There remains little doubt that the offcial population statistics which indicate the beginning and the end of the most recent down swing in China's “dynastic cycle” of demographic development – 430 million people in 1850 and 582·6 million on 30 June 1953 – are close approximations of the true totals. Detailed scrutiny of all evident irregularities in the reported data is unlikely to suggest corrections by more than five per cent, and such modifications are subject to questions and reservations in turn.

This paper explores the role of guanxi, particularly in its special form of tunqin, in building rural resilience in a poverty-stricken county in north China. The emphasis of this paper is placed on the nature and function of such guanxi. By presenting how guanxi is maintained, this paper also analyses the impact and effectiveness of local guanxi as a strategy to cope with poverty. Whereas tunqin guanxi appears to have built rural resilience in order to cushion villagers against life's upheavals, the maintenance of rural guanxi diminishes this resilience as scarce resources are spent on the exchange of cash gifts, thus aggravating local poverty.

Land expropriation, where peasants’ property rights are encroached by the state, has been recognized as a primary source of social dissension in rural China. Since the end of the last century, the Administrative Litigation Law (ALL) has provided people with a legal weapon to defend themselves against violations by state power. Drawing on the theory of relative deprivation, this paper proposes that peasants are more likely to sue the state when they feel deprived. To examine this hypothesis, we first present a case study to depict the causal process and then use quantitative research to improve the external validity of our findings. We created a novel and unique database of prefecture-level administrative litigations and relative deprivation for Poisson regression analysis. The quantitative results prove that the more peasants feel relatively deprived, the more likely they are to sue the state. Furthermore, the positive effect of relative deprivation on administrative litigations has become more significant over time, implying peasants’ growing awareness of legal resistance. This paper concludes that a critical step towards eliminating social inequity and maintaining social stability in rural China is to reduce the relative deprivation of peasants by, for example, allowing them to share in land value appreciation in the process of urbanization.

Women are underrepresented in legislature almost worldwide, and China is no exception. Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) implemented its first gender quota in 1933, gender quotas and women's representation in China remain understudied. This study fills the literature gap by examining the subnational variation in gender quota implementation and women's representation in the county-level people's congresses (CPC). Through a comparison of four county-level units in Hunan and Hubei with similar socioeconomic features yet contrasting results in the numbers of female representatives elected in the 2016 CPC election, this study argues that women's access to CPCs is affected by the CCP's adoption and enforcement of grassroots quotas. The fieldwork shows that although all cases introduced a 30 per cent gender quota, only CPCs in Hunan province were able to meet the quota requirements. This was because the grassroots quota threshold was raised in Hunan and strictly enforced, partly as a response to the 2013 Hengyang vote-buying scandal. In contrast, CPCs in Hubei province nominated a large number of “first hands” (yibashou) candidates, very few of whom were women.

This study analyses the intricate relationship between sanction-based accountability and bureaucratic shirking. Drawing on an original survey conducted among Chinese civil servants, it addresses the question of whether sanction-based accountability can effectively regulate the conduct of public officials and provide a cure for bureaucratic shirking. The study identifies the characteristics of shirking behaviour in the Chinese bureaucracy and distinguishes three major patterns: evading responsibility, shifting responsibility and reframing responsibility. The findings indicate that sanction-based accountability may contain some obvious and notorious slacking types of behaviour, such as stalling and inaction, but government officials may distort or reframe their responsibilities to cope with accountability pressure. Empirical evidence suggests that owing to some “strategic” adjustments in bureaucratic behaviour, flagrant shirking is replaced by more subtle ways of blame avoidance, such as playing it safe or fabricating performance information. Sanction-based accountability therefore does not offer a panacea for bureaucratic shirking.

In a letter to Joseph Bloch, dated 21–22 September 1890, Friedrich Engels wrote: “[W]e make our history ourselves, but in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed, even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one.” The phrase, “the political ones, etc.,” refers to the superstructure and the forms of social consciousness of a society as distinguished from its economic base or the mode of production.

The basic structure of the Republican economy at its pre-1949 peak is not much in dispute.1 With a population probably in excess of 500 million, the economy was predominantly agrarian: nearly two-thirds of its GNP originated in agriculture, and probably three-quarters of its labour force derived most if not all of their living from farming. There was a small modern sector, comprising parts of manufacturing, transportation, finance and so on, that represented no more than a tenth of GNP and was largely concentrated in the treaty ports. A similar percentage of the population lived in urban areas. It was a relatively commercialized economy, with as much as 40–45 per cent of farm produce making its way primarily into domestic markets. And by most measures, it was also moderately “open.” Imports and exports combined totalled about one-eighth of GNP. It was, however, a very poor economy. Per capita GNP in the mid-1930s was only 60 yuan, which converting into current U.S. dollars is only $200–250. Purchasing power parity calculations suggest an estimate probably double or even triple this, but by today's standards, this would still rank China amongst the poorer “low-income” countries.2

