Faced with the pressures of digital transformation, media organizations in China are undergoing a “think-tank turn,” in which Public Opinion Monitoring Services (POMS) are playing an integral role. This study uses POMS as a case to examine the digital transformation of Chinese media organizations and to explore the broader shifts in the political economy of Chinese media in the digital age. Combining in-depth interviews, fieldwork and analysis of secondary documents, this qualitative research study identifies the emergence of consulting as a “third role” of Chinese media, supplementing the traditional roles of news reporting and ideological propagation. This new role caters to the government’s need to govern the online space and manage public opinion through three primary operations: “timely firefighting” against dissident voices, “regular monitoring” of public opinion and the “periodic training” of information officials. In this context, POMS not only enable media organizations to navigate financial challenges but also significantly reshape their role and relationship with the state.

This report examines gender differences in trust-based social networks in contemporary China. Using data collected from a uniquely designed survey, respondents rate the trustworthiness of 24 prototypical social roles, enabling our construction of gender-specific networks. Community detection analysis reveals a tripartite structure in men’s networks – older-generation kin, same-generation kin and non-kin – versus a simpler kin/non-kin split among women. Two explanatory pathways are tested: cultural dispositions and life chance access. Matching analyses suggest cultural orientation as the primary driver: when men and women both embrace traditional ideas to the same degree, their network partitioning differences cease to exist. Further analyses suggest that the gender difference in social network partitioning lies in the fact that men are more traditionally oriented than women. This study highlights a gendered cultural configuration in which men appear relatively more “traditional” and women more “modern” as played out through gendered forms of social networking.

This article examines the reality of “let the adjudicator judge” by investigating how Chinese judges are held accountable for their judgments under the expanded ex post case review system. We examine the first three years of the implementation of this headline initiative in a grassroots court (Court T) located in a major city in China. Our data include the internal quarterly reports produced by the court’s case review committee and interviews with judges. The assessments went beyond legal analysis, commenting on matters such as work ethic, diligence and moral sensibilities. Frontline judges view the review system as subjective and arbitrary. The new mechanism, however, alters the power dynamics between senior judges and their subordinates. While frontline judges no longer require pre-approval from senior judges, they rely on the goodwill of those same seniors to navigate the review process. Within this ostensibly freer framework, frontline judges are subjected to a more diffuse but pervasive form of discipline. Our analysis reveals how the adjudication committee, far from being sidelined, has shifted its role, concentrating ex ante supervision on a minority of difficult cases while holding judges accountable through ex post reviews of flawed judgments. The article further underscores the challenges of disentangling legal analysis from political supervision in a framework of authoritative legality.

State-led financialization has emerged as a salient feature of local governance in China, yet it remains underexplored through the lens of bureaucratic restructuring. This paper traces the evolution of local financial agencies since 2002 through four distinct stages: local financial offices (jinrongban), financial bureaus (jinrongju), financial regulatory bureaus (jinrong jianguanju) and financial commissions (jinrongwei). Initially, local governments established jinrongban to harness financial capital for regional development. By proactively connecting local firms with capital markets to facilitate corporate listings, they embedded financial logic into local governance, reflecting local state-led financialization. Subsequently, the central government formalized these bodies into jinrongju with expanded mandates, deepening state-led financialization. Later, it systematically devolved regulatory responsibilities and renamed them jinrong jianguanju, elevating regulatory functions to a top priority, illustrating how the central government selectively steered the direction of financialization. Ultimately, provincial agencies were reorganized into jinrongwei and stripped of development functions, while city-level counterparts were largely closed, signifying a shift towards central state-led de-financialization. This trajectory was driven by shifting central–local dynamics, as early bottom-up initiatives were superseded by top-down control. The bureaucratic restructuring examined in this study offers new insights into the state-led (de-)financialization of local governance in China.

How does identity threat affect mass political participation during times of autocratization? Building on social identity and group threat literatures, we theorize that perceived threats to Hong Konger identity increase voter turnout; however, the political salience of this threat is contingent on the degree of autocratization. We test this argument utilizing the case of Hong Kong, whose ongoing incorporation into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has entered an unprecedented era of autocratization. We argue that threats to Hong Konger identity came to mobilize voter participation, especially as autocratization progressed in Hong Kong. Hong Kongers resisted during this period of political change through their intention to turn out to vote. We conducted three original experiments during different transitionary periods of Hong Kong’s autocratic shift. We find that priming identity threat had no effect on voter turnout before Hong Kong’s autocratic divergence. However, once more extreme forms of autocratization began, Hong Kongers assigned to an identical identity threat treatment were substantially more likely to report a higher likelihood of voting. This mobilizing effect persisted in a third experiment. Our results suggest a paradox where citizens’ propensity to vote increases when faced with perceived shrinking opportunities to participate in elections during times of authoritarian transition.

The increasingly proactive role of central authority in managing subprovincial leaders is understudied and our understanding of the function of political recognition in contemporary China remains inadequate. By adopting an expanded view of political meritocracy and using difference-in-differences analysis of original data about China’s model county Party secretaries, we demonstrate the ramifications of political recognition in generating a merit-based fast track and find that the recognition of model county Party secretaries has a lasting positive impact on recipients’ subsequent career advancement, although this impact is uneven. These findings enhance our understanding of the role of centrally bestowed political honours in promoting meritocracy, the non-institutionalized soft measures in shaping political incentives and the central–local interaction in the dynamics of political recognition in contemporary China.