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Let Many Civil Societies Bloom: The Rise of Consultative
Authoritarianism in China
Jessica C. Teets
The China Quarterly / Volume 213 / March 2013, pp 19 - 38
DOI: 10.1017/S0305741012001269, Published online: 23 January 2013
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0305741012001269
How to cite this article:
Jessica C. Teets (2013). Let Many Civil Societies Bloom: The Rise of Consultative
Authoritarianism in China. The China Quarterly, 213, pp 19-38 doi:10.1017/
S0305741012001269
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http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 20 May 2016 IP address: 91.127.122.121
Let Many Civil Societies Bloom: The Rise
of Consultative Authoritarianism in China
Jessica C. Teets*
Abstract
In this article, I analyse civil society development in China using examples
from Beijing to demonstrate the causal role of local officials’ ideas about
these groups during the last 20 years. I argue that the decentralization of
public welfare and the linkage of promotion to the delivery of these goods
supported the idea of local government–civil society collaboration. This
idea was undermined by international examples of civil society opposing
authoritarianism and the strength of the state-led development model after
the 2008 economic crisis. I find growing convergence on a new model of
state–society relationship that I call “consultative authoritarianism,” which
encourages the simultaneous expansion of a fairly autonomous civil society
and the development of more indirect tools of state control. This model challenges
the conventional wisdom that an operationally autonomous civil
society cannot exist inside authoritarian regimes and that the presence of
civil society is an indicator of democratization.
Keywords: China; civil society; authoritarian politics; policy learning
The associational revolution that began in the early 1990s in China introduced
the idea of a relatively autonomous civil society, departing from traditional
forms of social organizations such as kinship groups and corporatist federations.1
In this article, I analyse the state–civil society relationships that developed over
these last two decades, interwoven with examples from Beijing to explore the
motivations prompting government officials to allow the expansion of civil
society. I use examples from Beijing due to its status as both the capital of
China and a distinct city-province, which means that local officials are exposed
to national and international pressures in ways not experienced by cadres in
other provinces; it thus serves as both a mirror and microcosm of national political
trends. I argue that local officials’ ideas about civil society play a causal role
in determining the evolving relationship between the local state and groups:
specifically, that both “strategic” ideas, such as the material benefits and disadvantages
of group activity, and “modular” ideas, derived from successful
* Middlebury College. Email: jteets@middlebury.edu.
1 Wang and He 2004; this term is derived from Salamon 1994.
19
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international and domestic state–society models, influence the current development
of a “consultative authoritarianism” model in Beijing.2
Through fieldwork in Beijing and over one hundred interviews in four other
provinces beginning in 2006, I find that the “strategic” idea of civil society assistance
with the delivery of public goods and the “modular” idea of a “small state–
big society” derived from Western regulatory states together have created positive
feedback for the idea of local government collaboration with civil society groups.
As I explore in the case study of Shining Stone (Canyu shi 灿雨石), decentralization
of public welfare to the local government and the linkage of promotion to
the delivery of these goods generated a strategic idea of civil society development
benefiting the career advancement of local cadres. Additionally, this strategic
idea was supported by the regulatory state model, such as seen in the US, of a
large public welfare role for social groups and a regulatory role for the local
state.3
However, during the same period competing “strategic” and “modular” ideas
undermined this cooperative relationship and advocated more of a confrontational
relationship. The “strategic” idea of civil society challenging social stability
– the maintenance of which is a vital component of cadre promotion – was
formed both from domestic experiences and from the international examples of
civil society opposing authoritarian regimes, such as the colour revolutions in
the former Soviet Republics and more recently the Arab Spring protests.
Moreover, this more confrontational relationship outcome was also supported
by the increasing popularity of the “modular” idea of state-led development
after the successful Olympics in China, which contrasted with the rocky Asian
Games in India, and strong economic growth in China during the global economic
crisis, which contrasted with economic decline in the US.
This feedback undermined but did not destroy cadres’ idea of a collaborative
relationship with civil society. In fact, these contradictory ideas interacted to
encourage convergence on a new model of state–society relationship in Beijing,
which I call “consultative authoritarianism,” that encourages the simultaneous
expansion of a fairly autonomous civil society and the development of indirect
tools of state control. This model is being used in Beijing as a “social management”
pilot and increasingly appears to be the model for a new proposed national
law regulating the development and activity of civil society.4 National ideational
convergence on this model of consultative authoritarianism challenges the conventional
wisdom that an operationally autonomous civil society cannot exist
inside an authoritarian regime, and also that the presence of civil society is an
indicator of a process of democratization. In fact, as I illustrate in this article, the
expansion of civil society in China is not leading to a process of democratization
2 I do not have the space to discuss ideational models; one of the best overviews is Blyth 1997.
Additionally, due to space constraints I only examine the influence of cadres’ ideas here, but in other
publications also include those of group leaders.
