bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Past and the Future of Hong Kong's Constitution
Authors: Ghai Yash
Published: February 2009

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of constitutions in Hong Kong, the principal concern being the implications of the Basic Law which comes into effect in July 1997 as the constitution of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). In order to show the purpose and method of the Basic Law, I also examine the role of colonial constitutions in the territory.
China's Economy on the Eve of Reform
Authors: Nolan Peter , Ash Robert F.
Published: February 2009

Pressures for change are inherent in leadership succession under any political system. In China, because of his longevity and close involvement in major strategic initiatives, Mao Zedong's passing was bound to intensify such pressures. When he died in September 1976, Mao had held supreme power, largely unchallenged, for four decades. Since 1949, China's economic development had been uniquely, if not consistently, influenced by his personal prejudices and idiosyncratic view of how best to realize the country's development potential.
The Social Roots of China's Economic Development
Authors: Whyte Martin King
Published: February 2009

Why has China been so much more successful than the former Soviet Union and its East European satellites in making the transition away from a centrally planned economy? While other articles address a wide range of explanations of China's success, this one explores the possible contri- bution of China's grass roots social organization, and particularly its family and kinship structures. Attention is drawn to social factors by the obvious fact that China, through its spectacular recent growth, has taken its place among other Chinese (and Chinese cultural orbit) populations in East Asia, reinforcing the position of this region as the most dynamic portion of the world economy. Could China share with other Chinese populations, despite more than 30 years of collectivist socialism, grass roots social structures that are conducive to economic growth under the proper conditions - social structures that are different in strategically important ways from those in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe?
Power Change, Co-optation, Accommodation: Xinhua and the Press in Transitional Hong Kong
Authors: Chan Joseph Man , Lee Chin-Chuan
Published: February 2009

We have documented that political transition set out by the Sino-British Joint Declaration in September 1984 has compelled the Hong Kong press to undergo decisive, yet uneven, editorial paradigm shifts. This article, as a sequel, examines the structural interaction between Xinhua (New China) News Agency, China's command post in Hong Kong, and the ideologically-polarized Chinese-language press. Specifically, we seek to focus our analysis on aspects of Xinhua's co-optation and press accommodation. As a new power centre, Xinhua tries to incorporate the press into the changing political order with offers of benefits, resources and status. In turn, the press organization makes institutional policy – ranging from investment strategies to the internal routine of news work – to adapt itself to, and maximize its position in, a rapidly changing socio-economic context.
An Exchange of Views about Basic Chinese Social Organization Review Essay: Transfigured Community: Neo-Traditionalism and Work Unit Socialism in China
Authors: Womack Brantly
Published: February 2009

In the last decade a variety of local studies and more comprehensive works have shed light on basic-level Chinese politics and society, but Andrew Walder's bookCommunist Neo-Traditionalismhas been the boldest and most influential in proposing a new paradigm for understanding the human realities of life and power in China. Although the empirical base of his study is the state industrial workplace in China, Walder claims that it is applicable to industrial relation in other communist countries, and his theory fits closely with Jean Oi's analysis of clientelism in rural areas.
A Reply to Womack
Authors: Walder Andrew G.
Published: February 2009

When Womack asserts that I present a picture of “the total power of local leadership” and “total dependence” of workers, he substitutes for the main thrust of my argument a quite different one. I did not argue that dependence breeds all-powerful leaders, but that it gives rise to a clientelist pattern of authority, in which the Party uses material and career rewards to build networks of loyal followers, dividing the Party's clients from rank and file workers, and helping to stimulate a thriving subculture of instrumental–personal ties (guanxi). The focus is upon how authority is exercised – not how much authority leaders have–and the main argument is that dependence breeds personal rule.
The Chinese Television System and Television News
Authors: Xiaoping Li
Published: February 2009

In the development of mass communications in China (as elsewhere), the newspaper is the oldest form, followed only this century by radio, and most recently, television. The earliest Chinese newspaper appeared in the TangDynasty, 1,200 years ago, and was published regularly by successive feudal dynasties. The earliest modern Chinese newspaper, however, was founded in the middle of the 19th century, published by Wang Tao, China's first political commentator.
Electric Power Production in Pre–1937 China
Authors: Wright Tim
Published: February 2009

Many important issues in modern Chinese history are crucially affected by the magnitude and pattern of economic growth up to 1937. Despite the work of John Key Chang and more recently Thomas Rawski, however, we still know all too little about the quantitative aspects of that growth. All scholars of the period are greatly indebtedto Chang's pioneering and indispensame work on industrial production but, as he himself points out, his index remains tentative and exploratory. Although the compilation of a definitive new index will eventually depend on work by scholars in China, to my knowledge this has not yet got under way. Wherever compiled, any index of industrial output as a whole, or even of national income, will have to be based on better series for individual industries. In such a context, this research note builds on Chang's work by offering a revision of the output series for one very important and rapidly growing industry in pre-1937 China, the electric power industry.
Organizational Changes of the PLA, 1985–1997
Authors: Li Nan
Published: February 2009

