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When in 1989 Chinese astrophysicist Fang Lizhi sought asylum for months in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, later escaping to the West, worldwide attention focused on the plight of liberal intellectuals in China. In Science and Dissent in Post-Mao China H. Lyman Miller examines the scientific community in China and prominent members such as Fang and physicist and historian of science Xu Liangying. Drawing on Chinese academic journals, newspapers, interviews, and correspondence with Chinese scientists, he considers the evolution of China's science policy and its impact on China's scientific community. He illuminates the professional and humanistic values that impelled scientific intellectuals on their course toward open, liberal political dissent. It is ironic that scientific dissidence in China arose in opposition to a regime supportive of and initially supported by scientists. In the late 1970s scientists were called upon to help implement reforms orchestrated by Deng Xiaoping's regime, which attached a high priority to science and technology. The regime worked to rebuild China's civilian science community and sought to enhance the standing of scientists while at the same time it continued to oppose political pluralism and suppress dissidence. The political philosophy of revolutionary China has taught generations of scientists that explanation of the entire natural world, from subatomic particles to galaxies, falls under the jurisdiction of ?natural dialectics,? a branch of Marxism-Leninism. Escalating debates in the 1980s questioned the relationship of Marxism to science and led some to positions of open political dissent. At issue were the autonomy of China's scientific community and the conduct of science, as well as the validity and jurisdiction of Marxist-Leninist philosophy'and hence the fundamental legitimacy of the political system itself. Miller concludes that the emergence of a renewed liberal voice in China in the 1980s was in significant part an extension into politics of what some scientists believed to be the norms of healthy science; scientific dissidence was an unintended but natural consequence of the Deng regime's reforms. This thoughtful study of science as a powerful belief system and as a source of political and social values in contemporary China will appeal to a diverse audience, including readers interested in Chinese politics and society, comparative politics, communist regimes, the political sociology of science, and the history of ideas.
In recent decades, China has become a quasi-capitalist economic powerhouse. Yet it continues to be ruled by the same Communist Party-dominated government that has been in power since 1949. But how has China’s political system achieved such longevity? And what does its stability tell us about the future of authoritarian versus liberal democratic governance? In this detailed analysis of the deeply intertwined relationship between the ruling Communist Party and governing state, noted China expert Teresa Wright provides insightful answers to these important questions. Though many believe that the Chinese party-state has maintained its power despite its communist and authoritarian features, Wright argues that the key to its sustained success lies in its careful safeguarding of some key communist and authoritarian characteristics, while simultaneously becoming more open and responsive to public participation. She contends that China’s post-Mao party-state compares well to different forms of political rule, including liberal democratic government. It has fulfilled the necessary functions of a stable governing regime: satisfying key demographic groups and responding to public grievances; maintaining economic stability and growth; and delivering public services - without any real reduction in CCP power and influence. Questioning current understandings of the nature, strengths, and weaknesses of democracy and authoritarianism, this thought-provoking book will be essential reading for all students and scholars of Chinese politics and international relations.
"Today’s intellectuals in China inherit a mixed tradition in terms of their relationship to the state. Some follow the Confucian literati watchdog role of criticizing abuses of political power. Marxist intellectuals judge the state’s practices on the basis of Communist ideals. Others prefer the May Fourth spirit, dedicated to the principles of free scholarly and artistic expression. The Chinese government, for its part, has undulated in its treatment of intellectuals, applying restraints when free expression threatened to get “out of control,” relaxing controls when state policies required the cooperation, good will, and expertise of intellectuals. In this stimulating work, twelve China scholars examine that troubled and changing relationship. They focus primarily on the post-Mao years when bitter memories of the Cultural Revolution and China’s renewed quest for modernization have at times allowed intellectuals increased leeway in expression and more influence in policy-making. Specialists examine the situation with respect to economists, lawyers, scientists and technocrats, writers, and humanist scholars in the climate of Deng Xiaoping’s policies, and speculate about future developments. This book will be a valuable source of information for anyone interested in the changing scene in contemporary China and in its relations with the outside world."
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China over 70 years ago, five paramount leaders have shaped the fates and fortunes of the nation and the ruling Chinese Communist Party: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. Under their leaderships, China has undergone an extraordinary transformation from an undeveloped and insular country to a comprehensive world power. In this definitive study, renowned Sinologist David Shambaugh offers a refreshing account of China’s dramatic post-revolutionary history through the prism of those who ruled it. Exploring the persona, formative socialization, psychology, and professional experiences of each leader, Shambaugh shows how their differing leadership styles and tactics of rule shaped China domestically and internationally: Mao was a populist tyrant, Deng a pragmatic Leninist, Jiang a bureaucratic politician, Hu a technocratic apparatchik, and Xi a modern emperor. Covering the full scope of these leaders’ personalities and power, this is an illuminating guide to China’s modern history and understanding how China has become the superpower of today.
