China’s National Experiences and the Evolution of PRC Grand Strategy

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Chas W. Freeman

This chapter focuses on the People’s Republic of China’s “grand strategy” in world affairs. Grand strategiy, for all powers, is rooted in the nation’s past and its historical evolution. As such, this chapter traces the various historical and cultural sources of China’s contemporary approach to the world. It argues that China has a deep sense of greatness—but also wounded pride. In particular, different sources of China’s traditions, encounters with the West, border insecurities, and preoccupation with the United States. The author argues that China’s relations with the United States are reaching a critical, and dangerous, point.

There has been a neglect on the part of Western governments with focus on the U.S. to take seriously the internet campaign that ISIS has been waging since 2014 and the affective response that still draws citizens from across the world into their promise of a civilized, united nation for Muslims. It is possible that the West, even with a severely increased commitment to fighting the Islamic State, may be too late. This chapter will explore responses by Western governments including the United States to fight internet-enabled terrorism.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Luke Patey

China views the decline of the United States and the West as signal to advance its interests, norms, and values on the world stage. But sentiments that one superpower will replace another miss the bigger picture. China’s rise to the commanding heights of the global economy and world affairs is not preordained. Its potential evolution into a global superpower, with a deep presence and strong influence over economic, political, military, and culture abroad, will rather be conditioned by how China behaves toward the rest of the world, and how the world responds. The world’s other large economies, major militaries, technology leaders, and cultural hubs will be significant in shaping the future world. For developed and developing countries alike, there is recognition that economic engagement with China produces strategic vulnerabilities to their own competitiveness and foreign policy and defense autonomy. China will struggle to realize its political, economic, and military global ambitions.


Worldview ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 14-16
Author(s):  
Lionel Gelber

When the United States fostered the recovery and underwrote the security of Western Europe she had more than sentiment to impel her. That salient zone is a pivotal sector of the world balance, and while she may station fewer of her own troops upon its soil, she can entertain no total disengagement from it. But there is another West European item, the future of the Common Market, which calls for a fresh American scrutiny. The West will be better off if Western Europe acquires more of an ability to stand on its own feet. Gaullism, however, revealed a less modest goal, one that was not confined to France and did not vanish with the departure of General de Gaulle. On the contrary, it may have gained new leverage from his downfall.


2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-136
Author(s):  
Ariege Muallem

Refugees in our Own Land narrates the author’s life between October andDecember 2000, when she was married and living in the West Bank’sDheisheh refugee camp. The book creates a new respect for the refugeesamong whom she lived and gives the reader a glimpse of the incredible difficultiesof their everyday lives.The book is divided into two parts. The first part chronicles Hamzeh’slife during October 4-December 4, 2000: her personal life and that of herfriends in Dheisheh, as well as current political events and how they affectthe life of the refugees in the camp. These almost daily entries were actuallye-mailed to a large number of people while she was still living inDheisheh. The second half of the book is a series of short unrelated storiesand articles, written between 1988 and March 2000, that highlight eventsthat brought her to Dheisheh and explain other events and people in her life.Their order is a bit odd. After the reader gets used to Hamzeh’s life in thecamp, she abruptly ends her entries by describing how she left the camp andthen, just when the reader wants to know what happened next, she startsrelating the events that transpired 2 years ago prior to her journey to theWest Bank. There is no mention of a husband there, and then all of a suddenshe goes from living in the United States to ending up in Dheisheh.How she got there, unfortunately, is never explained. The lack of detailsconcerning such important transitions is quite frustrating. Although shemay have considered them “too personal” to include, it resulted in frustrationon the reader’s part.One success, however, is her exposure of the humanity of people whoso often are dismissed by the world as “refugees.” She mentions their namesand describes their faces and personalities, thereby giving the reader an ...


Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 248
Author(s):  
Ching-ning Wang

From late January to early February 2018, the first Vinaya course in the Tibetan tradition offered in the United States to train Western nuns was held in Sravasti Abbey. Vinaya masters and senior nuns from Taiwan were invited to teach the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, which has the longest lasting bhikṣuṇī (fully ordained nun) sangha lineage in the world. During this course, almost 60 nuns from five continents, representing three different traditional backgrounds lived and studied together. Using my ethnographic work to explore this Vinaya training event, I analyze the perceived needs that have spurred Western Buddhist practitioners to form a bhikṣuṇī sangha. I show how the event demonstrates the solid transmission of an Asian Vinaya lineage to the West. I also parallel this Vinaya training event in the West to the formation of the bhikṣuṇī sangha in China in the 4th and 5th centuries, suggesting that for Buddhism in a new land, there will be much more cooperation and sharing among Buddhist nuns from different Buddhist traditions than there are among monastics in Asia where different Buddhist traditions and schools have been well-established for centuries. This Vinaya training event points to the development of the bhikṣuṇī sangha in the West being neither traditionalist nor modernist, since nuns both respect lineages from Asia, and reforms the gender hierarchy practiced in Asian Buddhism. Nuns from different traditions cooperate with each other in order to allow Buddhism to flourish in the West.


