Collective Agriculture

Socialization was a hallmark of China’s economic strategy from the early 1950s onward, and the collective organization of agriculture was a defining characteristic of China’s rural economy under Mao Zedong. The strong organizational emphasis of farm policy reflected a belief that institutional change was the main determinant of agricultural growth. By 1953, land reform had fundamentally changed the balance of political power, as well as the profile of land ownership, land use, and farm management, in the countryside. However, it had not advanced the cause of socialization. It was, in fact, always the government’s intent that land reform would be merely the first step in a series of institutional changes eventually leading to a fully socialist collective agriculture, to be completed by 1967. The process would take place gradually and in stages, with farmers initially engaging in what were called “lower-level (semisocialist) agricultural-producer cooperatives” until the demonstrated benefits of cooperation encouraged them to voluntarily join fully socialist (“higher-level”) collectives. The underlying economic rationale was that collectivization would bring agriculture more firmly within the remit of planning and strengthen government control over grain, while the larger scale of farming and the mobilizational capacity of the collectives would enhance agricultural efficiency and generate sustained output growth. But thanks to the overwhelming response to Mao’s call for accelerated collectivization (31 July 1955), the original timetable was abandoned, and coercion was increasingly used to force peasants—including those with minimal or nonexistent experience of lower-level cooperatives—into fully socialist collectives. A mere two years later, under a more indigenous strategy of development (the “Great Leap Forward”), another massive institutional upheaval took place, as peasants were incorporated into a new and huge organizational unit (the rural people’s commune), whose remit extended to political as well as economic management. Following the human and economic catastrophe precipitated by the Great Leap, there was a temporary institutional retreat. But the imperative of collective farming soon reemerged and remained intact until decollectivization in the early 1980s. These events have generated a rich literature, much of it written before the post-1978 explosion of data and other materials from China. That so many of these early studies still merit careful reading is testament to the remarkable dedication of authors (e.g., Kenneth Walker, Nicholas Lardy, Chao Kuo-chün) who spent years locating and then immersing themselves in Chinese-language books, journals, and newspapers to an extent that seems inconceivable in the 2020s. Economic issues define the major themes of the literature (e.g., the rationale of institutional change, its impact on yields and output growth, the role of state procurement policies, the implications for urban and rural food consumption). But it has also embraced political-economy dimensions of China’s rural institutional framework, a notable example being Jean Oi’s pathbreaking 1989 study.

Human Resource Management in China

The concept of human resource management (HRM) in China was only adopted beginning in the 1990s as a foreign import. Many domestic firms still operate in a traditional personnel management mode with limited strategic planning or HR capability, although there is a general trend by which firms are increasingly becoming more strategic in their HRM. In state-owned firms, the HR department acts mainly as the implementer of HR policies formulated and imposed by the state (employer). In domestic private firms, HR managers often play the role of administrator, following instructions from the boss. Indeed, lack of professional management is often a criticism about Chinese family-owned businesses, in which the owners run the business and make all the decisions with little consultation of those who work for the firm. It is in the foreign-funded multinational corporations (MNCs) that HRM is considered to be most systematic and sophisticated, resembling that of Western practices. Chinese culture plays a fundamental role in the management of workplace relationships. Paternalism and collectivism are seen as distinctive cultural characteristics that influence the way people behave and are managed at work. However, work ethics and expectations have changed as China develops economically and has become more open to the influence of foreign cultures, aided by information communication technology, and as the majority of the younger generation of the Chinese urban workforce are the “only-child” of the family as a result of the one-child policy enforced by the government from 1980 until the 2010s to curb population growth. Young employees are more eager to succeed, less willing to endure hardship, more assertive of their rights and interests, and less loyal to their employers, as evidenced by the high level of staff turnover. Equally, employers have become more cost-oriented, in part to deal with heightened competitive pressures. This is in part reflected in the work intensity (measured by pressure at work and long working hours) and the growing use of nonstandard employment characterized by the absence of job security, reduced social security, and the lack of career development opportunities. As marketization deepens, wealth disparity increases, and workplace relationships become more transactional in nature, the relationship between labor and capital/management has worsened in many workplaces, leading to a rising level of labor disputes. The understanding of people management at workplaces, therefore, needs to be situated in the broader context of employment relations, including the respective role, power base, and level of bargaining power of key institutional actors such as the state, employers and employer associations, and workers and their representing bodies like the trade unions. It is with this objective in mind that this bibliography of HRM in China has been compiled, taking into account aspects of functional and strategic HRM at the firm level, organizational behavior (OB) at the individual level, and workplace relationships collectively, with relevance to HRM. This broadened approach to contemplating HRM is an attempt to address the growing imbalance in HRM research that has been heavily skewed toward quantitative studies of individual behavior at the expense of in-depth studies of actions and interactions of socials groups in specific organizational settings.