3 Lian 2010.
4 Chen 2011.
20 The China Quarterly, 213, March 2013, pp. 19–38
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but rather to better governance under the conditions of authoritarianism, which in
turn is increasing citizen satisfaction with the regime.5
The Associational Revolution in China
Chinese civil society has grown dramatically since the early 1990s in the number
of registered groups and their participants, from about 400 registered
groups in 1986 to over 400,000 by 2006. In fact, despite crackdowns on organized
social groups during the 1989 Tiananmen protests and again with the
1998 falun gong protests, civil society has grown even more dramatically and
diversified its activities since the mid-1990s. Most scholars believe the number
of active groups far exceeds the 400,000 registered groups reported by the ministry
of civil affairs in 2006, with some estimates as high as eight million registered
and unregistered groups.6 While both foreign and domestic groups have
proliferated, the government does not provide separate figures for registered
foreign groups. In 1995, Jude Howell suggested that 15 international nongovernmental
organizations (INGOs) existed in China, including Médecins Sans
Frontières, the US Peace Corps, Oxfam Hong Kong, and Save the Children.7
More recently, Hsia and White estimate that at least 50 registered organizations
have a long-term presence in China, and approximately 150 international
NGOs lack permanent registration but fund development work in China
through local partners.8
Domestic groups are comprised of social organizations (shehui tuanti 社会团
体), popular groups (minjian zuzhi 民间组织) and non-profit groups ( feiyingli
zuzhi 非营利组织) mostly engaged in service delivery and community development.
Although the numbers of groups and participants are increasing, most
grassroots organizations are understaffed, with 72 per cent having fewer than
ten staff and insufficient volunteers.9 These capacity problems are exacerbated
by the lack of funding sources – domestic sources due to regulations restricting
fund raising and international sources because most international funding goes
to larger, more established groups or Chinese branches of INGOs.10 Surveys of
civil society in China reveal the rapid growth of these organizations in sheer numbers,
participation and diversity of issue areas; however, groups face significant
challenges with capacity issues and mostly operate at the local level, with only
6 per cent of surveyed groups conducting interprovincial activities.11
In addition to concerns about the capacity of this emergent civil society in
China, questions likewise have been raised about this emergent civil society’s
autonomy from the state. The majority of analyses conducted in the 1990s
5 Others have argued that China is improving governance not democratizing. See Nathan 2003.
6 Wang and He 2004.
7 Howell 1995.
8 Hsia and White 2002.
9 Xiong and Qin 2008.
10 Simon 2009.
11 Xiong and Qin 2008.
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concluded that these associations were not fully autonomous from the state,
and operated as a corporatist extension of the state apparatus.12 In fact, in
1996 an official in the ministry of civil affairs estimated that less than 50 per
cent of groups were self-organized, self-supported and self-governed.13 More
recent analyses of Chinese civil society still debate the level of autonomy; however,
they reveal more independence among both government-organized groups
and grassroots groups.14 As Yiyi Lu finds, most groups independently locate
funding sources, hire staff and run programmes.15 This debate also occurs
inside civil society, and is likewise often expressed in a more nuanced fashion
as a continuum of autonomy outcomes rather than a dichotomous category.
For example, a group leader contended that he must balance cooperating
with the government in return for access to the policy process, with the risk
of losing this access if he criticized government actions.16 Although this is
still a contentious debate in the existing literature, many scholars, including
myself, argue that over the last decade increasing group activity and professionalization
have given rise to a sector comprised of both grassroots and
government-organized groups that help deliver goods and participate in policy
decisions at the local level, or possess what Wang calls “operational autonomy.”17
While civil society autonomy is not the main focus of this analysis,
it clearly is a part of the overall state–group relationship outcome that I seek
to explain. Thus, in the rest of this article, I explore how cadres’ “strategic”
and “modular” ideas of civil society influence the current state–society relationship
outcome of “consultative authoritarianism,” beginning with the ideas that
support a more collaborative relationship with autonomous groups.
Motivating State–Society Cooperation: Decentralization of Public
Goods Provision
My contention that a relatively autonomous civil society is emerging in China
raises the question of why local officials allow such an expansion in an
authoritarian state. In contrast to most of the literature which posits the
expansion of civil society as an indicator or precursor of democratization, I
argue that the decentralization of public goods and linking of the provision
of these goods to promotion generated the “strategic” idea among local officials
that civil society expansion might benefit them, which was further supported
by the regulatory state–society model provided by Western industrial
states.18
12 Brook and Frolic 1997; Chamberlain 1993.
13 Ma 2002.
14 Howell and Pearce 2002; Saich 2000.
15 Lu 2007.
16 Interview with director of grassroots group, Beijing, July 2007.
17 Wang 2006.
18 Diamond 1994.
22 The China Quarterly, 213, March 2013, pp. 19–38
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Beginning in the 1980s, the central state increasingly decentralized fiscal policy
to local governments under the slogan of “cooking in separate kitchens” ( fenzao
chifan 分灶吃饭). The central government transferred to local governments the
primary responsibility for the provision of public goods such as education, health
care, infrastructure and social security programmes like unemployment insurance.
Consequently, the Chinese fiscal system is highly decentralized, with the
central government accounting for only 30 per cent of total budgetary expenditures,
and the remaining 70 per cent distributed among four sub-national levels.19
In comparison, sub-national governments account on average for only 14 per
cent of total budgetary expenditures in developing countries, and 32 per cent
in developed countries. As Christine Wong notes, this model of decentralization
is even more notable because China is one of the only countries in the world to
assign responsibility for providing vital social services such as social security,
basic education, health care and public safety to local governments.20
Decentralization gave local government limited political devolution alongside
more significant administrative and economic devolution, and was intended to
increase the ability of local governments to regulate local markets and provide
public services to society.21 However, local governments do not possess the
necessary fiscal autonomy to meet these unfunded mandates. The central government
restricts the ability to tax local populations and to secure bonds or loans
through fiscal budget laws, so local governments cannot issue debt and should
not run fiscal deficits. Nevertheless, with the demands on local governments
increasing while fiscal transfers from the central government remain low, most
provinces operate a budget deficit, tax illegally, or borrow using special financial
vehicles to fund social programmes through extra-budgetary revenue.22 This gap
between responsibilities and funding represents one mechanism motivating local
governments to view an emerging civil society as a source of potential partners in
securing international funding and innovative models to bridge the resource gap
and solve welfare provision problems.
