Metaphors and Analogies as Heuristics in Policymaking

Author(s):  
Qingmin Zhang

Metaphors and analogies are two of the most popular heuristics utilized by decision makers, promoting an unconscious inference into the realm of rationality within the mind. A master of metaphor and analogy, the late leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mao Zedong, offers an illuminating example of such heuristic reasoning. Analyzing the metaphors and analogies most frequently invoked by the PRC leader, this chapter demonstrates that Mao’s conceptual system was highly metaphorical. While historical analogies explain Mao’s heuristic reasoning for China’s revolutionary diplomacy, his use of metaphors reveals how stereotypes influenced his understanding of his enemies, which in turn explained and shaped China’s major foreign policy decisions. Mao’s use/misuse of metaphors and analogies also showcases their fallacies, mainly their tendency to exaggerate similarities and move from the realization that something is like something else to assuming that something is exactly like something else.

1978 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-49
Author(s):  
William Minter

Mozambique “switched from a pro-Chinese to a pro-Soviet stance during the Angolan civil war,” writes a commentator in the influential U.S. quarterly Foreign Policy of Fall 1977. “Mozambique said to Cool on Soviets, Turn West,” headlines a Washington Post dispatch of December 15, 1977. The Economist’s Foreign Report claims in its advertising to have been the first to describe the ideological infighting within FRELIMO and the swing to Russia. The commentators seemed to have missed Mozambique’s 1977 trade fair in September, at which the People’s Republic of China won first prize for an exhibit corresponding to Mozambique’s needs, but if they had been there one might well have seen headlines proclaiming Mozambique’s shift back to China.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (04-1) ◽  
pp. 122-133
Author(s):  
Ilya Kolesnikov ◽  
Konstantin Kasparyan ◽  
Elena Malyshkina ◽  
Jordan Gjorchev

The article is devoted to the comprehension of changes in foreign policy of Communist China during Mao Zedong's rule - in late 1940s - mid 1970s. The authors investigate the causes and consequences of fundamental changes in the Chinese foreign policy doctrine, taking into account the whole range of objective and subjective factors that led to the deterioration of the Soviet-Chinese relations and the beginning of rapprochement between China and the USA.


Author(s):  
Anatoliy V. Goncharenko ◽  
Lybov G. Polyakova

The article researches the US foreign policy towards the PRC during Gerald Ford presidency in 1974-1977. It describes the reasons, course and consequences of the intensification of the US foreign policy strategy in the Chinese direction during the investigated period. There was explored the practical realization of the “Pacific Doctrine”by Washington. The role of various groups in the American establishment in the question of the formation of the Chinese White House policy has been analyzed. The specific foreign policy actions of the administration of the US president Gerald Fordon the PRC in 1974-1977 are analyzed. The chief results of the foreign policy of the administration of the President of the United States Gerald Ford (1974-1977) concerning the PRC, which resulted from the real political steps taken by the leaders of both countries, was the establishment of systematic and reliable channels of bilateral ties, expansion of economic, scientific and cultural contacts, the beginning of a systematic exchange of views on the most important issues of international relations. In the second half of the 70’s of the twentieth century this dialogue ensured the continuity of China’s policy in Washington, which was based on the concept of a “balance of power”, while China played a complementary role in the foreign policy strategy of the White House. These factors formed the “Pacific Doctrine” of G. Ford, which gave Beijing the status of an American partner in maintaining a balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region and consolidated a positive assessment of the place and role of the People’s Republic of China in Asian politics in the United States of America. The return of American political thought to the ideas of the combination policy occurred in the formation of US-Soviet strategic parity and awareness of the ruling circles in the United States, due to the defeat in Vietnam, the limited resources of force influence on the international situation. Started in the United States the study of China’s behavior in the international arena and its power parameters made it possible then to draw a preliminary conclusion that the People’s Republic of China can fill the place of the missing link in the “triangle” of the global scheme – a place of counterweight to the USSR; this required the removal of a US-Chinese confrontation. However, the socio-political and ideological contradictions that were pushed to the foreground on the initial stage of the Chinese policy of the administration of G. Ford and the process of normalization of bilateral relations, again made themselves felt at a later stage. Their injection was promoted by the logic of the development of bilateral US-China relations, as well as by a number of internal objective and subjective reasons, as in the People’s Republic of China (a sharp increase in the struggle for power connected with the illness and death of Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong), and in the United States (Gerald Ford made certain curtseys towards the American right-wing conservative forces and began to intensify approaches to Beijing and Moscow, and also the presidential campaign of 1976). Keywords: the USA, PRC, China, foreign policy, American-Chinese relations, “Pacific Doctrine”, Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger , Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping.


Author(s):  
Zhou Yongming

In China, the term minority nationalities is used to refer to all ethnic groups that are not Han Chinese. According to the 2000 census, a total of 55 minority nationalities numbered in total 106 million people, or 8.4 percent of the total population in the mainland (Zhu 2001). However, the size and composition of minority nationality populations in China is extremely heterogeneous. In terms of population, based on the 1990 census, the smallest, the Lhoba, numbered only 2,312, whereas the most populous, the Zhuang, were 15.5 million strong (National Statistics Bureau 2000: 38). Socially and culturally speaking, the differences among the minority nationalities are large: Some are hunter-gatherers or slash-and-burn cultivators, whereas others are highly sinicized Chinese-speaking groups like the Hui and the contemporary Manchu. Minority nationalities are spread all over China, and 90 percent of them live in mountainous areas (Li 1994: 72). Because of this geographic distribution, isolated minority areas became safe havens for poppy planting and opium production, especially after the opium suppression campaign of 1906–1911 by the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). In most cases, opium was introduced into minority communities in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Opium’s effects on minority communities have varied considerably. Generally speaking, there have been three possible types of effects. First, members of some minorities have become addicted to opium but relied on others to obtain the opium supply. Second, members of other minority groups have acted mainly as poppy cultivators and raw opium suppliers but have been less involved in consumption and trafficking. Last, members of yet other minority groups have become involved not only in poppy planting but also in opium trafficking and consumption. Opium has thus come to play an important role in a minority’s social and economic lives in those areas affected by the drug. By exploring how antidrug campaigns were carried out in the Jiayin Erlunchun community in northeast China and the Liangshan Yi and Aba Tibetan areas in southwest China, I will explore all three types of the effects of drugs on minority communities up to the late 1950s. The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949. To Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists, drugs were remnants of capitalist and feudal culture and had no place in the new China to which they looked forward.


1987 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Hoberman

In the decade following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the People’s Republic of China has experienced a cultural and ideological transformation unprecedented in the history of communist societies. Sport, like the arts, is a political subculture that expresses prevailing ideological trends; for this reason, the new modernization in China has mandated a new ideological interpretation of sport. Contrary to appearances, the ideological content of Maoist sport doctrine has actually been retained in post-Maoist sport ideology. What has changed is the relative degree of emphasis accorded specific ideological elements, so that these two doctrinal phases may be analyzed in terms of dominant and recessive traits. The four primary ideological variables examined in this study are competition, high-performance sport and record-setting, sportive ethics, and scientific sport.


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