GEOGRAPHY, CHINAS PATH AND State-society relations: redressing western misinterpretations

Fabio Massimo Parenti

Abstract The complexity of Chinas state-society relations is often underestimated, or completely neglected, by Western commentators, journalists, politicians and, at times, academics. There especially seems to be a lack of theoretical ideas and systematic analysis in geographical studies. The overall outcome of said underestimation is the proliferation of misinterpretations on the meaning-sense of evolving relational configurations between power, people and places in China. Hence the Western ability (institutions and common people) to understand and judge, as objectively as possible, ongoing socio-economic and political trends in China, its hybrid experimental path and general development trajectory, is concretely invalidated. Starting from this standpoint and drawing from different sources, this paper first suggests that the changing characteristics of the current Chinese multiscalar politico-socio-economic processes cannot be simply reduced to capitalism. Secondly, to get a better understanding of China in a comparative perspective by analyzing the countrys direction of development and governance I summarize some instructive traits of state-society relations, arguing that the nature and significance of these differ, when they are not quite the reverse, from the prevailing (mis) interpretations by Western agents. I specifically refer

International Institute Lorenzo de Medici, Rome, Italy

to the need to (re)interpret two points from a comparative standpoint: a) the states popular legitimacy and socio-economic dynamism, and b) the variegated modes of conflict resolution and financial governance. Key words: Geography; Chinas path; capitalism; the states popular legitimacy; governance; mass incidents. Geografa, la trayectoria China y las relaciones entre el estado y la sociedad: re-direccionado las malas interpretaciones occidentales Resumen Comentaristas occidentales, periodistas, polticos y algunas veces acadmicos, subestiman, o ignoran por completo la complejidad de las relaciones entre el estado y la sociedad en China. Especficamente, en comparacin con otras disciplinas, hay pocas contribuciones tericas y anlisis sistemticos en trabajos geogrficos. El resultado de esta subestimacin es la proliferacin de malas interpretaciones acerca de las cambiantes configuraciones de poder, actores y lugares en China. De esta manera, instituciones y ciudadanos de occidente pierden la capacidad de entender y juzgar, tan objetivamente como sea posible, las tendencias socio-econmicas y polticas de China, junto con su trayectoria experimental y su trayectoria de desar-

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rollo. En este artculo sugiero que las caractersticas experimentales y cambiantes de los procesos polticos, socio-econmicos, y multi-escala de China, emergiendo desde la literatura no geogrfica, no pueden ser definidos y reducidos al capitalismo neoliberal. Segundo, para lograr un mejor entendimiento de la trayectoria de desarrollo y gobernanza de China en una perspectiva comparada, ofrezco una sntesis instructiva de las relaciones entre el estado y la sociedad, proponiendo que la naturaleza y significancia de esas relaciones es diferente, si no contradictoria, con respecto a las malas interpretaciones ofrecidas comnmente por actores occidentales. Asimismo, me refiero a la necesidad de reinterpretar de forma comparativa dos puntos: a) la legitimidad popular y el dinamismo socioeconmico del estado, y b) la forma diversa de resolver los conflictos y manejar la gobernanza de las finazas. Palabras clave: geografa, trayectoria de China, capitalismo, legitimidad del estado, gobernanza, incidentes de masas. Introduction This paper is divided into two main parts. The first summarizes the limits and deficiencies of geographical literature in interpreting Chinas development path. This point is explained by selecting papers and books that demonstrate international geographys partly backward and too often superficial in understanding of Chinas path within a comparative framework. Wider acknowledgement of this state of affairs is a first step towards a more critical, articulated debate on what can be reasonably considered to be a fundamental subject of our changing world. To overcome these intellectual barriers, the second part of this paper focuses on the peculiarities of Chinas state-society relations by redressing Western misinterpretations. Considering the extensive nature of studies of Chinas path, my selection of sources can be only partial, and not exhaustive. Nevertheless, some factual examples of, for example, state planning, provide the necessary data for redressing common Western misinterpretations, with this allowing the devel-

opment of alternative interpretations. Though it is virtually impossible to make a conclusive statement on Chinas path, along with other scholars I do not think that China can be defined as a capitalist system, or as undemocratic, corrupt and socially depressed as is generally supposed. The debate is undoubtedly wide-ranging and open, above all outside the field of geography. Part I Deficiencies of Geography in understanding Chinas path in the world Ethnocentric and a-critical prejudices prevail in the Western interpretation of the Chinese political and socio-economic system. Subsequently, the complexity of Chinas state-society relations is often underestimated by Western politicians, commentators, journalists and, at times, scholars, who adopt flawed theses and, hence, feed common misunderstandings on the so called Chinas model (for a detailed analysis that debunks such misconceptions, see Rothman and Zhu 2012). The discipline of geography exhibits a lack of published work on the nature and characteristics of Chinas national system compared to the US-Western capitalist macro-space, above all in leading journals (e.g. Progress in Human Geography). This does not mean that geographers are not engaged in research and analyses on China (see the recent study on Chinas Geography edited by Veeck, Pannell, Smith and Huang, 2007, or the important international conference held in August 2010 at Sun Yat-sen University, Ghuangzou, on China and the future of Human Geography). Basically, the commitment of geographers is still insufficient and too weak, considering the importance of the subject (as acknowledged by Murphy 2010; Webber 2010). Despite the many geographical papers covering, above all, Chinas environmental, urban, agricultural and geopolitical issues (e.g. in Eurasian Geography and Economics; Geographical Journal; Area; Political Geography; Geopolitics), the majority of international, Western-based geographical journals seem to be backward in analyzing Chinas diversity and complexities in a systematic and comparative way and, consequently, in developing original and innova-

