In search for an East Asian model:Comparative Civil Society Study in China, Japan and South Korea.

Deeply rooted in the western historical and political context, the concept of "civil society" is often portrayed as the opposition to "the state", a force that checks the state's power and develops in tandem with democracy. In East Asian countries where power has traditionally been rested with the state, in the 1990, there has been a booming of NGOs and voluntary associations in three major East Asian countries-China, Japan, and South Korea. What makes the state finally unleash its grip on the society and even yield its power to the latter? This paper argues that in East Asian countries, civil society grows out of the needs of the state. It hypothesizes that it is the incapability of the state to meet the challenges of decentralization that opens up new space for the vibrant growth of civil society. The deepening of market liberalization in the 1990s has transformed the traditional role of the state in managing economic and social affairs. This process brings about a large number of social and economic challenges that the state is not able to cope with. As a result, the state has to give more space to the society, yielding part of its power in return for corporation and even partnership in addressing those issues. The paper intends to develop a model that captures the pattern of civil society transformation in three East Asian countries: China, Japan and South Korea and tries to discover the driving forces behind this evolution. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]