As Chinas' material power has reached the ranks of the great powers, realist predictions of Chinas' inevitable hegemonic trajectory have gained traction in international politics. Nevertheless, China has consistently articulated a commitment to anti-hegemonic principles, even as this claim continues to face scrutiny in international society. Diverging from various paradigms of hegemony studies in international relations, the author endeavours to explain-through conceptual analysis-why China does not seek hegemony. By contrasting the multiplicitous connotations of "hegemony" in Western and Chinese contexts, this article presents hegemony as context-dependent. Drawing on Gramscis' theoretical framework, the article argues that hegemony is, in itself, an analytically neutral term-whether it is viewed as a positive goal or a negative threat depends on its legitimacy and the degree of consent from the subordinate actors. In light of the realities in China, the author proposes "legitimised leadership" as an alternative approach to rethink hegemony in relation to China. Such "hegemony" remains a prospective vision that would require long-term efforts to ultimately realise. The article seeks to clarify misconceptions and misjudgements about Chinas' peaceful rise in the international community.
A consideration of market elites' class identification is essential for understanding the power shift within Chinas' market system. On reviewing data from the 2013-21 waves of the Chinese General Social Survey, the findings reveal a declining trend in market elites' class identification in recent years. Over time, the contribution of income to market elites' class identification has diminished, while the influence of social security has increased. Geographically, in areas characterised by high levels of market closure, the effect of income on market elites' class identification weakens, whereas the impact of social security intensifies. These findings broaden scholarly knowledge of market elites by expanding the consideration from objective status to subjective attitudes, thereby enhancing the understanding of Chinas' social transformation.
Using panel data from 283 Chinese prefecture-level cities, this article investigates effects. The results show that, within a local region, the digital economy exerts a positive impact on agricultural development. However, it may also create a "crowding-out" effect on neighbouring regions through mechanisms such as information siphoning and resource misallocation. The analysis further indicates that these spillover effects are moderated by factors including human capital and industrial structure. The findings remain robust after accounting for potential self-selection and endogeneity issues, and they are consistent across multiple spatial econometric models.
This article examines how Chinas' market-oriented reform affected the efficiency of industrial resource allocation from 1999 to 2007. Results indicate that marketisation significantly improves allocation efficiency, primarily by optimising government-market relations. Regional marketisation also boosts local resource allocation efficiency, with the strongest effects observed in central China and the weakest in western China. Further analysis identifies a double threshold effect of marketisation level on optimal industrial resource allocation, indicating that when marketisation reaches a certain level, efficiency no longer continues to increase but instead reverts to a "steady state" level. These findings offer policy implications for advancing Chinas' market-oriented reforms.
Given Chinas' need to respond to rapid population ageing, shrinking family sizes and shifting norms around filial piety in elder care, this article examines whether self-reported health and mortality in rural areas. Using three waves (2009, 2012 analysis shows that older parents-especially mothers with only daughters-report low levels of self-rated health. However, having only daughters is associated with a lower mortality risk, whereas having mostly sons is linked to higher mortality risk, particularly for fathers. In practice, care from daughters corresponds to lower mortality risk for older parents, especially fathers, while care from sons is associated with better subjective health, particularly for mothers. The findings suggest that persistent traditional norms and gender inequalities in rural China partly offset the potential health advantages associated with daughters' caregiving.
The international promotion of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as part of Chinas' Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has attracted considerable scholarly attention. However, limited research has examined the Chinese states' specific framing of TCM in its promotion since the inception of the BRI. This article addresses the gap by conducting a thematic analysis of a sizeable corpus of official documents and state media reports on the international promotion and development of TCM from 2013 to 2022. The findings show that the promotion of TCM has been consistently politicised, with TCM being framed as both science and cultural heritage in a state of flux. The fluidity of framing indicates that these framings are deployed in various contexts and by different actors to advance the diverse strategic objectives of the Party-state.
The implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative has placed foreign contracted projects (or overseas contracted projects) in a prominent strategic position, with a growing number of Chinese workers posted overseas. To examine the effectiveness of Chinese law in protecting the labour rights of these workers, this article adopts a rights-based approach, under which posted workers are treated as holders of legally enforceable rights and the analysis focuses on the role of origin-country legal frameworks in securing labour protection. Drawing on the actual employment patterns of Chinese posted workers in overseas contracted projects, the article reveals a structural incompatibility arising from the inadequate integration of the regulatory framework governing overseas contracted projects into Chinas' labour law regime. This misalignment generates significant legal uncertainty in the application of labour standards, the allocation of employer liability and questions of jurisdiction. As a result, these workers' labour rights are often infringed due to employers' evasion of liability and the lack of clear pathways for applying labour standards stipulated in Chinese labour law. The article argues that addressing these deficiencies requires strengthening supply chain compliance mechanisms, clarifying the extraterritorial application of Chinese labour law and adopting complementary measures to enhance transnational coordination in the protection of labour rights.
