A new, independently designed household income survey for China in 2002 shows some decline in income inequality in both rural and urban China since 1995. However, the overall Gini ratio for China remained unchanged due to a rise in the urban–rural income gap. The reduction in rural inequality stemmed mainly from a fall in both inter-provincial inequality and inequality within most of the provinces, as well as from a further improvement in the distribution of wage income and farm income and a reduction in the regressiveness of net taxes. The reduction in urban inequality came from a fall in inter-provincial inequality and better distribution of imputed rental income and net taxes. The results raise questions about whether recent more equity-oriented policies, such as the “great western development strategy,” began to reduce some dimensions of overall income inequality. For the first time, a special survey was implemented to furnish data on migrants living in towns and cities. Incorporating the migrants into the urban population raises urban inequality and reduces the urban–rural gap somewhat, but leaves the latter still very high by international standards.

Collective action directed at the government is not rare in China, but why some actions endure and succeed whereas many others fail remains inadequately addressed. Based on a case of home owners' sustained collective resistance in Shanghai, this study finds that state power is fragmented at the local level. While the disparate priorities among different levels of state authorities provide opportunities for resistance, social networks between participants of collective action and officials or media workers may significantly help the former to achieve success.

Over the last decade, rural township governments have been subjected to intensive streamlining and rationalization programmes. This article examines which ongoing reforms and processes are causing township governments to become “hollow shells,” and explores the effects of “hollowing out” on township government leaders, staff and rural residents. While the aim of local government reform was to transform extractive township governments into “service-oriented” agencies, this article finds that the current logic of rural governance has produced township governments which are squeezed from above and below. From above, township leaders face the political imperatives of inspections, annual assessments, the need to attract industrial investment and an ongoing process of “soft centralization” by higher levels of government. From below, township staff are drawn out to the villages to enforce family planning policies and maintain social stability. Unprecedented numbers are working as “sent-down cadres” in villages where their capacity to deliver services has been weakened by village amalgamations and the lifting of agricultural taxes and fees. Despite significant boosts to rural health and education investment, rural residents still face a level of government that regards them as problems to be dealt with, rather than citizens to be served.

This article uses an institutional approach to examine Chinese NGOs as an emerging organizational field. In mature organizational fields, the organizations are powerfully constrained to follow the institutional practices of that field. However, in an emerging organizational field, the institutionalized constraints are not yet established, so actors can try out a wide range of practices. Some of these practices will become the new “rules of the game” of the organizational field when it is established. The content of these rules will shape the relationship between NGOs and the Chinese party-state for future generations. We find that a Chinese NGO's resource strategy is shaped by two interacting factors. First, NGOs operate in an evolving ecology of opportunity. Second, the social entrepreneurs who lead Chinese NGOs perceive that ecology of opportunity through the lens of their personal experiences, beliefs and expertise. As a result, the initial strategies of the organizations in our sample were strongly influenced by the institutional experience of their founders. Former state bureaucrats built NGOs around alliances with party-state agencies. In contrast, NGO founders that had no party-state experience usually avoided the state and sought areas away from government control/attention, such as the internet or private business.

The Cultural Revolution severely shook the organizational structure of China. In its aftermath came a general weakening of the administration and a loosening of control. As a result the country has experienced an intensification of the tendencies towards a cellular economy. The forces, already strong, which encouraged individual localities and enterprises to develop on self-sufficient autonomous lines, have received a new accession of strength. At present the country seems composed of a myriad of small discrete units, although there are at work technical forces which, it would seem, ought to be breaking down this cellular arrangement. This article looks at the emphasis on self-reliance and self-sufficiency, enquires into certain consequences of these trends and hexamines and speculates on the manner in which the separate units of the Chinese economy relate to each other economically.

Since the United States committed to withdraw from the UN Paris Agreement on climate change, international observers have increasingly asked if China can take the lead instead to raise global ambition in the context of a world leadership vacuum. Given the country's increasing economic and strategic focus on sustainable and low-carbon innovation, China might seem well placed to do so. However, much depends on the direction of governance and reform within China regarding the environment. To better understand how the government is seeking to make progress in these areas, this article explores key political narratives that have underpinned China's policies around sustainable development (kechixu fazhan) and innovation (chuangxin) within the context of broader narratives of reform. Drawing on theoretical insights from work that investigates the role of power in shaping narratives, knowledge and action around specific pathways to sustainability, this article explores the ways in which dominant policy narratives in China might drive particular forms of innovation for sustainability and potentially occlude or constrain others. In particular, we look at ecological civilization (shengtai wenming) as a slogan that has gradually evolved to become an official narrative and is likely to influence pathways to sustainability over the coming years.

