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When most of China's major cities are suffering from smog, people start to cry out for environmental improvement. The significance of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become one of the hottest topics in China. CSR and shareholder primacy are widely debated idiosyncratic areas of corporate legislation. China's approach has thus far been unclear in both areas. This paper first considers all related provisions in Chinese commercial law in order to identify China's approach (law on the books) from the legislative perspective. Then, based on this conclusion of the schizophrenic Chinese corporate law, it further examines the enforcement of shareholder primacy and CSR laws using empirical methods (law in action). Finally, the efficacy of the current approach is analysed and assessed from a political economy perspective. The article concludes that it would be efficient for China to follow existing statutory requirements and imperatives. Moreover, China must correct practitioners' modus operandi in order to improve the rule of law. Social responsibility issues should, for the time being, be tackled outside the corporate law box rather than by meddling with already confusing director duties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the question of why the risks posed by collective petitioning in China deter some villagers from participating but not others. Based on the statistical analysis of an original dataset and an ethnographic study of one case, this article finds that higher household income is the only significant factor that increases a villager's probability to participate in collective petitions. Economic security empowers a peasant's political participation. Contrary to the existing literature, being a demobilized soldier does not significantly increase a villager's probability to participate in collective petitions. The implication of this finding is that petitioning as a form of 'managed participation' in Chinese politics may face more and more challenges if the average Chinese household income continues to grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I find that the political economy of public goods provision by the local government in Shanghai influenced the decision to transition from the existing public service delivery model based on residency, to a social innovation model where the government contracts with non-profits and private firms to provide services at lower costs and experiment with different levels of provision (购买服务). Contracting also forms a bridge between old governance models and new ones, which potentially allow for a process of administrative modernization without social instability. Contracting for public-goods provision is increasing in prevalence not only in Shanghai but also in many other provinces, and is professionalizing participating organizations and providing public goods to vulnerable populations. While this practice is not yet increasing non-profit participation in the policy process, the creation of access channels that are currently operating solely in one direction may at some future date allow groups to participate in relevant policy areas. Contracting public goods might have the potential of significant effects beyond the term of the contract by increasing pluralism in local public policy and generating more demand for transparency and accountability of government services. As such, this is an interesting bellwether for future political change in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]