Book Review: Wenfang TANG and Burkart HOLZNER, eds, Social Change in Contemporary China: CK Yang and the Concept of Institutional Diffusion. … (original) (raw)
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International Journal of China Studies, 2010
China is a country in great transformation. Over the last three decades the highly remarkable economic performance of the once low-income and inward-looking state of China has attracted increasing interest from academics and policymakers. China’s astounding transformation is reflected not only in her economy, but also in her social changes in the past few decades, and this inevitably is also going to have implications for the country’s domestic sociopolitical development. For instance, the country’s breakneck economic transformation and the accompanying income and wealth disparities could be engendering increasingly volatile intergroup relations that would result in intensified resource contest which in turn may see groups coalesce along socioracial and ascriptive lines and thus further polarized by such divides, aggravated by transnational influences brought about by the selfsame globalization that has ironically contributed to her very economic “miracle” in the first place. Adapting Green’s change process model (2008) and Reeler’s threefold theory of social change (2007) to the China context, this paper investigates how various dimensions of social change have been engendered by the three decades of Chinese economic reform and how these various facets of social change are impacting on the coming direction and trajectory of the country’s socioeconomic and political transformation, how the interplay of State policy and societal response within the context of the exigencies engendered by the country’s continued odyssey of development, modernization and reform is shaping the future of the civil society, and how from both the theoretical and empirical perspectives the complex polity-economy-society nexus involved in the transformation of modern China are having wider ramifications for the country’s future. https://www.dropbox.com/s/tz4o1sfo9nu0l2p/IJCS-V1N2-final-yeoh-socialtransformation.pdf
China in Transition: Social Change in the Age of Reform, 2010
Emile Kok-Kheng Yeoh (special issue editor) (2010), International Journal of China Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, October 2010 (Special Issue – China in Transition: Social Change in the Age of Reform), pp. 237-666 (430 pp. + vii). [Scopus] https://www.dropbox.com/s/cgka4067asy6chs/IJCS-V1N2-final-021110.pdf
International Journal of China Studies, 2011
The process of social change typically involves a combination of four different components: context, institutions, agents and events. Upon the praxis between operating structures and purposely acting human agents, agency is constantly shaped by structure which in turn is being reshaped in the process. Amidst the dynamic interplay of such an array of critical socioeconomic factors that underlie the surging currents of social change, the role of the individual as a catalyst for change cannot be underestimated, even if the long-term impact of the individual's action is not immediately explicit and the lone crusade involved does not receive adequate sympathy of the wider public. Such is the tragedy of the commons. Beginning with the problem of increasing inequality and ethnoregional dimension of poverty which together constitute the epitome as well as the root of China's social ills resulted from her recent decades of continuous, astounding economic tour de force, this paper examines contemporary China's social transformation as a phenomenon that is neither simple nor unidimensional, wherein social and in particular sociopolitical change could be said not to be a multiattribute concept, but a multiconcept construct. Due attention is paid to various different dimensions of such changes, both positive and negative, including socioeconomic inequalities, socioracial strati-fication, ethnoregional disparities and State-civil society relations, in particular the structure-agency interface in the challenge of ACES (active citizenship and effective State) evolvement. At any one time, certain dimensions may increase in severity, while others remain constant or decline. Certain dimensions or variables are considerably more difficult to measure than others but their inclusion is essential to provide a comprehensive view of the challenges of China's social transformation in her contemporary reform era. https://www.dropbox.com/s/yh83v175xbteiv7/IJCS-V2N2-final-yeoh-morphogenesis-corr-p428p441p443p463.pdf
International Journal of China Studies, 2011
In various ways this 2011 special issue of the IJCS, Reform, Governance and Equity: Exploring the Sociopolitical Implications of Contemporary China’s Transformation, represents a follow-up to the earlier, 2010 special issue China in Transition: Social Change in the Age of Reform which began the journal’s exploratory focus on indeed the most fundamental and critical issue in contemporary China’s astonishing transformation, especially if one takes social changes as to encompass both socioeconomic and sociopolitical transitions. As the contents of each of the papers collected in this special issue have been summarized in the respective abstracts, this introduction will not attempt to purvey the synopses of these articles but to contemplate each as part of the whole exploration on reform, governance and sociopolitical change within the context of a transforming China. https://www.dropbox.com/s/3c9yjlkq45q7ozk/IJCS-V2N2-final-yeoh-introduction.pdf
International Journal of China Studies, 2012
