Deng Xiaoping Research Articles

CHINESE PEACEFUL RISE AND DEVELOPMENT. THE THEORY OF “CHINA’S THREAT”

People’s Republic of China (PRC) has achieved phenomenal economic growth and unprecedented development “miracle” in human history. From the middle of the first decade of this century China has become a significant player in the global economy, it has flourished into a formidable economy, ranked the second largest in the world, and stands as the largest, the fastest growing and the most heavily engaged in international business and investment. The sustained and rapid growth of China’s economy, since the late 1970s, initiated by Deng Xiaoping (8 March 1978 - 17 June 1983), driven by reform and opening-up policy, became one of the most important milestones of the global economy during the past quarter century. The reform and opening up has enabled China to complete the historic transformation from a semi-closed society into a fully open one. Today, the openness of Chinese society and its integration with the outside world have reached unprecedented levels. The consequence of integration into the global economy, economic development has made China into a major force and advocate of globalization. China has become the strategic center of the “global factory” that produces the commodities consumed globally, above all in the centers of global capitalism.

The Visible Hand: The Role of Government in China’s Long-Awaited Industrial Revolution

China is undergoing its long-awaited industrial revolution. There is no shortage of commentary and opinion on this dramatic period, but few have attempted to provide a coherent, in-depth, political economic framework that explains the fundamental mechanisms behind China’s rapid industrialization. This article reviews the New Stage Theory of economic development put forth by Wen (2016a). It illuminates the critical sequence of developmental stages since the reforms enacted by Deng Xiaoping in 1978: namely, small-scale commercialized agricultural production, proto-industrialization in the countryside, a formal industrial revolution based on mass production of labor-intensive light consumer goods, a sustainable “industrial trinity” boom in energy/motive power/infrastructure, and a second industrial revolution involving the mass production of heavy industrial goods. This developmental sequence follows essentially the same pattern as Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution, despite sharp differences in political and institutional conditions. One of the key conclusions exemplified by China’s economic rise is that the extent of industrialization is limited by the extent of the market. One of the key strategies behind the creation and nurturing of a continually growing market in China is based on this premise: The free market is a public good that is very costly for nations to create and support. Market creation requires a powerful “mercantilist” state and the correct sequence of developmental stages; China has been successfully accomplishing its industrialization through these stages, backed by measured, targeted reforms and direct participation from its central and local governments.

The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World by Ho-fung Hung

Reviewed by: The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World by Ho-fung Hung Kristin Stapleton Hung, Ho-fung. he China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Ho-fung Hung, a sociologist with a keen interest in comparative history, aims in this study to both dash hopes and calm fears that China is transforming the capitalist world order in radical directions. China supports the status quo, he argues, and "is a key force in helping perpetuate U.S. global dominance" (173). As a concise, incisive, and provocative introduction to the history and contemporary [End Page 98] state of the Chinese economic system, this book is invaluable, particularly for students and newcomers to the field. Even those familiar with the arguments Hung presents, though, will appreciate the clarity and fairness with which he dissects debates on China's role in the global political economy. An introduction sets out Hung's twin goals of explaining the development of capitalism in China and assessing the nature and extent of its impact on the world. Hung argues that, more than simply a market economy, a capitalist system requires a cultural drive to accumulate material wealth and institutions that encourage this drive. The history of markets in China is long and rich, but the "capitalist spirit" of accumulation did not take firm hold until its political economy was transformed by the collapse of the imperial order in the twentieth century. Hung devotes the three chapters of part one ("Origins") to a survey of economic change in China from the Qing era (1644-1911) to the present. Over the course of these chapters he engages critically with works by Kenneth Pomeranz, Thomas Rawski, and many other analysts of China's political economy. He argues that the Maoist regime managed to accomplish what its nineteenth- and twentieth-century predecessors had tried but failed to do: harness the wealth of the countryside to industrialize. In Chapter Three, he analyzes the "capitalist boom" since 1980 as partly a legacy of Maoist policies that benefitted industry over consumption, but spread education and health services to the countryside. The household registration (hukou) system, put in place in the 1950s to prevent rapid migration to the cities, [End Page 99] now serves to suppress the wages of relatively well educated and disciplined migrant workers. The entrepreneurial Chinese diaspora contributed to the boom, as well, by responding enthusiastically to Deng Xiaoping's invitation to bring its organizational expertise and capital to the motherland in the 1980s and 1990s. Chapters Four through Six comprise part two ("Global Effects, Coming Demise"). The global effects of China's industrial boom are discussed efficiently and convincingly. The prediction of a coming demise of the boom is more speculative, but grounded in Hung's analysis of the cyclical nature of capitalism, the changing labor market in China, and the fragility of its political system. In Chapter Four, Hung examines whether China's growing prosperity is likely to increase or decrease inequality worldwide. Even though income inequality is increasing in China itself, he believes that the overall impact of China's development is to reduce global inequality. This effect will diminish as the Chinese economy slows. On the other hand, he argues that China's industrial dominance threatens to "lead to deindustrialization and a return to dependence on natural resources exports in the developing world" (109). In this respect, China's Asian neighbors have adjusted more successfully to China's industrial boom by shifting production to complement rather than compete with Chinese manufacturers. African and Latin American economies have not done this as effectively, Hung explains. In Chapter Five Hung argues that China depends on and supports the United States as the world's financial center: [End Page 100] China's "insurmountable addiction to U.S. Treasury bonds as the new opium" props up the U.S.-dominated international system (132). He concludes that "China needs the perpetuation of the global neoliberal order to advance its economy through the expansion of its trade and investment ties to the Global North and South" (143). Chapter Six, entitled "Global Crisis," examines the instability of the Chinese system and its relation to...

