Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. x, 226 pp. US$26.99, paper. ISBN 978-1-107-58761-8.
Frank Pieke adopts a China-centric perspective to move beyond Western preoccupations, desires, or fears. Knowing China is not aimed at determining whether China is or will become capitalist, or remain socialist. Instead, Pieke explores twenty-first-century China as a unique kind of neo-socialist society, combing features of state socialism, neo-liberal governance, capitalism, and rapid globalization. Pieke argues that delineating the distinctive features of this neo-socialist society not only helps us to know contemporary China better but takes us beyond the old dichotomies of West versus East, developed versus developing, traditional versus modernity, democracy versus dictatorship, and capitalism versus socialism.
Chapter 1 introduces the concept of neo-socialism. Pieke explains that from the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), market reform is only a means towards a more important end: a vigorous Communist Party leading to a strong state that governs a healthy nation and represents a powerful country. Rather than breeding conservatism, this conviction thus inspired a pragmatism and willingness on the part of the Party to constantly reinvent itself, while retaining core Leninist principles that guarantee its authoritarian leading role over state and society. An intrinsic part of neo-socialist strategy has been the selective, partial, and gradual nature of marketization of state and collective assets and functions. However, neo-socialism is not an ideology or a logically consistent model of governance but an analytical shorthand for the recombinant and open-ended nature of political, economic, and social development.
Chapter 2 starts with an analysis of the nature of socialist party rule. The Party after the reforms has in certain respects become more rather than less Leninist. These features include collective leadership, Party discipline imposed on the behaviour of its members, and Party control over leadership appointments. However, the ultimate objective of the Party is no longer communism; instead, it promises a united nation, a strong country, and a prosperous and harmonious society. Surprisingly, the Party after 1978 retained and deepened the highly decentralized structure of the administration that made local governance affordable and adaptable but also very difficult to control.
However, Pieke cautions that despite its successes, not all is well, and the long-term success of the neo-socialist strategy is by no means an established fact. Increasingly, Party politics is captured by special interest groups, the private interests of the families of high Party leaders, and even organized crime. The fall from power in 2011 of Bo Xilai laid bare the deep divisions in the Party leadership and showed the danger of a return to the devastating factional politics.
Chapter 3 examines the question of how a communist regime and a capitalist economy can exist alongside each other. Despite strong similarities with capitalist countries, Pieke shows that China charts its own course of neo-socialist development as much in the economic realm as in other aspects of politics, society, and culture. A closer look at the economic reforms shows that the growth of a market economy supports rather than undermines the socialist institutions and strategy of the Party. While thousands of state enterprises were let go, a select few were turned into large state-owned conglomerates and spearheads of further economic development and globalization. Neo-socialist industrial policy has thus been highly graded and selective. Whereas markets have been created in which all economic actors have to operate, certain strategy enterprises and sectors of the economy have been protected.
Pieke further argues that longer-term prosperity has less to do with the further development of market economy and more with the challenges that are generic and global rather than specifically having to do with the socialist legacy of the regime. Among these post-reform challenges, Pieke highlights three: demographic change, innovation-based growth, and environmental degradation.
Chapter 4 turns its attention to society. Under Mao, Chinese society had been wholly subsumed under the Party and the state. This totalitarian ambition was abandoned after the start of the reforms. In the 1990s the autonomy of individuals, families, enterprises, and organizations became a cornerstone of the Party’s unfolding neo-socialist approach. China has become a society of enterprising strangers who are free, albeit within the political limits imposed by the state, to pursue whatever goals or desires drive them. Just like in capitalist societies, freedom comes at a price: risk, inequality, individual responsibility, alienation. New forms of sociality based on religious beliefs, leisure and pastimes, lifestyles, or special interests have emerged to fill the gap created by freedom and individualization.
Chapter 5 argues that under neo-socialism, nation building and nationalism have become even more important than in the past. Chapter 6 tries to gauge the consequences that neo-socialist approaches have on the impact of Chinese people, businesses, capital, and culture in the world that we all live in. Pieke concludes that neo-socialist state strengthening, the proactive support for world-leading firms, the emergence of an intensely competitive market and society, and the aggressive nation-building project are preparing the way for China’s prominent global influence. China will become a global power not only because of a deep-seated wish to be independent from Western civilizers. There are also signs that China as an emerging power will not hesitate to become a civilizer in its own right, imposing its modernity on others.
I find this book very interesting and well written. Its innovative concept of neo-socialism is very useful to capture the distinctiveness of contemporary China, which consists of an uneasy combination of different contradictory elements that defies any easy characterization. In addition, this book is very informative because Pieke has done an excellent job in synthesizing the findings in Chinese studies to answer such research questions as: why the communist party will not fall from power, why China’s economy will continue to grow, but not forever, and why Chinese people have freedom without universal human rights. Thus, both general readers and area specialists will find this book indispensable for their in-depth understanding of contemporary China.
Alvin Y. So
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China
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