In transitional countries, particularly those characterised by multilevel, multiagency bureaucratic structures, such as China, the success of deregulation is largely contingent upon the credible enforcement of effective bureaucratic control. Although a substantial body of literature examines central bureaucratic control and local compliance, relatively few studies investigate how such bureaucratic control is exercised when the central government seeks to regulate lower-level governments directly. This article addresses that gap by examining how Chinas' national business environment evaluation-a comprehensive regulatory reform assessment inspired by the World Banks' Doing Business Project, particularly by its framework-has been initiated by the central government and implemented at the municipal level. Using case studies from two provinces, the article develops two theoretical propositions. First, the adoption of less restrictive measures towards intermediate-level governments reduces their inclination to compete with the central government in supervising the performance of lower-level governments. Second, leveraging the Doing Business Project, coupled with a third-party implementation plan, increases the costs of noncompliance for participating agencies and local governments, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will comply with the central governments' evaluation scheme.
Indian strategists have traditionally prioritised the role of the Indian Army in countering China and attempting to narrow the capability gap along the northern frontier. However, the prolonged post-Galwan border crisis since 2020 has catalysed alternative approaches that emphasise counterbalancing Chinas' continental advantage through increasing maritime deterrence. This article argues that India has begun to overhaul its conventional approach that has long been dominated by a land-centric buildup. Instead, India has sought to better leverage its advantages in the Indian Ocean to strengthen deterrence against both Chinese naval forces and merchant shipping and aim to gain additional bargaining leverage in its continental rivalry with China. Thus, as this strategy, dubbed "offsetting Chinas' continental advantage through maritime deterrence" (hereafter, maritime deterrence1 in short), highlights the expansion of the theatre of Sino-Indian rivalry beyond the land to include the maritime domain, it calls for greater investment in the Indian Navy. More importantly, it reflects Indias' emerging effort to integrate the continental and maritime theatres within a more coherent strategic framework. In this sense, maritime deterrence is not merely a programme of naval modernisation, but part of a broader endeavour to recalibrate Indias' overall strategic posture and secure asymmetric advantages vis-& agrave;-vis China.
Risk shocks remain a major driver of recurrent poverty in rural China even after the achievement of poverty eradication. Using survey data from 926 rural households in Shaanxi province, this article employs ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, interaction terms and mediation analysis to examine how natural and market risks affect rural household income. The results show that both types of risk significantly reduce income, while in situ urbanisation helps to mitigate these adverse effects. Financial behaviour, including maintaining insurance, savings and access to credit, plays a mediating role in households' ability to cope with risk shocks. To examine these aspects more closely, the article also constructs a micro-level financial behaviour index and provides policy implications for raising income and consolidating poverty-alleviation gains through inclusive finance and in situ urbanisation.
This article investigates Chinas' support for Palestine during the Hamas-Israel conflict beginning 7 October 2023 and highlights the developing trends in Chinese diplomatic influence and foreign policy towards Israel. Chinas' critical stance towards Israel and backing for Palestine meet its objectives for increased regional influence against the United States' interests in the Global South and deepened relationships with Arab states. Sino-Israeli relations deteriorated significantly due to the conflict and antisemitism increased within China. However, enduring economic and technological interests on both sides create opportunities to maintain stability in the relationship, provided that China has a moderate stance going forward and addresses the key issues of the conflict in what Israel might consider a more balanced and constructive manner.
The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped not only our perceptions of life but also our political attitudes. Grounded in the Chinese sociological approach to political power and the "rally-around-the-flag" effect, this article examines how external political efficacy among Chinese youth changed before, during and after the pandemic, and whether political trust moderated this relationship. Drawing on data from respondents aged 18 to 35 (N=6,845) in the 2019, 2021 and 2023 Chinese Social Surveys, the authors conducted bivariate correlations, regressions and moderation analyses. Findings show significant variations in external political efficacy across the stages of the pandemic, moderated by levels of political trust. Among youth with low political trust, external political efficacy was higher in the pre-pandemic stage (2019), prior to the implementation of public health measures. By contrast, those with high trust in government exhibited lower external political efficacy in 2019 (pre-pandemic stage) compared to 2021 and 2023 (during and after the pandemic). These findings deepen understanding of political power dynamics in the context of crises such as a pandemic and demonstrate how such major public health events can reshape political perceptions and behaviour. They underscore the importance of fostering political trust and efficacy to maintain resilient civic engagement among Chinese youth.
While the role of public sector wage levels in combating corruption has long been a highly contentious issue, research identifying the conditions under which such wage incentives become effective is scant. Addressing this gap, this article empirically analyses Chinas' provincial panel data from 2003 to 2017 using multiple econometric models. The results demonstrate pronounced regional heterogeneity and a threshold effect in how public employees' relative wages impact regional corruption. Specifically, the effectiveness of wage-related anti-corruption strategies hinges critically on the level of economic development. These findings imply that pay rises alone are unlikely to curb systemic corruption when complementary anti-corruption mechanisms and institutional safeguards are weak or inadequate.
