Political Science Commons^™

5/28/09: Chai Ling’S Last Will And Testament, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This piece is excerpted from the manuscript of Philip J. Cunningham’s forthcoming book, Tiananmen Moon, part of an on-going China Beat feature of excerpts from Cunningham’s book, and describes the set-up for one of the most famous interviews of the final days of the student movement. Interested readers can see more at Cunningham’s website.

A petite sun-bronzed woman wearing a stained white tennis shirt and dusty beige trousers sits next to me in the back of the taxi, grimacing as if in pain, weeping quietly to herself. Named to the police blacklist, she says she fears imminent arrest. Up front …

In Search Of Old Shanghai (Buildings)

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Earlier this week, the Washington Postpublished a fascinating article by Maureen Fan, paired with a very effective video that the same reporter narrates (hat tip to Shanghaiist for bringing both to my attention), that combines architectural and family history. This is because the grandfather of the Post‘s Beijing bureau chief was Robert Fan, a leading local architect who designed, among many other buildings, the one pictured here.

I won’t try to summarize her piece, which is part memoir and part analysis of the fate of buildings her grandfather designed (some of which are shown in the accompanying video), as it …

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 …

Cooper, John Sherman, 1901-1991 (Sc 1906), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 1906. Letters from U.S. Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky to constituents dealing with various political issues. He mentions then-senator Lyndon Baines Johnson blocking one of his bills.

5/22/89: The Hunger Of Provincials, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

On the evening of May 22, BBC asked me to take one of the crews to the Square for a closer look at the protest, which was thought to be on the wane now that martial law was coming into force. We did the usual look-see, I conducted a few spot interviews and the talented camera crew captured ironic and iconic visuals. Then we took a break in front of the History Museum, parking the hotel van near the camp of the provincial students.

The protesters around us didn’t seem to mind our presence, until we decided to crack out …

Better City, Better Life, Part Ii, Gina Anne Russo

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In my first post on the “Better City, Better Life” Expo promotion campaign, I focused on the centrality within it of visions of Shanghai as a special sort of distinctively modern and distinctively international Chinese metropolis, but here I’ll emphasize the second half of the slogan, which draws attention to the quality of urban existence. Expo public advertisements don’t just glorify Shanghai’s place in the modern world, they also strive to present Shanghai as a place where good behavior is on display. For example, on the subway one day I ran across a person dressed up as Haibao, and he …

The Social Evolution Of War And Transformation In Political Organization, Talon J. Powers

Political Science Honors Projects

Until recently, international relations theory has treated the territorial state as a transhistorical constant. The post-positivist turn, however, revives the question of the state’s origins and future sustainability. By drawing together the contributions of historical sociologists and social theorists of war, this thesis provides a model for change in political organization stemming from foundational transformations in warfare. This model considers not only warfighting practices, but the social and broader historical context in which war is embedded. Through analysis of the feudal and modern cases, I demonstrate why warfare is the best lens through which to evaluate change in political organization.

Should China Copy The West On Academic Integrity?, Susan D. Blum

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In recent years, articles have appeared from time to time in the Western press that deal with cases of plagiarism in China and speculated on what these incidents may reveal about how academic life and the educational system in the PRC work. When we learned that anthropologist Susan Blum, one of the contributors toChina Beyond the Headlines, a book that was co-edited by a contributor to China Beat (Timothy Weston) and in a sense was trying to do in print form some of the things that this blog now tries to do online, has been combining writing about various aspects …

Attitude, Money, Or Administration? Barriers To Clean Energy Expansions In Kankakee, Illinois, Adrienne Martin

Capstone Projects – Politics and Government

The world faces an unprecedented level of environmental degradation. The United States, considered one of the main culprits of unsustainable resource consumption and the main manufacturer of the unsustainable “American” lifestyle, is experiencing a political, environmental and economic movement to re-habituate unsustainable resource consumption to encourage more conservative and sustainable growth. Since President Obama’s inauguration, mandates and incentives for clean energy programs have proliferated along with a mandate for behavioral change. American citizens and businesses, politicians argue, must change their unsustainable, excessive, individualistic, and wasteful lifestyles. This paper examines the current unsustainable behaviors of U.S. industries and current incentives for …

