ALBERT

Notizen: On 13 April 1987, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of Portugal signed a Joint Declaration on the question of Macau, agreeing that the PRC would resume the exercise of sovereignty over the territory from 20 December 1999. In the Joint Declaration, the PRC promised that the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR) would enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs which are the responsibilities of Beijing, as was to be the case for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The Joint Declaration further stipulated that the government and the legislature of the Macau SAR will be composed of local inhabitants and will be vested with legislative and independent judicial power. This marked the beginning of the transition period for Macau to move from Portuguese to Chinese administration.

Notizen: In the past twenty years the People's Republic of China has undergone four marked periods of overheating as measured by output and price rises. While the 1980 bout of inflation was primarily a result of planned price increases, inflation in 1985/86, 1988/89, and 1993–95 increasingly reflected underlying market imbalances as prices had been liberalized and production decisions decentralized. Inflation was experienced as most severe in the 1988/89 period when the inflation rate climbed rapidly to levels – since the early years of the PRC unprecedented – above 20 per cent in mid-1988. Panic purchases in summer 1988 because of expected further price rises spread to several cities and inflation became tantamount to “social instability.” The Chinese Communist Party Central Committee strongly voiced its concern about the “stable and healthy economic development” in a communiqué on 30 September 1988: “At present, our overall economic situation is good, but the difficulties and problems are numerous, the most prominent being the excessively large commodity price rises.” Party and central government in 1988 felt compelled to stop economic overheating in order to prevent further panic purchases and rises in the inflation rate which would endanger social stability.

Notizen: It is now receiving wide attention that since the adoption of the open-door policy at the end of the 1970s China has been extremely successful in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). Particularly, according to UNCTAD's World Investment Report 1997: Transnational Corporations, Market Structure and Competition Policy, China has become the second largest recipient of FDI in the world since 1993, after the United States. On the other hand, however, it seems less noticed that China has also become a growingly important FDI exporting country. According to UNCTAD's same report, China now ranks as one of the largest outward investors among developing economies in the 1990s. By the end of 1996, the cumulative stock of Chinese outward FDI had reached over $18 billion, next only to Hong Kong ($112 billion), Singapore ($37 billion) and Taiwan ($27 billion). Consequently, China increased its share in world-wide FDI outflows from less than 0.5 per cent until 1991 to an average of 1.3 percent in 1991–95. As China is rapidly rising as a new economic power, its deepening participation in the regional and global economy, through both inward and outward FDI as well as trade, will inevitably bring about significant implications in the international political economy. This article attempts to explore the development of Chinese outward FDI, its characteristics and motives, the outward FDI regime, the government's policies and existing problems, and the prospects for the future trend of Chinese outward FDI.

Notizen: Until recently, few people in mainland China would dispute the significance of the hukou (household registration) system in affecting their lives – indeed, in determining their fates. At the macro level, the centrality of this system has led some to argue that the industrialization strategy and the hukou system were the crucial organic parts of the Maoist model: the strategy could not have been implemented without the system. A number of China scholars in the West, notably Christiansen, Chan, Cheng and Seiden, Solinger, and Mallee, have begun in recent years to study this important subject in relation to population mobility and its social and economic ramifications. Unlike population registration systems in many other countries, the Chinese system was designed not merely to provide population statistics and identify personal status, but also directly to regulate population distribution and serve many other important objectives desired by the state. In fact, the hukou system is one of the major tools of social control employed by the state. Its functions go far beyond simply controlling population mobility.

Notizen: No monocausal explanation will suffice to account for the complex process of economic development. At different times and under different politico-economic circumstances, different combinations of actors and institutions are involved as agents of development, which include factories, investment banks, entrepreneurial bourgeoisie, foreign capital and the state. When “telescoping” the arduous process of development is the key imperative, the role of the state becomes particularly crucial in designing overall development strategies, governing the market by getting the prices wrong, and controlling the major sources of financing development. It should be noted, however, that the state is a multi-layered structure of authority with its own intra- and inter-governmental dynamics. As the extensive literature on the East Asian Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) almost uniformly adopts the highly encompassing term of state, it largely fails to differentiate the roles performed by the central and local governments in executing “developmental intervention.”