2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (7) ◽  
pp. 25-33
Author(s):  
V. Mikheev ◽  
S. Lukonin

Linking the 100th anniversary of the CPC, celebrated in 2021, with long-term goals, the Chinese leadership is talking about the country’s entry into the next stage of development – the stage of the “second century of the CPC.” The 14th plan for the socio-economic development of the country for 2021–2025, adopted in March 2021 and long-range objectives through 2035 are seen as the first steps in a new round of China’s evolution. According to the Chinese leadership, the goals of the first century have been largely achieved. Now China faces more ambitious tasks: 1) achieve socialist modernization by 2035, doubling its GDP per capita to the level of an average developed country; 2) to reach the German or Japanese level of industrial and innovative development by 2050; 3) to ensure the innovative and scientific and technological self-sufficiency of China in order to get away from the current technological dependence on the United States and the West in general, which, in the opinion of the Chinese leadership, poses a threat to the national security of the PRC; 4) to create by 2027 (100th anniversary of the PLA) a strong modern army; 5) Ensure China’s global leadership by the 100th anniversary of the founding of the PRC in 2049. The peculiarities of the new 14th five-year plan include the absence of targets for GDP growth rates for 2021–2025. The benchmark will now be set every year. For example, for 2021, this indicator is set in the highly redundant formulation “6 percent or more”. Beijing records the nearing transition from quantitative planning to qualitative planning. The aggravation of relations between China and the United States under the Biden administration and Beijing’s retaliatory, in a new way, actions in almost all areas, from ideology to security and defense, in the near future will change the global balance of power and lead to the formation of a “new bipolarity” implying in the context of globalization, that in addition to the two new planetary “poles” in the world, regional and subregional centers of power will persist and develop, forming, as saying in China, modern “polycentricity”. Against such a background, the “new bipolarity” will be characterized not only by a direct clash of Chinese and American interests, but also by a struggle for dominance, influence, and alliance with the leaders of the “polycentric world.” Within the framework of the “new bipolarity”, the United States is strengthening relations with allies, opposing the “democratic economy” of the West to the “authoritarianism of China”. The concept of financing by the West of the world transport infrastructure of a “democratic sense” as opposed to the “authoritarian” Chinese “Belt and Road” is put forward. In the reciprocal steps of China to attract partners to the “Chinese pole”, the main place is given to Russia, relations with which are characterized as “exemplary” for the whole world. At the same time, there is an opinion among Chinese experts that “excessive rapprochement” with Russia is unprofitable for China, since for Russia, as well as for the United States, China is not only a partner, but also a “strategic competitor.” China has become the main Russian trade and economic partner, in many directions it has turned into an uncontested supplier. At the same time, the “Sino-Russian Comprehensive Partnership in a New Era” contains many tactical and long-term problems.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-37
Author(s):  
Amadu Sesay ◽  
Charles Ukeje

The end of the cold war has made democratization, and its barest essential component elections, imperative for all nondemocratic forms of government. This is to be expected, given the dismal failure of the socialist alternative even in the first socialist country, the former Soviet Union. The United States, which is not only the foremost democracy in the world but also the only superpower, has been in the vanguard of democracy salesmanship. Africa, the continent with the least democratic space, has not been left out, as witnessed by President Bill Clinton’s unprecedented tour of the continent in March 1998.Understandably, Nigeria, arguably the most important country in Africa, was left out of the tour, since it was then under the obnoxious, undemocratic, and oppressive military regime of the late General Sani Abacha.


2015 ◽  
Vol 01 (02) ◽  
pp. 183-204
Author(s):  
Yafei He

As the world moves from "governance by the West" to "co-governance by both the West and East," the inherent deficiency in current global governance architecture becomes obvious to all of us. The author, through his own experiences as both a practitioner and student of global governance, has highlighted where the deficiency is and how to remedy it. By explaining China's recent moves in proposing the Chinese dream and building "one belt and one road," the author suggests that China continue on this proactive approach in dealing with global governance and offers some ideas from Chinese cultural heritage on how to reform the global governance architecture, with an emphasis on the G20, as well as on what China and the United States can do together to achieve better global governance.


Author(s):  
Stephanie Fox

This article addresses the phenomenon of ‘national epistemologies’ that areunderstood as particular ways to think about the world, both enabled and restrictedby national(ist) ideologies as cultural thesis about distinct commonality andtogetherness. With regard to methodology, the article describes on a general levelhow these ‘national epistemologies’ can be identified and particularly how theirdevelopment as nationally idiosyncratic ways of conceptualizing and conductingresearch can be explained, taking the academic field of education as an example. Theexistence of such distinct national research thought styles can be detected, at leastin the West: in the United States, in France, in England and in Germany. Thereby,imperial aspirations of these nationally connoted and configured phenomena cometo the fore, indicating their efforts of spreading from epistemologically strongernation(-state)s into weaker ones in the way of ‘travelling ideas’. Starting from thethought style represented by German Idealism, two major reasons or purposes forthese travels can be distinguished: One ‘by invitation’ and one ‘as occupation’, asrepresented by the case of Austria.Key words: Austria; education research; national epistemologies; nationalism;travelling ideas.


Author(s):  
David J. Neumann

The epilogue narrates the developments and impact of Self-Realization Fellowship and Yogananda’s writings since his death in 1952, assessing his influence in the United States and around the world. A century after Yogananda came to the U.S. with his message of Kriya Yoga, and three quarters of a century after the Autobiography of a Yogi was released, yoga has become ubiquitous, while Hindu beliefs have become an integral part of the spiritual landscape. Yogananda ultimately succeeded in converting thousands of Americans during his lifetime. When he died in 1952, he was revered and worshipped—overwhelmingly by non-Indian Americans—as the very incarnation of deity. Since his departure, he has influenced many others around the world through his successor organization, the Self-Realization Fellowship, and other independent organizations—such as Ananda, founded by Kriyananda—that trace their lineage to him, as well through Autobiography of a Yogi and his other teachings. The Father of Yoga in the West nurtured religious offspring. Yogananda’s story is thus an indispensable element of the emergence of both contemporary yoga and modern American Hinduism


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