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Patriotic campaigns and mass mobilization draw on existing xenophobic attitudes of the public, reinforcing the 'us vs. them' dualism between China and 'the West'. However, patriotic campaigns are not always top-down, state-led, nor are they always primarily driven by political ideology. Patriotic content appeals to a growing nationalist audience who consumes a mixed feeling of perceived victimization at the hand of foreign aggression and the pride arising from being a Chinese citizen. This paper argues that the profitability of patriotic content circulating on social media exacerbated the tension between market-driven grassroots patriotism and state-led patriotic campaigns. The tension grows out of, and is manifested in, the online popular debate around economically driven, grassroots 'patriotic' content that can challenge the state state-led patriotic rhetoric. While the state sometimes strategically co-opts some patriotic contents into its own patriotic narratives, it also delegitimises other undesired ones through labels such as 'high-level black' (gaoji hei) or 'low-level red' (diji hong). These labels were initially used to differentiate meticulously crafted political satire and parody from incompetent, illogical and vulgar propaganda pieces that unintendedly blemish the state's patriotic campaigns, but later evolved into an exercise of power to distance the CCP from undesired patriotic content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of bilateral ties in 1950, the China–Pakistan relationship has grown significantly. Known as Pakistan's 'all-weather friend', bilateral economic cooperation has been advanced by the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) agreement, worth US$62 billion of Chinese investment in Pakistan. Due to its geo-economic and geopolitical importance, the CPEC is considered a 'game changer' by Beijing and Islamabad. However, since its initiation in 2015, the CPEC has also been a source of tension between centre and provincial governments in Pakistan. This paper analyses the impact of the CPEC on nation-building in Pakistan. In the light of nation-building theories, it further argues that the CPEC has provided Pakistan with much-needed opportunities to address inter-provincial and federal–provincial discord through dialogue and compromises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the emergence of the 'three rural issues' and rural crisis, a new co-operative movement has been witnessed in rural China, which is different from the former revolutionary communalist co-operative movement. This social movement can help to understand and rebuild civil society in China, which has, more often than not, been criticized as not genuine, civil nor society-based. Following the debate's background of the juxtaposition of a fast economic reform together with slow social and political reforms in China, the paper addresses a crucial question on the impact of economic development on civil society dynamics in China. By identifying the causal mechanisms of the new co-operative development and the conditions needed for them to develop, the paper presents some implications of the co-operative model in today's society. These causal mechanisms are set within the context of one historical process evolving with a path dependency. Using this theoretical framework, it further presents the empirical observations. Through the findings it is concluded that the new co-operative movement in rural China can be considered as a mild liberalization within civil society's sphere. While questioning a popularly used perspective examining the voluntary/non-profit nature of civil society organizations and excluding the economic aspect within civil society studies in China, the paper suggests an alternative approach representing an inclusive third sector with diverse organizations that combine both economic and social aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interaction between two perspectives—China as a world factory and Chinese business knowledge—has been complicated by the ever greater tensions generated from the national—China—and the transnational actors—Chinese—in understanding the economic driving force behind the real meanings of the rise of China. The construction process of the rise of Chinese economic power puts the state in direct contact with regional and global economic/political changes. On the one hand, Chinese business knowledge, identities, economic and political interactions also give rise to the notion of network building and sub-regional development, which help transcend country-specific relations. On the other hand, the notion of the rise of China is still being re-constructed through the interplay between regional and global political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper it is argued that Taiwan succeeded in developing by deviating from the currently popular 'Washington Consensus' strategy in specific ways. In particular, it developed investment strategies that have now reached a crucial 'Schumpeterian' phase. This has important implications for high and information technology sectors. Following Schumpeter we assume that innovation in specific firms can have economy-wide effects. Models based on this idea can be shown to have multiple equilibria. The idea of a positive feedback loop innovation system or POLIS is formalized by picking an appropriate sequence of equilibria over time. It is shown that POLIS has empirical relevance by applying the formal model to an actual economy. Recent financial crisis in many Asian countries, most notably South Korea, seems to have reversed the conventional wisdom regarding the East Asian 'miracle'. This paper applies the concept of a POLIS to show that neither the current view that the miracle was a mirage nor the earlier contrarian view that the growth was a result of factor accumulation only is correct. Ultimately technological transformation--in particular the creation of a positive feedback loop innovation system is what makes the difference between sustained growth and gradual or sudden decline. Although various problems remain in both the real and the financial sectors, the successes of Taiwan in building the preconditions for an innovation system are worth examining. Upon careful examination of Taiwan's system of innovation within the above Schumpeterian model it is found that of all the 'miracle' economies Taiwan has the best chance of