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The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society
Mujun Zhou
2026
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The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society examines how a group of Chinese intellectual elites referred to as the liberals or ziyou pai edified the civil society project beginning in the 1990s to build an independent space to constrain state power, increase political participation, and promote China’s democratization. In the early 2000s, activists in movements such as the environmental and the AIDS movements identified with the liberals and regarded their activism as part of the project of building civil society. However, since the late 2000s the liberals’ influence has gradually declined. In prominent social movements in the 2010s such as the labor and feminist movements, activists have openly criticized the liberal interpretation of civil society and regarded liberals’ civil society agenda as irrelevant. Mujun Zhou employs the concept of interstitial space, or the space where the exercise of power has not been fully institutionalized, to examine the history of the civil society project over the past three decades and its changing relationship with other social movements. Zhou suggests that by advocating for civil society the liberals gained allies and thematized many social problems rising during China’s economic reform; however, liberals’ activism also produced new forms of power inequalities.
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Keywords
- authoritarian state
- China
- Civil society
- Critical journalists
- Critical media
- Democracy
- Environmental movement
- feminist movement
- Grassroots organizations
- Homeowners' movement
- Ideational movement
- ideology
- Institute of Civil Society
- institutionalization
- Interstitial emergence
- Interstitial space
- Labor movement
- Liberal intellectuals
- Liberalism
- New Left
- New rural reconstruction movement
- NGOs
- Open Constitute Initiative
- Public Intellectuals
- Public sphere
- Social Movement
- Southern Weekly
- thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSL Ethnic studies::JBSL1 Ethnic groups and multicultural studies
- thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHF Asian history
- Weiquan
- youth activists
Links
DOI: 10.3998/mpub.14408227Editions