Product desciption
Useful Bullshit Constitutions In Chinese Politics And Society Neil J Diamant by Neil J. Diamant 9781501761270, 1501761277 instant download after payment.
In Useful Bullsh*t, 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? Four times 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 \x22\x22what is a state?\x22\x22, but also others that, through implication, harshly criticized the document and the government that sponsored it. They pressed officials to clarify the meaning of words, phrases, and ideas in the constitution, proposing numerous revisions. Despite many considering the document \x22\x22bullsh*t,\x22\x22 successive PRC governments have promulgated it, amending the constitution, debating it at length, and even inaugurating a \x22\x22Constitution Day.\x22\x22 Drawing upon a wealth of archival sources from the Maoist and reform eras, Diamant deals with all facets of this constitutional discussion, as well as its afterlives in the late \x2750s, the Cultural Revolution, and the post\-Mao era. Useful Bullsh*t illuminates how the Chinese government understands and makes use of the constitution as a political document, and how a vast array of citizenspolice, workers, university students, women, and members of different ethnic and religious groupshave responded.
