Rivers of Iron Lampton, David M; Ho, Selina; Kuik, Cheng-Chwee
10/2020
eBook
In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled what would come to
be known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)-a global development
strategy involving infrastructure projects and associated ...financing
throughout the world, including Asia, Africa, the Middle East,
Europe, and the Americas. While the Chinese government has framed
the plan as one promoting transnational connectivity, critics and
security experts see it as part of a larger strategy to achieve
global dominance. Rivers of Iron examines one aspect of
President Xi Jinping's "New Era": China's effort to create an
intercountry railway system connecting China and its seven
Southeast Asian neighbors (Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar,
Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam). This book illuminates the
political strengths and weaknesses of the plan, as well as the
capacity of the impacted countries to resist, shape, and even take
advantage of China's wide-reaching actions. Using frameworks from
the fields of international relations and comparative politics, the
authors of Rivers of Iron seek to explain how domestic
politics in these eight Asian nations shaped their varying external
responses and behaviors. How does China wield power using
infrastructure? Do smaller states have agency? How should we
understand the role of infrastructure in broader development? Does
industrial policy work? And crucially, how should competing global
powers respond?
This article discusses the rationale for, and progress to date of, creating a National Security Commission in China, a move first announced in late 2013. Central impulses for the Commission's ...establishment are to help better coordinate a very fragmented bureaucracy and to advance Xi Jinping's drive to consolidate his personal power over the internal and external coercive and diplomatic arms of the governing structure. The Commission is a work in progress and its full institutional maturation will take a protracted period. In the midst of the Commission's construction, there is considerable confusion among subordinates in the foreign policy and security areas about lines of authority and ultimate objectives. Beyond Xi Jinping, it is difficult to discern an authoritative voice. It is an open question as to whether this institutional attempt to achieve coordination will improve, or further complicate, China's long-standing coordination problem, some recent foreign policy achievements notwithstanding. The Commission's focus is heavily weighted toward internal and periphery security, but it also is an institution-building response to new global and transnational issues. It is not self-evident that Xi, or any single individual, can effectively manage the span of control he is constructing.
With unique access to Chinese leaders at all levels of the party and government, best-selling author David M. Lampton tells the story of China's political elites from their own perspectives. Based on ...over five hundred interviews, Following the Leader offers a rare glimpse into how the attitudes and ideas of those at the top have evolved over the past four decades. Here China's rulers explain their strategies and ideas for moving the nation forward, share their reflections on matters of leadership and policy, and discuss the challenges that keep them awake at night. As the Chinese Communist Party installs its new president, Xi Jinping, for a presumably ten-year term, questions abound. How will the country move forward as its explosive rate of economic growth begins to slow? How does it plan to deal with domestic and international calls for political reform and to cope with an aging population, not to mention an increasingly fragmented bureaucracy and society? In this insightful book we learn how China's leaders see the nation's political future, as well as about its global strategic influence.
US-China ties are worse than they have been at any time since the early 1960s, and likely will deteriorate further and more dangerously unless Washington and Beijing take steps that neither is yet ...willing or able to. Current tensions were years in the making, have multiple causes, and will persist for the indefinite future. There is no quick fix. The best we can achieve is wary coexistence, careful management to reduce dangers, and keeping the way open for a better day, no matter how distant or near it may be. Achieving even that goal requires a deeper understanding of China's goals, fears and behavior, and how it has fallen into an old mindset that sacrifices growth to reduce vulnerability to external ideas and interference. This is not good for China, the United States or the world. It is an old default mindset; Washington needs to avoid hardening that old thinking unnecessarily. Here, Fingar and Lampton offer their explanation on the flawed characterizations of PRC politics and policymaking that often prevail in Washington.
This contribution argues that, without an ethical operational code, scholars', policymakers', businesspersons', and citizens' policy positions simply become expedient reactions to perceived problems, ...opportunities, and interests. Without ethical footing, policies as a whole will lack coherence, staying power, and persuasive force. Key elements of an ethical operational code include: philosophical grounding and core values, concepts of social and historical development, and rules of thumb derived from an individual's experience. Providing several examples of China-related policy issues which would benefit from the ethical operational code approach, this essay then discusses the analytic elements of an operational code. It concludes by arguing that, in the context of US-China relations, individuals should develop ethical constructs characterized by patience, more carrots than sticks, and more open doors than high walls. In what is emerging as an increasingly ideologically polarized domestic and foreign policy circumstance in the United States and in U.S.-China relations, the starting point for an individual needs to be self-reflection concerning what they believe and why.
The People's Republic of China under Xi Jinping appears headed toward one of two very different outcomes. The first is that Pres Xi becomes a durable strongman by continuing to strengthen personal ...dominance, falling back on the Leninist playbook as well as populist (and popular) policies of attacking corruption with minimal legal restraint, taking down competing personal and organizational networks, and rallying the populace around the flagpole of assertive nationalism. Another scenario is that the genies of socio-political pluralism, socio-economic stratification, marketization, and globalization are too far out of the bottle to be stuffed back in by old economic and political instruments.
With unique access to Chinese leaders at all levels of the party and government, best-selling author David M. Lampton tells the story of China’s political elites from their own perspectives. Based on ...over five hundred interviews, Following the Leader offers a rare glimpse into how the attitudes and ideas of those at the top have evolved over the past four decades. Here China’s rulers explain their strategies and ideas for moving the nation forward, share their reflections on matters of leadership and policy, and discuss the challenges that keep them awake at night. As the Chinese Communist Party installs its new president, Xi Jinping, for a presumably ten-year term, questions abound. How will the country move forward as its explosive rate of economic growth begins to slow? How does it plan to deal with domestic and international calls for political reform and to cope with an aging population, not to mention an increasingly fragmented bureaucracy and society? In this insightful book we learn how China’s leaders see the nation’s political future, as well as about its global strategic influence.
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