Evidence from sample surveys and local field studies have long supported opposed arguments about the impact of market reform on the value of political office in the rural economy. This article reviews the evidence, describes a gradual convergence in findings, and identifies unresolved questions about qualitatively different local paths of development. Examining previously unexploited data from a nationally representative 1996 survey, a resolution of the remaining issues becomes evident. The value of political office initially is very modest, as the first private entrepreneurs reaped large incomes. However, subsequent economic development led to rapid increases in the earning power of cadres and their kin, and by the end of the Deng era the returns to political office were roughly equal to those of private entrepreneurs. The political advantages were not limited to regions that industrialized rapidly under collective ownership: they were large even in regions where the private economy was most extensive. However, despite evidence of large and enduring political advantages, those who reaped wealth from political position were only a small fraction of the newly rich, the vast majority of whom achieved wealth without current or past office-holding or kinship ties to cadres.

This article re-evaluates an important yet usually ignored episode in modern Chinese ethnopolitical history. It seeks to argue that, in the midst of the Second World War, Chiang Kai-shek manoeuvred towards a possible war with Tibet in order to serve other military, strategic and political purposes, namely, to insert his direct control into China's south-western border provinces that were still in the firm grip of obstinate warlords. Chiang Kai-shek's careful manipulation of the Sino-Tibetan border crisis in 1942–43 also reveals how he and his top military advisors perceived wartime China's territoriality and border defence in south-west China. With considerations of regime security and national survival foremost in their minds, top KMT leaders took a pragmatic stance towards the intractable issue of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. In addition, at the diplomatic level, the Sino-Tibetan border crisis brought discord among the Allied Nations. The Chinese regarded Tibet as part of China whereas the British had long considered it within their sphere of influence. Eventually the Chinese won the sympathy of the US government. Facing Sino-British disagreement over Tibet's political status, the State Department continued to recognize Nationalist Chinese authority in Tibet, however fictitious that authority was. In retrospect, this episode, along with the US government's official stance towards China's sovereignty over Tibet, although a only a minor disagreement between the Allied Nations during the war, led to the problematic Tibetan issue that still haunts the international community today.

This article takes recent theoretical essays by Shanghai scholar and public intellectual, Xu Jilin, and other scholars of the history of thought and culture (sixiang wenhua shi) as a case study of efforts by intellectuals in the People's Republic of China to define and promote a role as public intellectuals separate from the party-state. This analysis suggests that political liberalism is used in such intellectual discourse to explain the social experience of intellectuals in China today and to promote a renewed public role for them. This public intellectual discourse is characterized by the continued privileging of sixiang (thought), by the naturalizing of foreign theories about liberalism, and by the use of such thought work to argue for a renewed public role for intellectuals as interpreters of public issues rather than as legislators of public values.

The word suzhi has become central to contemporary China governance and society. Reference to suzhi justifies social and political hierarchies of all sorts, with those of “high” suzhi being seen as deserving more income, power and status than those of “low” suzhi. This article examines the rise of the word's popularity during the reform era, the ways in which its meaning has been transformed, and the relationships of the word to earlier discourses. It proceeds through three sections: a linguistic history, a genealogy of related discourses and an analysis of the contemporary sociopolitical context. The historical section focuses on the spread of the word across various political and social contexts during the reform era. It examines the ways in which the word operates semantically and the challenges to translation these semantic structures pose. The genealogical section explores the historical antecedents of the meanings of the word in earlier political and social discourses both in and out of China. Finally, the sociopolitical section examines the uses to which the word is put and asks what the rise of suzhi discourse tells us about contemporary China's governance, culture and society.

Collective action directed at the government is not rare in China, but why some actions endure and succeed whereas many others fail remains inadequately addressed. Based on a case of home owners' sustained collective resistance in Shanghai, this study finds that state power is fragmented at the local level. While the disparate priorities among different levels of state authorities provide opportunities for resistance, social networks between participants of collective action and officials or media workers may significantly help the former to achieve success.