“Lost in Translation? Transnational American Rock Music of the Sixties and its Misreading in 1980s China”

Excerpt from The Power of Culture: Encounters between China and the United States, edited by Priscilla Robert

The Rise of China as an Economic Power

In the twenty years since the Cultural Revolution, China has maintained fast real growth. This occurred despite China having similar problems to other transitional economies, eg loss-making State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), eroding fiscal revenues and inflation, (Section 3). Although China initially adopted the Soviet central planning model, after the 1950s break Chinese planning changed towards a regionally-based system with local planning (Section 2). In contrast to the centrally-based, functionally-specialized (U form or unitary structure) Soviet model, the Chinese-economy is organized on a multi-layer-multi-regional (M form) basis. This encouraged development of small size township and village enterprises (TVEs), the main engine of Chinese growth. Power and control remained with the Party and the State, but was diffused much more widely, regionally and locally. This allowed initiatives at lower (political) levels to establish institutions, both in agriculture (the 'household responsibility system') and industry (TVEs), without state protection. Even among regionally controlled SOEs, 'tournament rivalry' between regions, etc, and between SOEs and TVEs provided competition.

Chinese Enterprise Reform as a Market Process

The reform of China's enterprise system increasingly reflects the outcome of China's emerging property rights market. We distinguish between a centrally-directed reform strategy, with characteristics similar to those of a Pigouvian tax, and a market-driven reform process, which captures the essential features of a Coasian approach to social cost. The Coase Theorem postulates that eliminating transaction costs and attaching well specified property rights to public goods that generate externalities will allow uncoordinated economic agents to negotiate institutional arrangements that produce socially efficient allocation of resources. Extending Coase's reasoning to the case of socialist transition ' we argue that reforms that expand competition, move toward well-specified assignment of ownership rights to public enterprises, and reduce transaction costs will motivate the "ultimate" owners, including officials of national and sub-national government agencies, to reconfigure their assets or to combine their assets with those of other jurisdictions and/or private investors to create more efficient ownership arrangements. We review the extent to which China's reforms have established the conditions for an effective market in ownership rights to industrial property. We tabulate progress from 1 980 to present along the three major analytic dimensions inherent in Coase's analysis: competition, property rights, and transaction costs. We conclude that the sheer size and diversity of China's industrial economy will motivate a continuation of decentralized reform initiatives. To support this Coasian reform process, central and provincial governments need to expand initiatives to clarify property rights, particularly the right of alienation, reduce impediments to competition, and facilitate the reduction of transaction costs.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39466/3/wp76.pd

Waiting for Leviathan: A Note on \u3cem\u3eModern Wo\u27er Trading Co Ltd v Ministry of Finance of the People\u27s Republic of China\u3c/em\u3e

This article analyzes a Chinese bid protest that has taken nearly seven years to adjudicate, yet as of this writing, no institution of the Chinese state has evaluated the substance of the protester’s bid challenge. Instead, the supplier’s complaint has been snared in a grey area between two of China’s multiple bid protest systems, burdening the supplier to push China’s administrative state to respond. The saga of Modern Wo’Er Trading Company Ltd. v The Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China raises compelling questions about the relationship of China’s 1999 Tender and Bidding Law and China’s 2002 Government Procurement Law, the nature of administrative power in China, and the ability of Chinese public procurement law to offer justice to aggrieved supplier

Competition Law Enforcement in China: Between Technocracy and Industrial Policy

The article provides a rare reconstruction of a number of early cases decided under the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law. In particular, the article seeks to go behind the published decisions of the responsible authorities, to reconstruct their decision-making process in particular by identifying the sources of consultation and the arguments that various stakeholders presented to the authorities about what course of action to follow

Chinese television between propaganda and entertainment: socialist traditions, marketisation and popular TV dramas, 1992–2017

China's economic reforms and opening to the world since 1978 have profoundly changed the operation and function of Chinese television. Following the accelerated market reforms from 1992, the production of Chinese TV programmes has become increasingly driven by ratings and oriented towards popular entertainment. Within this context, this project examines how Chinese television has evolved over recent decades in response to wider political, economic and cultural changes in China, with a focus on prime-time television dramas broadcast between 1992 and 2017. It situates the analysis of TV dramas within the spectrum of two poles – propaganda and entertainment, aiming to explore how these TV programmes have continued to serve the propaganda imperatives of the Party-state, while at the same time responding to audience demands regarding entertainment.In order to map the changes and continuities exemplified by Chinese TV dramas, this project has adopted a mixed-method approach. This approach includes a systematic quantitative analysis to delineate long-term trends, and four qualitative case studies to establish a more thorough understanding of the detailed transformation in Chinese television. The thesis demonstrates that while Chinese television has become increasingly driven by commercial values that prioritise audience interests and popular elements, television entertainment in China still needs to align with official ideological lines. In the meantime, varying degrees of political supervision have been identified from different levels of TV stations, and the Party-state has actively engaged in promoting its own agenda through Chinese television entertainment. These have shown an increasingly complex picture of socialist television in the new era.In these ways, this project sheds light on the interplay between political propaganda and commercial trends within the Chinese television system over the past two decades and a half. It is intended to contribute to existing studies on the relationship between propaganda and popular entertainment, and to the analyses of propaganda in television drama. It would also facilitate a systematic understanding of socialist television contexts, bridging the east-west divide on the perceptions of contemporary socialist television culture.</div

Normative and Audience Discourses on Public Service Journalism at a “Critical Juncture”: the Case of TVE in Spain

The concept of journalism, its metatheory and, in particular, public service journalism is regulated by feedback between political models (legal and normative framework), academic precepts and social practices. Scant attention has been paid to date to the impact that these models have on citizens’ discourses, which is especially relevant at “critical junctures”, i.e. periods in which the old institutions are collapsing and require renovation (McChesney, 2007). Hence, this paper addresses the issue in the Spanish context in order to explore the similarities and differences between the academic/legal/normative framework and audience discourses. The former has been studied using documents, reports and legislation, and the latter explored by means of discussion groups with viewers of the newscasts of Televisión Española (TVE)

Chinese Indonesians After May 1998 How They Fit in the Big Picture

For Chinese Indonesians, May 1998 is a significant historical marker, twelfth and thirteenth being two concentrated days of riots and atrocities in Jakarta, followed by more, albeit on smaller scales, in Solo, Surabaya, and a number of other cities. Destruction of properties belonging to them, and rapes of their women, occurred. Then Indonesia witnessed the end of Suharto\u27s rule when the president resigned on 21 May 1998. A gradual political turn-around followed; Chinese Indonesians found room to move. The subsequent governments revoked restrictive regulations put in place by the New Order government, and lifted the suppression on cultural expression by Chinese Indonesians. The situation has progressed in conjunction with China\u27s rise in global economic dominance. Does China\u27s increasing International profile and rising global economic dominance help Chinese Indonesians? This article seeks to find some answer to the question as it looks at the development in the big picture; how and to what extent the social perceptions of Chinese Indonesians have evolved among the mainstream population; how they perceive themselves and believe how others perceive them; and how these may influence their lives as Indonesian citizens