Notizen: The literature on interregional disparities in China has become quite extensive, as has that on absolute poverty and its regional incidence. But most of this work deals with huge “regions” – entire provinces or even groups of provinces (“coastal” versus “western” China) – each of which is comparable, in area and population, to a good-sized country. Needless to say, there may well be large variations within such regions at any point in time, and large spatial shifts within them over time. Many studies suggest, for example, that, contrary to the “Maoist model,” relative disparities among provinces did not narrow significantly during the Maoist era. Can the same be said of disparities among counties, within individual provinces? And are the broad spatial patterns of poverty, as observed across provinces, somehow replicated in microcosm within particular provinces?

Notizen: Regional and provincial cultures have (re)emerged in China since the 1980s, regardless of their previous existence or articulation. Although it is not yet clear whether this represents the seemingly powerful trend of fragmentation or nothing but a superficial phenomenon generated by the unprecedented pace of economic integration throughout the country, there is every reason to believe that regional and provincial cultures, or identities, in China have been (re)shaped by the new process of modernization, decentralization and international interactions that have characterized the reform era. Competition for resources, markets and preferential policies have forced every locality to mobilize support from their local populations; reform, decentralization, marketization, internationalization, growing provincial autonomy and the decline of state ideology have combined to challenge some time-honoured traditions and provide an opportunity for the discourse of regional cultures and identities. While it is almost a common belief in China that a construction of a glorious past will inevitably lead to the self-confidence needed for a nation or community to build a better future, some see the current reforms as an opportunity to rid themselves of, or distance themselves from, the anti-commerce, anti-individual conservatism assumed to be inherent in the Chinese state ideology; others, those in the south-east coastal area in particular, find themselves natural heirs to the open and dynamic entrepreneurial culture suppressed by the centralized state in the past.

Notizen: During the 1980s market reforms proceeded more slowly in Shanghai than in other Chinese coastal cities. Bureaucratic procedures had continued to determine employment conditions and few city residents assumed the risks of entrepreneurship. The pace of marketization quickened in the early nineties and, between 1990 and 1995, the percentage of Shanghainese working outside the state or collective sectors grew by a factor of ten. For the first time since the launching of the economic reforms, private sector activity approached parity with Guangzhou (see Table 1).

Notizen: Since the summer of 1993, the Chinese central party-state has been engaged in a vigorous campaign to reassert control over “thought work,” or the flow of communications messages into and through Chinese society. The chief features of this sustained, omnidirectional crackdown – much more ambitious in scope than earlier, episodic crackdowns such as the 1983–84 “Campaign Against Spiritual Pollution” and 1987 “Campaign Against Bourgeois Liberalization” – include limitations on access to foreign Internet websites; restrictions on satellite television reception; efforts to suppress the surging tide of pornographic and other “bad” print publications; and many other measures aimed at curtailing the circulation of heterodox ideas and images in China. The underlying strategic goal is to restore the Centre's control over the “environment of symbols” from which Chinese people derive many of their most important world views, values and action strategies to pursue interests. If central party-state leaders can resume control over the symbolic environment, they seem to believe they will be much more able to maintain political stability and direct Chinese society towards the achievement of a variety of more specific goals, including reduced crime and corruption, the reform of state-owned enterprises, and the abatement of environmental degradation. On the other hand, a continued haemorrhaging of control over thought work would not only make current problems worse, but could over time facilitate the formation of a semi-autonomous, critical public opinion.

Notizen: This article describes and analyses changes in the environment and related policy developments in the People's Republic over the past 50 years. When discussing the quality of China's environment it must be remembered that the population of the country has doubled over the past half century and the economy has grown rapidly, particularly over the last two decades. Pessimists argue that the current population of over 1,200 million has exceeded the number which can be supported at a good living standard. Despite such views, there has been some ground for optimism in recent years, with China's greater environmental awareness and increased openness, its realization that the environment can be a tool in international diplomacy, and the increasing importation of environmental protection techniques. Yet overall, China has not done enough to maintain environmental quality and has not chosen to make many environmentally friendly transport investments.

