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Comments on the authenticity and editorial procedures in the introduction to the Chinese book version of the Tiananmen Papers that illuminate an understanding of Chinese politics. Discrepancies between the Chinese and the English versions; Definition of authenticity; Faulty editorial policies and processes.

The Chinese media have undergone commercial liberalization during the reform era. Interviews with media practitioners reveal that media reform has brought about three different types of newspapers that differ with respect to their degree of commercial liberalization. Based on a natural experiment during the anti-Japanese protests in Beijing in 2005, this article shows that urban residents found more strongly commercialized newspapers more persuasive than less commercialized newspapers. Provided that the state can enforce press restrictions when needed, commercial liberalization promotes the ability of the state to influence public opinion through the means of the news media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the structure and development of the Chinese public sphere. Details about late Qing's social history research and Haberman's seminal study; Discussion on public sphere and China's future; Establishment of Shanghai as an enclave by British, American and French authority in 1843; Conclusions of the study.

This article represents the first attempt to examine the Chinese elite's threat perception of Japan using statistics to analyse what, if any, differences exist among the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese economic institutes. It seeks to answer two questions that have not previously been addressed in the literature. First, has there been a change in perception of the Japanese threat in these three sectors over time? And if so, what can we deduce about the causes of this change? This study finds that there have indeed been two major shifts in China's threat perception of Japan since the 1980s, one in the late 1980s and the other in the mid-1990s. It also finds that there were no differences between sectors as to the direction and timing of these shifts. It suggests that Japan's military build-up in the late 1980s and the strengthening of the US-Japan alliance from 1996 onwards are what prompted these shifts in China's threat perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ten years after the handover, Hong Kong's media faced multiple pressures. There were few cases of outright prosecution of the media, but there were subtle political and economic pressures. Co-optation of media bosses, fear of losing advertising revenue and media takeovers by pro-Beijing figures brought some of the media into line. This brought editorial shift and self-censorship, as the media systematically shied away from stories that might antagonize Beijing, underplayed negative news for the government and gave the democrats less favourable coverage. Interviews with journalists showed little evidence of ostensible intervention from government officials or media bosses, but newsroom socialization and editorial gatekeeping are effective constraints. The constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press and the moral force of professional ethics lent the media the room to defend and negotiate their freedom, but the pervasive fear induced by the political environment invariably overpowered the resistance and constrained press freedom in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on the articles discussed in the periodical "The China Quarterly" from October-December 2003. Foreign relations; China's European Union policy paper; Economic affairs; Military affairs; Party and political affairs.

Comments on the authenticity and editorial procedures to the Chinese book version of the Tiananmen Papers that illuminate an understanding of Chinese politics. Government's inability to attack the book in any effective way; Disagreement with a number of the editorial and translation decisions; Authenticity of the materials on the inspection of physical documents.

Focuses on the foreign and domestic policies influencing arms control and nonproliferation policies in China. Analysis of multilateral and unilateral pressures on international norms and agreements; Context of decision-making policies on arms control; Illustration of study cases depicting the influence of external and internal forces.

Discusses the Sino-Japanese relationship, which is one of the keys to understanding contemporary changes in international relations. Highlights reviews by Nish and Iriye of the pre- and post-Second World War relations; The economic dimensions of the relationship as explored by Yokoi and Howe.