The experience of decentralization in China has led to the creation of unfunded
mandates and high levels of local debt.23 In addition to this resource gap, the
linkage of public goods provision to promotion further motivates local officials
to cooperate with civil society to deliver public services. The target management
responsibility system (gangwei mubiao guanli zerenzhi 岗位目标管理责任制)
prioritizes economic targets like public goods provision to evaluate cadre performance
and determine promotions and pay. Although there is debate over
which performance criteria actually result in promotion, the two most important
goals are economic development and social order.24 When the work-unit system
19 Park et al. 1996.
20 Ibid.
21 Qian and Weingast 1996.
22 Li 2006; Wong 2007.
23 Frazier 2010; Cai and Treisman 2002.
24 Whiting 2001; Landry 2003.
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of welfare disintegrated, social intermediaries became necessary to provide health
and other welfare services.25 As a senior official in the ministry of civil affairs succinctly
explained, “The government cannot totally manage health, culture, social
welfare and education. In the future China will have a big society and a small
government. Social organizations will play a big role.”26 According to interviewed
local officials, this pressure to provide public goods motivated collaboration
with civil society because officials could access international funding and
resources to further their promotion goals and increase welfare in the local community,
and if the collaboration appeared to lead to unrest, they could simply
shut down the whole project.27 As one official explained, partnering with these
groups opened up a new line of finance with little risk, unlike common extrabudgetary
channels such as increasing fees and taxes or selling land, both of
which create social protest.28
The decentralization of public goods provision corresponded with an increase
in international funding sources for civil society groups. Beginning in the early
1990s, international funding agencies and INGOs began to work in China,
often explicitly excluding local governments and funding grassroots groups.29
The World Bank and other international funding agencies, such as the Ford
Foundation, wanted to fund development through more bottom-up initiatives.30
Together this environment created limited space for the legitimate functioning of
civil society groups in service delivery as well as raising the capacity among these
groups to undertake expanded projects in the poorest areas. As one group member
explained, “my organization’s role is service delivery – providing services that
the government cannot provide. While government investment in health is
increasing, the majority goes to the cities – with 80 per cent of the funding serving
20 per cent of the population.”31 In order to take advantage of this new funding
stream, local officials partnered with existing groups or supported the creation of
new groups, as I later illustrate with the Shining Stone case.32
Motivating State–Society Cooperation: the Regulatory State Model
In addition to this “strategic” idea of collaborating with groups to provide public
goods, the Western regulatory state model supported this type of cooperation.
Beginning in 1979 with the initiation of economic reform, elites engaged in a
national debate over developing a regulatory state. The regulatory-state model
consists of transitioning governing institutions from a producer function to
25 Howell 2004, 144.
26 Howell 1995, 10.
27 Over 100 interviews conducted by the author with academics, officials, and civil society leaders in
Beijing, Yunnan, Jiangsu and Sichuan provinces between 2006 and 2010.
28 Interview with retired health bureau (weisheng ju) cadre, Yunnan, May 2007.
29 Mathews 1997; Salamon and Anheier 1996.
30 Sanyal 1994.
31 Interview with founder of health-care association, Simao, Yunnan, February 2007.
32 Foster 2001.
24 The China Quarterly, 213, March 2013, pp. 19–38
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more of a regulatory function, similar to advanced industrial models found in the
West. Many Party leaders, like Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 and Jiang Zemin 江泽民,
believed that economic reform required restructuring state institutions designed
to produce market goods to become institutions designed to regulate a combination
of state-owned and private firms producing market goods. This idea of
a regulatory state dominated local policy in Beijing, as well as nationally, during
the first 20 years of economic reform. Reforms were initiated that consisted of
developing regulatory institutions and policies, building a professional and technocratic
civil servant corps, decentralizing fiscal and public welfare functions to
lower levels of government, and expanding the private sector composed of both
firms and civil-society organizations.33 As Wen Jiabao 温家宝 – another proponent
of this regulatory-state model – asserts, as the state withdraws from its former
responsibilities, civil society develops to mediate problems associated with
development and globalization.34
The regulatory-state model patterned after advanced industrial economies such
as the US and Germany supports this idea of a collaborative role for civil society,
where the state provides a supportive legal and fiscal structure, and groups provide
public goods, mediate social unrest and promote good governance. For
example, in addition to a tax-exempt status, the US government supplies approximately
56 per cent of civil society groups’ funding, and the German government
supplies 65 per cent.35 The US and Germany, as developed capitalist states, represent
examples of China’s potential future that many policy makers use to discuss
how the state, society and economy might evolve over time.36 However,
while this collaborative state–society model might be the ultimate goal, the
methods of transition and process of reform are debated between advocates of
the regulatory state and New Left (xin zuopai 新左派) models.37
Throughout the reform era, officials proceeded with economic restructuring by
“crossing the river by groping for stepping stones” (mozhe shitou guo he 摸着石头
过河), which implies that change occurs by moving slowly from one stage to
another after recalibrating the strategy to adjust for any negative effects.
