Changing Approaches in the Study of Chinese Politics

Elizabeth J. Perry
Harvard University

	The academic study of Chinese politics in the United States is approximately the same age as the People’s Republic of China itself -- a little over 50 years.  Before World War II, several American universities provided instruction in “Sinology” (the study of classical Chinese texts from a humanistic perspective), but few offered courses in modern Chinese history – let alone the contemporary social sciences.
	Only after the establishment of a Communist regime in 1949 did the U.S. government, foundations, and academic institutions begin to appreciate the desirability – indeed the necessity – of developing expertise in the study of contemporary China.  The Ford Foundation’s decision to contribute $30 million to build up the field of East Asian studies was a major stimulus in this regard; so too was the National Defense Education Act, which allocated government scholarships to the study of “critical” languages including modern Chinese.
	The half-century partnership between the PRC and the field of contemporary China studies has been fraught with difficulties from the outset, however.  Most problematic, of course, was that for the first three decades of the relationship American scholars were denied the opportunity to conduct field work in China – usually considered the prerequisite of successful social science inquiry.  
	Unable to experience China for themselves, political scientists were heavily dependent upon official sources – especially the Chinese press – for information about the Chinese political scene.  Limited access to the field had the unfortunate effect of inducing many scholars seriously to underestimate the social devastation brought about by the milestones of the Maoist era: land reform, collectivization, the anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.  A further difficulty that beset the academic community of China watchers reflected the origins of the field itself.  Born of a Cold War mentality to “know one’s enemy,” the contemporary China field was more oriented toward up-to-the-minute intelligence analysis and policy pronouncements than toward lasting scholarly contributions.  A successful academic career tended to be measured by a job offer in Washington, D.C. rather than by the publication of a groundbreaking scholarly book.   
	Under the circumstances, the quality of work produced by this newly trained generation of American social scientists – with no first-hand knowledge of China – was quite remarkable.  Relying almost exclusively upon official documents from the PRC (subsequently supplemented by Hong Kong interviews and the Red Guard press), their analyses of bureaucratic behavior and political participation have withstood the test of time surprisingly well.  
	Nevertheless with the advantages of hindsight it is easy enough to point to flaws in that pioneering literature, flaws generated both by the lack of field access and by the lenses through which the scant data were interpreted. In the 1950s and early ‘60s, the totalitarian model – imported from studies of the Soviet Union – blinded scholars to the significance of social forces by limiting attention to state-sponsored ideology and organization.  Then, with the onset of the Cultural Revolution, scholars overcompensated by adopting American-inspired models of pluralism to highlight the strength of social interests.  More recently, models of state-society relations drawn from the European tradition have gained currency.  Questions of state-building, civil society, and the relationship between market development and democratization have assumed center stage. The causes, characteristics, and consequences of political change are interpreted as a product of interactions between the state apparatus and society at large.
	The contributions and shortcomings of the initial waves of post-war scholarship on China have already been considered in some detail in the secondary literature, and need not detain us further here.  Instead, I should like to focus on the changes that have taken place since the opening of the China mainland to American researchers following the normalization of diplomatic relations in January 1979. In particular, I will explore developments of the last several years.
	As a member of the first cohort of American exchange scholars to venture to China for field work twenty-four years ago, I have followed the course of China-based research with keen interest.  Not long ago, I expressed a certain disappointment over the reluctance of fellow political scientists to take advantage of the new sources made available by the opening of China.  Whereas senior historians such as Philip Kuhn, Joseph Esherick and Philip Huang had written prizewinning books based upon rich primary materials accessible only in China, students of the contemporary field seemed sluggish in seizing comparable opportunities.  
	Happily, that criticism is much less apt today.  In just the past few years, several monographs by seasoned political scientists indicate the expanded possibilities afforded by access to previously unavailable sources. Dorothy Solinger’s study of the “floating population” (a social category generated by the post-Mao relaxation of the household registration system) is a case in point.  What breathes life into her important study are the interviews that Solinger conducted with floaters themselves.  The rich empirical materials form the basis for an argument about urban citizenship that carries significant implications for other industrializing societies.  Another fine example of recent scholarship by a senior political scientist is the third, prizewinning volume in Roderick MacFarquhar’s authoritative trilogy on the origins of the Cultural Revolution.  Although MacFarquhar relies primarily on published sources (especially memoirs of elite political actors), many of these materials would not have been obtainable without direct access to Chinese bookstores, publishing houses, and private collections.  The result is a stunning level of detail that permits MacFarquhar to probe the actions and motivations of Mao Zedong and company in unprecedented depth.
