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A significant proportion of critical agri-food literature has, to date, focused on the uneven relations of power between the Global North and the Global South, and the neoliberal characteristics of the corporate food regime. This literature has often overlooked the nuances in varieties of capitalism, particularly in East Asia. China is re-emerging as a powerful state actor in an increasingly multipolar global food system. It is also an important hub of capital, facilitating agribusiness mergers and acquisitions, as well as new East–South and South–South flows of agri-food trade, technology and capital. This paper aims to contribute to understanding state-led capitalism in China and neomercantilist strategies in the agri-food sector. The paper provides a critical analysis of a case study of China's state owned agri-food and chemical companies 'going global'. It contends that the current food regime is in a period of transition or interregnum– a period of fluidity separating the continuity of successive regimes. Arguably, the analytical contours of a contemporary food regime in transition cannot be adequately comprehended without recognising the incipient importance of state-led capitalism and neomercantilism, and how contemporary socio-political and economic dynamics are reshaping relations of power in the global political economy of food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of China's economy, air pollution is becoming extremely serious. The spatial-temporal evolution of air pollution is conducive to the management of air pollution. The paper is proceeded into three steps. Firstly, based on the generalization principal component analysis method, the comprehensive air pollution evaluation index is established. Then, the gravity center model is utilized to explore the spatial-temporal evolution of air pollution in Yangtze River Delta from January 2014 to December 2016. Finally, the contribution decomposition method is utilized to explore the contribution to gravity center evolution. The main results are as follows: (1) The air pollution have obvious seasonal and regional differences in Yangtze River Delta. (2) The gravity center of air pollution continues to westward after 2014 with the characteristic of the north-south circular movement. (3) Hefei City and Yangzhou City have huge impact on the gravity center evolution of air pollution. The conclusions could be helpful for Chinese government to control the air pollution in Yangtze River Delta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilises a reduced-form equilibrium model to investigate the possible sources of real estate investment differentials among 22 provinces, five autonomous regions and four municipalities of the People’s Republic of China. The model is estimated using panel data from 2001 to 2006, yielding a total of 186 observations. Specifically, empirical results suggest that demographic, economic and planning factors are the major determinants to cause real estate investment to vary among Chinese regions. The relatively small coefficient estimate of real interest rates indicates that it has a significant but modest impact. Based on the coefficient estimates, this paper finally suggests that the Chinese government should focus and work on several policy parameters in order to achieve a more balanced state of real estate investment across Chinese regions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Along with the emergence of the 'three rural issues' and rural crisis, a new co-operative movement has been witnessed in rural China, which is different from the former revolutionary communalist co-operative movement. This social movement can help to understand and rebuild civil society in China, which has, more often than not, been criticized as not genuine, civil nor society-based. Following the debate's background of the juxtaposition of a fast economic reform together with slow social and political reforms in China, the paper addresses a crucial question on the impact of economic development on civil society dynamics in China. By identifying the causal mechanisms of the new co-operative development and the conditions needed for them to develop, the paper presents some implications of the co-operative model in today's society. These causal mechanisms are set within the context of one historical process evolving with a path dependency. Using this theoretical framework, it further presents the empirical observations. Through the findings it is concluded that the new co-operative movement in rural China can be considered as a mild liberalization within civil society's sphere. While questioning a popularly used perspective examining the voluntary/non-profit nature of civil society organizations and excluding the economic aspect within civil society studies in China, the paper suggests an alternative approach representing an inclusive third sector with diverse organizations that combine both economic and social aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the historical process of Hong Kong-China national unification through a crisis-transformation framework. This paper argues that the Chinese unification process between Hong Kong and mainland China is not a smooth process. Instead, it has gone through at least four crises during the 1980s and the 1990s. The institution framework for unification - the so-called 'One Country, Two Systems' policy - emerged out of the first crisis of negotiation in the early 1980s, and this policy has been hotly contested and transformed during the various crises over the past three decades. Previous studies on Hong Kong-China unification tends to focus solely on the political and legal aspects. However, this