1. Three Roads to Political Accountability

Ma Jun

School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University

　　Abstract:Establishing an accountable government is a core issue for modern state governance. To achieve this goal, two fundamental questions need to be solved: (1) Who exercises power? (2) How should the power be exercised? To the first question, the electoral system offers a relatively good answer; to the second, the budgetary system offers the best answer. Through a historical and comparative analysis, this essay identifies three roads to political ccountability: the European road of the nineteenth century, the American road from the founding of the United States to the reform of Progressive Era and the newly emerging Chinese road. This implies that the Western experience does not represent the only route toward political accountability. Compared with Western experience, China’s state transformation since the 1980s is quite unique. A Chinese road is taking shape despite all the challenges ahead.

 

2. The Reform and Development of the Decision-making System in Contemporary China

Zhou Guanghui

College of Administration, Jilin University

　　Abstract:The decision-making system is the backbone of China’s political system and a crucial factor determining its development. The decision-making system with the CPC lying at the core results from the CPC’s long history of leading China’s revolution and establishing the People’s Republic of China; therefore it has historical rationality. Decision-making was centralized over the period from the foundation of the PRC to reform and opening up. This centralized decision-making system had faults such as a low level of specialized division oflabor, low institutionalization, an undue emphasis on experience, a closed decision-making process and the absence of any self-correcting and adjustment mechanisms. The reform of China’s decision-making system in the post-reform period has attached much importance to promoting democratic, scientific and law-based decision-making with regard to decision- making structures, modes and mechanisms. Practice proves that this reform has successfully met the challenges arising from rapid social and economic transition. Viewed from the perspective of political development, it involves an evolution from personal to democratic, from experience-based to scientific, from centralized to decentralized, from closed to open, from passive to active participation and from non-institutionalized to institutionalized decision-making. A decision-making model has gradually taken shape that is characterized by CPC domination, participation by multiple entities, scientific proof, open process, and law-based operation.

 

3. Cultural Feedback and Intergenerational Transmission in Artifact Civilization

Zhou Xiaohong

School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University

　　Abstract:“Cultural feedback” (wenhuafanbu, literally “cultural reverse feeding”), an indigenous concept coined to facilitate the understanding of intergenerational relations in China’s drastically changing society, focuses on the subversion or reversal of conventional intergenerational relations in the light of changes triggered jointly by globalization and social transformation and views the extensive absorption of emerging cultural elements by the older generation from the young generation as a new mode of transmission. The process of the dissemination and selection of three kinds of modern artifacts—new foods, cell phones and computers—highlights the intergenerational tilt, the phenomenon of decentralization and the trend towards a digital divide. The subversion of conventional intergenerational relations in the process of the transmission of artifact civilization, as a significant part of Chinese psychological reactions to over three decades of reform and opening up, is indispensable to the psychological integrity of Chinese experience.

 

4. Cultural Capital and Status Attainment: An Empirical Study Based on Data from Shanghai

Qiu Liping（a） and Xiao Rikui（b）

a. Sociology Division, E-institute of Shanghai University

b. Department of Sociology, Shanghai University

　　Abstract:Cultural capital plays an important role in individuals’ educational and status attainment. On the basis of data from the Shanghai Social Structure Survey of 2008 and from the perspective of broadly defined cultural capital, this paper measures the role of cultural capital of parents and children in the acquisition of social status. The findings are as follows: (1) Higher stocks of cultural capital on the part of parents and children mean more years of schooling for children. (2) Children’s cultural capital has a significant influence on their status attainment. (3) Controlling for variables like gender and father’s occupation, the more cultural capital one has, the more likely one is to enter a higher stratum. (4) A family’s education, cultural ambience and cultural investment have a sustained and stable impact on status attainment. (5) Cultural capital provides an effective way for the lower strata ofsociety to achieve upward social mobility.

 

5. The Development of Early Modern Chinese Economics: Based on Investigation of Doctoral Dissertations by Chinese Students Studying Abroad in the Late Qing and Republican Periods

Zou Jinwen

Zhongnan University of Economics and Law

　　Abstract:In the initial period of transplanting Western economic theory, Chinese students studying abroad in the late Qing and Republican periods played a very important role in the formation and development of modern Chinese economics. On the one hand, by applying modern economic theory to Chinese economic problems, they sought solutions to these problems and facilitated the Sinicization and localization of economics; on the other, they kept pace with the latest developments in economics and were bold innovators, with some entering the ranks of world famous economists.

 

6. The Intrinsic Influence of the Poetics of Yanzhi on Modern Chinese Literature

Song Jianhua

Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Jinan University

　　Abstract:Rejection and denunciation of the poetics of “yanzhi” (literally “expressing one’s thought or ideals”) was once a marker of Chinese literature’s modern transformation. However, right from the beginning of May Fourth new literature, the poetics of “yanzhi” was not only not cast out of the aesthetic canon of modern Chinese literature but was, on the contrary, legitimately transmitted via Western discourse. Whether modern Chinese writers were expressing enlightenment ideas of saving the nation or voicing their personal feelings for their country and their people, they remained convinced that “zhi” was “feelings” writ large and “feelings” were a lesser form of “zhi.” Specifically, the school stressing the idea that “literature expresses thought” advocated utilitarian literary creation and returned to the traditional Chinese poetics of “yanzhi” by replacing “feelings” with “zhi.” Those stressing the idea that “literature expresses feelings” advocated writing with genuine emotion; they went on to express “zhi” via “feelings,” thus returning to the traditional Chinese way of thought. Both the theory and practice of modern Chinese literature have a strange “Western” tint. Nevertheless, this literature’s essential character of “reinterpreting the ‘dao’ (way)” and sophisticated “expression of thought” or “yanzhi” indicate its value identification withtraditional culture rather than the simple abandonment of “tradition” in pursuit of “the West.”

