Privatization within the Chinese State

Abstract

Since the nature of the state and state—society relations in China are significantly different from other "developmental states" in East Asia, an analysis of Chinese political economy has to go beyond the developmental state theory. The Chinese state is a socialist state which is an amalgamation of the Communist Party, the government, and their vast network of affiliated social organizations. In contrast to the authoritarian rule of other Asian developmental states, the Chinese state exercises totalitarian rule over the society. Among other characteristics of this totalitarian rule, state organizations in China thoroughly penetrate society and the state plays a hegemonic role in the economy, based on the principles of public ownership and central planning (McCormick, 1990, p. 7). Therefore, alternative theoretical arguments are needed to explain China's political economy.

This research was supported by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute at Duke University and the Center for International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I thank Michael M. Atkinson, Dennis Van Hickey, Tang Tsou, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. An earlier version of this chapter was published in Governance, 7 (1994), pp. 387–411. It has been revised and condensed for publication here with the permission of Blackwell Publishers.