Drawing on both regime and falun gong sources, this article analyses two conflicting depictions of falun gong's organizational structure, communications system and financing base. It first presents the regime's view that falun gong was a well organized movement, with a clear hierarchical structure, a centralized administrative system, functional specialization of organizational tasks, a well-developed communications and mobilization system, and a fulsome financial base built on undue profits derived from charging excessive admissions to qigong seminars and selling falun gong publications and icons at substantial mark-ups. In stark contrast, falun gong claimed that it had no organizational structure, no membership rosters, no local offices, telephones or financial accounts; and that its adherents were prohibited from receiving remuneration for teaching falun gong, that it charged the lowest training seminars admission and cheapest prices for publications and material. The article attributes the differences to adversarial polemics, the regime's fervour to criminalize, and the falun gong's eagerness to deny those charges. Some of the discrepancies can also be explained by the status of the falun gong as an evolving and clandestine social organization with changing features and practices, survival structures and camouflage mechanisms. Both regime and falun gong could thus stake their respective claims on different manifestations of the falun gong on arguable but ambivalent evidence.

The private sector has become an indispensable part of Chinese economic growth since its revival from the early 1980s. This raises the issue of the justifiability of the abolition of private ownership by the socialist transformation from 1953. Many Chinese intellectuals now suggest the CCP put an end to New Democracy too early. With new material released since the 1980s, the author argues that the private sector had sharply declined under New Democracy as the Party tried to boost the development of the private economy in default of a market economy. This article substantiates the view that the implementation of the New Democracy policy during 1949–52 was significantly moulding and re-defining the policy goal towards the private economy.

The entrepreneurial “second generation” of Chinese policy research institutes (often called think tanks) that emerged during the 1980s played a pivotal role in the policy process of reform. Since Tiananmen, China's growing commercialization is spawning a “third generation” of think tanks characterized by even more ambiguous links to sponsoring leaders and institutions, greatly expanded commercial links, greater exposure to Western theories and techniques, and the gradual emergence of wide-ranging “policy communities.” The extent of this change varies greatly across policy sectors, however. Generational change is evident in China's previously unstudied network of public security (police) think tanks. Though clearly still of the “second generation” variety, these institutes have been in the forefront of importing and incorporating more sophisticated crime-fighting techniques and less class-based and conspiratorial theories of crime and social unrest.

A more pragmatic Chinese foreign policy and a more bureaucratic policy-making process have increased the opportunities for China's civilian research institutes to affect foreign policy. Beijing's growing involvement in the international community has created increased demand for research and analysis to aid Chinese leaders in making informed decisions. A more pluralistic and competitive policy environment has given analysts at think tanks more influence, but has also created new competition from analysts and authors working outside the traditional research institute system. This article examines the evolving role of Chinese civilian foreign policy research institutes, their relationships to policy makers, and the pathways through which they provide input into Chinese foreign policy formulation. It provides an overview of the key civilian research institutes, identifies important trends affecting them, and examines the roles and functions they play. The article concludes with an assessment of sources of policy influence within the Chinese foreign policy process.

This occasional paper is a revised version of a paper presented in February 2000 at a symposium on “The Chinese transnational communities” and the first result of a wider research project currently being developed by Gregor Benton and Edmund Terence Gomez. In this succinct comparative study, the authors analyse the topic of trans-nationalism within the Chinese communities of the UK and South-East Asia, focusing on two main aspects: business style and political consciousness.

As state enterprise reform in China gathers pace, this book provides a timely description of urban life between the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the transformations wrought by the emergence of a market economy. The authors, a political scientist and a sociologist, explore two central issues: the systemic consequences of socialist and market social contracts, and the winners and losers in the politics of transition.

Salt merchants, despite their critical role in the traditional Chinese economy, have largely been ignored by historians. Indeed, Ping-ti Ho's pioneering article on the Yangzhou salt merchants was published nearly 50 years ago. With The Salt Merchants of Tianjin – a revision of his 1999 Chinese book – Kwan Man Bun intends to help fill this gap.