Officials also apply this approach to political reform, especially the development
of civil society, by encouraging civil society groups to solve social problems without
threatening Party hegemony. For example, Wen Jiabao recently called on
Shenzhen to serve as a pilot for political reform, and in response local government
officials initiated a system of contracting the provision of public goods
out to civil society groups.38 As illustrated in the following case study, both
33 See Dali Yang (2004) for a comprehensive overview of administrative reforms.
34 Sibin Wang 2011.
35 Salamon 1996.
36 I first heard this during a civil society conference at Peking University’s Civil Society Research Center,
15 January 2007, and then again at a staff research meeting at Tsinghua University’s NGO Research
Center, 2 June 2008.
37 Li 2010.
38 See Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao’s speeches about piloting political reform in Shenzhen (quoted in Lee
2010).
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“strategic” and “modular” ideas influenced local officials in Beijing to collaborate
with civil society groups to provide public goods.
State–Society Collaboration in Beijing: The Case of Shining Stone
Community Action
Beijing is unique in that it serves as both a provincial and national capital; however,
the local government in Beijing is organized in a similar fashion to other
provinces, with a four-level municipal government, local Party authority held
by the Beijing Party secretary, and authority over 16 urban and suburban districts
and two rural counties. Beijing is one of the most developed cities in China, with
26 Fortune Global 500 companies. This rapid development and urbanization creates
a multitude of challenges, such as strained social-welfare provision and a
large migrant population without access to basic social services. The registered
population of Beijing consists of those holding a permanent residence permit
(hukou 户口) or a temporary residence permit; as of February 2010, the combined
population of permanent and non-permanent residents exceeded 22 million, with
the latter category numbering eight to nine million.39 In addition to the difficulty
in developing new affordable models to provide these services to residents, a large
number of migrant workers (min gong 民工) live in Beijing without official residence
permits of either kind, which limits access to social services for the
migrants and their children. This large population places pressure on Beijing’s
local government to provide social welfare services such as compulsory education,
health care, unemployment benefits, pensions and elder care services.
Beijing is divided administratively into districts (qu 区), supervised by street
affairs offices (jiedao banshichu 街道办事处) responsible for residents’ committees
(jumin weiyuanhui 居民委员会) in communities of approximately 2,000 households.
Most residents’ committees have six or seven staff members appointed by
the street affairs office who have developed various service delivery models as
part of the “community construction” initiative. This initiative was established by
the central government to encourage local governments to adapt to the rapid
changes in service delivery in urban China – including both the influx of rural economic
migrants and the wide service gaps left by the collapse of the work-unit model.
While Beijing is a wealthy city-province, officials lacked models for service delivery
that were not linked to state-owned enterprises, traditional practices of elder care by
families, and stable migration practices governed by the hukou system.
This difficulty in creating new service delivery models is illustrated by surveys
from the Horizon Research Group for 2003 to 2005, which revealed that the
majority of Beijing residents are not satisfied with government service, primarily
due to an overly bureaucratic approach to welfare, and a “one size fits all” model
that does not actually address existing problems.40 In response to these problems
39 China Daily 2010.
40 Saich 2007.
26 The China Quarterly, 213, March 2013, pp. 19–38
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providing social-welfare services to vulnerable communities in Beijing, domestic
and international groups initiated projects to provide many of these services.
Local officials allowed the proliferation of these projects at the lowest levels of
administration in order to test innovative international models piloted by the
groups, and this successful collaboration reinforced the idea of civil society mediating
social problems, as advocated by the advanced industrial state model.
One of these groups, Shining Stone Community Action (SSCA), uses a
community-participation model to deliver services to migrant communities in
the Beijing suburbs, and contends that public participation in China’s municipal
affairs will increase citizen satisfaction as the government involves citizens in the
provision of social services as partners of the local government, thereby giving
them some influence in selecting types of services.41 The founder of Shining
Stone, Song Qinghua 宋庆华, joined one of China’s original NGOs, Global
Village of Beijing, in 1997 to encourage recycling. Five years later, Song formed
Shining Stone Community Action, registering it initially as a consulting company
due to difficulty receiving permission to register as a civil society group. The
group’s aim is to develop urban community capacity to sustain participatory
governance, and it has received a number of international grants to operate
these projects. For example, Shining Stone initiated training programmes for
street affairs office staff in Beijing with a grant from the Ford Foundation in
2002. After working in Beijing for seven years, the group was allowed to register
as nonprofit in 2009, and currently has seven full-time staff.
