This paper starts out from James C. Scott's seminal book "Weapons of the Weak" dealing with everyday forms of collective action by private entrepreneurs. It raises the question by what kind of formal and informal mechanisms Chinese entrepreneurs exert political influence in order to protect or...

This policy paper contributes to the topic of German-Chinese municipal partnerships, with a focus on the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). It first builds a bridge between the idea of town twinning and the future-oriented thematic complex of city diplomacy. Secondly, it looks at the...

The authors argue that China's "authoritarian resilience" cannot be fully grasped without adopting a local state perspective to examine the way that policy-making plays out at county level and below. Although local cadre bureaucracies have to obey upper levels, they still have substantial...

Existing scholarship regards the collusion between the Chinese government and the private sector as 'informal' and a series of 'economic alliances', without considering the private sector's institutionalized participation in the process of government policy formulation. This article takes an...

This paper provides a literature review and preliminary field observations on the topic of political representation in the Chinese cyberspace. The authors demonstrate that multiple new communication platforms are being established in the Chinese cyberspace. These new platforms not only transform...

The paper examines recent political and social developments in the People's Republic of China. It highlights some of the principle features in current Chinese politics: fragmentation of both the system and its actors; the role of the Chinese state as a developmental state; the issue of whether...

Die vorliegende Publikation untersucht die bestehende Zusammenarbeit des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen mit China bzw. den chinesischen Partnerprovinzen und gibt darauf basierend Handlungsempfehlungen zur Verbesserung bestehender Kontakte in den Bereichen Hochschule und Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft,...