F

or years, I have been fascinated with the concept of “social capital” -- defined simplistically as the cultural “glue” that helps people cooperate and holds a community or society together. This would include shared values and shared habits that reduce friction and promote harmony. The academic literature on social capital usually highlights the weakness of Chinese societies in this area. Chinese tend to have “low-trust” cultures based on the difficulty of building trust outside the boundaries of kinship ties.

In this context, I have been thinking about the different means used over time by Chinese governments to mobilize cooperative action. In pre-modern agrarian China, the traditional Confucian teachings and social structure built upon the basic extended family with its clan networks and associations, to tie local communities into the bureaucratic state structure for large-scale civilian or military endeavors. The Emperor was the highest patriarchal authority. (See my first essay of ’08 on family-based identities.) This social system had collapsed by the early 20th century.

From the mid-1920s through the Cold War, China’s modern industrializing regimes, both Nationalist and Communist, sought to use militant state ideologies and authoritarian party-state structures to mobilize society from the top down for military defense and rapid industrialization. These efforts echoed or even directly copied methods used in the Soviet Union. I think many of the common features shared by Russia and China today are due to the residual autocratic Soviet-style structure and culture adopted earlier under war-time conditions of fear and scarcity.

The use of vertical lines of authority, informal personal ties of patron-client loyalty, and patriarchal values, prompted Kenneth Jowitt, a Soviet expert, to view this kind of society as an alternative path to the Western model of democratic liberalism, which he called “communist neo-traditionalism.” China expert Andrew Walder adopted Jowitt’s concepts and methods creatively to analyze Mao’s China, where the rural communes and urban work units (the danwei) were used by the state to replace family identities and loyalties. The ultimate patriarch was Mao Zedong, of course, but the operative authority figure was the local Party secretary, who was delegated unlimited authority over those under him so long as he proved his loyalty to those above.

Coercive “command and control” mechanisms of mobilization were applied to large-scale projects from land reform or communization to large-scale dam-building or “backyard steel” production, literacy campaigns and disaster relief, or political purges. The National Party’s Confucian-fascist “New Life” campaign in the 1930s was an early example, followed by waves of radical Maoist ideological campaigns, all meant to forge new levels of public loyalty to the state and willingness to sacrifice family and local interests in the name of national unity and modernization. The resulting culture bred and reflected passivity and dependency on higher authority.

In the global era, such centralized approaches to mobilization have become much less effective due to lack of discipline (fueling massive corruption) at the top and cynicism at the bottom of society. Open borders have brought access to information and relationships outside the party-state structure, and have created a more pluralistic culture. Today’s “market Leninism” is a transitional hybrid society. The state still controls key industries and institutions, but economic and social organizations are “outgrowing socialism.”

The response by state and society to May’s Wenchuan Quake was a window into the changes underway. (See Simon Elegant’s article in Time magazine, June 2nd, at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1808638,00.html). Taiwan and Hong Kong have pioneered the search for democratic Chinese politics and voluntary, grass-roots mobilization of social capital by which the state plays a key role but supports involvement by private business and social organizations. This cooperative “win-win-win” relationship is the stated goal of the nonprofit sector in mainland China, and this year showed that progress has been made.

The first and major responders to rescue earthquake victims were units from the PLA and armed police force brought in from outside the area, with delays due to the massive damage and minimal transportation and communication infrastructure common to such poor mountainous regions populated mainly by ethnic minorities, in this case, Tibetans.

These same conditions justified the limits placed on accepting offers of rescue teams from other countries. (Eventually, only a handful of Asian countries were invited in.)

The massive outpouring of compassion from around the country and around the world surprised everyone. As with other crisis relief efforts (such as the February snowstorms and June flooding in South China), the state strictly limited the collection of domestic donations to those trusted government-organized nonprofits like China’s Red Cross.

What was new and different this time was the spontaneous, effective mobilization of donations and volunteers by China’s new middle class, and by foreign corporations and also foreign nonprofits already working in China. Some “yuppies” just filled their cars with instant noodles and blankets and drove to the site. As the crisis has moved from the rescue phase into recovery and rebuilding (which will take decades), this is continuing.

Essential for this to occur was government approval of open media coverage and media professionalism, along with experienced networking and organizing in the nonprofit sector … the fruits of research and training, as well as financial support and modeling by international media and NGOs over the past ten years.

The result of this win-win-win cooperation has been an unprecedented level of national spirit, with popular (and overseas) approval of the government, and pride in Chinese society, aligned with appreciation for international sympathy and support. Let’s hope the experience breeds the courage to continue along this path.

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