Casino Politics,Organized Crime and the Post-Colonial State in Macau

Organized crime and politics have been traditionally intertwined in Macau. During the colonial era, the Portuguese administration was characterized by bureaucratic corruption and a cozy relationship with casino capitalists. The colonial state had limited autonomy vis-à-vis the casino capitalists. With the growth of tourism and the associated casino industry in Macau during the 1990s, organized crime groups penetrated various casinos and emerged as a baffling problem. Yet, neither the Portuguese administration nor the casino capitalists had the capability to contain the use of violence by organized crime groups. As Macau approached the end of the Portuguese colonial rule, the People's Republic of China (PRC) decided to intervene in the rapidly deteriorating law and order. The Chinese intervention took the forms of stationing the People's Liberation Army in the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR), penalizing the triad boss Wan Kuok-kuoi, and supporting the new Edmund Ho Government's attempts at civil service reforms. The SAR Government also liberalized the casino industry by embracing American investment. Due to market competition, the local casino capitalists have been forced to improve the management of casinos and to minimize the infiltration of triads. Unlike the colonial state, the post-colonial state in the Macau SAR has enhanced its relative autonomy vis-à-vis the local casino capitalists, directly or indirectly curbing the detrimental impact of organized crime. The case study of Macau is illustrative of the critical role of state autonomy vis-à-vis casino capitalists, whose previous monopoly over casino management encountered the infiltration of organized crime that grasped the opportunities for maximizing profits in the era of the rapidly expanding casino industry. The Macau example also demonstrates the city-state's use of market competition as a means to improve casino management and to contain the spread of organized crime at least in the short run.     

The Rise of Collective Corruption in China: the Xiamen smuggling case

The Xiamen case, as well as several other high-profile corruption cases uncovered at the end of the 1990s, signals a new trend in collective corruption whereby private companies, entrepreneurs and organized crime groups now play an important role in initiating and coordinating networks of criminal activity. This article uses the concept of collective corruption to examine the smuggling empire built up by the entrepreneur, Lai Changxing, the network of state-owned enterprises and officials that supported and protected his smuggling operations, and the central government's crackdown. It concludes with a discussion of two other major corruption scandals, and what they say about the nature and extent of collective corruption in China. I argue that these recent cases show that corruption in China has evolved into more sophisticated, complex and destructive forms that resemble the more extreme forms of corruption found in post-communist countries where corrupt networks have been able to infiltrate and take over state institutions.     

China's Socialization in the International Human Rights Regime: why did China reject the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court?

This article uses a hard law—the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court—to examine the depth of China's socialization in the international human rights regime and the relative weights of sovereignty and human rights norms in determining China's policy choices. It shows that the reasons for China's rejection of the Rome Statute are twofold. On the one hand, Chinese leaders have not fully internalized human rights norms, and they prioritize state sovereignty over human rights when making decisions. On the other hand, the legalized Rome Statute sets up an independent court with mandatory jurisdiction and grants the Prosecutor the ex officio right to investigate a crime. Such treaty provisions may have negative impacts on China's core sovereignty of territorial integration and regime security, thus imposing high sovereignty costs on China. Therefore, China resolutely voted against the Rome Statute, even if such an action made it a small minority outside the international mainstream. These findings indicate that China is still in a weak socialization stage and is not able to take on binding human rights and humanitarian obligations with high sovereignty costs.     

Re-interpreting China's Non-intervention Policy towards Myanmar: leverage,interest and intervention

China's non-intervention policy has long been criticized for prolonging the rule of many authoritarian regimes. Myanmar has become one of the classic examples. As China is expected to become a responsible great power, her behavioral patterns have aroused many concerns. This paper aims to re-interpret China's non-intervention policy. While explaining various constraints on China's capability to intervene in the Myanmar government, it shows how China is making efforts to seek a new intervention policy in dealing with countries like Myanmar. It argues that China's insistence on a non-intervention policy does not mean that China does not want to influence other countries such as Myanmar. To assess Chinese leverage and its non-intervention policy toward Myanmar as well as to supplement the current limited academic discussion on Sino–Myanmar relations, in this paper we first examine Chinese leverage in Myanmar through Burmese local politics, such as the power struggle between the central government and local rebel governments. Second, we disaggregate the Chinese interests in Myanmar into different levels (regional, geo-strategic and international) and discuss how these interests affect China's non-intervention policy. Third, we argue that China has indeed tried to intervene in Myanmar politics, but in a softer manner that contrasts with the traditional Western hard interventions, such as economic sanctions and military interference.     