Scholarly attention has not kept pace with the rapid changes in the professional role of Chinese journalists. Instead, two older views prevail. The first, which sees Chinese journalists as “mouthpieces” of the Communist Party unchanged from the Maoist era, downplays the tremendous changes in the media since 1978. The second view, holding that they are increasingly becoming “American-style professionals,” overstates the influence of international media norms on Chinese news workers' day-to-day reality. While such communist and American-style professionals do exist in contemporary China, both are far less influential and numerous than stereotypes would suggest. Exclusive scholarly focus on these groups ignores two other more numerous and influential orientations: “advocate professionals,” those who write to influence opinion and policy, and “workaday journalists,” who work mainly for money and lack a commitment to public service. This article delineates all four types of Chinese journalist and explains why an understanding of the latter two professional orientations is critical to understanding China's media, politics and society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although China has had difficulty improving the performance of its banks and stock markets, it has struggled even more to develop a credit rating industry. Credit rating agencies (CRA), which provide bond ratings, are vital to financial markets in advanced capitalist countries, but China's credit rating companies are weak and have had little influence over the behaviour of those who issue or invest in bonds. Some argue that CRAs gain authority through their strong reputation in the eyes of market participants, but the experience of rating agencies in China supports evidence from elsewhere that their private authority is largely dependent on government mandate, a benefit China's CRAs have only recently begun to enjoy. Many private actors, from trade associations to charity groups, are struggling to gain public influence in China, but credit rating agencies may be the best barometer to measure the Chinese government's general stance towards private authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decade, the Chinese government has pursued greater engagement with a range of international legal regimes. China's expanded participation in international regimes for trade and human rights, for example, can provide deeper understanding of the factors influencing China's international behaviour. Building upon scholarly perspectives about institutional compliance with treaty texts and the influence of local conditions on China's policies and practice, this article examines China's participation in international legal regimes for trade and human rights in light of dynamics of normative engagement and the paradigm of selective adaptation. Normative tensions help explain China's policies and practices on compliance with the WTO trade regime, while the imperative of normative engagement helps explain much about China's international human rights diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of articles about culture in contemporary China.

Discusses the early perception of communism and its importance in Hong Kong from 1921 to 1934. Dual society of the colony with the British as the ruler and the Chinese as the ruled; Feelings of the main segments of the Hong Kong Chinese population in their first encounter with communism; Significant political events which were related to communism and Hong Kong.

Presents information as it pertains to the income and inequality of persons living in China, highlighting the distribution and growth of household income between 1988 and 1995. Efforts launched to estimate household income in China; Reference to the evolution and sources of equality in China; What findings of studies conducted in China indicated.

Considers `Friendship' in the Chinese Communist sense, with focus on the works of poet-laureate of Sino-Foreign Friendship Rewi Alley. Examination of Alley's role as an official of Friend of China; Implications of friendship; Information on the Friend of China; Details on Alley; What Alley and the Friends represent.

Discusses the law on women's and children's rights and interest, and how the People's Republic of China (PRC) responds to this law. Information on the perspective on rights and interests which is at the heart of the judicial reform; View of the state-society relationship; Efforts of the Western society to keep up with the changes in Chinese law and society; Reference to reform jurisprudence.

Discusses the author's editorship of `The China Quarterly' with particular attention to the challenge posed by the reform and opening of China to the world. Roles of the editorial board and its executive committee; Development of the Chinese legal system; Importance of Hong Kong in Sino-American and Sino-Japanese relations.

A bibliography is presented of books received by the journal such as "Mao’s Forgotten Successor: The Political Career of Hua Guofeng" by Robert Weatherley, "Chinese Male Homosexualities: Memba, Tongzhi, and Golden Boy" by Travis S. K. Kong, and "Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image" by Kam Louie.

This study examines civic solidarity in Hong Kong and Taiwan at key democratic moments. Using political cartoons published during the 1995 LegCo election campaign in Hong Kong and the 2000 presidential election campaign in Taiwan, our findings indicate that the cultural codes of liberty, though not typically considered part of traditional Chinese values, have become the dominant cultural source for discourse in civil society. Values of caring and state paternalism, which resemble subsets of Confucian values, exist as competing, alternate cultural codes. In Taiwan, politically-divided members of civil society appear to share the same cultural language, thereby fostering a basis for mutual engagement. Nevertheless, little mutual engagement is actually found among politically divergent discourses. In Hong Kong, even a shared cultural language cannot be documented. The conclusion discusses the broader implications of these findings for the inclusive potential of civic discourses, amidst competing identity claims, in Hong Kong and Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs related to China's domestic and international political affairs. A keynote speech for the 90th anniversary celebration of the Chinese Communist Party was delivered on July 1, 2011 by Chinese General Secretary Hu Jintao. On September 29, 2011, China launched the space lab module Tiangong-1. From August 2-9, 2011, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi made diplomatic visits to countries including Poland, Albania, and South Sudan.

