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 foundation of this association has now been laid. People call us Blue Shirts or terrorists. That is nothing. The important problem to be solved is how to create a new revolutionary atmosphere so as to lead the revolutionary masses⃜ In China today definite action must be taken for temporary relief as well as for fundamental cure. However, what we need now is a fundamental cure. Our present problem is not the Japanese. Our problem is not the invasion of our north-eastern provinces and Jehol. If we can maintain the status quo, it will be enough for the present time. As a revolutionary government, the loss of a little territory does not mean much. A revolutionary movement has both to advance and retreat. When our strength is not enough, it is natural to retreat. We have lost territory today, but we will take it back the next day when we have strength

Since the Yan'an Rectification Campaign the Communist Party of China has dominated the interpretation of modern Chinese history. With its 1981 resolution it renewed its claim, but a close look at official and unofficial publications on 20th-century Chinese history reveals its loss of control. There is no longer a CCP-designed master narrative of modern Chinese history. This article uses the case of the Cultural Revolution to show how much post-1949 history is contested in mainland China today. It argues that the CCP is unable to impose its interpretation of the “ten years of chaos” on society. Instead many divergent and highly fragmentized views circulate in society, and there is no overwhelmingly acceptable view on this period of post-1949 history. While this is a positive sign of diversification, it leaves unsatisfied both inside and outside observers who hope that the Chinese people might eventually come to terms with their own troublesome history.

There has been little systematic research on corruption in China. Analyses so far often only reveal various cases of corruption and conclude by commenting on the retrograde aspect of the Chinese state. Work of this nature also tends to be too static – not considering the historical and cultural dimensions of politics – and too superficial – just concentrating on anecdotal aspects of corruption. As a result, one could quite simply conclude that what is required is a Weberian bureaucracy, which would be both rational and efficient, though without explaining how this should come about.

However, in the light of works dealing with the shifting role of the state in societies which are undergoing change, the causes and nature of the phenomenon of “corruption” in China can be reassessed.

A crucial element in China's modernization effort is the control of population growth. Months before the historic Third Plenum of the 11th Communist Party Congress in December 1978, the leadership decided that only a drastic limitation of fertility would ensure achievement of its economic goals for the year 2000. The policy to encourage all couples to limit themselves to one child was announced in January 1979. In September 1980 the Party Central Committee took the unusual step of publishing an “Open Letter” announcing a drastic programme of 20 to 30 years’ duration to restrict population growth, and calling on all Party and Youth League members to take the lead in having only one child. Thus was launched the world's most ambitious family-planning programme.

While China has been portrayed as a reluctant supporter of UN peacekeeping in the past, it has voted in favour of every newly established UN peacekeeping operation since the beginning of the new millennium. Previous studies of China's behaviour in UN peacekeeping explained this phenomenon primarily with recent shifts in its foreign and security policy rather than with changes in UN peacekeeping itself. This article analyses China's voting behaviour in the UN Security Council on peacekeeping resolutions in the context of the evolving concepts of UN peacekeeping. It argues that China's recent enthusiasm for these missions is the result of two developments. On the one hand, Beijing was able to reinterpret its understanding of UN peacekeeping after its experience in the 1990s, especially with regard to the use of force; while on the other hand, the way UN peacekeeping missions are conducted was reformed after the Brahimi Report in 2000, which made UN peacekeeping more agreeable to the China.

The future of the reforms in China ultimately depends on whether, and if so to what extent, reforms introduced in the recent past have improved the consumption and the standard of living of the Chinese people. It also depends on whether any such gains in the standard of living have been widely spread among the whole population. Since 1978 real per capita consumption in China has risen at an average annual rate of 7 per cent which is more than three and a half times that of the preceding 21 years. As a result, the standard of living of the average Chinese citizen in 1990 was more than double that of 1978. However, the growth of consumption and the living standard was rather uneven during the reform period. During the first phase of the reforms (1978–85) the consumption standard increased rapidly without widening existing income disparity. During the second phase (1985–90), however, improvements in consumption standards slowed significantly amidst rising inflation and growing income inequality. The question is whether the recent trend of a relatively slow rise in the standard of living and greater income disparity will continue in the 1990s. The purpose of this article is to examine the recent trends and changes in the level, structure and differentials of Chinese consumption and living standards, and to assess their prospects for the 1990s