This article situates Macaos' sweeping gaming law reforms from 2022 to 2024, the first substantial revision of the casino framework in over two decades, within Chinas' evolving governance and economic priorities. Central to the reforms is the dismantling of the traditional VIP ecosystem run by gaming promoters (commonly known as junkets), despite its historical contribution of over 70 per cent of gross gaming revenue. Tracing the industrys' evolution since the 1999 Macao handover to the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC), the article argues that curtailing junkets reflects strategic alignment with mainland Chinas' objectives, including tighter capital controls, enhanced financial transparency and law-based governance. It shows how the junket model, while integral to Macaos' growth, increasingly conflicted with Chinas' anti-money-laundering enforcement and sectoral modernisation. More broadly, the analysis demonstrates how subnational legal reform mediates between Macaos' gaming practices, Chinas' national strategic priorities and evolving legal frameworks; the article then contextualises Macaos' changes within wider economic and social reforms, and explains how these reforms align regional economies with national policy goals in Chinas' unique political-economic system.
While the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) face legal challenges in effectively implementing the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), China, as a key player, faces unique challenges in aligning its national legal framework with the goals and targets of the GBF. After translating the GBF targets into national policy commitments, the next critical step is to translate these political pledges into binding legal obligations. Concurrently, a thorough examination of the implementation challenges within biodiversity legislation is warranted, as addressing these challenges effectively will directly support the attainment of the GBF targets.
Drawing on parenting advantage and institutional theories, this article investigates how emerging multinational enterprise (EMNE) headquarters' ability to manage institutional voids influences subsidiary performance and how this relationship is moderated by host-country experience and institutional distance. Findings from an analysis of panel data on 353 Chinese EMNEs and their 3,394 foreign subsidiaries from 2012 to 2020 show that headquarters' ability to manage institutional voids improves subsidiary performance. This positive effect becomes stronger with greater host-country experience. Formal institutional distance weakens the positive effect of the capability to manage institutional voids, whereas informal institutional distance shows no significant moderating effect.
Leaderless movements are generally characterised by networked, decentralised and horizontal mobilisation. However, the implications of such leaderless "leadership" remain underexplored. Analysing 9,336 posts on the LIHKG forum following the first disruptive events of the Hong Kong's Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement on 1 July 2019, this article highlights that the "diffused leadership"-anonymous "online users" who use social media to promote radicalisation against the authorities-has certain marked differences from the participants, who are more motivated by concerns for fellow protesters. The findings indicate that posts advocating unity garner greater participant engagement than those calling for condemnation or follow-up actions. These insights offer a fresh perspective on the dynamics between a diffused leadership and participants in leaderless movements.
This study examines the potential for conflict between China and South Korea over Socotra Rock. Although recent geopolitical tensions-such as South Koreas' (the have raised concerns about the broader trajectory of China-ROK relations, this article argues that the Socotra Rock dispute, on its own, is unlikely to become a major flashpoint. It reevaluates historical claims advanced by both China (which names the rock Suyan Jiao) and South Korea (which calls it Ieodo), and examines the postcolonial significance of the dispute. In addition, it assesses regional strategic interests and economic interdependence between China and South Korea to evaluate the possibility of a military escalation over Socotra Rock. Finallly, the article applies a prisoners' dilemma framework to analyse how cooperation or defection could shape China-ROK maritime interactions, and offers a structured examination of negotiation strategies and mechanisms for mitigating conflicts.
Research on the development of volunteerism in China has underscored the important role of state mobilisation, but it has yet to fully examine the effects of different mobilisation strategies on public volunteering. Based on a between-subjects survey experiment, this article investigates the impact of three mobilisation instruments-government funding, publicity and institutionalised mobilisation (such as leveraging the political identity of the Communist Party of China and state-affiliated employment)-on individuals' willingness to volunteer and their intended duration of volunteering. It also analyses the moderating effects of two framings of mobilisation (nation-centric or individual-centric). The findings indicate that government funding produces the largest positive effect on individual willingness to volunteer and intended volunteering duration, followed by government publicity and, lastly, institutionalised mobilisation. An individual-centric framing strengthens the mobilising effects of both government funding and publicity. These findings highlight the importance of infrastructure and publicity in promoting volunteerism, and suggest that state mobilisation enhances individuals' enthusiasm for environmental volunteering in China.
Amid global and domestic changes, Chinese firms face increased exchange rate uncertainty. Using cross-country panel data for 2005-22, this article examines whether the exchange rate is a barrier or a driver of Chinas' outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). The findings show that renminbi appreciation drives both the frequency and scale of OFDI, particularly in high-income host countries, highsunk-cost industries and at the later stage of the "811 exchange rate reform". Conversely, exchange rate volatility inhibits OFDI scale, particularly in highincome, lower-middle-income and low-income countries, in low-sunk-cost industries and the early stage of the "811 exchange rate reform". Further analysis indicates that the host countrys' labour-cost advantage can amplify the effect of renminbi appreciation. Policymakers should take into account firms' responses to exchange rate uncertainty when advancing reforms of the renminbi exchange rate.