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tive theoretical ideas. Some exceptions are published in Eurasian Geography and Economics: e.g. Agnews critical review and analysis of geopolitical narratives and their implications related to Chinas ascent (2010; 2012); Murphys assessment of the broad implications of Chinas rise for the study of Human Geography (2010); and Webbers claim (2010) to potentially reconceptualize ideas and concepts in Economic Geography by focusing on Chinas specificities (always considered within a comparative framework). I agree with Murphy (2010: 564-566) when he writes: with only a few exceptions (e.g., de Blij, 2005), there has been little general consideration in human geography circles of what Chinas rise might mean for the content, modes of theorization, and practices of human geography itself. Part of the problem lies in the institutional character of the discipline of geographyat least in the Anglo-American realmwhich often leaves commentary on China primarily in the hands of a relatively small group of China specialists. Articles about China in the mainstream geography journals are dominated by these specialists, while much of the rest of the geographical establishment goes about its work with only tangential reference to their work. This state of affairs needs to change if we are to come to grips with the implications of Chinas rise for the emerging political, economic, cultural, and social landscape of the 21st century. Chinas changing internal circumstances and expanding external role carry with them empirical and theoretical consequences for scholarship and teaching in a wide array of human geographic subdisciplines. [] Engaging more fully with the nature and implications of Chinas rise in human geography, however, should not mean ignoring hard questions about how enduring or significant the rise of China might be. I argue that the level of mutual interdependence between China and the Western world is becoming so important that it cannot be overlooked by geographers. For instance, it is commonly assumed that China is a capitalist nation-state, which I deem to be an assumption taken for granted and scarcely questioned, and which, therefore, leads to poorly declined

definitions: Chinese capitalism (Yeung 2004), capitalism with Chinese characteristics marked by (neo)liberal practices of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey 2006; more critical and less trenchant, Wu 2010) or post-socialist/capitalist state (Peck and Theodore, 2007). These definitions, which also exist in other disciplines (e.g. Huang 2008; Callinicos 2009), can be interpreted as a form of scientific reductionism, with trickle down misinterpretations of many aspects of state and society relations. This approach is mirrored by weekly/daily newspapers and reviews. The Economists interpretation of China as State capitalism tout court (2012) is merely one example of how Western media and specialists generally analyze Chinese economic dynamics along a continuum of capitalism, failing to capture relevant forms of geopolitical socialist-communist expression and their localto-global impacts (De Villar 2012). Luigi Cavallaros (2012) critical comment on The Economists report further clarifies the point, taking into account the fact that: The market is simply one of the social institutions in which the existing nexus of domination/subordination concretely manifests itself between capitalist relations of production and state relations of production (socialist). The fact that, at the moment, the latter are [in China] solidly established in a dominant position allows us to judge the Chinese socio-economic formation as an irreducible other compared to the Western capitalist one []. Hence our puzzlement when The Economists report strongly concludes that the battle that will define the 21st century will not be fought between capitalism and socialism but between different versions of capitalism [my translation from Italian]. Starting from this oversimplification, the essence of the Chinese system is then described as marked by overexploitation of workers, general violence, and antidemocratic coercion. In other words, China is depicted as a state that prevalently feeds on the hyperexploitation of labour. In his short guest editorial on a supposed Chinese labour imperialism, Peter Taylor (2011: 176) describes huge socio-economic

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and political processes without underpinning them with consistent empirical foundations and, therefore, makes the following questionable statements: The party combined its draconian domestic policy of population control with a foreign policy that imports the manageable number of jobs that are nevertheless still needed [] What has been happening is that Chinese cities have been sucking industrial jobs from all other former third world countries [evidence is not provided]. Thus although contemporary globalization started with the new international division of labour (NIDL) leading to deindustrialization of large swaths of core countries, it has transmuted into a Chinese national division of labour (CNDL) leading to deindustrialization of large swaths of non-core countries [] it is labour imperialism. But one could rhetorically ask: are Vietnam and the Philippines, just to mention two Asian cases, or many African countries, recording fast industrialization processes? Is China moving on to a stage characterized by the end of cheap labour (Rein 2012)? And what about the increasing volume of south-south trade (Athukorala and Nasir 2012)? Is the category of Empire/Imperialism more consistent with Western neo-colonial actions in the world (see, among others, Gregory 2004; Smith 2008; Nazemroaya 2012)? Weak theories on China abound products of a flawed, Western-centred, perspective. And again, this is particularly evident among geographers. Pdraig Carmody (2012: 72-73), for instance, describes China as having one of the most violent histories over the last century, characterized by indirect and direct state violence. Despite its problems, contradictions and new challenges, Chinas national system is significantly exploring and applying complex and effective socio-economic governance policies without feeling the need to either plan wars against sovereign states or to finance and train terrorist groups or any sort of mercenaries. I also argue that we should develop alternative analytical categories/theoretical ideas based on empirical work and related to the hybrid substance

