Is privatization in China leading to political change? This article presents original survey data from 1999 and 2005 to evaluate the Communist Party's strategy towards the private sector. The CCP is increasingly integrating itself with the private sector, both by co-opting entrepreneurs into the Party and encouraging current Party members to go into business. It has opened the political system to private entrepreneurs, but still screens which ones are allowed to play political roles. Because of their close personal and professional ties, and because of their shared interests in promoting economic growth, China's capitalists and communist officials share similar viewpoints on a range of political, economic and social issues. Rather than promote democratic governance, China's capitalists have a stake in preserving the political system that has allowed them to prosper, and they are among the Party's most important bases of support.

From its initiation in 1979, China's one-child policy has been controversial. Most critiques on the stringent birth control policy in rural China still focus on the resistance framework and there is very little research on whether Chinese peasant families are changing their fertility preferences and behaviours when confronting both the state birth control policy and the rapidly changing social and economic environment. Based on recent ethnographic study in a central China village, this article seeks to explore new fertility trends that indicate the shift from “active resistance against” to “conscious decision for” the one-child limit among rural families. In particular, it discusses the newly emerging social, economic and demographic factors that may have played a role in this fertility shift, and its social implications for the central tenet of son preference in Chinese culture and the norm of child-rearing as a means of securing old age support among rural families.

This article addresses one of the institutional elements identified as essential to modern capitalism, but which has received little research attention, that is, the “freedom of the markets.” Through an analysis of inter-firm trading ties for the procurement of intermediate products in China's automobile industry, this article demonstrates that to a significant extent the exchange structure remains bound by particularistic networks of trading between institutionally tied actors. It also shows how the resultant “dualism” in market networks, which discriminates between actors sharing particularistic ties and those that do not, is derailing the rational development of the industry by sustaining a “cellular” pattern of industrial development. The case of the auto industry suggests that it may specifically be the large-scale, modern industrial sectors – which require resources to be mobilized and actors to be co-ordinated at vast scale and scope – where the need for the “rational capitalistic establishments” are greatest, and therefore the failure to institute them may constitute a real hurdle to development.

In recent years Chinese government policies and research programmes have advocated agricultural industrialization in order to raise demand for farm products, facilitate structural adjustment in agriculture, create rural employment and increase farm incomes. But although agro-industrial activities have become a key feature of China's rural development strategy, the agricultural industrialization policy has been little studied outside China. This article is a case study of the implementation of agricultural industrialization and its impact on rural livelihoods in Sichuan province. It identifies and analyses two major forms of agricultural industrialization: “dragon head enterprises” and “rural associations.” Although agro-industrial development is likely to be a critical determinant of China's future social and economic trajectory, the preliminary analysis given here shows a mixed picture. Positive effects include increases in both income and employment. But there is also a negative dimension, shown by the existence of numerous entry barriers, unequal bargaining power and an uneven distribution of benefits.

This article uses a case study approach to examine the processes and consequences of pollution enforcement in an industrial township in rural Sichuan. China's national pollution emissions standards are relatively strict, but enforcement is the responsibility of some 2,500 Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs) within municipal and county governments. EPB officials exercise considerable discretion in prioritizing and carrying out enforcement activities, but exactly what factors influence regulatory behaviour within EPBs is poorly understood. Data for the article are drawn from interviews with EBP officials, township government officials, industrial managers and local residents, as well as a review of township and district financial records and pollution enforcement records. In this case study, EPB enforcement priorities and actions were guided by State Council directives and State Environmental Protection Administration policy, but citizen complaints and media exposure regarding polluting factories also played a key role, and action culminated in the forced closure of township factories. The article uses political ecology as an analytical framework for understanding how pollution enforcement is shaped by the competing values, goals and priorities within the EPB and the administrative unit in which it operates. This is crucial in China, where the decentralized nature of environmental oversight requires an examination of both policy formulation and implementation. The implications of pollution enforcement on rural enterprises for ecological health, fiscal revenue and rural development are also discussed.

This article looks into the process through which minority cultures and subjects are interpreted and defined by the cultural mainstream as inferior and less valuable for the modernization of China, and in consequent need of transformation, particularly through education. In dichotomizing advanced cultures vis-à-vis backward ones, this process has ethnicized minorities' differences. However, within the process itself are internal contradictions that render any attempt at actual education self-contradictory and ultimately unproductive. Using three sources of data – government policy, academic discourse and ethnographic fieldwork – the article provides corroborative evidence relating to the creation of particular images of minority cultures and subjects by the mainstream Han.

Ten years after the handover, Hong Kong's media faced multiple pressures. There were few cases of outright prosecution of the media, but there were subtle political and economic pressures. Co-optation of media bosses, fear of losing advertising revenue and media takeovers by pro-Beijing figures brought some of the media into line. This brought editorial shift and self-censorship, as the media systematically shied away from stories that might antagonize Beijing, underplayed negative news for the government and gave the democrats less favourable coverage. Interviews with journalists showed little evidence of ostensible intervention from government officials or media bosses, but newsroom socialization and editorial gatekeeping are effective constraints. The constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press and the moral force of professional ethics lent the media the room to defend and negotiate their freedom, but the pervasive fear induced by the political environment invariably overpowered the resistance and constrained press freedom in Hong Kong.

Through analysing the early 1950s Thought Reform campaign, this article suggests a new approach to studying Chinese intellectuals. I highlight the reification of this social category under Communist Party rule. The campaign universalized zhishifenzi (知识分子) as a social classification, absorbed a diversity of people into the category and established within it multiple subject positions. This reification of the Chinese intellectual, which persisted after Thought Reform, had serious impacts on central policies, local organization and individual behaviour. My analytical perspective can further the understanding of CCP rule, state–intellectual relations and the experience of so-called Chinese intellectuals.

Japanese rule transformed Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, laying the foundations for the post-1950 “economic miracle,” but there is little consensus about the impact on the welfare of Taiwan's ethnic Chinese. A difficulty with past studies is the adequacy of economic indicators to measure the standard of living. Instead of conventional economic data, we use average adult height, an indicator of nutritional status. The rise in the average height of the Chinese indicates welfare improved under colonialism, but the static average height from 1930 highlights the negative effect of the shift in economic policy during the late colonial period.