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"Dictatorship China History."
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China after Mao : the rise of a superpower
\"Through decades of direct experience of the People's Republic combined with extraordinary access to hundreds of hitherto unseen documents in communist party archives, the author of The People's Trilogy offers a riveting account of China's rise from the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. He takes us inside the country's unprecedented four-decade economic transformation--from rural villages to industrial metropoles and elite party conclaves--that vaulted the nation from 126th largest economy in the world to second largest. A historian at the pinnacle of his field, Dikötter challenges much of what we think we know about how this happened. Casting aside the image of a society marching unwaveringly toward growth, in lockstep to the beat of the party drum, he recounts instead a fascinating tale of contradictions, illusions, and palace intrigue, of disasters narrowly averted, shadow banking, anti-corruption purges, and extreme state wealth existing alongside everyday poverty. He examines China's navigation of the 2008 financial crash, its increasing hostility towards perceived Western interference, and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. As this magisterial book makes clear, the communist party's goal was never to join the democratic world, but to resist it--and ultimately defeat it\"-- Provided by Amazon.
Book
The Troubled Empire
The Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empire—a millennium and a half in the making—was suddenly thrust under foreign occupation. What China had been before its reunification as the Yuan dynasty in 1279 was no longer what it would be in the future. Four centuries later, another wave of steppe invaders would replace the Ming dynasty with yet another foreign occupation. The Troubled Empire explores what happened to China between these two dramatic invasions.If anything defined the complex dynamics of this period, it was changes in the weather. Asia, like Europe, experienced a Little Ice Age, and as temperatures fell in the thirteenth century, Kublai Khan moved south into China. His Yuan dynasty collapsed in less than a century, but Mongol values lived on in Ming institutions. A second blast of cold in the 1630s, combined with drought, was more than the dynasty could stand, and the Ming fell to Manchu invaders.Against this background—the first coherent ecological history of China in this period—Timothy Brook explores the growth of autocracy, social complexity, and commercialization, paying special attention to China's incorporation into the larger South China Sea economy. These changes not only shaped what China would become but contributed to the formation of the early modern world.
eBook
Kornai on the affinity of systems
More than 40 years ago, János Kornai introduced his famous supermarket metaphor. Socioeconomic systems cannot be constructed from purposely selected features, similar to customers in a supermarket, who can freely put into their shopping trolley whatever they like. Systems constitute an organic whole. They contain good and bad features in fixed proportions. After 1990, Kornai and most Western commentators expected that as market integration and private property expand, China would eventually turn into a liberal democracy. Prior to the worldwide fall of communism, Kornai had three primary criteria to determine whether a country was socialist or capitalist; later he amended this with six secondary ones. The present paper introduces into this list an additional 11 criteria—i.e. 20 quantifiable metrics altogether. Kornai was among the very first to recognize that with President Xi Jinping taking charge, China made a U-turn. While capitalist elements remain strong, in the final analysis, the country is on its way back to where it was before 1978.
Journal Article
Asia's little divergence: state capacity in China and Japan before 1850
This paper explores the role of state capacity in the comparative economic development of China and Japan. Before 1850, both nations were ruled by stable dictators who relied on bureaucrats to govern their domains. We hypothesize that agency problems increase with the geographical size of a domain. In a large domain, the ruler's inability to closely monitor bureaucrats creates opportunities for the bureaucrats to exploit taxpayers. To prevent overexploitation, the ruler has to keep taxes low and government small. Our dynamic model shows that while economic expansion improves the ruler's finances in a small domain, it could lead to lower tax revenues in a large domain as it exacerbates bureaucratic expropriation. To check these implications, we assemble comparable quantitative data from primary and secondary sources. We find that the state taxed less and provided fewer local public goods per capita in China than in Japan. Furthermore, while the Tokugawa shogunate's tax revenue grew in tandem with demographic trends, Qing China underwent fiscal contraction after 1750 despite demographic expansion. We conjecture that a greater state capacity might have prepared Japan better for the transition from stagnation to growth.
Journal Article
The Dilemmas of Becoming Chinese in Taiwan
After the Civil War of 1945-1949, Taiwan and mainland China were separated and developed two different systems: a British-American liberal-democratic capitalist system, and a socialist system with one-party dictatorship. Although differences between the two sides developed, there was still a consensus on ＂Chinese identity＂ during the rule of Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo in Taiwan. This ＂Chinese identity＂ began to waver and the idea of ＂Taiwan identity＂ gradually emerged around the 1980s. As a result, the struggle between unification and independence in Taiwan sharpened. ＂The Taiwan nativists＂ (dupai) want to achieve the ideal of ＂independent nationhood.＂ ＂The Chinese culturalists＂ (tongpai) hope to maintain exchanges and interactions with the Mainland to create a win-win situation, and finally lead to a unified China. The current ratio of independence to unification (eventual not immediate), in terms of votes in the 2020 presidential election, is 57 percent for the Taiwan nativists and 43 percent for the Chinese culturalists. The Chinese culturalists firmly believe that cross-straits competition is grounded in institutional (rather than existential) competition, and experiments in Taiwan will contribute to the future of ＂China.＂ But they are facing three dilemmas. The first is pressure from mainland China with the possibility of military invasion. The second is pressure from the Democratic Progressive Party upholding Taiwan independence. And third, generational change: because of their lineage, educational, and cultural background, the Chinese culturalists are of an older age group, and as time goes on, the number of supporters will gradually decrease.
