Description
Book SynopsisIn Useful Bullshit Neil J. Diamant pulls back the curtain on early constitutional conversations between citizens and officials in the PRC. Scholars have argued that China, like the former USSR, promulgated constitutions to enhance its domestic and international legitimacy by opening up the constitution-making process to ordinary people, and by granting its citizens political and socioeconomic rights. But what did ordinary officials and people say about their constitutions and rights? Did constitutions contribute to state legitimacy?
Over the course of four decades, the PRC government encouraged millions of citizens to pose questions about, and suggest revisions to, the draft of a new constitution. Seizing this opportunity, people asked both straightforward questions like what is a state?, but also others that, through implication, harshly criticized the document and the government that sponsored it. They pressed officials to clarify the meaning of
Trade Review
Diamant's vivid and trenchant study offers a vital contribution to our understanding of the Chinese constitution as a political tool, both during the Mao era and today. It should be required reading for social scientists, legal scholars, and historians seeking to understand the interplay between state and society in the People's Republic, and the ways in which the Party-state is able to refashion key political instruments like state constitutions to better suit its needs.
* Journal of Chinese Political Science *
Diamant's provocative arguments, sharp prose style, and thoughtful close reading of previously unused historical documentation amply delivers on the promise of his book's arresting cover and transgressive title.
* The University of British Columbia *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Constitutions, Legitimacy, and Interpreting Popular Commentary
1. Officials Read the Draft Constitution
2. The Draft Constitution in China's Business Community
3. Popular Constitutionalism
4. Reading about Rights and Obligations
5. Christians, Buddhists, and Ethnic Minorities
6. Constitutional Afterlives
Conclusion: The Meanings of the Constitution and Comparative Perspectives
