Elizabeth J. Perry

Danwei : the changing Chinese workplace in historical and comparative perspective

This book is designed to show readers how ethics can constrain improper behavior. To demonstrate the relationship of ethics to good government, the author presents high profile case studies that were selected for their notoriety and their ability to connect the reader to fundamental ethical questions. Themes of public interest, natural law, and rule of law provide a framework for the case studies, which include torture (Abu Ghraib), impeachment (Clinton), competence (FEMA), electoral violation (DeLay), and historical corruption (machine politics). The chapters discuss concepts that help to define responsible behavior in terms of behavior in elections, honesty and competence, and international law.

Studying Chinese Politics: Farewell to Revolution?

A brief discussion on the sustenance of high economic growth rate, the sustenance of communism inspite of its movement towards greater privatisation and market freedom is presented. Advanced economic development will demand new political arrangements with greater autonomy to legal institutions and civil society, without which the Peoples Republic of China could devolve into an authoritarianism that dispenses with both the ideological and the organisational features of its revolutionary past.

Trends in the Study of Chinese Politics: State-Society Relations

In his survey of the field some years ago, Harry Harding noted that the study of contemporary Chinese politics stood then on the threshold of a third generation of scholarship. While the first generation had been limited by the atmosphere of the Cold War and the second had been overly influenced by the Cultural Revolution, Harding held out hope for a third generation able to surpass its predecessors in both substance and theoretical sophistication. Nearly a decade has passed since the publication of Hardings prescient article and in fact such a third generation can now be discerned - distinguished from the first two not only by the prevailing political atmosphere, but also by its theoretical perspective and access to source materials.

Popular protest and political culture in modern China

* Introduction: Chinese Political Culture Revisited Elizabeth J. Perry. General Frameworks * Imagining the Ancien Rgime in the Deng Era Ernest P. Young. * Acting Out Democracy: Political Theater in Modern China Joseph W. Esherick and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom. Class, Gender, And Identity: 1989 As A Social Movement * Casting a Chinese Democracy Movement: The Roles of Students, Workers, and Entrepreneurs E. J. Perry. * Science, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity Craig C. Calhoun. * Gender and the Chinese Student Movement Lee Feigon. Popular Culture And The Politics Of Art * The Birth of the Goddess of Democracy Tsao Tsing-yuan. * Politics and Popular Music in Post-Tiananmen China Andrew F. Jones. Cultural Dilemmas And Political Roles Of The Intelligentsia * Memory and Commemoration: The Chinese Search for a Livable Past Vera Schwarcz. * From Priests to Professionals: Intellectuals and the State Under the CCP Timothy Cheek. * The Role of the Chinese and U.S. Media Stephen R. MacKinnon. State Power And Legitimacy * What Happened in Eastern Europe in 1989? Daniel Chirot. * Discos and Dictatorship: Party-State and Society Relations in the Peoples Republic of China Tony Saich. Historical Narratives And Key Words Deconstructed * History, Myth, and the Tales of Tiananmen J. N. Wasserstrom. * That Holy Word, Revolution Liu Xiaobo. * Postscript: April 1994 J. N. Wasserstrom.

Rural Violence in Socialist China

Have state policies under socialism radically and irrevocably transformed the Chinese countryside? Or do traditional attitudes and behaviour persist, fuelled by rural social structures that remain tenaciously vigorous despite new socialist imperatives? These questions have shaped much of the inquiry and debate on contemporary China over the past few decades. More recently, however, another promising line of argument has gained some currency. This approach does not pose the relationship between state control and traditional social structure as a “zero-sum conflict” in which the ascendancy of one is necessarily a loss for the other. Rather, it sees state and society as interacting in a more complex manner; a manner which is not always conflictual, and sometimes even quite complementary. By this view, certain policies of the Chinese state have contributed (albeit often unwittingly) to the survival and strengthening of traditional patterns of activity.

Popular protest and political culture in modern China : learning from 1989

A reconsideration of contemporary Chinese society and politics since the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989. The book emphasizes the need to understand the vital role that a culture plays in shaping political action.

Syncretic Sects in Chinese Society: An Introduction

were classed, together with certain antidynastic political brotherhoods such as the Tiandi Hui (Triad Society) and its offshoots, as &dquo;secret societies.&dquo; For example, C. K. Yang (1967: 219), in his Religion in Chinese Society, lists religiously motivated rebellions in the nineteenth century fomented by the &dquo;White Lotus; the Eight Diagrams and Nine Mansions ... The Heaven and Earth Society, ... and the White Lotus Again.&dquo; Jean Chesneaux (1971: 36-54) categorized the White Lotus, the Eight Trigrams, and the Yiguan Dao as secret societies, groups that could be understood according to the model of the Triad Society, which he described in

Growing Pains: Challenges for a Rising China

ELIZABETH J. PERRY, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2002, is the Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Her many books in clude Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (1993), Patrolling the Revolution: Worker Militias, Citizenship, and the Modern Chinese State (2005), and Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition (2012). The accumulative achievements of China’s ongoing socioeconomic reforms are by most measures little short of astounding. From one of the globe’s poorest countries at the time of Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, the People’s Republic of China (prc) has become a booming economy–second biggest in the world– thanks to a swift rise that has rescued hundreds of millions of its people from poverty and afforded the government enviable resources for further development. Yet while one may marvel at the speed and success of the so-called China miracle, neither the Chinese people nor their leaders seem at ease with the current situation. Rampant grassroots protest bespeaks intense popular indignation at everything from land grabs to environmental pollution, while top of1⁄2cials themselves rail against the corroding effects of cadre corruption and income inequality. To evaluate the challenges facing China after thirty1⁄2ve years of reform is a dif1⁄2cult task, and not only because of the apparent disconnect between objective gains and subjective gripes. For one thing, the head-spinning pace of change threatens to render any academic assessment quickly obsolete. For another, the prc’s post-Mao record of achievement is in fact decidedly uneven across geographic re gions, social strata, and policy sectors. While major cities boast gleaming new infrastructure and attendant urban amenities that equal or surpass those of the advanced industrial world, much of the rural interior remains mired in grinding poverty. The af fluence of new urban middle and upper classes, flush

State and Society in Contemporary China

Recent works on contemporary China stress the importance of the nonmarket economy in shaping a pattern of state-society relations quite unlike those found in capitalist economies. Nevertheless, these studies present strikingly different pictures of the Chinese case: a new, party-dominated, divided, yet compliant network society on the one hand; and an enduring, localistic, solidary, and resistant cellular society on the other. The author suggests that such divergent images may be partially reconciled if local variation (by region and social sector) is systematically incorporated into our models of Chinese politics. Calling for a nuanced and dynamic approach to state-society relations, the article argues for the importance of historically grounded research.

FROM PARIS TO THE PARIS OF THE EAST AND BACK : WORKERS AS CITIZENS IN MODERN SHANGHAI

Workers have figured prominently in a series of political confrontations that have changed the face of modern China. From the May Fourth Movement of 1919 to the June Fourth Massacre of 1989, working-class participation has proven critical. Although these famous milestones in Chinese history are, for good reason, usually regarded as student—rather than labor—protests, the involvement of members of the working class was far from incidental. The spectacle of workers marching outside their factory gates to engage in protest not simply as laborers, but also as citizens, has been a notable feature of Chinese contentious politics at critical junctures throughout the twentieth century. This phenomenon, moreover, carries implications that extend beyond the borders of China itself. Worker participation in the watersheds of Chinese political history turn out to hold international ramifications as well.