Jianxing Yu and Sujian Guo, eds., Civil Society and Governance in China

摘要

Since the early 1990s, many scholars used the concept of civil society to interpret social changes in China. However, scholars soon recognized that this concept is problematic as a way of understanding social change in China, which has a very different historical trajectory and social characteristics. These scholars found that the enhanced power of social forces does not necessarily reduce the power of the state in the Chinese context. Therefore, revised concepts were advanced for depicting the relations between civil society and the state in China, such as "socialist civil society", "strong state-strong society", and "state in society". Although these studies recognized the differences in civil society in China, these scholars failed to provide a good understanding of the logic of Chinese political development because the revised concepts are still largely derived from Western civil society theory. Additionally, once the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party restricted the use of the Western concept of civil society around 2011, the once fairly open discussion of civil society was constrained in China.