This article examines the response of Shanghai's cultural bureaucracy during the Attack on the Four Olds, the Red Guard repudiation of old culture launched in the early years of China's Cultural Revolution (1966–76). It focuses on how local officials, acting in a space created by the Central Cultural Revolution Group and the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, worked to control the damage wrought by the political campaign and justified their activities by adapting the rhetoric of revolution. Based on the archival documents of the Shanghai Bureau of Culture, this article traces the reinvention of the cultural bureaucracy and the subsequent shift in the language of preservation. It argues that during the Cultural Revolution, there was an institutionalized and ideologically legitimated movement to protect historic sites and cultural objects. Faced with the destruction of antiquity, Shanghai officials instead proposed its rectification, defending cultural relics in the name of revolution.

Since the early 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has put in place a series of measures to allow more Party members to participate in the cadre selection process. “Intra-party democracy” was promoted as a remedy to solve the corruption and social tension that resulted from overly concentrated personnel power. How effective are these formal procedures in constraining the appointment power of core Party leaders and institutionalizing the influence of a larger group of cadres? Drawing on archival research, interviews and quantitative data, this paper examines two components of intra-party democratic reform: “democratic recommendation,” which serves as a gateway to cadre promotion, and the semi-competitive elections at Party congresses. This in-depth study finds that the efforts to expand bottom-up participation are hindered by loopholes in formal regulations, informal practices and the frequent rotation of Party officials. Meanwhile, the reform measures have brought changes to the personnel system by complicating the Party secretaries' exercise of appointment power and altering the incentives of ambitious cadres. The implementation of intra-party democracy could improve the vitality of one-party rule, and its ebbs and flows imply a divide within China's top leadership over the direction of political change.

Although not commonly recognized as such, China is a sizeable oil exporter in the world. In 1985, for example, it exported 36.24 million tonnes of crude oil and oil products, accounting for 2.41 per cent of total oil exports in the world. Oil also satisfied 17 per cent of total domestic energy needs and generated 25.9 per cent of all export earnings of the country in 1985.

Introduction Since the late 1970s, when the current programmes seeking to modernize China's defence establishment began, issues of military doctrine, strategy and operations have remained at the forefront of China's quest for a defence capacity capable of being ranked among the world's great powers. As the Chinese leadership contemplated defence modernization, they could not but recognize the Janus-like quality of their armed forces. One face looked back on the people's war traditions that served them so well and for so long, while the other faced the complexities of conventional and strategic nuclear warfare and deterrence in the latter part of the 20th century.

It is axiomatic among observers that in the transition to the post-Deng era, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) will play a pivotal role. This is understandable. Until now, the army has been a central force in Chinese politics owing to the unique Party-army relationship that has existed since the founding of the Communist regime. Although this relationship will change in the near future, the importance of the military will not: they will remain indispensable backers of the new leadership. This is because they command the forces which may be used to determine the outcome of an elite power struggle, displace rebellious local figures, put down a mass uprising or even carry out a coup.

In this article I argue that China currently has the technical capacity to increase the size of its nuclear forces by about two to three times and to improve its operational flexibility.1 Whether it does so or not will depend primarily on four variables or constraints: trends in thinking about nuclear doctrine that justify these sorts of changes; the economic and technological resources available; China′s commitment to nuclear arms-related arms control conventions; and strategic and arms control decisions by the United States. I suggest that for the foreseeable future the variables relating to doctrine, economics/technology and Chinese arms control preferences are all relatively fixed or constant. That is, present trends in all three suggest a continuing will and ability to modernize Chinese nuclear forces. The last variable is somewhat less fixed, and thus may be the one that is most amenable to external manipulation.

This paper sets out to examine various aspects of the contemporary Chinese social system and their political implications by studying the social and political attitudes of a subgroup of Chinese society. The general area of interest is social stratification in China: the bases of social differentiation in the new society and how these are perceived by its citizens; the extent to which changes in the structure of society have been accompanied by changes in social attitudes; the extent to which ideological campaigns to change attitudes have been successful; the limitations placed by the stratified nature of society in its transitional stage of socialism on the effectiveness of ideological and political education.

