Digital Commons Network^™

History, Generations, And China Stories, Robert A. Kapp

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In early May, a conference was held at Yale for retiring Chinese historian Jonathan Spence, with several China Beatniks in attendance. Here, Robert Kapp, one of Jonathan Spence’s first graduate students, reflects on the shifts in the stories we’ve told and heard about China during the time that Spence has been active in the field.

The retirement of a distinguished scholar and doctoral mentor sometimes goes insufficiently remarked, but in the case of Jonathan Spence’s recent retirement from the Yale History faculty, something better happened. Happily, several of Spence’s Ph.D. students decided to throw their efforts into a conference and …

Radical Politics In Hong Kong: Can Business Make A Difference?, James T. H. Tang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

As Hong Kong in 2009 retained its title as the world’s freest economy for the fifteenth consecutive year, radicalism seemed to have gained wider support in local politics at a time of economic turbulence—even though a timetable for universal suffrage has been set.

The Corruption Enigma: Understanding Success And Failure Of Corruption Reform Programs In Highly Corrupt Countries, Matthew T. Hall

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

There exists a corruption enigma. Experts and analysts largely agree on the institutional reforms that constitute successful corruption reform programs—this is the 'Corruption Consensus.' Unfortunately, the well-designed and resourced reform programs created from this consensus and intended to improve national institutional capabilities rarely work. Yet the reform programs patterned on the Corruption Consensus continue on. Everyone agrees what to do in order to reform corruption but everyone also agrees that it will not work. This is the Corruption Enigma.

This dissertation employs a structured, focused analysis to determine the reasons for varying success levels between otherwise similar countries in order …

Malaysia's Transitional Moment? : Democratic Transition Theory And The Problem Of Malaysian Exceptionalism., Jason P. Abbott

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Many theorists of democratization transition have, either explicitly or implicitly, a teleological concept of political progress, liberalization and reform. For such theorists, countries such as Malaysia are therefore in transition towards substantive 'full' liberal democracy. Taken in this light, the significant advances by opposition political parties in the 2008 federal and state elections in Malaysia represent a major advance towards this end goal. While many have highlighted that Malaysia may in fact be an exception to this rule, this paper contends instead that the Malaysian case study challenges the central tenets of democratic transition more profoundly. Indeed, since independence the …

June 4th Around The World: Notes From One Week After The Anniversary

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A week (or so) after the anniversary of the “May 35th” events (as some Chinese netizens put it to circumvent automatic blocks on mention of a highly charged date), we got several more responses to our request to Friends of the Blog for word on how June 4th was commemorated, discussed, or ignored in various parts of the world. The most substantial (reproduced in full below) is a second contribution to the series (click herefor her first) by Paola Voci (an Italian-born, American-trained, New Zealand-based specialist in Chinese visual culture whose book, China on Video: Small Screen Realities, is due …

A Different Path From Tangshan To Wenchuan : China’S Participation In The International Disaster Reduction Regimes And Its Domestic Impacts, Lin Peng

Conference on “Improving the Human Destiny"

The catastrophic Wenchuan earthquake provides an uncomfortable opportunity to examine China’s disaster management system. This paper would approach this issue from the perspective of international politics, trying to explore the interaction between the international factors and the development of China’s domestic disaster administrative system.

Berkshire Encyclopedia On New Media

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Berkshire Publishing has recently published its Encyclopedia of China with contributions by China scholars like Sherman Cochran, Kerry Brown, Judy Polumbaum and many others and featuring one thousand entries on a diverse range of historical, social and cultural topics.

A few of the entries caught our attention as a little unusual for a print encyclopedia—including entries on “internet use,” “online social networking,” and “blogging.” As these topics are of particular interest to us (and we’re guessing to many of you, too), we were curious how Berkshire would cover them in the encyclopedia format. Here are a few relevant excerpts (selected …

The Mexican Economic Crisis Of 1982 And The Brazilian Economic Crisis Of 1999 - Critical Junctures In Economic Policy, John Hogan, Ana Maza

Articles

This paper utilises a new critical juncture framework to help us determine whether changes to Mexican macroeconomic policy in the early 1980s, and Brazilian macroeconomic policy at the turn of the century, were clean breaks with the past, or continuations of previously established policy pathways. The framework consists of three elements, which must be identified in sequence in order to declare, with some certainty, if an event was a critical juncture. These are crisis, ideational change, and radical policy change.

Historical Bafflement Of The Chinese People

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

David Kelly, researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, translated the following opinion piece by overseas political commentator Liang Jing. He has published several previous pieces at China Digital Times, including, “Trigger for an Earthquake in Chinese Society” and “Where Does Wen Jiabao’s Faith Come From?”

One of the most significant cultural phenomena in Chinese society in recent years is the growing interest in history. Everyone—elite and general populace, leftists and rightists—shows an unprecedented enthusiasm for understanding China’s past. And in 2009 a series of major historical anniversaries, including the 90th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, have pushed China’s …

6/4 Around The World: The First Sequel

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In our second installment of the series (for part one click here), we return to Japan (via a follow-up post by James Farrer on coverage in Tokyo) and offer a view from Hanoi (where long-time Reuters China correspondent John Ruwitch is now based and sometimes writes on themes that link or divide the two countries).

