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This book aims to make sense of the recent reform of neighbourhood institutions in urban China. It builds on the observation that the late 1990s saw a comeback of the state in urban China after the increased economization of life in the 1980s had initially forced it to withdraw. Based on several months of fieldwork in locations ranging from poor and dilapidated neighbourhoods in Shenyang City to middle class gated communities in Shenzhen, the authors analyze recent attempts by the central government to enhance stability in China's increasingly volatile cities. In particular, they argue that the central government has begun to restructure urban neighbourhoods, and has encouraged residents to govern themselves by means of democratic procedures. Heberer and Göbel also contend that whilst on the one hand, the central government has managed to bring the Party-state back into urban society, especially by tapping into a range of social groups that depend on it, it has not, however, managed to establish a broad base for participation. In testing this hypothesis, the book examines the rationales, strategies and impacts of this comeback by systematically analyzing how the reorganization of neighbourhood committees was actually conducted and find that opportunities for participation were far more limited than initially promised. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, Development Studies, Urban Studies and Asian Studies in general.

A surveillance system for sales volumes of antimicrobial agents for veterinary use was established in Germany in 2011. Since then, pharmaceutical companies and wholesalers have been legally obliged to report annual volumes of veterinary antimicrobial products sold to veterinary practices or clinics located in Germany. The evaluation of sales volumes for eight consecutive years resulted in a considerable total decrease by 58% from 1706 tons to 722 tons. During the investigation period, two legally binding measures to control the risk of antimicrobial resistance resulting from the veterinary use of antimicrobials were introduced, a) the German treatment frequencies benchmarking in 2014 and b) the obligation to conduct susceptibility testing for the use of cephalosporins of the 3.sup.rd and 4.sup.th generation and of fluoroquinolones in 2018. Both had a marked impact on sales volumes. Nonetheless, the category of Critically Important Antimicrobials as defined by the World Health Organization kept accounting for the highest share on sales volumes in Germany in 2018 with 403 tons, despite an overall reduction by 53%. Sales surveillance is considered essential for data retrieval on a global scale and inter-country comparison. However, the usability of a surveillance system based on sales data for risk management of antimicrobial resistance has limitations. The German system does not include off-label use of antimicrobial products authorized for human medicine and does not allow for identification of areas of high risk according to animal species, farm and production types and indications for treatment. For further reduction and enhanced promotion of a prudent use of antimicrobials, targeted measures would be required that could only be deducted from use data collected at farm or veterinary practice level. A surveillance system based on use data is currently lacking in Germany but will be established according to Regulation (EU) 2019/6 on veterinary medicinal products.

China scholars have consistently described China's private entrepreneurs as politically co-opted by the Communist Party regime. Since China's economic development now overwhelmingly depends on the performance of the private sector, the political dynamics and power configurations within the current regime coalition between state and business may have seen change over the past decade. Drawing on the recent literature on state-business relations and fieldwork conducted in different provinces, cities, and counties since 2012, this paper hypothesizes that private entrepreneurs are a ＂strategic group＂ in Chinese politics. By working through the multidimensional networks that crisscross different party-state units, administrative levels, and formal institutions such as business associations and local parliamentary bodies all over the country, private entrepreneurs act collectively, albeit in (as yet) uncoordinated ways. By looking closely at the evolving government-business nexus in China's local state, this article sheds new light on private entrepreneurs' strategic action in China's political system and highlights that private entrepreneurs are increasingly influential within the existing regime coalition.

Since the early reform days and particularly during the Hu-Wen era, the local state has seen remarkable changes triggered by the central government’s new focus on rural development and rural-urban integration. The “peasant burden” was reduced by the tax-for-fee reforms in 2002 and the abolition of the agricultural tax in 2006. Fiscal transfers were increased to provide more funding for local governments in order to ensure reasonable public goods provision as well as investment in agricultural modernization and in situ urbanization. At the same time, the performance evaluation of local cadres and government units has been streamlined to enforce stricter compliance with upper level policy guidelines and local governments have been systematically encouraged to engage in policy experimentation and innovation by linking policy success to cadre promotion. However, the local state, at all levels, is still struggling with “un(der)-funded” mandates, rising public demand and, as often reported, social protest. Against this background, this article argues that the concept of local developmentalism can still serve as a useful analytical tool to explain state-business relations at county level and below. The local state has maintained its control over private sector development and entrepreneurial agency by becoming an “interested facilitator” and “enabler” by withdrawing from its position as bureaucratic patron, cadre entrepreneur and corporate agent.