paper shows that unification needs to be symmetrical on all aspects (legal, political, economic and socio-cultural) in order to make it work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Revue Tiers Monde is the property of Librairie Armand Colin and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines China's overseas land-based investments in agriculture. Our hypothesis is that – despite extensive media, NGO and scholarly attention to China's global resource-seeking activities – the discourse on Chinese ‘land grabs’ is insufficiently informed by the available data. Moreover, we argue that China's overseas land-based investments are part of what can be termed ‘developmental outsourcing’. Different from a conventional interpretation of outsourcing, this concept refers to global off-shoring in which the state plays a key role in planning, intervention and regulation. This paper does not aim to provide definitive answers, yet intends to scrutinize the data and re-examine the ‘land grabbing’ discourse. This will be done by studying land-based investments in terms of incidence, size and geographical dispersion over 1949-2011. Where relevant and possible, other variables such as the investor, data source, investment type and outcome will be discussed. Lastly, we will also discuss the data quality and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper shows how wuwei (effortless action) and associated concepts drawn from Daoist thought are applied in analyses of the Chinese market economy and state-economy relations published in recent issues of social science and Communist Party journals in the People's Republic of China. Such use of traditional concepts partially displaces Marxist terminology from 'diagnostic economics'. In discussing the use of these concepts in 5 articles published between 2000 and 2008, the economic theory of Daodejing is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the rise of China present a threat or an opportunity for Southeast Asia? One of the most revealing arenas in which this will be determined will be within the context of regional institution-building. For a region that is perennially associated with under-institutionalisation it is remarkable just how many initiatives have been proposed recently. Such institutions, may be important venues within which 'asymmetric regionalism' may be manifest and perhaps managed. The paper provides an assessment of this process through an analysis of China's relationship with Southeast Asia. The paper initially provides a brief theoretical introduction which explains the relationship between regional development and its possible impact on inter-state relations. Following this I provide an analysis of the political economic and strategic dynamics that are shaping and being shaped by regional initiatives. Finally, I assess how successful ASEAN's efforts have been to engage China via regional mechanisms has actually been. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world economy shifts towards services, transnational corporations ( TNCs) in the service sector have accelerated their expansion in emerging economies. This paper examines the development and embeddedness of foreign hypermarket retailers in China. It also analyzes the spatial penetration patterns of retail TNCs, the impacts of home and host economies on their local embeddedness, and how they resolve the structural paradox between enforcing standardization and conducting localization. The expansion of retail TNCs has been influenced by the gradual liberalization policies of the Chinese government. Spatially, they expanded in two directions: from the eastern costal region to the central and western hinterland, and along China's urban hierarchy from larger cities to smaller cities. While home economies greatly influenced their initial strategies, foreign hypermarket retailers are constantly adjusting to better embed in the Chinese market and to more effectively resolve the structural paradox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This social-historical study aims to enrich contemporary knowledge of the history of the Paralympics in modern China. In addition, the paper also seeks to understand policy and politics through the development of the Paralympics movement. To achieve these aims, a comparison and contrast between a ‘social approach’ and an ‘elite approach’ is provided in order to assess which approach is better in terms of current challenges facing Paralympic sport in China. This study adopts a qualitative approach and uses grounded theory as its research process. Interviews and archival material are used to gather information relevant to this study. Critical theories such as enlightenment theory, empowerment theory, and Hosking's critical disability theory, are then used to interpret the findings. The conclusion is that Paralympic sport in China has greatly benefited by an elite approach. However, after this approach enlightened Chinese society with modern disability theory, it is the time to move on to a social approach for the welfare of all people with disabilities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘Meat grabbing’ describes actually existing land deals undertaken for industrial meat production, either directly in the form of animal housing and stocking (confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs), or indirectly in the form of monocrop grain and oilseed production for livestock feed. Meat grabbing is also a concept for analyzing the relationships between industrial meat regimes, food security politics and the global land rush, relationships which have not yet been sufficiently considered in research or in policy. Using China's reform-era meat revolution as an analytical case, this