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Dreaming In Chinese: Accountable Development, Barbara L. Bezdek

Barbara L Bezdek

Economic life in the PRC today is marked by rapid privatization, marketization, and urbanization. This triad of forces effects a profound restructuring of China's urban spaces and is giving rise to new forms of private, voluntary associations of citizens such as neighborhood campaigns of resistance to urban redevelopment. Civil society theory ascribes to such organizations outside of state control, the potential to constrain government officials by enabling citizens to express their collective interests more effectively, and to resist government encroachment more powerfully than they otherwise could. Because resort to China's courts has produced little protection for citizens' formal legal rights …