| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 51

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Robert Cosbey, Watching China Change (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2001)

WATCHING CHINA CHANGE aims to sketch in broad outline the historical transition from socialism to a market economy, demonstrating the impact of social, economic and cultural changes for the people of China. Spanning some twenty years from 1972 as part of Mao Zedong's "Cultural Revolution," and lasting until the death of Deng Xiaoping in 1997, the book presents the reader with an opportunity to reflect on how ideologies and policies play a role in informal social interactions that permeate Chinese daily life. Although a political idealist, Robert Cosbey sees a need to move out of the world of ideas and into the world of Realpolitik. Thus ordinary life becomes a focal site rather than a neglected domain of investigation. At first blush, the read is similar to Jan Wong's Red China Blues (1996) and Jan Wong's China (1999) as well as Michael Dutton's Street Life in China (1998). However, Cosbey utilizes a more comprehensive approach in attempting to integrate the lives of people within the sweeping changes of political economy.	1
Cosbey's text is neither doctrinaire nor polemic; indeed, he does not use the self-descriptor "socialist." In a way he elaborates Herbert Marcuse's argument that "social change needs to begin at home;" if it does not do so, then it merely replaces one authoritarian order with another. Although strongly supportive of many aspects of Chinese culture, Cosbey works arduously to create a sense of balance in the text. He is as critical of the excesses of the Mao era and the "Gang of Four"as he is of what Karl Polanyi refers to as a "market mentality," characterized by free-agent workers and the inclination to view human life in terms of an exchange of commodities. He has come to understand the moral dimensions of political commitment — to engage a shared vision of equality and justice when confronted with expansive changes in social conditions. Cosbey's pragmatic socialism causes him, therefore, to focus on the extent to which Chinese society "produces high-quality goods at a profit, but also to make a good life for the people."(xvi)	2
Chapter Four unfolds Cosbey's most substantive analysis of the benefits of a socialist state. He is at his best highlighting socialism's "iron rice bowl" features including guaranteed jobs, housing, medical care, free schools, and the provision of old-age pensions through the factory system. He draws interesting contrasts between older economic policies "to serve the people," and Xiaoping's "socialism with Chinese characteristics," in which, as a throwback to 19th century unregulated capitalism, the rallying cry is "to get rich is glorious." (xxii) Two political visions are differentiated — the former, doctrinaire, and associated with "brutal excesses" that purged the country of intellectuals, and sent "tens of thousands of young people to learn from the peasants in the countryside," and demolished all things artistic such as the flowering gardens of Nankai, in the name of a future "of self-interest and production for profit through the 'Four Modernizations'" of agriculture, industry, the army, and science and technology. (99) Thus, the slogan, "Black cat, white cat, what does it matter so long as it catches mice" became exceedingly popular as economic changes were initiated by post-Mao governments. (203)	3
Cosbey points out that as a result of the introduction of market forces, surplus value is being squeezed out of labour by "new managers," and 100,000,000 people have become unemployed and largely unqualified for emerging jobs in the new economy. It is argued that concentrating on reforming agriculture through collectives and building the country's infrastructure (including heavy industry and hydroelectric dams) during the Great Leap Forward provided the material base upon which the current consumer-oriented society rests. While Cosbey admires changes taking place in the new economic zone of Xiamen that have produced higher wages, upgraded plant assembly lines, and provided numerous consumer goods in modern, free-enterprise stores, he is also cognizant that throughout the country many people no longer enjoy job security, social inequities have increased, and the noise and pollution of traffic has replaced hand-pulled carts, as the entire region is transformed into a marketplace. It is suggested that combining economic liberalism with political and social repression (an adaptation of the Singapore model), almost inevitably led to the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square. Despite the provocation of the demonstrators, Cosbey makes it clear that no government is ever justified in utilizing the army against its people in such a heinous fashion. A lament is heard for the passing of the spirit of communalism, as evidenced in the campaign to eliminate flies in which each individual was assigned a daily kill quota. Equally regrettable are cultural shifts in the national opera company's political performances of "Going to the Fields," transformed to vacuous presentations that suggest more traditional feminine roles and social divisions along ethnic lines.	4
