Book Reviews Andrew H. Wedeman, From Mao to Market: Rent Seeking, Local Protec- tionism, and Marketization in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 277 + xiii pages. ISBN 0-521-80960-6. This book deals with the important topic of China's transition from a cen- trally planned economy under Mao Zedong to a market-oriented economy under Deng Xiaoping in terms of lo- cal competition for resources. The central thesis of the book is that local protectionism and rent-seeking behav- ior may seem to have resulted in sepa- rate "economic warlords" in China but the net outcome of local competition was marketization at the national level. As different localities competed for resources, they had not only pushed the prices of these resources to market levels, they had also inad- vertently pushed China past the "pit- falls" of reform--problems associated with dysfunctional partial reform-- that entrapped other former socialist economies. This book is a useful addition to the literature on China's economic transition with the following contri- butions. First, it has adopted a new approach to the issue of the economic transition in China. Instead of a top- down approach (e.g., Susan Shirk, The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China) or a bottom-up approach (e.g., Barry Naughton, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Re- form, 1978-1993), the author has adopted a middle-level approach. Consequently, his conclusions are dif- ferent from those of Shirk and Naughton. Instead of Deng's politi- cal strategy of playing to the prov- inces as Shirk perceived it, Wedeman argued that marketization was not the result of a deliberate central policy and that local leaders were not neces- sarily obedient subordinates of the central leaders. Instead of spontane- ous market forces growing out of the plan as Naughton understood the pro- cess, Wedeman saw marketization as a result of the externalities of local protectionism. Third, regardless of its connection to the overall logic of marketization, this book has provided a lot of insights into various forms of local protectionism through a detailed study of resource wars (the cotton war, the tobacco war, the wool war, and the silk cocoon war) and other forms of monetary (illegal tolls) and non-monetary barriers to trade among different regions. Finally, the author has attempted to develop a more so- phisticated version of principal-agent theory that entails one principal and a number of agents at multiple levels.
Transcript
Book Reviews
Andrew H. Wedeman, From Mao to Market: Rent Seeking, Local Protec- tionism, and Marketization in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 277 + xiii pages. ISBN 0-521-80960-6.
This book deals with the important topic of China's transition from a cen- trally planned economy under Mao Zedong to a market-oriented economy under Deng Xiaoping in terms of lo- cal competition for resources. The central thesis of the book is that local protectionism and rent-seeking behav- ior may seem to have resulted in sepa- rate "economic warlords" in China but the net outcome of local competition was marketization at the national level. As different localities competed for resources, they had not only pushed the prices of these resources to market levels, they had also inad- vertently pushed China past the "pit- falls" of reform--problems associated with dysfunctional partial reform-- that entrapped other former socialist economies.
This book is a useful addition to the literature on China's economic transition with the following contri- butions. First, it has adopted a new approach to the issue of the economic transition in China. Instead of a top- down approach (e.g., Susan Shirk, The
Political Logic of Economic Reform in China) or a bottom-up approach (e.g., Barry Naughton, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Re- form, 1978-1993), the author has adopted a middle-level approach. Consequently, his conclusions are dif- ferent from those of Shirk and Naughton. Instead of Deng's politi- cal strategy of playing to the prov- inces as Shirk perceived it, Wedeman argued that marketization was not the result of a deliberate central policy and that local leaders were not neces- sarily obedient subordinates of the central leaders. Instead of spontane- ous market forces growing out of the plan as Naughton understood the pro- cess, Wedeman saw marketization as a result of the externalities of local protectionism. Third, regardless of its connection to the overall logic of marketization, this book has provided a lot of insights into various forms of local protectionism through a detailed study of resource wars (the cotton war, the tobacco war, the wool war, and the silk cocoon war) and other forms of monetary (illegal tolls) and non-monetary barriers to trade among different regions. Finally, the author has attempted to develop a more so- phisticated version of principal-agent theory that entails one principal and a number of agents at multiple levels.
