Shaanxi province has obtained substantial benefits from the Open Up the West programme. It has developed communications, sped up exploitation of energy resources, and subsidized industrial and agricultural restructuring. Conversion of farmland to forest or grass has been subsidized on a massive scale, even if its lasting effects are quite uncertain. Moreover, local governments were able to receive increasing amounts of subsidies for government services such as education and welfare, which meant the burden of human and social cost of marketization of the local economy could be alleviated. Of the three different regions of Shaanxi, the north has benefited most from energy development and agricultural restructuring. Central Shaanxi with Xi'an as the capital has profited from its advantageous location, existing industrial basis, administrative functions, and strong education and research facilities to improve its industrial structure and upgrade its services. However, the substantial industrial expansion over the past few years was fuelled by heavy policy-driven investment from outside and growing urban income, and most enterprises still have to prove their ultimate competitiveness in the national market.

Focusing on Dongtai and Songjiang counties in east China, this report examines peasant resistance to the “unified purchase and sale” programme in the 1950s. The heavy procurement burden on most households in the prosperous Songjiang county led to various forms of resistance from peasants that culminated in collective violence. In sharp contrast, the low procurement quota on a limited number of households in the impoverished Dongtai county only caused moderate resistance. In both counties, however, local government leaders faced the increasing inapplicability of the prevailing notion of “class line” to the new realities of rural disgruntlement. As this report demonstrates, in both counties, resistance to the state's grain programme came primarily from ordinary peasants rather than their class enemies of landlords and rich peasants. For the first time, the CCP felt the need to redefine peasant discontent under the socialist state as a new category, later known as “contradictions within the people,” which remains valid to date in official representations of rural disturbances.

Venerable Hong Choon (1907–90) made eight visits to China between 1982 and 1990. During these visits, the Venerable met national and religious leaders, made pilgrimages to sacred Buddhist sites, helped to restore the monasteries associated with his master Venerable Hui Quan, and officiated at religious ceremonies. This study aims to examine the diplomatic significance of Venerable Hong Choon's visits to China. It positions these religious exchanges within the broader context of Singapore–China relations since the reopening of China in the late 1970s, and argues that Buddhism played a role in fostering international relations between the two countries in the period prior to the official establishment of diplomatic ties. In the absence of formal diplomatic channels between Singapore and China, Venerable Hong Choon's religious visits could thus be seen as a form of informal diplomacy with the aim of confidence building.

Using a detailed case study of house eviction in peri-urban China as well as original data from an online survey experiment, this article explores the opportunistic bargaining phenomenon in China in which citizens leverage the policy priorities of authorities with tactics that are not approved by the state to bargain for goals beyond those promised by the state. We find that opportunistic bargaining is widely accepted by Chinese citizens and that such an inclination is encouraged by successful precedents and clear signals of an opening through which to leverage government policy priorities; however, it is dampened by unclear signals and failed precedents. We also find that opportunistic bargainers tend to hold more negative perceptions of the current regime and are less likely to abide by state rules or social norms. The characteristics of opportunistic bargaining appear to be the opposite of the dominant “rightful resistance” framework.

On 1 July 1997, Hong Kong, the only significant remaining part of the British Empire, will revert to China. In the same year India, once the jewel in that crown and whose emancipation marked the beginning of the end, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence. History will record that for the latter part of these five decades the economic development of Hong Kong was, compared to other former British territories, spectacular. Once Hong Kong had overcome the challenge of the mass influx of refugees following the Chinese civil war, which endured for almost two of the five decades, its subsequent development, measured in material terms, was exemplary. No matter what the challenge, the Hong Kong population rose to it. Yet, compared to India and other parts of the former empire, its government until the eve of the reversion remained, judged by recognized criteria, “undemocratic” and unrepresentative, executive-led, and based on a colonial form of constitution.

The data presented in this paper are drawn from observations and materials that I acquired as the result of a short visit to Kwangtung Province in April 1977. During that time I was able to travel as an individual and undertake 10 days of concentrated interviewing on the composition of the household, marriage and kinship relationsin a selection of rural villages and urban neighbourhoods. During this visit I specifically set out to test the correlation between differing patterns of marriage with the structure and functions of households and primary groups that I had already developed from a study of the documentary sources. In making these correlations from documentary sources, I found that I was far from clear about questions such as household composition, post-marital residential arrangements and relations between households and kin groups in rural villages. I hoped that my visit might allow me to make an inquiry into the structure of domestic groups and the nature of primary kin groups in rural and urban areas. Restricted by time, I had to be less concerned with the actual marriage patterns themselves and with other areas of interest, such as the relation of kin groups to leadership patterns. My collection of data is, therefore, directly relevant to a very limited subject area. The materials collected from one village have been published here because the opportunities to acquire a survey of, or more comprehensive materials from, a single village are still limited, and previous such collections stand out as land-marks in the history of the study of social institutions in China.

Since the late 1950s, when the core of China' science and technology (S&T) system was first established, a recurrent problem has been the lack of transfer of technology from research units to production enterprises. When the Chinese leadership of the post-Mao period decided that science and technology constituted a vital component of the Four Modernizations, it became increasingly clear that something had to be done about the inability of the S&T system to contribute to economic development.

As other analysts have suggested in different ways, the Cultural Revolution involves differences of emphasis among Chinese leaders over basic directional choices for the society at large: whether Maoist-style politics (or ideology) can continue to “take command” or must yield at least equal place to the practical problems and limitations involved in fixing priorities and setting goals; whether radical Maoism befits a China in transition or must be modified if China is to realize its historically based claim to great power status; or whether China must inevitably “change colour” or can remain ideologically “pure red” even in the throes of modernization.

This article examines the institutionalization of online consultation, a prominent instrument of governance reform in contemporary China in which government organizations make public draft laws and regulations and solicit input from interested parties prior to finalizing decisions. The article specifically analyses the extent to which online consultation is a durable governance reform that enhances transparency and participation in policymaking. The analysis focuses on the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) and Guangzhou Municipal Government (GMG), leading organizations in the implementation of online consultation. Through the analysis of original datasets consisting of hundreds of policies proposed by the MOC and GMG and thousands of comments submitted in response to these drafts, the article demonstrates that online consultation has institutionalized government transparency but has not consistently enhanced public participation. Although online consultation has the potential to transform policymaking, the evidence suggests that strong confidence in this possibility is not warranted.

At the National Conference on Learning from Taching in Industry, held in Peking in May 1977, vice-premier of the State Council, Yu Ch'iu-li, first publicly mentioned the recreation of regional “economic systems.” Although there has been no reference to any administration for governing these regions, the use of the term “systems” (t'i-hsi), which must be “established,” suggests organized co-ordination on a regional basis. Several Hong Kong-based journals that report on current Chinese economic or political developments took note of Yu's remarks, speculating, respectively, that they were to serve economic development or defence goals, or that they might represent a concession to provincial leaders demanding autonomy. Thereafter, no further word of these regions surfaced for over four months. Then, in mid-September, in an article on socialist construction, the State Planning Commission drew attention again to these regions.

China's application for accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) raises particular questions about the implications for China's legal system. This article examines these issues by reference to Chinese contexts and perspectives, and by examining the processes of accession and what these mean for further legal reform. It concludes with a discussion of possible approaches that might prove useful in managing China's relationship with the world trading system.

The theory of price formation has been vigorously discussed in Communist China since 1953, but the main themes of the discussion have varied. Generally speaking, the discussion may be conveniently divided into two periods. The first period covers the years prior to 1960, during which there were a large number of articles dealing with the role of the “law of value” in socialist planning and the problem of price formation for producer goods transferred within the state sector. The discussion was partly a result of Stalin's publication of Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. A number of Chinese economists disagreed with Stalin's assertion that the law of value and the concept of commodity production and exchange did not apply to the state sector.