An Emerging China and Diasporic Chinese: historicity,state, and international relations

The past decade has seen a growing body of literature on the (re)emergence of China and its implications for the new international order, and this scholarship is accompanied by the attempts from both within and outside of China to establish Chinese schools of international relations (IR). These admirable efforts, however, have been largely state-centric and concerned mainly with the balance of power, with little attention being directed to the diaspora's role in the evolution of China's international relationship and their potential contribution to bridging China studies and international relations theorization. Drawing upon theoretical insights from both IR and diaspora studies and employing a wide range of primary data including archives and personal interviews, this essay examines the diaspora's role (or the lack of it) in China's diplomacy since 1949 and attempts to conceptualize the Chinese experience in an historical and comparative perspective. I argue that historicity and state have played a significant part in shaping the interactions between the diaspora and diplomacy. The Chinese state's resilient capacity in domesticating (potential) diplomatic problems with respect to the diaspora and transforming them into new policy initiatives through facilitating diasporic participation in China's socio-economic and political processes has opened up new venues for the Chinese overseas to be involved in China's diplomacy. This article concludes by considering three different routes in engaging the diaspora with diplomacy at a time of China rising and by calling for strategic integration of diaspora into the emerging discourses on ‘IR theories with Chinese characteristics’.     

The Evolution of China's Nonproliferation Policy since the 1990s: Progress,problems, and prospects

This article offers an overview of China's evolving nonproliferation policy over the past decade. It documents the key developments during this period and identifies both the internal and external factors that have brought about significant change in Chinese policy. It argues that China's growing recognition of the threats posed by WMD proliferation, image concerns, its interest in maintaining stable Sino-US relations, and the US policy initiatives aimed at influencing Chinese behavior are largely accountable for Beijing's gradual acceptance of nonproliferation norms, pledges to adhere to selected multilateral export control guidelines, and the introduction of domestic export control regulations. It suggests that the future direction of China's nonproliferation policy to a large extent will depend on how Beijing and Washington manage their increasing differences over missile defenses and the Taiwan issue.     

Performance Legitimacy,State Autonomy and China's Economic Miracle

Theories that explain post-Mao China's economic success tend to attribute it to one or several ‘successful’ policies or institutions of the Chinese government, or to account for the success from economic perspectives. This article argues that the success of the Chinese economy relies not just on the Chinese state's economic policy but also on its social policies. Moreover, China's economic success does not merely lie in the effectiveness of any single economic or social policy or institution, but also in the state's capacity to make a policy shift when it faces the negative unintended consequences of its earlier policies. The Chinese state is compelled to make policy shifts quickly because performance constitutes the primary base of its legitimacy, and the Chinese state is able to make policy shifts because it enjoys a high level of autonomy inherited from China's past. China's economic development follows no fixed policies and relies on no stable institutions, and there is no ‘China model’ or ‘Beijing consensus’ that can be constructed to explain its success.     

China's Sovereign Wealth Funds: origins,development, and future roles

China has established two of the world's newer large sovereign wealth funds (SWFs): the official China Investment Corporation (CIC), and the non-official and less transparent State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) Investment Company (SIC). Both provide alternative investment opportunities for China's exploding foreign exchange reserves, at US$2.4 trillion at the end of 2009, the largest in world history. This paper will address how China has accumulated its huge and growing foreign exchange reserves, and what roles these reserves, until 2007 managed only by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), have played in the establishment and development of China's two new SWFs. We will look specifically at why China's foreign exchange reserves have developed, and how the new SWFs are a part of broader efforts to provide investment alternatives for China's ballooning foreign exchange surpluses, particularly in light of the inflow of ‘hot’ foreign speculative funds. We will then point out some of the difficulties for China's financial officials of SWFs as they try to pursue multiple and sometimes competing goals, set by boards of directors representing different bureaucratic and economic interests, all within the context of a general lack of transparency and a rapidly growing economy. Finally, we will present our conclusions about the future roles of the two SWFs as well as of the policies being developed to decentralize foreign exchange reserve holdings while at the same time not slowing the growth of China's foreign trade surpluses, nor its foreign direct investments, nor its overall economic growth. We will also examine the effects of US-promoted Chinese currency appreciation on the future of China's foreign exchange reserves and its sovereign wealth funds.     