Raised to be "flowers of the nation," the first generation born after the founding of the People's Republic of China was united in its political outlook and at first embraced the Cultural Revolution of 1966, but then split into warring factions. Investigating the causes of this fracture, Guobin Yang argues that Chinese youth engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 to 1968, enacting a political mythology that encouraged violence as a way to prove one's revolutionary credentials. This same competitive dynamic would later turn the Red Guard against the communist government. Throughout the 1970s, the majority of Red Guard youth were sent to work in rural villages, where they developed an appreciation for the values of ordinary life. From this experience, an underground cultural movement was born. Rejecting idolatry, these relocated revolutionaries developed a new form of resistance that signaled a new era of enlightenment, culminating in the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang's final chapter on the politics of history and memory argues that contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along these lines of political division, formed fifty years before.
China's bold program of reforms launched in the late 1970s--the move to a market economy and the opening to the outside world--ended the political chaos and economic stagnation of the Cultural Revolution and sparked China's unprecedented economic boom. Yet, while the reforms made possible a rising standard of living for the majority of China's population, they came at the cost of a weakening central government, increasing inequalities, and fragmenting society. The essays of Barry Naughton, Joseph Fewsmith, Paul H. B. Godwin, Murray Scot Tanner, Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O'Brien, Tianjian Shi, Martin King Whyte, Thomas P. Bernstein, Dorothy J. Solinger, David S. G. Goodman, Kristen Parris, Merle Goldman, Elizabeth J. Perry, and Richard Baum and Alexei Shevchenko analyze the contradictory impact of China's economic reforms on its political system and social structure. They explore the changing patterns of the relationship between state and society that may have more profound significance for China than all the revolutionary movements that have convulsed it through most of the twentieth century.
This is the first extensive study in English or Chinese of China’s reception of the celebrated physicist and his theory of relativity. In a series of biographical studies of Chinese physicists, Hu describes the Chinese assimilation of relativity and explains how Chinese physicists offered arguments and theories of their own.
This book traces and analyzes the transformation of the public discourse of science and technology in Mao-era China. Based on extensive primary sources such as science dissemination materials and technical handbooks, as well as mass media products of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution periods, this book delineates the emergence of a pragmatic approach to knowledge in society. To achieve the goal of fast modernization with limited financial, human, and material resources, the party-state accommodated Western and local, "modern" and "traditional" knowledges in the fields of agricultural mechanization, steel production and Chinese veterinary medicine. The case studies demonstrate that scientific knowledge production in the Mao-era included various social groups and was entangled with political and cultural issues. This reveals and explains the continuity of scientific thinking across the historical divides of 1949 and 1978, which has hitherto been underestimated.
This socio-political analysis of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) sheds new light on the link between China’s educational reforms and the ideological control exerted by the Party-state. It explores the dynamics of the ways in which the academic community has carved out and utilised the spaces between the academic and Party leadership and the free will of the individual. By differentiating between various forms of power, the author shows how knowledge produced at CASS is influenced not only as a direct result of top-down decisions-making but also unintentionally through organizational networks that interlock both leaders and led in the institutions they helped shape. Administrative tools and symbolic representation in official ceremony are shown to be indispensable for an adequate understanding of the generation of knowledge at CASS. With financial support of the International Institute for Asian Studies (www.iias.nl).
The Science and Technology policy changes in post-Mao China cannot be complete without a historical narrative and analysis of Science and Technology in its pre-policy (prior to 1850) and policy (since 1850 when the Qing rulers began to promote Science and Technology ) periods. This book is an imperative to revisit and interrogate the nature and scope of Chinese Science and Technology policy and progress. The text is divided into three parts. The first part considers both the macro and micro issues pertaining to Science and Technology policy in general and also of the policiy in particular. The second part highlights the historical narrative of Chinese Science and Technology policy as it has a key role in the evolution of contemporary Science and Technology architecture. The third part discusses three focal components of the Chinese Science and Technology system each representing state, society and international systems - the organizational structure representing the state; the research system representing society; and technology acquisition representing the international system with serious implications for China.