Do authoritarian governments’ responses towards different civil society organizations (CSOs) reflect policy differentiations? Building on the existing literature of graduated control, diversification of civil society, and consultative authoritarianism, this paper utilizes an online field experiment,1 and interviews with government officials and CSO leaders to demonstrate that local governments have the tendencies to intentionally treat different CSOs with different policy responses, referred to as “deliberate differentiation” in this paper. However, contrary to what the existing literature would suggest, this study reveals that at the local level, such differentiation is driven more by the state's interest in extracting productivity and outsourcing responsibility for the provision of public goods and less by the state's need to acquire information from CSOs, including politically sensitive advocacy groups.

This paper examines the nature of China's current research climate and its effects on foreign scholarship. Drawing on an original survey of over 500 China scholars, we find that repressive research experiences are a rare but real phenomenon and collectively present a barrier to the conduct of research in China. Roughly 9 per cent of China scholars report that they have been “invited to tea” by authorities within the past ten years; 26 per cent of scholars who conduct archival research report being denied access; and 5 per cent of researchers report some difficulty obtaining a visa. The paper provides descriptive information on the nature of these experiences and their determinants. It concludes with a discussion of self-censorship and strategies for conducting research on China.

How does the establishment of the National Supervisory Commission affect China's capacity to curb corruption? Using published materials and fieldwork data, this article addresses this question by comparing the newly established anti-corruption agency with the previous dual-track system. It first examines the previous system by focusing on four dimensions of the interaction between the Commission for Discipline Inspection (CDI) and the People's Procuratorate: complementarity, convergence, competition and conflict. Although the CDI and the procuratorate compensated for each other's deficiencies, competition and conflicts between the two institutions were rife, reducing the efficiency of China's anti-corruption work. The article then investigates what impact the establishment of the National Supervisory Commission has had on China's capacity to combat corruption. This new model strengthens the Party's capacity to curb corruption, and the focus of the anti-corruption work has shifted from punishment to prevention, but the Party still needs to resolve three types of unbalanced power relations: between supervision, prosecution and trial; between central and local authorities; and between the state and citizens.

Immediately following the Battle of Chamdo in October 1950, during the period between November 1950 and April 1951, the leaders of the new People's Republic of China (PRC) had two priorities in regard to Tibet. The first was to persuade the Tibetan government to send delegates to Beijing as soon as possible in order to start “negotiations,” and the second was to prevent the Dalai Lama from fleeing Tibet. Using Chinese documents that offer a new version of the process that led to these “negotiations,” this study, without addressing the international issues in detail, illustrates how the leaders of the PRC, either with promises, threats or even by bluff, were able to attain their goals.

This article uses the mean age at menarche of women in China as an indicator of changes in the standard of living during the 20th century. It discusses the difficulties of using this indicator. It finds that the mean age of menarche stagnated at 16 to 17 years for women born during the period between the 1880s and 1930s. The age at menarche decreased in some urban areas, indicating improving living standards in, for example, Beijing and Shanghai. The mean age at menarche increased for 1940s’ birth cohorts, in relation not only to the warfare of the 1940s but also the famine of 1959–1962. The mean age at menarche decreased in a sustained way for women born during the 1950s to early 2000s. The decrease is associated with increasing educational attainment since the 1940s and also improvements in nutrition, hygiene and healthcare.

This article uses an “urban landscapes” perspective to examine the urban sculpture scene and its production system in Shanghai. It reviews both the national urban sculpture discourse and urban sculpture planning practices since 1949, and then focuses on Shanghai specifically. It examines three major stakeholders in urban sculpture development and their interactions. The main argument is that Shanghai's urban sculpture scene has evolved due to the proliferation of aesthetic and symbolic sculptures as opposed to traditional monuments; however, urban entrepreneurialism and globalization have been shaped by the continuity of the Chinese ideological framework, which has transformed urban sculptures from explicit into veiled political didacticism under the guise of caring for the people.