Lauri Paltemaa

Regime Transition and the Chinese Politics of Technology: From Mass Science to the Controlled Internet

Abstract The article employs the concepts of the politics of technology and regime transition for analysing the connection between political power and the application of technology in contemporary Chinese history. Examining the Maoist policy of ‘mass science’ and the contemporary Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies on information and communication technologies, and Internet control, shows how regime-determined policy goals, namely social transformation and political security, have been reflected in the politics of technology during the Maoist and the post-Maoist eras. Through this examination, the article shows how controlling technologies has always been closely connected to the political order in China and how this diagram of power has changed through time. The transition from a totalitarian to a post-totalitarian political order has shifted the Chinese politics of technology from the hard core of the political order to its protective belt. Accordingly, the criteria set for allowed forms of technology have been reduced from the Maoist plural must-nots to the single must-not: technology must not be allowed to jeopardize the position of the CCP as the exclusive holder of the ultimate political power in China. Still, maintaining a post-totalitarian autocratic system requires engaging in a distinct type of politics of technology.

The Democracy Wall Movement, Marxist Revisionism, and the Variations on Socialist Democracy

This article analyses the Beijing Democracy Wall Movements argumentation on democratic reforms in 1978–1981 from the perspective of the larger genre of international revisionist Marxism critical of Leninist/Stalinist political systems at the time of the movement. The movements argumentation contained three distinct variations on the same theme of socialist democracy, which the author calls classical Marxist, eclectic Marxist and non-Marxist lines of argument. They differed in the content of proposed institutional reforms and their intellectual sources, but shared the perception of democracy as an institutional solution to the conflict between the people and a bureaucratic class that the Stalinist political system had produced in China. All lines also accepted the socialist economic system. As discussed in the article, these ideas were heavily influenced by the Radical Red Guard criticism against the Maoist New Establishment created and popularized during the Cultural Revolution, and the need to find ideological means to refute the official Maoist ideology of the Party Left at the time through a return to the original sources in Marxism. East-European revisionist Marxism also influenced these arguments directly and indirectly.

Individual and Collective Identities of the Beijing Democracy Wall Movement Activists, 1978–1981

Drawing on the new social movement approach, this study focuses on the construction and uses of collective and individual identities in the Beijing Democracy Movement (1978–1981). The movements mainstream constructed a progressive Marxist identity and its individual participants used it to prove the movements historical necessity and justify its democratic agenda. Combined with the related identity of socialist citizens, the proponents defended the movement against adversaries from without and the right-wing minority within. It is argued here that the way the Democracy Movement activists defined their collective identity offered them a progressive Marxist platform to champion their cause. This collective identity not only precluded confrontational opposition to the Communist Party, but also enabled a more constructive use of both classical Marxist and Western democratic thinking in the movements agenda.

Researching disasters and disaster management in China: Persistent questions and emerging trends

This article offers an introduction to China Information’s special issue on disasters and disaster management. It is argued here that studying disasters and disaster management should not only improve our understanding of them as social phenomena and thereby increase our ability to manage disasters better, but also that disasters offer unique windows for researchers to study Chinese society and explain social and political changes therein. The article further argues that although research in natural disasters in China has developed rapidly both in terms of disciplinary approaches and topics, such research has still to overcome its narrow event-based nature and embrace more cross-disciplinary and comparative approaches geographically and historically, and disaster studies should investigate different types of disasters.

China’s changing disaster management regime

This article analyses China’s disaster management regime at the local level. The article outlines historic disaster management regimes from the pre-imperial era to the present and ends with an analysis of the ongoing campaign for ‘comprehensive disaster relief model communities’. As argued in the article, throughout history Chinese disaster management has been characterized by attempts to combine strong state leadership with active grass-roots participation in disaster prevention and relief work, and different historical circumstances have translated into different kinds of disaster governance regimes with strengths and weaknesses. The current situation is no exception. The current model community drive led by the party-state aims to establish local professional or semi-professional disaster management organizations in every urban community, but leaves the role of civic organizations vaguely defined. While the state’s commitment to local-level disaster management has its strengths, the current ambiguous conceptualization of the role of civil society actors leaves resources untapped.

Human Rights from the Left: The Early Chinese Democracy Movement

This chapter examines the potential that lies in the Asian attempts to adapt human rights to indigenous value systems and worldviews in the region. This is done through an analysis of the Chinese debate on human rights that took place through the Democracy Wall Movement from 1978 to 1981, exploring how such an indigenous adaptation process could take place under the strict Marxist, or Maoist, intellectual atmosphere that still prevailed in China during this period. The chapter is also a contribution to the discussions of what “Asian values,” after all, are.1 Must “Asian values” be derived from some of the great cultural and religious traditions of the region? Or, can they possibly arise from something more modern, and yet still influential to peoples in (East) Asian societies—in this case—Marxism? As it is argued here, attributing “Asian values” to these traditions is not enough in modern Asian societies. Values are not fixed and perpetual; new ones are being acquired, remade, and recycled as we speak.