"Chen argues that to prevent party cadre opposition to market restructuring - the nemesis of change in other communist states - national leaders manipulated legislative channels and party regulations to allow citizen participation in the implementation of reform programs. Opportunistic realignments at the political level, involving the central leadership, local party cadres, and ordinary citizens, brought "people power" into the policymaking process. That power, suggests Chen, may also presage China's constitutional evolution toward a democratic form of government."--BOOK JACKET.

The massive economic transformations and political upheavals that have been sweeping China and the Soviet Union in the final decades of the twentieth century are among the great dramas of our time. Yet the origins of these revolutionary changes are murky and their outcomes unclear. Have we witnessed the demise of an archaic authoritarian order and the rise of pluralism and democracy, or are the tumultuous events of the post-Mao era and the period of perestroika more usefully viewed in light of broader patterns of power and politics in Chinese and Russian history? Considering these questions with a new interpretation of power relations and political processes in China and Russia, Mark Lupher explores the imperial era, the communist period, and the current situation in both countries. Rather than speaking of “reform,” which too often is understood as liberalization along Western lines, his discussion is focused on power restructuring—the ebb and flow of state power; the centralization and decentralization of political and economic power; and the three-way struggles between central rulers, various elites, and nonprivileged groups that drive these processes. Lupher’s power-restructuring analysis is noteworthy in combining broad comparative-historical analysis and conceptualization with a closely focused discussion and reinterpretation of the Chinese Cultural Revolution—the core of his book. By comparing and bringing new light to bear on a series of pivotal episodes in Chinese and Russian history, he furthers our understanding and assessment of processes that will continue to unfold in China, Russia, and the former Soviet republics.

How has China's post-Deng leadership governed the country? How have the changing social and political environments shifted the bases of political legitimacy? What strategies has Jiang Zemin adopted to cope with new circumstances in order to strengthen his leadership? What are the challenges these new reform measures have generated for the leadership? And how have domestic concerns constrained the leadership's intention in China's foreign relations? These are some of the questions which this volume attempts to address.The authors agree that Jiang Zemin is not a man without any political initiative. He has struggled to establish his own style of leadership, and to strengthen the legitimacy of his leadership by setting forth new rules and institutions for political games and by finding new measures to cope with new challenges. This collection of articles shows the success Jiang and his colleagues have had in strengthening their leadership; how the different reform measures have strengthened Jiang's rule; and how the ongoing reform has created new challenges for his regime.

What can Chinese economists learn from the Japanese economic boom and subsequent stagnation? This project aims to institutionally and empirically investigate the growth mechanism and determinants of sustainable development in China compared with Japanese experiences. This is the first challenge in conducting a comparative study on China and Japan’s economic growth and development. We aim to investigate the economic system transition and its influence on the Chinese and Japanese economy from macroeconomic and microeconomic perspectives. This book will interest economists, scholars of comparative politics, and scholars of China or Japan's economic development.

This book provides a framework of protest handling which redirects our attention away from the strength of protesters and towards the constraints of state power, drawing on detailed case studies randomly collected in 7 provinces in China over the last decade. It finds that the challenges of retaining legitimacy, the propensity for responsiveness, the contradictions of the petition system, and the dynamics of elite alignments are key elements shaping the fate of nail-like petitions. A nail-like person refers to the individual who looks like a stubborn nail on a plank of wood that cannot be easily hammered down. His persistent protest thus is theoretically puzzling, since such individual-based protest is assumed to be too weak to effectively challenge a powerful authoritarian regime. Although this phenomenon is widely observed in China, it is ignored by current studies on collective action. Meanwhile, this book delves into the life politics of nail-like persons and reveals that their escalation of grievance, marginalized social status, inability of pursuing desirable lives through legitimate means, and communication with fellow petitioners also reinforce their determination of contention. This book describes deeply the fate of individual-based protests in China. It scrutinizes the state’s role in shaping contention at its macro, intermediate, and micro levels, and meanwhile pay more attention to local specifics that are crucial to uncovering the logic of petitioners' actions and consciousness. This book has implications for scholars and graduates who are interested in contentious politics and state-society interactions in China.

This edited volume describes the intellectual world that developed in China in the last decade of the twentieth century. How, as China's economy changed from a centrally planned to a market one, and as China opened up to the outside world and was influenced by the outside world, Chinese intellectual activity became more wide-ranging, more independent, more professionalized and more commercially oriented than ever before. The future impact of this activity on Chinese civil society is discussed in the last chapter.

The Handbook is a timely compilation dedicated to exploring a rare diversity of perspectives and content on the development, successes, reforms and challenges within China’s contemporary welfare system. It showcases an extensive introduction and 20 original chapters by leading and emerging area specialists who explore a century of welfare provision from the Nationalist era, up to and concentrating on economic reform and marketisation (1978 to the present). Organised around five key concerns (social security and welfare; emerging issues and actors; gaps; future challenges) chapters draw on original case-based research from diverse disciplines and perspectives, engage existing literature and further key debates.

Social Change in Contemporary China offers a wide-ranging examination of Chinese institutional change in areas of education, religion, health care, economics, labor, family, and local communities in the post-Mao era. Based on the pioneering work of sociologist C. K. Yang (1911-1999), and his institutional diffusion theory, the essays analyze and develop the theory as it applies to both public and private institutions. The interrelationship of these institutions composes what Yang termed the Chinese "system," and affects nearly every aspect of life. Yang examined the influence of external factors on each institution, such as the influence of Westernization and Communism on family, and the impact of industrialization on rural markets. He also analyzed the impact of public opinion and past culture on institutions, therein revealing the circular nature of diffusion. Perhaps most significant are Yang's insights on the role of religion in Chinese society. Despite the common perception that China had no religion, he uncovers the influence of classical Confucianism as the basis for many ethical value systems, and follows its diffusion into state and kinship systems, as well as Taoism and Buddhism. Writing in the early years of Communism, Yang had little hard data with which to test his theories. The contributors to this volume expand upon Yang's groundbreaking approach and apply the model of diffusion to a rapidly evolving contemporary China, providing a window into an increasingly modern Chinese society and its institutions.

The rise of popular politics is among one the most significant social and political developments the People’s Republic of China has witnessed in the post-Mao era. People from all walks of life have responded to rising inequalities and the privatization of collective goods with a new quest for justice. Although China has remained a censorial society under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party, state-society relations are being remade by interventions of emergent publics through word and action. In this book, a group of anthropologists, specializing in Chinese society, examine various facets of popular politics, which are animated by the pursuit of justice, fairness and good government. The ethnographic chapters collectively analyse how ‘the political’ arises in particular judicial situations, provoking public judgements or other forms of critical engagement. Focusing on the interplay between private and public spaces, between morality and law and between speech and action, the contributors in this book explore how such engagements are changing Chinese society from the bottom-up. As the first systematic exploration of the relationship between popular politics, emergent publics and notions of justice in contemporary China, this book will be useful for students of Chinese Studies, Politics and Anthropology.

China's basic work units, collectively known as the danwei system, have undergone significant reform, particularly since 1984. The author examines how this system operates and how reform is generating change in the party at grassroots level. The author demonstrates how China's post-Mao reforms have produced a quiet revolution from below as the process of political and economic liberalization has accelerated. This book presents new research findings that will be invaluable to those wishing to understand the nature of change in China.