Pervasive government interference and cronyism in China's financial sector resemble the deficiencies displayed by many other political economies. But in its regulatory efforts, China's government has means at its disposal that are very different. The rise and demise of the Central Financial Work Commission (CFWC) is an outstanding example of the innovative potential and also the limits of Communist Party institutional engineering in China's economy. The creation of the CFWC was a strategy to arrest the breakdown of hierarchies in the financial industry and to restore central policy decisiveness. By means of Party control over senior financial executives and Party-sponsored institutional reorganization, China's political leadership pushed through a centralization of financial market supervision and a series of regulatory innovations starting in 1998. Leninist institutions provided China's politicians with a reserve capacity for responding to perceived organizational crises and for innovating economic regulation. Leninist means of control were conducive to establishing centralized supervision and more uniform regulation. But they failed to introduce market-driven incentive structures for financial executives, did not raise the efficiency in allocating capital and mismatched with the emerging new forms of corporate governance. The new Wen Jiabao government therefore tried a different approach to financial sector reform, redefined the role of Party bodies and dissolved the CWFC. By laying the foundations for national market regulation, this Communist Party body however paved the way for the efforts at dismantling old socialist institutions in China's financial sector that have been under way since 2003.

In the 1980s and 1990s, China experienced rapid labour transfer from agricultural to non-agricultural activities. Large numbers of Chinese villagers sought to escape low-status and unprofitable work in grain cultivation through migration or local off-farm employment. Although migrants generally earned higher wage income, they suffered from inferior work and living conditions compared to local off-farm workers. All things considered, we argue that migration was a second best option for the villagers which they chose only after they had failed to secure comparable local employment. Under such circumstances, political power in the rural area was expected to have a significant influence on the outcome of local off-farm employment. When the off-farm population (migrants and local off-farm workers) is further divided into wage labourers and entrepreneurs, it can be seen that local power worked differently in each case. Being from a cadre family had little impact on whether a wage worker stayed local or migrated, but entrepreneurs with political connections were more likely to stay in the local area. This conclusion contradicts the “market transition” theory that asserts marketization (measured by the presence of private entrepreneurial activities) nullifies the advantage of traditional power. It also qualifies the “power persistence” theory in that positional power seemed less relevant for the wage labourers than for the private entrepreneurs.

Environmental non-governmental organizations are becoming increasingly visible players in China's environmental politics. Adopting a field perspective, this article shows how the rise of environmental NGOs has taken place in interactions with four institutional fields. They not only respond to political conditions, but also to opportunities offered by the media, the internet and international NGOs. In this process, organizational entrepreneurs play a crucial role in mobilizing resources while other individuals participate in search of self-fulfilment or social experience. These arguments underscore the multi-institutional dynamics of civil society development without underestimating state-centred and market-centred explanations. In conclusion, the article discusses how environmental NGOs can serve as both sites and agents of democratic social change in China.

This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the discourses of same-sex desire which predominated in Taiwan in the two decades preceding the lifting of martial law in 1987. Using a poststructuralist, historical approach, it is shown that Taiwan – being on the one hand a society with a strong Chinese cultural heritage, but on the other a society which has developed a strong sense of selfidentity as a result of a history very different from that of the Chinese mainland during the last century – can provide valuable insights into the ways in which social developments, global interaction and intercultural influences have changed the discourse of same-sex desire. Within the framework of this approach, it will be shown that these changes, which contributed towards the liberalization and pluralization of Taiwanese society, began to take effect in the period just before the lifting of martial law.

Yangge is a popular rural dance in north China. In the Yan'an era (1936–47) the Chinese Communist Party used the art form as a political tool to influence people's thinking and to disseminate socialist images. During the early years of the People's Republic of China, the Communists introduced a simpler form of yangge in the cities. In three major yangge musicals performed in Beijing, the Party attempted to construct “a narrative history through rhythmic movements” in an effort to weave the developments of the Party's history into a coherent success story, affirming various themes: the support of the people, the valour of the Red Army, the wise leadership of the Party and the country's bright future. However, urban yangge's simplicity as an art form, the professionalization of art troupes, the nation's increasing exposure to a variety of alternative dance forms and, worse still, stifling government control all contributed to the rapid decline of this art form in urban China.