	Access to unpublished archival sources is another benefit of field work opportunities.  In collaboration with a Chinese scholar at the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, I relied on such materials to produce a co-authored study of the Shanghai workers’ movement during the Cultural Revolution.  Although China-specific in its empirical foundation, the book attempts to draw conclusions of relevance to students of contentious politics outside the confines of the China field.  
	Happily, the exploitation of new sources is not limited to senior scholars.  A number of recent dissertations have utilized archival documents from the 1950s to start rewriting the early history of the PRC.  Neil Diamant’s study of the implementation of the marriage law and Mark Frazier’s analysis of industrial management are excellent examples.  For the reform era, intensive interviews, surveys and first-hand data gathering at a variety of economic enterprises, ranging from state factories to collective industries and private companies, have led to an explosion of political economy analyses by scholars representing a range of cohorts and disciplinary foci. 
	The growth of academic exchanges is responsible, of course, not only for a quantum leap in access to research materials.  Even more important are the close personal contacts that have developed between Chinese and foreign scholars.  One salutary result has been the infusion of talented young political scientists from the PRC, trained at the best American graduate schools and placed at many of our finest colleges and universities.  These individuals serve both to enliven the field of Chinese politics in the US and to strengthen channels of communication with our counterparts in China.  Increasingly, American-trained political scientists from China are also returning directly to plum academic positions in the PRC.
	A further benefit of the academic exchanges has been the development of collaborative research projects between American and Chinese scholars.  Institutions such as the Luce Foundation, the Committee for Scholarly Exchange with China, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and the Harvard-Yenching Institute have played critical roles in encouraging such initiatives.  Co-authored works by students from China and their American mentors constitute some of the best recent scholarship in the field.  The studies by Kevin O’Brien and Li Lianjiang on popular protest in the contemporary Chinese countryside illustrate the outstanding work that can issue from this type of collaboration.
	One of the most important developments in recent scholarship on the PRC is that it is no longer dominated by political scientists.  Anthropologists, once confined to Taiwan or the New Territories of Hong Kong, are now conducting path-breaking research on the contemporary mainland scene.  Studies by Mayfair Yang and Yan Yunxiang on social networks in city and countryside, respectively; by Erik Mueggler and Jing Jun on rural folk culture; and by Ellen Hertz on the Shanghai stock market are indicative of this welcome trend.  
	Historians have also been lured across the 1949 divide to consider the whole sweep of twentieth-century Chinese history.  William Kirby’s research on the Guomindang’s National Resources Commission and its influence on industrial planning in both Taiwan and the PRC in the 1950s is an important contribution. Jeffrey Wasserstrom’s work on student protest from the May Fourth Movement to the present is another noteworthy example of the insights to be gained by comparing political phenomena at different times and under different circumstances. And Jin Qiu’s book on the Lin Biao incident suggests the insights that an (insider’s) historical imagination can bring to the study of contemporary events.
	Equally heartening is the ease with which political scientists now venture into pre-‘49 terrain.  David Strand’s study of street politics in 1920s Beijing, Iain Johnston’s work on strategic policy in the Ming, Julia Strauss’ analysis of government institutions under the Guomindang, and Elizabeth Remick’s comparison of local state-building in the 1920s and 1980s are symptomatic of this promising trend.
	These cross-temporal, cross-disciplinary developments are important not simply for the scholarly sophistication that they represent.  Their significance lies also in promising to improve our response to one of the biggest challenges now facing the contemporary China field: namely, how to explain the seeming reversion to pre-Communist practices that characterizes so many aspects of the post-Mao era.  The demarcation of a separate sphere of contemporary Chinese studies some fifty years ago was a reaction to the perception of a fundamental dichotomy between Communist and pre-Communist history.  The dramatic rupture that 1949 seemed to represent argued for a new social scientific (as opposed to purely Sinological) approach.  In 1959, ten years after the founding of the PRC, John Fairbank explained the rationale behind the new field of contemporary China studies as follows: "A great revolution, perhaps the greatest of all time, is sweeping the biggest single block of mankind into a new order …… For historians, now that we have turned a sharp corner, all the Chinese past looks different …… Now we must study Communism, and the Soviet connection, in addition to China."  Fairbank’s argument convinced the Ford Foundation to contribute a substantial amount of money to support the study of contemporary China at Harvard.  The funding went both toward the hiring of social scientists (sociologist Ezra Vogel, economist Dwight Perkins, political scientists Benjamin Schwartz and Roy Hofheinz) and toward the establishment of a new research center – known today as the Fairbank Center – which, in sharp contrast to the venerable Harvard-Yenching Institute, was committed to studying modern China from a social science perspective.  Comparative Communism, rather than traditional Sinology, was the favored approach.
