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Because it is not clear why Jiang Jieshi?s [Chiang Kaishek] drew so persistently on ?shame? for his leadership, this paper outlines the method by which what one might call the ?Confucian self? makes decisions. Within this Confucian framework, this paper argues that ?shame? occurs at certain moments, when propriety [li] has degenerated to where one side of the hierarchical relationship (i.e. ruler to ruled or father to son) has lost its standing (and usually it is the inferior side). ?Shame? serves a dual purpose of reinforcing or transforming the script of propriety (i.e. the rules of proper behavior between superior and inferior). Each side may exert great effort to reinforce or transform the script to prevent the relationship from degenerating. But, for various reasons, ?shame? might still occur. This paper demonstrates that the standards of ?propriety? might not follow the changing of times; the superior might be overbearing; the inferior operates with another standard. Because ?shame? often occurs on the inferior?s side, ?shame? becomes an important ideological resource and weapon of the weak to recover standing, and in the process, further reinforce or transform the script of propriety. Given the dire circumstances of the Chinese army and of society, Chiang?s uses of ?shame? become intelligible. Because China was always in the ?inferior? position in relation to the ?superior? imperial powers that had transgressed propriety, Jiang appealed to ?shame? to exhort his soldiers and citizens to overcome their dire situation and to recover their standing in the international community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how political leaders of weak states confront imperial aggressors. In particular, it investigates Chiang Kaishek?s response in 1931 to Japanese aggression and eventual occupation of Manchuria, an action that some have called the true beginning to World War II. Japanese military superiority considerably constrained Chiang?s choices as a leader. The indisputable military inequality between Japan and China may lead one to conclude that Chiang could not exercise leadership in a way that mattered. This paper argues that by examining agency as a process, however, we open up new avenues for examining Chiang?s agency. By process, I mean given Chiang?s unfavorable structural situation, how did he selectively apply history (i.e. draw from strategies of past political leaders or from their past political decisions) and envision the future direction of history to solve day-to-day political problems? Through this approach, we are able to depict more faithfully Chiang?s agency, and in addition, better evaluate the strengths and shortcomings of his agency. This paper demonstrates that even as the stakes were much higher in Chiang?s second confrontation with the Japanese (the first being in 1928), and his structural context had simultaneously worsened, Chiang diversified his uses of shame to confront these greater challenges. These included noncooperation and nondirect negotiations to guard against further humiliation from the Japanese and nonmilitary resistance to establish China?s innocence in the international arena. In addition, by defining shame as China?s disunity on the macro-level and by highlighting the undeserved humiliation he was receiving from fellow party members, Chiang further emphasized the difficult contextual situation he was in. And by portraying himself as valiantly struggling within this context, he aimed to guarantee his place in history regardless of the results. I rely on the ?diaries? of Chiang that the Taiwanese government recently opened to the public in 1997. In painstaking brushwork calligraphy, Chiang?s secretaries had copied quotations from Chiang?s diaries and portions of his speeches and telegrams, among other writings by Chiang. The presentation and content of this source, properly called the working [shilue] manuscripts, give us a unique window to understand Chiang?s agency in the face of Japanese aggression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a new framework with which to analyze and understand institutional change. At the heart of the model is a clear distinction between organizations and institutions and a focus on the relationship between organizational and institutional change. In the second half of the paper, the framework is used to open a window on the process by which the institutions of economic governance have begun to change in contemporary China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the way that transnational "opportunities" can give Chinese rural women a voice and an ability to reframe their own situations. While some official-level Chinese discourses seek to promote women’s "liberation" through market participation, the non-governmental sector seeks to provide alternative views of identity and modernity in contemporary China. Through content analysis of a magazine aimed at rural women in China, the paper examines how the meanings of modernity and globalization for rural women can be transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northeast Asia, consisting of Japan, Korea, and China, has featured a distinct paradox: growing economic integration and stagnant political cooperation for over three decades. Indeed, the region’s political cooperation has traditionally lacked formal, multilateral, and regionally exclusive institutions, producing a pronounced ‘organization gap’ compared with Europe, the Americas, Africa, and even the Persian Gulf. After critically assessing current literature explaining this ‘organization gap,’ this paper offers an alternative framework, that of critical juncture, explaining regional institution building in terms of a crisis-driven dynamic. This framework incorporates the significant role that crisis plays as catalyst for regional cooperation; it argues that crisis can help the region transcend the endemic collective action problem in Northeast Asia, and open windows of opportunity for regional institution building. Two sets of ‘before and after’ case comparisons are used to test the framework. A Korean War comparison explains the origins of the ‘organization gap,’ while an Asian financial crisis comparison elucidates its narrowing. This paper concludes with an analytical discourse on why critical junctures shape institutional profiles in Northeast Asia, and how the concept may have heuristic value in explaining regionalism worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political economists typically depict informal institutions as idiosyncratic norms, ideas, and practices that affect the functioning of formal institutions ex ante. This paper proposes, however, that in many cases informal institutions originate from pre-existing formal institutions. Specifically, formal institutions present everyday actors with a myriad of restrictions and opportunities, which may yield novel operating arrangements that are not officially sanctioned. I argue that these informal institutions represent adaptive strategies in formal institutional environments that fail to reflect the implicit demands of both political and economic actors. This is often the case in non-democratic regimes where formal institutions are imposed top-down rather than subjected to popular suffrage. Over time, these adaptive informal institutions may amass sufficient causal power to change formal institutions. The paper presents four examples of this dynamic in China’s reform-era economy. Taken together, the cases show how institutional innovations originate from existing legal restrictions on various forms of economic activity, require official collaboration for their functioning, and ultimately, end up shaping formal institutions themselves. In this sense, formal institutions appear to provide the seeds of their own reform, if not destruction. But ultimately, the causal mechanism of institutional creation and change has a relational, interactive ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: During the transformation of formerly planned economies, the development and regulation of securities finance is an important and poorly understand process. For the governments involved securitization - the creation of securities and the shift of financial assets from banking into securities- has been a complex political challenge. For students of political economy, securities finance can seem a particularly opaque sphere in which the interests, incentives, and important institutions are often unclear. This paper presents a framework for analyzing the political dynamics of securities finance in developing and transitional economies. The distinction between equity and debt on the one hand, and the distinction between issuers of securities and investors in securities on the other hand, together create a useful framework - the asset-class/financial-position matrix - for political analysis of the creation, exchange, and use securities. Based on documentary, quantitative, and interview-based evidence collected during field research between 1997- 2001 the paper deploys this matrix to explore the politics of securitization through case studies of stock exchange development in China and India. I find that the autonomy of central-state-elites within the dominant coalition and