Zhu cun lu: Zhongguo beifang xiangcun kaocha baogao by Du Jianhui

Reviewed by: Zhu cun lu: Zhongguo beifang xiangcun kaocha baogao by Du Jianhui Patrick Fuliang Shan (bio) Du Jianhui (杜建辉). Zhu cun lu: Zhongguo beifang xiangcun kaocha baogao (驻村录：中国北方乡村生活考察报告) [Recording my residence in a village: An investigative report of rural life in North China]. Kaifeng: Henan University Press, 2011. 162 pp. Paperback RMB 28.00, isbn 978-7-5649-0037-3. Since Deng Xiaoping initiated his reforms, Chinese rural society has experienced dramatic changes. The rural responsibility system enforced in the early 1980s brought dynamism to rural production, the rural economy, and rural society. The ensuing rural transformation accelerated the coming of national economic prosperity. However, the overall quick growth has drawn the countryside into the national trajectory of industrialization and urbanization. Consequently, the rural issue, particularly the low living standard of peasants, has been an excruciating headache for the Chinese nation. Nevertheless, few authors have gone to live among the peasants to write a comprehensive book relaying relevant information. Du Jianhui has published his personal observation of a village, offering all-inclusive coverage, rendering an insightful analysis, and providing a thought-provoking reflection. Targeting the rural issue, Du went to live with a peasant family in 2003 in Chuwa Village, Yiyang County, Henan Province. This village is a cluster of twenty-two small settlements on hilly ranges with a total population of 2,480. Du meticulously observed the local conditions, recorded what he saw, and published a comprehensive book, which went through three editions between 2009 and 2011. Challenging the official view of a totally positive rural transformation, Du presents a picture of an unbalanced national development. While he noticed positive social advances, he exposes a number of daunting challenges. From his findings, the reader understands that “the peasants are really indigent, the countryside is really destitute, and the agriculture is really precarious” (p. 6). Written in fluent language and with intuitive ideas, Du’s book presents a panorama of Chuwa Village. In twenty-four chapters, he provides an encyclopedic illustration by covering almost every aspect of contemporary rural life. Although it is not a scholastic monograph, this book contains insightful perspectives, provides eye-catching facts, and offers stimulating thoughts. By reading it, the reader learns more about rural society, comprehends the rural–urban gap, and overhears rural stories. Indeed, the value of this book is its authentic firsthand observation, its reflective examination of rural society, and its beseeching plea for attention to this neglected side of Chinese life. As Du elucidates, the current rural progress does not mirror China’s impressive march toward modernization. Rather, he exposes the imbalanced national growth that has created a huge discrepancy between urban affluence and rural adversity, as rural incomes are roughly one-fourth to one-half of those in the cities. [End Page 302] Sadder still, rural income has continued to drop in recent years. By citing the Latin American experience as an alarm, Du indicates that a similar situation might occur in China. As modernization progresses, a large number of poor people can emerge, as happened in Latin America. In fact, China’s rural–urban disparity deprives rural residents of basic needs, common opportunities, and regular funds. Many families in Chuwa did not have a chance to eat meat except during traditional festivals. Du urges the Chinese to alleviate this rural–urban discrepancy in order to reach long-term sustainable national development by offering more help to the rural residents. In addition to the meager economic situation, rural education poses a serious issue. In Chuwa, there is an elementary school, but it is not well staffed as it has only two teachers who graduated from middle school in the 1960s. The two have to handle a large number of students and they must teach everything. Their salary equates to half that of their urban counterparts. The two were not trained with appropriate pedagogy and did not visit urban schools to learn new teaching skills. In the past four decades, Chuwa only sent two students to college. Du argues that today’s education is tomorrow’s economy; such deplorable rural education leads him to worry about long-term sustainable national growth. In the past three decades, the rural folks who served as cheap...

