This study examines the changing effects of labor migration on the countryside of post-Mao China. Most of the changes are occurring because the migrants send money home and return to their villages for visits or to resettle. 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. Importantly, some returned migrants even create businesses at home. The book is based on in-depth fieldwork in the Chinese countryside, and it draws...

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 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...

Edmund Fung examines an important phase of development in China's long quest for democracy. The momentum for democracy, he contends, grew strongest between 1929 and 1949 through civil opposition to the one-party rule of the Guomindang. The Nationalist era contained the germs of a reformist, liberal order, the legacy of which can be seen in the pro-democracy movement of the post-Mao period. This book fills an important gap in the historical literature on Chinese intellectuals between May Fourth radicalism and the Chinese Communists' accession to power.

Andrew Scobell examines the use of Chinese military force abroad as in Korea (1950), Vietnam (1979), and the Taiwan Strait (1995-1996) and domestically, as during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and in the 1989 military crackdown in Tiananmen square. Scobell warns that a "Cult of Defense" disposes Chinese leaders to rationalize all military deployment as defensive. However, changes in the People's Liberation Army's doctrine and capabilities over the past two decades suggest that China's 21st Century leaders may use military force more readily than their predecessors.

Since 1978, reform policies introduced in rural China have had a profound impact on women's work and gender divisions of labor. This book provides detailed information on the shifts in women's work patterns that have occurred. It explains how and why these shifts have come about, and how they relate to other aspects of women's position in society. While other aspects of reform in rural China have been analyzed extensively, this is one of very few, and to date the most comprehensive, studies of the effects of reform on rural women.

This imaginative and incisive collection of pieces about life in contemporary China reveals, like a series of snapshots, a picture of the lives of ordinary people and the rules and rituals that govern their daily existence. Key themes surface: in particular, the emergence of a consumer culture driven by the market, and the way in which this intersects with the "floating population" of vagrants, prostitutes and liumang (hooligans). We see how, in turn, the official strategies of the state deal with this perceived social disorder and how the street responds. Underlying much of the discussion of...

Thomas G. Moore examines the role of the outside world as a source of change in post-Mao China. Based on extensive documentary and interview material, the book adds the Chinese case to a long tradition of country-based studies by political economists, historians, and area specialists that have chronicled the experiences of developing countries as they enter specific industrial markets in the world economy. This book will be timely and provocative reading for anyone concerned with the nature of China's deepening participation in the world economy and its consequences for the country's...

The Modern Chinese State is the first book to examine systematically the evolution of the Chinese state from the late Ming Dynasty of the 17th century, through the Nationalist and Communist party states of the 20th century, and into the 21st century. Leading scholars on modern China carefully assess the internal organization of the Chinese state over time, the ruling parties that have governed it, the foreign and indigenous systems that have served as models for state-building and political development, and the array of concepts that have guided Chinese thinking about the state.

The Modern Chinese State is the first book to examine systematically the evolution of the Chinese state from the late Ming Dynasty of the 17th century, through the Nationalist and Communist party states of the 20th century, and into the 21st century. Leading scholars on modern China carefully assess the internal organization of the Chinese state over time, the ruling parties that have governed it, the foreign and indigenous systems that have served as models for state-building and political development, and the array of concepts that have guided Chinese thinking about the state.

This book provides a rare glimpse into how the Chinese urban population is experiencing the rapid shift from a planned to a market economy. Using a dozen recent national surveys, the authors give voice to workers, civil servants, intellectuals, and women, who report their grievances and joys at home, at work, and in the public sphere. With fresh data on emerging patterns of economic inequality, labor-management relations, popular grievances, political participation, and gender inequality, the book analyzes how the shifting social contract influences ordinary people's lives and China's future...