This paper focuses on agency workers in China's auto industry. Some scholars foresee that this new category of workers, particularly in the auto industry, will play a leading role in global labour resistance. In this context, we conducted a questionnaire survey of 483 regular and agency workers at five major auto joint ventures in China and compared their work conditions, job satisfaction and willingness to take collective actions. Based on these findings, we argue that these companies have good reasons to keep the gap in wages and in work conditions small. This, along with management practices inherited from the Maoist system, can mitigate workers' dissatisfaction and reduce their tendency to take militant actions.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, historians′ approach to Republican China was informed by a predominant concern for Revolution. Scholarly priorities were focused on the early history of the Chinese Communist Party and on the socio-economic analysis of the countryside where the Chinese revolution had achieved its first success. Few publications were devoted to urban China. The Maoist regime until its end was seen to maintain a strong anti-urban stance. Great ex-treaty port cities were condemned for their past co-operation with foreign imperialism. In the West, the Republican era was often perceived as a confused interregnum between the Qing dynasty and the Communist Empire. And more than a few historians shared the views of their Chinese colleagues and featured big cities of the 1920s and 1930s as outposts of foreign economic exploitation and political oppression, as citadels of cultural arrogance.

Chinese state firms are expected not only to profit but also to serve state interests. But the Chinese state is fragmented: border provinces are taking on an expanded role in China's global expansion and a broad range of firm activities could be defined as patriotic contributions. Through the case of Yunnan State Farms (YSF), a province-level state-owned enterprise, this article explores how state firms interpret and navigate multiple state interests while also pursuing profit. The firm's ability to profit depends on balancing the demands and support of different Chinese state actors while depicting itself as a development partner to the Lao state and a contributor to Sino-Lao diplomatic relations and border region stability. This case thus shows that, instead of YSF's behaviour being directed by the state, the firm exercises considerable latitude in defining its contributions to state interests through the expansion of rubber production as a driver of development.

Following a well-established research tradition on court decisions, this study analyses 524 defamation cases in China from 1993 to 2013, explores the media's success possibilities, and investigates the role of party capacity, political influence and the medium effect. Contrary to the existing assertions, we find that the media are not necessarily losing. On average, from 1993 to 2013, the success rate of news media in Chinese defamation courts was 42 per cent, and this rate has been increasing since 2005. We also find that government officials and Party organs had consistent advantages in court, while ordinary plaintiffs, magazines and websites had less success. The medium of the media (i.e. print, broadcast, internet) makes a difference, as do the government policies governing the media. In addition, local protectionism exists, but it is less rampant than expected. These findings compel us to rethink the dynamics among the media, the courts and the state, and their implications on China's institutional resilience.

Debates about whether China's rise poses a threat or an opportunity for Taiwan have settled into a realist assumption that Beijing will continue to upset the balance of power and a liberal approach that believes the benefits of economic interdependence are leading to greater gains. Missing from this debate is a nuanced consideration of how Taiwan's policy elites view themselves and their position in cross-Strait relations. Taiwan's decision makers' views are deeply affected by, and interact with, factors and institutions on and beyond the island. This article offers a model of political processes – the staying power of the status quo and order of movement – as a possible route towards an explanation for Taiwan's position on cross-Strait negotiations. The conclusion is that the status quo position – de facto but not de jure independence – is becoming more entrenched with time. Taiwan's colours of partisanship, Blue and Green, are blending into Aquamarine.

A large body of literature on state–business relations in China has examined the political role of capitalists and collusion between the state and the private sector. This paper contributes to that literature and understanding of the internal differentiation among China's business elites by documenting the emergence of a particular kind of large, non-state business group that we argue is more akin to a mafia system than any standard definition of a firm. Drawing on large-N descriptive data as well as deep ethnographic and documentary research, we argue that mafia-like business systems share organizational principles (plunder and obfuscation) and means of growth and survival (relations of mutual endangerment and manipulation of the financial system). Understanding the particular moral economy that underlies mafia-like business systems and their interactions with the state challenges methodological foundations of research on China's political economy and helps to explain recent conflict between high-profile business people and the state.

The past 15 years have been eventful ones for the Chinese economy. They have seen an ambitious attempt at economic acceleration decline into agricultural crisis, a major reversal of the direction of economic policy, agricultural recovery and resurgent economic momentum. These years have brought major changes to the Chinese economy: whole new industries have appeared; official policy towards such diverse areas as education, income distribution, regional dispersion of industry and economic specialization has shifted repeatedly; the organization of agricultural production has also changed.