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.

By the mid 1960s, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had structured the opportunities and career choices available to the Chinese people. In their individual decisions, the Chinese people had to confront the questions Mao wanted them to face, such as whether to join the Party, to serve the people, and to become heavily involved in political life. Mao and his associates had helped to shape the determinants of social mobility and delineate the skills needed to get ahead and along in China. By 1965, the violence, uncertainty, and turmoil which affected lives during the revolutionary era had given way to a period of more stable, predictable, and structured career patterns.

One of the most extraordinary and puzzling events of the twentieth century is surely the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. This most profound crisis in the history of the Peking regime provides us with the best available opportunity to study the Chinese political system. For it is during a crisis that the nature, the strength, and the vulnerabilities of a political system fully reveal themselves. Further-more, we can attempt not only to note the unique features of this extraordinary event, and of Chinese politics itself, but also to see whether the seemingly unique Chinese experience does not reveal some universal dilemma of the human condition and fundamental problems of the socio-political order in a magnified and easily recognizable form. It is my belief that the Chinese political system prior to the Cultural Revolution is one of the purest forms found in human experience of a type of association in which there is a clear-cut separation between the elite and the masses. If one follows Ralf Dahrendorf in asserting that in every social organization there is a differential distribution of power and authority, a division involving domination and subjection, the Chinese political system can be taken as one of the polar examples of all social organizations, showing clearly their possibilities and limitations, their problems and dilemmas. From this perspective, the Maoist vision as it has revealed itself in its extreme form during the early phases of the Cultural Revolution can be considered a critique of this type of political organization.

Recent studies on the origins of various Chinese Communist administrative techniques have revealed a striking continuity between present methods and the Communists' pre-1949 experiments in the Kiangsi Soviet (1927–34) and in the Border Regions of the north-west (1935–45).1 The Kiangsi and Yenan experiences are particularly vital to an under-standing of the Party's penal theories, since it was during the 1927–49 period that the Communists formulated their policies concerning release, leniency, production, democratic management, education and thought reform. Of particular interest is the gradual elaboration, during a war-time situation, of their controversial procedures of thought control or “ brainwashing.” While a description of the development of these policies from 1927–49 is interesting in itself, this article aims in addition to analyse how changes in technique were a response to environmental and political factors. It can be shown that prison policies varied in a direct relationship to the changing economic, political and military environment; consequently, the present penal policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cannot be understood without reference to their origin in the physical and psychological environment of Kiangsi and Yenan.

International attention is increasingly focusing on the modernization of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA). Discussions about the Chinese military have moved from intelligence circles and esoteric defence journals into the global media spotlight. Chinese moves in Burma and the South China Sea, continued nuclear testing, arms purchases and, exports, lack of budgetary transparency, increasing influence in elite politics and the political succession to Deng Xiaoping, and coercive pressure against Taiwan have all drawn attention to the PLA and have contributed to growing concerns about a muscular and assertive China.

In March 1954, the Central Committee of the CCP offered for discussion the initial draft of the Constitution which reflected the victories of the people's democracy and socialism. In this draft was systematised the new historical experience of the revolutionary struggle of the Chinese people and the accumulated experience of state building. In the discussion of the draft, which lasted more than two months, took part more than 8,000 representatives of various strata of the population.

The decade from 1978 to 1988 was a period of great social transformation in China. The pragmatic economic policies and comparatively relaxed political approach resulted in a less rigid and dogmatic atmosphere, providing a more liberal setting for cultural and intellectual activities. Chinese intellectuals directly participated in defining and developing the new social intersubjectivity and ideological discourse. In comparison with the first 30 years of the People's Republic, the role and functions of intellectuals between 1978 and 1988 became increasingly complex within a rapidly changing social context. The period also marks the development of a new pattern in the relationship between Chinese intellectuals and the state, which was no longer based on the total submission of the former to the latter.

