Peace and security were once marginal in Sino-African relations. Recently, however, reflecting China's more proactive role as a global security actor, they have become central. Yet while China's actions mirror this shift, the official China–Africa discourse has not changed. This article, based on fieldwork interviews and discourse analysis of official Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) documents, proposes a theoretically grounded study of China's Africa discourse to account for the role it plays in maintaining continuity through time. It makes a threefold claim. First, while the China–Africa discourse has not been given much attention in the literature, it is crucial to explaining the overall success of China's engagement in the continent. Second, the shift in China's policies towards greater participation in peace and security is not mirrored by changes in the official discourse. Third, and related, this is owing mostly to the successful articulation of the link between the promotion of economic growth and the achievement of stability – the security–development nexus – and to the generally positive reception the discourse has found among African leaders.

To what extent has governance of China's state-owned economy changed under Xi Jinping? Against the background of momentous shifts in the political arena since 2012, some observe a decisive departure in Xi's approach to managing state-owned enterprises (SOEs): towards tight centralized control by the Chinese Communist Party and away from gradual marketization. Analysing the main aims and methods of SOE governance over the last two decades, we find that SOE policy under Xi exhibits a deepening of pre-existing trends rather than a departure. First, the essential vision of SOE functions articulated under Xi is strikingly consistent with that of his predecessors. Second, his administration's approach to governing SOEs is not novel; it relies on established mechanisms of bureaucratic design, the cadre management system, Party organizations and campaigns. While Xi has amplified Party-centred tools of command and control, this appears to be an incremental rather than a radical shift in approach.

Empirical evidence suggests that close to 100 million women are “missing” worldwide. We revisit the empirical evidence for China, the country with the most missing women. Nearly ten million girls born in the 1980s and 1990s who were “missing” according to earlier census data can be found again in the 2010 population census. We discuss two possible explanations for the re-emergence of these formerly missing girls: the delayed registration of girls owing to economic reasons, and the response to amendments to the Chinese Statistics Law in 2009 and policy changes in the 2010 population census. Using the most recent statistics, we document patterns of the underreporting of women over time and across regions as well as explore the basic determinants of underreporting of women. Important policy challenges remain. For the unregistered children, the lack of access to public services will increase their vulnerability and adversely affect their quality of life.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is expanding its organizational infrastructure in the private sector, revealing the dynamics of CCP-style institutional change. Party building follows a distinct version of adaptive governance. Hesitant to rely on innovative tools alone, organizers productively tinker with traditional and disparate elements. Grassroots Party organs, sanctified by their venerable history, are redeployed – initially for modest purposes that fall short of their original revolutionary potential. The Party's surge in private-sector firms was triggered by technocrats overhauling Leninist systems to reconnect to Party members; the search for a broader mission came later. To empower CCP organs in companies, organizers use tactical precedents ranging from incentives to negotiations around Party financing, and membership discipline. Combining tactics from different eras, overseas Party building deploys old organizational arrangements to new ends, whereas digitization gives time-worn procedures a second life. The inclination for institutional bricolage is a deeply rooted hallmark of innovation in Chinese statecraft.

While existing scholarship looks at the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and emerging social strata and civil society, the Party's impact on its own grassroots has been largely overlooked. How does the Party manage its own grassroots members? I argue that the CCP has ritualized its management practices in recent years. Drawing from a dataset of 1,408 “Thematic Party Days” (TPDs) conducted by grassroots Party branches in Beijing, I show how such practices are geared towards integrating ordinary Party members with the Party centre in Beijing and the Party in general. This reflects a major shift in the Party's organizational strategy, moving away from embracing market values and towards reproducing the Party's values and ideology at the grassroots.

Wildlife trade policies in China and elsewhere have come under increased scrutiny following suggestions that the emergence of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 may have been linked to trade in wild animals. The breeding of and trade in most terrestrial wild animal species for consumption as food were prohibited in China in February 2020, but trade for non-food purposes such as ornamental items or traditional medicine continues to be covered by provisions in the Wildlife Protection Law (WPL). While a superficial reading of the WPL could lead to the conclusion that commercial trade in nationally protected species is generally prohibited, in practice key language is interpreted to permit commercial trade in the parts and derivatives of protected wild animal species, including those subject to the most stringent protection within China and internationally, such as leopards and pangolins.

In recent years, explanations of the Chinese Communist Party's longevity as a ruling party have focused on institutionalization. But a close look at the four leaders of China since 1978 reveal that institutions have remained weak. Of much greater importance have been balances that reflect the informal distribution of power and norms that express agreed-upon Party procedures. Of yet even greater importance have been the efforts of individual leaders to concentrate power in themselves through the appointment of protégés to critical positions. Such leaders also attempt to extend their influence beyond their terms in office through those protégés and their roles as “elders.” Thus, we see a tension between Party norms and the centralizing tendencies of Leninist systems in which the centralizing tendencies usually prevail. With Xi Jinping, we see a far greater personalization of power disrupting the norms and balances existing under previous leaders.

Perhaps the most oft-quoted part of Xi Jinping's defiant 1st July speech marking the Party's centenary was his warning than any external forces attempting to “bully, oppress or subjugate” China will “dash their heads against the Great Wall of steel built with the flesh and blood of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people.” Foreign news organizations covering the ceremony also noted the “visual trick” of Xi's donning of a grey Mao suit identical to the one worn by the Great Helmsman in the portrait that hangs on Tiananmen, just feet below the rostrum from which Xi delivered his address; others doubted the functional significance of the five identical microphones, ascribing to them a very different significance. Xi's repeated references to the importance of Party history, however, drew far less attention in the Western press, although Xi gravely warned a cheering and flag-waving audience of more than 70,000 that while the CCP's original mission “is easy to define, ensuring that we stay true to this mission is a more difficult task.”