Addressing service delivery to the growing migrant population in Beijing,
Shining Stone partnered with the Qingyuan 清源 street office to initiate a pilot
project in 2007. This office supervises 28 neighbourhoods with a total of
110,000 registered residents and 20,000 migrant workers. Each neighbourhood
has its own residents’ committee responsible for household registration, public
safety, enforcement of the one-child policy, and services for the elderly, disabled
and unemployed. SSCA worked with the residents’ committees to train government
officials and residents in participative methods and project management
skills.42 Next, using these skills, the participants jointly identified services that
were needed and designed a pilot programme to create participatory mechanisms
to solve future problems cooperatively. The Qingyuan street office funded promising
projects that were suggested by participants, such as a training centre for
migrants employed as domestic helpers and a cultural association run by the participating
residents and members of the residents’ committees. These
SSCA-proposed projects assist the residents’ committees in meeting the social
innovation requirement, outlined by the municipal government, of each committee
implementing at least one such civic project by 2010. Many of the projects
implemented with Shining Stone assistance address service-delivery problems
with either elderly or migrant residents, such as library and kindergarten
41 Shining Stone Community Action website, www.communityaction.org.cn.
42 Geisselmann and Warmer 2009.
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programmes for migrant children, community dinners where pensioners can buy
a meal for less than one yuan, and training courses for migrants in urban skills
such as learning how to use ATM machines.
In the past, urban and community development was strictly controlled by the
local government without the participation of community members. However,
after the collapse of the former model of welfare delivery, municipal officials
are uncertain how to adopt new models of service delivery without being overwhelmed
by citizen dissatisfaction as soon as they open channels for participation.43
Additionally, local officials and residents lack practical experience
with policy participation. Shining Stone’s pilot programmes in Beijing help
local officials manage the transition from former service delivery models to a
new participatory model based on practices in advanced industrial states, without
generating a flood of social unrest and public grievances.44 Through its extensive
training programmes, SSCA promotes a new understanding of the roles of both
state and civil-society actors. According to this model of service delivery, local
officials no longer provide all necessary services or use a “one-size” plan, but
instead fund and supervise projects proposed and run cooperatively by residents
and committees. This collaboration allows committees and community leaders to
help the local state mediate between various interests, and does not treat participation
as “mass mobilization” in the way that previous models calling for public
participation did. In this way, Shining Stone’s pilot programme in Qingyuan created
positive collaborative experiences for local officials and a model for other
communities to follow, both of which reinforce the idea of civil society partnering
with the state to mediate social problems.
In addition to creating a stable path for transition to new social welfare
models, Shining Stone’s projects in Beijing improve local governance, which
also positively reinforces the idea of collaborating with civil society. For example,
as the Horizon surveys found, many residents view the residents’ committees and
street offices as intervening in their private affairs and acting in an arbitrary manner
with little concern for their needs. The committees often do not investigate
diverse needs across communities and use the same programmes in communities
with different needs, leading to non-cooperation and occasional outbreaks of protest
on the part of displeased residents. As SSCA’s founder notes, uniform welfare
provision presupposes that every neighbourhood has identical needs, yet
this is simply incorrect.45 For example, she finds that in contrast to poorer
areas, families in richer neighbourhoods have books at home so library use is negligible,
thus government funding would be better spent meeting needs identified
by the residents rather than providing a library in every community.
Services identified and provided by residents after deliberation with committees
and street offices offer better local governance because residents, being
43 Interview with ministry of civil affairs official, Beijing, January 2007.
44 Interview with Beijing municipal representative, Beijing, June 2010.
45 Young and Qian 2006.
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directly affected by welfare provision, stress quality and efficiency and understand
the local context and needs. As Song finds, “The other day the staff in
one neighbourhood were discussing how, when they have to announce a new
decision or policy, if they just put up posters (tongzhi 通知) to communicate
this, people always criticize and complain. But if they hold a meeting to explain
and discuss changes with the community, people usually see the point and are
supportive, and there is less conflict.”46 In addition to satisfied citizens, local officials
gain recognition from supervisors through “innovation awards” that many
provincial governments award to encourage policy innovation at lower levels.
These innovations can then be tested and disseminated by provincial leaders.
For example, in Beijing, one district official who partnered with Shining Stone
in order to develop a new model for integrating migrant families into their new
communities won an “innovation in governance” award with a cash reward
and recognition from the municipal government.47 This experience reinforces
officials’ idea of civil society partnering with the local state to mediate development
and globalization problems, such as urbanization.
Shining Stone’s successful collaboration with street offices and residents’ committees
in Beijing supports the regulatory-state model whereby civil society assists the
state in mitigating social problems through innovation difficult for the state to
achieve without public participation. Song argues that collaboration has changed
many officials’ ideas of service delivery and more broadly of the role of civil society
from the early 1990s: “Some people at the very top understand the need for this, but
local government is more generally populated by bureaucrats operating on remote
control. Many Chinese officials have their own idea of citizen participation: “We
decide, you participate.”48 After the first pilot projects in Beijing in 2002, Shining
Stone’s model of service delivery spread to other provinces. Throughout 2003, the
group trained cadres and community workers across 26 urban communities in
Beijing and 22 in Wuhan with funding support from the Ford Foundation, and
then trained local officials in Tianjin, Nanjing, and Shanghai with funding from
the ministry of civil affairs. In late 2006, Shining Stone secured funding from
Oxfam Hong Kong to support a programme to help migrant communities develop
a plan for future development in Chengdu, Nanchang and Ningbo.
As illustrated in this brief case study, the participatory model of service coordination
advocated by Shining Stone improves community welfare provision in
Beijing, and creates a new model of service delivery. This new model is based
on state–society co-production of public goods, and as discussed further in the
conclusion, has quickly been adopted by other local governments.49 However,
as I discuss in the following section, both the strategic and modular ideas
supporting state–society collaboration were challenged by competing ideas of
46 Ibid.
47 Interview with staff member of Shining Stone, Beijing, June 2008.
48 Young and Qian 2006.
49 Jing and Savas 2009.
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civil society as a threat to single-party rule and the success of a state-led model in
the wake of the global economic crisis and the colour revolutions in the
post-Soviet Republics.
