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Language matters in China. It is about power, identity, opportunities, and, above all, passion and nationalism. During the past five decades China’s language engineering projects transformed its linguistic landscape, affecting over one billion people’s lives, including both the majority and minority populations. The Han majority have been juggling between their home vernaculars and the official speech, Putonghua – a speech of no native speakers – and reading their way through a labyrinth of the traditional, simplified, and Pinyin (Roman) scripts. Moreover, the various minority groups have been struggling between their native languages and Chinese, maintaining the former for their her...
This comparative study of the Naxi and Tai minority groups in Southwestern China examines the implementation and reception of state minority education policy. Hansen (Center for Development and the Environment, U. of Oslo) argues that state policy is not uniformly successful among all minorities, no
This book is the first Western-language monograph on the study of the Qingshui River manuscripts. By examining over 3,000 contracts and other manuscripts, this book offers constructive insights into the long-standing question of how and why a society in late imperial China could maintain a well-functioning social system with few laws but many contracts, i.e., Hobbesian “words without sword.” Three interrelated questions, what contracts were, how and why they worked, are explained successively. Thus, this book presents a non-stereotypical “contract society” in southwest China, arguing that the social order which provides predictability and regularity for economic prosperity could be f...
In this vivid new social history of the Tiananmen protests, Beijing massacre, and nationwide crackdown of 1989, Jeremy Brown explores the key turning points of the crisis in China and shows how the massacre and its aftermath were far from inevitable.
This book analyses Chinese discourse on Indian attitudes towards the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), and argues that the Indian discourse is becoming one of the biggest hurdles to China creating its own narrative about China’s rise in Asia and beyond. In doing so, it spans across the themes of the power struggle between China and US, China and India, the Chinese perception of India, China-South Asia relations, the China-US- India strategic triangle and the success and failures of BRI. The first part of the book focuses on the Chinese thinking behind the launch of the BRI and addresses questions related to the purpose of this initiative and ways in which it will facilitate China’s rise as a superpower. Subsequently the book addresses how effective or ineffective India’s challenge is and how it is negatively affecting China’s BRI.
Wakeman's authoritative biography of the ruthlessly powerful man who led the Chinese Secret Service during the violent and tumultuous period after the fall of the Imperial system.
A “memorable series of portraits of the working class people who defended Tiananmen Square” (The New York Review of Books) during the protests from the award-winning poet, dissident, and “one of the most original and remarkable Chinese writers of our time” (Philip Gourevitch). Much has been written about the Tiananmen Square protests, but very little exists in the words of those who were actually there. For over seven years, Liao Yiwu—a master of contemporary Chinese literature, imprisoned and persecuted as a counter-revolutionary until he fled the country in 2011—secretly interviewed survivors of the devastating 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Tortured, imprisoned, and forced into silence and the margins of Chinese society for thirty years, their harrowing and unforgettable stories are now finally revealed in this “indispensable historical document” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
How to deal with the relationship between tradition and modernity has become a global concern under the impact of pluralism. This book explores the relationship between traditional Dai culture and modern school education through a field study in the Dai region of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China. The study analyses the reasons for conflicts between monastic education and modern school education in the Dai region of Xishuangbanna. It also discusses the logic behind the formation of the Dai people’s belief in Southern Theravada Buddhism and its importance in Dai culture. Through the analysis of the changes in monastic education before and after the intervention of the modern school system, the study finds symbiosis in the differences and conflicts between these two forms of education. The author proposes a symbiosis theory of multiple educational forms in ethnic areas and offers targeted solutions to specific problems between the Dai monastic education and modern school education in Xishuangbanna. This book will be a great read to students and scholars of Chinese studies, ethnic studies, education, and those who are interested in multi- ethnicity issues in general.
In this collection, scholars examine the prospects for China's rise and the emergent and unintended consequences posed by China's internal challenges and international assertiveness. The result is a comprehensive analysis of current policy trends in Xi's China and the implications of these developments for his nation, the US, and East Asia.
When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on December 10, 2010, its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was in Jinzhou Prison, serving an eleven-year sentence for what Beijing called “incitement to subvert state power.” In Oslo, actress Liv Ullmann read a long statement the activist had prepared for his 2009 trial. It read in part: “I stand by the convictions I expressed in my ‘June Second Hunger Strike Declaration’ twenty years ago—I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies.” That statement is one of the pieces in this book, which includes writing...