The “Wenzhou model” is a controversial one in China. Wenzhou, situated in south-eastern Zhejiang Province, is characterized by its lively private or unofficial economy. This pattern of development caused Wenzhou to be pulled into the vortex of national politics, policy-making and reform in the 1980s. As a result, policy implementation and development in Wenzhou has a wider significance than just as an example of local variation.

This paper attempts to estimate the impact of both factional ties and economic performance on the promotion of provincial Party secretaries and governors by analysing a person–year dataset of their career mobility for inclusive years 1989 to 2009. We found that for provincial Party secretaries whose promotion meant rising to a top national position, both factional ties and good economic performance increased their chance for promotion. On the other hand, for provincial governors whose promotion meant rising to a ministry-level position, only economic performance mattered for their promotion. Among provincial Party secretaries, the extent to which performance affected the likelihood of promotion was not different between factional members and non-members. This suggests that even factional members needed to show good performance to enhance the likelihood of their promotion.

Central–provincial budgetary relations are among the most significant, intricate and obscure facets of Chinese governmental procedures. Audrey Donnithorne and Nicholas Lardy illuminated central–provincial budgetary relations to 1959, and more recent writings by Donnithorne, Barry Naughton and Dorothy Solinger have brought aspects of the story forward. Based on recently-published Chinese materials, this article traces the evolution of the formal system in central-provincial relations from 1971 to 1984. A new fiscal regime was supposed to begin in 1985 but was never fully implemented because lack of progress in the reform to replace enterprise profits with taxes. The regime since 1984 has been largely a continuation of the 1980–84 fiscal management system, with some new incentives for provinces to collect more revenue. The post-1984 arrangements are well described to collect more revenue. The post-1984 arrangements are well described in a recent World Bank study. This argicle, therefore, fills a gap in the current literature and untagles the complicated and rather obscure story for the 1971 to 1984 era.

Workers' protests in the 1980s and 1990s, numerous and widely distributed though they may be, remain spasmodic, spontaneous and unco-ordinated. While the reasons are numerous, this article focuses on the role of workers' hegemonic acceptance of the core values of the market and the state. Data from interviews in Tianjin from 1995 to 1999 are used to explicate the existence of this hegemony. Several of its sources, some general, some specific to China, are then discussed. The findings are situated within recent scholarship on labour politics in China, and the prospects are discussed.

This article examines the intensity and sources of Chinese private entrepreneurs' support for the current political system. The study presented here is based on data from a representative sample of private entrepreneurs collected from five coastal provinces in late 2006 and early 2007. In general, China's private entrepreneurs tend to support the current party-state and to be in favour of the status quo. Subjective values are far more important than CCP membership and relationship to the state in determining which capitalists are regime supporters. Among all the factors analysed in this study, democratic values, life satisfaction, evaluation of government policy performance and perception of official corruption play the most decisive roles in shaping private entrepreneurs' support for the incumbent regime. Only red capitalists who are former cadres are likely to be reliable supporters of the regime when subjective values are also considered; other ties to the state do not create support for the regime. The degree of regime support also exhibits considerable regional variation. These findings have important implications for the survival of the regime and for the role of private entrepreneurs in a potential political change towards democracy.

over the past decade, urban residents have experienced a consumer revolution at multiple levels. in terms of material standard of living, sustained economic growth has dramatically increased spending on discretionary consumer purchases and urbanites have enthusiastically consumed globally branded foodstuffs, pop-music videos and fashion. at the same time, however, income distribution has become increasingly unequal. some scholars therefore emphasize the negative exclusionary and exploitative parameters of the new consumer culture seeing nothing more than a ruse of capitalism or marker of all that is negative about post-socialist city life. building on nearly a decade of fieldwork in shanghai, this article disputes such a linear interpretation of subordination and exclusion in favour of a more polyvalent and stratified reading that emphasizes individual narratives unfolding against memories of an impoverished personal past, and a consumer culture that simultaneously incorporates contradictory experiences of emancipation and disempowerment.