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There are, however, some ambigu- ities in the study. First, it is not clear which local level the author was re- ferring to when he talked about local protectionism. As the author made it very clear, China's local governments consist of five administrative levels-- the provincial, prefectural, municipal, county, and township and village lev- els (p. 70). In the section on opening China's inner doors, the author dis- cussed none of the above administra- tive levels but aggregate economic areas such as coastal vs. interior areas (pp. 27-37). In the theoreti- cal discussion on rents and wars, he switched to a slightly different con- cept of localities--raw material-pro- ducing regions and manufacturing regions. The provincial-level local protectionism seems to be the central concern of the study because all the statistics presented were at the pro- vincial level (pp. 100, 103, 115, 129, and 182), yet many actual examples of local protect ionism were from the county-level. As the author ad- mitted (p. 162, note 17), there is no hard evidence of provincia l - level protectionism prior to 1989; nor is any hard evidence of provin- cial-level protectionism in the period of 1989-90 when provincial-level governments were allegedly "explic- itly" involved in cases of local pro- tectionism. Second, because of lack of clarity on the level of local gov- ernments in the study, it is difficult to know the level of local protection- ism existed in China in the period of 1989-90 (as the author admitted on
p. 175); nor is it clear how local pro- tect ionism had actually produced marketization in China. Third, the author was not always consistent in his explanation of resource wars. The cotton war, for instance, was not ex- actly a war between different locali- ties but a war between government purchasing agencies and farmer-fac- tory alliance (p. 93) or a war be- tween g o v e r n m e n t p u r c h a s i n g agencies of different localities (p. 96). In this instance, banning farm- ers from selling their products to purchasing agencies of other locali- ties is a form of local protection- ism but this fo rm of local protectionism was not conducive to marketization. Finally, it would be more convincing to demonstrate that local competition for resources pro- duces marketization than to argue that local protectionism might somehow result in marketization.
Overall, this book represents the cut t ing edge of the l i terature on China's economic transition from a centrally planned system to a market oriented system. It is well written with relevant political cartoons and a lot of primary information and provin- cial-level statistics. It should be of great interest to scholars and gradu- ate students of China studies as well as those who are interested in the po- litical dynamics of transitional econo- mies.
Zhiyue Bo St. John Fisher College, USA
80 East Asia ] Fall 2004
Ole Bruun, Fengshui in China: Geomantic Divination Between State Orthodoxy and Popular Religion. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Man & Nature in Asia Series, no. 8. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. 2003. 320 pages. ISBN: 8-791-11479-9.
Fengshui in China is an anthropo- logical study based both on historical materials and ethnographic fieldwork. The author distinguishes his book from most other approaches that portray fengshui as proto-science, pseudo-sci- ence, environmental aesthetics or primitive magic by noting that these approaches "merely provide a vulgar portrait of a complex tradition. The more relevant issues are how fengshui is perceived and practiced locally, how it is linked to other ideas and in- stitutions, and why this particular tra- dition gained such significance in Chinese society" (p. 2). The book examines how fengshui has changed in meaning and practice over the past century and a half, and how it varies between different places, both geo- graphically (comparing western and eastern China) and different levels of urbanization (comparing rural villages and cities). The book argues that "fengshui cannot be fruitfully inves- tigated as a system in itself, but forms part of a meaningful whole only when seen against the totality of its cultural set-up" (p. 2). Despite this variation, it can be recognized as "a broad popu- lar tradition" in that it incorporates Chinese classics and many elements of popular rel igion and common
moral values "that allow any Chinese to recognize familiar principles de- spite endless local variation" (p. 2).
Chapter 1 also presents a critique of the way Chinese religion has been studied. Bruun notes that empirical multiplicity was portrayed with total- izing concepts, attempting "to extract an essence from or to find a unifying design in the cultural stock encoun- tered" (p. 19). He argues that this "search for unity and systematics in other cultures" (p. 19), or the "quest for 'system' in anthropology" (p. 18), has been an obstacle to understanding fengshui. He asks, "Why is systemic pluralism so inconceivable as a principle in itself--is this another spillover from monotheism?" (p. 19). He notes that fengshui could be studied as a system, but that would lead us to ask the wrong questions, e.g. whether it is a con- scious or unconscious system, its ori- gin, purpose, and function (p. 25). "We would focus on how the system represents the culture as a whole rather than on how individuals and population segments use fragments of a whole in particular contexts" (25). "As a replace- ment for system to denote an assembly of imaginative human thought and knowledge as contained in fengshui, 'tradition' tends to be a better ap- proximation," using the term in the sense of "a body of cultural stock, containing, for instance, information, knowledge and customs, that is car- ried by population segments and po- tentially conveyed from one generation to the next" (p. 27). The chapter em- phasizes the importance of attending
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to the inevitability of diverse currents of thought. Their coexistence need not be systemic, nor arbitrary, but con- tinual products of deliberate acts of identification, driven by mankind's restless intellect" (p. 32).
