One of the most arresting aspects of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has been the confrontation between Mao Tse-tung (or the Maoist group) and the Chinese Communist Party. There is, to be sure, an area of vagueness and uncertainty concerning this whole matter. Have the Maoists attacked the party as such? What indeed is the party as such? The party may be conceived of as the sum total of its actual members—of its human composition. It may be conceived of in terms of its organisational structure—its “constitution,” rules and established mechanisms. To any genuine Marxist-Leninist, it is, of course, more than its cells and anatomy. It is a metaphysical organism which is more than the sum of its parts. The “soul” of this collective entity incarnates all those intellectual and moral capacities which Marx had attributed to the industrial proletariat.

Law is a social institution designed to help society operate in a harmonious and efficient manner. It fosters orderly relations among individuals and groups by formulating and enforcing some basic rules of conduct, providing mechanisms for the resolution of some major disagreements, and defining the structure and mode of government. The precise shape, content and manner of operation of this institution are determined by the resources, needs, problems, historical development and general conditions of the society in which it functions. As these factors differ from society to society, so also differ the attitudes towards law, the forms of legal systems and the specific legal norms and rules.

Lee Teng-hui, president of Taiwan from 1988 to 2000, played an important role in launching the widespread nationalism in Taiwan today. Since the end of his presidency, Lee has pushed very hard for a separate Taiwan nation, but during his terms of office he moved very cautiously and only announced his “special state-to-state” relationship to describe Taiwan's relations with China after China repeatedly refused to negotiate. Although Lee's efforts at democratization have received widespread affirmation in Taiwan, his efforts in creating Taiwan nationalism have proven more controversial.

How does the establishment of the National Supervisory Commission affect China's capacity to curb corruption? Using published materials and fieldwork data, this article addresses this question by comparing the newly established anti-corruption agency with the previous dual-track system. It first examines the previous system by focusing on four dimensions of the interaction between the Commission for Discipline Inspection (CDI) and the People's Procuratorate: complementarity, convergence, competition and conflict. Although the CDI and the procuratorate compensated for each other's deficiencies, competition and conflicts between the two institutions were rife, reducing the efficiency of China's anti-corruption work. The article then investigates what impact the establishment of the National Supervisory Commission has had on China's capacity to combat corruption. This new model strengthens the Party's capacity to curb corruption, and the focus of the anti-corruption work has shifted from punishment to prevention, but the Party still needs to resolve three types of unbalanced power relations: between supervision, prosecution and trial; between central and local authorities; and between the state and citizens.

What impact is the current rise in workplace conflict having on governance in China? This article argues that, over time, protests are driving the state in two directions at once: towards greater repression and greater responsiveness. Using an original dataset of strikes, protests and riots by Chinese workers between 2003 and 2012, along with government budgetary and judicial statistics, the article demonstrates that significant, positive correlations exist at the provincial level between increased unrest on the one hand and both increased spending on the People's Armed Police (repression) and increasing numbers of pro-worker and split decisions in mediation, arbitration and court cases (responsiveness) on the other. Feedback effects exist with regard to responsiveness, though: more cases in which workers win something in turn seem to spur greater unrest. The article closes by noting the changes since Xi Jinping took office and examining the implications of the findings for China's political development.

This article is a case study of state–society–capital conflicts over the preservation of the Central Police Station (CPS) compound in Hong Kong during 2003–08. The conflict was between two fundamentally different approaches to urban space: a cultural economy approach that took culture and space as a source of economic profit, and an opposition discourse of preservation that emphasized cultural, historical and humanistic values as an end. The struggle turned out to be a moderate success for anti-commercialism. Drawing on and extending the notions of collective memory and spatial politics, this article examines how the various civil society actors, in their struggle against commercialism, sought to define and enhance the cultural value of the site through a variety of discourses and practices relating to history and space. It addresses the specific question of why and how certain constructions of collective memory succeed (or fail) to work with certain places in particular instances. The study shows that memories of the CPS compound contained both state-associated and people-associated accounts, between which the former prevailed. The state-associated account was embedded in a familiar, hegemonic story about Hong Kong, which, via an abstract process of symbolization around the notion of the rule of law, successfully turned the compound into an iconic symbol of identification for the city. Beyond this, the civil society actors sought also to generate a sense of lived space associated with the people, and the outcome was mixed.

