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Frequently, civil society is identified with an increase of associational life. Yet, in this article it is argued that the emerging of citizens and citizenship is a vital precondition for developing a civil society. Here I will focus on a concept of citizenship grounded in a local context. Accordingly, it focuses on both the public discourse on citizenship and the institutional effects with regard to citizenship generated by the establishment of urban neighborhood communities and the enhancement of participation. The author's hypothesis is that by virtue of newly established neighborhood communities in urban areas, a gradual transition from 'masses' to citizens seems to manifest itself. This transition process will be examined in four central fields: (a) community participation and grassroots elections; (b) self-administration (autonomy) and the attitudes of residents thereto; (c) the growth of individual autonomy; and (d) value engineering by the party state. As the institutional preconditions for a civil society in China are widely lacking, the party-state conceives its role in initiating them. It is precisely the combination of the top-down establishing of neighborhood communities and grassroots elections, mobilized participation and volunteers, which gives evidence of the party-state's intention to generate structures of an (illiberal and controlled) civil society. Citizen status has not yet been fully achieved in China; yet the state-led activation in urban neighborhood communities shows that the political leadership has decided to chart this course. Finally the article classifies the concept of neighborhood communities as a model of 'authoritarian communitarianism'.
Thomas Heberer (Wed,) studied this question.