Search

Begin New Search Political Geography China Publication Year within 25 Years

5161. China's New Leadership: Paradoxes, Characteristics and Implications

Author:
Cheng Li
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
In his seven-decade-long academic career, the great British historian, Joseph Needham, tried to explain what Sinologists later called “the Needham Paradox.” It was a paradox that, while traditional China had many talented people and was advanced in science, the country declined during the middle part of the last millennium. According to Needham, a primary reason for the decline of China was that the country “lost its edge” by suppressing technicians and merchants “whose power posed a threat to the Emperor.”
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
China, Israel, East Asia, and Asia

5162. The Prospects for Political Reform in China: Religious and Political Expression

Author:
Richard Madsen
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
Religion is flourishing in China today. After being severely restricted in the first decade and a half of the Maoist era, virtually all forms of public religious practice were suppressed during the Cultural Revolution and replaced by a quasi-religious cult of Mao, complete with sacred texts (the Little Red Book), rituals, and claims of miracles. But the Mao cult imploded amid the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. After the death of Mao and the overthrow of his close associates, the Deng Xiaoping regime relaxed restrictions on religious practice; and the freedoms of an expanding market economy made the remaining restrictions easy to subvert. In this environment, hundreds of religious flowers began to bloom, some of them replications of pre-revolutionary religious forms, many others new mutations of the old. According to the government's own—almost certainly underestimated—figures, there are over 100 million religious believers in China today. The real number is probably several times as large.
Topic:
Politics and Religion
Political Geography:
China, Israel, East Asia, and Asia

5163. Taiwan in U.S.-China Relations

Author:
Shelley Rigger
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
It is hardly a revelation that U.S. relations with Taiwan and the People's Republic of China are vexed and vexing. Managing U.S. relationships with Taiwan and China has never been easy, but the trend seems to be toward ever greater complexity and ever higher stakes. The U.S. is like a helicopter pilot carrying out a rescue at sea. The pilot is struggling to hover above the boat, which is drifting and heaving, while the wind does its best to blow his craft out of the sky. Meanwhile, the passengers on the deck are fighting over who gets to go up first. Like the helicopter pilot, U.S. policy makers must hold a steady course while they wait for Taiwan and China to resolve their differences. They also would like to do what they can to speed up the negotiations down on the deck.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States, China, Israel, Taiwan, East Asia, and Asia

5164. Taiwan's Approach to Cross-Strait Relations

Author:
Ying-jeou Ma
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
Civil war broke out between the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) Government of China and the Chinese Communist forces shortly after Japan surrendered to the Allied forces in 1945. Having occupied most of the country by mid-1949, the Chinese Communists proclaimed in Beijing the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on October 1, 1949. The Nationalist Government retreated to Taiwan, an island of 13,969 square miles just 90 miles off the coast of the Chinese Mainland, in December that year and continued to call itself the Republic of China (ROC). Sporadic battles continued in coastal areas of the Chinese Mainland.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Government
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Israel, Taiwan, Beijing, East Asia, Asia, and Island

5165. The Chinese Economy: WTO, Trade, and U.S.-China Relations

Author:
Barry Naughton
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
The Chinese economy is showing extraordinary dynamism, which partly reflects the early impact of the commitments in China's WTO accession agreement to liberalize the economy. Incoming foreign investment has increased, and trade has grown rapidly. At the same time, China is grappling with serious economic problems that may worsen in the near future. The most difficult problem in crafting China policy is deciding how to respond flexibly to this extraordinary mixture of dynamism and fragility. Rapid growth gives the Chinese economy remarkable resilience; but deep-seated institutional weakness and stubborn problems of poverty and unemployment create dangers of social and economic disruption. An effective U.S. China policy must navigate between the extremes of over-estimating China's current economic strength and under-estimating her potential.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

5166. Chinese Military Power

Author:
Harold Brown, Adam Segal, and Joseph W. Prueher
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The People's Republic of China (PRC) is currently engaged in comprehensive military modernization. This report addresses the state of China's military capability, assesses the current capabilities of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and establishes milestones for judging the future evolution of Chinese military power over the next twenty years. These assessments and milestones will provide policymakers and the public with a pragmatic and nonpartisan approach to measuring the development of Chinese military power. They will allow observers of Chinese military modernization to determine the degree to which changes in the quantity and quality of China's military power may threaten the interests of the United States, its allies, and its friends; and how the United States should adjust and respond politically, diplomatically, economically, and militarily to China's military development.
Topic:
Defense Policy
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