of Chinas developmental path and its experimental policies, as other social scientists (Jacques 2012; Lee 2012; Van Der Pijl 2012; Trichur 2012; Dirlik 2012; Choi 2011; Arrighi 2007) have clearly explained. If there is a China model, its most outstanding feature is the willingness to experiment with different models (Dirlik 2012, 277, 289). As Murphy correctly acknowledges: the question that remains to be answered is whether [Chinese] developments will lead to a more transformative, post-Western, even Chinese form of modernism or civilization in the decades ahead. Putting China more centrally into our assessments of the changing geography of the planet is likely to be critical if we are to speak meaningfully to this question, and to the many others that are necessarily raised when the Chinese juggernaut of the past two decades is taken seriously (2010: 567). Analysing Chinese complexity, deriving from its long, civilizational history and its multinational/ continental geographical nature, we should be aware that Chinas developmental path and its characteristics remain an open question. The underdevelopment or insufficiency of geographical debate on the significance of Chinas transformation and its ongoing pattern of development (always in comparison to the rest of the world) is clear enough when we consider recent literature on varieties/variegated capitalism and, more generally, on the nature of capitalism (Peck and Theodore 2007; Dixon 2010; Rossi 2013). China is barely mentioned, not because it is considered as a radically different system (socialist or not prevalently capitalist), but because it is, instead, more simplistically taken for granted that China is a post-socialist/capitalist nation-state. Failing to discuss the existing articulated interpretations of the Chinese state-society complex (e.g. Arrighi 2007: chap. 11; Jacques 2012: chap. 7), geographers seem to be unaware that the current processes of class formation and struggles in combination with Chinas contender role present a unique conjuncture favourable to a (state-) socialist turn (Van der Pijl 2012: 506). Hence the importance of acknowledging that there are alternative and original comparative analyses

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on Chinas evolving path (mostly developed outside academic Geography), that are capable of grasping the concrete non-capitalist originalities in Chinas dynamics.1 How might Geography contribute to said analyses and the related debate? I think that if geographers were more engaged in analyzing China, its statesociety and multi-actor dynamics could be interpreted by applying, for example, Coxs spatial scheme on the constant intersection between spaces of engagement and spaces of dependence (1998), or the scalar politics approach suggested by McKinnon (2010), or other, similar geographical theoretical ideas, making an attempt to link them to the broader debate on global capitalism and the existing alternatives. A recent paper published by Peck and Zhang (2013) in the Journal of Economic Geography seems to opportunely take the scientific and political relevance of seriously questioning the notion of capitalism with Chinese characteristics. Chinas institutional politics combines political and economic traditions in which socio-economic planning and politico-economic experimentation lie at the core of its evolving path, deeply attached to, and inspired by, the main principles of an historically long-standing, flexible, adaptable Confucian tradition (e.g. Tu 1993) and, at least partially, by the principles of Socialism (Jacques 2012; Dirlik 2012; De Villar 2012). Though Confucianism was generally limited and constrained between the mid 19th century and 1980, it is worth mentioning that it has some important ideas/general principles in common with Socialism-Communism (e.g. emphasis on education, self-criticism, model workers, reciprocity). This is an additional reason why some authors have observed important points of continuity between the traditions of Confucianism and Communism in China (Jacques 2012: 273-277; Trichur 2012: 74). Moreover, paying particular attention to specificities should not induce scholars to neglect the fact that Chinas visions and practices, with its proper traditions, are the result of multiple internal-external influences (Oakes 2012).
1 It must be said that these alternative-in-depth analyses are rare even in other social disciplines: as previously stated, misunderstandings and oversimplifications on Chinas path and its dynamism are not only related to Geography.

Defining Chinas path in a few words is no easy feat. The first part of this paper infers that the prevalent interpretation given by the geographical literature, strictly attached to capitalism, has not significantly contributed to developing a wider understanding of Chinas path. At the same time, we find other social scientists (e.g. Jacques; Arrighi; Van Der Pijl; Cavallaro; Trichur; Dirlik; Choi) who deeply reject the idea that China can be associated with a capitalist state. The analysis of Chinas state-society complex, as partly attempted in Part II, suggests that there are several factors that can be better associated with a non-capitalist/socialist state. Part II Moving beyond Western Misinterpretations After discussing todays narrow vision of Chinas path, the second part of this paper provides a complementary contribution, prevalently based on the nongeographical literature, on the nature of state-society relations in China and their variegated and broad implications. This partly redresses some main Western distortions of Chinas state popular legitimacy, socioeconomic results, corruption, resolutions/contradictions regarding local conflict and financial governance. I provide evidence that the Chinese authorities have obtained significant popular legitimation as a result of the enormous socio-economic results achieved during the last decades, and their capacity for looking at effective solutions for problems of corruption and social conflict (e.g. mass incidents). In this regard, Chinese authorities are constructively responding to popular demands made by the bottom-most rung of society. Finally, I underscore the radical difference between financial governance in the West extremely privatized and unregulated and in China, where the state strongly limits speculation, with all its disruptive effects on society and the real economy. All these aspects demonstrate that Chinas state-society relations are not as antidemocratic, corruptive and socially depressed as generally perceived and interpreted in the West. By suggesting a deeper, more open-minded understanding of Chinese state-society relations we can learn from its variegated state-driven experiments