China's water abstraction policies are significant for illustrating the application of market-based instruments in a transitional and developing country and for shedding light on improving China's water management system. This article presents a new approach to analysing applications of market-based instruments for water resources in China. Expanding the analysis beyond a rational choice approach, it demonstrates the institutional dimension of policy implementation at the local level in China. Four peculiar features of China's water institutions influence local governments in dealing with water abstraction differently from how regulators might expect. This explains local governmental failures and the implementation of water abstraction policies in several ways, including the setting of charges at low levels, a lack of necessary monitoring and sanctions, few incentives to collect charges diligently, and failure to provide accessible information for the public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines a wave of Chinese poetry sparked by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. “Quake Poetry” was published online before being re-circulated through digital, print and live media. Multimedia adaptations of one poem are examined to investigate the relationship between the authors of Quake Poetry, the different media platforms, and the people and institutions involved in its proliferation. Media convergence enabled Quake Poetry to fulfil several functions in the aftermath of the earthquake. Most prominently, it served as an emotional outlet for those affected by the quake, while giving its netizen-producers a sense of creative agency as they engaged in participatory cultural production. Members of the contemporary poetry scene cited Quake Poetry as evidence of poetry's ongoing hold over the Chinese national consciousness. Finally, certain poems were appropriated and promoted by China's state-controlled media to propagate a politically expedient image of Chinese unity in the face of tragedy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What explains the course of Uyghur-related violence in Xinjiang and Central Asia since 1990? Using data derived from a variety of sources, I argue that the locations and types of violent incidents were influenced by a combination of Chinese government policies and the political geography of Xinjiang. Specifically, 1990 to 1996 were dominated by logistically complex incidents in a low-level violent campaign in Xinjiang. The Strike Hard campaign in 1996 brought about an increase in logistically simple incidents in Xinjiang and some violence in Central Asia as Uyghur separatists had trouble moving people, information and weapons across the well-guarded, difficult terrain of Xinjiang's borders. China's rapprochement with Central Asian countries in the late 1990s led after 2001 to a dramatic decrease in Uyghur-related violence in general, but also signalled the appearance of logistically creative attacks that required little planning or materials. My findings suggest that Uyghur rebels will have a difficult time mounting a large-scale violent campaign as long as China retains even minimal control of Xinjiang. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers information on social, political, and cultural events in China related to both internal developments and foreign relations. Topics discussed include discouraging independent candidates from participating in elections, a crackdown on the illegal use of non-edible materials in food and violations of food safety, incidents of social unrest and protest, and efforts to curtail inflation in Chinese economic policy. Other topics include severe drought conditions, the detention and release of artist Ai Weiwei, and the detention of Christians in Beijing, China.

