The military is a key actor in the political life of many nations. Across the developing and socialist worlds, the armed forces have served as far more than guarantors of national security as they sustain civilian elites in power or often seize it themselves. In China there has been a long tradition of military rule during much of the modern era–one need think only of Li Hongzhang and the Beiyang Army, the Republic's first president General Yuan Shikai, the warlords of the 1920s, or Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the Guominjun (the twin sibling of the ruling Guomindang). In post-1949 China former and active-duty military officers (as well as the military as an institution) have been central actors in the political life of the nation, effectively administering the country from 1949–52 and 1967–73. However, this article is not so much about the militarization of politics in China as about the politicization of the military.

The people who have triumphed in their own revolution should help those still struggling for liberation. This is our internationalist duty. Mao Zedong

In the middle of October 1975, a dusty column of South African troops, equipped with armoured cars and helicopters, rumbled north into Angola, further internationalizing the already complex civil war there. The South African attack not only broadened the war, prompting an even greater Cuban intervention, it also posed a dilemma for China, which supported the same Angolan parties as did South Africa: should China follow its policy of tit-for-tat opposition to Soviet expansion world-wide, even if it meant allying with the racist government of South Africa? Or should it follow the opinions of its fellow Third World nations in Africa, even if it led to a Soviet bloc advance? The difficulty China's leaders faced in the autumn of 1975 was one which had hidden origins in the different ways in which China viewed conflicts around the world, a difficulty that had lain dormant for years but which erupted in 1975 into full view, and with disastrous consequences for Chinese foreign policy in Africa. It is, moreover, a discrepancy which continues to exist in China's views of the world today.

How does China view conflicts and revolutions in the Third World? How do the Chinese organize their relations with Third World revolutionary organizations and their post-independence governments? This article examines the tensions and shifts of Chinese policy towards two essentially simultaneous revolutionary struggles and their post-independence governments: Angola and Mozambique.

This article examines the potency and persistence of myth and language in the context of the dispute, now over 80 years old, about the officially-sanctioned wording of regulations in the municipal parks of foreign-administered Shanghai. Specifically, it examines the potent symbol of the sign placed in Shanghai's Huangpu Park that allegedly read: “Chinese and Dogs Not Admitted.” This symbol has secured a totemic position in the historiography of the Western presence in China before 1949 and is deeply embedded in contemporary Chinese and Western perceptions and representations of that era, and of the whole question of Western imperialism in China. It is the subject both of popular discourse and official fiat in China today. Drawing on a series of revisionist writings and new archival research this article shows that the true facts of the case are both beyond dispute and irrelevant, but that the legend survives undiminished.

For over 60 years before June 1928 most Chinese certainly were barred from the parks administered by the foreign-controlled Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) of the International Settlement in Shanghai. As shown below, the enforcement of the ban varied over time but for the first three decades of the 20th century it was rigidly administered. Dogs, ball games, cycling and picking of the flowers were also forbidden, but the alleged juxtaposition of the bans on dogs and Chinese became notorious. The potency of “dog” as an insulting and dehumanizing epithet in China undoubtedly exacerbated the insult, and also made the story of the sign's outrageous wording seem all the more plausible.

In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, a dramatic surge of rural industrialization occurred in China. Thousands of small-scale enterprises using intermediate technologies were set up in the rural hsien and communes.

This article focuses on three distinctive features of the revival of Catholicism in China: its relatively slow rate of increase, compared with other forms of Chinese religiosity; its relatively intense internal and external conflicts; and its peculiar mix of antagonism and co-operation with the government. These are explained in terms of three interpenetrating layers of the Chinese Catholic community: its priestly, sacramental religious vision, its social embodiment in rural society, and the legacy of political conflict between the Vatican and the PRC government. Though intimately interconnected, these layers of the Catholic Church have each developed at different paces and in somewhat different directions. The effects of this are seen most clearly in the problems faced by Chinese priests.

Traditionally, marriage is a near universality in China. However, in the coming decades, owing to the growing sex imbalance, millions of men will be unable to marry. As a consequence, bachelorhood is becoming a new demographic concern, particularly affecting men from the most disadvantaged socio-economic groups. In China's cultural context today, heterosexual marriage remains a prerequisite for family formation and, in rural society particularly, the legitimate setting for sexual activity. Under such circumstances, bachelorhood is likely to produce privations on various fronts, the consequences of which for both the individual and the community are still largely unknown. This article focuses on the opinions and sexual behaviour of bachelors, and highlights significant variations from those of married men. It is based on the findings of an exploratory survey conducted in 2008 in selected villages in a rural county in Anhui province, referred to here as JC county. The survey provides insights into the more general situation of rural men unable to marry in a context of female shortage, and indicates the conditions a growing number of Chinese men will face in the near future.

As urbanization continues to fuel land and property conflicts in rural China, shareholding has been promoted as a reform in property rights that would enhance bottom-up control in the governance of collective assets. The recent proliferation of community-based shareholding companies has been credited for giving villagers new identities as shareholders, which entitle them to vote, receive their share of collective profits, and elect the managers of their wealth. This paper critically appraises these reforms and offers a contrarian perspective to singular narratives of villager empowerment. While shareholding clarifies villagers’ rights of control, income and transfer in collective property, the effective exercise of such powers is often forestalled on the ground by the concentration of power in elite hands. To the extent that formal and informal constraints on cadre power remain tenuous, shareholding could function as a vehicle for the powerful to appropriate collective wealth rather than as a weapon of the weak.

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 central government's Open Up the West campaign has failed to reach one of its primary objectives in Sichuan: to diminish the large developmental gap between poor and affluent regions. In fact, most investment flows, policy initiatives and infrastructure projects initiated under the campaign concentrate on localities in or adjacent to the Sichuan basin, therefore widening the gap between Sichuan's poor western mountain regions and affluent basin cities. Notwithstanding this deficiency, significant effects have resulted from the campaign's initiation. First, the campaign is facilitating central government approval for large-scale environmental protection and infrastructure projects, thereby quickening the national integration of Sichuan's economy and society. Secondly, it is prodding government and business leaders to ameliorate the investment climate and regulatory structure. As a result of these two effects, the campaign is accelerating processes of economic reform, urbanization and globalization already under way. It is putting in place the infrastructure for accelerated capital accumulation, thus extending capitalist development from China's seaboard towards the interior.

Using a household sample survey for 2006, this article shows that the Hui population in the rural part of Ningxia Autonomous Region in China is disadvantaged compared to the Han majority as regards length of education and household per capita wealth. Yet, there is no gap in average disposable incomes between the two ethnic groups and poverty rates are very similar. This paradox is owing to members of Hui households earning more off-farm income than members of Han households. In particular, young Hui males living in poor villages have a remarkably high likelihood of migrating, thereby bringing back income to their households.

A recent addition to the global discourse of China's interaction with developing countries has been the claim that the Chinese government exports prison labour to these countries. While no evidence is ever presented to support this claim, it has been widely circulated in international and local media, as well as on the internet. This article examines the origins of the rumour and the mechanisms of its transmission. It shows that while the rumour often originates at the grass roots in developing countries, it is promoted locally and globally by political, economic and media elites with distinct agendas that often involve building support for opposition parties, competition in obtaining contracts, or geo-strategic and ideological rivalry. We analyse the rumour's circulation in light of the larger discourse on China and developing countries, and discuss why Chinese official responses to the claim have proved to be ineffective.

One of the central concerns in a study of the political economy of reforms in China is to determine the factors that affect the pace and the direction of reforms and to see if the objectives of the reformers can be obtained within a realistic time period. In the current literature on the political economy of reforms, much attention has been focused upon the orientation, decisions and interests of the Chinese top and regional leadership and central economic bureaucracies. For example, Harry Harding, in his recent book, has written extensively about the debates that took place between the moderate and radical reformers within the Chinese leadership on the two contrasting approaches to speeding up economic growth. On local governments and economic bureaucracies, much attention is paid to the conflicts of interest between the centre and the locality, and between different bureaucracies. Christine Wong has argued that with the substantial gain in allocation power, local governments are able to behave in ways detrimental to central objectives. Dorothy Solinger and Susan Shirk have described different ministerial responses to inflation control measures and reform initiatives.

The social volcano thesis states that the rising inequality in China threatens regime stability. This idea, although widely held in the media and in academia, is backed by little positive evidence but by much negative evidence. Two primary pieces of negative evidence are that the Chinese people trust the central government and that they are highly tolerant of inequality. This paper discusses the shortcomings of the negative evidence and re-examines the thesis in a rigorous and direct way. Our multilevel analysis shows that provincial inequality has negative effects on individuals’ trust in the local government but not in the central government, and this negative effect holds for both the rich and the poor. Because distrust in the local government implies distrust in the central government, we conclude that a social volcano exists.

