China today is never out of the news: from human rights controversies and the continued legacy of Tiananmen Square, to global coverage of the Beijing Olympics, and the Chinese 'economic miracle'. It seems a country of contradictions: a peasant society with some of the world's most futuristic cities, heir to an ancient civilization that is still trying to find a modern identity. This Very Short Introduction offers the reader with no previous knowledge of China a variety of ways to understand the world's most populous nation, giving a short, integrated picture of modern Chinese society, culture, economy, politics and art. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This book aims to provide a context-informed, culture-sensitive picture of the reception of human rights in the early period of Chinese modernization. Following the delineation of the role of human rights in the democratic campaign, the anti-patriarchy movement and the cultural-psychological transformation, it inquires the conceptual grounds for the reception of human rights as well as features of the Sinicized understanding of human rights. It presents how the indigenous humanistic resources and the imported Western ideas jointly resulted in the ready acceptance of human rights, which was remarkably underpinned by a prevalent patriotic motivation. Observing the moral connotation in the Chinese interpretation of human rights, it discloses the impact of the traditional ‘ethical’ vision of the individual that subsumed the ‘right’ perspective, which both harbored the inclination of new forms of oppression of individual freedom, and provided a possible paradigm that synthesizes the good of the individual and of society. This constituted an inquiry of the relationship between Confucianism and human rights, which is still a theme of fierce debate in contemporary discussions.

They offer a balanced forum that seeks common ground, providing needed perspective at a time when the Chinese government, after years of denouncing Confucianism as an aritfact of a feudal past, has made an abrupt reversal to endorse it as a belief system compatible with communist ideology.

Rev. ed. of: Zhongguo min quan zhe xue = The philosophy of civil rights in the context of China. 2004.

One of the most interesting questions in China studies today is the effect that the opening up of the country economically will have on the individual rights and freedoms of the population. This volume addresses that issue by considering recent changes in the relations of the state and severalgroups in the populationDSrural peasants, manual workers, the military, the intellectual community, and the youth of China. With distinguished contributors, this coherent and comprehensive volume should become an essential reference work for academics and students.

Available for the first time in English, this is the definitive account of the practice of sexual slavery the Japanese military perpetrated during World War II by the researcher principally responsible for exposing the Japanese government's responsibility for these atrocities. The large scale imprisonment and rape of thousands of women, who were euphemistically called "comfort women" by the Japanese military, first seized public attention in 1991 when three Korean women filed suit in a Toyko District Court stating that they had been forced into sexual servitude and demanding compensation. Since then the comfort stations and their significance have been the subject of ongoing debate and intense activism in Japan, much if it inspired by Yoshimi's investigations. How large a role did the military, and by extension the government, play in setting up and administering these camps? What type of compensation, if any, are the victimized women due? These issues figure prominently in the current Japanese focus on public memory and arguments about the teaching and writing of history and are central to efforts to transform Japanese ways of remembering the war. Yoshimi Yoshiaki provides a wealth of documentation and testimony to prove the existence of some 2,000 centers where as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, Dutch, Australian, and some Japanese women were restrained for months and forced to engage in sexual activity with Japanese military personnel. Many of the women were teenagers, some as young as fourteen. To date, the Japanese government has neither admitted responsibility for creating the comfort station system nor given compensation directly to former comfort women. This English edition updates the Japanese edition originally published in 1995 and includes introductions by both the author and the translator placing the story in context for American readers.