paper proposes meat grabbing as a concept with three broad goals: (1) to show how industrial meat complicates notions of food security and of food security land grabs, (2) to incorporate social inequalities and environmental injustices into the conceptualization and measurement of land deals and (3) to expand dispossession's domain to include relationships between people and agroecosystems. This is an initial exploration of the content and framing of meat grabs, intended to synthesize its core features and raise questions for further study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For many scholars, 1949 represents a revolutionary rupture in the Chinese historical narrative. For some individuals living in China at that time, however, 1949 did not appear to be a watershed event but rather a temporary readjustment demand in a degree of adaptation. This paper looks at 1949 through the eyes of Church of the Brethren missionaries working in rural Shanxi between 1945 and 1952. Having already endured the 1911 Revolution, the regional wars of the 1920s, and the Japanese invasion of the 1930s, the Brethren were confident they would be able to conform to the demands of the new communist regime. Only in 1952 and beyond did individual missionaries begin to appreciate the major, momentous events that had transformed China. Drawing on their experiences helps us understand the complexities of 1949 and appreciate the continuities that transcended the 1949 divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governance is a hot topic in China, as well as among political scientists. Ways of thinking about it can be improved. This essay offers a ‘neo-functionalist’ method to test for successful or unsuccessful governance of reform stability in China. It takes account of the need for participation in effective governance. Steering a state (or any part of a state) requires attention to multiple sizes of polity—especially several medial sizes in a country as large as China. Governance has varied over time during the ‘reform’ era, when anti-reform conservatives have remained important in many nested political networks. The paper shows variation of governance over time, over sizes of polity and over four sample governance functions: managing the economy, maintaining orderly stability, linking ‘social’ parts of the polity to the government, and choosing cadres. It shows how these categories exhaust a logical field that is at least implicit in any analysis of governance roles, and it suggests the value of a ‘circulation of elites’ paradigm when thinking about governance success or failure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I examine the relationship between the construction of history by the textual history of early imperial China and by Chinese archaeology in the second half of the twentieth century, considering how these two fields of scholarship were directed by ideologies of the Chinese government. The locus for this investigation is the complex of imperial ancestral temples constructed by the emperor Wang Mang (r. 9–23 CE) for his brief interregnum dynasty. Although this group of buildings is described in the official dynastic history, compiled only fifty years after its construction, as having nine temple buildings with specific ancestors ascribed to each, its archaeological excavation in the late 1950s instead revealed twelve temples in a carefully organized plan. The discrepancy between the original construction of the temple complex and its subsequent revision in textual history is revealing in terms of the relationship between received tradition and individual action in the context of establishing imperial legitimacy, whereas the modern attempts to reconcile the discrepancy between textual history and excavated history are indicative of the relationship between Chinese archaeology of that period and the nationalist revision of history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ) has been the flagship labouratory of Deng Xiaoping’s reform and open-door policy and the forerunner of China’s capitalist transformation. The initiation of the Shenzhen SEZ was driven by the imperative of political and economic survival along the state hierarchy and was informed by the international practices of export processing zones (EPZs). Shenzhen’s capitalist fundamentals, such as the commodification of land and labour, were largely established through imitating its ‘big master’ Hong Kong across the border. However, Shenzhen’s policy learning style has gradually shifted from laissez-faire Hong Kong to authoritarian Singapore, propelled by the aspiration, shared among policy-making party élites across China’s administrative hierarchy, of perpetuating the single-party rule. Theoretically, this paper demonstrates how policy mobility is shaped path-dependently by the pre-structured institutional/ideological regime, in what ways the idiosyncratic geographical/historical conjuncture matters, and why political representation and participation are crucial to policy selection and mutation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social security regimes must be underpinned by enforcement mechanisms designed to compel employers to fulfil their contribution requirements. In this paper we extend debate on China's social security system by discussing whether the inclusion of re-integrative shaming in the repertoire of mechanisms the state utilises to enforce employer compliance is likely to prove effective. Drawing on audited data provided by the Shanghai Bureau of Labour and Social Security and on interviews with employers and Bureau staff we argue that though shaming has the potential to become an important social security enforcement mechanism in China, optimism that this will occur in the near future is not justified. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's economic reforms have resulted in spectacular growth and poverty reduction. However, China's institutions look ill-suited to achieve such a result, and they indeed suffer from serious shortcomings. To solve the 'China puzzle,' this paper analyzes China's institution-a regionally decentralized authoritarian system. The central government has control over personnel, whereas subnational governments run the bulk of the economy; and they initiate, negotiate, implement, divert, and resist reforms, policies, rules, and laws. China's reform trajectories have been shaped by regional decentralization. Spectacular performance on the one hand and grave problems on the other hand are all determined by this governance structure. (JEL O17, O18, O43, P21, P25, P26) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been heated debates on outcome and orientation of China’s economic reforms which started in the late 1970s. Though most of the previous studies on Chinese politics concentrate on the role of elites in policy-making, I argue that the intellectual discourse over policy have become increasingly salient in the post-Mao period. The paper focuses on the following research questions: How and under what circumstances did the New Left and liberals emerge in China? What are the major debates between the two? To what extent have the New Leftists and liberals affected the economic reforms and what change they might bring to the political climate? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has become a fast-growing economy with an unbalanced economic structure. Economic policies, especially fiscal and financial policies, contribute to the current growth model by depressing household disposable income and reducing the social services provided by the government. Laws that have been used by the government to subsidise investment and production by distorting factor markets are also to blame. Finally, rebalancing China’s growth pattern has proven to be extremely difficult due to political obstacles, including pressure from interest groups, gridlock caused by factional politics, and ideological discrimination against private entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The long-term prevalence of China's old planned economy, a socialist economic plan instituted between 1949 and 1978, has created inefficient management, low competitiveness and poor marketing for Chinese university journals, which has lead to the necessity and urgency of university journal reform. After comparing the publishing model of Chinese university journals with western academic journals and analyzing the Chinese government's requirements for university journal reform, the author examines and summarizes the experiences of western academic journal publishing practices and integrates these experiences with the current framework of Chinese academic publishing. Suggestions include introducing a competition system, improving and better applying a peer review system, developing a university journal publishing group, applying open access publishing models, and enhancing business consciousness for further development of Chinese university journals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The author delineates the configuration of the Chinese Buddhist ecology in post-Mao China by focusing on three major types of religious actor found in the ecology. She spells out how the interactions between the internal characteristics of religious groups and external structural conditions have shaped the development patterns of groups in each type. First, the dominant Buddhist temples, which enjoy state recognition, have been beset by the hollowing-out process. Second, the type of Buddhist groups with ambiguous legal status has been growing vigorously in the interstices of the current Chinese socio-political structure but faces uncertainties. An array of actors and forms, including self-appointed monks and the mixed form of Buddhism and popular religion, exist on the fringe of institutional Buddhism and constitute the third type. Within this type, the syncretic sects, receiving censure from both the state and the Buddhist establishment, are forced to operate underground. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Only a fraction of the Buddhist temples in Beijing that once housed monastics now function as places for religious activity. Some were demolished while others were converted to schools, government buildings, or residences. Several of these former temples have been restored; however, some have not been reopened as official religious sites but rather as fee-charging museums. Other temples have been restored to religious use but remain encircled within fee-charging “parks” that cater mostly to tourists. Lay Buddhists in Beijing are challenging this “museumification” of Buddhist temples by seeking exemption from admission fees and engaging in religious activities at museum/temple sites. Through a close examination of two of these sites, the White Dagoba Temple and the Eight Great Places Park, the author explores how Buddhist laypeople engaged in popular worship practices are slowly transforming museum/temples into social spaces informed by a vital, living Buddhist religion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"The world has enough for both of us" has come to be a regular refrain of Chinese and Indian leaders. Even academic commentaries sometimes use this argument to explain why Asia's two fastest growing economies and increasingly dynamic billion-plus-strong societies will not clash as they pursue peaceful development. Their relationship continues to be examined in simplistic dichotomies of competition