Search

Begin New Search Political Geography China

2901. Politics and Property in Transitional Economies: A Theory of Elite Opportunity

Author:
Andrew G. Walder
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Command economies gave communist-era elites administrative control and material privilege but severely restricted money income and private wealth. Markets and privatization inject new value into public assets and create unprecedented opportunities for elite insiders to extract incomes or assume ownership. These opportunities vary with the extensiveness of regime change and the barriers to asset appropriation. Within these limits, they further vary with the concentration and form of economic assets and structural changes induced by reform. Elite advantages are smallest where regime change is extensive and barriers to asset appropriation are high, and in small-scale economies that grow rapidly. In China, there has been no regime change and privatization has been delayed and slow. In the rural economy, elites keep their posts as a source of economic advantage, while low entry barriers to household enterprise and rapid growth have created new entrepreneurial elites. After two decades, rural officials nonetheless enjoy large net income advantages that grow along with the expansion of labor markets and private entrepreneurship. These are not generic outcomes of market reform, but the product of market reform in distinctive political and structural conditions.
Topic:
Communism, Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2902. 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

2903. 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

2904. 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

2905. 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

2906. 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

2907. 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

2908. Central Asian Leadership Succession: When, Not If

Author:
Eugene B. Rumer
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
The Central Asian political landscape yields few signs of an impending storm in the near term. The absence of threats to the status quo, however, does not mean that it is acceptable or that it represents a stable political equilibrium in the region. Leadership succession in Central Asia bears watching for several reasons: as a precedent-setting process, it will provide the key missing element for the emerging political structures of the Central Asian states the tenure of the next generation will either make up for the shortcomings of its predecessors or aggravate them in the event of the latter, the stage will be set in Central Asia for more radical changes that could reverberate far beyond remote regional boundaries.
Topic:
Security, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2909. Modernizing China's Military: A High-Stakes Gamble?

Author:
Howard M. Krawitz
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
China's accelerated push to modernize the People's Liberation Army (PLA) raises two important questions: What impact will such change have upon the PLA image, status, and role in Chinese society? And how will Chinese military modernization affect the strategic interests and security concerns of the United States and China's neighbors in the region? Making the PLA into a more professional, technologically proficient force would certainly strengthen its capability to perform national defense, regional security, and other externally oriented missions more effectively. But modernization could also significantly change internal PLA demographics, resulting in a drastic alteration of the social contract that has traditionally existed between China's military and civilian society.
Topic:
Security, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
United States and China

2910. Resolving Korea's Nuclear Crisis: Tough Choices for China

Author:
Howard M. Krawitz
Publication Date:
08-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Clearly, Washington and Beijing do not see eye to eye on North Korea. From the U.S. perspective, North Korea is a rogue state (one that is still technically a U.S. enemy, to boot), with an announced intent to develop further its nuclear capability and acquire nuclear weapons—in spite of formal agreements in which Pyongyang promised not to engage in such pursuits. Pyongyang's rhetoric and behavior highlight its willingness to use nuclear blackmail as a tool for achieving its aims. It has heightened tensions by implying that it might export nuclear weapons or fissile material if its needs are not met. Summed up, North Korea poses a tangible, real-time threat to U.S. allies in East Asia and to U.S. national security interests.
Topic:
Security and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
China, Washington, Israel, and North Korea