Books in the Cambridge Modern China Series series

Forging Reform in China explains how and why measures to reform unprofitable state-owned enterprises have not succeeded and how meaningful reform could be achieved.

This 2004 volume offers an evaluation of the strategic significance of the Shanghai economy in the Pacific War. It also draws attention to the feminisation of urban public discourse against the backdrop of intensified violence. The essays capture the last moments of European settlements in Shanghai under Japanese occupation.

This book provides detailed information on shifts in women's work patterns. It explains how and why these shifts have come about, and how they relate to women's position in society. While other aspects of reform in rural China have been analysed extensively, this is one of very few, and to date the most comprehensive studies of the effects of reform on rural women.

This 2004 volume offers an evaluation of the strategic significance of the Shanghai economy in the Pacific War. It also draws attention to the feminisation of urban public discourse against the backdrop of intensified violence. The essays capture the last moments of European settlements in Shanghai under Japanese occupation.

In this book, Xin Zhang uses the case of local elites and the power structure of Henan province in north-central China to demonstrate how local politics first transformed local society, challenged the state and eventually influenced change across China.

This book traces the origins of the 'iron rice bowl' of comprehensive cradle-to-grave benefits and lifetime employment in Chinese factories. It suggests that, in some ways, the Chinese revolution in 1949 was not as revolutionary as most have thought.

This book provides a rare glimpse into how the Chinese urban population is experiencing the rapid shift from a planned to a market economy as workers, civil servants, intellectuals, and women report their grievances and joys at home, at work, and in the public sphere.

The focus of this book is on the impact Chinese control is likely to have on the city's role in the international economic system, and how the business community will be affected. The result is a balanced analysis of a sensitive subject: the prospects for Hong Kong's continued success and freedom.

This 2003 book examines China's use of force domestically and abroad. The author warns that a 'Cult of Defense' disposes Chinese leaders to rationalize all military deployment as defensive, while recent changes in PLA suggest that today's leaders may use military force more readily than their predecessors.

This book documents the evolution of modern Chinese banking, from the establishment in 1897 of the first Chinese bank along a Western model, to the abrupt interruption of professional banking by the Japanese invasion in 1937.

What should we make of claims by members of other groups to have moralities different from our own? Human Rights in Chinese Thought gives an extended answer to this question in the first study of its kind. It integrates a full account of the development of Chinese rights discourse - reaching back to important, though neglected, origins of that discourse in 17th and 18th century Confucianism - with philosophical consideration of how various communities should respond to contemporary Chinese claims about the uniqueness of their human rights concepts. The book elaborates a plausible kind of moral pluralism and demonstrates that Chinese ideas of human rights do indeed have distinctive characteristics, but it nonetheless argues for the importance and promise of cross-cultural moral engagement.

Xu makes a compelling, original contribution to the study of China's modernization with this 2001 book on the rise of professional associations in Republican China. This book is rich in detail about the key professional and political figures and organizations in Shanghai, filling an important gap in its social history.

This is the first book to examine systematically the evolution of the Chinese state from the late Ming Dynasty of the seventeenth century, through the Nationalist and Communist party states of the twentieth century, and into the next century. Leading scholars explore historical, contemporary and future challenges.

This 2001 book narrates the origins, visions and achievements of the social sciences in China. It focuses on the efforts of social scientists at three institutions to relate their disciplines to the needs of Chinese society. More broadly, he examines the transfer, indigenization and international patronage of the social sciences.

This book, first published in 2003, examines the evolving relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and private entrepreneurs. Although many foreign observers expect that economic change will inevitably lead to political change in China, the author shows that China's entrepreneurs are willing partners with the state rather than an autonomous force in opposition to the state.

Factionalism is widely understood to be a distinguishing characteristic of Chinese politics. In this book, first published in 2000, Jing Huang examines the role of factionalism in leadership relations and policy-making. His detailed knowledge of intra-party politics offers an alternative understanding of still-disputed struggles behind the high walls of leadership in Zhongnanhai.

This book proposes a different perspective on China's integration in the world economy. Most economists view China's large foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows as a result of China's economic success. This book views the same phenomenon as a function of the imperfections in the Chinese economic system.

The most comprehensive analysis of one of the most important issues in contemporary China: the tensions between the Communist Party and state institutions. Taking the 'neo-institutionalist' approach, Zheng suggests that the Party faces an institutional dilemma: it cannot live with the state, and it cannot live without the state.

This imaginative collection of pieces about life in contemporary China reveals a patchwork picture of the lives of ordinary people and the rules and rituals that govern their daily existence. There will be no better introduction to the discourses of contemporary China, and few more stimulating accounts of shifts in cultural life.

This is the first book to examine systematically the evolution of the Chinese state from the late Ming Dynasty of the seventeenth century, through the Nationalist and Communist party states of the twentieth century, and into the next century. Leading scholars explore historical, contemporary and future challenges.

The financial burden imposed upon the Chinese farmer by local taxes has become a major source of discontent in the Chinese countryside and a worrisome source of political and social instability for the Chinese government. Bernstein and Lu examine the forms and sources of heavy, informal taxation, and shed light on how peasants defend their interests by adopting strategies of collective resistance (both peaceful and violent). Bernstein and Lu also explain why the central government, while often siding with the peasants, has not been able to solve the burden problem by instituting a sound, reliable financial system in the countryside. While the regime has, to some extent, sought to empower farmers to defend their interests - by informing them about tax rules, expanding the legal system, and instituting village elections, for example, these attempts have not yet generated enough power from 'below' to counter powerful, local official agencies.

Susan Whiting develops through the case of China's rural industrial sector a theoretical framework to explain institutional change. She explores the complex interactions of individuals, institutions and the broader political economy to explain variation and change in property rights and extractive institutions in rural China.

This book examines how labor migration is changing the countryside in post-Mao China. The return flows of money, people and information affects rural inequalities, rural spending patterns, agriculture, family relationships, the position of women, and the interactions between villagers and officials.

Examining factors that shaped Chinese liberal thought, Fung argues that the reasons democracy was thwarted during the 1930s and 1940s were more political than cultural. The Nationalist era contained the germs of a reformist, liberal order, he asserts, and the legacy of this era is evident in the post-Mao pro-democracy movement.

This book argues that China succeeded in moving from a Maoist command economy to a market economy because government failed to prevent local officials from forcing prices to market levels. The 'resource wars' that resulted from partial price reform in the early 1980s cleared the way for sweeping reforms.

In this edition of his path-breaking analysis of political and social change in China since the crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989, Joseph Fewsmith traces developments since 2001. These include the continuing reforms during the final years of Jiang Zemin's premiership and Hu Jintao's succession in 2002. Here the author also considers social trends and how Chinese citizens are starting to have a significant influence on government policies. As Fewsmith - a highly regarded political scientist and a seasoned China-watcher - observes, China is a very different place since Tiananmen Square. In the interim, it has emerged from isolation to become one of the most significant players on the world stage. This book explains the forces that have shaped China since Tiananmen.

This book examines the role of the outside world as a source of change in post-Mao China. This book will be provocative reading for anyone concerned with the nature of China's participation in the world economy and its consequences for the country's development prospects, internal reforms, and foreign policy.