The question arises as to how global liberalization trends observed since the 1970s mask even supposedly stable institutional ensembles in nonliberal forms of capitalism. Against this background, Streeck and Thelen (2005) conceptualize several ideal-typical modes or mechanisms of change that attempt to interpret the gradual change undergone by central institutions in developed political economies. These are used in my study as heuristic tools.
The term displacement refers to the dissolution of existing institutions that can be regarded as incoherent and the replacement of those institutions by new ones, for instance, when their regulatory capacity has been undermined. This term also denotes the gradual incorporation of foreign elements into the institutional system of a political economy, for example, adapting Western social security insurance schemes for use in China. As a result, institutions that were once subordinate can become significantly more important. This fact is evident in the intrastate conflicts surrounding the advancement of certain ministries. The same also applies to external influences (for instance, the role played by Western corporate practices in China, as I attempt to demonstrate below).
For Streeck and Thelen, the term institutional layering describes processes that result in the—albeit often informal—formation of institutions, both alongside and in interaction with existing institutions. These processes also trigger change within the existing institutions. Unlike displacement, no entirely new institutions or rules are introduced here. Groups of actors with too little power to eradicate existing institutions will induce change in institutions from the sidelines, so to speak. As described in Chapter 2, in China, this role was adopted by quasiprivate enterprises (township and village enterprises or TVEs) that put pressure on the entire corporate sector to restructure. New components, or additional layers, are added to the existing system of institutions.
The term conversion, in contrast, denotes processes where the actors in an existing institution (the staff in a ministry, for instance) make an adjustment, and, from that point on, this institution serves a new purpose even if the habitual rules officially continue to exist for the time being. “Different from layering and drift, here institutions are not so much amended or allowed to decay as they are redirected to new goals, functions, or purposes” (Streeck and Thelen 2005, 26). Similarly, changes in the constellations of social actors can affect the purpose of an institution fundamentally. Here, the necessary pressure to adapt is created by involving new social groups—in the PRC, this happened, among other things, in the course of integrating entrepreneurs into the party and state apparatus, as I shall endeavor to demonstrate in the present work.
The phenomenon of drift is the erosion or dissolution of institutions, processes that are induced by what are often tentative deviations from generally accepted rules. Applied to the Federal Republic of Germany, we could interpret the relaxing of the collective bargaining system as drift—given that the institutions that set the tone continue to exist but protect fewer and fewer employees. Bearing this in mind, we should probably ask ourselves whether the gradual erosion of the strict system of registration for residents (hukou) in China might also be an example of this mechanism of institutional change.
Finally, the term exhaustion refers to the possibility of exhausting institutions to the point of collapse. In Chapter 2, I will examine whether the collapse of traditional Maoist political styles and institutions in the 1970s and 1980s might be an example of this.
It would appear that changes to the Chinese institutional system are affected by elements of all five of the aforementioned modes of change. The current work will now seek to ascertain whether certain modes of change have more of an impact than others.
CAPITALISM WITH “CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS”? THE ROLE OF HISTORICAL CULTURAL TRADITIONS
The drivers of capitalism are always mediated by normative and historical cultural traditions. Alongside older historical traditions such as the Confucian tradition and close interpersonal network of relationships (guanxi) this also includes Sino-Marxism. Sino-Marxism’s attempts from 1949 to imitate the Soviet-Marxist modernization model in fact considerably modified it, thus contributing to China’s distinctive path to modernity (see Arnason 2003b).
As mentioned, historical ideational, and social cultural traditions cause path dependencies that call global convergence processes into question. In the case of China, historians, historical sociologists, and anthropologists argue, for instance, that in order to explain its extraordinary economic dynamism, older Chinese and East Asian traditions of merchant capitalism must be taken into account (Pomeranz 2000; Hamilton 2006a). This comprises a rich tradition of merchant groups operating on the basis of familial ties, which coexisted for hundreds of years with the ruling “tributary” state class without ever achieving a dominant role, until they emerged in the course of the twentieth century, under the new “tributary power” of the CCP, as a motor for economic restructuring (Gates 1996). Other authors argue that the rise of capitalism in China draws from other cultural traditions—including, particularly, those of the overseas Chinese. These include family values, network-based relationships, and paternalistic authority structures. The spirit of Chinese capitalism is also described as Confucian (see Redding 1990; M. Yang 2002). Long dominated by a Weber-inspired notion, according to which the roots of China’s inability to modernize lay in the static traditional values of a culture shaped by Confucianism, the discussion now draws on opposite assumptions. Now it is precisely certain Confucian values such as diligence and thrift that are viewed as stimuli for economic growth. In a sense, then, a Confucian way of life is considered to be equivalent to the “Protestant ethic” (see Pohlmann 2002; Arnason 2003a).
In more recent historical sociological research, further arguments are propounded as to why favorable conditions for capitalist dynamics were to be found in China (and East Asia). In comparison to other regions of the world, there was a relative continuity in East Asian history, which derives from the comparative stability of Chinese culture (Arnason 2003a, 304–8). In contrast to the Indian, Islamic, or even the later Western world, what the East Asian historical region had in common during the premodern era was the more developed, more continuous existence of state structures promoting the protracted processes of nation building. “[In China] the result was … a more marked cultural unity than any other imperial order has achieved, and—in due course—an enduring ambition to transform this legacy into a full-fledged national identity” (Arnason 2008, 401). Finally, in comparison to other world regions, the premodern East Asian region was less affected by the influence of foreign powers. Even the colonialism of the nineteenth and (more so) the twentieth century was, for the most part, in spite of significant Western influence, an experience associated with Japanese imperialism. The relatively limited Western presence and military power allowed the region flexibility to more autonomously receive and adapt Western models.
Admittedly, far from the perspectives just outlined, research on China and Asia has long been influenced by approaches that could be described as culturalist (see Weggel 1997; Pye 1998; Jacques 2009). Abstracted in this way, Confucianism for instance is in danger of being essentialized (Dirlik 1997, 311). This reductionist “China-is-China-is-China” viewpoint (Dreyer 1996, 13) leaves no room for a comparative perspective. Rather, such approaches are frequently more concerned with emphasizing the uniqueness of China. According to Jacques, today’s China should be seen as a “civilizational-state,” which, unlike the Western nation-state, preserves within it an over two-thousand-year-old living tradition (Jacques 2009, chapter 2). Its most important moral point of reference is the desire for the unity of the Chinese people. While in the West the relationship between state and society is assumed to be constructed in such a way that the authority and legitimacy of a state essentially result from democratic processes, the Chinese “civilizational-state” acquires its legitimacy through its role as representative of Chinese civilization. The “Chinese,” according to Jacques, experience the state as the head of the family, whereas in Western societies