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An emerging star in the field of US-China policy pairs leading scholars from both the US and China in dialogues about the most crucial elements of the relationship.
An emerging star in the field of US-China policy pairs leading scholars from both the US and China in dialogues about the most crucial elements of the relationship.
What do China’s scholars make of the nature of China’s global rise? And what is the significance of academic debates for Chinese policy goals and preferences? In this book, leading Chinese specialists outline how their colleagues are studying and interpreting different dimensions of China’s evolving global role, opening these Chinese language debates to a new audience. Collectively they show that while some ideas and ways of thinking are more prominent than others, there is no homogeneity of scholarship and no single conception of what China thinks and wants. Not only has the range of issue areas under discussion actually increased as China’s global role and impact has changed, but there also remains considerable diversity when it comes to thinking on what China can, might, and should try to do as a global power, and how China’s global role should be studied and theorized. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, The Pacific Review.
Chinese rulers and statesmen were naturally concerned about the issue of war, when to wage it, when it was justified, and when to avoid it. Although much has been asserted about how these issues were understood in Chinese culture, this work is the first study actually to focus on the debates themselves. These debates at court proceeded from specific understandings of what constituted evidence, and involved the practical concerns of policy as well as more general cultural values. The result is a decidedly messy portrait of Chinese decision making over two millenia that is neither distinctly Chinese nor entirely generic. Contributors are Parks Coble, Garret Olberding, David Pong, Kenneth Swope, Paul Van Els, David Wright, and Shu-Hui Wu.
Tracing the concept of human rights in Chinese political discourse since the late Qing dynasty, this comprehensive history convincingly demonstrates that—contrary to conventional wisdom—there has been a vibrant debate on human rights throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on little-known sources, Marina Svensson argues that the concept of human rights was invoked by the Chinese people well before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and that it has continued to have strong appeal after 1949, both in Taiwan and on the mainland. These largely forgotten debates provide important perspectives on and contrasts to the official PRC line. The author gives particular attention to the issues of power and agency in describing the widely divergent views of official spokespersons, establishment intellectuals, and dissidents. Until quite recently the PRC dismissed human rights as a bourgeois slogan. Yet the globalization of human rights and the growing importance of the issue in bilateral and multilateral relations have forced the regime to embrace, or rather appropriate, the language of human rights, an appropriation that continues to be vigorously challenged by dissidents at home and abroad. By exploring the relationship between domestic and international human rights discourses, this study offers new insights not only into the Chinese but also into the Western human rights debate. Students and scholars of China and of human rights will find this work an important tool for understanding one of the great issues of our time.
This book is a critical interpretation of a seminal and protracted debate in comparative global economic history. Since its emergence, in now classic publications in economic history between 1997-2000, debate on the divergent economic development that has marked the long-term economic growth of China and Western Europe has generated a vast collection of books and articles, conferences, networks, and new journals as well as intense interest from the media and educated public. O’Brien provides an historiographical survey and critique of Western views on the long-run economic development of the Imperial Economy of China – a field of commentary that stretches back to the Enlightenment. The book’s structure and core argument is concentrated upon an elaboration of, and critical engagement with, the major themes of recent academic debate on the “Great Divergence” and it will be of enormous interest to academics and students of economic history, political economy, the economics of growth and development, state formation, statistical measurements, environmental history, and the histories of science and globalization.
China held a unique place in European thought during the eighteenth century. Considered a relatively unknown but advanced agrarian and commercial civilization, the Chinese Empire represented the apex of an economic system that was only beginning to be supplanted. Europeans did not assume their superiority and were drawn to study the nature and organization of China’s economy. Analyzing the writings of early modern European travellers, missionaries, merchants, geographers, and philosophers, including Charles de Secondat, Denis Diderot, David Hume, François Quesnay, Abbé Raynal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Voltaire, A Singular Case evaluates the circulation of information about the Chinese political economy that fed European imaginations. Ashley Millar examines perceptions of China’s science, technology, and moral and behavioural foundations, foreign trade policies, and the form and function of China’s government in order to question the extent to which consensus emerged on China’s successes and failures and to assess how knowledge of the Chinese system influenced the Enlightenment Shedding light on contemporary debates on the rise of the west and the Great Divergence from a historical vantage point, A Singular Case offers striking observations on Western views of early modern China.
This comprehensive volume is a three-part study of whether the Chinese political system has maintained a significant degree of regime legitimacy in the context of rising domestic discontent, in particular the popular protests against socio-economic inequality and environment degradation. Part I presents the scholarly debate on the theoretical refinement and empirical measurement of regime legitimacy in contemporary China. Part II focuses on the challenges to regime legitimacy of the increasingly widespread popular protests and civil activism. Part III examines the regime’s responses to these challenges, including coercive repression, adaptation, and economic performance. This book finds that, while repression can hardly stop popular protests – and often backfires – economic performance legitimacy is increasingly difficult to be maintained. The only way out is the adaptation to the changing domestic and international environment. The chapters in this collection were originally published in the Journal of Contemporary China.
The growing disconnect between China's market-oriented economy with its emerging civil society, and the brittle, anacronistic, and authoritarian state has given rise to intense discussion and debate about political reform, not only by Western observers, but also among Chinese intellectuals. While some expect China's political reform to lead to democratization, others have proposed to strengthen the institution of single-party rule and provide it with a solid legal base. This book brings the ongoing debate to life and explores the options for political reform. Offering the perspectives of both Western and Chinese scholars, it presents the controversial argument for building a consultive rule of law regime as an alternative to liberal democracy. It provides several critiques of this thesis, and then tests the thesis through empirical studies on the development of the rule of law in China.