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in governance and market-government relations. This can be particularly useful in an historical period characterized by a profound socio-economic crisis and the general political disorientation as experienced in the West. The states popular legitimacy, governance, corruption and poverty Terms such as dictatorship, authoritarianism and single-party system (often used interchangeably to draw a negative portrait of China) are rarely associated with a systematic analysis of the relationship between the Chinese authorities and the rest of the society, or rather, of the mechanism of the political class reproduction and the people-politics/ state-citizens dialectic. Hence, misinterpretations of China are extremely common. For instance, China is generally considered as a close and rigid system (another assumption that is taken for granted), both politically and socially. However, during the last few decades of land, fiscal and administrative reforms (not to mention their historical precedents), the variegated and complex Chinese society has once again recovered large margins of political agility. Formal recognition enforced by the law of the right to demonstrate, freely exercised after obtaining official authorization (as occurs in Western societies); the increasing number of strikes in factories (an abolished right which, nevertheless, led to the new labour contract law being drawn up in 2008); the state strategy to reactivate the capillary role played by the Partys trade unions (recently even accepting independent trade union representatives) to limit corporate abuse and improve the conditions of labour (see The Economist, May 8, 2010: 61-62; Financial Times, February 4, 2013: 1,3; Van Der Pijl 2012: 512); and the widespread use of direct elections for Village Committee members since 1988 (Trichur 2012); all are significant aspects of the intense Chinese political and social dialectic. The current processes of class formation and struggle appear to be pushing the country towards a re-politicisation of social relations limiting capitalist development (Van Der Pijl 2012: 504). And, despite capitalist influence and presences, the determining

characteristics of the Chinese regime of accumulation remain those of a contender state-society complex, in which the state class retains the key levers of power and operates as a force anticipating and guiding class formation rather than being confronted by it, as was still the case in 1989 (Ibid: 509). China is extremely diversified, though its people have always identified themselves with the imperialstate and, more recently, with the continental nationstate, which Jacques (2012) calls civilization-state (see also Tu 1993). We are talking about the biggest and longest political and territorial entity in human history, a leader on the scene of world trade and technical-scientific innovation for thousands of years (Mazzei and Volpi 2006; Arrighi 2007). If we fail to acknowledge these facts, it is natural that a distorted interpretation of China per se and, above all, of its relations with the rest of the world, will affect the quality of our understanding. A comparative analysis purified from self-referential perspective could have several surprises in store for us. In-depth surveys conducted by Pew Research Centre (2010, 2012) and Saich (2012), built upon primary sources, report that the degree of satisfaction as stated by the Chinese people regarding their economic conditions and the political-economic competencies of their governors is very much higher than the satisfaction recorded in countries such as Germany, UK, US, France and Japan. Does this come as a surprise? Perhaps for those who, blinded by self-referential reductionism, are unable to take the various existing critiques on Western democracies seriously (see Losurdo 2005, 2011; Stiglitz 2006; Peet 2007; Michael Parenti 2011; Todorov 2012). I found enlightening elements in this regard in Todorovs recent book (Les ennemis intimes de la dmocratie 2012: 230). He describes the current condition of democracy as a political regime that is sick of its own excesses, in which freedom becomes tyranny [] and the desire to promote progress shifts to a crusade spirit. He also states that the economy, the state and the law are not a common development tool anymore, since they are participating in a dehumanization process [my translation from the Italian edition].