Undermining State–Society Cooperation: Stability Maintenance and
Colour Revolutions
As illustrated by the Shining Stone case, collaboration with civil society helps
local officials solve development issues and improve governance; however, officials
must balance these benefits with social stability concerns. The target management
responsibility system prioritizes both economic development and
social order goals for officials. Concerns with social stability, or perceived antistate
activities, permeate the Party leadership and all levels of government in
Beijing. Statistics illustrate growing numbers of “mass incidents” such as demonstrations,
protests and riots throughout the 2000s – totaling 87,000 in 2006, an
increase of 6.6 per cent from 2005.50 Since 2008, central government officials
have expressed rising concern about protests in the minority areas of both
Tibet and Xinjiang in western China, and local officials in Beijing worry about
the possibility that growing income gaps and unemployment among the migrant
population and recent college graduates might trigger increasing unrest.51 In fact,
the most recent national budget showed more spending on “stability maintenance”
than any other category, including public goods, and equivalent to
national defence.52 Thus social stability is the paramount goal of the Party leadership,
with “instability” broadly defined as social unrest which might threaten
economic development and the Party’s political hegemony.53
The ability of civil society organizations to mobilize citizen action against the
state is well understood in Beijing after the colour revolutions and the Arab
Spring, and local officials must balance the benefits of partnership with concerns
about social mobilization and instability. The confrontational role played by civil
society groups in the colour revolutions during the 2000s reinforces desire for
more state control over group activity. As Deyong Yin notes, a constant concern
of the Chinese government is that NGOs supported by governments of Western
countries may subvert the rule of the Chinese Communist Party through “peaceful
transformation”; this concern encourages officials to pay particular attention to
groups with funding from overseas foundations or foreign NGOs, to prevent a colour
revolution in China.54 As one staff member of a Beijing group noted, “After
the colour revolutions government officials have frequently visited our office and
invited me to have tea to discuss the goals and strategies of the group.”55 She
50 Tanner 2004.
51 Ford 2009.
52 Tsinghua University report, cited in New York Times 2010.
53 Interview with faculty member of Central Party School, Beijing, June 2007.
54 Yin 2009.
55 Interview with staff member of domestic NGO, Beijing, February 2007.
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contends that the colour revolutions led local officials to attempt to learn about all
unregistered groups’ “intentions and organizational structure.”56 With increasing
unemployment in both migrant and recent graduate populations in Beijing, local
officials fear the ability of civil society groups to mobilize and link these populations,
as seen in the youth movements during the colour revolutions. In fact,
President Hu Jintao issued a joint declaration with President Putin where he stated
that the imposition of “alien models of social and political systems” was deemed
“inadmissible,” and suggested that the Belarusian strategy of crushing potential
social mobilization was the way to maintain stability.57 Most recently, the
Beijing government responded to suggestions in online chat rooms that there be
a “Jasmine Revolution” modeled after the Arab Spring protests by closing several
civil society groups, arresting known dissidents and physically repressing any large
gatherings in the city.58 This response illustrates the “strategic” idea held by many
officials that civil society is not a partner and in fact may mobilize society to oppose
an authoritarian regime, which challenges the idea that the local state should collaborate
with these groups to coproduce goods.
Undermining State–Society Cooperation: the Successful State-Led
Model
In addition to fears of instability, the successful 2008 Beijing Olympics and
weathering of the global economic crisis generated feedback undermining the
idea of collaborating with civil society. In fact, the ability of local officials to
hold the Olympics despite international and domestic “disruptions,” and to
maintain strong economic growth despite a global economic crisis, increased
the prominence of ideas that imagined a larger, more active state role than
under the regulatory-state idea, which was delegitimized by the decline in the
US economy during the economic crisis. Since 2008, many officials have discussed
the “rise” of China and “decline” of the US as evidence of the superiority
of a state-led model.59 In Beijing, the local economy was not as tied to exports as
the coastal cities in the south, and thus felt less of a manufacturing impact.
Instead it suffered the decline of the construction sector and hiring freezes by
multi-national corporations, which disproportionately affected migrants and
recent college graduates. After central and local officials implemented a stimulus
package, Beijing experienced a surge in consumer sales and a slow resurgence in
building. In fact, local GDP increased by 10 per cent in 2009. In response to these
successes on the part of state leadership, the New Left idea of the superiority of a