China's industrial wage reforms, initiated with much fanfare in 1977, have currently reached an impasse. Despite large increases in wages over the past decade, the expansion of incentive pay, and several new schemes to link incentive funds to factory performance, low labour productivity and lax work discipline remain major problems in state industry. Moreover, the reforms have created consequences that were unintended: they have heightened contention over wage matters in the work place; they led in the initial years of the reform to uncontrolled increases in bonus expenditures that outstripped increases in productivity and profitability; and they have inadvertently provided an incentive for sharp business practices and financial deception, both of which hinder broader industrial reform.

This article examines the extent to which labour markets are emerging in the Chinese countryside, focusing on nonfarm work, and whether women participate in those new markets. The examination is based on a 1993 survey that provides new detail on types of work, employment channels, migration and income

China's fifth population census taken on 1 November 2000 reveals that the mainland had a total population of 1,265.83 million, of which 455.94 million were urban residents (chengzhen renkou). This suggests that the level of urbanization was 36.09 per cent. Whereas this is a reasonable figure that appears to fit well the general rising trend of urbanization shown in the previous four censuses, the levels of urbanization reported in the five censuses are not really comparable because the criteria used to enumerate “urban” population have been different for different censuses. Before the State Statistical Bureau produces a set of comparable figures on the levels of China's urbanization based on a set of uniform criteria, the problem of data incomparability concerning the levels of urbanization will continue to baffle users. This report analyses the statistical criteria defining China's urban population used in the 2000 census, compares them with the criteria of the previous censuses and presents two sets of adjusted and internally coherent time-series data to remedy the problem of data incomparability.

The shift in Beijing's priorities to more balanced and people-oriented development has led some localities to make more efforts in developing social policy areas. By investigating the personnel institution, a political incentive mechanism, this article aims to shed light on the structure of political incentives in China and why local political leaders improve public welfare in a non-democratic setting. A content analysis of 69 regulations that cover one-third of all municipal leaders shows that the formal evaluation rules for leaders in some localities have become more welfare-oriented to reflect Beijing's new focus on social policy areas. A statistical analysis further reveals that different political incentives operate for municipal Party leaders and mayors, and that political incentives to develop social policy vary across geographic regions. The statistical analysis exploits an original dataset I compiled from an online archive and statistical yearbooks, and contains biographic and career history data on municipal leaders between 2003 and 2010.

This article questions the effectiveness and viability of the fiscal response to rural stability adopted by the Chinese state. Tax-for-fee reform (feigaishui) has been heralded as a possible solution to the cancer of excessive fiscal predation by local government. While the experiment may have achieved in relief of peasant burden, the success is simply based on central government financial sponsorship and is thus hardly sustainable as a national programme. And unless there is fundamental reform of fiscal redistribution, the new scheme will ironically hurt rather than help the poorest peasants. Putting all the blame on local cadres is politically expedient, but the central government needs to admit that the present crisis is a result of the systemic discrimination against peasants and the consequent deficit in financing rural governance. The ultimate solution entails a full-scale eradication of structural bias against the peasantry.

Success in agriculture depends on many factors embracing the natural environment, economic and demographic policy, institutions and technology. China's agricultural resource endowment has long encouraged reliance on land-intensive methods to raise farm outputs. Indeed, the record of agricultural growth in China since 1978 is most remarkable for the overwhelming debt it owes to increases in yields per hectare.

Food safety is a matter of intense contestation in the Chinese media. Through three case studies, this article shows that government and corporate elites strive to maintain media hegemony while citizen-consumers and activists engage in counter-hegemonic practices. Under conditions of hegemony, citizen dissent is most likely to take one of two forms: diffused contention or radical protest. Like the yin and yang of civic dissent, these two forms are both the results of, and responses to, state and corporate hegemony.

During the 1980s, as the Chinese state moved to free the economy and to relax direct Party controls over society, it needed mechanisms to bridge the gaps in control that were created. A very large number of associations accordingly were established, usually on the government's own initiative, to serve as intermediaries between die state and diverse constituencies and spheres of activity.1These range from associations for different sectors of the economy, to science and technology associations, religious councils, cultural and social welfare groups, and sports associations: the numbers and range keep growing. All of these so-called non-governmental associations (minjian xiehui) must be officially registered, and only one organization is recognized as the representative for each sectoral constituency.2