It is both a privilege and an honour to be editor of The China Quarterly for the publication of its 200th issue. The autumn of 2009 is a time of multiple anniversaries. The People's Republic of China has completed its first 60-year great cycle; and The China Quarterly its first half-century. We have invited all of our previous editors to reflect on their life and times at The China Quarterly, and on the study of contemporary China more generally.

When the editor asked me along with other ex-editors to offer some thoughts on the occasion of The China Quarterly's 50th anniversary, I was at a loss. At the celebration which David Shambaugh held for the 35th anniversary in 1995, I wrote fairly extensively about the founding and early development of the journal (No.143, pp. 692–96) and did not have much to add. So I made the suggestion that I should reprise a special feature of the first China Quarterly. For that founding issue, I solicited a number of senior Sinologues to give their appraisal of the PRC on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. Could I, now senior, be given a similar opportunity to look back at the founding of the PRC on the occasion of its 60th anniversary? This article is the consequence of the editor's kind agreement.

When I took over as the second editor, resigning from the British Diplomatic Service to do so and as an opportunity to work in my spare time on a PhD relating to modern China, The China Quarterly had already established itself as the leading English-language journal on contemporary China under its founder-editor, Rod MacFarquhar. Rod had done a superb job as the first editor and was moving on to play a role in British political life as a Member of Parliament and from thence to Harvard and academic distinction. The China Quarterly too was moving, from its earlier position as one of a group of journals funded by the International Association for Cultural Freedom, to coming under the wing of the newly established Contemporary China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. There, that great scholar on the life and political thought of Mao Zedong, Stuart Schram, had just been appointed Director.

The year during which I served as acting editor while David Wilson was away (1971–72) came amidst “great changes” both in China and in China studies. Indeed it was a time of “great upheaval.” While the anarchic phase of the Cultural Revolution was giving way to one of shaky stability enforced by state violence, how to look at China had become part of a fierce controversy both in academic and political terms among Western scholars of Asia. Not surprisingly, both the upheavals in China and among China scholars were reflected in the pages of this journal.

My first impression of The China Quarterly was its extraordinary efficiency. As I was about to enter the editor's office on my first day, I noticed that they had anticipated making my name plate and had already mounted it on the door. It was only later that I realized that the real cause for congratulation was the School's parsimony in making do with an old name plate to serve a new editor. So I shared a name plate with my predecessor, another D. Wilson. In more imaginative mood I could even toy with the idea that my candidacy had been approved over other applicants precisely because they would save money on a new name plate.

Looking back over three decades during which I had close involvement in the production of The China Quarterly, I am struck by both the degrees of continuity and by the forces for change. On the continuity side, the role of the host institution, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has been vitally important to its survival and development to become the pre-eminent journal in the field. At the same time, continuity would have been neither evident nor achievable without the stimuli provided by the current history of China and by those working in China studies. On the side of change, the major driving force has been the overall effect of advances in technology. Successively since the 1990s, these have transformed the means by which authors' contributions are composed and submitted, the stages in conducting the editorial process, and the ways in which the journal is printed, published, marketed and delivered.

It is an honour and pleasure to join in this commemorative symposium of the 50th anniversary of The China Quarterly, still the field's flagship journal. The journal is entering its “middle age” in fine form. Like most who turn 50, The China Quarterly has had its ups and downs, its signature moments and trying times, but has sustained itself with a sense of purpose and strong identity, supported by its extended family (contributors, readers, staff and editorial board). The China Quarterly has been a living chronicle and window for the world to view one of the most important countries on earth. The China Quarterly has much to be proud of over the past half century, but journal's best days hopefully still lie ahead.

I feel honoured and privileged to participate in this ceremony celebrating The China Quarterly's 50th year. Throughout the years the journal has remained the core source for retrospective information on modern China. It is the journal staff, the editorial board, the readership, and the writers who submit papers that have kept the journal at the top of the field. Over the years this tradition forged by those who went before me, has shaped and greatly facilitated what an editor can do with the journal. It seems that most editors have found it wise to build upon what was already there while attempting to expand coverage and encouraging work in new or somewhat neglected areas, and I was no exception. Since I am the first editor who was not involved in The China Quarterly's 35th anniversary symposium, although I was present at that event, I will concentrate a bit more on details of my editorship.

To discuss the issues raised by the title of this essay requires us to think of four types of change. These are:

1. 1. The changing realities of the economy.

2. 2. The possibilities for assessing and analysing these realities.

3. 3. The background, training and chosen methodologies of those working in this field.

4. 4. The role of The China Quarterly in selecting and encouraging particular types of work.

After three decades of spectacular economic successes, China is facing a significant challenge. The string of recent scandals – environmental degradation, melamine-tainted milk powder, fake drugs and chemicals – have all pointed to government weakness in protecting public safety, exposing an enormous gap between China's growing economic prowess and its capacity to govern. With the leadership now focused on improving the regulatory regime, will China “catch up” and build the public institutions needed? This article argues that the reactive, incremental retrenchment of government in the 1980s and 1990s, combined with inadequate finance, had broken the intergovernmental fiscal system and created large distortions in the incentive structure facing government agencies and public institutions (shiye danwei 事业单位). Until the intergovernmental fiscal system is repaired and incentives are fundamentally reformed for the public sector, the top-down programme to redirect China's development and build a service-oriented government will have limited effect.