Fundamental changes in China's finance system for social services have decentralized responsibilities for provision to lower levels of government and increased costs to individuals. The more localized, market-oriented approaches to social service provision, together with rising economic inequalities, raise questions about access to social services among China's children. With a multivariate analysis of three waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (1989, 1993 and 1997), this article investigates two dimensions of children's social welfare: health care, operationalized as access to health insurance, and education, operationalized as enrolment in and progress through school. Three main results emerge. First, analyses do not suggest an across-the-board decline in access to these child welfare services during the period under consideration. Overall, insurance rates, enrolment rates and grade-for-age attainment improved. Secondly, while results underscore the considerable disadvantages in insurance and education experienced by poorer children in each wave of the survey, there is no evidence that household socio-economic disparities systematically widened. Finally, findings suggest that community resources conditioned the provision of social services, and that dimensions of community level of development and capacity to finance public welfare increasingly mattered for some social services.

This article examines the situation of non-governmental children's welfare institutions based on field investigation in China. The research finds that China's market-oriented reforms have created both the demand for and the resources required to meet the welfare needs of vulnerable children. The new private non-profit sector responds to the social demand of providing services to vulnerable children by mobilizing non-government resources whilst actively looking for new ways of co-operating with the state and fighting for legal status. However the Chinese state hesitates to establish formal relations with the new non-government sector owing to political or economic considerations, or the lack of necessary capacity and experience in the field. A major policy break-through is urgently needed to address the welfare needs of vulnerable children in China. The aim of this policy change must be to establish formal relations between the state and civil society and to define the regulatory role of the state in social welfare.

China's health reforms of the 1980s led to privatization of rural health care with adverse impact on farmers. A decade later a new rural co-operative medical scheme (RCMS), was piloted throughout many provinces to promote better equity. Although many schemes later collapsed owing to inadequate funding, some continue to the present. This article compares such a scheme with the out-of-pocket system in Henan province. We study the township hospitals, focusing on cost of services, utilization rates and impact of RCMS on hospitals' financial sustainability. Our results derive from monthly hospital records and a survey of four hospitals in two adjacent counties, one county with low-premium RCMS and the other with the out-of-pocket system.

All hospitals charged for preventive activities (such as antenatal care, immunization), an unfortunate consequence of limited government support. It was not clear that on average, the total cost of individual patient visits in RCMS hospitals was lower than non-RCMS hospitals. Farmers were generally unaware of their insurance entitlements, except the catastrophic illnesses for which there was a real benefit from refund of US$100 or more. Although the effect of the RCMS on hospital charges was unclear it was notable that the utilization rates in RCMS areas were twice those in non-RCMS.

We conclude that RCMS hospitals were better funded because of re-imbursements from the insurance scheme and therefore were more viable as sources of good health care. Thus, health care could become more equitable under RCMS than the out-ofpocket system. China is now beginning to test a revised form of RCMS with pooling at the county level, increased premiums (10 yuan per person) and increased government funding. However, it must be followed closely to determine the effect on rural services and health care costs for farmers.

Whether there will be a war between China and Taiwan depends very much upon whether Taiwan will declare independence. And given that Taiwan is a democracy now, public opinion on the issue will certainly affect the political leaders' decision to move one way or the other. Since the early 1990s, several competing methods have been used in surveys to study Taiwanese attitudes on the independence – unification issue. The existence of a large percentage of respondents with conditional preferences makes us realize that the traditional six-point or 11-point scale measures of preferences oversimplify the situation. In this article, we construct a new measure of preferences and show that it clearly outperforms the traditional methods.

Robert Kuhn's lengthy biography of Jiang Zemin sets out to tell the inside story of this unlikely leader of China from 1989 to 2004. An American investment banker and television producer with business interests in China, Kuhn was given access to many of Jiang's closest friends, aides and political allies. Yet the long-anticipated result is short of expectations. Much of the book is a dry rehashing of Jiang's official schedule from year to year, with Trollopian chapter subtitles like “How could I not know?” The occasional glimpses into the inner political and personal world of the man are so fleeting as to leave the reader more frustrated than gratified.

