Risk and Individualization: An Inquiry About the Ethic of Accountability and Its Challenge to China’s Bureaucracy

Abstract

This article aims at the challenge to contemporary China’s bureaucracy despite its great economic achievement acquired in the past four decades since the Reform and Opening era and discusses within the sight of Risk Sociology how China manage to escape the trap of national governance such as the middle-class and involution traps,which can be used to interpret the rise and fall of post-industrialized countries.
In part one the overall performance of China’s economy and the challenge it faced are discussed;in part two the basic beliefs of contemporary China’s bureaucracy,especially those of local bureaucratic system was outlined and questioned;in the last part it’s argued that China’s evolution trend and self-orientation in the decadency of globalization should be shed light on that the fundamental transformation of China society occurred in the sphere of social individualization and its ethic consequence,which means the modernization of ethics both for the governments and the citizens.