Notizen: The acceleration of economic reform in the early and late 1990s has highlighted repeatedly the importance of social welfare for maintaining economic growth, social stability and political authority. Indeed each of these decade-long goals of China's government can be seen to rest on either establishing or maintaining an accessible social welfare package. Economic growth requires further enterprise reform which in turn requires alternative forms and funding of worker social welfare. Sporadic reports of urban unrest resulting from lay-offs and loss of welfare benefits and of rural discontent resulting from the continued absence of welfare benefits suggests that social stability and political authority are dependent on the government's ability to reform social welfare provisioning. Simultaneously the process of economic reform itself has altered urban and rural socio-economic and political environments and had far-reaching consequences for welfare demand, service supply and notions of security.

Notizen: The profound silence that followed immediately after the 4 June massacres in 1989 was short-lived. As it became clear that the regime would stay in power, writers reacted as opportunity and circumstances allowed. Dissident writers associated with the protest movement were in danger of arrest and imprisonment: Duo Duo only just managed to get his flight to London on 4 June, joining those like Bei Dao who were already abroad and had no choice but to remain. Writers in high positions were also vulnerable: Wang Meng was forced to resign as Minister of Culture in 1989 and dropped from the Party's Central Committee at the 1992 Party Congress. Less prominent writers waited for a more propitious time to publish; younger writers barely paused.

Notizen: How does democratization affect environmental politics and policy? While some scholars have cited empirical evidence showing that democratic countries tend to have better environmental records than their authoritarian counterparts, others have debated the compatibility between democracy and sustainable environmental management. One may, for example, note that many environmental problems involve large numbers of individuals who suffer from spill-over effects of actions by small numbers of individuals or firms. Many serious water and air pollution problems, for instance, are caused by a few industrial plants, yet their effects are suffered by many people. Although popularly elected officials may have an incentive to develop policies to protect the environmental welfare of the many, these officials may also be influenced by a few polluters who are better organized and more resourceful in pressing their case in the policy process. Following this logic, one cannot definitely predict, at least in the short term, that democratization will help improve the environment.

Notizen: China's electrical power industry has been undergoing piecemeal reforms over the last 15 years. Some of these reforms, such as substantial tariff increases, have been deliberate and have been implemented directly by government. Other changes, such as the increased variety of investors, including foreign investors, have been more spontaneous and have resulted in a gradual evolution in the way the industry works. In 1996 the Chinese government announced a more radical package of reform starting with the new Electricity Law which laid the foundations for a degree of competition in power generation, but without wholesale privatization.

Notizen: Human capital refers to the skills, knowledge and values that individuals acquire in formal schooling, in the workplace and in other settings that raise their productive capacity. In an increasingly global economy, investment in human capital is seen as one of the major strategies for enhancing the economic competitiveness of firms and nations and a major factor in determining the extent of economic polarization among social groups and nations.

Notizen: Renewed interest in China's defence modernization has focused new light on the connection between military goals and national high technology strategy. China is in the throes of a major effort to modernize its arsenal. Its technology planners have begun systematically to build a genuinely national high technology infrastructure that may ultimately enable Chinese defence planners to harness the dual use potential of many new technologies. Yet as scholars and policy-makers raise questions about present patterns and anticipate future trends, it seems more important than ever to take a long look backwards into the origins of the relationship between China's military and its economic development strategy.