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 …

Measuring The Effectiveness Of The Statewide Initiative: “The Maturing Of Illinois”, Joseph Alustiza

Capstone Projects – Politics and Government

The federal government continues to mandate and fund non-profit organizations to provide social services in local communities around the United States. Social services such as healthcare, education and poverty relief have been “privatized” to non-profit organizations. In the case of aging services, the East Central Illinois Area Agency on Aging (ECIAAA) has been mandated and funded by the federal government and the state government of Illinois based on appropriations in Title III from the Older Americans Act (OAA). This area agency and others around the country provide program and planning services and support to service providers for older adults, caregivers …

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 …

Aboriginal Affairs: Monologue Or Dialogue?, Vanessa Castejon

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

On January 26 2002, the thirtieth anniversary of the creation of the first Aboriginal tent embassy was celebrated. In 1972 the tent embassy emerged from the Black Power movement as a manifestation of the call for recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty and the right to self-determination. These claims have been raised continually by some prominent Aboriginal activists, but the main answer given by the government has been the creation of Aboriginal policies and sections for Aboriginal people within the Australian political system. The government, by different means, has brought Aboriginal activists within the system and has diverted attention from their aspirations. …

5/18/89: Working Class Heroes, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

New, creative links were being made, reflected in the flags and slogans draped on industrial strength trucks with factory logos packed to the brim with red-sashed workers.

WORKERS SUPPORT BRIGADE!

WORKERS UNITED WITH STUDENTS IN SUPPORT!

But the really eye-catching, breath-stopping slogans took aim at the most powerful man in China.

XIAOPING GAODE RENREN FENFEN BU PING

“Wow! You see that Lotus?

It says Xiaoping is ruining it for all of us!” Quite a few posters and political cartoons were openly critical of Deng, representing a logical but politically dangerous turn of heart. But the most novel element today was …

The Ties That Bind The United States: A Recount (Book Review), Jeffrey W. Legro

Political Science Faculty Publications

Review of the book, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy by Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlworth. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Marx And The Taipings, Daniel Little

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

With all the May anniversary dates to mark, we missed the May 5th birthday of Karl Marx (a man to whose thought the Chinese Communist Party still pays homage, even if you wouldn’t know it from their economic policies). Had we been on our toes, we might have found a China-specific way to mark that date, like looking back to how Marx, in his journalist mode, wrote about the Taiping Uprising, an event that the CCP would later treat as a precedent for their own revolutionary struggle. Well, in the spirit of better late than never, here’s what one of …

Rss Feeds

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Several regular readers have mentioned in conversations recently that they don’t know what an “RSS feed” is. Many of our readers are already using the service—at this writing, more than 1200 of them access the site’s content this way.

What is an RSS feed? “RSS” stands for “really simple syndication” or maybe “rich site summary” (depending on who you ask). An RSS reader is a service that will automatically download content from websites of your choosing. Rather than spending time each day checking in at each of the websites you regularly read, your reader will download all the new content …

5/16/89: To Serve The People, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The term “democracy” was gaining a certain purchase on the popular imagination, though it was not without its slippery side. Given the predictable confusion about what the students were really up to, given the abstraction and ambiguity inherent in political term minzhu, particularly within the confines of a communist society which fancied itself to be democratic in a roundabout sort of way, “democracy” meant very different things to different people. It had such a bafflingly wide range of meaning, it was so easily co-opted and distorted, that one could better appreciate the efficacy of a banal but concrete cry.

Thus …

Zhao’S Memoirs: 5 Places To Turn

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The biggest publishing news just now related to Tiananmen’s 20th anniversary is the release of Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs, a book that was apparently already being offered for sale in Hong Kong even before its official publication date and has been reviewed, excerpted, and discussed in various newspapers and magazines. We may at some point do an “In Case You Missed It” review of Prisoner of the State(or deal with it extensively in another fashion), but we weren’t able to do a “Coming Distractions” piece about it for a simple reason: we weren’t sent an advance copy.*

What we can do …

In Case You Missed It: Death By A Thousand Cuts, David Porter

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the months leading up to the Beijing games, as Tibet protests flared and t-shirts derided the “Genocide Olympics,” Jill Savitt, the Executive Director of the human rights group Dream for Darfur deployed a striking phrase in a New York Times interview about her group’s plans to pressure Beijing to take action on Sudan. Promising a broad-based campaign that would be far more sophisticated than a mere “ham-fisted boycott,” she explained, “From start to finish, what we want China to fear is death by a thousand cuts.”

