CHINA ALONG THE YELLOW RIVER by Cao Jinqing and translated by Nicky Harman and Huang Ruhua. RoutledgeCurzon, London and New York 2000 ISBN: 0-415-34113-2 Price: £65.00

Reviewed by Rachel Murphy

The Chinese Intelligentsia is “fond of talking about political reform” but has “not the faintest idea about what [is] really happening on the ground”. Cao Jinqing includes himself in this critique, but his journal of wandering and reflections is a bold attempt to remedy the problem. He invites the reader to travel with him to meet new people and visit places of interest, all the while interleaving observation with analysis. Although writing about Chinese problems for his compatriots, Cao’s vivid anecdotes and critical reflections make his book a compelling read for a non-Chinese audience too.

A Shanghai-based professor of sociology, Cao rejects out-right Western social science theories. He notes astutely that in the twentieth century such theories were not only inadequate for understanding rural China, but also a tool for formulating and realising top-down programmes for social transformation, often with disastrous consequences. He elects therefore to conduct an open-structured ethnography of the state and society in the countryside. Cao travels to the agricultural interior province of Henan with the following questions: How does one modernise? What are the obstacles to political and economic modernisation in rural China? What are the consequences of this failure to modernise for the well-being of the farmers?

Despite his suspicion of theoretical models, Cao’s questions and assumptions nevertheless place him within an intellectual tradition with roots in the May Fourth Movement. Since 1919, Chinese scholars have tried earnestly to uncover the elements of traditional Chinese culture, values and institutions that might explain continuing economic backwardness and political despotism. Their attention has turned repeatedly to the countryside as both the repository of Chinese tradition, and an insular land-fixed agricultural society at the source of inertia. Cao provides no answers, only more and more questions but many are bold, courageous and hugely provocative.

Cao’s research method inevitably invites comparisons with that of China’s pioneering rural sociologist, Fei Xiaotong. Both scholars share a conviction that rural China must be understood on its own terms. Each is sceptical about the value of armchair theorising and is committed to careful first-hand empirical research as a way of generating explanations and concepts relevant to the Chinese situation.

Cao’s careful survey of the countryside presents us with a particularly intriguing puzzle. Farmers have undoubtedly experienced very real improvements in their living standards since the communes were dismantled and land was parcelled out to households in the early 1980s. This reform enhanced incentives for farmers to produce and led to substantially better harvests. Farmers have also been pursuing off-farm earning opportunities on an unprecedented scale injecting huge amounts of cash into the rural economy. Yet there has been widespread and mounting unrest.

Cao’s reflections centre on varied aspects of the problem of modernisation, arguing that “genuine modernisation” is essential if the simmering dissent in the countryside is to abate. Cao explores three themes central to the problems of modernisation in rural China.

1. Economic Well-Being
Most of the farmers that Cao chats with in rural Henan admit that since the economic reforms of the early 1980s there have been big improvements in their economic well-being. Everyone is now able to feed and clothe themselves. But quite clearly, as far as Cao and the farmers are concerned, these historical improvements in economic circumstances are not enough to get rid of widespread dissatisfaction. Cao’s reflections detect three reasons for this. First, farmers have an unprecedented need for cash owing to their increasing involvement in the market economy and a heavy tax burden. Official figures overestimate the real growth in rural incomes. For some households the standard of living has actually fallen under ever-increasing agricultural levies and the erosion of collective welfare. Second, people define their economic well-being in relative terms, through comparison with their neighbours, reinforced by the impressions of migrants. Modernisation interacts with an existing cultural need to have face, propelling competitive consumerism. Finally, while the consumerist images of the new market economy have raised expectations, structural features of the rural economy impede efforts to modernise. Scattered plots, equitably distributed, obstruct gains through economies of scale. Meanwhile the need to retain land as security blocks enterprise, ensuring the status quo remains along with unfulfilled expectations.