the structure of property-rights help explain varying outcomes in the governance of securities finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that, contrary to early claims about the Internet in authoritarian regimes, this technology does not represent an inherently liberal sphere of communication. Rather, authoritarian governments can exert quite effective control over use of the Internet by manipulating the architecture of this flexible technology and by leveraging laws, social norms, and market conditions in ways that significantly raise the cost of unfettered Internet access. However, while diffusion of the Internet in authoritarian regimes does not constitute an automatic extension of civil liberties, this technology may well prove to be an important tool for promoting another type of political reform: bureaucratization. In countries where rampant corruption threatens the effectiveness of public administration and the legitimacy of authoritarian rule, leaders who prevent use of the Internet to challenge their monopoly on power may nonetheless use the technology to promote greater accountability in the exercise of power. Throughout the paper I illustrate these conceptual and theoretical arguments with evidence from the cases of China and Saudi Arabia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will address aspects of transformation and continuity in Chinese dress from Imperial, Republican, and Communist China. In what follows, I shall discuss how dress articulates key cultural issues such as the interface between tradition and modernization, east and west, global and local. In Chinese history, clothes function as a sign in social interaction to signify class, political allegiance, as well as, paradoxically, individual identity. Each section of this paper will explore how government power has been exercised to control people externally first and then internally and to make that control manifest through the body’s appearance. I shall argue that these practices must be understood in the light of the modernization of governmental domination that unfolds historically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Utopianism has always been a part of Chinese political culture. The endless of pursue of a perfect individual, a harmonious society, and a one-world are all encompassed in the age-old ideas of Datong . In the last hundred fifty years of the turbulent history of China, utopian influence can be seen almost in every major political thinker. This paper intends to examine the evolution of modern utopianism in China and their impact on China¡¦s political development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1990s the Chinese state undertook a project to transfer public pension obligations from the enterprise to local government agencies. Pension reforms made local governments responsible for distributing benefits to retirees of urban enterprises. While an abundant policy literature has covered China's pension crisis and measures to cope with it, the process and unintended consequences of pension reforms offers fertile ground for exploring broader questions about policy implementation and power relations between central government and sub-national levels of government. This paper addresses three significant outcomes of pension policy reform in the late 1990s: 1) the inability or unwillingness of provinces to exert influence on pension policy; 2) the transfer of pension obligations from enterprises to urban governments; and 3) the erosion of once close relationships that existed between urban governments and state firms within their respective territorial jurisdictions. Each of these sheds light on the broader comparative questions of how policy legacies and state structures influence social policy reform and how economic reforms influence local government incentives and behavior. This paper is based on documentary evidence from official sources and on recent interviews with central and local officials, firm managers, and others in the cities of Changchun, Chengdu, Beijing, and Shanghai. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a pure policy standpoint, the path of Chinese financial reform appears haphazard and without vision. Through the lens of power politics in China, however, the trajectory of financial reform in China is not at all haphazard but the result of short-term political calculations aimed at strengthening the power of individual leaders. This paper will demonstrate this logic by examining Premier Zhu Rongji’s policies toward the estimated 3.3 trillion RMB (US$400 billion) in non-performing loans (NPLs). Although increasing commercial independence of banks had been a long stated goal of both Premier Zhu Rongji and People’s Bank of China Governor Dai Xianglong, policies adopted by the central government to deal with the NPL problem failed to address the issue and instead focused primarily on serving short-term political interests. This paper draws on interviews with bankers and officials, as well as hundreds of internal government documents to establish the political motives behind Premier Zhu’s policies toward NPLs. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decade after the opening of stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen, the process of issuing shares remains subject to political control. The stock market is a key component of the reform policy for medium and large state-owned enterprises (SOEs). These SOEs are first transformed into shareholding corporations. After restructuring, some of these corporations then go on to list shares on the Chinese stock exchanges. In addition to channeling funds to state-owned enterprises and promoting reform in corporate governance, central government policies regulating the stock market seek to balance among a variety of goals, including generating economic growth and maintaining stability in financial markets. Since the Chinese policy-making process is opaque, it can be extremely difficult to disentangle the tradeoffs between these various objectives. This paper tests several competing hypotheses about the selection and approval of companies for listing. Because there is wide variation in economic conditions within provinces, this paper analyzes the distribution of company listing at the prefectural city level. Based on the analysis in this paper, it appears that the allocation of approvals for company listing is used to build political support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of the process through which a completely new set of business associations have emerged in China over the past two decades. At the end of the 1970s, China's organizational landscape was marked by a nearly complete absence of associations. During the 1980s and 1990s, as part of an effort to reform the economy and the state administration, state officials and agencies set up a large number of business associations. Although in the years immediately following their creation these associations possessed only an embryonic sort of existence, by the beginning of the new millennium a large number of business associations had evolved into distinct and increasingly active and influential organizations. Some associations operated essentially as subsidiary organizations of a government agency, while others had come to possess a measure of de facto independence from the government. This paper develops a new framework for the analysis of the process of organizational evolution and uses it to shed light on two questions. First, why and how have Chinese business associations emerged and evolved from empty shells into real and active organizations? Second, why have these associations evolved in different ways with regards to their relationship with government organizations? These questions are explored through a detailed analysis of two illustrative cases: the China Construction Industry Association and the China Chain Store and Franchise Industry Association. The case studies reveal how government agencies have engineered a transfer of resources to associations, in the process helping to create a new set of "hybrid organizations" standing between state and society. The process of associational evolution sheds light on several aspects of the institutional transformation of the Chinese political and economic system. The paper concludes by arguing that to understand fully this transformation, scholars must recognize the existence of a "third realm", an expansive realm of activity located at the interstices of state and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of post-communist democratization needs to be better connected theoretically and empirically to fundamental political questions such as the character and legitimacy of state-society relations. Focusing on Russia and China in the 1990s, this paper finds that the legitimacy of national state institutions has declined in both countries, although the decline appears to be less steep in China while the current level of legitimacy appears to be comparatively lower in Russia. The paper also draws upon different kinds of data to show that the decline in legitimacy is not a function of a growing "longing" for democracy that has been stifled under an authoritarian Chinese state and a "superpresidential" Russian state. In spite of a high level of support for ?democracy? in the abstract in Russia, in neither country does the preference for specific features for democracy appear to weigh in significantly in evaluations of the state, and illiberal and undemocratic attributes of the state are not only tolerated but welcomed if they promise to deliver political order, economic well-being, reduced crime and corruption, social justice, and a coherent national identity emphasizing historical distinctiveness and cultural particularism. As an alternative to arguments that conflate levels of democracy and legitimacy, we offer some tentative hypotheses that combine elements of currently popular and previously respected theoretical projects and that provide a partial explanation for both the decline in state legitimacy in post-communist Russia and China, and the comparatively higher level of legitimacy in the latter. We contend that the most relevant legacy inherited from the communist era in examining attitudes towards democracy and the state have to do with the stable, widely acknowledged dualism of formal and informal norms and practices that allowed ordinary citizens to incrementally improve their immediate situations outside of the officially sanctioned system of political control, economic exchange, and social organization. We also suggest that two features of the post-communist state -- the extent to which it is identified with familiar institutional practices and the extent to which it permits regularized channels of communication and exchange between state-connected elites and locally emergent networks -- affect the patience of the citizenry in evaluating the legitimacy of state institutions in the midst of transition. On both counts, China has fared better than Russia thanks to its incremental strategy and the separation of political and economic reform: the survival of recognizable state institutions has provided Chinese citizens with a sense of continuity and stability while limiting the attentuation of various tiers of connectivity linking local communities to state institutions and state-connected elites, while the more radical transformation in post-Soviet Russia has brought disorientation and detachment among Russians, while concentrating power and wealth in the hands of ?oligarchs? who are far fewer in number and far less connected to local actors than was the old Soviet nomenklatura elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although historical institutionalism encompasses a variety of institutional dynamics, it has traditionally focused on the impact of formal institutions designed and enforced by official entities. The tendency to prioritize formal institutions reflects in part the fact that historical institutionalism grew out of the study of advanced industrial democracies. By contrast, efforts to take informal institutions seriously have derived primarily from research on developing countries and transitional economies where certain types of formal institutions may be less institutionalized than informal ones. An implicit division of analytic labor has thus emerged between scholars of established capitalist democracies who regard formal institutions as the normative barometer for institutional analysis, and comparativists who specialize in countries where key political economic processes occur beyond the scope of formal institutions. The reflexive association of formality with advanced industrial democracies and informality with incomplete development, however, is not only teleological, but misleading. Concepts developed from analyses of endogenous institutional change in varied political economic contexts reveal that the causal mechanisms of institutional transformation are often informal in character. Meanwhile, even though informal institutions have received more attention by comparativists studying developing and post-communist countries, an emerging second generation of historical institutionalists recognizes that even in advanced political economies, informal institutions are relevant in structuring political processes and economic performance. Going forward, direct theorization of informal institutions represents a fertile frontier for comparative politics, particularly when combined with insights from historical institutionalism about institutional stability and change. This paper develops these arguments in four main parts. The first two sections review key contributions in historical institutionalism, starting with now-classic contributions that concerned how institutions structure politics, followed by more recent efforts to explain institutional development over time. The latter studies continue to privilege formal institutions, but upon closer examination, present explanations that include dynamics generated by informal institutions. The second part discusses studies in comparative politics that explicitly engage informal politics, practices, and institutions--but are not necessarily identified with historical institutionalism. The third section proposes that informal institutions be analyzed in a manner that decouples institutional formality from functionality. The case of economic reform in China illustrates how the relative dysfunctionality of formal institutions may give rise to informal coping strategies that facilitate transformation of the original formal institutions in an endogenous manner. Economic reform in developing countries and transitional economies often encounters the challenge of overcoming a "partial reform equilibrium" trap, whereby initial beneficiaries of early reform become political obstacles to deeper liberalization.2 This phenomenon poses a dilemma for historical institutionalism at two points in time, or "critical junctures." The first juncture is the initiation of economic reforms, and the second one is overcoming the partial reform equilibrium trap. Attending to adaptive informal institutions provides insight into how unorganized groups may nonetheless influence policy processes. The paper concludes by identifying promising directions for incorporating informal institutions into historical institutional analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper relates centrality in an informal elite network to the formation of winning coalitions to illustrate how social network analysis (SNA) can explain the internal workings of authoritarian regimes theoretically and empirically. An informal network among Chinese elites is created by noting who has been promoted under whom during their earlier career. An analysis with exponential random graph models confirm that ties between members belonging to the same faction, with the same provincial origin, or with similar pre-P.R. China experiences are significantly more likely. Network position is then used to predict who will be appointed to the inner circle of the Chinese Communist Party, the Politburo, five years later. The network approach indicates that it is the number of patrons that matter, and not just the fact of having one, as earlier studies have shown. Being well-connected to peers, i.e. having one's own clients, matter as well. Complex centrality measures that take into account the individual's overall position in the network can identify patrons and predict who will enter the inner circle even if patrons are unknown. The paper proposes a new theoretical and empirical approach to the understudied informal institutions of authoritarian regimes, and suggests a more principled, but also more nuanced way of measuring one such institution - the personal relationships between a larger set of elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the transition to a market economy, postcommunist states experienced sharp increases in aggregate income inequality and a breakdown in the former social welfare system. New market-consistent social insurance systems replaced the former enterprise-based, budget-financed forms for provision of retirement income, health care finance and other types of social protection. This paper uses the case of pension insurance in Russia and China to analyze the process of building a new "social contract." Although Russia and China differ markedly in the level of development at the point market reforms began, level of administrative centralization, economic performance records, preservation of communist party rule, and style of policy making, they share a common legacy of communist political institutions. The paper argues that this legacy accounts for the fact that despite substantial reform of the system of pension insurance, both have so far failed to construct a fiscally sustainable pension insurance system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about U.S.-China conflict due to Taiwan is presented which was discussed at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, from August 30-September 2, 2012. The paper discusses topics including China's emerging global influence in the post-Cold War era and the U.S. involvement in the Taiwan Strait conflict.

A conference paper about militarized conflict in the cross-strait relations is presented which was prepared for presentation at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, from August 30-September 2, 2012. The paper discusses topics including the U.S.-China-Taiwan triangular relationships and the alliance-like arrangement between Taiwan and the U.S.

