Civil Society: Concepts And Chinese Reality

It has been almost 20 years since the study of Civil Society begun in China , but there are still many differences on how to understand the concept of "Chinese civil society" correctly, which severely limits the depth of civil society research.Face this situation,this study aims to redefine the civil society of China.As the academic resources of civil society from the West, so this study retrospects the concept and the reality of civil society in the West firstly, and as a reference, to consider the study of civil society in China. The paper selects the research by Deng Zhenglai, Yu Keping and Tang Shiqi as the representative study of Chinese civil society, reviewing them and pointing out its inherent flaws, which is the reason why the academic community can't obtain common view. Now that the theory research can not reach a consensus, scholars turned to empirical study. Investigating comprehensively the existing empirical research of civil society, it is summarized by five facets of the reality of Chinese civil society:the economic growth from outside the system, increased personal autonomy, the rise of the civil society organizations and the public sphere, community autonomy and villager autonomy. On the basis of comparison of both concept and reality of civil society in Chinese and the West, this paper finally defines"Chinese civil society"。Exactly it is paralleling with the state, and a network structure constructed by a variety of actors-mainly private citizens and civil society organizations, who adhering to the contract (law), equality, autonomy and other values. At last, this paper described three dimensions of this definition:the subject, the field of border and the principles or values.