At the conclusion of WWII, no part of the world experienced a more dramatic transformation than East Asia. The region's political stability throughout the postwar period prompted exponential economic growth that ultimately established South Korea, Japan, and China as East Asia's most important powers. While many citizens of these nations now live in a time of unprecedented prosperity, the arrangement that supported this region's transformation is fragile. With the second largest economy and a burgeoning military sector, China is widely acknowledged as the preeminent rising world power. The onus of maintaining balance in the region now rests primarily with South Korea and Japan in partnership with the United States. However, because of long-standing weaknesses in South Korea–Japan relations and an inconsistent US commitment to the region, the possibility that China could usher in a more uncertain era of revisionism has never been more likely.In Strengthening South Korea-Japan Relations: East Asia's International Order and a Rising China, Dennis Patterson and Jangsup Choi address the historical roots of this weak alliance. Combining decades of research with current public opinion data, the authors warn that the tendency of these nations to rely on the United States to maintain the status quo has become dangerously unstable. A new strategy, one of cooperation and collaboration, is needed to prevent China from upending the region's current liberal international order.

Based on groundbreaking research, this book is the first of its kind to provide a close examination in English of the extensive imagery of the soldier figure in the war culture of early twentieth-century China. This study moves away from the traditional military history perspectives and focuses on the neglected cultural aspect of the intersection of war and society in China during a crucial period that led to the eventual victory of the Chinese Communist Party over the Nationalist Party. Integrating history, literature, and arts, this appealing narrative reveals multiple meanings of the soldier figure created by different political, social, and cultural forces in modern China. Drawing from a wide range of sources including government documents, speeches, newspaper articles, memoirs, military textbooks, and yangge drama, Yan Xu recounts stories of unforgettable Chinese political leaders, including Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. She also examines the wartime experiences of previously marginalized social groups, including women soldiers, wounded soldiers, student soldiers, military writers, and vocational education professionals, giving voice to those largely forgotten by military historians. This book opens up a new area in modern Chinese history and Chinese military history by revealing that the cultural discourse on the soldier image is essential to understanding Chinese nationalism, state-building, and civil-military relations in the early twentieth century.

Today 700 million Chinese citizens -- more than fifty-four percent of the population -- live in cities. The mass migration of rural populations to urban centers increased rapidly following economic reforms of the 1990s, and serious problems such as overcrowding, lack of health services, and substandard housing have arisen in these areas since. China's urban citizens have taken to the courts for redress and fought battles over failed urban renewal projects, denial of civil rights, corruption, and abuse of power. In Power versus Law in Modern China, Qiang Fang and Xiaobing Li examine four important legal cases that took place from 1995 to 2013 in the major cities of Wuhan, Xuzhou, Shanghai, and Chongqing. In these cases, citizens protested demolition of property, as well as corruption among city officials, developers, and landlords; but were repeatedly denied protection or compensation from the courts. Fang and Li explore how new interest groups comprised of entrepreneurs and Chinese graduates of Western universities have collaborated with the CCP-controlled local governments to create new power bases in cities. Drawing on newly available official sources, private collections, and interviews with Chinese administrators, judges, litigants, petitioners, and legal experts, this interdisciplinary analysis reveals the powerful and privileged will most likely continue to exploit the legal asymmetry that exists between the courts and citizens.

On March 11, 2011, an underwater earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku, Japan, triggered one of the most devastating tsunamis of a generation. The aftermath was overwhelming: communities were reduced to rubble, thousands of people were missing or dead, and relief organizations struggled to reach affected areas to provide aid for survivors and victims of radiation from compromised nuclear reactors.In Japan after 3/11, editors Pradyumna P. Karan and Unryu Suganuma assemble geographers, economists, humanists, and scientists to consider the complex economic, physical, and social impacts of this heartbreaking disaster. Historical geographers place the events of March 2011 in context, while other contributors assess the damage and recommend strategies for the long process of reclamation and rebuilding. The book also includes interviews with victims that explore the social implications of radioactive contamination and invite comparisons to the discrimination faced by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Balancing the natural and social sciences, this timely volume offers not only a model of interdisciplinary research for scholars but also an invaluable guide to the planning and implementation of reconstruction.

