Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) party organ is often called “the mouthpiece of the party”, recognized as the propaganda means to spread CCP’s thoughts and policies. In addition, CCP aimed to gather information at the grass-roots level through correspondents. Thus, CCP’s party organ is presumed to have both communication and information gathering functions.

However, we cannot accept these ideas uncritically. Many people in the grass-roots level did not have sufficient information about CCP’s thoughts and policies. CCP did not have enough information about the grass-roots level, either. Therefore, this paper approaches the actual state of CCP’s party organ, specifically by examining the Hebei Daily (Hebei Ribao), which is the organ of CCP.

In chapter 1, I briefly marshal the general situation of all of the publications in this period and show that CCP started to strengthen its regulation on publishing, which was not so heavily regulated in the early People’s Republic of China (PRC) period. In chapter 2, I analyze the actual state of the regulation as well as the organ itself. It is demonstrated that CCP’s regulation on publishing was not effective enough, and that the organ did not sufficiently fulfill its propaganda role either. In chapter 3, I examine the correspondent system and prove that the correspondent system remained insufficient throughout the 1950s, thus CCP could not gather enough information about the grass-roots level.

This paper not only clarifies the actual situation of CCP’s party organ, but also analyzes the relationship between the party and society. In other words, this paper examines the actual situation of the communication between the higher level and grass-root level during the period when CCP proceeded with land reform and agricultural collectivization in early PRC period. This paper concludes that throughout the period of concern in this paper, there was a difference between the higher level recognition and the lower level recognition due to insufficient communication, which includes the differences between the central level and the provincial level, and between the provincial level and the grass-root level. CCP’s policies were enforced under such a situation in the early PRC period, indicating that this may be one of reasons why CCP’s policies often faced problems during this period.

China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) has been growing rapidly in the last decade. Since 2014, China has emerged as the second-largest country for OFDI in the world. Empirical investigation of the determinants of OFDI is very important for the formulation of OFDI policies, because OFDI brings various benefits to both investing countries and recipient countries. On the one hand, FDI transfers not only financial resources but also technology and managerial know-how from investing country to recipient country. On the other hand, for investment country, FDI can enable them to use their resources efficiently.

In the light of important contributions that OFDI delivers to both investing and recipient countries, it is useful to discern the factors that would promote China’s OFDI. However, few papers have studied the determinants of China’s OFDI. By using firm-level OFDI data covering the period 2005–2015, this paper attempts to fill this gap by investigating the determinants of China’s ODI.

This paper focus on how the destinations’ institutional environment affects China’s OFDI location choice. We apply principal component analysis to six dimensions of world governance indicators, and use the first principal component as an institutional environment proxy. As the method of empirical analysis, this paper uses the conditional logit model. We also use the probit model and logit model to do the robustness checks. The results do not show a significant relationship between the destinations’ institutional environment and China’s OFDI. However, the results show a significant relationship between OFDI by Chinese State-Owned Enterprises and the destinations’ institutional environment.

We find that sizable local market, low-wage labor, and abundance of natural resources in the recipient countries are important factors that attract Chinese firms’ OFDI. Furthermore, the results show that the accumulation of Chinese enterprises in recipient countries play an important role on attracting China’s OFDI. This paper also investigates the impacts of RMB revaluation and it’s volatility on China’s OFDI. However, the results do not show significant relationships.

To control Christians and their religious activities, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) committees in 1954 and required Protestant churches to register with these committees. However, the number of non-registered house churches has been growing rapidly since the end of the Cultural Revolution. During the first decade of the 21st century, new house churches, whose leading members are students and intellectuals, developed in large cities. This paper studies the Chinese government’s response to the development of Protestant churches.

The national government has devolved the mandate to develop religious policies to local government in order to address concerns about Protestant churches. Provincial governments have a mandate to establish regulations for religious affairs, and some have established regulations that allow local churches in their jurisdiction to receive donations from Christian organizations abroad. Local governments adopt these policies in order to encourage Protestant churches to supply welfare and public services to the residents instead of the government.

In 2001, the CCP central committee decided to build networks of religious affairs management among governments of counties, townships, and villages to post religious affairs staff to a grassroots community. However, local governments have not been willing to build these networks or strengthen the management of Protestant churches for the following reasons. First, local governments want the churches to provide public services. Second, they emphasize economic development rather than religious affairs management in their jurisdictions. Third, they have been ordered to reduce and simplify government organizations by the central government; hence, it is difficult to increase the number of staff members assigned to religious affairs.

On the other hand, some local governments and churches registered with TSPM committees have begun to approach individual house churches directly. TSPM churches provide pastoral work, services, and materials for some house churches. The government is trying to apply this approach across the country, but even some pastors of TSPM churches have doubts about this approach because some house churches fundamentally do not want to involve with the government or TSPM churches. Meanwhile, some local governments scout out house churches and order them to dissolve if they have connections with hostile forces abroad.

Through these analyses, this paper reveals that the Chinese government has been confronting challenges in implementing policies for church affairs management because each stakeholder has different priorities.

In recent years, China has achieved the “rise of economy”, which shows the hegemonic behavior to change the current situation by force in the political and secure fields including the South China Sea issue. Meanwhile, regional integration and free trade is promoted by China’s leadership in economic field. Whether it has been named as hegemony or leadership in above ways, the rising of great power tends to accompany expansionist diplomacy that trying to expand its influence and rules to other countries and regions.

Studies of the rising Chinese diplomacy were increasingly well-documented, but some of them just analyzed the reasons of Chinese expansionist diplomacy, which mainly focused on China’s “push factors”. However, it is still poor understood whether neighboring countries react to China’s behavior passively or not. In the present paper, relations between China and Pakistan from the viewpoint of Pakistan side will be further discussed.

The ambition and willingness of China is a necessary prerequisite in Chinese expansionism diplomacy. Therefore, this paper will discuss the following parts. First of all, existing research has focused on “push factor” of China’s side which explained “why China expands” and “how to expand”. Nevertheless, this approach didn’t take account into the reaction of target countries, which was closely related to the Chinese expansionism diplomacy could be accepted. Secondly, the “push factor” of the China’s side has been reported to play an important role in the development of China’s expansion. And the “pull factor” from the target country’s side may also contribute to its expansion.

The present paper reviewed the Sino-Pak relations, and then analyzed the “pull factors” of Pakistan side that influenced the development of China’s expansionist diplomacy. Together, unlike the “push factor”, which emphasized China’s diplomatic strategy and hegemonic ambition about Chinese expansionism diplomacy, this paper indicated that we should not overlook the “pull factor”, which Pakistan spontaneously depended on China due to the difficulties of domestic and foreign affairs in the country. Specifically, it was assumed that the “pull factor” led to the expansion of China, and how far target countries accept its expansion as well. Based on the studies about the diplomacy of rising China, it seems reasonable to assume that “push factor” complementing by “pull factor”.