Scholarship on factional warfare during the first two years of the Cultural Revolution has long portrayed a struggle between “conservative” factions that sought to preserve the status quo and “radical” factions that sought to transform it. Recent accounts, however, claim that the axis of political conflict was fundamentally transformed after the fall of civilian governments in early 1967, violating the central tenet of this interpretation. A close examination of Nanjing's abortive power seizure of January 1967 addresses this issue in some depth. The power seizure in fact was a crucial turning point: it removed the defenders of local authorities from the political stage and generated a split between two wings of the rebel movement that overthrew them. The political divisions among former rebel allies intensified and hardened in the course of tortuous negotiations in Beijing that were buffeted by confusing political shifts in the capital. This created a contest that was not between “conservatives” and “radicals” over the restoration of the status quo, but about the respective places of the rival radical factions in restored structures of authority.

This article employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine two distinct processes of depoliticization by non-governmental organizations advocating rights for sex workers in China. Drawing upon Bourdieu and institutional theory, we argue that the consolidation of state repression of civil society under the Xi regime created an institutional field of power to which two NGOs responded differently. While one of them relied on government procurement as its major funding source, thus diluting the original mission, the other internalized state rhetoric as it sought political legitimacy through state certification, thus sanitizing its political mission. These distinct responses were then institutionalized into organizational practices, norms and culture. Rather than portraying NGOs in China as either capable political actors or pawns of an authoritarian state, this article illustrates how NGOs are subtly depoliticized by being inculcated in a state-produced, hierarchical social order in which compliance with state norms becomes synonymous with organizational competence.

This study estimates the extent of subsidization in the ten provinces of western China from 1990 to 2012 with the aim of highlighting the exceptionality of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) leading up to and following the widespread Tibetan protests that swept through four Chinese provinces in 2008. Although the Tibet development model was criticized by many Chinese economists in the 1980s and 1990s for being highly subsidy-dependent and inefficient, these aspects of dependence and inefficiency were exacerbated even further under the Hu–Wen administration, particularly following the 2008 protests. While subsidies and investment also increased in other western provinces, the exceptionality of the TAR stands out in terms of the levels of subsidization attained, the sheer disassociation of these subsidies from changes in the local productive economy, and the degree to which ownership in the local economy has come to be dominated by external interests. The recent phase of intensive subsidization has thereby exacerbated the dependence of local Tibetan livelihoods on these state strategies, while at the same time intensified the state-led economic integration of the region into the rest of China through externalized patterns of ownership and consolidated state control. Arguments that the resultant inefficiencies and social tensions are owing to a marketization of social relations or to cultural insensitivity and lack of adaptation to local circumstances de-emphasize the central role of the state in shaping the deeply structural character of these transformations.

In October 1952, while addressing the Seventh Congress of the Kuomintang (KMT), the party chairman and president of the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek, reminded his audience that “Sun Yat-sen's highest goal was to build a political system in which sovereignty resided with the people [zuchuan zaimin]” Chiang then said that “in order to oppose communism and recover our nation, the primary task of our party is to carry out local elections, build our nation's political system, and establish the solid foundations for our people to practise democracy.”

The 10 years of the “open policy” changed China dramatically. After it decided to join the world economy by expanding its exports and importing technology, funds and management skills to bring to fruition the historic goal of modernizing China, it opened itself as well to new forces in the international system. But while most studies of China's growing foreign trade sector emphasize its impact on China's trading partners and the international economy, few studies have addressed the domestic impact of this decision to open up parts of the domestic economy to foreign trade and shift into a more “export-led” pattern of economic development.

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.

For peasants who have been collectivized for nearly three decades, the national campaign initiated by the Party Central Committee's Document No. 1, 1984 to promote the reparcellization of collective farmland, by extending the peasants' leasehold right to over 15 years (para. 3–1), is certainly not less spectacular than the land reform of 1949–52, when land was confiscated from the rich for redistribution among poor peasant families. This “second land reform” has now firmly consolidated the long-fought policy of Deng Xiaoping for a decentralized approach towards rural management. All the cats – “black or white” – seem to have now been totally unleashed to run after their best catch. This stands in sharp contrast to the uneasy equilibrium of the “two-line struggle,” which existed throughout the entire 20-year period following the abortive communization drive of 1958/1959. Nevertheless, while probably no Chinese leader today can afford to play the role of Mao's Liu cum Deng, one wonders whether, for economic reasons, the present rural institutional solution as envisaged in Document No. 1 will mark the end of the perennial Chinese search for an “optimum” level of decentralization. In a way, the agricultural reform of recent years has begun with the drastic increases, decreed in 1979, in state farm procurement prices, averaging 25 per cent. For a regime very much obsessed with the value imperative of modernization, the farm price increases should clearly be construed as income incentives for promoting agricultural production to ease the economic constraints on industrialization. This is nothing new but is exactly the policy developed by the prominent Chinese economist, Ma Yinchu, some 25 years ago in his then much condemned “balanced growth model” for China. Thus the strategy fits in well with a western analytical model formulated by Chiang and Fei in 1966, for a “maximum-speed development through austerity.” The model postulates that under socialism, a consumption policy which imposes an “optimum” rather than maximum degree of austerity, may induce greater labour effort and thus an output growth more than proportionate to the required marginal consumption expenditure. It follows that not only will the rate of capital accumulation not be depressed by increased consumption, but it may even accelerate and thus help to sustain a higher overall income growth rate.

