Continuity and Change in China’s Civic Engagement

Authors: Magnus Dau Stephanie Bräuer

Publish Date: 2016/02/03

Volume: 27, Issue: 5, Pages: 2021-2026

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Abstract

Civic engagement in China has been under particular scrutiny in the last decade The analytical vantage points have often built on the implicit understanding of statesociety relations as a zerosum game in which the third sector’s gains are equivalent to the partystate’s loss and vice versa As a result the findings from such studies often oscillate between scenarios of subliminal democratization on the one hand and increased repression and the advent of a regimestabilizing third sector on the other Chamberlain 1993 McCormick et al 1992 Unger and Chan 1996 White 1993 Deviating from this dichotomy we start from a more nuanced perspective and conceptualize civic engagement as an integral part of statesociety relations that constitute the interplay between state and societal actors Ho 2007 Ho and Edmonds 2008 Saich 1994 2000 Shieh 2009 Teets 2013 2014 We follow Migdal’s 2001 ‘state in society’ concept to add to existing theory the notion that civic engagement can

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