Notizen: Like opening Pandora's box, Chinese reforms have unleashed institutional and social forces which have led to a variety of production regimes co-existing under the permissive banner of “market socialism.” The industrial scene of Guangdong, which boasts of itself as one of the first, the most and the best reformed provincial economies, bears witness to the profound and wide-ranging transformation in production politics. Compared to the era of state socialism, a restructuring of industrial employment has evidently occurred. The 740 state-owned industrial enterprises in Guangzhou, for instance, now account for only 15 per cent of a total of 4,903 industrial establishments, and the 307,000 employees in the state industrial sector account for one-third of the city's 940,000-strong industrial workforce. Twenty-one per cent and 46 per cent of all industrial employees are found respectively in 2,005 collective enterprises and 2,158 private, foreign and joint ventures. As recently as 1985, the state industrial sector was still dominant, employing 65 per cent of the city's industrial workforce, and producing 68 per cent of industrial output. The composition of the work force has also significantly changed: among the 2.03 million urban (including non-industrial) employees in Guangzhou, 700,000 are “registered” migrant workers, of whom 280,000 work in state and collective enterprises. For the province as a whole, registered migrant workers numbered 3.6 million in 1996, while a generally-accepted estimate for the entire migrant labour population reached a staggering 11 million. In the pre-reform days, this massive pool of rural labour was sequestered in the countryside by the hukou system and the number of those who found employment in state factories as temporary contract workers was estimated to be only about 6 per cent of all employees in urban state enterprises by 1978. Complexity is further induced by a new round of deepening reform measures in the 1990s, targeting enterprise ownership, scientific management and labour laws.

Notizen: Many studies link family planning programmes to the extensive structure of government control in China. Some emphasize the determining role played by government control in Chinese family planning programmes, and some debate its consequences for human well-being, finding it either negative or positive or mixed. The rigidity of Chinese family planning programmes has been controversial both in China and around the world. There are however very few studies, which consider in detail how family planning policies are formulated and implemented at the local level, under a particular, concrete, social, economic and cultural context.

Notizen: Actually we could have picked a different name, such as the Chinese People's Party, the Revolutionary Party, the Liberation Party – any of these would have been OK. But no matter what, our intention remains to resolve the “property” (chan) issue. What are we fighting for? What is our goal all about? Getting “property” – not private property, but public property. For everybody to get rich, for everybody to lead a good life. That's why there has to be a revolution.

Notizen: China's countryside has been the target of dramatic change since 1949. The CCP directed redistribution in land reform, the transformation away from private farming to collectivization, and, most recently, the move back to household production. Throughout the PRC's 50 years, agriculture and peasants have paid for the regime's ambitious programme of industrialization, as the price scissors consistently favoured the urban over the rural producers. The state struggled with its food producers over the grain harvest, using ideology and organization to maximize both the production and extraction of the surplus from the countryside.

Notizen: The People's Republic of China (PRC) may not have had the opportunity to celebrate 50 years of statehood had it not been for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) – nor, for that matter, is it likely that the PRC would have come into existence in the first place were it not for the PLA (as is evident in Mao's often-cited observation that, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun!”). As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rode the military to power in 1949, the army also subsequently acted on several occasions to rescue the regime, maintain the Party in power and ergo sustain the People's Republic. The PLA has also been the designated protector of “state sovereignty” and “unifier” of China – acting to incorporate Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Manchuria and border regions in the south-west and north-west during the early 1950s, and fighting several border wars against China's neighbours thereafter – and it is the PLA that is ultimately charged with ensuring both that Taiwan does not seek “independence” and that China's territorial claims in the East and South China Seas are protected.

Notizen: Since the Communists came to power in 1949 Chinese art has seen extraordinary changes. For 30 years, the Party apparatus and its Marxist-Maoist ideology exerted so tight a control over cultural life that it is natural for the art of that period to be viewed primarily as a reflection or expression of political forces. To some degree that is unavoidable, and it is the approach taken by the authors of two important books on post-1949 Chinese art, while Jerome Silbergeld's monograph on the Sichuan eccentric painter Li Huasheng is a fascinating study of the way in which these forces affected the life and work of an individual artist.

Notizen: Current understanding of spatial inequality in China is largely informed by the regional analysis framework (RAF). The RAF is built upon the proposition that the best geographical partition of the Chinese landmass for understanding spatial inequality is a partition into three supra-provincial regions: coastal, central and western. Empirical discussion revolves around how equal the three regions are along several different outcome measures (e.g. per capita income). However, a better framework for understanding spatial inequality is the one developed by Paul Krugman, the “manufacturing zones framework” (MZF), although this framework requires theoretical elaboration to encompass the Chinese reality in a realistic manner.

