Why have existing developmental strategies failed to promote rural industrial development more effectively in many regions of China? This question cannot be fully answered by prevailing developmental state theory, which emphasizes the institutional conditions of embedded autonomy, market competition, and enterprise investment capacity, while overlooking the influence of informal property relations within industries. This article’s case study of an industrial township in northern China demonstrates that informal property relations, tied to entrepreneurs’ informal access to labor, land, and environmental resources, have been persistently maintained through socially embedded power interactions. These relations have contributed substantial profits to rural industries and greatly alleviated pressure on entrepreneurs, making them unwilling to reinvest profits into development activities. Instead, profits are allocated to simple industrial expansion or personal consumption. As a result, the developmental strategies fail to achieve their intended effects because of a lack of response from enterprises. Furthermore, this study examines two attempts by the government to formalize these property relations—the construction of industrial parks and more stringent environmental governance—and explains how their impact has been constrained. This research provides valuable insights for late-developing regions with lagging political and economic reforms and deepens our understanding of the substantive view of the economy.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a sweeping mass assault that shook the political foundations of China's Leninist party-state. But why was it called a "cultural revolution"? What, precisely, was "cultural" about Mao's last revolutionary endeavor? Focusing on the ideological and cultural struggles that preceded and shaped its early phase, this article challenges the prevailing narrative that assumes Mao conceived of the Cultural Revolution as an insurgent political movement from the outset. Instead, it contends that the movement initially took form as a radical "cultural revolution" in the literal sense-rooted in Mao's longstanding vision of ideological and cultural transformation. What began as a targeted intervention within the cultural domain, however, escalated into a far-reaching political upheaval and systemic crisis, ultimately exceeding Mao's original expectations. By reconstructing Mao's intent in historical context and treating "cultural revolution" as a distinct historiographical category, this article offers a more historically grounded account of the Cultural Revolution's origins and early dynamics.
This article examines how local states in Qinghai have turned labor export into a development strategy, using the province's "noodle economy" to promote large-scale, long-term out-migration. Drawing on multi-sited qualitative research, it shows how county governments in Hualong and Xunhua have mobilized training, loans, cadre persuasion, and branch offices to encourage Hui and Salar households to establish qingzhen (halal) noodle restaurants across eastern China. This strategy has successfully generated remittances, consumption, and fiscal revenues, yet it has also enhanced social and educational exclusion for households and the long-term hollowing out of origin villages. By analyzing labor export as an institutionalized practice of local states, the article reframes internal migration not as spontaneous movement or resettlement but as the organized export of populations to stimulate growth-akin to international "emigration states." It highlights how such policies externalize social costs to households while valorizing remittances and even absence as developmental success.
Over the course of six decades of scholarly exploration, Philip C. C. Huang has conducted in-depth research on Chinese history and contemporary society and published fifteen monographs based on his findings. His work covers the late imperial, modern, and contemporary periods and spans a wide range of topics, including the peasant economy, the law and the justice system, the informal economy, and state governance. Huang's academic thought, theoretical perspectives, and research methodologies are systematically presented in these fifteen monographs. His most significant theoretical contribution lies in his understanding of "practice" as the dualistic interaction and unification of the subjective and objective, through which he has constructed a methodological framework for the "social science of practice." This innovation not only provides important methodological guidance for building China's independent knowledge system, but also introduces new academic paradigms and theoretical pathways for the global study of Chinese issues.
Heavily influenced by Western scientism, the economics profession strives to emulate classical physics in its search for universal laws that govern the complex world. However, the indeterminacy of the economic world means that economics cannot replicate classical physics, leaving mainstream economics perpetually entangled in a paradoxical relationship between theoretical assumptions and empirical realities, as it continually seeks universalization. In contrast, the social science of practice approach does not use assumption-driven frameworks to construct universal laws. Instead, it abstracts the real logic of actors’ behavior from practice, understood as the dualistic interaction between subjective and objective elements. This approach not only constitutes a powerful critique of formalist epistemology but also offers important insights into how to build a social science grounded in Chinese subjectivity.
In the opening years of the People's Republic of China, two laws were enacted-the Marriage Law and the Land Reform Law. Based on an investigation of divorce cases across five periods in Ping county, Guizhou, between 1950 and 1956, this article argues that the successful implementation of the Marriage Law hinged on the success of land reform. Hence, it is not a coincidence that when land reform came to an end in 1953, the number of divorce cases reached its peak across the country. In adjudicating these cases, local cadres adhered to the longstanding legal tradition of "practical moralism," prioritizing women's survival over abstract ideological principles such as marital freedom and gender equality. As an ever-larger number of women obtained land through land reform, the court in Ping county shifted its attention from securing women's livelihoods to the partition of landed property. In this new socioeconomic context, the principle of "dividing the land and letting the woman take away her share" was enforced to resolve marriage disputes, empowering women to seek divorce with greater autonomy.