building a POLIS in the near future. Because of Taiwan's strength in building a POLIS, the PRC can also benefit from continuing contact with Taiwan through trade and FDI from Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Guangdong is the province one step ahead in China and Guangzhou is the city one step ahead in Guangdong.' Being one of the most economically active cities in China, Guangzhou citizens have generally experienced improved living standards and a better quality of life since the economic reform started in the late 1970s. What is also true is that economic modernization has changed the social structure, allowing far more social mobility in the post-Mao society. Nowadays, people living in Guangzhou have more job choices in a relatively free labour market. This paper is set in such a socio-economic context to examine the job preferences and work ethics of Guangzhou citizens, with particular reference to what changes have taken place in people's work values after the adoption of a market economy in the mainland. The paper is based on our current research projects conducted in the Guangzhou area to examine how socio-economic changes have affected people's value orientations and is confined to discussion of whether people living in Guangzhou have changed their attitudes towards work in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines China's transformation from different perspectives, including economic, social and political, and discusses how these transformations are linked to the country's open-door policy. The paper argues that the most powerful driving force behind China's rapid transformation is its openness. At the domestic level, openness creates an institutional environment in which different existing factors reorganize themselves, thus providing new dynamics for change. At the international level, openness links China and the world together, and the interplay between China and the world produces an external dynamism for China's internal changes. Openness, however, has led to social injustice. Society often becomes the weakest link in the process of globalization and opening up; therefore, it must be defended by all means and in all major policy areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on Guizhou and Yunnan, two provinces with similar geographies, institutions and natural resource endowments, this paper asks why provincial leaders adopted markedly disparate economic strategies. Using data from the early 1980s to 2003 gathered from fieldwork and secondary sources, it focuses on three political factors purported to explain differences in provincial policy: (a) constraints and opportunities from central authorities; (b) characteristics of the provinces; and (c) attributes of individual provincial leaders. I argue that while the center constrains and encourages certain actions and approaches in the provinces, the experiences and background of individual provincial leaders further affects the choice of strategies implemented there. Moreover, once a particular course is set and receives central support, a form of path dependency can encourage the strategy to continue even after the original leaders have departed. While emphasizing the importance of characteristics of local leaders and their relationship with the center, the paper questions the assumptions on which research focusing on elite characteristics has so far been based, and suggests alternative approaches. The results have implications for our understanding not only of these two provinces, but also central-provincial relations and the origins of the economic policies of Chinese President Hu Jintao. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on survey data from rural Fujian Province of China, this paper shows that economic development, especially village collective revenue, plays an important role in village elections. With economic development and industrialization, collective revenues will increase and differentiated interests will develop among villagers. Village elections are institutional channels for villagers to articulate their interests. The research findings show that it is the collective revenue and the relative living standard of the village compared with other townships within the same county or district that arouse villagers' interests for participation and candidates' motives for campaigning, and thus enhance the implementation of elections. The paper concludes that village-level economic development is crucial for the implementation of competitive elections. With economic development, village committees will control more collective revenues, thus increasing the stakes villagers have in elections. This will result in greater participation by villagers in elections, and in more competitive elections. Increased competitiveness of elections will facilitate changes in the institutions regarding village committee elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies growth equations to examine the impact of region-specific factors on China's growth in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, this study focuses on investigating the role of capital formation, initial conditions, labour productivity, human capital, openness, infrastructure, foreign capital and economic reform in China's regional growth. It is found that those variables account for 70-90% of China's growth in the past decades. The robustness of the findings in this study is tested by estimating alternative models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will study one of the unique population movements in modern history: the circular movement of students and trainees between China and the Soviet Union from 1950 to 1966. This population movement includes more than 38,000 Chinese who were trained by the leading Soviet Union industrial enterprises, research centers and institutions of higher learning. These returned students and trainees from the Soviet Union captured a considerable number of prominent positions in the Chinese leadership from the 1980s to the 1990s. The explanation of their political impact relies on the domestic country's politics and international context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Governance is a hot topic in China, as well as among political scientists. Ways of thinking about it can be improved. This essay offers a ‘neo-functionalist’ method to test for successful or unsuccessful governance of reform stability in China. It takes account of the need for