Notizen: Proponents of Western-style democracy greeted the Chinese “Democracy Movement” of 1989 with great hope and anticipation. Yet the brutal end of this wave of political protest left many in despair. The rulers of the Chinese Communist Party had made it painfully clear that they would not tolerate any movement or organization which posed a threat to their political control. At the same time, however, observers and analysts also began to question the wisdom and effectiveness of the student protesters who had participated in the movement. Perhaps, many wondered, the students' behaviour had also contributed to the movement's unfortunate finale. In particular, many noted the students' disorganization, lack of respect for democratic procedures and inability to present a united position to the government. In addition, some remarked that the students' exclusive, non-integrative mobilization strategy may have weakened their ability to successfully put pressure on the government.

Notizen: Official figures show that the total extent of China's farmland has been steadily decreasing since the late 1950s and that it now stands at roughly 95 million hectares (Mha). Divided by 1.243 billion people, China's mid-1998 population total, this prorates to less than 0.08 ha/capita, a rate comparable to that of Bangladesh, equal to only about 60 per cent of Asia's and to roughly 40 per cent of India's mean, and to just 25 per cent of the global average (Figure 1).

Notizen: Involuntary resettlement programmes have not only become an increasingly important and separate component of development projects within China but the movement of more than a million persons within the Three Gorges project has generated a new international interest in Chinese resettlement experiences. With a view to examining prior resettlement projects in China, this article is based on interviews with national and provincial bodies responsible for resettlement and on field investigations of linear resettlement attached to the Jiqing highway in Shandong province and of reservoir resettlement within a hydro-electric power project in Guangxi Autonomous Region.

Notizen: The Chinese central-provincial fiscal relationship of the reform era has been at the centre of academic attention in the last few years. It is rapidly becoming one of the most researched areas regarding China. Despite numerous publications, however, there are still some crucial issues that have not been sufficiently elucidated. First, the emphasis of discussions so far has been on formal budgetary relations, particularly the distributive pattern of revenue collection. In reality, the scope and impact of the Chinese budget are very much smaller than those elsewhere and the pattern of revenue collection is only one aspect of the multi-faceted central-provincial fiscal relationship. An appreciation of these aspects and their implications requires a better understanding of the full range of arenas in which the Chinese central government interacts with the provinces over public finance than is currently available. Secondly, it is generally accepted that the Chinese central-provincial fiscal relationship has been decentralized during the reform era, and that this change has underpinned the growing strength of the provinces and the decline in central power. However, the change in the relationship is actually more complex than one-dimensional decentralization would suggest, and the link between fiscal decentralization and political decentralization is less straightforward from a comparative perspective. Thirdly, it is widely accepted that there has been a fiscal decline in China and that the revenue-sharing system – implemented up to 1993 – was the cause of this decline. From this understanding, erroneous conclusions have been drawn. On the one hand, some scholars suggest that this decline signifies a limit on the Chinese state in its relation to the economy, and it is this factor that has underpinned the success of the Chinese economy during the reform. On the other, this decline is considered to epitomize the emergence of a “weak centre, strong localities” situation in China that may eventually lead to the disintegration of the Chinese political system. But it is far from established that there has indeed been a fiscal decline in the true sense of the term. The same can be said on the question of this decline, if it exists, representing the limiting of the Chinese state in relation to the economy or the decline of the central power relative to that of the provinces. Fourthly, in 1994 the Chinese government launched important reforms to the central-provincial fiscal relationship, aiming to replace the previous revenue-sharing system with a tax-sharing system (TSS, or fenshuizhi), and ultimately to stem so-called fiscal decline. Despite earlier reported problems, recent official reports have claimed substantial success of this reform in terms of improvement in the so-called “two ratios” – the ratio of budgetary revenue to GDP, and the ratio of central budgetary revenue to total budgetary revenue. What do these two ratios signify? How should we interpret such success? Does the success on the one hand confirm the allegation that the revenue-sharing system was the cause of the Chinese fiscal decline? And does it on the other hand indicate a strengthening in the centre's power relative to the provinces'?

