By Jean-Philippe Béja

The study of State-Society relations is an important component of political sciences and is particularly useful to characterize a political regime. Such an approach is especially fruitful in the study of communist regimes. The rediscovery of the concept of civil society in the seventies can be considered a landmark in the development of research on Central and Eastern European regimes. It is therefore quite surprising that most sinologists have been reluctant to use the concepts which emerged in Eastern Europe in the seventies to analyse China before 1989. Only a handful of European observers of the pro-democracy movement during the late seventies and the early eighties had regarded the concept of civil society as fruitful for the study of Chinese politics.

Strangely enough, it became widespread among China specialists and pro-democracy scholars in exile only after the repression of the 1989 pro-democracy movement. In China itself, it became a "hot" topic when Social Sciences in China, the mainland journal published in Hong Kong, devoted its first issue to a discussion of this concept in 1992.

In the last decade, it was widely used by many Western and Chinese observers. But I consider that the reality that it covers is very different from the one that the Eastern European concept referred to. Whereas the latter had more to do with strategy, it is now essentially an analytical concept closer to the Anglo Saxon definition developed in the nineties, in which civil society designates non-governmental organisations. In the last two or three years especially, many political scientists have devoted much of their energy to compile exhaustive lists of NGOs in China.[1].

In this paper, I will try to argue that this concept of civil society, referring to an informally structured network of non-governmental organizations which have a loose relation with the Party-State, is quite different from the combative structure which had developed in Poland in the seventies, in Czechoslovakia in the eighties, and, to a certain extent, in China during the first decade of the reforms. And I will argue that the development of such associations does not play the same role as the ones which emerged in Eastern Europe and in eighties China. In other words, the development of such a "civil society" does not mean that the regime is democratising, nor does it mean that the evolution of China will follow a pattern similar to Eastern Europe.

I The social pact for reform

The failure of reform from outside: repression of the Democracy Wall Movement

The civil society strategy appeared after the failure of the institutionalisation of a political opposition. In Poland in the seventies, the brutal repression of the workers riots in Gdansk and Sczeczin convinced part of the rebellious intelligentsia that it was impossible to directly confront the Party in the political field. The most concerned elements founded the KOR (Committee for the Defence of Workers), which started to help society organize itself and presented itself as a self-limiting social movement. "[Since the social movements in Eastern Europe] had given up hopes for radical reform of [the power] structures, there was no other alternative but to concentrate the activities of the movements on the democratic self-organisations of social solidarity and cooperation outside the institutional framework of the state."[2]

The Chinese evolution was different. In the People's Republic, in the wake of Mao's death and Deng Xiaoping's rehabilitation, an atmosphere of relative freedom was felt in Party circles. In order to legitimise his policy aimed at achieving the "four modernisations" which needed the support of the intelligentsia, Deng Xiaoping launched a policy of rehabilitation of the "stinking ninth" based on a stated will to carry out secularisation. Many thinkers who had been criticized during the last two decades of Mao's reign were summoned by Hu Yaobang who then acted as Deng's representative in the intellectual field, and asked to devise Marxist foundations for the new policy. Well aware of the legitimacy crisis facing the regime, Hu launched his campaign for "thought liberation" rallying most audacious thinkers behind his new line. Criticisms of the abuses of the Cultural Revolution were allowed in the official press. After the rehabilitation of the Tiananmen Incident of April 5th 1976, and the Third Party plenum where he defeated the neo-Maoists, Deng launched the Conference on Theoretical thought during which the totalitarian nature of the Great Helmsman's regime - designated under the code name "feudalism" - was seriously denounced. Thinkers who criticised the various aspects of Mao's rule (without naming the Red sun) asked for the institutionalisation of free debate as an antidote to the excesses of "modern superstition". At the same time, the Party had relaxed its grip on public expression of opinions, and while discussions were taking place in the Great Hall of the People, in the streets of Peking, Xidan and Tiananmen, victims of Mao's campaigns, and especially members of the Red Guard generation, were denouncing the abuses by cadres and producing analyses of the regime, asking for the institutionalisation of supervision by public opinion. As Ye Jianying said at the time, "Xidan democracy Wall is a model of people's democracy"[3]and some of the participants in the Theoretical Thought Conference often took part in meetings organized by the editors of unofficial journals. Some, such as Yan Jiaqi or Guo Luoji, wrote articles for Beijing zhi chun, an unofficial journal distributed at the Wall. Therefore, a joint pressure was exerted by intellectuals inside the system who enjoyed the support of reformers in the leadership, and ordinary citizens who asked for the respect of basic rights. But in March 1979, Deng Xiaoping formalized the limitations imposed on political debate by stating the "Four Cardinal Principles". Then, from 1979 to 1981, the Democracy Wall movement was repressed, and its main actors were sentenced to long jail terms without causing any reaction on the part of the intelligentsia.

