International Relations Commons^™

A Defense Of Jiang Rong’S Wolf Totem, Timothy Weston

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I have a confession to make: I was moved by Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem, think it’s an important novel and that it’s well worth reading. The reason I say I feel a need to “confess” as opposed to just being able to state this is because recent postingson The China Beat, as well as some of the reviews referenced in those postings, attack the book with a sharpness and thoroughgoingness that initially made me question my own taste and to think that I was politically incorrect for liking and being impressed by the novel as I read it. But after …

What We’Re Reading Today

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

There are a few themes we’ve been tracking lately at China Beat, including growing Chinese nationalism, middle class protest, and India-China comparisons. Here are a few stories we’ve noticed around the web this week that address some of these issues:

1. For a thoughtful take on the fenqing phenomenon, check out Evan Osnos’s recent New Yorker piece, “Angry Youth: The New Generation’s Neocon Nationalists.”

2. Financial Times ran a recent piece on the efforts to stop construction of a nuclear power station in Rushan (southeast of Beijing)–see “China Pressure Groups Learn to Tread Carefully.”

3. Earlier this week, Danwei.org ran …

Rocking Beijing, Eric Setzekorn

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Like almost every aspect of Beijing life in the past five years, the live music scene has undergone rapid but uneven development. Beijing has always prided itself on the gritty originality of its live music compared to the dominance of cover bands in Shanghai or the saccharine Canto-pop of Hong Kong. The recent opening of new, modern venues on both sides of the city has allowed dozens of new bands and a newly affluent urban youth to establish a flourishing but still shallow live music scene.

For live music, particularly rock and hip hop music, the Olympics are bringing challenges …

Beijing’S New Flame, Rob Gifford

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The essence of Beijing has always been found in its buildings. The city has no major river, no coastline. There are some hills to the west and the north, with the Great Wall stretched across them, but there is none of the geographic razzle-dazzle that created towns like Hong Kong or San Francisco or Sydney or Istanbul. As the historian Arnold Toynbee noted when he visited in the 1930s, Beijing as a city owes little to nature and everything to art.

The art of which Toynbee wrote was contained within the ancient walls of the Forbidden City, where the emperor …

Dilemmas Of Strategy, Melvyn P. Leffler, Jeffrey W. Legro

Political Science Faculty Publications

America’s crystal ball on strategy is murky. Officials in the next administration will face a complex world, will receive conflicting advice, and will need to mobilize domestic support for their policies. They must nonetheless act, most likely without the convenience of a single threat such as the Soviet Union during the cold war or terrorism in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In this conclusion, our aims are to highlight the decisive issues of consensus and contention that resonate across the chapters. We seek to delineate the trade-offs involved in making choices, and we hope to illuminate the national …

Introduction, Melvyn P. Leffler, Jeffrey W. Legro

Political Science Faculty Publications

For many Americans, the past decade has been a bewildering era. They have seen their country attacked and their husbands, sons, wives, and daughters sent to war in faraway places. They have read about orange alerts and red alerts. They have waited on long lines at airport security checks. They know that defense expenditures have soared and that Homeland Security has mushroomed. They have seen gruesome daily headlines about the carnage in Iraq, the strife in Afghanistan, and the turmoil in Pakistan. They read about the suicide attacks that were prevented or aborted in Europe, and they know, darkly, that …

Faq #6: Are The Beijing Olympic Games Being Used As A Propaganda Campaign To Prop Up The Communist Party?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

“Olympic education” is the IOC’s label for the educational efforts that are supposed to be an integral part of the Olympic Movement as required by Fundamental Principle #1 of the Olympic Charter, which states that Olympism is a philosophy of life that blends sport with culture and education. Since 2005 Chinahas been carrying out the largest-scale “Olympic education” campaign in history.There have been academic and professional conferences, textbooks and courses for public schools and universities, educational television and radio shows, magazine and newspaper essays, websites, and more.

