That Chinese policy since 1949 has been characterized by a pattern of left-right oscillations is one of the most widespread, but least examined, assumptions among analysts of Chinese politics. In the popular press, we often read of a “return to a moderate phase” or a “resurgence of radicalism,” while in academic writing, we frequently find contemporary Chinese history set in periods according to the alternate ascendancy of “bureaucratic” or “mobilizational” “models” or of “realist” and “visionary” groups of leaders. Of course, to some extent the policy oscillations model is only a kind of shorthand, convenient for summarizing the content of policy and its changes. We all understand that there have been secular changes in China both in what has been accomplished and in the terms of policy debate. Thus, it has become increasingly common to describe the pattern of policy change in China in terms of a combination of cyclical and secular patterns, to refer to policy oscillations in passing while presenting a chronology which actually indicates secular change, to offer the oscillations model explicitly as just a convenient simplification; or to ignore oscillations entirely in discussing the development of policy.

Research suggests that cause lawyers are a diverse group. Death penalty lawyers with attachment to political institutions and a strong commitment to procedurals tend to have a unique path to professional identification, participation in the legal process and acquiring the ability to affect case outcomes. Borrowing from Hilbink's typologies and Liu and Halliday's analytical framework, this study examines in detail the practices of proceduralist and progressive elite lawyers. It uses a high-profile capital case, the Nian Bin case, as a case study to analyse the motivation and strategies of the lead defence lawyer in the context of progressive proceduralist cause lawyers. Relevant theoretical and policy implications as well as suggestions for future studies are discussed.

“Recently, amid clamor and cries of ‘rural bankruptcy’ and ‘rural collapse,’ the slogans ‘rural reconstruction’ and ‘rural revival’ reverberate through the entire nation; this is really a kind of sudden awakening of government and people.” Thus, the major chronicler of rural reform movements during the Republican period began his 1934 compendium. Another reporter counted almost 700 distinct organizations devoted to rural work of various sorts. The pens of the intelligentsia churned out hundreds of monographs and specialized periodicals, and thousands of articles on the rural problem and the rural reconstruction solution. The powerholders – the Nanking regime itself, the provincial governments under its control, and the semi-independent militarist provincial governments – were concurrently formulating policies, instituting measures, establishing agencies, reorganizing local government structures, and generally manifesting great concern for the giant rural sector of Chinese society they had previously ignored.

In market reform China, contentious and unfair labour relations between vulnerable migrant workers and exploitative foreign factory owners are one of the most critical issues of the political economy. This article analyses another group of workers – non-migrant local village workers – who protect themselves from foreign employers using two political resources: collective land-use rights and local political organizations, such as village governments, affective networks and physical forces, during their suburban village's industrialization. Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork in Shandong (Qingdao) and other coastal regions in 2007, 2008 and 2011–2013, this article attempts to answer the questions of how local village workers protect their labour rights without reliable trade unions or rigorous governmental protection. How can villagers protect, if not maximize, their interests in their relations with the foreign factories in their villages? It also contrasts local labour relations in Qingdao with migrant labour relations in other coastal regions.

This article investigates the recent proliferation of family-themed homosexual stories in China based on life-history interviews and participant observation conducted in Shenzhen. We develop the concept of “neo-Confucian homonormativity” – characterized by a harmonious relationship between gay men and their families of origin and their ability and aspiration to enter a monogamous relationship and become parents – to explain the production, circulation and consumption of these stories in the Chinese gay community. We argue that these stories are socially embedded actions enabled by the emerging neoliberal sexual politics in the Chinese gay community that influence the organization of the Chinese gay community and Chinese gay men's lived experiences. By analysing the emerging storytelling practices in the Chinese gay community, this article challenges the Western-centric way of theorizing homonormativity and opens up the possibility to conceptualize homonormativity from an Asian perspective.

Since the signing of Sino–British Joint Declaration in September 1984 Hong Kong has entered a transitional phase, preparing for its ultimate return to China in 1997. This transition is characterized by a drastic redistribution of power and authority, and a realignment of social forces. Most significantly, a dualistic power structure has emerged, signifying a rapid decline of traditional British colonial dominance and a corresponding rise in the influence of the People's Republic of China in Hong Kong.