This closing of the Wall ended the period of direct participation by citizens in the political field and opened the way to the struggle for a civil society.

Social Stability, a condition for the development of Civil Society.

The major success of Deng's new policy was the effective dismantling of the people's communes. This policy satisfied the requests of farmers who represented the vast majority of the Chinese population. By allowing them to sell their produce on the free market, and eventually by proceeding to a de facto decollectivization, the Communist Party succeeded in bringing a long period of stability to the countryside. Until 1985, the standards of living of the rural population grew by leaps and bounds, and it is not until the second half of the 1980s that the situation started to be more contrasted.

In the cities, salary rises and the opening of job opportunities by self-employment (the geti hu) considerably alleviated the pressure on the urban population. So did the re-establishment of bonuses for the workers. As no profound restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) was on the agenda, the new leadership enjoyed a large measure of support among employees and workers. This started to change after the 3^rd plenum of the 12^th Central Committee in 1984 tried to impose the end of the steel rice-bowl (tie fanwan) by making firms responsible for their profits and losses. The first wave of semi-privatization which took place in the second half of the eighties provoked discontent among SOE workers because it allowed some cadres to become quite rich . But not until the end of the eighties did urban dwellers start to listen to the criticism pronounced in the newly emerging public space

A divided leadership:

Although Deng had clearly stated the limitations of the scope of political criticism, the Party summit remained divided between conservatives who stood for a limited reform of the command economy, and reformers who were ready to abandon a large portion of the ideology in order to achieve modernization. Reformers themselves were divided between those who thought that bold innovation was possible only in the economic field, and those who believed that the political system had to be deeply reformed. Deng Xiaoping arbitrated between the various factions, and was careful not to alienate the conservatives.

As the satisfaction of rural and urban society's needs provided the necessary stability, it was possible to leave more space for debate and experimentation on the way forward for the political system. The reform faction which steered the course all along the eighties could therefore encourage the intellectuals whose support was necessary to achieve modernisation to engage in a reflection on the ways to improve the efficiency of the regime. Debate should obviously remain circumscribed to the elite.

Civil society a la Chinese: an intra-elite project.

As they realized that the Party was not ready to tolerate the existence of organizations in the field of politics[4], but that part of the leadership persisted in its policy of secularisation and reform[5], most of the advanced theoreticians who had helped design the new avatar of the official ideology, ostensibly opted for collaboration with the reformers. This is quite different from what had happened in Poland where only after intellectuals had despaired of the possibility to reform the system from inside did they start to develop a civil society.

But at the same time, Chinese intellectuals drew the lessons from the last twenty years of Mao's reign, and tried to take some distance from the leaders by helping develop an embryo of civil society and of public space beside the Party. Taking advantage of their positions at the head of many journals to which they had been appointed after their rehabilitation, the former "stinking ninth" encouraged debate on the nature of the regime and on the factors that had made the tragedy of Maoism possible. Literary journals were instrumental in helping a generation of writers come of age, and, in turn, these writers, along with the newly appeared social science scholars whose disciplines had just been rehabilitated, helped introduce a number of Western theories and weaken the hegemony of Marxism-Leninism in public life. Numerous conferences held in universities were opportunities for discussions about the ways to deepen political reforms. These ideas were somewhat relayed by the media, which had adopted a much freer style than before.