Hong Kong joins the National People's Congress: A first test for one country with two political systems

Before its reversion to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997, Hong Kong was preoccupied with safeguarding its autonomy while China insisted on keeping separate the two political systems of Hong Kong and the mainland. Toward these ends, everyone focused on Hong Kong's own governing councils and ignored its future status within China's congress system. Not until the December 1997 deadline approached for naming Hong Kong's delegation to the March 1998 meeting of China's new Ninth National People's Congress, did the full implications of this oversight become apparent. Hence, the institutional channels whereby the two systems must interact are actually rooted in the reforming structure of China's congress system. Delegate selection in Hong Kong revealed a new ‘bridging’ function whereby the two legislative systems are linked through the old organization tactic of concurrent membership. The bridging function also illuminates previously unheralded features of Hong Kong's new post‐1997 government, as a replica and appendage of China's people's congress network.     

Rethinking the Chinese World Order: the imperial cycle and the rise of China

Looking to China's imperial history to understand how China as a great power will behave in the twenty-first century, some scholars have rediscovered the concept of the traditional Chinese world order coined by John K. Fairbank in the 1960s in the reconstruction of the benevolent governance and benign hierarchy of the Chinese Empire, and portrayed its collapse as a result of the clash of civilizations between the benevolent Chinese world order and the brutal European nation-state system. China was forced into the jungle of the social Darwinist world to struggle for its survival. As a result, China's search for power and wealth is to restore justice in an unjust world. China's rise would be peaceful. This article finds that while imperial China was not uniquely benevolent nor uniquely violent, the reconstruction of China's imperial past to advance the contemporary agenda of its peaceful rise has, ironically, set a nineteenth century agenda for China in the twenty-first century to restore the regional hierarchy and maximize China's security by expanding influence and control over its neighborhoods.     

The Tenacious Tributary System

Recently, some writers on Chinese foreign relations have argued that the tributary system is a useful concept for describing imperial China's relations with its neighbors, and that it can even serve as a model for the future of international relations in East Asia. An examination of China's historical practice of foreign relations shows that there was no systematic tributary system, but instead multiple relationships of trade, military force, diplomacy and ritual. Furthermore, China's neighbors did not accept the imperial center's definition of hierarchy and subordination, but interpreted ritual relationships in their own way. Even in the 1930s, when scholars invoked Chinese history to advocate peaceful relations, they recognized the importance of military force, colonial settlement and domination in East Asian state relationships. The current myth of the tributary system ignores historical reality and misleads us about China's true position in East Asia and the world.     

China's Unbalanced Economic Growth

This paper summarizes empirical findings and results from the author's most recent research publication in Chinese: China's Unbalanced Economic Growth. It studies China's economic growth with a special emphasis on its regional disparities. It provides an analysis of China's overall economic landscape as well as an empirical study of China's unbalanced regional development. Based on its quantitative findings and results, the author predicts the emergence of ten Chinese metropolitan economies in the early twenty-first century and recommends a regional development strategy as well as implementation policies for China's future development. The major empirical findings, results and conclusions of this research are outlined in three sections: the first describes China's economic future—the emergence of ten regional metropolitan economies, the second reports the empirical findings of China's national and regional economic disparities and discusses policy implications, and the third investigates China's future economic growth and discusses its growth limitations.     

