In recent years scholars have grown increasingly interested in the potential for a contentious environmental movement in China. This article explores the beliefs of university students in Beijing and finds that there is little likelihood of environmentalism among students transforming into an independent grassroots movement or becoming a source of pressure for political change.

China's state sector reform process is examined through the key sector of agriculture. A preview of aggregate statistics and broader reform measures indicate the declining role of the state. However, a systematic analysis of administrative, service and enterprise structures reveal the nuances of how the state has retained strong capacity to guide development of the agricultural sector. State and Party policy makers aim not only to support the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of farmers, but also to pursue agricultural modernization in the context of rapid industrialization. These goals are unlikely to be achieved through a wholesale transfer of functions to the private sector, so the state has maintained or developed new mechanisms of influence, particularly in the areas of service provision and enterprise development.

In late autumn 1958, Mao Zedong strongly condemned widespread practices of the Great Leap Forward (GLF) such as subjecting peasants to exhausting labour without adequate food and rest, which had resulted in epidemics, starvation and deaths. At that time Mao explicitly recognized that anti-rightist pressures on officialdom were a major cause of “production at the expense of livelihood.” While he was not willing to acknowledge that only abandonment of the GLF could solve these problems, he did strongly demand that they be addressed. After the July 1959 clash at Lushan with Peng Dehuai, Mao revived the GLF in the context of a new, extremely harsh anti-rightist campaign, which he relentlessly promoted into the spring of 1960 together with the radical policies that he previously condemned. Not until spring 1960 did Mao again express concern about abnormal deaths and other abuses, but he failed to apply the pressure needed to stop them. Given what he had already learned about the costs to the peasants of GLF extremism, the Chairman should have known that the revival of GLF radicalism would exact a similar or even bigger price. Instead, he wilfully ignored the lessons of the first radical phase for the sake of achieving extreme ideological and developmental goals.

This article sheds light on the ways in which township governments mobilized resources from local financial institutions, and how failure to repay many of these loans gave rise to sizeable local government debt. Mobilization of resources was done through loans to collective enterprises whose de facto owners were township authorities. Though the enterprises were nominal borrowers, loan transactions would not have occurred without guarantees by township governments. Another way of financial resource mobilization was by establishing local informal financial organizations that were subject to less strict regulations, and over which township authorities could exercise control. Further, because the enterprises' profits and taxes ultimately went to township authorities, and the enterprises also contributed towards provision of public goods that were the authorities' obligation, enterprise financing became a roundabout way in which township authorities sought financial assistance for their fiscal needs.