Trends in the Study of Chinese Politics: State-Society Relations

1994 ◽  
Vol 139 ◽  
pp. 704-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth J. Perry
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Source Materials ◽  
Study Of Chinese Politics

In his survey of the field some years ago, Harry Harding noted that the study of contemporary Chinese politics stood then on the threshold of a third generation of scholarship. While the first generation had been limited by the atmosphere of the Cold War and the second had been overly influenced by the Cultural Revolution, Harding held out hope for a third generation able to surpass its predecessors in both substance and theoretical sophistication. Nearly a decade has passed since the publication of Harding's prescient article and in fact such a third generation can now be discerned - distinguished from the first two not only by the prevailing political atmosphere, but also by its theoretical perspective and access to source materials.

The Study of Chinese Politics: Toward a Third Generation of Scholarship

1984 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Harding
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
General Description ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Competing Models ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Study Of Chinese Politics

Research on contemporary Chinese politics can be divided into two distinct generations since its initiation in the early 1960s. The first, produced before the Cultural Revolution, was characterized by general description rather than systematic comparison or sophisticated conceptualization. The second generation, which appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, assigned greater attention to describing the variation of Chinese politics over space and time, identifying the informal norms and mechanisms by which Chinese politics operates, and developing general theories of the Chinese political process. In a third generation, which is just now beginning to emerge, we should see efforts to absorb the new sources of information now available about China; to sort, test, and amalgamate the competing models produced by the second generation; to integrate the analysis of Chinese politics with the rest of comparative politics; and to study Chinese politics in an interdisciplinary fashion.

scholarly journals Cold War as Method

Prism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 408-431
Author(s):  
Petrus Liu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Identity Formations

Abstract This essay proposes a reconceptualization of the Cold War as a critical methodology for the study of contemporary Chinese-language cultures and literatures. Arguing that the Cold War is not over but simply transformed, the author redefines it as an enduring “problematic of the present,” an emotional structure that continues to shape the contours of literature, academic discourse, and identity formations in ways of which we are not always fully conscious. Hence the Cold War is best understood as a “cultural palimpsest” where the old dilemma of communism versus anticommunism is rewritten into a contemporary idiom of colonialism versus self-determination. After developing the concept of Cold War as method, the second part of the essay offers a concrete example through a critical reading of Swordsman II, a 1992 martial arts film adapted from Jin Yong's 1967 novel. While the film has generally been analyzed for its representation of (queer) sexuality, the essay shows that it is the Cultural Revolution and its Cold War legacies that explain the emergence of its main character.

The Cold War and After

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Trachtenberg
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International System ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Book Deal ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Historical Issues ◽  
Shed Light

What makes for war or for a stable international system? Are there general principles that should govern foreign policy? This book explores how historical work can throw light on these questions. The essays in this book deal with specific problems—with such matters as nuclear strategy and U.S.–European relations. But the book's main goal is to show how in practice a certain type of scholarly work can be done. The book demonstrates how, in studying international politics, the conceptual and empirical sides of the analysis can be made to connect with each other, and how historical, theoretical, and even policy issues can be tied together in an intellectually respectable way. These essays address a wide variety of topics, from theoretical and policy issues, such as the question of preventive war and the problem of international order, to more historical subjects—for example, American policy on Eastern Europe in 1945 and Franco-American relations during the Nixon–Pompidou period. But in each case, the aim is to show how a theoretical perspective can be brought to bear on the analysis of historical issues, and how historical analysis can shed light on basic conceptual problems.

‘The Timpani Beats Just Hit on My Heart!’ Music, Memory, and Diplomacy in the Philadelphia Orchestra's 1973 China Tour

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-418
Author(s):  
BESS XINTONG LIU
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Western Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Art Music ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Musical Diplomacy

AbstractThis article examines the underexplored history of the 1973 Philadelphia Orchestra China tour and retheorizes twentieth-century musical diplomacy as a process of ritualization. As a case study, I consult bilingual archives and incorporate interviews with participants in this event, which brings together individual narratives and public opinions. By contextualizing this musical diplomacy in the Cold War détente and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, I argue for the complex set of relations mobilized by Western art music in 1973. This tour first created a sense of co-dependency between musicians and politicians. It also engaged Chinese audiences by revitalizing pre-Cultural Revolution sonic memories. Second, I argue that the significance of the 1973 Orchestra tour lies in the ritualization of Western art music as diplomatic etiquette, based on further contextualization of this event in the historical trajectory of Sino-US relations and within the entrenched Chinese ideology of liyue (ritual and music).