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Looking eastwards, we might discover that democracy is neither the only, nor the most important, criterion for evaluating the quality of governance or, rather, the ability to manage and meet the socio-economic needs of a plurality of territories and geo-historical contexts (Jacques 2012: 266-267). The Chinese state class still today retains the ability to decide development priorities and can accelerate/ decelerate the pace of change (Breslin quoted in Van Der Pijl 2012: 505). In other Asian countries too, the ability to promote and manage economic growth, to maintain social cohesion, and to limit corruption are equally important, if not more so, compared to representative democracy, since they are the concrete manifestations of the political authorities skills to promote general/common interest. Moreover, in the Confucian tradition (enriched in different periods by other Chinese thinkers, such as, for example, Mencio and Hsun Tzu) the state is not suspiciously viewed as a polity to be limited or used in support of private interests a common concept in many Western countries, though to different extents but is, instead, considered as an integral part of society, as the most authoritative member of the family (Jacques 2012: 267, 277-280; Tu 1993). It must be said that the entire Chinese society is informed by a conception of patriarchal and familist state, which is underpinned by lifelong learning on the importance and value of the social hierarchy. The close state-family-society relationship is, therefore, rooted in both the fundamental role of the family, embedded in the socialization processes and the supposed ability of the state to select governors and officials of high professional, moral and ethical leverage.2 Historically, one could recall that in the 18th century, the British and Prussians adopted the so called Chinese Mandarin system as the reference model to recruit and establish public administration on merit-based exams/ public competition (Lee 2012: chap. 3; Jacques 2012:
2 Confucianism is not only related to Chinese narrative construction for national and geopolitical purposes, but it is also related to concrete internal and external practices, such as hundreds of Confucian Institutes rapidly springing up in many foreign countries, the Confucian teaching in secondary school and the party officials assessment procedures, based also on Confucian values.

270-75). More recently, since 1993, after decades of a hereditary family system that was not always transparent, the Chinese central government defined and implemented a merit system in recruiting civil servants, which is a standard today (Ko and Weng 2012: 719). Hence, conversely to Western perception, it is important to acknowledge that the high level of popular legitimacy recorded by the Chinese state is socially and culturally rooted in its advanced statesociety relations. Moreover, another complementary aspect is related to the numerous achievements of the Chinese government in limiting and solving corruption. Throughout the last thirty years, the nature of corruption has changed, and the general picture seems to have improved during the past fifteen years. Since the late 1990s, hundreds of anti-corruption laws, regulations and policies have been defined and issued by the Chinese government with important results. For example, the incidence of corruption related to administrative processes has decreased. The overall number of corruption cases has decreased mainly because of decreases in embezzlement and misappropriation cases (Ko and Weng 2012: 733). This partly positive trend has been complemented and enforced by numerous other reforms: the reduction in non-transactional administrative corruption can be attributed to changes in opportunity. Fiscal recentralization with the adoption of better supervision and auditing systems, and civil service reform based on the merit principle, can explain its reduction []. Particularly, the extra-budgetary funds which give considerable discretion to local governments have been gradually reduced and managed through systematic processes. As a result, the central government can monitor the flow of public funds more easily by using information technology (Ibid: 734-735). In any case the problem of corruption remains open and articulated both in nature and tendencies. Though the latest changes have not prevented new corruption cases from surfacing nowadays more related to public-private relations rather than purely administrative ones the mentioned reforms are essential for understanding the results achieved in

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socio-economic governance by a plurality of governors during the last evolving and experimental decades. Returning to the general principle, it emerges that Chinese state representatives are strong and legitimate as long as they can constantly prove that they deserve state appointments, that they have the right to govern at various institutional levels. Conversely, in case of failure, the basic principles and rules of the countrys politico-socio-cultural tradition allow Chinese rebelliousness (historically incisive and always active, Arrighi 2007) to find ample room for action by legitimately exerting their right to overthrow people in power or, to be precise, those who have the authority to manage the res publicae (Wang 2012; Jacques 2012: 260-266). Indeed, recent protests recorded in China have become a constant social reprimand for the authorities to do more and better. Moreover, current protests and social movements are not aimed at subverting the communist system, but are a constant claim to find solutions for specific problems related to land grabbing, local corruption, and the like. When Western journalists and reporters interpret the current protests as clear evidence of the Chinese political systems crisis, they omit the data that this socio-political dynamism is allowed not only by administrative and political reforms, but also by the general improvement in the living conditions of millions of people. This perspective enables us to really understand the Pew figures on the high level of popular legitimacy of the Chinese state. Among other things, during the last 30 years, per capita income in China has grown by more than 1300%. In comparison, the same index was 100% during the first US economic boom, between 1870-1900 (Unz 2012; IMF database). As a matter of fact, the figures of widespread social protests, which are analyzed in the next paragraph, have risen along with those on the extraordinary socio-economic improvements. In this regard, the level of socio-economic inequality and poverty reduction are other aspects that need to be carefully considered. International sources (OECD 2012: 16-34; UNDP 2012) report that Chinas level of inequality is not far from the U.S. level. An additional detailed analysis confirms that both inter/intraregional inequalities have diminished since 2004 (Fan

