China's recent revisions to its Company Law and Securities Law have brought new attention to issues of corporate governance in Chinese companies and financial markets. Among the chief criticisms of the earlier laws – in both their provisions and application – were the lack of protection for minority shareholders, the paucity of independent directors, the absence of transparency and inadequate financial disclosure. The acknowledged need for greater congruence between Chinese law and practice and that of countries with more developed capital markets led to the proposal of amendments to China's legislation during the first half of this decade. This article highlights several improvements resulting from the revisions as well as remaining weaknesses in the regulatory framework for corporate enterprises in China.

Few political parties have the opportunity to make a fresh start in a new location. An organization is rarely able to leave the environment in which its lessons are learned and apply them in a new one. However, the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) encountered this situation after its defeat on the Chinese mainland and retreat to Taiwan. From 1950 to 1952, the KMT underwent a thorough organizational restructuring. The result was a renewal of its Leninist origins from the previous reorganization in 1924. During 1950–52, the KMT created a network of Party cells throughout the government, military and society to which each Party member had to belong. The principles of democratic centralism, ideology as guide to policy, hierarchical authority, and Party authority over the government bureaucracy and the military were reasserted.

the import of illegal, cut cds from the west (dakou cds) in the mid-1990s marked the revitalization of chinese rock culture. this article analyses the rise of dakou culture in the context of the interrelated processes of globalization and marketization of chinese culture. contrary to accounts that proclaim the crisis or death of chinese rock, this article describes the re-emergence of rock since the mid-1990s. it presents an overview on three different scenes, part of the dakou culture among chinese youth. the fashionable bands are inspired by a cosmopolitan aspiration, the underground bands signify the return of the political and the urban folk singers express a nostalgic longing. all three scenes attest to the current diversity of popular music cultures in china, and are interpreted as sonic tactics employed by chinese youth to carve out their own space amidst an increasingly commercialized and globalized society.

Since the late 19th century many Chinese leaders have studied abroad, mostly in Japan, the US or the former Soviet Union. Recently, thousands are returning from studying overseas. Is this new cohort of returnees more internationalist than Chinese who do not study abroad? If their values differ and they join China's elite, they could influence China's foreign policy. Drawing on surveys of returnees from Japan and Canada over the past 15 years, we compare their views on “co-operative internationalism” and “assertive nationalism” with the attitudes of China's middle class drawn from a nationwide survey in 2006. Our returnees are both more “internationalist” than the middle class and less nationalistic. So they are likely to support China's increasing international role and perhaps constrain China's growing nationalist sentiment.

This article traces a civil environmental lawsuit from dispute to decision to explore how environmental law works, as well as how lawyers and litigants try to work the law. Detailing ground-level encounters with a legal system promoted and carefully watched by political elites offers a fresh perspective on the ways the past 30 years of legal reforms have affected the experience of China's court users. Amid accounts of financial stress, lawyer–client tensions and the hunt for elite allies, what emerges is a story of variation. Although plaintiffs and lawyers agree that environmental cases are hard and wringing concessions out of polluters requires remarkable persistence, the process sometimes creaks forward so that appraisals are conducted on time, help is solicited and compensation won. How Chinese courts work (and how well they work) depends on local circumstances, an insight that suggests that disaggregating expansive concepts like rule of law is a helpful way to explore complexity instead of glossing over it.

Can one man dominate the Chinese Communist Party? This has been a much debated issue in the field of Chinese politics. Using a novel database that tracks the biographies of all Central Committee (CC) members from 1921 to 2007, we derive a measure of top CCP leaders' factional strength in the CC. We show that Mao could not maintain a commanding presence in the Party elite after the Eighth Party Congress in 1956, although the Party chairman enjoyed a prolonged period of consolidated support in the CC at a time when the CCP faced grave external threats. No Chinese leader, not even Mao himself, could regain the level of influence that he had enjoyed in the late 1940s. Our results, however, do not suggest that a “code of civility” has developed among Chinese leaders. The Cultural Revolution saw the destruction of Liu Shaoqi's faction. Although violent purges ended after the Cultural Revolution, Chinese leaders continued to promote followers into the CC and to remove rivals' followers.

