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In the early 1980s, Buddhism in China entered a period of revival and prosperity, yet it retained a sense of public disgrace inherited from nearly three decades of persecution. In order to survive and to conform to the ethical system imposed by the government, the monks were forced to engage in “productive labour”. However, Buddhism's growing influence among lay people, and the increasing number of exchanges between monasteries and believers promoted a steady growth in the value of Buddhism's cultural and religious capital. From the 1990s onwards, local authorities sought to co-operate with Buddhism, hoping to profit by its cultural capital through attracting investors and promoting tourism. The state did not cease to control and to oppress the Buddhists although, guided by economic interests, it contributed in some cases to promoting and reconstructing Buddhism: the monasteries thus found new legitimacy and new space for development.

This article analyses the degree of integration of the Chinese domestic market. It recounts the stages in the development of regional protectionist practices from the late 1980s, and describes the present situation and the efforts of the central authorities to bring these practices to an end. It also presents the main structural factors that account for regional protectionism. Finally, the work studies the economic integration of the Chinese provinces based on trade data taken from input-output (IO) tables drawn up by the provinces between 1987 and 1997. It makes clear the drop in the intensity of inter-provincial trade, under the twin pressures of internationalisation and the development of intra-provincial exchanges. This movement, which corresponds to a greater self-sufficiency of the provinces, runs counter to the logic of regional specialisation promoted by the reforms, in terms of comparative advantage and economies of scale.

Since the launch of the reforms in 1979, most striking has been China's tremendous ability to adapt to - and therefore to resist - the Communist Party, its leadership and its nomenklatura, as an institution exercising political power in a monopolistic fashion and seeking to preserve this monopoly while maintaining an increasingly plutocratic grip on the most strategic segments of the economy. Moreover the numerous social and economic as well as international constraints — such as maintaining its position vis-à-vis the United States — which China must overcome, as well as the “class” interests of the political and economic elites that lead the country, militate against any quick escape from authoritarianism. That changes introduced within the system might eventually favour a change of system cannot be ruled out. However, does a move to another system necessarily translate into a transition to democracy? Is it not possible that China might once again innovate and succeed in emerging from communism by means of an evolution towards a more flexible but stabilised authoritarianism, consultative yet elitist and corporatist, endowed with a certain legal modernity but not with the rule of law and still only partially institutionalised? In short, might not China be evolving towards what I would be tempted to call “enlightened” but plutocratic authoritarianism?

Taking as its basis the polemical texts of the adherents of liberalism and neo-leftism in China at the end of the last century, this article presents the main questions that the writers from these two camps address, and attempts to measure the impact of this intellectual debate on the recent evolution of Chinese society.

This study confronts the results of the World Values Survey conducted in China in June 2001 with three theories on the origins of democratic values. It shows that Chinese people have rather high democratic aspirations. The Chinese middle class offers the highest level of support for democracy. The negative relation between age and democratic-value orientations confirms the generation-replacement theory. This study also shows that education plays a critical role in support of democracy.

The 2004 presidential election campaign in Taiwan brought head to head the political alliance of the Kuomintang (KMT), the People's First Party (PFP) and the New Party (NP) on one side, and of the Democracy Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) on the other. Adopting an iconographic approach, this article looks at four aspects of “Taiwanisation”: a stronger Taiwan identity, the island's ability to face political challenges arising from democratisation and political unrest, Chen Shui-bian as the symbol of Taiwan, and the Taiwanese hostility towards and distrust of mainland China.