and Sun 2008). In any case, and conversely to the trend in Western countries, China is showing concrete signs of inequality contraction, and this positive trend is combined with a substantial reduction in absolute poverty. Over the period 1980-2009 China achieved the greatest reduction in absolute poverty ever seen in the world, with a constant and significant increase in urban salaries, like rural ones (Young 2007; World Bank 2009, 2012: 4, 83; ILO 2010; Rothman and Zhu 2012). Moreover, Chinas Human Development Index (HDI) has constantly improved during the past three decades (from 0.40 to 0.70, UNDP database; on the rapid establishment of a strong welfare system, see The Economist, August 11, 2012: 10-11, 45-46; Khun 2012, 2012a). Many other misunderstandings of Chinas socio-economic dynamism and characteristics related to trade, consumption, monetary policies are debunked by Rothman and Zhu (2012), who show a sort of countertendency in Chinas developmental path in comparison to the Western countries.3 Mass incidents and financial governance As previously clarified, several anti-corruption achievements have been recorded through the development and enforcement of specific laws and practices. At the same time, while reducing the incidence of certain type of offences, the new laws have not stopped numerous abuses, such as illegal land confiscation by local authorities and real estate entrepreneurs, which is one of the most common reasons behind the so-called mass incidents in China. Nonetheless, in this regard too, interpretations that confuse cases of land confiscation with an alleged process of ongoing and generalized rural and urban land privatization should be avoided. Though new forms of private use of land characterized, according to some scholars, by neoliberal practices of accumulation by dispossession can be found (Harvey 2006; Wu 2010), it is equally important to underscore the fact that, in China, land remains formally and strategically under state control and is managed within a complex legislative appa3 Though we cannot ignore the fact that there are still poverty issues that need an answer, the above data can be clearly interpreted as political, social and economic results that provide enlightening information on the countrys developmental and governance trend.

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ratus, which has been widely reformed to meet the requirements of a steadily evolving situation (Trichur 2012; Lee 2007). Land is given to families, enterprises and local authorities through contracts based on landuse rights for various social and productive purposes, whilst speculative private land-use is heavily sanctioned. When privatization occurred in the housing sector, it was politically driven by, and embedded in, a redistribution policy focused on meeting the right to have a home. In the 1980s, over 80% of urban housing was publicly owned and rented to workers for a nominal fee (often less than 1% of income) by government agencies and state-owned companies. That was much higher than the 28% share of state-owned housing in Eastern Europe. Today, over 80% of Chinas urban housing is privately owned. The turning point came in 1998 []. Many state workers, including some of those who lost their jobs [millions], were allowed to buy their government provided flat at a steep discount to the market value (which was, at that point, very low). This was the largest one-time transfer of wealth in the history of the world, as most of Chinas urbanhousing stock was handed over to its occupants (Rothman and Zhu 2012: 40). In other words, in comparative terms, China did not implement a general process of (neo)liberal expropriation of direct producers, as occurred in the enclosure movement in England, and was reproduced across the Anglophone West as a transnational, selfregulating class society through liberal constitutionality and a culture of possessive, Calvinist (-inspired) individualism. (Van der Pijl 2012: 504-505) With the above considerations, I want to emphasize that the current Chinese social activism and rebelliousness is not only brought about by a generalized improvement in the countrys conditions of living, but also by the concrete definition of new reforms, legislations and legal instruments. The latter have been provided by the central government to encourage people (peasants and workers, in general) to report cases of power abuse and to provide a practical solution against corruptive processes. This has occurred

since the 1980s and, more extensively, during the past 15 years, with the boom of incisive popular petitions (Cai 2010; Chen 2012; Trichur 2012). As Sullivan correctly summarises (2011: 851) in his review of Cais book on popular protests in China: the vast majority of protests are highly circumscribed in geography, time, scale and objectives. There are few calls for radical political change, but many that are driven by material grievances and power abuses suffered at the hands of local officials. The goal of many protests is to bring these abuses to the attention of higher authorities, who, it is hoped, will intervene and restrain their local agents. As Kevin OBrien, Elizabeth Perry and others have shown (including Guobin Yang in the case of online contention), central government is often wont to act on such signals to censure its agents in the (self-serving) name of maintaining stability and reinforcing its legitimacy as a beneficent ruler. Another important force that is changing the boundaries between the state and society is represented by village cadres and their new activism in petitioning. This new tendency is explained by Wang (2012) as the result of other central government reforms, such as fiscal autonomy recentralization to the county level. To further substantiate this, I briefly focus on the social protests in Wukan, Guangdong province, late in 2011 and early in 2012. Local authorities confiscated the land of villagers to sell it to real estate developers. Subsequently, an increasing number of villagers organized protests to publicly denounce the event. Demonstrations were held on streets, and popular meetings prolonged for weeks (the level of social anger peaked when a villager died in suspicious circumstances), until some signs of a positive reaction came from the provinces government and Communist Party officials. Local and central authorities did not enforce repressive action as in other cases; instead, they concentrated on seeking a constructive solution for the problems raised by demonstrators, thus taking into serious consideration demands issuing from the lowest levels of society: abusers were promptly identified and banned from all political

