Infl uence of China’s imperial examinations on Japan,Korea and Vietnam

China’s imperial examinations greatly influenced the East Asian world. Japan imitated it during the eighth to tenth centuries; its subjects include xiucai, mingjing, jinshi, mingfa, as well as medicine and acupuncture. Korean imperial examinations are the longest and most comprehensive ones among other East Asian countries. Vietnam was the last to abolish the imperial examinations. All three East Asian countries imitated China in their imperial examinations, which greatly raised their cultural levels.     

Li,Huaiyin, Reinventing Modern China： Imagination and Authenticity in Chinese Historical Writing

Li Huaiyin＇s new book deals with the dialectic and competing processes ofwriting the history of ＂modem China＂ in China during the past century. Li presents the writing of history as a literary genre that has produced multiple narratives in different periods, narratives that corresponded to or were instigated by particular socio-political （especially political） circumstances of the protagonists of his story. In general, Li depicts these narratives as ＂romantic,＂ ