The Art of Political Control in China
Title | The Art of Political Control in China PDF eBook |
Author | Daniel C. Mattingly |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 269 |
Release | 2019-12-05 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1108485936 |
Civil society groups can strengthen an autocratic state's coercive capacity, helping to suppress dissent and implement far-reaching policies.
Rethinking Chinese Politics
Title | Rethinking Chinese Politics PDF eBook |
Author | Joseph Fewsmith |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 231 |
Release | 2021-06-17 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1108831257 |
A comprehensive but accessible examination of how elite Chinese politics work covering the period from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping.
The Art of Being Governed
Title | The Art of Being Governed PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Szonyi |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 323 |
Release | 2019-08-27 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0691197245 |
One of Choice Reviews' Outstanding Academic Titles of 2018--an innovative look at how families in Ming dynasty China negotiated military and political obligations to the state.tate.
Contesting Cyberspace in China
Title | Contesting Cyberspace in China PDF eBook |
Author | Rongbin Han |
Publisher | Columbia University Press |
Pages | 255 |
Release | 2018-04-10 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0231545657 |
The Internet was supposed to be an antidote to authoritarianism. It can enable citizens to express themselves freely and organize outside state control. Yet while online activity has helped challenge authoritarian rule in some cases, other regimes have endured: no movement comparable to the Arab Spring has arisen in China. In Contesting Cyberspace in China, Rongbin Han offers a powerful counterintuitive explanation for the survival of the world’s largest authoritarian regime in the digital age. Han reveals the complex internal dynamics of online expression in China, showing how the state, service providers, and netizens negotiate the limits of discourse. He finds that state censorship has conditioned online expression, yet has failed to bring it under control. However, Han also finds that freer expression may work to the advantage of the regime because its critics are not the only ones empowered: the Internet has proved less threatening than expected due to the multiplicity of beliefs, identities, and values online. State-sponsored and spontaneous pro-government commenters have turned out to be a major presence on the Chinese internet, denigrating dissenters and barraging oppositional voices. Han explores the recruitment, training, and behavior of hired commenters, the “fifty-cent army,” as well as group identity formation among nationalistic Internet posters who see themselves as patriots defending China against online saboteurs. Drawing on a rich set of data collected through interviews, participant observation, and long-term online ethnography, as well as official reports and state directives, Contesting Cyberspace in China interrogates our assumptions about authoritarian resilience and the democratizing power of the Internet.
Popular Protest And Political Culture In Modern China
Title | Popular Protest And Political Culture In Modern China PDF eBook |
Author | Jeffrey N Wasserstrom |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 369 |
Release | 2018-02-07 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0429963378 |
This innovative and widely praised volume uses the dramatic occupation of Tiananmen Square as the foundation for rethinking the cultural dimensions of Chinese politics. Now in a revised and expanded second edition, the book includes enhanced coverage of key issues, such as the political dimensions of popular culture (addressed in a new chapter on Chinese rock-and-roll by Andrew Jones) and the struggle for control of public discourse in the post-1989 era (discussed in a new chapter by Tony Saich). Two especially valuable additions to the second edition are art historian Tsao Tsing-yuan's eyewitness account of the making of the Goddess of Democracy, and an exposition of Chinese understandings of the term ?revolution? contributed by Liu Xiaobo, one of China's most controversial dissident intellectuals. The volume also includes an analysis (by noted social theorist and historical sociologist Craig C. Calhoun) of the similarities and differences between the ?new? social movements of recent decades and the ?old? social movements of earlier eras.TEXT CONCLUSION: To facilitate classroom use, the volume has been reorganized into groups of interrelated essays. The editors introduce each section and offer a list of suggested readings that complement the material in that section.
The Rise and Fall of Imperial China
Title | The Rise and Fall of Imperial China PDF eBook |
Author | Yuhua Wang |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 352 |
Release | 2022-10-11 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 0691237514 |
How social networks shaped the imperial Chinese state China was the world’s leading superpower for almost two millennia, falling behind only in the last two centuries and now rising to dominance again. What factors led to imperial China’s decline? The Rise and Fall of Imperial China offers a systematic look at the Chinese state from the seventh century through to the twentieth. Focusing on how short-lived emperors often ruled a strong state while long-lasting emperors governed a weak one, Yuhua Wang shows why lessons from China’s history can help us better understand state building. Wang argues that Chinese rulers faced a fundamental trade-off that he calls the sovereign’s dilemma: a coherent elite that could collectively strengthen the state could also overthrow the ruler. This dilemma emerged because strengthening state capacity and keeping rulers in power for longer required different social networks in which central elites were embedded. Wang examines how these social networks shaped the Chinese state, and vice versa, and he looks at how the ruler’s pursuit of power by fragmenting the elites became the final culprit for China’s fall. Drawing on more than a thousand years of Chinese history, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China highlights the role of elite social relations in influencing the trajectories of state development.
Minjian
Title | Minjian PDF eBook |
Author | Sebastian Veg |
Publisher | Columbia University Press |
Pages | 386 |
Release | 2019-04-23 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0231549407 |
Who are the new Chinese intellectuals? In the wake of the crackdown on the 1989 democracy movement and the rapid marketization of the 1990s, a novel type of grassroots intellectual emerged. Instead of harking back to the traditional role of the literati or pronouncing on democracy and modernity like 1980s public intellectuals, they derive legitimacy from their work with the vulnerable and the marginalized, often proclaiming their independence with a heavy dose of anti-elitist rhetoric. They are proudly minjian—unofficial, unaffiliated, and among the people. In this book, Sebastian Veg explores the rise of minjian intellectuals and how they have profoundly transformed China’s public culture. An intellectual history of contemporary China, Minjian documents how, amid deep structural shifts, grassroots thinker-activists began to work outside academia or policy institutions in an embryonic public sphere. Veg explores the work of amateur historians who question official accounts, independent documentarians who let ordinary people speak for themselves, and grassroots lawyers and NGO workers who spread practical knowledge. Their interventions are specific rather than universal, with a focus on concrete problems among disenfranchised populations such as victims of Maoism, migrant workers and others without residence permits, and petitioners. Drawing on careful analysis of public texts by grassroots intellectuals and the networks and publics among which they circulate, Minjian is a groundbreaking transdisciplinary exploration of crucial trends developing under the surface of contemporary Chinese society.