Author: Philip C. C. Huang.

The concepts of "bourgeois public sphere' and "civil society' as they have been applied th China presuppose a dichotomous opposition between state and society. The author argues that the binary opposition between state and society is an ideal abstracted from early modern and modern Western experience that is inappropriate for China. We need to employ instead a trinary conception, with a third space in between state and society, in which both participated. This third realm, moreover, took on characteristics and institutional forms over time that need to be understood on their own terms. Discusses briefly some examples of this third realm in imperial, Republican, and contemporary China. -from Author