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Taru Salmenkari, "Global Ideas, Local Adaptations: Chinese Activism and the Will to Make Civil Society" (Edward Elgar, 2025)
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:07]
B
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode on New Books Network. I'm your host, Qin Shen. Today I have the pleasure to talk to Dr. Taru Selman Carey, senior researcher at the University of Helsinki. We are going to talk about her new book titled Global Local Chinese Activism and the Will to Make Civil Society. This book investigates local forms of political agency in China in light of the globalization of political values, practice and institutions. She provides a theoretical framework for globalization to examine new forms of governance emerging with non government organizations and how these have reconfigured social power in China. So, Taru, welcome to the show.
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C
Thank you.
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B
Yeah, so as we always do. So first of all, can you say something about your academic trajectory? Like how did you become a China Studies scholar and what brought you to this book project in the first place?
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C
Well, when I entered the university, I already knew I want to studied Chinese. At that time I thought it's history. I had read detective stories, Robert Van Gulick's Judge D stories when I was kid. And so it was quite clear to me that yes, I will study China and I will go to university to study it. And then that happened to be a time when this usually called, like Tiananmen incident or whatever, like, or Democracy Movement, 1989 was one factor that made me study, not that Much history, ancient history that I had thought to, but something quite close to this time. So I started to study what Chinese mean when they talk about democracy. And I chose the period of democracy war movement, so 1978 to. Well, democracy war movement was until 1979, but yes, 1980 about in my study it was not among those people on the streets, but in the official Chinese press. After the Cultural Revolution there was a lot of discussion how new China should look like. Obviously Cultural Revolution had not worked. And we know all that economic reform started because of this. But there was also big political discussion that politics of the Ma era did not work. And so what should China develop instead? Or on the top of it? And democracy was one of the things that was discussed. And so I wrote my PhD thesis about this discussion. But then after spending so so many years in the libraries, I thought now I start to work with people. And I became from historian, I became an anthropologist. And then I was thinking that how can I continue this thing with anthropology? And that was the time when NGOs were starting to emerge in China. And so I chose NGOs as my topic because of course as an anthropologist, many democracy related issues cannot be studied. I don't have big quantified data, I have these smaller groups that I can study. And NGOs appear to be something that are small enough, available enough observable in practice and all these things that anthropologists often like to have. And so yeah, that was again a long time ago. And so this book actually follows from another book. I wrote a book for Routledge a little bit over. So seven years ago it came out. Yeah, eight, seven years ago. And that was kind of anthropological study of NGOs where I used all these famous modernization theory predictions as an anthropologist. And I could show that neither in China nor in Taiwan we actually see that these theories have any systematic relevance. So individual cases, of course, middle class, sometimes one struggles, but so did poor people or a state society boundary. I showed how it is maintained. I use Taiwan as an example, how you keep NGOs outside, how you block their access to real decision making structures. And I use China as an example how this is bridged. Of course it happens in both countries that it's sometimes bridged. So sometimes you're allowed in and sometimes you're not, not. But I chose in this way kind of show that government has ways to do both things, invite you sometimes and exclude you in other times. And I showed how it works in practice. So the state society boundary as something absolute did not work either. So I showed that in this everyday scale, these kind of predictions have no meaning. This like state, society boundary, middle class as a driving force in civil society.
- [07:36]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, fascinating. So, yeah, we will dig deeper into the book. Yeah, we will continue.
- [07:43]
C
Yeah, so, and then of course, the question that this former book raised was that what then? So I showed what doesn't work. So I was like, now I need to write a book about what works in China. And so it took me to globalization theory. And so I started to see how Chinese actually do do it. Why some NGOs are actually quite good at doing politics, why some other people use some other ways to organize.
- [08:24]
B
Yeah, great. So the title of the book is Global Ideas, Local Adaptations, the Chinese Activism and the Will to Make Civil Society. So as this title suggests, the general theme of the book is about the globalization and localization of civil society in China. Right. And it also suggests that some people's will to see China as something more global played a role in this adoption of NGOs in China. So can you elaborate on this process?
- [09:00]
C
Yes. So of course NGOs came to be established in China during the time of democracy promotion. So that was after the collapse of Soviet influence sphere in Eastern Europe, that one of the explanations for democratization in Eastern Europe, but also in Asia, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, in Latin America, civil society played a big role in these theories. And of course it played a big role, but not necessarily in a form of NGOs. But then actually the idea of NGOs comes from somewhere else. It comes from the UN processes, aid distribution processes, where especially Western powers wanted to deliver money not to the local governments in Africa, Asia, or wherever in the poorer regions of the world. And so they started to think, can we have social organizations to it? And NGO became a term and a type of organization that was promoted. But then this kind of critical civil society studies often expects that this is kind of a very dominant process. While what I wanted to show is that there is a lot of Chinese who had will to start NGOs for their own uses. Of course there was also accidental NGOs who didn't think they will become NGOs. But then somebody hinted that, yeah, you can get money for this, what you're doing, if you become ngo, you call yourself ngo. But quite many people were very interested in this concept, probably including people in the government, because government organized NGOs also appeared, and often appeared earlier than those that came bottom up from society, because, for example, UN processes needed them. And many Chinese saw opportunity to do something good, often in that way. Did you ask something else?
