The first meeting of the Interdisciplinary Workshop on the theoretical tracing of East Asian developing country and China revelation research
Summary Person: Zhang Zhenhua, Department of Political Science, East China Normal University
(Internal discussion document, do not cite)
On the 1st July Zhang Zhenhua, an interdisciplinary workshop project of the theoretical tracing of East Asian developing country and China revelation research ( project number: 2016kx036), undertaken by Teacher Zhang Zhenhua from the Department of Political Science of East China Normal University, held its first meeting at the Humanities Salon of East China Normal University in Minhang District.More than 10 teachers engaged in politics, sociology, public administration, journalism research from East China Normal University, Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai Municipal Party School, Shanghai University of Political Science and Law and other units had made wonderful speeches around the theme of the conference. Although close to summer vacation, the activity still attracted the postgraduate students majored in political theory and so on.
The morning meeting was presided over by Teacher Zhang Zhenhua. He first introduced the significance of the university's establishment of Interdisciplinary workshop project and the characteristics of the conference agenda. Unlike most of the current meetings, the workshop arranged a 25-30 - minute paper presentation time for each speaker so that the speaker could fully demonstrate his views. The meeting did not arranged the dedicated commentator, but the free discussion time for 30 minutes of each three or four papers.
The first speaker of the morning meeting was Geng Shu, a researcher from the Department of Sociology of Zhejiang University, who spoke on the system theory of the developing countries’ transformation. Geng Shu deemed that in today's China, it was none of sense to discuss the question whether or not adopting a developing country that the question whether or not the developing country could be transformed was of more significance that is practical. He talked about the debate of the industrial policy between Lin Yifu and Zhang Weiying, using system theory to discuss the choice and transformation of the economic system. There were two opposing propositions about the system theory. One held that the system was universal, could be constructed and played an effective role in various contexts. Therefore, when a good system was invented, it would be actively adopted by other countries in the world that the situation of ‘survival of the fittest’ would happen. The long-term result of system competition was that the system of different countries would gradually converge. Another point of view was that the system must be compatible with the existing situation in a country. When an effective system was transplanted into other contexts, it did not necessarily bring good results. An ineffective system did not automatically exit, because the function of benefits redistribution of the system allowed those who were able to benefit from the design of the system to become defenders to the system from resisting, dismantling and updating. If the strength of maintaining an ineffective or inefficient system were strong enough, the transformation of the system would be hard to come by, despite the fact that more effective system design existed.
Developing country studies argued that the capacity of one regime setting economic growth as the nation's top priority issue depends partly on the relationship between the state and society, particularly the system of labour and trade union. Professor Wang Xiangmin from Political Science Department of East China Normal University reported the topic on "Pivot type of social organization and China's national social relations". He interpreted the pivot-type social organization construction of the Chinese group as a sign of”the transformation of people's livelihood ". On the one hand, groups weakened its administrative color through the organizational reform of" small organs, strong grassroots and full coverage ", on the other hand they enhanced their social service function through professionalism such as the introduction of lawyers, specialization which emphasized the qualifications of staff and the socialization construction. China's group organization and its reform could not be explained by the existing theory framework of corporatism and pluralism. It was a uniqueauthoritarian- livelihood structure. China's social governance was becoming more refined, and the means were more diverse and delicate, which could not be unmatched by most East Asian development economies. The limitations of such practices were increasingly evident that applied China's lively and complex experience of practice to the rigid theoretical framework forcedly. China needed a new analytical framework of relations between state and society, and a new discourse system of analyzing relations between state and society.
Professor Zhang Zhenhua apply for the 2017’s General Project of the National Social Science Foundation with the subject of the theoretical tracing of East Asian developing country and China revelation researchof the year. He reported about the research background, main contents, difficulties and emphases of the subject. He pointed out that the existing summary of the Chinese experience and the road usually gained from the perspective of the transition economy, emphasizing the transition from planning to market and the consequent social and political changes, which also focus on the comparison with other economies in transition, and that before and after the reform and opening-up. Such researches overlooked a very important aspect while acquiring important insights, that China was not only a successful model of transition, but also a successful example, which accomplished leap-forward development of the economic, the latter of which was the subject that developmental state theory tried to explain. However, on the one hand, China's mainstream economists had not paid enough attention to the theory of developing countries so far. On the other hand, China's experience had not gained its rightful place in the research of developing countries. In addition, there were still big disputes within the theory of developing countries. The first is the phenomenon of ”labelling" in the study of developing countries, in which all the economies that have achieved extraordinary achievements were called developing countries. Some scholars even began to interpret mercantilism promoted in the western developed countries during the early stage of industrialization from the perspective of the developing countries. The second was that the East Asian developing countries appeared terrible fragmentation: it was previously seen as a model for successful economic catch-up in developing countries, and was then seen as an object of vigilance and reflection for developing countries before and after the period during the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s. He hoped to clarify these basic issues through the study of the subject, to eliminate the differences and controversies within the theory, and to bridge the fragmentation of different historical periods.