To be sure, the careful reader will turn up a host of interesting facts here that enhance our understanding of Jiang: for example, he began his life as an anti-drugs protestor not aware that the protests he joined were organized by the CCP. There is also a vivid James Bond-like scene of Jiang speeding a friend to safety in Shanghai at the wheel of an American jeep in 1948. And there are glimpses of real world politics. Jiang's chief mentor, Wang Daohan, commented candidly to Jiang in 1989 on the “many complications and contradictions” of politics in Beijing “especially all the subtle conflicts between different interest groups.” His sister notes of his elevation to Party chief: “We certainly didn't celebrate. His appointment wasn't worth celebrating.” Later, Jiang's wife, Wang Yeping, is quoted as saying she was always dismayed by the files on her husband's desk that suggested a daily crisis of governance. “Explosions here, rioting there. Murders, corruption, terrorism – little that was nice.” Unfortunately, these factional conflicts and governance crises are nowhere to be found in the narrative, which offers instead a steady diet of Jiang's meetings with foreign leaders and “important” speeches.

One can obtain as wide a range of views on the state of health of the Chinese media as on any other subject these days. Chinese journalists who remember the press up to 25 years ago will assert how much greater freedom exists now. Even the reporting of traffic accidents was forbidden, as Hugo de Burgh points out, “until the taboo was broken around 1980” (p. 36). (In Shanghai, I was told, it was broken when the Jiefang ribao reported that a trolley bus had caught fire on Huaihai Road.)

Younger journalists are more likely to chafe at the limits still imposed upon the media. Many seek to pursue media studies abroad, explaining that they hope to be better qualified if or when there is a new breakthrough in China. Others continue to push at the limits, sometimes getting sacked but often able to move on to another media outlet in another province. Those working for web-based media are often bolder than their print counterparts – including journalists on the People's Daily website who exposed the notorious Nandan tin mine disaster in 2001.

This is a timely book which, as its title suggests, focuses on the Chinese journalist rather than on Chinese journalism – a distinction that would have been impossible to draw until recent years. It is based on fieldwork as well as wide reading although the value of some interview material is reduced by the necessity – revealing in itself – to mask the interviewees' identity.

Phillip Andrews-Speed has written a timely book. China's rapid economic growth has generated an enormous appetite for energy. Over the past decade, China has become an increasingly important factor in global energy markets. China was responsible for about one third of the increase in daily world oil consumption in 2003, and China's demand for oil and coal has contributed to the recent higher prices for both of these commodities. Consequently, the decisions Beijing makes – and does not make – about energy will have an increasing impact not only on China but also on the rest of the world.

Energy Policy and Regulation in the People's Republic of China surveys energy policy formulation, implementation and regulation in China. The book is primarily based on research previously published by the author, and reads more like a collection of parts than an organic whole. Nonetheless, two themes loosely bind the chapters together. First, China lacks a coherent energy policy. Secondly, China's powerful state-owned energy companies exert considerable influence over energy decision-making.

Andrews-Speed argues that China's energy policy incoherence can be explained, in part, by the fragmented institutional structure of energy decision-making. China does not have a Ministry of Energy to oversee the formulation and implementation of policy. Currently, this responsibility nominally falls to the Energy Bureau within the National Development Reform Commission (NDRC). Yet, the Energy Bureau lacks both the manpower and the authority to play a major role in policy making. Both the Chinese and Western media indicate that the Energy Bureau's small staff of 30 is so overwhelmed with projects in need of approval that it has little time to devise and co-ordinate broader policy objectives. The Energy Bureau's ability to shape policy is also limited by the fact that it is only one of many actors involved in energy matters. Energy decisions, according to Andrews-Speed, are the result of bargaining and consensus-building among the stakeholders in any given initiative and do not reflect an overarching strategy for energy.

China's Poor Region is based on the author's PhD thesis and has a foreword by Peter Nolan, the distinguished scholar at Cambridge. It is a questionnaire survey plus two-ended interviews of subjects in Shanxi province. It is important to point out that the subjects of the investigation are migrants internal to Shanxi and are mostly male workers at coal mines or construction sites. This is very different from the subjects of the second book reviewed, which deals only with women, but also involves migrants from across China.

After a survey of theories of rural poverty and rural to urban migration, Zhang goes on to describe the poverty in China and discusses the Chinese government policies to tackle rural poverty. In chapters three to five, Zhang describes the methodology and results of a case study of three sampled counties of 200 households. The final chapter is a very brief conclusion which suggests, among other points, that rural migration has played – and will continue to play – a positive role in social development and in resolving rural poverty.

