Against the background of a complex and evolving statistical system, this article addresses three crucial issues in the understanding of the rapid export expansion of China in general and the Pearl River Delta in particular. First, the export orientation of the Pearl River Delta is critically assessed. The gradual emergence of export-oriented firms in the region and their spatial clustering around Hong Kong are highlighted. Secondly, the structural dimension of export expansion in the region is examined. Foreign-invested enterprises were found to be the “engine of growth.” Lastly, an analysis of the spatial dimension of the foreign-invested enterprises' export component reveals that the juridical status and geographical locations of exporting firms are complementary in providing a better understanding of export expansion in China since 1978.

Taiwan studies is confronting several challenges from within and outside the academy to its vitality if not viability. The growing attraction of mainland China to researchers, the encroachment of disciplines and marginalization of area studies, and the closing life cycles of several of the most salient research themes on Taiwan, have all contributed to the sense of a field in decline. This article seeks to provide a more concrete empirical basis for assessing the state of the Taiwan studies field. Drawing on content analysis of journal publications, combined with citation data and a survey of Taiwan specialists, the article addresses a number of key questions about the field.

In a speech delivered at the rally commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the liberation of Korea, the North Korean Premier announced that the peasants in North Korea were now the owners of large-scale collectivised farms and that they had the firm technical foundation for bumper crops every year without strenuous efforts. He declared: “This is the beginning of a world for our farm villages.” Another spokesman of the North Korean regime has stated: “It is easy (or good) to work and enjoyable to live in the co-operativised North Korean farms. There is a bumper crop every year in the constantly changing collectivised fields and the peasants' work and living are literally song and dances.”

Accepting that Taiwan has accumulated “soft power” since the introduction of democratic reforms in the late 1980s, this paper assesses Taiwan's external communications during Ma Ying-jeou's presidency and how its soft power resources have been exercised. Demonstrating the strategic turn from political warfare to public and cultural diplomacy, the paper begins with the premise that the priority must be to increase familiarity with Taiwan among foreign publics. It then argues that any assessment of external communications in the Ma administration must consider the impact of two key decisions: first, the dissolution of the Government Information Office and the transfer of its responsibilities for international communications to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a new Ministry of Culture, and second, the priority given to cultural themes in Taiwan's external communications.

Using a detailed case study of house eviction in peri-urban China as well as original data from an online survey experiment, this article explores the opportunistic bargaining phenomenon in China in which citizens leverage the policy priorities of authorities with tactics that are not approved by the state to bargain for goals beyond those promised by the state. We find that opportunistic bargaining is widely accepted by Chinese citizens and that such an inclination is encouraged by successful precedents and clear signals of an opening through which to leverage government policy priorities; however, it is dampened by unclear signals and failed precedents. We also find that opportunistic bargainers tend to hold more negative perceptions of the current regime and are less likely to abide by state rules or social norms. The characteristics of opportunistic bargaining appear to be the opposite of the dominant “rightful resistance” framework.

The Fourth and Fifth Plenary Sessions of the 13th Central Committee(CC) were the first comprehensive central Party meetings to be convened in the aftermath of the suppression of the “pro–democracy” movement in and around Tiananmen Square. Although held roughly four months apart, they can be considered together insofar as both sought to consolidate and confirm the legitimacy of the new hardline leadership. While the agendas of the two plenums varied, both dealt with the impact of the momentous events of April–June particularly in terms of their effects on: leadership personnel; public security; ideology and propaganda; economic policy; civil–military relations; and foreign affairs.

The theory of price formation has been vigorously discussed in Communist China since 1953, but the main themes of the discussion have varied. Generally speaking, the discussion may be conveniently divided into two periods. The first period covers the years prior to 1960, during which there were a large number of articles dealing with the role of the “law of value” in socialist planning and the problem of price formation for producer goods transferred within the state sector. The discussion was partly a result of Stalin's publication of Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. A number of Chinese economists disagreed with Stalin's assertion that the law of value and the concept of commodity production and exchange did not apply to the state sector.

Professor Nathan's pungent essay raises important issues for the politics of development in general and for drawing comparative conclusions from the Chinese case in particular. His cleansing scepticism demolishes some positions which may be held by authors in the China field and reminds others that the unstated assumptions in their models need better articulation. However he goes too far. What needs to be re-established is that clear and modest formulations of short-term recurrence, interdependence among policies, and two-sided policy disagreement are not avoidable errors but indispensable heuristic devices in the conceptual repertoire of China watchers. In fact it would be a great disservice to stùdies of contemporary China and to comparative study of the Chinese case if Professor Nathan were allowed to succeed in his attempt to identify all such analyses with his reductio ad absurdum of some of them. Let us try to rescue the possibility of constructive social science modelling of the three principal issues Professor Nathan raises.

The past 15 years have been eventful ones for the Chinese economy. They have seen an ambitious attempt at economic acceleration decline into agricultural crisis, a major reversal of the direction of economic policy, agricultural recovery and resurgent economic momentum. These years have brought major changes to the Chinese economy: whole new industries have appeared; official policy towards such diverse areas as education, income distribution, regional dispersion of industry and economic specialization has shifted repeatedly; the organization of agricultural production has also changed.