Cosbey wants the reader to appreciate the fact that starvation, high infant mortality, massive illegal trading in smuggling opium, and waves of conquerers characterized the period prior to 1949. In telling the tale of what socialism has achieved for China, he points out as well the internal strife between the Nationalists headed by Chiang Kaishek and the Communists led by Mao Zeodong. Given that the Chinese government is currently encouraging investment by foreigners "who intend to take out profits for their companies back home," Cosbey is incredulous that "this time the Chinese are making the rules."(89) Neither is the paradox lost on Cosbey of Mao replacing a hierarchical caste system based on personal authority with a collegial system, only to be worshiped as an emperor (a role rejected by Xiaoping). Nor does he shrink from criticizing the heavy hand of Mao bureaucracy that forced people into factories and on farms against their will. Nonetheless, some of his strongest criticism is reserved for the rampant corruption, drugs, and prostitution that permeate the culture of new China. In contrast to Mao's commitment to an interventionist state, Xiaoping's "Responsibility System of Farming" swept away the commune system. Although more individual initiative emerged, plots of land were often too small to cultivate, a few farmers became wealthy at the expense of others, and there was a growing tendency to keep children (and especially girls) out of school to work in the fields.	5
The analysis in Watching China Change stands in sharp contrast to discourses of liberal democracies that stress that generating employment and wealth is the only purpose of political life. Cosbey argues against engaging in competition in a global Darwinian contest that will further polarize Chinese society. While advocating for a society that is less bound to uncritical notions of progress and fixed dogma, he has not given up on the great socialist experiment. Private enterprise and the free market based on unhindered, competitive individualism are inimical to Cosbey's hope of creating economic systems that enable people to take control over their lives and seek a politics of justice. Even Adam Smith, the foremost thinker in the hagiography of neoliberalism, advocated the principle of self-interest with limitations, and only insofar as it promoted the common good.	6
The chapter on Ningxia offers an analysis of inequities, since this Muslim area is one of the poorest in all of China. Despite the fact that Mao's minority policies were some of the most progressive in the world, the unleashing of the Red Guards (to eradicate local customs and cultures that served as an extension of centuries of discriminatory legislation favouring the Hans) is deplored by Cosbey in a "classless society." He utilizes small vignettes such as the change in diet from sea slugs and snakes to fast food, and the disappearance of the old teahouses with traditional storytellers to illustrate changes that have both unintended and somewhat welcomed consequences. Transformations in Chinese political economy have necessitated for example, that parents pay for their children's schooling and have resulted in the disappearance of "barefoot doctors."	7
Cosbey is well aware that universities were the first target of the Cultural Revolution. Nonetheless, a quote from Mao, "if you want to be the people's teacher, first be the people's student," reveals the approach to education that he favours. Grappling with issues of power embedded in teacher/student relations, he concludes that the Chinese system of Mao's vintage, devoid of examinations and degrees, was less elitist and more relevant to the needs of society. Upon retiring from the University of Regina and taking up a teaching position at Nankai University, he faced, however, the contemporary situation in which his students memorized enormous amounts of material and looked to their teachers to provide opinions and ideas rather than developing their own powers of reasoning and analysis.	8
The text ends with a brief section titled "Women: Holding Up Half the Sky," widening the focus to include gender. The myth that Cosbey seeks to dispel is that women have made substantial progress in the new economy. Yet another irony of his work deals with one of the significant goals of the Cultural Revolution — to allow women to achieve equality with men. Practices such as foot binding and concubinage of the old China have been eliminated and women's status improved as a result of the contributions they made to the revolution of 1949. Cosbey demonstrates, nonetheless, that women when compared to men have not obtained jobs in equivalent numbers in the business sector, and he underscores the paradox of female employment in which sex segregation in the labour force has served to devalue the nonmonetary contributions of female domestic labour. His skepticism about the possibility of improving the future status of women is well founded but unfortunately he offers few suggestions that address women's oppression.	9
The descriptions offered in Watching China Change are largely based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence, and for the most part do not move below the surface to explore the theoretical underpinnings of analysis George Lin takes up in Red Capitalism in South China (1997) or Charles Trenck's treatment of China's growing dependency on the global economy in Red Chips and Globalization. (1999) Nonetheless, Cosbey's well-written, thoughtful overview deserves a wide readership for providing an exemplary study of China's changing political economy.	10
Diane Meaghan Seneca College

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