Social Transformation, Nascent Civil Society and the Taiwanese Capital in Fujian

Social Transformation, Nascent Civil Society and the Taiwanese Capital in Fujian This paper starts with the description of four distinctive characteristics of Fujian's economic development since the 1980s and highlights the importance of foreign investments, within which the ethnic Chinese capital from Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan have played a crucial role in facilitating Fujian's three aspects of unprecedented social transformation. The rise of more and more "autonomous" groups and horizontal "intermediary"social organizations induced by the economic growth and the emerging open character of Fujian society leads to the examination of critical issues, such as to what extent the state-society relations have been fundamentally changed and whether or not the civil society has emerged in Fujian. This paper then assesses two prospective civil society constituents, i.e., the private business and the intellectuals (and new middle class); follows an analysis of the two other related social and political contexts in which the development of the nascent civil society is being shaped, i.e., the rising autonomy of the local government and the increasingly unequal development and class conflicts. In the course of the above assessment of Fujian's nascent civil society, the extent to which the Taiwanese capital has contributed is further examined.