Think tanks in China simultaneously play advisory, academic and advocacy roles in the policy process. In this article, I recommend an analytical framework that evaluates think tanks by studying their specific activities in addition to their nature. Empirical data involving 301 think tanks in 25 provinces were collected through the China Think Tank Survey 2004. The 1998 regional Integrated Knowledge Development Index database was also used for the analysis. Based on these two independent sets of survey data, the article concludes that connections with the government and knowledge capacity in regions where think tanks are located are the two differing forces that drive China's think tanks to operate as either advisors or advocates. Moreover, these two determinants differentially influence the individual roles of the two types of think tanks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The conversion of land to non-agricultural use in China has often been attributed to the demand for land arising from urbanization, that is, a growing urban population and the shift from agricultural to industrial activity. With a focus on Sihui 四会, a county in Guangdong, this study explains land use conversion from an alternative perspective: by looking at the supply of agricultural land for conversion and what determines this supply. It gives precedence to the role of the central actors in the process – local officials – and suggests that the extent to which agricultural land is converted for non-agricultural purposes is determined by an array of structural and agential factors, including the fiscal and land resources at the disposal of local officials, the incentive structure and macro-processes which influence their decision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the response of Shanghai's cultural bureaucracy during the Attack on the Four Olds, the Red Guard repudiation of old culture launched in the early years of China's Cultural Revolution (1966–76). It focuses on how local officials, acting in a space created by the Central Cultural Revolution Group and the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, worked to control the damage wrought by the political campaign and justified their activities by adapting the rhetoric of revolution. Based on the archival documents of the Shanghai Bureau of Culture, this article traces the reinvention of the cultural bureaucracy and the subsequent shift in the language of preservation. It argues that during the Cultural Revolution, there was an institutionalized and ideologically legitimated movement to protect historic sites and cultural objects. Faced with the destruction of antiquity, Shanghai officials instead proposed its rectification, defending cultural relics in the name of revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Between 1991 and 2001, Qian Xuesen, China's leading missile expert, was given an array of honourable titles by the state, followed by eulogistic narratives by the media and his biographers. This article analyses three forms of Chinese narratives about Qian: commendations from the state, stories told by his biographers, and Qian's self-presentation. It aims to show that although the CCP showered Qian with compliments seemingly because of his contributions to China's national defence and space programmes, the real reasons were Qian's political fidelity and the Party's aim to build a role model for intellectuals to emulate. The article demonstrates that Maoist practices of “hero construction” and using history for the present persist in the post-Mao period with some variations, and that the writings of “unofficial history” are heavily influenced by official history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article describes agricultural technology extension, access to channels of information and adoption of agricultural technology in rural Guizhou, China. It addresses the questions of whether the agricultural technology extension process matches the needs of the villagers and whether in using extension services and adopting technologies there are differences between older and younger cohorts of farming households. Few farming households can get formal extension services and their main channels of information are neighbours, relatives and friends. Older cohort households like to learn by experience, while younger ones like to use written materials. There also appear to be differences in the ways women and men adopt technologies. Technology delivery and farming households’ needs are not well matched. Finally, the migration context has an influence on the suitability of technologies and the feasibility of applying them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China promulgated the Open Government Information Decree and Measures of Environmental Information Disclosure (Trial) in 2007, but the Pollution Information Transparency Index revealed the poor implementation of disclosing environmental information in 113 cities in 2008. Adopting a comparative case study approach, this article uses a combination of the “cultural roots” and “webs of dialogue” analytical frameworks to analyse the pilot environmental information disclosure programmes in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province, and Hohhot, Inner Mongolia from 1999 to 2000. It finds that when the programme was top-down, the commitment, perception and resources of leadership determined its success and nondisclosure did not receive any public attention. However, when environmental NGOs are actively engaged, pressure can be from the bottom up, webs of dialogue can be established, and the public can be empowered to seek and use environmental information actively in development decision-making and redressing pollution harms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contrary to the prevailing view in the literature that Chinese courts have been notoriously incompetent in enforcement, this article contends that the situation may not be so bad. Based on in-depth fieldwork investigations of 60 debt collection cases at a basic-level court in the less developed hinterland region of China, this study finds that the majority of plaintiffs recover most of their debts through the court. Local protectionism persists, but seems to be contained within legal rules. Nevertheless, the underdeveloped economy of the region has limited the effectiveness of several core judicial reform measures. Unlike the situation in more developed regions, the forces of economic development outside the court have not been significant enough to reshape the power structure inside the court. The overall situation suggests, however, that China's efforts in the field of legal reform, including the promulgation of substantive laws as well as strengthened institution-building have, in general, been conducive to the effective processing of routine debt collection cases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a chronicle of events related to internal developments and the foreign relations of China for July-September 2010. Internal developments discussed include central government appointments, military exercises in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, and growth of the gross domestic product (GDP). International developments include visits to China by South African President Jacob Zuma, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a collision between a Chinese fishing boat and a Japanese patrol boat, and China's opposition to European Union (EU) sanctions on Iran.

