Guest Editors' Introduction

In the past few decades or so, academicians have engaged much of their attention on Chinese politics of institutionalization. Questions were raised to assess the extent of primacy of the state, to remedy the problems of institutional vulnerability, and to identify the limits of institutionalization, etc.1 It is proposed here that there is a need to draw upon local variables to explain what has been going on in the People's Republic of China (PRC). If China has a different point of departure in most of its policy initiatives, then it renders a crude imposition of Westem-based theories on China studies less useful. In a state-socialist context, the peculiar features of Chinese political economy probably diminish the significance of making a gross global comparison between a socialist state (as China is) and a capitalist regime.