But the field of ideology was not the only locus of creation. The former Red guards were very creative in designing new modes of organisation such as the professional associations which rivalled the old ones, editorial boards of official publishing houses whose members were appointed without the approval of the department of organization of their danwei, boards which were actually quasi autonomous associations. As the publishing houses were increasingly asked to be responsible for their profits and losses, they were keen to publish the works by audacious intellectuals. In this sense, the growing importance of the market provided the bold with new freedoms. Many activists organized conferences, debates on all sorts of subjects, including the role of culture in development, the necessity to fight for the recognition of freedoms of speech and assembly, the evolution of political regimes in foreign countries, etc.

Although these structures were less "unofficial" than the "home seminars" that were taking place in Prague or Warsaw during the same period, they served a similar function. However, to the difference of what happened in Eastern Europe, most members of these Boards, specialists associations, "salons" were Party members who worked outside the Apparatus to create an autonomous sphere.

Their lesser autonomy can be accounted for by the fact that, in China, there was no independent structure capable of playing the role of the Polish Church which, thanks to its insulation from the Party and its international links, had been able to provide an institutionalized protection to the actors of the civil society. In China, the would-be developers of civil society could only rely on the protection of the most radical reformist leaders, and therefore could not clearly break away from the Party.

This protection was provided because the reformist leaders needed new ideas to defeat the conservatives and to consolidate the legitimacy of their policies. They encouraged the creation of think tanks which helped devise new policies. The people who worked in these structures, such as the tigaisuo, did not differ much from the ones who were active in the universities. This is what a well-known dissident intellectual explains: "Communist party reformers and intellectuals were very close, for the Party was very tolerant during the 1980s. It was absolutely necessary for them to work together"[6]. On the other hand, some Party leaders established informal links with leaders of autonomous organisations such as Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, the founders of the autonomous Peking Social and Economic Research Institute: "One needs to have two 'wings', i.e. in practise, one needs to have one hand in the system and one in the pro-democracy movement. During that period, we held meetings which, up to a point, influenced theoreticians and brought many ideas and projects inside the system; we also systematically founded editorial boards, essentially to influence public opinion. On that front, we were quite successful"[7]. Collaboration between reformers, establishment intellectuals, and intellectuals outside the establishment worked quite well despite the recurrent campaigns against "bourgeois liberalisation" which took place from 1981 to 1989.

At the end of the eighties the network of semi-autonomous organizations (professional associations, editorial boards, salons, research centres) constituted a form of civil society -- although, at the time, almost nobody in China used that term - which bore some resemblance to the one which had appeared in Eastern Europe a little earlier. This sector was born out of the impossibility of creating a political opposition. But,  contrary to what had happened in that part of the world, the Chinese civil society was made possible by the protection of the reformist faction, and could not achieve any measure of institutionalisation[8].  Besides it was exclusively an intra-elite process, and never did the actors of the emerging civil society take contacts with workers or peasants. Intellectuals active in this sphere were working to reinforce the radical reformers and to push them to admit pluralism in society.

The social crisis

In the second half of the eighties, the social stability induced by the policies adopted at the Third plenum of 1978 started to erode. In the countryside, the authorities who lacked the necessary cash to buy grain from producers, paid them with IOUs which they were in no position to pay. Small-scale discontent started to appear in villages.

But it was especially in the cities that the situation started to deteriorate. The decision to make SOEs responsible for their profits and losses, and the emerging dual channel which allowed the sons of the nomenklatura to make huge profits by trafficking in authorisations[9] provoked discontent among employees of state companies. In the summer of 1988, after the leadership launched the price reform which resulted in high inflation (14%), discontent among workers peaked. The social stability which had allowed the reformist leadership to launch experimentation in the political realm was under threat.

