The strength of this collection of papers, by some of the best researchers in the field, covering grassroots political developments in elections, budget, homeowners' associations, labour, legal aid and media, lies in the openness of the possible conclusions. As editors Perry and Goldman explicitly admit in the Introduction, despite the high level of interest amongst commentators and realpolitik practitioners in the possibility of China transforming into a democracy, more observations are required to assess "whether the contemporary (political) reforms are working to empower or imperil the party-state." The volume has thus aimed at elucidating, through detailed description of local actors and processes, the "actual impact of reform initiatives on local politics," rather than attempting to draw a conclusion on the prospects for national democracy (p. 3). Implicit in this is a bottom-up view of the constitution of national political developments: that major political change at the national level requires and is the summation of (though not a unilinear one) a multitude of diverse if also mutually supporting changes at various levels in both the state and society. Focusing on the local processes themselves facilitates a more solid understanding of what political changes have in fact taken place as well as their possible implications for the broader, national picture.
展开▼