Since the launching of economic reforms in China, diverse forms of expertise and educational programs have promoted the pursuit of well-being. In this article, we introduce the concept of "well-being entrepreneurs" to analyze charismatic agents who shape conceptions and practices in this field. These individuals carve out niche enterprises within the tensions-and sometimes convergences-between state-led campaigns and market trends, asserting their distinct, invaluable expertise. Our analysis is grounded in a biographic ethnography of a well-being entrepreneur running a private academy in rural Zhejiang. His career trajectory spans multi-level marketing in the 1990s, psychologized life coaching in the 2000s, and, from the 2010s onward, "family education" grounded in Confucian traditions. These phases reveal the continuous and shifting conceptions of well-being during the reform era, demonstrating how political projects, globalized discourses, and grassroots initiatives co-construct ideals of flourishing, positioning well-being as a collective aspiration and a contested, commodified project.
This article explores Feng Yuxiang's relationship to the central government at Nanjing in order to analyze the concept of "residual warlordism" in the early Nationalist period. As a former warlord turned Nationalist military commander, Feng pursued the contradictory goals of protecting his military and political autonomy while also supporting the authority of the Nanjing government, which reveals the central problem that residual warlords faced after 1928. Feng's diary provides evidence of this difficult situation, with insights into how he understood his new position after 1928, how certain issues complicated his relationship to the central government, and how he justified his decision to break with Chiang Kai-shek. In analyzing Feng's decision to revolt against Chiang Kai-shek in 1929, this article illustrates the difficulty of reconciling the contradictory impulses inherent in the residual warlordism of the Nanjing Decade.
This study reviews the personnel management reforms in Chinese courts that began in 2014 and that aimed to enhance the professionalism of the judiciary. Reforms included instituting a judge quota system, reducing judges' workloads, improving their compensation, and implementing a judicial "lifetime responsibility" system, wherein judges are held accountable for their judgments even after retirement or leaving the judiciary. Based on interviews with thirty-seven in-service and thirteen former judges from 2017 to 2023, this study demonstrates that the reforms have only partially enhanced judicial professionalism in China. The reforms have raised the threshold for becoming a judge and increased their decision-making autonomy. Yet, their workload remains heavy without significant increases in compensation, and public confidence in the judiciary has not improved substantially. Some judges want to leave their quota judgeships while retaining other judicial administrative positions. However, since this transition is difficult, some choose to leave the judiciary entirely. Finally, local governments still routinely intervene in the courts, thereby compromising judicial autonomy. This study provides valuable insights for future personnel management reforms to improve judicial professionalism in China.
The rapid development of online platforms has resulted in notable governance challenges worldwide. While governments and platform companies often struggle and compete with each other in Western countries, scholars generally view the interaction between the two in China as cooperative. Given that platform companies, after all, are private organizations, how should we understand the nature of their relationship with the government in China? Furthermore, how does the Chinese government make the relationship sustainable? Based upon extensive fieldwork and documentary sources, we conceptualize the relationship between the government and platform companies in China as predicated on "informal subcontracting," which resembles "administrative subcontracting" but is distinguished from it by the informal components of its operation-characterized by a higher degree of negotiability, reciprocity, and flexibility within the rule of law. Our findings carry important implications for our understanding of government-enterprise relations and platform governance in China.
This article investigates how historians studying PRC history refer to individuals drawn from historical sources in their scholarship. A survey of English-language scholarship reveals a wide spectrum of approaches, yet most historians remain silent about the rationale behind their choices. I argue that naming is not simply a matter of anonymization versus the use of real names, but of how anonymization is enacted, the extent to which anonymity is applied, how real names are presented, and what these decisions signify. Naming practices raise methodological and ethical concerns relating to credibility, privacy, agency, and accountability, but more fundamentally, they illuminate the dynamics of power in the three-way relationship between historical subjects, historians, and readers. By examining case studies of historical writing on sexual violence in the PRC, this article contends that naming is an epistemological issue central to the production of historical knowledge.
