An accessible, introductory text on contemporary China, this book covers the social, economic, and political factors responsible for China's revolutionary changes, and interweaves this structural analysis with a consideration of social changes at the micro and macro levels.

The nine papers collected in this volume examine recent trends in language use in mainland China, and the associated social, economic, political, and cultural manifestations.

The rise of China has been shaped and driven by its engagement with the global economy during a period of intensified globalization, yet China is a continent-sized economy and society with substantial diversity across its different regions. This means that its engagement with the global economy cannot just be understood at the national level, but requires analysis of the differences in participation in the global economy across China’s regions. This book responds to this challenge by looking at the development of China’s regions in this era of globalization. It traces the evolution of regional policy in China and its implications in a global context. Detailed chapters examine the global trajectory of what is now becoming known as the Greater Bay Area in southern China, the globalization of the inland mega-city of Chongqing, and the role of China’s regions in the globally-focused belt and road initiative launched by the Chinese government in late 2013. The book will be of interest to practitioners and scholars engaging with contemporary China’s political economy and international relations.

This landmark study provides an integrated analysis of China's unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. The authors combine deep China expertise with broad disciplinary knowledge to explain China's remarkable combination of high-speed growth and deeply flawed institutions. Their work exposes the mechanisms underpinning the origin and expansion of China's great boom. Penetrating studies track the rise of Chinese capabilities in manufacturing and in research and development. The editors probe both achievements and weaknesses across many sectors, including China's fiscal, legal, and financial institutions. The book shows how an intricate minuet combining China's political system with sectorial development, globalization, resource transfers across geographic and economic space, and partial system reform delivered an astonishing and unprecedented growth spurt.

In this timely work, Liu Kang argues that globalization in China is both a historical condition in which the country's gaige kaifang (reform and opening up) has unfolded and a set of values or ideologies by which it and the rest of the globe are judged. Moreover, globalization signals a significant ascendancy of culture. Liu examines China's current ideological struggles in political discourse, intellectual debate, popular culture, avant-garde literature, the news media, and the internet. With careful textual analysis and observation informed by critical theories and cultural studies, he offers a forceful critique of the Chinese version of globalism that privileges economic development at the expense of social justice and equality.

This book explains the importance of globalization and the Belt and Road Initiative, which is one of the essential projects of President Xi Jinping, and where China fits on the global arena. Additionally, the contributors cover such important topics as China’s maritime traffic, infrastructure along the modern Silk Road, the South China Sea, and China’s relationship with Indonesia, Malaysia, East Timor, Hong Kong, and Macao. This edited volume will interest scholars, researchers, and students in the fields of Asian studies, globalization, political science, and Chinese politics.

Greater China in an Era of Globalization examines China's rise, its role in the greater China region, and its influence in other regions of the world. It also analyzes the idea of "Chinese globalization" and its significant implications for the world.

The era of globalization saw China emerge as the world's manufacturing titan. However, the "made in China" model—with its reliance on cheap labor and thin profits—has begun to wane. Beginning in the 2000s, the Chinese state shifted from attracting foreign investment to promoting the technological competitiveness of domestic firms. This shift caused tensions between winners and losers, leading local bureaucrats to compete for resources in government budget, funding, and tax breaks. While bureaucrats successfully built coalitions to motivate businesses to upgrade in some cities, in others, vested interests within the government deprived businesses of developmental resources and left them in a desperate race to the bottom. In Manipulating Globalization, Ling Chen argues that the roots of coalitional variation lie in the type of foreign firms with which local governments forged alliances. Cities that initially attracted large global firms with a significant share of exports were more likely to experience manipulation from vested interests down the road compared to those that attracted smaller foreign firms. The book develops the argument with in-depth interviews and tests it with quantitative data across hundreds of Chinese cities and thousands of firms. Chen advances a new theory of economic policies in authoritarian regimes and informs debates about the nature of Chinese capitalism. Her findings shed light on state-led development and coalition formation in other emerging economies that comprise the new "globalized" generation.

Confucius Institutes, the language and culture programs funded by the Chinese government, have been established in more than 1,500 schools worldwide since their debut in 2004. A centerpiece of China’s soft power policy, they represent an effort to smooth China’s path to superpower status by enhancing its global appeal. Yet Confucius Institutes have given rise to voluble and contentious public debate in host countries, where they have been both welcomed as a source of educational funding and feared as spy outposts, neocolonial incursions, and obstructions to academic freedom. China in the World turns an anthropological lens on this most visible, ubiquitous, and controversial globalization project in an effort to provide fresh insight into China’s shifting place in the world. Author Jennifer Hubbert takes the study of soft power policy into the classroom, offering an anthropological intervention into a subject that has been dominated by the methods and analyses of international relations and political science. She argues that concerns about Confucius Institutes reflect broader debates over globalization and modernity and ultimately about a changing global order. Examining the production of soft power policy in situ allows us to move beyond program intentions to see how Confucius Institutes are actually understood and experienced in day-to-day classroom interactions. By assessing the perspectives of participants and exploring the complex ways in which students, teachers, parents, and program administrators interpret the Confucius Institute curriculum, she highlights significant gaps between China’s soft power policy intentions and the effects of those policies in practice. China in the World brings original, long-term ethnographic research to bear on how representations of and knowledge about China are constructed, consumed, and articulated in encounters between China, the United States, and the Confucius Institute programs themselves. It moves a controversial topic beyond the realm of policy making to examine the mechanisms through which policy is implemented, engaged, and contested by a multitude of stakeholders and actors. It provides new insight into how policy actually works, showing that it takes more than financial wherewithal and official resolve to turn cultural presence into power.

Get the inside story from a Chinese journalist/consultant about China's surge under globalization and capitalism. This second volume of a trilogy covers (1) political-economic trends; (2) Chinese multinationals vs. global giants; (3) trade, the yuan, banking, insurance, and the stock market; and (4) issues with Taiwan, the West, India, and Japan.