John Ruwitch, Hanoi

Six-four didn’t make its way into the official Vietnamese media, of course, but reports about it on CNN, which is widely available in Hanoi, were not censored. When I told a Vietnamese friend I found that mildly surprising, given the somewhat similar …

Warren County, Kentucky - New Deal Programs, 1934-1935 (Mss 253), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 253. Documents related to New Deal relief programs in Warren County, Kentucky and surrounding counties; correspondence of Ida Leighton Hodges, Bowling Green, Area Administrator of the Kentucky Emergency Relief Administration.

Notes From A Non-Anniversary, Jeremiah Jenne

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I woke up this morning and took a short walk to a big square. As expected, it was pretty calm in the kind of jittery, strained, composed way one usually associates with a dinner party where one of the hosts is having an extramarital affair with one of the guests. The square looked relatively normal but with a beefed-up security detail that included a ring of young slack-jawed crew cut types in tracksuits and matching gray badges worn on unmatching t-shirts. Reports of visitors being asked to produce passports, to weed out foreign journalists, appear to be overstated. I walked …

6/4 Around The World

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Last August, we called on contributors and friends of the blog around the world to send in short reports on how the Olympics were being covered and received in their neck of the woods. Recently, we sent out a similar call regarding today’s anniversary. Here are a few of the responses we’ve received so far, pulled together into a piece that we think would make for interesting reading beside the very different “around the world” survey that David Flumenbaum has done and will keep updated over at the Huffington Post. Included here are some comments by people who contributed to …

6/4 Reader

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A set of links to readings about 6/4 from various sources:

1. A short and straightforward documentary from Al Jazeera (in English), posted at YouTube in two parts: Part I and Part II. This documentary has notably less emphasis on the influence of Western-style democracy than the average (Western) doc on the subject, and more on the opposition to authoritarianism…

2. Mara Hvistendahl has written a piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education on a well-trod topic—the shifts in China post-89, particularly among those of the 6/4 generation. Yet, Hvistendahl, in addition to getting the basics right (unlike others we …

U.S. Human Rights Activism And Plan Colombia, Winifred L. Tate

Faculty Scholarship

Non-governmental organizations claim to play a central role in defining U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the field of human rights. Here, I will examine the role of human rights and humanitarian groups in the debates over U.S. foreign policy towards Colombia, focusing on the design and subsequent additional appropriations for Plan Colombia, a multi-billion dollar aid package beginning in 2000. I argue that NGOs were able to build on the legacy of prior human rights activism focusing on Latin America, but failed to achieve significant grassroots mobilization around this issue. I examine the structural issues limiting such mobilization, as well …

Chinese Democracy: How Elite Thinking On China's Development And Change Influences Chinese Practice Of Democracy (1839–The Current Time), Rey-Ching Lu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Will China become a multiparty democracy? This is the research problem of this dissertation. My hypothesis is this: the greater the extent that Chinese elite thinking on development and change reconciles the tension between Chinese nationalism and collectivist, family-like ethics on the one hand, and the western democratic ideals based on each self-seeking individual’s subjectivity on the other hand, the greater the chance that China’s political development will lead to a multiparty democracy. The dissertation includes two parts: Chapters two to five are historical analyses, and chapters six to eight are the interviews. It is my assumption that Chinese elite …

Pragmatism And Pluralism, Together Again, Matthew J. Moore

Political Science

No abstract provided.

Looking Forward, Backward, Or Just Away?, Chandra Lekha Sriram

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The declassification and leaking of the so-called “torture memos” only supplements much which was already publicly well-known, but has offered a fresh opportunity to frankly debate American values, in particular its commitment to the rule of law, its own constitution, and international human rights and humanitarian law obligations to which it has committed itself, and which the Supreme Court has confirmed are part of domestic law. It is a shame, therefore, that the debate has been so stunted, diverted by the red herring of Dick Cheney’s rantings, and the apparent willingness of a segment of the population to accept, first, …

The Role Of Theory And Evidence In Media Regulation And Law: A Response To Baker And A Defense Of Empirical Legal Studies, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Federal Communications Law Journal

We thank Professor Baker for a stimulating response to an Article in which we offered empirical evidence of editorial viewpoint diversity in the face of media consolidation. We appreciate his praise of the Article as "apply[ing] innovative statistical techniques" and as "far superior methodologically to most empirical studies" he has seen. At the same time, Baker "denies the policy relevance" to our Article because empirical evidence is "entirely irrelevant" to the field of media regulation under his preferred normative theory. Baker argues sweepingly that the legal academy's increased willingness to consider the perspectives of quantitative empiricists and positive theorists is …

America's Role In The World, Jason Edwards

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Memory For Political Messages: The Role Of Inhibition And Prior Attitudes, Shannon Peterson Callahan