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and/or administrative offices, land was redistributed to the collectivity, and leaders of the protest won the village elections and held top-most positions in the Village Committees. And this was not a sporadic case. Solutions to conflicts in Foshan (Guangdong), Dalian (Liaoning), Haining (Zhejang) and Nansha (Guangzhou) followed similar steps: mass popular protests (also with unavoidable clashes) convinced local and/ or central authorities to remove, or close , factories that were considered environmentally and socially dangerous (The Financial Times and China Daily reported the details). These are only a few examples of the power sources associated with the Partys popular legitimacy and authority (for an in-depth analysis of various cases, see Cai 2012; Chen 2012). Among other things, the increasing number of independent candidates at village, county and province elections must also be mentioned. All these facts can be interpreted as the result of what Agnew defines as fragmented authoritarianism (2012, 303), in which the party-state is increasingly open to, and influenced by, an articulated public opinion. Very often Chinese authoritarianism seems to be constructive and open to democratic procedures to meet demands from the lowest rung of society. And this is also true when, for instance, we compare it with the poor, ineffective or total lack of solutions provided by Western political elites to popular claims for reforming the financial system at the national and macro-regional levels. European attempts at reforms are proving to be weak, marked by an alleged scarcity of resources, blatant lack of cooperation between nation-states, and lengthy achievement of objectives within the Basel III regulation scheme (not yet implemented). Concurrently, on the opposite shores of the Atlantic, the 2010 Dodd Frank Act, which was supposed to deeply reform the distorted US financial sector, has not achieved a significant effect: the set of norms have proven to be too intricate, besides requiring long execution terms and being met by political opposition. Overall, private bank concentration is growing apace in the EU countries and in the US (see BIS 2012). According to the Dallas Federal Reserve, the extent of bank concentration in the US

has reached intolerable levels, with the five largest banks controlling 52% of the banking industry assets, a quota that has tripled since the early 1970s (Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas 2011: 6-7). This structural condition can be reasonably considered as the most powerful systemic factor in the hands of the financial elite in order to influence (and govern) state governments, an historical process that has had various periods of evolution and expansion within the North Atlantic states (see, among others, Van der Pijl 2012; Gallino 2011; Arrighi 1994) and is connected to the financial elites money owner status and, indirectly, to that of industrial capital controllers. By comparison, in China: The party still controls all of Chinas financial institutions, including all commercial banks and the 70 trust companies. (Yes, there are individuals running informal credit shops, as Chinese have been doing for centuries, but this is a very small share of the total.) The trust companies are not evidence of Chinas financial system run amok: they are Party animals [] It may also be useful to put the scale of Chinas trusts into context. In 2011, the total assets of the trusts was Rmb4.8tn (US$764bn), equal to only 5.9% of total deposits (or 8.8% of total loans outstanding) in the formal banking system. This is in sharp contrast to the US-based shadow-banking system, which in March 2008 had a gross size of nearly US$20tn significantly larger than the liabilities of Americas traditional banks (Rothman and Zhu 2012: 46-47). Conclusion This paper clearly reveals the existence of a general interpretation/vision of Chinas path, which is too often narrow, reductive and superficial. In this regard, we can agree that wider acknowledgment of this is an essential step in improving our future understanding of Chinas developmental path. So, if it is true that Chinas path in the world is generally distorted by many Western agents (academic and non-academic), this is also a consequence and, at the same time, a cause of many other secondary misleading interpretations of Chinese society. Hence, the second part of

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the paper proposed a partial/non-exhaustive re-interpretations of some Chinese state-society characteristics and dynamics, which are generally neglected or not properly placed in a comparative perspective. Contemporary China, with its spatial varieties and historical complexity, should be interpreted as a polity in which market forces and their spaces of action are an instrument in the hands of the government apparatus. Something that we can consider as an opposite structural condition (a socialist state?), compared to the Western nation-states. Thus, it is legitimate to ask if, and eventually to what extent, China could represent an inspirational source for the rest of the world. Not because it would symbolize the best possible world, but because it is a state-realty that is able to maintain its own autonomy while, at the same time, gradually increasing its relations with the rest of the world to experiment with new politicoeconomic strategies and to feed ongoing market development without substantially allowing market forces to drive and control political processes and decisions. As I have said, an open-minded/deeper understanding of Chinese state-society relations is necessary to better define Chinas path and its evolutionary developmental process, and to learn something from its variegated socio-economic and political experiments. This can be particularly useful in an historical period characterized by the profound socio-economic crisis and general political disorientation we are experiencing in the West. References Agnew, J. 2012. Looking Back to Look Forward. Eurasian Geography and Economics 53(3): 301-314. Arrighi, G. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century. London: Verso. Arrighi, G. 2007. Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century. London: Verso. Athukorala, P., and S. Nasir. April 2012. Global Production Sharing and South-South Trade. Background paper. UNCTAD.

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Fan, C.C., and M. Sun. 2008. Regional Inequality in China, 1978-2006. Eurasian Geography and Economics 49(1): 1-18. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. 2011. Choosing the Road to Prosperity: Why We Must End Too Big to Fail. Annual Report. Gallino, L. 2011. Finanzcapitalismo. La civilt del denaro in crisi. Torino: Einaudi. Gregory, Derek. 2004. The Colonial Present. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Hille, K., R. Jacob. 2013. Foxconn workers in landmark China vote. Financial Times. February 4th: 1,3. Huang, Y. 2008. Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. IMF. World Economic Outlook Databases. http:// www.imf.org/ International Labour Organization (ILO). 2010. Global Wage Report 2010/2011. Geneva: ILO. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). 2012. Rural Poverty in China. www.ruralpovertyportal.org/ Jacques, M. 2012. When China Rules the World. London: Penguin. Khun, R.L. 2012. Economic Model Must Change. China Daily. September 14-20: 8. Khun, R.L. 2012(a). China Can Produce. Can China Create? China Daily. September 28-October 4: 8. Ko, K., and C. Weng. 2012. Structural Changes in Chinese Corruption. China Quarterly 211: 718-740.

