Is privatization in China leading to political change? This article presents original survey data from 1999 and 2005 to evaluate the Communist Party's strategy towards the private sector. The CCP is increasingly integrating itself with the private sector, both by co-opting entrepreneurs into the Party and encouraging current Party members to go into business. It has opened the political system to private entrepreneurs, but still screens which ones are allowed to play political roles. Because of their close personal and professional ties, and because of their shared interests in promoting economic growth, China's capitalists and communist officials share similar viewpoints on a range of political, economic and social issues. Rather than promote democratic governance, China's capitalists have a stake in preserving the political system that has allowed them to prosper, and they are among the Party's most important bases of support.

Ten years after the handover, Hong Kong's media faced multiple pressures. There were few cases of outright prosecution of the media, but there were subtle political and economic pressures. Co-optation of media bosses, fear of losing advertising revenue and media takeovers by pro-Beijing figures brought some of the media into line. This brought editorial shift and self-censorship, as the media systematically shied away from stories that might antagonize Beijing, underplayed negative news for the government and gave the democrats less favourable coverage. Interviews with journalists showed little evidence of ostensible intervention from government officials or media bosses, but newsroom socialization and editorial gatekeeping are effective constraints. The constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press and the moral force of professional ethics lent the media the room to defend and negotiate their freedom, but the pervasive fear induced by the political environment invariably overpowered the resistance and constrained press freedom in Hong Kong.

In recent years Chinese government policies and research programmes have advocated agricultural industrialization in order to raise demand for farm products, facilitate structural adjustment in agriculture, create rural employment and increase farm incomes. But although agro-industrial activities have become a key feature of China's rural development strategy, the agricultural industrialization policy has been little studied outside China. This article is a case study of the implementation of agricultural industrialization and its impact on rural livelihoods in Sichuan province. It identifies and analyses two major forms of agricultural industrialization: “dragon head enterprises” and “rural associations.” Although agro-industrial development is likely to be a critical determinant of China's future social and economic trajectory, the preliminary analysis given here shows a mixed picture. Positive effects include increases in both income and employment. But there is also a negative dimension, shown by the existence of numerous entry barriers, unequal bargaining power and an uneven distribution of benefits.

This article addresses one of the institutional elements identified as essential to modern capitalism, but which has received little research attention, that is, the “freedom of the markets.” Through an analysis of inter-firm trading ties for the procurement of intermediate products in China's automobile industry, this article demonstrates that to a significant extent the exchange structure remains bound by particularistic networks of trading between institutionally tied actors. It also shows how the resultant “dualism” in market networks, which discriminates between actors sharing particularistic ties and those that do not, is derailing the rational development of the industry by sustaining a “cellular” pattern of industrial development. The case of the auto industry suggests that it may specifically be the large-scale, modern industrial sectors – which require resources to be mobilized and actors to be co-ordinated at vast scale and scope – where the need for the “rational capitalistic establishments” are greatest, and therefore the failure to institute them may constitute a real hurdle to development.

This list of books received at The China Quarterly during the period stated is intended to serve as an up-to-date guide to books published on imperial, modern and contemporary China.

This article looks into the process through which minority cultures and subjects are interpreted and defined by the cultural mainstream as inferior and less valuable for the modernization of China, and in consequent need of transformation, particularly through education. In dichotomizing advanced cultures vis-à-vis backward ones, this process has ethnicized minorities' differences. However, within the process itself are internal contradictions that render any attempt at actual education self-contradictory and ultimately unproductive. Using three sources of data – government policy, academic discourse and ethnographic fieldwork – the article provides corroborative evidence relating to the creation of particular images of minority cultures and subjects by the mainstream Han.

Through analysing the early 1950s Thought Reform campaign, this article suggests a new approach to studying Chinese intellectuals. I highlight the reification of this social category under Communist Party rule. The campaign universalized zhishifenzi (知识分子) as a social classification, absorbed a diversity of people into the category and established within it multiple subject positions. This reification of the Chinese intellectual, which persisted after Thought Reform, had serious impacts on central policies, local organization and individual behaviour. My analytical perspective can further the understanding of CCP rule, state–intellectual relations and the experience of so-called Chinese intellectuals.