The Mind(s) of China: Don’t Deeds Speak Louder Than Words?

Asian Perspective 40 (2016), 753-757 BOOK REVIEW ESSAY The Mind(s) of China: Don't Deeds Speak Louder Than Words? Walter C. Clemens Jr. Christopher A. Ford. China Looks at the West: Identity, Global Ambitions, and the Future ofSino-American Relations. Lex­ ington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. Fred Dallmayr and Zhao Tingyang, eds. Contemporary Chinese Political Thought: Debates and Perspectives. Lexington: Uni­ versity Press of Kentucky, 2012. Ren Xiao. “Ideas Change Matters: China’s Practices and the East Asian Peace.” Asian Perspective, vol. 40, no. 2 (2016), pp. 329-355. Seok-Hyun Hong. “Bring the Tigers into the Trees: The Rise of China and the Future American Role in Asia.” Global Asia, vol. 11, no. 1 (Spring 2016), pp. 63-69. Recognizing the importance to world peace of China's relations with the United States, it is natural to ask how each side views its place in the world and its relationship with the other great power. The daily news confirms that US leaders disagree with each other on these questions. Learning about China’s mind or minds is more difficult. The less outsiders know about an authoritarian political sys­ tem, the more they are tempted to assume that the system not only speaks with one voice but also thinks in some uniform way. But as time passes and revelations from inside the system appear, we often see that ostensible uniformity masks internal complexity and even discord. Thus, Nikita Khrushchev’s Cuba missile gambit and John F. Kennedy’s response were shaped not only by a strate­ gic logic but also by bureaucratic routines and partisan/factional 753 754 The Mind(s) of China political struggles (Allison and Zelikow 1999). Probably every large polity will experience similar influences on policymaking and implementation. The personal ambitions and propensities of top leaders will also shape both politics and policy. Thus, the Great Helmsman Mao Zedong faced strong challenges from rivals such as Lin Biao and more muted disagreement by Zhou Enlai and others.1 Given the epistemological problems, outsiders must hesitate before assuming that a top leader’s preferences are backed by his entourage and public. Indeed, Christopher Ford devotes the first three chapters of China Looks at the West to “the challenges of Sinological epistemology.” Ford’s response to these challenges is to focus on official Chinese statements to see what they reveal about official attitudes and policies. Mutual understanding is also complicated by linguistics. Words such as democracy can carry very different meanings in different languages and contexts. Going back more than a century, Ford shows how democracy and the US model meant something different for Sun Yat-sen and other Chinese leaders from what US leaders and citizens understood. Looking beyond officially sanctioned statements, the diversity of Chinese perspectives is manifest in the debates and perspec­ tives recorded in Contemporary Chinese Political Thought. This anthology, edited by Fred Dallmayr and Zhao Tingyang, contains deep analyses by academics in Beijing, Taipei, Hong Kong, Aus­ tralia, and the United States. The nuanced views presented here are epitomized in Zhao Tingyang’s chapter, “All-Under-Heaven and Methodological Relationism: An Old Story and New World Peace.” Here, and elsewhere, Chinese authors demonstrate their familiarity with Western writings and criticisms of Chinese poli­ cies. Western sinologists also demonstrate their knowledge of Chinese perspectives, but relatively few Western political analysts can use Chinese language sources. Having studied Chinese language sources and met with many Chinese leaders and military analysts, veteran US sinologist Michael Pillsbury warns that Chinese elites are rather united in support of a hundred-year marathon to replace the United States as world hegemon.2 Ford’s book, however, shows this view to be Walter C. Clemens Jr. 755 an oversimplification. China has been of at least two minds about the United States, he writes. He calls these two strands of Chinese thought “aspirational” (positive, emulative) and “oppositional.”3 Since the time of Deng Xiaoping, Chinese politicians and political writers have agreed that China is rising, but they have disagreed on whether—and when—China’s ascent portends armed conflict with the United States. The more that Chinese president Xi Jinping represses dissent and pushes to mobilize the country’s...