Lee, A. 2012. What the U.S. Can Learn from China. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Lee, C.K. 2007. Against the Law: Labor Protests in Chinas Rustbelt and Sunbelt. Berkley: University of California Press. Losurdo, D. 2005 [2011]. Controstoria del liberalismo [Liberalism: A Counter-History]. Bari: Laterza. Mazzei, F., and V. Volpi. 2006. Asia al centro. Milano: Universit Bocconi Editore. McKinnon, D. 2010. Reconstructing Space Towards a New Scalar Politics. Progress in Human Geography 35(1): 21-36. Murphy, A.B. 2010. Reassessing Human Geography in the Wake of Chinas Rise. Eurasian Geography and Economics 51(5): 563-568. Nazemroaya, M.D. 2012. The Globalization of NATO. Clarity Press. Oakes, T. 2012. Looking Out to Look In: The Use of the Periphery in Chinas Geopolitical Narratives. Eurasian Geography and Economics 53(3): 315-326. OECD. 2012. China in Focus: Lessons and Challenges. Paris: OECD. Parenti, M. 2011. Democracy for the Few. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Peck, J., and N. Theodore. 2007. Variegated Capitalism. Progress in Human Geography 31(6): 731- 772. Peck J., and J. Zhang. 2013. A varieties of capitalism with Chinese characteristics? Journal of Economic Geography. First published online January 24 doi:10.1093/jeg/lbs058

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Peet, Richard. 2007. Geography of Power. London: Zed Book. Pew Research Center. 2010. Global Attitude Survey. Released 17 June 2010. Pew Research Center. 2012. Global Attitude Project. Released 16 October 2012. Rein, S. 2012. The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends that Will Disrupt the World. New Jersey: Wiley. Rossi, U. 2013. On the Varying Ontologies of Capitalism: Embeddedness, Dispossetion, Subsumption. Progress in Human Geography 37(3): 348-365. Rothman A., and J. Zhu. 2012. Misunderstanding China: Popular Western Illusions Debunked. Special Report. CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. Available online at https://docs.google.com/ file/d/0B5PLEfhDB5KxMjcwNTZaalFnc2c/edit Saich, A. 2012. The Quality of Governance in China: The Citizens View. HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP12-051. Smith, N. 2008. The Imperial Present. Geopolitics 13(4): 736-739. Stiglitz, Joseph. 2006. Making Globalization Work. New York: Norton & Company. Taylor, P.J. 2011. Thesis on labour imperialism: How communist China used capitalist globalization to create the last great modern imperialism. Political Geography 30(4): 175-177. The Economist. 2012. State Capitalism. Special Report. The Economist. 2012. Social security with Chinese characteristics and Pensions. Fulfilling promises. August 11th: 10-11, 45-46.

The Economist. 2010. China and foreign companies. Joint the party! May 8th: 61-62. Todorov, T. 2012. I nemici intimi della democrazia. Milano: Garzanti. Trichur, Ganesh K. 2012. East Asian Developmental Path and Land-Use Rights in China. Journal of World-Systems Research XVIII(1): 69-89. Tu Wei-ming. 1993. Confucianism. In Our Religions. The Seven World Religions Introduced by Preeminent Scholars from each Tradition. New York: HarperCollins. UNDP. trends/ 2012. http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/

Unz, Ron. 2012. Chinas Rise, Americas Fall: Which superpower is more threatened by its extractive elites?. The American Conservative April 17. Van der Pijl. 2012. Is the East Still Red? The Contender State and Class Struggles in China. Globalizations 9(4): 503-516. Veeck, G., C.W. Pannell, C.J. Smith, and Y. Huang. 2007. Chinas Geography: Globalization and the Dynamics of Political, Economic and Social Change. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publisher. Wang, J. 2012. Shifting Boundaries between the State and Society: Village Cadres as New Activists in Collecting Petition. China Quarterly 211: 697-717. Webber, M. 2010. Re-emerging China and Consequences for Economic Geography. Eurasian Geography and Economics 51(5): 583-599. Wu, F. 2010. How Neoliberal Is Chinas Reform: The Origin of Change During Transition. Eurasian Geography and Economics 51(5): 619-631.

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World Bank. 2009. From Poor Areas to Poor People: Chinas Evolving Poverty Reduction Agenda; An Assessment of Poverty and Inequality in China. Washington, DC: The World Bank. World Bank. 2012. China 2030. Washington DC: The World Bank and the Development Research Center of the State Council of Peoples Republic of China.

Young, Nick. 2007. How Much Inequality Can China Stand? China Development Brief.

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