Thomas Heberer and Christian Goebel, The Politics of Community Building in Urban China

摘要

Following the events of 1989, many Western social scientists repeatedly predicted the impending death of China's one-party regime, and devoted themselves to interpreting the coming regime change in China. As this event failed to materialize, these scholars have grudgingly conceded that their prediction of the "coming collapse of China" might have been premature. They have found that the reforms implemented by the Chinese government are not intended to realize abstract notions of democracy, but to solve very concrete problems. Indeed, by creating compensatory institutions, the Chinese government has reacted with flexibility to the challenges of a changing economic and social environment. In this volume, Thomas Heberer and Christian Gobel analyze the innovations in China's system of urban grassroots governance, and argue that the top-down creation of urban community reform within an institutional framework regulated by the central government was aimed at instrumentalizing participation in order to enhance state control over society. Terms such as 'democracy' and 'self-governance' are frequently referenced in government programs, but it is quite clear that these terms do not mean to Chinese leaders what they mean to a Western audience.