Journal of China in Global and Comparative Perspectives

Abstract:Advocates of civil society posit that it can greatly contribute towards the formation of a happier, more peaceful social order on a local, national and global scale. At the same time, civil society is seen by many today as a political force; a magic bullet that can burst the bubble of totalitarianism and create democratic space in its wake. However, its sceptics see it not as a state-strengthening tool or a conduit for ideals of democracy, but as an unstable force that undermines a state, regardless of whether the state is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Whichever side of the debate one is on, the growth of civil society in China influences the country’s development and potentially affects the orientation of this development to a high degree. The study of Chinese civil society is growing in popularity but opportunities to compare and contrast it with its contemporaries, other than with the much studied ones of Europe and North America, are few and far between. It is this noticeable gap in the literature that the two books being reviewed here endeavour to fill. Both Globalization, The City and Civil Society in Pacific Asia: The Social Production of Civic Spaces and Civil Society and Political Change in Asia: Expanding and Contracting Democratic Space deal with the growth of civil society in East Asia