Although much has been written about Maoist economic theory (about the role of material and moral incentives, for instance, and about the relation between industry and agriculture), the recent appearance of the two volumes entitled Mao Tse-tung ssu-hsiong wan-sui and in particular five pieces therein (“Reading notes on the Soviet Union's Political Economy,” the three critiques of Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. and Mao's comments on Stalin's “Reply to Comrades Sanina and Venzher”), permits analysis to push beyond “Maoist” economics into the theory of Mao himself. In fact these pieces in the Wan-sui on political economy may well be compared to Mao's public speeches and the Selected Works as Marx's Grundrisse is to Das Kapital.

By 1964 Mao Tse-tung had lost effective control over much of the Party hierarchy set up by his “successor,” and also over the state administrative apparatus… Liu Shao-ch'i and his like-minded comrades utilized the Mao cult in theory and slighted Maoism in practice… Mao was convinced that the people and Party rank and file were with him but were misled by his disloyal opposition. … Edgar Snow, “Aftermath of the Cultural Revolution,” in The New Republic, 10 April 1971.

Using online Chinese communities as primary sources, this article studies public perceptions in China of Latin America in terms of how the region is seen as part of the Third World while also offering China a convenient backyard by which to access the First World United States. Codified online public opinion on four different Latin American topics is then analysed and compared with official opinion: how “Latin Americanization” becomes China's nightmare, how the Latin Americans should learn from the “China model,” how the Latin Americans were being discriminated in the H1N1 epidemic, and how the “Latin American card” to balance the United States is emphasized. The conclusion suggests that only when the stereotypes discussed in this article are dismissed will the true value of Latin America gradually obtain any standing in the eyes of ordinary Chinese and will the Latin American mission of the Chinese government be fully understood by its subjects.

This study draws on a case study of Wukan and interviews with migrants and peasants in other sites to examine how migration shapes popular resistance in migrant-sending communities (i.e. rural China). Findings demonstrate multidimensional roles played by migrants and returned migrants who act as a vehicle of informational and ideological transmission and at times directly participate in or even lead rural resistance in origin communities. Both the transmission and participation processes foster political consciousness and action orientations among peasants. The importance of migrants is exemplified in the Wukan protests but is also found in other settings under study. In general, migrants represent a latent political force that acts upon serious grievances back home. The findings provide a useful lens for understanding the diffusion of popular resistance and the linkage between urban and rural activism in China.

More than a decade after the end of the Cold War, both the European Union (EU) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) are usually regarded as important political and economic actors in a globalizing international environment. While the United States as the third important partner is heavily divided in its China policy between proponents of a policy of containment and their opponents favouring engagement, European countries have without exception followed a policy of “constructive engagement” towards China. The PRC in return is strengthening its relations with Europe, seeking not only improved trade relations, but also a deepened political dialogue and intensified co-operation. Apart from policy statements, however, Europe is far from implementing a consolidated and integrated China policy.

Mao Zedong's key concern in his analysis of the United States was always how to estimate American influence on the survival and security of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and, after 1 October 1949, of the People's Republic of China (PRC). But on 21 February 1972, Richard Nixon, the first American president ever to set foot on Chinese soil, began what he called “the week that changed the world.” This was also perhaps the most significant day in the 200-year history of Sino-U.S. relations. To prepare for it Nixon read extensive background materials on China, listened to specialists' advice on how to deal with his Chinese counterparts, and even practised eating with chopsticks. Nevertheless, he still felt nervous, fearing that he might be subjected to the humiliation previously encountered by Western barbarians who had journeyed to the court of the Chinese Emperor in an earlier age.

Overseas study is a global phenomenon and a major business internationally. But does overseas study pay off? Using data from the 2015 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), we examine the labour market performance of overseas returnees in China. To obtain more accurate results, we matched each returnee with a local so that the domestic group is as similar as possible to the returnee group. We then conducted empirical analyses of the matched data. We find that compared with domestic postgraduates, returnee postgraduates earn about 20 per cent more annually. Moreover, the salary premiums paid for foreign graduate degrees can be attributed principally to the superior human capital gained from overseas education rather than from any “signalling” effect. Also, returnees with graduate degrees are more likely to enter high-income professions and foreign-funded ventures, and to reach higher positions in those organizations. However, we find no significant differences in income, occupation choices and positions between returnee and local bachelor's degree recipients. As such, we suggest that Chinese students and their families are best served when the students obtain a local undergraduate degree and then go overseas for graduate training.

