Creative Forms of Public Participation in China: From Everyday Politics to Media Agendas

A workshop sponsored by the Harvard-Yenching Institute

China has often been considered to be a country that has enjoyed rapid economic growth while suffering from very strict political constraints. Yet in recent years, many creative forms of public participation have emerged, especially from the grassroots level, which include not only significant media agendas but also everyday politics in rural and urban life. A fragile, nascent civil society and other various social players are now actively interacting with the state. Sometimes, they even successfully change the state's policy-making process.

How can we understand these creative forms of public participation in China? Who are the emerging players? What strategies and discourses are they using to mobilize public participation and promote policy pluralization? And what are the political potentials and limitations of these creative forms?

This workshop brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds. Based on empirical research, it aims not only to illustrate new patterns of public participation and civil society development, but also to trace their impacts on the  political institutions in a country undergoing a transition from socialism to a market economy, and from administrative vertical integration to social horizontal solidarity.