Ethics and Inequality: A Strategic and Practical View

Deng Xiaoping once said, “Let some get rich first, the others will follow.” This is Angus Deaton's basic view in The Great Escape. Deaton, co-winner of the Leontief Prize in 2014 and winner of the Nobel Prize in 2015, chronicles the rise of almost all of humanity out of conditions of widespread hunger, disease, destitution, and premature death, and into a world where infant and child mortality has fallen sharply, and where heart diseases and even cancers are declining. Consequently, with exceptions related to AIDS and in the poorest countries, life overall is longer and health better than ever before.

The Jubilee Year of Shanghai Cooperation Organization

The author contemplates about the prospects of SCO development according to the strategy formulated at the Ufa-2015 summit and its possible conjugation of this strategy with Chinese initiative of Silk Road. The stages of China global policy and the most recent shifts as compared with the political attitudes of Deng Xiaoping era are described.

To ‘educate’ Deng Xiaoping in capitalism: Thatcher’s visit to China and the future of Hong Kong in 1982

This article examines Thatcher’s 1982 visit to China concerning Hong Kong’s future. The visit occurred at the critical historical junctures of the rise of Thatcherism in post-Falklands Britain and of the growth of Deng Xiaoping’s nationalist sensitivities. With her strong belief in capitalism, Thatcher aimed to convince Deng that Hong Kong’s prosperity depended on confidence, which in turn rested on the continuation of British administration beyond 1997. With his nationalist feelings towards Taiwan stirred by America, Deng regarded Hong Kong’s return to China as a non-negotiable principle. Thatcher’s project of ‘educating’ Deng in capitalism was doomed to failure.

William Davies's The happiness industry: how the government and big business sold us well-being. London: Verso, 2015. 314 pp.