This article presents the first quantitative analysis of gender disparities in self-employment in urban China. It documents the extent of gender income inequality in self-employment. By disaggregating self-employment into three occupational classes, it reveals the gender segregation within self-employment – women were concentrated in the financially least rewarding segment – and identifies it as a main source of gender income inequality. I examine a range of determinants of participation in self-employment, including family structure, family background and career history, and how their gender-specific effects contribute to gender segregation. Although using data from a 1996 national survey, this study captures two key processes that shaped the structure of self-employment in contemporary urban China: the restructuring of the state sector and the growth of financial returns and social status in the private sector, both of which contributed to the formation of gender segregation in self-employment.

In mid May 1983 the Wuhan Public Security Bureau posted a notice along the walls of Hankow on “temporary residence certificates” for non-native personnel coming into the city to work. Since a check of the State Council Bulletin and the People's Daily for the months surrounding this time (from 1 January through 31 July 1983) turned up no similar central-level document, one must conclude that the source for this circular was local. Also, in the period since (through the time of final preparation of the present manuscript, late March 1984), those sources have still not published any authoritative rulings on this matter, insofar as I have been able to verify. Moreover, recent press accounts pertaining to city household registration describe decisions about this work as if they were taken by the municipalities themselves. Thus, the regulations translated and analysed below may only represent the situation and its handling in one particular region. Nonetheless, their intrinsic interest, their broader implications and their import reach far beyond this one case.

These reading notes are based upon an initial close reading of an important compilation of documents on the Chinese wage and fringe benefit system previously unavailable in the west and entitled Laodong Gongzi Wenjian Xuanbian (Selected Documents on Labour Wages; cited hereafter as LGWX: date of original document: page number). This volume is over 700 pages long, contains more than 390 documents and regulations on wages and fringe benefits spanning the years 1949 to 1973, and was published in 1973 by the Planning Commission of the Fujian Provincial Revolutionary Committee. The introduction states that some of the documents were included for historical reference only, but most were still being applied in 1973 and thereafter. In this respect it is interesting to note that over half of the documents included were issued in the years 1962–65. Furthermore, although published in Fujian, the great majority of the documents (over 300) were not issued in that province, but by national authorities, particularly the State Council, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Some of the documents included, such as those on the 1956 wage reforms, labour insurance regulations, and holidays and holiday travel leaves, have previously been available in openly-published documents.

The object of this article is to examine changing Chinese attitudes to their place in the world from a Chinese historical and intellectual perspective, in order to provide a basis for anticipating developments in the future attuned more to a Chinese than to a western point of view. The question immediately arises whether such a perspective is in any way relevant to the recent theory and practice of international relations in the People's Republic of China, and what insights, if any, such a perspective may provide for discussing the future. This is a controversial subject concerned with the nature of cultural change, and the extent to which " imprinting" from a long continuity of accepted social and cultural values can psychologically condition people even after a decisive break in that tradition appears to have occurred.

Empirical evidence concerning the demographics and development of Chinese nationalism is sparse but important for scholarship and policy. Its collection entails methodological challenges in access and reliability. We conducted a field experiment to measure nationalism in incentive-compatible choices among a diverse group of 447 Chinese subjects in a field setting. Our results demonstrate greater nationalism in female, older, less affluent and more rural respondents. We also find support for nationalism in professional and educated individuals. Our results provide qualified support for a middle-class nationalism in China.

Charismatic forms of healing can be found both in Chinese medicine and spiritual practices. This article examines how qigong healing sects in contemporary China became subject to state regulation and medicalization. Such a move was intended to eradicate masters who were viewed as promoting superstition (mixin) or heterodox spiritual practices. Yet, the rise of masters who intertwined healing with spirituality was facilitated by market reforms that enabled entrepreneurial forms of medicine. When other popular forms of healing emerged in the late 1990s, the previous state response to qigong facilitated containment practices which continue into the 21st century. Recent state policy towards sectarian organizations based on the promotion of science are compared with the regulation of qigong a decade earlier.

It is standard practice, both within and outside China, to divide its population between rural and urban. However, this distinction is more complex than at first appears. China's State Statistical Bureau uses three distinct concepts when defining China's rural population. These have been translated into “rural,” “agricultural” and “countryside” definitions. A further complication is that the people included in each of these definitions has changed over time. As a result, data for China's rural population is ambiguous unless the user can determine which of the three definitions is being used and from which period.

Pressures for change are inherent in leadership succession under any political system. In China, because of his longevity and close involvement in major strategic initiatives, Mao Zedong's passing was bound to intensify such pressures. When he died in September 1976, Mao had held supreme power, largely unchallenged, for four decades. Since 1949, China's economic development had been uniquely, if not consistently, influenced by his personal prejudices and idiosyncratic view of how best to realize the country's development potential.

