: gong and zhou 1999. table 4: places of worship and religious meeting places in china period meeting sites early years of communist rule 120,000 late 1980s 40,000 1992 60,000 late 1990s 100,000 2003 100,000 sources: zhu 1994; he 1999; 'zongjiao tuanti' [religious groups] 2003. 47 the religious revival in china table 5: number of offi cial religious clerics, places of worship, and religious colleges around 2003 religions no. of clerics places of worship religious schools/colleges mahayana buddhism (han) 70,000 9,000 14 tibetan buddhism 120,000 3,000 4 theravada buddhism (yunnan) 10,000 1,600 1 daoism 25,000 1,500 4 islam 45,000 35,000 10 protestantism 20,000 37,000 18 catholicism 4,000 5,000 36 total 294,000 92,100 87 total (offi cial source) 300,000 100,000 74 sources: 'zongjiao tuanti' [religious groups] 2003; data on daoist and islamic religious schools (wang 2003); 'bentai dui zhongguo yisilanjiao xiehui fuhuizhang xiamusi ding de caifang shilu' [interview by our station of xiamusi ding, vice director of china islamic association] 2003. whereas 2,067 buddhist and daoist temples were not. second, one buddhist or daoist temple can serve many more followers than one site of other religions. in the post-mao period, the state revived the offi cial associations of the fi ve religions, which were set up in the 1950s and then abolished during the cultural revolution. offi cial associations play a dual role in mediating the relations between the state and religion. on the one hand, they help the state to implement offi cial religious policies and manage local religious organizations, for example, by setting the number of buddhist temples to be opened and by preventing religious groups and believers from stepping outside the offi cial lines. in this sense, the associations serve as the enforcers of state rules (macinnis 1989: 147). on the other hand, they voice the concerns (like local offi cials' infringement on religious freedom) to governmental agencies and top leaders for their religious groups and the believers. offi cial religious associations also endeavour to promote the religion they represent. for example, by 1999 the offi cial protestant association had printed 25 million copies of bibles and 10 million copies of hymnals, set up 18 seminaries, trained 3,800 graduates and were publishing 100,000 copies of tianfeng (a monthly journal), (liaowang [outlook], 1999 (21): 23-27). 48 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18•2003 hongyi harry lai unoffi cial religions underground catholic church the centralized chinese state has had a long history of confl ict with the catholic church. an early example is the rites controversy between 1640 and 1742. the controversy resulted, on the one hand, in the pope's edict that catholic missionaries should forbid the practice of chinese rites and, on the other hand, the qing emperor's expulsion of the jesuits from china, which lasted for about 100 years. antagonism between the vatican and the chinese communists erupted during the chinese civil war, resulting in the uneasy development of catholicism in china in the following decades. in the 1950s, the ccp encouraged a three-self movement in order to sever the catholic church's ties with the vatican. it arrested pro-vatican bishops, priests and nuns, and drove pro-vatican catholics underground. the vatican, in return, has been rejecting archbishop and bishop appointments by the chinese offi cial church and has offi cially recognized taiwan instead of the people's republic. the underground church consecrates new bishops, ordains priests, organizes national episcopal conferences and secures the vatican's authorization. some elements of the underground church may be more confrontational toward the state than rome would expect them to be (hunter and chan 1993: 241; gong and zhou 1999: 73). an estimate placed the number of offi cial bishops in 1995 at 70, and that of the underground bishops at 60 (mainland china commission, 1996: 89). the underground catholic church appears to have attracted more followers than the offi cial church by the early 1990s. the underground church exists mainly in the rural area of hebei, shaanxi, guangxi, gansu and xinjiang. it was estimated that in the early 1990s only one-fi fth or less of the total number of catholics attended the offi cial church, and that in some provinces the underground church attracted twice as many followers as the offi cial one. however, the offi cial church has managed to reverse this trend in recent years. many underground catholics now also attend the offi cial church (hunter and chan 1989: 236-41; chan 1994: 19,13-14; mainland china commission 1996: 82-89; liu and leung 2002: 126; personal communication with offi cials from china's bureau of religious affairs of the state council in march 2002). 49 the religious revival in china independent protestant church during the cultural revolution, some christians kept their faith by attending the secret 'house churches'. like the underground catholic church, the independent church operates without the state's authorization, sometimes even overtly. the independent church exists for three reasons. first, some protestants regard the three-self patriotic movement (tspm) – the offi cial protestant church – as having compromised too much vis-à-vis the atheist state, and therefore they refuse to acknowledge it. second, believers persecuted by the state during the late-mao era are reluctant to join the state-sanctioned church. many christians still widely despise the tspm's cooperation with the high-handed state in the 1950s at denunciation meetings and thought reforms. third, the sparse geographical distribution of the buildings of the offi cial church (partly due to the government's cap on new church buildings) also encourages the congregation to assemble at a nearby building of the independent church. retired and devout believers who want to pray more often fi nd house churches suit their needs best. the state restricts and occasionally cracks down on these two underground churches (hunter and chan 1993: 81-88; chan 1995; mainland china commission 1996: 89). unoffi cial sects unoffi cial sects differ in their preaching and practice from the fi ve offi cial religions, and they also try to avoid the state's control. these sects have multiplied in post-mao china. in hunan province alone, nearly 10,000 of these sects were eradicated in the course of fi ve government campaigns in the 1990s. these included unoffi cial christian sects, such as lingling jiao [oriental lightning], zhushen jiao [religion of the main god], as well as unoffi cial buddhist, daoist, and folk-religious sects, such as buddhist-like falun gong, guanyi famen, daoist yiguan dao, and probably qigong-based zhong gong (claiming 38 million followers at its peak, with an extensive business network and under the leadership of zhang hongbao). the state has viewed these sects with suspicion and has at times cracked down on them. for example, falun gong and zhong gong have been banned, and their founders placed on the government's wanted lists. the state is wary of the organizational independence and secrecy of these unoffi cial sects, their apocalyptical appeals, the challenges they pose to the party, as well as their foreign ties. reportedly, the unoffi cial sects the state has suppressed share most of the following characteristics: 50 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18•2003 hongyi harry lai • secretive activities and elaborate organizations; • personality cult of the sect leader; • preaching about doomsday; • tight control of their members; • mysticism and claimed supernatural abilities of the sect; • independence of the ccp, or even hostility toward it; • condemnation of offi cial religious associations and the offi cial church (such as the tspm); and • links with the west, taiwan, south korea, and other overseas places (cao 1999: 29-30; tan and kong 2000: 28-30). falun gong as an unoffi cial sect as an unoffi cial sect attracting the international limelight in recent years, falun gong deserves a brief discussion here. falun gong is based on an unoffi cial and exclusive theology and boasts an extensive organizational network. founded by li hongzhi, falun gong fuses daoist meditation and buddhist doctrines. li preaches about an apocalypse (mo jie),9 encourages mystic and inward-directed development of the self, and attracts followers by claiming his and his followers' 'supernatural' abilities. li preaches truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance as the core principles of falun gong, and promotes personal cultivation of virtues and supernatural abilities through meditation and practice. he condemns the corrupting infl uence of the capitalist system, claims to know about a higher truth, and demands a high standard of morality (shue 2001). falun gong practice provided millions of anxious, insecure, and ill followers with spiritual peace and medical relief (li 1994; liu 1999; liu 2000: 103-34; wong 1999). falun gong's large nationwide organization operated at four levels, namely, national, provincial, local, and grassroots levels. at the top level was its headquarters, established in beijing in 1992. at the grassroots level were 28,000 sites where it was practised. as the overall leader, li was able to quickly issue instructions through telecommunications (including e-mails) to each level. many national, provincial and local cadres and offi cials became followers, and even supplied inside information regarding the government's policies toward the sect. under close scrutiny, falun gong may have propagated itself through means that contradict its own axioms. li reportedly altered his birthday to that of buddha in order to claim himself as the new saviour. he also proclaims that he and his master set the lifespan for the earth and that he could postpone an imminent explosion of the earth. li claims to have 51 the religious revival in china supernatural abilities, even though his mother, neighbours, colleagues, and even he himself privately deny their existence. li has accumulated a large amount of wealth yet has evaded income tax (hua and zhong 1999: 132, 99-101, 148-56). li and his followers staged a dozen mass protests in front of government offi ces, newspaper offi ces, and tv stations to challenge criticisms by the local media, scientists and sceptics (wong 1999: 8, 11). since 1999, the confl ict between falun gong and the state has intensifi ed. in april 1999, over 10,000 falun gong followers caught the state off-guard by staging a peaceful protest and surrounding zhongnanhai in beijing, the chinese white house. this event demonstrated to the state falun gong's extensive mobilizational capacity. chinese leaders were well aware of large-scale rebellions led by religious sects or followers in china in recent centuries. between the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, the qing empire was rocked by large rebellions led by the white lotus sect and the heavenly principles sect. in the mid-nineteenth century the taiping rebellion destabilized the qing dynasty. hong xiuquan, the leading rebel, was a proclaimed christian follower who claimed to have received a message from god. chinese leaders, especially the top leader jiang zemin, soon learned and worried about falun gong's infi ltration into the party and government, its large following, and its potential to rally the support of millions of discontented people into nationwide mass protests.10 in july 1999, the state declared falun gong an evil cult and outlawed it; key organizers were arrested soon afterwards. since then, falun gong followers have been engaged in a war of attrition with the state, yet have seen their infl uence waning. occasionally small groups of falun gong followers protest in and outside mainland china, including staging publicly disruptive acts. most of these protesters in mainland china have been quickly arrested. by august 2000, at least 151 falun gong followers had been convicted of leaking state secrets, creating chaos, or other crimes (human rights watch 2001). in early 2001, several falun gong followers, in response to li's call for action, set themselves on fi re in protests at tiananmen square. the offi cial media quickly used the footage of these acts as sensational material to portray falun gong as a suicidal and evil cult to the general public. since then, falun gong has staged several acts in public defi ance of the state. during may and june 2001, falun gong followers used timed radio devices to broadcast publicly in ten provinces li hongzhi's preaching and his organization's precepts. these followers were soon arrested. in 14 july, falun gong followers who had been imprisoned in harbin 52 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18•2003 hongyi harry lai attempted to commit suicide, and the authority rescued all but three. the state blamed overseas followers for instigating the event. after the 11 september attacks in the us, communist party leaders even accused some falun gong followers of committing terrorist acts (south china morning post, 14 december, 2001). in november 2001, 35 falun gong followers from ten western countries (including the us, canada, germany and australia) staged a protest in tiananmen square and were expelled from china. in the fi rst half of 2002, falun gong followers on several occasions disrupted cable and satellite tv programs in china and aired falun gong messages, one of which occurred during the world cup championship game broadcasts ('qiongtu molu de aiming' [wails in despair], 2001; south china morning post, 21 november 2001; south china morning post, 14 december 2001; 'a record of china's xinnuo satellite attacked by falun gong's illegal signals,' 2002). religious revival and movements in tibet and xinjiang religion has been an intrinsic part of the culture and tradition of a number of ethnic minorities. the largest and most visible ethnic groups comprise tibetans and uighurs. tibetan buddhism has pervaded tibetan daily life for centuries and many tibetans see the dalai lama, their supreme religious leader, as their spiritual leader. uighurs in xinjiang accepted islam as their faith hundreds of years ago and imams wield signifi cant infl uence on their lives. religion is also an underlying factor in the movements of independence of tibet and xinjiang from china's rule. 11 the cultural revolution devastated buddhism in tibet, as in other provinces in china. with relaxed control in the post-mao period, tibetans revived their religious beliefs and traditions. as beijing's liberal leaders, such as hu yaobang, relaxed control in the 1980s, tibetans demanded greater autonomy, for example, by claiming tibetan as their offi cial language. their drive toward greater social freedom posed a direct challenge to the authority of the party and beijing. unemployed urban tibetans were unhappy with competition from han people in tibet; while monks and nuns, along with conservatives and traditionalists, despised secular developments in the wake of reform. some radical tibetans played down the central government's generous subsidies and blamed the backwardness of tibet solely on the communist rule; these groups supported the independence of tibet. in addition, exiled tibetans tried to exert their political infl uence in tibet in various ways, including disseminating their political views during visits to tibet, which tended to attract beijing's suspicion. in the 1980s, many tibetan 53 the religious revival in china intellectuals and offi cials objected to radical movements that would derail gradualist reform and liberalization in tibet. nevertheless, other elites tolerated radicals in order to enhance their position vis-à-vis the central government and to obtain more subsidies (shakya 1999: 419-21; xu 1999: 147-61). the pro-independence movement grew and took to the streets in the october 1987, march 1988, march 1989 and may 1993. in the fi rst three protests, the police opened fi re on the tibetan protesters, who were shouting slogans for tibetan independence and throwing rocks at the police, resulting in six to sixteen deaths in each incident (xu 1999: 147-61). in xinjiang, muslims total over 10 million, which is equivalent to 60 percent of the population and 95 percent of the religious followers in the province. muslims worship at most of the 24,000 mosques in xinjiang. pan-islam gained initial support in xinjiang in the 1930s, and seems to have undergone something of a revival with the rise of post-soviet central asian countries, the support from several middle eastern muslim countries, and recently, the nato intervention in kosovo. to supporters of full autonomy and even independence for xinjiang, beijing's policy of promoting economic development is merely a facade to erode the uygur culture and muslim beliefs. resentment over competition from the hans also provided the potential for schism among the ethnic minorities (far eastern economic review, 13 april 2000: 25; ming bao, 2 september 1999; south china morning post, 28 august 2000; mackerras 1994: 194-96; becquelin 2000: 65-90). uighurs are also unhappy with beijing's restriction of their religious activities as well as their lack of political power. former mujaheddin fi ghters in afghanistan might have aided militancy in xinjiang (lufti 2002: 204-05). many independence advocates in xinjiang operate under the banner of islam. working as religious clerics, they condemn the ccp and the government, interpret the koran as advocating an islamic state and militant jihad, and propose independence as the best way to preserve local cultures. chinese offi cial sources suggest that explosions, assassinations, and other violent acts in the 1990s totalled a few thousand, and that in 1998 alone, over 70 serious incidents occurred, resulting in more than 380 deaths (becquelin 2000: 87). southern xinjiang (such as kashi), where the population is overwhelmingly non-han and muslim and where unemployment and economic underdevelopment are severe, as well as yining, the former capital of east turkestan, may be hotbeds of the separatist movement (becquelin 2000: 65-90; ming bao, 3 november 2001). 54 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18•2003 hongyi harry lai the state has suppressed religious separatism in tibet and especially xinjiang. since the 11 september attacks in the us, beijing has stressed that violent muslim radicals constitute a terrorist threat in china and has stepped up its crackdown.12 folk religions scholars have long documented chinese folk religions.13 folk religions quickly regained their popularity in the countryside in the 1980s, as suggested by anecdotal evidence. as early as 1982, peasants in chuansha county in suburban shanghai fl ocked to visit fortune-tellers at a fee, and were willing to pay a sorceress large sums of money for cures to their diseases. in 1986 in a market town in guangdong province, a total of 393 ancestor halls were erected. locals there regularly worshipped the spirits of ancestors in order to bring good luck to their living descendants. in 1988, in a village in sichuan, ancestor worship took place during the holidays, and religious rites were performed at funerals (macinnis 1989: 387-89, 368, 373, 395, 394).14 a survey (summarized in table 6) provides circumstantial evidence for the extent of the popularity of folk religions. of all the respondents, more than 41 percent believed totally or partially in some form of superstition, and more than 38 percent had at one time participated in such rituals; 19 percent had done both. folk religions have become very popular in rural areas where most chinese live, resulting in a marked rise in the number of new temples being built and a boom in sales of manuals and books on folk religions. as followers of folk religions may account for 19 percent of the population, as noted above, and as many of these followers may also belong to one of the 'big fi ve' religions, one may assume that one-fi fth of all the chinese in the mainland accept some form of religious faith. profi le of religious followers in 1997, the people's political consultative conference of hubei province conducted a survey on 1,160 buddhists and daoists in 26 townships within 12 cities, counties and municipal districts. this appears to constitute the only published data on the background of religious followers in china. given hubei's medium level of socio-economic development in china, it can be regarded as a representative chinese province. in addition, as the above-mentioned statistics on religious followers suggest, buddhists and daoists constitute the majority of believers of the fi ve major religions in china, especially among the han. the same is true 55 the religious revival in china for chinese societies in taiwan and hong kong. therefore, these data can be illuminating. data on buddhists and daoists in hubei in 1997 (see figure 2) suggest the following profi le: 1. the majority (65.3 percent) were born before 1957 and grew up (or were growing up) before the ccp's prohibition of religions of 196678. those who were born between 1957 and 1967 accounted for 14 percent, those between 1967 and 1979 for 19 percent, and those after 1979 for merely 2.2 percent. 2. the educational background of believers was diverse. among the buddhists and daoists, 29 percent were college graduates, 20 percent left after high-school, 29 percent left after primary school, while 22 percent were illiterate. 3. females (63 percent) accounted for the majority of the believers. 4. believers were more or less representative of professions among the population, with peasants and workers making up 60 percent of the believers, and other professions 29 percent. even though many cadres and teachers were party members, and even though the party prohibited its members from believing in religion, cadres and teachers still made up 11 percent of the believers (gong and zhou 1999: 71).15 table 6: chinese involvement in superstitious beliefs, 1990 attitudes and participation % of all respondents believe or partially believe 41.4 have participated 38.3 believe, or partially believe, and have participated 19.4 breakdown of the answers: do not believe and have not participated 38.0 do not believe but have participated 18.9 believe to some extent and have participated 15.7 believe to some extent but have not participated 16.3 believe but have not participated 5.7 believe and have participated 3.7 other responses 1.7 total 100.0 source: le and jiang 1998: 75. notes: the respondents totalled 619. the surveyors defined superstitions (folk religions) as physiognomy, fortune telling, worshipping deities for help, divining, and believing in lucky numbers. �� ����� ������ �� �������� ���� ������������ �������� ����� � ���������� � ������� � � � � ��������� � ��� ���!�� ��� �� ����"���� ��� �� ��� "���������� �� � �� ������ ����� ���#�� � ����������������� ����"�" ������������$ � ��� �� �%� ����� ���� ���&&�'����$(�)�* +������&�&'����$��)�� � �&&�' ��$���,.�� ������ � !�� �� �� ������� � ��"�" � �� � �� �� � �� �� ��/������������������� ��������������������� �� ��"�����0����� � ����� ��� � � �� ��� ������ � � �� �� ���� ��� %* +���� �&�&' �$��) � ���� ��� � ���&&�'����$(�,-�* �/�� � "�$ ����������������1������ ��2���� ������� �� ��"�����0����"����� ������� �� ������� ��-�* ����������� �� 2� ���� �� �������� � ���� ���� ���� ��� �� � ��� 2 �� �� � � !����"��� 1 � ���2 ������� � �� �� �� ��������0 �� �"�� ��"����� � �2� ��������$!����"���-�+��� ������$* ���� 0�� ���� ��� ��������� 3��1�$ �����������#���2���� �� �� ��������������� ���� ��0� ��� ������� ���� ������� ���� �� ��� ���������������� �������� ����� ��4���� �� �-���� ��� ��0 � � ��� � � "� ��"�"�� � ��� !������ �� ��������0 �� � � ��2�� ������ �� ����� �������2 ���� ���0 � � ��� �� * ����$����� �������� � ���� ���� ���� �� � � �� ��/� ��� � � ���� �� ������� ! ��"� �� �� ������ � 2� ���� "� 1� 3���� !����� �� � � ��� � � ��������5 � ����$* � �� ���� �� �������� �������� ��"����2��� �� ��$�2� ��4�� ��������0 ���� � ��� ���� ���� ������� � � ��2�������� �� 6 �� ���� �� 7 ����� �� � !��0 �&&( ��� ��'�8���� ���9 � ��&&&'�(��� ��� ��� ��� ��� ���� ���������� ��� � ��� ���� ����� ����� ��� � �� ��������� ����� ��� ������� �� ��� !����� � �� ��� "��� # �� � $ ��� %�� ���& ����� '� �� "��� � � ������ ( )��* �� 57 the religious revival in china deng's southern tour in 1992. rampant corruption has further undermined the offi cial ideology, with an increasing number of people turning to religion for an alternative set of beliefs to fi ll the spiritual vacuum.17 third, religion meets the population's needs for psychological comfort and spiritual fulfi lment, especially in confronting a variety of problems inherent in the modernization program, including increasing marketization, rapid social transition, and emerging social problems. a large body of literature on modernization suggests that this process could transform and disrupt the existing class structure, ethnic and tribal relations, political power structure, and even the values system. modernization in several western countries and many non-western countries was accompanied by social disruption, political upheavals, protest, revolution, and even large-scale wars. these examples included the civil wars in great britain, the united states, russia, and china as well as numerous coups and armed movements in africa and latin america. modernization also gives rise to deviant social behaviour and leads to the breakdown of traditional values and ethics. 18 in a similar vein, recent economic and social changes in china since the late 1970s have created considerable social stresses and ruptures. millions are dislocated socially and economically; many have been laid off and hence are experiencing a loss of social safety and security (including free health-care and guaranteed income); rural income grows sluggishly; and rural workers face discrimination in the cities. alienation in the form of loneliness and helplessness in an increasingly competitive world, together with the prevalent social anomie, as evidence in money-worship, prostitution, and the breakup of families and family values, are taking their toll on the people. religion, on the other hand, provides spiritual peace to a population troubled and disillusioned with present-day social and political turmoil. this is just as signifi cant as the lessening of state prohibition in explaining the religious revival. fourth, religious infl uence survived even the cultural revolution. during the cultural revolution the infl uence of religion abated yet persisted, especially in the countryside. religions, such as buddhism, exercise their subtle infl uence on people through literature, art, philosophy and family (macinnis 1989: 155-63; hunter and chan 1993: 168-75). these residues of religious beliefs can be rekindled once conditions are favourable. fifth, not only the chinese cultural traditions but also the state shape the revival of religions. on the one hand, religious revival refl ects the resilience of the traditional culture. many chinese catholics maintained their faith during the cultural revolution because the church upheld 58 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18•2003 hongyi harry lai their bonds to kin and ancestors, which is an important traditional chinese value. on the other hand, as a result of the state's past efforts to eliminate religion, some popular religious rituals today are modifi ed traditional elements that differed from those before the communist reign, or are merely cultural fragments (madsen 1989; siu 1989). han buddhist and daoist utilitarian belief the studies on china's religious revival cited above also touch on factors that motivate individual chinese to turn to religion. however, they are not based on any comprehensive survey. in this article, i proceed via a different approach, by examining the results of the aforementioned survey on buddhists and daoists in hubei (see table 7) and drawing conclusions. respondents were allowed to choose multiple causes for turning to religions. from the survey, we can see a utilitarian tendency in the han chinese religious belief. the largest portion (51.6 percent) of believers turned to religion out of a hope that the divine would bring them material benefi ts. specifi cally, 36 percent sought prosperity, 9.4 percent wanted material well-being, 6.2 percent hoped to obtain medical cure or relief through their religious beliefs. that is to say, the han buddhists and daoists accept religion hoping that supernatural forces would bring them material benefi ts in their mortal lives (hou and fan 1994: 9-10, 86-129; gao 1994: 332; xu shaoqiang, cf. hunter and chan 1993: 174). only 30 percent of the believers sought spiritual guidance from religion, 9.8 percent reported an intellectual fascination with religion, and about one-fi fth turned to religion out of their political and social discontent. a number of the respondents accepted religion because of family infl uence. as discussed, recent political, economic, and social changes in china, such as unemployment, losses of social security and medical care, corruption, money-worship, prostitution, and the breakup of families, may have contributed to religious conversion. surprisingly, only 1.5 percent of the respondents reported a loss of confi dence in the ccp and socialism, probably out of the political sensitivity of the choice. nevertheless, religious conversion signals the offi cial ideology's declining appeal. 59 the religious revival in china conclusion in china today three categories of religion exist: (i) offi cial religions, namely, buddhism, daoism (taoism), islam, protestantism and catholicism, represented by offi cial associations and approved monasteries; (ii) unoffi cial religions that operate without the state's permission, including underground catholic and protestant churches, unoffi cial sects (such as falun gong), and pro-independence tibetan buddhists and xinjiang muslims; (iii) folk religions of various forms, whose practitioners are usually not well organized. all the above three categories of religion expanded rapidly in the post-mao period. religious revival in china is driven by the state's abandonment of mao's ban on religion, a decline in the appeal of the offi cial ideology, and the populace's inherent psychological needs for security amidst rapid modernization, increasing commercialization and social dislocation. more importantly, religious revival raises questions about the future of religions in china as well as the state's policy towards religion. reasons % 1. to seek prosperity and material well-being 51.6 • escape poverty and seek prosperity 36.0 • seek material well-being in this life 9.4 • seek remedy for and escape serious illness 6.2 2. to have spiritual sustenance 29.7 • disillusioned with and escape from the material world 5.9 • seek happiness in an afterlife 9.8 • hope divinity would grant wisdom 7.0 • hope the soul would be purifi ed 7.0 3. driven by political and social discontent 20.5 • dissatisfi ed with corruption, social evil, and social inequality 19.0 • losing confi dence in the ccp and socialism 1.5 4. to seek knowledge (and fascinated by theologies) 9.8 5. infl uenced by a religious family unknown table 7: reasons hubei residents gave for believing in buddhism and daoism, 1997 source: gong and zhou 1999: 72. i regroup the subcategories under more appropriate categories. the survey allowed the respondents to choose more than 1 answer 60 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18 copenhagen journal of asian studies 18•2003 hongyi harry lai indeed, in today's china, modernization and commercialization are no substitute for religion (luo 2000: 407-17). in fact, china's economic reform has generated much insecurity and anxiety among its peoples, whereby individuals feel a deep sense of alienation from society and a considerable number of people stoically endure physical suffering because formerly affordable public health-care services have been dismantled. religion thus provides mental solace and spiritual fulfi lment. however, except perhaps for ethnic minorities (especially those in tibet and xinjiang), the han chinese, at least buddhists and daoists who make up the majority of religious believers, have been materialistic and practical in outlook. the han chinese will continue to turn to religion primarily hoping for improvement in their mortal lives, and secondarily for their afterlives, but seldom for the administration of the state or to exact revenge on foreign enemies, as do fundamentalists in the middle east, south and central asia, and southeast asia. for tibetans and uighurs, however, religion is ingrained in their culture and tradition, and it is likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. hongyi harry lai is research fellow at the east asian institute, national university of singapore. notes 1 for recent us media coverage of china's religions, see new york times 19, 20 may 2001; time 2001: 18-24; xiao 1999: 33. 2 this defi nition is a modifi ed version of that used by marshall 1998: 562. 3 for historical studies of chinese religions, refer to jochim 1986; ching 1993; wolf 1974; gao 1994. for contemporary studies, see macinnis 1989; madsen 1998. 4 see daniel overmyer's explanation for excluding confucianism (overmyer 2003: 315). as overmyer argues, confucianism might have infl uenced the veneration of ancestors. however, ancestral worship can be traced back to the state's practice under the zhou dynasty prior to confucius. confucianism only reinforces this tradition. see 'the origin of kanyu,' 2003. 5 for studies of folk religions, see gao 1994: 330-55 and macinnis 1989: 367-74, 385-410; dean 1993; siu 1989: 121-37; for anthropological studies, refer to essays in faure and siu 1995; for a historical study, see feuchtwang 2001. 6 these comments apply to the articles in the china quarterly 174. (june 2003) 7 for sources of chinese offi cials statistics, refer to sources for table 2 and gong 1998: 24. two facts also are woth noting. first, the majority of tibetans believe in tibetan buddhism. second, islam is an accepted faith among 10 minorities, including hui, uygurs, kazak, dongxiang, kirgiz, salar, tajik, uzbek, bonan and tatar. 8 the number of believers in religions might have reached the lowest point shortly after 1966. protestantism might be an exception in the 1980s, because its popularity grew rapidly 61 the religious revival in china with china's opening to the west and the chinese fascination with the western culture. 9 although william liu (2000: 120) disputes this view, li did claim himself as a propagator of the true dharma before the last millennium in his much-publicized zhuan falun (li 1994: 33, 11). 10 for an inside look at the chinese leaders' crackdown on falun gong, refer to zong 2001: 47-70. 11 for a discussion of religion and culture in tibet, refer to kvaerne 2002 and grunfeld 1996. for overviews of uighur religion, culture and history, refer to lapidus 2002: 351-55, 725-31, and rossabi 2002: 355-73. arguably, ordinary tibetan buddhists and muslims in xinjiang are vague and silent about their position toward independence of their own ethnic regions. vocal separatists may use their religious background to mobilize support and organize protests, resistance movements, and even violent acts. 12 for further discussion on religious or religious-inspired movements in tibet and xinjiang and beijing's responses, refer to lai 2003. 13 for historical studies on folk religions, see feuchtwang 2001; for case studies, refer to faure and siu 1995; faure 1986. 14 for further analyses of chinese folk religions in post-mao china, refer to feuchtwang 2001. 15 gong is professor at the department of religious studies, college of philosophy, wuhan university, and zhou is a deputy secretary general of the standing committee of the people's congress of hubei province. they have good access to internal data on religious followers in hubei. 16 for detailed discussion on the logic of state's policies toward different religions, refer to lye 2002. 17 for discussion on the spiritual crisis, refer to madsen 1998: 8-11 and wong 1999: 5. 18 for classical studies of revolutions and civil wars in countries experiencing or in the process of modernization, refer to moore 1966 and skocpol 1979. for discussion of effects of modernization on the political structure, refer to huntington 1968. for sociological discussion on modernization, see parsons 1959. for a discussion on social problems and protests in modernization, refer to eisenstadt 1966. references argue, donald and theodore e. mccarrick, and rabbi arthur schneier 2000. 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'meiguo duihua guanxi zhong de zongjiao wenti' [the religious issue in us relations with china], zhongguo zongjiao [china's religions] 17 (2): 31-33. xu mingyu 1999. yingmou yu qiancheng [conspiracy and devotedness]. hong kong: mirror press. 'zhongguo zongjiao yanjiu zhongxi wenzhang toulu: zhongguo xianyou gezhong zongjiao xintu yiyi duoren' [paper from china religious research center reveals: china has over one hundred million followers of various religions] 2003, at http:/ /www.mingjing.org.cn/xgxx/ 39.htm, accessed on 6 december. zhu yueli 1994. jinri zhongguo zongjiao [religion in today's china]. beijing: jinri zhongguo chubanshe. 'zongjiao tuanti' [religious groups] 2003, at http://202.130.245.40/chinese/chinashuzi2003/zz/zj1.htm, accessed on 6 december. zong hairen 2001. zhu rongji zai 1999 [zhu rongji in 1999]. hong kong: mirror books. . binder1 st.pdf, page 1-153 @ normalize_2 _______________________________________________________________________ 139 ___________________________________________________________________ reviews minxin pei, china's trapped transition: the limits of developmental autocracy. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 2006. 294 pp. isbn 0-674-02195-9. in which direction is the current reform process taking china? this fundamental question is the subject of a host of recent works on china. the general consensus seems to be that china is moving away from excessive state control in the economy and patrimonial rule in the political realm towards a market economy and a more pluralistic political order. some analysts (e.g. bruce gilley, china's democratic future, 2004) argue that this process will eventually bring democracy to china. they maintain that the ccp is doomed and is bound to wither away or will be abolished by new social forces. this thinking is the logical outcome of the so-called transition paradigm, which posits that once a country moves away from dictatorial rule, there is a linear process towards pluralism and democracy. minxin pei's book provides a sophisticated picture of another possible scenario for china's transition. in fact, he argues that there is no transition to speak of, as china is trapped in a system which he alternatively labels a development autocracy, a decentralized predatory state or a cleptocracy. this is a system where the agents of the state are engaged in rent-seeking, corruption and collusion to benefit themselves, their families and their friends. collusive networks of corrupt officials, often working together with organized criminal groups, are emerging in many parts of china. they form local mafia states that undermine the central state power and will ultimately cause the regime to collapse. minxin pei highlights what he calls the erosion of state capacity in china by discussing the chinese government's performance in several critical areas: taxation, health and education, enforcement of laws and rules, etc. in all these areas he sees a decline of state capacity. he also argues that the ccp is suffering a decline. he sees this evidenced in the shrinkage of the party's organizational penetration, in the erosion of its authority, and in the breakdown of its internal discipline. minxin pei is only the latest of a long row of analysts who maintain that the ccp is undergoing atrophy rather than adaptation. however, he seems to overlook the fact that in recent years the party has introduced a number of internal reforms designed to make it better equipped to rule china in a modern globalized world. thus a number of measures concerning recruitment, appointment and supervision have been implemented to reform the cadre management system. in 2002 alone, six major documents to reform and regularize cadre supervision and dis140 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 reviews ___________________________________________________________________ cipline were published. in 2005 a new civil service law was published further regulating the work of state cadres. as a result of these measures, chinese cadres are in general much better educated and much younger than during mao's and deng's time. there are now strict age and educational criteria for advancing up the various rungs of the career ladder. that the chinese leadership takes all this very serious was evidenced at the important 4th plenary session of the 16th central committee in september 2004, where the party adopted an important 'decision of the central committee of the chinese communist party on strengthening the party's ability to govern'. a few days later, vice-president zeng qinghong in a lengthy article in the people's daily discussed ''the painful lesson of the loss of power'' by the communist parties in the former soviet union and eastern europe. zeng stressed that improving the governing capacity of the party and upgrading the quality of the cadre corps would determine whether the ccp would survive or perish. there are many other examples of how the regime debates state and party capacity. in sum, minxin pei overlooks the fact that the party has been engaged in a process of renewal and reform that dates back to the mid-1990s. in this sense, minxin pei's study breaks no new ground. reading minxin pei's book, one wonders how china and its leaders have been able to spearhead an unprecedented economic growth trajectory that has turned china into an economic superpower and lifted millions of chinese out of poverty. pei reluctantly admits that this is the case, but he argues that the costs are enormous. the growth rate has been pumped up by high savings and massive shifts of population from agriculture to industry. such high investments rates can propel growth 'even though the economic system remains relatively inefficient'. in his mind, chinese growth is not high-quality growth but low-quality growth, since it is achieved at the expense of rising inequalities, underinvestment in human capital, damage to the environment, etc. pei predicts that the 'pathologies of a trapped transition will have a material impact on macroeconomic performance in future years' (p. 209), i.e. china will not be able to sustain the current economic hypergrowth for very long. as indicated above, pei's book reminds us that perhaps the academic discourse on china operates with the wrong paradigm. this is a paradigm (the transition paradigm) that is rooted in the assumption of china's inevitable political change brought about by rapid economic development and the concomitant development of new social groups. some scholars within this paradigm even predict that when countries reach a certain income level, democratization is bound to occur. de_______________________________________________________________________ 141 ___________________________________________________________________ reviews mocratization processes in south korea and taiwan and other emerging economies seem to substantiate these assumptions. in the 1990s, the paradigm of a china headed for political change also attracted the business community. thus many multinational corporations defended their increasing business with china by arguing that increasing economic interaction and trade would be the key that would unlock the door towards liberalization and democracy. similarly, when the george bush and bill clinton administrations extended most-favoured nation trade benefits to china, they argued that increased trade would integrate china in the world economy and thereby help bring political liberalization to china. china's trapped transition would argue that this is not a likely scenario. first, the economic gains in china will be appropriated by a layer of rentseeking party and state officials. second, the instability of the regime will prevent economic gains from being translated into political gains. the present leaders are primarily interested in rent-seeking and will seek ways of securing their profits in time. says minxin pei: 'one of the lessons many chinese elites learned from the fall of the soviet union was that they should have an exit strategy and insurance policy' (p. 154). therefore, by implication, china will collapse before it becomes democratic. what if minxin pei is wrong? what if china manages to continue on its current economic path and its political system does not change in any fundamental way? what if the party manages to revitalize itself and succeeds in improving its governing capacity? what if, thirty years from now, a wealthier china continues to be run by a one-party regime that continues to refuse open and organized political dissent, and yet is even more intertwined with the rest of the world in terms of trade, investment, and other economic ties? this is what james mann recently has called the third scenario and what thomas carothers calls 'dominant-power politics'. carothers maintains that most existing transitional countries are stuck in a grey zone where they are neither clearly dictatorial nor clearly headed towards democracy. they get stuck in the transition process, so to speak. in this sense, neither the transition paradigm nor pei's version of china's trapped transition will come true and the world will be faced with new theoretical and practical challenges in coming to terms with 'china's rise'. kjeld erik brødsgaard professor asia research centre copenhagen business school vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. binder1 st.pdf, page 1-153 @ normalize_2 142 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 reviews ___________________________________________________________________ eva-lotta e. hedman, in the name of civil society. from free election movements to people power in the philippines. honolulu: university of hawaii press, 2006, 268pp. isbn-13: 978-0-8248-2921-6 (hardcover). when considering the ten asean countries in southeast asia, one country stands out as being somewhat different, and this despite an already very high regional degree of political, economic and cultural heterogeneity in the region.. this difference was also noticeable during the 1980s and 1990s, where the discourse on asian values was at its height and the southeast asian tiger economies at their peak. this particular country was not a party to the developments that otherwise characterized the region. we are of course talking about the philippines. with its long tradition of democratic elections, rapid change-over of presidents, religious status as a catholic country in an otherwise muslim and buddhist dominated region, and spanish and american colonial past, it stands apart from the other countries in the region. the assemblage of these characteristics are what makes the philippines unique in a southeast asian context. focusing exclusively on the philippines during the period 1953-2001, the main theme of hedman's book is the politics of civil society, not the institutional or the political setup, but how civil society in all its complexity constitutes a societal force that is capable of keeping presidential abuses of power in check. criticizing a tocquevillean perspective on filipino civil society and liberal democracy, which states that a pluralist and self-organizing civil society independent of the state is an indispensable condition of democracy, hedman proposes a gramscian perspective instead. in contrast to the tocquevillean concern with the tyranny of the majority, the puzzle of minority rule under conditions of formal democracy informed gramsci's writing on the significance and role of a 'dense' civil society in complementing and reinforcing the coercive state under capitalism. according to hedman (p. 6), rather than viewing civil society as a constraint or a counterbalance against state power, gramsci argued that the assemblage of entities commonly called private – including various civic associations and religious institutions – help to maintain the power of the bourgeois state by facilitating rule through the mobilization of consent, or in his terminology, hegemony. it is thus not argued that the state per se is the problem in relation to civil society and all the more or less fragmented civic forces out there, rather the problem is deemed to lie with those who man the state apparatus, misappropriating it to their own advantage. the state per se is thus perceived as a vital body within a capitalist society and not a _______________________________________________________________________ 143 ___________________________________________________________________ reviews power that tends to dominate and control civil society to the advantage of the bourgeois, as stated in orthodox marxism. gramsci thus drew attention to the role of schools, churches and what are often referred to as secondary associations as transmission belts for the assertion of universalist leadership by what he called a 'dominant' or 'historic' bloc of social forces. gramsci thus suggested that mobilization in the name of civil society is dependent on the success of calls to citizens and performative displays of citizenship against other appeals and articulations of identity such as class. according to hedman, gramsci provided analytical tools for grappling with the key questions that are left unanswered by the tocquevillean traditions, namely when, where, by whom and how mobilization in the name of civil society is to be undertaken. civil society is thus to be conceptualized as a process or event that is capable of initiating (political) mobilization of various sub-social and/or political entities. these political entities are capable of transforming themselves into a coherent societal body that can act as a counteracting political force in the face of official abuses of power (pp. 8-9). beginning with the ousting of president elpidio quirino in 1953 and of president ferdinand marcos in 1986, and ending up with the ousting of president joseph 'erap' estrada in 2001, hedman covers in detail the empirical field of election-watch movements (namfrels) within civil society, thus demonstrating a keen insight into the political history of the philippines. there are, however, some problems with the way in which she perceives societal processes in such a highly politically loaded context. her analysis avoids digging too deeply into the underlying social and political forces that define the dynamics driving filipino civil society. this is due to her adopting a gramscian universalist approach rather than taking the localized nature of the filipino society into account. a pertinent point here is that hedman ignores the issue of why civil societies in other southeast asian countries fail to display similar patterns of reaction towards political and/or economic abuses by the dominant elite, as evidenced in the filipino case. in this sense she fails to verify the validity of her gramscian inspired approach within a regional context. hedman does claim that the filipino election movement namfrel has fielded similar election monitoring movements in several other parts of southeast asia, such as comfrel (committee for free and fair elections in cambodia), unfrel (university network for free elections in indonesia) and anfrel (asian network of free elections), as well as 'people power' movements in burma and thailand. whatever the 144 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 reviews ___________________________________________________________________ similarities among these countries, this does not explain the 'flow' of civic social and political power in these more or less authoritarian and elite-oriented regimes in southeast asia – regimes that are outwardly highly resilient towards 'people power'. in indonesia, the transition towards democracy in indonesia was initiated by the financial crisis of 1997 before being hijacked by the indonesian political and economic elite. in malaysia and singapore, elections are heavily engineered by the dominant political constellation organized within umno and pap. in thailand, however, the military is the main 'societal' force that determines how and when the ruling elite is to be replaced. what i am arguing here is that a gramscian universalist perspective is not applicable in a region that is characterized by a very high degree of political, economic and cultural pluralism – a pluralism that is further reinforced by the impact of current global processes in all their multiplicity. returning to the case of the philippines, the gramscian perspective does not explain why those presidents who abuse their powers came to be elected president in the first place. generally speaking, it is the hegemonic bloc that 'elects' a representative to the position of president – a representative whose job it is to secure the hegemonic bloc's grip on power. hedman does not explain why the hegemonic bloc has been so seriously wrong when 'electing', or should i say selecting, their representative. instead the analysis is painted from a black and white perspective. it does not take into account the various fractions of 'people power', some of which are quite problematic in terms of varying degrees of corrupt internal practices. for example, the business community and the army (who are mostly white) together with the president, indulge in all sorts of criminal and corrupt practices to the detriment of jeopardising the society at large, who are mainly black. providing answers to these kind of questions is just as important as providing