Search

In this paper, we examine the role played by religion in a struggle waged by Hui Muslim villagers against land expropriation. Religion can provide powerful resources for protest movements, especially for religious minorities, but it can also be dangerous. This is particularly true in China where the state has had little toleration of autonomous organization and has long been suspicious of religious organization, especially among ethnic minorities. Scholarly literature about collective action by religious minorities in China has focused on protests about cultural and political issues – and the repression of such protests – but there has been relatively little scholarship about protests by religious minorities over economic issues. The number of protests over economic conflicts has increased in recent years, and the state has been more tolerant of economic than of political protests. These conditions have shaped the following questions: what happens when villagers employ religious ideas and use religious organization to advance economic demands? How effective are religious ideas and organization as tools of mobilization? How do government authorities respond? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines recent trends in inequality and poverty and the effects of distributional policies in China. After a discussion of data and measurement issues, we present evidence on national, as well as rural and urban, inequality and poverty. We critically examine a selection of policies pursued during the Hu–Wen decade that had explicit distributional objectives: the individual income tax, the elimination of agricultural taxes and fees, minimum wage policies, the relaxation of restrictions on rural–urban migration, the minimum living standard guarantee programme, the “open up the west” development strategy, and the development-oriented rural poverty reduction programme. Despite these policies, income inequality in China increased substantially from the mid-1990s through to 2008. Although inequality stabilized after 2008, the level of inequality remained moderately high by international standards. The ongoing urban–rural income gap and rapid growth in income from private assets and wealth have contributed to these trends in inequality. Policies relaxing restrictions on rural–urban migration have moderated inequality. Our review of selected distributional policies suggests that not all policy measures have been equally effective in ameliorating inequality and poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Countries endowed with rich natural resources such as fuels and minerals often fall behind in human development. Does resource endowment hamper human capital development in China, a country that hosts rich resources in many of its regions? Through cross-regional and longitudinal statistical analysis and field research in selected mining areas, this study finds that resource dependence reduces government expenditure on human capital-enhancing public goods including education and health care. The local economic structure and reduced demand for labour, the shifting of government responsibilities onto mining enterprises, and the myopia of local residents and officials all discourage the local governments in resource-rich regions from investing in human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The rise of private sector business in urban China has led to more women engaging in low-end self-employment. This study, however, reveals a more complicated story in the countryside. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted in a Chinese village, this study finds that the women took the lead in developing sideline self-employment and were then attracted to rural wage employment in the 1980s. With the privatization of rural industries and the rise of capital-intensive self-employment in the 1990s, some women were forced into low-end self-employment, but others were attracted to high-end self-employment, forging individual careers and family ventures. In more recent times, younger women have been more inclined to work on-and-off, balancing self-employment pursuits with the desire to be a good mother. This pattern marks a shift from the continuous multitasking practised by the older generation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is well established that returns on education are higher for women than for men in urban China. We argue that this finding, while accurate, is misleading owing to its individualist perspective. The income to which most working-age women and men have access includes not only their own income, but also spouse income. Furthermore, decisions about participation and investment in the labour force, both consequential for income trajectories, are likely to be made with partner income and potential income in mind. To our knowledge, no research in China has explored the returns to education enjoyed via spouse income, or the implications of pooling couple income, for illuminating the returns to schooling difference for women and men. In this article, using data from the China Urban Labour Survey (2001), we argue that the returns for women, conventionally defined, are higher than for men because many women trade their own income for spouse income, and this is particularly true among less educated women. We demonstrate, first, that women who are more educated are less likely to get married, while the reverse is true for men. Second, we show that among couples there is evidence of a trade-off in investments in careers. Moreover, among couples, the less educated the woman and the more educated the man, the less likely the couple is to depend heavily on her income. Finally, we show that among couples there is a compensating reverse pattern of returns differences by sex when income is conceptualized as spouse income. Thus, in terms of total couple income, there are no returns differences by sex. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Popular satisfaction with current standards of living in reform-era China is explored in this article, using survey data from the 2004 China Inequality and Distributive Justice Project. Three major patterns are found: first, people of rural origin, with low levels of education and living in the west region, who are disadvantaged in the inequality hierarchy, report greater satisfaction with current standards of living than do privileged urbanites, the highly educated and residents in the coastal east. Second, inequality-related negative life experiences and social cognitive processes including temporal and social comparisons, material aspirations, and life goal orientations mediate the effects of socioeconomic characteristics. Third, the social sources of satisfaction with current standards of living vary across urban, rural and migrant residents. It is suggested that these patterns have largely stemmed from the unique political economic institutional arrangement and stratification system in China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's increasing, and increasingly visible, engagement in Latin America has led to a variety of analyses, many based on either international relations notions of realism or international political economy precepts of trade. Rather than seeing China's rhetoric on its relations with Latin America as fluff that conceals a harder reality, this article takes rhetoric seriously as a device of “framing and claiming”: a way in which political elites in China interpret the fast-changing developing world and China's place in it. The article explores how political elites have understood the sources of China's own domestic development and then projected those notions on to other parts of the developing world, through earlier “fractal” logics of development whereby each state repeats one model of development in its own way and a currently dominant “division of labour” logic that posits one integrated model of development whereby complementarity and comparative advantage hold sway. The article concludes with a comparison of China's relations with Peru and Brazil, suggesting that China's bilateral relations with Brazil indicate a newer, emerging rhetoric of global partnership based on equality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There has been considerable concern in Latin America over the implications of increased competition from China for local industry. These concerns include the possibility of “deindustrialization,” the increased “primarization” of the region's exports and the difficulties of upgrading manufactured exports into higher technology products. This article examines the impact of Chinese competition both in the domestic market and in export markets on Brazilian industry. It documents the increased penetration of Chinese manufactures in the Brazilian market and the way in which Brazilian exports have lost market share to China in the US, European Union and four Latin American countries. Brazil, because of its more developed and locally integrated industrial sector, is not typical of other Latin American countries and the article also discusses the relevance of the Brazilian experience for the region as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using data from a 2004 national survey, we examine the recent trends in the conditions of migrant workers in China. Our discussion engages the debate in the existing literature between the migrant workers as victims of China's economic growth and as a newly emerging political force with growing bargaining power. The study focuses on three dimensions of migrant workers' status: their socio-economic conditions, relations with rural and urban residents, and conflict resolution behaviour. The findings indicate that while migrant workers continue to occupy more blue-collar and service jobs than urban residents, their economic, social and political status has improved. In some areas, migrant workers show even more political activism than both rural and urban residents. Migrant workers' growing social influence is a positive development in China's political diversification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has debated the relative importance of such factors as human capital, political capital and region in determining workers' earnings in reform-era urban China. This article argues that a main agent of social stratification in contemporary China continues to be the danwei, the work unit. Using data from a 1999 survey we conducted in three large Chinese cities, Wuhan, Shanghai and Xi'an, we assess the extent to which workers' earnings (including regular wages, bonuses and subsidies) depend on the profitability of their danwei. Results show that the financial situation of the danwei is one of the most important determinants of earnings in today's urban China. Furthermore, the importance of danwei profitability does not vary by city or by employment sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the electricity transfer project in Guizhou Sheng, China. Infrastructure development; Recentralization of the state political and economic control; Diversification of its economy.

Focuses on the economic condition in Qinghai, China. Development of the province's infrastructure and environmental sustainability; Absence of the province's cultural development strategy; Prospects for economic development.