Despite being known as “Asia's water tower,” Yunnan frequently experiences severe droughts which put pressure on local communities and state actors alike. This article examines the institutional arrangements that guide water governance strategies employed by local cadres in Yunnan province, showing how central control mechanisms in the Chinese administrative system undermine effective water governance at the local level. Findings obtained from field research in two counties in Yunnan with different levels of economic development and water resource access show that current institutional arrangements – including those regulating local cadre performance and the procedures to apply for project funding from higher-level governments – hinder the efficient use of infrastructure investment. Instead, provincial and prefectural water bureau officials use their authority to channel funding to those regions with an already positive track record of project applications.

In the 1990s Taiwan began to pose a complex new challenge to the international community. At issue is Taiwan's attempt to revise the so-called “one China” policy as it had been previously understood. By seeking to be treated as a separate state that was distinct from mainland China, Taiwan was embarking on a new approach that confronted the Beijing government with what it saw as the totally unacceptable prospect of secession by a renegade province that would in effect subvert China's unity and national coherence.

Macau was the first port on the China coast to come under the influence of a foreign power and will be the last to return to Chinese sovereignty. Its historical importance in the early transmission of culture between East and West is well known. After reaching its height as the centre of such contact in the second half of the 16th century Macau, like Portugal, languished in international affairs albeit with subsequent brief periods of relative importance.

The Cold War is over, but international violence, and preparations for it, are not. Despite the end of the bipolar world and “balance of terror” associated with the United States-Soviet confrontation, peace has not broken out. The militarization of world politics continues, as shown by the Gulf War, ethnic and religious conflicts in central Europe and Asia and nuclear proliferation. Global military spending has somewhat diminished, but at somewhere between $900 billion and $1 trillion annually, it still is a major factor in the budgets and ambitions of most countries. Nevertheless, the end of the Cold War provides opportunities for governments to re-examine their priorities and shift military resources to promote economic and social development, the so-called “peace dividend.” Although in recent years China has dramatically increased its official military expenditures (nearly 100 per cent between 1988 and 1993), beginning in 1979 the Chinese leadership inaugurated a major reorientation of its military-industrial complex.

Hong Kong's political parties are now in decline after the return of the former British colony to China. The decline of political parties stands out in stark relief in a context featuring “Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong” and gradual democratization. A major reason for the decline is the stunted political party system of Hong Kong. Prominent in that stunted system is the absence of a ruling party. The stunted party system is primarily the result of Beijing's antipathy towards party politics in Hong Kong, which in turn discourages party formation by the Hong Kong government and the conservative elites. The lack of incentives for the business elites to organize political parties to protect their interests is another major reason. The stunted party system has produced serious adverse consequences for the governance of Hong Kong, representation of interests, public attitudes towards the political class and the further democratization of the territory.

Educational reform has been one of the important issues raised during the Cultural Revolution, not merely because it belongs to the realm of culture but, more important, because it bears on the question of “cultivating revolutionary successors” and on the shaping of the whole future of China. Anyone seizing power wishes to keep it for a certain length of time; it is however a special feature of people's revolutions to set their goals on the prospect of a boundless future. In this regard, gaining power in education is not simply one side of the struggle for actual total power (mastering the “superstructure” as well as the “structure”) it is the guarantee of everlasting rule, on the assumption that the mind is ultimately the only thing man can rely upon and which is entirely within his grasp. As one slogan puts it: “The earth may shake, heaven may fall, but we shall ever be faithful to Chairman Mao.”