a detailed account of filipino civil society in times of political crisis, employing a rather stuffy theoretical approach that was developed specifically to explain socio-political events in an italian context during the early twentieth century. history does provide the analyst with vital clues toward an explanation of today's social and political manifestations. however, ignoring the current impact of global processes on local economic, political, social and cultural matters leaves the analyst with a superficial or, even worse, only a political-ideological understanding of local processes of societal diversification. notwithstanding this weakness in her analysis, eva-lotta hedman does provide the reader with a detailed account of the various societal _______________________________________________________________________ 145 ___________________________________________________________________ reviews movements that led to the ouster of three filipino presidents, who confused or merged their position with private interests. how those individuals attained their positions in the first place is left unanswered. the answer would seem to be found in exactly those groupings that led to their exit when the person in power abused his position – not because of the position per se but because of the persons (s)elected! michael jacobsen associate professor asia research centre copenhagen business school binder1 st.pdf, page 1-153 @ normalize_2 _______________________________________________________________________ 105 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia technology transfer and diffusion among manufacturing small and medium enterprises in indonesia tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan abstract it is evident everywhere that in manufacturing industry, levels of productivity are higher in large enterprises (les), including foreign-owned firms or multinational companies (mncs), than in small and medium enterprises (smes), partly because the former enterprises enjoy higher levels of technological capacity. thus, for smes, increased productivity might be facilitated through a scaling-up of knowledge or technology. the case study of the tegal metalworking industry in central java presented in this article shows that the most important channels for the diffusion of knowledge/technology among domestic manufacturing smes include subcontracting arrangements with foreign direct investment (fdi). however, the importance of fdi as a source of technology/knowledge varies across the differing types of domestic firms. this study also shows that government agencies are currently the largest providers of training and similar assistance for manufacturing smes in the country. such programmes, however, are rendered less effective by a low level of coverage, a lack of effective evaluation and assessment, and a supply rather than a demand orientation. introduction a key to increased productivity among manufacturing small and medium enterprises (smes) is to build their capacities through improved knowledge or technological know-how. this technology development can take place internally (inside the firm) or can be fostered through access to outside sources, such as the transfer of technology from multinational companies (mncs), technical licensing agreements and imported capital goods. the main goal of this study is to address the following three research questions. first, what are the main channels used for transferring technology from abroad (mostly from developed countries) to indonesia? second, do foreign firms or mncs play the dominant role in technology transfer to manufacturing smes in the country? third, how effective 106 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ are government programmes in supporting the improvement of technological capacity in manufacturing smes? the structure of this study is as follows. after this introductory first section, section ii compares the productivity of large enterprises (les), including foreign-owned enterprises and their technological capacities, with those of smes in the manufacturing industry. section iii explores the channels of technology transfer and diffusion. section iv looks at the effectiveness of government-funded programmes to boost the technological ability of manufacturing smes. section v presents the findings of a case study on knowledge diffusion in the tegal metalworking industry in central java. section vi offers some concluding remarks. productivity in manufacturing smes in indonesia: an indicator of technology capacity a number of researchers have attempted to measure the current technological capacity of indonesian firms by comparing their levels of labour productivity with that of foreign firms. recently, takii and ramstetter (2005) compared the average levels of labour productivity, as determined by value added/labour ratio, of foreign-owned and domestic medium and large enterprises within the manufacturing sector in indonesia.1 they found that the productivity differentials were often very large in the indonesian manufacturing sector and varied not only over time but also across industries. if all manufacturing industries are analysed together, takii and ramstetter's study shows that compared to enterprises that are fully locally owned, the average level of labour productivity was 388 to 745 percent higher in minority foreign-owned firms; 436 to 594 percent higher in majority foreign-owned firms; and 164 to 542 percent higher in firms with foreign shares of 90 percent or more. higher levels of labour productivity in local firms than in foreign firms were extremely rare. these findings support the general assumption that in a developing country such as indonesia, foreign firms are more productive than local firms because they have relatively large endowments of firm-specific, generally intangible assets. one of the greatest of these intangible assets is assumed to be technological capacity. that minority foreign-owned enterprises appear to be less productive than majority or heavily foreign firms supports the assumption that these enterprises restrict the access of minority-foreign affiliates to these firm-specific assets in order to avoid losing control of them. _______________________________________________________________________ 107 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia previously sjöholm (1999a, 1999b) compared levels of labour productivity of mncs and domestic firms in indonesia and came up with results similar to those of takii and ramstetter, supporting the thesis that because of their high level of technological and human resources, the level of labour productivity of the mncs was correspondingly much higher than in the indonesian firms. unfortunately, sjöholm's and takii and ramstetter's works are not so useful to us in this study because in their comparisons of labour productivity, they only distinguish between mnc plants and domestic plants in the various manufacturing industries, without differentiating between les and smes.2 official data from the national agency for statistics (bps) in manufacturing industry supports the theory that the value added/labour ratio increases by size of enterprise. this may suggest that in larger enterprises, the level of technology is higher than that in small ones (see table 1). bps splits the size of enterprises into three categories: micro enterprises (mies) with one to four workers, small enterprises (ses) with five to 19 workers, medium enterprises (mes) with 20 to 99 workers, and large enterprises (les) with 100 or more workers. in mies and ses, the labour productivity is much lower than that in mes and les. this finding is not unexpected, since most mies and ses in indonesia (as in developing countries in general) are traditional enterprises using manual production techniques with a low degree of mechanization. by contrast, les (and to a lesser extent mes) are usually mechanized and computerized, the production processes are much better managed and organized, and they employ more highly skilled workers. in the food and beverages industry, for instance, mies and ses are very simple manufacturing units producing mostly for local markets, in contrast to les which are modern production units such as unilever and indofood. surprisingly, both the 2006 rural investment climate survey (world bank 2006) and the survey on small scale and handicraft industry in indonesia from bps show that the surveyed mies and ses do not regard lack of technological capacity as one of their key constraints. and this table 1: value added/labour ratio (q1; 000 rp) and manufacturing total output contribution (q2; %) by size of enterprise in indonesia, 19992003 size group 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 q1 q2 q1 q2 q1 q2 q1 q2 q1 q2 mes & les combined 115.28 90.52 143.99 91.65 167.70 91.50 166.31 89.94 196. 90.68 mies & ses combined 8.35 9.48 9.11 8.35 10.98 8.50 12.36 10.06 13.55 9.32 source: bps 108 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ despite the fact that other evidence suggests that in some industries, mies are able to improve their technology capabilities and that this benefits their performance. for instance, from their studies on sme clusters in central java, sandee (1994, 1995, 1996) and sandee et al. (1994, 2000, 2002) show that these smallest and most traditional enterprises are in a position to adopt innovations in products and production process, even without support from the government. for them, technological capability is a major determinant of business performance. this evidence suggests that there are substantial benefits to be derived from improving technological capabilities. channels of technology transfer and diffusion the international transfer of technology/knowledge there are various channels through which technology may be transferred internationally. these include: foreign direct investment (fdi); technical licensing agreements between foreign and local firms; imports of intermediate and capital goods; education and training in technologically advanced countries; turnkey plants and project contracts; technical consultancies by foreign companies/consultancy firms; and simply through participation in world trade (export). this study focuses on three of these, which are considered as the most important channels of foreign technology transfers to indonesian firms, including smes: (i) fdi, (ii) imports of intermediate and capital goods, and (iii) participation in world trade (thee 2005). foreign direct investment (fdi) because of the resources it brings and the attributes embedded in it, fdi can bolster technology capabilities in local industries through the transfer of technology and spillover effects. for example, thee and pangestu (1994) assess the technological capability of indonesian textile, garment and electronics industries to show that in an effort to increase technological capability, indonesian textile and garment manufacturers established strategic alliances with their japanese counterparts to open up a vital channel of technology transfer. similarly, business linkages with foreign firms have been a very important technology transfer channel for electronics firms, especially for consumer electronics and electronic components. _______________________________________________________________________ 109 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia however, the evidence suggests that the nature and extent of technology that is transferred can be rather limited. for instance, according to their study, technology transfer in the textile industry was limited to improvements in production capability. whilst important, more sophisticated activities that might help local firms upgrade their technological capabilities, including activities related to pre-investment, project implementation and technical changes in production or product were conducted by japanese counterparts. the global competitiveness report 2005-2006 from the world economic forum (wef) also provides evidence to suggest that fdi can be a limited channel of technology transfer from foreign countries to indonesian firms. based on a survey of 150 enterprises from all sizes in all sectors (except agriculture) in indonesia, this report shows that indonesia ranks 82nd of a total of 103 countries covered in the survey (wef 2005). in general, empirical studies on fdi as a channel for technology transfer in indonesia fail to provide strong evidence to support the general view that there is a significant degree of technology transfer and spillover effect from mncs to indonesian firms.3 moreover, whether technology transfer will have a positive effect on the recipient firms or countries depends largely on the absorptive capacity of the firms/host countries; that is, on their ability to understand, assimilate and make effective use of the transferred knowledge or technology. imports of intermediate and capital goods intermediate and capital goods embody the technological know-how involved in their production. as a result, trade in these goods in itself promotes the transfer of technology between trading partners. this appears to have been an important channel for technology transfer to indonesia, as the country has become more heavily dependent on imports of intermediate and capital goods. the only study available that directly addresses the role of such imports in indonesia is from jacob and meister (2005). they show that such imports have indeed made a significant contribution to the performance of indonesian manufacturing, especially after liberalization and reforms conducted between 1988 and 1996. their study is based on an assessment of the contribution of foreign technologies to manufacturing performance in indonesia at the subsectoral level, in which they combined indonesian data sets on production and input/output transactions with the r&d, export-to-indonesia and output data of ten major oecd countries that trade with indonesia. 110 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ other studies provide indirect evidence of the importance of imports of capital and intermediate goods. for example, thee (2003) stresses the role of imports, particularly given the fact that capital goods industries in indonesia are still underdeveloped. similarly, bps data show an increasing share of imported intermediate inputs and capital goods in indonesia's total imports, suggesting that imports of these goods have been playing an important role in transferring technology from abroad to indonesian firms. participation in world trade participation in world trade through export has been used effectively by local firms as an important informal channel for the transfer of technologies. for example, local electronics firms in the east asian countries such as south korea and taiwan were able to build up production capabilities through the simple assembly of mature products for exports, often developed through technical assistance provided by foreign buyers.4 this process of coupling exports with technology development is called 'export-led technology development' (hobday 1994: 335). similarly, since the mid-1970s, export has been an important informal channel for the transfer of technology from abroad to indonesian firms, including smes. for example, the remarkable export performance of the garment industry in bali and that of the furniture industry in jepara (central java) since the mid-1970s share important characteristics with the experience of these east asian firms. the case of bali's garment industry in paticular shows the importance of foreign buyers (i.e. foreign firms, businessmen and tourists) as a vital source of innovation in their role as marketing intermediaries, connecting local producers with retail outlets abroad. in the process, these intermediaries dispensed important information on design and production techniques. foreign buyers provided information and technical and managerial assistance on plant layout, the purchase of the most appropriate machines, and quality control methods, and also often acted as technical consultants to smes. as a result, these firms were able to achieve higher levels of efficiency and accuracy (cole 1998). foreign buyers also provided vital information as well as technical, managerial and marketing assistance during the development of the export-oriented furniture industry in jepara, central java. as a result, the quality of jepara furniture has been steadily upgraded (sandee et al. 2000: 5-7). foreign buyers have also played a crucial role in providing guidance to smes on the furniture designs popular in the export _______________________________________________________________________ 111 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia markets and the quality standards required to penetrate these markets (berry and levy, 1994; schiller and martin-schiller 1997). these two cases show that smes in the two regions have benefited from the inflow of technologies through their participation in foreign trade, suggesting that the more open the regional economy, the greater their chances of upgrading skills and technologies through this means. however, an important conclusion from these studies is that local smes must have some basic industrial competence in their particular field of activity to be able to absorb the inflows of technology or knowledge. in this regard, bali and jepara are still exceptional cases. in general, the capability of indonesian manufacturing smes, especially mies and ses in rural areas, to adopt and deploy new technologies is limited due to the lack of management capacity, access to information, skilled workers and capital. domestic diffusion of technology/knowledge although the international transfer of technologies is essential, such transfers tend primarily to impact larger and predominantly urbanbased enterprises in the country. for such technological knowledge to improve the productivity of rural manufacturing smes throughout the country, effective mechanisms are needed for the domestic diffusion of technical knowledge from the first local recipient firms to other local firms, or from a local university as the first recipient to local firms.5 domestic diffusion of the transferred or imported technology or knowledge can occur in various ways6 and the most immediate and direct channel is through subcontracting, where buyers assist sme suppliers to meet technical standards for inputs. in addition, there is a growing recognition of the importance of long-term networks as a means of achieving the diffusion of technology/knowledge. through networks an entrepreneur can obtain knowledge from other entrepreneurs in the same sector or from universities, r&d institutions or ngos. the literature on networks in turn explores two main issues: strategic alliances and clusters. subcontracting during the soeharto era (1966-98), the government imposed a system of protection and local content rules in a number of industries, including machinery, electronics and the automotive industry, as part of its import substitution policy. in these local content rules all assembling 112 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ industries should use some components produced locally. these rules stand as a clear lesson in how government interference does not facilitate the use of subcontracting as a means for achieving the domestic diffusion of technology or knowledge. the main aim of this policy was to encourage industrialization in the country and also to encourage a pattern of industrial development that followed the industrial pyramid model from japanese. in this model, mies are at the base to support ses, which then support mes and the latter support les at the top of the pyramid (taf 2000). however, industrial development in indonesia did not follow the same pattern as in japan. on the contrary, the local content policy resulted in a vertically integrated production system within les. the asia foundation (taf 2000) argues that the lack of success of this policy in creating strong interdependence between smes and les was largely due to the government's excessive interference, aimed at replacing market mechanisms. the economic rationale behind this local content policy was to create a captive market for domestic products in order to increase the economic scale of production and thereby to increase efficiency. however, government interference went too far. the government decided which products were to get priority in this policy, and introduced fiscal incentives in line with the type of priority recipient products. the determination of priorities did not appear to have been based on economic considerations, such as smes' capacity for investment and absorption of technology. similarly, thee (1990b, 1997) argues that such production linkages did not develop smoothly during the new order era because of market distortions and the lack of skills and low technological capabilities of local firms, especially smes. sri international (1992) found that production linkages between les and sme clusters were weak and only a small number of clusters (all located in java) established subcontracting relationships with les. the general impression from other studies is also that subcontracting between les and smes is weak, mainly because the latter cannot meet the required quality standards, due to their lack of technology and skills.7 although during the new order era the local content rules as mentioned above were largely unsuccessful in developing viable domestic supplier firms, successful private-led subcontracting networks did arise in some industries and these did facilitate technological capacity building. one example is the case of astra otoparts, part of the astra international business group, indonesia's largest integrated automo_______________________________________________________________________ 113 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia tive company. through astra otoparts, astra international was able to develop several smes into efficient and viable suppliers. as a result of the rigorous training which astra provided to local suppliers with potential, over time these suppliers were able to produce a wide range of parts and components for cars and motorcycles according to the high quality standards set by astra, and also to meet its strict delivery schedules. strategic alliances strategic alliances are defined as the development of a long-term and stable relationship with other enterprises.8 many researchers such as perry and pyatt (1995) and weaver and dickson (1995) maintain that such alliances form a key component of successful firms' competitiveness. such partnerships are especially important for smes, which in general have limited capital, human resources, information and technology. through collaborations, les can share their capacities with smes in order to reduce costs, without having to reduce the creativeness and competitiveness of each company involved (weaver and dickson 1995). strategic alliances are quite common among mes. tambunan (2006: 237) surveyed 124 respondents, most of which were mes, and found that more than 50 percent of them had strategic alliances with other firms. however, the percentage of those with strategic alliances differs among various industries. a majority of the firms surveyed in food, beverages and tobacco industries and industries manufacturing metal products, machines, tools and other capital goods had some kind of strategic alliances with other firms, while the proportion in other industries was considerably lower. most of the firms surveyed have had more than one type of strategic alliance (see table 2). the most important types are long-term marketing output agreements, purchase–supplier alliances (i.e. cooperation between input suppliers and their purchasers), joint ventures with other enterprises, and cooperation in technology. with respect to the kinds of assistance that the surveyed firms have received from their strategic alliance partners, technology, market information and skills training are the most important. cooperation in marketing, rather than in technology, is also the most prevalent form of partnership in a study of 300 enterprises in the food, timber products and clothing industries in six provinces in indonesia (taf 2000). 114 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ table 2: types of strategic alliances by surveyed firms in indonesia, 1997 types percentage use long-term marketing agreements 25.3 % purchaser–supplier alliance 23.9 % joint ventures with other smes 22.8 % technology alliances 22.0 % outside contracting 21.2 % licensing 20.0 % joint ventures with les 18.9 % equity investments 14.8 % export management 13.4 % source: tambunan (2006) (field survey 1997) clusters clusters can be defined as geographical concentrations of industries that gain performance advantages through co-location (doeringer and terkla 1995) and they can be a powerful means for smes to overcome constraints on their development. through cooperation in a cluster, smes may take advantage of external economies such as the presence of suppliers of raw materials, components, or new technologies embodied in new machinery and parts; the presence of workers with sector-specific skills; and the presence of workshops that make or service the machinery and production tools (humphrey and schmitz, 1995). moreover, with the clustering of enterprises, it becomes easier for the government, les, universities/research institutes and other agencies to provide supporting services. these might include technical development and management training as well as general facilities such as large machinery for raw material processing. such services and facilities would be very costly to provide if provided to individual enterprises in dispersed locations (tambunan 2000). while clustering is commonplace throughout the developing world, well-developed networks among enterprises inside clusters and between the clusters and external agencies are rare. highly developed inter-firm divisions of labour, subcontracting and cases where technical information flows have resulted in ongoing technical innovation tend only to be observed in the more advanced clusters of south east asia and latin america (nadvi and schmitz 1994). however, internal networks among _______________________________________________________________________ 115 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia firms within clusters, as well as external networks, are important for the development of technology inside the clusters.9 unfortunately, indonesia's clusters appear to be quite weak in this regard. for example, sato (2000) saw little evidence of positive effects of clustering, as she found no inter-firm specialization of work processes and no joint actions in marketing, production, distribution or technological development among the firms studied. supratikno (2001, 2002) also found that, in general, very limited inter-firm specialization and cooperation among producers inside the clusters. he concluded that the importance of a cluster for production development, including technology and marketing, depends on whether there are leading/pioneering firms inside the cluster. these are usually larger and faster growing firms that are able to manage a large and differentiated set of relationships with firms and institutions both within and outside clusters. furthermore such firms have generally utilized cutting-edge technologies in production. he cited as examples the clove cigarette cluster in kudus, the tea-processing cluster in slawi, and tourism clusters in bali. in the case of the clove cigarette cluster in kudus, their products are able to outperform products from philip morris and bat. similarly, the teaprocessing cluster in slawi, led by the large company sostro, has grown to become the market leader in the indonesian soft drink market, leaving giant coca-cola behind. by contrast, sandee et al. (2002) emphasize the role of traders, suppliers of raw materials and other inputs, and other market agents in introducing new technologies into clusters. weijland's studies (1992) emphasize the importance of middlemen or traders as a source of knowledge transfer to the clusters. the effectiveness of government and government funded programs to build technological capacity of manufacturing smes in indonesia, almost all known types of government intervention to promote the development of smes have been tried at one time or another. these include subsidized credit, such as credit for small farmers and village cooperatives (kud), small-scale credit (kik, kmkp, kuk), and credit for village units (kupedes); the development of small rural development banks (bkd); human resources development training such as production techniques, general management (ms/muk), management quality systems iso-9000, and entrepreneurship (cefe, amt); 116 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ providing total quality control advice, technology and especially internet access (warsi) and advisory extension workers; subsidized inputs; facilitation, the setting up of cooperatives of small-scale industries (kopinkra) in clusters; the development of infrastructure, building special small-scale industrial estates (lik), partnership programmes (the 'foster parent' scheme), and small business consultancy clinics (kkb); the establishment of the export support board of indonesia (dpe); the establishment of common service facilities (upt) in clusters; and the implementation of an incubator system for promoting the development of new entrepreneurs. all these have been initiated by the central government and implemented through local government offices. the smeru research institute has mapped out most of the important assistance programmes to strengthen mies and ses provided by central government and non-government institutes, showing that most are run by the central government (smeru 2004). the data in table 3 reveal that there are 64 institutions with such programmes and 594 identified programmes, two-thirds of which are provided by the central government.10 other programmes are conducted by ngos (18%), donor agencies (8%), banking institutions (5%), private companies, mainly les (2%), and other institutions. the government is still running 127 different support programmes. table 3: number of institutions and assistance programmes to strengthen mies and ses, 1997-2003 institutions number of institutions number of assistance programmes total still running total % government institutuions 13 388 127 32.7 banking institutions 7 31 25 80.7 private companies 10 12 12 100.0 donor agencies 8 46 15 32.6 ngos 20 109 79 72.5 others 6 8 8 100.0 total 64 594 266 44.8 source: smeru (2004). table 4 shows the type of assistance provided by these programmes. the number of activities within each programme also varied, but generally ranged between one and three. in total, the most common types of activities are the provision of training (22.9%), capital assistance/credit (17.3%), facilitation (16.1%), and the dissemination/introduction of new technology (15.2%). _______________________________________________________________________ 117 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia g ov er nm en t in st it ut io ns b an ki ng in st it ut io ns pr iv at e co m pa ni es d on or ag en ci es n g o s o th er s t ot al c ap it al a ss is ta nc e 5. 3 52 .9 25 .0 21 .0 29 .6 28 .6 17 .3 t ra in in g 21 .1 13 .7 22 .2 19 .0 29 .0 21 .4 22 .9 fa ci li ta ta ti on 11 .3 9. 8 19 .4 7. 6 28 .7 0. 0 16 .1 in fo rm at io n 1. 9 7. 8 2. 8 3. 8 1. 6 21 .4 2. 6 fa ci li ti es 16 .2 2. 0 5. 6 8. 6 1. 0 0. 0 9. 7 pr om ot io n 3. 0 3. 9 13 .9 6. 7 1. 0 7. 1 3. 3 d is se m in at io n /i n tr od u ct io n of n ew te ch no lo gy 27 .9 0. 0 0. 0 6. 7 1. 3 0. 0 15 .2 g ui de li ne s 4. 3 0. 0 0. 0 0. 0 0. 7 0. 0 2. 4 o th er s 9. 0 9. 8 11 .1 26 .7 7. 2 21 .4 10 .5 so ur ce : s ee t ab le 3 t ab le 4 : p ro po rt io n of a ss is ta nc e pr og ra m s to s tr en gt he n m ie s an d s e s b as ed u po n th e t yp e of a ct iv it ie s an d th e e xe cu ti ng in st it ut io ns 118 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ the table shows that government agencies most often introduce new technology (27.9%) and provide training (21.1%), whereas other institutions mostly provide capital assistance. of all the executing institutions, government agencies play the most prominent role (50.9%), followed by ngos (29.4%) and donor agencies (10.1%). based on the type of activity, training is mostly undertaken by government institutions (46.9%) and ngos (37.2%). capital assistance is mostly provided by local and international ngos (50.3%), followed by government institutions (15.5%) and banking institutions (14.9%). facilitation is mainly provided by ngos (52.4%) and government institutions (35.7%). despite their large number, the level of coverage of assistance programmes is very low. the integrated business survey (susi) 2003 from bps shows that out of a total 481,714 units of non-farm mies and ses that received government support in 2003, some 203,563 firms (or 43% of the total) received support through one or more of the various government programmes. the remainder (57% of the total) received support from such agencies as ngos and foreign foundations. also, the coverage is %11 %17 %8 %2 %7 %1 aretamus ilab & avaj araggnet asun natnamilak isewalus aupap & ukulam figure 1: distribution of total non-farm mies and ses receiving support from the government in indonesia by region, 2003 (% source: bps (susi 2003). _______________________________________________________________________ 119 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia heavily skewed towards java and bali, i.e. 71% of the total recipient non-farm mies and ses are found in java and bali (figure 1). this is not only because the majority of these enterprises are located in those regions, but it is much easier to conduct a central governmentinitiated programme in inner than in outer indonesia due to better infrastructure facilities (e.g. roads and telecommunication links) and the availability of supporting agencies such as banks, trading houses and business associations. thus, uneven economic development between 89.0 82.1 03.3 44.0 31.2 89.0 00.0 05.0 00.1 05.1 00.2 05.2 00.3 05.3 aupap & okulamisewalusnatnamilakaraggnet asunilab & avajartamus % source: bps (susi 2003). figure 2: percentage of non-farm ses and mies receiving government assistance (as a % of total non-farm ses and mies in each region) 2003 inner and outer regions also plays an important role in affecting this distribution. moreover, in java smes are mostly located in clusters close to urban areas, while in outer regions they are scattered individually far from cities, which makes it more difficult for local government staff to recruit potential participants in a programme. however, as a percentage of total non-farm mies and ses in the region, nusa tenggara (both west and east) scores the highest, while java (including bali) ranks third (figure 2). this variation depends on many factors, including the willingness of owners/entrepreneurs to attend a government-sponsored programme, the availability of alternative pro120 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ grammes from non-government institutes, and the proactivity of local government staff to encourage local entrepreneurs to participate. despite this low level of coverage, those enterprises that do receive assistance appear to benefit from it. to assess the effectiveness of assistance programmes, smeru (2004) studied 172 mies and ses in six kabupaten/kota in java. these firms are mostly informal, non-legal entities whose turnover and employees fluctuate over time, and which operate with minimal or no technology. a large number of mies (58.6%) and ses (63%) stated that the assistance they had received had increased their revenues. some mie owners stated that, as a result, they had been able to develop their businesses further. unfortunately, it is not established whether there was an increase in knowledge or technological capability as a result of the training or technical assistance received. typically, government programmes are evaluated according to the number of enterprises that participate. the actual outcomes of the programme are generally not assessed. thus, it is impossible to ascertain for most government programmes whether they have proved effective in improving technical ability. moreover, programme benefits need to be compared with programme costs to determine the net benefits, but this is generally not done (van diermen, 2004). a few studies suggest that most sme development programmes have not been very successful.11 for instance, the foster parent (fp) programme attempts to create productive linkages between large and small firms, but levels of participation are low and very little training and technical assistance are supplied.12 furthermore, the emphasis is on the provision of capital and marketing assistance. susi data 2003 (bps) show that only 11 percent of mies and 3 percent of ses in indonesia have received training and technical assistance from this programme. the general impression is that the fp is essentially a non-market mechanism to pressure les and smes into a 'forced marriage'. international evidence shows that patterns of business linkages or partnerships between firms are not established through mandatory requirements; rather, they are established when they offer commercial benefits to both parties. low participation is a common feature of such programmes. for example, susi data (bps) show that the majority of mies and ses in indonesia are not members of kopinkra. the reason for this is mentioned by klapwijk (1997: 65), who states that: in view of the wide definition of small industry employed by the ministry, much of the promotion efforts may have bypassed the smallest enterprises that are most in need of assistance . . .the extension officers generally have _______________________________________________________________________ 121 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia little technical or business experience, and training or other technical facilities have been largely provided according to the directions of central planners, rather than having been adapted to local needs. another more comprehensive technical assistance programme has involved the development of technical service units (upt)) in existing sme clusters of similar industries across provinces. these units provide extension and technical services and training courses, and are staffed by government technical officers who have received special training. van diermen (2004: 51) concludes that the upt extension service programme has achieved poor results. it has failed to deliver efficient services, to target appropriate recipients, or to address the important criteria of providing a net benefit to society and/or effectively addressing equity or fairness objectives. in particular, van diermen notes the following: 1. types of services are highly supply oriented rather than demand driven. 2. most of the machines and equipments are outdated. originally, these units were supplied with modern technological machines and equipments. however, over the years, especially after the economic crisis of 1997/98, budgetary constraints prevented the replacement of the existing equipment. 3. services were delivered indiscriminately to clusters. 4. the staff of the upt did not receive the appropriate training to respond to entrepreneurs' needs. 5. there is not enough flexibility in the system to respond to the changing needs of smes, possibly due to the bureaucratic structure of the upt. based on his analysis of the effects of macroand micro-policy environments on rural industries in indonesia, van diermen (2004) comes to the following conclusions: (i) few of the micro-policies (programs) implemented by the government have had a lasting impact on improving rural smes; (ii) a significant number of macroand micro-policies placed additional costs and burdens on rural smes' compliance, which has led to most operating outside of the formal economy; and (iii) macropolicies that created a favourable economic environment (as reflected by consistently high gdp growth rates and not biased in favour of les) provided the best stimulus for sme growth. based on their study on a furniture cluster in jepara (central java), sandee et al. (2000) conclude that public intervention is likely to have contributed to the success of this cluster. a comprehensive development package – including technical upgrading through the provision of a 122 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ common service facility for wood drying; export training and support for participation in trade fairs; and investment in improvement of the regional infrastructure (container facilities, roads, telephone) – helped the cluster to gradually develop export markets. on the other hand, sato's (2000) field study of several clusters in the metalworking and machinery industry in java concludes that the successful development of these clusters has been achieved without significant government support. her findings on the effectiveness of government programmes for the development of smes is also supported by tambunan's (1998) findings on rattan industries in padang (west sumatra). they both conclude that the government's efforts to support the clusters have not yielded positive results. one reason appears to be the lack of coordination between the various government agencies. in many clusters, local government agencies such as regional offices of the state ministry for cooperatives and smes, the ministry of industry, state universities and skills training centers for workers (balai latihan kerja) from the department of manpower provide some support. however, sometimes different agencies provide similar schemes/programmes, and there is little attempt to coordinate their efforts. while the government is the largest supplier of training programmes (see table 4), the evidence suggests that the quality and relevance of the training provided have been poor. most of these programmes do not appear to have been very effective in upgrading the technological capabilities of the firms trained. for example, sandee (1994: 152) notes that training materials and other information do not always match the needs of the producers: in practice, direct assistance frequently concerns brief training sessions of one or two days for a selected group of producers. such sessions are characterized by a great deal of theory and little attention is paid to how to improve the actual running of the business of particular activities. universities and research institutes can also contribute to the diffusion of knowledge to domestic firms, particularly manufacturing firms, through publications, patents and consultancy services (agrawal 2001). in indonesia, the public science and technology institutes consist of the 12 national-level and several regional-level r&d centres of the agency for industrial research and development (bppi), the department of industry, and the research centres of the non-departmental government research institutes, particularly the indonesian institutes of sciences (lipi) and the agency for the assessment and application of technology (bppt). however, bppi's r&d centres are mostly engaged in product _______________________________________________________________________ 123 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia certification, training and testing activities for manufacturing firms, particularly state-owned companies and private smes. their research staffs are generally not well trained and are often unaware of the latest technological developments in their fields. moreover, much of their laboratory equipment is obsolete because the centres are underfunded, particularly since the economic crisis of 1997/98 (lall and rao 1995). hence, in general they are not able to provide adequate technical information or technology support services to indonesia's manufacturing firms (thee 1998). the non-departmental government institutes, particularly lipi and bppt, are better funded, better equipped and better staffed, with highly trained researchers, many of whom have pursued postgraduate training abroad. however, like the department of industry's r&d institutes, the research centres of lipi and bppt have not played a significant role in developing the technological capabilities of indonesia's non-farm firms, particularly in manufacturing industry. the reason for this is that they have generally not been able to establish mutually profitable linkages with national industry, particularly private industry. because of their lack of contact with national industries, they are generally not aware of the technological needs of private industry and therefore lag behind world technological frontiers (lall and rao 1995). as a result of their failure to establish mutually profitable linkages with non-farm firms, most, if not all, of their research is supply rather than demand driven (thee 1998). moreover, the universities and r&d institutes are located mainly in urban areas, having little interest in the problems of rural firms. the available literature confirms that spillovers from universities or r&d institutes to firms are positively correlated with geographical proximity (see e.g. anselin et al. 1997). the government-initiated programmes discussed above were initiated and sponsored by the central government in the pre-economic decentralization and regional autonomy era prior to 2001. nowadays, many central governmental economic developmental initiatives have been transferred to the provinces and, in particular, to the regencies within the provinces. this also includes development programmes for smes, in which local governments must themselves initiate and finance programmes to support smes in their own regions. unfortunately, no studies have been conducted to date to examine the effect of these economic and power transitions from central to regional government on sme development programmes. however, a number of official re124 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ ports from the state ministry for cooperativse and smes reveals that some central government programmes have ceased to operate, while local governments have been slow to launch new programmes. lack of funding is often cited as the main reason, although lack of initiative may well be the primary cause as local governments are accustomed to receiving orders from the central government (a typical 'top-down' development approach during the pre-economic decentralization and regional autonomy era). evidence of knowledge diffusion in the tegal metalworking industry tegal district is located near the north coast of central java on key trucking and rail routes. major industries in the area include food processing, textiles and furniture. the district generates 22.09 percent of its annual income from the industrial sector, compared to 24.24 percent from trade and 24.62 percent from the agriculture sector. these three sectors are the largest contributors to the district economy (bappeda, 2005, and bps, 2005). tegal district is one of the few areas in indonesia to have a metalworking cluster. the tegal metalworking industry employs about 30,029 workers out of a total of 118,820 (around 25 percent) workers constituting the district's industrial sector. there are around 2,811 metal workshops in the district. among these there are seven sentra, or groups of geographic agglomerations of metal enterprises producing the same metal products, such as components or spare parts for ships and vehicles. since the new order era, sentra have become the focus of government development strategies for smes in all manufacturing subsectors, including the metalworking industry in tegal district. the majority of metal workshops are small, employing less than 20 workers, mostly male. most of tegal's metal workshops rely on the same basic metalworking technologies, e.g. casting, cutting, bending, drilling or stamping (depending on product), machining, welding, finishing (painting or electronic plating depending on product), and assembly. their comparative advantage has been in fulfilling small orders for simple metal products or components. the small size of the workshops gives them greater flexibility and tegal's abundant cheap labor can outweigh the productivity advantages of more capital-intensive production. there is often intense price competition among workshops. tegal district has been a metalworking centre since the mid-1800s _______________________________________________________________________ 125 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia when it was the locus of several sugar-processing factories and related enterprises, including locomotive repair shops and metal processing factories. the industry continued, thriving particularly under the new order's massive infrastructure and development agenda. at the beginning of the 1980s, the first subcontracting activity started in the district, sparking government activity to develop the metalworking industry. types of workshops the structure of the tegal metalwork value chain is illustrated in figure 3. according to the size of production and the level of production sophistication, there are two types of workshops in the tegal metalworking industry: (i) mes and les called inti and (ii) ses and mies called plasma. inti workshops receive orders for metal components from large private companies (les) outside the district. large inti workshops employing a total of up to 100 men derive a majority of their income from subcontracting work. during the survey in 2005, there were several large private companies that subcontracted work to tegal metal workshops, including pt komatsu indonesia tbk, pt daihatsu, and some divisions of the astra group such as pt sanwa and pt katshusiro. these companies often source metal components from several parts of the country, mostly in west java. among these companies, the most prominent is pt komatsu indonesia tbk, which is a subsidiary of a japanese company that established subcontracting production linkages with tegal metal workshops in 1998. this company produces various types of equipment for construction and mining activities under the global trademark of komatsu, such as hydraulic excavators, bulldozers, motor graders, frames and related components, cast steel products as well as dump tracks. plasma workshops usually hire cheap, unskilled labour or use family members as unpaid workers (helpers). the owner normally passes basic metalworking skills on to his employees, leaving the technical capacity of the workshop highly dependent on the technical capacity of the owner. inti workshops often subcontract part of their production to plasma workshops. inti and plasma workshops that have no subcontracting businesses with inti workshops manufacture entirely for the wholesalers and retailers or sell their products directly to local consumers rather than through these marketing channels. many wholesalers and retailers purchase goods from tegal metal workshops for resale in urban stores. 