The post-Cold War world is witnessing the reconfiguration of international relations with the emergence of new actors and relationships on the world stage. These new actors and patterns of relations are reshaping the familiarities of the post-war era. As the new millennium approaches, one has the sense that the world is in transition from one epoch to another. Among the new realities of our era is the emergence of “Greater China.”

The basic character of crime in contemporary China by the Ministry of Public Security Research Unit Number Five1 offers what must be the most comprehensive picture to date of crime in contemporary China. Written by the unit in charge of criminal investigation this authoritative article offers figures and analysis rarely seen outside the Ministry. Almost by definition it was never meant for open publication. It was designed for Chinese specialists within the Ministry to help them come to terms with, and to gain some understanding of, the nature of crime in the China of economic reform. The overall volume from which this article comes was one of three internally published by the Ministry between 1989 and 1993. The first two volumes are collections of articles from throughout the country, and the final volume (published in 1993) was a summary of major criminal trends and an update on the situation. The decision to publish these books followed a specialist conference convened by the Ministry in 1989 and held in Hebei for specialists in the area. The significance of the series is testified by the fact that the then Deputy Minister of Public Security, Yu Lie, was made editor-in-chief of the whole series.

Western economists who are interested in the analysis of the contemporary Chinese economy are currently confronted with challenging analytical tasks arising from two remarkable events. The first is the new post-Mao government's attempt to reform the economic system of centralized, physical planning that characterized the Mao regime in the direction of a system of decentralized and market-orientated planning (referred to as “reform” policy). Side by side with this systemic reform, the previous development policy of high growth and high investment, which gave top priority to heavy industry, is being replaced by a new one which aims at securing a steady increase in personal consumption and in which investment allocation is weighted in favour of light industry and agriculture. Of these new strategies, the latter is already being rigorously put into force (and even accompanied by a drastic deflatory effect), starting with an interim measure to reduce the over-inflated production of heavy industry in favour of raising that of light industry and agriculture (referred to as “adjustment” policy). The former component for the systemic reform of the economy is still at an experimental stage, but Chinese planners and economists appear to be very busy in discussing and preparing even more comprehensive reforms.

The analytical approaches so far devoted to the contemporary People's Liberation Army (PLA) have been of three general types. First, biographical studies which explain events in terms of the individual military leaders and their inter-relationships. Second, some students of the PLA have devised analytical models of informal power structures. The behaviour of the PLA in the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” has been interpreted by some as determined by personal loyalties, latent regionalism, and cliques formed around common service in military units prior to 1949. Others have viewed the PLA as split between “professional” commanders and the political cadres in the armed forces – sometimes dubbed a “Red versus expert” analysis. These categories of studies have one thing in common; they treat PLA institutions as being manipulated by informal and extra-legal forces. The third type of study emphasizes organizational and institutional frameworks. This paper falls into the third category. It asks the question: to what extent were the military institutions the subject or object of developments in the Cultural Revolution? It concludes that the organizational structures of the PLA and the missions assigned them heavily influenced the political behaviour of military leaders in the provinces.

In light of widespread western condemnation of the Tiananmen Square event, it may seem somewhat capricious to raise the issue of the “rule of law” as it is understood in China; however, prior to 4 June the Chinese Communist Party sanctioned a provocative theoretical debate which featured the “rule of law” as opposed to the “rule of man.” Even though the Chinese rule of law derived self-consciously from Chinese ideology and history, it seemed to parallel loosely the substantive concern in the western theoretical notion of “government of laws, not men.”

Grid governance has been developed by the Chinese party-state to collect intelligence at the grassroots level for the early pre-emption of what it defines as social instability. Using data collected from four months’ participant observation and extensive interviews with personnel who work in the grid governance system in what we call W Street, a location in a second-tier city in southern China, this paper examines how China's grid governance is used for stability maintenance and how in practice the system has become alienated from its original purpose of social control. We find that grid governance is achieved mainly through three mechanisms: intelligence gathering, case coordination and real-time reporting for stability maintenance. We further reveal that while grid governance provides an important infrastructural power for intelligence gathering, the realization of this power could be hindered by contradictory logics among different levels of government. This research not only provides empirical data on how China's grid governance works in practice but also calls for a rethinking of the capacity of China's stability maintenance regime.