or cooperation, rivals or partners, friends or foes, etc., ignoring the complex nature of their evolution and interactions. This paper argues that their continued rapid economic growth and resultant ever-expanding engagement with the external world is not completely innocent, and that their growth has begun to influence their bilateral relations. Prima facie, multilateral forums provide China and India with a relatively neutral playground in which the two countries have gradually begun to decipher their stronger commonality of interests in addressing their regional/global challenges within multilateral settings. This expanding mutual trust and understanding at the multilateral level is expected to have a positive impact on the nature of their historically complicated bilateral equations. No doubt, their difficult bilateral engagement also impacts their interactions at the multilateral level and their mutual trust deficit circumscribes their joint strategies in multilateral forums. Yet, on balance, contemporary Sino-Indian relations seem to mark a clear shift in the center of gravity from a bilateral to a multilateral matrix. This shift is nosy discernible enough to stand scrutiny and also to guide the future direction of Sino-Indian equations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite close geographical proximity and centuries-old ties, the relationship between China and India has been filled with obstacles and stumbling blocks. The majority of academic research and media reports tend to examine relations at the national level, yet cities have become increasingly important due to urbanization and globalization. This paper argues that, through the city platform, India and China can turn potential cooperation into reality. The differences between Chinese and Indian cities beget complementarity that provides great potential for cooperation. Local governments in both China and India have high levels of administrative power in decisionmaking. Cooperation between cities can avoid many obstacles that prevail in national-level cooperation. Local governments will not only be motivated to cooperate, but also can accomplish a great deal in promoting cooperation between the two countries. The conditions for city cooperation are improving. Cities can and should become a key path and a new engine for Sino-Indian cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the threat of a water war between China and India. It argues that Indian suspicion of China has been premature. Beijing has not yet given its approval for major water diversion projects in Tibet, it has taken some limited steps toward easing the concerns of the Indian government and a growing number of Chinese experts have taken an interest in developing institutional frameworks for managing transboundary rivers. However, definitive settlement or cooperation will be difficult because both countries perceive themselves as the victim of a greedy neighbor. While India complains about China's ravenous exploitation of the Himalayan rivers, it is common in China to accuse India of exaggerating the Chinese threat and being unreasonable in its demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid economic development and transformation of Chinese society over the past three decades has, by a large mass of analysts, been called a "Miracle." This paper not only addresses the shortcomings of existing interpretations but also develops a new multi-dimensional framework based on North's theory of institutional change and Hayek's theory of institutional evolution to explain China's miraculous growth. Our analysis shows that both Hayekian spontaneous order and Popper's "piecemeal social engineering" played a major role in attaining China's miraculous growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anniversaries are occasions for celebration and for taking stock of past problems as well as successes as a basis for looking ahead. But it is important to acknowledge first the enormity of the achievements of the People’s Republic. The sixtieth anniversary has been marked in Beijing by a display of China’s military strength and its wealth. The “sick man” of Asia of a century ago has been transformed into one of the world’s economic power-houses. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. The Chinese economy ranks as the largest in the world. It has become one of the world’s greatest trading nations and its influence is growing in every continent. However, in assessing the significance of these sixty years this paper will focus on three themes: history; foreign relations and future prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author presents a response to the 2006 Chinese white paper "China's African Policy." He considers Chinese involvement as an actor in Africa's economic, environmental, and political spheres. China's policies have included debt forgiveness to 23 African nations and large sums of developmental aid which includes 13 billion dollars for Angola, 9 billion dollars for the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 2.5 billion dollars for Ethiopia. The article also discusses international security issues, single-party governments in Africa, the One-China principle, the use of Chinese emigrant labor in Africa, and China's relations with both the African Union and United Nations.

The article presents a literature and research review of the international political history of China during the Cold War. An overview of the academic field from the 1980s onward is discussed in detail. The subject as pursued in Chinese and American academic institutions is particularly discussed. Common methodologies from Chinese scholars are highlighted, pointing out the post-Cold War analytical paradigm.