This coincided with disappointment among the radical intelligentsia following the dismissal of Hu Yaobang. Many actors of the civil society started to despair of the possibility to reform the system from inside. This provided the conditions for students to take to the street in the spring of 1989. The majority of intellectuals did not immediately support the students as they were afraid of losing the protection granted them by Party reformers who had allowed them to build a semi-autonomous sphere. Nevertheless, they finally decided to take part in the movement. The student demonstrations had a very strong impact on the discontented urban population who joined the students to denounce corruption and authoritarianism, and demand democracy and freedom. This challenge was too much for part of the reformers, and it led to the fall of Zhao Ziyang. The actors of the "civil society" who had finally opted for autonomy from the Party, repeatedly demanded that the authorities accept to have a dialogue with them. The Party leadership refused, and the activists were defeated.

As opposed to what had happened in Poland after the proclamation of martial law in December 1981 when the actors of civil society had been able to seek protection from the Church, Chinese intellectuals had nowhere to turn to. Their protectors had been purged, and the Party quickly reinstated its hegemony on the political field. It has been careful not to let any kind of political challenge re-emerge ever since.

In a way, one can say that the 1989 pro-democracy movement gave the "coup de grace" to the "combative" civil society in China.

II The Pact for conservation

The Tiananmen massacre sealed the new pact of the elites[10]. By crushing the attempt at democratisation which had developed in society with the help of the radical reformers, the Party leadership saved its hegemony. But force was not enough to restore legitimacy. The cause of socialism had lost its appeal in the masses as was shown by the strong discontent which reigned from 1989 to 1992, when the Conservatives had their way.  Therefore, the Party had to find a new type of legitimacy. This was achieved by Deng Xiaoping's trip to the South. The paramount leader put an end to the struggle between neo-Maoists and reformers, by stating that any policy was good as long as it favoured economic development.  He explicitly declared that there should be no unending haggling over whether a policy was capitalist or socialist, showing his commitment to the achievement of secularisation. He was able to rally the whole leadership behind his project combining the development of a market economy and the reinforcement of dictatorship. And in fact, since 1992, there has been no episode of struggle between diverse political projects in the leadership of the apparatus. A consensus has emerged and it is still effective now.

The risk of social unrest: stability eclipses everything

The new agenda had new implications: whereas in the early eighties, economic reform had been supported by the great majority of the population, with only a fraction of the bureaucracy opposing it, since the end of the decade, some discontent had appeared in the countryside and in the cities. The new agenda for development, which aimed at transforming the command economy and the large SOEs was bound to provoke more discontent. In the nineties, it became clear that economic reform would hurt a great number of workers and farmers. It was therefore necessary to maintain a strong repressive apparatus, and to mobilize the support of all the segments of the elites. This was achieved by making sure they would be able to considerably raise their standards of living.

Given the risk of social unrest, and the consensus that reigned at the summit of the Party, it became dangerous to continue to proceed with experimentation in the political sphere. Therefore, the new social pact that the Party presented to the intelligentsia was different from the one it had proposed in the eighties. It was not a pact for reform anymore; it was a pact for conservation. This time, the political system had to remain unchanged so that it could enact the new development strategy. Intellectuals would see their standard of living dramatically improve through entering the marketplace, creating private firms, through the revaluation of university salaries etc. Scholars and professors would be allowed to raise their academic level, to take part in symposiums and conferences abroad, to link with the international scientific community, to do research in foreign universities. But, the condition was that they not try to revive the organisations which they had created in the eighties, whose goal was to push for the transformation of the regime; and, obviously, that they not try to link with the disgruntled portions of the population to help them translate their discontent into political demands. With the risk of social unrest, authoritarianism had to be reinforced. This was expressed in the slogan: "Stability overrules everything else" (wending yadao yiqie).

As time went by, a larger space was granted by the Party to society's initiative. This has led many observers to write that in China, a civil society has been developing. This is a bit far fetched. In any case, this civil society has been growing in a space designed by the Communist Party, and it still doesn't enjoy any kind of legal guarantees that would provide for its institutionalization. In this sense, it does not enjoy a larger autonomous than the one which emerged in the eighties, and the scope of its action and reflection is much less close to politics than at the time.