participation in effective governance. Steering a state (or any part of a state) requires attention to multiple sizes of polity—especially several medial sizes in a country as large as China. Governance has varied over time during the ‘reform’ era, when anti-reform conservatives have remained important in many nested political networks. The paper shows variation of governance over time, over sizes of polity and over four sample governance functions: managing the economy, maintaining orderly stability, linking ‘social’ parts of the polity to the government, and choosing cadres. It shows how these categories exhaust a logical field that is at least implicit in any analysis of governance roles, and it suggests the value of a ‘circulation of elites’ paradigm when thinking about governance success or failure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China is currently not only the most populous country on earth, but also the world's largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter. As China's population growth continues contributing to the overall global population increase, the country remains a significant player in the global problems related to climate change. The Chinese government, however, has recognized that a low-carbon economy is in the country's long-term economic and social interests and this is now a key part of its national development strategy. This paper examines the evolution of policies for sustainability in China and explores their compositions, functions and operational mechanisms. Some emerging features and trends in China's development model are examined, arguing that they represent a clear shift towards sustainability. Further problems and challenges associated with this change and how they impact on China's policies and strategies are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's government launched the Western Region Development Strategy in 2000 with the aim of boosting economic development in 12 provinces, municipalities and autonomous administrative regions in the western part of the country. This paper presents the results of an assessment of the progress made so far and makes suggestions for better performance in the future. We conclude that although the western region has experienced impressive rates of economic growth, regional disparities in China have continued to widen in spite of the western regional strategy. We also develop a regional growth model to determine the major drivers of regional economic growth in the western region of China. Furthermore, the sources of regional disparities are examined using Morduch and Sicular's regression-based decomposition approach. These models are used for suggesting a more targeted package of regional development policies for the period beyond 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crippled economic and political reform in China has come with two schools of thought: the new-left and nationalism. The new-left focuses on domestic issues, while nationalism tackles more international relationships. This paper explores the effects of radical nationalism on China's democratization process. It argues that if nationalism takes the dominant position in China's political process, Chinese reform will go astray. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China was a latecomer to the preferential trading bandwagon that has swept East Asia in the years since the financial crises. The Chinese government was unwilling to go down the path of negotiating bilateral and minilateral agreements until the terms of its accession to the World Trade Organization were finalized. Since then, it has become one of the most active participants in the negotiation of preferential trading arrangements, currently being engaged in negotiations with more than 20 countries. The paper will address the following questions about China's move to preferential trade: (a) What forces are driving China's approach to the negotiation of preferential trade agreements? (b) To what extent is it possible to untangle economic and political motivations in China's choice of partners for PTA negotiations? And, which economic interests are being pursued most aggressively? (c) How are conflicting domestic interests reconciled in the policy-making process? (d) To what extent will the new PTAs facilitate Chinese-dominated production networks in the regions? (e) What overall impact will the PTAs have on the Chinese economy? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the dispersion of household income in the course of economic development in Taiwan. Statistics show that inequality of income has increased since the early 1980s as the rate of economic growth has declined from 11.6% in 1986 to 4.1% in 2005. The empirical result on the relationship between economic growth and income distribution also fails to support the conventional inverted-U Kuznets curve. Factors leading to change in income disparity may be attributed to variations in family formation, economic structures, and the recent change in political leadership and institutional policy. Among them, increased single-parent families deteriorate overall income share, although growth in the service sector helps to alleviate inequity. The new political governance and policy reform since 2000 are detected to aggravate income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses several assumptions underlying the promotion of democracy and good governance in rural China. We draw on a 1999 survey of 120 villages in four counties, two in Anhui and two in Heilongjiang provinces (sample of 2,997 households, including villagers, cadres and entrepreneurs). First, we look at how institutionalized ‘democratic procedures’, such as secret ballots, multi-candidate elections, public nominations, and village contracts, are in these villages. Then we analyze villager views on economic development and democracy, finding that villagers want more democracy, even if the economy is doing well. Third, we assess their views on the election process; do they see elections as efficacious, fair, and competitive, or do they feel that the local power elite manipulate outcomes? Fourth, we found that the richest people are less supportive of democracy, with the most democratic being middle-income households. Finally, elections have increased local elite turnover, cadres understand this, and therefore, democracy does lead to good governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes empirical findings and