Suzanne Ogden

Education and modernization : the Chinese experience

This text combines historical perspectives on Chinese education with a thematic analysis of a range of contemporary issues. It takes the reader from Confucius to beyond the Cultural Revolution, through current systems of formal and non-formal education, to a consideration of a range of issues.

The Chinese and their future : Beijing, Taipei, and Hong Kong

Policy analysts and scholars in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States discuss the major issues arising in the aftermath of the explosive events in China in 1989. Contributors include Arthur Hummel, the former U.S. ambassador to the Peoples Republic of China, and Ding Mou-Shih, the representative of the Coordination Council for North American Affairs to the United States.

Don’t Judge a Country by its Cover: Governance in China

In 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) declared victory in its civil war, a Cold War perspective neatly divided the world into communist and anticommunist/liberal democratic poles. Each side seemed intent on winning this ideological struggle, even if it meant supporting unsavory regimes throughout the world. The West turned to the export of democracy as part of its strategy of fighting the Cold War. When China entered its period of opening and reform in 1979, the world was still in the grips of the Cold War ideological view. Although the analysis had become more complex, policy-makers in the West still framed the choice as fundamentally one between liberal democracy and authoritarian communist rule. These analytical concepts were not rethought. Rather, policy-makers merely tweaked their old ideas to adjust to extraordinary changes in China’s governance and society without a fundamental recasting of dearly held views.

China and International Law: Implications for Foreign Policy

I N THEIR STUDY of international law, sovereignty, and the state system, Chinese Communist writers and statesmen differ fundamentally from the dominant tradition of Western political and legal theory, which attempts to base general conclusions on valid first principles (ontological and epistemological), so that the conclusions are generally valid over many years and for most if not all nations. The Chinese assume that the formulations of political and legal theory should be wholly subservient to the needs of the Chinese state. Whatever value these formulations have as truth derives from their foundation in Marxist doctrine. Their truth, however, is less important than their usefulness, and this is gauged by how well they serve to justify the objectives of Chinas foreign policy. This set of basic assumptions leads to several somewhat overlapping aspects of the Chinese study of these basic political concepts, each aspect constituting a significant part of their formulations. Clearly their methodological assumptions profoundly affect their conclusions.