Political Science Commons^™

Christ In Pingyao

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the old town of Pingyao, right next to the Confucius temple, Christmas banners still hang on a Catholic Church, built 1910. Mr Zhang, housesitting the Church while its priest is away, stands messianically in his room, shortly after his quiet attempts to convert me.

The Harmonious Evolution Of Information In China, Geremie R. Barme

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As the contretemps involving Google’s conflicted presence in the People’s Republic of China unfolds, it is timely to recall one anniversary that passed by all but unnoticed in 2009: that of a covert Cold War-era clash between John Foster Dulles and Mao Zedong in 1959. This overlooked anniversary is worth recalling now, since it is of particular relevance to contextualizing the remarks—and the Chinese response to those remarks—that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made regarding Internet freedom and US policy at the Newseum in Washington on 21 January 2010 (see here for full text of Clinton’s speech).

Blogging Aas 2010, Shellen Xiao Wu, Daniel Little, William A. Callahan

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As many of our readers are already aware, the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting is taking place this weekend in Philadelphia. The largest annual gathering of Asia scholars in the world (this year there will be about three thousand in attendance), the AAS meeting brings together university-based and independent scholars and writers who work in fields ranging from history to political science to literature and studying cultures and countries across Asia.

Google.Cn & Beyond: Politics Of Digital Media, Silvia Lindtner

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

A bit more than two months ago, on January 12, 2010, Google released an official statement on its corporate blog that described the company’s plan to push back over censorship of search results on Google.cn. The following is an excerpt from that statement, which was inspired in large part by sophisticated cyber attacks against Gmail users that originated from within China:

Tangka

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Baimaobar, a Tibetan friend from Qinghai province, poses next to the thangka-esque art he painted on the wall of my Beijing flat in 2008.

Five Questions (And Answers) About “Autumn Gem”, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

At the beginning of March, Rae Chang and Adam Tow came to UC Irvine to show their docudrama about the life of Qiu Jin, Autumn Gem (see here for their blog post about the UCI event, and here for a list of upcoming screenings around the country). The movie traces the life of “China’s first feminist,” Qiu Jin (1875-1907), who was a leader in both the nationalist and women’s movements and was executed at the age of 32 for her involvement in a plot to overthrow the Qing government. Hailed as a revolutionary martyr in China, Qiu Jin is little …

Lusting For Old Shanghai: Andrew Field And Tess Johnston @ Silf 2010, Marta Cooper

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Shanghai is a city where one has to work particularly hard to find simple, unadulterated culture. So, when the blue moon opportunity comes to bask in it for two weeks, I do just that. Most recently, that’s meant heading to the sophisticated Glamour Bar, overlooking the curve of the Bund and the sci-fi lights of Pudong, which has been hosting the 2010 Shanghai International Literary Festival (SILF)this month. The venue has been brimming with excitement, with authors from County Cork to Manila sharing their work with the spoiled audience.

In Case You Missed It: An Introduction To Chinese Philosophy, Miri Kim

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In this well written and organized book, Karyn L. Lai lays out the founding personalities, texts, and interventions in the early history of Chinese philosophy. What could easily have been a tortuous path through centuries’ worth of extant materials and a plenitude of voices devoted to their understanding is, rather, a brisk and focused guided tour that covers major developments in Chinese philosophy without eschewing its lesser known – but still important – aspects. An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy does exactly what it promises to do: provide a clear introduction, neither too truncated nor too bogged down in detail, that …

Buying American, Ron Javers

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

When New York rumors began flying about fresh talks between Newsweek and The Daily Beast over Tina Brown’s taking over the editorship of the venerable but now reeling newsweekly I found myself wondering what Xiang Xi in Guangzhou thought of all that.

A New Book On Mao: A Quick Q & A With Author Rebecca Karl, Rebecca Karl

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Rebecca Karl, who teaches at New York University and is known in Chinese studies circles as the author of important studies of nationalism during the final years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) and the development of Marxist thought between the 1920s and the present, has a new book coming out soon. Titled Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History, it’s being published (simultaneously in paperback and hardback editions) by Duke University Press. The publisher promises that it will provide readers with a “lively and concise historical account of Mao Zedong’s life and thought,” and it comes …

In Case You Missed It: Dreaming In Chinese, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Each time my three Chinese I classmates and I complained that we had chosen a language that was simply too hard to learn, our professor had an answer at the ready.

