Boston Seminars

May 13, 2005 (Lang Xianping & the Reform of State-Owned Enterprises)

Seminar Notes
Margaret Woo presentated on the debate over property rights restructuring of China's SOEs. The readings this time were focused on Lang Xianping's controversial talk about MOBs (management buyouts)and the debate that ensued between China's mainstream economists and the New Left.
As background reading, please see the following:
A paper by Cui Zhiyuan on Lang Xianping is found here.
The Lang Xianping controversy will be one of the topics to be addressed at the July Beijing workshop. For those interested, Professor Lang started a talk show with Shanghai TV called Larry Lang Live! He was invited to the workshop as a moderator for this panel on which Cui Zhiyuan and Qin Hui will discuss his views.

Seminar Notes
Lili Tsai discussed her paper "The Dangers of Decentralization: Fiscal Management and Informal Institutions in Rural China." See seminar notes. A copy of the paper was sent to committee members.
Jing Wang reported on contemporary Chinese rural reconstruction movement spearheaded by Wen Tiejun.
Both topics (rural fiscal crisis) and the rural reconstruction movement are on the agenda for our July 2005 workshop.

Seminar Notes
Rob Weller led a fascinating discussion on "civil society." The group was happy to have Edward Steinfeld on board.
Here is a document about the keyword "gong" and "si" defined by Mizoguchi Yuzo. Peter Perdue translated and assembled some of those definitions into a file.

Seminar Notes
Article: Daniel Drache, “The return of the public domain after the triumph of markets: revisiting the most basic of fundamentals," in D. Drache ed., The Market or the Public Domain, Routledge, 2001.
Jing started with a summary of the major theses of the volume The Market and the Public Domain.
Kate Hartford led the discussion of Lawrence Lessig, chapter 7 & 10, "What things regulate," “Intellectual Property,” in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace , Basic Books, 1999.

Seminar Notes
Peter Perdue started the discussion of Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere(1989).
Robert Putnam, “Bolwing Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital”

Seminar Notes
The group read Peter Perdue's two essays:
1. "Property Rights on Imperial China's Frontiers"
2. Constructing Chinese Property Rights: East and West"
Reading from Carol Rose, Property and Persuasion: Introduction and Chapters 1, 2 and 9

Seminar Notes
Peter Perdue discussed Foucault's seminal essay "governmentality."
Rob Weller moderated the discussion on Procacci's "Social Economy and the Government of Poverty."
Jing introduced the Chinese concept of "wenti yishi" (problem consciousness vs. ism/theories) as described in Qin Hui's work (see his interview "Dividing the Big Family Assets" published in The New Left Review: ttp://www.newleftreview.net/NLR25403.shtml

Seminar Notes
Tony Saich gave a presentation (i.e., a Ford Foundation reproductive health project in Yunnan).
Cao Tianyu (Boston University) talked about a Nov, 2003 round-table discussion on “social justice” and “constitutional amendment.”
Their presentation was preceded by Jing Wang’s summary of the discussions on xiaokang that took place in the previous meeting.
Cui Zhiyuan's article on the "Xiaokang Society" (in Chinese)

William Rowe, "The Problem of 'Civil Society' in Late Inperial China," Modern China 19:2 (1993)
Frederic Wakeman, "The Civil Society and the Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture," Modern China 19:2 (1993)
Robert Weller, TBA