Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Over Exposure, Lisa Movius, Shakhar Rahav

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“The Expo story that couldn’t be printed.” That’s what editors at Shanghai’s City Weekend magazine found they had on their hands several weeks ago, when Chinese censors deemed the story below “too negative” to run. A revised version was subsequently submitted, approved by the censors, and printed in the January 20, 2010 issue. City Weekend decided not to post the original story on its website as planned, as they were told it was inadvisable due to an official caution against publishing media reports critical of the Expo. Here, we are pleased to share with China Beat readers the full, uncensored …

China Learns From The Soviet Union: An Interview With Thomas P. Bernstein

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Thomas Bernstein, professor emeritus of Government at Columbia University, has recently edited a new book with Hua-yu Li, China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-present (Lexington Books, 2010). Below, an interview we conducted with Professor Bernstein via e-mail, exploring the volume’s scope and how it came into being.

Yo! Aas Is Coming To The City Of Brotherly Love, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I’d very much like to be in China this month, as several cities are hosting big literary events that feature many authors I’ve followed for the past several years, and whose names are probably familiar to regular China Beat readers. In Beijing, the Bookworm International Literary Festival is welcoming Graham Earnshaw (The Great Walk of China, March 6), Jonathan Tel (The Beijing of Possibilities, March 8; two excerpts are here and here), and Jeremy Goldkorn (Danwei, March 18). The Shanghai International Literary Festival is also boasting a program chock-full of talks I’d love to hear, such as Hyejin Kim on …

An Interview With Richard Mcgregor, Author Of The Party, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Richard McGregor is the former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times and author of the newly released The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers. I recently conducted the interview below with McGregor via e-mail; you can read excerpts from the book here and here and also find a “Why I Write” profile of McGregor at the Urbanatomy site.

Special Report: Thirty Years Of The One-Child Policy

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Scott Tong of Marketplace is concluding his three years as the program’s Shanghai bureau chief by taking an in-depth look at the One-Child Policy as it approaches its 30-year anniversary.

Confessions Of A Lifelong China Watcher, Angilee Shah

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Looking back on China’s dramatic recent history, from the devastation of the Great Leap Forward to today’s exuberant “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” is a fascinating exercise. China Watcher offers the rare opportunity to learn this history as author Richard Baum did — from the front row.

Notes On A Conversation: Ian Johnson And Angilee Shah, Miri Kim

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Earlier this week, we held the final event of this year’s “China Lecture Series” at UC Irvine, featuring a dialogue between Ian Johnson and Angilee Shah. Johnson, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, is author of Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China and A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. Shah is a freelance writer and blogger; her work has appeared at the Far Eastern Economic Review, Global Voices Online, Zócalo Public Square, and The China Beat. Below, a summary of the conversation between Johnson and Shah.

Looking At China From Across The Pacific And Across The Himalayas, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on Japan?”

Reflections On Qing History, Maura Dykstra

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A review of Pamela Kyle Crossley’s The Wobbling Pivot: China Since 1800, An Interpretive History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) and William T. Rowe’s China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (Belknap Press, 2009)

Around The Web: Podcasts And Videos

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Though we spend a lot of time reading over here at China Beat headquarters, we also like to keep up with the many China-related podcasts and videos that are proliferating on the web these days. A sampling of what’s caught our attention recently:

Blogging Aas 2010 (5), Miri Kim, Charles Wheeler

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In this panel, organized by Siyen Fei (University of Pennsylvania), Mark Edward Lewis (Stanford University), Hilde De Weerdt (University of Oxford), and Fei presented papers that creatively engaged the work of G. William Skinner on how to conceptualize empire in time and space. Lewis proposed that the northern capital historically functioned as a peripheral center that connected the agricultural and economic centers found further south with the steppe, and this positioning, a prime concern of the dynasties founded by nomads, helped maintain China as a coherent empire. De Weerdt used social network analysis to mine Song dynastybiji for data that …

Blogging Aas (3), Miri Kim

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This intellectually and visually stimulating roundtable was chaired by Carma Hinton (George Mason University) and focused on the legacy of China’s socialist past in China’s not-quite-so socialist present. I’d like to think I took good notes, but this was a session very rich in materials and ideas (and excellently managed time-wise, which means things moved along at a brisk pace), so apologies in advance for any errors or omissions.

