Author's Response: China's Water Warriors—Returning to the Scene of Battle

[ 143 ] book review roundtable • china’s water warriors demonstrations that the authorities could brand as threats to sacred social stability. But in his own accounts of the Dujiangyan and Nu River cases, Mertha draws attention to the way the authorities were divided. Different government agencies had different interests, different scientific experts held different opinions, and different levels of government attached different degrees of importance to the projects. One key reason for the activists’ success in these two cases, it seems, was that the activists skillfully exploited these fissures, chiseling into them to shatter the state’s determination. If the authorities had kept a more disciplined grip on the situation, they could probably have resisted their opponents. The state still holds almost all the good cards in this game, even if it cannot always play these cards to best effect. Mertha is undoubtedly correct to point out the new roles that civic activists are creating for themselves in China, and we can all hope that the successes of activists will shed new light and breathe fresh air into a stultifying system. The balance of power between these activists and the government, however, is clear even before the book begins. In the preface, where Mertha thanksallthosetowhomheowesadebtofgratitude,the“individualsinChina” who make up the “dense network of activists, journalists, and sympathetic officials” and who are “a critical part of the story” have to remain anonymous for their own safety (p. xvi). “Pluralization” clearly does not mean freedom. Author’s Response: China’s Water Warriors—Returning to the Scene of Battle Andrew Mertha My first year in China wound down abruptly on the night of June 3, 1989, when the tanks rolled into Beijing, killing hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of Beijing’s citizens and breaking up the occupation of Tiananmen Square. I had left Beijing for Chengdu on May 5 and was one of the few foreign witnesses to the bloodshed that occurred in that city.1 The events of June 3–4, 1989, 1 Karl L. Hutterer, “Chengdu Had Its Own Tiananmen Massacre,” New York Times, June 23, 1989. andrew mertha is Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. He can be reached at . [ 144 ] asia policy created a “before” and “after” bifurcation in the way I viewed Chinese politics and society from that point forward. In contrast to the growing chorus of those denouncing China, what I felt was a profound sense of loss. In the six years that I have lived and worked in China since then, never again would I be exposed to the unqualified (albeit naïve) sense of hope and optimism that so many Chinese people had exhibited about the future. This has colored my view of China ever since. I was, therefore, not the most likely candidate to arrive at the conclusions that I did in China’s Water Warriors: that Chinese politics are slowly moving in a direction of increased pluralization within the policymaking process. Indeed, I subconsciously resisted this conclusion because it was inconsistent with my own biases. But over the course of almost three years of research, I reached a certain point where I could no longer deny what I was observing: the data that I gathered simply overwhelmed any cognitive dissonance on my part regarding China’s state-society relations. Do I think for a minute that China has left behind its unfortunate legacy of repression, unequal treatment of citizens, and arbitrary enforcement of laws, norms, and regulations? Of course not. But what I found does suggest that by continuing to view the People’s Republic of China (PRC) without updating assumptions that we might have formed in the 1980s and 1990s, we miss what is actually occurring in front of our eyes and in real time. Conceptually speaking, if we insist on conflating political liberalization with democratization, we face significant developments in China with blinders on, misinterpreting events that, ironically, China’s biggest critics would welcome: the gradual pluralization of the political process in the PRC. I am both happy and humbled by the opportunity to have China’s Water Warriors analyzed and evaluated by such a stellar cast of scholars and policy analysts. Their interpretations are sophisticated and illuminating...