This collection includes seven essays translated from the leading Chinese-language journal Open Times. Bringing together a wide range of leading experts across several disciplines, this book offers critical insights on some of the most important questions of contemporary urban Chinese politics and society. Drawing on extensive research across different localities and issues in China, the chapters offer rich data and fresh analyses of the shifting contours of urban governance, social mobilization and contention, and mechanisms of social control in the new Millennium. Taken together, this collection represents the most comprehensive look in some years at how urban Chinese political institutions have adapted and responded to challenges and how social actors and groups have mobilized to press for redress of substantial new grievances.

In the past four or so decades, a significant amount of research efforts has been made to examine the rapid and constant social changes in China. However, most of the literature has focused on either macro- or micro-level issues, and what has not been adequately analysed is how the majority of ordinary people has reacted to and influenced the changes. This inadequacy has affected our understanding of Chinese society, its dynamics and the changing trends. Drawing upon a new perspective of competitive social repositioning, and the evidence recorded in numerous recent publications and interview data, this book seeks to re-examine the ever-changing, but under-researched, societal dynamics driving social transformations in China from 1964, when the communist heir narrative was rebranded and utilised, to 2000, when Jiang Zemin formulated the Three-Represents theory to modify the ideological political thinking of China’s ruling elites. This analysis focuses on how a high proportion of aspirational citizens have kept repositioning themselves in China’s changing distributions of social resources and social structure, how their attitudes and behaviours have been shaped over time, what characteristics of their choices are at different stages, and how their preferences have resulted in the zig-zag patterns of China’s recent social change.

This book explores human dignity, human rights and social justice based on a Chinese interdisciplinary dialogue and global perspectives. In the Chinese and other global contexts today, social justice has been a significant topic among many disciplines and we believe it is an appropriate topic for philosophers, theologians, legal scholars, and social scientists to sit together, discuss, enrich each other, and then deepen our understanding of the topic. Many of them are concerned with the conjuncture between social justice, human rights, and human dignity. The questions this volume asks are: what’s the place of human rights in social justice? How is human dignity important in the discourse on human rights? And, through these inquiries, we ask further: how is possible to achieve humanist justice? This volume presents the significance, challenges, and constraints of human dignity in human rights and social justice and addresses the questions through philosophical, theological, sociological, political, and legal perspectives and these are placed in dialogue between the Chinese and other global settings. We are concerned with the norms regarding human dignity, human rights and social justice while we take seriously into account their practice. This volume consists of two main sections. The first section examines Chinese perspectives on human rights and social justice, in which both from Confucianism and Christianity are considered and the issues such as patriotism, religious freedom, petition, social protest, the rights of marginalized people, and sexual violence are studied. The second section presents the perspectives of Christian public theologians in the global contexts. They examine the influence of Christian thought and practice in the issues of human rights and social justice descriptively and prescriptively and address issues such as religious laws and rights, diaconia, majoritarianism, general equality, social-economic disparities, and climate justice from global perspectives including in the contexts of America, Australia, Israel and Europe. With contributions by experts from mainland China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, USA and Norway, the book provides valuable cross-cultural and interdisciplinary insights and perspectives. As such it will appeal to political and religious leaders and practitioners, particularly those working in socially engaged religious and civil organizations in various geopolitical contexts, including the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

"In Becoming Citizens in China Shi Yunqing describes the two interlinked histories that have made China's urban and economic miracle: the unfolding of inner city renewal and the production of citizen shaped by the collective rights defence action resulted from demolition and removal projects. She reveals a complex problematic tension on State and the fabric of the Individual in Social Transition in China. This book is extremely well-documented and produced with abundant empirical materials. In this approach of the State-Individual relationship, Shi Yunqing convincingly elaborates how citizens have been produced in urban social movements against the background of differences between Chinese and Western development histories. The production of citizens in "Chinese-style" produces insightful "located knowledge" and makes a contribution to a new global sociology and more especially to the Post-Western Sociology"--

Crime, Shame and Reintegration is a contribution to general criminological theory. Its approach is as relevant to professional burglary as to episodic delinquency or white collar crime. Braithwaite argues that some societies have higher crime rates than others because of their different processes of shaming wrongdoing. Shaming can be counterproductive, making crime problems worse. But when shaming is done within a cultural context of respect for the offender, it can be an extraordinarily powerful, efficient and just form of social control. Braithwaite identifies the social conditions for such successful shaming. If his theory is right, radically different criminal justice policies are needed - a shift away from punitive social control toward greater emphasis on moralizing social control. This book will be of interest not only to criminologists and sociologists, but to those in law, public administration and politics who are concerned with social policy and social issues.

Tells the story of the growing Chinese Navy - The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) - and its expanding capabilities, evolving roles and military implications for the USA. Divided into four thematic sections, this special collection of essays surveys and analyzes the most important aspects of China's navel modernization.