 

7. Historical Reconstruction of the Literary Family

Mei Xinlin

Jiangnan Cultural Research Center, College of Humanities, Zhejiang Normal University

　　Abstract:The process of reconstructing the history of the literary family is also a process of logical construction. By focusing on the transformation of political and cultural institutions and sorting through the historical evolution both of literature and of distinguished families, we can describe the historical evolution of the literary family in Chinese dynastic history, that is, the succession and the orderly progress of its three forms over three periods. The first period from the Han Dynasty to the Northern and Southern Dynasties saw the emergence of “literary families of classical scholars,” and their evolutionary successors, “literary families with hereditary power.” In the second period of Sui and Tang Dynasties, this latter group coexisted and to some extent merged with “literary families of scholar-officials” in a composite form. The third period of Song, Ming and Qing Dynasties witnessed the continuation and transformation of the mainstream form of “literary families of scholar-officials.” In addition to the above groups, there existed a multiplicity of other forms. To construct an academic paradigm of the history of the literary family, we need to integrate four levels of research into an organic unity: research on individual literary families, research on families in specific periods and in specific regions, and research on the literary family across history.

 

Special Issue: The Origins of Ancient Chinese Civilizati on and States

 

8. Introduction

Wang Zhenzhong

Institute of Chinese History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

 

9. The Originsof Ancient Chinese Civilizationand States: Implications of Large Burial Sites of Songze Culture

Li Boqian

School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University

　　Abstract:The discovery of large burial sites belonging to the early and middle stages of Songze Culture at Dongshan Village, Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu Province, shows that distinct social polarization had already emerged in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River 5,700 or 5,800 years ago, when the initial stage of kingly power had taken shape and society had entered the stage of the “ancient states.” In the course of the evolution of ancient Chinese civilization, this area—rather than the Central Plains in the middle reaches of the Yellow River or the northern area centered around the ancient Great Wall—was the first to experience significant social transformation. This discovery also indicates that when the “ancient states” first appeared, they varied in form and character: some took the form of theocracies while others were dominated by kingly power. These differences meant that they developed in different directions and had different outcomes.

 

10. Theoretical Reflections on the Formation of Early States in China

Chao Fulin

School of History, Beijing Normal University

　　Abstract:Unlike the ancient Greek, Roman and German states, ancient Chinese states took a path of harmonious construction which did not involve abolition of the clan system. It was on the basis of the existing clan organization that the first shoots of the state sprouted, and the state and the clans underwent a long coexistence which allowed the early state to develop and be perfected. The unique social structure of ancient China––the long existence and development of the clan system––was the underlying social foundation for harmonious construction. The early Chinese states were much concerned with the feelings, opinions about right and wrong, advantages and calamities of the clans and tribes. This concern and social practice was the foundation stone for harmonious construction, as well as the benchmark for success for the leaders of the time. Traces of the idea of harmonious construction are apparent up to the full development of the early state in ancient China.

 

11. Indicators of State Formation: With a Discussion of the State Theory Based on the Four-tiered Settlement Hierarchy

Wang Zhenzhong

Institute of Chinese History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

　　Abstract:In ancient China, in Xia, Shang and Zhou society, the relationship of subordination between the head of a state and the territories or fiefdoms of the nobles was not equivalent to the administrative relationship between the central government and the localities under the system of prefectures and counties introduced in Qin and Han times. Any theory of state formation based solely on a four-tiered settlement hierarchy is limited; it fails to explain the essential question of whether a state has come into being, and thus cannot be regarded as a criterion for judgment. It is true that in integrating settlement archaeology with social morphology in research on the origins of the ancient state and civilization, we need to classify settlement hierarchies. At the same time, however, we still need to conduct extensive research into the appearance of prehistoric social organizations, hierarchies, strata and classes, as well as the evolution of the nature of power, etc. Therefore, it is the emergence of strata and classes and the establishment of a coercive power that stands over and above society that are the mostcharacteristic indicators of state formation. Further, we can provide archaeological grounds and materialized forms for this approach, which thus possesses operability.

 

12. Several Issues in Research on State Emergence in China

Xie Weiyang

Center for Ancient Civilization Studies, Shanghai University

　　Abstract:There is no consensus in international academia on the absolutely universal appearance of chiefdom in all parts of the world. Making this point clear has positive significance for the correct understanding of the original meaning of the concept and theory of chiefdom. Further researches on the distribution of chiefdoms in Europe and other parts of the world, based on studies of ancient Greek and early medieval Germanic cases, will not change our basic understanding of the chiefdom model’s applicability to the case of China, nor will it pose a serious challenge to the ongoing researches on state emergence in China. It is undoubtedly very helpful if we diligently apply foreign academic findings to our own studies in this subject, but genuine and in-depth understanding is necessary, if researchers are to accurately interpret and sum up the real implications of these foreign materials. At present, some Chinese scholars have produced various generalizations based on their own understanding of foreign research results. However, since they are not based on careful study of the original literary sources and other materials, those “generalized” views are often inaccurate. This is a problem that deserves our serious attention in current researches.

 

13. “Civilization” and “State”: An Etymological Perspective

Yi Jianping

Institute of World History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

　　Abstract:There is no evidence in the etymology of Western European languages to support the distinction between “civilization” and “state” stressed by some scholars, nor any to support the division of “civilization” into a dichotomy of “culture” and “society.” The original meaning of “civilization” is “state.” In discussing the origin of civilization, it is groundless to divide “civilization” into “culture” and “society,” or to interpret “civilization” and “state” as two different concepts. Given such considerations, there can only be one focus in studies of the origin of civilization, namely, changes in society and its management structure, or in other words, the changing social relations among people who live within a given territory.