This paper compares the key arguments of ecological modernization theory (EMT) with the reality of recent environmental reform in China. Based on data gathered from a survey and in-depth interviews with executives from Hong Kong-based enterprises operating in Guangdong province, we examine the changing roles of government, market, and civil society actors in the reform process, focusing on various types of pressures these actors have exerted on business enterprises. Compatible with Mol's (2006) conjectures, ecological concerns have gradually gained a foothold in existing political, economic, and to a lesser extent, social institutions. Yet, the relevant actors and their patterns of interactions differ from what EMT generalizes from Western European experiences. Specifically, local governments are assuming a more formalized relationship with firms in regulatory enforcement. Among market actors, organizational buyers along the supply chain have exerted more noticeable pressures on manufacturing firms than industrial associations and individual consumers. Civil society, while remaining less of an institutionalized actor in the environmental policy process, appears to pose a perceptible threat to at least some firms.

The Hu–Wen era saw significant expansions in social policies in China. How did these policy changes affect income inequality, and did they leave a progressive legacy? Using the China Household income Project (CHIP) 2002, 2007 and 2013 data, this article offers empirical evidence to answer these questions. We find that these social policy changes indeed led to some convergence of the divided urban–rural–migrant social welfare systems and helped curtail the growing income inequality driven by market forces. Measured as the share in household final income, the size of urban social benefits decreased, while those for rural residents and rural-to-urban migrants increased from 2002 to 2013. Social benefits – especially pensions – reduced income inequality in all three groups, although to a much smaller extent for rural residents and migrants as compared to their urban peers. Rural residents also gained from agricultural and livelihood subsidies through the “Building a new socialist countryside” initiative.

Contemporary Chinese artists have long been marginalized in China as their ideas conflict with the mainstream political ideology. In Beijing, artists often live on the fringe of society in “artist villages,” where they almost always face the threat of being displaced owing to political decisions or urban renewal. However, in the past decade, the Chinese government began to foster the growth of contemporary Chinese arts and designated underground artist villages as art districts. This article explores the profound change in the political decisions about the art community. It argues that, despite the pluralization of Chinese society and the inroads of globalization, the government maintains control over the art community through a series of innovative mechanisms. These mechanisms create a globalization firewall, which facilitates the Chinese state in global image-building and simultaneously mitigates the impact of global forces on domestic governance. The article illuminates how the authoritarian state has adopted more sophisticated methods of governance in response to the challenges of a more sophisticated society.

Dramatic social and economic change taking place in the Zhujiang Delta region has been a subject of extensive documentation. Much has been written on the growth and restructuring of the deltas regional economy, on its intensified social and economic linkages with Hong Kong and the outside world, and on its changing geographic patterns of urbanization and regional development. While the emergence of the Zhujiang Delta as one of the most dynamic economic regions has received wide recognition from scholars and the general public, the operating mechanism of economic and spatial transformation at the local level remains poorly understood. How has a rural economy under socialism been transformed after the intrusion of free market forces? What role is played by the state, the collective economy and the private sector in this process of transformation? Is the transformation process facilitated by the growtrT of market farming or rural industrial development? How has change in the political economy affected migration, land use and the natural environment? These questions are all open to further investigation.

The relationship between the Chinese intellectual and the communist state experienced some significant changes during the 1980s, although some of the basic patterns established since the 1930s and 1940s were not altered. This contrast is in line with the overall impact of Deng Xiaoping's limited reforms, which gave more room, and more weight, to society vis-à-vis the state, while the basic structures of the latter were left untouched. Social change was the new element which allowed the intellectuals to enjoy more autonomy in organizing their associations and in articulating new ideas. The intellectual with an autonomous base in a more autonomous society emerged from the prevalent pattern of technocratic intellectuals operating within the state framework, a state whose totalitarian scope had deprived them of any social base.

Observers of the current Chinese scene have found the anti-Confucian campaign which dominated the Chinese press from the autumn of 1973 through 1974 to be extremely puzzling. At one level, most observers agree that the attack on Confucianism was what it appeared to be – a continuation of the communist effort to eradicate traditional habits and attitudes that have persisted despite the revolution. It was a campaign against elitism, bureaucratism, scorn of physical labour, and the inferior condition of women. Most important, it was the rejection of the Confucian values of idealism, humanism and conservatism.

Discussions of China's rising domestic security expenditure often present this spending as evidence of the Chinese Communist Party's strong coercive capacity. This article argues that a lack of theoretical clarity about domestic security has resulted in flawed conclusions about these expenditures and their implications for China's coercive capacity. Challenging the conventional wisdom, the article analyses China's domestic security spending from 1992 through 2012 and argues that it is important to consider not only the total amount that China spends but also how it spends these resources and the magnitude of the threats that this expenditure must address. It finds that China's domestic security spending is not historically unprecedented, is not expanding as a proportion of national expenditure, and is not necessarily high (or producing high coercive capacity) when compared to other countries. The article also shows that certain locations struggle more to fund their coercive capacity than others, and that these locations overlap with areas where internal security threats may be particularly acute. The challenges that the coercive apparatus must address have also grown over the same period during which domestic security spending has risen. Finally, attempts to improve the political position of China's coercive agents cannot be equated with improvements in their capacity to manage Chinese society. Cumulatively, this reassessment provides more evidence of the limitations on China's coercive capacity than of its strength.

