Having a number of studies on what Kenneth Dolbeare has called “fundamental policies” in the education and health fields, we are now able to make a preliminary assessment of how the Chinese political system has performed along three important dimensions. With what degree of equity have services been provided across provinces? What have been the aggregate growth trends in education and health and what have been the long- and short-term costs of these patterns? Finally, what impact have the programmes had on the problems they were designed to overcome?

During the regime of Mao Zedong (1949–76), a number of Western scholars described Chinas modern history as moving from one orthodoxy, the Confucianism of the Qing dynasty, to the Marxism–Leninism– Maoism of the Peoples Republic. The cultural and intellectual pluralism of the intervening years of die early decades of the 20th century, the May Fourth movement, and even the more limited pluralism during the weak Leninist state and watered–down Confucianism of the Kuomintang Republic (1928–49) looked like an interregnum between two orthodoxies.1 When Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978 and established a milder form of authoritarianism than that of his predecessor, a number of Western scholars revised their views of 20th–century Chinese history. As Deng carried out economically pragmatic policies and relaxed controls over the intellectual community as well as over peoples personal lives and geographic regions, they pointed out that the 1949 divide of the Chinese Communist revolution was not as sharp and as singular a break in modern Chinese history as it had been presented. Rather, it should be seen as part of the ongoing effort to build a strong Chinese state and modern economy, inspired by nationalist pride, going on since the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911.

The Chinese government has acknowledged that in order to turn Chinese universities into world class institutions, it will have to grant them a greater degree of autonomy. However, the reforms that have been introduced to achieve this goal run counter to a long tradition of central government oversight. The question now presenting itself is how much actual control government has devolved to universities. The qualitative evidence presented in this paper, obtained through interviews with university presidents and Party secretaries, not only confirms that, as one might expect, Chinese universities continue to operate “in the shadow of hierarchy,” but also and more importantly that formal efforts to devolve authority are being rendered ineffective by informal pressures and control mechanisms. Discussion reflects on the state of play in Chinese public administration studies, and urges public policy researchers examining devolution in China to account for both formal reforms and everyday “lived experiences.”

This article represents the first attempt to examine the Chinese elite's threat perception of Japan using statistics to analyse what, if any, differences exist among the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese economic institutes. It seeks to answer two questions that have not previously been addressed in the literature. First, has there been a change in perception of the Japanese threat in these three sectors over time? And if so, what can we deduce about the causes of this change? This study finds that there have indeed been two major shifts in China's threat perception of Japan since the 1980s, one in the late 1980s and the other in the mid-1990s. It also finds that there were no differences between sectors as to the direction and timing of these shifts. It suggests that Japan's military build-up in the late 1980s and the strengthening of the US–Japan alliance from 1996 onwards are what prompted these shifts in China's threat perception.

In January 1967, Communist China's “great proletarian cultural revolution” entered a new stage—a stage of violent overthrow of all those in positions of authority in the Party and government who refused to accept Mao Tse-tung's new “revolutionary” order. Erupting in Shanghai under the name of the “January Revolution,” this frenzied drive to “seize power” initiated a period of nation-wide violence and disorder.

Decollectivization and the division of land have raised questions about whether a landed basis might reappear for a contemporary reformulation of patriliny in the Chinese countryside. This article addresses these questions by examining the processes through which formerly collective land has been divided and partially brought together again in informal, nameless co-operative groupings with an apparent patrilineal tinge.

This research reveals a new consensus among scholars in both Moscow and Beijing that the 1969 Sino-Soviet border crisis was a premeditated act of violence orchestrated by the Chinese side. International and domestic causes are investigated for their strength in explaining China's belligerence. There has been a widespread belief among sinologists that China acted out of desperation against Soviet strength and aggressiveness, which had been demonstrated most clearly by the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and the associated “Brezhnev Doctrine.” The author presents evidence that challenges this traditional interpretation. Rather, a stronger explanation for China's aggressiveness in March 1969 is Mao's need at that particular time for an external threat to unify the country. The article additionally explores the implications of these revelations for the study of Chinese foreign policy and international relations generally.

It is axiomatic among observers that in the transition to the post-Deng era, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) will play a pivotal role. This is understandable. Until now, the army has been a central force in Chinese politics owing to the unique Party-army relationship that has existed since the founding of the Communist regime. Although this relationship will change in the near future, the importance of the military will not: they will remain indispensable backers of the new leadership. This is because they command the forces which may be used to determine the outcome of an elite power struggle, displace rebellious local figures, put down a mass uprising or even carry out a coup.

Scholarly explanations of the worsening financial performance of Chinese industry over the reform era, particularly the loss-making phenomenon, have coalesced around two rival stories: the “inefficient institutions causing poor financial performance” story and the “increased competition inducing profitability decline” story. This article critically reviews the arguments and empirical substantiation of the two stories, and gives an alternative explanation that takes demand conditions and industrial configurations into the analysis. On this basis, it is argued that the worsening financial performance is a macro as well as micro problem that points to the fundamental contradictions in contemporary Chinese political economy. Some policy implications from this analysis are raised in the concluding section.