At the 15th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress held in September 1997, Chinese leader Jiang Zemin announced that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) would reduce its manpower by 500,000 in the next three years. This is apparently a new step to deepen the military reform that Deng Xiaoping had initiated in early 1980s. Such reform aims to transform the PLA from a manpower-based military geared toward fighting a major defensive “people's war” to a technology-based military capable of forward deployment to deal with more variegated local contingencies. While substantial research has been done on major aspects of this reform, changes within major PLA organizations, such as the Central Military Commission (CMC), the higher command structure, the research and learning institutions, and the force structure, have not been adequately and systematically analysed. This study intends to shed light on these changes. Such a study is necessary and significant also because it helps towards an understanding of the extent, direction and problems of China's defence modernization drive, which may have important implications for Asian security. Finally, it provides an analytical framework for research regarding further organizational changes of the PLA.
Do the Power Sector Reforms in China Reflect the Interests of Consumers?
Authors: Andrews-Speed Philip , Dow Stephen , Wang Aijuan , Mao Jin , Wei Bin
Published: February 2009

China's electrical power industry has been undergoing piecemeal reforms over the last 15 years. Some of these reforms, such as substantial tariff increases, have been deliberate and have been implemented directly by government. Other changes, such as the increased variety of investors, including foreign investors, have been more spontaneous and have resulted in a gradual evolution in the way the industry works. In 1996 the Chinese government announced a more radical package of reform starting with the new Electricity Law which laid the foundations for a degree of competition in power generation, but without wholesale privatization.
The Rise in Female Education in China: National and Regional Patterns
Authors: Lavely William , Zhenyu Xiao , Bohua Li , Freedman Ronald
Published: February 2009

The considerable increase in educational attainment of Chinese women from virtual complete illiteracy 50 years ago to current levels can be traced systematically for the first time on the basis of the 1982 census of China and a large sample survey of the same year. Until very recently we had known only the broad outlines of this major social transformation. Although even the newly available data are imperfect, their significance is illustrated by their strong and consistent association with such vital facts of life as the age at which women marry and the number of children they bear. Educational levels can be shown to have varied with degree of urbanization and rural development from the earliest days of the People's Republic.

Major regions of China have distinctive educational histories. In all regions examined here, however, the course of educational change was affected to a greater or lesser degree by such major historical events as the great famine, the Cultural Revolution and the post-Mao reforms. It is now possible to measure with some precision the influence of these events on educational progress. This paper utilizes census and survey data to describe change in female education nationally and for four major regional populations from 1952 to 1982. Because it is plausible that the educational trends and differentials are related to other aspects of Chinese social, political and economic history, they are presented here in some detail.

Our findings can be summarized as follows:

1. The rise of female education occurred mainly in two periods the 1950s to 1958, and the late 1960s to mid 1970s.
Deng Xiaoping: The Statesman
Authors: Yahuda Michael
Published: February 2009

Alone of the world's Communist leaders, Deng Xiaoping has charted a course that has combined for his country rapid economic development, successful economic reform and openness to the capitalistic international economy with continued dictatorship by the Communist Party. Under his leadership Communist rule in China has survived the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union-the motherland of Communism. In the process the regime has weathered the ending of the Cold War and has become more engaged with the Asia-Pacific region. But Deng's reputation at home and abroad has been badly tarnished by his ruthlessness in masterminding the Tiananmen massacre of 4 June 1989. But that ruthlessness is absolutely central to Deng's political philosophy and strategy. For him it is the basis of order at home which alone ensures that the economic policies of reform and openness can be carried out without undermining Communist Party rule through the spread of liberal influences. In so far as statesmanship requires moral dimensions it will be necessary in assessing the quality of Deng's statesmanship to consider the meaning of statesmanship itself.
Systemic Irregularity and Spontaneous Property Transformation in the Chinese Financial System
Authors: Ding X. L.
Published: February 2009