This study estimates the impact of road expansion on off-farm activities in rural China. To achieve this goal, econometric models that capture the impact of road expansion on migration and local off-farm works are developed and estimated using individual data. Estimation results show that road expansion encourages farmers to participate in local off-farm work rather than migrate. In addition, road expansion also has a significant impact on the working time and income of local off-farm work.

In 1983 when The China Quarterly published a special issue on Hong Kong, I attempted to synthesize the history of its urban social life, coining the term “Hong Kong Man” to describe what I considered to be the emergence of an identifiable unique social animal. Hong Kong Man, I suggested, was neither Chinese nor British. I characterized him as quick-thinking, flexible, tough for survival, excitement-craving, sophisticated in material tastes, and self-made in a strenuously competitive world. He operated in the context of a most uncertain future, control over which was in the hands of others, and for this as well as for historical reasons he lived “life in the short term”.

The formative years of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have long remained one of the most obscure periods in the recent past of China. There remain many puzzles about why and how the alliances, between the CCP and the Kuomintang (KMT) on the one hand and Soviet Russia on the other, came about in the early 1920s.

For the last four years I have been studying the establishment and first years of the CCP, at the same time paying attention to the foundation and first years of the Indische Sociaal Democratische Vereniging (ISDV), which was later to become the Partai Kommunis Indonesia (PKI). In this connexion I have been specially interested in outlining the origins of that strategy whereby Communist Party members entered a nationalist mass movement and tried to capture it from within.

The shift in China's economic strategy following the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1978 was an attempt to readjust and reform the economic system. First, reform measures were introduced in the agricultural sector. Secondly, the commercial sector was gradually being adjusted to allow the market mechanism to play a role under the “guidance” of state planning. Thirdly, there was more investment in transport and communications. Fourthly, the rate of accumulation by the state was reduced while the rate of consumption by the people was raised through higher incomes and the availability of more consumer goods. Fifthly, there were attempts to readjust the investment pattern between agriculture, heavy industry and light industry. Last, but not least, reform measures were introduced in the management of state enterprises. The article is concerned with this reform.

In the very first sentence of the first article in the first issue of The China Quarterly, Howard L. Boorman, seeking to summarize the first decade of the PRC, wrote: “The man who faces his typewriter to set down a thousand words of coherent comment on the Communist revolution in China confronts not only a massive experiment in social engineering but also the fact that his interpretation of that experiment will expose as much of the author as it does of the revolution.” Except that now it is a computer and not a typewriter, little is different for anyone who would try to summarize what is now 50 years of the PRC. True, enough time has gone by for us now to have not just the initial standard interpretations as to what transpired in China but revisions and then further re-revisions of the story, so that even though we cannot be so bold as to say that we now have the full truth, we probably are a bit closer.

The Cultural Revolution was a large-scale self-examination by the Chinese of their political system, involving all the ruling groups as well as the whole population. Not only specific policy issues but also social. economic and political institutions and their value premises were subjected to this examination. Hoping to reverse the trend towards social restratification based on Party bureaucratism, Mao sought to build a mass consensus on the future direction of the revolution. However, in the process of “freely mobilizing the masses,” some social groups found that their interests called for a radical restructuring of the Chinese political system, while those of others lay in the status quo. As the Cultural Revolution (CR) unfolded, the masses and the elite further divided among themselves over the various issues: elite groupings took conservative or radical positions, and formed coalitions with corresponding sections of the masses. Consequently, the division between the radicals and the conservatives cut through both the elite and the masses and set in motion forces that gave the Cultural Revolution its distinctive character.

Indian justification of its May 1998 nuclear tests in terms of Chinese threats to India prompted a multifacited Chinese campaign pressuring New Delhi to retract its offensive statements. One significant element of Chinese concerns with Indian statements was apprehension over an Indian drift toward alignment with the United States. Beijing's efforts were successful and within two years New Delhi had given Beijing the requisite assurances and the normal state of Sino-Indian amity was restored. Sino-Indian interactions in the period after India's May 1998 tests demonstrates the extreme sensitivity of both powers to the other's alignment with the United States in the post-Cold War world.