In the aftermath of the famine in 1962, Mao Zedong took formal responsibility for the failure of the Great Leap Forward in the name of the central government. Thousands of local cadres were made scapegoats and were legally punished. This article focuses on the question of how the different levels of the Chinese state, such as the central government, the province and the county, have dealt with the question of responsibility for the famine. The official explanation for the failure of the Great Leap will be compared to unofficial memories of intellectuals, local cadres and villagers. The case study of Henan province shows that local cadres are highly dissatisfied with the official evaluation of responsibility. Villagers bring suffering, starvation and terror into the discourse, but these memories are constructed in a way to preserve village harmony. This article explains why these different discourses about responsibility of the famine are unlinked against the background of the “dual society”; the separation between urban and rural China. Finally, it will be shown that the Communist Party was unable to convince parts of society and the Party to accept the official interpretation.

This article examines the complex dialogical relationship between China and the global reach of human rights. It charts the transformation of China from a human rights exception and a human rights pariah state to an active participant in, and shaper of, global human rights governance. It looks at such transformation as dynamic social and political processes full of contradictions and the negotiated outcome of China's communicative engagement with “moral globalization” in a world morally divided on the meaning of human rights. It contends that the global reach of human rights understood as advancing rather than perfecting global justice will always remain contentious, as it is contingent on the possibility of open public reasoning across cultures and national boundaries in a global moral conversation. It also argues that China has resourcefully used the idiom of human rights for two specific purposes. One is to justify and rationalize its “developmental relativism” as an excuse for practices that condone continued political repression in China; the other is to internalize politics of contestation within the institutions of global human rights governance by shifting the centre of gravity of both the normative debate and the practical application of human rights.

China's opening to the outside world was perhaps the most visible of its reforms of the 1980s. China's international trade volume grew dramatically, it attracted tens of billions of dollars of foreign direct investment and it became an active borrower in international financial markets. In contrast to the pre-reform era, foreign trade grew more rapidly than the domestic economy and in some regions of the country it appeared that it had become a powerful engine of growth, accelerating not only the speed of domestic development but the pace of structural and technical transformation as well.

Many studies put forward the argument that local policy experimentation, a key feature of China's policy process in the Hu Jintao era, has been paralysed by Xi Jinping's (re)centralization of political power – otherwise known as “top-level design.” This narrative suggests that local policymakers have become increasingly risk-averse owing to the anti-corruption campaign and are therefore unwilling to experiment. This article, however, argues that local governments are still expected to innovate with new policy solutions and now will be punished if they do not. By introducing the analytical framework of “experimentation under pressure” and drawing on an analysis of over 3,000 local government regulations and fieldwork data related to foreign investment attraction policies in two localities, Foshan and Ganzhou, the authors highlight new features developing within current experimental policy cycles. Local cadres now have no choice but to experiment as the political risk of shirking the direct command to experiment may be higher than the inherent risk of experimentation itself.

This article explores why and how the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a PRC state research-institute, survived after its involvement with the June Fourth demonstrations in 1989 through research regulation. I show how the explicit ascription of an advisory role to CASS required an increase in freedom of research and an increase in political steering through regulation. I do this by comparing the institutional setting of CASS in the early 1990s with that during Li Tieying's leadership (1998 to 2003). The article traces a general trend in which organizational reforms at institutions of higher education increasingly entail giving political direction to the development of the social science debate. Radical political views are discouraged through regulation, guidelines, meetings, academic activities and financial, material and social encouragement. This institutional approach aims to yield insight into the functioning of CASS as producer of knowledge and as think-tank to the government.

In March 1995, The China Quarterly published a special issue devoted to developments in the Chinese legal system. That issue canvassed a wide range of subjects: the legislative process, the implementation of legislation via the interpretive practices of courts and administrative agencies as well as through the enforcement of civil judgements, the personnel staffing the system in the role of legal advisers, criminal law and human rights, the key area of foreign trade and investment law, and finally China's place and role in the international legal order.

