ABSTRACT
Urban economic reform in China has not yet led to the emergence of what is popularly labeled "civil society," 1 among the business class. Nor has it hewed out any sharp and novel borderline between the "state" and a distinctive sphere of "society" among its subjects in this particular realm. No "repluralization" 2 can be said to have issued from some genuine formation of a "private" realm truly separate from the still enveloping "public" one for those who make their lives in the marketplace. Instead, the essential economic monolith of the old party-state now shapes official and merchant alike; both have become dependent, mutually interpenetrated semi-classes, even as both share a new kind of dependence on the state. As a Chinese commentator described the situation:
China's private economy has developed. . . during the transformation from a product economy of unitary composition into a planned commodity economy of coexisting multiple economic sectors. . . because the strong socialist public sector occupies the dominant place in the national economy, the private sector developing in this situation cannot but be related to, as well as influenced and restricted by, the public sector. . . . Hence it must be dependent on the socialist public economy and at the same time supplement it. 3