state-led model challenged the hegemony of the regulatory-state idea.60
56 Ibid.
57 TASS 2005.
58 Jacobs 2011.
59 Jisi Wang 2011.
60 Mishra 2006.
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New Left ideology is characterized by an emphasis on the state’s power to
redress the problems of injustice and other negative effects of privatization, marketization
and globalization. Following the Marxist tradition, New Left theorists
believe that the capitalist mode of production is grounded in exploitation, and
that a civil society developed under capitalism is simply a vehicle for ensuring
the dominance of capitalist interest groups.61 Thus, the New Left advocates the
development of new state-controlled mechanisms for participation, and distrusts
current civil society in China as representing dominant capitalist interests at the
expense of social justice. However, New Left ideas differ from Maoist ideology,
where civil society was incorporated into the state, in instead promoting state guidance
of fairly independent civil society to help the state meet goals coupled with
strict controls on groups that attempt to promote special interests or pursue a role
outside of the one envisioned by the state. In fact, the head of the ministry of civil
affairs policy office recently published an article calling for state guidance of
autonomous groups to avoid the “bad” civil society seen in many Western
countries.62
While New Left ideas were gaining in popularity, the perceived failure of the
US-style regulatory model has greatly undermined neoliberal reformers in
China who would like to see a more complete dismantling of the state-owned sector
and rise of non-state actors such as civil society.63 The rising influence of the
New Left in the “harmonious society” policies adopted in 2005 illustrates the
ideational challenge to the regulatory-state ideas of the 1990s.64 Thus, events in
the last decade undermined the idea of civil society as a partner advocated by
both the Western regulatory-state model and successful collaboration experiences
such as with Shining Stone. The interaction of these conflicting ideas created a
new state–civil society model which simultaneously allows for the expansion of
relatively autonomous groups and the development of indirect state control
mechanisms.
The Rise of “Consultative Authoritarianism”
These strategic and modular ideas influenced the development of a new model of
state–society relationship, what I call “consultative authoritarianism,” which
merges the regulatory-state idea of a relatively autonomous civil society collaborating
with the state to solve social problems with the New Left idea of state guidance
of groups to protect society from narrow interest groups and social
instability. This model is characterized by two main aspects – a pluralistic society
participating in policy formation and implementation, and the use of multiple
indirect tools of state control. As I explain below, while the goals of this
61 Hui Wang 2001, 185.
62 Zhou 2011.
63 Bo and Chen 2009.
64 Huang 2011; He Li 2010.
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consultative authoritarianism are the same, the social pluralism and differentiated
state control present in this model distinguish it from earlier corporatist
models.
The first distinctive characteristic of this new corporatist model is the existence
of officially tolerated social pluralism. Unlike the corporatist model described by
Jean Oi, groups no longer serve as appendages to the state, but possess independent
staff, resources and projects.65 In fact, Jude Howell finds that most groups
receive little government funding other than perhaps free office space; the
majority of groups were started voluntarily from below, although some also
involved officials in activities in order to informally access resources and contacts,
enhance the prestige of the organization and gain political protection for
activities.66 Groups are required to register with the ministry of civil affairs
and a supervisory agency, but these regulations have not substantially limited
the expansion of civil society in China to date. Attempts to restrict the space
and range of organizational activity through registration have turned into a
“facade of monopoly.”67 For the most part, these groups establish independent
projects and strategies, and any cooperation with local government is due to
mutual recognition of comparative advantage: “We [the Yunnan Reproductive
Health Association] need a government network, like the women’s federation,
for this makes our work convenient. It helps us to organize a focus group discussion
or visit households. So there is a cooperative relationship.”68 Local government
often collaborates with unregistered groups, as the SSCA example
illustrates. As Wang finds, these groups possess operational autonomy.69
Additionally, there is more pluralism in this model than offered under corporatism,
with multiple groups competing inside one policy space or region. Under
the corporatist model, the state only recognizes one organization, such as the
women’s federation, as the sole representative of the interests of the individuals
or businesses comprising that organization’s constituency. It is only through
this channel that incorporated organizations may participate in the policymaking
process to help implement policy for the government. This former
model of corporatism limits the number of actors participating in the policy process
and thus controls the actions of the members. However, since the early
2000s, multiple groups representing the same constituency in a region have proliferated,
and some groups such as environmental NGOs increasingly link
members across the country through online forums and resources.70 These groups
and practices have proliferated to such as extent that the director of one
group engaged in linking civil society actors across regions argues that the
official federations now view grassroots groups as policy and resource
65 Oi 1992; Chan and Unger 1995.
66 Howell 2004, 157.
67 Howell 2004, 158.
68 Cited in Howell 2004, 159; interview with Federation staff, Yunnan, June 2007.
69 Wang 2006.
70 Ho 2001.
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competitors.71 These groups also participate in the whole process of policy making
including policy formation, and no longer just in policy implementation as
seen with the former federation model.72
The second distinctive characteristic of this new model is the type of control
mechanisms used by the state. These mechanisms are called “differentiated control”
by Kang Xiaoguang 康晓光, who finds that the state increasingly uses more
sophisticated and indirect methods to create positive and negative incentives
encouraging groups to work toward meeting state goals.73 The example of a
group called 1KG More (Duobei yi gongjin 多背一公斤) illustrates the positive
incentives used under the consultative authoritarianism framework.74 The founder
of this grassroots group set up an online network on QQ to coordinate
between needy rural schools and potential urban donors. Since 2004, thousands
of urban citizens have participated in 1KG More’s network by carrying a kilogram
of books or other school supplies in their luggage to distribute to children
in the impoverished rural areas they visit, and at the same time to share information
on the website about the condition of rural schools.
This group helps the local government in Beijing and two other provinces
address problems with income inequality between rural and urban areas, such
as gaps between rural and urban education. According to the group’s founder,
“By combining travel with doing good, we hope to change the reality of the
imbalance of education between rural and urban areas in China. Although enrolment
in higher education is increasing, the proportion continuing their studies in
rural areas is far lower, and education standards are much poorer.”75 Since 2004,
when the network started, ten thousand 1KG More “volun-tourists” have collected
detailed data on over 600 rural schools, distributed books and stationery
benefitting at least one million people, and developed new sites representing
almost all major Chinese cities.