The separation of Chongqing from Sichuan and its promotion to a municipality directly subordinated to central government, as well as its inclusion in the area for the campaign to Open Up the West, have helped Chongqing position itself well ahead of many other inland Chinese industrial cities. Increased central funding has helped Chongqing to survive the social, political and economic consequences of the large-scale relocation programme attached to the Three Gorges Reservoir area and the dramatic restructure of state-owned industries. The future of Chongqing, however, depends on how long the current proactive fiscal policy of the central government will last and how quickly Chongqing can establish sustained economic development under socialist market conditions.

Rights and interests, quanyi, are superseding class as the conceptual axis of Chinese law and jurisprudence. Recent legislation highlighting this new social and legal theory has stipulated new law on womens and childrens rights and interests. It has also endorsed an updated conception of the relation between state and society, by which the state is formally required both to provide for newly stipulated civil law protection of rights and interests and to perfect a system of social protection, shehui baozhang zhidu. The latter is to serve as a self–conscious guarantee of the practical enjoyment of rights and interests through broadly based education and social activism. If the leadership of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) has formally committed itself to the development and protection of such rights, it remains to be seen how this commitment can be squared with the regimes refurbished mass line focus on comprehensive social control.1

This research reveals a new consensus among scholars in both Moscow and Beijing that the 1969 Sino-Soviet border crisis was a premeditated act of violence orchestrated by the Chinese side. International and domestic causes are investigated for their strength in explaining China's belligerence. There has been a widespread belief among sinologists that China acted out of desperation against Soviet strength and aggressiveness, which had been demonstrated most clearly by the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and the associated “Brezhnev Doctrine.” The author presents evidence that challenges this traditional interpretation. Rather, a stronger explanation for China's aggressiveness in March 1969 is Mao's need at that particular time for an external threat to unify the country. The article additionally explores the implications of these revelations for the study of Chinese foreign policy and international relations generally.

“Integrated village development on the basis of the employment of surplus rural labour is probably the best way forward for most poor countries.” J. Gray

This article examines the dynamic evolution of China's ideology work through the prism of journalism education. Official sensitivity about both student activism and the media makes journalism education a critical sector for observing how the Party attempts to instil ideology. The article interrogates the process of negotiation of official ideology among authorities, educators and students at elite journalism schools. It demonstrates that alongside state-sanctioned media commercialization and globalization, official influence still looms large in journalism training. Ideological teachings continue to occupy a core place in the curricula, and the authorities deploy a mix of structural oversight, ad hoc surveillance and coercion to keep the educators in check. The effects of the official ideology work, however, are ambivalent, as educators and students engage in the active reinterpretation of the Party's media principles. While these practices do not directly undermine the Party's legitimacy, they demonstrate that official ideology has merely constructed what Yurchak terms a “hegemony of form,” highlighting a degree of vulnerability in China's mode of adaptive authoritarianism.

When the history of Sino-American relations since 1949 is written in years to come, it will very likely lump together much of the two decades from the Korean War to the Kissinger-Chou meeting as a period of drearily sustained deadlock. Korean hostilities will be blended rather easily into Indochina hostilities, John Foster Dulles into Dean Rusk. The words and deeds of American East Asian intervention, of the containment and isolation of China, will seem an unbroken continuity. And at the end, under most improbable auspices but for commonsense balance-of-power reasons, will come the Zen-like Nixon stroke that cut the Gordian knot and opened a new era.

In announcing its bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing chose a “Green Olympics” theme to indicate that hosting the Olympic Games would serve as a catalyst for environmental improvements and sustainable development. With the Olympics now just a short time away, it is appropriate to examine the city's cleanup progress to date. This article does so, and also quantifies some of the health benefits of these cleanup activities, placing an economic value on the gains. Results for air pollution cleanup indicate an economic gain of nearly 50 billion yuan over a ten-year period, with a potential annual gain of 3.5 billion yuan for reaching air quality standards. Water pollution results suggest a potential annual gain of another 2.6 billion yuan.