Using official statistics and a pooled dataset of longitudinal surveys, the aim of this article is to examine the impact of the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) on political trust in Hong Kong. Our multilevel analysis found that the gradual inflow of IVS visitors (mostly overnight visitors) increased political trust in the first few years, but that this trust rapidly diminished in later years, especially after the introduction of the one-year multiple-entry IVS endorsement (which attracted mostly same-day visitors). The main reason for the reduction in the positive impact of the IVS scheme is that the growth in the number of same-day visitors has contributed less to Hong Kong's economy than has the increase in the number of overnight visitors, and has exacerbated several social problems. The impact of mainland visitors has varied across groups with different levels of education. The political trust of people with a senior secondary education has been enhanced more by the increase in overnight visitors and reduced less by the increase in same-day visitors than that of people with a tertiary level of education or a junior secondary education or below.

After three years of agricultural calamities, both natural and man-made, China has begun the importation on a substantial scale of foodstuffs— a dramatic departure from previous policy. The chief beneficiaries abroad are the grain producers of Canada and Australia.

Actual quantities involved may be regarded as small from the standpoint of total Chinese food consumption, but remarkably significant when considered in terms of the actual addition to domestic supplies of wheat and barley, the probable consumption of grain in the seaboard cities, the amount of foreign exchange required, the concomitant decline in other imports (including machinery and raw materials), and the enormous demands usually made upon transportation facilities by agricultural shipments from the interior to the coast. These food purchases are also significant from the standpoint of both Canada and Australia.

Is macroeconomic stability the Achilles heel of the Chinese economy? Recurrent bouts of inflationary disorder lead some observers to worry that the Chinese government is unable to control the economy. Macroeconomic difficulties show up in a pattern of repeated boom and bust cycles, in which each boom is accompanied by an acute inflationary phase and significant disruption. Moreover, since the reform era began, the peak annual inflation rate of each successive cycle has been higher than that of the preceding one. The most recent attempts to cool off the economy have only led to additional questions. An austerity policy was decreed at the end of June 1993, yet inflation actually accelerated in 1994, and it was not until mid-1995 that it dropped to the levels of mid-1993. The Chinese government was engaged in a quest for an economic “soft landing” for two years without a net reduction in the inflation rate!

Vague and often somewhat contradictory impressions of equality and inequality in China abound. Some recent visitors to China have reported that income differentials there have been reduced to nominal levels. At the same time the recurring themes of the class struggle and the dangers of revisionism alert us to the continuing conflict within China over the inequalities that still exist. In this paper I try to draw together the scattered pieces of information already available in order to examine, first, the kinds of inequalities that do continue to exist in China, and then the policies designed to affect the transmission of these inequalities over time and from generation to generation, or, in other words, stratification. Although the available information is not precise enough to permit any systematic comparisons with other countries, I hope to be able to arrive at some rough impressions of the extent to which the Chinese elite has been successful in producing a society with more equality and less stratification than is generally the case elsewhere.

this article treats an understudied subject in popular culture studies: the mutual feed between lifestyle cultures and marketing through an examination of the bobo fever in urban china. how did an imaginary class of “bourgeois bohemians” emerge in a country where the bourgeois base is statistically small and where the bohemian equation is non-existent? to shed light on this pop-culture-turned-marketing-fad syndrome, the article introduces the concept of the “neo-tribes” and maps the pathways that link style cultures to consumer segmentation. a couple of critical questions arise from this exercise. first, is the separability of taste from class symptomatic of a “chinese leap of faith”? and secondly, is the hottest market segment today – the “neo-neo-tribes” – preparing us to address the convergence of a global youth culture?

