Alvin Y. So

Property Rights and Economic Reform in China

1. Property rights in the Chinese economy: contours of the process of change Andrew G. Walder and Jean C. Oi Part I. Enterprise Ownership in Village Communities: 2. Collective enterprise and property rights in a Sichuan village: the rise and decline of managerial corporatism Gregory A. Ruf 3. Local institutions and the transformation of property rights in Southern Fujian Chih-Jou Jay Chen 4. The role of local government in creating property rights: a comparison of two townships in Northwest Yunnan Xiaolin Guo 5. The evolution of property rights in village enterprises: the case of Wuxi Kung James Kai-Sing Kung Part II. Rural Shareholding Reforms and Their Impact: 6. Shareholding cooperatives: a property rights analysis Eduard B. Vermeer 7. Local elites as officials and owners: shareholding and property rights in Daqiuzhuang Nan Lin and Chih-Jou Jay Chen 8. The regional evolution of ownership forms: shareholding cooperatives and rural industry in Shanghai and Wenzhou Susan H. Whiting Part III. The Transformation of Public Property in the Urban Economy: 9. Backyard profit centers: the private assets of public agencies Yi-Min Lin and Zhanxin Zhang 10. Bargained property rights: the case of Chinas high-technology sector Corinna-Barbara Francis 11. Producing property rights: strategies, networks, and efficiency in urban Chinas nonstate firms David L. Wank Notes Index.

Cross-Border Families in Hong Kong: The Role of Social Class and Politics

The massive relocation of industrial activities from Hong Kong to mainland China that followed in the wake of Chinas acceptance of foreign investment has given rise to two different sets of cross-border familial relations. In the first case, middle-class managers and technicians from Hong Kong have taken “second wives” during their stay in southern China. Hong Kongs mass media have been generally tolerant of this second-wife phenomenon, seeing it merely as a case of funglau (sexually potency), justifying it in terms of middle-class mens “soft spot,” and blaming the first wives for neglecting their duties. In the second case, workers from Hong Kong have crossed into the mainland in search of spouses because they believe that women in China are more affordable than those in Hong Kong. Hong Kongs restrictive immigration policies result in these mainland wives and children having to wait for ten years or more before receiving a one-way permit to migrate to Hong Kong. When they do arrive in Hong Kong, they have been discriminated against and condemned as causing Hong Kongs social and economic problems. This article examines how social class and politics have affected the way in which the mass media and the Hong Kong government have dealt with these two sets of cross-border families.

Welfare capitalism in Taiwan : state, economy and social policy

List of Tables - List of Figures - Acknowledgements - Introduction - PART 1: STATE WELFARE DEVELOPMENT IN TAIWAN: AN OVERVIEW OF HISTORY AND LITERATURE - Colonial Taiwan (1895-1945) - Postwar Taiwan (1945-1979) - Taiwan in Transition (1980-1990) - Issues and Explanations - PART 2: WELFARE CAPITALISM IN TAIWAN: TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED MARXIST ACCOUNT - The Specific Feature of Taiwans Capitalist Development - The State Autonomy in Taiwan - Education, Ideology, and Popular Welfare Attitudes - Class Division, Social Movement, Democratisation and State Welfare - Conclusion - A Postscript on Taiwanese Welfare Development after 1990 - Appendix: Historical Events in Taiwans Development - Bibliography - Index

Peasant conflict and the local predatory state in the Chinese countryside

Observing the growing number and intensity of peasant struggles in the Chinese countryside, examined here is why Chinese peasants protest against township government but not against the central state. It is argued that two decades of a neoliberal project, plus recent policy changes, have led to the formation of a split state, one divided between a‘benign’ centre and a‘predatory’ local apparatus. This split state has in turn shaped the contours of peasant conflict.

Asia's environmental movements : comparative perspectives

The investigation of the rise and fall of Gao Gang suggests broader implications on the nature of elite politics in the Maoist era. The illumination of basic issues in Chinese politics in the context of this case, especially as regards the role of Mao Zedong, is relevant not only to the initial post-1949 period of comparative, but flawed, party unity, but also to the structural fault lines of the political system which were later to contribute so significantly to the Cultural Revolution.

“One Country, Two Systems” and Hong Kong-China National Integration: A Crisis-Transformation Perspective

Abstract This paper examines the historical process of Hong Kong-China national unification through a crisis-transformation framework. This paper argues that the Chinese unification process between Hong Kong and mainland China is not a smooth process. Instead, it has gone through at least four crises during the 1980s and the 1990s. The institution framework for unification – the so-called “One Country, Two Systems” policy – emerged out of the first crisis of negotiation in the early 1980s, and this policy has been hotly contested and transformed during the various crises over the past three decades. Previous studies on Hong Kong-China unification tends to focus solely on the political and legal aspects. However, this paper shows that unification needs to be symmetrical on all aspects (legal, political, economic and socio-cultural) in order to make it work.

The Economic Success of Hong Kong Insights from a World-System Perspective

This article studies the origins and development of the economic success of Hong Kong. After pointing out the problems of the free-market explanation and the authoritarian state explanation, this article turns to the world-system perspective for new insights. It is argued that the historical development of Hong Kong is shaped both by the capitalist world-system and by the interactions between socialist China and the capitalist power bloc between the 1950s and the 1970s. This article contributes by showing how these world-system dynamics have affected the Hong Kong political economy over the past three decades.

State Neoliberalism: The Chinese Road to Capitalism

China has undergone rapid and sustained economic transformation in the last 30 years. Its development has been remarkable for a number of reasons. In the first place, its gross domestic product has increased at close to ten percent per year since 1978, and the country managed to reduce the share of the population living on less than US

Beyond the logic of capital and the polarization model: The state, market reforms, and the plurality of class conflict in China

1 per day from 64 percent in 1981 to 16 percent by 2006; effectively lifting 400 million people out of absolute poverty (UNDP 2006). The rapid growth rate was matched nowhere in the world except for the so-called miracle economies of Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In the second place, although the Chinese economy has its share of problems, such as tremendous regional disparity, it also succeeded in upgrading its technological capability and escaped the threat of foreign domination. Over the years, not only has China become the global factory for inexpensive consumer goods, it has also enticed BP, General Motors, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and other corporations to locate part of their research and development facilities in China. Furthermore, despite the importance of foreign investors both as producers aiming at the global market, or as retailers targeting the domestic one, foreign capital remains largely a junior partner in China’s development project. In the third place, despite the downfall of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, China’s communist party-state has continued to provide leadership for the country.

The Transition from Neoliberalism to State Neoliberalism in China at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

In China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle, Martin HartLandsberg and Paul Burkett argue convincingly that “China’s market reforms have led not to socialist renewal but rather to full-fledged capitalist restoration, including foreign economic domination” (9). In addition, they show that this pro-market transition is highly costly, leading to rising unemployment, economic insecurity, inequality, intensified exploitation, declining health and education conditions, exploding government debt, and unstable prices. Consequently, they conclude, the progressive community in the West is wrong to celebrate China as an economic success story. Further, they insist, we have to bring Marxism back in so as to provide the “theoretical clarity and strategic perspective necessary to help us transform the world” (24). Hart-Landsberg and Burkett’s Marxist analysis, however, is derived mostly from the polarization model presented in Marx’s Capital. If capitalism has been restored in China, then the logic of capital and the polarization model should be applicable. In the editors’ foreword to China and Socialism, Magdoff and Foster spell out the assumption underlying this polarization model, “Under capitalism, driven by profit for the few, accumulation occurs on a world scale while the great majority of the world’s masses are plunged into misery. And as shown by Critical Asian Studies 37:3 (2005), 481-494