China in Transformation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan [an imprint of Springer Nature], 2019. xv, 250 pp. US$99.99, cloth. ISBN 978-981-13-0540-5.
Daniel Vukovich’s Illiberal China is no staid or cautious work; it is a purposively provocative and unabashedly harsh critique. Though multiple scholars, fields of study, institutions, and ideas fall in its sights, the volume’s main antagonists are liberalism and its neo-liberal degradation. This is not to say that the work is unworthy of serious consideration; to the contrary, Vukovich’s criticisms should be grappled with by all who wish to better understand China and its role in the modern world.
A basic thrust of the book is that political freedom is meaningless without economic empowerment, and that real democracy is not found in electoral procedures but in humane economic outcomes. From this foundation, Vukovich argues that the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) illiberalism is not uniformly objectionable. To the extent that the PRC exhibits beneficial attributes of illiberalism—such as a state uncaptured by money/capital/interest groups, and a commitment to the people’s livelihood—its illiberalism should be praised and indeed deepened. Relatedly, rather than criticizing the Chinese party-state for failing to live up to liberal democratic ideals or moving toward political-economic convergence with the West, we should look to the Chinese party-state for potential solutions to the social ills that neo-liberalism has created. Doing so entails “tak[ing] China seriously” (ix) as a viable alternative rather than viewing it as an abnormal or deficient system that will be legitimate only if and when it sheds its illiberalism and mirrors the liberal/neo-liberal West.
The book begins with an overview of Vukovich’s argument, emphasizing as well liberalism’s growth through slavery and colonialism (despite its hypocritical self-depiction as civilized and tolerant), and the Mao era’s focus on social relations as the source of “what it means to be alive [and] human” (8). The second chapter examines China’s illiberal “new left” thinkers, who defend China’s “revolutionary socialist past as meaningful and not … merely propaganda,” and voice concern over social and systemic inequality and exploitation (44). This chapter also highlights the positive aspects of maligned Communist Party of China (CCP) leader Bo Xilai and his illiberal “Chongqing experiment,” including increased spending on public housing, requiring cadres to work and live with peasants, removing advertising from the municipal satellite network, and allowing rural hukou-holders to re-register as urban residents. Chapter 3 lays out Mao’s critique of liberalism’s rejection of ideological struggle and embrace of “unprincipled peace” (97), emphasizing that this is what “revisionism” or “rightism” signified from 1949–1976. In the post-Mao period, Vukovich argues, it is precisely this “revisionist” Liu-Deng line that has prevailed, ushering in an era of de-politicization, commodification, and inequality. In chapter 4, Vukovich critiques the 2014 “Occupy” movement in Hong Kong for exhibiting the misguided beliefs that liberal democracy will solve Hong Kong’s problems, and that Hong Kong is destined to converge with the West. According to Vukovich, democratic activists will never succeed in forcing the “actually sovereign mainland” (130) to agree to their demands, adding that that these demands are unreasonable even by liberal democratic standards: “direct civic nomination without parties or other obstacles does not exist in any major city or country of the world” (146). Chapter 5 presents a contrasting case of successful protest that Vukovich believes is both realistic and meaningful in its demands and results: farmer activism over unjust land requisitions in the mainland Chinese village of Wukan. The final chapter reiterates the book’s overall argument and ends with a call for a “progressive” illiberalism that features an active state engaged in planning and capital controls and is focused on the livelihood of the people—an achievement that, in Vukovich’s view, the PRC may better lay claim to than any other state in history (217).
The book’s core claims and critiques are significant and worthy of engagement. At the same time, the text has a number of shortcomings. First, the volume does not always read as a coherent whole. Parts of chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 were published elsewhere, and the book reads as separate pieces that were later woven together. Second, the prose is repetitive and unnecessarily convoluted, such that it can be a somewhat arduous read at times. Third, the book contains numerous unfair, inaccurate, and hyperbolic characterizations. Most notably, Vukovich portrays “political science” and “area studies” as hopelessly dominated by modernization theory and “‘straight’ self-professedly liberal theory” (13), including most scholarly work on political contention in China. He provides little evidence to back these claims, save for a small handful of pieces (including popular media articles and a blog). In reality, the truly vast literature on contentious politics in China generally exhibits the complex and non-pejorative understanding of the PRC that Vukovich claims is almost entirely absent in contemporary China studies. Would any serious China scholar disagree, for example, with Vukovich’s statement that “it would be a mistake to simply map the Chinese [new left] positions onto modular Western ones” (48)? Relatedly, Vukovich makes a number of questionable claims, including that mainland Chinese “are as generally free as … Americans and Hong Kongers” (25). Finally, although he emphasizes complexity and nuance, Vukovich repeatedly uses imprecise language, such as “China is” or “China is not…” Singled out for explicit criticism are Verso Press, Amnesty International, Jonathan Fenby, Geremie Barme, Anthony Garnaut, Sebastian Veg, Liu Xiaobo, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, and Denise Ho—though only Liu’s work is included in the bibliography.
Nonetheless, the book makes an important argument that warrants thoughtful engagement. Scholars, journalists, and politicians should avoid teleological assumptions of convergence and accept that China almost certainly will never come to look like the West. We must guard against making arguments based on ideology, or what we would like to be the case or transpire. The Chinese political system is complex and cannot be defined or assessed in simple, dichotomous categories. The Maoist period was not uniformly harmful, and cannot be dismissed as sheer “madness or stupidity” (63). The post-Mao period has lost some of the significant advances of the Mao era, especially in terms of gender neutrality/equality, empowerment of the poor, and a belief that equality is fundamental to a good society. Liberalism and especially neo-liberalism are flawed and in many respects detrimental to humankind. And the Chinese political system may provide some examples of how an illiberal regime can promote the wellbeing of regular people.
Teresa Wright
California State University, Long Beach