This article assesses the impact of China's accession to the World Trade Organization on its foreign trade and investment regime. While the government had begun liberalizing the Chinese economy long before joining the WTO, the accession induced regulatory, institutional and normative changes that have transformed the landscape of trade and investment in China. The profound impact of the WTO stems directly from the extensive commercial and rule commitments China undertook in its accession. Focusing on the most significant of these commitments, the article examines their implications for Chinese constitutional law and their effect on the regulation of foreign trade, foreign investment, intellectual property rights and domestic governance. Additionally, it looks at the impact of WTO disputes on Chinese law and practice. It concludes that China's accession has made its foreign trade and investment regime far more liberalized and less opaque than a decade ago. More importantly, the accession has institutionalized the process of China's domestic reform externally through the force of WTO obligations. Although much uncertainty remains concerning the future direction of government policies, WTO membership ensures that the course of China's economic development will be charted within the disciplines of the WTO system.

Isaac Deutscher once observed that the Chinese Communist revolution presents the paradox of “the most archaic of nations avidly absorbing the most modern of revolutionary doctrines, the last word in revolution, and translating it into action. Lacking any native ancestry, Chinese Communism descends straight from Bolshevism. Mao stands on Lenin's shoulders.” This echoes the generally accepted view of the historical relationship between Maoism and Leninism. Among most western students of Chinese communism it is something of a truism that Marxism came to China in its Leninist form; for different reasons, Maoists have long been saying that Mao (and now only Mao) is the true heir of Lenin. Indeed, the “thought of Mao Tse-tung” is no longer simply considered the practical application of “the universal truths” of Marxism-Leninism to the specifically Chinese historical situation, but is explicitly celebrated as a new and higher stage of universally valid revolutionary theory; it is “invincible Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought” that now propels world history forward. In contemporary Maoist eyes, Mao stands on the shoulders of Lenin as firmly as Lenin presumably stands on the shoulders of Marx.

Based on fieldwork and studies of historical and contemporary materials, this article investigates several issues key to Buddhist life in the present-day PRC, focusing on Han Buddhists, especially the monastic tradition. It argues that many current practices take their shape from the innovations that transformed Chinese Buddhist life in the late Qing and Republican periods. While profound political, economic and social changes have occurred in the past few decades, some of the most pressing issues are extensions of questions raised at that time. The most significant question of the earlier period – what is the Buddhist monastic vocation, and what training and leadership are required to safeguard that ideal? – remains central to present-day activities and conceptions. To consider how to answer this question, or indeed how it is posed within present circumstances, three interconnected matters are investigated: current training methods, the economics of monasteries and the issue of leadership. In this context, Han–Tibetan interchange in the Buddhist field and the influence of overseas Chinese Buddhists on the mainland are also considered.

The abolition of agricultural taxes (AAT) (2005–2006) significantly changed the workload, finance, authority and functions of village governments. In agricultural regions, village cadres had their agendas reset, with the top priority switching to the search for new revenues through “attracting investment” (zhaoshang yinzi). This new agenda fits perfectly with the demands of township governments. Facing an even worse fiscal crisis, township governments attempted to cover up their deficits using village revenues. The shared stake in increasing revenue has resulted in the convergence of the functions of township and village authorities. However, the change in the function of village governments has increased the disengagement between cadres and villagers.

Environmental protection in the international context constitutes a type of soft or functional regime directed at the control of behaviour by states which generally does not present an overt threat to their neighbours. Rather, the principal danger is one of everyday social or economic activity presenting risks within the state in which it originates, to that state's neighbours and, possibly, the global commons. Thus, it is typically the activity's externalities rather than any intent to cause harm or encroach on neighbours' territory which is the cause of concern. Control is complicated by sovereignty issues, which become paramount when externalities cross a country's boundaries and affect the originator's neighbours and/or the wider international community. Although there have been cases of countries obtaining judicial relief for environmental harms that originated in another country, such issues are overwhelmingly non-justiciable. It is more likely that any international regimes that are established will provide no avenue for judicial relief.

As urbanization continues to fuel land and property conflicts in rural China, shareholding has been promoted as a reform in property rights that would enhance bottom-up control in the governance of collective assets. The recent proliferation of community-based shareholding companies has been credited for giving villagers new identities as shareholders, which entitle them to vote, receive their share of collective profits, and elect the managers of their wealth. This paper critically appraises these reforms and offers a contrarian perspective to singular narratives of villager empowerment. While shareholding clarifies villagers’ rights of control, income and transfer in collective property, the effective exercise of such powers is often forestalled on the ground by the concentration of power in elite hands. To the extent that formal and informal constraints on cadre power remain tenuous, shareholding could function as a vehicle for the powerful to appropriate collective wealth rather than as a weapon of the weak.

