China's Past, China's Future


Book Description

China has a population of 1.3 billion people which puts enormous strain on her natural resources. This volume, by one of the leading scholars on the earth's biosphere, provides the fullest account yet of the environmental challenges that China faces.




China


Book Description

China: Adapting the Past, Confronting the Future combines original essays by leading experts with excerpts from primary sources, the latest scholarship, Chinese literature, and Western media reports to provide a comprehensive textbook on contemporary China. Completely updated, China: Adapting the Past, Confronting the Future is the latest in a series of classroom units on China from the Center of Chinese Studies at The University of Michigan. It is not only ideal for courses on contemporary China but also an excellent supplement for courses in area studies, international affairs and economics, and women's studies. Each section, in addition to essay and excerpts, also includes a bibliography of additional topical works as well as suggestions for complementary video and internet teaching resources.




China's Future


Book Description

China's future is arguably the most consequential question in global affairs. Having enjoyed unprecedented levels of growth, China is at a critical juncture in the development of its economy, society, polity, national security, and international relations. The direction the nation takes at this turning point will determine whether it stalls or continues to develop and prosper. Will China be successful in implementing a new wave of transformational reforms that could last decades and make it the world's leading superpower? Or will its leaders shy away from the drastic changes required because the regime's power is at risk? If so, will that lead to prolonged stagnation or even regime collapse? Might China move down a more liberal or even democratic path? Or will China instead emerge as a hard, authoritarian and aggressive superstate? In this new book, David Shambaugh argues that these potential pathways are all possibilities - but they depend on key decisions yet to be made by China's leaders, different pressures from within Chinese society, as well as actions taken by other nations. Assessing these scenarios and their implications, he offers a thoughtful and clear study of China's future for all those seeking to understand the country's likely trajectory over the coming decade and beyond.




A Confucian Constitutional Order


Book Description

English translation of materials from a workshop on Confucian constitutionalism in May 2010 at the City University of Hong Kong.




The Future of China's Past


Book Description

The Future of China's Past examines how China's traditional culture is being reinvented and manipulated for political purposes. Like no time before in its recent history, and certainly at no time in the history of the People's Republic, China is being shaped in terms of its past, but which past—Confucianism, Legalism, Daoism, Buddhism—or combination of pasts is being held up as the model? Given its growing economic, political, and cultural significance, it is incumbent upon us to take China's rise seriously, yet perspectives involving modern and contemporary geopolitical and intrastate dynamics are insufficient, on their own, for understanding China's rise, and the same holds true for economic analyses, however pertinent. Instead, this book looks at current engagements with models of China's past, introducing the four traditional lenses of Chinese thought and reflecting on their potential relevance for China's—and the world's—future.




Falun Gong and the Future of China


Book Description

In 1999, 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered outside Zhongnanhai, the guarded compound where China's highest leaders live and work, in a day-long peaceful protest of police brutality against fellow practitioners in the neighboring city of Tianjin. This book explains what Falun Gong is and where it came from.




Tales of Futures Past


Book Description

Most studies of Chinese literature conflate the category of the future with notions of progress and nation building, and with the utopian visions broadcast by the Maoist and post-Mao developmental state. The future is thus understood as a preconceived endpoint that is propagated, at times even imposed, by a center of power. By contrast, Tales of Futures Past introduces "anticipation"—the expectations that permeate life as it unfolds—as a lens through which to reexamine the textual, institutional, and experiential aspects of Chinese literary culture from the 1950s to 2011. In doing so, Paola Iovene connects the emergence of new literary genres with changing visions of the future in contemporary China. This book provides a nuanced and dynamic account of the relationship between state discourses, market pressures, and individual writers and texts. It stresses authors' and editors' efforts to redefine what constitutes literature under changing political and economic circumstances. Engaging with questions of translation, temporality, formation of genres, and stylistic change, Iovene mines Chinese science fiction and popular science, puts forward a new interpretation of familiar Chinese avant-garde fiction, and offers close readings of texts that have not yet received any attention in English-language scholarship. Far-ranging in its chronological scope and impressive in its interdisciplinary approach, this book rethinks the legacies of socialism in postsocialist Chinese literary modernity.




Interpreting China's Grand Strategy


Book Description

China's continuing rapid economic growth and expanding involvement in global affairs pose major implications for the power structure of the international system. To more accurately and fully assess the significance of China's emergence for the United States and the global community, it is necessary to gain a more complete understanding of Chinese security thought and behavior. This study addresses such questions as: What are China's most fundamental national security objectives? How has the Chinese state employed force and diplomacy in the pursuit of these objectives over the centuries? What security strategy does China pursue today and how will it evolve in the future? The study asserts that Chinese history, the behavior of earlier rising powers, and the basic structure and logic of international power relations all suggest that, although a strong China will likely become more assertive globally, this possibility is unlikely to emerge before 2015-2020 at the earliest. To handle this situation, the study argues that the United States should adopt a policy of realistic engagement with China that combines efforts to pursue cooperation whenever possible; to prevent, if necessary, the acquisition by China of capabilities that would threaten America's core national security interests; and to remain prepared to cope with the consequences of a more assertive China.




The Future of China-Russia Relations


Book Description

Relations between China and Russia have evolved dramatically since their first diplomatic contact, particularly during the twentieth century. During the past decade China and Russia have made efforts to strengthen bilateral ties and improve cooperation on a number of diplomatic fronts. The People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation maintain exceptionally close and friendly relations, strong geopolitical and regional cooperation, and significant levels of trade. In The Future of China-Russia Relations, scholars from around the world explore the current state of the relationship between the two powers and assess the prospects for future cooperation and possible tensions in the new century. The contributors examine Russian and Chinese perspectives on a wide range of issues, including security, political relationships, economic interactions, and defense ties. This collection explores the energy courtship between the two nations and analyzes their interests and policies regarding Central Asia, the Korean Peninsula, and Taiwan.




The Coming Collapse of China


Book Description

China is hot. The world sees a glorious future for this sleeping giant, three times larger than the United States, predicting it will blossom into the world's biggest economy by 2010. According to Chang, however, a Chinese-American lawyer and China specialist, the People's Republic is a paper dragon. Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao's death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society. Beijing's cautious reforms have left the country stuck midway between communism and capitalism, Chang writes. With its impending World Trade Organization membership, for the first time China will be forced to open itself to foreign competition, which will shake the country to its foundations. Economic failure will be followed by government collapse. Covering subjects from party politics to the Falun Gong to the government's insupportable position on Taiwan, Chang presents a thorough and very chilling overview of China's present and not-so-distant future.




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