Although the Chinese leadership and international observers disagree on many things about China, they share at least one assessment: corruption has penetrated China's public sector, and the state financial system is among the worst examples. In Transparency International'sCorruption Perception Indexreleased annually since the early 1990s, China has been placed either into the bottom group (“the most corrupt”) or at the lower tier (“more corrupt than the majority”). During the Asian financial crisisThe Economisteven called the Chinese state banks “the worst banking system in Asia.” The Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin, when addressing a 1996 general meeting on Party discipline, marked several domains as the “major problem area” where big corruption and crime cases concentrated, and the financial sector topped the list. The Prosecutor General, in his 1998 work report, urged law enforcers to pay special attention to the abuses of power by financial officials.
Partial Democratization, “Foundation Moment” and Political Parties in Hong Kong
Authors: Siu-Kai Lau , Hsin-chi Kuan
Published: February 2009

Before the late 1980s, political parties were unknown phenomena in colonial Hong Kong. Since then measures of democratization initiated by the British in anticipation of their withdrawal in 1997 made available a portion of political power for public contest. The democratic reforms initiated by Chris Patten, the last colonial governor of Hong Kong, accelerated party formation and competition in the last few years of British rule.
Taxation without Representation: Peasants, the Central and the Local States in Reform China
Authors: Bernstein Thomas P. , Lü Xiaobo
Published: February 2009

China's countryside has undergone tremendous changes in the last two decades, but the changes and the benefits that came with them were not distributed evenly. Rapid rural industrialization in the Eastern, coastal provinces under the aegis of the local developmental state dramatically improved the lives of villagers. In contrast, township and village enterprises (TVEs) and incomes grew much more slowly in the Central belt of provinces and still more slowly in the Western belt. Because agriculture was the major resource, rural governments had to rely on extraction of taxes and fees from the peasants in order to meet their expenses and to carry out developmental programmes. Here, predatory state agents imposed heavy financial burdens on the peasants. The result was a long festering crisis in the relations between peasants and the local state. Since the mid-1980s, the central authorities have been ordering their local agents to lighten the burdens of the peasants, yet the problem persists to the present. Why has it been so intractable?
Chinese Democratization in Perspective: Electorates and Selectorates at the Township Level
Authors: Manion Melanie
Published: February 2009

Progress in democratization is widely judged by how well elections function as instruments allowing ordinary citizens to choose political leaders to represent their preferences. In January 1999, I travelled to villages and towns in Chongqing as a member of a Carter Center delegation invited by the National People's Congress (NPC) to observe the electoral processes that produce delegates to people's congresses, chairmen and deputy chairmen of these congresses, and government leaders at the township level. The Carter Center is an American nongovernment organization associated with Emory University, with an executive board chaired by former President Carter. As part of its mission to enhance freedom and democracy, the Center has observed and reported on Chinese village elections in delegation visits that began in 1996. Ours was the first delegation to observe people's congress elections, however. Only weeks before we visited Chongqing, voters a hundred miles away, in Sichuan's Buyun township, elected a head of township government in an unprecedented exercise of authority vested constitutionally and legally in their people's congress delegates. Juxtaposing the experience of the Buyun elections with the normal processes by which township leaders emerge offers a useful perspective from which to consider electoral mechanisms of representation in China today. My main conclusion is that these mechanisms are designed to align voter preferences with the preferences of Communist Party committees. Ordinary voters and people's congress delegates have choices among candidates in elections at the township level, but these choices are normally constrained by Communist Party committee pre-selection of candidates designated for positions of leadership.
Origins of the Agricultural “Miracle”: Some Evidence from Sichuan
Authors: Bramall Chris
Published: February 2009

The Chinese reforms that began in 1978 mercifully ended one of the most brutal and misguided economic regimes in modern history… [responsible for]… a manmade famine that killed millions during 1959–1961, and for state-promoted social upheaval that destroyed the lives of millions, including almost the whole intellectual class, while paralysing rural development for more than a decade between 1966 and 1978.
The Politics of Lodging Complaints in Rural China
Authors: O'Brien Kevin J. , Li Lianjiang
Published: February 2009

It all began when angry villagers accused the Party secretary of turning off the electricity to an ice lolly(binggunror popsicle) factory whose owner had refused to pay bribes. The lolly maker had not been paying his rent but that was no reason, they said, to melt his stock and to cause the bank to foreclose on the village's most profitable enterprise.
Who Will Feed China?
Authors: Smil Vaclav
Published: February 2009

China's recent economic surge has called attention to factors that may slow down, and perhaps even reverse, this vigorous trend. There is no shortage of items to explore, ranging from brittle politics and ingrained corruption to intensifying environmental pollution and runaway unemployment. In the long run few among these considerations are more decisive than the country's ability to feed itself: it is of critical existential importance, and it subsumes a universe of political, social, environmental and technical capabilities and limitations.
The Security Service for Chinese Central Leaders
Authors: Li Wei
Published: February 2009