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Abstract Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) is a phenomenon wherein repeatedly accessing a portion of information causes decreases in memory for related information that is not practiced (Anderson, Bjork, Bjork, 1994). This study applied the retrieval practice paradigm commonly used in cognitive research to persuasive political statements in order to understand the cognitive implications that selective exposure to political messages may have. This study had a mixed design, with retrieval practice agreement (proattitudinal or counterattitudinal), attitude extremity (neutral, moderate, extreme), gender, and practiced issue (affirmative action or gun control) as between subject variables and item practice status (retrieval practiced, non-practiced/shared stance, non-practiced/shared …

Political Theory, Political Science, And The End Of Civic Engagement, Ben Berger

Political Science Faculty Works

Within a span of fifteen years civic engagement has become a cottage industry in political science and political theory, but the term has now outlived its usefulness and exemplifies Giovanni Sartori's worry about conceptual "stretching." This article traces civic engagement's ascension as a catch-all term for almost anything that citizens might happen to do together or alone, and illustrates the confusion that its popularity has occasioned. It proposes that civic engagement meet a well-deserved end, to be replaced with a more nuanced and descriptive set of engagements: political, social, and moral. It also examines the appeal of engagement itself, a …

5/26/89: An Audience With An Audience, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On May 26 I got another glimpse of student command central, when Chai Ling was at the height of her power. She was holding court in the broadcast tent, the ideological hothouse of student-occupied Tiananmen Square. It wasn’t easy getting in. I had to pass three rings of student security to secure an “audience.”

The BBC had yet to give me any kind of ID, so I learned to talk my way into things. My only “press” pass was my wit, which worked okay because I liked to talk and could do so in Chinese. There were times when the …

A News Story On School Collapses Tantalizes, Then Disappears, David Bandurski

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Yesterday, China Media Project’s David Bandurski published a post that highlights the best of what CMP does: muckraking in the China media and blogosphere, in this case regarding school construction in Sichuan. If CMP isn’t already on your RSS feed, we encourage you to add them. In the meantime, Bandurski kindly agreed to let us re-post this piece on the suppression of findings regarding shoddy school construction in Sichuan.

China Economic Weekly, a spin-off magazine of the official People’s Daily, ran an important story Monday about the collapse of school buildings in last year’s Sichuan earthquake. But the story, posted …

Reading Roundup

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. A very cool set of reports from 1949 on what happened in Shanghai sixty years ago when the Communist Party took control (Hat tip: Shanghaiist).

2. Alec Ash continues with brief insights on critical issues. Here’s a nugget on the Chinese “brain drain.”

3. A very smart review of Zhao’s memoir by Richard Rigby at East Asia Forum:

What was not generally known at the time to outside observers was Zhao’s determination, mentioned several times in the book, that he not go down in history as the General Secretary who approved unleashing the PLA against the demonstrators.

In so …

Better City, Better Life, Gina Anne Russo

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This month began with the countdown clocks ticking away the time until the start of the 2010 Shanghai Expo hitting the one-year-to-go point, and the weeks that have followed have seen the international press pay a good deal of attention to this upcoming event, which had gotten relatively little media coverage in the Western media. There have been a flurry of op-eds (including this one by China Beat‘s Jeff Wasserstrom), reports on the question of whether the U.S. will have a national pavilion (such as this one by Shanghai Scrap‘s Adam Minter), and feature stories on the city of Shanghai …

A Few Readings Around The Web

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

1. China Digital Times is on our RSS feed, and, hopefully, on yours too—it is one of the essential places where English-language readers can find easily accessible updates of what is happening in China and in the Chinese media and blogosphere.CNReviews has posted an interview with CDT’s Sophie Beach that gives further details about the site’s management and goals.

2. In the interview, Beach also mentions her own website (好妈妈) on raising bilingual children, chockfull of information and references for those who are interested. At Hao Mama, Beach references Anna Greenspan’s website, Waking Giants, on Greenspan’s experiences sending her son …

The Chinese Typewriter, Thomas S. Mullaney

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Tom Mullaney, who will be familiar to regular followers of this site thanks to the podcasts he’s done for us (such as this one on the 1989 protests and this one onLast Days of Old Beijing), recently mentioned that he is currently writing a history of the Chinese typewriter, as actual and imagined object.

He sent this piece introducing the subject, which moves between popular culture and the history of technology (how often are rapper MC Hammer, IBM engineers, diplomats from China, and Homer Simpson alluded to in a single story?), while illuminating some of the directions that thinking about …

May 10, 1989: Demonstration Of Ten Thousand Bicycles, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For a few days there it seemed that the successful student march of May 4 would be the last of the big demos and soon everyone would be back on campus attending classes again. Railing against this rather pleasant and natural inclination, strident wall posters at Shida and Beida called for continuing the student strike. One of the more florid campus wall posters that I managed to snap a photo of was a florid eulogy to the Great Hall of the People as a symbol of representative rule. The dark message, written on May 5, 1989 was at odds with …

"Super" Representation: The Relationship Between Elected Officials And Their Constituents, Joshua Shulman

Honors Scholar Theses

The following paper is about the relationship between elected officials and their constituents. Seniority and margin of victory are studied to determine their effects on said relationship. The institution of superdelegates in the Democratic nominating process is studied from 1984-2008 to make this thesis empirical.