The article introduces reports published within the issue of the journal including one by Gao Xiaoxian on female participation in Chinese local politics, another by Ellen Judd on marriage in rural China, and one by Danning Wang on the intergenerational transmission of family property.

In the flow of the material, cultural and moral influences shaping contemporary Chinese society, individual desires for emotional communication are reconstituting the meaning of the subject, self and responsibility. This article draws on fieldwork conducted in Beijing between 2000 and 2004 to discuss the gendered dimensions of this process through an analysis of the implications of the "communicative intimacy" sought by mothers and daughters in their mutual relationship. What could be termed a "feminization of intimacy" is the effect of two distinct but linked processes: on the one hand, a market-supported naturalization of women's roles, and on the other, the changing subjective articulation of women's needs, desires and expectations of family and personal relationships. I argue that across these two processes, the celebration of a communicative intimacy does not signify the emergence of more equal family or gender relationships, as recent theories about the individualization and cultural democratization of daily life in Western societies have argued. As families and kin groups, communities and neighbourhoods are physically, spatially and socially broken up, and as gender differences in employment and income increase, media and "expert" encouragement to mothers to become the all-round confidantes, educators and moral guides of their children affirms women's responsibilities in the domestic sphere. Expectations of mother—daughter communication reshape the meaning — and experience — of the individual subject in the changing character of the urban family at the same time as they reinforce ideas about women's gendered attributes and the responsibilities associated with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fifth village elections in 2003 in Shaanxi province only 184 women were elected as village heads, a mere 0.6 per cent of the total. By the sixth elections in 2006 the number had almost doubled, and by the seventh elections in 2009 it had increased to 544. Together with the women on village Party committees, there were now 1,193 women village officials throughout the province, 4.5 per cent of the total. In contrast to leading women cadres within the formal structures of the political system, these village heads owed their positions not to nomination by upper levels of Party and government leadership but to success in fiercely competitive elections. Their success was the result of a grass-roots movement launched by a civil organization, the Shaanxi Research Association for Women and Family, to mobilize women's political participation. Their activities and trajectories had an impact on the local gender division of labour and entrenched gender attitudes that far surpassed the numbers alone. This article examines the collaboration between the Shaanxi Research Association for Women and Family and the All-China Women's Federation to mobilize women's political participation in Heyang county, Shaanxi province. It particularly focuses on the role of the Research Association in drawing on international feminist practices of women's empowerment to provide participatory based gender training courses as the key to persuading women to confront local and institutional resistance. Collaboration between the Research Association and the Women's Federation opened up access to significant resources both within and outside the system, creating new spaces for the articulation and protection of women's rights. Originating in a grass-roots movement, this collaboration can be seen as an instance of China's contemporary movement for gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I re-think the complex legacies of the Maoist era and their relationship to the contemporary decline in rural women's leadership. By focusing on some of the gendered dimensions of rural development policy, it becomes evident that many "traditional" beliefs about the leadership abilities of rural women were given new life during the Maoist era. Prior to the Cultural Revolution rural women had two dominant paths of "liberation" or jiefang available to them: one that involved a liberation through the female body and household, the path of dangjia, and one that involved a liberation from the constraints of the female body and household, the path of fanshen. In this article I show how the simultaneous implementation of these two paths of liberation on a unique women-led Mu Guiying Brigade during the Great Leap Forward reproduced the problem of the political unacceptability of rural women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a study of socialist feminist cultural practices in the early PRC. It investigates stories behind the scenes and treats the All-China Women's Federation's official journal Women of China as a site of feminist contention to reveal gender conflicts within the Party, diverse visions of socialist transformation, and state feminist strategies in the pursuit of women's liberation. A close examination of discrepancies between the covers and contents of the magazine explicates multiple meanings in establishing a socialist feminist visual culture that attempted to disrupt gender and class hierarchies. Special attention to state feminists' identification with and divergence from the Party's agenda illuminates a unique historical process in which a gendered democracy was enacted in the creation of a feminist cultural front when the Party was consolidating its centralizing power. The article demonstrates a prominent "gender line" in the socialist state that has been neglected in much of the scholarship on the Mao era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article highlights the case of a rural north-east Chinese village where youth labour mobility is a marriage strategy deployed by parents and engaged in by young people given constraints on education and income in the countryside. While some rural mothers and their daughters do make the fairytale of "marrying-up" into an urban household come true, for most rural young women migrants the self-oriented consumption that they are encouraged to pursue free of rural domestic responsibilities sets them up for heartbreak when they are brought back for a rural marriage. As long as rural households are left to rely on the "insurance" of land and a younger generation to work it and provide labour of domestic subsistence, they will pull sons (and wives for them) back to the countryside, and try to marry daughters to urban households to expand their network of security. This new twist on an old managerial strategy sets up a tragic conflict: young men are encouraged to return to the countryside, while young women are pushed to provide a "uniting bridge" into the city and, when they fail, are brought back to the countryside for marriage. If the experiences of families in Huangbaiyu village are not an anomaly but signal a broader trend, a generation of returnee young women who are frustrated and angry in rural marriages and abandon their husbands and parents-in-law will dramatically influence the future of China's development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information from a variety of news sources on Chinese political, military, economic and social affairs as well as information on the 14th and 15th sessions of the 11th National People's Congress Standing Committee. It discusses changes in leadership in China's Military Districts and notes the presence of Chinese naval vessels in Asian waters. It reports on economic growth and the success of China's stimulus package, discusses the impact of droughts in Southern China and reports on labour conditions at Chinese companies.