In fall of 2007 I was added to the “experts team” of Beijing …

China Around The World: Australia, Rowan Callick

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s hard for me to compare how Australians and others cover China, in part because we rarely actually meet each other to swap notes, except for the occasional encounter via the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (an admirable organization, but one without formal standing in China because it lacks—for obvious reasons on both sides—the sponsorship of a party or government body) and in part because the whole structure of journalism in China does not bring reporters together frequently, as it does in most other countries.

I sometimes go for weeks without encountering another journalist. For China has few press conferences, …

Duelling Dreams At The 2008 Beijing Olympics, James Leibold

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

This year is China’s year. On the 8th day of the 8th month at 8pm, it will light the flame of the 29th Olympics Games—bringing not only the world’s athletes to Beijing but also thousands of foreign visitors and millions more through the massive global media contingency that will descend on the capital.

What will the media spotlight capture? The luster of an ancient civilization and emerging superpower as many in China hope; or the darker, seedier corners of an authoritarian yet fragile party-state as many in the West suspect.

According to the Chinese government, the Olympics games have never …

Kung Fu Panda, Go Home!, Haiyan Lee

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It seems that boycott fatigue has finally hit the Chinese, in a year that has lurched from one boycott to another—against such entities as a French supermarket chain, a Hollywood star, and an American cable channel. When the latest clarion call was issued by a performance artist named Zhao Bandi赵半狄 against Kung Fu Panda, he was greeted with jeers and mockery. Zhao presented his case in a blog: Hollywood is morally corrupt for churning out loathsome personalities like Sharon Stone (who betrayed schadenfreude over the Sichuan earthquake as “karmic retribution” for Tibet) and Steven Spielberg (who quit his role as …

Things We’D Rather You Not Say On The Web, Or Anywhere Else, David Bandurski

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

I love words. And I thank you in advance, dear citizens, for obeying mine. Words are dangerous and slippery things. Some people in the West will tell you that words are playthings, and that we should all be free to do with them as we please. But I want to tell you that words are really all we have – and this is why the Party has troubled itself to choose them so carefully on your behalf.

You will have heard, I suppose, that Article 35 of our nation’s constitution guarantees that you enjoy “freedom of expression.” You will no …

From Lovers To Volunteers: Tian Han And The National Anthem, Liang Luo

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

As the clock counts down towards the opening of the Olympic Games at 8 p.m. on August 8, 2008, the Chinese government and many ordinary Chinese citizens are hoping that one particular song will make an impression on television viewers in all corners of the globe: “March of the Volunteers,” the country’s National Anthem. Not only will it play during the Opening Ceremony and the Closing Ceremony, but also every time a Chinese athlete wins a gold medal, and expectations are running high that this will happen a lot, thanks largely to the high caliber of the women competing for …

Olympic Readings

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For those keeping up on coverage of the Olympics and China, the new issue ofForeign Policy has a piece by John Hoberman, professor of German Studies at UT-Austin. In FP’s regular “Think Again” feature (which seeks to challenge conventional wisdom), Hoberman argues that the Olympics are political, are not intended to promote human rights, are not (necessarily) a catalyst for change, don’t generate a lot of revenue for the host or sponsors, are not the most controversial Games ever, and that the IOC is even more corrupt than already reported. In an additional piece, “Prime Numbers: Rings of Gold,” Brad …

Bourgeois Shanghai: Wang Anyi’S Novel Of Nostalgia, Wittenberg University

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

After the recent publication of a translation of Wang Anyi’s 1995 novel A Song of Everlasting Sorrow, we asked Howard Choy to reflect on the novel’s contents and importance. Below, Choy draws on his recently published work on late twentieth century Chinese fiction to contextualize Wang’s Shanghai story.