Reading On the Move, the first question that came to my mind was: why women? What are the gender issues that make researching female migration as a separate study worthwhile? The informative introduction chapter not only discusses the aims and rationale of focusing on women, but also contains a brief survey of modern migration in China and brings together a whole range of gender issues to the subject. For example, “Outmigration may provide an important avenue of escape for women suffering gender oppression or violence,” such as the above average rate of suicide among rural women. Women suffer – or suffer more – from the patriarchal authority of parents or in-laws, and migration has an impact on that. One chapter in the book suggests that migrant women make more independent and informed decisions on who to marry and how to spend money. Even for those women who stay at home, having a migrant in the family changes the status of the women in the household as they take up new duties and responsibilities. There are other issues such as the emotional ties between mothers and children, and returned migrant women may also find themselves in a different emotional and social situation from that of the men.

In Corruption and Market in Contemporary China, Yan Sun seeks to describe, in qualitative terms, corruption in post-Mao China and assess its consequences. Corruption is not, she argues, a unitary phenomena but rather consists of a variety of different forms of malfeasance whereby officials use the public authority granted them by right of their positions to seek private gains. Differences in form imply differences in result. Thus, we might presume it makes a difference if an official loots the treasury and absconds to the Cayman Islands or if she accepts a minor bribe in return for granting a business licence to an entrepreneur who goes on to establish a flourishing business empire.

In trying to describe Chinese corruption, Sun faces a Herculean task. Since 1979, the Ministry of Supervision and the Party's Discipline Inspection Commission have disciplined three million cadres and the judicial Procuratorate has prosecuted one million cases of economic and disciplinary crime. Even given detailed and systematic data, the task of cataloguing the multitudinous forms of corruption and then characterizing them into a manageable typology would be a formidable analytic task. Such data are, however, lacking. Sun is therefore forced to turn to case data drawn from a variety of compilations and collections. These data are problematic – as Sun recognizes – because of sampling error and selection bias.

Using her database (which consists of approximately 1,300 mostly senior-level cases), supplemented by data from official and unofficial Chinese sources, Sun breaks corruption down into two major categories, transactive and nontransactive, differentiating between exchanges between state officials and private interests (e.g. bribery), and the theft of state assets by officials (e.g. embezzlement). She then disaggregates these categories into 11 subcategories and 27 specific forms. She further differentiates between two periods (pre-1992 and post-1992) and breaks corruption down along regional lines.

This book's primary theoretical targets are methodological problems and political biases in China studies, and it uses scholarly and administrative discourses about female prostitution in order to illustrate the field's shortcomings. As befits its embrace of the text-based “new humanities,” its sources are scholarly debates, police and government reports, and secondary sources rather than ethnographic fieldwork.

Jeffreys argues that China studies suffers from several problems. First, it has methodological deficiencies: China studies is dominated by scholars who wrongly claim to have access to the “truth” about China because of their linguistic skills; as “nation-translators” they produce positivist, realist, empiricist works disconnected from the theoretically-oriented “new humanities.” Moreover, scholars who do attempt to apply postmodern or postcolonial theories to China engage it as an object that can illustrate their theories, never as a subject that can generate theory. In short, Anglophone authors privilege the metropolitan discourse and ignore what Chinese people have to say. Secondly, the field suffers from political biases: China Studies is still mired in a Cold War ideological framework in which scholars accept the word of the CCP only “to turn it back on the CCP … to show how and where the CCP and Chinese Marxism have failed” (p. 41). Their analytical reliance on the state/civil society dichotomy emphasizes the power of the state over and above society, with the implication that only non-state actors can speak truthfully. This “preclude[s] the possibility that there might be anything positive or productive about the operation of power in China” (p. 41). Jeffreys advocates replacing the state/civil society dichotomy with the Foucauldian notion of “governmentality,” which forces one to examine the complex historical background and administrative networks in which government officials are enmeshed, and which creates the limits of the possible for them. Lastly, she argues that international NGOs and metropolitan feminists are fundamentally misguided when they push the Chinese government to recognize the validity of sex work because they have no idea what the actual ramifications of this would be in the Chinese context. Such a policy would, unlike the commonsense efforts of the Chinese police, make life worse, not better, for prostitutes.