Nearly four years have passed since China's leaders ordered the military to crush student demonstrators and their supporters in and around Tiananmen Square. Since then, students at all levels have been given a massive infusion of political “re-education” in an attempt to forestall a recurrence of the turbulence and, more ambitiously, to win back the hearts and minds of Chinese youth. The methods employed by the authorities have included an extended programme of military training, tighter political control over the job assignment system, more time in the curriculum for politics courses, a renewed stress on familiar model personages from the pre-Cultural Revolution era, an upgrading in the status of political work cadres, and an abandonment of the more flexible political and moral education courses and textbooks introduced in the 1980s in favour of a return to more traditional “classical” Marxist approaches.

During its structural transformation, rural China witnessed the emergence of four types of village: traditional, industrialized, commercial and villages in cities. Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), including fixed phones, cell phones, television sets and the internet (with personal computers), are now commonly used in Chinese villages but in ways that differentiate villagers according to variables such as occupation, villager membership and social status. The adoption of ICTs by peasants not only represents but also accelerates growing peasant differentiation; in other words, the function of ICTs could not penetrate the barrier of social structure. Meanwhile, structural transformation in China has been an activator to shaping peasants' diversified ideas about information, and the demand for and usage of ICTs. An analysis of peasants' ICT adoption thus enables us to identify the basic trends and characteristics of social transformation in contemporary China.

Analyses of regional economic disparities in China mostly refer to the level of the province. The report provides a survey of the prospects and limitations of using prefecture-level data in order to understand the spatial dynamics of growth. A new database has been built that is based on the original data available in the provincial yearbooks. The data are in the GIS framework. A large set of maps is accessible via www.on-China.de. Preliminary observations on possible new insights include, amongst others, a more complex picture of rural development.

The main aim of China's agricultural policy during the Readjustment has been to raise the production of all branches of the sector in order to increase employment and incomes and to reduce the country's growing dependence on foreign agricultural imports, especially sugar, cotton and edible oil. In adopting this policy the government has recognized and accepted the need to maintain and even to increase foreign grain imports during the foreseeable future.

In 2011 and 2012, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) published its first “guiding cases.” Guiding cases serve as decision-making models that must be taken into account by lower courts when deciding similar cases. This study argues that the establishment of a national formal legal mechanism to improve consistency in adjudication across jurisdictions and geographical boundaries will strengthen judicial professionalism. The guiding cases system provides the SPC with an instrument to steer adjudication in lower courts discreetly, thereby allowing it to exercise significant influence over legal developments. Given the complexity of cases, compared to law set out in statute, non-lawyers may have tremendous difficulty in understanding and assessing the effects of guiding cases; this in turn acts as a protective mechanism against extra-legal interference. The reform is an example of the SPC's delicate manoeuvring in order to retain judicial professionalism in a hostile yet politically conservative environment. It reflects an attempt by the SPC to strengthen its position vis-à-vis other actors of the party-state and to consolidate the judiciary's function as an adjudicative institution that works on the basis of formal legal mechanisms.

This paper treats the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a means by which to open on to a more affective approach to the question of the political. It examines one piece of art-technology of that period and shows the way it intuitively worked within the fluidity of power to produce political intensity. This one technology is a microcosm of the Cultural Revolution notion of the political that was built around an attempt to channel and harness affective power towards revolutionary ends. Both because it attempts to direct the political through the affective dimension and because its methods of doing so resembled contemporary art practices, this paper opens on to the possibilities of a method based on an art rather than a science of the political.

In this paper, we examine how the Chinese state controls social media. While social media companies are responsible for censoring their platforms, they also selectively report certain users to the government. This article focuses on understanding the logic behind media platforms’ decisions to report users or content to the government. We find that content is less relevant than commonly thought. Information control efforts often focus on who is posting rather than on what they are posting. The state permits open discussion and debate on social media while controlling and managing influential social forces that may challenge the party-state's hegemonic position. We build on Schurmann's “ideology and organization,” emphasizing the Party's goals of embedding itself in all social structures and limiting the ability of non-Party individuals, networks or groups to carve out a separate space for leadership and social status. In the virtual public sphere, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to apply these principles to co-opt, repress and limit the reach of influential non-Party “thought leaders.” We find evidence to support this logic through qualitative and quantitative analysis of leaked censorship documents from a social media company and government documents on information control.