China's Symbiotic Narratives of Opening and Globalization

The construction of the two symbiotic narratives of “opening” and “globalization” makes it possible for China’s leaders to present their policies, and in a wider perspective their rule, as an objective necessity. China’s economic growth is represented as a result of the post-1978 Opening policy, while globalization is said to demand a strong and unified state that can defend Chinese interests. The paper discusses the different stages in the construction of these narratives

Training Farmers or Educating Citizens?

Jørgen Delman’s Ph.D. thesis “Agricultural Extension in Renshou County, China” (1991) was the result of his return to academia in the late 1980s after he worked for three years at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN in China. It is a detailed study of the complex rural bureaucracy promoting agricultural innovation and change and reflects a deep understanding of how things worked on the ground in those relatively early years of market-oriented rural reforms. It also contributes to a larger story of how ‘modern’ knowledge over the last century has been transmitted and negotiated between China’s urban centers and its countless rural communities. This vignette offers some thoughts on this larger topic

Giving the people a voice? Experiments with consultative authoritarian institutions in China

In the last decade Chinese consultative authoritarianism has been renewed through many political and administrative innovations and tools. Authoritarian rule in China is now permeated by a wide variety of consultative and deliberative practices. These practices stabilize and strengthen authoritarian rule, leading to deliberative authoritarianism, an advanced form of consultative authoritarianism. This paper discusses two experiments—deliberative polling at Zeguo, Zhejiang, and a township election in Ya\u27an, Sichuan. Through these two cases we examine the direction which the development of consultative authoritarianism is presently taking, and the potentials and limitations of such input mechanisms in an authoritarian setting

Vagtskifte i Beijing

Intet resum

Grundtvig i Kina

Grundtvig in ChinaBy Stig ThøgersenGrundtvig and the Danish folk high-schools have been known to the Chinese since the beginning of this century. From the late 1920s, the attention of Chinese reformers turned to the rural areas, and »the Danish model« subsequently came to play a major role in the Chinese political discourse as an example of a country that had reached prosperity through education, the cooperative movement, class cooperation, and agricultural development rather than through industrialization and social polarization. A major proponent of Grundtvig’s ideas was Liang Shuming who from 1931 to 1937 headed an experiment with rural reconstruction in Shandong province. Liang was a cultural conservative who advocated economic and technological progress through the establishment of rural communities centred around village schools. The article examines the sources through which Liang and other Chinese learned about Denmark and Grundtvig, and shows how the image of a Danish Utopia was created by a number of enthusiastic supporters of the folk high-school idea, among them Peter Manniche, who visited Liang in Shandong. The relative failure of Liang’s experiment is analyzed in the context of his reception of this idealized image

Politisk deltagelse under autoritær kontrol - ”Konsultativt demokrati” og overvåget offentlighed i Kina

This article looks at policies implemented in China under the heading of ”consultative democracy”, and at how the Internet challenges authoritarian one-party rule. It argues that it is still difficult to see a distinct Chinese model of democratization emerge from these trends, but that the combination of social conflicts, quickly rising levels of education, better access to information and increased political participation through local elections makes the future trajectory of political reforms unpredictable