It is commonly accepted that leaders play a crucial role in collective action. Existing literature has suggested a number of factors that contribute to the emergence of leaders including, among others, personality, sense of moral responsibility, community pressure, self-interest and institutional exclusion. However, current research tends to suggest that activists are driven by a particular reason to become leaders and that their motivation is static. Based on intensive fieldwork in residential communities in Beijing, this article illustrates that leaders' motivations can be mixed or multiple and that leaders may re-prioritize or adjust their objectives over the course of collective action. The re-prioritizing tends to alter the leaders' behaviour and affect group solidarity and interactions with other group members.

This article analyses the data from the 2010 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) to investigate the effects of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) on people's political trust and policy expectations in China. Results from difference-in-differences (DID) analyses show that those in the NRPS pilot areas reported higher levels of trust in government at both central and local levels than their counterparts in non-NRPS areas, with the former gaining more support than the latter. Moreover, the potential NRPS beneficiaries show similarly higher levels of trust in both central and local governments than non-NRPS beneficiaries. However, the policy did not increase rural residents’ rights consciousness that the government should take the main responsibility for the provision of the old-age support. These findings suggest that citizens' political trust under an authoritarian regime is mainly determined by the material benefits they receive.

China's military exercises in the Taiwan Strait in 1995–96 accentuated concerns among states in the Asia-Pacific region about what kind of great power China will become if its economic growth continues at present rates and if its domestic political system does not change appreciably. In most respects many Chinese internal post-mortems on the crisis were quite similar to those in other states: coercive diplomacy led to an increase in voter support for Beijing's nemesis, Lee Teng-hui, and it increased worries among surrounding states about how China might handle bilateral disputes with them; but it also showed just how seriously the Chinese regime takes threats to the related interests of territorial integrity and domestic legitimacy.

During the 1980s, bracketed by the Third Plenum in 1978 and the suppression of the democracy movement in 1989, China edged, step by step, away from the orthodoxies of the Cultural Revolution, and each reversal excited a certain amount of commentary both within and without China. As time passed, and the list of reintroduced institutions and practices grew ever longer, habituation reduced the surprise of succeeding announcements. But the reintroduction of advertising, a cental totem of advanced capitalist culture, occupied a particularly significant place on the list because its reappearance in China forced the Chinese to reconsider distinctions that had formerly been drawn between capitalist and socialist societies. For most of its history, the People's Republic had castigated advertising as the apotheosis of the capitalist religion of consumption. This was especially so in the late 1960s during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Afterwards few commercial billboards or newspaper advertisements interrupted the skein of relentlessly political messages that crossed public space. When advertising was officially reintroduced in 1979, and its sanctioned scope expanded beyond industrial goods, the state faced a daunting ideological task: rebuilding a case for advertising in a socialist system that had long defined itself as one that did not need commercial exhortation. In essence, it had to sell the legitimacy of selling.

From its initiation in 1979, China's one-child policy has been controversial. Most critiques on the stringent birth control policy in rural China still focus on the resistance framework and there is very little research on whether Chinese peasant families are changing their fertility preferences and behaviours when confronting both the state birth control policy and the rapidly changing social and economic environment. Based on recent ethnographic study in a central China village, this article seeks to explore new fertility trends that indicate the shift from “active resistance against” to “conscious decision for” the one-child limit among rural families. In particular, it discusses the newly emerging social, economic and demographic factors that may have played a role in this fertility shift, and its social implications for the central tenet of son preference in Chinese culture and the norm of child-rearing as a means of securing old age support among rural families.

The Beijing Olympics were about more than just sporting competition. They were about China and its role on the international stage. The Games were explicitly recognized for their role showcasing China's economic, technological, cultural, social and environmental achievements to the rest of the world. The Beijing Games were therefore inevitably going to lead to a process of contestation between competing representations, understandings and identifications of China, and a common motif of this process became the designation of what is or is not the “real China.” This article focuses on the notion of the “real China” and the debates and contestations surrounding it in Chinese and foreign media over the months running up to and during the Olympics. It will identify what these debates and contending claims about the “real China” may reveal for a broader understanding of the role of media in the country and our need to rethink our approaches to both.