Energy Economics and Climate Change

Energy economics and global climate change–related issues are becoming more and more important in China. China is the world’s largest energy producer and consumer. The sustained growth of energy supply has provided an important boost to the country’s economic growth and social progress, while the rapid expansion of energy consumption has raised energy security concerns. At the same time, a still coal-dominated primary energy supply and a still growing economy lead to massive emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. During the past 100 years, the Earth’s climate has experienced significant changes characterized by global warming. This global trend is also happening on a regional scale in China. The impact of climate change on China’s agriculture and livestock breeding, forestry, water resources, coastal zones, and many other natural eco-systems is evident, such as sea level rise in the coastal areas, glacial retreat in northwestern areas, and the earlier arrival of the spring phenophase. More frequent extreme weather events are occurring, such as drought in the north and more frequent rainstorms and floods in the south. To cope with the existing negative impacts of climate change, the Chinese government is adopting climate change adaptation policy measures, such as early warning systems for floods in coastal cities. To avoid global climate change, at the same time, mitigation measures are being implemented, such as energy efficiency improvements and a primary energy mix change toward low or zero carbon energy carriers. In 2020, China’s national emission trading scheme in the power sector is on schedule to be launched, initially for coal- and gas-fired power plants of a certain minimum size. In contrast to other countries, hardly any climate change skeptics are found in China. The existence of anthropogenic climate change is widely accepted in this country.

Judaism in China

Judaism in China is a unique topic for Jewish religion as China is the only country in East Asia that has had Jews living in its society for one thousand years. Various Jewish communities existed in various places at different times. Since Judaism is not a proselytizing religion, there were no activities of converting any Chinese into Judaism, but there was intermarriage between Jews and Chinese. Therefore, “Judaism in China” refers to the religious practices of Jews who had lived or are now living in China. In order to understand or present the theme, it is necessary to briefly explain the relationship between Jewish people and Judaism, because it is different from that of any other religion. In Judaism, founded by Jews, the devotion object is God. As the earliest monotheistic religion, Judaism had great impacts on the rise of both Christianity and Islam. Because of the uniqueness of the history and cultural developments of the Jewish people, the nuances of the term “Judaism” are very broad. Its basic meaning is “all Jewish.” In other words, it includes the whole of Jewish civilization. So Judaism does not merely refer to the religious beliefs of Jews but also—maybe more importantly—the visible daily life of the Jewish people, and indicates Jewish culture or the kernel of Jewish culture. Further, in the course of a very long history, Jewish thought, spirit, religion, and culture includes all aspects of the people who were bound together and it would be very difficult to separate them. It is often said: Jews cannot separate from their religion, for if they do then there would be no Jewish people. Furthermore, for Jews Judaism is the manner of their life. The life of the Jews, observant or not, is inextricably bound to their religion, from their eating and drinking to marriage and death, and all are connected with their religion. Therefore, one may very well say that Judaism has also continued in Chinese society for over a thousand years due to the fact that Judaism is indigenous to Jews and is inconceivable without it, as Judaism and Jews entered history simultaneously. Talking about Jewish Diaspora in China, there is a significant distinction between Jews in premodern China (before 1840) and modern China (since 1840). Those who came before modern times became part of Chinese society without distinct features while those who came since modern times remained as aliens. The practices of Judaism by those two groups of Jews were carried out under different circumstances. Therefore, it is necessary to address them separately. Finally, Judaism in China must include books and articles, written either by Chinese or by foreign scholars whose works were translated into Chinese.