In a coincidence tinged with historical irony, an important book published in the …

Modern Sophistry: On The "Economization" Of Higher Education, Michael Mcshane

Honors Theses

The best way for one to begin approaching political philosophy is to do just that, not as a theorist or philosopher, but as a student who examines the various works of theorists in general and sees what is gainful in each of them. It is a thing said to be pleasant – to gain from those who possess knowledge that exceeds one's own. The theorists themselves are taxed with a kind of work that would not appear to the student pleasurable in the slightest, and he might be better off conceding the great labors and accolades that come with this …

5/15/89: Looking For Gorbachev, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Setting up a shot in a methodical manner–tripods incrementally adjusted, white balance achieved, illumination enhanced–allowed for the recording of clean, well-lit images worthy of prime time TV, but much of it came at the price of spontaneity. That which we sought to observe was constantly reacting to us and regrouping due to our presence. Cameramen know all about this of course, and a long lens can, with some foreshortening, capture unadulterated spontaneity, but more than once we simply scrapped the shot when members of the crowd seized up or returned our curiosity in an obvious way.

Which brought us back …

The Apology Of Sidney: Explaining Martyrdom, Michael Marinaccio

Honors Theses

The treatment of important figures throughout history has always played favor to the victor by nature and consequently only been offered thorough significance given the eventual passage of time and publicity. If queried of philosophy and its basic influence on the modern world, laymen would probably have the ability to conjure up the name of Socrates, one of the more prominent, noteworthy philosophers in history.

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 …

Journal Of Asian Studies 68.2

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

In the brand new May 2009 issue, just up on the Cambridge University Press website, readers will find, free for now at least, two relatively short (four to six-thousand words) pieces in the Journal of Asian Studies‘ new “Asia Beyond the Headlines” series–one by Berkeley economist Pranab Bardhan is on China-India comparisons, while the other is a take by USC political scientist Stanley Rosen(who took part in the Brookings Institution panel that was the subject of a recent post by Teresa Wright) on youth and politics in China.

The third piece is a full-length one (with illustrations) on Confucian temples …

Understanding China’S “Angry Youth”, Teresa Wright

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Two things that China Beat has been tracking since we began are Chinese nationalism and youth attitudes in the PRC today (those interested in these issues might check out Alec Ash’s recent posting that addresses youth nationalism in regard to the 5/8 anniversary). It’s no surprise, then, that we were interested in learning more about an event at the Brookings Institution that brought these topics together (Evan Osnosmentioned his participation at his blog).

So we turned to Teresa Wright, one of the people who shared the stage with Osnos at the panel, to fill us in on the discussion that …

The Hunger Strike Begins, Philip J. Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The idea that the campus was under student control struck me as a dangerous illusion. Bright and others said campus life had changed for the better, and in the aftermath of May 4, I could see evidence of the soaring change in spirit. But what if the whiff of freedom turned into a mockery of the same, a transient window of openness that served to make people implicate themselves? It had happened before in the 1950s, when Mao urged “a hundred schools of thought to contend,” only to punish those who expressed themselves too freely.

To date, the campus strike …

Cohort And Cultural Effects On Unconventional Political Behavior, Cameron C. Wimpy

Student Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines unconventional political behavior in the Muslim world by comparing it to Europe to test the influence of culture. Using data from the most recent wave of the World Values Survey, several hypotheses regarding the primary sources of protest behavior in the Muslim world are tested to determine whether Muslims behave in a politically unique way. Using ordinary least squares regression, I find that Europeans are more likely to engage in protest activity than Muslims. Further, it is determined that cohort differences are responsible for predicting unconventional political behavior in the Muslim world. Last, I demonstrate that religiosity …