Andrew J. Nathan

China's Crisis: Dilemmas of Reform and Prospects for Democracy

Nathan explored the roots of the Tiananmen tragedy in Deng Xiaopings ten-year reform. How will cultural values and attitudes shape Chinas political development? What will be the impact of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the West? Drawing on ground-breaking empirical research, Nathan measures the expectations of individual Chinese and their attitudes toward government and democracy.

Human Rights in Chinese Foreign Policy

Influence in world affairs is not limited to military and economic power. A government can use ideas and values to build support at home and to recruit sympathizers among publics and policy-makers abroad. The struggle over beliefs and values may be as complex as the struggle over other forms of power. The history of the human rights issue in Chinese foreign policy exemplifies such a process.

China's Challenge

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) under President Xi Jinping has begun to flex its muscles as a major power. Setting aside Deng Xiaoping’s mantra of “hide our light and nurture our strength” and Jiang Zemin’s policy of “increase trust, reduce trouble, develop cooperation, and do not seek confrontation,” Beijing today actively challenges its neighbors. It also confronts U.S. interests in the South and East China Seas, builds up its navy and missile forces to oppose a U.S. intervention should an armed clash erupt over Taiwan, and promotes the creation of alternative global institutions such as the “BRICS bank” and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank that are designed to exclude U.S. and European influence. There is growing worry among Western analysts about the extent to which China, as its power grows, will seek to remake the world in its authoritarian image. China expert Michael Pillsbury, for example, argues that if the country’s economy continues to grow at its current pace and hard-liners retain control over Chinese policy, by midcentury China will oppose democratization around the world, control information about China available globally through censorship of the Internet and influence over mass media, and intimidate critics by means of cyberattacks and the withholding of economic favors.1 Retired U.S. general Wesley Clark points out that China “has rejected both the move toward democracy and the acceptance of human and civil rights that Americans had hoped would emerge from China’s astonishing economic rise. . . . China’s foreign policy relies on keenly calculated self-interest, at the expense of the

Is chinese culture distinctive? - A review article

Anyone Who Works in the Field of Area Studies knows from experience that cultures are different. Indeed, the effort to understand the distinctiveness of cultures in comparative perspective is a central undertaking of the modern humanities and social sciences, not only in Asian studies but in studies of other parts of the world. But works on the subject seldom discuss the conceptual and methodological issues involved. What do we mean by culture in the context of comparative statements? How can a cultures distinctiveness be conceptualized? What is required to demonstrate that such distinctiveness exists, what it consists of, and what influence it has on the performance of societies? In the case of Chinese studies, how far have we come in establishing that Chinese culture is distinctive, in what ways, and with what consequences? It is helpful to discuss these issues in terms of two bodies of literature with different ways of conceptualizing culture and its distinctiveness, although I intend to blur the distinction at the end. Following Ying-shih Yu, I will label the two approaches hermeneutic and positivistic. I do not argue that one of the approaches is better than the other; each achieves goals that the other does not. The real problem is lack of clarity about the different logical statuses of the kinds of findings that typically emerge from the two approaches. This can lead to problems when insights are transposed from the hermeneutic approach into positivistic language or vice versa.

