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Beijing has come to realize that multilateral organizations can legitimize and universalize Chinese interests at a time when China needs to reassure others about the way it will use its newfound powers in the global system.

AbstractThis article examines why the BRICS Development Bank is being created and the role it will play in the global economy and world development. After describing some of the critical needs that are driving the formation of this new multilateral development bank, I discuss how the creation of the BRICS bank is linked to failures among traditional funders to deliver on their commitments, especially in terms of infrastructure investment. This article also outlines the national interests that each BRICS country has in the BRICS bank, and the main challenges that the BRICS countries are facing in transforming this idea into reality.

AbstractThis article details the reorganization of China's national leadership training system, and analyses the reforms as an integral element of the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to adapt institutionally to a rapidly changing environment. Three main findings are presented. First, the national leadership training system is being remade under the direction of the Party's Central Organization Department to give greater emphasis to the "spirit of reform and innovation," as seen especially in the creation of the China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong, Shanghai, and in the formation of sister academies in Jinggangshan and Yan'an. Second, China's political elite have given greater priority to leadership innovation, although they are trying to balance this with ensuring that sufficient attention and resources are also given to preserving the ruling status of the CCP. Third, by establishing the new group of training academies under the COD, the Party is diversifying beyond the Party School system for leadership research and training. The article suggests that the guiding logic behind these reforms is to promote enough innovation in managerial training and research to enable the Party to meet the changing governance requirements of the market transition and economic globalization, while at the same time putting in place institutional measures that help to preserve the Party's rule.

The dimension of China's farm economy that has been least altered since the onset of the reforms in the early 1980s is the rural land system. However, in the face of mounting rural social tension and concerns over the impact of heightened trade liberalization on the domestic agricultural sector, Chinese authorities have recently undertaken a reform program to fundamentally alter the nature of agricultural land rights in the country. In the name of protecting farmers' rights and interests, new institutions are being established to certify rural land use rights and strengthen enforcement of these rights; facilitate the trade of these land use rights according to market principles; and settle disputes over tradable land use rights. These institutional reforms in the agricultural land management system are giving rise to a rural land market in China, based not on private land ownership but on a two-tiered rural land system that combines public ownership with the private leasing of user rights. These reform measures strengthen adherence to the rule of law in rural society and the market orientation of the rural economy, while at the same time reflect efforts to preserve China's state socialism. (Asian Perspect/DÜI)