At first glance, it would seem that over the past two decades Chinese Communist Party (CCP) power and policy in the distant Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of the People's Republic of China have travelled full circle. By late 1981 the region's foremost pre-Cultural Revolution leader, Wang Enmao, and many of the more moderate and pragmatic policies he had come to advocate for consolidating CCP (and Han) control without unduly provoking the sensitivities of the majority non-Han (and primarily Islamic) indigenous population, had returned.2 Thus, the stage was set for Xinjiang's de novo overall integration with the rest of China. Against a brief historical backdrop this article will analyse recent leadership and policy trends in strategically-located Xinjiang, particularly the significance of Wang's return. It will then assess subsequent socio-economic developments and discuss their relevance to security and defence-related issues. Finally, some conclusions will be made concerning the always complex process of integration, in terms of both its nature and degree and its interaction with the processes of ‘modernization.’

Two decades after Mao Zedong ignited the Great Proletarian Revolution there is still no satisfactory accounting for the upheaval which Beijing now says caused millions of deaths and left some 100 million people scarred victims. Ordinary imagination cannot grasp what took place during those “10 bad years of great disaster” (shinian haojie) as the Chinese now call them. Since so much at that time defied conventional theories of politics, outsiders quickly put the phenomenon out of mind once the turmoil ceased. For the Chinese, however, it has not been so simple. Those who personally suffered have tended to summarize the story according to their individual tragedies. Chinese seeking a larger perspective are caught between the inexplicableness of its causes and the incalculability of its consequences.

After decades of policy learning and adoption of “Western” theories of international politics, the Chinese academic community has (re-)turned to the construction of a “Chinese” theory framework. This article examines the recent academic debates on theory with “Chinese characteristics” and sheds light on their historical and philosophical foundations. It argues that the search for a “Chinese” paradigm of international relations theory is part of China's quest for national identity and global status. As can be concluded from the analysis of these debates, “Chinese” theories of international politics are expected to fulfil two general functions – to safeguard China's national interests and to legitimize the one-party system.

Through an investigation of the Shenzhen Collective Consultation Ordinance and the Guangdong Regulations on the Democratic Management of Enterprises, this article demonstrates how transnational capital in China deploys its associational power alongside its structural economic power to lobby and pressure the national and local governments to advance its own interests. In addition, building upon the ideas of Hall and Soskice about the varieties of capitalism, the authors have developed the concept of “varieties of transnational capital” to account for the differing positions of overseas business associations regarding the two laws. We find that these positions are shaped by two determining factors: a) where the associations are situated in global production chains, and b) the industrial relations model in their home countries.

The 14th Party Congress heralded a victory for Deng Xiaoping's programme of rapid economic transformation accompanied by tight political control. His name and policies were lauded in Jiang Zemin's “Work Report” to the Congress and the theory of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” became the cornerstone of the revised Party Constitution. The overhaul of leading personnel has provided a clear Politburo majority in favour of the increasing marketization of China's economy. Thus, the Party has created perhaps one last chance to position itself at the forefront of reform rather than appearing as an antique body engaged in increasingly irrelevant ideological polemics.x Whether it will be able to ride this newly re-released tiger of economic reform will depend on its capacity to deal with the social and political consequences of its strategy, many of which will be unpredictable. In essence, the easy part of reform was completed in the 1980s and the difficult stage will now begin. Citizens will be hit as rents and pricesrise, and the state will have to offer employment or welfare to those who lose their jobs if enterprises are forced to become genuinely efficient. It will take a trustworthy, competent and imaginative leadership to sell this programme to the Chinese people, a task made even harder by the credibility gap that has widened enormously in recent years. The mandate for change is there, but whether it will be exploited effectively remains to be seen. Past experience suggests that despite the commitment to bold changes, the Party will slow down the pace of reform once it senses potential unrest.

Although many state agencies in China are designated with a function of “representing” ordinary people's interests, they are poorly structured for that purpose. It is therefore puzzling why some of them have at times actively and effectively advocated the interests of ordinary people, even when such interests may conflict with state policies. To solve this puzzle, this article examines a recent campaign by the Chinese Disabled Persons Federation to resist a national trend to ban the use of three-wheelers for passenger transport by many local governments. Our analysis recognizes the importance of personal motivations and favourable political structure, but it emphasizes that forceful popular collective action can create both pressure and opportunity for active state advocacy. Such a pattern of mutual-reinforcement between mass organizations and their constituency has sometimes contributed to the dynamics of political change in the reform era.

Recent changes in the relationships of Hong Kong and Taiwan to mainland China have presented education policy-makers in both territories with problems of reforming school curricula in areas of teaching that are important for the formation of national identity. While both territories are subject to claims that they are part of China, both have also been separated from the Chinese mainland for long periods, and in recent years their relationships with it have been undergoing fundamental changes. Hong Kong's relationship with China has become closer due to economic integration with the hinterland and the 1997 transfer of sovereignty. Taiwan's identification as a part of China, on the other hand, has become increasingly uncertain as the process of liberalization and democratization that began in 1986 has allowed sovereignty to be practised by the residents of the island and a sense of “Taiwan consciousness” (Taiwan yishi) to develop.

