This is the first environmental history of China during the three thousand years for which there are written records. It is also a treasure trove of literary, political, aesthetic, scientific, and ...religious sources, which allow the reader direct access to the views and feelings of the Chinese people toward their environment and their landscape.Elvin chronicles the spread of the Chinese style of farming that eliminated the habitat of the elephants that populated the country alongside much of its original wildlife; the destruction of most of the forests; the impact of war on the environmental transformation of the landscape; and the re-engineering of the countryside through water-control systems, some of gigantic size. He documents the histories of three contrasting localities within China to show how ecological dynamics defined the lives of the inhabitants. And he shows that China in the eighteenth century, on the eve of the modern era, was probably more environmentally degraded than northwestern Europe around this time.Indispensable for its new perspective on long-term Chinese history and its explanation of the roots of China's present-day environmental crisis, this book opens a door into the Chinese past.
Obdobje, ki se je pričelo vzporedno z aktivnim odpiranjem Kitajske navzven in z ekonomsko liberalizacijo v notranjosti države, lahko označimo kot obdobje sodobne refleksije kitajske idejne tradicije ...in hkratne kritične evalvacije najvplivnejših struj tujih miselnosti. Le-ta se kažejo tudi na področju, kjer se snujejo zametki aktualnih ideologij. Članek poskuša v tem kontekstu osvetliti ideološko in družbeno funkcijo umetnosti in kulture. V tem okviru je estetika po eni strani služila kot latentni upor proti v družbi prevladujočemu pragmatizmu in kot manifestno zavzemanje za lepoto, oziroma kot vrsta čustvene emancipacije, po drugi pa kot diskurz, ki je bil na Kitajskem vseskozi tesno povezan s politiko ter z možnostjo reinterpretacije oziroma nadgradnje marksističnih teorij.
Righteous Revolutionaries illustrates how states appeal to popular morality—shared understandings of right and wrong—to forge new group identities and mobilize violence against perceived threats to ...their authority. Jeffrey A. Javed examines the Chinese Communist Party’s mass mobilization of violence during its land reform campaign in the early 1950s, one of the most violent and successful state-building efforts in history. Using an array of novel archival, documentary, and quantitative historical data, this book illustrates that China’s land reform campaign was not just about economic redistribution but rather part of a larger, brutally violent state-building effort to delegitimize the new party-state’s internal rivals and establish its moral authority. Righteous Revolutionaries argues that the Chinese Party-state simultaneously removed perceived threats to its authority at the grassroots and bolstered its legitimacy through a process called moral mobilization. This mobilization process created a moral boundary that designated a virtuous ingroup of “the masses” and a demonized outgroup of “class enemies,” mobilized the masses to participate in violence against this broadly defined outgroup, and strengthened this symbolic boundary by making the masses complicit in state violence. Righteous Revolutionaries shows how we can find traces of moral mobilization in China today under Xi Jinping’s rule. In an era where states and politicians regularly weaponize moral emotions to foment intergroup conflict and violence, understanding the dynamics of violent mobilization and state authority are more relevant than ever before.
This concise and incisive analysis unpicks the likely practical implications for the international community of China's announced reorientation of its economy towards protecting its domestic market.
The year 2018 marks 40 years of reform and development in China (1978–2018). This commemorative book assembles some of the world’s most prominent scholars on the Chinese economy to reflect on what ...has been achieved as a result of the economic reform programs, and to draw out the key lessons that have been learned by the model of growth and development in China over the preceding four decades. This book explores what has happened in the transformation of the Chinese economy in the past 40 years for China itself, as well as for the rest of the world, and discusses the implications of what will happen next in the context of China’s new reform agenda. Focusing on the long-term development strategy amid various old and new challenges that face the economy, this book sets the scene for what the world can expect in China’s fifth decade of reform and development. A key feature of this book is its comprehensive coverage of the key issues involved in China’s economic reform and development. Included are discussions of China’s 40 years of reform and development in a global perspective; the political economy of economic transformation; the progress of marketisation and changes in market-compatible institutions; the reform program for state-owned enterprises; the financial sector and fiscal system reform, and its foreign exchange system reform; the progress and challenges in economic rebalancing; and the continuing process of China’s global integration. This book further documents and analyses the development experiences including China’s large scale of migration and urbanisation, the demographic structural changes, the private sector development, income distribution, land reform and regional development, agricultural development, and energy and climate change policies.
