Micropolitics in Contemporary China


Book Description

This title was first published in 1980:










Micropolitics in Contemporary China


Book Description

This title was first published in 1980. One of the most prevalent and significant issues facing socialist countries is the role of intellectuals. In the poorer countries like China, this has presented itself with particular acuity in the relationship of scientists and technicians to the process of socialist economic modernization. Since the Cultural Revolution has come to a close, its impact on China’s intellectual life— especially on scientists, technicians, and the development of scientific and technical work— has been the subject of lively inquiry in China. In turn, this inquiry has provided a major focus for reevaluating the Cultural Revolution as a political movement and as a way of dealing with the inequalities and bureaucratic inefficiencies that have arisen and will continue to arise in the centrally planned Chinese economy during a period when rapid economic growth and modernization have been given the highest priority. This monograph intends to address some of these issues by presenting a detailed case study of a Chinese technical unit over the period from 1966 to 1974.




The SAGE Handbook of Contemporary China


Book Description

The study of contemporary China constitutes a fascinating yet challenging area of scholarly inquiry. Recent decades have brought dramatic changes to China′s economy, society and governance. Analyzing such changes in the context of multiple disciplinary perspectives offers opportunites as well as challenges for scholars in the field known as contemporary China Studies. The SAGE Handbook of Contemporary China is a two-volume exploration of the transformations of contemporary China, firmly grounded in the both disciplinary and China-specific contexts. Drawing on a range of scholarly approaches found in the social sciences and history, an international team of contributors engage with the question of what a rapidly changing China means for the broader field of contemporary China studies, and identify areas of promising future research. Part 1: Context: History, Economy, and the Environment Part 2: Economic Transformations Part 3: Politics and Government Part 4: China on the Global Stage Part 5: China′s Foreign Policy Part 6: National and Nested Identities Part 7: Urbanization and Spatial Development Part 8: Poverty and Inequality Part 9: Social Change Part 10: Future Directions for Contemporary China Studies




State and Peasant in Contemporary China


Book Description

This is a study of peasant-state relations and village politics as they have evolved in response to the state's attempts to control the division of the harvest and extract the state-defined surplus. To provide the reader with a clearer sense of the evolution of peasant-state relations over almost a forty-year period and to highlight the dramatic changes that have taken place since 1978,1 have divided my analysis into two parts: Chapters 2 through 7 are on Maoist China, and chapters 8 and 9 are on post-Mao China. The first part examines the state's grain policies and patterns of local politics that emerged during the highly collectivized Maoist period, when the state closed free grain markets and established the system of unified purchase and sales (tonggou tongxiao). The second part describes the new methods for the production and division of the harvest after 1978, when the government decollectivized agriculture and abolished its unified procurement program.




Local Government and Politics in China


Book Description

After over a decade of administrative and economic reform in mainland China, the center has become increasingly remote and less important for many localities. In many ways, the mobilization capacity of the central government has been weakened. Central government policies are often ignored and local officials are often more interested in personal projects than in centrally directed economic plans. In this study of local government and politics in China, the author explores when and why local government officials comply with policy directives from above. Drawing on interviews with government officials in various municipalities and a review of county records and other government documents, he provides the first in-depth look at policy implementation at the county and township levels in the PRC. The book examines the impact of the Chinese cadre system on the behavior of local officials, local party and government structure, relationships among various levels of Chinese local government, policy supervision mechanisms at local levels, village governance of China, and more.




Outsourcing Repression


Book Description

Bulldozers, violent thugs, and nonviolent brokers -- The theory : state power, repression, and implications for development -- Outsourcing violence : everyday repression via thugs-for-hire -- Case studies : thugs-for-hire, repression, and mobilization -- Networks of state infrastructural power : brokerage, state penetration, and mobilization -- Brokers in harmonious demolition : mass mobilizers, mediators, and huangniu -- Comparative context : South Korea and India.




Popular Politics and the Quest for Justice in Contemporary China


Book Description

This book examines facets of popular politics that are, above all, animated by a quest for justice as law, fairness and public virtue. The aim is to better understand how "the political" emerges in the interstices of state law and local moralities. The contributors to the book focus on the interplay between private and public spaces, between morality and law, and between ‘front stage’ and ‘back stage,’ to explore how the common quest for justice, which takes on state slogans but cannot be absorbed by state institutions, changes Chinese society from the bottom-up by creating self-reflective new publics.




Politics in China


Book Description

Faced with the usual list of paradoxes that plague our views of China: it is a communist regime with a capitalist economy; an authoritarian state with an entrepreneurial spirit; a unified nation with tendencies toward fragmentation, the contributions to this volume work to go beyond them and to seek new paths to understanding China. To do so, the essays avoid the conventional approaches toward Chinese politics that focus on either evolutionist (culturally bound) or functionalist (role bound) issues. Rather than separate state from society, these essays explore how the interweaving of these different spheres creates a hazy border between them. The contributors explore the moving frontiers between other spheres as well, such as rural and urban populations, internal evolution and external influence, and money and politics. This book does not aim to offer a new framework of analysis for understanding Chinese politics, but to open up new directions for research and study on the topic. The internationally diverse scholars in this volume offer readers an intriguing look at the present and future of China research.