In 2008, as few in the world are unaware, China was host to the world via the Beijing Olympics. The world watched the metamorphosis of Beijing from insecure capital to confident metropolis but, aware of it or not, the world was also watching the symbolic assertion, via the Games, of a rising superpower. The Pacific Rim will be the stage on which China initially displays its new hegemonic intentions, aspirations and ambitions. Thus in Post-Beijing 2008, the political, economic and cultural impact of Beijing 2008 on the geopolitical future of the Pacific Rim will be discussed. This perspective, analysed by some of the most distinguished academic commentators from some of the world's leading universities who are closely associated with the Pacific Rim (East and West), is original in focus and the analysis is pregnant with political possibilities. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

In 2008, as few in the world are unaware, China was host to the world via the Beijing Olympics. The world watched the metamorphosis of Beijing from insecure capital to confident metropolis but, aware of it or not, the world was also watching the symbolic assertion, via the Games, of a rising superpower. The Pacific Rim will be the stage on which China initially displays its new hegemonic intentions, aspirations and ambitions. Thus in Post-Beijing 2008, the political, economic and cultural impact of Beijing 2008 on the geopolitical future of the Pacific Rim will be discussed. This perspective, analysed by some of the most distinguished academic commentators from some of the world's leading universities who are closely associated with the Pacific Rim (East and West), is original in focus and the analysis is pregnant with political possibilities. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

This tribute to Professor J. A. (Tony) Mangan is well-deserved. Professor Mangan is a path-breaking scholar. Mangan's impact is measurable in the rarest of ways: institution-building. Under his leadership, a globally situated team has opened a new relationship between sport and the academy and I recommend Manufacturing Masculinity: The Mangan Oeuvre -- Global Reflections on J.A. Mangan's Studies of Masculinity, Imperialism and Militarism as, yet again, it offers a unique consideration of the relationship between sport and academy. Professor John D. Kelly - University of Chicago Professor Mangan has since the early 1980s been one of the foremost international scholars within his chosen field of cultural history. Over this period he has possibly more convincingly than any other international academic shown in his research how much sport and associated forms of competitive performance have not only reflected and reproduced but indeed sometimes also reformed and redirected fundamental political, cultural and social structures and ideological transformative forces in modern civilisation. Professor Henrik Meinander - University of Helsinki Professor Mangan is widely and greatly respected in China as a scholar of international distinction... he has made both direct and indirect contributions to Chinese scholarship especially regarding Chinese women and their long struggle for emancipation... Finally, and I cannot stress this point too strongly, a most important contribution ... has been his crystal clear and nuanced writing style much appreciated by... Chinese who wish to write for the international scholastic world. Professor Dong Jinxia - Peking University No one has had a more influential role in, or made a greater contribution to the cultural history of modern sport than Professor J.A. Mangan. With his visionary, pioneering monographs and many seminal edited collections and as founding editor of the series Sport in the Global Society with its numerous volumes and most especially as founding editor and editor of The International Journal of the History of Sport for some thirty years -- which he took from the original three numbers a year to eighteen numbers a year, his contribution has been unparalleled. Professor Roberta J. Park - University of California, Berkeley

Soft Power Politics- Past and Present: Football and Baseball on the Western Pacific Rim illustrates the momentous expanse and moment of sport in the Asia Pacific region and through these essays dealing with two of the most prodigious global team sports confronts various cultural clashes that Samuel Huntington would ensure the end of civilisation. They also demonstrate the power sport has to change the world and to inspire and unite people globally. All who sail under the flag ofSport as ingenuous as it may seem to the host of cynics that abounds, believe that dialogues that emerge from arguments included in this text represent communication of the highest order and have the potential to produce the cohesion that can close some of those cracks that Huntington said would open up along, what he called the fault lines between civilisations.This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

The premise of The Asian Games: Modern Metaphor forThe Middle Kingdom Reborn - Political Statement, Cultural Assertion, Social Symbol is emphatic. The Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games was a metaphor for hegemony and renaissance. China crushed the other Asian nations with the massive weight of its Gold Medalhaul and demonstrated regional self-confidence regained. The huge accumulation of gold medals emphasized that once again China stood apart, and above, other nations of Asia. China's reaction and the reactions of the other Asian nations are explored in The Asian Games. There is another premise in the publication that theChinese Asian Games were a harbinger of a wider dominance to come: geopolitically, politically, militarily, economically and culturally. And there is a further issue raised by the Guangzhou Asian Games- the continuing determination of the Asian nations to mount a distinctive Games that is Asian and resistant to the cumbersome gigantism of the Modern Olympic Games. Asia now has the wealth to promote, present and project a global sports mega-event with an Asian identity and in an Asian idiom. This Collection is unique in focus, argument and evidence.This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

This seminal book explores the complex relationship between popular geopolitics and nation branding among the Newly Independent States of Eurasia, and their combined role in shaping contemporary national image and statecraft within and beyond the region. It provides critical perspectives on international relations, nationalism, and national identity through the use of innovative approaches focusing on popular culture, new media, public diplomacy, and alternative "narrators" of the nation. By positing popular geopolitics and nation branding as contentious forces and complementary flows, the study explores the tensions and elisions between national self-image and external perceptions of the nation, and how this complex interplay has become integral to contemporary global affairs.