The national security research community in Beijing is dominated by think tanks and other research institutes affiliated with specific governmental institutions. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) maintains its own set of internal and affiliated research institutions, performing a variety of intelligence, exchange and research functions. The growth and professionalization of the Chinese military think tank community, combined with the widening degree of interaction between PLA researchers and foreigners presents a new set of challenges and opportunities for scholarly research. On the one hand, the new environment complicates the task of outside scholars as they seek to understand the biases and reliability of new sources of information. At the same time, it offers foreign scholars an unprecedented opportunity to test theories, delve into new research and improve understanding of the PLA. This article examines the roles, missions and composition of the units in this system, assesses the influence, authoritativeness and utility of the output from these organs, and offers some preliminary implications for Western study of the Chinese military.

In recent years Chinese government policies and research programmes have advocated agricultural industrialization in order to raise demand for farm products, facilitate structural adjustment in agriculture, create rural employment and increase farm incomes. But although agro-industrial activities have become a key feature of China's rural development strategy, the agricultural industrialization policy has been little studied outside China. This article is a case study of the implementation of agricultural industrialization and its impact on rural livelihoods in Sichuan province. It identifies and analyses two major forms of agricultural industrialization: “dragon head enterprises” and “rural associations.” Although agro-industrial development is likely to be a critical determinant of China's future social and economic trajectory, the preliminary analysis given here shows a mixed picture. Positive effects include increases in both income and employment. But there is also a negative dimension, shown by the existence of numerous entry barriers, unequal bargaining power and an uneven distribution of benefits.

What makes Manchuria a most promising industrial field … is the fact that coal and labour are obtainable at an extraordinarily low cost. … Although Manchuria possesses a population of forty millions, not a single piece of clothing worn by the inhabitants is manufactured in the province. All textiles required by the people are imported either from south China or from Japan. The starting of a spinning and weaving industry in Manchuria will be fraught with great possibilities. [Shirani Takeshi, Kwantung Civil Governor (1909).]

China presents a mixed picture in terms of its anti-corruption efforts. On the one hand, rampant corruption remains a huge challenge for the party-state because it not only results in the loss of state assets but also damages the legitimacy of the regime. On the other hand, China's record of curbing corruption is not particularly worse than other comparable countries. This paper explains the reasons behind this mixed picture by focusing on the anti-corruption strategy employed by the central Party authorities. Effective anti-corruption measures are determined by the high probability of detecting corrupt agents and the meting out of effective and warranted punishment. In China, the central government is unable or unwilling to investigate a large number of officials, especially high-ranking officials. However, at the same time, it must impose severe punishment on convicted high-ranking officials. Although this mode of selective discipline compromises the credibility of the state in terms of anti-corruption efficacy, it also creates uncertainty for corrupt agents because corrupt officials are not guaranteed exemption.

The Vietnam War was an international conflict. Not only were the Americans engaged in large-scale military operations in a land far away from their own, but the two major Communist powers, China and the Soviet Union, were also deeply involved. In the case of China, scholars have long assumed that Beijing played an important role in supporting Hanoi's efforts to fight the United States. Due to the lack of access to Chinese source materials, however, there have been difficulties in illustrating and defining the motives, decision-making processes, magnitude and consequences of China's involvement with the Vietnam War.

Dr Lardy (in The China Quarterly, No. 61, March 1975) denies that the economic decentralization of the late 1950s impaired the ability of the central government to control allocation of economic resources. If such impairment had occurred, he argues, “ More developed provinces with high remission rates in the period before decentralization would have vastly greater resources at their disposal which they could use to maintain or increase the level of health, education and welfare (HEW) services they provided to their populations. Because provincial remittances would be reduced the central government could no longer subsidize areas previously dependent on net central government subsidies. Thus I hypothesize that the level of HEW expenditures in these areas would decline after decentralization as compared with the previously less dependent provinces. Similarly I hypothesize that the share of total national investment in provinces with proportionately greater fiscal resources would have increased sharply while the investment shares of the less developed provinces would have declined” (pp. 33 and 36). Dr Lardy's calculations indicate that “the dependency variable is significant but its effect is exactly the opposite of that predicted by the ‘decentralization hypothesis.’ That is, provinces that were more dependent on the central government prior to 1958 experienced larger increases, on the average, than did the less dependent provinces” (p. 38). “These tests,” he continues, “do not support the view that the decentralization measures transferred resource allocation power to provincial governments ”(pp. 38–39). Dr Lardy draws the conclusion that “ The central government's continued control of the fiscal system assured that the level of social services provided in the less developed provinces did not decline compared to more developed regions.”