Uneven Opening of China's Society,Economy, and Politics: pro-growth authoritarian governance and protests in China

This article evaluates China's model of development, especially its main component, i.e. its model of governance. It suggests that China's model of development is marked by an imbalance between fast opening of the economy and the society and sluggish opening of the political system. The Chinese society has become much more open, reflected in the Chinese growing awareness of their legal rights. The Chinese economy has become highly internationalized and open, but much of Chinese politics is closed. China's governance is marked by pro-growth authoritarianism. The Chinese state is effective in opening up the economy, promoting reform, and generating economic growth, but offers weak protection of people's rights and ineffectual mitigation of social grievances. These imbalances help produce social protests. Viable solutions are discussed.     

Returnee Entrepreneurs: impact on China's globalization process

Recent research on returning Chinese students has focused on their role as an alternative solution to their home country's mandate to build technological capacity. This study shows the depth of the ‘brain circulation’ that is underway and the fact that overseas students are not only serving China from abroad or by returning, but after they return they play a leading role in many aspects of China's ‘going out’ strategy. These returnee entrepreneurs present many advantages to the Chinese economy. They have studied at the best universities in the world, were deeply involved in the New Economy, and have gained valuable experience in listed companies overseas. They often possess venture capital, many have experience working with some of the best MNCs in the world, and they serve to contribute enormously to China's current economic engagement with the world. The paper describes the returnees' impact on China's globalization drive and analyzes the factors leading to their success in comparison to MNCs and indigenous Chinese firms.     

The Ascendency of State-owned Enterprises in China: development,controversy and problems

The state sector still plays an important role in China's economy. One of the key development phenomena characterizing the Chinese economy is the rapid ascendency of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the resurgence of the state. The strength of China's SOEs is projected in the centrally administrated state-owned enterprises (CSOEs). They are the backbone of the national economy, spearheading national economic development and Beijing's ‘going-out’ strategy. The CSOEs have expanded their reach and increased their power, domestically and globally. In seeking to boost local GDP growth, the eastern provinces in China have joined the western provinces in a fierce contest to attract investment from SOEs. Nevertheless, the rapid ascendency of the SOEs has brought many negative consequences for China's economic, social and political development by causing conflict with the market-oriented development direction of Chinese economic reform and hindering fair competition between state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises.     

China's Defense White Papers: a critical appraisal

China's defense white papers have long been dismissed as lacking substance and offering little useful information on China's real strategic intentions and military capabilities. Nevertheless, since 1998 Beijing has continued to issue defense white papers on a regular two-year frequency. Indeed, in recent years it has accorded greater importance to these documents. This paper argues that China's defense white papers warrant more attention than they have received so far. An examination of the making of the white papers, the functions designated for these documents and their evolving content and structure reveals not only the different nature and purpose of the Chinese white papers compared with their counterparts in Western countries, but also important changes and continuities in China's strategic outlook and its evolving perceptions of the role of the use of force in the context of the country's re-emergence as a major player in international affairs.     

卧底侦查的相关法律问题

卧底侦查是侦破有组织犯罪、团伙犯罪等案件的有效手段 ,阻却违法事由的紧急避险是其刑法理论基础。卧底侦查不同于教唆陷害 ,卧底警察具有不完整的教唆故意 ,欠缺可罚性。卧底警察在侦查中的犯罪行为合法化 ,不具有可罚性。卧底警察不应作证 ,其提供的材料不能作为证据。     

网络犯罪、电子证据与数字化刑事侦查

网络犯罪是伴随信息技术的发展与应用而出现的一种新型犯罪。而电子证据因网络犯罪的滋生蔓延而在刑事诉讼中日益发挥着重要的作用。掌握网络犯罪的特点和电子证据收集的高技术性,构筑我国的数字化侦查系统已成为完善刑事侦查体制的必然要求。     

Rural China and the WTO

China's entry into the World Trade Organization has been applauded for the benefits it will confer on China's economy and for granting recognition to China's modernizing efforts. The scrutiny of the outside world will force China to regularize many of its practices, such as legal and economic practices. But most of the discussion of the WTO has focused on a very limited segment of China's society. This article considers the realities of rural Chinese life, warning that the consequences of China's increased pressure to reform may be more negative than positive and that the prospect for rural China is far from clear.