Many thought China's rise would fundamentally remake the global order. Yet, much like other developing nations, the Chinese state now finds itself in a status quo characterized by free trade and ...American domination. Through a cutting-edge historical, sociological, and political analysis, Ho-fung Hung details the competing interests and economic realities that temper the dream of Chinese supremacy—forces that are stymieing growth throughout the global South. Hung focuses on four common misconceptions: that China could undermine orthodoxy by offering an alternative model of growth; that China is radically altering power relations between the East and the West; that China is capable of diminishing the global power of the United States; and that the Chinese economy would restore the world's wealth after the 2008 financial crisis. His work reveals how much China depends on the existing order and how the interests of the Chinese elites maintain these ties. Through its perpetuation of the dollar standard and its addiction to U.S. Treasury bonds, China remains bound to the terms of its own prosperity, and its economic practices of exploiting debt bubbles are destined to fail. Hung ultimately warns of a postmiracle China that will grow increasingly assertive in attitude while remaining constrained in capability.
Before the Chinese Communist Party came to power, China lay broken
and fragmented. Today it is a force on the global stage, and yet
its leaders have continued to be haunted by the past. Drawing on an
...array of sources, Sulmaan Wasif Khan chronicles the grand
strategies that have sought not only to protect China from
aggression but also to ensure it would never again experience the
powerlessness of the late Qing and Republican eras. The dramatic
variations in China's modern history have obscured the commonality
of purpose that binds the country's leaders. Analyzing the calculus
behind their decision making, Khan explores how they wove
diplomatic, military, and economic power together to keep a fragile
country safe in a world they saw as hostile. Dangerous and shrewd,
Mao Zedong made China whole and succeeded in keeping it so, while
the caustic, impatient Deng Xiaoping dragged China into the modern
world. Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao served as cautious custodians of
the Deng legacy, but the powerful and deeply insecure Xi Jinping
has shown an assertiveness that has raised both fear and hope
across the globe. For all their considerable costs, China's grand
strategies have been largely successful. But the country faces
great challenges today. Its population is aging, its government is
undermined by corruption, its neighbors are arming out of concern
over its growing power, and environmental degradation threatens
catastrophe. A question Haunted by Chaos raises is whether
China's time-tested approach can respond to the looming threats of
the twenty-first century.
As China emerges as an international economic and military power, the world waits to see how the nation will assert itself globally. Yet, as M. Taylor Fravel shows inStrong Borders, Secure Nation, ...concerns that China might be prone to violent conflict over territory are overstated. The first comprehensive study of China's territorial disputes,Strong Borders, Secure Nationcontends that China over the past sixty years has been more likely to compromise in these conflicts with its Asian neighbors and less likely to use force than many scholars or analysts might expect.
By developing theories of cooperation and escalation in territorial disputes, Fravel explains China's willingness to either compromise or use force. When faced with internal threats to regime security, especially ethnic rebellion, China has been willing to offer concessions in exchange for assistance that strengthens the state's control over its territory and people. By contrast, China has used force to halt or reverse decline in its bargaining power in disputes with its militarily most powerful neighbors or in disputes where it has controlled none of the land being contested. Drawing on a rich array of previously unexamined Chinese language sources,Strong Borders, Secure Nationoffers a compelling account of China's foreign policy on one of the most volatile issues in international relations.
The rise of China and India is the story of our times. The unprecedented expansion of their economic and power capabilities raises profound questions for scholars and policymakers. What forces ...propelled these two Asian giants into global pacesetters, and what does their emergence mean for the United States and the world? With intimate detail, Shalendra D. Sharma's China and India in the Age of Globalization explores how the interplay of socio-historical, political, and economic forces has transformed these once poor agrarian societies into economic powerhouses. This book examines the challenges both countries face and what each must do to strike the balance between reaping the opportunities and mitigating the risks. For the United States, assisting a rising China to become a responsible global stakeholder and fostering peace and stability in the volatile subcontinent will be paramount in the coming years.
China at 60 Chan, Lai-Ha; Chan, Gerald; Kwan, Fung
2011., 2011-03-24
eBook
China at 60 explores the interactions between China and the world, over the course of 60 years of Communist Party rule since 1949 and the impact of these interactions on China's domestic development. ...To understand China's development experience and its transformation, it is necessary to examine the trajectory of development from pre-reform to post-reform periods. While the book may concur with previous findings on the changing development of China under economic reform, more importantly, it demonstrates the areas of continuity of the PRC's existence over the entire six decades. To that end, a dual theme — change-and-continuity and global-local interactions on China's development — is adopted to assess the historical development of China's policies in various issue areas over the past 60 years. The focus is chiefly on the domestic impacts of China's increasing engagement with the world, the global implications of China's reform efforts and growing power, and the long-lasting uniqueness of this rising non-European nation.
