The anti-Unity Sect campaign (1949–53), a precursor to the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (the zhenfan movement), was one of the Chinese Communists' most violent policies to root out a perceived evil cult in China. This article argues that the drive was never simply a religious crusade. It was essentially a mass mobilization for the purpose of consolidating the Communists' power and legitimacy. Through a host of propaganda channels, including media attacks and public trials, the Communists dealt a crippling blow to the sect. The mobilization campaign turned many citizens into supporters and agents of the government, and its tactics would soon be mimicked in subsequent political movements.

This report presents a portrait of contemporary liberal Chinese journalists. Compared with the national average ten years ago, a typical journalist in Guangzhou is younger, better-educated and more likely to be female, and less likely to be a Communist Party member. The survey shows that the literati value coexists with both the modern professional and Party journalism value during the current journalistic professionalization. Such coexistence results in a complexity in journalists' attitude and behaviour. Journalists tend to be inactively liberal: possessing liberal attitudes but not engaging themselves in action. The survey also reports evidence on the contingency of journalistic behaviour logic. Professional logic shows its popularity when journalists encounter conflicts involving legal, economic and political concerns, but not in cases involving moral or cultural conflicts. Neither professional nor commercial logic is strong enough to oppose political logic when journalists are handling severe political issues.

Scholarship on education in China has correctly emphasized the massive inequalities in reform era educational funding. In describing these inequalities, however, scholars have made dubious claims about the supposedly low level of funding for education in China in relation to other countries. In this article, we examine the statistics on which this claim is based and detail the ways in which education is funded in China that do not get counted in the statistics. We conclude that though funding for education in China is unequal, the total level of such funding may not be low. Moreover, the official statistics are not a reliable guide to comparative discussions of educational funding.

An increasingly visible facet of China's commercial diplomacy has been its pursuit of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) with small and medium-sized economies outside Asia. China's PTAs, completed or under negotiation, have indicated both a conservative approach and an increasing comfort level with cross-regional trade negotiations. The China–Iceland PTA negotiations since 2006 illustrate this new thinking. Although the island state has a considerably smaller economy, China has perceived the negotiations as being undertaken between equals as well as an important bilateralism model. A successful deal will further demonstrate a new stage in Chinese commercial diplomacy and its approach to bilateral trade as well as a determination to engage the European economy even through a “side door” approach. However, in light of Iceland's banking crisis and deep recession in late 2008, Beijing has also had to address the uncertainties of negotiating with small states in a time of global economic uncertainty.