Liu Xiaobo And The Nobel Peace Prize: More Readings

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It has now been a little more than one month since the announcement of Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize win, with the December 10 award ceremony a bit less than a month away. Here are a few links we’ve come across recently in our search for updates on the story:

Touring With A Book (Vs. Touring With A Band)

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

My “book tour,” which has had me adding a lot of miles to my frequent flyer account,has finally started winding down. I’ve got some things still to come, including an upcoming event in this area with Ian Johnson in June and then during the summer some book-related talks across the Pacific, including several Shanghai gigs (details to follow in a future post) and a July 24 presentation at the Suzhou branch of the Bookworm bookstore, and so on. Still, the pace has slowed down, which put me in a reflective mood and gave me time to finish writing a piece …

You Can’T Make An Omelette With Only One Egg, Vignesh Pillai

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In her book Egg on Mao, Denise Chong chronicles the life of Lu Decheng, a seemingly ordinary man who committed the very extraordinary act of vandalizing Mao Zedong’s portrait during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. At the heart of the book is an exploration of morality under Communist rule in the Hunanese village of Liuyang, beginning with the lead-up to Lu’s birth in 1963, his formative years, his involvement in the 1989 protests, and his incarceration. Chong draws her narrative both from interviews with Lu, who now lives in Canada, and from interviews she conducted in China in April and …

Why I Support Liu Xiaobo’S Nobel Peace Prize, Wang Chaohua

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

What does a Nobel Peace Prize stand for politically? We probably can’t take the written words of Alfred Nobel himself and of the awarding committee at face value. In the past century, the prize has stirred up numerous controversies. For example, a war-mongering, coup-conspiring politician like Henry Kissinger was chosen to be honored, leaving the rest of the world with jaws dropped and the winner himself reluctant to revisit the moment in public. After all, the prize was decided and awarded by a committee of five retired politicians. In addition, no matter how politically balanced each of the actual committee …

A House Museum Café: Part 2, Leksa Chmielewski

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As I chat with the librarian-cum-barista, a Shanghainese family comes in and starts looking over the menu. They order three different kinds of imported coffee and as the librarian lights the flame percolator, I ask her whether there are differences between Shanghainese visitors and those from other areas of China.

Links, Links, And More Links

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

• The Economic Observer has started a new column that provides a roundup of the commentary and op-ed pieces contained in each week’s newspaper and also a few of the opinion pieces that appear on the EO‘s website. The most recent column can be found here. The EO has also begun providing abstracts of its monthly Book Review; check out September’s lineup here.

Planning To Write A China Book? Just Say No, Jonathan Watts

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

We wrote to Jonathan Watts to ask him to write a commentary on the book tour he’s been on to promote When a Billion Chinese Jump, which included a stop at UC Irvine, but he said he was too busy being whisked from champagne receptions to meetings with Hollywood directors seeking to buy the film rights to the book to craft something suitable. Watts was, however, good enough to offer us permission to run (in slightly trimmed-down form) a piece he wrote—with tongue firmly in cheek—for a 2009 issue of the newsletter of the Beijing Foreign Correspondents’ Club. Composed while …

A Bitter Pill For Prime Minister Kan, James Farrer

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It was a bitter pill for the Democratic Party of Japan, no matter how they swallowed it. By releasing a Chinese fishing boat captain detained by Japan without a trial, Prime Minster Kan Naoto was clearly bowing under Chinese pressure. The captain had been arrested by the Japanese coast guard for allegedly ramming his boat into Japanese coast guard vessels while in territorial waters claimed both by China and Japan. The Japanese government appeared to buckle and released the captain to China on Saturday. According to an unnamed official in the prime minister’s office quoted in the Asahi Shinbun on …

The Bush And The Obama Administrations And The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict 2001-2009, Laura Simon Espinalt

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis’ aim is to determine whether or not the Obama administration had a chance to produce a more effective foreign policy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict approach used by the Bush administration. The thesis analyzed the two administrations’ foreign policies toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and compare the diplomacy used by Bust throughout his administration and the diplomacy used by Obama during his first year in office. The requirements that embody good negotiations from a problem-solving perspective and comparison to how the Bush and the Obama administrations have approached the conflict are examined. It is concluded that in order for a …

Legal And Moral Dimensions Of Churchill's Failure To Warn, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

Churchill had been given at least forty-eight hours' warning that Coventry would be hit. He could have warned the people of Coventry of the impending attack. Yet Churchill determined that any advance warning to the people of Coventry would have enabled the Germans to deduce that their top secret code had been broken. The coded intercepts provided evidence of the Holocaust in progress. Other ways to reveal information that could have by-passed the code system existed, thus providing warning to the public while maintaining a strategic advantage. The international law of genocide would have to develop to go beyond intentional …

The Moral And Legal Basis For Sanctions, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

In order to analyze the moral and legal basis for sanctions in international relations, we have to begin at a stage where there is no centralized government in place. We first need to get a picture of the range of possible sanctions. Next, we need to see what role sanctions play in the international system. Finally, we turn to the intertwined moral and legal considerations that make well-designed sanctions efficacious in today's world. The fundamental objective of sanctions in interstate relations is to make it expensive for a target state to refrain from doing what the sanctioning state wants it …

World Conferences And The Cheapening Of International Norms, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

As long as we understand that world conferences only address problems, we will not be disappointed in them. We will only be disappointed if we think that a world conference is supposed to solve problems. Is there any point in getting a lot of people together, at great expense, just to address a problem without any prospect of solving it? My answer is a qualified yes. A world conference is a cultural artifact. It has an impact upon our collective sense of civilization.