An exercise in globalised newspeak

Ironically, it was after the Tiananmen massacre that the term the "civil society" made its appearance on China's intellectual scene. Since the end of the nineties, even the authorities have used it, often referring to it as the "third sector" (di sange bumen). However, it is a completely different concept from the one which had appeared in the eighties, closer to the one that is prevalent in the West, especially in the newspeak of international organisations.

To be provocative, one could say that the Chinese Communist Party has learned how to use the politically correct language of globalisation.

In effect, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, conventional wisdom has it that politics have been increasingly replaced by administration. For administration to be efficient, it has to rely on good "governance". Free expression of citizens in the public space, which, under the influence of Eastern European dissidents, had been at the centre of public debate during the eighties, has given way to discussions among experts on how best to design public policies, and to the newspeak of international organizations. In this approach, mankind's problems can be solved if one applies the right expertise. Scientism, which had characterized the end of the nineteenth century, has made its comeback, albeit under a different guise, at the end of the twentieth century.

It is quite ironical to note that the end of totalitarianism in a large part of our planet has given rise to an increasing depoliticization of the public space. Dissident intellectuals the world over have been replaced by experts, whose legitimacy for action in society is based on "scientific" knowledge. Putting forward the increasing complexity of the problems faced by countries in nowadays, most government leaders tend to reduce the space for public debate, and to expropriate citizens from participation in controversies. In democratic countries, political participation is more and more reduced to voting every four or five years, and ordinary citizens feel increasingly estranged from political life. This disenfranchisement is an explaining factor of the decreasing turnouts which have characterized elections in most advanced democracies.

In this sense, the Chinese communist Party, which has not gone trough the troubles of democratisation, has demonstrated an impressive capacity to speak the language of "modernity".

In the language of "governance" there are no more political programmes, only concrete problems which must be confronted with "public policies". Technocrats need trustworthy information which they know the bureaucracy is unable to provide. In our countries, consultation of "users" and experts is occupying an increasingly large space to the detriment of public debate by the people's representatives in parliaments. In China, one can observe the emergence of a growing number of committees and in this sense the regime is becoming increasingly similar to other modern states. The multiplication of committees appears to be one of the characteristics of governance in these countries.

In democratic societies, NGOs which constitute "civil society" are becoming powerful actors, whereas the more traditional organisations such as political parties, unions etc. see their role decrease. This civil society, however, is not the combative one that we have discussed above, the objective of which was to give life to social actors. The NGOs that compose it today are mostly humanitarian associations, or one issue groups, which seek to lobby the government to enact public policies which will help resolve specific problems. Instead of putting problems in political terms - in terms of choices that can be debated in public by citizens- governments tend to put them forward as technical problems, and tend to create structures of consultation to help solve them. Citizens are being replaced by "users".

The Chinese Communist Party has shown a remarkable ability to adapt to this evolution of the modern  state and its leaders have enthusiastically rallied behind the new themes of governance, and even civil society, allowing international NGOs to settle on its soil (organisations such as Médecins sans frontieres, Oxfam, Ford Foundation, etc.). It has also started to allow the development of Chinese NGOs (we shall see below that these are acting under serious constraints). In return, international governmental and non-governmental organizations congratulate themselves of this leap into modernity by a regime which seemed so reluctant to accept recognize such organisations.

A provider of modern identity for Chinese intellectuals

The majority of Chinese intellectuals have also shown plenty of enthusiasm for these new ideas. They see them as a way to emancipate themselves from the traditional model of the Confucian (or the pro-democracy) intellectual whose action is based on morals, to become "modern" professionals, specialists who play a determining role in the modernisation of the country. In effect, as they take part in the various committees set up by local and national governments, they can put their knowledge to use and help adapt policies to the needs of society.

As a matter of fact, since June 4^th and even more since Deng Xiaoping's trip to the South, the majority of the intelligentsia have been convinced that they had to collaborate with the Party to make China a prosperous and powerful country. In return, the Party gives them consideration and Jiang Zemin has even included the intelligentsia in his "Three represents". Whereas during the eighties, intellectuals had to fight for democracy if they wanted to be regarded as modern, things have changed with the advent of the (post-)modern state. In the new situation, there is no contradiction between the regime and the intelligentsia. The latter do not have to fight for the transformation of the former in order to attain the common goal of modernisation. Collaboration is not only possible, it is desirable if one wants to help China regain its prominent position on the international scene.