With nearly twenty-five million citizens, a secretive totalitarian dictatorship, and active nuclear and ballistic missile weapons programs, North Korea presents some of the world's most difficult foreign policy challenges. For decades, the United States and its partners have employed multiple strategies in an effort to prevent Pyongyang from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Washington has moved from the Agreed Framework under President Bill Clinton to George W. Bush's denunciation of the regime as part of the "axis of evil" to a posture of "strategic patience" under Barack Obama. Given that a new president will soon occupy the White House, policy expert Walter C. Clemens Jr. argues that now is the time to reconsider US diplomatic efforts in North Korea.In North Korea and the World, Clemens poses the question, "Can, should, and must we negotiate with a regime we regard as evil?" Weighing the needs of all the stakeholders -- including China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea -- he concludes that the answer is yes. After assessing nine other policy options, he makes the case for engagement and negotiation with the regime. There still may be time to freeze or eliminate North Korea's weapons of mass destruction.Grounded in philosophy and history, this volume offers a fresh road map for negotiators and outlines a grand bargain that balances both ethical and practical security concerns.

In recent years, the film industry in the People's Republic of China has found itself among the top three most prolific in the world. When the Chinese government introduced a new revenue-sharing system in 1994, the nation's total movie output skyrocketed with gross box-office receipts totaling billions of yuan. This newfound success, however, has been built on an alternately competitive and collaborative relationship between the ascendant global power of China and the popular culture juggernaut of America. In China's Encounter with Global Hollywood, Wendy Su examines the intertwining relationships among the Chinese state, global Hollywood, and the Chinese film industry while analyzing the causes and consequences of the rapid growth of the nation's domestic film production. She demonstrates how the Chinese state has consolidated power by negotiating foreign interest in the lucrative Chinese market while advancing its cultural industries. Su also reveals how mainland Chinese and Hong Kong filmmakers have navigated the often-incompatible requirements of marketization and state censorship.This timely analysis demonstrates how China has cannily used global capital to modernize its own film industry and now stands poised to step clear of Hollywood's shadow. The country's debates -- on- and offscreen -- over cultural change, market-based economic reforms, and artistic freedom illuminate China's ongoing efforts to build a modern national identity.

Chinese leaders have long been fascinated by the United States, but have often chosen to demonize America for perceived cultural and military imperialism. Especially under Communist rule, Chinese leaders have crafted and re-crafted portrayals of the United States according to the needs of their own agenda and the regime's self-image -- often seeing America as an antagonist and foil, but sometimes playing it up as a model.In China Looks at the West, Christopher A. Ford investigates what these depictions reveal about internal Chinese politics and Beijing's ambitions in the world today. In particular, Ford emphasizes the importance of China's "return" to global preeminence in state images, which has become an essential concept in the regime's self-image and legitimacy. He also examines the history of Chinese intellectual engagement with America, surveying the ways in which Chinese elites have manipulated attitudes toward the United States, and revealing how leaders from Qing dynasty officials to Mao Zedong and from to Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping have altered and reconstructed this narrative to support their own political agendas.Ford concludes the volume with a series of scenario-based alternatives for how China's approaches to understanding itself and other nations may evolve in the future. Based on extensive research, including interviews with Chinese scholars and researchers, this groundbreaking study is essential reading for policymakers and readers seeking to understand current and future Sino-American relations.

With an economy and population that dwarf most industrialized nations, China is emerging as a twenty-first-century global superpower. Even though China is an international leader in modern business and technology, its ancient history exerts a powerful force on its foreign policy. In The Mind of Empire: China's History and Modern Foreign Relations, Christopher A. Ford expertly traces China's self-image and its role in the world order from the age of Confucius to today. Ford argues that despite its exposure to and experience of the modern world, China is still strongly influenced by a hierarchical view of political order and is only comfortable with foreign relationships that reinforce its self-perception of political and moral supremacy.Recounting how this attitude has clashed with the Western notion of separate and coequal state sovereignty, Ford speculates -- and offers a warning -- about how China's legacy will continue to shape its foreign relations. Ford examines major themes in China's conception of domestic and global political order, sketches key historical precedents, compares Chinese ideas to the tradition of Western international law, and outlines the remarkable continuity of China's Sinocentrism. Artfully weaving historical, philosophical, religious, and cultural analysis into a cohesive study of the Chinese worldview and explaining its relevance, Ford offers a unique perspective of modern China.