On April 9, 1939, Cheng Xigeng, a collaborator of the newly established puppet Provisional Government of the Republic of China, was assassinated at the Grand Theatre in the British Concession of Tianjin. When the Chinese suspects in his murder were caught and questions arose over the legitimacy of their trial, the case sparked an international crisis that involved Britain, Japan, and the Nationalist government in Chongqing. This article investigates the neglected Anti-Japanese Traitors Assassination Corps (AJTAC), who were the real murderers of Cheng. While the coexistence and rivalry of different layers of imperialism in China provided opportunities for the Chinese to "use barbarians against barbarians," Japan countered by "using Chinese against Chinese." Composed of scions of the elite, the AJTAC, initially driven by a sense of righteousness, became embroiled in diplomatic disputes and an intelligence war between the Chongqing government and the collaborationist Wang Jingwei regime. Ultimately, it was the intelligence rivalries rooted in the clique culture of the Nationalist Party that led to the downfall of the AJTAC. By tracing the development of the corps and its involvement in Cheng's case, the article seeks to reveal the multi-layered struggles between foreign and domestic powers in wartime Tianjin.
Around 1745, Magistrate Xie Shenglun arrived in Tianzhu county in southeastern Guizhou, intent on transforming the kinship and marriage practices of the local Miao. Indeed, during the eighteenth century, local families adopted markers of formal lineage, including graveyards, genealogies, and ancestral halls, aligning themselves with Neo-Confucianism and the imperial state. However, other aspects of Neo-Confucianism were adapted or ignored. Records of wives and daughters in the Pan genealogy present evidence of practices such as widow remarriage, cross-cousin marriage, and delayed-transfer marriage. Attention to affinal relations reveals an alternate kinship system recorded alongside patrilineal descent. Families adopted formal lineage to protect their political and economic interests, but instead of reforming or replacing local kinship and marriage practices, they reinforced them. Even as the Pan genealogy confirmed the family's status as imperial subjects, the marriage practices and networks it recorded helped maintain an ethnic identity separate from state categories and grounded in the local community.
The Spring Festival Gala is China's most important annual television show. Produced and broadcast by China Central Television (CCTV), it provides a lens through which to analyze the evolution of masculine ideals sanctioned by the party-state. The Gala's comedic skits present various male images for analysis. The changing presentation of "soft" or less masculine male characters in Gala skits-from such roles being mocked in the 1980s to becoming positively coded protagonists in the 2010s-mirrors the changing concepts of Chinese masculinities against the background of economic growth, consumer society, and women's rising social status. Considering the recurrent criticism of "feminine" young men and the moral panic over a "masculinity crisis" in China that has emerged since the 1980s, this article examines the subtle interdependency between the official masculinity discourse and the rising popularity of "soft masculinity."
This chapter investigates the evolution of Chinese culture, showing how it balanced modernity with its deep-rooted traditions across literature, film, and television. It begins with the 1915 call for a new culture, followed by the Cultural Revolution, and then China’s global cultural presence today. It also recounts the emergence of mass readership in the Ming dynasty and the pivotal shift to the baihua vernacular that enabled mass literacy and stronger links between language, education, and political messaging. The chapter discusses cinema that grew from 1920s Shanghai into a politically charged art form. It also traces the rise of television in the 1980s, especially through CCTV and popular costume dramas.
This chapter delves into how Chinese society has changed in its pursuit of equality, wealth, and freedom, focusing on gender roles and economic transformation. It starts with Zou Taofen’s call for real equality based on moral contribution and examines how modern China remains rhetorically committed to equality despite visible hierarchies. It also traces the fierce struggle for gender equality, from the binding of feet to women’s access to literacy and publishing during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The chapter analyses China’s post-Mao economic progress, noting rising incomes, expanded education, and a growing urban middle class. It questions whether increased economic freedom has come at the cost of deeper political control.
This chapter traces the end of imperial China and the rise of modern political thought. It explains how Late Qing China faced growing pressures from population increase, corrupt tax collection, inflation, and silver shortages, which weakened central authority and empowered provincial militarization. It also emphasizes that ambitious efforts like the Xinzheng reforms and the abolition of the examination system alienated elites and eroded trust in the dynasty. The chapter examines Sun Yatsen’s revolutionary ideas that gained popularity among the middle class. It recounts the Qing collapse, the founding of the Republic of China, and the beginning of a new, yet unstable, political era.
This chapter reviews China’s evolving relationship with modernity by tracing both its historical roots and present-day transformations. It begins with a 1910 account from New China that captures China’s early embrace of English and Western knowledge as signs of modernization. It also demonstrates how this vision still echoes today, as China continues to redefine itself through economic growth, urban change, and global engagement, including events like the 2008 Olympics and the Global Civilizational Initiative. The chapter highlights how modern societies prioritize reason, secularization, and individual identity while breaking hierarchical traditions. It underscores that China has long exhibited features of modernity but has followed its own unique path in embracing them.