Uyghurs

The Uyghur (alternatively spelled Uighur) are the largest and titular ethnic group living in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a vast area in northwestern China of over 1.6 million sq. km. According to the 2010 census Uyghurs make up 45.21 percent of the population of Xinjiang, numbering 8,345,622 people. The Han, the largest ethnic group in China, make up 40.58 percent in the region with 7,489,919. A Turkic-speaking largely Muslim ethnic group, the Uyghurs traditionally inhabited a series of oases around the Taklamakan desert. Their complex origin is evidenced by a rich cultural history that can be traced back to various groups that emerged across the steppes of Mongolia and Central Asia. Uyghur communities are also found in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, with significant diaspora groups in Australia, the United States, Germany, and Turkey. In the first half of the 20th century, Uyghurs briefly declared two short-lived East Turkestan Republics in 1933 and again in 1944, but the region was brought under the complete control of the Chinese state after the Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949. Within China they are considered one of the fifty-five officially recognized ethnic minority groups, who, along with the Han who constitute 92 percent of the population, make up the Chinese nation or Zhonghua Minzu中华民族. However, for many Uyghurs the name “Xinjiang,” which literally translates as “New Territory,” indicates that their homeland is a colony of China, and they prefer the term “East Turkestan.” Nevertheless, many scholars use Xinjiang as a natural term even when they are critical of the position of the Communist Party. In this article both terms are used. In the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Uyghurs numbered about 80 percent of the population of Xinjiang, but large-scale government-sponsored migration has seen the number of Han in the region rise to almost the same as that of the Uyghur. This has led to an increase in ethnic tensions often caused by competition for scarce resources and a perception that the ruling Communist Party favors the Han. In 2009, a major outbreak of violence in the capital Ürümchi saw hundreds die and many more imprisoned. The years 2013 and 2014 were also crucial turning points with deadly attacks on passengers in train stations in Kunming and Yunnan, bombings in Ürümchi, and a suicide attack in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, all blamed on Uyghur terrorists. Since then the Chinese government has introduced a harsh regime of security clampdowns and mass surveillance, which has significantly increased from 2017 and which, by some accounts, has seen over one million Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities imprisoned without trial in “reeducation” camps. The Chinese government insist these camps form part of an education and vocational training program designed to improve the lives of Uyghurs and root out “wrong thinking.” Many Uyghurs believe it is part of a long-term project of assimilation of Uyghur identity and culture.

Five Classics

Although the term “Five Classics” (The Odes; Documents; the three Rites classics, counted as one; the Annals, and the Changes) was probably coined in Western Han, for much of Chinese history the Five Classics corpus has been the common cultural coin of the realm, familiar to all educated people, regardless of their religious creeds or ethical persuasions. Although parts of the Five Classics have claimed Confucius, as author, editor, or teacher, others may not have derived from self-identified “followers of Confucius,” of which there were very few in Antiquity. Given the importance of the Five Classics as repositories of ethical and political teachings, numerous debates over the “correct” graphs and meanings assigned to passages in the Five Classics have continued unabated from Western Han times down to today, in China, among the Chinese diaspora, and abroad, perhaps the most famous being the Qing-era “New Text/Old Text” debates. Only recently have Euro-American scholars, in company with some of their East Asian counterparts, begun to acknowledge at least two “general shifts in the textual landscape,” the first of which took place during Song, spurred, perhaps, by the Song ancient prose movement, and the second around the turn of the 20th century, when leading scholars and political reformers began to debate the role of the Five Classics in the education of the wenren文人 (men and women of letters) and the general populace, a debate that is still raging in some quarters, given the Chinese Communist Party’s belated flirtation with Confucian ethics. A few modern scholars, in addition, would emphasize the conceptual ruptures that also accompanied the changeovers from seal script to clerical script, and from regular script to simplified. What has proved equally disruptive in recent years is the insistence by some Chinese authorities that unprovenanced materials bought on the market in Hong Kong or Japan be accorded the same “weight” as scientifically excavated manuscripts or texts transmitted via the received literary tradition. Past experience suggests that patient accumulation and sifting of the evidence is preferable to overly hasty judgements about the reliability of such manuscripts.

