Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012. xxv, 354 pp. (Maps, figures, tables.) US$39.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-4422-0905-3.
This is the third volume in the popular series China beyond the Headlines by Rowman & Littlefield. The first volume, China beyond the Headlines, was published in 2000, and the second volume, China’s Transformations: The Stories beyond the Headlines, in 2007.
The series has made contributions in two dimensions. First, academically, it helps our understanding of contemporary China. China is not fixed. Ever since the reform and open door policy in the late 1970s, it has experienced rapid changes. Despite the fact that the country has now become the world’s second largest economy, there is no sign that the speed of change is slowing down. In this sense, contemporary China is a moving thing, and it has to be continously redefined. This series has enabled readers to capture the main aspects of a changing China. Second, there is a policy dimension, namely, China’s relations with the West, particularly with the United States. The editors have a specific target, namely, to influence the general public. Therefore, the volume is not only for academic circles, but also for ordinary people who are interested in international affairs. All the chapters in these volumes are easy to read without difficult academic jargon. The continuous publication of the series points to its success. Readers appreciate their great efforts.
This third volume has 15 chapters with an introduction by the two editors and an afterword by John Kamm on China’s human rights dialogues with the West. Like the first two volumes, this volume also covers a wide range of important topics, including civil society, consumerism, environmental adversity, ethnic tension, the internet, legal reform, new media and social networking, nationalist tourism, sex and popular culture, the cost of urbanization and so on. While it is not necessary for everyone to agree with individual contributors’ analyses, they will all be impressed by this volume’s demostration of how complex contemporary China is.
Indeed, most contributors have not only provided us with vivid descriptions of changes in different fields of China they seek to look deeply into the dynamics of all the changes. For instance, in the chapter on Chinese journalists, David Bandurski shows how political power, commercial interest, and journalist professionalism have interplayed, and created a great dynamism in journalism; in the chapter on youth culture, Jonathan Noble demonstrates how the rise of materialism has changed Chinese youth’s attitudes on sex; in the chapter on urbanization, Timothy Weston tells us how rapid urbanization has changed the urban landscape and created enormous problems. The volume is also full of insights and new perspectives. For instance, in the chapter on civil society, Jessica Teets provides readers with a new perspective on interpreting civil society: the dismantling of the socialist welfare state has lead to the rise of civil society; and in the chapter on Chinese intellectuals, Timothy Cheek shows how diverse Chinese intellectuals are. He discusses different intellectual groups and their concerns for the country.
Overall, the volume is structured into three levels. At the first level, the editors want to show what changes have happened in China and how they happened. At the second level, they attempt to demonstrate how limited these changes are for China politically, particularly in regards to democratization and human rights progress. The case of Liu Xiaobo, who received a Nobel Prize, is a good example of how limited these changes are. At the third level, they seek to spell out how such limited changes will affect China’s relations with the outside world, particularly the United States. Apparently, rapid economic and social changes without democracy and human rights are not in accordance with the expectations of the United States (or the West).
To a great degree, at all these levels, this volume has achieved its goal. But there is still room for future improvement. In choosing topics, all the editors (or contributors) have focused on hot issues which often appear in the media. Therefore, most topics are about changes at the societal level. However, though social changes are important, they cannot dictate the direction China is moving. Which direction China is moving is decided by the interaction between the state and society. Particularly in the Chinese context, the communist state continues to play an important role. Readers may like to know how the state has responded to all the changes at the societal level. In this volume, while several chapters are about the Chinese state (e.g., the chapter on the evolution of China’s authoritarianism by Orion Lewis and the chapter on the legal reform by Benjamin Liebman), their focus is still on the social dynamics of these changes. The state has been portrayed as only reacting to social changes, and not as an actor that has proactively initiated changes from the top.
Furthermore, today China and the United States are so interdependent. As Andrew Erickson shows in his chapter, it is a relationship of mutually assured destruction. For a stable relationship, each side must have a realistic perception and expectation towards the other side. Otherwise, a situation will arise of “same bed, different dreams,” as Kamm discusses in his afterword, in terms of human rights dialogue between China and the West. At the policy level, to provide such a realistic perception is a responsibility of our scholarly community. Therefore, in framing our research agenda, we must not only consider topics that are of interest to a Western audience, but also that are important inside China. Many factors, such as the Chinese Communist Party and China’s deeply rooted traditional culture, are important determinants in China’s development, but are understudied in the West.
Also, to help readers to understand what is happening inside China, scholars can also place China in a comparative perspective. Many problems China faces today are developmental. Historically speaking, China is not unique despite its communist system. Many problems that China is confronting today also appeared in many Western countries in their early days of industrialization and urbanization. Indeed, the way the Chinese state has responded to social changes often reminds us of how the states in the West responded a century ago. A comparative perspective will certainly help readers to reach a fair judgment on what direction China is moving.
Yang Lijun
National University of Singapore, Singapore
pp. 126-128