Strengthening the ideological and professional training of cadres is a cornerstone of the socialist modernization of the Chinese party-state. On the basis of long-term field research in Party schools, this article shows that this effort entails much more than the upgrading of existing institutions. The CCP has embarked on a simultaneous marketization, centralization and globalization that has integrated cadre training into the larger market for higher education and training. This new approach privileges China's richer areas. Poorer places such as Yunnan province struggle to meet the ever higher demands of the centre from their local budgets. The article concludes that the gap between rich and poor areas in China is about more than wealth alone. Poorer areas cannot take part in China's new, glossy socialism, and will be not only economically but also politically and administratively left behind.

In order to improve the effectiveness of redistributive policies, in 2002 the Chinese government increased fiscal transfers and imposed more stringent regulations on the use of earmarked funds. This article evaluates the impact this had on K county in a north-western province. The case study finds that the misappropriation of earmarked transfers did decrease but this did not necessarily indicate an improvement in the local government's compliance in the usage of transfers. Instead, the county governments found ways to sabotage central policies by exporting fiscal burdens to the subordinate bureaus that received the earmarked subsidies. In some bureaus this was done by reducing the amount of funds allocated for operating expenses. In others it involved increasing staff numbers. These findings provide a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of using earmarked funds and internal supervisory mechanisms to achieve policy objectives in an authoritarian regime.

Traditional analyses of political liberalization in China focus on elections or other facets of democratization. But they cannot account for the fact that although China remains authoritarian, it is nevertheless responsive to the increasingly diverse demands of Chinese society. I argue that the rules of the policy-making process are still captured by the fragmented authoritarianism framework, but that the process has become increasingly pluralized: barriers to entry have been lowered, at least for certain actors (hitherto peripheral officials, non-governmental organizations and the media) identified here as “policy entrepreneurs.” With policy change as the variable of interest, I compare three cases of hydropower policy outcomes. I argue that policy entrepreneurs' ability to frame the issue effectively explains variation in hydropower policy outcomes. I then extend these findings to an unlikely policy area, international trade, specifically, the 2001–06 Sino-EU trade talks over child-resistant lighter safety regulations.

This study explains the institutional structure and mechanism of economic regulation in China's telecommunications basic service industry. The case of telecoms basic service provides an excellent window to explore how Chinese leadership governs strategic state sectors whose assets and profits are central to the national economy. Challenging the ideational model of independent regulator, this study argues that the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) explains much of the telecoms business regulation, as the authority of the Ministry of Information Industry has been circumscribed by other party-state institutions. The SASAC's regulatory power suggests that the primary goal of the Chinese industrial economy is the best protection of state assets through the creation of large and strong state firms, not the protection of consumers' interests by breaking up the monopoly in markets.

Over the past decades income inequality has been sharply increasing in both mainland China and Hong Kong, two Chinese societies that have distinct paths of institutional development. While previous studies on income inequality have attempted to document the trend and investigate its causes, this article focuses on people's perceptions of legitimate income inequality and how these perceptions are related to their attitude towards inequality. Analyses of data collected in separate population surveys in China (2005) and Hong Kong (2007) reveal a higher degree of tolerance of income inequality and a higher degree of perceived fairness of income distribution in Hong Kong than in the mainland. In both societies, such normative support for income inequality is positively associated with people's perceptions of opportunities.

Using newly available documents from the PRC Foreign Ministry Archive, this article traces the evolving legacies of the War of Resistance in the first seven years of the People's Republic. Analysis is offered of PRC campaigns against Japanese bacteriological war crimes, criticisms of American dealings with Japanese war criminals, and the 1956 trial of Japanese at Shenyang. Throughout, behind-the-scenes tensions with the Soviet Union and internal bureaucratic struggles over the Japanese legacy regarding these matters are revealed. The article thereby aims to shed light on how the War of Resistance affected post-war China's foreign relations, demonstrating how the young Republic advantageously used wartime legacies as diplomatic tools in relations with the superpowers and within the orchestrated clangour of domestic propaganda campaigns.

This study investigates the complicated interplay between indigenous and mainstream discourse in the production of Taiwanese indigeneity. Via the case study of Syaman Rapongan 夏曼藍波安, an indigenous writer in Taiwan known for his ethnographic portrayal of his tribal culture, I examine how the production of indigeneity in Taiwan involves not only inscription of resistance from indigenous people but also strategic exploitations of transnational legacies by different social groups as they struggle over the definition of indigeneity to formulate their own specific agendas. It is the contention of this article that the question of Taiwanese indigeneity is not just about indigenous self-representation, that is, claiming the subject position of the indigenous people and seeking to restore declining, oppressed indigenous cultural heritages. The study shows that we need to go beyond the familiar scheme of binary opposition to deal with the complexity of the question of indigeneity. The article ends with a re-theorization of the relationship between indigenous and new Taiwanese identity discourse in terms of Jacques Derrida's notion of “inheritance.”