In recent years, overseas China studies maintain a great momentum. China has taken a path of development different from that of the western countries, yet achieved a dramatic growth, which probably the major reason why overseas China studies become increasingly heated in recent years. Moreover, contributing to the opening-up and the spread of information, overseas scholars can much more easily get access to the research resource, which is quite an impossible thing prior to the opening-up, nor easy at the beginning of the reform. At that time, the channels for overseas scholars to get to know China are limited to publicly-issued newspaper and official documents.

Most of the overseas scholars of China studies have studied Chinese issues for a long time, tilting towards the right wing, yet calling themselves neutral and objective. In studying the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, these scholars tend to regard China’s opening-up as a part of the modernization and find that China’s modernization is not a typical capitalism process---along with the marketization and the economic taking-off, neither a free democratic political mechanism nor the values of liberalization are established. Through a dual reflection on both the western theories and China’s development path, the overseas scholars try to establish a new interpretation paradigm, bridging the gap between the theory and practice.

Theoretically, the overseas scholars take western modernization theory and civil society theory as a benchmark to judge the development of modern China and define certain fields of China’s socioeconomic structure as Chinese characteristics. They attribute the Chinese characteristics to China’s long history, unique culture and the reform. By this way, some new moderately-modified theories are created, consequently enhancing the western theories’ explanatory power.

For instance, some overseas scholars use dichotomy between state and civil society to study China and find the concept of civil society not applicable to China in terms of either explanation or construction. Philip C.C. Huang maintains that the concept of civil society stems from the evolution of western history, hence not suitable in explaining the social structure of modern China. Huang puts forward the concept of Third-realm Justice during the course of investigations on the legal order of Qing Dynasty's local society, which he thinks is more applicable in understanding the relationship between economy and political power of modern China.

Vivienne Shue argues that prior to the opening-up, China’s rural society formed a typical honeycomb-fashion structure, where each comb is independent and self-sufficient, so the distinction between state and society is fuzzy; whereas after the opening up, government (state), enterprise (market) and village (society) formed an interdependent and cooperated power structure.

Jonathan Unger brings forward a theory named “socialist corporatism”. In her view, “at the national level the state recognizes one and only one organization (say, a national labour union, a business association, a farmers' association)as the sole representative of the sectoral interests of the individuals, enterprises or institutions that comprise that organization's assigned constituency”. In this sense, a link between state and society is formed.

Kellee Tsai argues in Capitalism without Democracy that according to the western economic theory, the middle class, especially the private business sectors always have political appeal. In China, however, private business sectors do not ever have political appeal. Tsai explains that as Chinese entrepreneurs from different levels and different sectors, it is hard for them to form a “being for itself” class.

Overseas scholars reflect upon the western theories and neo-liberalism in a certain degree, but still cannot get out from the deep-rooted structure of the western theories and the mainstream ideology. Both Huang’s “Third-realm” and Unger’s “socialist corporatism” are aiming at finding an intermediary agent between state and civil society.

Author Fan Chunyan and Feng Yanli are from the Institute of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Translated by Zhang Zhe