Journal Article
Autocratic Challenges to International Human Rights Law: A Chinese Case Study
Abstract
Drawing on a case study of the implications of China’s atrocities in Xinjiang in the context of China’s historical engagement with UN and its human rights mechanisms, this article examines autocracies’ impact on the institutions and practices of international human rights law. It argues that that rather than creating new law that turns international law as a whole (more) authoritarian, the Chinese party-state is primarily—and even more dangerously—corroding its institutions and practices, while expanding neo-totalitarian governance discourses and practices to the global level. The autocratic corrosion of international human rights law institutions is exacerbated by attempts to weaken accountability under international human rights law from within liberal democracies, amounting to synergic corrosive effects. Yet, the corrosion of practices norms and institutions must not be equated with the elimination of human rights as powerful ideas underpinning responses to the institutional challenges identified here.
Journal Article
Red Inc
Red Inc. takes issue with the view that economic development will eventually promote democracy. It outlines in detail the enormous social costs of the rapid rise of China's economy. Although many observers argue that Deng Xiaoping introduced capitalism to China in the late 1970s, Schaeffer believes that capitalist development really began during the 1950s under Mao Zedong. But although Mao made relentless efforts to generate the capital needed to finance economic development, his regime failed to promote any real growth. Schaeffer shows that the remarkable rise of its economy in recent years has provided China with new and often corrupt sources of wealth and power that have enabled it to resist democracy. He brings into sharp focus the consequence of the regime's uncompromising approach to capital accumulation.
eBook
Política Asiática del Régimen Militar Chileno (1973-1979): La estrategia comunicacional contra el aislamiento, el caso de China
Resumen: Este trabajo examina la Estrategia Comunicacional de la Política Exterior de Chile hacia China en el período 1973 - 1979. Con este objetivo, a través del levantamiento de datos primarios producto del trabajo con oficios secretos, reservados y ordinarios, así como de télex y notas de archivo, el estudio desde un enfoque multidisciplinario (Relaciones Internacionales, Tiempo Presente y Comunicación) analiza las relaciones bilaterales de estos países. Se ha podido concluir que las relaciones bilaterales en la década de los 70s no fue un continuo, sino que estuvo subdividida en dos etapas, que representaron para la Estrategias Comunicacional de la política exterior de Chile un complejo escenario a resolver; en el que China era central para que la Dictadura Cívico-Militar no quedara completamente aislada del sistema internacional. Del mismo modo, se logró determinar las materias sobre las cuales ambos Estados intercambiaban ideas, visiones y posiciones para las categorías de Política Interna de Chile, Relaciones Bilaterales Chile-China y Política Regional e Internacional de Chile. De esta forma, la investigación, pensando en las actuales y futuras relaciones bilaterales, permite mirar un momento histórico en el que no se habían visualizado las tensiones y problemas de la Estrategia Comunicacional chilena hacia China; y es un aporte para entender la forma en que el país asiático se relacionó y estableció su posición determinando la forma en que se comunicó con Chile.
Journal Article
A crítica do direito na \Campanha de estudos sobre a ditadura do proletariado\ na China (1975-1976)
Resumo: Este texto procura analisar as duas mais significativas intervenções teóricas no decorrer de uma das últimas campanhas de mobilização de massas já no final do período maoísta, e que teve como seu objeto a crítica do direito burguês. O seu objetivo é apreender as contradições geradas por uma crítica do direito que se faz inteiramente no interior da ideologia jurídica, produzindo uma representação imaginária do socialismo que neutraliza todo esforço de transformação efetiva das relações sociais capitalistas.
Journal Article
Autocracy and coups d'etat
In this paper I first briefly survey Tullock's contributions to the study of autocracy and coups d'etat. Tullock's analysis of the coup d'etat is insightful. He suggested that those at the top could control those at the bottom with a proper system of incentive payments. Here I expand on that idea by asking the reverse question, not what keeps those at the bottom from rebelling, but what keeps those at the top from looting the regime? I begin by noting that shareholders of the modern widely held corporation face a similar problem: what keeps the CEO from looting the company when the market for corporate control is flawed, shareholders are too weak to exercise discipline, and the board is in the CEO's pocket? I suggest the answer is provided by \"internal governance\": the old need the young for good performance. I explain the financial crisis of 2008 as in part the result of the failure of this mechanism. I also explain the success of modern China this way: The Communist Party facilitates growth because its structure provides a way for superiors (the \"old\") to trade with subordinates (the \"young\"). I have also expanded on Tullock's analysis to ask what conditions might prevent the dictator from implementing his solution to the coup d'etat problem, thus explaining why coups d'etats actually occur. The basic reason is the weakness of the state. Japanese history provides two interesting illustrations of this: first the Tokugawa regime, where the people were over-controlled, and second, the Meiji constitution, implemented after the fall of the Tokugawa state. The Japanese problem after Meiji was that the military (the young) had no incentive to offer their loyalty to the old (the civilian regime), so the young acted on their own. The problem was the reverse of the Tokugawa regime's: the Meiji constitution left the bottom with too much control over the top. There was no formal coup d'etat but a number of coup attempts were made and defacto the military increasingly constituted a state within a state. This reversal of authority apparently continued down the chain of command, ultimately with tragic consequences, most notably the invasion of Pearl Harbor.
Journal Article