results from the author's most recent research publication in Chinese: China's Unbalanced Economic Growth. It studies China's economic growth with a special emphasis on its regional disparities. It provides an analysis of China's overall economic landscape as well as an empirical study of China's unbalanced regional development. Based on its quantitative findings and results, the author predicts the emergence of ten Chinese metropolitan economies in the early twenty-first century and recommends a regional development strategy as well as implementation policies for China's future development. The major empirical findings, results and conclusions of this research are outlined in three sections: the first describes China's economic future—the emergence of ten regional metropolitan economies, the second reports the empirical findings of China's national and regional economic disparities and discusses policy implications, and the third investigates China's future economic growth and discusses its growth limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the serious widening of economic disparities in China during the last two decades. The economic disparities indicate that there is a substantially lower standard of living, and lower economic activity in the western region of China as compared with the eastern region. The causes of these disparities include a wide range of factors: geographical differences; government policies that address market distortions; preferential treatment that favors the eastern coastal areas; and an imbalance in China's industrial structure. To avoid further deterioration and a further widening of the disparities, Chinese leaders have embarked on the so-called 'Go West Program'. By adopting the node-axle theory, this study recommends that selected areas in the western region be considered as pilot nodes for this development, with each node networked to other a.xles for further development. The government's policy declaration on the 'Go West Program' should not lead one to be overly optimistic about this program. Evaluations of investment prospects in western China should take into consideration the constraints inherited by the western regions: a weak legal system, local government inefficiency, and inferior infrastructure and labor quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates China's economic growth potentials and limitation up to 2020 and recommends a trend of economic regionalization. A sustainable growing economy is a necessity for China's future stability. The growth sustainability of the Chinese economy depends essentially on its continued commitments to institutional reform and economic deregulation. China's relaxation of government intervention in economic activities has led and will be leading China to decentralize its central governmental authority over economic planning and control. This will consequently stimulate the emergence of regional economies in Mainland China. In the next two decades, there will likely be 10 regional economies with relatively independent industrial structures emerging in Greater China (or the Chinese Economic Area of Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and the Mainland) as a result of economic liberalization and decentralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst China's increasing foreign aid in education to Africa, its soft power remains insufficient. 'Telling China's story well' attributes the lack of soft power to inadequate communication. This article argues that the 'story' rather than 'telling' matters. It reveals that the education-for-economic development paradigm adopted by the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Education's reluctance toward Africa jointly shape China's ineffective practice in the international discourse. Institutional changes since 2018 can hardly alter this bureaucratic divide as the imbalanced capacity of China's economy and education remains. This article contributes to bureaucratic politics in foreign policymaking by identifying ministerial influences subject to their relevance to foreign policy rather than their occupancy of resources in the issue area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's meteoric economic rise has precipitated a debate about its growing profile in Europe through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In this context, for some observers Greece serves as an illustration of how China is also translating its economic power into actual political influence over small European states to Brussels' disadvantage. This article challenges such simplistic and state-centric views by considering the role of contingent and domestic factors and the wider strategic environment in which Sino-Greek relations have unfolded. It also highlights the agency of influential actors at the more micro-level of analysis. It argues that although China has achieved some limited political gains, the relationship remains mainly economics-driven at a time when Greece is strengthening strategic ties with its traditional allies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geo-economic rivalry is back on the international agenda, particularly in the field of high technology. Very often, technical standards are regarded as being a central arena of this competition. Surprisingly ignored is the question, how precisely technical standard-setting (such as Wi-Fi or 5G) empowers China. Based on the analysis of quantitative data, primary sources, and in-depth interviews, this article substantiates the widespread hypothesis that China's growing footprint in technical standardization empowers the Chinese party-state. It introduces seven proxies to measure influence on standard-setting. Next, it explains how technical standards can be utilized by states to gain economic, legal, political, and discursive influence. Finally, it shows thatChina's growing footprint in technical standardization is the result of party-state engagement, which provides leverage to China's political leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to explore the economic relationship between China and the surrounding dynamic Asian economies. It delves into China's influence over the Asian economies and whether this relationship has evolved in a market- and institution-led symbiotic manner. The three principal channels of regional integration analyzed in this article are trade, FDI and vertically integrated production networks. Another issue that this article