Among all the major cities in China, Shanghai has become the most popular in recent academic research and creative writings. This is partly a consequence of its resuscitation under Deng Xiaoping’s (1904-1997) intensified economic reforms in the 1990s, and partly due to its unique experience during one hundred years (1843-1943) of colonization …

China Images From The Library Of Congress

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

For those always on the lookout for more teaching images, you may be interested in taking a gander at the Library of Congress’s Flickr account. Though mainly featuring images of the United States (altogether about 4,000 images), if you search “China” at the top of the page you will receive several pages of images from or about China. (You can easily download the images to your computer by clicking on the photo, then selecting “all sizes,” then selecting “download the original size.”) These fascinating images include the photos below, taken between 1910 and 1915. The first is a photograph of …

After The Olympics, What?, Nicolai Volland

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Exactly one month before the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games, all attention seems to be focused on those magic sixteen days, from August 8 through August 24. It is surprising, however, how rarely the question is raised: what will happen once the Games are over?

In the run-up to the Summer Games, China has been placed under an undeclared state of emergency. Special regulations and restrictions are effecting almost every of daily life. Taxi drivers and Beijing residents had to brush up their English and study brochures that explained how to stand in line and be courteous to foreigners. …

Out And About

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

It’s been a while since we’ve done a reading round-up–here a few things we’ve been reading (and writing) on the web lately:

1. If you’ve been picking up rumblings about “soy sauce” and “push ups” and haven’t been able to sort out the details, the always savvy Sky Canaves (with Juliet Ye this time) at Wall Street Journal‘s China Blog sorts it out for you. Check out Time‘s report for the basics. As CDT reports, debates over the Wengan riots have turned to the topic of internet censorship, while EastSouthWestNorth notesthat discussions of the incident are cooling down.

2. Looking …

Service Encounters, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

The action in Amy Hanser’s Service Encounters (Stanford University Press, 2008) moves smoothly among three separate but related urban consumer settings in Harbin: the Mao-era relic of Harbin No. X department store, Sunshine Department Store, a swanky oversized shrine to the new conspicuous consumption of wealthy Chinese, and the chaotic marketplace of The Underground, where young women will literally sell the shirts off their backs when presented with the opportunity. Hanser, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, focuses on these three sites as she examines the shifts that have taken place in Chinese retail practices …

Faq#5: Why Can’T The Chinese Authorities Allow A Little Space For Protests During The Olympics?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Of course, the easy answer to this question is: Because there is almost no freedom of assembly in China and there are big restrictions on freedom of expression. But I have started to realize that this answer is too simple. The people I have been talking to, even well-educated and international people, have a gut reaction to the idea of public protests that is unfavorable.

I have been discussing the issue of protests during the Olympic Games with Chinese colleagues, friends, and acquaintances from academic, government, and corporate backgrounds. The people whose views I summarize here are college-educated (in China), …

Faq#4: How Is Beijing Planning To Handle Political Protests During The Olympic Games?

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

One of the most important issues for the upcoming Beijing Olympics is whether activists will attempt to carry out public protests and demonstrations, and how the Chinese authorities will react if they do. Some Western journalists believe that there will be protest attempts, and if the Chinese reaction is to immediately send in the security forces, this will dominate the front-page coverage of the Games. One journalist acquaintance observed that if this should happen, it is likely that a photo of a policeman manhandling a protester will become the graphic emblem of the Games for years to come, carrying on …

Global And Functional Strategic Issues, Antulio J. Echevarria Ii

Articles & Editorials

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing Sovereignty: From Control To Responsibility, Eric K. Leonard

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As I stood with a standing-room only crowd last fall at a United Nations University of New York (UNU-ONY) event entitled, "Prevention of Mass Atrocities: From Mandate to Realization," I began to wonder how far the responsibility to protect (R2P) could be stretched. As defined by the UNU-ONY organizers, the purpose of the event was " to explore the work of mass atrocity prevention across the UN system, with a focus on the role of the new Office of the Special Representative for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities (SRPGMA)." As I currently look at the international community's response …