Cao’s deliberations on modernising the rural economy reveal numerous catch-22’s, whilst amply demonstrating the urgent need for a way beyond the impasse if the rural economy is to keep up with rising expectations.

2. The Local-State: Top-Down Government for the People
Cao’s analysis of the problems of modernising government in rural China focuses on the top-down nature of the Party-state. Government is for rather than by the people. He shows that the Party-state reaches throughout rural Chinese society by means of a complicated network of vertical structures. Cao’s survey shows that when looking downwards, Party-state officials at the levels of the county, township and village enjoy substantial power. But when looking upwards they face tightly-defined responsibilities and quotas. Officials often use their power to pressure farmers to meet targets so that they can obtain rewards from within the Party-state. Conversely it enables them to use their position to pursue self-interest within their administrative domains.
Township and village level cadres are the most feared and hated because they are seen as “corrupt bullies” - the source of the unrelenting fees, fines, taxes and demands that plague farmers’ lives. Despite the election of Village Committees in the 1990s self-governance continues to be very limited. Cadres’ horizontal latitude exercised within a vertical power monopoly contributes to the worst of governing practices - bullying of peasants toward targets, false reporting and investment in wasteful prestige projects. Cao laments that the top-down one-size-fits-all approach to economic development stifles innovation and creativeness. Even though bad governing practices pervade the Chinese countryside, causing immense suffering and resentment among farmers, Cao’s approach of letting the cadres speak for themselves prevents the readers from simplistically dismissing them as parasites and oppressors. Their words let us see their motivations, frustrations, difficulties and humanity.

Pessimistically, Cao suggests that true political modernisation - government by rather than for the people - is unlikely to occur because of the resistance of a vested interest group, the cadres, and because farmers do not know how to organise and demand political modernisation.

3. The Socio-Cultural Characteristics of the Farmers
For many Western readers, Cao’s attention to the social and cultural traits of Chinese farmers may well be the most contested and controversial aspect of his analysis. Cao considers how their cultural values and customary modes of social interaction underpin “low economic returns and political corruption in rural China.” Reflecting an education that must have incorporated Chinese Marxist theory, Cao differs from Fei Xiaotong and recent Chinese and Western scholarship in that he sees the small farmer mode of production as responsible for a conservative and narrow outlook rather than as a potential source of entrepreneurial vision. He sees rural modes of social association as the reason for endemic corruption rather than as the potential wellspring for a uniquely Chinese form of civility and modernisation.

Cao argues forcefully that rural China needs democracy and an impersonal civil society to counteract the pervasiveness of the particularistic ties and the narrow “little peasant” mentality. Looking only outwards is unsatisfactory because when outside modern values and democratic institutions are imposed on the Chinese polity, they are alien to the consciousness and culture of the people, so sit on the surface like oil on water. At the same time, Cao repudiates China’s traditional modes of social interaction, and so dismisses potential endogenous sources of an alternative modernity and civil society. Indeed in the case of rural China, these networks may well provide one of the most promising possibilities for forging the horizontal linkages that are badly needed to counterbalance the vertical state penetration that is so pronounced in interior agricultural provinces.

Cao himself has no answers about how elements of the internal and external might in practice contribute to government by rather than for the people. His only firm conclusions are that the voices of rural people need to be heard and that there are more and more questions. Indeed a key finding of Cao’s research and contemplation is that solutions have failed throughout the twentieth century because they were based on an inadequate understanding of the problems.

Cao has clearly succeeded in his quest to interrogate and to stir up debate about the meaning of modernisation in the Chinese context. This success is enhanced by his incorporation of rural people’s vivid testimonies about “the nature of their lives” into the debate. These unheard voices now actually intercede in the contemplations of China’s intelligentsia and bureaucratic elite. Cao Jinqing has excelled in provoking and guiding a hugely important conversation which will, as a result of his book, extend far beyond the peasant houses, Party schools and government offices of rural Henan.

Rachel Murphy is a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford and a Research Fellow in the Contemporary Chinese Studies Programme at Oxford.