Since 1999, falun gong has been one of the most burning and sensitive political and religious issues in China, brought to the attention of the public around the world by demonstrations and media reports. Until Maria Hsia Chang's book, Falun Gong: The End of Days, was released this spring, no balanced book-length account of the facts surrounding falun gong was available. Chang's book provides the general public with an informative summary of the development of falun gong, its basic beliefs, the history of its repression by the Chinese state, and its connection with millenarian and sectarian traditions in Chinese religious history. However, the journalistic style and sources of the book underline the need for a thorough academic study of the phenomenon.

Chapter one, “A religious sect defies the state,” outlines the story of falun gong from its foundation in 1992 to its continued repression today following the Zhongnanhai demonstration of 1999. In chapter two, “Chinese religions and millenarian movements,” Chang summarizes the history of Chinese religions, secret societies, and millennial and apocalyptic movements, including the Eight Trigram, Taiping and Boxer rebellions, and argues that the Chinese Communists tapped into China's millenarian tradition in order to gain power. She then stresses that falun gong, contrary to its claims that it is not a religion, draws heavily from Chinese religion, and particularly its millennial and apocalyptic strands. Falun gong teachings are described in chapter three, “Beliefs and practices,” in which falun gong's cosmology, theology and eschatology are outlined with ample reference to the writings of Li Hongzhi. The next chapter, “The state vs. falun gong,” goes through the Chinese state's charges against falun gong. Chapter five, “The persecution of other faiths,” begins with a critique of the “rule of law” purportedly called on by the CCP to deal with falun gong, and argues that the accusations made against falun gong could just as well be made against the CCP itself. It then discusses the vast social dislocations in contemporary China that create a fertile soil for the emergence of apocalyptic movements such as falun gong, and describes how the persecution of falun gong is part of a larger policy to eradicate underground religious groups, several of which are presented. Finally, Chang concludes that, in the face of widespread social dissatisfaction, the fear of millenarian uprisings is the main motivation for the CCP's fierce suppression of falun gong – but its intolerance of “heterodox” faiths only reinforces their politicization into oppositional movements, increasing the likelihood of the CCP “reaping the fate” it so dreads.

It has been more than 80 years since Chinese intellectuals, struggling with the complexities of “science and philosophy of life,” debated the challenges of finding the moral wisdom needed to apply new scientific knowledge in ethically responsible ways. Could a moral compass be found? Would it be discovered in Chinese culture, or would it come from the West?

Advances in science and technology during the course of the 20th century have often outpaced progress in understanding “science and philosophy of life.” Nevertheless, the importance of the ethical dimensions of science and technology has increased in all countries, and there is little doubt that the new technologies of the early 21st century are already bestowing on us new moral conundrums. As advanced technologies and scientific research capabilities diffuse around the world, the ethical traditions which inform moral choice seemingly become more heterogeneous, and the need for reasoned, cross-cultural moral discourse increases. The Institut für Asienkunde in Hamburg is therefore to be congratulated for convening the “First International and Interdisciplinary Symposium on Aspects of Medical Ethics in China,” from which the 15 papers in this volume come.

There is no easy way to summarize the diversity of views presented in this provocative conference report. The authors include practising scientists from China and students of bioethics from China, Malaysia, Germany and the United States. But, the theme of eugenics – especially the ways in which advances in human genetics affect our moral stance towards eugenics – link a number of the papers. The atrocities of Nazi Germany strongly condition the views of the Western authors. Reacting, perhaps, to China's 1994 Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care, the latter seem to be urging Chinese researchers, medical practitioners, ethicists and policymakers to take the German experience to heart – even as China embraces the promises of the new genetic technologies. Thus, historian Sheila Faith Weiss' “Prelude to the maelstrom,” an informative account of the origins of Nazi eugenics in the 19th and early 20th-century culture of German medicine, is not so subtly subtitled, “A cautionary tale for contemporary China?” The Chinese authors acknowledge this “cautionary tale,” but also speak to the ethical challenges of new genetic technologies from a tradition with its own understandings of how practical knowledge and moral purpose are related, and how individual and collective well-being are reconciled.

