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.

The media and generalist scholarly work have created a conventional wisdom that China's one-child policy is the driver of the country's skewed sex ratio and so should be relaxed in order to ameliorate the imbalance. However, we show through historical, domestic and international comparisons that son preference, which we treat as an observable and measurable variable made up of labour, ritual, inheritance and old-age security practices and policies, is crucial to explaining the imbalanced sex ratio at birth. China's sex ratio cannot fully normalize without addressing son preference.

To what degree are Chinese citizens concerned about the seriousness of global warming and climate change (GWCC) and what are the key factors that shape their concern? Drawing theoretical insights from extant literature and using recent data from a national representative public survey (N = 3,748) and provincial environmental and economic statistics, this study, the first of its kind, examines the variations and determinants of Chinese GWCC concern. Our data show that in China, compared to other countries, average public concern about GWCC is relatively low, and concern varies greatly among Chinese citizens, across different provinces and between coastal and inland areas. Statistical analyses reveal that the levels of Chinese GWCC concern are significantly influenced by individual sociodemographic characteristics, personal post-materialist values, and regional economic dependency on carbon-intensive industries. Specifically, women and younger Chinese with greater post-materialist values are more concerned about GWCC than their counterparts, and citizens from provinces with higher economic dependency on carbon-intensive industries tend to be less concerned about GWCC than people from provinces with lower carbon dependency. We discuss key policy implications and make suggestions for future research in the conclusion.

Contemporary Chinese artists have long been marginalized in China as their ideas conflict with the mainstream political ideology. In Beijing, artists often live on the fringe of society in “artist villages,” where they almost always face the threat of being displaced owing to political decisions or urban renewal. However, in the past decade, the Chinese government began to foster the growth of contemporary Chinese arts and designated underground artist villages as art districts. This article explores the profound change in the political decisions about the art community. It argues that, despite the pluralization of Chinese society and the inroads of globalization, the government maintains control over the art community through a series of innovative mechanisms. These mechanisms create a globalization firewall, which facilitates the Chinese state in global image-building and simultaneously mitigates the impact of global forces on domestic governance. The article illuminates how the authoritarian state has adopted more sophisticated methods of governance in response to the challenges of a more sophisticated society.

Drawing on both regime and falun gong sources, this article analyses two conflicting depictions of falun gong's organizational structure, communications system and financing base. It first presents the regime's view that falun gong was a well organized movement, with a clear hierarchical structure, a centralized administrative system, functional specialization of organizational tasks, a well-developed communications and mobilization system, and a fulsome financial base built on undue profits derived from charging excessive admissions to qigong seminars and selling falun gong publications and icons at substantial mark-ups. In stark contrast, falun gong claimed that it had no organizational structure, no membership rosters, no local offices, telephones or financial accounts; and that its adherents were prohibited from receiving remuneration for teaching falun gong, that it charged the lowest training seminars admission and cheapest prices for publications and material. The article attributes the differences to adversarial polemics, the regime's fervour to criminalize, and the falun gong's eagerness to deny those charges. Some of the discrepancies can also be explained by the status of the falun gong as an evolving and clandestine social organization with changing features and practices, survival structures and camouflage mechanisms. Both regime and falun gong could thus stake their respective claims on different manifestations of the falun gong on arguable but ambivalent evidence.

The foundation of this association has now been laid. People call us Blue Shirts or terrorists. That is nothing. The important problem to be solved is how to create a new revolutionary atmosphere so as to lead the revolutionary masses⃜ In China today definite action must be taken for temporary relief as well as for fundamental cure. However, what we need now is a fundamental cure. Our present problem is not the Japanese. Our problem is not the invasion of our north-eastern provinces and Jehol. If we can maintain the status quo, it will be enough for the present time. As a revolutionary government, the loss of a little territory does not mean much. A revolutionary movement has both to advance and retreat. When our strength is not enough, it is natural to retreat. We have lost territory today, but we will take it back the next day when we have strength

Inequalities in college access are a major concern for policymakers in both developed and developing countries. Policymakers in China have largely tried to address these inequalities by helping disadvantaged students successfully transition from high school to college. However, they have paid less attention to the possibility that inequalities in college access may also arise earlier in the pathway to college. The purpose of this paper is to understand where inequalities emerge along the pathway to college in China, focusing on three major milestones after junior high. By analysing administrative data on over 300,000 students from one region of China, we find that the largest inequalities in college access emerge at the first post-compulsory milestone along the pathway to college: when students transition from junior high to high school. In particular, only 60 per cent of students from poor counties take the high school entrance exam (compared to nearly 100 per cent of students from non-poor counties). Furthermore, students from poor counties are about one and a half times less likely to attend academic high school and elite academic high school than students from non-poor counties.