explores is the so-called China ‘threat’ or ‘fear’ in Asia. The China threat implied that China was crowding out exports from the other Asian economies in the world market place. Also, as China became the most attractive FDI destination among developing countries, it was understood that China was receiving FDI at the expense of the Asian economies. These concerns were examined by several empirical studies and the inference was that they were exaggerated. The article concludes that China methodically expanded and deepened its economic ties with its regional neighbors. At the present juncture, China's integration with the surrounding Asian nations is deep. Both China and its dynamic Asian neighbors have benefited from this synergy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Liberal democracies in North America, Europe, and Japan have coalesced into a global power center with shared in-group values and a common foreign policy outlook. Despite its growing materialist capacities, China finds itself hardly closer to the great power center, perceiving itself instead condemned to the periphery and victimized by the assertion of the emerging global center. Confronted with this predicament, Chinese intellectuals and policy elites have debated over how China should relate to the world and the United States. Their answer remains uncertain, as China is still struggling to find the way out of the periphery. However, so long as it believes that the great power club is open to its membership, China will likely continue to try to live up to its self-identification as a responsible power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature suggests that China's rationale for the belt and road initiative was to stimulate infrastructural investment abroad and thus economic growth at home, foster economic ties with Eurasia, and counter the US pivot to Asia. Employing a domestic political economy perspective, this article suggests that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aimed to address China's three following vulnerabilities that could derail its economic growth and threaten its political regime—industrial surplus capacity, massive imports of energy through maritime transport instead of safer land routes, and under-development of the western region. Addressing these vulnerabilities helps to sustain China's economic model characterised by heavy reliance on investment and exports, protection of state firms, and massive energy input. Post-2012 data suggest that the BRI has partially mitigated these three vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's growing economic strength provides Beijing with potent instruments of economic statecraft to pursue political and strategic objectives. Yet studies of economic power and Chinese economic statecraft tend to concentrate on trade in goods, outbound investment, and international institutions. This article broadens this research program into trade in services by focusing on China's outbound tourism sector. Drawing on a variety of Chinese and English language sources, the authors describe the history and structure of the domestic regulatory framework governing Chinese outbound tourism, before studying instances where the government has apparently intervened for strategic purposes. By unpacking how Chinese consumers arrange overseas holidays, this article provides insights into how the market structure of this service industry creates both opportunities for and constraints on China's economic power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a gap between the elusive concept of Beijing Consensus and China's effective practices to promote economic growth at home and in other countries. This article aims to expound this phenomenon by examining both the rationale underlying China's structural transformation and the corresponding practices in development cooperation. Using a case study on the evolution of infrastructure construction within China and abroad, this article argues that China's success has little to do with a new pattern of state capitalism, but rather presents a different manner of understanding and facilitating modernization. Target-oriented non-linear synergism can drive comprehensive transformation more effectively in developing countries than model-oriented linear mechanism. With a consistent goal, the pragmatic thinking enables multiple stakeholders to coevolve in diverse contexts through open attitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising income inequality and the surge of civil disorder are two important socio-economic phenomena in contemporary China. This article empirically explores the relationship between inequality and the occurrence of mass incidents at the county level. The results show that in counties with higher income inequality, mass incidents tend to happen with a larger probability. Two psychological transmission channels exist: income inequality will make individuals not only feel unhappy and unsatisfied with their lives but also feel unsatisfied with the government, both of which will lead to a larger occurrence possibility of mass incidents. A significant proportion of mass incidents are associated with the encroachment on citizens' economic interests and on the relationship between the public and the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the following important but often overlooked variable in studies investigating China's cadre system: the city administrative level. Using a dataset covering Chinese municipal party secretaries from 2000 to 2017, this article finds that secretaries from sub-provincial cities are more likely to be promoted than those from prefecture-level cities. This result reveals that serving as a party secretary in sub-provincial cities may be a key step towards further promotion among those who become vice ministers at a young age. In addition, economic performance has a negligible effect on sub-provincial secretaries' better promotion prospects, highlighting the existence of heterogeneity caused by the city administrative level in the promotion tournament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's involvement with the Gulf monarchies has been built upon an economic foundation. With the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) this has expanded, as the Gulf monarchies see cooperation with China through MSRI projects as a means of advancing economic development programs necessary to move beyond single-resource rentier economies and