However, the CCP does not go so far as to set up consultative structures of the Hong Kong type, where ordinary citizens are directly consulted by the administration on the ways of solving the problems that the State must address. The various echelons of the Party State have chosen to ask experts to carry out studies in order to gather information on the opinions of the social groups targeted by the policies they want to enact. But, of course, the input from scholars is not binding for the leading cadres who use it at their discretion.

However, scholars are satisfied that the government consults them when it comes to designing new policies. They see it as a kind of recognition of their action as a positive factor in the struggle for modernisation. On the other hand, this new relation to the authorities allows them to conciliate the role of the "modern" intelligentsia whose legitimacy is founded on expertise with the more traditional functions of the literati such as the "counsellor to the Prince" -- a model which is part of their identity-- and the "spokespeople for society", which is at the heart of their legitimacy.

Seeing no hope of a return to power of radical reformers eager to transform Party rule, the majority of the intelligentsia have therefore abandoned the struggle to create an autonomous civil society, and most of its members have accepted the function that the Party State has designed for them. Under these circumstances, many intellectuals, especially economists and sociologists, enjoy real consideration from the authorities. They help develop the new kind of "civil society" as encouraged by the Party State.

A new avatar of the "Counselor to the Prince"

Let's take the example of sociologists. Government at various levels often ask them to take part in all sorts of advisory committees that they set up. They can make their voices heard when the local authorities tackle problems like the situation of the mingong, or juvenile delinquency. For example, in the Spring of 2002, the NPC has put the defence of the weakened groups (ruoshi qunti) at the top of its agenda. This decision has given rise to the creation of large-scale research programs on the increasing social polarisation. In the last couple of years, many research papers have been written by sociologists on the fate of migrant labour (mingong) in the cities. Whereas the denunciation of the negative effects of the hukou system by some radical sociologists in 1988-89 had not led to any concrete change to that system[11], participation by mainstream sociologists in the various committees set up by the local and municipal governments bureaus in charge of migrant labour (wailai renkou guanli ju) has, in certain cases, helped improve the situation. The sociologists justify their propositions for change with arguments based on economic efficiency, they explain to the bureaucrats that the relaxing of controls on hukou, by doing away with the discrimination between rural and urban populations, will help set up a modern labour market capable of rationally affecting the workforce to available jobs. Their arguments have convinced some leading cadres, and many municipalities have set up a system of "provisional hukou" which allows mingong who have a work contract and accommodation in the cities to enjoy almost the same rights as urban dwellers. More recently, their lobbying in the various committees has helped convince cadres of the necessity to do something about the education of the migrant workers' children. For instance, under the pressure of sociologists from the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, schools for children of migrant workers have rapidly developed in Chengdu. Sociologists' opinions are obviously not the only factor which has allowed these improvements, but they have played an undeniable role. These recent successes show the efficiency of this type of intervention.

However, from the point of view of Party State-Society relations, one must note that the position of intellectuals has changed, compared to the eighties. Now they intervene as experts inside the system. They reject the a la Solidarnosc model of civil society for reasons of efficiency, and do nothing to favour the autonomous expression of the social groups they try to defend, nor do they encourage them to set up the associations that would enable them to defend their interests. Of course, they are well aware that the Party State won't tolerate the creation of autonomous organisations by the citizens themselves. Besides, the traditional elitism of the intelligentsia leads them to regard action by the working people with diffidence. Being themselves as wary of disorder (luan) as the political leaders, they wilfully agree to silence the ordinary people, whose "quality" -- a term meaning a mixture of level of education, politeness, urban behaviour - is too "low" to be able to run the government (renmin de suzhi taidi is a very common phrase even among the most pro-democracy intellectuals); therefore, they accept to submit to the government's requirements. By prohibiting public debate and political participation of citizens, by instituting mediation through experts, the Party State is succeeding in transforming political problems into purely administrative questions, or, to use a "modern" phrase, in questions of "governance". The majority of the intelligentsia has enthusiastically accepted this transformation.

