Population growth, small-scale agricultural development and popular beliefs concerning fengshui guided the evolution of the areal form and content of Chinese rural settlements during the imperial past. Over the last half century, on the other hand, more formal planning, top-down political decisions and the broad economic policies of the state have altered the Chinese countryside. Since 1949, on both Taiwan and the coastal mainland, quite different political and economic systems influenced the geometry and morphology of villages, affecting their inherited appearances and functions. The hybrid rural settlements that have emerged, while echoing traditional village forms, are often neither rural, urban nor suburban settlements. This article examines and compares the reshaping of village settlements in Taiwan and Fujian over the past half century and probes the role played by the state in guiding such transformations. In both Taiwa

Patron—client ties are pervasive in the post-Mao economy between entrepreneurs operating private firms and cadres staffing the state's administrative, distributive and production organs. The burgeoning literature on private business is converging on a view of them as localized exchanges of commercial wealth for bureaucratic power. These deviations from central policies and standard procedures enable entrepreneurs to manage their dependence on local authorities while giving officials new sources of income that buttress their power within jurisdictions. However, less attention has been paid to the ties themselves. This article shifts the focus from patron–client ties as localized exchange to examine their operation in private business and function in marketization. The starting assumption is that patron–client exchange is also a type of market transaction: although expressed in popularly legitimated sentiments of social trust, goods and services are voluntarily exchanged.

In 1949 the Chinese adopted, almost in total, the former Soviet Union's system of central or command planning. Thirty years later, in 1979, the country embarked on a major economic reform programme aimed largely at correcting problems caused by central planning. The government now sought to create an economic system which would combine the best characteristics of socialist and market economies. Most analysts would agree that the non-grain agricultural and consumer goods sectors have been fully marketized, and quite successfully so, but that the economic reform of the state industrial sector has lagged far behind. Raising the profits and output and productivity levels of the state enterprises has proved extremely difficult, and the government has been reluctant to allow the unrestricted operation of market forces.

During the 1980s, as the Chinese state moved to free the economy and to relax direct Party controls over society, it needed mechanisms to bridge the gaps in control that were created. A very large number of associations accordingly were established, usually on the government's own initiative, to serve as intermediaries between die state and diverse constituencies and spheres of activity.1These range from associations for different sectors of the economy, to science and technology associations, religious councils, cultural and social welfare groups, and sports associations: the numbers and range keep growing. All of these so-called non-governmental associations (minjian xiehui) must be officially registered, and only one organization is recognized as the representative for each sectoral constituency.2

Although after the 4 June crackdown on the Tiananmen protest movement in 1989 many newspapers were banned, their previous issues remained accessible in public libraries. However, there were two exceptions, the Shanghai-based World Economic Herald (hereafter abbreviated as the Herald) and the Beijing-based Economics Weekly (hereafter abbreviated as the Weekly). It is obvious that the intention of the authorities was to make people forget the existence and influence of these two newspapers before 4 June. At the very beginning of the student movement, the editor-in-chief of the Herald, Qin Benli, was dismissed from his post by Jiang Zemin, then Party head of Shanghai. Chen Ziming and Wang Juntao, respectively former manager and former vice-editor-in-chief of the Weekly, were accused of being black hands of the student movement, and were sentenced to 13 years of imprisonment in 1991, the heaviest punishment on non-conformist intellectuals.

The publication of this issue signifies the changing of the editorial guard at The China Quarterly. Although I will guest-edit the forthcoming special issue on Contemporary Taiwan (No. 148), it is time to hand over the editorial chair to my successor. This transition is occasioned by my move to the George Washington University to take up the positions of Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, and Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies.

With this issue David Shambaugh formally resigns as Editor of The China Quarterly. As the new Editor, I hope I will be able to follow David's, as well as the previous Editors', good work in sustaining the journal's high standards in studies of contemporary China. The China Quarterly is fortunate in that all its Editors since its founding in 1960 have given their continuous support for its growth and welfare. It also benefits from a hard-working Editorial Board, Executive Committee and editorial staff, as well as the Quarterly Chronicle and Documentation, compiled by Robert Ash since 1982.