"As a spokesman for disaffected youth of the post-1960s, Murakami Haruki has become one of the most important voices in contemporary Japanese literature, and he has gained a following in the United ...States through translations of his works. In Dances with Sheep, Matthew Strecher examines Murakami’s fiction—and, to a lesser extent, his nonfiction—for its most prevalent structures and themes. Strecher also delves into the paradoxes in Murakami’s writings that confront critics and casual readers alike. Murakami writes of “serious” themes yet expresses them in a relatively uncomplicated style that appeals to high school students as well as scholars; and his fictional work appears to celebrate the pastiche of postmodern expression, yet he rejects the effects of the postmodern on contemporary culture as dangerous. Strecher’s methodology is both historical and cultural as he utilizes four distinct yet interwoven approaches to analyze Murakami’s major works: the writer’s “formulaic” structure with serious themes; his play with magical realism; the intense psychological underpinnings of his literary landscape; and his critique of language and its capacity to represent realities, past and present. Dances with Sheep links each of these approaches with Murakami’s critical focus on the fate of individual identity in contemporary Japan. The result is that the simplicity of the Murakami hero, marked by lethargy and nostalgia, emerges as emblematic of contemporary humankind, bereft of identity, direction, and meaning. Murakami’s fiction is reconstructed in Dances with Sheep as a warning against the dehumanizing effects of late-model capitalism, the homogenization of the marketplace, and the elimination of effective counterculture in Japan."
China's relation to Taiwan has been in constant contention since the founding of the People's Republic of China in October 1949 and the creation of the defeated Kuomintang (KMT) exile regime on the ...island two months later. The islands autonomous sovereignty has continually been challenged, initially because of the KMT's insistence that it continue to represent not just Taiwan but all of China and later because Taiwan refused to cede sovereignty to the then-dominant power that had arisen on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. One thing that makes Taiwan so politically difficult and yet so intellectually fascinating is that it is not merely a security problem, but a ganglion of interrelated puzzles. The optimistic hope of the Ma Ying-jeou administration for a new era of peace and cooperation foundered on a landslide victory by the Democratic Progressive Party, which has made clear its intent to distance Taiwan from China's political embrace. The Taiwanese are now waiting with bated breath as the relationship tautens. Why did detente fail, and what chance does Taiwan have without it? Contributors to this volume focus on three aspects of the evolving quandary: nationalistic identity, social economy, and political strategy.
The "one China" policy officially supported by the People's Republic of China, the United States, and other countries asserts that there is only one China and Taiwan is a part of it. The debate over ...whether the people of Taiwan are Chinese or independently Taiwanese is, Melissa J. Brown argues, a matter of identity: Han ethnic identity, Chinese national identity, and the relationship of both of these to the new Taiwanese identity forged in the 1990s. In a unique comparison of ethnographic and historical case studies drawn from both Taiwan and China, Brown's book shows how identity is shaped by social experience—not culture and ancestry, as is commonly claimed in political rhetoric.
Charlotte P. Lee considers organizational changes taking place within the contemporary Chinese Communist Party (CCP), examining the party's renewed emphasis on an understudied but core set of ...organizations: party-managed training academies or 'party schools'. This national network of organizations enables party authorities to exert political control over the knowledge, skills, and careers of officials. Drawing on in-depth field research and novel datasets, Lee finds that the party school system has not been immune to broader market-based reforms but instead has incorporated many of the same strategies as actors in China's hybrid, state-led private sector. In the search for revenue and status, schools have updated training content and become more entrepreneurial as they compete and collaborate with domestic and international actors. This book draws attention to surprising dynamism located within the party, in political organizations thought immune to change, and the transformative effect of the market on China's political system.
Drawing on the life stories of 266 migrants in South China, Choi and Peng examine the effect of mass rural-to-urban migration on family and gender relationships, with a specific focus on changes in ...men and masculinities. They show how migration has forced migrant men to renegotiate their roles as lovers, husbands, fathers, and sons. They also reveal how migrant men make masculine compromises: they strive to preserve the gender boundary and their symbolic dominance within the family by making concessions on marital power and domestic division of labor, and by redefining filial piety and fatherhood. The stories of these migrant men and their families reveal another side to China's sweeping economic reform, modernization, and grand social transformations.
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