National leaders need security protection against political assassinations, espionage, terrorism and many other dangers, and therefore almost every country has a specialized organization to provide such protection. In the United States, the President is protected by the Secret Service of the Treasury Department, and in the Soviet Union, the Kremlin denizens were guarded by the Ninth Directorate of the KGB. The Chinese security system for the top leadership, consisting mainly of the Central Security Bureau in Zhongnanhai, is however distinctive in several respects. Institutionally it has a peculiarly complex set of arrangements which result in some puzzling divisions of responsibilities. It also relies heavily on a military detachment, Unit 8341. Above all, the Chinese central security apparatus can, and does, play a more active and indispensable political role than is common in other countries.
China and the First Indo-China War, 1950–54
Authors: Jian Chen
Published: February 2009

Despite its obvious significance, the involvement of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the First Indo-China War has long been an under-researched and little understood subject in Cold War history. Because of lack of access to Chinese or Vietnamese sources, few of the many publications in English deal with China's connections with the war. In such highly acclaimed works as Marilyn B. Young's The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990, Jacques Dallaoz's The War in Indo-China, 1945–1954, Anthony Short's The Origins of the Vietnam War, R. E. M. Irving's The First Indo-China War, Ellen Hammer's The Struggle for Indo-China, 1946–1955, Edgar O'Ballance's The Indo-China War, 1945–1954, and Bernard Fall's Street Without Joy: Insurgency in Vietnam, 1946–1963, the PRC's role is either discussed only marginally or almost completely neglected.
Fang Lizhi's Expanding Universe
Authors: Williams James H.
Published: February 2009

During an interview in September 1986, some three years prior to seeking political asylum with his wife at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, Fang Lizhi was asked how he felt about the progress of political reform in China. Fang responded, “I must start with cosmology in answering this question.”

Fang's linkage of politics with cosmology – a branch of astrophysics concerned with the origins of the universe – must seem peculiar to those who know him only as a human rights advocate and critic of the Chinese Communist Party. Yet this was no idiosyncrasy on Fang's part. Fang's life and published work from the early 1970s to the present leave no doubt that his emergence as the symbolic leader of China's democracy movement is deeply rooted in his experiences and outlook as a scientist.

Fang's personal universe began to expand in 1972, when he and his colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) published a paper in Physica entitled “A Solution of the cosmological equations in scalar-tensor theory, with mass and blackbody radiation.” This innocuous-sounding article met with a furious response from leading theoretical circles of the Party. Fang et al. had broken a long-standing taboo by introducing the Big Bang theory to the Chinese physics world. Insofar as the Big Bang contradicted Engels's declaration that the universe must be infinite in space and time, Fang's paper was tantamount to heresy.
From Incorporation to Exclusion: The Employment Experience of Taiwanese Urban Aborigines
Authors: Chu Jou-Juo
Published: February 2009

The racial or ethnic division between aborigines and the predominant Han Chinese had seldom been considered a significant factor in shaping Taiwan's labour forces before the late 1970s. Even though the aboriginal urban migrants felt isolated or discriminated against in the urban neighbourhood and the workplace, most grievances remained at the individual level. The discontent did not become a public issue until the introduction of foreign workers was made a legal measure to relieve labour shortages. This article is concerned with the way urban aborigines have been first incorporated into and then excluded from the employment structure of Taiwanese society in the process of industrialization. A brief look at the two waves of aboriginal urban migration is accompanied by a description of the characteristics of the jobs to which most urban aborigines were recruited. The article then examines one of the major effects of globalization on the sub-proletariatization of urban aborigines through the medium of the 1989 foreign imported labour policy. Urban aboriginal opposition to the importation of foreign workers started with the deprivation of their job opportunities and then developed into a feeling of xenophobia which encouraged the formation of a pan-aboriginal consciousness in pursuit of political rectification of their long-ignored subordinate and disadvantageous position in terms of citizenship.
China's Universities since Tiananmen: A Critical Assessment
Authors: Hayhoe Ruth
Published: February 2009

China's present leadership sees universities as being of key importance for the country's economic development and for its relationship with Western countries. This is a kind of two-edged sword. On the one hand, considerable support and encouragement for scientific and technological development is provided, together with pressures for scientific findings to be applied to specific economic development needs. On the other, the reflective and theoretical social sciences and the humanities are being purged of Western influences in efforts to mobilize all resources against what is seen as the Western strategy of fostering “peaceful evolution” towards capitalism. The kinds of tension that arise out of this highly contradictory situation are severe.
The Effect of Post-4 June Re-education Campaigns on Chinese Students
Authors: Rosen Stanley
Published: February 2009

Nearly four years have passed since China's leaders ordered the military to crush student demonstrators and their supporters in and around Tiananmen Square. Since then, students at all levels have been given a massive infusion of political “re-education” in an attempt to forestall a recurrence of the turbulence and, more ambitiously, to win back the hearts and minds of Chinese youth. The methods employed by the authorities have included an extended programme of military training, tighter political control over the job assignment system, more time in the curriculum for politics courses, a renewed stress on familiar model personages from the pre-Cultural Revolution era, an upgrading in the status of political work cadres, and an abandonment of the more flexible political and moral education courses and textbooks introduced in the 1980s in favour of a return to more traditional “classical” Marxist approaches.
The State and the Individual: An Overview Interpretation
Authors: Pye Lucian W.
Published: February 2009

It could be that no people have ever outdone the Chinese in ascribing moral virtues to the state or in deprecating the worth of the individual. First Confucianism and then the Chinese version of Leninism went all out in extolling the importance of rulers and society and in minimizing the rights of individuals. The gap between the moral worth and the recognized rights of state and citizen in China was and remains huge both because of the way the Chinese have consistently given paramountcy to the state and the ways in which they have subordinated the individual to the group. The extraordinary imbalance in the relations of the state and individuals provides both the structural and the cultural bases for the human rights practices which are now the most contentious issues between China and the west, especially the United States. What is outrageous to Americans can be for most Chinese normal expectations – although since Tiananmen a majority may feel that the state has gone too far.
An Overview of Relations Between China and Japan, 1895–1945
Authors: Nish Ian
Published: February 2009

The relationship between China and Japan is a many-layered cake, impossible to eat all at once. This article will concentrate on the diplomatic layer of the relationship. Diplomatic history is essentially about the decisions of governments and the documents that are subsequently exchanged. Each of these aspects has its difficulties for the historian of East Asia. For substantial parts of the period under review “government” in a western sense hardly existed in China, while in Japan even the considered decisions of the government in Tokyo frequently failed to reflect the situation on the ground. In Japan's relations with China there was often a dual – if not a multiple – diplomacy at work where the army (among others) had an independent hand in fashioning “policy.”
Sino-Japanese Controversy since the the 1972 Diplomatic Normalization
Authors: Ijiri Hidenori
Published: February 2009

Introduction

Sino-Japanese relations appear to have a dual structure which is built into the long history of exchanges and interaction between the two countries. Some phrases such as ichii taisui (“neighbours across the strip of water”) and dobun doshu (“same Chinese characters, same race”) have long been regarded as a symbol of the friendly relationship between the two countries. Such a symbol, however, implies dual and conflicting sentiments of the Japanese and the Chinese, namely the feelings of inferiority and superiority with each other in a hierarchical order of foreign relations in Asia.

To be more specific, the Chinese have a superiority complex deriving from their cultural influence in pre-modern history and hatred stemming from Japanese military aggression against China in the modern period, while having an inferiority complex based upon Japan's co-operation in their modernization, and admiration for Japan's advanced economy. On the other hand, the Japanese have an inferiority complex due to their cultural debt to China and the sense of original sin stemming from their past aggression against China, while having a superiority complex based upon their assistance to China's modernization and contempt for China's backwardness.
Economic Integration within Greater China: Trade and Investment Flows Between China, Hong Kong and Taiwan
Authors: Ash Robert F. , Kueh Y. Y.
Published: February 2009

Economic integration is essentially a process of unification – the means whereby coherence is imposed upon previously separate, even disparate, geographical regions. It may be pursued as a domestic or international goal, although the simultaneous attainment of both may prove elusive. Recent efforts towards the creation of formal trans-national, regional economic identities, whether North American (NAFTA), European (EC) or Asian-Pacific (APEC), have sometimes been perceived as a threat to the establishment of a truly integrated global economy. By contrast, the remarkable degree of economic integration already achieved between southern China and Hong Kong (and, latterly, Taiwan) might ironically have a fissiparous effect on China's domestic economy. From this point of view, there is a danger that increasing economic integration within Greater China could threaten China's national economic identity, or at least compel its re-definition.
Direct Investment and Economic Integration in the Asia Pacific: The Case of Taiwanese Investment in Xiamen
Authors: Luo Qi , Howe Christopher
Published: February 2009

The Asia-Pacific region, and particularly its East Asian core, has achieved an impressive record of growth, export expansion and regional economic integration that now spans more than three decades and a wide variety of world economic environments. A key indicator of these achievements is the changing level of intra-regional foreign trade. This indicator is positive for the region as a whole over the period, although trends since 1980 are quite sensitive to the precise definition of the region employed. However, for the NICs (Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore) and the ASEAN group (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philip-pines and Brunei) in isolation, intra-regional trade increased by approximately 25 per cent over the decade 1980–1990.
Social Change in Hong Kong: Hong Kong Man in Search of Majority
Authors: Baker Hugh D. R.
Published: February 2009

In 1983 whenThe China Quarterlypublished a special issue on Hong Kong, I attempted to synthesize the history of its urban social life, coining the term “Hong Kong Man” to describe what I considered to be the emergence of an identifiable unique social animal. Hong Kong Man, I suggested, was neither Chinese nor British. I characterized him as quick-thinking, flexible, tough for survival, excitement-craving, sophisticated in material tastes, and self-made in a strenuously competitive world. He operated in the context of a most uncertain future, control over which was in the hands of others, and for this as well as for historical reasons he lived “life in the short term”.
The Execution of Civil Judgments in China
Authors: Clarke Donald C.
Published: February 2009

When judgements are not executed, the law is worth nothing. – “The masses”

It is a staple of Chinese legal literature that the judgments of Chinese courts in civil and economic cases are plagued by a worryingly low execution rate. This perception should be taken seriously. When the President of the Supreme People's Court devotes significant space to it in his report to the National People's Congress, as did Zheng Tianxiang in 1988 and Ren Jianxin in subsequent reports, clearly something interesting is going on. Yet it would be a mistake to accept all reports at face value. A critical examination of the claims and the evidence can yield a richer picture of reality than has been presented by the literature so far.

The issue of whether court judgments can be enforced is important for a number of reasons, among which is its bearing on the relationship between the legal system and the economic system. Laws, courts and court judgments are part of the institutional framework within which economic reform is being carried out in China. Obviously, the rules of the game have to change. But the move from a hierarchically administered economy to a primarily market economy means more than just changing the content of the rules. It implies a whole new way of rule-making and rule-enforcing.

This article explores one particular way of making the rules mean something: the enforcement of a court decision that the implementation of a particular rule requires the performance of a particular act - typically, the delivery of money or goods.
Compartmentalized Law and Judicial Restraint: An Inductive View of Some Jurisdictional Barriers to Reform
Authors: Dicks Anthony R.
Published: February 2009

Among the various classes of legal documents which have become publicly available in China in recent years, few are more interesting than the growing body of reported decisions by courts and other institutions. Usually resulting, directly or indirectly, from litigation or some similar process, these interpretative rulings and decided cases have appeared in increasing numbers in the nine years following the first publication of the Supreme People's Court's own gazette. Since then a number of general collections of judicial interpretations and abstracts of court decisions have been brought out, some of which pre-date the Cultural Revolution. The Supreme People's Court now supplements its gazette with periodical collections of reports of cases, and more specialized collections of interpretations and cases have been published to meet various specific needs, academic and professional.

Access to material of this kind on a larger scale than hitherto sheds light on various aspects of the Chinese legal system itself which for foreign observers were previously obscure. Moreover, although most of the cases and decisions which are published emanate from the higher levels of the legal hierarchy, they bring the reader closer both to the practical workings of the legal system and to the thought processes which guide it.

The question which inevitably arises is whether these newly available materials should be regarded as providing more than just a heightened awareness of the dynamics of Chinese society and its legal system. Outside China, the study of Chinese law is increasingly regarded not merely as a discipline for the description and analysis of a specialized category of Chinese institutions, but more importantly as a source of detailed prescriptive norms of the kind expected from legal systems in the world as a whole.
Antagonistic Contradictions: Criminal Law and Human Rights in China
Authors: Clarke Donald C. , Feinerman James V.
Published: February 2009

The institutions of criminal law and their relation to human rights in the People's Republic of China are worth studying for a number of reasons. First, it is in the realm of criminal law and human rights discourse that much of the Chinese conception of law itself is worked out. Secondly, criminal law in China, like criminal law anywhere, carries with it a theory of social order and disorder that is worth looking at for its own sake. One of the challenges facing Chinese criminal law today is that of rejustifying itself in the face of the enormous social changes that have taken place since the beginning of economic reform and China's opening to the outside world in the late 1970s. Thirdly, as long as human rights remain a matter of international concern, one cannot ignore the institutions of punishment that govern one-fifth of the world's population. This article gives an overview of issues of criminal law and human rights as they affect Chinese society today.
Foreign Investment Law in the People's Republic of China: Dilemmas of State Control
Authors: Potter Pitman B.
Published: February 2009

The legal regime for foreign investment in the People's Republic of China over the past 15 years has reflected a basic tension between encouraging foreign business activities and maintaining state control over them. While China's policies may be viewed as attempts to pursue an independent path towards development, neo-classical and critical perspectives on the role of the state in economic development provide useful contexts within which to view the PRC's efforts at harnessing foreign investment in pursuit of economic growth. This article reviews the structure and performance of foreign investment law and policy in the People's Republic of China in the context of these alternative approaches to the role of the state in economic development.
Faction versus Ideology: Mobilization Strategies in Taiwan's Elections
Authors: Bosco Joseph
Published: February 2009