Friendship in Chinese International Relations

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 177-199
Author(s):  
Chih-Yu Shih
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
The Us ◽  
Scope Of Application ◽  
Tributary System ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Chinese Diplomacy ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Confucian friendship adds to the literature on friendship distance sensibilities and aims to maintain and even reinforce the Confucian ethical order, whereas contemporary international politics fails to provide any clear ethical order. The use of friendship and the concomitant creation of a friendly role by China indicate an intended move away from the improper order, including the tributary system, the Cold War, imperialism, and socialism. Confucian friendship continues to constitute contemporary Chinese diplomacy under the circumstance of indeterminate distance sensibilities. It highlights the relevance of the prior relations that are perceived to have constituted friendship. This article explores several illustrative practices of a Confucian typology of friendly international relations, divided into four kinds of friendship, according to (1) the strength of prior relations and (2) the asymmetry of capacity, including the policies toward Russia, North Korea, and Vietnam, among others. Such a Confucian friendship framework additionally alludes to foreign policy analysis in general. The US policies for China and North Korea are examples that indicate this wide scope of application.

Children of the Holocaust and Cold War

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Susan M. Reverby
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Medical School ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
American Jews ◽  
Upstate New York ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Cold War

The prologue situates Alan Berkman as an unexpected American revolutionary. Raised in the 1950s and 1960s in small town upstate New York during the Cold War and as part of the first generation of post-Holocaust American Jews, Berkman was focused on doing his parents proud. The author grew up with him, went to his bar mitzvah, and joined him at Cornell for college. But then their paths diverged as Berkman was focused on medical school while the author saw her future in radical politics. The chapter summarizes the arguments of the book and lays out the path of Berkman’s increasingly revolutionary stances.

Soviet reform and the end of the Cold War: explaining large-scale historical change

1991 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Deudney ◽  
G. John Ikenberry
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Collapse Of Communism ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Theoretical Issues

IntroductionAfter years of retirement in the academy, macro’historical commentary on contemporary events has returned to fashion. Radical domestic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and new patterns ofEast’West relations-in short, the collapse of communism and the end othe Cold War’mark the end of an era and present an invitation to international theorizing.1 Few would deny that these changes are momentous, but there is little consensus concerning their origins, trajectory, and implications. Explaining these events will necessitate a reweighing of fundamental theoretical issues. Thesize and speed of these changes were largely unexpected,reminding us how primitive our theories really are and encouraging us to broaden our theoretical perspective. To capture these events, theorists must reach across the disciplinary divides of Sovietology, international relations theory political economy, and political sociology.

Death and Transfiguration: Liu Shaoqi's Rehabilitation and Contemporary Chinese Politics

1981 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lowell Dittmer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Comprehensive Assessment ◽  
The Self ◽  
Chinese Politics ◽  
New Materials ◽  
Communist Leader ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Mass Participation ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Liu Shaoqi, the highest-ranking Chinese Communist leader to fall victim to China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was posthumously rehabilitated in spring 1980. His rehabilitation was accompanied by the publication of new materials on his life and career, enabling us to fill in various lacunae and to attempt a more comprehensive assessment of his political import. If the vindication is successful among China's still somewhat skeptical masses, Liu may come to serve as a popular symbol of the folly of spontaneous mass participation in politics and the essential continuity of China's Marxist-Leninist tradition from the 1950s to the 1980s. To China's officialdom, Liu will represent the ultimate integrity of the Party apparatus, an avatar of the self-cultivated rectitude of the “clean official.”

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