There are many studies on the effects of both economic globalisation and the rise of China. These core issues of the contemporary international agenda entail major economic, military, environmental, social and cultural transformations in most nations. While there is also an abundant literature on how globalisation supported the rise of China, there are scarce publications on how China became one of the primary drivers of globalisation. This article assumes that understanding the power of globalisation over countries is as crucial as assessing the power of certain countries over the process. In this sense, it uses the recently created 'theory of globalisers' to analyse how is China transforming contemporary economic globalisation. The conclusion is that China became an 'economic globaliser' in the twenty-first century. As the largest exporter, the second largest importer, the third largest provider of foreign direct investments, and a major supplier of high-tech goods, the Asian giant is a vital partner for several economies in different continents. In this context, Beijing's globalisation strategy aims at both securing the benefits of globalisation and reforming the international economic order, but without a revolutionary stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topography and continental configuration of East Asia favor the year-round existence of storm tracks that extend thousands of kilometers from China into the northwestern Pacific Ocean, producing zonally elongated patterns of rainfall that we call "frontal rain events." In spring and early summer (known as "Meiyu Season"), frontal rainfall intensifies and shifts northward during a series of stages collectively known as the East Asian summer monsoon. Using a technique called the Frontal Rain Event Detection Algorithm, we create a daily catalog of all frontal rain events in east China during 1951-2007, quantify their attributes, and classify all rainfall on each day as either frontal, resulting from largescale convergence, or nonfrontal, produced by local buoyancy, topography, or typhoons. Our climatology shows that the East Asian summer monsoon consists of a series of coupled changes in frontal rain event frequency, latitude, and daily accumulation. Furthermore, decadal changes in the amount and distribution of rainfall in east China are overwhelmingly due to changes in frontal rainfall. We attribute the "South Flood-North Drought" pattern observed beginning in the 1980s to changes in the frequency of frontal rain events, while the years 1994-2007 witnessed an uptick in event daily accumulation relative to the rest of the study years. This particular signature may reflect the relative impacts of global warming, aerosol loading, and natural variability on regional rainfall, potentially via shifting the East Asian jet stream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite playing a key contributing role in China's economic reforms and the Party's regime durability, there has been a noted reduction in local policy experimentation. Using semi-structured interviews with policymakers in Beijing, Zhejiang and Shenzhen, we find that although recentralization efforts at the central-level are impacting local officials, a great deal of variation in policy experimentation outcomes still exists. Thus, the puzzle motivating this study is how do local officials react to these institutional changes to decide whether or not to engage in local policy innovation? Our study offers three potential explanations for why local officials vary in their willingness to continue policy experimentation: (1) the ineffectiveness of the vertical reward and punishment systems operated by the Party-state; (2) differing base preferences of local officials; and, (3) the presence of a cohort effect. These factors 'filter' institutional changes to result in variation at the local level. As such, we find strong support for an evolutionary process predicated on individual preferences interacting with institutional incentives such as the evaluation system and the networked-structure of cadre knowledge. Although some officials are still conducting policy experimentation, the overall reduction in innovation strongly suggests that potential solutions to governance problems remain trapped at the local level, and that the central government might lose this 'adaptable' governance mechanism that has contributed to its past economic and political successes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Communist victory in 1949, the People's Republic of China was excluded from most world organisations. China withdrew from the International Olympic Committee in 1958 in protest over its continued recognition of Taiwan, and since it supported the US boycott of the Moscow 1980 Olympics, it did not return to the summer games until the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. While the diplomatic importance of those games is well known, their importance for China's economic reforms has not been discussed. The Los Angeles Games not only played an important role in the revitalisation of Chinese national identity, but also provided an eye-popping example of marketised sport and mega-events just as the economic reforms were launched. The Los Angeles Games were the first televised broadcast of the popular culture of the West to a wide Chinese audience. The deep impression they left on their Chinese viewers helped to launch China towards becoming the economic power that it became a quarter of a century later. This was symbolically represented at China's first Olympic Games in 2008, when the Olympic flame was lit by Li Ning, the gold medalist in Los Angeles who founded a sporting goods company that is considered as one of the hallmark cases of the reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on previous literature and theoretical considerations, the authors identify six key independent variables related to popular religious belief and practice in mainland China: institutional religious affiliation, level of education, income, perspectives on inequality as a social problem, assessment of overall health, and rural residency. Using the 2007 Spiritual Life Study of Chinese Residents, the