With the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China concluded on 15th November 2012 and the birth of a new Politburo Standing Committee, the Party thus completed its second orderly hand-over of power in more than six decades of its rule over this most populous country in the world, and today, the world’s second largest economic entity. Nevertheless, also marking the year 2012 are various other poignant events that have further strained State-civil society relations in this vast country: the suicide of Zha Weilin, the mysterious death of Li Wangyang, the daring escape of Chen Guangcheng from captivity in Shandong, the intensification of public protests apparently emboldened by the encouraging solution to late 2011’s Siege of Wukan, and the continuing self-immolation of Tibetans since 2009. Among these, most undoubtedly epitomizing the contemporary sociopolitical dilemmas of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the proliferation of public protests mainly related to forced demolition and relocation, industrial pollution and official corruption, and related to this, State response to civil rights-defending weiquan activism and its treatment of such activists as part of the wider dissident community. The continued unfolding of this systemic crisis has, indeed, to be properly placed in the overall environmental context of the problem of increasingly acute socioeconomic inequality, including its ethnoregional dimension, which in many ways constitute the epitome as well as the root of China’s social ills resulted from her recent decades of continuous, astounding economic tour de force while having stagnated are the modernization and democratization of its political structure and sociopolitical power configuration. https://www.dropbox.com/s/96bjjwjjmkb64av/IJCS-V3N3-yeoh-intro-280413.pdf
International Journal of China Studies, 2010
This volume, “Changing China”, represents the inaugural issue of the International Journal of China Studies, the academic journal of the Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya. The ten papers selected for inclusion in this inaugural issue showcase the major areas of the institute’s research interest: contemporary China’s political and socioeconomic development, and her external political and socioeconomic relations in the context of regional and global political economy. More specifically for this inaugural issue, related to the former area of study are three papers that deal respectively with contemporary China’s interregional developmental disparity, her developing political model, and Shanghai as a potential international financial centre, while covering the latter field of research are another three papers that look at the geopolitics of resource security, China-Southeast Asian economic relations and China’s role in East Asian regional integration. In a way spanning both domains are a paper that focuses on the critical issue of cross-Strait integration and three others that analyze the economic, social and gender aspects of the Chinese “new migrants”. With a broader view of migration based on its defining feature of cross-border mobility, the latter papers deal with an age-old phenomenon, albeit in new forms, that is affected by and in turn impacts upon the socioeconomic development of not only the destination country but also the country of origin. As the first issue of the journal, this volume thus brings together research outputs on these main areas of the institute’s research focus encompassing the many challenges stemming from the emergence of China as a global and regional economic power and increasingly important political player in the contemporary increasingly globalizing world. The publication of this inaugural issue of the journal also marks the continued development of the Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya, as an academic research organization dedicated to the advancement of scholarship on China’s political and socioeconomic development and her international relations in the context of regional and global development. – Emile Kok-Kheng Yeoh, editor, International Journal of China Studies / director, Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya https://www.dropbox.com/s/6w7x7cju8yyxxq4/IJCS-V1N1-ChangingChina-IJCS-2010-1-1-combined.pdf
Changing patterns of Chinese civil society
Routledge eBooks, 2017
Whilst the Chinese Communist Party is one of the most powerful political institutions in the world, it is also one of the least understood, due to the party's secrecy and tight control over the archives, the press and the Internet. Having governed the People's Republic of China for nearly 70 years though, much interest remains in how this quintessentially Leninist party governs onefifth of the world and runs the world's second-largest economy. The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party gives a comprehensive and multifaceted picture of the party's traditions and values-as well as its efforts to stay relevant in the twenty-first century. It uses a wealth of contemporary data and qualitative analysis to explore the intriguing relationship between the party on the one hand, and the government, the legal and judicial establishment and the armed forces, on the other. Tracing the influence of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, as well as Mao Zedong, on contemporary leaders ranging from Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, the sections cover: The Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Communist Party will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Politics, Asian Politics, Political Parties and International Relations.
The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, 2008
Over the last three decades the highly remarkable economic performance of the once low-income and inward-looking country of China has attracted increasing interest from academics and policy-makers. However, beyond the stated intention of fostering modernisation and marketisation, China's reform and transformation have not been achieved in accordance with an agreed and clearly established blueprint. It has been a result of policies and ideas formulated and tested as marketbased reforms continued to push direct administrative management back into the past. At the same time as domestic economic reform and attendant social transformation were progressing at impressive speed, China has emerged as a regional and global power. The transformation of China's international profile has been one of the most pivotal changes in the contemporary world. It is a change that has given rise to much debate over the weight to be given to domestic and external forces in explaining China's current world position. https://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/cjas/article/view/1894/2425 https://www.dropbox.com/s/sodxolz9dtho3jr/emileyeoh-katehannan-intro-CJAS-V26N2-2008-1894-8913-1-PB.pdf