Abstract
The relations between the government and enterprises are an important part of the social adjustments in the historical course of China’s economic transition, transformation of the government functions and changes of social organizations, and will remain at the core in a rather long period of time. The complexities of these relations and the variability of their change path reflect typical characteristics of China’s holistic reform experience. From the sociological point of view, these political and economic relations are embedded in the broader social structures and relations with very rich connotations of structures, institutions, mechanisms and behavioral rules that can be elevated into the experience. The trace and summary of the changing process of these relations are not only an essential part of the analysis of China’s social development, but also helpful for us to reexamine the basic change path of social relations in China from the perspectives of organization and institution.
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- 1.
The autonomous development is a process full of contradictions and paradoxes, and is obtained and lost in a same process. An autonomy is often achieved at the expense of another autonomy and some people’s autonomy is often realized at the cost of other people. In a hierarchical system, there are contradictions between autonomies of organizations at different levels, which may arise in the form of conflicts or in a coordinated manner. The conflicts are fundamental, but the coordination is unstable (Li 2008; Xiong 2010).
- 2.
Li (2006, p. 219).
- 3.
Other types of enterprises include (1) private enterprises with more than seven employees; (2) foreign capital and “three kinds of foreign-invested” enterprises; and (3) other types of joint ventures (such as those established jointly by state-owned and private enterprises). These forms of ownership emerge until the early 1980s. The urban and rural individual economy in Fig. 1.1 mainly refers to the family (or individual) enterprises hiring no more than seven employees, which appear in the early 1980s (For explanations on the enterprise types, see Qian and Xu 2008).
- 4.
According to the Report on the 1st Five-Year Plan for Development of the National Economy of the People’s Republic of China delivered on July 5, 1955, “we must foster the growth of agricultural producers’ co-operatives, whose system of ownership is partially collective, and handicraft producers’ co-operatives, thus laying the preliminary groundwork for the socialist transformation of agriculture and handicrafts; and in the main, we must incorporate capitalist industry and commerce into various forms of state-capitalism, laying the groundwork for the socialist transformation of private industry and commerce” (Bo 2008).
- 5.
In this book, we focus on the explanatory research, which is different from the interpretative research made by many scholars on the government-enterprise relations. We aim at figuring out the internal mechanism of the changes in such relations as well as the corresponding causal, dialectical or historical relations (Zhao has deep insight into the applicability and comparison of the interpretative and explanatory research paradigms, see Zhao 2004).
- 6.
The concept of “interstice” has been introduced into the sociological studies by Mann when explaining the source of social power. In his opinion, the driving force of human society is not institutionalized, but various broad and deep power relation networks. The networks are further developed by human beings in the pursuit of their goals or originated from a direct challenge of the existing institution or by “interstitial emergence”, which means creating new relations and institution in the interstices and around the edge of the institutions (Mann 1986).
- 7.
Deng (1993).
- 8.
North (1994).
- 9.
Li (2006, p. 213).
- 10.
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Wei, Q., Li, H. (2019). Introduction: A Holistic Analysis Framework and the Research Question. In: Entities and Structures in the Embedding Process. Social Development Experiences in China. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2390-4_1
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