Comparative Development and Policy in Asia, 15. London; New York: Routledge, 2014. xviii, 233 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$160.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-415-71130-2.
This edited volume, with contributions by scholars from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, presents case study research on public policy making in the three Chinese societies. The book, consisting of twelve chapters, covers four areas regarding the role of civic engagement, legislature, mass media, and bureaucracy in public policy making in the three entities in the Greater China region. The chapters are rich in information. I applaud the contributing authors for following the same structural format, with the description of the case and discussion/analysis of the case. The most obvious commonality among the three entities is that they are all ethnic Chinese societies. Other features shared by the three societies, as pointed out in the preface of the book, are a high level of popular political dissatisfaction and the transitional nature of these societies. Differences among them are also obvious: recent history, political system, civil liberty, and political culture. Mainland China experienced a violent revolution in the late 1940s and went on a socialist experiment for three decades before adopting market-driven reform in the late 1970s. Both Hong Kong and Taiwan had colonial experiences, with the former being a colony of Great Britain for over one hundred years and the latter being colonized by Japan for fifty years. While Mainland China remains an authoritarian state with limited civil liberties, Hong Kong can be classified as a semi-democracy with extensive civil liberties while Taiwan has been a full-fledged Western-style democracy for over two decades.
Despite the differences, one can conclude several similar developments in these three Chinese societies with regard to the public policy-making process. Public participation in public policy making has increased in all three societies, even in authoritarian Mainland China. It should be pointed out that other than legal civic engagement, unconventional political participation acts such as street protests, public petitions, and Internet discussions have become major forms of public participation in public policy making in Mainland China. In fact, street protests have become an extremely effective way for the public to “get things done.” Chinese local government is quite sensitive to public street protests due to its concern with maintaining local political stability. The most cited official figure for street protest occurrrences in China was 87,000 in 2005 (Zhao Peng et al., “The Warning Signal of ‘typical social protests’,” Outlook Weekly, September 8, 2008, 36). According to a Wall Street Journal report, the figure reached 180,000 in 2010 (Tom Orlik, “Unrest Grows as Economy Booms,” Wall Street Journal, http://tinyurl.com/pcktp5l). Elizabeth Perry, an influential scholar on contentious politics in China, even argues that social protests have become a normal form of political participation for ordinary Chinese in Chinese politics and these activities actually contribute to social stability in China because protesters use these occasions to vent their anger and have their demands met (Challenge the mandate of heaven: Social protest and state power in China, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002). Another similar development among the three entities is the increasing role played by mass media in governmental decision-making processes. While media behaviour in both Taiwan and Hong Kong is similar to that in any democratic setting, how media functions in Mainland China is somewhat interesting. For example, due to their need to appeal to the market, Chinese central media organs have carved out a critical role for themselves in exposing the wrongdoings of local governments in China. This is fully demonstrated in the case study of the “big-headed babies” incident in the book.
Though informative, this edited volume also suffers from several deficiencies. First of all, the book needs a strong introductory chapter. Currently it only has a weak preface. Ideally in the introductory chapter, the editors would lay out an overarching theoretical framework to connect the case studies. Second, it is never clearly stated why Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong were chosen for this edited volume, other than the fact that all three are Chinese societies. Were they chosen for comparative purposes? Was “most similar system design” the main consideration for the selection of the three cases? If so, culture should be the common ground for the three societies. Yet, culture is not explicitly used as an explaining variable in the case studies from the three societies. Similarly, political system is an obvious difference between Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Again, it is not treated as a key explaining variable by the contributing authors in their case studies. This brings up my last criticism of the book: the chapters do not “talk” to each other. It seems that specific case studies in the book were chosen randomly, without an attempt to relate them to one another. The three chapters in the bureaucracy section are cases in point. The Mainland China case is about selective policy implementation or policy non-compliance by local Chinese government. The Taiwan case discusses bureaucratic neutrality, while the Hong Kong one talks about the continuity of Hong Kong bureaucracy before and after China’s takeover of Hong Kong in 1997. Readers cannot find much to connect the three cases. They could have been much better connected with each other if political system had been used as an explanatory variable.
Yang Zhong
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA
pp. 624-625