Judged by almost any standard, law and the legal system in China today form part of a growth industry. Although the pace has been uneven and has at times seemed to falter, the growth has been maintained for more than a decade, since the end of the Cultural Revolution and the inauguration of the Four Modernizations. The most easily visible aspect of this phenomenon is the volume of legislation, unprecedented in any other period since 1949. The output is difficult to monitor precisely, because although the major laws and regulations issued by the National People's Congress and the organs of the central government are now for the most part regularly published, the majority of regulations issued at the ministerial or lower levels of the central government are still not published in such a way as to be easily accessible, if they are published at all; and the amount of local legislation which filters out of the area in which it applies is still limited.

How does one define the ”national security research bureaucracy” (NSRB) in the Chinese context and are there enough empirical data to sustain an article on this topic? The definition one chooses directly determines the data base one uses and, in turn, answers the question of the viability of the topic.

This article examines the profound transformation market reforms have brought to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rural grassroots organizations. Focusing on the political rise of private entrepreneurs and other economically successful individuals who recently obtained village Party secretary appointments in a north China county, the article explores their differing promotion channels, power bases, political resources and motivations to take up the CCP's grassroots leadership position. It demonstrates that the variety among the new entrepreneurial Party secretaries – from large factory owners to de facto farm managers – shaped the network resource, factional affiliation and socio-political capital they rely upon to exercise their newly attained power. It also shows the crucial role played by community-based endogenous forces in transmitting the power of economic liberalization into dynamics for the reshuffling of the Communist Party leadership at the grassroots level.

The performance of top Chinese women athletes in the 1990s has been unprecedented in the history of sport. Not only have they made remarkable progress from virtual obscurity to world champions and record breakers, they have far surpassed the performance of their male compatriots in international sport. This unique phenomenon extends from middle and long–distance running to swimming and diving, from weightlifting and chess to volleyball and basketball, from shooting and archery to wrestling and rowing, from badminton and gymnastics to softball and soccer – and table tennis dating back to the early 1970s.

This article examines the dynamic evolution of China's ideology work through the prism of journalism education. Official sensitivity about both student activism and the media makes journalism education a critical sector for observing how the Party attempts to instil ideology. The article interrogates the process of negotiation of official ideology among authorities, educators and students at elite journalism schools. It demonstrates that alongside state-sanctioned media commercialization and globalization, official influence still looms large in journalism training. Ideological teachings continue to occupy a core place in the curricula, and the authorities deploy a mix of structural oversight, ad hoc surveillance and coercion to keep the educators in check. The effects of the official ideology work, however, are ambivalent, as educators and students engage in the active reinterpretation of the Party's media principles. While these practices do not directly undermine the Party's legitimacy, they demonstrate that official ideology has merely constructed what Yurchak terms a “hegemony of form,” highlighting a degree of vulnerability in China's mode of adaptive authoritarianism.

Both supply- and demand-oriented solutions are important in cleaning up the electricity sector. However, their successful deployment calls for the removal of various barriers. This paper looks at China's electricity industry, one of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, by relating the regulatory framework to the environmental dimension of sustainable electricity development. It develops an analytical framework by drawing upon the literature on the deployment of supply- and demand-side solutions, regulatory governance, and environmental policy integration. The paper finds that, in China's electricity sector, environmental considerations are subordinate to economic and development goals in policymaking and enforcement. Under the current regulatory framework, regulatory policies/instruments are not conducive to removing barriers to the effective deployment of the solutions.

On 17 May 1996 at the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution, a group of about 40 people met in the number two crypt at Babaoshan national cemetery on the western outskirts of Beijing where the ashes of China's highest elite are interred. They met at that particular time in memory of four men who had been declared traitors and enemies of the state in 1966 at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In this crypt are kept the ashes of three of the men, Deng Tuo, Wu Han and Liu Ren. The ashes of the fourth, Liao Mosha, were scattered, according to his wishes, at the foot of a tree beneath the Great Wall.

This article examines the impact of migration on inter-household inequality in Wanzai county, north-west Jiangxi. A full investigation into the causal relationships between migration and inequality requires testing through longitudinal data. Although this study is based on data gathered at a fixed time, it is robust in examining the inter-relationships between migration and three other agents of stratification: household composition, local off-farm employment and land.

Samuel P. Huntington categorized Taiwan's path to democracy as “transformation,” by which he meant that “the elites in power took the lead in bringing about democracy.” The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) would agree with this explanation, although the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which was established in 1986 in defiance of martial law, would argue that Taiwan's liberalization and democratization was carried out through a process of transplacement, in which “democratization resulted largely from the joint action by government and opposition groups”.

The Han and Uyghur populations of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China differ in all major health indicators. In life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality and morbidity Uyghur people are much worse off than Han. Calculations performed with the linear mixed effect multiple regression model show that poor health in Xinjiang is tied directly to Uyghur nationality. Although education, employment and income are also correlated with public health outcomes, they neither cancel out the effect of nationality nor lessen it significantly. Various socio-economic, cultural and historical factors are responsible for the health gap. Preliminary investigations suggest that lack of education, low income, cultural attitudes about gender, group-specific psychological stress, and the socio-economic and demographic changes of the past 60 years could be the major factors.