This article will examine the constitution and evolution of the concept of “intellectual property” in the People's Republic of China through an analysis of policy regarding incentives for inventive activity – which in western legal systems would be generally covered by patent law. Hopefully, such an analysis will not only enable us to understand incentives for inventive activity in China, but also to understand crucial property concepts in China, especially “private” or “individual” ownership, during its “socialist transformation.” This, in turn, may shed additional light on the debate on the nature and future disposition of “bourgeois rights.”

The importance of “face” (lien or mien-tzu) has long been recognized as a prime determinant of Chinese behavioural patterns whether those of an individual or of a group. We also know that the Confucian emphasis on “harmony” (ho-p'ing) has long constituted a basic ideal in Chinese inter-personal relations. Recently social scientists have drawn attention to “impression management” and to the relatively great disparities in some societies between an individual's or group's “front region,” “front-stage” or “public sphere” behaviour and the contradictory “back region,” “back-stage” or “closed sphere” behaviour. Applying these concepts in a Chinese society which still purports to uphold Confucian ideals we find that the front-stage impression a group seeks and often manages to convey is one of unity and harmony. Closer inspection may reveal, however, that, back-stage, factionalism is rife.

Small firms in Chinese cities, which before 1949 were private, have in the communist era gradually come under more government authority. The stages of this slow process can be treated as a case study in the political socialization of small units. They tell a tale of tensions between different levels of economic power, high, medium and low. Research into the kinds of power that promoted this step-by-step centralization, and also into those that resisted it, may suggest a more comprehensive approach to power in China generally.* The author expresses great thanks to the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies for support related to this article. The Center of International Studies and the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, supplied some clerical help, and the Foreign Area Fellowship Program supported the author's first researches on Shanghai. Very useful comments were received from James Nickum, Gordon Bennett, Bruce Reynolds, Thomas Rawski, Carl Riskin, Dick Wilson, and an anonymous reader for The China Quarterly. All opinions here are the author's solely.

Wang Tung-hsing occupies a very important position in Chinese politics today. His political influence has increased enormously in the past year, and since the 11th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in August 1977, he has become one of the four vice-chairmen of the Central Committee (CC) of the Party.