He noted that there were three basic ways to study Chinese political and economic practice from the perspective of developing countries. One was seeking the same point or analogy. We could discover the common ground of the political and economic practice between China and the East Asian developing countries in terms of politics and business relations, industrial policy, bureaucracy, productive welfare system, national autonomy, financial repression, cooperative labor system and middle-income trap and so on. Second, seek the difference point and tell the story of China. In this approach, the developing country could be defined withgeneralization, as a country is thatpossesses the will and the capacity to set economic growth as the highest priority of the country's goals and tasks. The differences between China and other developing economies in East Asia did not mean that China is not a developing country, but was a developing country of special type. The third was to seek a developing country from the cases. The caseselection was based on two dimensions: one was industry, market and enterprise organizations closely related to the government such as photovoltaic industry, real estate market, state-owned enterprises; the other was relations between the government and market, which was already modeled, such as the South Jiangsu mode and Wenzhou mode.
In the session of discussion, Professor Yuan Chao of the department of party history and construction from Shanghai Municipal Party School and Professor Huang Chenxi of the social development from East China Normal University, pointed out that the subject needed to define and classify theconcepts of the developing country more meticulously, and differentiate the developing and developing country, It should be theoretically definite whether a developing country was a state form or a type of country. Liu Weiwei, a professor from school of international relations and public affairs of Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, cited the theory of Aoki Masahiko, pointing out that developing countries were not diametrically opposed to collusive countries, and that developing countries were at risk of degenerating into collusion-oriented countries without proper system coordination. Another core concept of the topic of industrial policy about the subject was also discussed by the conventioneers. Geng Shu, a researcher from sociology department of Zhejiang University pointed out that not all economic policies were industrial policies, and that industrial policies in developing countries typically included system arrangements to conserve transaction costs, focusing on tradable sectors that export-oriented, and on a handful of strategic industries and areas. Teacher Chen Wei of East China University of Technology pointed out that it was typically for the industrial policies of developing countries not to promote competition, but encourage entrepreneurs to respond positively to government industry guidance by restricting access. Therefore, the government's industrial policy-shaped market structure was usually oligopoly. The participants also had a lively discussion on issues such as the relationship between the Chinese model and road and developing countries, and the appropriate perspective on the study of China's developing system. These comments, views and opinions would play an important role in the further research of the subject.
The afternoon meeting was divided into two parts. The theme of the first part was "the origins and tracing about the theory of development countries in East Asian ". Teacher Huang Zonghao from School of International Relations and Public affairs Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University, whose speech topic was the development of state theory: Origin, evolution and prospect. Teacher Huang distinguished the theory of developing countries from three generations. The first generation of developing country theory originated in the 1980s, the main issues were around the market and the countries. The debates between scholars was whether East Asian economic miracle was the result of following the outcome of the free market economy or being driven by country or ggovernment. The second-generation theory of developing countries appeared in the 1990s, the main issues were around the country and society. The scholars generally noted the state and society especially the importance of relationship between the politics and commerce to the economic development of East Asia. Since the research of developing countries developed into the third generation in the 2000s, the scholars began to pay more attention to the transition of developing countries, especially the possible influence of globalization on developing countries, and gradually formed two propositions of convergence and transition. Teacher Huang also put forward two criteria for commenting on these theories, one was the time lag of theory and the other was the choice of simplicity or detail about theoretical connotation.