The Body Beautiful: Jonathan Spence’S Final Reith Lecture, Xu Guoqi

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Jonathan Spence gave his fourth and last Reith lecture on “The Body Beautiful.” This is a perfect fit for China’s Olympic year and a wonderful conclusion talk after his first lecture on mind (“Confucian Ways”), then on Chinese interactions with the former superpower (the second lecture “English Lessons”), and the current one (the third lecture “American Dreams”). From mind to body, from China as an ancient civilization through its turbulent relations with Western powers to a nation which is determined to compete with the world in hard power either economically or physically, the topic was extremely well thought. The lecture …

Our Women In China

China Beat Blog: Archive 2008-2012

Since late 2006, James Fallows has been providing regular coverage on China forThe Atlantic Monthly. His first piece for the magazine was subtitled “Our Man in Shanghai…” and the retro phrase caught our eye not only for its imperial overtones (the frequency with which it is used to describe newspaper reporters is unnerving, since the phrase calls up Graham Greene’s title, Our Man in Havana, a book about nothing so much as bad intelligence), but also for its gender implications. After all, “our man in China” is just as often a woman (as has been the case in the past; …

July Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

"Armed and Humanitarian" by Bruce Falconer. Mother Jones. May 19, 2008.

Hierarchy Or Heterarchy? Actors Of Medieval International Society At The Council Of Constance And The Peace Of Augsburg, Sarah Bania-Dobyns

Global and Public Affairs: Faculty Scholarship

IR research on medieval international society has been mixed. On the one hand, interest in “neo-medievalism” has led to some discussion of international relations of the medieval era. Hedley Bull first used the term to refer to a simultaneous trend towards cosmopolitanism as well as fragmentation (Bull 1977), so it is in this sense in which scholars like Ruggie (1983, for example) have used the term. However, much of this research has merely touched upon ideas of medieval international society, and not upon medieval international society itself and what it has to offer contemporary debates.

Shades Of Green: The Use Of Force Debate In The German Green Party, 1990--2002, Scott H. Brunstetter

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Utilizing an heuristic model that incorporates aspects from several theoretical perspectives this dissertation examines the German Green Party debate on the use of military force from 1990-2002. From the absolute rejection of any use of force to evict Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War in 1991, the Greens evolved over the course of a decade to support the deployment of German forces to Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This dissertation argues that this evolution was the result of a conscious will to govern by German political leaders in particular and external shocks—Srebrenica, Kosovo, and 9/11. It …

Drawbridge Diplomacy: Romanian-American Relations, 1963-1968, Brett A. Jerasa

History Theses & Dissertations

Entering the White House in 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson pursued a policy of "bridge building" to Eastern Europe, finding agreement on small issues of economics and foreign relations in order to decrease tension between East and West. Johnson targeted Romania as the show case for bridge building because of its growing autonomy from the Soviet Union. Romania's policies of rapid industrialization and foreign policy independence offered potent possibilities. However, Johnson's bridge building faced many difficulties. His administration pursued a dual Cold War policy: he fought communist belligerency in Vietnam while affirming the positive behavior of Eastern European satellites. Despite the …

The Political Personality Of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Aubrey Immelman, Pascal De Sutter

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect assessment of the personality of French president Nicolas Sarkozy. The study was conducted from the conceptual perspective of Theodore Millon’s model of personality.

Information concerning Sarkozy was collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the second edition of the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with Axis II of DSM–IV.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed on the basis of interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of Personality Styles …

Mission Creep: De-Militarizing Humanitarian Protection, Sonia Cardenas

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Over a decade ago, the U.S. military was warning liberal internationalists about the dangers of "mission creep." Today it is doing the opposite, incorporating relief and development work into its operations. In the devastating aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in Burma , the U.S. military's newfound mission may seem compelling. Unfortunately, expanding the military's role into humanitarian work reflects a flawed logic that should be resisted. There are more promising ways to protect victims of humanitarian disaster.