Ambitious aspirations for railway development in China had long antecedents prior to the establishment of communist rule in 1949. During the First World War, Sun Yat-sen presented a programme calling for the construction of 100,000 miles of railroads. A quarter of a century later, in 1943, Chang Kia-ngau, Kuomintang Minister of Communications, presented a ten-year plan for railroad construction. He called for 14,300 miles of railroads to be built within ten years following the end of the war. The new lines he envisioned were to be added to a total of 12,036 miles of railroad which had been built by 1942. Of this meagre existing mileage, “3,726 miles were lost through the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and 6,566 miles were lost or destroyed during the first five-and-one-half years of the Sino-Japanese war.” While lines lost but not destroyed could presumably be utilised after the war, the scope of his programme, as can be seen from comparison with the existing mileage, was considerably beyond what China could hope to achieve with her own resources. Like Sun Yat-sen before him, Chang Kia-ngau hoped that massive conversion of Western war industries to the production of construction goods would provide the material inputs to make his programme feasible. A plan based on the expectation of a beneficence the West has yet to display to the underdeveloped world was of course foredoomed to failure.

Defence budgets have many components, and the way the various items in the budget are categorized differs from country to country.... The main reason for this is not the way the budget is drawn up, it is due to profound social, economic and political factors.

An exposure to Chinese Communist discussions of the nature of “struggle” leaves a curious visual image. The portrait is not of two poles with a middle ground between, but of a situation in which the middle ground has moved to one of the two sides, leaving combat of one against two. For the middle ground or compromise between opposites has become an equal if not greater menace to progress (which emerges from struggle) than the obvious enemy itself. The “either-or” polarity is nothing new in Marxism, but it has taken on new significance in Chinese philosophical discourse.

Much attention has recently been paid to the difficult subject of estimating China's military expenditure (ME). This study seeks to contribute to this dialogue and research. Admittedly, this is not an easy task. A major problem with any analysis of China's ME is the veil of secrecy shrouding military allocations. Of course, the difficulty of gathering statistical data of sufficient reliability in this area is not peculiar to China. But Chinese leaders' traditional preoccupation with secrecy makes them extremely reluctant to publish details of the country's ME even in the crudest aggregated form. Until China published its first defence White Paper in November 1995, the annual state budget had contained only a single-line entry for defence. Even the White Paper did not reveal much about what was included in the official military budget. More important, a considerable amount of Chinese defence spending is not reflected in the official military budget. It is widely accepted by Western defence analysts, and occasionally admitted by their Chinese counterparts, that China's total defence spending includes three major components:

Drawing from ethnographic data from 48 households in four villages in rural Anhui, this study explores how two practices known for upholding son preference are affected by rural–urban out-migration, with a particular focus on the division of labour in agricultural work and patrilocality. The study deploys the concepts of an intergenerational contract and the “unsubstitutability” of sons and finds that a weakening of the intergenerational contract can take place without substantially challenging the unsubstitutability of sons. The study concludes that although male out-migration undermines the argument that sons are needed to secure male manual labour in family farming, the vital role of male labour as a rural livelihood strategy largely persists. Moreover, although the study identifies migration-induced exceptions, patrilocality remains the main organizing principle for social and economic life for both male and female migrants. Hence, the study finds little support for the prospect that migration is attenuating son preference in rural China.

By taking minban education at the level of basic education in Shanghai as an example, this article studies the processes of policy implementation in mainland China. Based on 65 interviews conducted during 2001 and 2004, the article analyses two policies on minban education which have metamorphosed during implementation. It argues that the Chinese mode of state governance has shifted from Party despotism to a mode that tolerates and embraces local deviation.

Since the 1999 budget reform, and for the first time in China, local people's congresses (LPCs) have begun to exert “the power of the purse.” Based on our fieldwork and survey, we argue that while LPCs have strengthened their budgetary oversight since the reform, they continue to employ a strategy of “embeddedness.” Although certain LPCs have become more contentious, they tend to veil contestations in bureaucratic negotiation in order to avoid uncontrollable budgetary conflicts. The strategy adopted by LPCs in budgetary oversight provides a case for examining the recent debate over the behaviour patterns of LPCs in legislative oversight.

The household registration (hukou) system has been widely recognized as a key contributory factor to social inequality and tensions in China yet it remains intact despite a series of institutional reforms. What explains the resilience of the system? In this study, we address this puzzle by drawing on policy documents, statistical data and interviews. We argue that the hukou system remains because it is used to protect the beneficiaries of welfare provision and to ensure pivotal groups continue to offer political support. We find that owing to the reforms, a formidable barrier has been erected between the guarded cities and other regions to protect healthcare and education resources from inbound migrant workers. Consequently, the institutional reforms of the hukou system serve as a political contrivance for the survival of the Chinese party-state regime. The findings contribute to emerging literature on China's political control by elaborating political elites’ subtle tactics through various institutions at central and local levels. We expect the new “Great Wall” established under Xi's administration to be an even stronger barrier than before for migrants during the current pandemic and in the future.