authors find that Buddhist identity is positively associated with popular religious involvement across measures of popular religious belief and practice. Identifying as a formally committed Buddhist consistently displays the strongest positive relationship with popular religious involvement. The level of education does not reveal a consistent negative association with popular religious adherence, contrary to predictions of classical secularization theory. One measure of existential security theory, feeling inequality is a serious social problem, shows a strong positive relationship with popular religious belief, but not popular religious practices. Finally, despite research highlighting the functional importance of popular religion in rural areas, rural residency is not consistently a significant predictor of popular religious adherence. The implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese economic and social development in the past three decades has been typically state-led, in which capital and government officials are gradually allied through guanxi—a social psychological network that connects individuals with continued exchanges of favours, emotions and resources. This transforms many traditional characteristics of guanxi and encodes it with new features deeply rooted in institutional settings in contemporary China, which we term as neo-guanxilism. Although ‘local state corporatism’ has strong explanatory power in analysing the alliance of enterprises and local government, we argue that this type of neo-guanxilism could fill the gap uncovered by local state corporatism, mainly through emphasizing government officials as interdependent actors instead of viewing the local state as a collective, capturing not only the developmental but also the predatory aspects of local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interviewer's Note: Among Western scholars, Gail Hershatter is one of the very few who conducted extended research in China right after such fieldwork became possible when the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) ended. Dr. Hershatter spent two years at Nankai University (1979–1981), collecting sources for her dissertation on Tianjin workers of the first half of the twentieth century. Her liuxuesheng (study abroad) life left undeletable marks in her academic career. Her solid scholarship benefited from her ability to dive into archives and to interview locals; her research projects and interests reflected her acute concern for the changes in Chinese society. Dr. Hershatter also exemplifies the new generation of China scholars' departure from traditional sinology, in their effort to incorporate theories and approaches from the social sciences. Gail Hershatter received her PhD in history from Stanford University and has taught at University of California Santa Cruz for twenty-three years, four of them as Distinguished Professor. She is the inaugural director of the UCSC Institute for Humanities Research, and served many years as chair of the History Department. She was President of the Association for Asian Studies (2011–12). Dr. Hershatter's scholarship ranges from labor, modernity, to gender and women's life in modern China. Her monographs, Dangerous Pleasures and The Memory of Gender won American Historical Association's Joan Kelly Memorial Prize for Women's History in 1997 and 2012 respectively. Since my research interest also lies in women and gender in Chinese history, I came to be quite familiar with Dr. Hershatter's work and got to know her in person. Last March (2013) Dr. Hershatter was invited by Pomona College to deliver the 2013 Ena H. Thompson Lectures. Siting among a captivated audience, I came up with the idea to interview her for The Chinese Historical Review, which was graciously accepted and supported by the journal's editors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between neoliberalism and masculinity in China from the late 1970s through the early 21st century, often referencing Chinese Olympic gold medalist sprinter Liu Xiang in this regard. The impact that the Western conception of gender has on Chinese civilization, including the role that capitalism plays in this regard, is discussed. The relationship between China's economic policies and masculinity, including in regard to athletics, is also discussed.

This article situates China's local policy experimentation in the broader context of policy experiments in decentralized political systems, through a case study which represents a local state response to China's transition to a market economy. With growing regional and urban-rural inequalities evident after the initial reform period (1978-1994), local party leaders of inland provinces devised strategies for addressing these inequalities and encouraging public-private sector mobility among party officials. County and township-level leaders pursued local policy experiments in which they selected and sent officials to find private-sector work in China's booming coastal cities. Initiated in the 1990s and peaking in the 2000s, these policy experiments and inter-provincial transfers demonstrate the discretion that local officials possess to conduct programmatic/policy experiments in a unitary political system and show how officials resort to extra-institutional strategies in order to bridge perceived knowledge gaps. The ultimate demise of these programmes illuminates the challenges to extra-institutional policy innovations in transitioning states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many economists believe that in the long run, the aggregate performance of open economies is better than that of closed ones, and that open policies contribute significantly to economic development. At the same time, many political scientists and policy makers fear that, in the short run, one of the steps towards openness - trade liberalization - may harm government revenues. However, in the 1990s, China successfully navigated the dilemma of trade liberalization and government revenues. In this period, China decreased tariff and non-tariff barriers for WTO accession, but has achieved dramatically increased tariff revenues since 1999. This study explores how