A Subversive Voice in China

By Shelley Wing Chan on December 28, 2010

Mo Yan, the most prolific writer in present-day China as well as one of its most prominent avant-gardists, is an author whose literary works have enjoyed an enormous readership and have caught much critical attention not only in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan but also in many other countries around the world. This book provides the most comprehensive exposition of Mo Yan’s fiction in any language. Author Shelley Chan delves into Mo Yan’s entire collection of literary works, considering novels as well as short stories and novellas. In this analysis, Mo Yan’s works are dealt with in a diachronic fashion––Chan discusses the development of Mo Yan’s style throughout his career by considering themes that he has addressed in a variety of narratives over time. This provides the reader with valuable insight into understanding how individual narratives fit into the entire collection of Mo Yan’s body of literary work. Scholars will also welcome the book’s extensive reference to secondary scholarship and theory, which not only skillfully deals with the Chinese scholarship on Mo Yan but also thoroughly covers the English-language sources. This book on one of the most important figures in contemporary Chinese literary history will be a landmark resource for scholars in Asian studies, cultural studies, and literary criticism, as well as an enticing read for people interested in Chinese literature and historical fiction.  —Cambria Press

The Long Arm of History

By Kaiser Kuo, David Moser & more on December 24, 2010

Visitors to China might be forgiven for concluding that history carries more weight here. For whatever the reason, even the far-off ghosts of the Opium War, the scramble for concessions, and the Treaty of Versailles still haunt contemporary politics, causing many observers to see echoes of the past in the present.

Xanadu in New York

By Eliot Weinberger on December 23, 2010

1.

The Mongols inhabited a vast, featureless grass plain where the soil was too thin for crops. They raised horses, cattle, yaks, sheep, and goats, and subsisted almost entirely on meat and milk and milk products. The women milked the cows and the men milked the mares. They had no fixed houses and lived in yurts made of greased felt that they hauled on ox-drawn carts. Inside the yurts, hunks of meat hung on the horns of goats. They never washed their clothes or washed their vessels; bathing in running water was punishable by death.

China and India

By Kaiser Kuo, Stephanie T. Kleine-Ahlbrandt & more on December 17, 2010

Asia’s rising colossi share a great deal besides rich cultures, great culinary traditions, billion-plus populations, and a long border. But relations haven’t always been smooth. Have a recent round of border talks, followed up by Premier Wen Jiabao’s recent visit to New Delhi, given a new direction to Sino-Indian relations? And how has U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent visit to India been perceived in New Delhi and Beijing?

Sino-U.S. Competition and U.S. Security

How Do We Assess the Military Balance?

By Dan Blumenthal on December 14, 2010

Assessments of the military competition between China and the U.S. are badly needed but mostly missing. Such assessments should consider the political objectives of the competitors, their military doctrines, and alliance politics, in addition to quantitative measures of military power in the context in which such capabilities would be deployed. Clashing political and military objectives will define the rivalry between the U.S. and China. For the U.S., the most important characteristics of the rivalry are those that impinge on Washington’s ability to defend its interests in the world’s most important region. These goals must be assessed against China’s growing ability to coerce U.S. allies, interdict U.S. forces, and cut off U.S. access to parts of the global commons in possible pursuit of regional hegemony. Considered in these terms, the United States may not have the overwhelming advantage it may assume. This essay argues that scholars and analysts can help policymakers advance U.S. interests in Asia by assessing the dynamic Sino-U.S. balance of power in the region.

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Topics: 
Military
Keywords: 
Security
U.S.-China Relations
Regional Politics
Organization: 
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

At the Nobel Ceremony: Liu Xiaobo’s Empty Chair

By Perry Link on December 13, 2010

On December 10, I attended the award ceremony in Oslo, Norway, for the Nobel Peace Prize, which the government of China had a few days earlier declared to be a “farce.” The recipient was a friend of mine, the Chinese scholar and essayist Liu Xiaobo, whom Oslo was now referring to as a Laureate and Beijing as a “criminal” serving an eleven-year sentence for “incitement to subvert state power.”

The Wikileaks Revelations, Part III

By Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more on December 10, 2010

As Interpol deepens its investigation into Mr. Assange’s use of birth control and financial service companies feel the wrath of script-kiddies worldwide, our own crew of Internet vigilantes sifts through the remains of the Wikileaks data-dump in search of all the hot China-related news and gossip the American government does not want you to know.

Remapping the Past

By Howard Y. F. Choy on December 10, 2010

The most prominent literary phenomenon in the 1980s and 1990s in China, historical fiction, has never been systematically surveyed in Anglophone scholarship. This is the first investigation into how, by rewriting the past, writers of Deng Xiaoping’s reform era undermined the grand narrative of official history. It showcases fictions of history by eleven native Chinese, Muslim and Tibetan authors. The four chapters are organized in terms of spatial schemes of fictional historiography, namely, regional histories and family romances, discourses on diaspora and myths of minorities, nostalgia for the hometown in the country and the city, as well as the bodily text and the textual body, thus broadly covering the eternal themes of memory, language, food, sex, and violence in historical writing.  —Brill

Book Review: 

Andrew Stuckey, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (January 2010)

Unveiling Hidden China

By Christian Caryl on December 8, 2010

Napoleon famously described China as a sleeping giant that would shake the world when it finally awoke. Well, now the giant is up and about, and the rest of us can’t help but notice. 2010, indeed, could well end up being remembered as the year when China started throwing its weight around.