Notizen: Recent changes in the relationships of Hong Kong and Taiwan to mainland China have presented education policy-makers in both territories with problems of reforming school curricula in areas of teaching that are important for the formation of national identity. While both territories are subject to claims that they are part of China, both have also been separated from the Chinese mainland for long periods, and in recent years their relationships with it have been undergoing fundamental changes. Hong Kong's relationship with China has become closer due to economic integration with the hinterland and the 1997 transfer of sovereignty. Taiwan's identification as a part of China, on the other hand, has become increasingly uncertain as the process of liberalization and democratization that began in 1986 has allowed sovereignty to be practised by the residents of the island and a sense of “Taiwan consciousness” (Taiwan yishi) to develop.

Notizen: On 17 May 1996 at the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution, a group of about 40 people met in the number two crypt at Babaoshan national cemetery on the western outskirts of Beijing where the ashes of China's highest elite are interred. They met at that particular time in memory of four men who had been declared traitors and enemies of the state in 1966 at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In this crypt are kept the ashes of three of the men, Deng Tuo, Wu Han and Liu Ren. The ashes of the fourth, Liao Mosha, were scattered, according to his wishes, at the foot of a tree beneath the Great Wall.

Notizen: The literature on China's social stratification and mobility has discussed the roles of family background and an individual's education attainment. This article aims to extend the existing literature by examining the interplay of these two aspects in fostering a homogeneous group of scientists, the members (yuanshi) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS, Zhongguo kexueyuan). Since its establishment in 1955, honorific CAS membership has been awarded to outstanding Chinese scientists in their respective fields. As of the end of 1997, a total of 859 Chinese natural scientists, including 40 women, had been elected to the five Academic Divisions of the CAS – Mathematics and Physics, Chemistry, Biological Sciences, Earth Sciences, and Technological Sciences (Table 1) – of whom 610 were alive. They have been renowned, nationally if not internationally, for their academic achievements and contributions, and they have a reputation and prestige similar to those enjoyed by their counterparts in other countries, such as members of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States and fellows of the Royal Society in Britain. Because the occupational prestige of scientists is very high in China, as it is in other countries, and following similar research on the scientific elite, it is reasonable to define CAS members as the Chinese scientific elite.

Notizen: In the very first sentence of the first article in the first issue of The China Quarterly, Howard L. Boorman, seeking to summarize the first decade of the PRC, wrote: “The man who faces his typewriter to set down a thousand words of coherent comment on the Communist revolution in China confronts not only a massive experiment in social engineering but also the fact that his interpretation of that experiment will expose as much of the author as it does of the revolution.” Except that now it is a computer and not a typewriter, little is different for anyone who would try to summarize what is now 50 years of the PRC. True, enough time has gone by for us now to have not just the initial standard interpretations as to what transpired in China but revisions and then further re-revisions of the story, so that even though we cannot be so bold as to say that we now have the full truth, we probably are a bit closer.

Notizen: The dynamic growth of the Chinese economy over the past 50 years under the policies and administrative management of the People's Republic of China must rank among the most important developments of the 20th century. When I began my serious study of China's economy in the early 1950s, Western economists were preoccupied with a single question, “how are they ever going to feed all those Chinese?” Today, after 50 years in power, we must respect and even admire not only their ability to feed a population that has more than doubled in size, but also to provide the Chinese consumer with watches, washing machines, sewing machines, colour television sets, and tape and video recorders. A small, but significant and rapidly expanding, share of China's consumers is using mobile phones, computers and even private cars.

Notizen: On the 50th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, the legal system plays an increasingly significant role in social, economic and even political relationships. Legal norms drawn largely from foreign experiences have been selected and applied through a plethora of newly established institutions. The role of law as a basis for government authority has become a legitimate and significant issue in the broader political discourse. Despite these achievements, law in China remains dependent on the regime's policy goals. Particularly where political prerogatives are at stake, legal requirements appear to pose little restraint on state power. In this sense, the ten years that have passed since Tiananmen appear to have had little impact on the willingness of the party-state to dispense with legal requirements in pursuit of political expediency. If we are to rely upon Dicey's dictum on the rule of law being in effect when the state becomes just another actor, the rule of law in China still seems a distant prospect indeed.