An emerging star in the field of US-China policy pairs leading scholars from both the US and China in dialogues about the most crucial elements of the relationship.

An emerging star in the field of US-China policy pairs leading scholars from both the US and China in dialogues about the most crucial elements of the relationship.

Drawing on little-known sources, Marina Svensson argues that the concept of human rights was invoked by the Chinese people well before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and it has continued to have strong appeal after 1949, both in Taiwan and on the mainland. These largely forgotten debates provide important perspectives on and contrasts to the official PRC line. The author gives particular attention to the issues of power and agency in describing the widely divergent views of official spokespersons, establishment intellectuals and dissidents. Until recently the PRC dismissed human rights as a bourgeois slogan, yet the globalization of human rights and the growing importance of the issue in bilateral and multilateral relations has grown. Thus, the regime has been forced to embrace, or rather appropriate, the language of human rights, an appropriation that continues to be vigorously challenged by dissidents at home and abroad.

Chinese rulers and statesmen were naturally concerned about the issue of war, when to wage it, when it was justified, and when to avoid it. Although much has been asserted about how these issues were understood in Chinese culture, this work is the first study actually to focus on the debates themselves. These debates at court proceeded from specific understandings of what constituted evidence, and involved the practical concerns of policy as well as more general cultural values. The result is a decidedly messy portrait of Chinese decision making over two millenia that is neither distinctly Chinese nor entirely generic. Contributors are Parks Coble, Garret Olberding, David Pong, Kenneth Swope, Paul Van Els, David Wright, and Shu-Hui Wu.

What do China’s scholars make of the nature of China’s global rise? And what is the significance of academic debates for Chinese policy goals and preferences? In this book, leading Chinese specialists outline how their colleagues are studying and interpreting different dimensions of China’s evolving global role, opening these Chinese language debates to a new audience. Collectively they show that while some ideas and ways of thinking are more prominent than others, there is no homogeneity of scholarship and no single conception of what China thinks and wants. Not only has the range of issue areas under discussion actually increased as China’s global role and impact has changed, but there also remains considerable diversity when it comes to thinking on what China can, might, and should try to do as a global power, and how China’s global role should be studied and theorized. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, The Pacific Review.

Explains why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and shows his Machiavellian role in masterminding it. This book documents the Hobbesian state that ensued. Power struggles raged among Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Qing - Mao's wife and leader of the Gang of Four - while Mao often played one against the other.