The Revival of Paternalism

In sum, many intellectuals who, in the eighties, would definitely have worked within the semi-autonomous organizations, are now very active in what the Party-State terms "the Third sector" (disange bumen). The so-called "non-governmental organisations" which compose this sector are supposed to design solutions to social problems that the Party-State cannot solve for lack of resources, or for lack of will, but under its control. The Communist Party looks as if it were going back to the 19^th century paternalism as it itself is developing ideas which  are reminiscent of the ones that had emerged among Christian industrial magnates. It is all the more ironical as the theoreticians of socialism such as Marx or Proudhon had denounced this ideology with great vehemence. By eulogizing the concept of charity, the vanguard of the proletariat asks the privileged to help the victims of modernisation without affecting the social structure while trying by all means to prevent the emergence of the disgruntled as a political actor capable of contributing to political life, and maybe transform it. The creation of this web of associations with the benediction of the Party is also reminiscent of the action of the Qing Dynasty which used to allow the gentry to create organisations whose function was to solve the social problems induced by natural disasters.

In the nineteen nineties, both for fear of repression, and because they accepted the new social contract proposed by Deng Xiaoping, the intelligentsia has renounced to be the ferment of an autonomous civil society which eventually could set up a dialogue with the Party (the Solidarnosc model); the most concerned scholars have instead immersed themselves in participation in GONGOs (Government Operated Non Governmental Organisation) active in rural education, health, all sectors which have been abandoned by the government since it launched the reforms. These organisations are often very closely linked to the Party's "mass organisations". For example the famous Hope project (Xiwang gongcheng) which helps develop schools in backward rural areas, operates under the auspices of the Communist Youth League whereas Dagongmei zhi jia, the House of the women migrant workers, which helps organize cultural activities and legal education for migrant women in Peking is closely linked to the All China Women's Federation. But these organisations of the 21^st century enjoy a much smaller degree of autonomy than their Qing counterparts inasmuch as they act in an environment which is very strictly controlled by the Party State.

In other terms, one could say that the intelligentsia, which, during the eighties, had been seeking to reform the political system in order to promote the prosperity and the maturity of society through the institutionalisation of its autonomy, now tends to accept the technocratic discourse held by the Party State. Instead of helping the weakened categories organise in order to be able to defend their interests, it tries to help them out by providing charity. This is a much less perilous road, as it doesn't put intellectuals in opposition to the Party-State, while still comforting their image as defenders of the weak. The intelligentsia is all the more confident that this is the right path to follow, as presenting social problems in terms of  "poverty alleviation" is strongly encouraged by international organisations, whether governmental or not[12]. This apolitical approach considers that public policies can solve the problems of "poverty" which is presented as a result of some kind of fatality rather than the consequence of the nature of the socio-political system.

A corporatist model?

The rationale behind the encouragement provided by the Party State to the Third sector is that, with the development of the market economy, the State should not try to intervene in all aspects of life, especially in the economy[13]. The new official discourse stands for a "Big society, small state" formula. But it reserves to the Party the right to create the NGOs which represent society. We have seen above how NGOs have been created to help the disgruntled. It is interesting to note that no Party leader has ever acted for the creation of a mingong association, for example, whereas it has encouraged businesspeople to enter the Chambers of commerce (shanghui). In other terms, as in Mussolini's corporatist model, the State decides which social categories exist and can be represented, and it itself creates the non-governmental organisations which will represent them. The setting up of any such association is subject to its authorisation.

However, the situation is not so clear-cut, and sometimes, the Party is obliged to acknowledge the existence of associations it did not help promote. The case of Aizhi Action Project is interesting. It was founded by Wan Yanhai, who wanted to attract the attention of the population on the serious development of AIDS in China at a time when the government refused to recognize it. When Wan posted detailed information on the AIDS situation in Henan province in August 2002, provoking an outrage all over the world, the authorities arrested him[14]. However, when the UNAIDS functionaries, and a great number of AIDS related NGOs all over the world protested against this measure, the government freed Wan, and allowed him to register his association under the company law[15].