After the beginning of the 1980s, the economic conversion towards a market economy led to a crisis in the urban social system. The partystate was no longer capable of ensuring, or willing to ensure, social protection by itself. New urban ＂neighbourhood communities＂ were supposed to assume these tasks through the far-reaching inclusion of their respective residents. This required an expansion of participation, self-help, and self-organization, i.e. socially and politically active citizens. In recent years, the state has therefore fostered social participation by its citizens in urban areas. Citizens' social commitment and activities in their neighbourhoods improve the quality of public services and thus their satisfaction with the state. In this article, the author argues that the Chinese party-state is attempting through this means to pursue the goal of strengthening its legitimacy. The article tries to clarify this intention with an example from a central policy field: the reorganization of social security by means of urban neighbourhoods. The question as to whether or not legitimacy is actually spawned by this reorganization cannot be fully answered at this time. The neighbourhood communities and their social security function are still rather recent. Therefore the author's focus lies much more on the state's discourse and intention to gain legitimacy, the implementation of its intention, and the initial reactions of the population involved.

Laboratory studies were conducted to characterize the 1-octanol/water partition coefficients of pharmaceutically active substances carbamazepine, clofibric acid, diclofenac, ibuprofen, and propyphenazone. Partition coefficients determined by shake flask experiments (OECD guideline 107) varied between log K sub(OW) 1.51 for carbamazepine, 2.88 for clofibric acid, 1.90 for diclofenac, 2.48 for ibuprofen, and 2.02 for propyphenazone. Comparison of these values with the literature values revealed rather significant differences for most of the compounds. The partitioning coefficients of the acidic compounds diclofenac and ibuprofen agreed much better with sorption and mobility data from previously conducted experiments, whereas K sub(OW) values for carbamazepine were lower and for clofibric acid higher than expected from experiments. Only K sub(OW) values for propyphenazone were in the same range as reported in the literature and expected from column experiments.

This article, the product of several years of extensive fieldwork, seeks to reinvigorate the debate on China’s private entrepreneurs by arguing that they have become a “strategic group” within the Chinese polity. While they do not openly challenge the current regime, they continuously alter the power balance within the current regime coalition, which connects them to the party-state at all administrative levels. As the future of Chinese socialism depends on the sound development of the private-sector economy and, therefore, on the promotion of private entrepreneurship, it can be expected that entrepreneurial influence within the regime coalition will rise, with inevitable consequences for regime legitimacy and stability.

Open-access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295804095 Longlisted for the 2009 ICAS Book Award Mountainous Liangshan Prefecture, on the southern border of Sichuan Province, is one of China's most remote regions. Although Liangshan's majority ethnic group, the Nuosu (now classified by the Chinese government as part of the Yi ethnic group) practiced a subsistence economy and were, by Chinese standards, extremely poor. Their traditional society was stratified into endogamous castes, the most powerful of which owned slaves. With the incorporation of Liangshan into China's new socialist society in the mid-twentieth century, the Nuosu were required to abolish slavery and what the Chinese government considered to be superstitious religious practices. When Han Chinese moved into the area, competing with Nuosu for limited resources and introducing new cultural and economic challenges, some Nuosu took advantage of China's new economic policies in the 1980s to begin private businesses. In Doing Business in Rural China, Thomas Heberer tells the stories of individual entrepreneurs and presents a wealth of economic data gleaned from extensive fieldwork in Liangshan. He documents and analyzes the phenomenal growth during the last two decades of Nuosu-run businesses, comparing these with Han-run businesses and asking how ethnicity affects the new market-oriented economic structure and how economics in turn affects Nuosu culture and society. He finds that Nuosu entrepreneurs have effected significant change in local economic structures and social institutions and have financed major social and economic development projects. This economic development has prompted Nuosu entrepreneurs to establish business, political, and social relationships beyond the traditional social confines of the clan, while also fostering awareness and celebration of ethnicity.