Post-Collective Agriculture

Since the start of the economic reforms in 1978, China has developed today into one of the world’s leading producers of agricultural produce—particularly pork, poultry, fruits, vegetables, wheat, corn, and rice. The transition of China’s collectivist Soviet-style agricultural production toward a modernized, mechanized, and market-based agriculture has taken many decades to take effect. A major breakthrough that marked the start of China’s agricultural transition was the nationwide adoption of the Household Contract Responsibility System in the mid-1980s. In addition to these managerial and structural changes, the Chinese government engaged in the liberalization of agricultural prices and supply and marketing systems, as well as the stimulation of agricultural diversification, mechanization, and economies of scale. As agriculture continued to develop, millions of farmers were lifted out of poverty and migrated to the cities to find employment in the industries and services. At the same time, however, China encountered significant problems as a result. For one, how to ensure food security and feed close to one-fifth of the earth’s population with less than one-tenth of its farmland? On top of that, over time vast tracts of fertile, arable land were lost due to its (legal and illegal) conversion into urban construction land. Raising agricultural production was also severely constrained by the small and fragmented nature of Chinese farms. Well into the 2010s, over 90 percent of these were smaller than 2.5 acres, while cropland was scattered over numerous different plots. Furthermore, ensuring adequate social welfare, education, and health care for the rural populace had become a daunting challenge in the face of the growing divide between urban citizens and the peasant population. Last but not least, rapid rural industrialization through township and village enterprises (TVEs), once hailed as a miracle of China’s reforms, had taken a heavy toll in the form of soil, air, and water pollution, giving rise to “cancer villages”, “black rivers,” and heavily degraded natural resources. At the time of this writing, Chinese agriculture is caught in between two worlds: on the one hand, one may find smallholders tilling scattered agricultural plots, on the other hand, there are high-tech food-processing factories and the peri-urban, sometimes ecologically guided industrial farms. The stark contrast between a highly modernized sector versus a traditional one will continue to explain the paradoxical dynamics of Chinese post-collective agriculture for the foreseeable future.

Transnational Chinese Cinemas

The term “transnational Chinese cinemas” first appeared in 1997 in the anthology Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. It was coined, theorized, and introduced in the book by editor Sheldon Lu. That was also the first time the phrase “transnational cinema” was used as a book title in world film studies. The immediate occasion for the rise of this concept had to do with the cultural landscape of Greater China and of the world in general in the post-Cold War period. Film coproduction across national and regional borders became a possibility again and was done more frequently. In the case of the Greater Chinese region of the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, filmmakers began to cooperate across the Taiwan Straits to make joint productions; they secured funding and established channels of circulation beyond their immediate territories. Simply put, transnational cinema is a cinema of border crossing, and transnational film studies transcends the unit of the nation state in film analysis. It can be understood as a model of film studies, a critical paradigm, a description of the film industry, and a type of film. The full methodological, historical, and critical implications of transnational Chinese film studies are first outlined in the introduction to the book Transnational Chinese Cinemas. Transnationalism is grasped at the following levels: First, the split of China into the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in modern history and consequently the coexistence of three competing national and local Chinese cinemas; second, the globalization of the production, circulation, and consumption of Chinese film in the age of transnational capitalism since the 1990s; third, the representation and questioning of “China” and “Chineseness” in filmic discourse itself—namely, the cross-examination of the national, cultural, political, ethnic, and gender identity of individuals and communities in the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese diaspora; fourth, a re-viewing of and revisiting the history of Chinese ‘national cinema’ as if to read the ‘prehistory’ of transnational filmic discourse backwards in order to discover the ‘political unconscious’ of filmic discourse—the transnational roots and condition of cinema. Transnational film studies have become a major paradigm in Chinese film studies, along with the models of Chinese national cinema, Chinese-language cinema, and Sinophone cinema. It shares certain assumptions with the other three paradigms but also has its own characteristics and differences. Transnational Chinese film studies have also evolved into a broader study of “transnational visuality.” Transnational visual culture includes feature film, documentary, video, digital media, and visual arts. This situation is especially relevant in the so-called ‘postcinema’ stage when the film medium, the platform of film circulation, and the venue of viewing have changed tremendously. There are also various forms of transnational films. For instance, there exist the commercial-global blockbuster, independent art-house film, and exilic transnational cinema. Transnational cinema emerges and flourishes in the age and condition of globalization and transnational capitalism. However, this does not mean that transnational cinema necessarily serves the interests of transnational capitalism. Such a cinema can be liberating and counterhegemonic as well, depending on the particular situation.

