Journal Article

The Advance of the Party: Transformation or Takeover of Urban Grassroots Society?

Thornton, Patricia M.

2013

Overview

While existing scholarship focuses attention on the impact of state control and repression on Chinese civil society, the increasingly independent role of the Communist Party has been largely overlooked. This article reviews the Party's drive to “comprehensively cover” grassroots society over the previous decade against the theoretical debate unfolding among Chinese scholars and Party theoreticians regarding the Party's role with respect to civil society. Focusing on greater Shanghai, frequently cited as a national model of Party-building, I describe the Party's advance and the emergence of Party-organized non-governmental organizations (PONGOs), a new hybrid form of social organization sponsored and supported by local Party committees. I argue that these developments invite a reconsideration of our understandings of the ongoing “associational revolution” and of the Party's relationship to China's flourishing “third realm.”

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Activists / China / Chinese languages / Civil Society / Committees / Communism / Communist Parties / Communist societies / Corporate sponsorship / Grass Roots / Grass roots movement / Motivation / Nationalist movements / NGOs / Non-governmental organizations / Nongovernmental organizations / Oppression / Peoples Republic of China / Political activism / Political behavior / Political leadership / Political parties / Political science / Political systems / Power / Repression (Political) / Revolution / Revolutions / Scholarship / Shanghai, Peoples Republic of China / Social entrepreneurship / Social organization / Social policy / Transformation / Urban Areas