The absence of a systematic programme has been a distinctive feature of China's economic reform process. The Chinese did not set out to develop a step-by-step plan of reform to be phased in over a period of years. Instead they adopted a number of strategic goals, and in 1978 launched incremental and pragmatic changes aimed at realizing them. Essentially the strategy adopted had four main aspects: a shift from economic growth expressed mainly through statistical targets towards an emphasis on satisfying the consumption needs of the population; a change from extensive development based on new investment towards intensive development through greater efficiency; an acceptance of greater economic autonomy for producers, with a broader mix of methods of economic management and types of ownership; and the adoption of a much more open economy. The reforms adopted over the succeeding years have all been consistent with these objectives, but they have not been implemented through a carefully planned series of stages. Overall the process has been marked by different rates of reform across sectors, by occasional pauses and even retreats, and by problems generated by the interaction of the differing rates of reform. Enterprise managers, for example, have found that plan controls over their production or sales have disappeared at a faster rate than controls over their supply of inputs. Given the dual price system and the continuing role of the central government in the supply of strategic materials and energy, the impact of the uneven pace of change on managers’ behaviour has therefore been very complex.

The fast-paced landing of China in Latin America raises the question of how such a complex relationship is being built from little previous contact. Focusing on Colombia's printed media, the article examines the construction of China's public image. A Janus-faced view of China is initially revealed: a growing power perceived as an auspicious trade partner on the one hand; a troubling new actor in the international context on the other. Further analysis shows shades of grey that reveal a multifaceted, continuously evolving image of China that tells us much about both countries. The depiction of China's rising power, whose direction and purpose suggest a paradigm of “modernity without enlightment,” brings light to Colombia's unsettled accounts with democracy and development. The article sets a launching pad for further research on such mutually constitutive relationships.

A revisionist literature on the Great Chinese Famine has emerged in recent years. These revisionists focus primarily on the question of agency. They claim that that neither poor weather nor the excesses of local cadres can explain the extent of mortality; rather, responsibility lies squarely with Mao and the CCP leadership. Using county-level data on mortality, output, rainfall and temperature for Sichuan province, I argue that this revisionist view is unconvincing. Weather admittedly played only a minor role, and the zealotry of the Party centre contributed significantly to the death toll. However, variations in mortality between Sichuan's counties appear to have been essentially random – suggesting that differences in local cadre responses to central government policy were decisive in determining the scale of famine.

How does democratization affect environmental politics and policy? While some scholars have cited empirical evidence showing that democratic countries tend to have better environmental records than their authoritarian counterparts, others have debated the compatibility between democracy and sustainable environmental management. One may, for example, note that many environmental problems involve large numbers of individuals who suffer from spill-over effects of actions by small numbers of individuals or firms. Many serious water and air pollution problems, for instance, are caused by a few industrial plants, yet their effects are suffered by many people. Although popularly elected officials may have an incentive to develop policies to protect the environmental welfare of the many, these officials may also be influenced by a few polluters who are better organized and more resourceful in pressing their case in the policy process. Following this logic, one cannot definitely predict, at least in the short term, that democratization will help improve the environment.

The educational reform document of May 1985 has set the policy framework for a transformation of the structure and organization of knowledge in the Chinese higher curriculum that may have far-reaching consequences. It has been the tradition in research on Chinese education to interpret educational reform movements in relation to broad political changes, policy debates among factions within the communist leadership and changing economic strategies represented in successive Five-Year Plans. More sociologically oriented studies have focused on issues such as access to higher education and changes in the composition of those who found their way into the upper echelons of the formal educational system in terms of social class background. These approaches have shed considerable light on aspects of China's modern educational development and their conclusions are of primary importance in seeking an understanding of the wide-ranging reforms announced in the document of May 1985.

This article uses a 1999 six-city survey of Chinese urban residents, along with several earlier public opinion surveys, in order to compare views on regime legitimacy between Deng and post-Deng eras. Posing the broad question of whether China's regime is seen to be in crisis or increasing stability, the author analyses data to measure public opinion in the areas of reform satisfaction, political support and political efficacy. The data reveals elements of both scenarios, possibly suggesting that the leadership was doing a good job at deepening economic reforms while successfully silencing public dissatisfaction at both the pace and content of market reform policies. Unlike in 1989, when urban residents took their issues to the street, in 1999 they became more politically conservative, even when dissatisfied with reform. Together with their heavy-handed control, the post-Deng leaders seemed to be successful in consolidating political power, using nationalism as an appeal while pushing for further market reform.

Guizhou's west to east electricity transfer project is a major energy infrastructure development project associated with the campaign to Open Up the West. In terms of state investments, the project has been the major feature of the campaign in Guizhou. It indicates the intensification of, rather than departure from, a long-term pattern of western primary resource exploitation for the purposes of eastern development. Guizhou's experience in the campaign to Open Up the West has mostly been about “big development,” and the campaign may even represent a new stage in the province's long history of internal colonization. In broader terms, the west to east electricity transfer project is indicative of the campaign's agenda to recentralize state political and economic control away from provinces which have gained considerable autonomy during the reform era. Along with the burst of infrastructure, the implications for Guizhou appear to be a continuation of uneven patterns of exchange between coast and interior. Tied increasingly to its role as net supplier of power to Guangdong, Guizhou could face fresh challenges in diversifying its economy sufficiently to withstand the impacts of China's World Trade Organization accession.