126 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ methodology this case study is based on two weeks of fieldwork in tegal district. in-depth interviews were carried out with 34 respondents: one representative of pt komatsu, five inti workshops (including three of the four inti workshops directly meeting subcontracting orders for pt komatsu), three plasma, nine owners of retail manufacturing metalworking firms, two retailers, four ngos and ten government representatives. these respondents were selected from four subdistrits, i.e. adiwerna, talang, desa kebasen and desa dampyak. the research sampling focused on clustered metal workshops in the automotive and shipbuilding industries.13 during the fieldwork, two focus group discussions (fgds) were held in desa kebasen, in which the workshop owners themselves participated. discussions focused on the needs of their businesses, and assessment of government and private sector training that they had received over the last five years. findings the major knowledge providers tegal district's main external knowledge providers are les, just as pt komatsu provide to their subcontractors (i.e. inti workshops), and to a lesser extent local government. some domestic retail market suppliers also act as knowledge providers by informing metal workshops about consumer preferences, market demand and new innovations. to access knowledge from les, however, a workshop must have atfigure 3: structure of the tegal metalwork value chain simple finished goods & parts simple finished goods & parts retail market shops consumers plasma/small workshops not in subcontracting system plasma/small workshops quality components of components subcontracting inti/large workshops quality components les/buyers imports _______________________________________________________________________ 127 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia tained a certain level of technical and managerial expertise. larger metal workshops are more likely to adopt new technologies in their bid to become subcontracting inti to les. by building upon existing technical and managerial capacity, larger workshops are able to enter a virtuous circle where quality output leads to subcontracts which lead to private training provided by les. training provided by les has proved to be the most successful method of efficiently transferring knowledge to selected inti workshops. while government-led initiatives attempt to cover a broader range of workshops covering more topics, this has not resulted in the efficient transfer of high-quality, usable knowledge. though a good reputation and personal connections are important, les require proof that a workshop has the capacity to produce high-quality components. an audit is held to determine whether the workshop has the required machinery, manpower, facilities, legal standing and competency in iso standards. the potential subcontractor is then requested to produce a sample component by providing technical drawings. before an agreement is signed, les will often ask for a trial run of the mass production process, subjecting the output to quality control tests. after winning a contract, an inti subcontractor has access to a significant level of technical training. according to a subcontractor of pt komatsu, training is directly addressed to the technical needs of the workshop to meet the production requirements of komatsu. indonesian experts from the jakarta komatsu office who were heading up the training sessions clearly delivered the necessary knowledge and emphasized practical applications, with 90 percent of the training time spent in hands-on experience. trainers also help the workshop to identify and troubleshoot potential problems. this style of knowledge diffusion has two important limitations. first, it focuses training only on larger inti workshops, with smaller subcontracting firms (plasma) benefiting only indirectly or, in the case of small retail market firms, deriving no benefit at all. second, le training does not seek to develop the inti workshops' capability to outperform their capacity as low-cost production centres for selected components. moreover, les do help inti workshops to build capacity to manufacture component parts, but there has been little interest in upgrading from specialized parts manufacture to manufacture and assemblage of finished products. most plasma workshops lack the technical ability to produce complicated components with the precision required by les, thus making it 128 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ unlikely that they will receive subcontracting orders. plasma workshops often use second-hand or homemade equipment. they hire low-skilled, low-wage workers with little or no experience and rely on the shop-owner's technical knowledge. since many plasma owners built their expertise through working in small shops and rarely have a formal academic training, they have difficulty reading technical drawings and instead rely on copying samples, leading to less accurate output. most plasma workshops sell to the retail market or to domestic market suppliers a limited range of simple final products, e.g. pulleys, ship windows. while these retailers may demand a sample product, there is much less emphasis on precision. generally, retailers emphasize low cost over quality. moreover, strong competition among retail suppliers inhibits knowledge transfer and encourages production of low-quality, inexpensive products. for knowledge improvement, these plasma workshops depend largely on untargeted, irregularly publicized government programmes, which may not best suit their needs. cheap labour and relatively small, erratic job orders reduce the incentive for workshops to specialize or acquire expensive machinery to increase productivity. as one seasoned metalworker explained, the strength of the plasma workshop is the flexibility to do smaller orders. however, this flexibility becomes a liability to capacity development when workshops have to meet many small orders and never develop specialization. though less direct, the subcontracting system does provide some market opportunities for smaller workshops to benefit from the virtuous circle affecting inti capacity building. subcontracting plasma increases the incentive to produce higher quality for a higher price, with technical coaching from inti clients in their own virtuous circle. inti respondents for auto components, for instance, turn to plasma workshops to produce 10–15 percent of their orders from les, usually subcomponents of components or basic parts made more cheaply in small workshops, while still passing the quality control requirements of les. often soft loans are provided to plasma to help them acquire new machines capable of higher quality output. inti and plasma involved in subcontracting are more likely to use the uptd lab, especially to test the quality of materials. they are better able to offset lab usage costs through the higher price paid by les for quality parts. learning takes place through quality control as inti often build a procedure for troubleshooting mistakes into their subcontracting relationships. inti workshops engage in coaching plasma on quality control standards and in some cases support former employees already familiar with these standards in starting up plasma.14 _______________________________________________________________________ 129 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia knowledge diffusion among small workshops it was stated above that a cluster of producers can be a powerful means for knowledge diffusion. however, in this tegal case knowledge transfer between small workshops is often contingent on personal networks and is conditioned by competition. on occasion, among workshops producing for the retail market, competition can sometimes become 'unhealthy' which has an opposite effect, inhibiting knowledge diffusion among them. for example, when a competing firm bought off a shopowner's driver after a marketing trip and followed up with lower bids to the same potential clients. many workshop owners were worried about firms' tactics to reduce production costs, often at the expense of quality. some workshops find the right combination of cheap scrap metals to get their products to pass buyers' inspection standards, but these lower-quality items wear out more quickly and this does little to strengthen the reputation of the tegal metalworking industry as a whole. this cost-cutting in turn creates price pressures, forcing competing workshops to a race for the bottom in terms of quality. small workshop respondents mentioned that there was hesitancy among metalworkers to share new and possibly advantageous technical knowledge. technical knowledge tends to be shared only amongst personal friends whose shops are not in direct competition. the same hesitancy was evident in giving too much training to employees. exemployees were likely to start up competing businesses, as was the case with one workshop owner interviewed, who lost 40 percent of his retail market share to ex-employees who began producing ship windows out of lower-grade materials. marketing information is even more closely guarded. in addition to the tactics mentioned above, sometimes domestic market suppliers will come to the cluster (sentra) and play the workshops off one against the other, using their proximity and lack of specialization to engage them in competitive price-cutting. the owner of kpy, one of the district's most successful metal workshops in both subcontracting and retail production, explained that lack of trust and mutual suspicion among metalworkers was the main constraint to metal works development and was the prime reason for the lack of growth in metalworkers' associations. the role of government while the district government has demonstrated a keen awareness of the importance of enhanced knowledge and skills to improve the com130 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ petitiveness of local metalworking shops, it has not been very successful at systematically improving the skills of local firms. it has attempted to both facilitate direct training as well as build up supporting institutions that can assist firms, and to lower information costs among firms. these efforts, while significant and well intentioned, have been handicapped by poor targeting, a lack of sufficient funds, an inadequate number of skilled staff dedicated to the effort, and weak feedback mechanisms between government and metalworking shops. the government is the only source of managerial training for plasma and retail market workshops as well as many inti that receive only limited management training from les clients. since 2001, the majority of government training has focused on technical subjects or technical quality management processes. for some smaller workshops without direct links to les, local government-facilitated technical training remains the only source of technical information outside the past experience of the workshop owner. however, according to respondents who participated in government training, these activities were poorly targeted, often incommensurate with their level of skills or the machinery available; while on occasion the training focused on skills they had already mastered. the district government has currently linked up with outside institutions, including strong partnerships with the central government's indonesian agency for the assessment and application of technology (bppt) and with an ngo, yayasan dana bakti astra (ydba). although this strategy has succeeded in bringing new knowledge to the cluster, what is offered in the way of training is often ill-suited to the needs of participants. in 1997, the district government opened the upt to enhance subcontracting workshops' capacity to produce high-quality, precision goods. the first government-funded upt opened in 1982, enabling the metalworking cluster to access the machines necessary to meet their orders. the upt was not able to keep up with technical advances and soon several of the workshops bought more advanced machinery for their own internal requirements. concluding remarks this case study demonstrates three crucial facts. first, despite some limitations, mncs such as pt komatsu indonesia are very important as a source of technology transfer to local smes. pt komatsu is able to increase the technology and hence production capability of _______________________________________________________________________ 131 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia its inti subcontractors, and indirectly, plasma workshops that have subcontracting links with the inti. this is also supported by blomstrőm and sjöholm's (1999) analysis of statistical data, showing that industries with a large presence of mncs are able to increase the production capabilities of local companies. however, mies in particular are largely excluded from the direct transfer of technology, as mncs are more likely to subcontract parts of their production to local firms that already enjoy a certain level of technological capability, and these are mostly mes and to a lower extent, ses. this supports the general view in the literature that the more absorptive capacity the local firms have, the more benefit the local firms will gain from a transfer of technology. the second conclusion to be drawn is that although local smes' technical capabilities in the cluster are generally low, many of them (mostly ses and mes) have innovation capability, in that they demonstrated an ability to advance from making relatively simple products to supplying metal components with higher grades of precision on a consistent basis. at least, this was demonstrated by the pt komatsu indonesia's inti suppliers. third, though well-intentioned, the government's role has produced poor measurable results due to (i) inappropriate training materials that fail to meet the needs of producers, (ii) budgetary constraints for managing and maintenance of the upt, and (iii) a lack of qualified trainers. the local government's training and technical assistance can though claim a limited positive impact, in the sense that it provides assistance to firms that would otherwise receive no assistance at all from other bodies such as les or university. so, the findings may suggest that currently, within smes, mes will derive more benefits from the presence of fdi than their smaller counterparts, as they are better able to meet requirements to become subcontractors. to achieve an optimal spillover effect, this depends on cooperation between mes as the first technology recipients and ses and mies. this is also the role that government should play in supporting technology capacity building in ses and mies. failing this, the spillover effect will not materialize or the technology transfer will be limited to mes; hence the presence of fdi will result in an increased technology gap between mes, on the one hand, and ses and mies, on the other hand. a key lesson from this case study is to understand how smes, especially ses and mies, can best obtain and utilize appropriate technology and how government can promote the most effective technology development pathways. 132 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan __________________________________________ tulus tahi hamonangan tambunan is from the center for industry and sme studies, university of trisakti, jakarta indonesia. notes 1 it is extremely difficult to measure and compare levels of technological capacity of enterprises or industries directly. therefore, the measurement of total factor productivity (tfp) or partial productivity for one factor is often used as a proxy for measuring this capacity. one means of establishing levels of technological capacity is achieved by comparing levels of labour productivity. 2 see also previous studies on productivity in indonesia (particularly in manufacturing) from shepherd et al. (1998), hill (2001), ito (2004), takii (2004, 2005), timmer (1999), rice and abdullah (2000), berry et al. (2001) and takii and ramstetter (2004). 3 see thee (1990a, 1990b, 1991), hill (1988), thee and pangestu (1994) and sato (1998). 4 see for example hobday (1994), mans (1996) and world bank (1996). 5 there is a growing literature on spillover effects from the transfer of technology; see for example, kokko et al. (1998). 6 for example, diffusion can occur through magazines and newspapers, education programmes and documentaries on television, seminars, workshops, training, plant visits and exhibitions. it can also occur if an indonesian manager or senior technician employed in a foreign firm leaves this firm to work in a domestic firm. the knowledge or experience received while working for the foreign firm is then deployed in the new job within the local context. 7 see for example harianto (1993), kitabata (1988), sato (2000), supratikno (2001) and jica (2000). 8 sas can take many forms, including subcontracting, joint ventures and cooperation in marketing, promotion or r&d activities. 9 see for example sandee (1995) and sandee and ter wingel (2002). 10 the scale of each assistance programme varied greatly, based on the amount of funds, time frame and geographical scope. 11 for discussion explicitly or implicitly on the government programmes to support smes in indonesia, see for instance klapwijk (1997), sandee (1994, 1995), sandee et al. (1994, 2000, 2002), van dierman (1997, 2004) and sato (2000). 12 in this scheme, introduced on a nationwide basis in february 1992, all state-owned enterprises and big private companies (les) are required to assist smes with capital, training and technical assistance, marketing, procurement of raw materials, inter alia. for example, with respect to marketing, the parent companies provide promotion facilities such as trade exhibitions and study tours for the supported enterprises or act as a trading house. with respect to technology, the parent companies give financial assistance for the purchase of new machines or provide them with technical training or technicians during the innovation process. 13 these two industries were selected by the local government for intensive assistance based on existing competency. according to mr. dasuki, head of the industrial affairs sub-agency, the industries showing the greatest competency are those seen as having access to key markets, those with many (including small) workshops involved in production, and having developed quality management systems. _______________________________________________________________________ 133 ________________________________ technology transfer and diffusion in indonesia 14 a plasma subcontractor for kpy, one of pt komatsu's inti, explained that his company received useful technical coaching as part of a quality control process conducted upon delivery of his product to kpy.20 in a case of knowledge spillover, his firm applied some of these technical lessons not only to his subcontracting operations, but also to the production of retail market goods. references agrawal, ajay 2001. 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'revitalizing the rural economy: an assessment of the investment climate faced by non-farm enterprises at the district level.' consultative draft report, july, jakarta. binder1 st.pdf, page 1-153 @ normalize_2 _______________________________________________________________________ 137 ___________________________________________________________________ reviews kevin j. o'brien and lianjiang li, rightful resistance in rural china, new york: cambridge university press, 2006, 179 pp. isbn 0-52167852-8. for more than a decade, o'brien and li have published widely on such crucial aspects of chinese grassroots rural politics as village elections, political attitudes and trust, popular resistance, and conflicts between farmers and local officials. in this book they summarize their rich empirical observations and interpret them in the light of larger theories of contentious politics. the result of this encounter between high theory and chinese rural life is the concept of 'rightful resistance', which is developed and explained from different perspectives in the six chapters of the book. this concept, which james c. scott in a cover note calls a major 'new species' in the study of resistance, was introduced by the authors as long ago as the mid-1990s. it describes a special form of protest where subalterns, in this case chinese farmers, make use of laws, official policies, and statements from political leaders to confront the authorities. farmers 'act as if they take the values and programs of political and economic elites to heart, while demonstrating that some authorities do not' (p. 5). after introducing the concept and placing it in a comparative context, the authors demonstrate how this type of resistance finds particularly favourable conditions in present-day china. more and more aspects of chinese life are covered by legislation, and information about these laws and about the central government's policies spread quickly through the media to a literate population increasingly aware of its rights. in the multi-layered chinese state, the authorities at the higher levels need mechanisms to control and discipline subordinate officials, and in this context 'rightful resisters' can serve as useful watchdogs against local corruption, power abuse, and incompetence. farmers can therefore to some extent rely on support from above when they challenge local officials. this creates structural opportunities for resistance, although local cadres do their best to stop it. much of this resistance is what the authors term 'boundary-spanning'. it operates somewhere between lawful political behaviour, which would often just serve to make the regime appear more legitimate, and open confrontation with the authorities. resisters skilfully make use of the fact that some officials at some levels of the state apparatus are willing to support their claims for whatever reason. thus popular forces and state actors sometimes confront each other and sometimes cooperate 138 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 reviews ___________________________________________________________________ in patterns that may become evident through detailed studies at the local level. such studies reveal the chinese state to be a 'hodge-podge of disparate actors' (p. 66). disgruntled farmers may escalate their means of resistance from simply making other villagers aware of the existence of certain laws and policies, to demanding a dialogue with officials, to open defiance and confrontation. the authors show how such tactics are developed over time as protesters gain experience and evaluate the outcome of their actions. these outcomes are not always positive, of course, but the book presents examples of how resistance affects policy implementation, as well as the life and outlook of the protesters, and therefore how it plays an important role in chinese rural politics. in a final chapter they point to potentially more far-reaching effects of the normally local and limited rural protests: a growing sense of citizenship rights among the rural population; an increased awareness among central leaders about the necessity of political reform; and maybe even a fertile ground for more radical types of resistance in the future – although the authors are careful not to make hasty conclusions or predictions about this issue. the book is a pleasure to read. practically every step of the argument is solidly supported by empirical data – either the authors' own interviews or material from a huge bulk of chinese and western scholarly literature on rural china – and practically every observation is interpreted in the light of the general social science literature on popular movements, protests, resistance, etc., and then used to question, expand, and revise general concepts and perceptions. in this sense, the book shows how the study of china can contribute to social science theory, rather than just testing whether general concepts fit or do not fit the chinese case. it is lucidly written, and will certainly be a landmark for future debates about chinese rural politics. for these reasons it is also well suited for teaching purposes. stig thøgersen, aarhus university binder1 st.pdf, page 1-153 @ normalize_2 72 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ doing business the chinese way? on manadonese chinese entrepreneurship in north sulawesi michael jacobsen abstract this article argues and documents that diasporic networking and guanxi relationships in north sulawesi province in east indonesia are not essential for doing business within the chinese business community. the main argument forwarded is that guanxi governed business networks are but one strategy among several other business strategies employed, when engaging in inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic business transactions. furthermore, a discussion of the relationship between local chinese and non-chinese business environment as well as of the inter-ethnic environment in general constitutes a framework for how to position the chinese in an overall societal context. of special interest in this connection are questions of inter-ethnic integration versus assimilation together with questions of descent and ethnic classification in the relation to the surrounding non-chinese community1. introduction in any discussion of ethnic chinese business practices in southeast asia, two interrelated themes immediately crop up. they are the cohesive nature of the ethnic chinese diaspora and the pervasive practice of guanxi in chinese business transactions.2 in relation to the former, mckeown writes that it can be conceived of as constituting an international router for ethnic chinese (business) networks (mckeown 2001), while kotkin states that the chinese diaspora is characterized by an enduring sense of group identification and global linkages (kotkin 1992; bolt 2000). callahan goes a step further, arguing that the comparative advantage of the chinese diaspora is its confucian reading of capitalism, which results in low transaction costs when conducting intra-ethnic business in china and southeast asia, especially in places where the legal system in terms of (trade) rules and regulations is underdeveloped (callahan 2002). according to these authors, the chinese diaspora is highly conducive as an international channel for chinese entrepreneurs as well as for chinese migrants and sojourners. _________________________________________________________________________ 73 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? the inner workings of the chinese diaspora are often defined in terms of transnational as well as national relationships, revolving around language, ethnicity and kinship affiliations within and between different chinese communities. this, it is argued, gives it a comparative advantage over other types of networks due to the perceived common confucian strength of mind. at the core of these networks, luo ( 2000) and yang (1994) maintain, is the so-called guanxi relationship that typifies the basic model of interpersonal relations, including those conducted in a business context (weidenbaum and hughes 1996). not every observer of the chinese diaspora, however, subscribes to these perceptions of business being conducted in the 'chinese way'. for example, gomez and hsiao write that individual ethnic chinese entrepreneurs do not necessarily make business deals on the basis of guanxi relations within a diasporic matrix. they maintain that chinese entrepreneurs have dealings with whoever can provide them with a profit, be they intra-ethnic or inter-ethnic business 'others', thus linking up to the appropriate chinese or non-chinese business communities within or outside their country of residence (gomez and hsin-huang hsiao 2001). furthermore, they are critical of the literature that highlights the importance of the culturally infused dynamics of ethnic chinese entrepreneurs (kotkin 1992; redding 1993; weidenbaum and hughes 1996; hamilton 1999; yeung 1998, 2004). following the critique by gomez and hsiao (2001), yao souchou contests the hypothesis that the institutions, norms and practices of ethnic chinese are the main reason for the growth of their enterprises (yao 2002). ultimately, they all question whether chinese entrepreneurs have depended primarily on business networks based on shared identities to develop their corporate base. they thus distance themselves from the massive literature on the importance of the chinese diaspora, guanxi relationships and their influence on ethnic chinese business practices. following the critical approach outlined above, this article argues and documents that diasporic networking and guanxi relationships in an east indonesian context are not essential for doing business within the ethnic chinese business environment. the main argument propounded here is that guanxi-governed business networks are but one strategy among a number of others employed, when engaging in inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic business transactions. on a more general level, these findings confirm dirlik's proposition that chinese business practices conceived of as being based on guanxi-engineered interpersonal relations constitute an ethnicization of capitalist practices 74 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ and not a specific chinese economy paralleling global capitalism (dirlik 1996). returning to the discussion of the cohesiveness generally attributed to the chinese diaspora, this article subscribes to the idea that a diaspora constitutes a decentred and multileveled ideational network that allows people to move in and out of a given diaspora depending on their current social and political situation.3 an adherence to a given diaspora thus depends on relative social, economic and political contextual givens. an understanding of diaspora in this article thus does not depend on systemic network approaches, but rather on how and under what circumstances de facto socio-political developments may influence an ethnic chinese entrepreneur's relationship to a given diaspora. such an approach demands that we first analyse and distil those social, political and economic forces that have the capacity to initiate change in the societal embeddedness of the ethnic chinese. this is achieved in this article by analysing the interaction between the latter and their community of residence. this article concentrates on the ethnic chinese business community in manado, the provincial capital of north sulawesi, eastern indonesia. as there is no written research material on this topic available for this province, two pieces of fieldwork conducted in march and june 2003 will constitute the empirical background for this study. in order to focus the research, three sectors within the ethnic chinese retail sector (clothing, electronics and it stores that sell computer hardware and software to both public and private customers), were selected for study. the topics discussed with representatives from these three sectors ranged from early migration patterns and family history to business strategies and potential connections to the chinese diaspora. finally, the relationship between the local chinese and non-chinese business environment and the inter-ethnic environment in general provides a matrix to position the ethnic chinese in an overall societal context. of special interest in this connection are questions of inter-ethnic integration versus assimilation, together with questions of descent and ethnic classification in the relation to the surrounding non-chinese community. the article opens with a vivid description of the manadonese chinese in contemporary manado. it then focuses on the societal processes that regulate the relationship between the chinese and the minahasa, the latter being the dominant ethnic group in north sulawesi province.4 the three retail sectors singled out for study are subsequently compared in detail. the article closes with a discussion of whether the role guanxi _________________________________________________________________________ 75 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? relations and diasporic affiliations play in the contemporary manadonese chinese business environment is superseded in importance by questions of integration versus assimilation in regulating inter-ethnic relations. on the chinese community in contemporary manado manadonese chinese do not like to use the term kampung cina, that is, china town, to describe the original centre of the chinese business community in manado. they prefer to use the words 'downtown' or 'centre'. the problem with the word kampung cina is that it establishes a difference between them and the minahasa, a difference that they are keen to play down. as i shall elaborate upon later, every single chinese trader in the retail sector maintains that there is a good relationship between them and the minahasa. another important point to note is a clear division within the chinese community itself along peranakan–totok lines.5 it is an insult to call peranakans totoks, as it indicates they are newcomers and thus not really integrated, not to talk of assimilated, into the indigenous community. finally, the word cina in bahasa indonesia has a derogatory connotation. the correct word to use when approaching a manadonese chinese is 'tionghoa', as it is more neutral. if you use 'cina', then you are referring to mainland chinese or newly arrived immigrants and thus not to a local chinese. in what follows, every effort has been taken to comply with these unwritten semantic rules, with one exception. the exception is that i shall the term kampung cina as an analytical tool, as it is an effective way to distinguish between the different commercial centres that exist within manado. kampung cina lies in the centre of manado, a city of 372,598 population constituting 19 percent of the total population (1,972,738) in north sulawesi province, according to a year 2000 population census. kampung cina is divided into different sectors that specialize in various kinds of wholesale and retail stores. as mentioned above, this survey focuses on the clothing, electronic and it retail sectors.6 those who participated in the survey mainly have their stores within the kampung, particularly those in the clothing sector. a few of the electronic retail stores can be found just outside the kampung where there is more space, while all the it stores are found in greater manado, that is, outside kampung cina. in general, the stores can be divided into two main types. the first is the traditional chinese one, where the store is on the ground floor and the family occupies the first and second floor, thus living among the stock of items for sale. younger people generally run the second 76 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ type of store, which is detached from the private residence. they tend to live outside kampung cina in nuclear families but have their stores within it. besides clothing, electronic and it retail stores, kampung cina accommodates a huge variety of restaurants and food stores together with wholesale stores that specialize in all sorts of iron pipes and metal fittings, different types of wood, rattan baskets and furniture, and various household articles. in addition, there are garages that fix and sell spare parts for many different types of engines (especially motorcycles and cars). sometimes retail and wholesale stores are lumped together into one building, which offers what can be termed 'across-the-board solutions' for private homes, government offices and private businesses. the overall impression of kampung cina, beyond the huge variety of stores, is that of a cacophony of music and a constant flow of people and cars. the narrow streets serve an endless flow of trucks, buses, private cars and horse-drawn carts dragging goods from one end of the kampung to the other and beyond. added to this colourful medley of activities is the noise and smell of poorly maintained cars together with huge piles of garbage consisting of plastic bags and bottles mixed with the sweet smell of rotting fruit and other types of leftovers. when entering, for example, a clothing store, one finds oneself in a narrow but long room housing all sorts of material – clothing for men and women, umbrellas, gloves, etc. generally a member of the family, usually the wife or daughter of the owner, sits close by the entrance or in the back of the store, answering the telephone and taking care of the everyday business transactions. the other children of the owner may also work there, together with some local non-chinese manadonese who serve the customers. in many cases, the owner may also own the store next door or one further down the street. this might be the one that their great-grandparents opened when first arriving in manado during the 1920s or 1930s. the original store is usually run by the parents, while one of their sons might start up a new store in kampung cina or just outside it. if the family has a store in one of the new shopping malls currently being built by wealthy chinese or javanese business people on the new boulevard that runs along manado bay, then it is generally the younger generation who run it. the parents tend to take care of the old store(s) in kampung cina – perhaps for sentimental reasons. in between the clothing stores in kampung cina, there might be a store selling electronic goods. this generally consists of a big room with a family member of the owner sitting close by the door or in the back of the room. as in the case of the clothing store, it is usually the wife or _________________________________________________________________________ 77 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? daughter (seldom the son) of the owner who sits there. the husband, perhaps together with his son(s), might be in jakarta or surabaya buying new stock for the store or looking for business opportunities to establish a new store in other parts of kampung cina, in manado proper or down at the boulevard along manado bay. the store will contain dozens of different types of tv sets, radios and cd players together with video/dvd players, not necessarily the major international brands such as sony, toshiba, aiwa or onkyo, but cheap indonesian, chinese and korean brands that are more affordable for the local population. besides these articles, an array of different types of fans together with dehumidifiers, refrigerators, all sorts of electronic tools for the kitchen and a multitude of household clocks can be found. in this type of outlet too, various family members together with non-chinese manadonese staff help in the day-to-day running of the store. outside on the streets, besides very loud music blaring out from the electronic stores to grab customers' attention, there are many street vendors, the so-called 'five foot retailers' or pedagang kaki lima in bahasa indonesia. these people are mainly muslims and originate from the newly established gorontalo province. from their small stalls they noisily proclaim to passers-by the excellence of the wares they are selling, be it fish, fruit, vegetables, watches, sunglasses, cheap cds, dvds, cassettes, etc. or they try to show the quality of the goods to potential customers by turning on a small tv set or dvd player at high volume. some tensions exist between these vendors and the mainly christian chinese store owners, whose businesses are located just behind the rows of the 'five foot retailers'. the chinese retailers complain firstly that these stalls are luring away their customers; secondly, that they obscure the view to their window displays so that the customers cannot see them from their cars. furthermore, the retailers also complain that they are paying rates, sewage charges, water and electricity bills, while the small stalls, besides blocking the streets, pay for nothing. the chinese retailers have protested about this to the manadonese authorities, and the police have on several occasions tried to chase away the stall owners but they always return. on the other hand, the 'five foot retailers' have turned down an offer from the municipality to have their own mall where they could create their particular marketplace. the main reason for rejecting this offer is, according to the stall owners, that their particular types of stall have always been there and that the whole environment is what makes it attractive to the customers; that their presence is what makes kampung cina a fascinating and lively place. 78 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ this problem is, however, not unique to manado. during a visit to the industrial centre of bitung municipality 45 km east of manado, chinese retailers also complained that the 'five foot retailers' were obscuring the view to their stores and luring away potential customers. as in manado, most of the stall owners originate from gorontalo province, a 12-hour bus ride away. back in manado and kampung cina, the chinese retailers are of course not confined to the kampung. it is mainly the small and medium-size retail and wholesale stores that can be found there. spread throughout manado one finds the better-off chinese who consider kampung cina as too crowded, noisy and polluted. here they have set up their big stores and homes, thus mingling with the local manadonese business community. they sell cars and motorbikes and it is also here that the major chinese-owned wholesale and retail stores such as supermarkets, hotels and mini shopping malls can be found. according to those we spoke to (both chinese and non-chinese), it is the chinese who own most of the wholesale and retail sector in manado. outside kampung cina the small gorontalese-run 'five foot retailers' cannot be found. there is simply not room for them, as this is also where the major and very busy roads are located – it would simply be too dangerous for them to set up their stalls here. the minahasa, the dominant ethnic group in north sulawesi province, and certainly within the minahasa regencies, have concentrated their efforts on getting jobs within the bureaucracy and the political institutions and organizations. some say that they are not good traders and that they have been more or less out-competed by the gorontalese and the chinese. others say that the minahasa are too lazy to take up the challenge, as they were previously spoiled by the fertility of the land and a benevolent dutch colonialism, and thus were not required to work too hard. whatever the reason, it is a fact that the chinese predominate in wholesale, retail, and the major businesses in manado and in the minahasa regencies. the petty trade is more or less monopolized by gorontalese muslims and, of course, by some entrepreneurial manadonese, but the latter are certainly not in the majority. despite these divisions between the ethnic groups, almost all the manadonese chinese said that they felt not only integrated but also quite assimilated into the local minahasa communities. this was owing to cultural factors, together with some degree of intermarriage spanning several generations. i shall return to these points later on in greater detail. at present it suffices to stress the positive and harmonious inter_________________________________________________________________________ 79 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? ethnic relationship that exists between manadonese chinese and local minahasans. as such, it stands in marked contrast to the relationship between ethnic chinese and local muslims in south sulawesi. for example, according to one christian chinese informant who originally came from south sulawesi province but is currently living permanently in north sulawesi, in south sulawesi the chinese only marry amongst themselves, as the muslim environment there is very hostile towards the chinese. every generation of south sulawesi chinese, especially the christian ones, had experienced at least one riot directed against themselves, their families and businesses. this is one of the major reasons why many had moved with their families to north sulawesi. even though they now live in north sulawesi and feel well integrated into the minahasa community, they still prefer to marry amongst themselves for security reasons. this practice, however, is not as strictly enforced as in south sulawesi and elsewhere in indonesia, as a number of manadonese chinese men have married minahasa women. interestingly, only a tiny fraction of manadonese chinese women have married minahasa men, as most of them prefer to marry chinese men. the main reason is that chinese women do not find minahasa men entrepreneurial enough compared to their chinese counterparts. the security that minahasa men otherwise could provide the chinese women is thus not enough to compete with a social status that is based on wealth and intra-ethnic preferences. religious difference and feelings of jealousy towards those who have proved themselves more successful in business have undoubtedly created hostility between the chinese and muslims in south sulawesi. other informants pointed out that the chinese in south sulawesi are quite arrogant, as they perceive the local population as inferior.7 this attitude has infuriated the local muslims to such an extent that they have tended to make the chinese scapegoats for all the bad things that happen in their communities. so in a sense, the negative relationship between chinese and muslims in this part of sulawesi has a duality to it: on the one hand, the two parties loathe each other because of negative stereotyping; yet on the other hand, they need each other at least in the economic sector. religious dimensions of processes of integration and assimilation despite the very positive comments expressed in relation to the manadonese chinese's assimilation into the local minahasa communities, 80 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ it seems as if they constitute a kind of 'window dressing' that covers up a much more complex inter-ethnic relationship. for example, the constant emphasis on the success of inter-ethnic assimilation and preference for inter-ethnic relationships, actually underscores the fact that a boundary still exists between the chinese and the minahasa. even though the chinese and the minahasa constantly declare that they mix very well, there is a tendency for the chinese to cultivate intraethnic relationships. in manado, for instance, there is an architecturally elaborate and expensive church designated to the christian evangelical church in minahasa (gmim). it was paid for by wealthy chinese, who make up about 90 percent of the congregation. one of the reasons for preferring to link up to other chinese is, as indicated above, past negative inter-ethnic experiences that continue to haunt them. i am here referring to those chinese who came to north sulawesi from other places in indonesia, first and foremost jakarta in java, makassar and poso in southern and central sulawesi, and ambon in the moluccas. besides being made scapegoats at times of political and economic difficulty, many of these chinese lost family members in the late 1950s and early 1960s due to politically engineered events.8 consequently, the chinese are rather apprehensive towards outsiders. a similar sense of ambivalence towards all things chinese can be sensed among the minahasa. one of my minahasa respondents, who showed a keen interest in my work on the manadonese chinese, asked me several times during my fieldwork what the chinese were doing, how they regarded the minahasa, and where they stood in terms of local and national politics. these enquiries revealed a subtle barrier between the minahasa and the chinese, which exists just beneath the otherwise harmonious inter-ethnic surface. on the basis of such statements, one may conclude that the chinese in north sulawesi province are more integrated than assimilated. one of the areas in which this subtle barrier surfaced was in relation to religious affiliations among the chinese. but before we examine this further, it is important to mention that north sulawesi province has always been a christian stronghold. since the establishment of the province in 1964, christians and muslims have constituted the two main religious communities of the region. other religions, including buddhism, have constituted only a tiny minority. the equilibrium between christianity and islam became tilted in january 2001, when the muslim-dominated regency of gorontalo became a new province. today, north sulawesi province consists of 69 percent christians and 29 percent muslims, with the remaining 2 percent comprising buddhists, _________________________________________________________________________ 81 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? hindus and other religious denominations.9 the current christian predominance is one of the reasons why so many chinese have more or less voluntarily moved to north sulawesi, especially after the fall of suharto in may 1998. about 60 percent of the chinese in north sulawesi are nominal christians, while the rest are more or less devoted to buddhism. in the north sulawesi chinese community, a variety of christian denominations and buddhist practices co-exist peacefully. many elderly chinese are buddhists whereas the younger generation tends to be christian, belonging to denominations such as gmim, bethel and pentecostal, to mention the main ones. in addition, there is a small congregation of catholics. in relation to buddhism, there is a 200-year old taoist temple at the centre of kampung cina which most of the buddhists in this part of manado attend. when i visited the temple in march 2003, an official told me that in order to be recognized by the authorities during the new order, they had to put effigies of the three main philosophies of buddhism (theravada, mahayana and tantrayana) in the temple, even though the temple is specifically dedicated to a taoist interpretation of buddhism. these three philosophies are generally referred to as the 'three brothers' or tri dharma, namely buddhism, taoism and confucianism. had this not been done, the temple would not have been allowed to function during the new order. this particular taoist temple is dedicated to t'ien hou, the southeastern chinese goddess of the sea and heaven. the relocated taoist temple on the outskirts of manado is also dedicated to t'ien hou and is thus also directed towards the sea.10 according to a senior figure at the old temple, about 90 percent of the buddhists in north sulawesi are taoist. the early chinese traders and settlers brought taoism with them from fujian province in mainland china more than 200 years ago. this early contact between the pre-colonial cultures in the mountainous interior of the minahasa regencies and chinese traders is evidenced by pieces of chinese porcelain discovered in the old burial tombs, the socalled warugas, found throughout the minahasa regencies.11 according to the temple official, after the fall of suharto in may 1998, there emerged some new followers of taoism, but relatively few in number. when viewed over time, the taoists comprise quite a stable group. however since 1998, there has been an upsurge in interest in celebrating buddhist ceremonies, particularly on the part of the younger generation. these young people are not buddhist, but christian or muslim, yet they enjoy participating in some of the major 82 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ taoist ceremonies. for example, during cap go meh, which means 'night of the 15th' in hokkian (it is held on the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar calendar), many young christian and muslim men take part in a big parade.12 during this festival, effigies of the gods, including t'ien hou, are carried around the streets of central manado. it would be very wrong to deduce from this that these young people are converting to taoism. they maintain their own religion despite participating in another religion's practices. the main motive behind this inter-religious activity can be seen as a reflection of the newly won freedom to worship after suharto was toppled. during the new order it was forbidden to celebrate cap go meh in public; chinese celebrations of this kind were restricted to the private sphere. in general, taoism in manado and throughout the minahasa regencies in the northern and central parts of north sulawesi province is on a good footing with both muslims and the dominant christian denominations in the region. this is not surprising, as buddhism together with hinduism only represents about 2 percent of the religions practised in north sulawesi. as such, it does not in any way threaten the dominant position of christianity. one factor that might be responsible for keeping down the number of buddhists is the low profile that buddhists maintain in social and political matters. this can also be interpreted as a non-engagement approach towards worldly matters, so as not to offend the more vociferous christian denominations. as a consequence, taoism and buddhism in general pursue a rather subdued life compared to christianity among the chinese. given the high profile of christianity among both ethnic chinese and minahasa, it seems to function as a linkage mechanism between the two ethnic groups, thus facilitating an assimilation process. taoism, on the other hand, tends to isolate its adherents from the minahasa, exoticizing the former and thereby rendering them as different. taoists thus constitute an exclusive group that indirectly works against ethnic assimilation, preferring integration as a way of preserving its cultural and religious uniqueness. the taoist way of life has given rise to an ambiguity in terms of cultural and political loyalty, which makes the christian minahasa unsure where to position this ethnic group in their social, political and economic universe. the combination of these factors means that chinese buddhists in north sulawesi province should more accurately be thought of as integrated rather than assimilated. _________________________________________________________________________ 83 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? early chinese migration and family history an analysis of the social and cultural background of the manadonese chinese will help to establish their place of origin. the majority of the great-grandparents of those who participated in this survey arrived in manado in the 1930s. manado is a city with a history stretching back to the early period of dutch colonization in 1677.13 here they found a thriving chinese community consisting of 4,770 individuals out of a total chinese population in the minahasa region of 7,028. manado had at that time a population of 28,077 (959 europeans; 4,770 chinese/asians; and 22,348 indonesians).14 a minority of the migrants came to this region because they already had family relations there or knew somebody who could provide them with a job upon arrival. the majority, however, came to north sulawesi and minahasa in particular because they had heard that there were good opportunities for doing business there. the first major chinese settlements were recorded back in the 1850s. they were located north of a hill, which was east of the dutch-built fort amsterdam, at that time the centre of manado. the european wards were north and south of the fort while the alfurs, as the minahasa people were called at that time, were living east and south of the european and chinese wards (nas 1995: 60-61). manado was then a bustling city with a mixed ethnic business community. it had 7 european, 5 japanese, 16 arab, 1 indian and 43 chinese stores in addition to an ice factory, 3 tailors, 7 shoemakers and 10 carpenters. unfortunately, the ethnic affiliations of the latter stores are not detailed in the annals.15 this was the manado that early migrants from our survey encountered when first arriving there in the 1930s. it was also around that time that manado saw the largest influx of chinese migrants. however, this almost came to a standstill when the second world war engulfed the area in early 1942. the next major influxes of chinese migrants did not take place until after the fall of suharto in may 1998. as a consequence of the harassment of the chinese population in many of the major indonesian cities during this period, a number of ethnic chinese went to manado and north sulawesi, as the social and political situation there was much more stable and welcoming compared to many other parts of indonesia. the second and latest influx of ethnic chinese to manado and north sulawesi came after riots broke out in 1999 in the southern and northern parts of maluku, together with the riots in central and southern sulawesi respectively. the refugees came with their