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This article traces the circuitous route of China's airlines industry into the ranks of China's strategic sectors. Although the airlines industry now belongs to a small group of industries characterized by oligopoly among state-owned enterprises, its initial reform pathway in the post-Mao era hinted at a different future. In the early years of the reform period, a decentralist approach to developing the industry laid the groundwork for an open market structure with a comparatively low degree of state intervention. Why was this trajectory of gradual state retreat abruptly reversed in 1997? In that year, regulators began a bold retrenchment leading finally to an administrative restructuring of the industry around the "Big Three" state-owned carriers. This article argues that this policy reversal was shaped by the state's increasing emphasis on developing a team of state-controlled national champions. (China J/GIGA)

Join us for an in-depth account of the history and development of contract cheating in Canada over the past 50+ years. Learn about the one and only (failed) attempt at legislation to make ghostwritten essays and exams illegal in Canada. Get the details on a criminal case in the 1980s, noted as being the first of its kind in Canada, and possibly the Commonwealth, that made history when an essay mill owner and his wife were charged with fraud and conspiracy. The case was dismissed by the judge, leaving the contract cheating industry to flourish in Canada, which it has done with a vengeance. Then learn about an exposé in a major US magazine in the 1990s that presented in-details about the experiences of writers who supplied services to the contact cheating industry. Now that we are in the 21st century, find out what's being done across the country today to take action against contract cheating. I will share previously undiscovered evidence and insights that shows how the contract cheating industry has been proliferating in Canada for at least half a century. Even if you thought you knew about contract cheating in Canada, you'll almost certainly learn something new in this session. The content of this session is drawn from Eaton's book chapter on contract cheating in the forthcoming edited volume, Academic Integrity in Canada: An Enduring and Essential Challenge (Eaton & Christensen Hughes) that involved over a thousand hours of historical research and digging into archival material to uncover that the contract cheating industry in Canada has been operating successfully for longer than most of us ever realized. I conclude with strong calls to action for educators, advocates, and policy makers.

This paper examines the interplay between leading international and American accounting authorities over the span of a critical four-year period, 2001–2005. Historically, US regulators and private-sector accounting institutions have taken a cautious approach to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs), citing the superior rigor and overall quality of their own Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). During the past four years, however, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) have each become markedly receptive to the International Accounting Standards Board's (IASB) efforts to harmonize accounting standards worldwide based on IFRSs. Why? This paper offers an explanation that highlights the role of the high-profile American corporate scandals (2001–2002) in precipitating a shift in US accounting authorities' views of the optimal form of accounting rules, an issue that has stood in the way of trans-Atlantic accounting standard convergence. Prior to the accounting scandals, the highly-detailed rules that are characteristic of US GAAP were widely seen to be the most effective form of accounting rule. Since 2002, a normative shift has taken place such that the SEC now endorses objectives-oriented rules that are conceptually aligned with the principles-based standards promulgated by the IASB. The analysis is framed by insights from contemporary International Relations theory which emphasize the influence of scope conditions on patterns of governance.

To what extent has governance of China's state-owned economy changed under Xi Jinping? Against the background of momentous shifts in the political arena since 2012, some observe a decisive departure in Xi's approach to managing state-owned enterprises (SOEs): towards tight centralized control by the Chinese Communist Party and away from gradual marketization. Analysing the main aims and methods of SOE governance over the last two decades, we find that SOE policy under Xi exhibits a deepening of pre-existing trends rather than a departure. First, the essential vision of SOE functions articulated under Xi is strikingly consistent with that of his predecessors. Second, his administration's approach to governing SOEs is not novel; it relies on established mechanisms of bureaucratic design, the cadre management system, Party organizations and campaigns. While Xi has amplified Party-centred tools of command and control, this appears to be an incremental rather than a radical shift in approach. (China Q/GIGA)

Autocrats typically seek public support on the basis of economic growth-promotion and redistribution policies, and China is no exception. As important as these factors are for authoritarian resilience, we argue that economic legitimation is a more complex phenomenon than has previously been acknowledged. Beyond improvements in material well-being, citizens form judgements about the state's effectiveness in carrying out a variety of economic roles beyond growth promotion and they also care about the fairness of these market interventions. In this study, we use original survey data collected in late 2015 and early 2016 to evaluate Chinese citizens' perceptions of two economic roles of the state that have been hotly debated in recent years: state ownership and market regulation. We find that while citizens view the ideas of state ownership and interventionist regulation in a generally positive light, suggesting a broad level of agreement in Chinese society about what economic functions the state ought to perform, perceptions of how the state actually carries out these roles are more mixed. Our results show that the urban young are especially inclined to critical evaluations, raising the question of how the Chinese Communist Party's legitimation strategy will fare under conditions of inter-generational value change. (China Q/GIGA)

AbstractAutocrats typically seek public support on the basis of economic growth-promotion and redistribution policies, and China is no exception. As important as these factors are for authoritarian resilience, we argue that economic legitimation is a more complex phenomenon than has previously been acknowledged. Beyond improvements in material well-being, citizens form judgements about the state's effectiveness in carrying out a variety of economic roles beyond growth promotion and they also care about the fairness of these market interventions. In this study, we use original survey data collected in late 2015 and early 2016 to evaluate Chinese citizens' perceptions of two economic roles of the state that have been hotly debated in recent years: state ownership and market regulation. We find that while citizens view the ideas of state ownership and interventionist regulation in a generally positive light, suggesting a broad level of agreement in Chinese society about what economic functions the state ought to perform, perceptions of how the state actually carries out these roles are more mixed. Our results show that the urban young are especially inclined to critical evaluations, raising the question of how the Chinese Communist Party's legitimation strategy will fare under conditions of inter-generational value change.