This paper focuses on agency workers in China's auto industry. Some scholars foresee that this new category of workers, particularly in the auto industry, will play a leading role in global labour resistance. In this context, we conducted a questionnaire survey of 483 regular and agency workers at five major auto joint ventures in China and compared their work conditions, job satisfaction and willingness to take collective actions. Based on these findings, we argue that these companies have good reasons to keep the gap in wages and in work conditions small. This, along with management practices inherited from the Maoist system, can mitigate workers' dissatisfaction and reduce their tendency to take militant actions.

Since her traditional empire collapsed China has experimented with many political institutions. After the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed a revolutionary one-party regime, the pattern of political order has shifted from one form to another. Intra-Party conflicts preceded these shifts, of which the Cultural Revolution represented the culmination. But in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution another shift is taking place, so it too has raised a series of important questions about Chinese politics.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, historians′ approach to Republican China was informed by a predominant concern for Revolution. Scholarly priorities were focused on the early history of the Chinese Communist Party and on the socio-economic analysis of the countryside where the Chinese revolution had achieved its first success. Few publications were devoted to urban China. The Maoist regime until its end was seen to maintain a strong anti-urban stance. Great ex-treaty port cities were condemned for their past co-operation with foreign imperialism. In the West, the Republican era was often perceived as a confused interregnum between the Qing dynasty and the Communist Empire. And more than a few historians shared the views of their Chinese colleagues and featured big cities of the 1920s and 1930s as outposts of foreign economic exploitation and political oppression, as citadels of cultural arrogance.

Variations in economic performance have in recent years been subject to increasingly sophisticated analyses; but the chemistry of growth remains mysterious. Although we can usually measure the physical contributions to increased output, these variations rarely explain everything we wish to understand. This is unfortunate because it makes prediction hazardous, particularly in situations where basic parameters are changing. Nonetheless, the requirements of policy require an effort to be made, and it is the purpose of this article to describe and explain the changing economic scene in Hong Kong and thereby to draw attention to some of the economic dimensions of the changing relationship between Hong Kong and China. The main thesis of the article is that Hong Kong is already passing over an economic watershed, and that present and future relations with China must be seen in that light.

Initialy, the Chinese Communist Government held high hopes for a speedy solution to “the nationalities question.” Recent events, however, show that this question is still much in evidence and has been causing considerable anxiety in Peking. Since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guard exposures of “black bandits in power who are following a capitalist path” have revealed the existence of minorities problems which cast doubt on the régime's previous claims of progress. The Cultural Revolution has also revealed a split between those in the top leadership who favour concessions to the customs and traditions of the minorities and those who favour immediate and total assimilation. Since the former are generally experienced administrators while the latter are ideological zealots, this split may also be seen as yet another manifestation of the continuing “Red” versus “Expert” controversy.

In October 1983 the secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hu Yaobang, formally announced the beginning of a two-stage, three-year Party rectification. The first stage, from November 1983 to around December 1984, would concentrate on the rectification of Party committees (dangwei) and leading offices at the Centre and in the provinces, major municipalities and autonomous regions. The second stage, from early 1985 to the end of 1986, would focus on rectification of Party organizations below provincial level. In fact, however, rectification was not officially ended until May 1987.

Chinese state firms are expected not only to profit but also to serve state interests. But the Chinese state is fragmented: border provinces are taking on an expanded role in China's global expansion and a broad range of firm activities could be defined as patriotic contributions. Through the case of Yunnan State Farms (YSF), a province-level state-owned enterprise, this article explores how state firms interpret and navigate multiple state interests while also pursuing profit. The firm's ability to profit depends on balancing the demands and support of different Chinese state actors while depicting itself as a development partner to the Lao state and a contributor to Sino-Lao diplomatic relations and border region stability. This case thus shows that, instead of YSF's behaviour being directed by the state, the firm exercises considerable latitude in defining its contributions to state interests through the expansion of rubber production as a driver of development.

It has become conventional wisdom that the U.S.–China rapprochement was a result (from the Chinese side) of Beijing's fear of the Soviet Union. Specifically, the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and the border confrontation which developed rapidly in the months after the clashes at Zhen Bao island on the Ussuri River in March 1969, are seen as exacerbating Chinese fears of Soviet attack.1 These fears had emerged during the Cultural Revolution when Moscow began insinuating that it might intervene in China in support of the anti-Maoist, “healthy forces.” 2 It was in hopes of deterring possible Soviet invasion, surgical strike, or intervention – so the argument runs – that Beijing wanted to improve relations with Washington. By establishing more cordial relations between Beijing and Washington, the risks which Moscow would assume in making a decision to attack China would be increased. Soviet-American détente would, conceivably, be endangered. The possibility of a Soviet-American confrontation arising out of such a Soviet attack on China could not be ruled out. This added increment of uncertainty about the U.S. response to a Soviet attack on China would be useful in preventing such an attack. Thus, it is concluded, in November 1968 Beijing moved to reopen the talks with the U.S. at Warsaw as a first step towards substantially improving Sino-American relations. Two years after the clashes at Zhen Bao the U.S. table tennis team arrived in Beijing in April 1971. A snowballing series of events rapidly unfolded, culminating in the 15 July 1971 announcement of Henry Kissinger's visit to China and President Nixon's impending visit

This paper will examine changes in seven aspects of higher education policy in the People's Republic of China during the 1970s and, based on the experience of the Soviet Union and the East European socialist states, will explore the implications of these changes for the structuring of social inequality in contemporary Chinese society.