- [11:39]
B
No, no, no, no. Yeah, I was going to ask. I was going to ask. So, like, in this book you also explore, like, how Chinese NGO leaders and staff localized NGOs in China, right? And you found that the values familiar with Confucianism are strong in these Chinese ngo. And you even argue that these values can explain why Chinese NGO activism diverge from the liberal civil society ideal promoted to China. So, yeah. So can you just like, for example, give us some example to illustrate this point?
- [12:16]
C
Yes. I first paid attention to some Confucian values as telling us how some NGOs rooted in China quite early on, because at that time people did not have much money and because they were unofficial NGOs, I paid attention to this. Not Congos, but very localized NGOs. So they found a way to get some resources through networks, through exchanges based on kind of community conflicts. I started. So they found ways to get access to resources by this kind of Confucian, like relationships. They, for example, found meeting places, offices through friends in the government or in public institutions, like many NGOs I visited happened in universities. So they had space there. None of them was actually having access to that space, but then a professor organized it for them. And so they had a room where they could meet and they could get stamps from that university if they had to pay something. And so this was very much confusion. Like, yeah, we in this insider group, we help each other. And maybe it was also very communist that this kind of things like office space don't have a value as such, we don't take money of it. If we are away during the weekend, of course you can have meeting here. But then this idea collapsed. So I had an idea to do research on this, but it collapsed very soon after because the second generation of Chinese NGOs, they were very critical about this. They had learned from the donors abroad that they need to have all the receipts and all the things that accountability to donors required. And so this kind of practice stopped. So it's typical for the first generation, but it stopped after that. But then two years ago, I started to do my last field work. And then I realized that Confucianism is actually everywhere. So NGOs, they, for example, used family that we teach to school children to do something, like, for example, they recycle. And then after they pick this habit, they ask their parents, hey, why don't we recycle? And the whole family will start to recycle. So this kind of way that we take family as a meaningful unit and not an Individual Was there also this kind of ideas from Confucian classic Daxue, the Great Learning is its English name. There is this idea that a person who wants to rule a country will need to start from his own self, own morality, and then expand that to the family, to society, and then to the state. And so there is no idea of representation, for example, here at all. It is very practical that when we work on one individual, the whole society will change. Of course, we need to work for many individuals, but we always treat these individuals as individuals who strive for improvement. And this improvement will affect whole society. And this logic, I find it so often in NGOs and actually after this book, one Chinese friend who had worked for NGO told me, not knowing that I have recognized it, told me that in her NGO the boss always asked them to read the Great Learning. So I don't say that families are just Confucian and just Chinese or value of education that NGOs do a lot is only Chinese or Confucian. But it is familiar to the Chinese partly from Confucianism. And this kind of values, they also lead to many things that we value in the Western style of politics be maybe more seen as corruption or failure. Instead of being proper politics, like being very agonistic, alienating others is definitely not good. In Confucianism, you use your network, you try to find mutual understanding. You don't strive to represent anybody, you try to influence them. So I also find that a lot of things that Chinese NGOs are criticized about, like not being properly separate from the government because their networks go everywhere, or not being vocal enough, these come also from Chinese values, not just or not even mainly from for example, fear of government repression or something like that. So I thought it's very important to talk about this in this book.
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B
Yeah, thanks, thanks. I think we can go into some of the chapters of this book. I find this chapter very interesting that the chapter five, and it is titled Ways of being and not Ways of being and not being political and not political. Gay self organizing in Shanghai. And here you compare two types of gay organizing. One is Shanghai Pride and the other is the leisure gatherings among older gay men who frequent a local ballroom and this small street garden. So can you give us some context about about this, the two types of self organizing and what made you intrigued with the case of gay self organizing in the first place?