This shows that the Party is not omnipotent, and that it can be forced to recognize organisations that it fought. Obviously, this could not have happened in the case of a political party or of an autonomous trade union. But this example shows that the economic sphere can provide a space for the emergence of associations which might become the basis for the development of a civil society in the "combative" sense of the term. Already, many scholars and activists have created firms which actually do carry out research on sensitive problems such as education, accommodation, integration of migrants etc. There is no comprehensive research on these firms, but it would be interesting to have an idea of their scope. If it is substantial, this could point to the possibility of a politicisation of the economic sphere, and provide better foundations for the eventual development of civil society.

However, recent experience shows that the Party is quite reluctant to completely forsake its control on the Third sector. The authorities are particularly wary not to let political dissidents try to use these associations either to achieve their agenda, or only to establish contacts with ordinary citizens through them. The case of one of the largest associations for the protection of the environment is quite enlightening. In the winter of 2003, the Ministry of Civil Affairs pressured the board of Friends of Nature into expelling the writer Wang Lixiong, who became famous for his acute denunciation of Chinese rule in Xinjiang and Tibet. Although Wang was a founder of the association, he was fired by its other leaders who did not convene a meeting of the board, in violation of the statutes. This shows that pressure by the authorities can succeed in eliminating the people whom they consider dangerous. It points to the very tough limitations that the Party can impose on third-sector associations[16]. But it also shows that the authorities can convince most leaders of even outspoken autonomous organisations to enforce their ban on dissidents. These leaders prefer to keep avowed dissidents out so that they are not subject to pressures from the Security organs, and this results in the increased isolation of these political activists. They do it in good faith, in order to be able to develop their action, but, through this kind of self-censorship, they help the Party enforce its ban on open dissent.

These developments show the ability of the Communist Party to integrate large numbers of activists who might otherwise have become dissidents, by giving them the feeling that they can act more efficiently if they accept to stay within the limits it has designed, and especially if they abstain from linking the social problems they try to solve to the political situation. Moreover, these activists, in their search for efficiency, accept to break away from political dissidents, thus enforcing the Party policy and consolidating its legitimacy.

China seems to be evolving along the same lines as the developed world, as consultation of users, recourse to experts, the increasing role of a "civil society" in the narrowest sense of single issue NGOs or charity organisations are replacing the social movements of yesteryears, and marginalizing the political intervention of social actors. Is China, therefore, really entering the mainstream of modernity? Will it be able to make a direct transition from totalitarianism -- the matrix (and the instruments of control) of which continues to exist -- to post-modern governance without going through the stage of democracy? The present regime seems to be evolving toward a kind of post-political authoritarianism which enjoys the support of a large proportion of the elites, including the intelligentsia. It is the first time since 1949 that elites in all fields, whether economic, political or intellectual, have supported the project proposed by the Party State. One interrogation remains: will this pact among the elites be strong enough to resist eventual pressure from the "toiling masses"? Or will these be able to organize and attract the support of part of the intelligentsia in an attempt to change the political system so that it takes their interest into account? This question might well plague the evolution of the political regime of the People's Republic of China for the decades to come. Some indices seem to indicate that disenfranchised groups such as farmers start to organize collective protests. Although these protests remain circumscribed at village or township level, they tend to develop in some regions such as Central China[17].

Be it in the eighties, when the organisations that the intelligentsia had set up were fighting for a radical transformation of the Party's rule and for democracy, or in the nineties when it has been working for the development of NGOs, action by intellectuals has always taken place in a space which was designed and structured by the Party. In the eighties, it depended on an alliance with the fraction of radical reformers for its possibilities of expression; since June 4^th, it has accepted to restrain its discourse to the one that is officially tolerated by the authorities. If no social group is in a position to overcome these limitations, it will be very difficult for a vibrant civil society to be consolidated in China.