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Critique of Anthropology
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Is China Becoming Neoliberal?

Donald M. Nonini

University of North Carolina, donald.nonini{at}unc.edu

Contemporary China has recently been seen as in the throes of `neoliberal restructuring'. This claim is contested on theoretical and methodological grounds. During the period of economic liberalization since the death of Mao, China has shown a hybrid governance that has combined earlier Maoist socialist, nationalist and developmentalist practices and discourses of the Communist Party with the more recent market logic of `market socialism'. A new cadre-capitalist class has emerged during liberalization, while large numbers of farmers, urban workers and a `floating population' of urban migrants have been dispossessed of land, employment and political rights. Reactions by many higher-level Party cadres against dispossession show a residual commitment to socialist values. Guanxi personalist ties within the new cadre-capitalist class simultaneously blur the `state'/`market' boundary, lead to dispossession and create conditions for accelerated capitalist growth. The conclusion is that contemporary China is not becoming `neoliberal' in either a strong or weak sense, nor undergoing a process of neoliberalization, but instead shows the emergence of an oligarchic corporate state and Party whose legitimacy is being challenged by disenfranchised classes, but is still in control through its efforts at modernization.

Key Words: China after Mao • clientelism • Communist Party of China • economic liberalization • market socialism • neoliberalisms • personalism

Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 28, No. 2, 145-176 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0308275X08091364
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