This approach results in a valuable book that adds to our understanding of fengshui, a topic that has been un- derstudied. In resisting the view of fengshui as a system, the author re- flects recent approaches to the study of Chinese popular religion and is led to ask different questions. But one cannot help but wonder if "humankind's restless intellect" does not also have a tendency towards co- herence (and system) that needs to be understood. So when the author says that "instead of depicting unified cul- ture" we need "to identify certain co- hesive traditions" (p. 28), one can agree but at the same time wonder if the term "culture" is not being over- simplified and merely replaced with "tradition." The book alludes a few times to symbolic patterns and struc- tural inversions, but these are not ex- plored. How is the geography of space a metaphor for social space? How do we integrate the systemic symbolic view with a more subtle and processual understanding of fengshui?
Chapters 2 and 3 are historical. Chapter 2, "Fengshui Practices and Politics, 1850-1949", argues that fengshui became more important in the late 19th century in reaction to imperialism. "[T]he Chinese imperial government adopted fengshui as a means of fighting the colonial pow-
ers by playing on popular anti-foreign sentiments as well as taking note of the foreign respect for 'native reli- gion'" (p. 36). He shows that only after 1860 did fengshui became a theme in the encounters between Chi- nese and foreigners. Within a decade, fengshui was adopted as part of an "anti-foreign discourse, which in turn gave new vitality and support to the fengshui tradition. It increasingly stood out as the cosmology of the en- tire nation, radically divergent from Western modernism" (p. 43). "The more notice foreigners took of fengshui the more it became a show- piece for Chinese resistance and a gathering point for patriotic senti- ments--something it had evidently never been before" (p. 57).
Chapter 3, "Fenghsui Practices and Policies after 1949", argues that athe- ism, modernization, and the reach of the state, all of which had begun ear- lier, fundamentally transformed China but allowed fengshui to survive. Be- cause fengshui in rural areas was dif- fused, disorganized, and the most locally anchored element of cosmology with no rebellious potential, "in many places fengshui stood out as the most impor- tant vehicle for an alternative, reli- giously informed mode of thought in the countryside" (p. 82). Though geomancers suffered, many continued to practice their craft, albeit in secret.
Chapter 4 describes the author's f ie ldwork in a rural township in Sichuan in the summer of 1993. The chapter discusses the biographies and practices of the masters; most were
82 East Asia / Fall 2004
old and had suffered greatly. Chapter 5, "Another School of Fengshui - - Fieldwork in Jiangsu", describes the fieldwork in a township that is geo- graphically similar but has more eco- nomic differentiation, describing the four masters of the township and con- trast ing their pract ices with the Sichuan case. Notewor thy is the author's frank discussion of fieldwork difficulties caused by authorities and by informants' suspicions that fengshui was not the real topic of his research. In each case, local history and problems affect the practice of fengshui, from the trauma of half of the population dying in the famine of the Great Leap (p. 115) to the departure of all doctors for the city (p. 150). When peasants go to the city for medical care, they are ex- ploited and swindled, which leaves the fengshui master as the only local and affordable healer.
Chapter 6, "Fengshui Applications and Possible Interpretations", dis- cusses fengshui's wide application, from the pursuit of wealth and eco- nomic competition, to explanations for curing and consoling, and as a cos- mological system. It notes that often fengshui is used as an after-the-fact explanation, and suggests fengshui may sometimes work in a kind of pla- cebo effect, which may be especially effective in Chinese culture because of images of the interrelation of the mind and body with the larger envi- ronment, and because Chinese tend to somatize social and psychic anxieties. He extends the concept to a "collec- tive 'placebo' effect" in cases where
an entire village is said to prosper due to improved fengshui (p. 204). Chap- ter 7, "The Construction of a Dis- course: Fengshui as Environmental Ethics", is a critique of the Western view of fengshui (in China) as envi- ronmental management. He empha- sizes, for example, "that if Chinese peasants destroy their environment but get rich in the process, they are most l ikely seen to have auspic ious fengshui" (p. 232).
What is most valuable about this study is its focus on how fengshui is practiced. The anthropologist focuses on the social, cultural, and political contexts, as well as the geographic aspect of where and how fengshui is used. This study treats fengshui as a cultural phenomenon, not asking the practical questions that potential cli- ents ask. Fengshui offers wide range of interpretat ion (pp. 8, 16) and "since fengshui metaphysics is a self- defining set of concepts, it is not open to contradiction or to being checked with reality" (p. 16). We see fengshui as a tool to fight imperialism, then as the alternative cosmology suppressed by the communists, then as a marker of backwardness . In the process , fengshui has shifted from the public to the private domain. This valuable study will be required reading for scholars of Chinese religion, and makes a valuable contribution to the anthropology of religion.