On 2 December 1989, voters on Taiwan cast ballots to elect national legislators(lifaweiyuan), provincial and city representatives(sheng/shiyiyuari)and county executives(xianzhang). Though the Nationalist Party (KMT) received 59 per cent of the overall vote, the election was widely viewed as a surprising success for the fledgling opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), since the KMT had polled over 70 per cent of the vote in all previous elections. James Soong, Secretary-General of the KMT, announced after an emergency meeting of the shocked KMT leadership, “We calmly accept an upset.”
The Chinese Discourse on Civil Society
Authors: Ma Shu-Yun
Published: February 2009

In recent years the concept of civil society has gained scholarly attention world-wide. It has found numerous advocates in the West, such as John Keane who suggested democratizing European socialism by defending the distinction between civil society and the state; Michael Walzer who proposed synthesizing socialist, capitalist and nationalist ideals under the rubric of civil society; and Daniel Bell, who called for a revival of civil society in the United States as a protection against the expanding state bureaucracies. In 1992 alone, at least three books on the subject appeared. In Eastern Europe, proponents of the civil society concept – like Vaclav Havel, George Konrad and Adam Michnik – have been credited with developing an extremely useful theoretical tool for overthrowing Stalinist authoritarianism. A volume consisting of case studies of seven former or present socialist countries found that the notion of civil society is generally applicable to the study of Communist systems, as long as the influence of different cultures and traditions of individual countries are fully acknowledged. The civil society paradigm, despite its basic European orientation, has also been recognized as applicable to the study of developing countries.
China's Third World Foreign Policy: The Case of Angola and Mozambique, 1961–93
Authors: Jackson Steven F.
Published: February 2009

The people who have triumphed in their own revolution should help those still struggling for liberation. This is our internationalist duty. Mao Zedong

In the middle of October 1975, a dusty column of South African troops, equipped with armoured cars and helicopters, rumbled north into Angola, further internationalizing the already complex civil war there. The South African attack not only broadened the war, prompting an even greater Cuban intervention, it also posed a dilemma for China, which supported the same Angolan parties as did South Africa: should China follow its policy of tit-for-tat opposition to Soviet expansion world-wide, even if it meant allying with the racist government of South Africa? Or should it follow the opinions of its fellow Third World nations in Africa, even if it led to a Soviet bloc advance? The difficulty China's leaders faced in the autumn of 1975 was one which had hidden origins in the different ways in which China viewed conflicts around the world, a difficulty that had lain dormant for years but which erupted in 1975 into full view, and with disastrous consequences for Chinese foreign policy in Africa. It is, moreover, a discrepancy which continues to exist in China's views of the world today.

How does China view conflicts and revolutions in the Third World? How do the Chinese organize their relations with Third World revolutionary organizations and their post-independence governments? This article examines the tensions and shifts of Chinese policy towards two essentially simultaneous revolutionary struggles and their post-independence governments: Angola and Mozambique.
French Studies of Contemporary China
Authors: Bianco Lucien
Published: February 2009

After belated and uneasy beginnings, French studies of contemporary China have recently matured. Thirty years ago the field was almost non-existent in France. Most sinologists either carried on the once celebrated philological tradition or concentrated on philosophy, religion, classical literature and ancient history. Few were happy to see the sacred field encroached upon by modern historians, whose secular interests they deemed closer to those of reporters than of scholars. Furthermore the tiny bunch of “barbarians” comprised mostly historians, not political scientists, economists or sociologists, and so they were interested in the century that preceded the Communist takeover (1840 to 1949), not in contemporary China as such.
The “Shekou Storm”: Changes in the Mentality of Chinese Youth Prior to Tiananmen
Authors: Xu Luo
Published: February 2009

In 1988, a year before the greatest urban mass protest in modern Chinese history, three major events took place in the cultural, ideological and theoretical realms. One was the broadcasting of the TV seriesRiver Elegy(Heshang) in June and the extensive discussions and disputes about it in July and August. The second was the controversy over the political theory of Neo-Authoritarianism, which started in the second half of 1988 and reached a peak in early 1989. The third event was the so-called Shekou Storm (Shekou fengbo) that began in February 1988 and lasted more than eight months. WhileRiver Elegywas the high tide of cultural reflection (wenhua fansi) which aimed at examining the cultural and historical roots of current socio-political problems, the Neo-Authoritarianism was a theoretical trend among some young social scientists and members of Communist Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang's think-tanks who were struggling to address pressing issues arising from the reform. The significance of these two events has been realized by many people studying the evolution of Chinese society in the 1980s and the background of the 1989 movement. In contrast, the Shekou Storm, which made an equivalent sensation throughout the country, has received much less attention.
Agents and Remonstrators: Role Accumulation by Chinese People's Congress Deputies
Authors: O'Brien Kevin J.
Published: February 2009