Vernacular Language Movement

The English term ‘vernacular language’ is more capacious than any of its Chinese equivalents. When discussing writing, the term is usually equated with baihua (白话), a word that now refers to the standard written language, but only gained that sense starting in the 1890s with the rise of vernacular newspapers. When discussing speech, the term now refers primarily to northern varieties of speech on which baihua was based, particularly the standard language, which in English is usually referred to by the terms ‘Mandarin’ or ‘Mandarin Chinese,’ which equates to putonghua (普通话 common speech) in the mainland, guoyu (国语 national language) in Taiwan, and huayu (华语 Chinese language) in Singapore. In these senses, ‘vernacular’ is defined in opposition to ‘classical’ or ‘literary,’ as in Classical or Literary Chinese (now usually called wenyan文言), a primarily written medium whose norms were established in the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 bce) and the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce). As the medium of the Confucian canon, the civil examination system, and the imperial bureaucracy, wenyan remained the prestige form of writing for roughly two thousand years until the end of the 19th century. On the other hand, when referring to speech, the vernacular language movement (baihua yundong白话运动) went hand in hand with the national language movement (guoyu yundong国语运动). This movement sought to create a standard spoken language to unify a polyglot Chinese nation that spoke hundreds of mutually unintelligible ‘speeches of a locality’ (fangyan方言). Though they are tantamount to distinct languages, these local speech varieties are usually called “dialects” in English in an acknowledgement of China’s cultural unity, though some advocate the term “topolect” as a more neutral equivalent of fangyan. Thus, the ‘vernacular’ represents an intellectual and political agenda for Chinese intellectuals who saw the ‘classical’ and ‘local’ as impediments to literacy, education, and thus modernization. Starting in the early 20th century, and spurred from 1919 onwards by the May Fourth Movement, progressive intellectuals advocated the vernacular in writing and in speech, arguing that it was closer to the living language of the people and thus appropriate for a modern nation in which being able to read was a necessity not just for a privileged few, but rather for the great bulk of the population. Baihua, which had simply meant ‘local speech’ until the 1890s, was redefined as the writing style found in ‘vernacular’ novels (xiaoshuo小说) of the past few centuries, which themselves were elevated in status from works of popular entertainment to literary classics. Guoyu, which during the Qing dynasty had referred to the Manchu language, was also redefined—under the influence of the Japanese neologism kokugo (国語)—as the nation’s language. The multiplicity of the Chinese terms for different aspects of the language in China thus emerged from the polemics of reform: baihua was not wenyan, guoyu was not fangyan. But the distinction between the components of each dichotomy was somewhat forced, given that baihua retained many wenyan expressions and guoyu incorporated elements of fangyan. While these ways of thinking about language have drawn legitimate scholarly criticism, they have become the conventional wisdom in contemporary China. Indeed, the revolution in the culture and practice of language in China may represent one of the largest such social transformations in history: Mandarin is now the language with the greatest number of speakers on the planet.

Liu Zongzhou

Liu Zongzhou 劉宗周 (personal name Xianzhang 憲章, courtesy name Qidong 起東, literary names Niantai 念台, Jishan 蕺山; b. 1578–d. 1645) was an important Neo-Confucian thinker in the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644) of China. Born as a posthumous child in Shanyin (Shaoxing) of the Zhejiang province, he was brought up by his mother, educated by his maternal grandfather and became a successful candidate of the metropolitan and palace examination in 1601. In 1621, as the Supplementary Secretary in the Ministry of Rites, he began to impeach the corrupt but powerful eunuch Wei Zongxian. In 1624, he declined the offer to be Junior Vice Commissioner of the Office of Transmission, and his status was reduced to that of a commoner. In 1629, he resumed office as the governor of Shuntian Prefecture, and resigned the next year to establish the Zhengren 證人 Association and to lecture at the Shigui 石匱 Academy. In 1636, he became Senior Vice Minister of Works. Yet he soon resigned to criticize the Senior Grand Secretary Wen Tiren 溫體仁, and this led to the degradation of his status to a commoner again. In 1642, he was promoted to Censor-in-chief, but he was relieved of his office when he antagonized the emperor by trying to save two censorial officials. During the fall of Beijing, he resumed his office as Censor-in-chief. He attacked the corrupt officials Ma Shiying 馬士英 and Ruan Dacheng 阮大鋮 and finally left his office. His official career lasted for forty-five years, during which he had held office six and a half years, was in active service at court only four years, and had been degraded to the status of commoner three times. With the fall of Nanjing and Hangzhou in succession to the Manchus and his decision to express his loyalty and patriotism to the country, he ended his life by fasting for twenty days. Liu distinguished himself as a Neo-Confucian philosopher and scholar. The main doctrines of his teaching are “vigilance in solitude” (shendu慎獨) and “sincerity of will” (chengyi誠意), which originate from the two Confucian classics Doctrine of the Mean and Great Learning. Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (b. 1610–d. 1695), his important disciple and a well-known intellectual historian, placed him and his school of thought in the last part of Huang’s influential work, The Records of Ming Scholars. Huang not only compared him to the most significant Neo-Confucian philosophers, but also hinted that his philosophy signified the final summation of the Neo-Confucian tradition from the Song to Ming dynasties. He is commonly regarded as one of the most important Song-Ming Neo-Confucian thinkers. It is the creativity and depth of his philosophy that deserves scholars’ attention.