ABSTRACT
From this chapter on, the focus of the book moves to Shenzhen, a prism through which to look at the reform unfolding and the consequences engendered for the whole country. This draws upon the approach recommended by Shue (1988) in current studies of the Chinese polity. It ‘puts the analysis of process at the center of the research effort and traces the mutually conditioning interactions among elements in the polity that tend more commonly to be dichotomized into abstractions like “state and society”, “structure and culture”’ (Shue 1988: 4). That is, a static viewpoint and rigid dichotomization will not work, and, instead, sufficient attention should be paid to the developmental process and the interactions between seemingly dichotomized elements. He labelled this approach the study of the social intertexture of Chinese politics, and suggested that the analyst continually juxtaposes the finest of complex local detail with the most sweeping of discernible social trends and patterns. In the following chapters, I endeavour to capture the process of development and at the same time ascend from the local to the national level.