relationships with external powers as a means of ensuring their security in an unstable region. This has important implications for the shape of the MSRI as a whole, and how it fits together with the larger BRI. China's BRI/MSRI success with participating states will be a matter of matching their specific domestic needs and strategic considerations with Chinese perceptions of the relative importance of those states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of subnational actors in China's foreign aid. It applies the terms of 'decentralized cooperation' and 'twinning' into the analysis of China's aid architecture, drawing a connection between aid and domestic politics. With evidence from East Africa, it argues that it is the endogenous twinning mechanism and the deep involvement of subnational actors that make Chinese aid structurally distinct from those of other donors, particularly in the area of health, agriculture and education. It finds that the involvement of subnational actors brings in more resources for the sustainability of China's aid programs, while the multiple faces and institutional capacity of subnational Chinese actors giving aid may require further examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iran is one of the countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). What effects will the realization of the BRI have on the geo economical and geopolitical status of Iran? On the one hand, this project can boost China's presence and influence in the political economy of Iran and its neighborhood, and create new domains of competition between Iran and China. On the other hand, it could contribute to the revival of Iran's historical role in the ancient Silk Road. Thus, to participate in this project, Iran is stuck between hope and fear. It is fearful for Iran because it has negative effects on Iranian interests, at the same time Iran is hopeful because it can enhance its economic development and raise its historical role as a bridge between the East and the West. As a result, Iran tries at the same time to develop its relationships with the EU as well as cooperation with China in the framework of the BRI. Iran tries to maximize its interests from the project and reduce its negative effects on its geo economic and geopolitical interests. Maintaining this fragile balance could face Iran 's active participation in the project with substantial challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beijing's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has exacerbated a longstanding concern about the power shift from the West to China. The existing debate, however, is both motivated by, and fixated on, the strategic concerns of and about great powers (and to a lesser extent, middle powers). What is often overlooked is the concerns and voices of smaller countries and contested regions where some of the power-shift symptoms allegedly unfold, such as the South Pacific. To traditional donors such as Australia, the power dynamism in the South Pacific is largely a linear, two-way model of power shift from Western donors to Beijing. Challenging this model, this article proposes a complex, three-way model to bring small and seemingly passive actors into the power shift equation. To illustrate, the article uses Papua New Guinea's (PNG) perceptions of China's aid vis-à-vis Australia's aid as a case study. Relying mostly on primary (interview) sources, this study not only reveals some nuanced attitudes of local actors toward the great-power interactions, but also highlights the hitherto neglected role and agency of Pacific Island nations and their domestic politics in the inherently complex power shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of ‘16 + 1’ framework substantially depends on how Central and Eastern European countries understand their fast-evolving relationship with China. This article investigates and analyses related perceptions and discusses their implications for ‘16 + 1’. Focusing on the Sino-Serbian relationship, the study reveals that the understanding of China and its growing involvement in the region oscillates between the extremes, yet that both positive and negative evaluations are not supported by the available empirical evidence and informed by a proper understanding of the context within which the relationship takes place. This is likely to result in a sense of disillusionment, as well as heightened concerns about the relationship with China, casting shadow over the prospects of the China-CEE relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economies of Africa require urgent structural transformation and the great challenge is how industrial development can aid this transformation process. China’s ability to sustain high productivity growth was underpinned by resource allocation from low-to-high productive sectors and this was the essence of its own modernization processes. Most African countries remain highly reliant on commodity exports in a depressed global environment, exacerbated by declining demand from China as the continent’s major trading partner. This article examines the dilemmas of Africa’s reliance on commodity exports but, equally importantly, it seeks to investigate how China, based on its own experience, could contribute to assisting African countries to move up value chains via the imperative of a concerted industrialization endeavour and the commitments China has made in this regard. This article suggests an incremental approach that emphasizes the importance of institution building as the optimal route for promoting Africa’s development on a sustained basis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among migrant worker NGOs conducted between 2011 and 2016, this article employs critical theories of citizenship to illustrate how migrant worker NGOs use a strategy of 'resistance through accommodation' to re-shape the citizenship regime and discourse in China. The dominant literature on labour activism tends to discount the potential for migrant worker NGOs to undertake resistance, on account of their dependency upon the state and the market. The article contends that while NGOs must engage in relations with the state and the market to ensure their own survival, their activism does not ultimately centre on either resisting or accommodating these actors directly, but rather upon a broader engagement process aimed at the strategic purpose of 'citizenship transformation'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the