Review of William Davies's industry: how the government and big business sold us London: Verso, 2015. 314 pp.Neoliberalism has been broadly accepted as fairly recent economic and political project. For example, David Harvey, distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, in his widely cited book, A brief of neoliberalism (2005) looks upon the years 1978-1980 to begin his social and economic of neoliberalism. For Harvey, key figures from this period, including Deng Xiaoping of China, Margaret Thatcher of Britain, and Ronald Reagan of the United States set the stage for a revolutionary turning-point in the world's social and economic history (p. 1). Others mark the turning point for the project of neoliberalism to the work of Milton Friedman and the emergence of the Chicago school of economics in the 1960s. Still others trace it back to the work of Friedrich Hayek and Lionel Robbins and the London School of Economics during the 1930s. It within this context of neoliberal economic and political that the story told by William Davies stands out.In bold and intriguing move, Davies places the foundations of neoliberalism in the late eighteenth-century social and political philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. Davies reminds us that the English philosopher's hedonism had strong connections with business, and the market-a point often overlooked in the rush to dismiss Bentham's hedonistic utilitarian ethics as merely philosophically weak precursor to the more philosophically mature eudaimonistic utilitarianism of his student John Stuart Mill. The business of government, wrote Bentham in principles of morals and legislation (1789), is to promote the of society, by punishing and rewarding (cited by Davies, p. 19). The free market, of which Bentham was an unabashed supporter, would largely take care of the reward of this 'business'-comments Davies-the state would take responsibility for the former part (p. 19).Thus begins Davies creative and convincing journey from the hedonic calculus and surveillance state of Bentham to the contemporary happiness industry and neoliberal state. But Davies's project much more than merely parsing out some of the originary moments of neoliberal thought in the science of Bentham, it also to looking beyond the current formation of neoliberalism to its next position, the post-neoliberal era.Referring to Hayek's road to serfdom (1944), Davies notes that [o]ne of the foundational arguments in favour of the market was that it served as vast sensory device, capturing millions of individual desires, opinions and values, and converted these into prices (p. 10). However, for Davies, we may be the cusp of new post-neoliberal era in which the market no longer the primary tool for this capture of mass sentiment (pp. 10-11). Once monitoring tools flood our everyday lives, writes Davies, other ways of qualifying feelings in real time are emerging that can extend even further into our lives than markets (p. 11).It here, however, that Davies arguments concerning business, and the market go well beyond the standard critiques of neoliberalism and the surveillance state-and extend into the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and health care. To be sure, Davies very hard on all three. For him, governments and corporations have become obsessed with measuring how people feel and then cashing in on it. measurement and commercialization of our feelings and emotions through smart technology, for example, clearly not something that Davies thinks really improves our well-being. Rather, it only of larger effort to cash in on our emotions and place them under continuous surveillance. Any critique of ubiquitous surveillance, argues Davies, must now include critique of the maximization of well-being, even at the risk of being less healthy, happy, and wealthy (p. …

Acceptance Speech for World Marxian Economics Award

June 19, 2015It is an honor of mine to receive the 2015 World Marxian Economics Award from the World Association of Political Economy (WAPE). My sincere gratitude goes to WAPE and the award committee. My age and health conditions do not allow my presence at this conference, but let me use this alternative way to share with you my experience in the research of Marxist economic theories.In 1956-1959, I studied in the graduate program at the Department of Economics, Remin University of China. In addition to the classes of Marxist economists such as Song Tao, Su Xing, etc., I took time to carefully read volumes 1-3 of Capital as well as major works of other founders of Marxism. In retrospect, these three years not only provided the basic knowledge in Marxist economic theories but also led me to become a real Marxist in terms of the view of the world.In 1959, I completed my graduate study and started to work in the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences after 1978), which was the beginning of my research career in Marxist economic theory. In 1985, I retired at the age of 60, but my research has never stopped. In over half a century, I have published five monographs and about 150 journal articles.Now I would like to share with you my reflections on a few important theoretical issues that have long occupied my mind.First, the Historical Positioning of the Preliminary Stage of SocialismIn 1987, Deng Xiaoping pointed out that China was still at the preliminary stage of socialism, a fact that should be the starting point of everything to be done. The concept of preliminary stage of socialism differs from Marx's idea of the first phase of communism, Lenin's transitional period, or Mao Zedong's new democracy. The question is, is there any support for such a concept from the theoretical system of Marxism? Marx's idea of five successive stages of social development, i.e., primitive society, slave society, feudalism, capitalist society, socialism and capitalism, can be seen in quite a few of his works. Marx also suggests in the Economic Manuscripts 1857-1858 a three-stage i.e., from relations of dependence to personal independence founded on objective dependence and then to universal development of individuals with individual labor as social labor from the very beginning. From the perspective of political economy, the five-stage model is based on production, especially the evolution of the ownership of the means of production, while the three-stage model is based on that of exchange relations. The two models reveal the general law of the development of production and exchange, respectively. It is their unity that provides a means to measure any specific stage of social development. China has taken a rather special route from the new democratic revolution to socialism. In the sense of the fivestage model, after the confiscation of bureaucrat-capital and the socialist transformation of national bourgeoisie, public ownership became the main body of the national economy, which indicated that China had crossed the Caudine Forks and entered the first stage of socialism. From the perspective of the three-stage model, however, commodity economy and market economy is yet to be developed, and people will still be involved in labor exchange through market and commodity forms. That is to say, China will remain in the second stage for a long time. Hence, the perspective that integrates the five-stage model and the three-stage model will allow us to grasp theoretically more accurate the scientific content of the preliminary stage of socialism.Second, the Distribution According to Labor at the Preliminary Stage of SocialismMarx suggests that the first stage of communism is characteristic of the distribution of consuming goods according to labor, and commodity economy and market economy will no longer exist. …

Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life, written by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine

Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life, written by Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine

Book review: Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping

Book review: Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping

Learning from Lee: Lessons in Governance for the Middle Kingdom from the Little Red Dot

Ever since Deng Xiaoping’s visit to Singapore in 1978, Beijing has showed tremendous interest in modeling Singapore on various aspects of domestic governance. This article seeks to locate China’s interest in learning from Singapore in the style of governance typified by Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father. This article explores the domestic aspects of governance that are common to both countries and seeks to explain China’s interests toward Singapore in as far as it views Singapore as a model of efficient and effective government. This is seen in three key areas, namely, the strength of Singapore’s first-generation political leadership, the stability of the ruling party and consequently the country, and Singapore’s economic growth.

Chinese Foreign Policy during the Presidencies of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping: A Comparative Study

The Chinese foreign policy may have been associated in the personal and political decision-maker as we find fluctuate fluctuated between those who hold decision Chinese solo of the magnitude of his leadership, "Mao Zedong" or for possession of the three authorities in his hand "Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the state presidency and the presidency of the Military Committee," and the collective leadership actress of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, and a small leadership groups to address urgent crises. And also I thought it was the Communist ideology adopting the Stalinist model, at the beginning of the PRC in 1949 until 1978.
 And began his leadership of China in the new track, the opposite of the old path, because contrary to policies of the past irrationality, and works on the application of an economic system Rashid aims to modernize China, which moved from a simple, isolated from the outside world to significant in foreign policy, its international impact of the State of the State. Chinese Foreign Policy In period presidency Both of Mao Zedong and Deng Chao Bing: A comparative study.

Liu Dahong—Stranded Objects and Shame in Chinese Contemporary Post-socialist Art

The Shanghai-based artist, Liu Dahong, was born in 1962, in the former German colony of Qingdao, in China’s eastern seaboard province of Shandong. Liu is a versatile and ideologically ambitious painter who has been active during the period of economic and social upheaval that began in 1978: Deng Xiaoping’s “Reform China.” In this article, I focus primarily on a pair of oil paintings Liu made a decade into the Reform era that make knowing reference to the grotesque cruelties and perversions of Hieronymus Bosch: Fairytales of the Twelfth Month (Childhood) (1987) (Figure 1) and The Awakening of Insects (Chaos) (1988) (Figure 2). Both exemplify the characteristic feature of his work that I want to highlight: his ability to stage, in his paintings and installations, a provocative and often satirical conversation between one phase of China’s revolutionary past and its post-socialist present—to whit the Cultural Revolution and Reform China, respectively. In doing so, Liu exposes a contradiction at the very heart of contemporary Chinese society and culture: the way that the past is consistently treated as a fixed determinant narrative, at the same time as the present is officially depicted as being unscarred by the traumatic nature of that past. In Fairytales of the Twelfth Month and The Awakening of Insects Liu incorporates the convulsions of the Communist Party State’s scopic regime in the late Maoist period, by throwing together, in carnivalesque mayhem, bizarre revolutionary episodes and the equally strange manifestations of China’s turn to capitalist tendencies through economic “opening up.” In more recent years, since 2007, Liu has produced lithographs of these two paintings and reflected publicly on the significance of the times and events they depict in a series of published Notebooks and Textbooks. In these commentaries, he explores the exegetical continuity and hyperbole that highlight the persistence of Maoist structures of rhetorical occlusion masking the dark side of late Chinese modernity.

An Exploration on Deng Xiaoping’s Thought of Close Ties With the People During His Administration in Southwest China

From November 1949 to July 1952, Deng Xiaoping presided over Southwest China as the first secretary of the Southwest Bureau of CPC Central Committee. During this period, he proposed the judgment that “close ties with the people is the life of our party”, stressing that close ties with the people must establish a Marxist view of people and uphold the party’s fundamental purpose; adhere to realize, safeguard and develop the interests of the people; play the roles of people’s congress, people’s organization, party newspapers and journals to tie with the masses; reform the bad style and tendency of being isolated from the people by rectification. These ideas are Deng Xiaoping’s preliminary summary of CPC’s ruling law during his administration in Southwest China, and have an important reference for doing the party’s mass work in the new situation.