The early to mid-1950s are conventionally viewed as a time when China broke sharply with the past and experienced a “golden age” of successful policy implementation and widespread support from the population. This article shows that the period should be seen as neither “golden age” nor precursor for disaster. Rather it should be seen as a period when the Chinese Communist Party's key mechanisms of state reintegration and instruction of the population – the political campaign and “stirring up” via public accusation sessions – were widely disseminated throughout China, with variable results. The campaigns for land reform and the suppression of counter-revolutionaries show that levels of coercion and violence were extremely high in the early 1950s, and the campaign to clean out revolutionaries in 1955 and after suggests some of the limits of mobilizational campaigns.

After 50 years of revolutionary transformation and uneven consolidation, and a generation of economic re-structuring, the political institutions of the People's Republic of China remain essentially Leninist. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to enjoy monopoly power, and independent media, autonomous trade unions and other manifestations of civil society are almost wholly absent. Yet the environment within which the Party now operates has changed fundamentally. Marxist-Leninist parties in power around the world have collapsed and to stay in power the CCP has abandoned central planning for market economics. Living standards and literacy rates have improved dramatically and ordinary people now have more control over their own lives. Some analysts have suggested that as a result of these changes, the regime is facing imminent institutional collapse. Others have suggested that the regime cannot but democratize. This article argues that the regime is more resilient than either of these interpretations allows. In spite of the formal trappings of Leninism and its neo-authoritarian political reform programme, the CCP has adapted to the new situation. The reforms, which date from the early 1980s, have considerably strengthened the country's political institutions. Although there is disagreement on the content and pace of reform, China's elite with few exceptions appears to agree that further political reform is necessary. Yet the Party is caught in a dilemma: if it moves too slowly, it could fail because it cannot meet the demands of the people; if it moves too quickly, it could fail because it further undermines its already weakened position.

The last years have seen lively international sinological and domestic Chinese debates oDn the structure and development of the Chinese public sphere. The international discussion has been largely analytical in orientation, prompted by developments in late Qing social history research and the new availability in English and French of Habermas's seminal study. The Chinese discussion has been more strategic, suggesting or legitimizing paths for China's further development: PRC government-directed research in the context of the Seventh Five-Year Plan focused on those aspects in the development experiences of cities like Shanghai which might be of use for the city's further development, especially regarding its relationship with the developed world. Independent critics writing outside the PRC felt prompted to join the discussion about the Chinese public sphere by the growing conflict between a society in the process of rapid diversification and development on the one hand and a political leadership rigidly maintaining the ideal of the people's uniformity in thought and attitude on the other. These differences notwithstanding, the international and domestic branches of the discussion share, for different reasons, an endogenous perspective explaining modern developments from the internal dynamics of Chinese society rather than from the impact from or the response to the West.

The international sinological discussion has searched for elements of a self-assertive Chinese public sphere in traditional areas such as guilds, associations or landsmannschaften, in the new private social welfare institutions set up by reconstruction activists after the Taiping rebellion, in the late Qing qingyi discussions within the bureaucracy, or in more modern areas such as labour unions or chambers of commerce.

Have state policies under socialism radically and irrevocably transformed the Chinese countryside? Or do traditional attitudes and behaviour persist, fuelled by rural social structures that remain tenaciously vigorous despite new socialist imperatives? These questions have shaped much of the inquiry and debate on contemporary China over the past few decades. More recently, however, another promising line of argument has gained some currency. This approach does not pose the relationship between state control and traditional social structure as a “zero-sum conflict” in which the ascendancy of one is necessarily a loss for the other. Rather, it sees state and society as interacting in a more complex manner; a manner which is not always conflictual, and sometimes even quite complementary. By this view, certain policies of the Chinese state have contributed (albeit often unwittingly) to the survival and strengthening of traditional patterns of activity.