The People's Republic of China has experienced significant transformations since Deng Xiaoping instituted economic reforms in 1978. Subsequent leaders continued and often broadened Deng's policies, shifting the nation from agrarianism to industrialism, from isolation to internationalism, and from centralized planning to market-based economics. As the world strives to understand the nation's rapid development, few observers have comprehensively examined the social and cultural price of the economic boom for the majority of the Chinese people. Zhaohui Hong assesses the sociocultural consequences of these reforms in this provocative study. He contends that modern China functions as an oligarchy or plutocracy ruled by an alliance of political power and private capital where the boundaries between the private and public sectors are constantly shifting. This "power-capital institution" based on three millennia of Confucian ideology and decades of Maoist communism exercises monopolistic control of public resources at the expense of civil society and social justice for the majority of citizens.The Price of China's Economic Development urges policymakers to alter their analytic lens. While industrial and commercial development is quantitatively measured, Hong argues that social progress should be assessed qualitatively, with justice its ultimate goal and fair allocation of resources and opportunity as the main index of success. This sophisticated analysis introduces English speakers to the varied and significant work of contemporary Chinese scholars and substantially enriches the international dialogue.

Promoting democracy has long been a priority of Western foreign policy. In practice, however, international attempts to expand representative forms of government have been inconsistent and are often perceived in the West to have been failures. The states of Central Asia, in particular, seem to be "democracy resistant," and their governments have continued to support various forms of authoritarianism in the decades following the Soviet Union's collapse. In Democracy in Central Asia, Mariya Omelicheva examines the beliefs and values underlying foreign policies of the major global powers -- the United States, the European Union, Russia, and China -- in order to understand their efforts to influence political change in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Omelicheva has traveled extensively in the region, collecting data from focus groups and public opinion surveys. She draws on the results of her fieldwork as well as on official documents and statements of democracy-promoting nations in order to present a provocative new analysis. Her study reveals that the governments and citizens of Central Asia have developed their own views on democracy supported by the Russian and Chinese models rather than by Western examples.The vast majority of previous scholarly work on this subject has focused on the strategies of democratization pursued by one agent such as the United States or the European Union. Omelicheva shifts the focus from democracy promoters' methods to their message and expands the scope of existing analysis to include multiple sources of influence. Her fresh approach illuminates the full complexity of both global and regional notions of good governance and confirms the importance of social-psychological and language-based perspectives in understanding the obstacles to expanding egalitarianism.

The five Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan constitute an area of increasing importance in global politics. The region currently serves as the main route for transporting American and NATO supplies and personnel into Afghanistan. Its Turkic Muslim peoples share ethnic and religious roots with China's Uighurs in neighboring Xinjiang, where some Uighurs have connections to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, fueling Beijing's already acute fears of terrorism and separatism. Perhaps most importantly, the Caspian basin holds immense reserves of oil and natural gas. Countries rich in hydrocarbons -- like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan -- can benefit greatly from this wealth, but often they must rely on foreign companies (usually backed by foreign governments) to develop these resources. Revolts in Kyrgyzstan (in 2005 and 2010) and Uzbekistan (in 2005); Tajikistan's civil war (in the 1990s); and continued terrorist incidents (2010--2011), strikes, and suicide bombings in Kazakhstan (in 2011) have contributed to concerns about stability in the region.In C ivil Society and Politics in Central Asia, a prominent group of scholars assesses both the area's manifold problems and its emerging potential, examining the often uneasy relationship between its states and the societies they govern. A meticulously in-depth study, the volume demonstrates the fascinating cultural complexity and diversity of Central Asia. Small, landlocked, and surrounded by larger powers, Central Asian nations have become adept at playing their neighbors against each other in order to maximize their own abilities to maneuver. The essays in this book look beyond the surface of Central Asian politics to discover the forces that are working for political change and continuity in this critical region of the world.

The world's third largest economy and a stable democracy, Japan remains a significant world power; but its economy has become stagnant, and its responses to the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 and the nuclear crisis that followed have raised international concerns. Despite being constitutionally modeled on Great Britain's "Westminster"-style parliamentary democracy, Japan has failed to fully institute a cabinet-style government, and its executive branch is not empowered to successfully respond to the myriad challenges confronted by an advanced postindustrial society.In Growing Democracy in Japan, Brian Woodall compares the Japanese cabinet system to its counterparts in other capitalist parliamentary democracies, particularly in Great Britain. Woodall demonstrates how the nation's long history of dominant bureaucracies has led to weakness at the top levels of government, while mid-level officials exercise much greater power than in the British system. The post--1947 cabinet system, begun under the Allied occupation, was fashioned from imposed and indigenous institutions which coexisted uneasily. Woodall explains how an activist economic bureaucracy, self-governing "policy tribes" (zoku) composed of members of parliament, and the uncertainties of coalition governments have prevented the cabinet from assuming its prescribed role as primary executive body.Woodall's meticulous examination of the Japanese case offers lessons for reformers as well as for those working to establish democratic institutions in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, China, and the new regimes born during the Arab Spring. At the very least, he argues, Japan's struggles with this fundamental component of parliamentary governance should serve as a cautionary tale for those who believe that growing democracy is easy.