China’s Reform in the Eyes of Chinese Political Elite

As one of the most influential China watchers, David Lampton specializes in Chinese leadership study. This book is another masterpiece of his scholarly work on Chinese political elite. Based on 558 personal interviews and conversations with political, military, and academic leaders from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan over a course of more than four decades, Lampton gives us a fresh insider look—through interviewees’ own assessments and personal accounts—of the mind-set of many political elites and helps to humanize China’s reform era starting from Deng Xiaoping. He incorporates these interviews and conversations into his own interpretation of the political development in China, and as a result, the book is not merely a compilation of these dialogues. Instead, he illustrates the changes and continuities mostly through his own lens of observations. His effort benefits greatly through the qualitative opinion research and reinterpreting the perceptions and views Chinese top leaders held over reforms and critical issues facing China. As a living witness of the dynamic changes taking place in China since the 1970s, the author sets out his goal to ‘‘humanize China’s extraordinary course of development’’ through revealing the frustrations, nightmares, and challenges leaders in China have been facing (pp. 1–3). He has done so gracefully. The time span of the study and the ranks and status of the interviewees are truly remarkable. One has to admire the ability of the author in gaining access to such an impressive list of high-ranking political celebrities, including Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, and Jiang Zemin. The author’s leading academic and administrative roles or affiliations, such as Asia Foundation, National Committee on United States and China Relations, the Nixon Center and the American Enterprise

A DSGE model of China

We use available methods for testing macro models to evaluate a model of China over the period from Deng Xiaoping’s reforms up until the crisis period. Bayesian ranking methods are heavily influenced by controversial priors on the degree of price/wage rigidity. When the overall models are tested by Likelihood or Indirect Inference methods, the New Keynesian model is rejected in favour of one with a fair-sized competitive product market sector. This model behaves quite a lot more ‘flexibly’ than the New Keynesian.

Interpreting change: International challenges and variations in foreign policy beliefs as explanations for shifts in China’s policy towards the European Union

This article examines why and how China upgraded its engagement with the European Union (EU) in the years between 2001 and 2004, with reference to pre-existing foreign policy traditions and practices in reform-era China. It argues that most of the observed changes can be explained with reference to two dynamics. First, the changing international environment, mostly with regard to the roles of the United States and the EU, challenged the established approach to foreign policy inherited from Deng Xiaoping, China’s pre-eminent leadership figure from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. In this sense, the shift towards the EU was part of wider efforts to solve this dilemma. Second, differences in how various groups in the Chinese foreign policy establishment understood and implemented Deng’s guidelines and their respective influence in policy-making can help to grasp some of the more specific developments in Chinese policy towards the EU in the early 2000s. To supplement this main claim, the article also critically evaluates the changes less well explained by these two dynamics and proposes additional explanations.

Planning Beijing: socialist city, transitional city, and global city

Cities are centers of economic, social, and political change, and urban planning is a process responding to and guiding urban change and development. In the Maoist era and under the influence of socialist ideology, China limited urbanization while promoting industrialization, and urban planning served as an instrument for socialist construction. Since the reform of the late 1970s, Chinese cities have experienced unprecedented growth and restructuring. However, the gradualist, exploratory reform—exemplified by Deng Xiaoping’s slogan “crossing the river by feeling the stones”—makes Chinese cities constantly change without clear directions for future development. This paper uses Beijing as a case study to analyze changing institutional and global contexts underlying the transformation of Chinese cities, and planners’ responses and dilemmas in making plans and implementing them. We found that market reforms, rapid growth, and dramatic change make urban master plans quickly out of date, forcing Chinese planners to frequently revise these master plans. We also found that the content of urban master planning in China has broadened from physical planning, and Chinese planning has adapted to market reform through utilizing concepts of visioning, flexibility, and governance. Increasingly what we call a “hybrid” form of planning is arising in which global concepts and Chinese ideas interweave in order to direct the shape and form of the Chinese metropolis.