families, businesses and capital and began to mix with 84 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ the local chinese community. many of these chinese latecomers to north sulawesi stayed on after the situation in their home regions had improved in terms of social and political stability. now they regard north sulawesi as their home because, according to our informants, this region is one of the safest areas in volatile indonesia. the migration and family history of the pre-1998 manadonese chinese in the clothing, electronics and it retail sectors, reveals that 81 percent of the original chinese migrants came directly from fujian or guangdong province in southeast china to manado, bypassing the political and economic centre of jakarta.16 the remaining 19 percent came from either fujian or guangdong province to manado via penang, jakarta and makassar. this indicates the continued use of an already established eastern trade route in southeast asia, along which migrants could travel en route to the philippines or further down towards the eastern parts of today's indonesia. it was the growing importance of the melaka mercantilist sultanates in the sixteenth century and their vast maritime trade networks in southeast asia which reduced the importance of the eastern trade and migration routes from china to indonesia.17 as generally suggested, the majority of chinese traders and migrants used the western routes. one possible route could have been along the eastern coast of vietnam and malaysia, continuing down via johore towards java and from there through the java sea towards makassar or through the flores and banda sea towards tidore or ternate before finally ending up in north sulawesi and manado, if that were the final destination. however, since the thirteenth century there existed trade routes that took as their main point of departure quanzhou in fujian province, from there straight down along the western cost of what is now the philippines, continuing towards ternate, tidore and ambon, and passing through the passage between sangihe and talaud islands in today's north sulawesi. these trade routes continued to be popular until the sixteenth century, when they were more or less abandoned due to shifting political and economic tides in the southeast asian region.18 nonetheless, small communities of chinese merchants established themselves along these old trade routes, thus providing later migrants with points of intersection on their journey towards either sangihe island or manado in north sulawesi. the foundation for a chinese diaspora in this part of southeast asia was thus laid in the thirteenth century, which migrants in the early twentieth century could capitalize on during their travels. _________________________________________________________________________ 85 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? it is perhaps important to note that not all migrants went directly to manado. some preferred to try out other areas that they had heard about before leaving china for north sulawesi. for example, one informant's great-grandfather went to amurang, a town of 13,687 individuals in the 1920s, about 40 km southwest of manado. he initially stopped there, as it was one of the major trading towns for copra production. he spent his first years there working as a shop assistant while learning bahasa indonesia. after a few years he moved on as a truck driver and finally ended up as a commodity trader. he then moved to tamako in sangihe island, where he opened a number of small wholesale stores between tamako and manado. (sangihe was and still is known for spices such as nutmeg and cloves, together with copra, either as crude coconut oil or as a product in itself.) in between he went to manado and surabaya in java to promote his business. today his family lives in manado where they concentrate on pharmaceutical products and licensed production and distribution of soft drinks. another example concerns a great-grandfather who went to southern minahasa where he sat up a wholesale store and copra business close to a prominent goldmine. here he married a chinese woman. he made business trips to manado but always returned to the southern part of minahasa. the informant's grandfather was born and raised there. in 1950 he and his family moved to manado, as life there was easier and more conducive for his particular line of business, namely garments. the couple's daughter married a chinese man and together they had five children; two boys and three girls. today one of their sons has moved to sangihe where he runs a clothing store. he is married to a chinese woman. the rest of the family – that is, the grandfather, his son and wife together with their daughter and son-in-law and their second son and daughter-in-law together with the three unmarried daughters – live together in one house above their old clothing shop in kampung cina. the picture that emerges is that the chinese migrants did not all end up in manado but that they spread out throughout the minahasa region. according to a survey conducted in the early 1920s, besides the 4,770 chinese in manado, the chinese population included 9 in bantik, 602 in tonsea, 616 in tondano and 1,031 in amurang in the minahasa region. moreover, in the neighbouring bola'ang-mongondow region, about 70 km west of manado, 352 chinese had settled down.19 the chinese had thus fanned out all over the two major regions in north sulawesi. it is important to note that the vast majority of the chinese settled down in towns and cities, partly as a result of dutch colonial policies and partly 86 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ because the minahasa jealously guarded their land from being taken over by non-minahasa people. apart from settlers from fujian and guangdong provinces, there is no evidence of immigrants arriving in manado from other provinces in south-eastern china, or elsewhere in china for that matter. the make-up of the immigrants is reflected in the chinese languages spoken in manado in the present day. hokkien speakers dominate (50 percent), followed by cantonese (19 percent) and hakka (7 percent). interestingly, the mainland chinese lingua franca, mandarin, comes in second (23 percent) among the chinese languages spoken there. i shall elaborate on that in a moment. there were no teochius or hainanese speakers in manado during the period under investigation (march and june 2003). the percentage of cantonese speakers is actually higher than indicated above, as one of my respondents told me that both her father and her husband's father came from guangdong province. originally they spoke cantonese but then changed to hokkien, as it was the language of both her mother and mother-in-law. as the majority of chinese in manado spoke hokkien, it forced many chinese to learn that language, as this example has shown. otherwise, when working in their stores or interacting with the minahasa, bahasa indonesia was and is the means of communication, which almost all the chinese informants could speak. it was only the very old chinese who spoke little or no bahasa indonesia, the remaining chinese had no problems with that language. there is a generation gap between chinese and non-chinese speakers within the manadonese chinese community. it is typically the elder generation who still speak one or two chinese languages, whereas the younger generations speak only a little or none at all. their main means of communication within the family is bahasa indonesia. however, a change seems to have occurred since the time suharto left the political scene. courses in mandarin (not hokkien, cantonese or hakka) are gradually becoming more popular among the younger generation, which is why the percentage of mandarin speakers is so high in manado. according to those interviewed, this is not only due to a re-sinification process but also because many young people see mandarin as an upand-coming business language in southeast asia alongside english. taking a course in mandarin is thus part of a strategy to gain a foothold in the lucrative chinese market once it begins to make its presence more strongly felt in the southern part of the southeast asian business community – and manado is aiming at becoming an important part of that community (jacobsen 2004b). _________________________________________________________________________ 87 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? maintaining a positive relationship between the chinese and the minahasa in manado and in north sulawesi is generally considered to be very important. in contrast to many other parts of indonesia, 75 percent of the interviewed chinese said that they had good or very good relations with the minahasa. the remaining 25 percent were neutral towards the minahasa, meaning that they thought they were all right but did not mix that much with them. none had negative experiences with the minahasa. one of the reasons why the chinese are on such good terms with the minahasa is related to perceptions of culture. quite a few informants mentioned that the minahasa were more straightforward in terms of social interaction compared to, for example, the javanese on java. having such a positive relationship would be almost impossible in, say, java or south sulawesi, because of the stratified social history which still lingers on today. in pre-colonial minahasa the alfurs lived in small, non-stratified communities where politically important positions could not be handed down to the next generation. the main reason for this was that leadership was kept and maintained on the basis of personal achievements and not on social status. furthermore, the social and political landscape was in a continuous state of flux, as local communities related to one another in terms of either alliances or war (schouten 1998). because of such culturally defined preconditions, it was easier to mix with the minahasa, despite the huge cultural differences that existed between the chinese and minahasa. another factor promoting good relations with the minahasa is christianity. as mentioned earlier, christianity bridges and thus facilitates social interaction between the majority of the chinese and the minahasa. a contrast was generally made towards the javanese, as by far the largest majority of them are muslims, thus making communication between the two ethnic groups difficult. an absolute majority of ethnic chinese in indonesia are christians, which is also true of the chinese from north sulawesi. these cultural and religious differences need to be seen too in the context of how the chinese perceive themselves in terms of descent and ethnic classification. beginning with perceptions of local descent, there is a marked difference between the three retail sectors investigated. seventy-five percent of the respondents from the clothing sector stress that they are related to the local minahasa in terms of inter-marriage, which results in an overwhelming classification of them as being peranakan. this observation contrasts quite sharply with the statements of those we interviewed in the electronics sector. here 83 percent stress their 88 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ 'pure' chinese descent, meaning that they do not inter-marry with the minahasa but prefer to marry with other manadonese chinese families. interestingly, even though they stress this 'pure' chineseness, they nonetheless classify themselves as peranakan even though, according to the nominal classification, they should classify themselves as totok, as they practise what can be called ethnic endogamy, thereby preserving a perceived chineseness. this sounds like a contradiction in terms, but when one looks more deeply into the values that lie behind the two terms peranakan and totok in this particular context, then it is quite logical. the term peranakan implies long-term settlement in the local environment and thus a higher degree of assimilation than the term totok implies. actually, calling a manadonese peranakan a totok is almost an insult, as it implies that he or she is a newcomer who does not want to become assimilated, only integrated into a local community. so even though informants from the clothing sector stress inter-ethnic descent and informants from the electronics sector stresses their 'pure' chinese descent as the background for their good relationship with the minahasa, both claim that they are peranakan, thus indicating a high degree of social assimilation. mixed or 'pure' descent and being peranakan thus do not exclude each other, as all three categories refer to the same point of intersection with the minahasa, namely a long-term settlement and societal involvement in the indigenous minahasa community. the informants from the it sector show a similar pattern. here there are almost an equal number of chinese of 'mixed' and 'pure' descent but all stress that they are peranakan. as the it sector was established around 1995 in manado, it is the young generation of the long established manadonese chinese families who have taken up this business. therefore we do not find any totok in this sector. the it sector thus constitutes an outlet for those of the younger generation of manadonese chinese who wish to break ranks with the older generations in terms of trade, but who nevertheless still prefer to live and work relatively close to their families and place of origin. doing business in contemporary manado we have so far established that a majority of the manadonese chinese families originated from either fujian or guangdong province in south-eastern china, that a majority came directly to north sulawesi thus bypassing jakarta, the political and economic centre of the nation, _________________________________________________________________________ 89 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? and that they feel themselves highly assimilated into the minahasa community. this prompts the question of how these circumstances influence the way in which the chinese do business in manado. do they do it on the basis of guanxi relationships, as maintained in the literature on chinese business practices mentioned in the beginning of this paper, and do the manadonese chinese entrepreneurs draw on the chinese diaspora if they want to expand their business ventures beyond the provincial and national borders? in order to address these questions, let us return to the survey that was carried out among the manadonese chinese entrepreneurs in march and june 2003. again, the organization of the retail sector follows the previous one used in this article, namely the clothing, electronics and it retail sectors. before going into detail, however, let us take a look at how the local non-chinese business community perceive the chinese entrepreneurs. chinese entrepreneurs and the local business environment: local perspectives on chinese business people during an interview with one of the three executive chiefs from kawasan pengembangan ekonomi terpadu (kapet), or in english 'the integrated economic development zone: manado-bitung', 20 i enquired about the involvement of chinese entrepreneurs in this organization and how they fitted into the overall business environment in north sulawesi. the chief executive officer for kapet was a chinese himself, and my informant, a 'pure' minahasa, claimed that the chinese were very well integrated into the minahasa community and as such did not constitute a specific minority group there. furthermore, the way in which the chinese conducted their business in this province differed markedly from other parts of indonesia. there they were very chinese in terms of business strategies, that is, they mainly worked along guanxi lines, and when conducting their business they were aggressive, and generally did not trust other people, chinese and non-chinese alike. the chinese in north sulawesi province, on the other hand, were much more integrated into the local business community and were regarded by local business people as competent traders and trusted partners. furthermore, some chinese had married local women, were mostly peranakan and christian, while a few were buddhists. as such the chinese shared many of the same values as the minahasa and thus did not confine themselves to more or less closed communities like china towns, as in many other parts 90 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ of indonesia. the latter remark is interesting as this local manadonese businessman did not conceive of kampung cina as a china town. like the chinese, he thought of it as just one of many other business centres that make up manado. this positive attitude towards the chinese entrepreneurs also permeated an interview with a representative from the north sulawesi chamber of commerce and industry. like most other informants, he said that the chinese in north sulawesi province were very well integrated into the minahasa communities. they did not set themselves apart as a distinct group, nor were they perceived in those terms by others, for example, the minahasa. they had become assimilated into the local communities through marrying local women. for example, the mayor of bitung, the industrial centre of north sulawesi province, was chinese, the chief executive officer of kapet was also chinese, and several members of the chambers of commerce were chinese. this is very different, he said, from south sulawesi province, where the chamber of commerce is exclusively made up of local muslims. the chinese are excluded from the chamber and were thus forced to set up their own chamber of commerce. he thought that this disparity was due to differences in religion and cultural history. in order to further improve and facilitate the relationship between the chinese business entrepreneurs and the local non-chinese business community, a new organization has been set up in the form of the indonesia china business council (icbc). it was established on 29 april 2003 and officially opened by the chinese ambassador to indonesia. there are 108 members of icbc in manado; 70 percent of them are young chinese entrepreneurs and the rest are manadonese businessmen. the icbc in north sulawesi constitutes part of a nationwide umbrella organization that covers 12 icbcs, or departments as they are called, spread throughout indonesia: sulawesi has three (north, central and south sulawesi); on java icbcs can be found in the eastern, central and western parts; and on the island of sumatra there is one icbc in medan. so far there is one in mainland china, namely in guangzhou in guangdong province. icbc does not compete with either kapet or the north sulawesi chamber of commerce and industry as such. it was actually the latter that prompted the chinese business community to set up a branch of icbc, as there was no umbrella association or organization for the wholesale or retail sector in the province. icbc has taken up this task and this has created a link between the chinese and minahasa business communities. _________________________________________________________________________ 91 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? the chairman of the north sulawesi icbc (who runs a motorcycle and car dealership), the vice-chairman (who is in cosmetics and tourism), and the secretary (who owns a fish cannery in gorontalo province), all come from fujian province and speak hokkien and mandarin. they said that many chinese business people like the chairman had come from south sulawesi and jakarta during the late 1990s because of civil unrest there. compared to where they came from, they were all quite happy to stay in minahasa, as they felt safe and could conduct their business in peace. only a very few went back to south sulawesi and jakarta after the riots stopped in may and june 1998. it is an interesting twist of history that some of the chinese business people that came from jakarta actually originated in manado and north sulawesi province. they had just expanded their businesses to jakarta but have now returned together with their businesses. all of them talked about north sulawesi as if the province only consisted of minahasa people; this was also the case with many non-chinese. this tells us something about how dominant the minahasa, conceived of as an ethnic group, are in north sulawesi province. the other ethnic groups in the province have in this connection rhetorically been left out of the social composition of the province.21 when comparing the views from kapet and the north sulawesi chamber of commerce and industry, who represent the two major business facilitators in the province, we find a convergence of statements from both the chinese and the minahasa business communities. it is this view that underlies the notion of successful assimilation and cohabitation. there is, however, as shown in the previous discussion of religious affiliation among the two ethnic groups, a subtle degree of difference, which manifests itself when going beyond the rhetoric of assimilation. before we discuss this issue, let us turn our attention towards some other features within the chinese business community that will deepen our understanding of how that community is constituted, especially in relation to business strategies. on the clothing, electronics and it retail sector: common trends and developments most of today's manadonese chinese retail businesses within the clothing and electronics sectors began as family-owned stores, in the wholesale sector in particular. here they sold rice, clove, copra, spices and other types of local foodstuffs together with household articles and building materials of all kinds. when a new generation took over the 92 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ stores in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, most of them specialized in the retail sector as a way of becoming more competitive in an increasingly complex business environment. despite these changes of business type, it is still mainly family-run businesses that dominate the clothing and electronics sectors. this means that the majority of members of the owning family are actively engaged in promoting, selling, buying and organizing everyday activities in their respective stores. the it sector, a newcomer in the retail sector, originated from a desire on the part of the younger generation to try something different to the traditional products traded by their parents. these stores are less than a decade old and occupy their own niche in commercial manado, where they mainly sell complete computer solutions to government offices and private businesses. some of the minor it stores concentrate on sales to private individuals and offer to repair and upgrade second-hand computer equipment. today there are about 20 it stores and companies in manado and these have organized themselves in a loosely structured network. this provides a vehicle not only for coordinating new business initiatives, but also for exchanging information about anyone who does not follow fair business practices. today most families, especially in the clothing and electronics sectors, have more than one store, on average two or three. some of them have broken out of the confinements of manado and branched out to other areas in north sulawesi, for example, to the other main municipalities in the province, bitung and tomohon, or even further afield, for example, to sangihe island north of mainland north sulawesi. in relation to the latter, the main reason for choosing this rather remote island was that some of the early chinese immigrants from fujian province passed through that island in the early 1930s. some of those migrants stayed on, thus providing today's manadonese chinese with relatives there. it is especially within the clothing sector that we find these familial connections. when discussing business strategies and practices, most informants maintained that they did not depend on kinship-affiliated trade relations or guanxi practices but chose suppliers who could provide them with the best price, whether they were chinese or non-chinese middlemen, for example, indian or indonesian traders. the most important thing for the chinese informants was what offers there were and whether these fitted into their business profiles. on the basis of such statements, it appears that ethnic affiliation was not the mainstay for doing business in manado in mid 2003. of course, if the chinese informants had family relations _________________________________________________________________________ 93 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? that were in the same line of business as they were, they would utilize these contacts, but not at any cost. the bottom line in any transaction was the profit margin. as the exception to the rule there are, however, a few chinese store owners, especially within the clothing and electronics sectors, who prefer to do business exclusively along guanxi lines and buy new goods for their stores exclusively through chinese middlemen, but they constitute a tiny minority within the manadonese chinese business community. interestingly, in these cases all family members are buddhist and they regard themselves as being 'pure' chinese, that is, there are no mixed marriages within these families. they are also the ones who do not mix that much with the minahasa except when doing business, that is, across the counter so to speak. otherwise they prefer to confine their social relations to other manadonese chinese families. in relation to the clothing sector, most of the shops do not make clothes themselves but direct their customers to specific tailors, who can be found all over manado and not just within kampung cina. also in this connection guanxi relations do not dominate business practices. the representatives from the chinese clothing stores i interviewed directed their customers not only to chinese tailors but also to non-chinese ones, that is, manadonese or indian – the choice depending on either family or business relations. it is therefore safe to say that guanxi trading relations constitute but one of several business strategies employed by the manadonese chinese entrepreneurs in the clothing sector. when buying new items for their shops, many traders from all three retail sectors went to jakarta or surabaya on java to attend trade fairs and buy, where possible, directly from the factories. one representative from the it sector said that there was a division between jakarta and surabaya in terms of serving the various indonesian customers. jakarta concentrated on those from western indonesia whereas surabaya concentrated on customers from the eastern parts. if a retailer did not have the opportunity to go to either jakarta or surabaya, there was always the option of buying new items through trade agents in manado. this is particularly true for the electronics sector. at least one of the stores in manado is an agent for sony. they sell sony products to many of the other electronics stores in kampung cina. a few of the store owners in the survey, particularly in the clothing and electronic sectors, went abroad, in particular to guangzhou in guangdong province, to attend the big trade fairs. only a tiny percentage of the informants went to guangdong or fujian province in order to initiate new business contacts. it is mainly the big retail stores that are able to do that; the other stores 94 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ in this survey are too small to afford to practise this strategy. however, there are plenty of other avenues for expanding one's business locally, as demonstrated by the new shopping malls along manado boulevard. an interesting thing in this connection is that when manadonese chinese visit either guangdong or fujian provinces, hardly any of them visit what family they might have left there. many maintained that they had lost contact with their original families, which they did not consider as a great personal loss. as a consequence, they attend the trade fairs strictly for business; alternatively they may visit the province of origin or other parts of china as tourists with sightseeing as the prime aim of the trip. despite all the talk of a successful inter-ethnic assimilation process, the manadonese chinese business community is generally inward oriented, that is, they do not enter into inter-ethnic business ventures. this is evidenced by the fact that none of the store owners interviewed had any plans to involve minahasa business people in their future business ventures. they often expressed a lack of conviction in the capabilities of the minahasa. another reason could be that in general the minahasa prefer to take up positions within the political and administrative establishment. given this preference, a conflict of interest for such inter-ethnic joint ventures could arise. furthermore, none of the store owners had any relations with the provincial authorities, especially the provincial planning board, the north sulawesi chamber of commerce and industry or kapet, even though the latter two organizations are the major business facilitators in the province. this might, however, have something to do with the type and scale of businesses under investigation here, as there are chinese business people among the boards of directors in both organizations. all of the manadonese chinese store owners (except a few within the it retail sector) who participated in this survey maintained that they had no need for these organizations and that they preferred to work on their own initiative and according to their own business plans. beyond that, the chinese business community provides them with all the business and financial infrastructure they need. the exception consists of a few store owners within the it retail sector, as they need a recommendation from the north sulawesi chamber of commerce and industry to obtain contracts for selling turn-key computer solutions to various government offices. this was the only contact they had with the official business establishment. _________________________________________________________________________ 95 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? kongsi-based business practices kongsi business organizations provide a good example of the selffinancing aspect of the manadonese chinese business community. they also highlight the introverted nature of that community, which, according to informants, is quite a common phenomenon within the manadonese chinese business environment. for a start, the word kongsi means 'to share' and in contemporary business terminology it usually refers to family members pooling money in order to establish a familycontrolled business. the profit generated by a kongsi business is divided annually or sometimes monthly between those family members who originally contributed to the establishment of it. the definition of the term kongsi in relation to both pooling resources and sharing (revenues) hints at an origin beyond the business context. this puts it in the same category as the term guanxi, which also has its origin outside a business context in a modern sense of that word.22 for example, barbara ward wrote in 1954 that: the kongsi system had its roots in the village organisation of china. those who see it as something apart, without recognising its connection with the basic chinese social structure and with the historical and geographical environment in which it developed, tend to fall into one or other of two errors. either they see the kongsi as a secret society, conspiring to thwart all regular civil government, in which case they condemn it; or they see it as a prototype of modern republican democracy, in which case they eulogise it. both views are misconceived. as de groot was at such pains to prove, the kongsi system was naturally developed out of the experience of chinese immigrants, coming in compact clan and village groups to a strange land in which they had to fend in all matters completely for themselves (ward 1954: 360). bien chiang warns, however, that references to the egalitarian and democratic spirit of kongsi organizations are embedded in an early developmental stage of that practice; he stresses that this quality was not feasible in its later stages of development (bien chiang 2003).the difficulty in maintaining an authentic, ethnically affiliated group after migrating from the father/motherland and arriving in a foreign cultural and political economic environment forced people over time to rely on more voluntary types of kongsi organizations, thus altering the internal dynamics of kongsi altogether (bien chiang 2003: 5). bien substantiates his argument by citing carl trocki: the kongsi changed shape as it came to terms with european capitalism in the nineteenth century, with the chinese adopting some european business 96 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ practices; thus the kongsi gained a degree of legal status while at the same time maintaining some of their original characteristics (trocki 1997) the chinese retail businesses in present-day manado that claim to be based on kongsi principles fall into the latter definition, as outlined by trocki. several different types and sizes of chinese companies in manado have started in this way, as the individual founder of the business tends to lack sufficient capital to start up on his own. as one informant explained: 'if i want to start a business but don't have an office and don't have enough money to rent one, i ask my uncle to borrow a room in one of his buildings. instead of paying him a rent i give him a share in the profit, which will be split annually.'23 he continued by saying that these kongsi-based businesses usually do not last long because as the business grows, some of the people who originally contributed to it financially or otherwise might suddenly want to take over the company. if this is not possible, they may threaten to pull their money out of the business, thus forcing it to collapse. in this context, kongsi practices can lead to serious conflicts within the company and, ultimately, within the family. from an anthropological and sociological point of view, because of the socially sensitive nature of this type of business venture, kongsi is best practised between either very good friends or close relatives. as such, kongsi-based businesses are problematic compared to other types of businesses that are based on more general capitalist practices. furthermore, if kongsi businesses are also based on guanxi relations in an attempt to facilitate common business interests, this can increase the potential for conflict between the founders of the business; for example, due to different perceptions of what the right business strategy should be. if such tensions cannot be contained or resolved among the shareholders, then all sorts of problems can arise, as the legal basis for this type of business venture is not as well developed as in ordinary business practices. this is not to say that kongsi practices do not fit general capitalist modes of doing business, however, they do entail higher risks on both a business and family level. finally, a major new development has to be taken into account, whether the discussion focuses on kongsi or guanxi modes of doing business within the manadonese chinese business community, or on inter-ethnic assimilation processes and how these affect the way the chinese do business in north sulawesi. i am here referring to the introduction on 1 january 2001 of the national programme of economic decentralization and regional autonomy. i have discussed elsewhere the implementation of this decentralization programme in another _________________________________________________________________________ 97 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? context (jacobsen 2004a). here i shall only mention in passing that all the informants from the three retail sectors maintained that this new decentralization scheme had made things more complicated in terms of doing business in the province. during the suharto era there were at least some rules and regulations that could be exploited or manipulated to their advantage, but this is no longer the case. now it is not just the various agencies within the central government that need to be approached but also the provincial, regional and/or municipality and their bureaucracies. the informants' main concern focused on new tax regulations, which have become very complicated and costly for many businesses. several chinese informants complained about double taxation as the provincial government, the regency, and the municipality all demand taxes from them. as such they would be in favour of the abolition of the decentralization scheme as it has become an impediment for most types of businesses, small and big alike. it is still too early to assess what kinds of consequences these new constraints will have, especially on manadonese chinese business practices. perhaps they will reinforce the conservative forces within the chinese business community, thus reinvigorating the use of kongsi and guanxi practices in order to circumvent the official bureaucracy. on the other hand, such a reversal of business practices would run counter to a growing globalization of the economy, thereby jeopardizing the expansion and ambitions of many within the chinese business community. what is certain is that a reorganization of the manadonese business environment, regardless of whether it is the chinese or the local manadonese one, is imperative if a vibrant and dynamic economy is to survive in such a changeable and politically volatile landscape. conclusion two principal characteristics emerge when studying the manadonese chinese business community. the first is the much emphasized rhetoric of inter-ethnic assimilation in the manado-minahasa communities – a preferred chinese societal positioning that is underlined by referring to oneself as a peranakan. stressing assimilation instead of integration and categorizing oneself as peranakan is similar to stressing both a diachronic and synchronic sense of belonging. being a peranakan means having roots in the local community, while being assimilated refers to an abolition of ethnic differences. at face value, these two aspects of being manadonese chinese constitute some of the factors behind the unusually 98 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ (in an indonesian context) low level of clashes between chinese and indonesians both before and after the fall of the new order regime. the second thing about the manadonese chinese is that they do not stand out as a distinct ethnic group among the minahasa. on the contrary, even the minahasa stress the almost total assimilation of the chinese into the local communities. to a large extent this can be attributed to the fact that the mechanisms for marking oneself out as a distinct ethnic group do not play a role in the inner functions of the manadonese chinese. for example, guanxi relations and connections to a transnational chinese (diasporic) community do not figure highly in the manadonese chinese business community, even though they can still be identified as a social signifier. as such, this study subscribes to gomez and hsiao's critique of the role of guanxi relations in a market economy. as stressed several times in this article, it is profit that is the touchstone for the manadonese chinese entrepreneurs when conducting business, not ethnic factors or cultural preferences. because of this, i lend support to dirlik's general proposition that guanxi in a contemporary business context is more about a rhetorically dictated ethnification of capitalist practices than a real issue when engaging in actual business. kongsi organizations and guanxi relations are thus only invoked if they can lead towards higher or more stable profit margins. in this sense, continually stressing guanxi as a dominating aspect of chinese business practices, at least in manado, can be criticized as a kind of cultural chauvinism within a specific business discourse. there is one further interesting consequence of the non-dominant position of guanxi in the manadonese chinese business community. because it is so weak, guanxi actually undermines the functioning and effectiveness of kongsi-organized businesses. arguably, guanxi relations can be conceived of as reinforcing the inner workings of kongsi businesses, as both strive towards reinforcing relations between the chinese partners and thus indirectly promoting a distinct chineseness in terms of business practices. however, guanxi constitutes only one of several business strategies when establishing kongsi-based companies. this de-linking of the relationship between guanxi and kongsi thus reinforces processes of assimilation and downplays the development of a distinct ethnic chinese identity. this development is underscored by another factor, namely religious affiliations, as christianity is generally seen as a facilitator between non-buddhist chinese and christian minahasa. and as christian chinese by far outnumber the buddhist chinese, processes of assimilation are further reinforced. _________________________________________________________________________ 99 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? however, if we were to take the processes of assimilation to their ultimate limit, we would arrive at another assumption, namely that distinctive ethnic features would become hybridized to such an extent that the original ethnic identity would disappear. moreover, that when this happens, a new common cultural denominator would arise. such a viewpoint can only be a naïve illusion; assimilation processes are always based on asymmetrical relationships. in the case of the manadonese chinese and the minahasa, the latter forms the dominant party and it is impossible to imagine that they would relinquish one iota of their perceived ethnic supremacy in relation to the chinese. processes of assimilation can thus only be a means to an end and never an end product in itself. they help to formulate the power relations that are manifested in social integration and that more or less peacefully co-exist. ethnic distinctions remain, despite these processes, but become subsumed at a lower level of social practice. they only resurface during ceremonial occasions, which are socially acceptable to the dominant 'other'. this is why the manadonese chinese can celebrate their 'traditional' customs, as the latter are viewed by the dominant 'other' as socially detached, exotic fabrications that do not impinge in any fundamental way on the established societal hierarchy. a somewhat unexpected consequence of these processes is that the manadonese chinese have become dissociated from the chinese diaspora. as we have seen, by far the greatest numbers of informants have detached themselves from their ancestral roots in either fujian or guangdong province. china has been transformed in their worldview into a specific trading centre and/or interesting tourist destination. the 'home' part of the chinese diaspora has been separated from the otherwise classical triangular perception of diasporic manifestations, namely the 'home–host–migrant' construct. this points towards the fact that diasporas are multi-dimensional entities that are contextually defined. even though the manadonese chinese have severed the link to the 'home' part of the chinese diaspora, the latter is still there. the linkages that it represents are still there. for example, coming to either sangihe or manado in the 1920s was more or less determined on the basis of pre-existing links between chinese communities in southern china, the philippines, and the maluku. and the continued use of kongsi-based businesses also presupposes the existence of chinese communities in those places where a daughter company or a new store is being established. in this connection it does not matter whether we are talking about national or transnational aspects of a given diaspora. 100 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ however, when not activated, the diasporic link withdraws into the deep recesses of people's consciousness and remains there until various social and political events reboot it back into existence. it is therefore possible to maintain that a diaspora is a latent structure, that is, not a permanently established, ethnically oriented national or international router for migrant and sojourners. a diaspora only comes back to life locally when certain social, political or economic events exert pressure on a certain ethnic group, for example, the chinese, as has been the case several times in indonesia. this confirms riggs's notion of diasporization and de-diasporization, as people utilize a given diaspora when the need arises (riggs 2001). this is obviously the case for the 'old' and 'new' manadonese chinese. for now, north sulawesi province provides them with a social and political safe haven, and the minahasa accept them in their midst as they constitute an important economic factor in the province. so for the time being, the manadonese chinese are highly localized, that is, assimilated and thus de-linked from the chinese diaspora. how long these harmonious inter-ethnic relationships will last depends on a whole range of things: economic performance, both locally and nationally, religious harmony, and amicable and noncompetitive inter-ethnic relationships, to mention just a few areas of potential conflict. when and why a shift in these relationships might occur, thereby giving rise to a potential re-linking of the manadonese chinese to the chinese diaspora, can only be determined through empirical studies, not theoretical extrapolations. michael jacobsen is associate professor at asia research centre, copenhagen business schooll notes 1 i would like to thank the southeast asia research centre at city university of hong kong for financing the fieldwork on which this article is based. i furthermore thank stephen frost for having made many useful suggestions regarding this paper. a warm thanks goes to my friend and mentor prof. willem waworoentoe for his kind help in providing me with data otherwise inaccessible to me. finally, i would like to thank the two anonymous readers for constructive comments and criticism. needless to say, i am responsible for the different extrapolations and conclusions offered here. 2 guanxi constitutes a form of social exchange between individuals that is founded on sentiments and emotions marked by a belief in mutual reciprocity and loyalty. 3 for an interesting discussion in this connection, see ang (2001) and riggs (2001). 4 for a detailed account of minahasa identity, see jacobsen (2002). 5 peranakan refers to ethnic chinese who have developed a creolized or mestizo culture _______________________________________________________________________ 101 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? with strong indonesian characteristics. these chinese are descendants from early immigrants to indonesia, traders or indentured labourers imported by the dutch during the early colonial period. the most important characteristics of the peranakans are that they, that is, the men, initially married (and to a certain degree still do) local indonesian women due to (originally) a lack of chinese women or (today) because of inter-ethnically strategic reasons, and that they speak bahasa indonesia within the family. proficiency in chinese languages and knowledge of traditional chinese culture have gradually disappeared. today most peranakans do not speak, read or write chinese. the term totok refers to relatively recent chinese immigrants to indonesia. they have lived in indonesia for about one generation, speak one or two chinese languages, and practise traditional chinese customs within the family. both peranakans and totoks in manado represent mainly hokkien and cantonese speaking chinese. hakka is only spoken by a tiny fraction of the manadonese chinese community. representatives of the other two main chinese languages found in indonesia, teochius and hainanese, did not exist in manado at the time of the study. 6 these three types of retail sectors are chosen because they combine new and old business sectors, with clothing being the oldest one and it the newest one. they thus provide us with an insight into the changing circumstances and preconditions for doing business in this part of the retail sector. 7 this sense of superiority is not confined to the south sulawesi chinese. the siauw giap refers to a study carried out in eastern java that revealed that no less that 83 percent of the chinese muslims who had converted to islam had been ostracized by their family. the main reason was that their buddhist or christian chinese relatives thought that by converting to islam they would become poor like the javanese. see the siauw giap (1993). the chinese muslims were thus seen as endangering the societal position of other non-muslim chinese as well as offending the latter's sense of ethnic identity and religious affiliation. 8 during the early 1950s, the indonesian government decided to force the ethnic chinese to make a choice of being citizens in either indonesia or china. this resulted in the sino-indonesian treaty on dual nationality, signed in bandung on 22 april 1955. this decreed that the ethnic chinese had to choose which nationality they preferred during the period january 1960 to january 1962. most of the about one million ethnic chinese with dual nationality registered and out of those, 65 percent opted for indonesian citizenship. in practice, this meant a huge exodus of ethnic chinese, about 400,000 people, from indonesia, heading towards the new chinese nation (see tan 1997). the other major impact on the ethnic chinese community was the killings in 1965 to 1966 when suharto took power. many chinese were lost in that mayhem although their numbers were minute compared to the slaughter of ethnic indonesians deemed communist at that time. 9 for further details, see jacobsen (2004a). 10 the reason it was possible to build a new temple during 1997, where such activities were banned by the new order regime, was that it was a relocation of an old temple and not the building of a new one. 11 for details, see dalrymple (1995). 12 cap go meh celebrations in indonesia have their roots in southern china which was the origin of most chinese descendants. it is believed that on this particular day the gods come out of heaven to grant wishes and spread good luck. lanterns, which are believed to draw the gods from heaven, are lit so as to lure the gods to the celebrations on earth and lead them back afterward. 13 for more details on the early history of manado, see nas (1995). 102 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ 14 the above and following figures have been kindly provided by prof. willem waworoentoe. they are compiled from a report written by v.i. van marle. verslag eener spoorwegverkenning in de afdeeling menado (personal communication, october 2003). in the 1920s the combined population figure of minahasa and bola'ang-mongondow, the two main regions in north sulawesi at that time, was about 292,449. according to a population census in 2000, the regencies of minahasa and bola'angmongondow had a population of 1,198,529 or 61 percent of a total population in north sulawesi province of 1,972,738. 15 from personal communication with prof. willem waworoentoe in october 2003. 16 the migrants from fujian are numerically better represented that the migrants from guangdong. 17 see for example ward (1954); reid (1996); ptak (1992); and thomaz (1996). 18 ptak (1992), for a detailed overview see jacobsen (2005). 19 personal communication, willem waworoentoe, june 2003. 20 kapet was established by the central government in january 1998 and was designed to accelerate economic development in outer indonesia. its main function was and still is to provide a favourable business infrastructure in the region and to act as a facilitator of private business initiatives. thirteen kapet institutions were initially sat up and sulawesi got four of them, one in each of the provinces. the new province, gorontalo, has still not got one, as it was only established in january 2001. the implementation of the kapets was a kind of concession towards outer indonesia in terms of economic development, as in particular eastern indonesia was more in need of such an input than western indonesia. the latter has always had the attention of the central government because of a bigger population concentration and a much larger pool of natural resources. 21 for more details, see jacobsen (2004a). 22 for details on the origin of the term 'guanxi' see yao (2002: 236). 23 personal communication, june 2003. references ang, ien 2001. on not speaking chinese. living between asia and the west. london: routledge, 2001. bien chiang 2003. 'the kongsi's past as a foreign country'. paper presented at a seminar, the institute of anthropology, national tsing hua university, taiwan, 8 october 2003. accessed 11 november 2004 at: <http://www.cckf.org/princetonworkshop/bien%20chiang.doc> bolt, paul j. 2000. china and southeast asia's ethnic chinese: state and diaspora in contemporary asia. westport: praeger. callahan, william a. 2002. diaspora, cosmopolitanism and nationalism: overseas chinese and neo-nationalism in china and thailand, working paper series no. 35. hong kong: city university of hong kong, southeast asia research centre, november. dalrymple, r. elizabeth 1995. the waruga burial tombs of north sulawesi (file number lg51368). leiden: koninklijk instituut von taal-, landen volkerkunde: 267-72. dirlik, arif 1996. 'critical reflections on ''chinese capitalism'' as a paradigm.' in r. ampalavanar brown (ed.), chinese business enterprise, vol. i. london: routledge: 17-38. gomez, edmund t. and hsin-huang hsiao 2001. chinese business in southeast asia: contesting cultural explanations, researching entrepreneurship. richmond: curzon press. _______________________________________________________________________ 103 _____________________________________________doing business the chinese way? hamilton, gary g. 1999. cosmopolitan capitalist. seattle: university of washington press. jacobsen, michael 2002. 