One of the institutional innovations in China's reform and open-door era is the establishment of economic and technological development zones, export processing zones, science and technology parks, and other “zones” or “parks” at geographically diverse regions. This book represents an effort to investigate some of the science and technology industrial parks (STIPs). For the geographer Walcott, such parks are oriented to multinational development, multinational learning, and local innovation learning, based on “the type of activity contained and the type of company profiled” (p. 13). In particular, she shows that multinational corporations (MNCs) have become the growth engines for China's leapfrog into the 21st century with their contributions to China's exports, high tech as well as low tech, and the creation of new jobs. Therefore, in cities like Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Suzhou, MNCs have mainly processed and assembled products using foreign-imported critical parts plus locally-made components with the help of cheap labor and easy access to major ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai. On the other hand, in Shanghai, the best example of a multinational learning zone capable of providing a wide range of skills, goods and services, MNCs are engaged in manufacturing activities in proximity to Chinese firms, research and development entities, both within and outside designated STIPs. Finally, Beijing, Shenzhen (again), and Xi'an, according to Walcott, have represented another model where the proximity of domestic firms to institutions of learning has facilitated knowledge transfer.

Chinese state capitalism may be transitioning towards a technology-assisted variant that we call “surveillance state capitalism.” The mechanism driving this development is China's corporate social credit system (CSCS) – a data-driven project to evaluate the “trustworthiness” of all business entities in the country. In this paper, we provide the first empirical analysis of CSCS scores in Zhejiang province, as the Zhejiang provincial government is to date the only local government to publish the scores of locally registered firms. We find that while the CSCS is ostensibly a means of measuring legal compliance, politically connected firms receive higher scores. This result is driven by a “social responsibility” category in the scoring system that valorizes awards from the government and contributions to causes sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party. Our analysis underscores the potential of the CSCS to nudge corporate fealty to party-state policy and provides an early window into the far-reaching potential implications of the CSCS.

Communist China is not an “Asiatic” (“hydraulic”) society; nor is Mao's government a replica of the power system called “Oriental despotism.” Comparative analysis reveals basic similarities as well as important dissimilarities between Communist totalitarianism and the absolutist régimes that prevailed in traditional Asia, North Africa and certain parts of pre-Columbian America.

The reasons for the visit to Russia, Eastern Europe, and China last summer of a DRV (Democratic Republic of [North] Vietnam) mission led by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong and Chairman of the National Planning Board Le Thanh Nghi gave rise to some speculation in the West. The inclusion of Le Thanh Nghi suggested that it was connected with economic aid to the DRV, more particularly with aid for the carrying out of the extremely ambitious five-year plan, which was first announced during the third Congress of the Lao Dong (Communist) Party in September, 1960.

Chinese Communist evaluations of China's foreign conquest dynasties, like those of earlier Chinese historians, have been hostile, at least on the most vulgar level of historical writing. This comes as no surprise, for the conquest dynasties occupied all or part of China by military force and often governed badly. For the Chinese Communist historians these conquerors carry the additional onus of being feudalists, or worse, feudalists who allowed the feudal economy to stagnate. This attitude is particularly marked in the treatment of the more recent foreign dynasties, the Khitan Liao dynasty (916–1124), the Jurchen Chin dynasty (1115–1234), the Tangut Hsi Hsia dynasty (1032–1227), the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty (1644–1911) and the one discussed here, the Mongol Yüan dynasty (1220–1367).

Within her first decade under Communist leadership, China has been transformed from a virtual nonentity into a major world Power. International decisions which ignore her interests are unenforceable against her. Her status as one of the Big Five can in practice no longer be challenged, and must be taken into account even by countries that refrain from acknowledging the changed situation diplomatically.

A young girl was walking along the road to Hung-wu-chen, the road which led to market. You would say she was about seventeen or eighteen, and clasped in her arms she carried a white hen. Trotting by her side was a little girl of seven or eight who had come along to buy some little cakes and see what was going on. They were sisters, and their names were Kai-kai and Eh-eh. The sisters talked as they went.

The cultural level of North Vietnam is undoubtedly one of the lowest imaginable. Eighty per cent, of the population is illiterate, ignorant to an incredible degree and subject to the most extraordinary superstitions. Apart from the masses there remains the élite—and the hopes that one should be able to place in the youth. But here, also, we find the same deep division that was created in the population as a whole by the war—on the one hand the members of the Resistance and on the other those who remained outside it.

Until the Chinese “volunteers” crossed the Yalu in November 1950, the Chinese involvement in North Korean politics seems to have been minimal. And yet, when the North Korean régime's very life and the Chinese border were threatened by the massive assault of the United Nations forces, the Chinese quickly came to the aid of the North Koreans. What is Chinese policy toward Korea? What are the prospects for Sino-Korean relations? Such questions will concern us for a long time. This article details part of the historical background to them.

This article examines the process, causes and repercussions of the accession of Taiwan, as a contested state, together with China, to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in 1991, the first intergovernmental organization that Taipei has joined since 1971. Based on an analysis of elite interviews, primary and secondary data, the paper traces the under-explored diplomatic history of the accession. It argues that changes in Taiwan's domestic and external environments, as well as changes in the diplomatic process, account for Taipei's admission, rather than the China factor alone. The paper examines four positive effects of accession on Taiwan's international space and the implications for Taiwan's continuous survival as a contested state. By undertaking a nuanced analysis of an important yet little explored milestone in the contested state's struggle to mitigate its international isolation, the article sheds light on Taiwan's external ties against the backdrop of the sovereignty dispute between Taipei and Beijing.

No observer of the Chinese political scene will argue with a frontpage headline in the New York Times of June 26, 1966, which said that a “titanic struggle” was taking place in China. This struggle has thrown China into turmoil and has already claimed the political careers of at least one senior Politburo member, two top Party propaganda officials (one of them an alternate member of the Politburo) as well as numerous Party and non-Party functionaries—and the full extent of the purge has yet to come to light. The Chinese themselves, with characteristic restraint, have proclaimed that “this great cultural revolution has no parallel in scale, in sweep, in strength or in momentum.” Whatever the final outcome of this “revolution,” it can be safely said that the Chinese political landscape will be considerably altered after it has run its unpredictable course.