Although the 16th National Party Congress was billed as one of political succession, the stage clearly belonged to 76-year-old Jiang Zemin, whose political report endorsed his major themes, including the controversial proposal to admit entrepreneurs into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Revisions to the Party charter endorsed Jiang's “three represents” and equated Jiang's accomplishments with those of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Hu Jintao, widely expected to be the star of the show, was reduced to applauding Jiang's accomplishments. Although Hu (59) was named general secretary of the CCP as expected, Jiang packed the Politburo and its Standing Committee with his allies and retained his position as head of the Party's Central Military Commission (CMC). Although Hu may eventually assume real power, the outcome of the congress made clear that meaningful political succession remains at least five years away. In forcefully asserting his power, Jiang opens up questions about the degree to which political governance, particularly at the top of the system, has been institutionalized.

Between the beginning of the 1950s and the early 1970s, China, like many other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, experienced rapid population growth. This was due mainly to a dramatic mortality decline not offset by any decline in the birth rate. In 1970, China had a crude birth rate of 33.43 (per 1,000), a crude death rate of 7.60 (per 1,000) and a rate of natural increase of 25.83. “Population growth” was identified as a fundamental obstacle to economic development, and the stage was set for large-scale state interventions in the process of human reproduction. The apotheosis of this intervention was the introduction, in 1979, of the One Child Policy, which was successfully implemented in the urban areas. In rural areas, policies promoting later marriage, one child – maximum two – per couple, and greater spacing of those births that are permitted contributed to the swift fertility decline witnessed over the last three decades. In 1996 China's birth and death rates were reported at 16.98 per 1,000 and 6.56 per 1,000 respectively and the population was growing at 10.42 per 1,000.

Thirty-seven years have passed since the Korean War ended in July 1953. The Korean War, which was one of the most dramatic events of the cold war, resulted not only in huge casualties on the two sides, but also in a deep wound in Sino–American relations which took more than two decades to heal. Vast amounts of research have been done on the war, but one important aspect–the motivation behind the decision of the People's Republic of China to enter the war – remains mysteriously masked, or at least unconvincingly explained.

Why did Beijing involve itself in a military conflict with the United States, the world's most powerful country, at a time when the newly established regime needed to be consolidated? What were the factors that led the Chinese to decide that they had to enter the war on behalf of North Korea? It has been generally accepted in the west that the Chinese were motivated by a combination of Chinese xenophobic attitudes, security concerns, expansionist tendencies and the communist ideology. To what extent is this perspective historically correct? What is the Chinese perspective on this issue?

The purpose of this article is to try to explain from a Chinese perspective the motivation of China's leaders in making such a momentous decision, as revealed by Chinese sources recently released in China.

Historical Roots

China's decision to intervene in the Korean War on behalf of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) had its historical roots. It was the natural result of gradually developed animosity between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and what it regarded as the foreign imperialist powers, especially the United States, and of the fear of a threat from the latter.

China's limited transparency concerning its defence spending harms strategic trust, but foreign analysts often lose sight of important realities. Specific details remain unclear, but China's defence spending overall is no mystery – it supports PLA modernization and personnel development as well as its announced objectives of securing China's homeland and asserting control over contested territorial and maritime claims, with a focus on the Near Seas (the Yellow, East, and South China seas). This article offers greater context and perspective for Chinese and Western discussions of China's rise and concomitant military build-up through a nuanced and comprehensive assessment of its defence spending and military transparency.

Despite common national institutions and incentives to remake urban landscapes to anchor growth, generate land-lease revenues and display a capacious administration, Chinese urban governments exhibit varying levels of control over land. This article uses a paired comparison of Dalian and Harbin in China's north-east to link differences in local political economies to land politics. Dalian, benefiting from early access to foreign capital, consolidated its control over urban territory through the designation of a development zone, which realigned local economic interests and introduced dual pressures for enterprises to restructure and relocate. Harbin, facing capital shortages, distributed urban territory to assuage the losers of reform and promote economic growth. The findings suggest that 1) growth strategies, and the territorial politics they produce, are products of the post-Mao urban hierarchy rather than of socialist legacies, and 2), perhaps surprisingly, local governments exercise the greatest control over urban land in cities that adopted market reforms earliest.