L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui: In your book Une sociologie de la Chine, [A Sociology of China] (La Découverte, 2010), you begin by distinguishing two ways to study Chinese society, mainly in order to develop your own necessary detachment from the subject. What are these two approaches and what alternative do you propose?

Jean-Louis Rocca: The first consists in saying that Chinese society must follow, as have all other societies before her, a predetermined development of economic revival and evolution towards democracy, based of course on a so-called western model. However, China is criticised for not following this pattern, as the development of its economic system is detached from its political system. A second way of analysing China today is based on the premise that “Chinese culture” is inhibiting the country’s evolution towards democracy. For example, there is the respect for parents and discipline. The case of Taiwan clearly shows the limits of these analyses, as it is a state that emerged from Chinese culture but which functions democratically. The analytical method I advocate is not based on following a model. As a sociologist, I simply try to understand, from the inside, why this system functions despite its paradoxes.

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