Teacher Chen Weiwei from School of Social and Management, East China University of Science and Technology University, whose topic was return to the classical developing country theory: a comparative historical analysis of national development strategies. Teacher Chen pointed out the approaches that the East Asian developing countries intervened into the market and economy is not unique. The development of textile industry in the United Kingdom from the 16th century to the 18th century. The iron and steel industry’s development of the American from the 19th century to the 20th century, the Germany and the Soviet Union at the early 20th century, and the China after the reform and opening-up had generally adopted the broadly similar approach. Teacher Chen distinguished the developing country theory from the classical theory, the former modern theory and the modern theory. On the basis of comparing their similarities and differences, Mr. Chen believed that successful country intervention has a common feature, which was in the early development of the country to promote economic development, but that was more with the help of market forces in the latter part of the general abandonment of this approach. The logic of this change was that in the early stages of economic development which was the imitation stage, that the direction of development was clear, the government had the information advantage, the policy standard was clear, the government could effectively supervise, the development risk was limited, the concentration helped to create the scale. Nevertheless, in the completion of catch-up and to the stage of innovation, that the direction of development was difficult to judge, the information advantage was lost, the policy standards were vague, the arbitrage space was open, the development risk was huge and the accumulation of risk was concentrated. These changes made intervention more difficult to achieve in the leading innovation period.
Zhang Zhenhua, an associate professor of Department of Political Science, East China Normal University, whose subject entitled Globalization and its response: a sample of South Korea for Asian developing countries' transformation. The international environment with Cold War as its main feature was considered to play an important role in the formation and maintenance of East Asian developing countries. Globalization had dramatically changed the system situation of developing countries, but it did not necessarily imply the disintegration or obsolescence of developing countries. The possible responses of developing countries to new scenarios were diverse and dynamic, with three models of invalidation, disintegration and evolution, corresponding to Japan, Korea and Taiwan from1980s to 2000s. The South Korean sample showed that the transition of developing country was a political and economic subject, which was relatively independent of the developing country, and the new liberalism reform and its consequence depended on the externalityof development, the transformation of the political system, the change of national capacity, the diagnosis of crisis events and their coping styles. This is an important inspiration and reference for China, whose economy was in the process of globalization and that took the mode of government guidance. Mr. Zhang admitted that failure, disintegration and evolution were not diametrically opposed, but could be a phased response of developing countries to globalization. After the age of 2000s, as thepolitical and economic contexts changed, the trend of East Asian developing countries showed a greater convergence. Nevertheless, he insisted that this cross-sectional or process study helped identify the factors that really caused the transition of a developing country.
Teacher Liu Weiwei's speech from School of International Relations and Public Affairs Management, Shanghai Institute of Political Science was titled Why Japan is so hard to give up nuclear: a theoretical analysis based on policy termination. After the Fudao nuclear accident, the Democratic Party (now known as”DPP") proposed to abandon nuclear power from radically to progressively, whose attitude was ambiguous. After the LDP took office, a policy reversal was made that nuclear power was explicitly used as a base charge to restart the plant. There were four reasons such as the protection of political parties, the kidnapping of interests, and the supervision of fictitious and nuclear ambitions, which made it impossible for Japan to abandon nuclear power. As for the future of nuclear power, there was a policy coalition for nuclear and nuclear-arms-dumping in Japan. The nuclear alliance were mainly constitute of the LDP which was long term government and the founders of Japan's nuclear power , a powerful and allied group of business groups like politicians and bureaucrats, power companies and local communities where nuclear power plants are located, of economic and Industrial provinces and other regulatory departments.. The nuclear alliance was largely composed of weak democratic and weaker civic groups, trade unions, intellectuals and the new Energy community. Both sides conducted policy argumentation on the basis of their respective positions. Abandoning the nuclear alliance has relatively weak influence and dispersed opinions, and it is difficult to organize effectively, although it can exert some pressure on government decision-making, but it cannot contend with the nuclear alliance. Japan has been playing with nuclear power development and peaceful use of the cloak, research nuclear technology; accumulate nuclear fuel, research and development of nuclear weapons heart undead. Security anxiety made the so-called "dual-use", in its essence, was merely the cloak of nuclear power development to study nuclear technology, accumulate nuclear fuel, and look for opportunities to engage in nuclear weapons. As a prototype of developing country, Japan's experience has always been the focus of developing countries in East Asia. Liu's research, although focusing on a specific case, but it helps us to understand the basic characteristics of Japanese bureaucracy and political party politics, these political characteristics of the development of Japan's system of construction and transformation played an important role.