1KG More initially earned its income by offering corporate social responsibility
consulting to businesses; however, the Beijing municipal government recently
supported this network as a way to encourage a charity approach to help rural
schools by using three main positive incentives – social incubators, government
grants and new registration laws. The Beijing municipal government funds a
privately-run incubator programme, the Non-Profit Incubator (NPI) established
by Lü Zhao 吕朝 in 2006, which trained 1KG More staff members in professional
project management, auditing and accounting skills and grant writing.76
Additionally, the municipal government eased registration regulations for selected
groups (which now only require registration with the local bureau of civil affairs
and no longer require a supervisory agency) and also initiated a grants programme
71 Interview with director of civil society group, Beijing, July 2007.
72 Mertha 2009.
73 Han and Kang 2005; interview with Kang Xiaoguang, Beijing, July 2010.
74 Interview with head of a capacity-building group working with 1KG More, Beijing, June 2010.
75 1KG More website: http://1kg.blogbus.com/.
76 Interview with Fudan University professor, Shanghai, July 2010.
34 The China Quarterly, 213, March 2013, pp. 19–38
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in 2010 of 300 million yuan (US$44 million) to fund groups proposing social innovation
projects. The grants and incubation experience allowed 1KG More to
expand into physical offices in Beijing and Guangzhou. These positive incentives
“guide” groups toward areas in which the local state would like to see them working,
such as social innovation to solve welfare-provision problems.
However, this model also uses negative incentives, as evidenced in the example of
the INGO Oxfam. Oxfam successfully partnered with many local governments to
undertake poverty alleviation programmes; however, when it attempted to link
together college student volunteers with migrant workers in Beijing – two sensitive
populations, given high unemployment rates – the ministry of education instructed
all Beijing universities to stop collaborating with Oxfam.77 Oxfam was allowed to
continue operating its poverty alleviation programmes including those with migrant
populations, but indirect control mechanisms such as cutting off the supply of student
volunteers were used to “guide” the group back onto a more service-oriented
path and away from anything potentially disruptive of social order. Oxfam closed
down this programme due to lack of student volunteers, which illustrates the
more nuanced and indirect tools of state control that local officials use to balance
the strategic ideas of meeting development goals and maintaining social order.
Unlike the former model of corporatism, autonomous civil society groups are
expanding in size, scope and significance; however, government control over these
groups, while still present, is increasingly nuanced. As these examples illustrate, competing
ideas among local officials in Beijing – about the perceived benefits and dangers
of this emergent civil society and about which type of state model to follow –
influence the development of this new model of consultative authoritarianism.
Although variation still exists across provinces and over time in the degree of
collaboration or confrontation found in local state–civil society relationships,
there is increasing evidence of a national convergence on this model as seen in
the use of the Beijing model of “social management” to develop new national
regulations for civil society by 2012. As the minister of civil affairs recently
announced, “The ministry will take Beijing’s experiences as reference and promote
them, but the steps will not be as wide-ranging as Beijing’s.”78 Thus this
consultative authoritarianism model might be adopted nationally as early as
next year and serve to promote the growth of operationally autonomous groups
and further indirect social controls.
Implications of Consultative Authoritarianism: Better Governance under
CCP Rule
While this article primarily relied on examples from Beijing, these local officials
serve as both a mirror and microcosm of political trends occurring nationally.
77 Interview with Renmin University professor, Beijing, July 2010; interview with Fudan University
professor, Shanghai, July 2010.
78 Le 2011.
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Across all provinces in China, the decentralization of public welfare to local governments
and the linkage of promotion to the delivery of these goods created the
motivation for officials to collaborate with an emerging civil society in the 1990s.
The “modular” idea of coproduction represented by the Western regulatory-state
model supports this idea of collaboration. However, other “strategic” and “modular”
ideas, such as the perceived role of civil society in the colour revolutions
and a successful state-led development model, undermined this collaborative
relationship model.
The interaction between these conflicting ideas influenced the emergence of a new
model of state–society relationship in China – “consultative authoritarianism” –
which promotes the simultaneous expansion of a fairly autonomous civil society
and the development of more sophisticated and indirect tools of state control
over this civil society. Li Junru, a leading Party theorist, advocates the use of “consultative
democracy,” which is a system whereby the CCP builds consensus around
policy decisions through deliberation and consultation with relevant constituencies.
I argue that this new state–society model in China encourages this type of consultation
with civil society; however, this is not democratization but rather a sophisticated
authoritarianism that uses more indirect tools of social control. The rise of
consultative authoritarianism in China demonstrates an alternative to Western
models of both civil society and regulatory state – one that balances the expansion
of civil society with more sophisticated state control.
In contradistinction to existing literature on civil society, the social management
pilot in Beijing provides evidence that an operationally autonomous civil
society is emerging in this authoritarian regime; however, the expansion of civil
society does not appear to be leading to democratization but rather to a more
resilient authoritarianism and better governance. The increased provision of public
goods and pluralistic policy-making creates the conditions for better governance
under authoritarianism, which challenges our current understanding of
civil society in China and should provoke more study of the implications of
this new consultative authoritarianism model.
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