How China Sees America

En la busqueda de aportes al desarrollo sostenible desde la construccion y tomando como referencia la aceptacion y aplicacion practica de los pavimentos con neumaticos reciclados, se realiza una investigacion cuantitativa con el objetivo de establecer las propiedades mecanicas de un concreto a los 28 dias, sustituyendo parcialmente el agregado fino en porcentajes de 5%, 10% y 15% en volumen, por neumatico triturado reciclado sin ningun tratamiento previo. Como aspectos positivos, los resultados muestran una reduccion en el peso unitario y un aumento en la resistencia a la traccion indirecta; sin embargo, se ve afectada la manejabilidad, la resistencia a la compresion, la resistencia a la flexion y se incrementa la absorcion inicial. De igual manera, en del desarrollo de la investigacion, fue analizado visualmente el comportamiento del neumatico dentro de la mezcla, observando una distribucion heterogenea y una adherencia parcial con la matriz.Marine algal seaweed species are often regarded as an underutilized bioresource many have been used as a source of food, industrial raw materials, and in therapeutic and botanical applications for centuries. Seaweeds are best known for the natural polysaccharides. Moreover, seaweed and seaweed-derived products have been widely used as a key ingredient in many pharmaceutical preparations like tablets, as rate retardant in sustained and extended release dosage forms, as stabilizer in liquid orals, cosmetics, implants and as bioplastic in packaging industry. This article provides a comprehensive review of various seaweed species and seaweed products with an emphasis on the use of this renewable bioresource in pharmaceutical industry and medical field.During the Chilean earthquakes of May, 1960, a number of tall, slender structures survived the ground shaking whereas more stable appearing structures were severely damaged. An analysis is made of the rocking motion of structures of inverted pendulum type. It is shown that there is a scale effect which makes tall slender structures more stable against overturning than might have been expected, and, therefore, the survival of such structures during earthquakes is not surprising.La necesidad de preparar al sector de tecnologias de la informacion y las comunicaciones de Colombia para hacer frente a los desafios que trae consigo el desarrollo de la convergencia tecnologica, institucional y de mercados, implicaba plantear un nuevo equilibrio entre la promocion del desarrollo competitivo del sector y el cumplimiento de los fines sociales de mayor cobertura y acceso de los ciudadanos, empresas e instituciones publicas a las TIC, derivados de la naturaleza de servicio publico que ostentan las telecomunicaciones. En consecuencia, el Gobierno colombiano trabajo desde mediados de 2006, con una permanente retroalimentacion intragubernamental y sectorial, en una revision del marco normativo del sector de comunicaciones con el fin de actualizarlo a la dinamica institucional y de mercado, prepararlo para anticipar los rapidos cambios tecnologicos y fortalecer el enfoque de la politica publica orientada a promover la masificacion de las TIC en todos los ambitos sociales, geograficos y economicos.De destacar como avances importantes de este nuevo marco legislativo esta contar con la Habilitacion General para que los proveedores de redes y servicios de telecomunicaciones puedan operar; la unificacion de la contraprestacion periodica a favor del Fondo de Tecnologias de la Informacion y las Comunicaciones; la introduccion del principio de Neutralidad Tecnologica mediante el cual el Estado garantiza la libre adopcion de tecnologias en la provision de redes y servicios; la creacion de la Agencia Nacional del Espectro como ente tecnico especializado; el fortalecimiento y claridad de la capacidad de intervencion del Estado en el sector; la precision del alcance del regimen de proteccion a los usuarios de los servicios de comunicaciones; la unificacion y actualizacion de las normas de radiodifusion sonora; y, la eliminacion del caracter domiciliario de los servicios publicos de comunicaciones.

Social and political development in post-reform China

List of Tables Foreword Preface Acknowledgements Map of China Introduction: Economic Growth, Quiet Social Revolution and Political Transformation PART I Preface Prosperity or Disparity: Economic Growth and Peoples Livelihood Social Development and Quality of Life PART II Preface Marginalization and Restratification: State Workers under the Socialist Market Economy Market Economy and the Intellectuals PART III Preface Professional Autonomy and Private Education Economic Prosperity or Democratization: China at a Crossroads Conclusion: An Unfinished Revolution in Post-reform China Notes References Appendix Index

What's Wrong with American Taiwan Policy

American efforts to reassure Beijing have confused our Taiwan policy, increasing the risk of war. The United States needs to return to a policy that worked well for a quarter century: combining clarity about ends with “strategic ambiguity” about the means.

Chinese democracy: The lessons of failure

Chinas experiments with democracy in this century were few in number, short in duration, and limited in their democratic characteristics. Democratic institutions malfunctioned in numerous ways. Nine sets of causes for the failure of Chinese democracy can be suggested: ideology, internal and external war, military intervention, Chinese political culture, underdevelopment, a peasant mass, flaws in the design of Chinese constitutions, moral failures by democratic politicians, or the lack of transactional benefits for military‐based elites in the process of democratic transition. Each of these factors is reviewed critically with an eye to its possible lessons.

Asia's Challenged Democracies

East Asian democracies are in distress. From Bangkok to Manila to Taipei to Seoul to Ulaanbaatar, democratically elected governments in the last few years have suffered inconclusive or disputed ele...

China's Overstretched Military

Despite the dramatic growth of China’s military power since the early 1990s, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as all branches of China’s armed forces are collectively known, remains overstretched as it seeks to address the wide range of missions it is called upon to perform. ‘‘China threat’’ theorists worry that the PLA poses a more significant challenge to the United States and China’s neighbors than it did twenty years ago, and they are right. Yet the Chinese military is far from able to successfully carry out all its most pressing military tasks within China’s borders and in its immediate neighborhood, and has only begun to project significant force beyond the Asia—Pacific. The real test for the PLA will be how adept it proves to be at bringing together new weapon systems, equipment, and formations in response to one or more serious instances of wartime or peacetime contingencies a broad set of requirements the Chinese have dubbed ‘‘Diversified Military Tasks.’’ Since its earliest days, the PLA has been more than just a fighting force. It is often expected to shoulder economic and political responsibilities. Until a major 2004 speech by China’s commander-in-chief Hu Jintao, however, there had never been a coherent initiative to integrate noncombat missions into the corpus of PLA doctrine. Addressing the Central Military Commission (CMC), Hu formally articulated a set of four extremely broad mission areas for the armed forces, subsequently dubbed the ‘‘New Historic Missions’’: ‘‘guarantee’’ the ‘‘ruling position’’ of the Chinese Communist Party; safeguard China’s ‘‘national development’’; protect China’s ‘‘national interests’’; and preserve ‘‘world peace.’’ These quickly became part of the lexicon of official Chinese defense documents and authoritative writings.