This article analyses an emerging African trading community in Guangzhou, China. It is argued that migrant communities such as this one act as linguistic, cultural and economic bridges between their source communities and their host communities, even in the midst of tensions created by incidents such as immigration restrictions and irregularities. Sociolinguistic and socio-cultural profiles of this community are built, through questionnaire surveys and interviews, to address issues such as why Africans go to Guangzhou, which African countries are represented, what languages are spoken there, how communication takes place between Africans and Chinese, what socio-economic contributions Africans in Guangzhou are making to the Chinese economy, and how the state reacts to this African presence. Following from the argument that this community acts as a bridge for Africa-China relations it is suggested that both the Chinese and the African governments should work towards eliminating the harassment of members in this community by many Guangzhou law enforcement officials and instead harness the contributions of this community to promote Africa-China socio-economic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chen Shui-bian achieved an international reputation for his promotion of Taiwan independence. Whilst that reputation may have been well earned, the analyses on which this conclusion is based are frequently flawed in two ways. First, by using an undifferentiated notion of independence, they tend to conflate sovereignty with less threatening expressions of Taiwanese identity and pro-democracy discourse. Second, by failing to take into account the impact of immediate strategic context, analysts ignore a fundamental element of democratic political communication. In our empirical analysis of more than 2,000 of Chen's speeches, we seek to avoid both flaws by unpacking the concept of independence and taking into account Chen's strategic relationship with his primary audiences. Our findings challenge popular portrayals of Chen, but more importantly they have strong implications for policy makers and students of political rhetoric with regard to current and future ROC presidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the October 2008 slapping incident of historian Yan Chongnian as a case study, this article attempts to contextualize and critically examine the articulation of Han supremacism on the Chinese internet. It demonstrates how an informal group of non-elite, urban youth are mobilizing the ancient Han ethnonym to challenge the Chinese Communist Party's official policy of multiculturalism, while seeking to promote pride and self-identification with the Han race (han minzu) to the exclusion of the non-Han minorities. In contrast to most of the Anglophone literature on Chinese nationalism, this article seeks to employ "Han" as a "boundary-spanner," a category that turns our analysis of Chinese national identity formation on its head, side-stepping the "usual suspects" (intellectuals, dissidents and the state itself) and the prominent role of the "foreign other" in Chinese ethnogenesis, and instead probing the unstable plurality of the self/othering process in modern China and the role of the internet in opening up new spaces for non-mainstream identity articulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]