Economic cooperation between Hong Kong and Mainland China, especially Guangdong province, has flourished since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) in 1997. The landmark in this process was the conclusion of the free trade agreement (FTA) between the two areas in 2003. The Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) between Hong Kong and the Mainland cover liberalization of trade in goods, liberalization of trade in services, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and other trade facilitation measures. This paper argues that a collaborative governance regime based on network coordination is emerging under "One Country, Two Systems" (OCTS) and the collaborative approach will be used to explain the intensifying Hong Kong-Mainland economic cooperation. This paper has three parts. Part one provides an overview of the evolution of intergovernmental mechanisms between Hong Kong and the Mainland and introduces the analytical framework. Part two discusses how the framework can be applied to the intergovernmental mechanisms on CEPA and part three analyzes the key provisions of CEPA and its implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been renewed emphasis on the policy process in China. The dynamic locally-initiated experiments regarding governance issues, however, remain largely ignored by the literature. The paper argues that the diffusion mechanism is essential in understanding their impacts. Through the analysis of a game of regional diffusion and a case in X County, Shandong Province, the paper concludes that to ensure regional diffusion, a local innovation has to construct a balance between its "effectiveness" and "properness." An understanding of the diffusion mechanism sheds light on explaining the resilient authoritarian rule and the central-local relationship in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treating women's organizations and public health organizations in China as critical fields, this paper shows how the organization-state relationships affect different organizations' influence on public policies and representation of the interests of their constituencies. An inductive framework to generalize policy influence of social organizations is drawn in the paper, which consists of four modes of policy influence--active state corporatism, passive state corporatism, embedded pluralism, and critical pluralism--and two modes of non-influence--symbolistic state corporatism and silent pluralism. The formation and distribution of these modes of policy influence in the two types of organizations are explained by three organizational factors--motivation, capacity, and autonomy--and three different field features--historical origins, crises experiences, and politicality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sequence of Chinese reforms has a major overall effect on the political and social landscape of the country. To some extent, economic development is certainly a push- pull factor that makes China move toward or deviate from the path of political liberalization. In the case of China, as this paper proposes, it deviates from the development experience of the four Asian tigers, where economy growth has lead to the emerging institutional basis for each country's intellectual pluralism and informal institutions. In other words, two-decades of economic reform have made China an exception that is immune to the political vulnerabilities and legitimacy crisis that most Eastern European socialist economies experienced during the transition period. The basic reason is that Chinese state-led development strategies generate unfavorable exogenous factors upon the path to democratic transition. China's dual-track system, state-led capital allocation, tax assignment system reform, and preferential treatment not only perpetuate state control, but also institutionalize state opportunism and corruption. Reform promotes the interests of the ruling elite, newly vested interest groups, and those who align themselves with the State in exchange the preservation of their special positions. For the same reason, Chinese entrepreneurs are not advocating for political change; they represent majority of the vast interest groups in pursuing of their self-interest as well as maintaining the favorable political status quo. To a large degree, China's private entrepreneurs are keen to maintain guanxi with the State to procure permits and business opportunities. From the top down, the Chinese Communist Party has shown incredible adaptability to accommodate changing societal needs and values to gain public support. In China, membership privilege is the sine qua non to ascend the political ladder. Party affiliation not only opens the door for career opportunities, but also allows access to political resources for economic gain. In all, the regime gains loyalty by rewarding those that collaborate with it. In fact, the Chinese Communist Party holds tight control over personnel appointment and the cadre system throughout government and state-owned enterprises. For the elite, the best way to climb up the social ladder is to get closer to the Party organizations. My paper argues that in the foreseeable future the Chinese Communist Party will continue to highlight the priority of the country's economic development, social harmony and stability, which enable the regime to hold a political monopoly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional interpretations founded upon cultural determinism regard the Chinese societies as incompatible with the practice of liberal democracy. By probing intrinsic and instrumental dispositions of democracy, however, this paper demonstrates that popular attitudes to democracy even vary within Chinese societies. Thanks to political learning about democracy, citizens in Taiwan not only possess a high degree of awareness for abstract political rights, but also utilize these inherent values and instrumental standards to assess the supply of democracy. Conversely, limited political experiences lead citizens in China to assess the supply of democracy only by self-related issues, particularly satisfaction with household financial situation. Given the two societies' different political regimes but similar cultural heritage, the findings of this paper disprove the cultural determinism's explanation, and also provide implications for the political future of Taiwan and China from the perspective of political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to establish a model of Chinese-Style Democracy through the process of concept construction. Concept construction involves both abstract and specific approaches, and this paper will identify and present both the abstract overarching concept and specific subtypes of Chinese-Style Democracy. If emphasis is placed on the abstract perspective, then the overarching concept of Chinese-Style Democracy can be understood to be a soft authoritarian regime, or in even more abstract terms, a hybrid regime. If a more specific conception of Chinese-Style Democracy is to be constructed, then three classical subtypes can be proposed: grassroots democracy, administrative democracy, and patriarchal democracy, as well as three diminished subtypes: intra-party democracy, consultative democracy and National People's Congress democracy. Each of these subtypes possesses its own specific traits. Finally, this paper discusses how best to define Chinese-Style Democracy, or democracy with Chinese characteristics, from the perspective of concept construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts from the observation that Chinese nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have increasingly embraced more strategic or economic orientations rather than purely principled ones, signaling the rise of social entrepreneurship in the country. While the rationales for doing so might seem economic in nature, they are also deeply intertwined with political conditions: the closed political environment compels NGOs to operate more as business if they wish to continue their work unabated. In many cases, this shift toward social entrepreneurship appears to be the result of unconscious adaptation on the part of NGO leaders. In other instances, there has been no shift in the life of an organization at all, but instead they have operated as social entrepreneurs from their inception. To better explain how adaptations occur for NGOs generally in China, rather than just individually, the paper posits an evolutionary theory of social entrepreneurship. Finally, the paper explores the implications of this economic orientation for the expansion and protection of rights for which activists are more traditionally known: if this evolution from activist to entrepreneur is necessary for NGOs to exist in China, does it signal a gloomy future for Chinese activism? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China decentralized in the 1980s, many provinces received the latitude to implement their own strategies and approaches to economic development. Not surprisingly, such strategies varied regionally as provinces with different levels of wealth and resources implemented different approaches to achieving economic development. Yet, some of these examples are quite puzzling, with provinces that share many similarities implementing markedly different strategies. Moreover, some provinces not only implemented different approaches to economic development, but adopted entirely different goals - interpreting the very definition of economic development differently. To explain these differences, China scholars have focused on different factors, including constraints and opportunities from the center, characteristics of the provinces themselves, and attributes of individual leaders (e.g., Li 1997, Huang 1996, Chung 2000, Zeng 1991). While these explanations are able to explain some of the more straightforward cases, puzzling exceptions remain. Moreover, how the provinces interact with lower levels administrative units remains under researched. Focusing on Guizhou and Yunnan, two provinces with similar geographies, institutions and natural resource endowments, this paper updates previous research in asking why provincial leaders adopted markedly disparate economic strategies. Using data from fieldwork and secondary sources, it focuses on the three political factors listed above that are purported to explain differences in provincial policy. I argue that while the center constrains and encourages certain actions and approaches in the provinces, the experiences and background of individual provincial leaders further affects the choice of strategies implemented there. While emphasizing the importance of characteristics of local leaders and their relationship with the center, the paper questions the assumptions on which research focusing on elite characteristics has so far been based, and suggests alternative approaches. In addition, since Li Zhanshu was appointed as Guizhou's CCP provincial secretary in 2010, the overall direction for that province's policy changed markedly. This allows us to examine the degree to which new leaders with different commitments and ideas can fight against the forces of path dependency and inertia to stake out different directions. The paper also explores the shifting relationships between provincial level governments and the lower level, highlighting different patterns for each case. The results have implications for our understanding not only of decentralization, central- provincial relations and the origins of the economic policies of Chinese President Hu Jintao, Guizhou's previous leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1994 the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China passed the first national labor law since the founding of the republic in 1949. The 1994 Labor Law was an important legislation step in the unification of the bifurcated transitional economy, divided between the plan and the market. The law liberalized labor markets, established a new system of contract employment, and set up some basic rights and responsibilities of employers and employees. In the decade that followed the passage of this law, Chinese labor legislation and implementation of laws and regulations tended to expand employer autonomy and control at the expense of workers' rights and security. Protective efforts emanating from the central government were weakened at the local legislative and implementation stages due to regional competition for foreign direct investment and close ties between state officials and enterprise owners and managers. In 2007, the National People's Congress passed three important labor laws that significantly enhanced workers' rights and employment security. The legislative process was marked by lively public debate about the laws and increased public participation in the legislation. The passage of these laws seems to mark the beginning of a new era of labor legislation in which workers are more knowledgeable about legal protections and the central government is more aggressive in pushing a development model that is not solely oriented around growth. In the period since the laws' passage, labor disputes in China have doubled with major manufacturing centers like the Yangtze and Pearl River Deltas seeing dispute increases up to 300%. With the severe impact of the global economic crisis on China's export sectors, workers responded to layoffs and other employment changes with a wave of filings against their employers. As China's economy recovered in 2009-10, workers continued to act contentiously, with a spate of strikes in foreign- invested enterprises and pressure on companies to raise wages and improve conditions. This paper examines the post-2007 period of more stringent labor legislation through an examination of the local responses to central government attempts to enhance workers' rights. We argue that the Global Financial Crisis, local competition for investment, and close ties between employers and local governments reduced the state's ability to implement and enforce the new protections promulagated in 2007. However, workers' heavy use of the legal system for dispute resolution points to a new kind of "bottom-up enforcement" of labor laws in which legal action by workers reinforces central government attempts to improve local implementation of central laws. We hypothesize that fear of worker-initiated litigation leads to changes in firm behavior in regions with high rates of disputes. Firms adjust to the new protections offered by the law by increasing protection for some kinds of workers and reducing protections for other kinds of workers. The paper highlights the inequality of legal protections at the workplace in China, both across region and across types of workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1993 to 2002 the emergence of the urban resident Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (MLG) system saw a major reconfiguration and expansion of social assistance in the People's Republic of China. Explanations of the MLG have either presented the emergence in terms of a logical evolution on the previous social assistance system or have focused on the stages of the policy's development. This paper, drawing on insights provided by the wider political science literature, will argue that the development of the MLG system has been a much more complex process. The initial design of the policy reflects constraints placed on the social assistance agenda by previous policy choices and commitments. The further expansion and development of the MLG can be explained by the interventions of key policy sponsors in the Chinese bureaucracy for a variety of different reasons. By taking advantage of or being forced to act by developments in the social assistance agenda these policy sponsors have utilised available resources, within the institutional constraints of the period, to shape the MLG. Rather than treating the emergence and subsequent development of the MLG as a self contained case this paper seeks to present the policy sponsors and institutional constraints of the MLG within the wider context of both the China studies and political science literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about China's global hybrid model of development is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including China's economic development due to globalization, creation of hybrid firms that drive China's technological development, and foreign financial institutions of the advanced capitalist economies.

A conference paper about rural-urban migration in China and India is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including experiments in India and China for in absorbing rural populations for better understanding how the practice of citizenship is improved, and infrastructure projects in the two countries.

A conference paper about the changing Chinese perceptions of the international order is presented which is prepared for presentation at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, in Toronto, Ontario, from September 3-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the term century of humiliation, China's involvement in the international system, and China's political and intellectual elites.