If You Can Read Chinese, Read This E-Journal, Xujun Eberlein

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The new issue of Remembrance (<记忆>) continues to review Mao’s Last Revolution (by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals; Chinese translation can be found here). The four articles in issues 55 and 56 discuss the book from different angles, with thoughtful comments and legitimate questions. All are well worth reading.

Anhui’S Barefoot Aids Doctors, Annie Ye Ren

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For the past four years, I have periodically worked with a Chinese grassroots HIV/AIDS non-governmental organization (NGO) that serves children in Fuyang Prefecture, Anhui Province. The Fuyang AIDS Orphan Salvation Association (AOS)gives aid directly to local communities, addressing local needs that are often overlooked or underfunded by large-scale government projects.

A Chinese Immigrant Reads Yiyun Li, Xujun Eberlein

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Among the twenty-three people who received MacArthur Fellowships last month was Yiyun Li, a fiction writer based at the University of California, Davis. Born and raised in Beijing before coming to the United States for graduate work (first in immunology, later in creative writing), Li is one member of a growing community of Chinese authors now writing in English. We asked Xujun Eberlein, also part of that group, to reflect on Li’s writing.

Symbols: Liu Xiaobo’S Nobel Peace Prize, Paulina Hartono

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Liu Xiaobo is, and now is probably much more so after Friday’s announcement, one of China’s most well-known dissidents—or activists, depending on the term you prefer. Most people who have heard of him know about his hand in penning part of Charter 08, a manifesto based on Charter 77, which advocates broad democratic political reform and human rights protections in China. Those who are more familiar with Liu’s name know of him for his hunger strike in Tian’anmen, or his prolific number of essays published in print and on the Internet.

China By The Numbers: The Chinese Professor And The Red Emperor, Charles W. Hayford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Remember those jailbirds who know all of each others’ jokes? They don’t tell the whole joke, just shout out the number from the jokebook. Our public discourse on China has something of the same quality. Instead of shouting out a number, however, somebody “shouts out” a word or an image which evokes a whole China story. These stories can be persuasive, poetic, or insightful, but when we only “shout out” the number, then we don’t have the chance to examine the whole story. Painful facts or challenges to venerable beliefs can be papered over when the story is a misleading …

On Michael Jackson In Mongolia, Hanging Out At Shanghai’S World’S Fair, And Other Topics: A Quick Q & A With Marketplace’S Rob Schmitz, Jeffrey Wasserstrom

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Over the summer, there was a changing of the guard in the Shanghai office ofMarketplace, an American radio program that has consistently carried smart reports about China. Scott Tong moved from the PRC back to the US (where he continues to work for the show) and former Peace Corps volunteer Rob Schmitztook his place. I had the pleasure of meeting them both in Shanghai in July andran a post with the former in early August, in which he reflected on his time covering the China beat. Now, as a sequel to that post, comes a quick q and a with …

What I Read On My Summer Vacation (Iv), Ron Javers

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I was booked to give a China talk in August, high season in the Hamptons, as part of the summer series at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton.

Agricultural Biotechnology: The U.S.-Eu Dispute, Charles E. Hanrahan

Congressional Research Service Reports

In May 2003, the United States, Canada, and Argentina initiated a dispute with the European Union concerning the EU’s de facto moratorium on biotechnology product approvals, in place since 1998. Although the EU effectively lifted the moratorium in May 2004 by approving a genetically engineered (GE) corn variety (MON810), the three complainants pursued the case, in part because a number of EU member states continue to block already approved biotech products. Industry estimates are that the moratorium costs U.S. corn growers some $300 million in exports to the EU annually. Corn gluten exports from the United States to the EU …

Analysis Of The Recent Made-In-China Campaign, Hongmei Li

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

China has recently launched its first global advertising campaign about products made in China. A 30-second television commercial, sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce of China and four Chinese trade associations, has been running on CNN, the Headline News and International Asia TV channels in the United States since November 23, 2009. Costing tens of millions of Yuan, the commercial was scheduled to run for six weeks. The commercial also started to run in some parts of Asia starting in December 2009.