What explains the course of Uyghur-related violence in Xinjiang and Central Asia since 1990? Using data derived from a variety of sources, I argue that the locations and types of violent incidents were influenced by a combination of Chinese government policies and the political geography of Xinjiang. Specifically, 1990 to 1996 were dominated by logistically complex incidents in a low-level violent campaign in Xinjiang. The Strike Hard campaign in 1996 brought about an increase in logistically simple incidents in Xinjiang and some violence in Central Asia as Uyghur separatists had trouble moving people, information and weapons across the well-guarded, difficult terrain of Xinjiang's borders. China's rapprochement with Central Asian countries in the late 1990s led after 2001 to a dramatic decrease in Uyghur-related violence in general, but also signalled the appearance of logistically creative attacks that required little planning or materials. My findings suggest that Uyghur rebels will have a difficult time mounting a large-scale violent campaign as long as China retains even minimal control of Xinjiang.

The nascent stock and bond markets in the People's Republic of China have received considerable attention from the international media, yet the emergence of these markets is poorly understood. China's new “limited stock companies” increasingly answer to a variety of public and private lenders and spenders, who partially own and largely manage the means of production. The government sometimes decides which companies and managers will be rewarded with the benefits of incorporation, and it grabs a lion's share of the newly issued securities. But the result is a slow, government-led move towards a more capitalist form of management and ownership. This kind of jointly funded project – companies that merge public and private ownership, management and responsibility – may become the defining characteristic of China's emerging “capitalism with Chinese characteristics.”

Qinghai is one of China's poorest provincial-level jurisdictions, least internally integrated and least integrated with the rest of the People's Republic. Its social complexity and fragile environment repeatedly created significant political and economic problems during the first half-century of the PRC, which were then exacerbated by policies that rapidly proved over-simplistic and counter-productive. Since January 2000 the PRC government's new policy initiative to develop the Western Region – the call to “Open Up the West” – has provided the provincial leadership with the opportunity to resolve some of the province's long-term difficulties through adopting markedly different perspectives on development. A more gradual approach has emerged, concentrating on the development of the province's infrastructure and environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, there remains a danger that in concentrating on economic solutions to the province's problems its inherent political, social and cultural contestations may be ignored to the detriment of the leadership's wider goals.

A number of prolonged political experiments in Chinese factories during the Cultural Revolution proved that, despite any alleged “historical” connection between the Communist Party and the “working class,” the role of the workers, lacking a deep political reinvention, was framed by a regime of subordination that was ultimately not dissimilar from that under capitalist command. This paper argues that one key point of Deng Xiaoping's reforms derived from taking these experimental results into account accurately but redirecting them towards the opposite aim, an even more stringent disciplining of wage labour. The outcome so far is a governmental discourse which plays an important role in upholding the term “working class” among the emblems of power, while at the same time nailing the workers to an unconditional obedience. The paper discusses the assumption that, while this stratagem is one factor behind the stabilization of the Chinese Communist Party, it has nonetheless affected the decline of the party systems inherited from the 20th century.

This article compares five leading Chinese universities with 16 other research-intensive institutions in Asia, Europe and the United States. All the universities demonstrate an increasing commitment to research, although the fastest growth between 2003 and 2007 occurred in Asian institutions. Beijing and Qinghua universities compare favourably in terms of funding, but their research output is not as highly regarded. Despite concerns about academic freedom, the international standing of at least some Chinese universities is likely to rise in the future.

Proponents of Western-style democracy greeted the Chinese “Democracy Movement” of 1989 with great hope and anticipation. Yet the brutal end of this wave of political protest left many in despair. The rulers of the Chinese Communist Party had made it painfully clear that they would not tolerate any movement or organization which posed a threat to their political control. At the same time, however, observers and analysts also began to question the wisdom and effectiveness of the student protesters who had participated in the movement. Perhaps, many wondered, the students' behaviour had also contributed to the movement's unfortunate finale. In particular, many noted the students' disorganization, lack of respect for democratic procedures and inability to present a united position to the government. In addition, some remarked that the students' exclusive, non-integrative mobilization strategy may have weakened their ability to successfully put pressure on the government.

Analysts and observers expect a faster pace and a greater magnitude of change in China's economic system in the post-Mao era than was achieved in earlier decades. Yet contrary to this view researchers have found that reform between 1978 and 1983, in the genuine sense of the word, was limited. Moreover, changes that have occurred appear to have resulted from proposals made in the 1950s to 1960s. Additionally, it took eight years (from 1976 to 1984) for Chinese policy-makers to advocate reforms of any significance. In fact the Party's resolution on the reform of the economic system was not put forward until the Third Plenum of 12th Party Congress in October 1984.

