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The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee set the 'modernization of the state governance system and governing capacity' as the overall objective of 'comprehensive deepening reform,' which has become an important political aspect of the 'New Normal' in Xi Jinping's era. Since then, the research on the theory and practice of the state governance model, state governance capacity, and social governance has become popular. By defining the concept of governance and investigating social governance model in China, this article analyses the institutional foundation restricting the transition of the social governance model in China, expounds the connotation and development goal of social governance alongside the state governance system modernization, and argues that the new development trend of 'social governance' is to make the transition to the self-governing model based on democracy and rule of law, and pluralistic cooperation between state and society. The main function of the government is not to exercise administrative intervention and control over the society, nor to replace societal actions or to take on everything by itself, rather it is to steer, standardize, support, and serve the social self-governance by exercising laws, rules, and regulations, democratic consultation, and social policies. This article suggests that further deepening political restructuring and achieving the transformation of government functions is the necessary condition to foster and promote social governance capacity and to achieve the transformation of the governance model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governance reform has emerged as an element of the Chinese Communst Party's development strategy in the era of the 'new normal.' This article examines the implementation of online consultation, a prominent instrument of governance reform-institutionalized under Hu Jintao and championed by Xi Jinping-in which officials provide interested parties with opportunities to offer feedback on proposed public policies. The research assembles original data regarding the online consultation practices of more than one hundred central government ministries and provincial governments. The analysis demonstrates that online consultation practices are more developed in provincial governments than central government ministries. Online consultation is more advanced in the disclosure of proposed policies than in the circulation of feedback submitted in response to draft laws and regulations. Finally, online consultation is primarily utilized by organizations with substantial resources, as well as organizations operating in environments not characterized by fundamental political sensitivities. These results suggest that, within well-specified limits, online consultation increases information disclosure and public participation in government decision making and, therefore, holds promise as a Party-led, incremental administrative response to the governance challenges of China's 'new normal.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012 he faced the major tasks of fighting corruption, getting beyond the stymied collective leadership of Hu Yaobang, structural reform of the economy, and promoting the rule of law. In his first term Xi has made significant progress in all these areas through his presidential style of leadership, though not without problems. The key task of his likely second term (the 19th Central Committee (CC), 2017-2022) will be to establish a 'new normal' of leadership structure and habits that will provide political continuity for a moderately prosperous China and a CPC entering its second century. The changes are foreshadowed in the documents of the Sixth Plenum of the 18th CC released in November 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private business is among the many things that comprise the 'new normal' in Xi Jinping's China. Given the Communist Party's socialist transformation of the private sector in the 1950s and its concerted suppression of 'tails of capitalism' over the next 20 years, it was surprising that it began to legitimize private business in 1978. It did this to address a number of pressing social and economic problems. After a slow start, micro enterprises began to increase in numbers and scale, and the party passed several amendments to the state constitution and revised its ideological stance to make private business a normal and legitimate component of the economic field, and to recruit private entrepreneurs into the party. Nonetheless, the 'new' normal continues to evolve and China's new capitalists walk a vague line between acceptance and vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnitude of China's energy needs and global energy acquisitions, and their recent emergence as key features of the international system, raise many sensitive questions: will China adapt to or reshape the international system as historically defined by the hegemonic West, and what is the role of its energy policy, politics, and resource nationalism in a possible new Great Game? While much of the current literature posits an either/or approach (China adapts to energy market or tries to redefine them as a part of a wider political plan), our hypothesis is that China is essentially a pragmatic actor who reacts to the forces in presence, rather than a revisionist power with a grand plan to realign the world order to suit its needs and satisfy some kind of pre-established grand vision. We posit that China goes beyond conformity with or resistance to the established energy market and the power relations they underpin: While local circumstances may be considered variables, its fixed objective is a stable international order and the pragmatic satisfaction of its energy needs in order to insure continued economic growth and general stability at home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]