ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the emergence of a relatively autonomous social space in the late Qing period as a result of state failure. It discusses the re-emergence of this space after China’s economic reforms in the early 1980s. The conception of civil society described earlier, which pits society against state, has gained little currency in China. According to Richard Madsen, the word “society” was unknown in China before its introduction from the West via Japan in the nineteenth century; the idea of civil society was imported even later. In addition to the traditional lack of individualism in Confucian culture, the celebration of statism in modern China has impaired the development of civil society. The idea of a self-organised society has yet to take root in China due to the long tradition of treating the state as the centre of social and moral order.