elite political competition in a large agrarian village in Hubei Province. Although known locally as well-governed, this village was actually a bifurcated political community with a host of problems. The power struggle between a few members of the village's political elite in the past two decades focused on the office of village Party secretary and produced a polarized politics of factionalism. The town Party committee played a crucial role in selecting the village's Party secretary for economic development with dubious results. This study also examines how and why a strongman Party secretary could hold on to power for 16 years despite an increasing opposition. It reveals the governing dilemma for a village that was hard to govern and the unintended consequences of the Party's recruitment policy for village leaders. Through the elite competition for the past two decades this study aims to capture a total picture of the village politics including its political ecology, agency and dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxation provides important inferences about the nature of non-oil authoritarian regimes. This article looks at taxation to understand the ruling Chinese Communist Party's relationship to society. It finds that the party has maintained fiscal capacity through non-intrusive transactional taxes that allow it to deliver more services in wealthier areas where potential dissent is greatest. This model is reaching its limits because of its negative impacts on economic growth and social equity. Attempts to expand new taxation sources--such as property value taxes or progressive and comprehensive personal income taxes--are difficult because of the prior reliance on transactional taxes. As a result, the CCP will rationally continue to rely on inefficient and inequitable taxation because of the political costs of pursuing a modern taxation system. The China case is indicative of the fiscal dynamics of durable authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While global commentators hail the unprecedented success of the Beijing Olympic Games, few have commented on the methods employed to promote urban development in China. This article develops a conceptual framework to unfold the Beijing Olympics and China's mega-event urbanization model, which feature 'playing games for leveraging land'. Literally, this informally translates to 'concept creation' and 'land and finance leverage paradigm'. Based on a detailed investigation of the way China has dealt with megaevents such as the Olympics and the Asian Games, this article begins with an analysis on the well-known Chinese 'land and leveraged finance' model. However, it goes a step further to reveal a much bigger picture and brings to light the deeper underlying logic behind China's 'mega-event urbanization model' as well as its legacy and consequence. It unfolds the intriguing relations between central and local governments; between functional/institutional systems (land, taxation and banking) in regard to territory and space; and between economic and political dynamics (local competition for both economic/GDP growth and individual political aspirations). This development model is unique to China and extraordinarily unconventional on a global scale which is unparalleled by any past experiences in other countries that have hosted the Olympic Games and other similar events. The ramifications of such ambitious and untested strategies could yield negative impacts on China's long-term development and harm the world economy in the global scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Xi Jinping era version of a China model of development continues law’s reform-era roles of generally market-oriented development (under newly challenging conditions), checking development-challenging threats (amid increased concerns over corruption) and reducing pressure for political change (at a time of intolerance toward dissent). The Xi-era version of law appears to be more ‘legalist’ (than its predecessor), still ‘reformist-developmentalist’ and more ‘Leninist’. The Xi-era project for law remains narrowly instrumentalist, uneven across subject matter and region, and beset by both ‘supply-side’ and ‘demand-side’ challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When the US restarted the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in 2009, speculation arose as to whether China would compete against it or cooperate by becoming a TPP member. Between 2010 and 2013, China shifted in stance from competition to cooperation in meeting the TPP challenge. By looking at both the economic and security dimensions, this article argues that China’s economic concern determines whether to react and its security concern determines the direction in which China reacts. Between 2010 and 2012 when security pressure was overwhelming and economic concern was not formidable, counterbalance was inevitable. In 2013, when anxiety over security pressure calmed down and economic concern grew more threatening, bandwagon became possible. This finding challenges the classical theory of the domino effect by pinpointing the importance of security consideration in where the free trade agreements (FTA) proliferation heads to. It also supplements the emulation–competition dichotomy by highlighting that whether the FTA initiator is considered a threat or a model is not fixed but contingent upon the initiator’s changing relation with the responding nation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using data from a 2011 national household survey, this study examines the factors shaping urban residents’ prejudice toward rural-to-urban migrants and the impacts of prejudice on rural migrants’ integration into urban communities. The author addresses the endogeneity of the prejudice variable by employing an instrumental variable method. The results show that urban residents with higher education and household income report stronger prejudice. Also, urban residents with urbanhukouat birth are more prejudiced toward rural migrants. Given thathukoustatus at birth is tied to parentalhukoustatus, this result implies that prejudice can be transferred across generations. With regards to rural migrants’ integration into urban communities, high levels of prejudice in one’s current county of residence reduces perceived social standing of rural migrants and increases the number of livelihood problems they encounter. The author also conducts a falsification