The Multilateral Fund created by amendments to the Montreal Protocol played a key role in motivating the Chinese government to ratify and comply with the Protocol. Two other factors have affected China's actions in meeting the Protocol's requirements: the nation's desire to appear as a responsible and co-operative actor in solving global environmental problems, and the interest of China's principal implementing agency in expanding its responsibilities and authorities. Three factors have had significant roles in enhancing the national government's ability to implement the Protocol: expanded administrative capacity, participation of local government units with capability to enforce regulations, and the employment of market-based environmental policy instruments.

This article examines, both in internal and international contexts, the petition of the zhiqing in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, during the 1978–79 transition. It first shows how a shortage of labour on Xishuangbanna state rubber farms led to the arrival of the zhiqing from other regions. It then reviews their lives and sufferings of these revolutionary youths, followed by an analysis of the petition in terms of its process and result. This article proposes three key reasons for the win-win result: the extraordinary leadership and organization of the zhiqing, factional struggles within the Chinese Communist Party, and the Sino-Vietnamese War. Finally, it attempts to fit this event into recent literature on mass resistance in contemporary China.

This study focuses on the theoretical links between two important ingredients of individuals’ fundamental political values (i.e. authoritarian ideology and national attachment) and their life satisfaction assessments in an authoritarian context. We employ data from a 2016 national public survey in China to empirically examine how these political values relate to Chinese citizens’ life satisfaction. Our regression analyses demonstrate that Chinese citizens with stronger authoritarian ideology and national attachment are likely to report a higher level of life satisfaction. Our study contributes to the existing literature by highlighting the importance of the connections between political values and citizen life satisfaction. It also advances our understanding of the origins of social and political stability in authoritarian regimes, where citizen life satisfaction usually represents a major source of state legitimacy.

How do subnational agents exercise policy discretion in the social welfare sphere? To what extent do they do so as a result of various bureaucratic and fiscal incentives? The literature has documented several explanatory frameworks in the context of China that predominantly focus on the realm of developmental policies. Owing to the salient characteristics of the social policy arena, local adaptation of centrally designed policies may operate on distinctive logics. This study synthesizes the recent scholarship on subnational social policymaking and explains the significant interregional disparities in China's de facto urban poverty line – the eligibility standard of the urban minimum livelihood guarantee scheme, or dibao. Five research hypotheses are formulated for empirical examination: fiscal power effect, population effect, fiscal dependency effect, province effect and neighbour effect. Quantitative analysis of provincial-level panel data largely endorses the hypotheses. The remarkable subnational variations in dibao standards are explained by a salient constellation of fiscal and political factors that are embedded within the country's complex intergovernmental relations and fiscal arrangements. Both a race-to-the-top and a race-to-the-bottom may be fostered by distinctive mechanisms. The unique role of provincial governments as intermediary agents within China's political apparatus is illuminated in the social policy arena.

Like other Chinese state institutions, the educational system has undergone many changes since the death of Mao Zedong and the overthrow of the “gang of four” in 1976. Several accounts and studies have appeared treating different stages and aspects of this continuing transformation. Further adjustments to the system of education are likely to take place in the near future. Now that the Sixth Five-Year Plan has been published in draft form laying down the blueprint of China's development in the coming few years, some kind of assessment needs to be made of the; educational system, its performance and its prospects, since much of they immediate and future operation of rapid economic growth depends on U ithe human capital provided by schools.

For two reasons the elevation of the law in government policy and political rhetoric in China in recent years inspires great interest and significance. The first is related to the perennial debate on the desirability and possibility of a “government of laws” versus a “government of men” in Chinese history. To what extent does the recent emphasis on the law indicate a movement towards the former from the latter? Given the importance of the issues of institutionalization and power distribution in the analysis of Chinese politics, what is the significance of this development of the law? What is, in other words, the meaning of the recent policy on the “rule of law”? Does it mean something new and what is that newness? The second cause of interest is the mere appearance of the topic itself. Why, and how, is it possible that the recent surge of deliberations on the rule of law occurred at all, if, as is often believed, individual leaders have heavily dominated Chinese politics? In other words, what underlying processes are at work to motivate the leaders to advocate the supremacy of the law, rather than the supremacy of their own authority?