China at the Turn of the 21st Century

The document is a collection of academic contributions from the 2001 NACS conference. It explores the complexities of China's transition to a market economy, focusing on the adaptability of the Communist Party, the challenges of urban neighbourhood governance in Shanghai, the dilemmas of bilingual education in Tibetan areas, and the development of indigenous social sciences. It also examines specific cases such as microcredit for poverty alleviation and the failure of a Sino-Norwegian environmental technology project in Yantai.

• The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has demonstrated significant adaptability, with market reforms actually strengthening the party-state organization rather than weakening it.
• Urban neighbourhood governance in Shanghai is characterized by a conflict between top-down authoritarian control and the bottom-up demands of a market society, which hinders effective governance and party legitimacy.
• Bilingual education in Tibetan areas outside the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) faces difficulties due to economic marketization and official fears that teaching Tibetan may fuel "local nationalism" or separatism.
• The transition to a market economy in China has led to a shift in social security from a state-provided 'cradle to grave' work-unit system to a diversified model based on compulsory savings and individual accounts.
• Government-run microcredit programmes in China often underperform compared to international donor-funded projects because they lack trained staff and frequently ignore the core Grameen Bank principles of focusing on women and group-based social collateral.
• The failure of the Sino-Norwegian Agenda 21 Project 6-8 in Yantai was partly due to 'tactical translation,' where different actors interpreted the technology differently to serve their own organizational interests, specifically clashing over 'hardware' versus 'software' (capacity building).
• The movement for 'sinicized' or indigenous social sciences in Taiwan is driven by both a scholarly desire to remove Western cultural bias and a sociological quest for a distinct cultural identity amidst modernization.
• Taiwanese identity has evolved into a pluralistic 'imagined community' that incorporates various ethnic groups (Minnans, Hakkas, Mainlanders, and Aborigines) under a 'New Taiwanese' identity to maintain social cohesion and democratic stability.
• In rural Tibetan areas, the high cost of education and the irrelevance of the standardized Chinese curriculum to nomadic life lead to high dropout rates and a preference for monastic education.
• China's social security reform is guided by a priority of economic efficiency over equity, mirroring the 'Asian Tiger' economies' approach of maintaining low state spending to support rapid industrialization.

APA

Buen, J., & Kjellgren, B. (2002). China at the Turn of the 21st Century. Peace Research Institute Oslo. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1f166236-99a7-4c4c-9bde-0fff840033da/Dilemmas of Education in Tibetan Areas Outside the TAR.pdf?inline=true

Chicago

Buen, Jørund, and Björn Kjellgren. China at the Turn of the 21st Century. Peace Research Institute Oslo, 2002. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1f166236-99a7-4c4c-9bde-0fff840033da/Dilemmas of Education in Tibetan Areas Outside the TAR.pdf?inline=true.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Buen |first1=Jørund |last2=Kjellgren |first2=Björn |title=China at the Turn of the 21st Century |publisher=Peace Research Institute Oslo |date=2002 |url=https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1f166236-99a7-4c4c-9bde-0fff840033da/Dilemmas of Education in Tibetan Areas Outside the TAR.pdf?inline=true |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{buen2002china, author = {Buen, Jørund and Kjellgren, Björn}, title = {{China at the Turn of the 21st Century}}, institution = {Peace Research Institute Oslo}, year = {2002}, url = {https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/1f166236-99a7-4c4c-9bde-0fff840033da/Dilemmas of Education in Tibetan Areas Outside the TAR.pdf?inline=true}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }