一封與作者交流的讀后感e-mail

Dear Professor P,   I’m XXX. Recently I have read your book Shanghai on Strike: the Politics of Chinese Labor (Shanghai on Strike, the Chinese version translated by Liu Ping) as well as the one you and Professor Goldman edited, Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China (Grassroots).   The reading has prompted me to write this e-mail to share my thoughts and feelings over the books and also to raise questions regarding grassroots resistance in China as well as the necessity of democratic reforms from above.   The authors of the various chapters in Grassroots conducted extensive field work regarding village elections, homeowners’ groups, labor legal aid, media supervision, etc. I noticed that there is a common standard against which China’s performance in these areas is evaluated: whether the specific phenomenon (be it village election or the emergence of homeowner groups with autonomous powers of different levels) would facilitate growth of democracy in China, or put it in another way, whether it is helpful in driving China away from authoritarian state. Even the only one chapter that contends the relative effectiveness of informal institutions of accountability (village-wide lineage and temple groups) vis-à-vis formal democratic institutions in rural China, assumes that the democratic model (in modern time mostly referring to elections) should be a default and that China’s situation proves to be an exception to the rule.   My personal experience in China (I was born and bred in the city, but my parents have their roots in towns and villages in China) gives me the intuition that maybe it is not what the Chinese people actually think: in contrast to what liberal elites in China may have claimed, common people here don’t actually care that much about democracy or freedom; instead, Chinese people are practical, and are more concerned about rice and meat, housing and wages. One of the arguments for tendency of political change after the economic boom in China (a deeper assumption of the common standard the authors use, and they are anxious to look for signs of that change) is that violation of the basic needs of the enriched Chinese people would lead to demand for political change. However, Chinese people, whether they are from villages or urban areas, are savvy enough to understand that the real working system in China differs from what the official propaganda presents, and that their problems could be better solved by leaving alone the faade of the current regime or even by resorting to the abundant resources of the regime propaganda of “serving the people”. Perhaps that’s why Xi Chen characterized the protests in China as “opportunistic”.   Of course, I do not mean to erase the vast differences among various interest groups, as Professor Perry has impressively demonstrated to me in Shanghai on Strike how the internal differences between technical workers and non-technical workers affected their perspective alignment with the two dominant parties. But I do worry about the application of the universal standard of democracy when evaluating grassroots movement in China. As I view it, the pressing need rests more in social justice than in democracy or freedom. A Chinese wants a fair way out when facing inappropriate compensation for their homes, either by resorting to courts or to governmental officials or to media, so that he does not have to burn himself to death as a protest against unfairness and as a protection to those he loves and cares the most. Does this “fair way out” necessarily involve democratic reforms? Or put it in another way, is there any way (at least in theory) that the CCP regime could remain intact while the common people in China could be treated in a just way? If it is possible, would grassroots resistance (in an “opportunistic” way) be a more feasible force to rely on than the top-down reform? And by grassroots, which group(s) do you think would play the leading role? Would it be the diversified working force?   Thanks for your patience to go through such a lengthy e-mail, and I’m just one among the many young people in China who are concerned about China’s future and also its implications on the rest of the world, both practically and academically.   Best Regards,   XXX

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