Terrorism Conflict: How The United States Responds To Al Qaeda Violence And Expressed Grievances, Richard Craig Rosthauser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes how the United States responds to Al Qaeda's messages and expressions of grievances and how America's responses escalate the conflict between the United States and Al Qaeda.

After its first two attacks against America, Al Qaeda devised a strategy to draw America into a guerrilla war in Afghanistan, stating its intentions in its "Declaration of War" in 1996. Before this declaration, Al Qaeda worked from the shadows and denied reports it was either funding terrorism or participating in terrorism. Bin Laden continued his denials but took responsibility for some terrorist acts in his messages. President Clinton did …

Fostering Global Security: Nonviolent Resistance And Us Foreign Policy, Amentahru Wahlrab

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation comprehensively evaluates, for the first time, nonviolence and its relationship to International Relations (IR) theory and US foreign policy along the categories of principled, strategic, and regulative nonviolence. The current debate within nonviolence studies is between principled and strategic nonviolence as relevant categories for theorizing nonviolent resistance. Principled nonviolence, while retaining the primacy of ethics, is often not practical. Indeed, most nonviolent movements have not been principled, or solely principled. Strategic nonviolence is attractive because it does not require any individual or group to believe in a particular faith or ethical tradition. However, strategic nonviolence is problematic as …

Navigating Through U.S.-China Policy: An Investigation Of China National Off-Shore Oil Corporation's Proposed Acquisition Of Unocal Corporation And How Domestic Politics Plays A Role In Balancing U.S. Trade Policy With National Security Policy, Vicki Lynn Spencer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation, Ltd. ( CNOOC) attempted to buy American-owned Unocal Corporation, it unleashed a "perfect storm" in Washington. Members of Congress immediately called upon President Bush to invoke his Exon-Florio authority to prevent the transaction. After the president claimed action would be premature, Congress quickly coalesced to block the deal. The Chinese expressed surprise at the political backlash and ultimately CNOOC was forced to withdraw its bid.

The purpose of this study is to explain the fervor that arose over CNOOC's proposed acquisition of Unocal. The study builds upon the theoretical approach of new institutionalism which …

Central Bank Independence In Words And In Deeds: Lessons From Brazil And Chile, Taeko Hiroi, Douglas Block

Selected Works Temporary Series

Political independence of the central bank is considered to bring financial stability to a nation and therefore to foster economic growth by providing safe investment environments. However, granting a central bank autonomy is politically contentious because of the implications such independence will entail for politicians in terms of their ability to influence monetary policy. This chapter analyzes central bank independence in words and in deeds. The first part discusses the existing literature on central bank independence and problems associated with its measurement. The implications of this debate are analyzed with two Latin American countries, Brazil and Chile. In Brazil, the …

The Small N Methodological Challenges Of Analyzing Regional Integration, Gaspare Genna, Philippe Delombaerde

Selected Works Temporary Series

As the number of regional integration organizations increases, the attention to case selection in small-N qualitative analysis becomes more necessary in order to avoid selection biases that could produce results with doubtful generalizations. This paper addresses the problem of selecting cases and offers solutions to potential pitfalls in research. First we examine various research designs in qualitative methods and discuss the problems of selecting observations on the dependent variable. We next discuss the operational definition of regions. In order to select from a population of observations, it is important to understand what is and what is not included. Finally, a …

The Principled Case For Employing Private Military And Security Companies In Humanitarian Interventions And Peacekeeping, Deane-Peter Baker, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The possibility of using private military and security companies to bolster the capacity to undertake humanitarian intervention has been increasingly debated. The focus of such discussions has, however, largely been on practical issues and the contingent problems posed by private force. By contrast, this paper considers the principled case for privatising humanitarian intervention. It focuses on two central issues. First, is there a case for preferring these firms to other, state-based agents of humanitarian intervention? In particular, given a state’s duties to their own military personnel, should the use of private military and security contractors be preferred to regular soldiers …

The Political Economy Of Avatar’S Chinese Adventure, Stanley Rosen

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There’s been a lot of discussion of the political meanings that can be read intoAvatar and how this might relate to it being pulled from or simply ending its run in some Chinese theaters. As a political scientist with a long-term interest in the Chinese film industry, and the fate of Hollywood movies in China, and someone who is interested in the working of SARFT (the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television), here are four things worth keeping in mind when considering the situation: