This study examines the birth and use of the first Chinese-sponsored museum, in Nantong county, Jiangsu province, in the context of local elites' effort to make the county an example of modern progress. It reflects on the changing notion of progress among Chinese elites since the self-strengthening movement of the 1860s, and also illustrates an often neglected dimension of modernity – exhibitory modernity, or presentation. The Nantong elites proved to be masters at manipulating exhibitory modernity to reconstruct their community. Understanding exhibitory modernity in the early 20th century sheds light on China's current modernization effort. One of the distinct marks of the new era has been the tremendous energy and resources invested in exhibitory institutions and activities, as demonstrated in the national zeal for China to host the 2008 Olympics and the 2010 World Expo. These sorts of activities are in part aimed at showing the rising status of China. By bringing the world – globally recognized symbols for power, strength, respect, modernity and cosmopolitanism such as the World Expo – to China, it wishes to remake its national image as part of that advanced world on the one hand, and boost nationalism at home on the other. This and the Nantong experience illustrate both the artificiality of national and community identity and the enduring force of modernity.

Just as the Greek hero Odysseus faced many misfortunes and great challenges and yet overcame them before returning to his beloved Ithaca, so, too, the Republic of China on Taiwan in 1949–50 faced insurmountable odds and difficulties and year-to-year crises thereafter, and yet also overcame them to achieve economic modernization and prosperity.

The legacies of the Cultural Revolution have been nowhere more enduring than in the Chinese Communist Party organization. Since late 1967, when the process of rebuilding the shattered Party began, strengthening Party leadership has been a principal theme of Chinese politics; that theme has become even more pronounced in recent years. It is now claimed that earlier efforts achieved nothing, and that during the whole “decade of turmoil” until 1976, disarray in the Party persisted and political authority declined still further. Recent programmes of Party reform, therefore, still seek to overcome the malign effects of the Cultural Revolution in order to achieve the complementary objectives of reviving abandoned Party “traditions” and refashioning the Party according to the new political direction demanded by its present leaders.

Enterprise Party–management relations lie at the intersection of two major reform efforts in present-day China–one aimed at decentralizing economic power through the “invigoration” of large and medium-scale industries, the other aimed at deconcentrating political power through the separation of Party from administration. Common to both reform efforts and critical to each is the area of Party–management relations. As an important issue in enterprise reform, on the one hand, it is central to the Chinese leadership's current drive to restructure the urban economy and, indeed, the entire national economy.1 On the other hand, as a crucial test of the leadership's ability to render the Communist Party more authoritative but less intrusive in day-to-day affairs, it is also central to current political reforms. While it might be too much to claim that the issue of Party–management relations is the key link in the leadership's overall modernization drive, unquestionably the failure to resolve the issue will seriously cripple its economic and political reform efforts.

At first glance, it would seem that over the past two decades Chinese Communist Party (CCP) power and policy in the distant Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of the People's Republic of China have travelled full circle. By late 1981 the region's foremost pre-Cultural Revolution leader, Wang Enmao, and many of the more moderate and pragmatic policies he had come to advocate for consolidating CCP (and Han) control without unduly provoking the sensitivities of the majority non-Han (and primarily Islamic) indigenous population, had returned.2 Thus, the stage was set for Xinjiang's de novo overall integration with the rest of China. Against a brief historical backdrop this article will analyse recent leadership and policy trends in strategically-located Xinjiang, particularly the significance of Wang's return. It will then assess subsequent socio-economic developments and discuss their relevance to security and defence-related issues. Finally, some conclusions will be made concerning the always complex process of integration, in terms of both its nature and degree and its interaction with the processes of ‘modernization.’

Two decades after Mao Zedong ignited the Great Proletarian Revolution there is still no satisfactory accounting for the upheaval which Beijing now says caused millions of deaths and left some 100 million people scarred victims. Ordinary imagination cannot grasp what took place during those “10 bad years of great disaster” (shinian haojie) as the Chinese now call them. Since so much at that time defied conventional theories of politics, outsiders quickly put the phenomenon out of mind once the turmoil ceased. For the Chinese, however, it has not been so simple. Those who personally suffered have tended to summarize the story according to their individual tragedies. Chinese seeking a larger perspective are caught between the inexplicableness of its causes and the incalculability of its consequences.

In Chinese public discourse, it has almost become a truism that the generation born after the mid-1980s is more selfish, individualistic, and materialistic than previous generations. Consequently, an important task for public moral education is to correct this behaviour and to generate compassion for others beyond the family, to strengthen nationalist sentiments and to imbue a sense of duty to the greater community. Schools provide the Chinese government with a key opportunity to achieve this. Based on fieldwork in a rural high school in China, this article demonstrates how the official visions of the learned individual portrayed in textbooks collide with a more powerful ideology of individualism that is implicitly promoted through activities within the school, and is reflective of an ongoing process of individualization, not only in Chinese society, but also within state institutions, such as the school.

What is unemployment in China? For 20 years after the Great Leap Forward was officially credited with having achieved full employment in 1958, this question could not even be raised in the People's Republic of China. From the founding of the People's Republic in 1949 and up to 1958 unemployment problems had been prominently featured in the Chinese press. In 1978 unemployment again became a topic of discussion. The reappearance of unemployment as an acceptable subject of debate was a further indication of how much of Maoist ideology had been officially discarded since the death of Mao Zedong two years earlier. One Chinese summed up these changes as they related to employment problems in this way2: Employment is a major economic as well as a major social problem. But from 1958 until the destruction of the “gang of four,” problems of employment virtually constituted a taboo which could not be discussed in public. After the smashing of the “gang of four” and especially after the third plenary session of the 11th Party Congress (December 1978), a new employment policy was decided on. This was a strategic decision of immense significance.

With the curtain of its 15th National Congress falling, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) completed the generational change in the leadership. Jiang Zemin claimed that the CCP would continue Deng Xiaoping's line of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The Party's consensus on upholding Deng's policy was reflected in its revised constitution that paralleled Deng's theory with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought as the Party's guiding principle. However, the ongoing market reform has not proceeded without challenge, especially from the left. Between 1995 and 1997, four so-called wanyanshu (“ten-thousand-word” articles) circulated privately in Beijing, severely criticizing market reform for its deviation from socialism. On the eve of the 15th National Party Congress, the capital was stirred up again by a publicized counter-attack from reformers at the leftist criticisms, with Jiang Zemin's speech at the Central Party School on 29 May 1997 as a signal. Some even call this counter-criticism the “third thought emancipation.” Speculation arose of political rift in Beijing. These developments at least indicate that leftism represents a strong ideological force that the Party has to take seriously. Although the 15th National Congress ended up with a declaration of even bolder measures in economic reform, particularly in restructuring state-owned enterprises (SOEs), no one should expect that the leftist voice will easily fade away.

Recent changes in the relationships of Hong Kong and Taiwan to mainland China have presented education policy-makers in both territories with problems of reforming school curricula in areas of teaching that are important for the formation of national identity. While both territories are subject to claims that they are part of China, both have also been separated from the Chinese mainland for long periods, and in recent years their relationships with it have been undergoing fundamental changes. Hong Kong's relationship with China has become closer due to economic integration with the hinterland and the 1997 transfer of sovereignty. Taiwan's identification as a part of China, on the other hand, has become increasingly uncertain as the process of liberalization and democratization that began in 1986 has allowed sovereignty to be practised by the residents of the island and a sense of “Taiwan consciousness” (Taiwan yishi) to develop.

Based on fieldwork in a heavily industrialized Yunnan village, this article examines how villagers understand and respond to pollution-related health risks. Building on Robert Weller's (2006) concept of environmental consciousness, it shows that Baocun villagers have developed an acute environmental health consciousness. However, despite earlier instances of collective activism, they no longer act as a community to oppose the harm to their bodies caused by pollution. The article investigates the role of uncertainty surrounding illness causation in deterring action. It argues that uncertainty about pollution's effects on health is reinforced by the social, political and economic contexts and developments in the past few decades. As a result, villagers engage in a form of “lay epidemiology” to make sense of the effects of pollution on their health, but not in a “popular epidemiology” consisting of collective action against presumed health damages. The article concludes with some thoughts on how locals act within and despite uncertainty.

The qipao ceased to be worn for everyday occasions afer the 1950s in the PRC and the late 1960s in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. But it has powerfully re-emerged in the last few years. This is puzzling considering the swiftness and broad scale of the re-emergence, and the qipao's recent history of being marginalized. Are the political and cultural elites responsible and what motivated them? Besides political and cultural nationalism, are there other reasons that have led a large number of people to resume wearing the qipao? This study finds that the state did not play a significant role in the qipao's re-emergence, that cultural producers and celebrities contributed much to it, and that the symbolic meanings of the modern historical qipao have been repackaged and now cater to a variety of consumers for very different reasons.

China presents a mixed picture in terms of its anti-corruption efforts. On the one hand, rampant corruption remains a huge challenge for the party-state because it not only results in the loss of state assets but also damages the legitimacy of the regime. On the other hand, China's record of curbing corruption is not particularly worse than other comparable countries. This paper explains the reasons behind this mixed picture by focusing on the anti-corruption strategy employed by the central Party authorities. Effective anti-corruption measures are determined by the high probability of detecting corrupt agents and the meting out of effective and warranted punishment. In China, the central government is unable or unwilling to investigate a large number of officials, especially high-ranking officials. However, at the same time, it must impose severe punishment on convicted high-ranking officials. Although this mode of selective discipline compromises the credibility of the state in terms of anti-corruption efficacy, it also creates uncertainty for corrupt agents because corrupt officials are not guaranteed exemption.

This article examines the organizational evolution of Communist Party control over lawmaking processes and institutions in post-Mao China. In particular, it charts the erosion and decentralization of Party control which has accompanied the rise of lawmaking since 1978. The unity of Party control over lawmaking has frayed and dissipated dramatically in these years, as more and more important policy issues are resolved outside the arena of the Party's central decision-making organs (such as the Politburo, the Secretariat, and so on). This decentralization has been matched by a corresponding increase in the institutional power, autonomy and assertiveness of the government (executive) lawmaking offices, and other more open policy-making arenas, most notably the National People's Congress, but also including the Supreme People's Court.

No global political trend in the last quarter of the 20th century has been more far-reaching and profound than the growth of democracy. During what Samuel P. Huntington has called the “third wave” of democratization, the percentage of states in the world that are democratic has grown from 27 (when the third wave began in 1974) to 61 percent. The trend was particularly powerful during the first half of the 1990s, when the number of democracies increased from 76 to 117, where it has essentially remained during the subsequent four years.

An organization must have rules, and so must a state. A constitution is a set of general rules, it is the fundamental law.… Constitution-making is a matter of science.Mao Tse-tung On 5 March 1978 the People's Republic of China promulgated its second constitution in little more than three years and the third since its establishment in 1949. What functions does a constitution serve in the Chinese political-legal system? Is it a sham not worth the paper on which it is printed? Is it an artifice of propaganda designed to impress and mislead foreigners? Does it have legal as well as political significance? The 1954 Constitution was not revised for two decades – why then was its 1975 successor so quickly overtaken by events? What are the differences among these basic documents?

I had the opportunity to participate in the five major negotiations between China and Japan from 1972 to 1975 (i.e., the talks over the normalization of diplomatic relations, and the aviation, trade, shipping and fishery agreements), and to observe the tactics, both offensive and defensive, used by the Chinese participants. Personal impressions are bound to be biased, but fortunately there are at least two books which give us detailed accounts of negotiations between China and Japan in the post-war period. These are The Record of Fishery Talks between China and Japan and The Secret Memorandum of Sino-Japanese Negotiations. The former, written and edited by the Japan-China Fishery Association, whose leaders negotiated with China in 1955, is a complete record of the first fishery talks between the Japanese fishermen's organization and Chinese authorities. These negotiations centred on the regulations which Japanese and Chinese fishermen were to observe in the East China and Yellow Seas in order to avoid collisions and other accidents. The negotiations also covered some conservation measures, such as the establishment of several conservation zones along the coast of China and seasonal restrictions of the catch of some types of fish.

Has China been a hegemonic challenge to the United States in Latin America in recent years? The article explores this question by setting a comparison with historical cases of instances of hegemonic challenge in Latin America, searching for similarities and differences, and looking for makers of rivalry as a way to start to distinguish perception from reality. I stress the instrumentality of framing issues, since they serve for internal mobilization and for control of allies. The article also attempts to illuminate the issue of how the United States has reacted to China's growing presence in an area historically considered within its sphere of interests, or “backyard,” and about the dialogue between the United States and China about the region. It provides insights on the United States, China and Latin American countries’ policy makers’ thinking, collected through off-the- record interviews and closed-door debriefings.

Song Binbin, the daughter of prominent CCP politician Song Renqiong, has long been accused of having played a role in the death of Bian Zhongyun which took place at the Girls' Middle School in Beijing Normal University on 5 August 1966. In January 2014, she publicly apologized for the violence that occurred at her school during the summer of 1966. However, instead of applauding her act of contrition, rebel participants of the Cultural Revolution used the opportunity to criticize the sons and daughters of high-ranking cadres and to try to overturn the 1981 official evaluation of the Cultural Revolution by promoting a positive view of that period in Chinese history. This paper analyses the background, consequences and implications of Song Binbin's apology from a political science cum memory studies perspective. It argues, against the background of a changing political landscape in the People's Republic of China, that the memory of the Cultural Revolution remains a battlefield of divergent memory groups and multiple narratives. In the memory of today, the struggles of the Cultural Revolution have still not come to an end.

What impact is the current rise in workplace conflict having on governance in China? This article argues that, over time, protests are driving the state in two directions at once: towards greater repression and greater responsiveness. Using an original dataset of strikes, protests and riots by Chinese workers between 2003 and 2012, along with government budgetary and judicial statistics, the article demonstrates that significant, positive correlations exist at the provincial level between increased unrest on the one hand and both increased spending on the People's Armed Police (repression) and increasing numbers of pro-worker and split decisions in mediation, arbitration and court cases (responsiveness) on the other. Feedback effects exist with regard to responsiveness, though: more cases in which workers win something in turn seem to spur greater unrest. The article closes by noting the changes since Xi Jinping took office and examining the implications of the findings for China's political development.