In the past, the loyalty most Chinese people's congress deputies felt toward the state completely overwhelmed their sense of responsibility to constituents. Deputies in the Maoist era faced simple and clear expectations to represent the regime to the people and often devastating sanctions if they did not. Ambiguities were few and deputies had limited opportunities to define their own role or to expand their constituency focus. More recently, however, evolving expectations, rapid societal change and institutional reforms have transformed the duties of “people's representatives” and have created deputy identities that are increasingly multi-layered and fraught with contradictions. Deputies now have unprecedented opportunities to improvise on conventional scripts and some have taken on new roles: roles that clash with their traditional responsibilities, and that appear very difficult to reconcile.
Strengthening Central CCP Control of Leadership Selection: The 1990 Nomenklatura
Authors: Burns John P.
Published: February 2009

In the aftermath of their suppression of the democracy movement in June 1989, China's leaders concluded that the Chinese Communist Party's leadership selection system was in serious trouble. The actions of intellectuals and the media during the May-June crisis, measures proposed by former Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang for cadre reform and the results of an earlier decision to decentralize the nomenklatura convinced authorities in Beijing that Party control of leadership selection had decayed and that decentralization of personnel decisions had gone too far. During the next few years China's post-4 June leadership took steps to rectify these problems. One of these was to revise the central Party's nomenklatura, which they subsequently re-issued in 1990.
Self-employment in Shanghai: A Research Note
Authors: Davis Deborah S.
Published: February 2009

During the 1980s market reforms proceeded more slowly in Shanghai than in other Chinese coastal cities. Bureaucratic procedures had continued to determine employment conditions and few city residents assumed the risks of entrepreneurship. The pace of marketization quickened in the early nineties and, between 1990 and 1995, the percentage of Shanghainese working outside the state or collective sectors grew by a factor of ten. For the first time since the launching of the economic reforms, private sector activity approached parity with Guangzhou (see Table 1).
Introduction: Rural Economic Reforms and Chinese Family Patterns
Authors: Whyte Martin King
Published: February 2009

The rural economic reforms introduced into China after 1978 have wreaked havoc on the accumulated scholarship of China specialists in the west. Dozens of books and articles that had revealed the inner workings of people's communes and the merits and faults of competing work point systems were reduced to historical curiosities by the decollectivization drive that swept the nation. In the wake of the demise of the familiar and fairly standardized pattern represented by people's communes, many questions arose for debate. How much of the collective system remained in rural China after decollectivization? To what extent did the revived system of family farming represent a return to pre-socialist organizational patterns, or was any resemblance to the past superficial and misleading? Was there a general pattern of village organization across the nation in the wake of decollectivization, or had uniformity completely given way to local peculiarities?
Aspects of Marriage in Three South-western Villages
Authors: Harrell Stevan
Published: February 2009

In their effect on marriage and the family, as in so many other domains, the reforms can be seen as having a dual thrust. On the one hand, by giving the land in long-term leases back to the family, and allowing it to invest in a variety of small and medium-sized ventures, they have restored something like the situation in rural China before the collectivization of 1956, when the family estate was the source of income and investment in opportunity for most rural Chinese. On the other hand, the reforms have been undertaken explicitly in the name of modernization, and the increases in both agricultural and rural industrial yields, along with the rise in household entrepreneurship, have taken China in some ways even further from the feudalism of pre-revolutionary days than it was during the collective era.
Land Divided, Land United
Authors: Judd Ellen R.
Published: February 2009

Decollectivization and the division of land have raised questions about whether a landed basis might reappear for a contemporary reformulation of patriliny in the Chinese countryside. This article addresses these questions by examining the processes through which formerly collective land has been divided and partially brought together again in informal, nameless co-operative groupings with an apparent patrilineal tinge.
Family Management and Family Division in Contemporary Rural China
Authors: Cohen Myron L.
Published: February 2009

Field-work in north, south and west China villages reveals that prior to the establishment of the People's Republic family organization at all three sites was characterized by the same customary arrangements concerning ownership of property, economic ties among family members, family management and family division. During the collective era and the present period of family fanning changes in these aspects of family life have been along similar lines. I was in a Hebei village for four months during 1986–87, and in 1990 carried out three-month periods of field-work in villages in Shanghai county and on the Chengdu Plain in Sichuan.