	At age 50-plus, however, both the PRC and its academic observers in this country may be tempted to question just how effective the attempt to break with tradition has actually proven.
After all, most of the formerly Communist world is no longer Communist.  Moreover, the signs of pre-‘49 influences are everywhere in contemporary China, from cosmopolitan Shanghai’s nostalgia for its 1930s heritage to the refurbishing of temples and the resurgence of folk beliefs across the land. Accompanying this re-invention of local traditions has come an accentuation of regional diversity.  Renewed interest in local dialects, histories, cuisines and customs is emblematic of a growing geographical differentiation with potentially momentous implications.  The political significance of this rise in local identities may be most obvious in the case of Taiwan, but it is by no means limited to the island.
	In order to make sense of these striking trends, social scientists will need to engage in careful comparisons across both time and space.  We will have to specify similarities and differences between contemporary patterns and earlier, apparently comparable manifestations if we are to determine what lasting impact – if any – a half century of Communism has exerted on the Chinese popular imagination.  And we will need to compare regions within China, rather than simply draw comparisons between China and other countries, if we are to figure out to what extent locales are or are not dancing to their own tunes.  This demands a departure from the style of China watching prevalent during the initial decades of the PRC, which treated 1949 as a definitive watershed that had ushered in a new, highly integrated system better compared to the USSR or even the US than to its own complex and fragmented past.
	The active engagement of anthropologists and historians as well as China-born political scientists is a tremendous boon in the effort to meet the difficult explanatory challenge posed by the twin trends of “traditionalization” and “localization” that are rolling across China with gathering momentum in the reform era.  A serious knowledge of Chinese history and an in-depth familiarity with multiple locales may prove more helpful in this effort than recourse to the latest social science fad.  Rather than jump too quickly on academic bandwagons being driven by other intellectual agendas, students of contemporary China would do well to take full advantage of the opportunities for social science comparison that are so richly afforded by our own increasingly accessible area of study.  If we are able to develop convincing answers to questions of continuity and change across time and space, the China field will be positioned to deliver an enormous contribution to the larger social science enterprise.  
	We can already detect the seeds of such a possibility in the fruitful inter-disciplinary work now being conducted on a number of key issues.  For example, both political scientists and historians have been focusing on the topic of institutional transformation under different political regimes.  Twentieth-century China is a marvelous laboratory for such research, with its dazzling array of political authorities – from imperial dynasty to warlord regimes; to treaty port and wartime governments; to Guomindang, Maoist, and reformed Communist systems.  Moreover, China may well be unique in its accumulation and preservation of archival documents on any and all such ruling authorities.  Taking advantage of these sources, recent and forthcoming studies compare institutional arrangements (e.g., welfare provisions, personnel management, revenue collection, anti-corruption initiatives, labor relations, industrial policy and the like) under different political regimes.  This impressive research effort affords the China field an excellent vantage point from which to contribute meaningfully to wider social science debates.  Whereas the “neo-institutional” modes currently so fashionable among American political scientists are based largely on contemporary American and European cases and stress continuity (or “path dependence”), the China studies – which actually draw from a more variegated set of regime comparisons – help us to appreciate the conditions under which institutional change may also take place.

	Prompted by a desire to address some of the key questions in modern Chinese history, social scientists working on contemporary China may provide telling clues to the solution of puzzles elsewhere in the world as well.  Under such circumstances, the study of China can mature from a “consumer field” (dependent for its analytical insights upon imports from the study of other countries) to a "producer field" (capable of generating original analyses of interest to comparativists in general).  
	The road ahead is not without barriers, of course.  Entering their fifties, both the PRC and its observers in this country are facing something of a midlife crisis.  In the case of China, the ushering in of a new millennium witnessed a combination of devastating floods and sectarian resistance (in the form of the Falun Gong movement) that evokes eery memories of imperial dynastic cycles.  In the case of the contemporary China field, the severe cutbacks in funding for area studies have raised serious questions about our future health. Nevertheless, middle age is also a time for renewed energy and commitment.  The contemporary China field has grown into a vibrant and diverse academic community that is both stretched by exciting intellectual issues and sustained by hard-won research access.  If we rise to the challenges presented by these opportunities, at the very least we can expect to weather our upcoming years with fewer and less traumatic crises than those now plaguing our half-century partner.