test, which provides support that the effect of urban residents’ prejudice on rural migrants’ integration is causal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on interviews in local commissions of China’s Party discipline inspection (CDIs), this article investigates the effectiveness, internal limits and selectiveness of CDIs in the anticorruption campaign. It uses a micro-level analysis to explore the role of law in affecting the CDIs’ anticorruption work and concludes that local CDIs remain heavily affected by the same-level local governments, but are effective in combating local corruption due to recent reforms that have strengthened higher-level CDIs’ control over lower-level CDIs. The current internal decision-making systems of the CDIs make their anticorruption work heavily dependent upon the central leadership. Their work is still not institutionalized and relies heavily on higher-level intervention. Nevertheless, law played a crucial role by providing the bottom lines to set the decision-making standards at different stages. Legal reforms should aim to further clarify and lift these baseline standards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the greatest challenges facing China today is the central government's ability to ensure that policies are implemented effectively at the local level, particularly policies that seek to make China's economic growth model more sustainable. These policies face resistance from local authorities and enterprises that benefit from the status quo. This raises a key research question: why do some provinces more fully implement these central policies? We argue the extent of local implementation is best conceptualized as a rational balance between economic and political incentives: localities with regulatory autonomy, low regulatory capacity and alternative interests will not fully implement policies that are at odds with local economic imperatives. By examining a critical case of central policy implementation—industrial energy intensity reduction in the eleventh five-year plan—this article demonstrates that, regardless of industrial makeup or economic development, provinces that have greater regulatory autonomy for noncompliance coupled with alternative economic interests do not, on average, perform as well. Using a nested analysis approach this study illustrates this argument with both quantitative analysis and original case study evidence from fieldwork interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article provides a Chinese perspective on the terms of China's WTO accession, highlighting the negative impact of some discriminatory conditions that China accepted in order to join the WTO on its foreign trade and global competitiveness in the last decade. The author uses the non-market economy status of China as a case study to support the argument that these discriminatory conditions imposed on China upon accession have not only impeded the healthy development of China's foreign trade, but also violated the ‘non-discrimination’ principle of the WTO. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China's dizzying economic achievement is not mirrored in its labor rights protection record. Migrant workers in particular do not enjoy rights commensurate with their contribution to the economy. The pervasive infringement of labor rights and the failure of the official protective system have jointly created a niche for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This article investigates the grassroots migrant labor NGOs in the Pearl River Delta region, an area which has seen unprecedented increases in labor disputes both in terms of quantity and intensity. Making extensive use of in-depth interviews and participatory observations, it examines the strategies and tactics NGOs use for survival and growth in a hostile external environment. This article reveals that administrative illegitimacy and resource shortage have been the two key challenges for grassroots NGOs; in order to survive, they have developed a series of strategies to enhance legitimacy and explore resources. In the meantime, however, antagonistic thinking still drives the government's response to grassroots organizations unless the latter can skillfully balance political ideology and actual operation. Yet, overall, most NGOs still managed to survive despite various difficulties. Reciprocity and mutual trust are of critical importance to peaceful coexistence, if not cooperation, between the state and the grassroots. The building of long-term healthy labor relations in China necessitates more liberal thinking and collaborative governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article systematically examines the perceptual dimension of US–China–ASEAN relations. It specifically focuses on Chinese perceptions of American intentions in Southeast Asia, Chinese perceptions of the impact on China of the US's return to Southeast Asia, and suggestions of the Chinese scholarly community as to how China should respond to the US's return. Chinese scholars believe that the US returns to Southeast Asia for a variety of reasons and one of the most important is to manage the rise of China, and that the US's return has both positive and negative impacts on China's interests and the negative impact outweighs the positive. Overall, Chinese perceptions of the US return, especially Chinese scholars’ suggested response, indicate that Chinese scholars have internalized the strategy of peaceful rise which would give us added confidence that China is seriously committed to this strategy. If both the US and China stick to their relevant commitments, the rise of China, unlike that of most great powers in the past, would quite likely be peaceful. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines Mongolia's and North Korea's bargaining with the People's Republic of China to provide insight into Northeast Asian regional dynamics and weak state bargaining behavior. The article demonstrates how both Mongolia and North Korea (which it demonstrates are weak states) employ a variety of tactics within the categories of capitulation, neutrality and confrontation when managing their respective relations with China. The article also argues the applica'bility of the two case studies to a better understanding of the diplomatic challenges China faces as it continues its development and to China's relations with the various weak states on its periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]