公民参与、群众参与与社区参与

Studies on the community participation in urban China are generally guided by citizen participation theories. However, these theories from the West lose their explanatory power when applied to the settings in China because the institutional arrangements of community participation here aim at securing recognition of the state authority by the people and their inspired and aggregated support to the Party-state policies rather than engaging citizens in political decision-making processes or cultivating a public sphere independent of the state, as the case in the West. The tradition of the Chinese Communist Party’s social mobilization and mass participation formed during the process of state-building since the 1940s can give meaningful insights into community participation and community collective actions in the course of China’s social transformation. This paper explains the processes of urban community mobilization and participation from the perspective of state mobilization and mass participation, as well as the significance of these community interactions to society’s growth.