The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society examines how a group of Chinese intellectual elites referred to as the liberals or ziyou pai edified the civil society project beginning in the 1990s to build an independent space to constrain state power, increase political participation, and promote China’s democratization. In the early 2000s, activists in movements such as the environmental and the AIDS movements identified with the liberals and regarded their activism as part of the project of building civil society. However, since the late 2000s the liberals’ influence has gradually declined. In prominent social movements in the 2010s such as the labor and feminist movements, activists have openly criticized the liberal interpretation of civil society and regarded liberals’ civil society agenda as irrelevant. 

Mujun Zhou employs the concept of interstitial space, or the space where the exercise of power has not been fully institutionalized, to examine the history of the civil society project over the past three decades and its changing relationship with other social movements. Zhou suggests that by advocating for civil society the liberals gained allies and thematized many social problems rising during China’s economic reform; however, liberals’ activism also produced new forms of power inequalities.
 

Mujun Zhou is Associate Professor of Sociology at Zhejiang University.

List of Figures    
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
Part One: The Interstitial Emergence of Civil Society as an Ideational Movement
Chapter 1. The Revival of Public Life, 1992–2002
Chapter 2. The Expansion of Interstitial Publics, 2003–2007
Chapter 3. The Hasty Formation of a Counter-Hegemonic Project, 2003–2007
Part Two: The Contradicting Institutionalization of Civil Society as an Ideational Movement
Chapter 4. The Structural Transformation of Interstitial Publics, 2008–2013
Chapter 5. The Increasing Contestation over the Idea of Civil Society, 2008–2013
Chapter 6. The Tribalization of Public Discussion, 2014–2019
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index