More On Google + China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Now that we’ve all had a few days to think deeply about the Google + China story, lots of commentaries and opinion pieces are coming across the wire. Here’s a sampling of those that caught our attention over the weekend:

Travelogue, Delhi-Beijing, Pallavi Aiyar

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The plane burps to a halt and almost immediately everyone is on their feet, jostling to open the over-head lockers, reaching high for their strolleys. My head feels stuffed with lead and I marvel at the nimble alacrity of my fellow travellers, at 3:00 in the morning. Slowly we shuffle off the Air China flight and make it into the inadequately-air conditioned environs of Indira Gandhi International Airport.

Blogging Aas 2010 (2), William Callahan

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One of the pleasures of going to a conference is seeing what free goodies you can scam from various institutions. Lots of free pens were proffered by various publishers. A Chinese press was giving out some trinkets — but for some reason not to me. The International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden) was once again giving out sheer canvas bags loaded with their newsletter and other readable items. UBC Press offered 50-year-old issues of Pacific Affairs for the antiquarians among us, as well as more recent issues.

Remembering September 11, Southwest State University, Mn

Crime/Violence

Bibliography and photographs of a display of government documents from Southwest State University, Marshall, MN.

Women's History Month, Southwest Minnesota State University

Women

Bibliography and photographs of a display of government documents from Southwest Minnesota State University.

Early Literacy Checklist — In The Home .G1991, Janet S. Hanna, Kayla M. Hinrichs, Carla J. Mahar, John Defrain, Tonia Durden

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

StoryQUEST’s Vision: High-quality early relationships and experiences throughout their daily routines provide each infant and toddler with the tools and skills to build a strong foundation for future school readiness. Families, caregivers, and communities as a whole collaborate to enable all children to become highly competent in language and literacy. This series was developed as part of a national research project — StoryQUEST — through the California Institute on Human Services, Sonoma State University.

Follow a checklist of suggested activities and environments to help your child’s literacy development. This is the eighth publication in a series of nine.

This checklist …

Recklessness In Context: Individual And Situational Correlates To Aggressive Driving, Paul B. Harris, John M. Houston

Faculty Publications

Traffic-related injury and fatality are major health risks in the United States and worldwide. One contributor to road accidents is unsafe and aggressive driving practices. We examined individual and situational aspects of aggressive driving by having 152 undergraduate students complete self-report measures. Aggressive driving was related to personality variables, such as hostility, sensation seeking, and competitiveness, as well as to social variables such as driving without passengers and characteristics of the target vehicle (e.g., passengers, age, and status of driver), environmental variables (e.g., type of road, traffic, and weather), and temporal variables (e.g., time pressure and time of day).

Seeing Through The Invisible Pink Unicorn, Andrew Stuart Abel, Andrew P. Schaefer

Sociology

This paper explores the quasi-religious aspects of the Invisible Pink Unicorn (IPU), an internet based spoof of religion. IPU message boards situate a moral orientation in an ongoing interactional process that sacralizes parody and an idealized form of “free thinking.” We employ content analysis and grounded theory to argue that IPU writers’ parody of religion serves as a ritual act and conclude our discussion by considering the implications of the findings for the literature on ritual.

The Changing Faces Of America’S Children And Youth, Kenneth M. Johnson, Daniel T. Lichter

Sociology

Recent U.S. Census Bureau projections indicate that by the middle of this century, non-Hispanic whites will cease to be a majority of the American population. In this article we document how for America’s youngest residents, the future is already here. America’s rapidly changing racial and ethnic composition has important implications for intergroup relations, ethnic identities, and electoral politics.