"The First Emperor of China (259-210 BCE) is recognized as one of the pivotal figures in world history, alongside other great conquerors and political innovators such as Alexander the Great, Genghis ...Khan, and Julius Caesar. His accomplishments are undeniable, including the conquest of the six other warring states of China, his creation of the imperial bureaucratic system that endured for 2,000 years, and his unification of Chinese culture through the promotion of a single coinage, unified weights and measures, and one writing system. Since his dynasty was cut off a few short years after his death, concrete information on the critical period in Chinese history he occupied has been lacking until recent decades. Only a single, biased historical account, written a century after his death, narrates his biography. In the last forty years, however, archaeologists have revealed not only the lavish burial pits associated with his tomb, but also
Guilty of indigence Chen, Janet Y
2012., 20120124, 2012, 2012-01-24, 20120101
eBook
In the early twentieth century, a time of political fragmentation and social upheaval in China, poverty became the focus of an anguished national conversation about the future of the country. ...Investigating the lives of the urban poor in China during this critical era, Guilty of Indigence examines the solutions implemented by a nation attempting to deal with "society's most fundamental problem." Interweaving analysis of shifting social viewpoints, the evolution of poor relief institutions, and the lived experiences of the urban poor, Janet Chen explores the development of Chinese attitudes toward urban poverty and of policies intended for its alleviation.
What does the state do when public expectations exceed
its governing capacity? The Performative State
shows how the state can shape public perceptions and defuse crises
through the theatrical ...deployment of language, symbols, and
gestures of good governance-performative governance.
Iza Ding unpacks the black box of street-level bureaucracy in
China through ethnographic participation, in-depth interviews, and
public opinion surveys. She demonstrates in vivid detail how
China's environmental bureaucrats deal with intense public scrutiny
over pollution when they lack the authority to actually improve the
physical environment. They assuage public outrage by appearing
responsive, benevolent, and humble. But performative governance is
hard work. Environmental bureaucrats paradoxically work themselves
to exhaustion even when they cannot effectively implement
environmental policies. Instead of achieving "performance
legitimacy" by delivering material improvements, the state can
shape public opinion through the theatrical performance of goodwill
and sincere effort.
The Performative State also explains when performative
governance fails at impressing its audience and when governance
becomes less performative and more substantive. Ding focuses on
Chinese evidence but her theory travels: comparisons with Vietnam
and the United States show that all states, democratic and
authoritarian alike, engage in performative governance.
Dr. Hu Shih (1891–1962) was one of China’s top scholars and diplomats and served as the Republic of China’s ambassador to the United States during World War II. As early as 1941, Hu Shih warned of ...the fundamental ideological conflict between dictatorial totalitarianism and democratic systems, a view that later became the foundation of the Cold War narrative. In the 1950s, after Mao’s authoritarian regime was established, Hu Shih started to analyze the development and nature of Communism, delivering a series of lectures and addresses to reveal what he called Stalin’s “grand strategy” for facilitating the International Communist Movement. For decades—and today to a certain extent—Hu Shih’s political writings were considered sensitive and even dangerous. As a strident critic of the Chinese Communist Party’s oligarchical practices, he was targeted by the CCP in a concerted national campaign to smear his reputation, cast aspersions on his writings, and generally destroy any possible influence he might have in China. This volume brings together a collection of Hu Shih’s most important, mostly unpublished, English-language speeches, interviews, and commentaries on international politics, China-U.S. relations, and the International Communist Movement. Taken together, these works provide an insider’s perspective on Sino-American relations and the development of the International Communist Movement over the course of the 20th century.
Ban Wang traces the shifting concept of the Chinese state from the late nineteenth century to the present, showing how the Confucian notion of tianxia—“all under heaven”—influences China’s dedication ...to contributing to and exchanging with a common world.
This study utilizes a wide range of new source materials to reconstruct the day-to-day operations of the port of Canton during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Using a ...bottom-up approach, it provides a fresh look at the successes
Analyzes international and cultural relationships informed by "China," a category that is becoming ever more indispensable and yet unstable in everyday narratives.