The paper examines diaspora investments in China and India, compared to investments made by Western MNCs, to demonstrate the unique policy role of ethnic investors. In China, ethnic capital (EDI) holds a significant share of incoming FDI, a phenomenon having been noted insufficiently. When EDI is noted, it has been treated as a product of Beijing's pro-FDI policy, rather than the cause of the liberalization. I argue in this paper that EDI has in fact driven the process of pro-FDI policy making in the PRC by demonstrating the superiority of openness and incorporating domestic interest groups in support of FDI. In India, the amount of EDI has been smaller than FDI; total FDI has been much smaller than China also. Conventional wisdom has treated diapora Indians as unimportant in India's economic liberalization since the 1990s. Again, I contend in this article that EDI has also been important for India's FDI liberalization, more quietly than diaspora Chinese in the PRC, to be sure. India's FDI liberalization has generally been more limited than China, with the exception of software, and in this industry, EDI's role was salient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the negotiations for trade liberalization in global and regional levels bogged down, Singapore swiftly engaged in planning for and forging a vast array of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), culminating in the creation of an FTA grounds well in East Asia and beyond. On the role played by Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, confidently stated that 'to say it is because of us may be too strong, but we set an example and we set people thinking. And I think that's also the reason why ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] itself is discussing FTAs. There is a demonstration effect' (cited in Straits Times, 1 December 2004). Singapore's interest in signing bilateral FTAs consecutively was partly born out of a fear of its survival as a nation that heavily relies on trade for its growth, and FTAs are expected to help Singapore overcome its innate inability to call effectively for diplomatic and economic changes in Southeast Asia to promote trade liberalization in the region and beyond. 　There are two layers of FTA movements in Southeast Asia: 1) bilateral FTAs between ASEAN members and extra regional countries, and 2) FTAs between ASEAN as a single unit and extra regional countries. This chapter initially focuses on the first layer of bilateral FTA diffusion by exploring the impetus behind Singapore's active engagement in FTA negotiations by examining three pressures (economic, security and legal), set out by Solis and Katada, to establish whether Singapore has contributed to the growth of FTAs involving both Southeast and Northeast Asian countries, and if so, how. The paper also examines the nature of trade policy-making system in Singapore to analyze the alleged little involvement of the business sector in trade policymaking as a common feature in Southeast Asia, demonstrating the predominant role of the state in the FTA making process. The chapter finally analyses another level of FTA proliferation as ASEAN has served as a hub in the ASEAN+1 FTA networks with five major powers. The origins of this approach can be traced back to China's FTA proposal to ASEAN in 2000, as a result of its concern to be isolated after the bilateral FTA initiative started by Japan and South Korea in 1998. Given the subsequent reaction taken by Japan, Korea and India, China's aggressive diplomacy in Southeast Asia including the FTA proposal can be seen as an independent variable against FTA diffusion in this layer, and, symbolically, the ASEAN+1 FTA movement has been a site for the competitions where two types of FTAs - China-led traditional FTA with gradual implementation and Japan-led new-age FTA with single undertaking approach - have prevailed, creating further complicated situations for multilateral companies' possible use of the FTAs. This paper argues that the impact of bilateral FTAs on Southeast Asia is limited, as only Singapore and Thailand have virtually signed multiple bilateral FTAs and, moreover, those FTA and ASEAN's integration schemes such as ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) are not well utilized by ASEAN's and multinational companies either, representing the perception gap between keener FTA creator in the governments and indifferent users in the business sectors. FTA diffusion certainly occurred in Southeast Asia, but it is Japan-centered as most of ASEAN members chose it as their first and, in some cases, only bilateral FTA partner, and thus the concern about trade diversion effect as a valid explanatory variable is mainly attributed to Japan's larger economic presence as the largest trading partner and investment source to those countries... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is China's growing relative economic power and reputedly rising nationalism translating into an increasing propensity to risk force to settle disputes on favourable terms? Or, is China responding to its rise by reassuring its neighbours that it does not pose a threat, thereby warding off counter-balancing? This paper tests competing hypotheses derived from offensive and defensive realism to address this question. It looks at three case studies: maritime disputes regarding the Spratly islands in the South China Sea, the Senkaku/Diayutai dispute with Japan, and China's policy toward regional multilateral security frameworks such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the Six Party Talks regarding the North Korean Nuclear Issue. This paper finds that China's rising relative capabilities has corresponded to a declining propensity to risk using force to settle disputes and an increasing emphasis on reassuring its neighbours about Beijing's benign intentions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When an authoritarian state aims to shape citizens' views and behavior through the means of the mass media, how successful are political leaders in this endeavor? This paper studies this research question based on a study of legal mobilization through the mass media in China. Since the 1990s political leaders are building a "rule of law" in China. Legal reform is intended to appease the losers of economic reform and to ensure social stability through the use of laws and courts. Thus it substitutes for more radical political change. The development of Chinese labor law, in particular, has been advanced in response to increases in incidences of worker unrest in recent years. The central government has responded by providing citizens with a National Labor Law that signals protection to alienated citizens, establishes a new social contract between workers and the state, and is aimed at channeling workers' grievances into state institutions. Dissemination of legal news through the media constitutes an important part of legal reform. The state relies on "thought work" in order to actively create and shape a legal consciousness. The underlying assumption is that people believe what is written in the news and that a person's way of thinking directly translates into behavior. In this paper we examine how successful Chinese political leaders are in creating perceptions of the law as an effective "weapon of the weak" through the means of the mass media. Content analysis of news reports reveals that the mass media portray the labor dispute resolution process in an overly positive light. News reporting on this issue is relatively uniform across media sources. Statistical analysis of a randomly sampled survey conducted in four Chinese cities in 2005 demonstrates that exposure to news reporting about labor law-related issues successfully promotes the image of a pro-worker bias in the law among citizens, thus encouraging them to participate in the legal system. The state is able to achieve its political goal because of the lack of conflicting sources of information and lack of previous experience with the reformed legal system among citizens. However, as more citizens participate in labor dispute resolution, skepticism toward media reporting on labor dispute resolution and general dissatisfaction with the legal system is likely to grow since experiencing arbitration or litigation leads to more realistic appraisal of the legal system and better understanding of the limitations of the Chinese legal system. However, even these more knowledgeable and experienced citizens are influenced by media messages. We conclude that commercial liberalization of the media can co-exist with authoritarian political control and resilience. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the various impacts of contemporary globalization on national security, with special reference to the migration of the Taiwanese semiconductor industry to China and its security challenges to the United States, Taiwan and China. The paper adheres to a sectoral approach to the study of globalization-security interconnections and adopts a broadly based definition of security pertaining to the case study in question that encompasses economic, technological and defense security. The analysis of the subject matter is grounded in evidence collected in more than 140 interviews with chip industry, defense sector and government insiders in the US and Asia, as well as English-language and Chinese-language secondary data. On sectoral migration, the paper argues that the scope of the migration is extensive, the direction complicated, the cause multiple, and the outcome significant in boosting the development of the indigenous Chinese chip industry. It has been discovered that some Taiwanese non-state chip actors have violated government regulations in the process of spearheading the migration, and some have even forged business ties with their PRC counterparts associated with the PLA. As for the ensuing security ramifications, it is argued that there is no immediate security risk involved, although long-term strategic repercussions are paramount. The depth and scope of the continuous sectoral migration in years to come will determine the level of economic security risks faced by the US and Taiwan. Long-term technological and defense security repercussions need to take into account two important elements at play: technological change in the sector (increasing commercial-to-military spin-on and dual-use nature of the chip technology), and the PRC dual-track (economic and defense) grand strategy behind its resolve to upgrade its indigenous chip capability. Four pertinent aspects are analyzed: (a) concerns over the PRC chip industrial base, its contribution to the PLA modernization and the ensuing shift in the balance of power in Beijing's favour; (b) technology-related misgivings over the trustworthy supplies of chips for the US and Taiwanese military end uses, as well as the shrinking "chip gap"; (c) fear of denial of chip supply due to foreign dependency; (d) dubious implementation of export control policies at the unilateral and the multilateral level that exacerbate some of the above security repercussions. The concluding section elucidates how the case study helps to show the impact of globalization on security as far as the agency and scope of security, the autonomy and capacity of the state, as well as the balance of power are concerned. To sum up, the study offers a fresh look at the complex security repercussions of the globalization of a strategic industry that occurs in a politically sensitive region in world politics today. It not only helps us disentangle an important policy issue, but also advances our theoretical understanding of the globalization-security interconnections in international relations today. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws attention to an understudied phenomenon, transnational political alliances (TPA), which occur when multinational corporations cooperate with local companies to influence public policies of the host government. The paper first explores the economic and political sources of TPAs, their structures, and the obstacles to their formation. It then examines TPAs through the context of China, a critical case because of a hostile political environment that discourages TPAs. However, the surprisingly common occurrence of TPAs in China indicates the power of economic incentives for political cooperation across national boundaries. Such alliances do not explain why China originally opened its doors to international trade and investment, but it may explain why the doors are remaining opening. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the variation in state organisation of that polity between 1893 and 1922, and attempts to provide a preliminary test of the possible accounts for the feudalisation of the Chinese state during this period. It begins by looking at the structure of relations between central and regional levels of government, the ability of outside actors to manage matters of domestic governance, and the extent to which regimes in China are able to interact with external entities autonomously. An analysis of archival and secondary material finds that in this period marked a limited fragmentation of the Chinese polity and the creation of crosscutting lines of political control, coupled with substantial independence in external affairs reflective of state organisation in the feudal polities of mediaeval Europe.In going through the evidence, the paper also examines the aggregated patterns of outside involvement in China and examines its effects on state organisation. From this investigation, the paper argues that the collective effects of major power interference in Chinese domestic politics contributed not only to the fragmentation of the polity between 1893 and 1922. Outside involvement was also responsible for holding the state together, maintaining China as a single political entity. As such, the paper proposes that external involvement in the domestic politics of weak states has implications that reach beyond fragmentation and subjugation, and may be worth further study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often contended that the expansion of freedom of expression and the decline of censorship and control over society is associated with the general political development in favor of liberalization and democracy. When Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) were introduced to East Asian countries in the early 1990s, there was hope, or even hype that claimed ICTs would help carve out a public space free from the intervention and censorship of one-party governments' where local authorities for decades had usually kept gate and set the agenda for socio-political discourses in the fundamental interests of national security and economic prosperity. China and Singapore are classic examples of this. Typically , one-party states rein in horizontal flow of information among the public and keeps a tight control of social and political expressions out of fear that the seemingly unfettered Internet may foster the expansion of freedom of speech and perceived liberty , and in turn result in the undesired socio- and political instability that the ruling Chinese Communist Party and Singapore's People's Action Party have long strived to fight against.While one-party states like China and Singapore embrace ICTs for boosting economic growth, they tend to contain this new medium for mostly political concerns. This paper will address this issue in the contexts of these two countries. The paper is written in the hope that it will eventually contribute to an important basis for further comparative research on ICT-driven political developments against the backdrop of other like -minded one-party states in Asia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature examining the social policy of developing countries has sought to explain the diversity of welfare policies and spending levels. This paper uses China's evolving welfare policies to ask how observations drawn from the Chinese case might contribute to theories of welfare regimes. The paper analyzes the strengths and limitations of five explanatory models for welfare regime formation based on evidence from China. Principal findings are as follows: 1) Fiscal surpluses are a necessary condition for any government to initiate or expand welfare provision to some or all of its citizens, regardless of its regime type. 2) Generic models of welfare provision based on region or on political-economic regime type (e.g., East Asian, transitional, democratic) fail to hold up given the considerable variation across these categories. 3) Globalization does not have uniform effects, but appears to pull social policy in different directions at the domestic level. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is growth good for the poor? In theory, yes. But exceptions give us pause. This paper examines two poor, neighboring Chinese provinces that are exceptions to the hypothesis that increasing economic growth should reduce rural poverty. Starting in the early 1990s, Guizhou saw significant declines in rural poverty despite moribund growth, while Yunnan's poverty rates stagnated despite robust growth. This paper argues that the volume, distribution and structure of roadways, migration and coal mining that contributed to this puzzling outcome. The results have an impact on our understanding of the relationship between development and poverty reduction, the role that the state plays, as well as poverty reduction in China. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of international pressure in bringing about social policy reforms in developing countries assumes such influence can be found at the nexus of international organizations (e.g., the World Bank and the IMF) and central governments. With its focus on international organizations and the policy models they promote, this explanatory model underemphasizes the role of foreign investment and trade in shaping domestic social policy outcomes. This paper uses China's experience with pension reforms in the 1990s to propose an alternative model that incorporates local-level actors such as governments and firms and their interaction with global economic forces as a key variable in the making of national social policy. This paper shows how China's pension-dominant welfare regime emerged from the manner in which local governments, which are responsible for social welfare expenditures, have sought to attract foreign investment, promote exports by local firms, and shed uncompetitive state firms. China's pension reforms were thus a product of ad hoc local initiatives to "internationalize," rather than a coherent policy decision taken by the central government with the advice of international institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of Chinese reforms focus on the domestic sources of change, but in reality the reform process and outcome have been shaped by both domestic and external forces. In this paper I explore the external sources of governance reforms in China, particularly the influence of international norms on China's civil service reform and the development of the NGO sector in Chinese society. By highlighting the role of foreign ideas and models in the formation of new institutions in China, this paper seeks to enrich our understanding of contemporary Chinese political development and to contribute to the literature on international norm diffusion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines two strands of international relations theory-- power-transition theory and institutionalist theory-- that provide the intellectual foundation for two contrasting views about the implications of China's growing capabilities. A generally pessimistic view rooted in power-transition theory sees China's rise as at least disruptive and most likely dangerous because it is expected to pose a threat