Can the nightmare of language control in Orwell's 1984 work in reality? Linguistic Engineering offers a detailed look at Cultural Revolution slogans and draconian punishments for ‘incorrect’ speech, especially in schools and the workplace. Ji offers much-needed evidence from linguistics and psychology that, even for Red Guards, new vocabulary for ‘class struggle’ against ‘cow ghosts and snake gods’ could not produce a complete or permanent change in thought. Language control is fortunately impossible, however much intellectuals or propagandists may wish. Mere exposure to a phrase does not mean people will learn it, much less believe it. Humans inevitably interpret the world by experience, context and possible rewards, using humour, subversion, indifference, and simple daily routine to find ways to live around even the most oppressive propaganda.

Linguistic Engineering focuses mainly on the spoken language of political discussion groups and propaganda between 1966 and 1972, with additional examples from school textbooks, and some model literature and operas. Once labels like ‘rightist,’ ‘bad element’ or ‘capitalist roader’ became linked with everything from ostracism to job loss to prison, passionate battles erupted. Traditional four character phrases such as “confess without being pressed” (bu da zi zhao) grew heavily politicized. Other new vocabulary, however, such as ‘tractor’ or ‘work unit’ was a more benign reflection of new technology and social systems, and remains part of everyday life.

Lazy research mars what should have been a better book. Most of the Chinese examples are lifted from English language secondary sources by political scientists, then back-translated (well) into Chinese. Other examples come from English language memoirs of former Red Guards. They are rather unevenly chosen and cited, but most examples have already received meticulous discussion over the past 30 years. This book uses the term ‘Maoist worship,’ for example, very simplistically, ignoring the extensive literature on the distinctions between religious rites and political rallies. The term ‘linguistic engineering’ itself, comes not from Stalin, but from his propagandist, Zhadnov, who said writers are “engineers of human souls.” Other sections are original, but less compelling (e.g. the heroine of the model opera, “On the Docks,” gets 42 per cent of the dialogue).

In The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou, historian James Gao provides the first book-length re-examination of the CCP's military and political conquest of China since Kenneth Lieberthal published Revolution and Tradition in Tientsin in 1980. This reappraisal comes none too soon, since there has been a revolution in the last 24 years in the quantity and quality of primary sources available on the early years of the PRC. Recently published memoirs, newly opened government archives, and interviews with former CCP cadres all contribute to Gao's richer and more nuanced portrayal of this key period in the Chinese Communist revolution.

Gao argues that the CCP's moderation in the early 1950s was not the typical cooling of utopian fervour that most revolutionaries have experienced upon seizing power. He also disagrees with scholars who have characterized the early 1950s as a sharp break from the radicalism that both preceded and followed it. Instead, Gao maintains that this period represents a strategic pause in the Chinese Communist Revolution, engineered by opportunistic Party leaders in order to consolidate their new hold on power. While this focus on the problems of regime consolidation may not be new, Gao's emphasis on the cultural aspects of this process is innovative. He argues that one of the most important facets of the Chinese Communists' consolidation of power was their effort to incorporate elements of urban elite culture into the rural revolutionary culture of the wartime base areas, and thereby transcend the limitations of their earlier political practices.

In the burgeoning sub-field of narcotic history in China, Narcotic Culture stands out as a revision of the revisionist literature. Most scholars now concur that the nature and extent of China's narcotic “problem” has been grossly exaggerated over time, and recent scholarship has reinterpreted opiates as key components of social, economic and political developments in the late Qing and Republican eras. But Narcotic Culture goes well beyond this reassessment in an interpretation that relies on a wide range of archival and other primary sources, as well as a methodology that successfully blends history and anthropology. Dikötter, Laamann and Zhou take issue with the “narcophobic discourse” (p. 2) that has characterized the rhetoric of drug use and abuse in China and, even more significant, they dispute the assumption that various attempts to prohibit opium and other narcotics were positive developments that reflected state strength or rising Chinese nationalism. Instead, the authors build a strong case for their contention that it was prohibition that generated a social and economic disaster for many Chinese.

The first half of the book is devoted to debunking what the authors term “the opium myth,” the idea that opium caused more harm than good and was largely responsible for the downfall of Chinese civilization. They establish that opium use was not confined to China, most Chinese opium smokers were not addicts, and many smokers sought the drug's valued medical benefits. They hypothesize that opium abuse in China was largely prevented by a smoking culture that valued decorum and encouraged complex and time consuming rituals. The authors also note that any valid historical examination of narcotics in China must have a global focus and should seek to extricate the drug from the multilayered socio-cultural meanings that have, at various times, transformed a legitimate medicine into a moral problem.