This book is a reinterpretation of China's international relations since 1949. Employing the notion and theory of international society, it offers a systematic examination of China's unique relationship with the society of states from its alienation in the 1950s and the 1960s to its political socialisation and economic integration in the 1980s and the 1990s. It explores how such a unique relationship has shaped and is likely to shape Chinese foreign policy. This book provides an entirely new perspective for our understanding of forces influencing Chinese foreign policy behaviour.

This new text on the People's Republic focuses on its rapid transformation during the past half-century, and the challenges this presents.Written for A-level and undergraduate students without previous background on China, and supported by primary source materials, it provides a coherent narrative of the major events in China's recent past, and a balanced account of China's on-going transformation as it moves toward a more open society, a market-oriented economy, and an increasing role in international affairs.

One of the most remarkable stories of the last century is the emergence of China as a modern economic giant, poised at the beginning of the 21st century to become a great world power. China has embraced the technological advances of the late 20th century and has provided new opportunities for millions of Chinese to improve their lives. While problems have accompanied this transformation, China's future holds unprecedented prosperity for 1.3 billion Chinese and greatly enhanced international status for the government that is making this possible. This new textbook on the People's Republic focuses on the changes which have swept through China for the past half-century. As well as providing a coherent narrative of the major events in China's recent past, China Since 1949 also provides an integrated treatment of: - the history of women's experiences under the communist regime - the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of ethnic minorities within China's borders and the rise of nationalism among the Mongols, Uighurs and Tibetans - the regional differences within China and the resulting tensions - the social implications of the Chinese Communist Party's attempts to control every facet of Chinese people's lives. The accompanying documents providing primary source materials, the Chronology and Who's Who of key figures help to ensure that this is an indispensable text for students studying modern China.

China and the World since 1945 offers an overview of China’s involvement in the Korean War, the Sino-Soviet split, Sino-American rapprochement, the end of the Cold War, and globalization. It assesses the roles of security, ideology, and domestic politics in Chinese foreign policy and provides a synthesis of the latest archival-based research on China’s diplomatic history and Cold War international history.

This review essay provides an analytical review of the most important works on the evolving nature of the state-society relationship in China post-1949. It is not intended to provide a new theoretical framework for understanding state-society relations; rather, the goal is to draw together the most important analyses in Western and Chinese writings. We begin by looking at the changing role of two key institutions that have been used by the state to manage society: the household registration system and the workplace. The analysis of the Maoist period looks at theories derived from Soviet studies as well as those that draw on the Chinese Communist Party’s own experiences pre-1949. We complete the review by looking at competing theories such as civil society, corporatism, or authoritarian resilience that seek to define the relationship and then look in depth at how to categorize the variety of state-society relations at the local level.

This book asks whether a regional international society exists in East Asia and why its existence matters to both regional and global orders.

This book provides a comprehensive history of the emergence and the formation of the concept of sovereignty in China from the year 1840 to the present. It contributes to broadening the history of modern China by looking at the way the notion of sovereignty was gradually articulated by key Chinese intellectuals, diplomats and political figures in the unfolding of the history of international law in China, rehabilitates Chinese agency, and shows how China challenged Western Eurocentric assumptions about the progress of international law. It puts the history of international law in a global perspective, interrogating the widely-held belief of international law as universal order and exploring the ways in which its history is closely anchored to a European experience that fails to take into account how the encounter with other non-European realities has influenced its formation.

In this book an international group of scholars examines China's acceptance and ultimate rejection of Soviet models and practices in economic, cultural, social, and other realms.

What does the rise of China represent, and how should the international community respond? With a holistic rereading of Chinese longue durée history, Fei-Ling Wang provides a simple but powerful framework for understanding the nature of persistent and rising Chinese power and its implications for the current global order. He argues that the Chinese ideation and tradition of political governance and world order—the China Order—is based on an imperial state of Confucian-Legalism as historically exemplified by the Qin-Han polity. Claiming a Mandate of Heaven to unify and govern the whole known world or tianxia (all under heaven), the China Order dominated Eastern Eurasia as a world empire for more than two millennia, until the late nineteenth century. Since 1949, the People's Republic of China has been a reincarnated Qin-Han polity without the traditional China Order, finding itself stuck in the endless struggle against the current world order and the ever-changing Chinese society for its regime survival and security. Wang also offers new discoveries and assessments about the true golden eras of Chinese civilization, explains the great East-West divergence between China and Europe, and analyzes the China Dream that drives much of current Chinese foreign policy.