A pioneering examination of history, current affairs, and daily life along the RussiaÐChina border, one of the worldÕs least understood and most politically charged frontiers. The border between Russia and China winds for 2,600 miles through rivers, swamps, and vast taiga forests. ItÕs a thin line of direct engagement, extraordinary contrasts, frequent tension, and occasional war between two of the worldÕs political giants. Franck BillŽ and Caroline Humphrey have spent years traveling through and studying this important yet forgotten region. Drawing on pioneering fieldwork, they introduce readers to the lifeways, politics, and history of one of the worldÕs most consequential and enigmatic borderlands. It is telling that, along a border consisting mainly of rivers, there is not a single operating passenger bridge. Two different worlds have emerged. On the Russian side, in territory seized from China in the nineteenth century, defense is prioritized over the economy, leaving dilapidated villages slumbering amid the forests. For its part, the Chinese side is heavily settled and increasingly prosperous and dynamic. Moscow worries about the imbalance, and both governments discourage citizens from interacting. But as BillŽ and Humphrey show, cross-border connection is a fact of life, whatever distant authorities say. There are marriages, friendships, and sexual encounters. There are joint businesses and underground deals, including no shortage of smuggling. Meanwhile some indigenous peoples, persecuted on both sides, seek to ÒreviveÓ their own alternative social groupings that span the border. And Chinese towns make much of their proximity to ÒEurope,Ó building giant Russian dolls and replicas of St. BasilÕs Cathedral to woo tourists. Surprising and rigorously researched, On the Edge testifies to the rich diversity of an extraordinary world haunted by history and divided by remote political decisions but connected by the ordinary imperatives of daily life.

Far from the glittering cities of Beijing and Shanghai, China's borderlands are populated by around one hundred million people who are not Han Chinese. For many of these restive minorities, the old Chinese adage 'the mountains are high and the Emperor far away', meaning Beijing's grip on power is tenuous and its influence unwelcome, continues to resonate. Travelling through China's most distant and unknown reaches, David Eimer explores the increasingly tense relationship between the Han Chinese and the ethnic minorities. Deconstructing the myths represented by Beijing, Eimer reveals a shocking and fascinating picture of a China that is more of an empire than a country.

Reveals the historical impact of dream rhetoric on Chinese modernity and nation-building Realism and the rhetoric of dreams intersected in modern Chinese literature from the May Fourth Era in the early twentieth century through the period just following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. The Edge of Knowing investigates this relationship, showing how writers’ attention to dreams demonstrates the multiple influences of Western psychology, utopian desire for revolutionary change, and the enduring legacy of traditional Chinese philosophy. At the same time, modern Chinese writers used their work to represent social reality for the purpose of nation building. Recent political usage of dream rhetoric in the People’s Republic of China attests to the continuing influence of dreams on the imagination of Chinese modernity. By employing a number of critical perspectives, The Edge of Knowing will appeal to readers seeking to understand the complicated relationship between literary form and Chinese history and politics.

A timely study of Hong Kong's politics and society since the 1997 handover that explores the city's long history of resistance.

Addresses issues surrounding China's science and technology talent pool, and suggests significant policy implications for China and the international community.

This important study explores the multifaceted Mongol experience in China, past and present. Combining insights from anthropology, history, and postcolonial criticism, Uradyn Bulag avoids romanticizing Mongols either as pacified primitive Other or as gallant resistance fighters. Rather, he portrays them as a people whose communist background and standing in China's northern borderlands has informed their political efforts to harness or confront Chinese nationalistic and political hegemony. Breaking new ground in the study of Chinese and Mongol history and ethnicity, the author offers a fresh interpretation of China viewed from the perspective of its peripheries, and of minority nationalities in relation to the study of Chinese representation and minority self-representation. The author interrogates received wisdom about Chinese and minority nationalism by unraveling the Chinese discourse and practice of 'national unity.' He shows how the discourse was constructed over time through political rituals and sexuality in relation to Mongols and other non-Chinese peoples that hark back to Chinese-Xiongnu confrontations two millennia ago and Manchu conquest in the 17th and 18th centuries. Titular rulers of an autonomous region in which they constitute a minority, Mongols face enormous barriers in building and maintaining a socialist Mongolian nationality and a Mongolian language and culture. Acknowledging these difficulties, Bulag discusses a range of sensitive issues including the imbrication of nation, class, and ethnicity in the context of Mongol-Chinese relations, tensions inherent in writing a postrevolutionary history for a socialist nationality, and the moral dilemma of building a socialist model with Mongol characteristics. Charting the interface between a state-centered multinational Chinese polity and a primordial nationalist multiculturalism that aims to manage minority nationalities as 'cultures,' he explores Mongol ethnopolitical strategies to preserve their heritage.