In the opening years of the People’s Republic of China, two laws were enacted—the Marriage Law and the Land Reform Law. Based on an investigation of divorce cases across five periods in Ping county, Guizhou, between 1950 and 1956, this article argues that the successful implementation of the Marriage Law hinged on the success of land reform. Hence, it is not a coincidence that when land reform came to an end in 1953, the number of divorce cases reached its peak across the country. In adjudicating these cases, local cadres adhered to the longstanding legal tradition of “practical moralism,” prioritizing women’s survival over abstract ideological principles such as marital freedom and gender equality. As an ever-larger number of women obtained land through land reform, the court in Ping county shifted its attention from securing women’s livelihoods to the partition of landed property. In this new socioeconomic context, the principle of “dividing the land and letting the woman take away her share” was enforced to resolve marriage disputes, empowering women to seek divorce with greater autonomy.

The Spring Festival Gala is China’s most important annual television show. Produced and broadcast by China Central Television (CCTV), it provides a lens through which to analyze the evolution of masculine ideals sanctioned by the party-state. The Gala’s comedic skits present various male images for analysis. The changing presentation of “soft” or less masculine male characters in Gala skits—from such roles being mocked in the 1980s to becoming positively coded protagonists in the 2010s—mirrors the changing concepts of Chinese masculinities against the background of economic growth, consumer society, and women’s rising social status. Considering the recurrent criticism of “feminine” young men and the moral panic over a “masculinity crisis” in China that has emerged since the 1980s, this article examines the subtle interdependency between the official masculinity discourse and the rising popularity of “soft masculinity.”

In the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1960), a limited free market was licensed across China to help repair the devastated economy. In the southern city of Nanjing, thousands of peddlers and other private merchants took full advantage of a temporary boom in private commerce. The window was brief. During the early 1960s, new or expanded policies promoted the rationalization of the state workforce, the reduction of China’s urban population, and a strengthened system of household registration. Collectively, these programs pushed small merchants to the margins of the urban economy, where they operated by the grace of city authorities and were subject to crackdowns and harassment. Using archival and newspaper evidence from Nanjing, this article explores the evolving power dynamic between small merchants and local communist officials and cadres, offering new insights into the creation of danwei- centered urban culture and economy in China.

This article explores Li Jinfa’s transformation from a work-study student to “China’s Baudelaire,” whose symbolist poetry features a distinctive “francophone foreignness.” It addresses the “language question”—specifically, French language acquisition and utilization—intrinsic to Chinese students’ encounters with Western thought, culture, and life in the early twentieth century. Employing approaches of historical sociolinguistics, it not only investigates the materials, methods, and environments available for Li’s French language acquisition but also examines how he learned and used the language. It argues that, more than just a means for studying abroad, the French language was deeply intertwined with French literature, culture, and quotidian life in shaping Li’s engagement with a foreign world as a work-study student and with literary expression as a symbolist poet. Moreover, rather than serving solely a collective mission toward either Enlightenment or revolution, francophone education among work-study students fostered personal journeys of self-discovery.

Since the 1990s, the guiding principle of “maintaining land allocations regardless of changes in population” 增人不增地、减人不减地 has gradually slowed the allocation of contract land in rural China and resulted in a new generation of rural residents without land contract and management rights. This article places the evolution of this policy in the context of the global expansion of neoliberal property rights theory, systematically reviewing the theoretical debates and practical issues arising from the rigid allocation of land contract and management rights. After reviewing the current situation, this article argues that there is an immediate need for reform of the land contract system based on the principle of “allocating land in accordance with changes in population” 增人增地、减人减地. To address concerns about protecting investments in agricultural land, this study recommends combining insights from local experiences in the practice of the land system with the Harberger Tax mechanism, proposing a new model for the allocation of land contract and management rights. This innovative model builds upon the new practices of rural land allocation since the introduction of the “separation of the three rights” 三权分置 approach in China’s collective land tenure system. It aims to promote the fair allocation of land and protect investments in the same, thereby achieving an organic unity of equity and efficiency. This study shows that an in-depth analysis of the institutional practices involving the land tenure system in local rural areas can help us reassess the theories underlying national policies and provide insights for further improvements in the land system in rural China.

Unlike other countries, sole traders in China have conventionally been defined in law in terms of “households” or hu , of which there are two types: individual industrial and commercial households and rural contractual management households. The former are currently the main legal sole traders in towns and cities, while the latter are mainly farmers in rural areas who engage in individual business. The concept of the household, as the vehicle for the two types of sole trader in China, stresses the collective, group, and family nature of sole traders and is not the simple sum of individual interests. This article explores the emergence of households as vehicles for individual businesses, examines the deep-rooted reasons for their adoption, and considers the debates over their ongoing relevance and reform. The article concludes by suggesting that China’s policymakers have chosen to pursue institutional reform in a moderate and pragmatic way, prioritizing order and incremental changes in order to minimize the impact of institutional change on society, strengthen institutional expectations, and highlight institutional stability. The example of the “household” provides insights into the process of legal reform and change in China more generally.

Looking back at the past half-century since the founding of the journal Modern China in 1975, we can see that in the beginning non–Chinese American scholars accounted for fully 73 percent of all articles. That figure remained at a fairly high 64 percent at the end of the century, but has declined greatly since, first down to 26 percent by 2005-2009, and further to just 11 percent in 2020-2022. That decline has been partly countered by the increasing numbers of Chinese-origin scholars (US citizens or not) based in the United States. At the same time, the proportion of articles published by mainland China–based scholars has steadily increased in the past two decades, reaching the present 28 percent. If we add to that articles by Chinese-origin scholars both inside and outside the United States, citizens or not, the total proportion rises to 65 percent, nearly two-thirds of all our articles, a sea change for the journal. Alongside that change, there has been the rise and expansion also of non–Chinese-origin scholars in the rest of the English–language world outside the United States, who now account for 24 percent of all our articles. Together these changes tell about the dramatic transnationalization of English language–based China studies as a whole, from mainly non–Chinese-origin American scholars to an ever-increasing proportion of Chinese-origin scholars, and from mainly a US endeavor to an ever more transnational one.