The Blue Shirts during the 1930s became one of the most influential and feared political movements in China. To both contemporaries and historians, however, the Blue Shirt movement has been a shadowy force, known mostly through hearsay, with little solid information regarding its doctrine or its activities. Now, on the basis of memoirs, interviews, and especially Japanese intelligence reports of the 1930s, a rough picture of this secret organization can be pieced together. And the image that emerges is not simply a terrorist organization, but a political faction that reflected the concerns and ideals of many Chinese during the troubled Nanking decade. This study will, it is hoped, not only provide an insight into the nature of Kuomintang rule, but will shed light on a previously unexamined species of the political genus, fascism.

A crucial element in China's modernization effort is the control of population growth. Months before the historic Third Plenum of the 11th Communist Party Congress in December 1978, the leadership decided that only a drastic limitation of fertility would ensure achievement of its economic goals for the year 2000. The policy to encourage all couples to limit themselves to one child was announced in January 1979. In September 1980 the Party Central Committee took the unusual step of publishing an “Open Letter” announcing a drastic programme of 20 to 30 years’ duration to restrict population growth, and calling on all Party and Youth League members to take the lead in having only one child. Thus was launched the world's most ambitious family-planning programme.

There has been little systematic research on corruption in China. Analyses so far often only reveal various cases of corruption and conclude by commenting on the retrograde aspect of the Chinese state. Work of this nature also tends to be too static – not considering the historical and cultural dimensions of politics – and too superficial – just concentrating on anecdotal aspects of corruption. As a result, one could quite simply conclude that what is required is a Weberian bureaucracy, which would be both rational and efficient, though without explaining how this should come about.

However, in the light of works dealing with the shifting role of the state in societies which are undergoing change, the causes and nature of the phenomenon of “corruption” in China can be reassessed.

While China has been portrayed as a reluctant supporter of UN peacekeeping in the past, it has voted in favour of every newly established UN peacekeeping operation since the beginning of the new millennium. Previous studies of China's behaviour in UN peacekeeping explained this phenomenon primarily with recent shifts in its foreign and security policy rather than with changes in UN peacekeeping itself. This article analyses China's voting behaviour in the UN Security Council on peacekeeping resolutions in the context of the evolving concepts of UN peacekeeping. It argues that China's recent enthusiasm for these missions is the result of two developments. On the one hand, Beijing was able to reinterpret its understanding of UN peacekeeping after its experience in the 1990s, especially with regard to the use of force; while on the other hand, the way UN peacekeeping missions are conducted was reformed after the Brahimi Report in 2000, which made UN peacekeeping more agreeable to the China.

This article describes and analyses changes in the environment and related policy developments in the People's Republic over the past 50 years. When discussing the quality of China's environment it must be remembered that the population of the country has doubled over the past half century and the economy has grown rapidly, particularly over the last two decades. Pessimists argue that the current population of over 1,200 million has exceeded the number which can be supported at a good living standard. Despite such views, there has been some ground for optimism in recent years, with China's greater environmental awareness and increased openness, its realization that the environment can be a tool in international diplomacy, and the increasing importation of environmental protection techniques. Yet overall, China has not done enough to maintain environmental quality and has not chosen to make many environmentally friendly transport investments.

China's Marriage Law of 1980 went into effect on New Year's Day 1981, permitting women and men to marry at 20 and 22, respectively. This contrasts sharply with the late marriage requirements of the 1970s, whichstipulated 23 and 25 years for women and men in the rural areas and 25 and 28 years for their urban sisters and brothers. The new legal minimum ages for marriage caused an instant upsurge in the numbers of young people getting married in China. One scholar estimated that as many as 30 million marriages would take place in 1981 as millions of young women and men took advantage of the new legal minimum. It was later officially projected that first marriages in 1981 would probably reach at least 14 million, more than twice the number in 1980. And, because of the “baby boom” of the 1960s marriage rates are likely to remain high through the mid 1990s.

In 2010, according to the sixth Chinese census, the sex ratio at birth (SRB) was 118 males for every 100 females. The global SRB average is about 105. Thus, the gap between 118 and 105 is made up of “missing girls.” Scholars present three main explanations for the skewed SRB statistic: sex-selective abortion, infanticide and delayed or late registration. Most studies take a demographic and cultural approach to explain the high SRB. However, we believe the story of the “missing girls” is also an administrative one and adopt the street-level bureaucrat theory of policy implementation to explain the pervasiveness of late registration in rural China. We use descriptive statistics derived from the 1990, 2000 and 2010 census data to identify the “missing girls.” We believe the combination of late registration and unreported births may point to a larger proportion of “missing girls” than previously reported from the SRB statistic.

This article assesses the impact of China's accession to the World Trade Organization on its foreign trade and investment regime. While the government had begun liberalizing the Chinese economy long before joining the WTO, the accession induced regulatory, institutional and normative changes that have transformed the landscape of trade and investment in China. The profound impact of the WTO stems directly from the extensive commercial and rule commitments China undertook in its accession. Focusing on the most significant of these commitments, the article examines their implications for Chinese constitutional law and their effect on the regulation of foreign trade, foreign investment, intellectual property rights and domestic governance. Additionally, it looks at the impact of WTO disputes on Chinese law and practice. It concludes that China's accession has made its foreign trade and investment regime far more liberalized and less opaque than a decade ago. More importantly, the accession has institutionalized the process of China's domestic reform externally through the force of WTO obligations. Although much uncertainty remains concerning the future direction of government policies, WTO membership ensures that the course of China's economic development will be charted within the disciplines of the WTO system.

The future of the reforms in China ultimately depends on whether, and if so to what extent, reforms introduced in the recent past have improved the consumption and the standard of living of the Chinese people. It also depends on whether any such gains in the standard of living have been widely spread among the whole population. Since 1978 real per capita consumption in China has risen at an average annual rate of 7 per cent which is more than three and a half times that of the preceding 21 years. As a result, the standard of living of the average Chinese citizen in 1990 was more than double that of 1978. However, the growth of consumption and the living standard was rather uneven during the reform period. During the first phase of the reforms (1978–85) the consumption standard increased rapidly without widening existing income disparity. During the second phase (1985–90), however, improvements in consumption standards slowed significantly amidst rising inflation and growing income inequality. The question is whether the recent trend of a relatively slow rise in the standard of living and greater income disparity will continue in the 1990s. The purpose of this article is to examine the recent trends and changes in the level, structure and differentials of Chinese consumption and living standards, and to assess their prospects for the 1990s

Isaac Deutscher once observed that the Chinese Communist revolution presents the paradox of “the most archaic of nations avidly absorbing the most modern of revolutionary doctrines, the last word in revolution, and translating it into action. Lacking any native ancestry, Chinese Communism descends straight from Bolshevism. Mao stands on Lenin's shoulders.” This echoes the generally accepted view of the historical relationship between Maoism and Leninism. Among most western students of Chinese communism it is something of a truism that Marxism came to China in its Leninist form; for different reasons, Maoists have long been saying that Mao (and now only Mao) is the true heir of Lenin. Indeed, the “thought of Mao Tse-tung” is no longer simply considered the practical application of “the universal truths” of Marxism-Leninism to the specifically Chinese historical situation, but is explicitly celebrated as a new and higher stage of universally valid revolutionary theory; it is “invincible Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought” that now propels world history forward. In contemporary Maoist eyes, Mao stands on the shoulders of Lenin as firmly as Lenin presumably stands on the shoulders of Marx.

While Chinese academic excellence is gaining increasing international recognition, plagiarism, corruption, nepotism and other negative practices are reportedly rampant in academia in China. Many point the finger at fundamental flaws within the tizhi, the highly structured Chinese socio-political system. I propose re-examining Chinese academia and its practices by applying and expanding Pierre Bourdieu's notion of field as this framework helps to identify the predicament of the “deep water” in which Chinese scholars and institutes find themselves. The four fields I outline – ideological, quasi-official, fame–profit and guanxi fields – spotlight academic practices with “Chinese characteristics.” I elaborate on my own experiences and reflections as both an insider and outsider to these practices, a position which I refer to as a third-eye perspective. I argue that despite the constraints of the “deep water,” the field-oriented angle of investigation reveals that the depths and types of “deep water” vary from one institute to another and also that the internally generated ongoing initiatives promise a step-by-step transformation in Chinese academia. To provoke further thought, I contend that the Chinese case is both a non-exception and alternative to the Western (and other) practices. In so doing, I call for a balanced perspective to re-examine Chinese academic ecology.

Environmental protection in the international context constitutes a type of soft or functional regime directed at the control of behaviour by states which generally does not present an overt threat to their neighbours. Rather, the principal danger is one of everyday social or economic activity presenting risks within the state in which it originates, to that state's neighbours and, possibly, the global commons. Thus, it is typically the activity's externalities rather than any intent to cause harm or encroach on neighbours' territory which is the cause of concern. Control is complicated by sovereignty issues, which become paramount when externalities cross a country's boundaries and affect the originator's neighbours and/or the wider international community. Although there have been cases of countries obtaining judicial relief for environmental harms that originated in another country, such issues are overwhelmingly non-justiciable. It is more likely that any international regimes that are established will provide no avenue for judicial relief.

During the 1980s, economic think tanks played a key role as centres of expertise, with distinctive philosophies and approaches to economic transition. Although they were all government-sponsored, they served as important alternatives to the policies and advice available within the formal government bureaucracy. In the 1990s, think tanks continued to play an important role but lost some of their distinctive personality. Expertise was absorbed into the bureaucracy, but at the same time independent think tanks emerged. Think tanks were knit into a web of policy debate and advice which Premier Zhu Rongji, in particular, uses as a source of ideas and analysis. The total network of advisers has become more important, while think tanks have become less distinctive nodes of that network.