In this fascinating study, Uradyn E. Bulag argues that the discourse of “unity of nationalities” (minzu tuanjie) conceals sharp fissures between class, national and racial definitions of China. Embracing children's stories, rituals, historiography, political intrigue, poetry and sexuality, he narrates formative episodes of Mongolian identity, demonstrating their critical importance in constructing modern China.

In the early 20th century, the cognoscenti put forward a rival to Shanghai as their nominee for the title of “Paris of the East” – the far north-eastern city of Harbin. As they pointed out, although it took weeks for goods or people to make their way by sea to Shanghai, Harbin was accessible from Europe in just a few days via the Trans-Siberian railway. A cosmopolitan, colonial place, Harbin was, like Shanghai, a product of late 19th-century imperialism, but in this case based on railways rather than shipping, and with the Russians, not the British, as the driving force.

Yellow Music is one of the rare publications in the field of ethnomusicology whose cross-over appeal is immediately apparent. This book will provide new perspectives for students of modern Chinese history, placing music centre stage in the cultural and political debates of the interwar period. It is less a study in musicology than a study of the cultural and political debates surrounding the musical recordings of the time.

The most striking feature of this important project is the excitement that the book is able to stimulate about the theoretical issues involved, about what has been achieved and about what remains to be done. Whether it is possible to describe a women's movement in China is almost beside the point for the ongoing project is so impressive.

This article examines the evolution of China's land system in the past two decades. Since the early 1980s, China has altered its land use arrangements and introduced new regulations to manage land use changes. In the process the administrative allocation of land to users has been transformed into a complex hierarchical system of primary and secondary markets for land use rights. The changes in China's land system were adopted primarily for two reasons: to develop land markets to allocate land more efficiently and to protect agricultural land. An analysis of available data suggests that the development of land markets is still at an early stage, that the conversion of land to non-agricultural use continues but at a slower pace, and that illegal land use is pervasive. The article concludes with an assessment of the new land system and a discussion of some likely future changes.

This article examines the management of Chinese identity and culture since Singapore attained independence in 1965. Due to the delicate regional environment, ethnic Chinese identity has been closely managed by the ruling elites, which have been dominated by the English-educated Chinese. There is the evolution from a deliberate policy of maintaining a low-key ethnic Chinese profile to the recent effort to re-sinicize – in form – the majority ethnic group. The article examines the policy impulses and implications for such a landmark change in reconceptualizing the Chinese-Singapore identity, which can be attributed to the needs of regime maintenance buttressed by Confucian ethos as well as the security and economic demands of nation-building.

Until recently, the military has dominated the national defence policy-making and military strategy process in Taiwan. Public debate did not occur because defence issues were classified or viewed as too politically sensitive. Therefore, non-government civilian institutions had little political or financial incentive to become involved. However, as Taiwan has moved towards a more open society, the Legislative Yuan, media, universities and non-profit research organizations have become more active in questioning the tenets of Taiwan's defence policy. Their impact has been limited, though, because of the lack of civilian expertise in defence matters. Furthermore, Western authors have not written extensively on Taiwan's internal defence policies because most information published in Taiwan is written in Chinese only.

Recent literature on Uyghur identity in China makes clear that Uyghurs today not only have perceptions and narratives relating to their identity which challenge official ones, but also that these are expressed publicly in literature, art and everyday practice. However, to date this agency has been highlighted only in the context of the Uyghurs' native-place, Xinjiang, while the little that has been written on representations of Uyghur identity in nationally distributed media and culture suggests that Uyghurs are still completely marginalized and voiceless. This article challenges this view by shifting the focus to Uyghurs who migrated to Beijing and by showing that they have been able to achieve an independent public voice that extends not only beyond Xinjiang but also beyond China. The article explores the role that Uyghur artists and entrepreneurs, and Xinjiang restaurants in Beijing play in challenging the orthodox representations of Uyghur identity in China and argues that although there are only a few thousand Uyghurs in the city they play a significant role in the negotiation of Uyghur identity, representation and nationalism. The article also challenges the widely held view that internal migrants in China are silent and politically powerless.

This is an essential reference volume for scholars, students and public officials interested in the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). It is the first highly detailed examination of the Chinese military's organizational structure and takes full advantage of the vast amount of Chinese language material that has recently become available on the subject.

In this ground-breaking study of the cult of Tudi Gong (generally referred to in English as the Earth God or the God of the Soil), Allessandro Dell'Orto sheds new light on the significance of one of the most popular deities in the Chinese pantheon, while also making an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of methodological issues in the field of anthropology.

This empirically rich and analytically engaging book draws on archives and oral history in Zouping county, Shandong province, and devotes each chapter to a distinctive period in the building of China's modern educational institutions. The study reveals how macro-level historical shifts interact with educational reforms to impact on the lives of rural individuals, and how their responses shape community-level policy formulation and implementation. Educational reforms therefore form the basis for a wider study of cultural, socio-economic and political processes in 20th-century China.

This article analyses the emergence of labour camps in the CCP base area of Shandong province from 1942 to 1950. By using original archival material, it provides a detailed understanding of the concrete workings of the penal system in a specific region, thus giving flesh and bone to the more general story of the prison in China. It also shows that in response to military instability, organizational problems and scarce resources, the local CCP in Shandong abandoned the idea of using prisons (jiansuo) to confine convicts much earlier than the Yan'an authorities, moving towards a system of mobile labour teams and camps dispersed throughout the countryside which displayed many of the key hallmarks of the post-1949 laogai. Local authorities continued to place faith in a penal philosophy of reformation (ganhua) which was shared by nationalists and communists, but shifted the moral space where reformation should be carried out from the prison to the labour camp, thus introducing a major break in the history of confinement in 20th-century China.

