Uncovering the Roots of the Nationwide Counterpublic Sphere in China.

My dissertation addresses a puzzle: Why has a nationwide counterpublic sphere, in which citizens formulate oppositional discourse to challenge the state, emerged and persisted in China? Existing studies, mostly based on experiences in Western Europe, theorize that a robust civil society is indispensable for a flourishing public sphere. Contrary to the theory, however, a nationwide counterpublic sphere has risen in China in the absence of a well-developed civil society. This anomaly in relation to the dominant theory of the public sphere makes the Chinese case a negative case in comparative historical sociology. Rather than completely abandoning the dominant theory, I identify its central proposition – namely, that a social-cultural foundation is needed for a public sphere to grow and persist, and examine how this foundation came to exist in China. Through a multi-faceted, comparative, and historical analysis that draws on a variety of sources, I argue that, whereas theorists examining the emergence of the public sphere in Western contexts emphasize the role of civil society, in the Chinese case it is the state that is – unintentionally and paradoxically – the architect of the counterpublic sphere. While continuing to suppress public opinion and civil society, the Chinese state responded to the legitimation crisis it faced in the late 1970s by creating legal institutions and transitioning to a market economy connecting China with the rest of the world. In doing so, it inadvertently contributed to the social-cultural foundation for a counterpublic sphere. To develop my central argument, I first establish the existence of a flourishing nationwide counterpublic sphere. Next, I show that in the process of institution-building to address the state’s crisis, the Chinese state established a shared symbolic structure based on laws and rights. Then, I examine how the state’s use of media to disseminate law unwittingly led to the formation of collaborative networks that connected media and legal professionals. I show how these professionals appropriated the symbolic structure of laws and rights to produce critical news reports and promote civic culture. Finally, I examine the processes by which these initially limited liberalization effects escalated into a nationwide counterpublic sphere.PhDSociologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102493/1/yawenlei_1.pd