One of the most effective weapons used by the Kuomintang in its struggle against the Chinese Communist Party during the Kiangsi period was probably the allegation that the revolutionaries had completely destroyed morals, collectivized women and contributed to sexual chaos. In 1931, a Kuomintang newspaper went so far as to affirm that units of the Red Army had revolted against Mao Tse-tung at Fut'ien in December 1930 because they were opposed to the partition of land and the practice of sexual liberty in the Kiangsi Soviet. In 1934, among the 42 anti-communist slogans adopted by the nationalist authorities, five had to do with the theme of sexual morality. Thus, in the “white areas” of Kiangsi, wall posters appeared bearing the words, “The red bandits wish to destroy virtue: they practise free sex. They are savage beasts who abandon themselves to debauchery!” Or, “If women wish to preserve their chastity and enjoy familial happiness, they must take up arms to exterminate the red bandits!“

this article looks at the practices of communities that employ internet technologies in order to produce, distribute, consume and value chinese poetry. the article is in three parts. the first part provides a brief general overview of the current state of research about the chinese internet. i take issue with the dominant tendency of english-language research to focus almost exclusively on questions of censorship. the second part looks at the development of “web literature” (wangluo wenxue) in china, briefly outlining the meaning of the term and the content of a protracted debate about web literature that took place in 2001. the debate illustrates the limited extent to which web literature is able to distinguish itself from conventionally published literature. paradoxically, this has led to “web literature” becoming a recognized genre within print culture. in the final part, i compare a prc online poetry community with a similar community based in the usa. i conclude by arguing that previous scholarship's biased focus on the transformative aspects of cyber culture has made it difficult to gain a clear insight into the many positive and culture-specific features of chinese web literature.

Under Xi Jinping's administration, ideological control in China has been tightened and political dissent has become increasingly difficult, especially in universities. What can professors do? Our research in one university in central China finds that professors have multifaceted identities and engage in synchronous political roles as establishment/organic, non-establishment/professional and contra-establishment/critical intellectuals, although most take on the first two roles. Our research is based on 36 interviews with professors, students and administrators from various departments of this provincial university and on an analysis of the faculty's teaching and research. This paper aims to contribute to the sociology of intellectuals and higher education by illuminating how professors, as intellectuals, engage in contemporary Chinese political discourse.

In China, owing to many parents' preference for sons, the sex ratio at birth (SRB) is imbalanced. During the 2000s, SRB fluctuated at around 120 boys to 100 girls. In the early 2000s, to tackle the SRB imbalance, the Chinese government launched a series of policy measures under the banner of “care for girls.” This article presents a case study of the Care for Girls programme in order to explore how the construction of SRB as a social problem has led to the formulation and adoption of one set of policy responses to the exclusion of others. The analysis shows that the imbalanced SRB has been attributed to rural peoples' cultural and economic deficiencies rather than cast in terms of a need to recognize the inherent worth of girls or a need to ensure that all rural families have entitlements to basic social welfare. This construction of SRB has enabled the Party-state to advance a “care as control” policy response which comprises ideological education, conditional material benefits and sanctions, and which sidesteps the institutional underpinnings of the problem.

This is a report of a short trip made in November 1997 to investigate the workings of the Provincial People's Congresses (sheng renda: PPCs) in Shandong and Heilongjiang as part of a more general enquiry into the democratic possibilities of the mainland's renda (NPC) system in the light of democratization in Taiwan. The visit was somewhat zouma kanhua, but since the Heilongjiang PPC at least had never before had an English-speaking visitor, some of the observations are possibly worth wider currency.

The dynamic growth of the Chinese economy over the past 50 years under the policies and administrative management of the People's Republic of China must rank among the most important developments of the 20th century. When I began my serious study of China's economy in the early 1950s, Western economists were preoccupied with a single question, “how are they ever going to feed all those Chinese?” Today, after 50 years in power, we must respect and even admire not only their ability to feed a population that has more than doubled in size, but also to provide the Chinese consumer with watches, washing machines, sewing machines, colour television sets, and tape and video recorders. A small, but significant and rapidly expanding, share of China's consumers is using mobile phones, computers and even private cars.