Any attempt to gauge the magnitude and composition of Soviet and Chinese economic assistance to North Vietnam since 1955 comes up against the problem of statistical secrecy. The North Vietnamese are the worst offenders: they have published no foreign trade returns, and their general statistical reporting is in the worst Stalinist percentile tradition. In reply to a question put to him by a French correspondent, a Dao Nai coal mine official stated: “Here in the mine we are not interested in tons; we are interested only in percentages. Tons are a matter for the Ministry of Heavy Industry in Hanoi.” A Soviet specialist stationed in Hanoi confided to the same correspondent: “They no longer permit us to get near the machines which we furnished them with.… It is worse here than in China.” Unfortunately, Chinese statistics, though more plentiful, are not much better. Soviet figures are the best of a bad lot, but they give only a partial, not unbiased, picture. Analysis of the North Vietnamese economy therefore reduces itself to the kind of detective work by which Western economists from 1929 to 1954 tried to piece together such information on the Soviet economy as Stalin's security-minded statisticians released.

At the outset of the recent anti-Confucian and Lin Piao campaign it was forecast that this movement would “ surely create still more •r favourable conditions for the emancipation of women.” x To create conditions advantageous to women the campaign set out to identify the obstacles inhibiting the redefinition of the role and status of women, j The identification of problem areas is not a new element in the history of the women's movement, indeed the problems have been stated time and again. The significance of this campaign lies in its concentrated and analytical attempt to integrate the redefinition of the female role with a nation-wide effort to change the self-image and expectations of both men and women. In this it provides a contrast with the strategy of the previous national campaign, the Cultural Revolution. Historically the women's movement has been very much concerned with raising the confidence of women in their own individual and collective abilities and translating the individual experience of suppression into a coherent analysis of oppression, but there is evidence to suggest that there was too little attention given to the position of women in the Cultural Revolution. For instance many associations and enterprises encouraged their members to believe that so long as overall revolutionary aims were fulfilled, there was no need to pay” particular attention to the position of women.2 The recent campaign and its application to practical problems among both men and women is a new recognition that because of their history of oppression it is still necessary to pay special attention to the restraints that continue to hinder the redefinition of women's role and status in society.

When the Chinese Communists finally consummated their seizure of power in mainland China, one of the first tasks which faced them was that of elaborating a formal institutional structure for the exercise of regular public authority. Indeed, while the new leadership now undoubtedly enjoyed de facto control over the country and the mass of the people, it found itself quite destitute of those normal channels of state regulation and administrative management which serve to bestow legitimacy on a claimant to the role of national government and to distinguish a duly constituted, relatively stable political order from an altogether fluid interlude of revolutionary action predicated on ad hoc use of organised force under a central direction. The Party soon moved to make up for this grave deficiency by creating, on paper at least, a complex mechanism of state administration to back up its bid for recognition as the official spokesman for the Chinese nation and, concurrently, provide it with the wherewithal to play that role effectively.

The recent surge in public remembrance of the Second World War in China has been substantially undergirded by a centrally planned and systematically implemented discursive shift which has remained overlooked in the literature. This study examines the revised official narrative by drawing on three cases from China's school curriculum, museums and formal diplomacy. It finds that the once dominant trope of “national victimization” no longer represents the main thrust in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rhetoric on the Second World War. Under Xi Jinping, this has been replaced by a self-assertive and aspirational narrative of “national victory” and “national greatness,” designed to enhance Beijing's legitimacy and advance its domestic and foreign policy objectives. By emphasizing national unity and CCP–KMT cooperation, the new narrative offers an inclusive and unifying interpretation of China's war effort in which the victory in 1945 has come to rival the 1949 revolution as the critical turning point towards “national rejuvenation.” The increasingly Sino-centric and centrally controlled narrative holds implicit warnings to those challenging Beijing's claim to greatness.

No monocausal explanation will suffice to account for the complex process of economic development. At different times and under different politico-economic circumstances, different combinations of actors and institutions are involved as agents of development, which include factories, investment banks, entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, foreign capital and the state. When “telescoping” the arduous process of development is the key imperative, the role of the state becomes particularly crucial in designing overall development strategies, governing the market by getting the prices wrong, and controlling the major sources of financing development. It should be noted, however, that the state is a multi-layered structure of authority with its own intra- and inter-governmental dynamics. As the extensive literature on the East Asian Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) almost uniformly adopts the highly encompassing term of state, it largely fails to differentiate the roles performed by the central and local governments in executing “developmental intervention.”