'on the question of contemporary identity in minahasa, north sulawesi province, indonesia.' asian anthropology, 1: 31-58. — 2004a. 'on factionalism and secessionism in north sulawesi: delineating emerging fault-lines in contemporary indonesia.' asian journal of political science, june: 16. — 2004b. 'tightening the unitary state. the inner workings of indonesian regional autonomy.' indonesian quarterly 32 (4): 384-404. — 2005. 'islam and processes of minorisation among ethnic chinese in indonesia: oscillating between faith and political economic expediency.' asian ethnicity 6 (2): 71-87. kotkin, joel 1992. tribes: how race, religion, and identity determine success in the new global economy. new york: random house. mckeown, adam 2001. chinese migrant networks and cultural change: peru, chicago, hawaii, 1900–1936. chicago: the university of chicago press. li ji and wright, philip c. 1999 the issue of guanxi: discrepancies, reality and implications. hong kong: hong kong baptist university, school of business, business research centre. luo yadong 2000. guanxi and business. singapore: world scientific. nas, peter 1995. 'miniatures of manado: images of a peripheral settlement.' in reimar schefold (ed.), minahasa past and present. tradition and transition in an outer island region of indonesia, vol. 28. cnws publications: 58-71. ptak, roderich 1992. 'the northern trade route to the spice islands: south china seasulu zone-north moluccas.' archipel 43: 25-49. redding, gordon 1993. the spirit of chinese capitalism. berlin, new york: walter de gruyter. reid, anthony 1996. 'flows and seepages in the long-term chinese interaction with southeast asia.' in anthony reid (ed.), sojourners and settlers. histories of southeast asia and the chinese. st. leonards: allen & unwin: 15-50. riggs, fred w. 2001. glocalization, diaspora and area studies: 1–4. accessed at: <http:// www2.hawaii.edu/~fredr/glocal.htm> schouten, mieke 1998. minahasa metamorphoses: leadership and social mobility in a southeast asian society: minahasa, 1677–1983. leiden: kitlv press. tan mely g. 1997. 'the ethnic chinese in indonesia: issues of identity.' in leo suryadinata (ed.), ethnic chinese as southeast asians. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies: 33-5. the siauw giap 1993. 'islam and chinese assimilation in indonesia and malaysia.' in cheu hock tong (ed.), chinese beliefs and practices in southeast asia. petaling jaya: pelanduk publications: 83. thomaz, luis filipe f.r. 1996. 'melaka and its merchant communities at the turn of the sixteenth century.' in denys lombard and jean aubin (eds), asian merchants and businessmen in the indian ocean and the china sea. oxford: oxford university press: 25-39. trocki, carl a. 1997. 'boundaries and transgression: chinese enterprise in eighteenth and nineteenth-century southeast asia.' in aihwa ong and donald nonini (eds), the cultural politics of modern chinese transnationalism. new york: routledge: 68. ward, barbara 1954. 'a hakka kongsi in borneo.' journal of oriental studies (hong kong) 1 (2): 358-70. weidenbaum, murray l. and hughes, samuel 1996. the bamboo network. how expatriate chinese entrepreneurs are creating a new economic superpower in asia. london: the free press. 104 _____________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 24•2006 michael jacobsen ___________________________________________________________ yang mei-hui 1994. gifts, favours, and banquets: the art of social relationships in china. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. yao, souchou (2002), 'confucian capitalism. discourse, practice and the myth of chinese enterprise'. new york: routledge/curzon. yeung, henry wai-chung 1998. 'under siege? economic globalisation and chinese business in southeast asia.' prosea occasional paper no. 21. june. — 2004. chinese capitalism in a global era. towards hybrid capitalism. london: routledge. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002138 kjeld erik brødsgaard the 16th party congress in china: a note on personnel changes kjeld erik brødsgaard at the recent 16th party congress a comprehensive change of the chinese leadership was carried through. even though there was much speculation as to whether jiang zemin and his generation would retire as scheduled, the change of the old guard took place without much drama when the congress finally convened in beijing. how do we evaluate this development? does it mean that chinese politics have matured in the sense that major decisions now conform to fixed rules and regulations rather than factional politics? has the chinese political process become more transparent? have consensual decision-making processeses finally taken over, relegating patrimonial policies to a phenomenon of the past? since the mid-1990s, clear and detailed regulations for the selection and appointment of leading cadres have been promulgated. is the 16th party congress the final step in this process of procedural normativization? before attempting to answer these questions, this paper will first deal with the personnel changes that took place at the 16th party congress and the central committee (cc) meeting shortly after the conclusion of the conference.1 composition of the politburo standing committee on 15 november, the 16th central committee elected a new general secretary and new members of the politburo and the politburo standing committee (pbsc). the new standing committee of the politburo, the true ruling elite, consists of nine members (see table 1). eight of these have been moved up from the politburo. only hu jintao, the new general secretary, had a seat on the outgoing pbsc. li changchun is at 58 the youngest of the new pbsc members. luo gan has turned 67 and is the oldest. the average age is 62, compared to an average age of 70 for the outgoing members. the new general secretary, hu jintao, is often described by the western news media as an enigmatic person whose beliefs and background are little known in the outside world. however, in china he is a wellknown public figure. hu became a member of the cc in 1982 at the early age of 39. in 1992, only 49 years old, he again attracted attention 139 the 16th party congress in china: a note on personnel changes when he was elected to the pbsc. this promotion was apparently suggested by deng xiaoping who regarded hu jintao as the core of the socalled fourth generation, i.e., the fourth generation that would eventually succeed the third generation with jiang zemin as its core. that hu for ten years has been able to maintain his position as core of the fourth generation of political leaders in china and the undisputed heir apparent is testimony to his political skills and acumen. in fact, hu possesses the three core competences necessary to make it to the very top of the political system in china. first he has solid regional work experience; having worked in gansu province for many years in the 1970s and early 1980s and by acting as party secretary in the provinces of guizhou and tibet. second, hu has worked in the central party and state bureaucracy in beijing. third, he holds a university degree which is a sine qua non for top party and state leaders in china today. in hu's case he graduated from the prestigious tsinghua university. in short, hu possesses the experience and competences that are considered important for leading party cadres in china today. the politburo standing committee was expected to consist of seven members, but the cc decided to enlarge the top party organ to nine members. apparently, when the decision was made to promote wu guanzheng, it was argued that huang ju and jia qinglin also had to follow suit. the three are approximately the same rank and it might have attracted criticism if only one of them had been promoted and the other two had been left on a politburo where their former colleagues were either promoted or retired because they had reached the age limit. to prevent such an awkward situation, the decision was made to move up the 'whole class'. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002140 kjeld erik brødsgaard seven members of the new pbsc are engineers by education and two have university degrees in geology and mining. four of the engineers are from tsinghua university. the four tsinghua graduates are hu jintao, wu bangguo, huang ju and wu guanzheng. this has reinforced tsinghua's reputation as being one of the major sources for elite recruitment in china today. it is noteworthy that four of the new members of the pbsc until recently worked as provincial leaders (see table 1). hu jintao and wu bangguo also share a background as provincial party leaders and zeng qinghong has served as deputy party secretary in shanghai under jiang zemin. it will be interesting to see whether such strong regional experiences in the top policy-making body will result in attempts to focus more on the problems in the inner provinces. it has been argued that five to six of the new members of the pbsc are members of jiang's faction. these are: wu bangguo, who is ranked number two and will probably take over li peng's post as chairman of the npc; jia qinglin who is slated for the position of head of the chinese people’s political consultative conference (cppcc); zeng qinghong who is in line to become vice-president when hu succeeds jiang as president next spring; the likely coming executive vice-premier huang ju; li changchun who will probably also be appointed vice-premier and most likely wu guanzheng, the new head of the disciplinary commission. of the remaining three one is reported to be close to zhu rongji (wen jiabao, the likely future premier) and another to li peng (luo gan who most probably will be in charge of the legal and security portfolio). hu jintao is considered his own man. however, the five allegedly pro-jiang members of the pbsc are perhaps really not that tight a jiang clique. they all have their own agendas. even zeng qinghong, who is considered a close confidant of jiang, might have a (reform) agenda going beyond jiang's ideas.2 jia qinglin and huang ju probably owe jiang zemin the most and from a factional point of view they may be the easiest to manipulate. however, jia is tainted by having served as party secretary in fujian province at the time of the big yuanhua corruption case in xiamen. huang ju reportedly also has some skeletons in his closet from his tenure as head of the party in shanghai. thus both may prove to be liabilities rather than assets for jiang zemin. luo gan is reported to be close to li peng. however, even though he is the oldest among the new pbsc members, he ranks last. in fact, during last-minute horse-trading he was deprived of the much coveted 141 the 16th party congress in china: a note on personnel changes position as head of the central discipline inspection committee. instead the job went to wu guanzheng and luo gan ended up with a reduced legal and security portofolio. this outcome might be seen as a reflection of li peng's weakened position and it will be curious to see whether luo gan will be able to protect his mentor without controlling the central disciplinary commission. wu bangguo's position as number two indicates that he will be appointed head of the npc when li peng retires next march. this was never a given thing as li ruihuan was in line for the job. wu bangguo's track record is not the best. as vice-premier he was tasked with reforming the soes, but has not managed to complete this important role. due to his background as party leader in shanghai 1991-95, wu is widely regarded as a staunch ally of jiang zemin's. however, wu also shares a background and experiences similar to hu's, as they were both at tsinghua at about the same time in the early 1960s. li changchun is at 58 the youngest of the pbsc members. he is from the northeast and was only 38 when he became mayor of shenyang city. in 1992 he was appointed party secretary of henan province. while he was serving in henan, the present aids epidemic in the province broke out. however, li changchun was transferred to guangdong in 1998, just in time to avoid being blamed for the problems of the province, and has been able to keep his career on track. but echoing the experiences of jia qinglin, his past might well have prevented his rise to the top had it not been for jiang zemin's support. at one point wen jiabao's career also seemed to have peaked. this was in 1989 when, as head of the party's central office, he appeared together with zhao ziyang at tiananmen square to tell the students that it was all too late. however, he was able to dissociate himself from zhao ziyang so that the downfall of the former general secretary had no major repercussions for wen jiabao. thus he was appointed vicepremier in 1998 and, under zhu rongji's direction, was assigned to rural work and attempts to reform the ailing bank sector. it is rather surprising that li ruihuan did not manage to retain his politburo seat. li is only 67 years old (the age of luo gan) and has not yet reached the 70-year age limit which operates informally in china. however, jiang wanted him to retire, fearing that he might use his status as the elder statesman in the new politburo to advance his slightly veiled criticism of jiang and the 'three representations'. apparently jiang used the argument that li ruihuan belonged to the outgoing third generation which has to give way to younger forces. copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002142 kjeld erik brødsgaard composition of the new politburo the politburo, the second-highest seat of power, consists of the nine pbsc members plus 15 full pb members and one alternate (see table 2 ) the politburo has been completely reshuffled and the members who were not retired have been promoted. as indicated above, this is probably the main reason for enlarging the pbsc to nine members. all those who had not yet reached retirement age were simply moved up. a third of the below-listed 24 members of the politburo are regional party leaders. in the outgoing politburo only four of the 20 full members were provincial leaders. they all came from eastern coastal provinces such as shanghai, beijing, guangdong and shandong. now shanghai, beijing, tianjin, zhejiang, jiangsu, sichuan, hubei and xinjiang are represented with their party leaders. in addition he guoqiang only recently was transferred from his position as party secretary in chongqing to take up his present assignment as head of the central organization department. the appointment of the xinjiang and hubei party secre143 the 16th party congress in china: a note on personnel changes taries as politburo members is particularly noteworthy. these relatively poor inland provinces are normally not represented in the politburo. in fact, this is the first time in the history of the prc that xinjiang has a full member of the politburo.3 it has been reported that zhang dejiang has been moved to guangdong, replacing li changchun. to replace zhang dejiang xi jinping has been appointed zhejiang party secretary. moreover, zhang gaoli has been moved to shandong, bai keming to hebei, and wang qishan to hainan. these personnel changes mean that guangdong has retained its politburo status, whereas shandong is no longer represented. barring any major reshuffle, this picture represents a clear victory for the localities, especially the inner provinces. wang lequan's promotion to the politburo is a reflection of several important developments. first, xinjiang has experienced a comparatively rapid economic development in recent years and is now one of the more wealthy of the inland provinces. second, xinjiang's increasingly strategic importance in the global war against anti-terrorism probably is an important factor. thus it has been reported that wang lequan might be given more responsibilities in fighting terrorism. third, wang lequan's presence on the politburo might indicate that the new leadership is willing to pay closer attention to the problems in the poorer innner provinces. hu jintao made his career in the inner provinces, in particular gansu, and might be more inclined than jiang and his shanghai group to push for a redistribution of funds and investment to the benefit of these regions. in this he will have the support of wen jiabao, who also worked in gansu in the 1970s and early 1980s. none of the so-called fifth-generation leaders, such as zhao leji (45, governor, qinghai), li keqiang (47, party secretary, henan), xi jinping (49, governor fujian, now zhejiang party secretary) and bo xilai (53, governor, liaoning) made it to the politburo. apparently jiang zemin blocked such appointments, arguing it was too soon for these young regional leaders to move up the hierarchy. also either they all had to be appointed or the top leadership would have had to make a decision on whom to consider the core of this new political generation and on this they could not agree. it should also be noted that the new politburo is weak on security and foreign policy expertise. apparently, wu yi will be given the foreign policy portofolio. however, although she has extensive experiences on trade-related issues from her time as minister of foreign trade and external relations, she is not known as a foreign policy expert on a par copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002144 kjeld erik brødsgaard with outgoing vice-premier qian qichen or foreign minister tang jiaxun. given such a situation, jiang zemin and other elders will continue to have a role to play in foreign policy-making. whether this will entail that jiang will continue to chair some of the important leading small groups such as the national security leading group and the taiwan leading small group remains to be seen. central military commission the central military commission (cmc) elected by the central committee consists of eight members. jiang was re-elected chairman and hu jintao vice-chairman. there are two new vice-chairmen: guo boxiong, former executive deputy chief of the general staff of the pla, and cao gangchuan, former director of the general armaments department. they are both members of the new politburo. the other new cmc members are generals xu caihou, director of the general political department, liao xilong, director of the general logistics department, and li jinai, director of the general armaments department and finally the new chief of general staff, liang guanglie. liang has served as commander of the nanjing military region (2002-02). this setup seems to indicate that jiang will step down in march 2003. it makes little sense to have eight members of the cmc, as chinese top organs usually comprise an uneven number. barring a major international crisis or increased tension in the taiwan straits, it is most likely that jiang will step down in march when the npc meets. then there will be the possibility of electing a new chairman of the state cmc. it does not make sense to change the party cmc now and then wait until march to change the state cmc, as this would result in a situation where there were two different chairmen. if jiang does not step down but instead, as is rumoured in the western media, stays on for another couple of years, then he will not have fully retired (quantui), but will continue to pull the strings in an arrangement similar to the one that deng instituted in 1987. central committee (cc) the 16th party congress elected a new central committee consisting of 198 members and 158 alternate members. there are 112 new members of the full cc (56 percent of total membership). the average age of the new cc is 55 years of age, 0.5 years lower than the 15th cc. those below 50 years of age account for more 145 the 16th party congress in china: a note on personnel changes than one-fifth of the membership. predictably, everyone born before 1937 has now retired with the exception of luo gan, ismail amat, gao gangchuan, li guixian and xu kuangdi. as a new member of the pbsc, luo gan had to stay and gao gangchuan's position on the cc military commission also necessitates a pb seating. why li and xu, the former mayor of shanghai, were reappointed is unclear. a number of fifth-generation representatives such as bo xilai (53), xi jinping (49), li keqiang (47) and zhao leji (45) were also elected, whereas former ccp party chairman hua guofeng finally had to relinquish his seat. the number of female members has dropped from 7 to 4 (2 percent). national minority members number 15 (7.5 percent), which is about the same percentage as in the outgoing cc. it is noteworthy that about 98 percent of the members have an educational background equivalent to a college degree (daxue benke), 6.2 percent higher than the 15th cc and 15.2 percent higher than the 14th cc. in fact, this is the best-educated cc ever in the history of the prc. thus the policy to appoint leaders and cadres on the basis of educational background and professional criteria is now being applied at cc elections. it is also noteworthy that there are representatives from the business world among the new cc alternate members. they include xie qihua, president of the baoshan iron and steel company; xi guohua, president of the china network communication corporation; and zhang ruimin, the chief ceo of the haier group. however, these are all business leaders in the state-dominated sector. thus rumours that private entrepreneurs might be elected to cc did not come true. apparently, there was widespread resistance against incorporating private entrepreneurs at this point in time, even though the party congress decided to write the 'three representations' into the party programme. two aproaches to chinese politics there are two main positions in evaluating the 16th congress and its results. the first position sees the outcome as the result of factional politics.4 this approach posits that outgoing leaders such as jiang zemin, li peng and zhu rongji have formed networks based on political loyalty. these are personalized networks that serve the interests of the person (patron) heading the network. the network leader looks after the interest of his followers (clients). jiang zemin's faction is based in shanghai and is the strongest. it musters five to six of the nine members of the new pbsc, many regional leaders and leading military figures. li peng's network encompasses the ministry of electricity and parts of the npc copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002146 kjeld erik brødsgaard xitong. zhu rongji's faction reputedly consists of leading personnel in the state economic and trade commision and other central organs engaged in economic planning and policy-making. hu jintao's network is rooted in the communist youth league which hu headed during the late 1980s. recently hu has also developed strong connections in the central party school. based on such a factional analysis, jiang zemin continues to dominate the pbsc even though he has officially stepped down. as faction head, he will command the loyalty of the people he has promoted. their presence will help to contain whatever political ambitions hu jintao might have. the second view claims that the politburo is dominated by consensual decision-making among leading individuals.5 the policy process is strongly influenced by the senior members; however, propositions to win assent have to be presented in a reasonable light rather than as a reflection of a single person's fiat or instance of power play. in short, there has been a process of procedural normativization and routinization which will prevent jiang's patrimonial aspirations from prevailing. this is in fact a return to the round-table model of political decision-making which characterized china before the great leap forward.6 since the mid-1990s new detailed regulations for the selection and appointment of leading cadres have been put in place. in february 1995 the interim regulations on the selection and appointment of party and government leading cadres were issued.7 they specified clear regulations for the recruitment, appointment and management of leading cadres from the county level and above. another important document is the development programme concerning the establishment of a national party and state leadership for 1998-2003, which was issued in june 1998.8 in june 2000 the programme to deepen the cadre personnel system was published. 9 finally, in july 2002, new regulations on the selection and appointment of party and government leading cadres were published. they replace the above-mentioned interim regulations of 1995.10 these documents stipulate clear criteria for the selection and appointment of leading cadres and the mechanisms for promotion within the system. thus there are clear criteria concerning age, gender and national minority distribution. educational qualifications are also stressed. thus an educational background equivalent to a college degree (daxue benke) is now required for leading cadres. new statistics show that already 88 percent of all leading cadres from the important departmental (ju) level and above can now boast of these qualifications. 147 the 16th party congress in china: a note on personnel changes the new regulations from july 2002 emphasize that cadres should rise gradually in the system. thus for promotion to a leading post higher than county level, work experience of holding more than two posts at lower-level organs is generally required. moreover, candidates promoted to a head post (zheng zhi) from a deputy post are generally required to have worked at the deputy post for more than two years. clearly, the party wishes to avoid the kind of helicoptering which some cadres experienced during the cultural revolution. the new regulations also elaborate on ways to ‘democratically recommend’ and evaluate leading cadres; on the principles for ‘deliberating’ candidates; and for making decisions through discussions. there is no doubt that the authorities wish to portray an image of a recruitment and appointment process characterized by clear rules and regulations. the development programme from 1998 stipulates that by the year 2003 every administrative level from the centre down to county and town (zhen) levels should have a leadership line-up consisting of different age groups, ranging from leaders in their sixties to young cadres in their forties. this is to ensure a flexible cadre corps with a so-called rational age composition in the leadership bodies (lingdao banzi). the development programme also mentions the establishment of a group of reserve cadres (houbei ganbu), who should be groomed to take over leadership positions. recently, age requirements have become the focus of attention. these are associated with the so-called '680 project' which aims to promote those cadres born in the 1960s who graduated and started working in the 1980s, i.e., young officials below the age of 40. the ‘680 project’ was launched at the beginning of 2000 which saw several high-level meetings to discuss the issue of selecting and promoting young cadres. in what seems to be a follow-up on the‘680 project’, the organizational department has recently required that cadres at the level of section head, division head, and bureau head step down from their leading post at the ages of 52, 55 and 58 respectively.11 whether these new age requirements will be fully introduced remains to be seen. but there is no doubt that there is strong emphasis on this issue in the party apparatus. it would have been a major setback to the whole process of institutional normativization unfolding since the mid-1990s if jiang zemin and his third-generation colleagues had not stepped down from the standing committee. in 1997 at the 15th party congress, jiang zemin had himself been arguing for a 70-year age-limit for re-election to the standing committee, reportedly in an attempt to retire his rival qiao copenhagen journal of asian studies 16 • 2002148 kjeld erik brødsgaard shi. had he himself violated this norm, it would have created considerable resentment, not only from the new fourth-generation leaders waiting for their turn, but also on the part of retired party elders such as qiao shi, wan li, liu huaqing, song renqiong, etc. conclusion china has recently initiated a major leadership transition – in fact the most comprehensive in the history of the prc. thus far it has resulted in the election of a completely new party leadership. only one out of the nine members of the new pbsc was on the former pbsc and almost two-thirds of the regular members of the politburo are new. in the spring of 2003 a similar renewal of leadership will take place in top state organs. thus jiang zemin is scheduled to be succeeded as president by hu jintao; zhu rongji will most likely pass on his mantle as premier to wen jiabao; and li peng will make way for wu bangguo as chairman of the npc. the composition of the new leadership is the outcome of an intense power struggle. however, the succession process has for the first time taken place in a peaceful and deliberate manner, in conformity with norms and rules concerning age, educational background, and professional capabilities that have been introduced for lower levels in recent years. in short, a process of institutionalization and normativization has taken place, which bodes well for china's continued political stability. dr. kjeld erik brødsgaard is vice-director and associate professor at the department of asian studies, university of copenhagen. notes 1 the following information on personnel changes is drawn from xinhua news agency (news.xinhua.net.com); renmin ribao [people's daily]; foreign broadcast information service (fbis); china aktuell, and rich chapman, 'special report: china's 16th party congress – prospects for a new direction?' (virtual information center, 15 november 2002). for background information on the new leaders see also cheng li, china's leaders: the new generation (new york: rowman & littlefield , 2001) and andrew j. nathan and bruce gilley, china's new rulers: the secret files (new york: new york review books, 2002). 2 according to the financial times, zeng qinghong has been active in promoting administrative and political reform. thus he is reported to have backed a recent state council document that suggests that party secretaries in china's 800,000 villages should be elected by direct suffrage. currently only village chiefs are chosen by direct elections and it will mark a major break with the past if the party also begins to elect its officials by this method rather than by internal selection. see james kynge, 'man of shadows will be power behind the throne', financial times, 14 november 2002. 149 the 16th party congress in china: a note on personnel changes 3 in the 1970s xinjiang had an alternate member of the politburo, namely saifudin, who was elected alternate member of the 10th and 11th central committees. 4 on factional politics in china, see huang jing, factionalism in chinese communist politics (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2000), and lucian pye, the dynamics of chinese politics (cambridge, mass.: oelgeschlager, gunn & hain publisher, 1981). 5 see nathan and gilley, china's new leaders. 6 see roderick macfarquhar, the origins of the cultural revolution. vol 1: contradictions among the people, 1956-57 (london: oxford university press, 1974). 7 'zhonggong zhongyang guanyu yinfa "dang zhengfu lingdao ganbu xuanba renyong gongzuo zanxing tiaoli" de tongzhi' [notice of the central central committee of the ccp concerning 'interim regulations on the selection and appointment of party and government leading cadres'], 9 february 1995, in renshi gongzuo wenjian xuanbian [selection of documents concerning personnel work], vol. 18 (beijing: zhongguo renshi chubanshe, 1996), pp. 13-26. 8 zhongyang zuzhibu [organization department of the ccp], '1998-2003 nian quanguo dang zheng lingdao banzi jianshe guihua gangyao' [development programme concerning the establishment of a national party and state leadership for 1998-2003], 24 june 1998, in renshi gongzuo wenjian xuanbian, vol. 21, pp. 90-100. 9 'shenhua ganbu renshidu gaige gangyao' [the programme to deepen the cadre personnel system], renmin ribao, 21 august 2000. 10 see 'dang zhengfu lingdao ganbu xuanba renyong gongzuo zanxing' [regulations on the selection and appointment of party and government leading cadres], renmin ribao, 24 july 2002. 11 according to zheng shiping, the new age requirements mean that officials must step down when reaching a certain age even though they have not yet reached the official retirement age of 60 for section to bureau level leaders. what is intended by the new stipulation is to underline the need for mobility in leadership position at all levels. see zheng shiping, 'the age factor in chinese politics', eai background brief no. 111 (15 january 2002). 70 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh _______________________________________ international food safety standards: catalysts for increased chinese food quality? wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh abstract increasingly, during the last 10-15 year, the question about food safety has been a topic of great concern both nationally and internationally. traditionally, there has been a conflict of interest between the developed countries with higher food safety standards and the developing countries with lower food safety rules. as long as adequate international rules exist, perhaps the view of these rules as barriers to trade should be replaced by the view of standards as catalysts for increased food quality. this article looks at the food safety issue in china, the largest developing country. the chinese exports of food products have been confronted with trade restrictions because the products did not comply with the high food standards in the usa, the eu and japan. these difficulties have contributed to a greater concern in china about the quality of the food products. in the last ten years, a series of changes in the rules and in the administration of food standards have taken place. this is a complicated task because it affects the whole food industry. the article tries to cast light on these important questions. what have been the consequences of inadequate food safety regulations in china? what has been done up to now to improve the food quality standards in china? what further initiatives should be taken to improve the situation in the future? keywords: food safety, import restriction, product standards, food quality, competitiveness. introduction along with increasing public awareness of health and environment, food safety issues have risen in importance. the problem related to food safety standards have been on the agenda in the global trade system for several years. food safety standards in developed countries have become more stringent and have increased. these standards are the source of concern among many developing countries (oecd, 2004; world bank, 2005). therefore the role of food safety standards in international trade has become an important topic for discussion in recent literature. the view of the 'standards-as-barriers' to trade holds that increased food safety standards in developed countries are used as protectionist tools or in a discriminatory manner (roberts, et al., 1999; caswell, 2003). conversely, _________________________________________________________________________ 71 ___________________________________________ international food safety standards the 'standards-as-catalysts' is more optimistic view that emphasizes the opportunities provided by emerging food quality requirements and the possibility that developing countries could use them to increase their competitive advantages (jaffee and henson, 2005). high food safety standards might be considered as trade barriers by developing countries. however, if the safety standards are complying with the sanitary phytosanitary agreement in the wto and the codex alimentarius commission, based on verdicts by expert committees under the fao and who, the safety standards are legitimate. developing countries cannot use the dispute settlement body in the wto. if the developing countries do not accept the present rules, they either have to open bilateral negotiations with the developed countries to try to convince the country to apply less stringent standards, or to try through multilateral negotiations to change the present set of wto rules. chinese food trade has increased markedly in recent years in spite of a series of cases where the chinese products did not comply with the safety regulations in the importing countries. this article is not dealing with the question of whether food safety standards are either open or disguised trade barriers but is looking at the food safety standards in the developed countries as catalysts for improving the quality of chinese food products. this article analyses how chinese food products have been subject to restricted import conditions when china has been trying to access the markets in the usa, the eu and japan. china has realized those problems, and the article shows how china has already introduced a series of changes with the purpose of achieving an improved product standard, which makes it easier for china to avoid restricted exports to the main export markets. however, what has been done is not sufficient, and further steps have to be undertaken to improve the quality of chinese food products. chinese food trade china is the largest food producing and food consuming country in the world. china is also playing an increasing role in global food trade. since the implementation of reform policies initiated in 1978, and especially since the accession to the wto in 2001, chinese exports in both raw and processed food products, has increased from us$ 3 billion in 1980 to us$ 31 billion in 2006 (see table 1). 72 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh _______________________________________ table 1: development of chinese food exports and imports, us$ billion 1980 2001 2006 total exports of food products 2.99 15,98 31,03 total imports of food products 2.93 11,78 31,99 food exports to us 0.11 1,22 3,78 to eu 0.26 1,71 4,34 to japan 0.47 5,72 8,21 food imports from us 1.33 2,29 7,59 from eu 0.03 0,64 1,67 from japan 0.01 0,23 0,41 food product exports as a share of total exports 16,47 6,00 3,20 food product imports as a share of total imports 14,62 4,84 4,04 source: chinese statistics year book 2006 and uncomtrade database the significant increase in international trade has been an important force in the rapid growth of the chinese economy in the past two decades. this trend has been strengthened following china's accession to the wto in 2001. as global food trade has been gradually liberalized, china has become an important food trader in the world. table 1 shows the development of the chinese food trade since the 1980s. as seen in table 1, the share of food exports in total exports decreased from 16.5 percent in 1980 to 3.2 percent in 2006. despite its rapidly declining share in total trade value, china's food exports have grown significantly from 1980 to 2006, that is, ten times. the trade balance in food products was in equilibrium in 1980, and then gradually an export surplus developed up until 2001, when china entered the wto. since then, food imports have increased more than the food exports. around half of the chinese food exports went to the usa, the eu and japan. table 2 shows the commodity composition of chinese food exports and imports. ten years ago, around half of the exports consisted of seafood and fish, vegetables, and fruits. this share was the same in 2001, but since then, the exports of seafood, vegetables and fruits have expanded more than the average exports. in 1996 the exports of animal products were relatively important, but since then the exports have stagnated in value. in imports, the dominant item in recent years has been edible oil and oilseeds, which in 2005 amounted to 40 percent of the total food imports. _________________________________________________________________________ 73 ___________________________________________ international food safety standards table 2: the commodity composition of chinese food exports and imports, us$ billion exports imports 1996 2001 2005 1996 2001 2005 animal products 2,44 2,03 2,35 0,35 1,03 1,38 vegetables and fruits 3,05 3,68 7,21 0,29 0,66 1,34 cereal 0,64 1,55 2,37 2,64 0,78 1,82 edible oil and oilseeds 1,44 1,03 1,67 2,11 4,12 11,47 aquatic products 3,21 4,64 8,71 0,61 1,35 2,91 coffee, cocoa and tea 0,54 0,57 1,04 0,09 0,1 0,22 sugar 0,31 0,16 0,42 0,43 0,38 0,45 beverages and alcohol 0,47 0,57 0,72 0,04 0,15 0,41 feed 0,35 0,29 0,48 1,3 0,64 1,31 others 1,36 1,46 2,21 0,61 2,58 7,35 total 13,72 15,98 27,18 8,46 11,78 28,65 source: chinese statistics year book 2006 and uncomtrade database in spite of the food safety problems discussed in the next section, it can be concluded that chinese food exports have expanded significantly. the commodity composition of chinese food exports shown in table 2, seem to reveal that china has comparative advantages in the production of seafood, vegetables, fruits and tea. the exports of these products have increased more than the average, in spite of the fact that some of the most important food safety cases are related to these products. restricted imports on chinese food products due to food safety regulations as its participation in world food trade has increased, china has increasingly been confronted with challenges related to food safety, especially for some higher-valued food products including fruits, vegetables, fish and poultry, which are the important products in chinese exports and cover about two third of the total food exports in 2005 (see table 2). china has not always been able to conform to the standards which have hindered the expansion of chinese exports. there are several cases in which chinese food exports in recent years have been affected by sanitary and phytosanitary measures, which were implemented by governments to protect human, animal and plant life and health. 74 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh _______________________________________ in recent years, health-related requirements on food exports from china are becoming more stringent and complex in its main export markets. for example, eu legislation requires exporters of fishery products to label consignments identifying the species name, production method and catch area. additionally, japanese standards for levels of pesticide residues in food products, especially fruits, vegetables, tea, cereals, animal and aquatic products, have become increasingly rigorous by the enforcement of the so-called 'positive list system' since may 2006. in the following discussion, we show some important cases of the food trade issue between china and its main partners since 1997. they illustrate market access barriers on chinese food exports. according to the estimates of the chinese government, the loss of chinese food trade due to these concerns accounted for us$ 9 billion in 2002, and about 90 percent of chinese food trade firms are affected by the trade loss (china daily 2003), revealing a gap between chinese and international food safety standards. all the cases mentioned in the following are important because the commodity range covers two third of the total chinese food exports. in recent years, these cases have been discussed widely in chinese professional journals and press. the united states the us is one of china's main trade partners for food products. in 2006, the total value of food export amounted to us$ 3.78 billion. the export of chinese fishery products amounted to us$ 1.3 billion, representing 90 percent of the total of american imports of fishery products. exports of chinese fruits, processed fruit products and fresh squeezed concentrate to the us accounted for nearly us$ 0.57 billion in 2006. the us has enforced strict sanitary and phytosanitary standards for food imports from china in the last years. table 3 illustrates some cases of the market access restrictions on chinese food exports to the us. for example, chinese frozen shrimps and honey exported to the us in 1997 and 2002 were restricted because of high trace levels of residues of animal waste and chloramphenicol. these measures have led to losses for chinese producers, in a sector where china is one of the largest producers of honey in the world and with an annual production of over 200 thousand tons or approximately one-quarter of total world production. these safety barriers of chinese food to the us market have also contributed to an adverse balance of bilateral food trade. in 2006, the deficit of chinese food trade with the _________________________________________________________________________ 75 ___________________________________________ international food safety standards usa reached $3.8 billion. this has exhibited a continuously increasing trend since 2001, when china joined the wto. table 3: restricted imports of chinese food products in the usa year product main problem trade impacts 1997 frozen shrimps excessive chloramphenicol residues import restricted 1998 canned mushrooms unqualified processes tariff increase of 154-198% 2002 honey excessive chloramphenicol residues maximal export to 500 tons 2002 shrimps excessive chloramphenicol residues no import of fisheries products in 2 years 2002 soybeans genetically modified organism import restricted 2004 poultry meat products bird flu import restricted source: compiled by wencong lu based on cheng (2002), ma (2004), li (2005), yang (2006) and moc (2007). the european union when looking at total exports and imports, the european union is the largest trading partner for china. however, this is not the case for food exports taken on their own. despite of the relative small share of food trade in the total amount of bilateral trade, food trade shows an increasing trend over the past few years. in 2006, food exports amounted to us$ 4.34 billion, an increase of 154 percent from 2001. processed fruits, vegetables and fishery products are the main exports from china to the eu. although eu import tariffs have been reduced on chinese food products since its wto accession in 2001, eu food safety regulations have become more vigorous. with all other things remaining the same, this has exerted a negative influence on exports of chinese food products to the eu. in august 1996, the eu closed the import of poultry meat, as well as some fishery and animal products from china because chinese quality standards for animal products did not meet the producing, breeding, processing and phytosanitary requirements of the eu. for vegetables, fruits and other horticulture products, european requirements demand the levels of pesticide residues to be below certain limits. table 4 shows some important cases of food trade friction between china and the eu related to food safety issues. the first restrictions on eu imports on all animal products from china started in 2002. chinese tea exports to the eu in 2001 were found to have overly high pesticide 76 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh _______________________________________ residue levels. these restrictions to the eu have resulted in a trade loss for chinese food producers and enterprises. the eu import prohibition on chinese animal products in 2002 alone resulted in a us$ 623 million loss to 94 chinese food-processing enterprises (moc, 2005). in addition, the eu restricted the import of peanuts from china in 2004 and 2005 because of high levels of aflatoxin (chao 2006). in november 2006, chinese canned asparagus with white heads were called back and restricted in denmark and then the eu warned all consumers about this product because of inadequate heating treatment in the processing. table 4: eu import restrictions on chinese food products year product problems trade impacts 1997 bivalve fishery products excessive antibiotic chloramphenicol import restricted 1998 hare meat uncertified process import restricted 1999 honey excessive chloramphenicol residues us$ 1.1 billion trade loss 1999 peanuts excessive aflatoxin residues import restricted 2001-02 tea excessive pesticide residues import restricted 2001 shrimps excessive antibiotic residues import restricted 2001 poultry excessive antibiotic residues import restricted 2002 honey excessive chloramphenicol residues import restricted 2003 hare meat uncertified process import restricted 2003 canned oranges excessive antibiotic residues import restricted for 9 months 2004 peanuts excessive aflatoxin residues import restricted 2006 canned asparagus uncertified process shipments rejected source: compiled by wencong lu based on cheng (2002), zhang (2003), peng (2006), huang (2005), wang (2006) and rasff (2006). japan japan is traditionally the main export destination of chinese food and agricultural products. total exports of chinese food to japan amounted to us$ 8.2 billion in 2006, one-third of the total of chinese food exports. in recent years, chinese exports of fruits, vegetables and seafood to japan have been the main targets of restricted imports. table 5 shows several key cases of the lack of market access faced by china in japan since 1997. in 2002 and 2003, the export of chinese frozen spinach to japan was forbidden because of too high traces of pesticide residues, which led to a decrease of us$ 372 million compared to the trade value in 2001. japan has in place stringent food safety requirements that have resulted in frequent constraints on imports of processed meat and fishery _________________________________________________________________________ 77 ___________________________________________ international food safety standards products. in 1999, the import of meat products from china was restricted due to the lack of certification in the production process. in 2004, the import of frozen shrimps from china was restricted as a result of high residue levels of the antibiotic chloramphenicol. the japanese government introduced in may 2006 new food safety standards called the 'positive list system' which included more than 40,000 items involving almost all food products. the new japanese standards will probably result in an increase in bilateral food trade frictions with china. in the short term, they will hinder chinese food exports, but in the long run they should contribute to improve chinese food product quality. table 5: japan's import restrictions on chinese food products year product problem trade impact 1999 meat products uncertified process increased production cost 2001 onions and mush-rooms n.a. import restricted for 200 days 2002-03 eel products excessive antibiotic residues import restricted 2002 frozen chicken excessive antibiotic residues import restricted 2002 tea excessive pesticide residues import restricted 2002-03 frozen spinach excessive pesticide residues import restricted 2002 milled rice unqualified package import restricted 2004 vermicelli excessive benzyl perox-ide residues mandatory inspection 2004 frozen shrimps excessive chlorampheni-col residues import restricted 2006 peas excessive pesticide residue import rejected source: compiled by wencong lu based on cheng (2002), ibn (2004), wang (2006), moc (2006), yang (2006) and china news (2006). lower food safety standards in china in spite of the significant development china has experienced through the last 20-25 years, especially in the eastern provinces of the country, china is still on average a country with a low gdp per capita compared to the usa, the eu and japan. there is a close relationship between the level of the food safety regulations in a country and the living standard of the people. in high income countries there is a greater demand for food security, and it is also easier to supply a higher level of food safety. 78 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh _______________________________________ cases of lower food safety standards in china there exist obvious differences in food quality standards between china and its main trade partners. as a developing country, china has just started to pay more attention to the quality of food in recent years instead of only being interested in output volume. most of the current chinese standards set up years ago cannot meet the requirements of the iso (international standards organization) and cac (codex alimentary commission) standards accepted widely in nearly all developed countries. for example, more than 90percent of present food standards in japan are consistent with international standards, as against china's 15 percent. the residue maximum rules in japan comprise 53,862 standards, concerning the usage of 797 pesticides, veterinary drugs and food additives. 