Each participant then controlled the other's fate in qualifying for a draw for US$50. They could make them perform tasks ranging from the benign ("jump up and down 10 times on one leg") to the belittling ("say 'I am filthy' five times") in order to qualify. One group was told their partner had to do whatever they told them if they wanted to qualify for the money, thus giving them high power. The other group could also make their colleague jump through the hoops, but their partner could remove their name from the raffle if they disliked the tasks.

South China Morning Post (南華早報)

Governance in China, edited by Jude Howell. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. xiv + 279 pp. US$75.00 (hardcover), US$27.95 (paperback). The term governance is "contested", says Jude Howell in the introduction to this new edited book, "and the juxtaposition of 'good' augments the evaluative nature of the concept" (p. 1). Rather than employ the usual normative, institutional and managerial definition of the term (good governance is transparent, predictable, accountable and participatory) that has been suggested by international agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, Howell suggests a more comprehensive meaning: "the totality of processes and arrangements, both formal and informal, by which power and public authority are distributed and regulated". From this premise the book sets out to analyze some of these processes. The book can be divided roughly into three parts. The first three chapters-by Joseph Fewsmith on the elite politics of China's reforms, John P. Burns on civil service reform and Zhu Sanzhu on the privatization of lawyers' services-deal with governance in the "usual" way, looking at the impact of major reforms on the ability of the Chinese government and its institutions to improve performance and become more predictable, accountable and so on. The next six chapters elaborate on Howell's extended version of governance, and investigate the marketization of culture (Michale Kaene), new self-government institutions in rural villages (Linda Jakobson) and in the urban residential neighborhoods (Zhang Jing), and civilsociety organizations representing marginal interests (Howell) and women (Du Jie). The final two chapters are on the challenges that the working class (Marc Blecher) and such religious organizations as the Falun Gong (Clemens Stubbe Ostergaard) present to the Party's ability to govern effectively in the face of societal discontent. The book is a welcome contribution to the existing literature on contemporary China. It will be a useful textbook for teachers examining Chinese society and politics, and the readable style and informative content of most of the essays will also attract a readership among public administrators, NGOs and policy makers. However, while the book offers insights into many specific aspects of power arrangements in China, the use of "governance" in such a broad social and political perspective raises some questions. Conceptually, the above-mentioned four generally accepted parameters of governance define a limited-and almost objective-field of investigation where "goodness" can be measured on the basis of rigid criteria borrowed from management textbooks and from the idea of "corporate governance". …

Governance in China

The Tiananmen Papers

Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific

China's Foreign Relations

As China re-emerges on the world stage as a great power, fuelled by intertwined ethno-nationalism and a sense of manifest destiny with roots on its identity as a civilisational state, it is increasingly seeking to reshape the international liberal order that was put in place by the USled West after the Second World War. Its emergence as a normative power in the field of human rights, prioritising national sovereignty and economic development over notions of universalism and civil and political rights has been noticed, and a growing number of political leaders have started to see the unique brand of Chinese authoritarianism and ‘human rights with Chinese characteristics’ as models to emulate. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in Southeast Asia, a region with deep historical and economic ties with China, where no one has forgotten the time when Beijing was the centre of the world.

Álvaro Gómez del Valle Ruiz

Papers

“A community of shared destiny” : how China is reshaping human rights in Southeast Asia