New details about the founding of China's Navy reveals critical historical context and insight into future strategy From 1949 to 1950, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) made crucial decisions to ...establish a navy and secure China's periphery. The civil war had been fought with a peasant army, yet in order to capture key offshore islands from the Nationalist rival, Mao Zedong needed to develop maritime capabilities. Mao's Army Goes to Sea is a ground-breaking history of the founding of the Chinese navy and Communist China's earliest island-seizing campaigns. In this definitive account of a little-known yet critical moment in China's naval history, Toshi Yoshihara shows that Chinese leaders refashioned the stratagems and tactics honed over decades of revolutionary struggle on land for nautical purposes. Despite significant challenges, the PLA ultimately scored important victories over its Nationalist foes as it captured offshore islands to secure its position. Drawing extensively from newly available Chinese-language sources, this book reveals how the navy-building process, sea battles, and contested offshore landings had a lasting influence on the PLA. Even today, the institution's identity, strategy, doctrine, and structure are conditioned by these early experiences and myths. Mao's Army Goes to Sea will help US policymakers and scholars place China's recent maritime achievements in proper historical context—and provide insight into how its navy may act in the future.
Avtorica v članku podaja kontrastivno analizo Li Zehoujevega koncepta sedimentacije in koncepta arhetipov C. G. Junga. Članek najprej podrobno predstavi koncept sedimentacije in pokaže, zakaj pri ...njem ne gre samo za estetski, temveč tudi za kulturno-psihološki pojem. Na osnovi tovrstne predstavitve Lijeve konceptualizacije in teoretskih osnov sedimentacije avtorica kritično primerja ta pojem z Jungovimi arhetipi. Članek nazorno prikaže, da so razlike med obema konceptoma zelo daljnosežne, saj nakazujejo splošno oziroma paradigmatsko razliko med referenčnima okviroma prevladujočih zahodnih diskurzov na eni in specifično kitajske teorije na drugi strani.
A Contemporary History of the Chinese Zheng traces the twentieth- and twenty-first-century development of an important Chinese musical instrument in greater China.The zheng was transformed over the ...course of the twentieth century, becoming a solo instrument with virtuosic capacity. In the past, the zheng had appeared in small instrumental ensembles and supplied improvised accompaniments to song. Zheng music became a means of nation-building and was eventually promoted as a marker of Chinese identity in Hong Kong. Ann L. Silverberg uses evidence from the greater China area to show how the narrative history of the zheng created on the mainland did not represent zheng music as it had been in the past. Silverberg ultimately argues that the zheng’s older repertory was poorly represented by efforts to collect and promote zheng music in the twentieth century. This book contends that the restored “traditional Chinese music” created and promulgated from the 1920s forward—and solo zheng music in particular—is a hybrid of “Chinese essence, Western means” that essentially obscures rather than reveals tradition.
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.
Disruptions as Opportunities: Governing Chinese Society with Interactive Authoritarianism addresses the long-standing puzzle of why China outlived other one-party authoritarian regimes with ...particular attention to how the state manages an emerging civil society. Drawing upon over 1,200 survey responses conducted in 126 villages in the Sichuan province, as well as 70 interviews conducted with Civil Society Organization (CSO) leaders and government officials, participant observation, and online research, the book proposes a new theory of interactive authoritarianism to explain how an adaptive authoritarian state manages nascent civil society. Sun argues that when new phenomena and forces are introduced into Chinese society, the Chinese state adopts a three-stage interactive approach toward societal actors: toleration, differentiation, and legalization without institutionalization. Sun looks to three disruptions—earthquakes, internet censorship, and social-media-based guerilla resistance to the ride-sharing industry—to test his theory about the three-stage interactive authoritarian approach and argues that the Chinese government evolves and consolidates its power in moments of crisis.
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