25 percent of these standards are stricter than chinese national standards involving 61 kinds of main food and processed food exported to japan. the european standard for pesticide residue in tea established in 2000 requires the content of chloramphenicol at maximum 0.1-0.3μg/kg which diminishes the level by 100-200 times compared to the previous standard. the eu food safety standard level is also higher than the japanese standard (50μg/kg) and the american standard (4-5μg/kg). the chinese standards in general are lower than in the developed countries. in addition, it is important to note, that even those food safety standards are not widely used by many small and medium enterprises (smes) in chinese food and food-processing industry, due to a lack of the necessary public monitoring. difficult for the farm and food processing sectors to comply with high standards many of china's food safety problems can be traced back to the production system at farm level. china has one of the world's highest rates of chemical fertilizer and pesticides use per hectare. antibiotics are widely used to control disease in livestock, poultry, and aquaculture products. over-use of chemicals, especially fertilizer and pesticides in farming and food additives in the food-processing industry, not only reduce the quality of products, but also pollute agricultural environment. the pollution problems and food safety problems are either caused by no regulations or too lax regulations on the one side, or to the lack of observing the rules. in the short term, the farmers are interested in few and weak regulations, and when confronted with rules they have an incentive not to follow the rules. the farmers often lack knowledge _________________________________________________________________________ 79 ___________________________________________ international food safety standards about methods of production if they follow the rules and do not have any knowledge about the alternative possibilities. even if they do have such knowledge, they may have an incentive to not observe the rules, because the alternative production methods are more costly. at present, the local use of traditional technology is not sufficient to deal with the problems encountered. in order to increase revenue from food export activities, technological and scientific assessments need to focus on improving food safety and quality. at present, technologies for agricultural production and food-processing in china are dominated by traditional approaches. chinese food producers face rising production cost when implementing stricter food safety standards. on the supply side, it is difficult for the farming sector and the food processing sector to observe more stringent environmental and food safety regulations. in addition, it should be emphasized that the introduction of new improved standards has suffered from weak administration also involving corruption at different levels. difficult to establish the necessary infrastructure for food safety china is still in the process of developing its infrastructure necessary for food safety to be implemented. laboratories for investigating the content of food items are necessary, food advisory boards informing about food safety and assisting in implementing food safety measures have to be established, and food control systems should be able to monitor that the rules are being observed. although china has established 35 national centres, 443 departmental institutions and over 300 laboratories for food quality inspection, its quality management systems are still insufficient to efficiently assist and supervise the production of the increasingly expanding number of the small and medium sized enterprises in the food industry. chinese food industries should be encouraged to further develop food certification systems, such as iso-9000/14000 standards and hazard analysis and critical control point (haccp), to ensure food safety and quality. chinese efforts to improve food safety to ensure food safety is not an easy task. there is a whole chain of elements which should be fulfilled before food safety is a reality. firstly, some food safety regulations with reasonable limits or standards have to be set. some institutions have to be in charge of these decisions and these decisions should be based on scientific evidence and other impor80 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh _______________________________________ tant concerns. secondly, when the regulations are set, the information about the regulations should be disseminated to all the producers and distributors involved in food production. thirdly, some institutions should assist the producers and distributors to implement the rules. the farming methods and the food processing techniques may have to be changed and that might involve new physical investments and investments in human capital. incentive systems which encourage production to observe the food safety regulations should be introduced. fourthly, monitoring institutions should ensure that the regulations are all observed by the producers and the distributors. certification can be a method to ensure that products delivered from certain producers do fulfill the requirements they presented to observe. to meet the food safety standards of the developed countries (a prerequisite for being successful in those markets), provides china with a powerful incentive and pressure to promote the administrative and technical capacities for food safety management. this needs the development of institutional structures, physical infrastructure, and human capital. china is in the midst of a campaign to overhaul its food system and improve safety standards. both the chinese government and the private sector have made great efforts in the past years to this end. some important policy measures and management strategies are reviewed in the following section. changes in the food safety rules as a response to increased public awareness and concern about food safety, there have been significant institutional changes in food safety regulations. now the chinese government has five ministries in charge of food safety issues namely: the ministry of agriculture (moa); the ministry of health (moh); the general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine (aqsiq); the state food and drug administration (sfda); and the state environmental protection administration (sepa). the responsibilities of these ministries are clearly divided as shown in table 6. in the recent past there have been important changes of the rules related to hygiene standards, the use of inputs and the certification of firms (see table 7). hygiene standards: a series of important regulations regarding hygiene issues has been established and revised in china recently. for example, in accordance with the principles for the establishment and application of microbiological criteria for food of the codex alimentarius com_________________________________________________________________________ 81 ___________________________________________ international food safety standards mission (cac), administered by the fao and the who, the moh has enacted 19 different hygiene rules for processing and transportation of products made of soya, plant oil, honey, milk, meat and other food products since 1988. the hygienic registration of food exportation regulation, revised by the state administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine (aqsiq) in 2002, requires all enterprises manufacturing frozen vegetables, meat, tins, water products, drinks, tea and sugar to register detailed information about the raw material, subsidiary material, processing, packaging, storage and transportation of the products for export, as well as where they are produced. the use of inputs: some more advanced technologies to reduce inputs of fertilizers, pesticides and growth hormones in agricultural production are recommended by the moa in order to ensure food safety and realise agricultural environmental sustainability. the usage of some food additives in the food-processing industry is forbidden by the aqsiq due to their negative effects on human health. imports of raw food inputs in the production process are inspected by the aqsiq. table 6: main responsibilities of chinese ministries for food safety ministries responsibilities ministry of agriculture (moa) • agricultural production; • production materials for agriculture; • animal epidemic prevention; • entry and exit of animal and plant quarantine; • supervising the safety of gmo; • certification of pollution-free, green and organic food; • agricultural extension. ministry of health (moh) • establishing and revising food hygiene standards; • monitoring food sanitation; • issuing hygiene license to food producer and traders. general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine (aqsiq) • monitoring, inspecting and testing food quality; • inspection and quarantine of product entry and exit; • certification, accreditation and standardization of food enterprises. state food and drug administration (sfda) • safety supervision of food, healthcare products and cosmetics; • investigating and treating key food accidents. state environmental protection administration (sepa) • establishing environmental quality standards • setting up the rules and regulations of environment • administrating environmental supervision • certification and supervision of organic food source: authors' own presentation 82 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh _______________________________________ table 7: main chinese laws and regulations for food safety year laws and regulations administrative departments 1995 food hygiene law moh 1997 regulation of pesticide management moa 1999 regulation of feed and additives management moa 1999 regulation of hygiene of food trade moh 2000 product quality law aqsiq 2001 regulation of gmo safety management moa 2001 regulation of food additives hygiene moh 2001 rule of organic food certification sepa 2002 agriculture law moa 2002 regulation of animal quarantine moa 2002 regulation of pollution-free agricultural products moa 2002 general rule of examination on market access of food safety aqsiq 2003 organic food standards sepa 2003 regulation of quality supervision of food-processing industries aqsiq 2004 quantified regulation of food hygienic supervision standard moh 2004 regulation of food safety improvement sfda source: authors' own presentation market access licences: in 2004, china began to issue domestic market access licenses for food products based on an examination by the aqsia of production conditions and quality standards in the food and foodprocessing enterprises. market access licenses were initially applied for meat, milk, spices, edible oils, rice, cookies, noodles and about 60 other agro-food products. information systems for food safety since 2003, an information system for food safety in different administrative regions in china has gradually been developed. this system serves to identify the source and cause of food pollutants. the goal is to reduce the residues of pesticide and veterinary pharmaceutical residues, environmental pollutants and other harmful chemical substances, such as nitrosamine in food production and processing. the system also monitors inputs and intermediate products imported from other countries. this system measures the chemical and biological pollutants remaining in primary and processed food items. at present, over 70 information stations are located in 18 chinese provinces. in addition, a national information centre and 12 provincial laboratories were built between 2004 and 2005 to conform to the environmental and health requirements of the who. _________________________________________________________________________ 83 ___________________________________________ international food safety standards technical training for food producers and managers it is important for china to avoid an excessive use of chemical inputs in the initial phases of the food production. in order to avoid this, the local governments provide training for farmers and food processing firms on how to use fertilizers, pesticides, veterinary drugs, feed additives and animal and plant hormones with due care and attention. local governments under the leadership of the moa are involved in organizing seminars for the producers and managers from food enterprises to help them to understand and acquire environment-friendly production techniques, knowledge and new technologies, as well as information to allow them to adhere to national food quality standards. reorganization of food production given the considerable number of small farmers and small and medium sized enterprises in food industries, china started a reorganization of food production in the mid-1990s. chinese farmers, food-processing enterprises and marketing companies have been encouraged to increase the vertical integration of the food and food-processing industries. the vertically integrated production organization is not only useful in helping to increase economic efficiency, but also as a means of introducing standardized production methods, which improve food product quality. in china the basic form of vertical integration is a co-operation between a food processing firm and a number of farmers delivering the inputs. the processing firm makes a standardised contract with farmers. if the food processing firm has a great number of farmers attached as suppliers, the firm is a called a 'dragon-head enterprise'. these firms are seen as a driving force to increase the value-added of agricultural products, and they are the main player in both the national and international markets. in 2004 there were 600 enterprises at the national level, having production units in several different provinces. a further 2,000 enterprises at the provincial level have production units in different parts of the province. at the county level, there are several thousand 'dragon-head enterprises'. according to statistics compiled by the moa, the national average number of farmers grouped under a national 'dragon-head enterprise' totalled 1,687 in 1996 and declined to 1,622 in 1998 and 899 in 2000. farmers are required to adopt the standardized technologies in food production offered by the 'dragonhead enterprise'. besides providing high-quality seeds for planting, the 'dragon-head enterprise' mainly delivers advisory services on the rational use of pesticides and fertilizers to the farmers in its group. 84 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh _______________________________________ the food products are processed and marketed by the 'dragon-head enterprise' under a uniform package and trade mark. certification schemes the provincial governments have introduced a certification scheme for the food producers. the certification schemes ensure that the certified enterprises are applying production methods which live up to certain standards of environmental protection, of food quality and food safety. the chinese enterprises have been eager to obtain certification because it allows them to be competitive on domestic and international markets. there are a series of different certification schemes such as good agricultural practices (gap), good manufacturing practices (gmp), good harvesting practices (ghp), sanitary standard operating procedures (ssop), hazard analysis critical control point (haccp) and international standard organization 9000/14000. these schemes have been of some importance. as an example, since the haccp system was first introduced in the processing of meat, vegetables, juice, fast food and fisheries products by aqsiq in 2003, more than 4,600 enterprises in the chinese food and food-processing industries use the haccp system. it is estimated that the introduction of the haccp system in china has increased food exports by 4.76 million tons with a value of us$ 6.1 billion. the intention of the chinese government was to require all enterprises producing meat, vegetables, juice, fast food and fishery products to obtain haccp certification by the end of 2006. in addition, to ensure food safety at the origin of the product, the systems of gmp and ghp were extended to all chinese enterprises producing meat, vegetables, juice, canned food, sugar, edible oil and fishery products in 2005. implementation of a 'green food' strategy in 1991, the moa began to implement a strategy of 'green food' in food production in order to ensure the environmental protection and to improve food safety and consequent market competitiveness of chinese food products. according to this standard, 'green food' is classified in two groups, namely 'green food a' and 'green food aa'. for the production of 'green food a', the use of pesticides, fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals is allowed but restricted. for 'green food aa', all chemicals are prohibited to be used in the production process. therefore, chinese 'green food aa' is equivalent to organic food. the moa has established comprehensive quality standard and certification _________________________________________________________________________ 85 ___________________________________________ international food safety standards systems concerning the geographical origin, production technology, product standard, packaging and transportation for 'green food'. since 1991, the production of 'green food' has increased by over 25 percent on average per annum. there are over 2,800 'green food' enterprises with around 6,500 types of products. the export of 'green food' is valued to be approximately us$ 1.5 billion (xinhua news 2005). what should be done in the future? as shown in the previous section, china has in the recent past, focused more on improving food quality and implementing higher food safety standards than previously. internationally, the food safety question has become more important, and food safety standards have become more rigorous. at the same time the large increase in living standards in china, especially in the eastern provinces of the country, has caused greater domestic concern about food quality and safety regulations. these trends will continue in the future. although important reforms have been started, it is important for china to continue to focus on food quality improvement and food safety standards. the changes which have already been undertaken, as shown in the previous section, have not been implemented in all provinces to the same degree. in each province, there are also significant differences between different areas when it comes to the question of food safety standards and food quality. in addition it is clear that the present situation could be improved by introducing new reforms, as a supplement to reforms already undertaken. china has two tasks in the future to deal with concerning the issue of quality and food safety. firstly, the changes already started should be disseminated more broadly in all provinces and in all locations in each province. secondly, new reforms should be decided and implemented to supplement the reforms which have been put at work. in order to improve china's export competitiveness and quality of food products, there are new issues that must be faced. in order to successfully meet the challenges ahead, the following suggestions are outlined. reform of the administration system today food safety is regulated by several governmental ministries and entities at the national level. there are the ministry of agriculture; the ministry of health; the ministry of commerce; the state administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine; the state food and drug administration; and other agencies. each of these institutions 86 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh _______________________________________ contributes to the food safety policies, and they often have overlapping responsibilities. different institutions at the national level and at the provincial level are dealing with the same issues. the problems with this arrangement are evident. the lack of clear delimitation of the authority of each institution opens up for conflicts about responsibility. it also opens up for too much administration in some areas and too little administration in other areas. if the borderlines between the activities of the different institutions were clearer, it would be easier to decide a coherent set of rules. it would be easier to both implement the rules and to monitor that they are observed by the firms and local authorities. different food safety regulations at different levels there are food safety regulations at the national level, at the provincial level and at the local level. in addition at the industry sector level there are associations of firms setting food standards levels for specific products. often the food standards decided by the associations of firms are higher than provincial and national food safety standards. the associations count exporting firms among the members, and they are interested in having standards which follow the international safety standards on the export markets. the standards at the provincial level vary between the rich provinces in the east and the poorer provinces in the west. the national standards are often more lax than the standards in the provinces in the east. it is clear that these different standards are complicating the situation both for the producers and the consumers. moreover, it seems unrealistic to implement only one set of rules, because a set of 'average' rules would neither fulfill the demands of the exporting firms nor the different demands in the richer and poorer provinces. the goal in the long run should be to implement regulations which correspond to international standards. the more they are applied in china, the easier it will be for chinese enterprises to compete on the world market. in addition, it should be remembered, that 70 percent of food processing enterprises in china are small or medium-sized firms. however, for the poorer provinces it is important to get as close as possible to the level of the richer provinces, because otherwise the 'export' possibilities to the richer provinces will be hampered. in fact, some differences in standards may be desirable at present due to of the large differences between the levels of development in the different provinces. it is up to the individual firm in the western provinces _________________________________________________________________________ 87 ___________________________________________ international food safety standards to decide if it will agree on a quality level acceptable for opening up the possibility of 'export' to the eastern provinces. in the long run the goal should be one common standard for the whole chinese market. administratively, it is evident, that it is more costly for small and medium sized firms to adjust to a series of different rules. the single market in the eu with the same product standards for all countries has proved to reduce costs and to increase internal competition. improving the information service systems effective and timely information are vital ingredients for farmers and food processing enterprises to allow them to take proper production decisions and develop reasonable management strategies. governments have a role to play in assisting farmers and food processing enterprises to catch up with changes in export markets, gain information on international market access requirements and be aware of developments in food production technologies. based on sufficient information, farmers and food processing enterprises can adjust food production and determine whether to adopt or develop new technologies. supporting technical changes technical changes in food production and processing should be regarded as the core elements in improving food quality and export competitiveness in the chinese food industries. a national net of technical advisory services should be established in order that small and medium sized enterprises in western china, and other less-developed areas, can also take advantage of opportunities to access new technologies in food production and processing. as already mentioned, most of the food processing firms in china are small or medium-sized firms which do not have the capacity to deal with research and development activities. therefore, research and development should take place at the sectoral level. it should be the tasks of public authorities to stimulate the interest in r&d activities at the sectoral level, which could also improve the product quality and the production methods, which are often linked together. strengthening vertical cooperation between farmers and enterprises while the number of 'dragon-head enterprises' that are integrated with farmers in the food sector has increased markedly in the past few years, these enterprises are mainly located in the eastern coastal regions of china. it is important, and also possible, to improve export 88 ______________________ the copenhagen journal of asian studies 26•2008 wencong lu and søren kjeldsen-kragh _______________________________________ competitiveness at the national level by developing different kinds of vertically integrated food production organizations in western china, where farmers have less information and knowledge on food production technologies and marketing. at the same time, a regional cooperation mechanism between food enterprises in different parts of china should be developed through transferring capital and technologies from the eastern coastal to the middle and western regions. this would enable full use of regional comparative advantage since natural resource-endowed chinese middle and western regions lack capital and technologies in food and food-processing industries, while the opposite is true in the developed eastern coastal areas. international transfer of know-how china is focusing on improving food quality and introducing environmental friendly production methods. fulfilling these goals demand technical changes. china should consider to what extent these goals can be reached in an adequate way by 'buying' know-how internationally. when foreign investments are taking place improved technology, improved marketing and improved management are relevant parts of the whole package. foreign investments are of especial interest, if they have an important spillover effect upon the domestic firms in the area. conclusions when discussing food safety issues, the conflict of interests between developed and developing countries is often brought up. it can be said that the developed countries have higher standards than developing countries, which hamper the export possibilities. it is an interesting question as to whether high food safety standards are protective or protectionist measures. the sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, which has been decided by the wto members, sets the rules for what the developed countries are allowed to do, and what the developing countries can do if they believe the food safety standards are disguised as protectionist means. this issue is not dealt with in this article. the authors assume that the high food safety standards in the developed countries are legitimate. following this, questions can be raised. what are the consequences of these standards? what has china done to overcome some of the problems? what can china do in the future to improve the situation? concerning the first question, the article aimed to show that chinese exports of its main food export items have had difficulties in fulfilling _________________________________________________________________________ 89 ___________________________________________ international food safety standards the international standards on the main markets in the usa, the eu and japan. in a series of cases, chinese exports have been restricted. as an answer to the second question, the article suggests that the high international standards have had a dynamic impact on chinese food economy. china has tried to adjust to the high international standards by focusing on food quality improvements, although it is a long term task to improve the food safety regulations, to implement the regulations and to monitor that they are observed by the producers. the article enumerates several important steps being taking in the recent past. in spite of progress china, still has to introduce further reforms. as an answer to the third question, the authors put forward a number of important suggestions for the future. administrative reforms are necessary. the safety standards differ between the national, the provincial and the sectoral levels, but the introduction of one set of rules is not possible at present. in addition, improved information systems are needed, technological changes in the farming sector and food industry should be encouraged, the vertical integration between farmers and the food industry should be enforced, and finally, the extent to which china should rely on foreign know-how should be considered. wencong lu is professor of agricultural economics at the university of zhejiang (wenclu@zju.edu.cn). søren kjeldsen-kragh is professor of international economics at the university of copenhagen (skk@life.ku.dk). acknowledgement this study has been possible due to a grant from the danish international development agency (danida). references aqsiq (administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine of china) 2006. annual report of chinese technical trade measures 2006, beijing. calvin, l. and d. hu 2006. food safety improvements underway in china. amber waves volume 4, issue 5, economic research service/usda, washington, d.c. china news 2006. available from: http://news.china.com/zh_cn/finance/11009723 /20060918 /13633328.html [accessed 1 december 2006] china daily, 11 june 2003. caswell, j. 2003: 'trends in food safety standards and regulation: implications for developing countries'. in l. unnevehr (eds). food safety in food security and food trade. international food 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'nontariff barrier: challenge to chinese aquatic product export'. journal of wuhan scientific and technical university, no.1. xinhua news 2005. rapid development of organic food industry in china. available from: http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2005-06/07/content_3055172.htm [accessed 15 may 2007] zhang, y.a. 2003. 'the impact on export of chinese agricultural products from us green barrier'. world economic research, no.1. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. 70 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan asean's regional integration challenge: the asean process benny teh cheng guan abstract asean's development, though gradual and slow, has consistently demonstrated an uphill shift from a focus on regional peace and stability to closer economic integration. amid economic difficulties, asean took on the task of setting goals for the region as clearly laid out by vision 2020. the vision for the future goes beyond the two-page bangkok declaration set in 1967. the ultimate goal is to achieve an integrated asean community with a common regional identity. considering the downturns and problems that are affecting the organization, scholars have argued that successful integration is highly unlikely for asean. the route is laden with obstacles that urgently need to be cleared. based on this understanding, the paper first reviews the analysis of the determinants of the success and failure of regional integration. it then attempts to show that there lies a deeper root cause of concern, one that has been fundamentally imbedded and has come to dictate the working traditions of asean. proper reconfiguration and supplementation of the asean process is a key necessity to reviving asean's dynamism and competitiveness and as such should not be sidelined any longer.* introduction regional institutions are constantly challenged by the changing times that are an integral facet of an anarchic international system. in times of change, adaptation and adjustment are important to maintain their significance and reliability. some organizations weathered the test of time while some faltered and withered away into the background of global politics. throughout history, there have been numerous regional groupings with differing goals but mostly centred around political and economic objectives. of the many regional integration plans or initiatives that have surfaced over time in various parts of the world, only a handful have materialized into well-established institutions, the two most successful being the european union (eu) and the north american free trade agreement (nafta). in asia, the association of southeast asian nations (asean) is a good example of a regional integration scheme. 71 asean's regional integration challenge asean's creation was initially for security. it was neither formed to integrate member economies nor to build a supranational institution. while it is an undisputed fact that asean and the eu have very different orientations, both were originally created for the preservation of peace and security in their respective regions. the europeans realized that a new european institution was needed to constrain germany. similarly, asean was formed to constrain indonesia. as konfrontasi (confrontation) was a clear indication of indonesia's powerful military might that stands to destabilize the region, the establishment of asean was a direct response to the intra-regional stimulus of sukarno's konfrontasi. drawing a somewhat analogous line to the downfall of germany's hitler, asean became viable and visible only after a change in indonesia's leadership had occurred. while the european community moved closer towards economic integration through the treaty of rome (1957), asean has, to some degree, strengthened its foundation in security cooperation; first, with the 1971 declaration of a zone of peace, freedom and neutrality (zopfan) and second, during the 1976 bali conference that produced the treaty of amity and cooperation in southeast asia (tac). economic cooperation was minimal. asean members' economic attainments were the makings of individual policies and their dealings with the broader international economy and had very little to do with asean as an organization (charterjee 1990). this explains why there have been rather limited complimentary economic policies due to low intra-asean trade. while asean was focusing more on security issues throughout the cold war period, movements toward economic integration became more visible in the post-cold war era. indeed, 1992 was seen as the year that 'launched' the economic integration of asean. a series of economic-related proposals and adoptions have been made since then. those include the common effective preferential tariff (cept) scheme for the asean free trade area (afta) in 1992, the framework agreement on services and agreement on intellectual property in 1995, the protocol on dispute settlement mechanism in 1996, asean investment area agreement and the framework agreement on the facilitation of goods in transit in 1998, the e-asean framework in 2000 and to a certain extent the asean tourism agreement in 2002. many of these are legally binding documents that probably show asean's growing realization for the need to have legal binding foundations if integration is to succeed. according to takeuchi, there are four factors contributing to asean's increased interest in regional economic integration: the 72 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan need to balance china's, as well as the former soviet union and eastern europe's, competition for foreign investment; the fear of future exports being affected by the formation of nafta and the closely integrated eu; the perceived convergence of regional economic relationships among member states; and the necessity 'to keep regional liberalization one step ahead of the wto and apec at all times' (takeuchi 1999: 123-24). apart from the four, the 1997 asian financial crisis is surely a contributing factor to faster and closer economic cooperation in order to build regional resilience against external volatilities. the 1977 asean currency swap arrangement, for example, was resuscitated and extended under the 2000 chiang mai initiative (cmi). furthermore, it was during the onslaught of the asian meltdown that asean members reaffirmed their commitment for regional solidarity, producing the asean vision 2020 statement. this is a step higher than the 1967 bangkok declaration, with 'closer cohesion and economic integration' clearly spelled out, as compared to the thirty year old ambiguous two-page declaration. as a result, asean as a regional organization has gradually shifted from merely a loose security arrangement to one that is working towards being a fully integrated community. under this notion, it is possible to gauge if an asean community bound by a common regional identity as stated in vision 2020 could be achieved or not, based on an analytical framework of the determinants of the success and failure of regional integration.1 in reviewing the analytical framework, this paper attempts to show that there lies a deeper root cause of concern, one that points to the working traditions and diplomatic culture of asean. thus the objectives of this paper are two-fold. firstly, it will be argued that the prospect of attaining the 'stated integration goal' as envisioned by vision 2020 is strongly related to the concept of the asean way or the asean process. by emphasizing consultation and consensus, this concept serves as the bedrock of how asean functions as an organization, internally and externally as well as politically, economically and socially. by tying it to the first, my second argument is that this process, being the most important centripetal force, is not capable of leading asean towards a successful regionally integrated institution in this global new age even though asean has achieved some past successes from it. hence, for integration to succeed the conceptualization of the norms of procedure need to be rethought and some degree of sovereignty has to be negotiated. this paper is organized into two sections. the first part examines and identifies a common denominator based on the defined analytical framework of asean as a regional integration scheme and 73 asean's regional integration challenge the second part looks into key areas that require reformulation and change by asean to pursue its integration quest. here, it should be made clear that the reasoning of the success and failure of regional integration should not be confused with the reasoning of the attempts at regional integration. defining the asean diplomacy the 'asean way' or the 'asean process' is understood to have been posited under the theory of constructivism, which was seen as an attempt to respond to the realist approach regarding factors determining state interactions in southeast asia. constructivist scholars conceive that through a shared collective identity, asean has built a set of norms defining states' behaviour that each member state is required to adhere to.2 in a broader perspective, these asean values or norms are 'the hybrid offspring of an asian value system' and the development of asean 'has been guided in part by the underlying beliefs and principles of asian values' (noor 1999: 166). unfortunately, they do not reflect the value system of asean peoples as a whole. arguing that 'the development of a non-elite and more popular sense of common asean identity' may be hindered, noor stated that 'the ascendancy of an elite discourse based upon a common elite political culture and value framework [of the traditional ruling elite] may well retard the progress and development of an asean organization that is dedicated to the interests of asean citizens themselves' (noor 1999: 166). indeed, the asean way, if any, provides a sense of regional identity only at the intergovernmental level. a people's asean has yet to be realized. as echoed by a former thai foreign minister, the future of asean should become 'an asean of the people, [and] not just an asean of government leaders' (pitsuwan 2001: 8). as the asean way is an evolving interactive process, it is not easily defined. haacke noted that there are at least three distinct conceptualizations of the asean way. first, it is 'an intramural approach to dispute management and confidence building'. second, it is a decision-making method associated with the principles of musjawarah (consultation) and mufakat (consensus) that is originally a native political process built on ancient javanese customs which basically express ways of resolving political and personal differences through lengthy consideration concluding in unanimous decision. the third refers to acharya's conceptualization that is a 'process of identity building which relies upon conventional modern principles of interstate relations as well as tradi74 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan tional and culture-specific modes of socialization and decision-making' (haacke 2003: 58-59; acharya 2001: 28).3 for the purpose of this article, the asean way denotes a broad definition that covers both the basic international norms and the socio-cultural norms steering interaction among the ten southeast asian members. key features would mainly include respect for sovereignty, non-interference, non-use of force, quiet diplomacy (which may include informality and saving face), non-involvement of the organization in bilateral disputes and mutual respect (for the sensitivity of others), frequent consultations, consensus-building, accommodation, discretion and conciliation. the requirements for successful regional integration what exactly constitutes a successful regional institution? as mentioned earlier, why do only a few regional organizations succeed among the many? walter mattli points out that the success of a voluntary regional integration plan depends critically on the demand and supply condition. an area with a significant cross-border exchange of trade will lead to strong market pressure for integration, which mattli labels as a demand condition. conversely, the integration process will come to a halt if the potentiality for gain is very low due to certain factors like the lack of complementarity among regional economies or the absence of vital economies of scale. success, according to him, is defined as the realization of 'stated integration goals'. as for the supply condition, each plan or scheme must have the presence of a munificent leader/country that will act as a central figure in the coordination of rules, regulations, and policies and assist in easing tensions that may 'arise from the inequitable distribution of gains from integration' (mattli 1999: 42). those two conditions above are considered by mattli to be of primary importance. a third less-crucial condition would be the creation of 'commitment institutions' as third party enforcers in helping to catalyze the integration process by improving 'compliance with the rules of cooperation' and preventing reneging (mattli 1999: 42-43). another key point put forward is the notion that political leaders who face economic difficulties at home will promote regional integration if they are convinced that their political survival depends on it. two current integration schemes that satisfy mattli's primary conditions are the eu and nafta, led by germany and the united states respectively. in the case of the eu, the european commission and the european court of justice are seen as examples of 'commitment institutions' fostering integration. 75 asean's regional integration challenge mattli's explanatory framework is not without limitations. douglas webber briefly provided six objections or reservations, questioning mattli's conditions of successful integration. he notes that: firstly, policies to integrate markets in creating a free trade area or common market should not be the only focus as there can also be emphasis on the 'integration or coordination of other kinds of policies' in some regional integration schemes, although it stopped short of explaining what are those kinds of policies and how they are related to the success and failure of integration; secondly, there should be an explanation of interregional variations of 'stated integration goals' such as why the eu's integration agenda seems to be more thorough and far-reaching than nafta's; thirdly, 'a coalition of leading states' apart from a hegemonic state do stand a chance to provide the obligatory leadership for successful integration citing the close bilateral relationship of france and germany as a more realistic interpretation of eu's success; fourthly, 'commitment institutions' should not be seen as only a pre-condition but they can also emerge as the consequences of successful integration; fifthly, economic difficulties as a condition may not necessarily encourage regional cooperation and even if it does, it may help to explain the attempt at, rather than the success/failure of regional integration; and lastly, the stipulation of leadership role is not only determined by hard variables (economic size, population, and military strength) but may also be dependent on soft variables (foreign policy strategies, history, and collective memories) (webber 2001: 344-45). while accepting mattli's first two 'strong' conditions and rejecting the others, webber put forth another two of his own – the 'degree of economic and political homogeneity' – and the role of the united states (us) in influencing regional integration projects (webber 2001: 347). identifying the impeding factor based on the conditions as spelled out in the previous section, both mattli and webber took to the task of analyzing asean as a regional integration scheme/project. the results of their individual analysis were daunting. as shown in table 1, mattli provided three reasons and webber four as to why asean would not succeed in its 'stated integration goals'. both mattli and webber agreed on the first two reasons (see table 1). the first reason of 'low and non-complementary intra-regional trade' cannot be simply understood in economic terms but should be put in a historical context. asean as an organization was borne out of regional 76 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan conflict whereby the founding leaders had no agenda of integrating member economies even though that notion was not alien to them as they were much aware of what was transpiring in western europe. moreover, southeast asian countries' economic successes, especially among the asean-five, prior to the economic crisis, were achieved through individual efforts under the directives of each nation's own national economic policies. most of them share the same markets and compete in the same industrial sectors. as history has shown, the bulk of early cooperation among member-states was in the areas of security, first with the communist insurgencies, followed by superpower rivalries and the invasion in neighbouring indochina (vietnam-cambodia issue). serious economic cooperation only took off after the cold war ended, mostly attributed to the trepidation of nafta's and the eu's integration plans. also, this is related to the unsuccessful attempt of an east asian economic group/caucus (eaeg/eaec) proposed by malaysian prime minister, dr mahathir mohamad, in 1990. had the eaeg proposal gone through, afta might not have come about or may have been realized in a different form.4 while economic integration has been somewhat expedited since then, more so after the economic crisis, intra trade has generally remained low. in 1993, trade among the ten southeast asian countries stood at around 22 percent of total exports and in 2002 it was only at 24 percent (wto trade statistics 2003). there are two possible reasons to this. first, asean is incapable of drawing up any kind of treaty like the 1957 treaty of rome establishing the european economic community. a treaty with clear rules and procedures would have arguably bound and ensured commitment from table 1: reasons why asean is not a successful regional institution pre-conditions mattli webber strong market pressure low and non-complementary intra-regional trade undisputed leadership lack an undisputed leader 'commitment institutions' no central monitoring or third-party enforcement economic & political homogeneity high level of disparities in economic development and openness. the us factor 'benign indifference' sources: adapted from mattli (1999: 169-71) and webber (2001: 351-53). 77 asean's regional integration challenge member-states. this inability is tied to a political culture, which holds sovereignty and non-interference sacred, as enshrined in tac. as the association becomes more firmly sheathed within its norms, it faces a tougher time to create institutional structures that are essential in increasing intra-trade and deepening economic integration. the asean way helped to achieve political stability in the region and so provided a conducive environment for foreign investment but it failed to enable member-states to capitalize on such opportunities collectively. second, the generally authoritarian nature of southeast asian governments kept the region 'divided' and limited economic integration. from a realist perspective, the dominant goal of authoritarian leaders is to remain in power, thus the survival of the individual leader surpasses the interest of the state.5 closer economic integration or the establishment of a treaty would lead to a trans-national organization and the subsequent loss of power in directing their respective national economies. thus asean norms (sovereignty, non-interference and consensual decision-making process) augment authoritarianism and preserve the divisions of nation-state identities. those norms also provide an escape route if member states fail to agree on a common policy. as countries pursue their own economic agendas, they face difficulties in collective coordination of their economies, eventually leading to competition rather than complementarity. the formation of afta and the signing of various economic agreements reflected the awareness of external market forces like globalization rather than strong internal needs for market integration. implementations of those agreements continue to remain a problem.6 the second reason was that asean does not have an undisputed leader or a coalition of leaders to guide the organization. indonesia, with the largest population and one of the strongest military, is often looked upon as the organization's leader. indeed, the stationing of the association's secretariat in jakarta shows the recognition of indonesia's importance in the region. even the concept of musjawarah and mufakat originated from the traditional indonesian village system, which became the standard norms of conduct for asean. the fall of suharto and the political and economical uncertainties that befell indonesia thereafter are partly blamed for the disruption of asean's goal in achieving an integrated community. indonesia was important to asean at the time of inception because of her size and military strength. by getting indonesia to commit to asean, it was hoped that any future mischief could be deterred. 78 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan but within asean, indonesia could hardly assert its leadership role as others were sceptical of her intentions or downplayed her position. referring back to history, it's possible to provide a few examples. when suharto first tried to lead the other founding members towards nonalignment as a response to foreign power rivalries, none followed. malaysia and thailand were subdued but the philippines had no intention of giving up their strong bilateral defence ties with the us and the singaporeans wanted to continue relying on british protection. obviously, they saw external actors as vital in preventing indonesia from dominating the region (leifer 1989: 5-6). another case of interest was the vietnam-cambodia issue – the invasion and occupation of cambodia by vietnam from 1978-90. geographical proximity and external power interference were threatening asean's security and thus saw the need to pull their strengths together. on the surface, it showed unity and managed to gain recognition from the international community. however, things were murkier below the surface. indonesia, which received the backing of asean as interlocutor in that issue, was later undermined by thailand's own independent approach in solving the matter.7 such tacit manoeuvring clearly showed the limitation of indonesia's reputation within the organization. a third example is best displayed by the proposal of eaeg by malaysia. the unilateral approach taken not only irked the indonesian camp but also put indonesia's headship into question. furthermore, while indonesia may be strong militarily, it is relatively weak in economic terms, even more so now as it grapples with democratic transition. this has greatly prevented it from becoming the 'regional paymaster' in easing any distributional problems unlike what germany was capable of doing for the eu. the limitation of indonesia or any other members to hold the role of undisputed leader is manifested in the asean process. the norms of procedure deny indonesia any outright leadership role.8 under musjawarah, a leader is not allowed to act capriciously or forcefully and any suggestions given should take into consideration the views and feelings of fellow members. mufakat will be achieved when all members agreed to those suggestions. the outcome is not only slow but reflecting the lowest common denominator. in this sense, the alleged hard and soft variables that determines an undisputed leadership role as submitted by webber is less applicable in the case of asean due to the presence of those unique norms of diplomacy that sets the organization apart from other regional entities. 