Tiananmen platform
on June 3, 2015
View of Tiananmen Square, 2011.
Beijing Autumn
My Return to China Three Months After Tiananmen
on June 3, 2015
Then even August ended. China was disappearing from the news, as portentous events elsewhere thrust themselves to the forefront.
South Africa had started to come out of the dark age of apartheid. Eastern Europe had begun the march to unshackle itself from the Soviet Union. Moscow looked omnipotent no more.
Divers Comb Capsized China Ship, Hopes Fade for Survivors
on June 3, 2015
Rescuers have not slackened off, even though about 200 divers face difficulties such as cabin doors blocked by tables and beds.
The South China Sea Is a Litmus Test for Sino-U.S. Relations
on June 2, 2015
American officials were recently quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying the U.S. military will send warships and fighter jets to the South China Sea as a show of its concern over maritime safety. They said U.S. warships would come within 12 nautical miles of where China is building artificial islands.
China Under Mao
on June 2, 2015
China’s Communist Party seized power in 1949 after a long period of guerrilla insurgency followed by full-scale war, but the Chinese revolution was just beginning. China Under Mao narrates the rise and fall of the Maoist revolutionary state from 1949 to 1976—an epoch of startling accomplishments and disastrous failures, steered by many forces but dominated above all by Mao Zedong.
Mao’s China, Andrew Walder argues, was defined by two distinctive institutions established during the first decade of Communist Party rule: a Party apparatus that exercised firm (sometimes harsh) discipline over its members and cadres; and a socialist economy modeled after the Soviet Union. Although a large national bureaucracy had oversight of this authoritarian system, Mao intervened strongly at every turn. The doctrines and political organization that produced Mao’s greatest achievements―victory in the civil war, the creation of China’s first unified modern state, a historic transformation of urban and rural life—also generated his worst failures: the industrial depression and rural famine of the Great Leap Forward and the violent destruction and stagnation of the Cultural Revolution.
Misdiagnosing China’s problems as capitalist restoration and prescribing continuing class struggle against imaginary enemies as the solution, Mao ruined much of what he had built and created no viable alternative. At the time of his death, he left China backward and deeply divided.—Harvard University Press
Media
05.26.15
Weighing Mao’s Legacy in China Today
At the May 21 Asia Society event ChinaFile Presents: Does Xi Jinping Represent a Return to the Politics of the Mao Era?, a discussion of author Andrew Walder’s new book, China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed, sparked a lively debate about the...
Peter Dutton
on June 2, 2015
Peter Dutton is Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. He is also Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and an Affiliated Distinguished Scholar at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute there. Dutton’s current research focuses on American and Chinese views of sovereignty and international law of the sea and the strategic implications to the United States and the United States Navy of Chinese international law and policy choices.
Top Chinese Authors Show Up at Book Expo, but Where Are the Readers?
on June 2, 2015
Last week, 20,000 publishers convened in New York’s Javits Center for BookExpo America (BEA), the publishing industry’s annual trade show.
China Ferry Sinking Leaves Relatives With Few Answers
on June 2, 2015
Neither a travel agency nor government officials had given them information about the incident.
Chinese Democracy Isn’t Inevitable
on June 2, 2015
Can a political system be democratically legitimate without being democratic?
Chinese Netizens to Fiorina: You’re Right, We Don’t Innovate
on June 2, 2015
Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a declared Republican candidate for U.S. president, evidently has strong opinions about the capacities of Chinese people. “Yeah, the Chinese can take a test,” Fiorina told an Iowa-based video blog at an unspecified date, a statement later circulated by online outlet BuzzFeed [Note: Start the video above at 1:48].
