Putting the Chinese State in its Place: A March from Passive Revolution to Hegemony

Gramsci in China: Past, Present, and Future of a Still Open Encounter

“…Complexity and richness of the concept of “passive revolution” have triggered a variety of applications in different geo‐historical contexts (Morton 2013). Concerning the Chinese case, Hui (2017:70) interprets the developments in post‐Mao China as a fundamental “hegemonic transformation”, in which “the Chinese state has been changing from forcefully engineering passive revolution into constructing capitalist hegemony”. The movement from passive revolution to hegemony implies here an increasing awareness of the Chinese party‐state for the need to secure consensus not only by influencing the Weltanschauung of subaltern classes, but also by according them material concessions (see below).…”

“…In addition, also the very adoption of the concept of passive revolution in the Chinese case is questionable. Analyses of the “restoration” of Chinese capitalism (Gray 2010) or of China’s “nascent capitalism” (Hui 2017) imply China’s non‐capitalist character before Deng’s reform and opening process. Alternative interpretations of post‐revolutionary China, however, would challenge this argument—either by rebutting the authenticity of China’s socialist experience (Harris 2015) or by regarding Chinese state‐market relations as subordinated to the logic of capital accumulation well before 1978.…”

Organizing the Environmental Governance of the Rare-Earth Industry: China’s passive revolution

“…The Gramscian passive revolution, as ‘a strategy for managing change’, emphasizes the progressive aspects of change in hegemony-building (Sassoon, 2001, p. 8). This allows us to understand contemporary Chinese hegemony as a top-down process of change that is embedded in a particular nexus of social, political and economic relations (Hui, 2017; Li & Christensen, 2012). China’s recent transformation into a state capitalist system has hence been an elite-driven process which has allowed the country to enter the global marketplace, introducing competition at all levels while keeping relative social peace through a set of ideologies and hegemonic cultures of consent (Li & Christensen, 2012).…”

“…In order to mitigate the increasing hegemonic disruption and avoid a real revolution, the state has emphasized the construction of an environmentally friendly ‘harmonious society’ and granted greater material concessions to civil society actors in the form of better social policies and environmental politics. For example, the ‘Scientific Outlook on Development’ was developed, to harmonize the environmental and economic perspectives of national development strategies (see also Hui, 2017; Mol & Carter, 2006; Xue, Simonis, & Dudek, 2007).…”

“…In the transition era, as demonstrated in our case, many contradictions emerged, such as conflicts between different levels of governments, payoff disputes between business and residents, struggles of NGOs with governmental agencies and corporate malpractices. In order to counteract such conflicts and regain control, the recent Xi Jinping government continues to place emphasis on the ‘harmonious society’ (Hui, 2017), elevating the importance of sustainable development (Zhang, Mol, & He, 2016). With the central state’s increased commitment to achieving the sustainable development of the traditional heavily polluting industries, China has advanced ‘the actual amount of environmental information disclosed to civil society actors’ and ‘the diversification and pluralism of environmental information suppliers and users’ (Zang et al, 2016, p. 17).…”