The theme of the second session of the afternoon was East Asian Developing Country theory and contemporary Chinese political and economic practice. The Professor Huang Chenxi from School of Social Development, East China Normal University whose speech was entitled China's welfare system: Chinese characteristics or East Asian model. Teacher Huang deemed that social welfare had two ultimate problems, one was welfare system and the other was welfare trend. The so-called welfare system was the way in which welfare production was distributed among countries, markets and families. There were different ways of classifying the welfare system. The idea of an East Asian welfare system as a productive one came from He Liren (Ian Holliday). Under the productive welfare system, economic development was the overriding, and social policy served the goal of economic development. The welfare system played an auxiliary role in economic development by attaching importance to the social policies that had positive effects on economic development, such as education and human capital. The productive welfare system puts limited resources into active welfare policy, focusing on investment-oriented social expenditure rather than consumption-type expenditure. On this basis, Teacher Huang proposed to understand the construction basis and logic of China's welfare system from three angles of socialist country, rapid transition country and welfare culture. The welfare system of our country was similar to the production-type welfare system in East Asia, which embodied the welfare system with social insurance as the core, according to the status of the society, the social insurance system based on the contribution system, the accumulation of funds, and the method of the Society relief. The different aspect included that China's reform promoted rapid economic development, but also led to a widening gap of income distribution, which was distinct from the East Asian developing countries. In addition, China still adhered to the socialist distribution principle of dens and distribution according to work, and constructed socialism with Chinese characteristics as the guiding ideology. This ideological base differed from that of East Asian capitalist countries. In addition, Miss Huang also pointed out that the East Asian development-oriented countries within the welfare model also had important differences, the East Asian welfare model as a whole was appropriate, which was worth further scrutiny.
An associate Professor Yi Yan from Department of Political Science, East China Normal University focused on political communication research, and her speech was titled China's Theatrical politics: the system and ceremony of the Chinese premier's press conference. She noted a so-called going public phenomenon in Western political communication studies, in which political leaders were involved in a series of activities to promote themselves or their policies. Examples of public events included televised press conferences, public speeches for the public or specific public groups, and visits to domestic public places, celebrations or parties that lived nationally. She cited Goffman's concept of theatrical politics to explore how power could be transformed into authority, how to construct political reality by means of ritual and symbol. She tried to reveal how the Chinese government would negotiate with Chinese and foreign journalists about who asked questions and what to ask before and after the press conference. She analyzed the topic management in the press conference, the art of the foreground setting, especially how to avoid the occurrence of the accident. Her final conclusion was that China was moving towards a more complex and pluralistic propaganda model, which was undergoing a process from rigid administration to democratic information management.
Compared with the East Asian developing economies, China's larger size and distinct regional differences had led local government officials to play a more active role in the regional economy, so China's development system was often called local developing countries. It had always been a very interesting topic where China's local officials ' incentives to develop the region's economy come from, and how China's political system sought to strike a balance between encouraging local officials to develop their area economy and guarding against abuses of power. Scholar Chen Hui and Teacher Tao Yijun from political science department of East China Normal University, whose speech topic was the local political economic development management power control and the politicization logic. Citing Zhou Xueguang's The contradiction between authoritative system and effective governance, Chou Li’an's Administrative contract System and Cao Zhenghan's Central Administration, local administration of the people, He noted the recent changes that had taken place in China's central and local relations, and was aware of the potential impact of these changes on local officials. First, the initiative of local officials had been declining, and the second was the rise in the phenomenon of lazy Government. In view of this kind of phenomenon, the central government adopted the method of politics first, required all levels of party member cadres to be politically sensible. However, the actual effect of such efforts still needed to be further observed.
During the free discussion at the two meetings, the scholars held a lively discussion. According to Chen Wei and others’ paper, Zhang Zhenhua deemed that information problems existed at any stage of economic development. The reason why more aggressive interventions in developing countries could have positive consequences in most cases was that the development-oriented system had a set of system arrangements to save transaction costs. Closer political and business relations also helped to redress the asymmetric information between the political and business. Teacher Huang Zonghao, Wang Xiaofei and so on made the summary about contents and characteristics of the developing countries' industrial policy. They believed that the industrial policy could not be generalized understanding. Industrial policy in a developing country reflected the government's leadership of the market, not its pursuit of the market. Catch-up was not a phased task, as developed countries were also developing. It was generally agreed that not all industries in a country would be at the leading stage, that some industries were in a leading stage, some were in a catch-up phase, and that developing countries might have a longer life force.
At the end of the meeting, Zhang Zhenhua thanked the participants and hoped that they would devote more effort to developing country research, and that the relevant scholars would continue to be concerned about the research progress of the subject. The second meeting of the interdisciplinary workshop on the theory of the East Asian developing country and its revelation in China was expected to be held at the end of this year or early next year, when we would invite experts from industrial Economics, sociology, demography especially the impact of ageing on the East Asian developing economies. I also hoped that the teachers here would continue to support and show us results that are more wonderful.
Department of Political Science
1st July, 2017