5167. CERI: Developing Border Cooperation between China and Russia

Author:
Sébastien Colin
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI)
Abstract:
Since the resumption of talks between China and Russia – still the Soviet Union when this occurred in the mid-1980s, relations between the two countries have been particularly dynamic. On the international level, the two countries in fact share the same viewpoint on a number of issues. These mutual concerns led to the signing of a strategic partnership in 1997, then a new treaty of friendship in 2001. The complementarity between the two countries in the energy and arms sectors also stimulates cooperation. However, this alliance is not without its limits. The United States, its primary target, can easily short-circuit it, as it did just after the September 11, 2001 attacks. In the field of cooperation, the intensity and structure of trade between the two countries are both inadequate. The rise in trade during the 1990s was very uneven and marked by a drop between 1994 and 1996. The main causes of this are situated at the local echelon along the Chinese-Russian border. After the dynamism characteristic of the 1988-1993 period, the opening of the border triggered new problems, such as illegal Chinese immigration in the little-inhabited border zones of Russia. Although this trend caused friction among the local Russian population, it was mainly the retrocession of certain Russian territories to China when the border was demarcated between 1993 and 1997 that radicalized the inhabitants, paralyzing border cooperation. The Russian and Chinese government played an active role in attempting to resolve most of these disputes, as the Tumen program illustrated. Since then, the various authorities in the two countries have tried to revitalize border cooperation, but a number of problems remain that are mainly economic in nature and vary depending on the border region.
Topic:
Development and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Europe, and Asia

5168. In Search of 'Suitable Positions' in the Asia Pacific: Negotiating the U.S. China Relationship and Regional Security

Author:
Evelyn Goh
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
This paper argues that the crucial determinant of Asia-Pacific security is whether the US and China can negotiate their relationship and their relative positions and roles in such a way as to produce sustainable regional stability. It examines three alternative models to assess some of the possible processes and outcomes in negotiating Sino-American coexistence. (I) Power transition, in which there is a significant structural shift in the regional system as a rising China challenges US dominance, with a range of possible outcomes; (II) The maintenance of the status quo of US strategic dominance over the region, which China does not challenge concentrating instead on inernal consolidation and on developing its economic power; and (III) Negotiated change, by which the two powers coordinate to manage a more fundamental structural transformation, either through froming a concert (duet) of power, or by moving towards a regional security community. The paper suggests that Model II is likely for the short-to medium-term; Model III for the medium term; and Model I for the long term.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United States, China, Israel, and Asia

5169. The Correlates of Nationalism In Beijing Public Opinion

Author:
Alastair Iain Johnston
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
In the past public opinion has never really been an important issue in Chinese foreign policy studies for obvious reasons. China, after all, is not a country where voters can recall poorly performing political leaders. Foreign policy is still one of the most sensitive public policy issues where unapproved or sharp public dissent and criticism can be politically risky. And the Chinese political system is still a dictatorship.
Topic:
International Relations and Nationalism
Political Geography:
China and Beijing

5170. Asian Oil Market Outlook: Role of the Key Players

Author:
Jeffrey Brown and Kang Wu
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The Asia Pacific region's dynamic oil market is marked by strong growth in consumption, declining regional oil production, and over capacity in its highly competitive oil-refining sector. Its "key players" are China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea—a group that includes the region's five top consumers and three of its major producers—and developments in these countries will have commercial and strategic implications for the whole region. On the consumption side, Japan's slow growth in demand has failed to dampen regional growth, which is now driven by China and India's fast growing thirst for oil. On the supply side, Indonesia's inevitable transition to a net oil importer highlights the trend toward growing dependence on Middle East oil, which already comprises 42–90 percent of imports among the key players. In response to this trend, China, Japan, and South Korea are pushing to acquire overseas oil reserves, with Japan and China already locked in a fierce competition for projected Russian supplies—a type of struggle that will likely become more commonplace.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Indonesia, Middle East, India, Asia, and South Korea