Internet service providers (ISPs) have played an important role in China's internet regulation regime. This article illustrates how ISPs are governed to serve the government's regulatory goals. This involves examining some of the most extraordinary and profound insights concerning internet governance: the theories of the layers principle, the end-to-end argument and the generative internet. Chinese ISPs have been dependent rather than neutral regulatory intermediaries of the government. Moreover, in addition to telecommunication carriers, the radio and television networks affiliated to the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) are to become a new type of ISP that is capable of choking the free spirit of the internet, as recently demonstrated by the far-reaching policy of “network convergence.” This article argues that the policy has the potential to drastically alter the structure and ecology of the internet in China.

In recent years, the governments of China and India have initiated a strategic partnership. Talks of creating an integrated “Chindia” economic hub have been commonplace. Many studies have been undertaken from conflicting perspectives on bilateral relations at the high level, but how ordinary Chinese people view their contemporary Indian counterparts and how this provides a civic dimension to the partnership remains under-explored. In an authoritarian nation where exhibiting sentiments contrary to the party-state's policy is not encouraged and remains uncommon, the Chinese have increasingly relied upon the internet to express their views on various aspects of policy, including that towards India. Using systematic, qualitative research on the online community, this article categorizes the various opinions expressed by Chinese internet users about India, the Indians and Beijing's Indian policy; analyses the apparent huge gap between these perceptions and the official rhetoric of Beijing; and forecasts how such perceptions might influence future Sino-Indian relations.

As Sino-African engagement keeps developing, racial relations have emerged to concern people on both sides. The recent Chinese cyber discussions on Africans have shown a blatant racialism against Africans. Comparing this with the campus racism in the 1980s and contextualizing it in China's modern history and, more importantly, China's recent rise as a global power, the article argues that racial discourse has become an important component in Chinese nationalism without public awareness of it.

During its structural transformation, rural China witnessed the emergence of four types of village: traditional, industrialized, commercial and villages in cities. Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), including fixed phones, cell phones, television sets and the internet (with personal computers), are now commonly used in Chinese villages but in ways that differentiate villagers according to variables such as occupation, villager membership and social status. The adoption of ICTs by peasants not only represents but also accelerates growing peasant differentiation; in other words, the function of ICTs could not penetrate the barrier of social structure. Meanwhile, structural transformation in China has been an activator to shaping peasants' diversified ideas about information, and the demand for and usage of ICTs. An analysis of peasants' ICT adoption thus enables us to identify the basic trends and characteristics of social transformation in contemporary China.

In recent years China's national oil companies (NOCs) have proactively ventured abroad to look for more fossil fuel supply. Despite the divided views on their foreign energy quest, previous studies tend to consider the Chinese government and its NOCs to be a monolithic organism, and explicitly or implicitly presuppose that the Chinese NOCs' foreign energy quest could enhance China's energy security. This is, however, an untested hypothesis. To fill the gap, this article assesses the impact of Chinese NOCs' foreign energy quest on the country's energy security. Findings show that the Chinese NOCs have made some progress in their foreign energy quest, which contributes to their coffers and reserves, but that does not mean that China's energy security is greatly enhanced; in particular, the diversity and reliability of China's foreign oil sources are questionable.

The conversion of land to non-agricultural use in China has often been attributed to the demand for land arising from urbanization, that is, a growing urban population and the shift from agricultural to industrial activity. With a focus on Sihui 四会, a county in Guangdong, this study explains land use conversion from an alternative perspective: by looking at the supply of agricultural land for conversion and what determines this supply. It gives precedence to the role of the central actors in the process – local officials – and suggests that the extent to which agricultural land is converted for non-agricultural purposes is determined by an array of structural and agential factors, including the fiscal and land resources at the disposal of local officials, the incentive structure and macro-processes which influence their decision.

Although many state agencies in China are designated with a function of “representing” ordinary people's interests, they are poorly structured for that purpose. It is therefore puzzling why some of them have at times actively and effectively advocated the interests of ordinary people, even when such interests may conflict with state policies. To solve this puzzle, this article examines a recent campaign by the Chinese Disabled Persons Federation to resist a national trend to ban the use of three-wheelers for passenger transport by many local governments. Our analysis recognizes the importance of personal motivations and favourable political structure, but it emphasizes that forceful popular collective action can create both pressure and opportunity for active state advocacy. Such a pattern of mutual-reinforcement between mass organizations and their constituency has sometimes contributed to the dynamics of political change in the reform era.

Think tanks in China simultaneously play advisory, academic and advocacy roles in the policy process. In this article, I recommend an analytical framework that evaluates think tanks by studying their specific activities in addition to their nature. Empirical data involving 301 think tanks in 25 provinces were collected through the China Think Tank Survey 2004. The 1998 regional Integrated Knowledge Development Index database was also used for the analysis. Based on these two independent sets of survey data, the article concludes that connections with the government and knowledge capacity in regions where think tanks are located are the two differing forces that drive China's think tanks to operate as either advisors or advocates. Moreover, these two determinants differentially influence the individual roles of the two types of think tanks.

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.

Taiwan studies is confronting several challenges from within and outside the academy to its vitality if not viability. The growing attraction of mainland China to researchers, the encroachment of disciplines and marginalization of area studies, and the closing life cycles of several of the most salient research themes on Taiwan, have all contributed to the sense of a field in decline. This article seeks to provide a more concrete empirical basis for assessing the state of the Taiwan studies field. Drawing on content analysis of journal publications, combined with citation data and a survey of Taiwan specialists, the article addresses a number of key questions about the field.