The traditional Chinese notion of itself as the “middle kingdom"—literally the cultural and political center of the world—remains vital to its own self-perceptions and became foundational to Western ...understandings of China. This worldview was primarily constructed during the earliest imperial unification of China during the Qin and Han dynasties (221 BCE–220 CE). But the fragmentation of empire and subsequent “Age of Disunion" (220–589 CE) that followed undermined imperial orthodoxies of unity, centrality, and universality. In response, geographical writing proliferated, exploring greater spatial complexities and alternative worldviews.This book is the first study of the emergent genre of geographical writing and the metageographies that structured its spatial thought during that period. Early medieval geographies highlighted spatial units and structures that the Qin–Han empire had intentionally sought to obscure—including those of regional, natural, and foreign spaces. Instead, these postimperial metageographies reveal a polycentric China in a polycentric world. Sui–Tang (581–906 CE) officials reasserted the imperial model as spatial orthodoxy. But since that time these alternative frameworks have persisted in geographical thought, continuing to illuminate spatial complexities that have been incompatible with the imperial and nationalist ideal of a monolithic China at the center of the world.
This report looks at crucial elements of reforms to growth-friendly recurrent taxes on immovable property. Tax design practices in place in OECD and partner countries are compared and analysed ...through the lenses of economic theory and empirical analysis.
The fact that Snow did not sneak into “red China" to gather information constituting the basis of his Red Start over China all alone is in many instances misunderstood even by scholars.Mao Zedong’s ...biography has been the subject of an international mountain of commentary in China and elsewhere. Biographies praising Mao and those slandering him are all based on the American journalist Edgar Snow’s (1905–1972) account in Red Star over China for the route Mao traveled from early childhood through his youth.How the “Red Star" Rose introduces the image of Mao and the biographical information made known to the world through the publication of Red Star, and with its publication the circumstances which they fundamentally undermined. Ishikawa Yoshihiro uses Mao Zedong as raw material to examine from whence and how ordinary historical information and images which we habitually use unconsciously come into being. He desires to help readers to reconsider the historicity of the generation of not only Mao’s image but of that of “historical materials."---With a title that evokes Gao Hua’s seminal study of Mao Zedong’s rise in the Chinese Communist Party, Ishikawa Yoshihiro asks two critical questions—What did the world know of Mao before the publication of Edgar Snow’s Red Star over China? How did Red Star change that understanding? With the meticulous research, careful documentation, and fair-minded judgment that characterizes all of Ishikawa’s work, he shows how little even Moscow and the Communist International knew about Mao before 1936. This study is full of unexpected insights into the origins of early visual images of Mao, the background to Snow’s historic trip to northern Shaanxi, and the evolution of the classic study that he left. In a world where balanced judgment of the rise of Mao is increasingly difficult to find, Ishikawa’s scholarship stands out as a rare model of judicious balance.—Joseph W. Esherick, Emeritus Professor, Hwei-chih and Julia Hsiu Chair in Chinese Studies, University of California, San DiegoThis book is, first, an exquisite excavation on the enabling infrastructures in the writing and publishing of one of the most iconic works in journalistic interviews in the 20th century, a text that broke through a wall of intelligence blockade to give to the world, in an autobiographical voice and with a striking image, the debut of the revolutionary Mao while holed up in a mountain base area. It is, in addition, a history of the reading of the book in multiple languages including Chinese that is indexed to the rise of the Mao cult thereafter. Ishikawa captures a moment of a past gearing up in anticipation of a future that never came. This book is a must-read for all with an interest in Mao, journalism, and the history of books.—Wen-hsin Yeh, Richard H. and Laurie C. Morrison Chair Professor in History, University of California, BerkeleyIshikawa offers a challenging reflection on how historical information and images that we take for granted come into being through the twin case studies of images of Mao Zedong before Edgar Snow’s famous biography in 1936 and then how Snow’s images of Mao were translated, and transmuted, into Chinese, Russian and Japanese. Joshua Fogel’s careful translation brings this impeccable example of Japanese sinology to the English reading public. —Timothy Cheek, Professor and Louis Cha Chair in Chinese Research, University of British Columbia