The world was watching when footage of the "tank man" -- the lone Chinese citizen blocking the passage of a column of tanks during the brutal 1989 crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square -- first appeared in the media. The furtive video is now regarded as an iconic depiction of a government's violence against its own people.Throughout the twentieth century, states across East Asia committed many relatively undocumented atrocities, with victims numbering in the millions. The contributors to this insightful volume analyze many of the most notorious cases, including the Japanese army's Okinawan killings in 1945, Indonesia's anticommunist purge in 1965--1968, Thailand's Red Drum incinerations in 1972--1975, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge massacre in 1975--1978, Korea's Kwangju crackdown in 1980, the Philippines' Mendiola incident in 1987, Myanmar's suppression of the democratic movement in 1988, and China's Tiananmen incident. With in-depth investigation of events that have long been misunderstood or kept hidden from public scrutiny, State Violence in East Asia provides critical insights into the political and cultural dynamics of state-sanctioned violence and discusses ways to prevent it in the future.

China's rapid socioeconomic transformation of the past twenty years has led to dramatic changes in its judicial system and legal practices. As China becomes more powerful on the world stage, the global community has dedicated more resources and attention to understanding the country's evolving democratization, and policymakers have identified the development of civil liberties and long-term legal reforms as crucial for the nation's acceptance as a global partner.Modern Chinese Legal Reform is designed as a legal and political research tool to help English-speaking scholars interpret the many recent changes to China's legal system. Investigating subjects such as constitutional history, the intersection of politics and law, democratization, civil legal practices, and judicial mechanisms, the essays in this volume situate current constitutional debates in the context of both the country's ideology and traditions and the wider global community.Editors Xiaobing Li and Qiang Fang bring together scholars from multiple disciplines to provide a comprehensive and balanced look at a difficult subject. Featuring newly available official sources and interviews with Chinese administrators, judges, law-enforcement officers, and legal experts, this essential resource enables readers to view key events through the eyes of individuals who are intimately acquainted with the challenges and successes of the past twenty years.

Westerners seem united in the belief that China has emerged as a major economic power and that this success will most likely continue indefinitely. But they are less certain about the future of China's political system. China's steps toward free market capitalism have led many outsiders to expect increased democratization and a more Western political system. The Chinese, however, have developed their own version of capitalism. Westerners view Chinese politics through the lens of their own ideologies, preventing them from understanding Chinese goals and policies.In Contemporary Chinese Political Thought: Debates and Perspectives, Fred Dallmayr and Zhao Tingyang bring together leading Chinese intellectuals to debate the main political ideas shaping the rapidly changing nation. Investigating such topics as the popular "China Model", the resurgence of Chinese Confucianism and its applications to the modern world, and liberal socialism, the contributors move beyond usual analytical frameworks toward what Dallmayr and Zhao call "a dismantling of ideological straitjackets." Comprising a broad range of opinions and perspectives, Contemporary Chinese Political Thought is the most up-to-date examination in English of modern Chinese political attitudes and discourse.Features contributions from Ji Wenshun, Zhou Lian, Zhao Tingyang, Zhang Feng, Liu Shuxian, Chen Ming, He Baogang, Ni Peimin, Ci Jiwei, Cui Zhiyuan, Frank Fang, Wang Shaoguang, and Cheng Guangyun.

As Asian countries emerge as global economic powers, many undergo fundamental political transformations. In Korean Democracy in Transition: A Rational Blueprint for Developing Societies, HeeMin Kim evaluates the past thirty years of political change in South Korea, including the decision of the authoritarian government to open up the political process in 1987 and the presidential impeachment of 2004.Kim uses rational choice theory -- which holds that individuals choose to act in ways that they think will give them the most benefit for the least cost -- to explain events central to South Korea's democratization process. Kim's theoretical and quantitative analysis provides a context for South Korea's remarkable transformation and offers predictions of what the future may hold for developing nations undergoing similar transitions.Although there are studies in the field of Korean politics that provide an overview of this important period, there are none that offer the theoretical and analytical rigor of this study. Combining theoretical perspectives with policy-relevant discussion, Korean Democracy in Transition sheds new light on the Korean model of democratization and makes a significant contribution to the field of comparative politics.