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Full-Text Articles in Asian Studies
On The Social And Political Effects Of Opening In Rural China, Housi Cheng, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson
On The Social And Political Effects Of Opening In Rural China, Housi Cheng, Qian Forrest Zhang, John A. Donaldson
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
What are the economic, social and political effects when previously isolated villages are opened to the outside world? Scholars from different traditions expect different sorts of positive or negative affects to occur. Rural China presents an ideal environment to study this question empirically. Villages within rural China are in the process of being opened to the outside world in different forms, such as through being connected by road, the investment of agribusiness, or urbanization. Moreover this opening is being driven and shaped by different actors, including local residents, government and businesses. The different ways and actors that this opening occurs …
Contemporary Daoist Tangki Practice, Margaret Chan
Contemporary Daoist Tangki Practice, Margaret Chan
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Since 1979, China has seen a renaissance of indigenous belief systems, including Daoist tangki spirit-medium practice. Tangki traditions have Neolithic roots. The founding myth is of a man who magically battled flood demons to save China. In imperial times, ordinary people, disenfranchised by the state religion and pawns of dynastic wars, created a soteriology of self-empowerment. Ordinary people would transform through spirit pos-session into warrior gods who would save the community. Millennia-old tangki traditions have diffused into the modern Chinese quotidian. With a remote Central Committee of the Communist Party recalling distant emperors, village temples, many led by tangkis, have …
An Asian Perspective On Policy Instruments: Policy Styles, Governance Modes And Critical Capacity Challenges, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett
An Asian Perspective On Policy Instruments: Policy Styles, Governance Modes And Critical Capacity Challenges, Ishani Mukherjee, Michael Howlett
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Does Asia have a distinct policy style? If so, what does it look like, and why does it take the shape it does? This article argues that in the newly reinvigorated emphasis of policy studies on policy instruments and their design lies the basis of an analysis of a dominant policy style in the Asian region, with significant implications for understanding the roles played by specific kinds of policy capacities. There is a distinctly Asian policy style based on a specific pattern of policy capacities and governance modes. In this style, a failure to garner initial policy legitimacy in the …
State Political Identity And Meta-Governance: Comparative Analysis Of Governance Modes In Vegetable Retail In Urban China, Qian Forrest Zhang
State Political Identity And Meta-Governance: Comparative Analysis Of Governance Modes In Vegetable Retail In Urban China, Qian Forrest Zhang
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
A government's political identity is a key factor in meta-governance; it powerfully shapes a government's policy aims and implementation preferences at the most abstract level and forms a stable governance mode. Dissonance between a pre-existing governance mode and the government's evolved political identity will lead to governance failures and pose political challenges to the government. In the case of vegetable retail in Shanghai, the neoliberal developmental state transformed the hierarchical governance into market governance; but as it evolves into a corporatist welfare state, market imperfections come to be perceived as governance failures, and the government responds by reintroducing hierarchical measures.
Bringing Agriculture Back In: The Central Place Of Agrarian Change In Rural China Studies, Qian Forrest Zhang, Carlos Oya, Jingzhong Ye
Bringing Agriculture Back In: The Central Place Of Agrarian Change In Rural China Studies, Qian Forrest Zhang, Carlos Oya, Jingzhong Ye
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Since the mid-2000s, rural development and politics in China has entered a new phase that revolves around what the central government calls ‘agricultural modernization’. Transforming the once-dominant smallholding, family-based agriculture has become a focal point of the government's programme of rural rejuvenation, where a range of economic changes unleashed by urbanization and industrialization also converge. We argue that in this new context, agrarian change has become the key vantage point from which to study rural China. We review key contributions of the papers in this special issue and highlight their insights on rural differentiation, land politics and rural livelihoods. We …
Class Differentiation In Rural China: Dynamics Of Accumulation, Commodification And State Intervention, Forrest Qian Zhang
Class Differentiation In Rural China: Dynamics Of Accumulation, Commodification And State Intervention, Forrest Qian Zhang
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This paper develops a classification of the emerging agrarian class positions in China today. Using an instrument based on rural households' combination of market positions in four markets – land, labour, means of production and product – I identify five agrarian classes: the capitalist employer class, the petty‐bourgeois class of commercial farmers, two labouring classes of dual‐employment households and wage workers, and subsistence peasants. This classification is then used as a heuristic device to organize the empirical analysis that examines how dynamics of agrarian change drive class differentiation in rural China. For the capitalist employer class, the analysis focuses on …
Rural China In Transition: Changes And Transformations In China’S Agriculture And Rural Sector, John A. Donaldson, Forrest Q. Zhang
Rural China In Transition: Changes And Transformations In China’S Agriculture And Rural Sector, John A. Donaldson, Forrest Q. Zhang
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Agribusiness companies operating in China are transacting in various forms with small agricultural producers, and in doing so, transforming the household-based agriculture in rural China. We argue that the presence of these distinct forms and the diverging relations between agribusiness and producers show the central importance of China’s collective land rights. China’s unique system of land rights – featuring collective ownership but individualized usage rights – has acted as a powerful force in shaping interactions between agribusiness and direct producers. It provides farmers a source of economic income as well as political bargaining power – albeit to various degrees – …