Digital telecommunication technology has expanded the potential of the mobile phone to be used increasingly as a weapon against authoritarian rule and censorship. Since the content of mobile communication is unpredictable and unregulated, mobile phones have the capability to breach state-sponsored blockage of information. This in turn helps the Chinese people to maintain contact with each other, receive information from outside the country, and make political waves in an aggressive battle for control over information. This paper examines spontaneous mobilization via mobile phones, with a focus on two concrete popular protests in rural and urban areas, demonstrating how Chinese citizens have expanded the political uses of mobile phones in their struggle for freedom of information flow, social justice, and the rule of law, while seeking to build an inexpensive counter-public sphere. These processes destabilize China's conventional national public sphere by shaping political identities on an individual level as well as the notion of citizenship within the evolving counter-public sphere. The political significance of mobile phones in the context of contemporary China's political environment can be observed by various social forces that communicate their struggles with the aid of this technology, pose challenges in governance, and force the authorities to engage in new kinds of media practices.

The expansionist policies of the early colonial regime led to a significant emphasis on the importance of a large cavalry, but horses of a suitable quality appeared difficult to obtain within the subcontinent. Several measures were consequently taken to encourage horse-breeding, including the establishment of government studs and policies directed towards the creation of a ‘native’ market in quality horses. However, these measures did not appear to produce any significant results, despite sustained implementation. This paper examines in detail colonial policies on horse-breeding and links them to the larger economic logic of empire. It touches on several related themes such as early colonial interaction with ‘native’ agents, the question of free markets, and the impact of utilitarian and physiocratic doctrines on colonial policies.

This article examines several fatwās by the important Muslim reformer Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā. It treats these fatwās as part of a broader Arabic debate on “materialism” at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. In this context, Riḍā's fatwās on materialism illustrate the changing nature of Islamic religious authority in this period, as new kinds of knowledge became available to new kinds of readers.

This article fits into the general picture of investigations on meta-historical thinking in Antiquity, as well as possible links between Persian apocalyptic literature and early Christian literature. The paper also explores the long-standing debate on the influence of Zoroastrian thought on Jewish–Christian apocalyptic – or whether it was rather the other way round.

What precipitated the 2003–06 “high tide” of petitioning Beijing and why did the tide wane? Interviews and archival sources suggest that a marked increase in petitioners coming to the capital was at least in part a response to encouraging signals that emerged when Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao adopted a more populist leadership style. Because the presence of tens of thousands of petitioners helped expose policy failures of the previous leadership team, the Hu-Wen leadership appeared reasonably accommodating when petitioners arrived en masse in Beijing. Soon, however, the authorities shifted towards control and suppression, partly because frustrated petitioners employed disruptive tactics to draw attention from the Centre. In response to pressure from above, local authorities, especially county leaders, turned to coercion to contain assertive petitioners and used bribery to coax officials in the State Bureau of Letters and Visits to delete petition registrations. The high tide receded in late 2006 and was largely over by 2008. This article suggests that a high tide is more likely after a central leadership change, especially if a populist programme strikes a chord with the population and elite turnover augments confidence in the Centre and heightens expectations that it will be responsive to popular demands.

This article examines how Chinese reformers have used a set of “fatality indicators” to deal with the serious work safety situation in the past two decades. It argues that the system of fatality indicators is a prudent strategy to tackle the responsibility deficiencies in the previous work safety regulatory system and strengthen the central government's supervision over local safety management. The primary purpose of implementing the fatality indicators is to shift local officials' focus from a GDP-centred growth mode to a new mindset of achieving a balance between economic development and social stability in local governance. The article also indicates that the decline in work-related fatalities in recent years is evidence of the effectiveness of the fatality indicators. These achievements aside, however, the introduction of fatality indicators is closely associated with an increase in local officials' dishonest reporting of real death tolls and the fluctuation in very serious accidents.

This article asks: is the cost of being Uyghurs higher for young Uyghurs than for old Uyghurs in Ürümchi? I address this question with data from a survey of 2,947 people conducted in Ürümchi in 2005. The cost of being Uyghurs refers to the extent of economic inequality in the earnings of Han Chinese and Uyghurs. I develop three hypotheses on the effect of age on earnings differentials between Han Chinese and Uyghurs. Data analyses show that although young Uyghurs are better educated and earn more than old Uyghurs, they are more likely than old Uyghurs to suffer from being Uyghurs in Ürümchi. This finding has policy implications for the reduction of ethnic disparity in Xinjiang.

Grassroots democracy has been practised in rural China for more than a decade. However, despite the existence of a mountain of evidence, evaluations of the quality of China's rural grassroots democracy, particularly electoral institutions, have unfortunately been inconclusive, due to primary reliance on case studies and local surveys. Moreover, the lack of comparable data over time prohibits effective studies on the evolution of grassroots democracy in Chinese villages. This article tries to provide some systematic information on how village committee elections are practised and have evolved in China, using two village surveys based on comparable national probability samples, implemented in 2002 and 2005 respectively. It further explores the validity of some key theories in contemporary literature on the uneven implementation of village committee elections in China with the help of an integrated regression model.

This article examines the profound transformation market reforms have brought to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rural grassroots organizations. Focusing on the political rise of private entrepreneurs and other economically successful individuals who recently obtained village Party secretary appointments in a north China county, the article explores their differing promotion channels, power bases, political resources and motivations to take up the CCP's grassroots leadership position. It demonstrates that the variety among the new entrepreneurial Party secretaries – from large factory owners to de facto farm managers – shaped the network resource, factional affiliation and socio-political capital they rely upon to exercise their newly attained power. It also shows the crucial role played by community-based endogenous forces in transmitting the power of economic liberalization into dynamics for the reshuffling of the Communist Party leadership at the grassroots level.