Joseph Bosco Department of Anthropology
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Book Reviews 83
Andrew Scobell, China's Use of Force: Beyond the Great Wall and Long March. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 316 pages + 1 map. ISBN: 0-521- 52585-3.
Andrew Scobell makes the argu- ment that three layers of culture--the Chinese cult of defense, a civil-mili- tary culture, and the military organi- zational culture--have contributed to the decisions of the Chinese leaders to use force in resolving inter-state and intra-state conflicts. By cult of defense, he means that Chinese deci- sions to use force are largely driven by the realist concern for eliminating threats to enhance survival and secu- rity. Such offensive behavior, how- ever, "is justified as defensive on the basis of a pacifist self-perception." On civil-military culture, he suggests that there has been differentiation between the civilian and military authorities in terms of functions and roles in China. Reflected in the decisions to use force are the divergent perspectives as de- fined by such differentiation. On or- ganizational culture, Scobell argues that the Chinese military has a dis- tinctive organizational culture that stresses caution and conservatism, and the decisions to employ force were mostly made by the civilian leaders. Scobell then selects five cases to ex- plore the extent to which the three layers of culture influence the Chi- nese decisions to use force: the Chi- nese decision to intervene in Korea; the involvement of the People's Lib-
eration Army (PLA) in the Cultural Revolu t ion during 1966-1976; China's 1979 attack on Vietnam; the PLA intervention in Tiananmen in 1989; and the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crisis.
Scobell's book has made several contributions to the understanding of Chinese strategic traditions and be- havior, crisis decision processes, and civil-military relations. He shows, for instance, that Chinese strategic tradi- tions and behavior can not be ex- plained purely by realism--that the Chinese have a propensity for em- ploying force to enhance its relative gains in an anarchic environment. Nor can they be accounted for purely by Confucian moralism--that the Chi- nese are largely defensive-minded and have a preference for nonviolent so- lutions to conflicts. Both elements can actually be found in such traditions and behavior: when China may engage in the offensive use of force, it also takes the high moral ground of claim- ing victimization that legitimizes the "defensive" use of force and a "just counterattack." Moreover, Scobell dispels the myth that Chinese crisis decision processes are monolithic be- cause of a civil-military "symbiosis," and he finds that diverse views ex- isted among China's political-military elites that carried with them the insti- tutional bias and all attempted to in- fluence decisions. Finally, most of Scobell's cases validate the argument of Samuel Huntington and Richard Betts on civil-military relations--that the military tends to be risk-averse
84 East Asia / Fall 2004
when it comes down to the use of force, and it is the civilian leaders who make the bold decisions to employ force. An exception, however, is the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, where Scobell finds that the military appears to have driven the decision to use force. This case val idates Barry Posen's argument that the military prefers offense to justify its parochial institutional interests, while the civil- ian leaders take a broader view of the situation and prefer the nonmilitary means to manage crisis, so that the assertiveness of the military can be constrained.
Scobell's book is not completely free of shortcomings. One is that all the chosen cases of force employment took place after 1949. The selection of samples that are confined within one historical period may make it dif- ficult to determine whether they are representative of Chinese strategic tra- ditions and behavior that transcend hundreds, if not thousands of years. Also, Scobell argues that a civil-mili- tary culture exists among China's po- l i t i ca l -mi l i ta ry eli tes, where the tradition of civilian supremacy and mil i tary subordinat ion has been firmly established. To the extent cul- ture is stable, constant, and deeply entrenched, one should not have ex-
pected the larger input of the mili- tary into policy, such as during the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, to take place. Scobell attributes such change of behavior to the absence of the old dual-role paramount leader such as Deng, which provided political space to be exploited by the military to in- crease its influence over policy. If this is true, the traditional approach of analyzing civil-military relations, with its emphasis on behaviora l changes as the outcome of constraints and opportunities stemming from in- stitutional changes, may be more pro- ductive than the more static approach of culture.
On the whole, the contributions of Scobell's book to the scholarship out- weigh the shortcomings. Moreover, the book is well researched and based on original materials. It is also well written and therefore enjoyable to read. It deserves the attention of those who are interested in strategic stud- ies, civil-military relations, Asian se- curity, and Chinese strategic traditions and behavior.