to others in the region who have long enjoyed the benefits of an international order underpinned by American power. This theory predicts that a more powerful China, dissatisfied with its hitherto marginal international influence, will try to use its increasing clout to reshape that order to its liking. A generally more optimistic view rooted in institutionalist theory sees China's rise as at least presenting an opportunity for building international cooperation within East Asia that might forestall a replay of the sort of tragic great power rivalry that often characterized world politics in previous centuries and that informs the thinking of the power-transition perspective. The paper is divided in to three sections. Section one briefly introduces an essential caveat about any assessment of China's rise. Section two provides a three-fold categorization of international theories that might be employed to study the phenomenon of a rising power and then further explicates the two theoretical perspectives for interpreting China's rise that I consider here in greater detail. Section three sets forth the expectations from these theories about three putative flashpoints in East Asia-Korea, the South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait-arenas where China's rise since the end of the Cold War has been seen as cause for concern. It also compares these competing expectations with the still skimpy empirical record of the post-Cold War era. Events in the South China Sea and Korea lend some credence to the expectations of institutionalist theory, though this evidence is inevitably inconclusive and I suggest why it may also be interpreted as consistent with power-transition theory. In the Taiwan Strait, however, the picture is less ambiguous-most of the evidence lends credence to the expectations of power-transition theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of democratization on Taiwan's foreign policy making. For fifty years, the ruling Koumintang determined Taiwan's China policy. The democratization that made possible the election of President Chen Shui-bian, however, complicated foreign policy making by allowing the participation of more voices in Taiwan's politics. For the past five years, the now opposition KMT and other parties have challenged Chen's China policy with a vastly different foreign policy agenda. This paper examines their views, and the influence of party cleavage on Taiwan's China policy. It seeks to answer the following questions: In Taiwan, does "politics stop at the water's edge"? (i.e., is there strong coordination among national officials and politicians), or is the state "disaggregated" with different elements (e.g., political parties) conducting semi-autonomous foreign policies in the service if disparate societal interests? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's new rural tax reform that started in 2000 reduced the rural residents' financial burden. However, it gave rise to a serious problem of local fiscal crises, and significantly weakened the provision of public goods in poorly-endowed agricultural areas. Why did the reform aimed at enhancing the quality of provided public goods fail to do just that in areas that needed it most? Moreover, why did the central government make the decision of this tax reform despite giving the rise to local fiscal crises? I argue that the center's decision becomes less puzzling when considering an often overlooked factor: the center's policy preferences. In particular, I show that though the center has an interest in allowing local governments to collect taxes and provide public goods, this interest is not as strong as its commitment to market-oriented reforms and socio-political stability. When this interest and the commitment conflict-as they did when the increase in local levies sparked rural unrest in the 1990s-the center places its own political survival before local fiscal health. The adoption of the 2000 tax reform reflects the center's willingness to sacrifice the latter for the former. Moreover, by appearing to side with the peasants against predatory agents of the local state, the central government managed to re-channel the blame for bad governance onto local officials-thereby strengthening its own authority. Since local cadres are appointed by their superior government in China's authoritarian regime, they have few avenues through which to articulate their grievances against the central government when they are harmed by the center's reform policies. And yet, the personnel system in which local cadres are not popularly elected but appointed by higher authorities creates an institutional incentive for them to shirk and disguise the accurate information in their locality. Therefore, though the central government succeeds in strengthening its authority, it fails to grasp the reality of local governance in rural areas. This paper carries out the theoretical presentation of this discussion with the help of a game-theoretic model. A series of comparative-static exercises with the simple model are used to examine how nationally implemented reform policies have influenced the relationship between villagers and their local governments depending on pre-existing local conditions. The analysis in this paper shows that the increased possibility of outbound migration gave villagers substantial bargaining power against their local governments in rich areas, while it did not give them real power in poor areas. The easier outbound migration strengthened the villagers' bargaining power vis-à-vis their local government up to a certain threshold where the local government was forced to raise levies on non-migratory villagers to replenish its dwindling treasury, thereby triggering renewed popular resistance. Moreover, rural industrialization in richer areas served to delay the onset of this threshold, suggesting that local governments in more industrialized areas were able to avoid raising levies, while local governments in poorer agricultural areas tended to increase them. As a result, the model predicts that the financial burden in China's rural areas will have regressive characteristics. Since taxes and fees became a source of contention between villagers and local governments, the CCP leadership institutionalized certain participatory channels to defuse popular grievances. The petition system is one of those institutions. It is a remonstrative institution, through which villagers can challenge their local government's decisions and higher authorities can monitor lower-level governments' behavior... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The government in China since the 1980s can be described as a form of bureaucratic technocracy which is characterized as rule by scientists and engineers. Many urgent problems China is facing today can be linked to the neglect of human distresses and social factors by political leaders whose training is limited to science and engineering. Although technocracy is an important step towards acquiring what Max Weber has termed a rational-legal basis of political legitimacy, the lack of popular sovereignty and innate tendency towards an oligarchic rule will eventually weaken the justification of bureaucratic technocracy. It is the argument of this paper that as China is becoming an affluent society, the concerns for qualify of life are substituting concerns for quantity of life issues. Consequently, the governing elite based on technocracy will face serious challenges. A broadening of the political elite circle to include more and more people who have training or background other than science and engineering fields will be inevitable. Part one of this paper will examine the rise of the politics of efficiency. Part two of the paper will analysize the weakness of the efficiency-driven technocracy. Part three will study the revival of the politics of equity and its implication for China's political development in the near future. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although China's accession to the WTO has justifiably received detailed attention from policymakers, scholars, and journalists alike, Beijing's growing participation in the burgeoning economic regionalism of East Asia is a less-studied phenomenon. By examining China's participation in groups such as ASEAN plus Three (including related initiatives such as the ASEAN-China FTA and other subregional/bilateral FTAs), this paper will examine how Beijing has sought to use regionalism in managing the challenges of globalization. While the paper focuses mainly on economic regionalism, security issues receive some attention as well. For example, China is increasingly concerned about transnational security threats such as terrorism, weapons proliferation, epidemics, and cross-border criminal activities. Especially in the area of nontraditional security issues, such as the spread of infectious diseases, China is making growing use of regional cooperation as a means of addressing challenges associated with globalization. Drawing upon the general literature on regionalism found in the International Political Economy subfield, the paper will examine alternative explanations for China's growing role in East Asian regionalism. As such, the paper will place China's participation in various regional groups in the context of Beijing's larger foreign policy orientation, including its emerging grand strategy for the new millennium. From this analysis, the paper will also consider the implications of China's views of, and behavior toward, intergovernmental cooperation for the evolving shape of East Asian regionalism. By any measure, China casts an increasingly large shadow over the region's economic and security affairs. In this respect, the paper aims not just to understand the nature and sources of Chinese policy but also to consider their likely impact on prospects for deeper regionalism in East Asia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]