ABSTRACT
In China, actual state-society boundaries can prove theoretically bewildering. Members of an NGO opposing domestic violence include grassroots NGOs, the Women's Federation, and individual women's rights activists, intellectuals, and a police station. This NGO formed a network beyond the state-society boundary among people and organizations sharing similar commitments and exchanging relevant information. This chapter focuses on actual state-society boundaries and the ways boundaries are crossed in China. The chapter is built on a number of theoretical and methodological ideas on the state-society boundary. This boundary based on certain European conceptualizations of private and public law is neither universal nor fixed. Real states do not form coherent units with clear boundaries. The chapter further maintains that any state-society boundary is a technology government. It probes into encounters, interactions, boundary work, power relations, and rationales for setting a boundary in certain ways.