79 asean's regional integration challenge as for the third reason based on mattli's 'commitment institutions', it is obvious that asean lacks third-party enforcement machineries and this becomes very clear when compared to the eu. however, this reasoning irrespective of whether it is a pre-condition or a consequence of successful integration as webber would argue has to be understood from the political culture that asean operates in. member-states have been frequently accused of not being willing to shift any decision-making authority to higher supranational bodies. any bilateral disputes that arise between members are mostly handled through quiet diplomacy where the organization is not involved. disputes that cannot be settled are often put off to a later period. a case in point is the philippines's claim over sabah in the 1960s. it was suppressed after marcos came into power and gave verbal assurance, but since no official treaty was signed, future dispute still remains highly possible. if trouble becomes unbearable, it is then referred to an outer international body and not asean itself. this is true of the case between malaysia and indonesia over the jurisdiction of sipadan and ligitan islands. the same holds for the recent dispute between malaysia and singapore over the strategic island of batu puteh (or pedra branca). the inability to draft its own effective 'commitment institutions' and the reluctant reliance on international dispute settlement mechanisms could be seen as due to the practice of the asean way that greatly puts constraint on the viability and implementation of such institutions. it clearly brings into question the norms of sovereignty and non-interference that are at the very centrepiece of asean's foreign policy. this is the underlying factor to mattli's definition of 'commitment institutions'. without prior resolve of those norms, commitment and compliance would not be possible since it would undermine the powers of the individual leaders and the sovereignty statuses of member countries, all of which with the exception of thailand experienced the harsh realities of colonialism and thus prize those values more highly than their western counterparts. if the goal is only to reduce tensions and war in the region, then the asean process can be likened to a unique kind of commitment 'institution', at least not within mattli's classification, that has created 'stable expectations' and acts as a monitoring mechanism of mutually acceptable behaviour in setting the course for any cooperative undertaking. however, asean's goals go beyond that narrow definition and norms alone obviously remain inferior to legal rules. as nischalke (2000: 89-112) points out in his research, there were instances when those fundamental principles have been breached. 80 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan in 1999, there were calls for more concrete measures to be taken in solving problems that had beset the organization. saying that the asean way can no longer be maintained, former indonesian foreign affairs advisor dewi fortuna anwar called for a crisis-management centre similar to the organization for security and cooperation in europe (osce) to be set up (international herald tribune, 22 april 1999). what transpired was the creation of the asean troika (2000) and the asean high council (2001). some may tend to argue that they do represent a form of 'commitment institutions' with the purpose of providing a channel to manage and resolve disputes among members. briefly, the asean troika is meant to deal with sudden flare up of disputes while the high council is intended to deal with long-term disputes. they are claimed to be seen as a small step away from the traditional diplomatic culture of asean. indeed, it does reflect a shift from the traditional norm of non-involvement of the association in any bilateral disputes. however, their effectiveness is put into question. several reasons could be identified. first, the asean troika has failed to materialize as a permanent institution at the ministerial level. instead it ended up as an ad hoc body. thailand's prime minister chuan leekpai's proposal to institutionalize the troika concept was seen by others as a 'clever effort to revitalize surin pitsuwan's proposal of flexible engagement in different garb' (haacke 2003: 72). second, it is not allowed to make any decisions on its own but only to offer recommendations in assisting the asean foreign ministers. third, the troika is subjected to the guidelines of the norms of procedure, specifically non-interference and consensus. all these point to the fact that the asean way has not been diminished but rather enhanced. not only it is important to prevent intervention from outside powers but also individual leaders are still reluctant to involve other regional members in their respective domestic affairs. comparably, asean's troika is unmatched to the osce even though principles of sovereign equality, non-intervention, peaceful settlement of disputes, territorial integrity, etc are also enshrined in the osce. on the rules of the procedure of the asean high council, haacke clearly noted that 'some of the rules of procedure reinforce rather than undermine existing norms of the asean way' (haacke 2003: 79). in contrast to the osce that allows any member nation to call for a dispute to be brought up before a commission, the high council could be invoked only by the state involved in the dispute, hence very much inline to the norms of non-interference and sovereignty. whether they are just political gestures or have the 81 asean's regional integration challenge might to solve asean's woes are yet unknown. but even as the aseansix may try to reinvent the organization in a more structured fashion, the asean-four (cambodia, vietnam, laos and myanmar – cvlm countries) will continue to resist and clam tight the diplomatic culture that they have come to identify with. on webber's third point, he argued that asean is incapable of achieving closer or successful integration primarily because there are high disparities in the economic level of member-states that would obstruct any efforts toward collective actions. in other words, the political and economic climate in southeast asia is too heterogeneous to achieve a 'sense of community' or a common identity, which he believes to be the prerequisite for a successful regional organization. here, the eu is once again evoked as a comparison. but while disparities may obstruct the integration process, it is not necessarily a strong argument. claiming a degree of homogeneity among state actors in a region as a variable for comparison does, to some extent, deny the fact that until today there has not been any regional organization visible in northeast asia where the countries of china, japan and korea share more similarities in many respects than the countries in southeast asia. japan and korea exhibit a wide range of economic and cultural resemblance. economic cooperation through trade between the two countries has generated extensive business networks. japanese trade and investment, not to mention developmental assistance, with china and china's shift to a market economy should have brought about some form of organizational structure for cooperation in the region. or, even the fact that the gulf cooperation council (gcc) established in 1981 among countries with similar cultural traits has remained weak and insignificant for two decades. discrepancies in political and economic systems or lingering historical animosities are as or could even be more essential hurdles to regional integration in comparison to religious or cultural qualities. the ability of asean to bring the three northeast asian countries into economic cooperation through the asean+3 process stand to further weaken webber's point above. a more fundamental factor in the obstruction of collective action and crisis management in asean should be directed at the norms of procedure that have developed over a long period of time. the seeing of themselves as feeble states and hence the need to uphold power and maintain sovereign rights not as a region but as individual states has exacerbated foreign policy divergence and, coupled with the overarching of protectionism especially among newer members, do not bode well 82 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan in breaking down the walls of political divisions. the asean way has been 'highly successful at altering the interactions' of members but it is neither capable nor designed to 'alter their definitions of their national interests' (narine 1997: 965). this limitation is a key factor in hindering the cooperative process towards shared common political values and goals of the organization. the fourth and final reason was about how the united states perceives regional integration plans in regions that fall under its sphere of influence. here, webber argues that without the johnson administration's approval and the critical role it played, asean would not have come to life. asean received us support due to its anti-communist raison d'être, which was 'entirely congruent' with the us's objectives of that time, while its current attitude towards the association is one of 'benign indifference' (webber 2001: 351-53). the view that asean succeeded in its creation because of us approval is rather misleading. asean's initial focus on communism may have run parallel to president johnson's asian policy but its formation was much less of a us influence. as yamakage clearly points out that asean was never a part of any us anti-communist strategy. indonesia, which proposed the name of asean and wished to incorporate the principle of nonalignment into the organization, was never aware of any attempts to use asean as an anti-communist satellite. policies taken by asean governments were actually disassociated from us policy. he notes that on the contrary, fear of us withdrawal from the region and over dependence on the us were factors that led southeast asian countries to form asean (yamakage 1997).9 nonetheless, the us factor can be best understood when the failed eaeg is taken as an example. the reason for the failure of the eaeg plan was principally the mistaken exclusion of us from the equation. other factors notwithstanding, had the eaeg been defined along the lines of open regionalism and assured us interests, an east asian organization could have emerged. but, as webber admits, it is a factor concerning the success or failure of attempts at regional integration for states that are susceptible to american pressure. us presence may help accelerate the integration process by providing security and maintaining stability in a region or decelerate it by influencing the policies of regional states. european integration plans in the early period were strongly supported by the us, which provided the security role of containing germany, thus giving france adequate confidence to construct a bilateral relationship with germany. 83 asean's regional integration challenge us presence in southeast asia has also played an integral part in stabilizing the region. however, it does not qualify as a pre-condition for successful regional integration. the us factor failed to be sustainable as is clearly proved when asean asserted its independence and voted to admit myanmar in 1997 in plain defiance against the us stance. although admitting myanmar remains a controversial issue, asean went a step closer to achieving its long-term goal of uniting all of southeast asia.10 therefore, even if the us shows 'benign indifference' to asean, there should be no grounds for the organization to derail from its course. what is obstructing asean's path to closer integration is not the us but rather the lack of a shared vision and political unity among the members. the asean process that defines how asean operates clearly limits the organization's ability to move towards stronger and deeper integration. it is more of an internal condition than an external factor. reformulating the asean way the above analysis mostly showed an existence of a common denominator – the asean way. the reasons promulgated by mattli and webber of asean as a 'failed' regional integration scheme is actually tied to a deeper root cause that specifically points to the nature of the organization's diplomatic culture. while recognizing the asean process as embedded in the system, the paper calls for necessary reconfiguration and supplementation in line with the changing regional and international landscape. there has been some reluctant progress to date. in 1998, an attempt was made in the effort to readjust the asean way through a policy proposal of 'flexible engagement'. it was a realization by some quarters that there is a need to shift towards a more transparent and open discussion. this realization came after the association was highly criticized and blamed for its failure to unite and manage the asian financial crisis collectively. however, there was resistance against the proposal. then malaysian foreign minister, abdullah ahmad badawi, made his stance clear when he wrote 'i believe in consultation, definitely not intervention – flexible or otherwise' (asiaweek, 25 december 1998). the proposal was finally rejected largely because the concept itself was poorly spelled out and there were fear among members that it would undermine regime security (haacke 1999: 592-98). instead, member countries settled for a less impressive formula of 'enhanced interaction'. the new adopted terminology allows member states to convene and discuss problems when a domestic concern of one country produces 84 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan vibrating effects on other countries and when transnational problems like drug trafficking, smuggling, and piracy require cooperative efforts. in practice, it has not wavered much from the general agreed code of conduct, as even thailand, which came up with the proposal, has kept much of its interaction rather compatible with asean's traditional diplomacy. agreements like the transboundary haze pollution, the asean troika and the high council, signed after 1998, are meant to provide a more institutionalized approach to problem solving. it may show a general move towards loosening the grip primarily on the norm of non-interference. but these agreements do demonstrate a flaw. as explained in the previous section, only the country involved in a dispute or a problem can raise the issue for discussion. the question then becomes what happens when a member country decides not to do so with a domestic problem that has turned into a regional one. power continues to be vested at the national level and since there are no means of forcing compliance, there will be obstacles in implementing those agreements. quiet diplomacy still reigns, more so in the post-asian crisis as the southeast asian countries busily continue to engage in nation-building. while the asean way has brought relative peace to the region, it clearly demonstrates insufficiency in providing a strong platform for regional integration. the paradox is that a total abandonment would risk threatening asean's own survival but full preservation will only cause the organization to lose out (kuroyanagi 2003: 170-71). since there is a strong desire to go beyond the current level of cooperation as further indicated in the 2003 bali concord ii declaration for economic, security and socio-cultural communities, the asean way ought to be rethought. the supplementation of 'commitment institutions' and the reconfiguration of at least three key norms – sovereignty, non-interference and consensus – are indispensable in achieving the objectives of asean. 'commitment institutions' it is difficult to envision a strong integrated asean without having effective forms of commitment institutions in place. democratization and further economic integration may encourage member countries to see beyond their narrow individual interests and open the door for mutual acceptance of higher institutional structures. 'commitment institutions' would serve as pivotal pillars that would help to constrain the members from reneging on the rules of cooperation. this would lead to the enhancement of transparency in the workings of asean and reduce 85 asean's regional integration challenge the need for quiet diplomacy. it will also ensure that the countries stay committed to the many initiatives and projects like afta, aia and other new ones being introduced. asean has been introducing various initiatives to keep up with global developments. as those initiatives become more sophisticated, institutionalization beyond the state would be inevitable or else there will be further disparities and unevenness if left to the devices of individual states. without doubt, asean has to reinvent itself. at the current stage, the asean process would make any proposition of 'commitment institutions' improbable. as yet, there is still a lack of preparedness to pool sovereignty in a way that is beneficial for the entire region and its wider population. a 'super structure of politics' may be what the organization needs to integrate the differing political cultures of member states (pitsuwan 2001: 10). the more the association is able to change its current diverse governance structure into a more homogenized form through the cultivation of a common set of political values, the better it will succeed in its integration plans. thus, asean has to assign itself the task of converting its members into a standardized political set-up. to date, the association has identified the need to strengthen its secretariat by enhancing its role and sharpening its priorities. however, this should also duly include the transfer of more authority for it to function as a respected central and legal body governing the ten member countries. while political divisions continue to be a dilemma for asean, it has come up with some ambitious plans on the economic front. under the roadmap for integration of asean (ria), there are three main pillars: firstly, to narrow the economic development gap of the organization's older and newer members through a six-year initiative for asean integration (iai) work plan (july 2002-june 2008); secondly, to deepen economic cooperation in areas like energy (asean power grid), transport (asean highway network) and sub-regional growth areas; and thirdly, to improve economic cooperation through market integration initiatives such as afta and asean investment area. these projects require proper management and extensive coordination as well as effective dispute mechanisms to ensure their success. with the supplementation of 'commitment institutions', not only will the projects be better managed but it will also certainly raise asean's competitiveness amid other regional groupings and avoid being marginalized. the realization of such institutions will, however, depend on two key norms – sovereignty and non-interference. 86 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan sovereignty and non-interference the cardinal principle, sovereignty, and its corollary principle, non-interference or non-intervention, are perceived as the most problematic concepts which obstruct successful integration. while both principles date back as far as the westphalia agreement of 1648 and have been serving as the basic rule of interstate relationship in the world, asean took to them as its sacred tenet. these principles allowed asean to be formed as a regional organization in a region beset with mutual suspicion, distrust and political rivalry. intermittent intervention in internal affairs notwithstanding, only through these principles could asean assure regime security for its members, that in return assures the association's survival. sovereignty-bound, asean took the role of controlling conflict between member parties. together with other norms that came to define the asean way, community building was gradually made possible. while asean was not a fully-fledged security community, it demonstrated some of the characteristics of no armed interstate conflict and military build-up (see acharya 1995: 175-200; narine 2002: 71-74). the beginning of the 1990s saw a different kind of challenge, an economic one that would seriously flout the principle of sovereignty. the current waves of fluid movements in the global arena with the advent of globalization, domestic issues increasingly manifest themselves into diplomatic problems and the emerging civil societies of southeast asia are all taking great toll of the traditional principles of absolute sovereignty and non-interference. the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs is a significant barrier that impedes the capability to achieve far greater integration. can there be a high level of integration by strictly adhering to this principle? the 1997 crisis has proved how disastrous it can be for the region. it has shown that as the countries in the region become more and more interdependent, the old argument of non-interference become less and less attractive. sooner or later it has to be discarded, for every southeast asian country should be its brother's keeper. the adoption of enhanced interaction, while minimal, is a good start. at least it shows leaders' willingness to engage in discussion. but obviously it is inadequate. if asean wants to solve its own problems and avoid being divided into the haves and have-nots, the members will have to engage each other in a more mature and constructive environment. this is where the asean-six can teach by example. the alternative would be to wait for all the member states to become fully democratic (yamakage 2001: 139-40).11 but even 87 asean's regional integration challenge then, being democratic alone does not suffice. it has to be coupled with economic prosperity to create confidence. unfortunately, what the association does not have is time. most member countries are fearful of having a strong functional asean for fear of incurring a diminished national policymaking autonomy. however, the issue is not entirely about ceding some colossal principle of sovereignty. it is more specifically about engaging in 'sovereignty bargains' – the acceptance of certain limitation in exchange for other benefits (litfin 1997). with sovereignty comprising three elements of autonomy (or independence in policymaking and action), control (the ability to produce an effect), and legitimacy (the recognized right to make rules), a state may bargain for more control over autonomy or have its legitimacy undercut by increased control (mattli 2000: 150). in this sense, sovereignty is being reconfigured through voluntary agreements but not necessarily diminished. if autonomy was traded for more economic security in asean, the damage caused by the asian crisis could have been limited as the 1997 experience clearly showed how interdependent the region is and the vulnerability of individual state policies in containing the spread. in asean, there are still other challenges that need to be taken into consideration. apart from differing political systems (from democracy to military regime) and a general lack of trust, the association's expansionist policies have made sovereignty reconfiguration harder. in comparing the accession of prospective candidates in eu and asean, there is a clear distinction between the two. the newer members of asean (cvlm) acceded without much sovereignty bargains that other eu prospective members had to go through. unlike the eu, asean's only political criterion for its potential members was for them to agree to accept the asean way and in the case of myanmar, the acceptance of constructive engagement. what attracted them was not national prosperity in exchange for autonomy (as in the case of eu) but political enhancement and external legitimacy in exchange for none. the asean way became a lucrative guarantor of their newly hard-won sovereign rights. they will reject any changes in the sovereignty configuration. it is therefore critical to enmesh the newer member economies with the old in deepening intra-trade to increase interdependency that would lead to the demand for sovereignty bargains and the natural fallout of strict non-intervention terms. 88 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan consensus decision-making an important norm in asean, consensus or mufakat is both the organization's strong as well as its weak point. the consensus norm puts each member on an equal footing, allowing the smaller and weaker states to have their voices heard (in the absence of legalistic rules) and its non-binding nature gives members the choice to forego initiatives or policies that run contrary to their national interests. consensus taken provides an impression of unity among fellow members in the eyes of the international community. furthermore, it confines public disputes and shelters any member from losing face in an international locale. on the other hand, consensus reached is normally on the lowest and at times the slowest common denominator. it is unable to produce results on contentious and detrimental matters (the economic meltdown being a case). since the responsibility for a decision is spread among the group, no one member can be found accountable for the consequences of the decision. it drags the organization from evolving rapidly. no doubt, this will become even more acute with enlargement as it increases asean's political and economic diversity and complicates the decision making process (see international herald tribune, 22 april 1999; asiaweek, 25 december 1998). some problems occurring from expansion are as follows. first, the cvlm countries' commitment to the association remains fairly weak. even after seven years in asean, myanmar has continued to defy popular pressure with its antics and caused the organization great embarrassment. with their recent membership, it would take more than just a few years to create a sense of belonging. second, many of them lack the resources and funds to carry out asean's activities and implement agreements reached at the regional level. developmental assistance from older members would certainly help ease the transition but the economic difficulties endured after 1997 is putting a burden on all parties. countries like indonesia are still trying hard to kick start their battered economies. it wouldn't be surprising if the realization of the vision 2020 is pushed further back. third, the number of political ideologies or state systems has increased accordingly. different variants of communism, socialism and military regime are introduced. this has not been an immediate problem because non-intervention continues to be observed. but lately, signs of discontent are manifesting themselves against myanmar's recent activities and they could well become the centre of contention as the organization intensifies its move towards integration. there will be a need for more homogeneous political governance between the ten member countries. it is in this respect that the 89 asean's regional integration challenge asean-four would have to evolve at a much faster rate both politically and economically to close ranks with the asean-six countries. being aware of the expansion problem and the difficulty in getting consensus, the association has resorted to adopting the 'ten minus x' principle. in getting around the consensus problem, this principle allows those who are ready to move forward with liberalization do so without being held back by the slower ones. the most obvious example is the acceptance of a two-tier afta. the original six asean members would surge ahead with plans while the cvlm members are given more time to catch up with reform measures. free from constraints, the aseansix can better position themselves to compete directly with the chinese economy. however, the fear is that it may widen instead of closing the gap and cause more tension between mainland and maritime southeast asia.12 the new trend of bilateral free trade arrangements led by singapore could increase wealth disparities and create resentment and envy in those who may not have the means or be in the position to do the same. at present however, the asean-four is moving to close the gap. in 1999, the combined gross national income per capita in terms of purchasing power parity for the older members was 9.17 times more than the newer members while it went down to 7.87 times in 2002 (the world bank).13 this development should be further encouraged by having institutional measures in place to guarantee redistribution of income in the direction of the poorer members to maintain the integration of asean. consensus, as traditionally understood, is no longer capable of defending the ideals of the organization in a global environment that is increasingly intrusive and competitive. internally, it is causing some members to get restless and impatient. with the 'ten minus x' formula, consensus has been redefined and as such does not connote unanimity. one is not obliged to wait for another. but while it is not unanimity (the outcome may not reflect everyone's preference), consensus decisionmaking still calls for general agreement and the resolving of objections as part of the process that will, above all, take time. as asean matures, it should display more flexibility in its decision–making process by introducing majority voting for issues that cannot afford the luxury of time. a fair voting process can prevent coercion and manipulation that are at times associated with consensus. the majority vote is also a good method to arrive at decisions on issues and not to defer or put on hold in a way which will subsequently create a large backlog of undecided matters. clearly, the rapid economic development of china and india is threatening the association's traditional approach of taking matters 90 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan slowly and step by step. there is hardly any room for mistrust and suspicion. consensus decision making will have to be further rethought and reconfigured to best support the complexities of institutionalism that is increasingly seen as inevitable in a growing asean. the call to speed up integration by singapore and thailand during last year's bali summit is an obvious indication of restlessness within the organization. their readiness to work with each other should not be bogged down by having to wait for time consuming consensus in deciding on the 'two minus x' approach (any two countries can work together first on specific sectors while the others can join in later). allowing singapore and thailand to surge ahead with their plans for cooperation can later place them in a good position to assist in the development of other slower member economies. it could well be an answer to the quest for a benevolent leader or a coalition of leaders which has been noted as an important condition for successful integration. in exchange, there must be commitment to assume some sort of a paymaster role in easing distributional tensions and other foreseeable conflicts within the group. this will entail sovereignty bargains and the shouldering of more responsibilities in the effort to create a well integrated and successful asean. conclusion in reviewing the analysis of the determinants of the success and failure of regional integration, this study has managed to identify a deeper root cause of the reasons that are obstructing asean from realizing its stated integration goals. the problem generally lies in the association's diplomatic culture – the working tradition that has come to be understood as the asean way or the asean process. it is a guiding principle that has over the years built confidence and trust among the members in the region. it has generated a certain level of comfort and understanding between the member states. however, the asean way in its current configuration is not competent to steer the region towards an integrated community. the fact that asean is built on norms and shaky institutional structures will not help it to weather the storm of globalization and new regional challenges posed by two neighbouring giants, china and india. furthermore, a second asian crisis must be avoided at all cost. it is in the light of these factors, among others, that the paper calls for the association to make an urgent priority of strengthening itself internally. the asean diplomacy must be reviewed, reconfigured and supplemented if there are going to 91 asean's regional integration challenge be genuine efforts at integration. the reconfiguration of the norms of sovereignty, non-intervention and consensus and the supplementation of 'commitment institutions' will strengthen asean's core foundation and speed up the process as the organization no longer has the benefit of time. elimination of those norms do not pose a viable option and by this recognition, the paper breaks away from traditional literatures and introduces concepts of sovereignty bargaining and majority voting that the association should explore to help it overcome some of the limitations of its diplomatic culture. furthermore, it is equally important to recognize that the three norms are interlinked and the reconfiguration of one may affect the other. a move to adopt constructive interference, for example, may require a shift in the consensus decision making process and such adoption may not be possible without some form of sovereignty bargain between the members. likewise, the introduction of 'commitment institutions' will require the alteration of the stringent principles of non-intervention and sovereignty. from the review of the conditions for successful integration, the paper finds that the reasons promulgated by mattli and webber are insufficient in explaining why asean has not been successful in its integration quest. the measurement for 'successfulness' based on the understanding of western integration models or on pure economic factors or even certain external variables risk over-generalizing and overlooking the internal complexities of an organization such as asean which has been in existence for more than 30 years and would therefore suggest the presence of a political culture that plays a fundamental role in shaping and dictating the interaction of member countries. the asean way is an important criterion that must be factored in to avoid too simplistic explanations that are incapable of fully capturing the intricacies of the region. the association's enlargement exercise has proved to be an expensive adventure. it must carefully consider the consequences if there is to be an accession of east timor. the focus now should be fully geared towards the internal strengthening of the organization and the further involvement of a wider circle of non-elites and the general population in the effort to build a competitive institution, one that can be identified and be proud of by the people of asean. benny teh cheng guan is a ph.d. candidate at the graduate school of socioenvironmental studies, kanazawa university. 92 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan notes * acknowledgements. this article is a revised version of a paper presented to the 6th asean inter-university seminars on social development at science university of malaysia, 14-16 may 2004. the author would like to thank the editors and an anonymous reviewer of the copenhagen journal of asian studies for their helpful comments and suggestions. special thanks to ai higuchi, jennifer hazzelby, shaun narine and masahiro kashima for their assistance and comments on an earlier draft of this article. 1 the framework is derived from walter mattli (1999) and douglas webber (2001). 2 for more details, see busse (1999) and snitwongse (1995: 520). 3 acharya (2001: 47-68) discerns between asean norms like non-interference, peaceful resolution, non-use of force, and regional autonomy and the asean way such as informality, consensus-building and consultation. 4 during the 23rd asean economic ministers meeting in kuala lumpur in 1991, five proposals were put on the table. there were the malaysian eaeg, the thai afta, the indonesian cept, the philippine asean treaty of economic cooperation and the singaporean sub-regional growth triangles. dr mahathir mohamad pushed strongly for the eaeg, casting doubt on the 'ability of asean to create an operational free trade area'. the final consensus led to the birth of afta and cept, achieved during the singapore asean summit in january 1992 (palmujoki 2001: 54-55). 5 this is based on steven david's theory of omnibalancing, which argues that the main actors of third world countries in international politics are individual rulers and not the state (david 1991). 6 as funston (2000: 4) pointed out that the practice of non-intervention has caused 'plans for economic cooperation [to gather] dust as countries adhered to protectionist policies and refused to make concessions to neighbours'. 7 under thailands's new premier, chatichai choonhavan, a series of initiatives were taken towards the indochina states. first, a change in economic policy gradually increased export items to laos and the normalization process let to chatichai's visit in 1988. second, chatichai departed from the established thai policy to recognize the phnom penh government by welcoming prime minister hun sen to an informal meeting in 1989. third, thai foreign minister siddhi savetsila formally visited vietnam in 1989 under chatichai's persuasion. the visit not only signalled support from the thai foreign ministry for the prime minister's diplomacy but also brought home successful trade negotiations and the acknowledgement for neutralization of cambodia (sudô 1996: 64-68). 8 indonesia, at best, was accepted as 'first among equals' (lee 2000: 370). 9 it is also worth noting here that asean cannot be formed on the grounds of anti-communism for history has shown that indonesia rejected the association of southeast asia (asa) because of its perceived political connections to the southeast asian treaty organization (seato). 10 for an interesting account on the accession of myanmar into asean, see palmujoki (2001: 47-49). 11 yamakage notes that the norm of non-interference as a barrier can be removed in long term when democracy matures in each member state. 12 for some viewpoints on this issue, see asia times online 20 february 2003. 13 statistical data was unavailable for brunei and myanmar. 93 asean's regional integration challenge references acharya, amitav 1995. 'a regional security community in southeast asia?' journal of strategic studies 18(3): 175-200. —2001. constructing a security community in southeast asia: asean and the problem of regional order. new york: routledge. asia times online, 20 february 2003. asiaweek, 25 december 1998. busse, nikolas 1999. 'constructivism and southeast asian security'. the pacific review 12(1): 39-60. chatterjee, srikanta 1990. 'asean economic co-operation in the 1980s and 1990s'. in alison broinowski (ed.). asean into the 1990s. london: macmillan: 58-82. david, steven 1991. 'explaining third world alignment.' world politics 43(2): 233-56. funston, john 2000. asean and the principle of non-intervention – practice and prospects. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. haacke, jurgen 1999. 'the concept of flexible engagement and the practice of enhanced interaction: intramural challenges to the 'asean way'.' the pacific review 12(4): 581-611. —2003. 'asean's diplomatic and security culture: a constructivist assessment'. international relations of the asia-pacific 3 (1): 57-87. international herald tribune, 22 april 1999. kuroyanagi, yoneji 2003. asean 35nen no kiseki: 'asean way' no kouyou to genkai [35 years of asean miracle: the applicability and limits of the asean way]. tokyo: yuushindou koubunsha. lee, kuan yew 2000. from third world to first. the singapore story: 1965-2000. singapore: singapore press holdings. leifer, michael 1989. asean and the security of southeast asia. london: routledge. litfin, karen 1997. 'sovereignty in world ecopolitics.' mershon international studies review 41: 167-204. mattli, walter 1999. the logic of regional integration. cambridge: cambridge university press. —2000. 'sovereignty bargains in regional integration.' international studies review 2(2): 149-180. narine, shaun 1997. 'asean and the arf: the limits of the 'asean way'.' asian survey 37(10): 961-978. —2002. explaining asean: regionalism in southeast asia. boulder: lynne rienner publishers. nischalke, tobias ingo 2000. 'insights from asean's foreign policy co-operation: the 'asean way', a real spirit or a phantom?' contemporary southeast asia 22(1): 89-112. noor, farish 1999. 'values in the dynamics of malaysia's internal and external political relations'. in han sung-joo (ed.). changing values in asia: their impact on governance and development. tokyo: japan center for international exchange: 146-76. palmujoki, eero 2001. regionalism and globalism in southeast asia. new york: palgrave. pitsuwan, surin 2001. future directions for asean. singapore: institute of southeast asian studies. snitwongse, kusuma 1995. 'asean's security cooperation: searching for a regional order.' the pacific review 8(3): 518-530. sudô, sueo 1996. tounan ajia kokusai kankei no kouzu: riron chiikigaku wo mezashite [composition of southeast asian international relations: towards a theoretical area study]. japan: keisou shobou. 94 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 20•2004 benny teh cheng guan takeuchi, junko 1999. 'foreign direct investment and economic cooperation'. in sueo sekiguchi and makito noda (eds). road to asean-10: japanese perspectives on economic integration. tokyo: japan center for international exchange: 98-132. the world bank. webber, douglas 2001. 'two funerals and a wedding?: the ups and downs of regionalism in east asia and asia-pacific after the asian crisis.' the pacific review 14(3): 339-72. wto trade statistics 2003. yamakage, susumu 1997. 'shoki asean saikou: reisen kouzou shita no ajia chiikishuugi to asean' [a reevaluation of early asean: asian regionalism under the cold war structure and the formation of asean]. nihon kokusai seiji gakkai [the japan association of international relations] 116: 17-31. —2001. 'asean no kihon rinen no douyou: naisei fukanshou gensoku wo meguru tairitsu to kyouryoku' [the convulsion of asean's fundamental principle: conflict and cooperation concerning the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs]. in susumu yamakage (ed.). tenkanki no asean: arata na kadai he no chousen [the turning point of asean: challenges to new problems]. tokyo: nihon kokusai mondai kenkyuujyo [the japan institute of international affairs]: 115-42. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. vi opdaterer systemet vi opdaterer systemet... rauli.cbs.dk opdateres og er snart tilgængeligt. marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 55 marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan curtis anderson gayle abstract during the early post-war period marxian approaches to history in japan sought to enfranchise women so that they might begin writing their own histories and become participants within the drive toward revolution. history writing was conceived as an existential activity and cultural practice that could help women and the working class become agents of socio-political change. a number of women's history-writing groups found such approaches useful and adapted some of the core methods about history writing originally developed in marxian approaches between 1945 and 1955. by grounding their approaches to history in terms of 'local' and 'regional' spaces, however, these women's history writing groups would also differentiate their socio-political objectives from those espoused by marxists concerned with 'national subjectivity' (minzoku jikaku). instead, through emphasizing the role of inter-class and even inter-gender cooperation within specific representations of the 'local' and 'regional' these groups hoped that such approaches could become models for other women's history-writing groups. this paper will argue that marxian approaches were both a source of inspiration and difference for such women's history-writing groups in tokyo, nagoya and ehime. introduction the development of local and regional women's history in post-war japan can be understood within the larger context of marxian approaches to history and social movements that dominated the political landscape during the 1950s. put forward as a set of discourses and political practices that could 'awaken' and move the working class, marxian history provided both opportunities and limitations for women interested in writing their own histories. during the early post-war period, history and history writing had become cultural practices that were broad enough to include women within their views of history and projects of socio-political change. as a result, the historical approaches developed by marxists became a way of looking at history and social change that could benefit women and help legitimize history writing through the voices of women themselves. curtis anderson gayle 56 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 whilst providing a radical and activist sense of history, marxian approaches also came with their own inherent problems. this paper will first examine the structural logic of marxian approaches to history in early post-war japan and discuss the notion of 'national subjectivity' (minzoku jikaku) set forth within them. it will show that problems in this conceptualization made it necessary for those interested in writing women's history to separate themselves from the marxian histories that had inspired them. the paper will then look at the development of three women's history writing groups – the tokyo women's history research association, the nagoya women's history research association, and the ehime women's history circle – to draw out some of the methodological similarities and differences of such groups to marxian approaches. the conclusion will suggest that although marxian histories crafted during the late 1940s and early 1950s overlooked the concrete relationship of the individual to the nation whose (liberationist) subjectivity it had just conceived, they nevertheless furnished ideas about writing history that could be appropriated by those 'without voices' in japan, particularly women. marxism, science and radical politics the idea of modern nationalism that ontologically resists and rejects the state is nothing new to intellectual history or theories of nationalism. nationalism on both the left and the right has often taken umbrage at a state seen to be in collusion with ideologies, beliefs and systems deemed to be unhealthy or illegitimate. on the right, this has historically taken the form of ideologies that find the modern nation state to have compromised the 'purity' and historical salience of 'national life' – so that a state more befitting the nation is imagined and represented in histories and political narratives (brown 1955).1 on the left, the radical tradition of twentieth-century marxian thought (especially within anti-colonial movements) makes it clear that belief in a nation can be a valid political principle upon which to envision revolution and structural change (forman 1998).2 in other words, the basic logic of anti-state nationalism is no stranger to modern political theory or cultural history. during the early post-war period, a number of influential marxian historians helped to produce an interesting amalgam of marxism and nationalism within the context of japanese historiography. figures such as ishimoda shō, uehara senroku, tōyama shigeki, eguchi bokurō, inoue kiyoshi and matsumoto shinpachirō3 sought to make history a science by establishing basic principles (kōryō) for the study of history marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 57 within the rekishigaku kenkyūkai, or historical science society (rekishigaku kenkyūkai 1946: 47).4 such organizations consisted primarily of marxian historians and, in 1946, they began conceptualizing history as an academic discipline which aimed to be independent of political concerns and based upon 'scientific truth'. by this, the historical science society meant that the study of history should be written without any interference from the state or external forms of coercion upon historians. in order for such 'objective' history to be written in japan, the society insisted, historians would have to reject 'statism (kokka shijōshugi), the ideology of national purity ideas (kokusuishugi), militarism, fascism and warped ethnic nationalism (henkyō na minzoku shugi)' (tsuchiya 1946: 56-9). similarly, the new principles also asserted that the writing of history could enlighten ordinary people toward a more pronounced sense of historical consciousness only if the terrain of history were kept free from external ideologies and forms of politics. even though marxian thinkers and movements had at times been able to distance themselves from such external forces during the 1920s and 1930s, the society maintained that history had not been fully independent of the state during the pre-war years. the now 'objective' study and writing of history would, conversely, be proclaimed as something completely 'new' to the japanese social and cultural landscape after the war. this meant that the study and writing of history were to become things that could unite, rather than divide, historians from the public at large. as eguchi bokurō – an influential figure within the historical science society and a major force in early post-war marxian history – surmised, the failure of pre-war marxian history during the taishō period (1912-26) had been partly due to its very 'limited connection' to 'mass movements' that had sought to change japanese society (bandō 1976: 292). by combining the idea of 'historical science' (rekishi kagaku) with the notion of a transition in japan from state capitalism to socialism through revolution, moreover, eguchi and his colleagues at the society sought to create a historical and epistemological space for the working classes to take part in future historical change.5 this is precisely what the historical principles of 1946 were referring to when they stressed the need to pursue history as an independent academic discipline by thinking seriously about the 'correct relationship between historians and the people (jinmin)' (rekishigaku kenkyūkai 1946: 47). those most active in writing histories through the lens of the nation (minzoku) belonged to the historical science society and the democratic scientists' association.6 they were more or less in agreement as to the curtis anderson gayle 58 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 necessity of writing new kinds of histories that might better articulate how conceptions of the nation in japan could become something politically progressive (and therefore acceptable) in the aftermath of the war. given that wartime thinking on the nation had been discredited in public memory after 1945 (gluck 1995), coming up with new ideas and representations of the nation would be no easy task. thus, marxian thinking on the nation, in order to become a public discourse accepted by the working classes at which it was aimed, sought to ground its methodology within the larger idea of the study of history that was undergoing tectonic shifts during the late 1940s and early 1950s (gayle 2003). by articulating their ideas about the nation through the new sense of history as a science, it would be possible for marxian historians like eguchi, ishimoda and inoue to present their approach as something politically necessary. marxian historians and thinkers were also becoming acutely aware of the need for more concrete and explicit answers to questions of subjectivity and independence, given political developments in japan and east asia by 1950. in addition to the oppression of labour unions and retractions of promises that post-war democracy in japan would enfranchise those who had been denied voices in the past, the advent of socialism in mao's china and conflict on the korean peninsula were seen by many as jeopardizing the chances for revolution to take hold. in response, marxian historians like eguchi would formulate the idea that japanese culture could be understood in terms of an historical trajectory other than that of 'bourgeois modernity' or liberal democracy (eguchi 1974). similarly, marxian thinkers such as kurahara korehito7 also put forward the notion of 'cultural struggle' as the basis for working class-consciousness and political change, just at the moment that the 'reverse course in occupation' policy was making a flagrant mockery of the ideals of post-war democracy. rather than emphasizing economic problems that affected the working classes, kurahara claimed that by mediating the notion of class struggle with the 'construction of an advanced form of national culture' (minzoku bunka) based upon the history of the working classes (rather than upon bourgeois culture), it would be possible to attain greater heights of political resistance and change (kurahara 1948: 62-73). in so arguing, he hoped to link the dynamics of class struggle with ideas about japanese culture as the domain of everyday working-class life so that class-consciousness might be conceived as something more than a simple 'material' issue. this kind of synthesis suggested that just as it was possible to offer economic/materialist alternatives to serve the marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 59 working classes (e.g., socialism as an alternative to capitalism), so it was possible to substitute reactionary and bourgeois ideas about culture with new approaches that linked it to working-class identity and history. japanese culture, in this analysis, did not have to be a pure function of capitalist consumption or politics.8 following these ideas, ishimoda and marxian historians during the early 1950s offered a conception of revolution as something far more profound than the mere substitution of one mode of production with another (i.e., socialism for capitalism). ishimoda and like-minded historians instead grounded the idea of revolution upon the notion that culture/everyday life did not necessarily have to support middle-class life and the capitalist state. by rejecting two extreme sets of explanations about historical change – either that it could be understood purely in terms of economic considerations, or that it could be realized through the kinds of ideologically clad appeals to 'national identity' that had been prevalent in pre-war japanese nationalism – ishimoda believed that revolution might be expressed as a change in the way the working classes thought not only about class, but also about questions of identity that spoke to historical memory and cultural identity in modern japan. it was in fact the pre-war italian marxian thinker antonio gramsci who first put forward this sense of the working class developing their own ideas and values against bourgeois cultural dominance. gramsci had suggested that the working class could gain liberation only if they could first establish their own 'original conception of the world' from the starting point of culture (pozzolini 1970: 109) yet, even