China implemented trade liberalization and simultaneously increased tariff revenues in the 1990s. It demonstrates that a series of institutional arrangements, including a reform of Criminal Law, rigorous anti-smuggling activities and a de facto tax imposed on the export sector, successfully curbed smuggling activities through the processing trade, and made foreign-invested manufacturing enterprises the major contributors to the stability of customs revenue. China's case shows that a prosperous, export-oriented and foreign-invested manufacturing sector could potentially provide a developing country with a source of customs revenue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on recent theoretical tenets regarding cross-border regions, this article analyzes China's state spatial policies that aim to transform Yunnan from a peripheral frontier into an economic bridgehead. The purposes of the present study are threefold: to contextualize the formation of Yunnan as China's frontier; to examine why Yunnan has been strategically selected as a bridgehead to promote China's transnational economies; and to explore the central-provincial alliance as an innovative institutional arrangement and look at how this alliance can convert Yunnan into a space of exception or new state space of development. This study finds that in order to convert regional assets into real competitiveness, the Chinese state (national, provincial and local) emphasizes transnational cooperation, endeavors to maximize Yunnan's place-specific locational advantages and promotes the differentiation of regional developmental trajectories across China's national territory. The article contributes to studies of institutional arrangements for cross-border cooperation in a non- Western context and sheds light on China's regional development policies in its hinterland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Working People’s Cultural Palace (WPCP), formerly the Imperial Ancestral Temple, is a celebrated public park near Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing. A closer look at the park, which was created by the government in 1950 to provide recreational activities for the local residents, reveals that it was not primarily used as a conventional urban amenity but rather as an arena for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to launch political campaigns and stage propaganda exhibitions. The park, therefore, under the guise of a recreation area, was used to promote labor policies, international diplomacy and Party politics, thus extending the CCP’s control of people’s lives. Based on recently available archival sources and by comparing the CCP’s use of urban parks to how they were used in the former Soviet Union and in the United States, this article argues that the WPCP reflects the conflict between the state and society, resulting in the domination of the former over the latter and rapid loss of citizens’ private space in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study offers a conceptual analysis of the social economy in China within the context of institutional transition. In China, economic reform has engendered significant social changes. Accelerated economic growth, privatization of the social welfare system, and the rise of civil society explain the institutional contexts in which a range of not-for-profit initiatives, neither state-owned nor capital-driven, re-emerged. They are defined in this research as the social economy in China. This study shows that although the term itself is quite new, the social economy is no new phenomenon in China, as its various elements have a rich historical tradition. Moreover, the impact of the transition on the upsurge of the Chinese social economy is felt not only through direct means of de-nationalization and marketization and, as a consequence, the privatization of China's social welfare system, but also through various indirect means. The development of the social economy in China was greatly influenced by the framework set by political institutions and, accordingly, legal enabling environments. In addition, the link to the West, as well as local historical and cultural traditions, contribute towards explaining its re-emergence. Examining the practices in the field shows that the social economy sector in China is conducive to achieving a plural economy and an inclusive society, particularly by way of poverty reduction, social service provision, work integration, and community development. Therefore, in contemporary China, it serves as a key sector for improving welfare, encouraging participation, and consolidating solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article looks at the history of China and its relations to the West from the 19th century through 2013. It describes the Yuanmingyuan, or Old Summer Palace, in Beijing, China, the Qing dynasty residence, noting it was destroyed by British and French forces during the mid-1800s Opium Wars and saying its remaining ruins are a symbol of Western imperialism. It outlines the period of foreign domination of China in the century following the Opium Wars, saying it was reversed by the 1949 Communist revolution under Mao Zedong. It describes Mao's effort to implement Marxist ideas of class struggle, which it says were reversed in the country's move toward a capitalist economic system beginning under Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. It traces Chinese-Western relations into the 21st century.

This article analyzes the official circulars relating to the punishment of male physicians for sexual misconduct in Chinese hospitals during the 1960s and 1970s. It reveals how the puritanical and political ideology of this period affected the images of male physicians who engaged in sexual misconduct, and argues that their punishment demonstrates how the social responsibility for upholding sexual morality, a task once ascribed to women in imperial China, had shifted to men in socialist China. The circulars were a mechanism to impose a new 'socialist sexuality' on Chinese society in order to strengthen the Chinese Communist Party's moral authority and ruling legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]