One of the most active areas of research in recent years concerns the urban history of Shanghai in the Republican period. Beginning in the 1980s, scholars have gone beyond an overview of Shanghai's rise as China's leading metropolis in the hundred years after the Opium War (1839–42), and produced richly contextualized analyses on the various aspects of the city's history and society.

This article traces the unique process of reconstructing the identity of the Macau Special Administrative Region and its people after the political resumption to China in 1999, and the political and economic significance of the reconstruction. As in other postcolonial contexts, identity is an arena of political contest where various discourses that embody re-appropriation of political traditions and legacies criss-cross. In Macau, the post-handover identity comprises the local, the national and the international components, with Macau characterized as a historical, colonial/cultural hybrid and economic object. In fact, the Macau identity after 1999 represents a re-appropriation of the image of colonial Macau propagated by the Portuguese administration since the 1980s. Also, identity making has been a process of incorporating instead of repressing or eliminating the identities of “the other,” and building a stand-alone national identity is not the prime task in the reconstruction of an identity. Rather, multiple identity components are deliberately incorporated and promoted. The success of the process has fabricated Macau's relatively smooth reintegration with China and enhanced the legitimacy of its new government.

With rapid industrial and urban growth taking place across the border, there has been a marked increase in public concern in Hong Kong over cross-border environmental problems since the early 1990s. Despite this increased concern, however, very little systematic research has been conducted on the issue. This article addresses the question of how, and to what extent, the SAR government could work with various jurisdictions across the border to address cross-border environmental problems within the “one country, two systems” governance framework. It concludes on a pessimistic note by pointing out that current signs strongly suggest that the SAR government is even more pro-business than the colonial government. Coupled with China's fragmented environmental governance structure and a dominant pro-growth culture permeating the delta region, all indications point to an uphill and long drawn-out battle for environmental managers on both sides of the border to bring forth improvements in this fast-growing and continually deteriorating landscape.

Although the state is still a major economic actor in China's cities, it is widely recognized that the rapid expansion of entities outside the state sphere has already fundamentally altered not just the urban economic landscape but also the forces driving the country's labour markets. The extent and consequences of this expansion are in need of much greater scrutiny, however. A number of analysts have made use of available information to clarify employment growth and changes in employment structure since the early years of the People's Republic and the early period of reform. Recent scholarship has also enhanced understanding of the design, implementation and impact of formal labour reforms, such as the labour contract system, and the nature of worker-management relations in a partially reformed environment. But because of the scarcity of data on the non-state economy, this research has tended to focus on the state-owned industrial sector.

Economists have argued that the compulsory procurement policy has been an important cause of China's past agricultural problems. Political scientists have seen administrative evasion, under-reporting, and other forms of “corruption” in villages during the Mao era as the result of state pressures for larger grain sales. The Chinese themselves now openly criticize the system of unified purchase (tonggou) for being coercive and inefficient; for forcing quota sales by administrative fiat, rather than utilizing market demand and incentives. In April 1985 the government abolished the system of unified purchase, the keystone of China's grain control policy since the early 1950s; in its place is a system of contract procurement (hetong dinggou).

China's evidently unstoppable “rise” energizes PRC political and intellectual elites to think seriously about the future of international relations. How will (and should) China's international roles change in the forthcoming decades? How should its leaders put the country's rapidly-increasing power to use? Foreign China specialists have tended to use an overly-streamlined “resisting” the West versus “co-operating” with it (or even simpler “optimistic” versus “pessimistic”) scale to address such questions, partly reflecting the divide between Realism and Neoliberalism in American international relations theory. By 2002, a near-consensus had developed (though never shared universally) that China had become an increasingly co-operative power since the mid-1990s and would continue to pursue the policy prescriptions of Neoliberal international relations theory. But using more nuanced “English school” analytical techniques – and examining the writings of Chinese elites themselves, aimed solely at Chinese audiences – this article discovers an unmistakably cynical Realism to be still at the core of Chinese thinking on the international future. Even elites who appear sincere in their promotion of co-operation firmly reject “solidarism” among the world's leading states and insist upon upholding the difference between China and all others. Many demand – and foresee – China using its future power to pursue world objectives that would depart in significant respects from those of the other leading states and non-state actors.

This article delineates the negotiated space of civil autonomy in post-handover Hong Kong through the contingent interplay of law, discourse, dramaturgy and politics. It takes the Public Order Ordinance dispute in 2000 as the first major test case of civil conflicts in the shadow of the right of abode struggle. As it unfolded, the event demonstrated both the power and limits of resistance by the people, and the government's increasing will, as well as the strategies it used, to rule within the “law and order” framework under continual challenges. In the event, civil autonomy had been a contested issue involving considerations of rule of law, rights, civic propriety, state legitimacy and the construction of particular identity (such as student-hood). Given the multiplicity of discourses and sub-discourses, citizenship practices and public criticisms opened up a contested space for resistance and negotiation. A campaign of civil disobedience was at first successfully mounted through an ensemble of political and symbolic mechanisms. A turning point was configured when, mediated by a meaning reconstruction process, the government made a series of political and performative acts to re-script the drama, which turned out to be an ironic success for itself that put state–society relations on an increasingly tenuous course. Ultimately ideological differences were at stake: respect for a rights-based discourse of rule of law versus the assertion of political and legal authoritarianism.

The pursuit of national interests is the legitimate goal of a state's foreign policy. Yet in the 1990s, politicians in the West and the U.S. have criticized the Chinese government for its allegedly narrow-minded, backward view, especially on issues concerning human rights and irredentist claims. Many scholarly analyses in North America also point to a “hard-core,” well-entrenched Chinese realpolitik “worldview” with little ingrained liberal thinking. The conclusion seems to be that, in the Chinese worldview, the international system consists essentially of atomistic nation-states locked in a perpetual struggle for power. China's foreign policy is based on an outmoded Westphalian notion of sovereignty in a world where state sovereignty is being eroded and the traditional notion of national interests is under increasing challenge, thanks to unprecedentedly “dense interdependence.” The blunt policy criticisms and subtle scholarly analyses point to a problematic Chinese definition of national interests.

Many peasants misunderstand the Marriage Law. They blindly emphasize that the Marriage Law “liberated” them. This is the case for some women in particular, who have become very unconventional and dissolute in their sexual relations. They have several partners at once, and often switch among them, choosing whichever man appeals to them on that particular day. They also recklessly flirt with many men.

We [provincial authorities] demand the basic-level cadres desist from monitoring adultery and sex, forcing confessions, humiliating and tying people up, hanging, beating, and organizing struggle sessions [against women seeking divorce].

Before economic reform and political liberalization swept the socialist world, leading to disintegration of multinational states such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, nation-building in socialist economies was primarily studied in the context of modernization theory. This paradigm placed all developing countries along a continuum from tradition to modernity and attributed their movement along the path to domestic factors, with the central assumption that nation-building, assimilation of minority peoples and industrialization followed a linear path of progress. At the beginning of China's economic reforms Donald McMillen used this framework to explain Xinjiang's relations with Han China. McMillen focused on local elites, primarily Muslim minorities, as modernizers working through Han organizations, promoting Xinjiang's development in co-operation with Beijing.

This article explores the discursive functioning of education policies, bringing into consideration community perspectives regarding policy enactment in contemporary China. With the intention of building upon ongoing discussions surrounding both the conceptions and purposes of policy sociology, we critically analyse policies directly related to the education of migrant children living in and around China's largest urban centres, with a specific focus on those implemented in Beijing. We emphasize two important aspects that previous studies of China's education policies have tended to underplay given their focus on social-economic perspectives. The first argument is that education policies have an underlying agenda that extends beyond that of simply addressing the educational needs of migrant children – evidenced through the discursive functions of policy texts. The second argument is related and seeks to raise questions about who is best served by these policies and for whom these policies are intended.

Since the early 1990s, China has come a long way in legislating the foundational rules for its reformed economy. Virtually all of the important areas – contracts, business organizations, securities, bankruptcy and secured transactions, to name a few – are now covered by national legislation as well as lower-level regulations. Yet an important feature of a legal structure suited to a market economy is missing: the ability of the system to generate from below solutions to problems not adequately dealt with by existing legislation. The top-down model that has dominated Chinese law reform efforts to date can only do so much. What is needed now is a more welcoming attitude to market-generated solutions to the gaps and other problems that will invariably exist in legislation. The state's distrust of civil-society institutions and other bottom-up initiatives suggests, however, that this different approach will not come easily.

Evidence from sample surveys and local field studies have long supported opposed arguments about the impact of market reform on the value of political office in the rural economy. This article reviews the evidence, describes a gradual convergence in findings, and identifies unresolved questions about qualitatively different local paths of development. Examining previously unexploited data from a nationally representative 1996 survey, a resolution of the remaining issues becomes evident. The value of political office initially is very modest, as the first private entrepreneurs reaped large incomes. However, subsequent economic development led to rapid increases in the earning power of cadres and their kin, and by the end of the Deng era the returns to political office were roughly equal to those of private entrepreneurs. The political advantages were not limited to regions that industrialized rapidly under collective ownership: they were large even in regions where the private economy was most extensive. However, despite evidence of large and enduring political advantages, those who reaped wealth from political position were only a small fraction of the newly rich, the vast majority of whom achieved wealth without current or past office-holding or kinship ties to cadres.