though gramsci's ideas were known to marxian thinkers in japan such as kurahara and to historians such as ishimoda, the early post-war sense of working-class agency was also heavily shaped by conceptions of history writing – as an existential tool for socio-political change – that pervaded marxian approaches to history during the late 1940s and early 1950s. whilst it is therefore instructive to reach back to gramsci to understand the basic idea of how revolution has been conceived as more than just a 'material' affair, in the early post-war japanese case, new ideas about history and its relationship to the working class constituted an important part of thinking about how culture might underlie political change. historicizing the transparency of the nation how could something that claimed to be 'scientific' – only several years after the conclusion of the second world war – also style itself as a set of discourses and ideas that sought to consolidate japanese 'national concurtis anderson gayle 60 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 sciousness' (minzoku ishiki)? by couching the language of history within new claims to historical science made by marxian historians, it would become possible to rationalize a new kind of ethnic nation that actually conformed to progressive ideas of history in japan. the old idea of the ethnic nation based upon metaphysical attributes of japaneseness, such as 'blood' and the imperial house, was replaced with a new vocabulary of historical constructionism that depicted ethnic nations in the modern world as the product of pre-capitalist and capitalist development on the road to socialism (gayle 2003). these ideas about both the nation and history were crystallized in ishimoda's 1952 two-volume work rekishi to minzoku no hakken [the discovery of history and the nation], which represents perhaps the most important single work within marxian history during this period (ishimoda 1952). what might have therefore have seemed a polarity between 'science' and 'national consciousness' was reconciled through an emphasis upon the fact that the japanese state had not yet reached the stage of socialism or communism. in order to rectify this problem, marxian historians put forward histories in which democracy and capitalism were seen as epiphenomena to be politically invalidated by exposing the failures of the post-war state in japan. in contrast to 'bourgeois democracy', which was now viewed as the handmaiden of american imperialism, for example, marxian history argued that only soviet-style socialism was a truly democratic ideology that could work for japan (ichikawa 1949: 24-35).9 thus, both democracy and capitalism were treated as accoutrements to 'bourgeois modernity' which had to be ultimately rejected as impediments to revolution (eguchi 1974: 161). as some have noted, these views were very much influenced by the 1950 comintern critique of japanese capitalism, which urged marxists to abandon initial post-war attempts to bring about revolution in cooperation with the american occupation and parliamentary democracy. in its place, moscow had urged a more militant strategy by which japanese marxists might gain the support of the working classes and make a direct transition to socialism (napier 1952: 12-13).10 although the soviet origins of marxian thinking on the nation were historically important to a good number of japanese marxists during this period, the politics of this history also involved the recently minted example of mao zedong's china. in particular, ishimoda shō and saitō akio held up china's wartime resistance to japan as a model for 'campaigns of the people' seeking 'cultural unification' against occupation and imperialism. the purpose of this very effective discursive twist was marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 61 to replace china's past with japan's present, and japanese colonialism with american imperialism, so that china's wartime struggle to raise a 'minzoku tōitsu sensen' (national unification front), might be reproduced in japan during the 1950s. as ishimoda surmised, whilst both china and the soviet union were to play a didactic role in marxian history, china was to serve as the premier case-study for japan since it illustrated the successful 'transplanting of socialism onto asian soil' (saitō 1953: 14041), in effect making mao's china something more relevant to japanese marxism than the existence of stalin's soviet socialism. yet, stalin's theory of the nation was still relevant to japanese marxists during the late 1940s and early 1950s. stalin argued that the process of history revealed the progression of peoples from enslavement to liberation, subjugation to conquest, and from inconsequential self-consciousness to a profound realization of one's place within a national grouping that was independent, modern and ultimately socialist. as stalin surmised in his marxism and the national and colonial question and reaffirmed in his concerning marxism in linguistics, a nation was a 'historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture' (stalin 1935, 1950). among marxian historians in japan, this idea of national development was treated as the very opposite of pre-war bourgeois nationalism, militarism or fascism, in that it made no claims to the metaphysical origins, or ontological inevitability, of national existence.11 rather, the historical evolution of the japanese people was what had ultimately come to shape its specific character, history and politics. by accepting this logic, moreover, historians such as ishimoda, inoue and eguchi were able to argue that the nation was 'natural' and transparent, on the one hand, and that it was also something contingent, ever-changing and ultimately radical, on the other.12 it would be a mistake to assume that this idea of the nation completely ruled out the legitimacy of the japanese state. on the contrary, marxian history focused upon what kind of state might be most appropriate for the political activity conceived in conjunction with new ideas about the nation. historians such as eguchi bokurō, along with ishimoda, viewed the existence of ostensibly multi-ethnic nation states in the soviet union and china as shining examples of how, under a non-coercive form of socialist 'multi-culturalism', these societies had successfully and permanently united peoples of different nationalities into one class, nation and indeed state (eguchi 1957: 91-101). given that they saw japan as a place that had curtis anderson gayle 62 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 relatively no significant ethnic-minority populations, they also reasoned that there would be far less of a problem raising a unified consciousness of the nation in japan than had been the case in china or the soviet union, even though they provided no detailed plans as to what conceptions of citizenship they preferred for their anticipated socialist state.13 in other words, just as their historical rejection of capitalism and postwar democracy was provisional – in that true democracy would come under socialism – so their ontological rejection of the japanese state was also contingent upon the possibility of a more sophisticated political entity coming to fruition through revolution.14 of course, this does not mean that marxian historians were operating under the influence of some reflex impulse for a strong japanese state (sokoku), a contra-claim recently made by oguma eiji (oguma 2002: 298). it might be more accurate to instead suggest that by envisioning a new political order based upon the transition to socialism, some marxists hoped to make the possibility of successful class struggle seem more convincing and thereby offer a viable social and political solution to the problems of the early post-war period. as an historical approach, such ideas were quite visionary – all the more so given that so shortly after the war, such specific representations of national identity could be offered as radical solutions to the problems associated with democratic reconstruction and modernity. in fact, no less an authority than the political thinker maruyama masao had declared in 1950 that the resurgence of any form of 'healthy' japanese nationalism would be unlikely in the foreseeable future. maruyama maintained that any viable japanese nationalism would demand nothing less than a completely different 'sense of mission' in order to win over the public in the aftermath of japanese imperialism and fascism (maruyama 1964: 159, 166). owing to what he saw as 'remnants of the old feudal structure in japanese society' and fresh memories of japan's attempts to create a greater east asia co-prosperity sphere, maruyama was convinced that within japan and east asia any attempts made to frame japanese nationalism as something 'healthy' and progressive were doomed to failure, even though he ultimately saw the 'happy marriage of democracy and nationalism' to be something that would help reconsolidate and legitimize japanese modernity somewhere down the road (maruyama 1976: 294). there were several techniques by which marxian history and thought sought in essence to prove maruyama wrong. the most dramatic and appealing means by which historians such as eguchi, ishimoda, inoue, marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 63 tōyama and matsumoto attempted to convince the public of the viability, and indeed political necessity, of new thinking about the nation was by grounding japanese history within the modern tradition of asian liberation nationalism. by presupposing and narrating the japanese nation, or minzoku, as colonized by the post-war state, allied occupation, and global capital, it would be possible to posit both the rightful existence of national consciousness as well as the obfuscation of that consciousness by the same basic geo-political forces against which peoples had – and were – struggling in china, korea, india, indonesia, africa and latin america. the idea of liberation became the anvil upon which this new mission could be hammered out not only as a national and cultural struggle, but also as one link within a much broader and deeper movement to resist american and european domination of asia and the third world (uehara and munakata 1952: 176-77).15 by discarding bourgeois modernity (but not 'modernity' per se), then, marxian historians hoped to realize a new 'post-colonial modernity' that was liberationist, socialist and primarily asian in origin. one problem with this epistemological tweaking of history lay in the fact that japan had a past to account for in asia. by holding up china as historically, socially and politically ahead of japan it was, however, possible to rationalize away some of the guilt that must have remained over the failure of the left to prevent war with china. more practically speaking, through the example of mao's china, japanese marxists could make history something that had appeal to the working classes. this was because china had already achieved what marxists were striving for in japan. so heavily did the example of mao's china weigh for marxists in japan that during the late 1950s, as marxian historians began to rethink their strategies, ishimoda himself lamented that part of the reason for not being able to bring about revolution could be attributed to an overreliance upon the way revolution was forged in wartime china against the japanese. he maintained that not enough thought had been given as to how revolution would need to fit the japanese context (ishimoda 1990: 366, 378).16 'national subjectivity' (minzoku jikaku) and its shortcomings the centrepiece of this overall approach to japanese history lay in the notion that the masses could be moved to action through history writing – history was seen as a means to help bring about the 'subjectivity' of the working class. the raison d'être of the people's history movement (kokuminteki rekishigaku undō) spearheaded by marxists like ishimoda curtis anderson gayle 64 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 lay in making history writing an instrument through which ordinary people might 'awaken' to their historical condition and engage in political struggle (gayle 2003: 131-36).17 whereas pre-war attempts to deprofessionalize and popularize the writing of history were limited to small-scale movements such as the seikatsu tsuzurikata undō (how to write your daily life movement) 'directed at working class children' as part of an effort to 'combat the excesses of nationalistic moral indoctrination' (figal 1996: 907), marxian history now operated under the assumption that the complete de-professionalization of history writing could bring about a change in popular consciousness that might unlock popular desires for self-representation and liberation. to these ends, the movement organized a number of different forums through which history writing might become a practice embedded within the lives of the ordinary working class in japan. through history writing, cultural campaigns and activities supported by local branches of tokyo-based organizations, the movement encouraged intellectuals and students to venture into local areas of japan and work with labourers, housewives and ordinary people to write their own histories. women and workers in villages, factories and farms began to write about their experiences and their pasts, becoming increasingly aware of how their subjective life-histories collectively constituted what became known as a 'national subjectivity' (minzoku jikaku) which carried within it the potential to transform japanese society. both individual history writing and writing in 'circle' groups were encouraged as part of new commitments to make historical science work towards revolution with far greater autonomy from the state than had been possible in the pre-war period. for marxian historians in tokyo and kyoto, history writing by the working classes was not merely to be done in and for itself. rather, it was seen as an exercise that carried with it the potential to recover and redeem cultural practice in everyday life as something essential to the project of 'national subjectivity' (minzoku jikaku). writing histories that could serve as examples to ordinary people interested in doing the same, marxists thought that if the working classes could be convinced that they were the agents of political change, history could be confirmed as the possession of ordinary people and not just intellectuals or professional historians. yet, the notion of 'subjectivity' here was not explicitly grounded upon the existential consciousness of rational individuals who possessed free will and social choice. the national subject of minzoku jikaku, or awakening, was instead mediated by the politics of class unimarxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 65 fication and revolution. concrete realizations of individual conscience were not to be woven through vigorous opposition and engagement between the individual ego and group interests. the autonomy and independence of the japanese ethnic nation could only come to fruition through a form of self-consciousness whereby each japanese saw him or herself as 'organically related' to one another (uehara and munakata 1952: 136-37). existential concerns and individual consciousness were, therefore, seen as important primarily to the extent that they served the historical idea of the nation and the political promise of a socialist state. in this sense, individual subjectivity and the autonomy of groups on the margins of japanese society – women, to take one example – were subordinated to the narrative of class unification. such was the case even though conceptions of class were informed by flexible notions of 'revolutionary culture' (kakumeiteki bunka) as conditions for radical political change (matsumoto 1956: 167). what marxian history lost in terms of individual subjectivity within 'national subjectivity', however, it made up for in thinking about history itself. in fact, it would be fair to say that the approach to history developed through marxian discourses between 1945 and 1955 was in the larger scheme of things relatively successful. contrary to selfimposed criticisms of early post-war marxian representations of the nation (oguma 2002: 349-50), it is unnecessary to relegate all of it to the 'dustbin' of post-war japanese history. this is because one of the central objectives surrounding the project to rehabilitate thinking about the nation involved de-professionalizing history so as to transform it into something that could be directly undertaken by women, the working class, outcastes and others on the margins of japanese society. in other words, even though thinking about the nation in marxian history predicated individual subjectivity to class-based interpretations of political change, marxian approaches also provided something that would become methodologically useful to groups interested in resisting various forms of hegemony, including some aspects of marxian discourses themselves. inoue kiyoshi and 'the history of ordinary women' although marxian history as a political discourse did not gain the hegemony it needed during the 1950s to produce a socialist revolution, it was successful in sparking the development of women's history groups in places like tokyo and nagoya from the mid-1950s. such groups were in fact the very kind of voiceless minorities whose participation was curtis anderson gayle 66 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 sought by marxian historians and the people's history movement. in this sense, then, there was a very subtle but important irony at work: whilst appropriating new thinking about history as a de-professionalized and 'existential tool' for individual and social growth, some women's history groups sought to challenge the sense of subjectivity embedded within marxian history. although borrowing and refining these views about the relationship of history writing to socio-political change, women's history-writing groups also sought to create their own spaces and discourses that brought to life different concerns from those being developed by male historians in tokyo and kyoto. in order to map the coordinates of such approaches and discourses, it is first necessary to point out how women and women's history became the active subject of marxian thinking and how this was tagged on to quintessentially marxian views on liberation. in keeping with the early post-war promise of marxian history to focus on the lives and problems of ordinary people and the working classes, inoue kiyoshi's 1949 nihon joseishi [the history of japanese women] engaged the subject of japanese women, from ancient to modern times, through the 'principle subject' (shujin) of the 'japanese proletariat' (nihon jinmin) so that he could ultimately write a 'people's history' (jinmin no rekishi) of women in japan. conversely, inoue took aim at previous attempts to write women's history as having for the most part ignored gender relations in favour of writing 'histories by a few male elites who dominated ordinary people' so that 'histories of japanese women' amounted to little more than 'love stories' centring around well-known figures (inoue 1949: 1-2). rather than looking to 'the imperial elite', 'the nobility' or 'women from illustrious bushi families', inoue chose instead to emphasize the 'real lifestyles' (jitsu seikatsu) of japanese women (inoue 1949: 2-3). in a very concrete sense, inoue helped to create a space within postwar marxian historiography for 'the history of ordinary women' (jimin josei no rekishi). at heart, inoue saw women's history in a japan striving towards socialism as needing to focus upon the struggle of women towards 'liberation' whilst also 'treating women as autonomous independent' human agents (inoue 1949: 2-3). even though the subjectivity of women (and their historiographical inclusion) was predicated on this sense of liberation, the methodology being developed by inoue and his colleagues did encourage women to begin writing their own histories. indeed, marxists like inoue were aware that their methodology would have to incorporate the everyday lives and struggles of those on the margins of japanese society and the gains being made by women within marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 67 the women's movement. conversely, women's history-writing groups to emerge in tokyo, nagoya and ehime have made it clear that they were very much involved with the women's movement and were influenced by inoue's 1949 text.18 yet, each of these groups – though influenced by marxian approaches to history – sought in different ways to contest the notion that their emancipation depended upon class unification and national liberation. writing women's history in the centre (tokyo) the tokyo women's history research association (josei-shi kenkyūkai) was originally established in 1946 as a subsection of the historical section of the democratic scientists association (minshushugi kagakusha kyōkai no rekishi-bukai). the latter was a driving force behind the conceptualization and organization of the people's history movement during the 1950s, to which historians such as ishimoda shō and inoue kiyoshi belonged. the tokyo women's history research association was headed by activists such as tatewaki sadayo, who had worked during the taishō period for the national women's alliance (zenkoku fujin dōmei) and had opened a school for women factory workers in tokyo during the 1930s (mitsui 1959: 183). the tokyo group also consisted of working women such as ide fumiko, murata shizuko, mitsui reiko and nagahara kazuko.19 the fact that this group dates back to the immediate aftermath of the war also suggests that women were very quick to realize that history was becoming a tool by which those previously disenfranchised might create the means to a greater sense of subjectivity. mirroring developments within marxian history during this period, moreover, the tokyo women's history research association defined its goals not merely in terms of social activism on the one hand, or historiography on the other hand. instead, it defined its objectives by looking at how labour, activism and historical theory might be brought together so that women could write their own histories and from this space also join movements seeking social and political change. the tokyo group had much in common with marxian approaches to history being honed during the late 1940s. for instance, ide fumiko recalls that she and the entire group believed that 'historical science' (rekishi kagaku) would provide the opportunity for new thinking about the role of women within japanese society and new 'laws of history' (rekishi no hōsoku) would help ensure dramatic change for women (ide 1976: 115).20 this process, as described by the tokyo group, began with 'individual subjectivity' (kojinteki jikaku) and progressed to 'economic curtis anderson gayle 68 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 independence', organization among labourers (in line with inoue kiyoshi's ideas about the role of women within a liberating proletariat), and finally social transformation (shakai henkaku). the process was collectively known as the 'rules for the liberation of women' and whilst not specifying socialist revolution as the concrete form of social transformation sought by women, it did share marxian ideas about history and historical progress. after all, new approaches to women's history 'like other branches of historical scholarship' that were acknowledged as legitimate historical enterprises were very much influenced by both marxian 'historical scholarship and liberation theory' (germer 2003: 4). this is why ide recalls that inoue's approach to the history of japanese women was nothing short of 'electrifying', even though she and her colleagues wanted to 'overcome' inoue kiyoshi's approach with something more appropriate for women themselves by grounding the notion of subjectivity within the histories and activities of individual women themselves (nagahara 2003). in other words, ide and the tokyo group wanted to distance themselves from marxian attempts to define liberation solely in terms of class. to be more specific, ide maintained that inoue's approach made the mistake of 'reconstituting japanese history through the historical materialist view of history carried over from the wartime period'. here, ide suggested that the 'liberation view of history' (kaihō shikan) inoue incorporated into his idea of class was at odds with the needs of japanese women as new citizens in post-war japan (ide 1986: 157). her critique of inoue was not, however, based upon a rejection of his notion of class, per se, but instead upon how women were conceived within this notion of class and how their subjectivity was contained and framed within the larger trope of class agency (consciousness) as the motor of political change. thus, even though for ide the methodology and principles of marxian approaches were useful for japanese women and for encouraging women to begin writing their own histories, the liberation of women remained wedged within the narrative of working-class emancipation from capitalism and the end of the capitalist state in japan. tatewaki sadayo put her objections into action by asserting that the liberation of japanese women would have to involve the unification and cooperation of all women regardless of their class or status. it was from this standpoint that her 1957 publication nihon no fujin [japanese women] argued it would be necessary to bring women of different stripes together beyond the limitations of class (koike 1981: 106). tatewaki believed that liberation as marxists had framed it ignored the realities marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 69 of everyday life for women in japan. yet, she also lamented that many women still thought 'women's emancipation' would come automatically through class struggle rather than through the coordinated efforts of women's organizations and movements. adherence to the marxian view of class and revolution had, quite ironically, produced what tatewaki called an excessive concern with 'direct material threats posed to oneself and one's family' rather than true gender-based cooperation and activism (tatewaki 1957: 207-9). if we focus our attention on historical methodology and principles, however, it becomes clear that the tokyo group found many useful things within marxian approaches. for instance, in keeping with the spirit of history writing propounded by inoue, ishimoda and others, the tokyo group saw history as something that they could themselves engage in, even though they were not trained academics or historians. as part of the marxian principle of combining textual study/reading with social activism, members wrote their own histories and the histories of groups such as japanese women, labourers and farmers. they also conducted surveys of factories and villages and even sponsored a 'conference for working women' (hataraku josei no tsudoi) which focused upon problems related to labour unions and working conditions for women; indeed, the tokyo group was very much tied into the women's movement (ide 1976: 116). much like the democratic scientists' association (organized by, among others, inoue and ishimoda) through which it was founded, the tokyo group went to villages and factories in order help ordinary people write their own histories and to better understand the problems of women in local areas. in terms of principles, methods and themes, then, the tokyo group put to work the more practical aspects of marxian approaches for the benefit of japanese women. some have even postulated that the tokyo group was so embedded within marxian approaches and the people's history movement that their work 'positioned the history of the post-war women's movement within the [marxian] general narrative of japanese history', in effect returning women's history to the place from which it had originated (koike 1981: 106). women's history as a local concern in nagoya local women's history-writing groups such as the nagoya women's history research association would depart from this kind of history writing by positioning their accounts in spaces apart from the general narrative of japanese history. the nagoya association, originally founded in 1959 curtis anderson gayle 70 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 by a group of women from the asahi women's history circle (founded in 1955), was less concerned with marxian views of liberation and more interested in how pre-war liberation movements like the blue-stocking movement could be related to events taking place in nagoya, rather than to those taking place in the centre (chūō). marxian views on history were therefore not as important as developing and writing histories that could 'bridge the subjective awareness of their lives and activities' with those of their mothers and grandmothers in nagoya (nagoya josei-shi kenkyūkai 1969: 44). the nagoya group was convinced that such an approach was necessary to lead to the development of what might be called true 'local women's history' (kyōdo josei-shi) and the emancipation of local women in japanese society (nakayama 1992: 60). much like the tokyo women's history research association, the nagoya women's history research association took careful exception to the way marxian history had framed womanhood as ultimately an issue of class. they contested the notion that women's history in japan could properly be written by men, since male experiences and views of society came from a different habitus and set of experiences. this was indeed a feature very prominent in both the tokyo and nagoya groups. yet, whilst the tokyo group did not directly contest the representation of women contained within the historical struggle of women for liberation in japan, as put forth for instance by inoue kiyoshi, members of the nagoya group sought to develop their own sense of womanhood intersected by local history and local struggles for economic, social and political enfranchisement. the creation of local women's history thus represented a historical space in which womanhood stood as a local issue of the past and present and not an axiomatic subject proscribed by grand narratives of structural change. just as in the relationship between marxists and the tokyo women's history research association, there were also points of both inspiration and divergence between the tokyo and nagoya groups. in fact, it was through an article in the women's journal fujin gahō [portraits of women] about the tokyo group that women in nagoya belonging to the asahi circle became interested in forming their own organization. although inspired by the tokyo group, the nagoya women wanted to write women's history that would be pertinent to women in nagoya and that could speak for local women (itō 1995: 316). as original member nakayama yasuko notes, the nagoya group set out to write its own women's history in terms of local (kyōdo) issues in the hope that this local practice would be followed by women in other areas of japan (namarxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 71 kayama 1966: 90). in other words, the writing of women into history had progressed to the writing of japanese women's history by women, and subsequently to the writing of local women's history that could separate women's history from sweeping generalizations about gender and the nation contained in marxian depictions of political change. in histories being written by women, moreover, the space of the local was becoming a site within which subjectivity could be produced in ways contrary to marxian approaches. no less a figure than murata shizuko of the tokyo women's history research association recognized that the history being written by women in nagoya was truly 'local women's history' and was, therefore, something different from the women's history being written by herself, ide, mitsui and tatewaki in tokyo (murata 1969: 44). the nagoya group proved that the idea of the local could actually work as a space within which to seek out greater autonomy and cooperation in ways not beholden to class or system-wide (national) change. for members like nakayama yasuko, this meant that women in post-war nagoya would have to look consciously at how women in local communities had overcome difficult historical conditions in the past. according to this view, women in local communities such as nagoya would also have to ground their history writing in 'scientific thought' (kagakuteki shikō) in order learn about the past and bring about peace in the present (nakayama 1966: 89). it was nonetheless also true that history written by women in local domains and by local voices was a concept not completely divorced from marxian approaches – there was much from marxian histories that had influenced the nagoya group. just as in the people's history movement and in tokyo, history in nagoya was seen as more than the reading of documentation, and could include, for instance, oral histories with women who had taken part in pre-war movements in nagoya. in this vein, members of the nagoya group such as nakayama wanted to 'study history by their own hand' and hoped to utilize 'historical research' as a 'necessary part of women's liberation'. this was an idea that was first expressed by mitsui reiko in the tokyo women's history research association in the 1950s and provided the spark that ignited the creation of the nagoya association (nakayama 1992: 55). here, the links between nagoya and tokyo were undeniable. as much could also be seen in the idea that 'scientific history' (a concept derived from marxism and put forward by the historical science society in 1946) could legitimize the interdependence of history and social activism, especially within the belief that history writing could serve the cause of peace curtis anderson gayle 72 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 and international cooperation. in terms of historical methodology and principles, the nagoya group (like its tokyo alter ego) owed much to marxian historical approaches even though they differed about the site (national vs. local) and telos (national liberation vs. local emancipation) within which such approaches might be utilized. from local to regional women's history (ehime) during this period another important women's history-writing group would emerge, namely the ehime women's history circle. unlike the tokyo and nagoya groups, its members consisted of both women and men who were involved in regional (ehime prefecture) education and labour unions. formed in january 1956 with the close assistance of the modern history institute headed by the marxian historian shinozaki masaru,21 members of the group feared for the future of democratic education in ehime and saw history as one means by which to improve both their own awareness of historical issues in ehime, as well as their potential to change society and politics. from its inception, the group consisted of ordinary workers, businessmen, students and housewives (ehime josei-shi sākuru 1986: 20), thereby reinforcing the hypothesis that the circle was interested in gender unity and interclass cooperation rather than gender-exclusive activity (as in tokyo and nagoya) or working-class unification (as in marxian approaches). the circle also sought to write the history of women and others in ehime prefecture in ways that stood out from other approaches. the fact that kawamata yoshiko22 and other founding members had as one of their objectives the study of marxian history suggests that one purpose of the group was to study and ultimately to write history. at the same time, however, the group believed one way to go about this was by writing regional women's history in ehime prefecture and incorporating new historical knowledge into their perspective. whilst historical methodology and the reading of marxian histories were important items on their agenda, the founding members of the group also believed that regional women's history would be an especially worthwhile space from which to connect new historical methodologies in japan with the concerns of women in ehime. by studying marxian approaches, members of the group hoped to be able to bring this knowledge into practice in ehime primarily, but not exclusively, through the efforts of women. as early member kumito fujiko23 notes, 'whilst trying to improve the lives of women in ehime', the circle 'studied historical texts' with the assumption that 'the writing of women's history could become one marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 73 important dimension to the women's movement' in ehime (ehime josei-shi sākuru 1986: 53). for members of the circle, history writing also 'represented a move away from "war education" (senso kyōiku) and statist views of history' (koku shikan) to instead 'place ordinary people in the centre of history' (minshu wo chūshin ni suru rekishi). much like the methodology of marxian approaches, this view assumed that history should not merely be an object of study that would speak to ordinary people but rather a device through which ordinary people could find their own voices and go about changing the spaces in which they lived. utilizing history in order to do this was something advanced by marxian historians such as uehara senroku, matsumoto shinpachirō and inoue kiyoshi, all of whom served as both an inspirational models and personal contacts of circle members from the very outset (ehime josei-shi sākuru 2003). it was against this background that the ehime group very early on decided to study inoue kiyoshi's 1949 nihon joseishi [the history of japanese women]. they were, however, adamant that they would not 'listen to lectures' by professional historians as the 'basis of their study'. even though inoue wrote women's history 'from a women's viewpoint', there was also a perception among circle members that 'history should not be written by elites' (erai hitotachi), whether male historians like inoue or the wives of professional historians and intellectuals such as nagahara kazuko and the tokyo women's history research association. on the contrary, they maintained that 'each person should write his or her own history' (ehime josei-shi sākuru 2003). the study and practice of writing regional history could, in other words, enable women and others to find their own voices without subordinating themselves to larger institutions or professional authorities. thus, the conscious decision of circle members to include different classes and genders within their new history writing and activism reflected the conviction that history would have to be both 'scientific' and 'objective' whilst at the same time providing a way to locate both 'individual member' and 'group' subjectivity (jikaku) within local and regional society (ehime josei-shi sākuru 2003). in this sense, the beliefs of the circle fit quite well with the need to develop conceptions of local and regional history that included women, but that also opened up the possibility of a larger and cross-gender/cross-class inclusion of those whose voices had long been denied by official histories and local histories, even marxian histories. the subjectivity of women (and others in ehime prefecture seeking a voice) was, therefore, something quite curtis anderson gayle 74 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 different from the subjectivity of women as conceived in marxian approaches discussed earlier in this paper. the ehime group sought to create regional women's history that could build upon the initial sense of women as valid historical subjects as well as agents of history that inoue kiyoshi had codified in his 1949 book, and, at the same time, also texture this with ideas about history and ways to represent ehime expressed in terms of the new metaphor of the 'chi'iki' (region). the circle recalled that they undertook the study of inoue's nihon josei-shi 'very carefully and deeply' and sent their 'opinions directly to the author'. in fact, the study of the text lasted a full three years. by taking things very slowly and deliberately, members learnt how women's history had not yet come to terms with discrimination against women in japan and how the educational system 'continued to rob women of their rights'. by arming themselves with this knowledge, moreover, they were able to realize the profound way in which learning and resistance might together provide a comprehensive and balanced way for participants to 'begin the process of regional [socio-political] change' (ehime josei-shi sākuru 1978: 88). instead of merely lining up different regions of japan within a linear sense of time (which would ultimately be referenced to tokyo as the centre of japan and 'modernity'), the circle sought to bring to light the 'unique contradictions within regional society and the ways by which local groups might transform such conditions' (ehime josei-shi sākuru 1978: 88). through readings of inoue kiyoshi and marxian history, involvement in the women's movement in ehime, the serial publication of their own journal (mugi), as well as the sponsoring of historical dramatizations in matsuyama, the circle sought to raise concrete awareness of problems in ehime and how these might be linked to problems within other regions and social contexts in various parts of japan. it is important to stress again that in terms of both marxian history and the writing of regional women's history, the circle saw it as essential to look at the chi'iki (or 'region') not in terms of national revolution or 'class-based contradictions found in society and the state' (kokka shakai no kaikyūteki mujun). instead, regional women's history would have to spotlight the problems 'specific to each chi'iki', starting from ehime (furuya 1978: 235). as contemporary member yokogawa setsuko has argued, regional women's history (chi'iki josei-shi) written first in ehime was not a counterpart to japanese women's history [nihon josei-shi]' (yokogawa 1995: 302-3) written either by marxian historians or by the tokyo women's history research association. neither was it a mere marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 75 reproduction of the local women's history (kyōdo josei-shi) written in the city of nagoya. whilst influenced by marxian approaches as well as by the tokyo and nagoya groups, women in ehime conceived their own notion of the 'region' that could help women and other local residents become involved with regional, national and international politics in ways more gender inclusive (yet regionally specific) than marxian approaches had imagined in their quest for national revolution and subjectivity during the 1950s. in terms of historical representation, then, post-war women had come 'full circle' from historiographical inclusion within marxian views on the proletariat to the point where they were now writing their own local and regional histories in spaces apart from marxian positions on subjectivity. these activities would subsequently pave the way for what is called the 'regional women's history' (chi'iki josei-shi) boom that was to take off from the late 1960s (orii 2001). yet, this still leaves the question as to why these three groups appeared when they did and why these were the only major groups to emerge until the mid to late 1960s. there were a number of intersecting factors that no doubt assisted in the development of the groups examined. one important factor was the prototype or sponsoring organizations from which each of the groups in emerged: the tokyo women's history research association from the much larger democratic scientists association, the nagoya women's history research association from the asahi women's history circle, and the ehime women's history circle from the modern history research institute. the women who formed the groups studied were, in addition, locally active in women's movements and particularly interested in how new representations and discourses of history might be utilized for their own benefit. perhaps most importantly, women from each of the three groups studied were personally and professionally acquainted with marxian historians such as inoue kiyoshi, ishimoda shō and matsumoto shinpachirō. this combination of factors did help to bring about the dawning of local and regional women's history during the 1950s. with hindsight, it would seem that there should have been more such groups popping up around japan during the 1950s. there were, however, a number of problems that help explain why this would not take place for another decade. history writing as it was portrayed in the people's history movement fell from favour by the mid-1950s, thus providing an incentive for more women to remain active within the more established field of the women's movement and mothers' movement rather than through the still gendered domain of history curtis anderson gayle 76 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 writing per se. not until the mid-1960s would historical organizations and discourses even begin to acknowledge the existence of local and regional women's history. moreover, the three groups taken up did not coordinate their activities or seek to cooperate with each other until the late 1960s. yet, once the success of the nagoya and ehime groups became a matter of public knowledge around japan from the mid-1960s, a wave of regional women's history-writing groups would begin to appear and subsequently build upon the initial gains made by local and regional women's history-writing groups. if there had been more cooperation and exchange among the three groups during the 1950s, it is likely that more such groups would have emerged and perhaps this 'wave' would have broken on to the historical landscape much earlier than the late 1960s. conclusion although marxian historians did not fully recognize women as sociopolitical subjects within narratives that deviated from their approaches, they did offer new ways of thinking about and writing history that opened the door to women. in terms of methodology, women's groups picked up the marxian idea of making history an 'existential tool' by which to seek socio-political change. they did, however, take exception to the presumption that this could only be done through the national subjectivity of class consciousness and instead sought to utilize history writing in the direction of subjectivity for women and others based upon the activities of individual women and the cooperation of women across class lines.24 likewise, women interested in writing history also picked up the basic principles of history as they were developed in marxian approaches, especially the concern with historical science and the history of everyday life. indeed, the idea that history writing could become a scientific activity that would also help to change society and give people their own voices could not have come about without the efforts of marxists to create new ideas about the relationship of history to socio-political change. the influence of marxian approaches upon women's history and local/regional women's history was therefore considerable. in terms of how each side envisioned the objectives of such practices there were, however, some striking differences. whilst male historians in tokyo looked to short-term structural change on the national level (e.g., the development of class consciousness for revolution and national subjectivity), women in nagoya and ehime hoped instead to create their own marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 77 sense of subjectivity within local and regional society. this infusion of the local/regional dynamic into gender concerns, moreover, helped make possible the wider development of local and regional women's history so that it did not have to stop in nagoya or ehime but could eventually begin to thrive during the high-growth period from the late1960s. in these respects, it is fair to say that without marxian approaches – and their imperfections – the historical landscape of post-war japan would have been something completely different and far less interesting. curtis anderson gayle is a ph.d. candidate in the research school of pacific and asian studies at the australian national university. notes 1 one general example can be found in twentieth-century fascism in italy, germany and japan. right-wing nationalism in pre-war japan has been treated in brown (1955). 2 see forman 1998. 3 ishimoda was a historian of pre-modern japan, while uehara specializes in premodern europe, tōyama in modern japan, inoue in modern japanese politics and matsumoto in pre-modern japan. for more detailed information of the writings and views of these historians beyond the question of 'subjectivity', see gayle (2003). 4 originally founded in 1932, the society regrouped in 1946 and began reissuing its journal, rekishigaku kenkyū. the principles for a new rekishigaku can be found in rekishigaku kenkyūkai (1946: 47). 5 following the pre-war kōza-ha, the marxian historians examined in this paper originally set out the idea of a 'two-stage approach' to revolution in japan – first a bourgeois democratic revolution and then the transition to socialism. during the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, this position would be modified to a one-stage (direct) transition to socialism as a result of ideological and geo-political challenges to japanese marxism. 6 the democratic scientists association, minshushugi kagakusha kyōkai, was conceived in 1945 in order to establish a new foundation for 'democratic science' in post-war japan. the marxian historians discussed in this paper belonged to both the historical science society and the democratic scientists association, and there was indeed much overlap and cross membership between these. 7 kurahara was an important marxian thinker and activist during both the pre-war and post-war periods and his pre-war ideas on 'culture' and political change in japan were to an extent influenced by the italian communist thinker antonio gramsci, as will be noted further along in the text. 8 this notion of 'reactionary' vs. 'revolutionary' culture in japan can be found in more developed form in matsumoto (1956: 167-209). 9 in addition, this can be found in okamoto (1949: 2-18). 10 see also kojima (1976). 11 stalin (1950) argued that the ethnic 'nation' was something pre-dating capitalism, even though its evolution – in particular the 'germ' (hōga) of the nation—developed curtis anderson gayle 78 the copenhagen journal of asian studies 19•2004 over centuries and, indeed, millennia. see also ishimoda (1952). 'bourgeois' and 'progressive' nationalisms are taken up and contrasted in eguchi (1950). 12 the notion of the 'nation' as something 'transparent' and part of 'everyday life' has been taken up in works such as billig (1995). 13 assumptions of japan's historical and social 'homogeneity' can be found in tōma (1954). 14 the phrase 'shakaishugi kokka' (socialist state) was often used within marxian history during this period. it was, needless to say, something quite different from the interwar notion of 'socialism in one country' propounded by 'converts' from marxism to imperial ideology such as sano manabu. see backmann and okubo (1969). 15 although american and european influence were held suspect, some marxian historians such as uehara senroku and munakata seiya also included 'non-asian' powers such as the soviet union within this constellation of hegemonic entities in the world system against which japan and other asian nations would have to resist. 16 other sources of reference on the 'self-criticism' of marxian historians during the late 1950s as to their earlier approaches to the 'national question' in japan include: nihon kyōsantō (1982: 142-43). 17 the people's history movement is also discussed in tōyama (1968: 117) and rekishigaku kenkyūkai gendaishibukai (1978: 76). 18 these points were confirmed to the author in itō (2003), ehime josei-shi sākuru (2003) and nagahara (2003). 19 murata had worked at the historical documents editing section of the university of tokyo; ide was an amateur historian in her own right; mitsui was a descendant of the famous mitsui zaibatsu; and nagahara was the wife of eminent marxian historian nagahara keiji. 20 these ideas were originally expressed in the 1949 conference of the historical science society, which focused upon the laws of history from a marxian perspective. see rekishigaku kenkyūkai (1949). 21 the modern history institute, or kindaishi bunko, was founded in 1953 by the ehime-born historian shinozaki masaru. not only was the institute instrumental in helping the circle get off the ground, but shinozaki himself served as advisor to the group and many of its meetings were held at the institute. 22 kawamata had belonged to a local teachers' union in matsuyama at the time the circle was created and continues to be active in the circle to this very day. 23 kumito was a young high school teacher in matsuyama when she joined the circle in 1956. 24 since their objective was not state or system-wide revolution per se, local and regional women's history-writing groups did not immerse themselves within the kōza-ha or rōnō-ha debate. it will be recalled from earlier in the paper that kōza-ha marxists had formerly held that a two-stage approach to revolution in japan was necessary, but that they modified this in 1950 to fit the idea of the immediate and direct transition to socialism that was being urged by the comintern critique of japanese capitalism. in contradistinction, women's history-writing groups were more interested in local and regional change that did not necessarily have to take place within the frame of reference about revolution that was the centrepiece of this famous debate. marxian approaches and women's history in early post-war japan 79 references backmann, george m. and genji okubo 1969. the japanese communist party, 19221945. stanford: stanford university press. bandō, hiroshi 1976. 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