- [19:23]
C
This was a very good example that NGOs and this kind of Western movement ideals, environmental movement ideas or LGBTQ movement ideals are meaningful for some Chinese, but not for all and this is one of my points about globalization and globalization that people in some countries, they have will to be global and others don't even care about this type of being global. And so there are people and groups and ways of action that are not reached by NGOs or other this kind of Western ideal types of being political. But, but these. And so NGOs movement, certain ideals should be seen in the whole context. So one of the problems of Chinese, for example, NGO study is that it's based largely on case studies of one ngo. And there, for example, people don't necessarily even see how small this sometimes are in the community or that community is actually very divided. And not all of them are actually welcoming these NGOs there. So this is so complex question. And so this question, like who is being left outside of this kind of western style civil society was one very prominent question in this book. And of course these people are not victims. These people are not someone who cannot do anything if they don't have Western style of organizing available to them or they are not interested in that. They can be really active doing things that they think is important for them. And with gays, it was so interesting. So I also use this LGBTQ moment at the Shanghai Pride. It's of course not just gays, but comparing gay activities because the male gay group of old, mostly working class people is a very different context. And then many of these who are in the global movement are young people with language skills education. They are very different kind of people. But I would like to see them both on the same platform and see what they can achieve by organizing themselves in the way that they do. And it's important to show that actually both this group that is inspired by Global Pride movement and this very local groups in dance halls, parks actually get many very similar things can create gay communities where people can feel at home when in the heteronormative society, they often face other kind of situations. So there is a place where we are normal, we can do what we want, we can be ourselves. And also both movements are visible to others. So we can show we exist.
- [23:33]
B
Yeah. So when you talk about, for example, these older gay men, you know, kind of gathering on a daily basis, right at those ballroom and also those street corner garden, I mean, I mean their activities doesn't look political, right? In the sense, in the normal sense as we understand it. But is it like your point that, well, their activities can be considered political in a different way. I was just curious to know more about. How do you, how do you define Their activities as political or not.
- [24:15]
C
So I think political being political, are they political? Is our problem, actually not their problem. That's not the point for them. But in research, it's very typical to dismiss Chinese activity as non political. And that goes even with the pride movement in Shanghai that many researchers say that, oh, but they are not political. They do too much personal things like gathering gay groups, becoming visible in that way. That's of course part of pride movement everywhere. That's the point of pride movement. But then this idea of what is political is limiting what we see there as scholars who use Western theories. And even with very successful fields like environmentalists in China, So many researchers say that okay, but yeah, China can have NGOs where they are not political. But then at the same time this environmental NGOs they change laws, they make law proposals that are accepted. Isn't this politics? And same question comes with how about people who make certain identities visible, in this case gay identities visible, certain kind of different kind of living, something that the society, the political system does not favor. And so I started to study this, how limited this conception of politics is and being political is in our western normal usage. And this is of course something that many researchers of Western movements and Western societies notice too that it's only politics if it's about the state or government. It's only politics if it's public, if it's vocal demand making. So what about if it's about our community? What about if it's practice, not voicing, but still something different, still an attempt to change a society in a way that they accept us. And also very importantly with gay movement is that it gives us confidence that we matter. It shows us we have a community and we have other people who have same kind of situation as us. It's not me alone not able to articulate what is important here because I don't see anybody else. It's not me alone. This is very important in game moment has been very important in games.
- [27:28]
B
I, I was also wondering like, like, are these for example, like older gay men creating some kind of civil society? Or is it like your point that well, civil society is not the right category or the right concept to analyze, to understand these people's activity or like you are actually exploring something outside the model of civil society? I'm not sure if I get it right.
- [28:03]
C
Yes. So as I told you before, I come from history and also history of thought. So for me, a concept like civil society in The west has 2,500 years history and it was not always the same. So in my books I defined civil society differently for the analysis that I'm doing. So for example, in my previous book by Routledge, I used more this kind of 10 years concept that there is certain kind of open society and then more close to more personal relation based communities. And the difference is when people start to work in the situation where they don't know everybody and they make new kinds of relations that don't come with the kind of histories that close relations come that we remember that last year this and this happened with you. You have reputation or even your family has a reputation. So in the situation of open society, we could very much say that this is civil society, what all Chinese gay men do in Shanghai in. In a park and in a dance hall. But then in this book, in order to be able to contrast when we are in standard civil society theory as it is being used now, I use quite much more stricter liberal understanding where these things like being public, being vocal, being political in a certain way, but not being governmental come come very clearly. And in that case there's a lot of debate like this. This is practice, this is so it's not voice, it is us here in locality, our community inside our neighborhood. So in that sense it would be problematic with this kind of conception of civil society.
- [30:27]
B
Yeah, that's great. And you kind of develop this in the next chapter, which is called Ming Jian, Self organizing among the people. And you focus on this cloak concept Ming Jian is based, which is kind of similar but different from civil society. So can you explain this concept for listeners who don't know much about China? Like what is mingjian?
