Community Volunteers' Associations in Contemporary Tianjin: multipurpose partners of the party–state
The Community Volunteers' Associations (CVAs) are among the oldest grassroots organizations in contemporary China and as such provide a valuable case for a study of China's fast-growing non-profit sector. The author defines CVAs as multipurpose partners of the party–state in its pursuit of social stability and maintenance of legitimacy. In this role, the CVAs have served three major tasks. They have provided social services, acted as a link between the party–state and urban residents, and served as a medium for shaping values. The article explores the definition and redefinition of these tasks as well as the actual operations of the associations since the late 1980s.
The New Life of the Party: Party-Building and Social Engineering in Greater Shanghai
While the 2004 introduction of a Party-organized trade union in Wal-Mart's mainland China-based stores was widely reported, far less is known about official Party branches and committees in the non-state-owned sector. Well over 3.5 million Party members now work in “non-publicly owned enterprises”, a sector of the economy in which the Party has continued to expand. The Party is experimenting with new organizational arrangements and remaking its social agenda in order to increase its popularity, relevance and appeal, particularly among young urban professionals. This article outlines recent Party-building initiatives in the private sector over the last decade. Drawing upon membership and other data from over 1,000 local Party committees in non-publicly owned enterprises in greater Shanghai, I analyze contemporary “Party life” in “two new” branches—new social and new economic organizations since the adoption of market reform—as a reflection of the Party's possible future as it absorbs the “advanced forces” of an increasingly market-oriented China.
The origins of modern citizenship in China
This paper considers the emergence in China from the 1890s onwards of several distinct but interrelated interpretations of citizen and citizenship. It shows how these differing interpretations have drawn on a variety of political influences and traditions, some relating to the cultural and political worldview of late Qing and early Republican China, and some absorbed from Europe and Japan. It notes that they have acquired renewed potential during the last two decades or so, as elite groups in the Chinese People’s Republic attempt to construct new approaches to the state and society in the wake of the collapse of Maoist socialism and under the influence of market–orientated economic reforms.