This article examines the CCP's “falun gong problem” with reference to PRC law and policy on “heretical cults,” paying particular attention to the implications of this problem for the ongoing struggle to establish human rights under the rule of law. Official PRC commentary contends that the falun gong not only committed criminal acts but also wilfully sought to undermine the rule of law itself. Human rights critics and agencies, such as the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, have, on the other hand, attacked the PRC for a “repressive legal framework” that threatens human rights. The “falun gong problem” is an important chapter in the struggle for the rule of law in China, and it appears that the law has not been able to transcend the conceptual bias of past criminal law on counter-revolution. The related politicization of the law through a revived principle of “flexibility” challenges the internal process of criminal justice reform and the recent reform focus on the balance of human rights protection and public order.

The Chinese Communist Party has maintained tight control over the institutions and processes for creating and deleting official posts. The Party's goal of maintaining as many official positions as possible to preserve political patronage and social stability conflicts with the need to curb administrative expenses and cut government deficits. Aggregate data indicate that the downsizing campaigns of the 1990s have not been particularly successful and that staffing levels in local government are probably to a large extent politically determined. A case study reveals that some local governments may have officially downsized while expanding the total size of public employment.

“The fruit of the mandarin trees growing south of the river Huai is sweet,” goes the Chinese parable, “but turns bitter when transplanted to other side.” In his latest book, the editor of Le Christ chinoisis again focusing on the cultural parameters determining the development of Christianity in China. As alluded to in the title, space is in the focus, and its relevance in the formation of human tradition, in particular religion, underlined from the beginning.

When the suppression of the falun gong started in July 1999, one of the targets of the government's propaganda was the biography of Li Hongzhi, its founder and leader. This article examines two versions of a biography of Li Hongzhi published by the falun gong in 1993 and 1994 that are no longer available. This biography presents Li as possessing superhuman abilities and god-like insight. In my analysis, I place this biography in the context of a centuries-old tradition of religious biography in China showing that, in textual terms, it represents a contemporary example of that venerable genre. As with its precursors, this biography seeks to establish a genealogy of the figure whose life is recorded and to buttress the orthodoxy of his doctrine.

Mass rural–urban labour migration in post-Mao China has received a great deal of attention by scholars of different disciplines. The existing research has largely focused on the causes and processes of migration; the politics of migrant identities and settlements in the cities; changing modes of governance in managing the migrant population; the questions of urban citizenship; and the cultural experiences of migrant wage workers in the reform era. Yet, we know very little about the profound social, economic and cultural impact of migrant labour on Chinese rural life and society. Rachel Murphy's book provides a timely contribution to our understanding of what has happened in rural China as a result of this unprecedented labour migration. Based on extensive, in-depth fieldwork in three counties in Jiangxi province, this is an extraordinarily insightful and fresh account of the everyday socio-economic changes brought by migration in the origin areas. Moving away from the static analysis of migration by modernization and structuralist theories, Murphy emphasizes the critical role of human agency by treating rural migrants as social agents who actively pursue their goals and utilize resources while making sense of the rapidly changing social world in which they live. Her study convincingly shows that migrants are neither passive victims of structural changes nor actors completely free of structural constraints; rather they constantly adopt strategies to negotiate with and alter the larger social, economic and political environment.

The cultural foundations of Chinese policy-making are a troublesome set of contradictions that many Sinologists regularly refer to but rarely grasp. This shaky bedrock often gives rise to analyses weakened by discrepancies that include passing references to the influence of both “harmonious” Confucianism and violent, realist Legalism. Peter Kien-hong Yu presents an analytical framework which attempts to address this challenge and, in turn, accurately and reliably “decode” and “decipher” Chinese political behaviour and all its contradictions. Yu's approach presupposes that dialectical, or dualistic, thinking, which he describes as a tense struggle between opposing ideas and the subsequent creation of an operational concept that falls between the two extremes – the zhongdao (middle road) – is prevalent among contemporary Chinese and can be effectively modelled. Yu defends this presumption by spinning a lengthy, meandering yarn of anecdotes, and is confident enough of his scholarship to make the bumptious declaration that “Sinology and Bicoastal Chinese Studies are dead; long live the Dialectical Study of (Communist) China!”

This book is not one of those publications filled with colourful photographs or illustrations that delight the eye but numb the mind, but rather a labour of love that distils the knowledge of plants in China of two scholars who have plenty of experience on the subject matter. The study is based largely on published analyses of flora in China, both in English and in Chinese. It has a botanical orientation, and concentrates on the taxonomic aspects of the diversity of plant life in China, despite the inclusion of the word “distribution” in its subtitle. Readers should not anticipate many discussions of the plant-geographical, geobotanical or phytogeographical flavour in the tradition of N. Polunin or R. Good.

What will not be lost on students of revolutionary chromatography is the fact that the hard cover index accompanying this CD-ROM is a huge black book. In the professional jargon of Cultural Revolutionary historians everywhere, The Chinese Cultural Revolution Database is already being referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as the hei cailiao – “black materials” – of editor-in-chief, Song Yongyi. Readable on most MS Windows platforms capable of displaying Chinese characters, it comes with a built-in search-engine and comprises nearly 30 million words. Suddenly, it is as if Eric Hobsbawm already had China's Cultural Revolution – and not merely the former Soviet Union – in mind when he observed, after the fall of the wall, that “Inadequacy of sources is the last thing we can complain about” (On History, p. 239).