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This chapter examines how the breakthrough of Zhang Ziyi's depiction of a female kung fu master in The Grandmaster (2013) transforms the figure of the heroine in Chinese action films. Zhang is well known for her acting in action films conducted by renowned directors, such as Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-wai. After winning 12 different Best Actress awards for her portrayal of Gong Ruomei in The Grandmaster, Zhang announced that she would no longer perform in any action films to show her highest respect for the superlative character Gong. Tracing Zhang's transformational portrait of a heroine in The Grandmaster alongside her other action roles, this analysis demonstrates how her performance projects the directors' distinctive gender viewpoints. I argue that Zhang's characterisation of Gong remodels heroine-hood in Chinese action films. Inheriting the typical plot of a daughter's use of martial arts for revenge for her father's death, Gong breaks from conventional Chinese action films that highlight romantic love during a woman's adventure and the decisive final battle scene. Beyond the propensity for sensory stimulation, Gong's characterisation enables Zhang to determine that women can really act in action films – demonstrating their inner power and ability to create multi-layered characters – not merely relying upon physical action. This chapter offers a relational perspective of how women transform the action film genre not merely as gender spectacles but as embodied figures that represent emerging female subjectivity.

This study first calculates a profit rate for China’s economy over the period 1952–2014; the rate shows a downward trend in the long term but also exhibits cyclical fluctuations. Then, structural vector autoregressive models are used to examine the Chinese economic structure and, thanks to impulse response functions, the role of the profit rate in investment, capital accumulation, and GDP growth rates. Then, based on a priori constraints relative to this structure, the study tests whether these assumptions are verified over the period studied in the context of the transformations of China. The impulse response functions are further examined by using Bayesian analysis. Finally, the authors conclude that the period from 1952 to 2014 should be divided into several sub-periods with distinct structural characteristics.