- [30:51]
C
Yes, Ming Jian is actually very old Chinese concept. Min has well, thousands and thousands of years of history. And in that sense it's similar with civil society, that min was always something that rulers were responsible to. So already like 4,000 years ago, that was the situation and that was understanding. So min is something that means something in Chinese context. And min jian means among the people. And it has a specific understanding that this is what people do without government. So what they do collectively, they organize themselves, but not with the government. There is also another old Chinese concept, much newer, but hundreds of years of history anyway, that is gong doing it in common. And that is kind of a space where community does something together. We build this bridge. You donate, they donate, government donates a little bit. And so that is the kind of space where the boundary between state and society is not very pronounced. And both can participate in provision of public goods, for example. But minjian is different in that way that their government is not present. And in China, there is quite much understanding that this is something that people need to do by themselves. So there is a kind of morals that government should take care of this. But then it's people's own responsibility to do that. So, for example, gays in Shanghai, they organize their own park gatherings and they have their own dance hall. And of course, they don't ask help from the government to organize a community, because that's not government's business. This is minjian. This is people's own business.
- [33:17]
B
I was also curious because I don't think, like, you would want to make something of a kind of cultural essentialist claim, right, that minjian is something unique to China. But like, if someone asks, so what you identify as minjian can be found in many societies, and how would you answer this?
- [33:37]
C
In a way, yes. So I, for example, discuss a little about informality and literature about informality. That is, every society, we have informality. And the newer research is not taking it as a failure, like not being formal. So it's not about being legal. As some older understandings of informal, where informal economy is illegal economy, the gray economy, this kind of very negative understandings prevailed, like 20 years ago. But nowadays there is much understanding that government allows this kind of spaces to be. And even might decide that, yeah, we don't do this, you poor people build your own houses, for example. Or another government might say that, yeah, we need public housing because we don't want people to live on streets. So how things are formalized or informalized, that is very much an issue of how politics works also. And this was giving me some ideas about how to analyze minjian and informal economy. For example, in China used to be especially, like 20 years ago, it was quite big, now it's much smaller. But then minjian is not only that. So mingjian also has its moral, historical understandings about where is the limit, like what belongs to the government, what belongs to the people. So it is not like informality is the same. It makes this distinction that here government kicks out these informal people to let property develop first, build new houses there. So it's about power and it's about decision when this is tolerated and when not. But. But mind has a very specific understanding of what belongs to the people and legitimately so where government cannot and should not interfere.
- [36:16]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
- [36:18]
C
And otherwise it's very different from civil society. So civil society has this one thing that there is governmental sphere and social sphere, and they are different. But then these kind of other ways. Like what is a proper way of action in civil society. Minjian does not say anything about that. Minjian. The biggest Chinese demonstrations are organized in Minjian. And then something very, very small, local self help groups, for example, are also organized in Minjian.
- [37:04]
B
It was also interesting like how the NGO people understand Mingjian. Like you told us in the book, these people call themselves Mingjian organizations. Right. But they also like dismiss some Mingjian self organizing activities. Activities. So yeah, can you say a bit more about this?
- [37:25]
C
Yes. So NGOs are. And especially NGOs that are organized by people themselves. So NGOs in any society, there are many kinds of them. There is government organized, business organized, donor organized, and so on in any society. So this is not specifically Chinese that these are the types of NGOs do exist. But so Chinese NGOs and especially those who have organized themselves or who have organized by society by people who are volunteers or otherwise kind of, they have ideals that they promote. They call themselves Minjian properly. So saying that they are coming from this kind of background, we come from the sphere where people organize themselves. But then Minjian has a lot of these other things. So there's so a lot of things happening. Minjian. So Min Jian, as I said, could be almost anything. Because it doesn't say what is the content of your self organizing. It just says that here is where you self organize. And these are some values that belong to this self organizing. And so when, for example, people organize themselves for protests, Chinese NGOs stay out. So in some cases, some of them participate as individuals. But many actually think that this is kind of uninformed, rude action and we should be more civilized, we NGOs, we're not this riffraff kind of ideas. So there is a big division there, like what is what. What NGOs doing in terms of Minjian. And I here use Minjian as this type of action where, yes, some ways of organizing, like organizing protests that NGOs do not approve, it's totally okay because that's what Minjian is about. But I don't say that NGOs use it not in a reasonable way. So they use it to say that, yeah, we are here as Mindjian NGOs and then they are gongos also in the same meeting, for example, they make this kind of distinctions.
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B
Great, great. So, Taruk, before we wrap up our conversation, can you tell us something about like what are you working on now? What project?
- [40:33]
C
So my new project is about civil society in Chinese climate policy at the moment. And now civil society is much bigger. So I realized when I was observing One of these UN Climate Summits 2 years ago that civil society in there is actually much bigger than just NGOs. It is business organizations. It is think tanks. It is many kinds of associations. And so now I'm a little bit out of the OR. I am keeping NGOs in, but now I'm a little bit in more unfamiliar field to see how, for example, business associations work with climate issues. Very interesting.
- [41:26]
B
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That's a fascinating project. And. Yeah. And thanks, Taru, for joining the show. And I do look forward to your future work.
- [41:37]
C
Yes. Thanks for invitation.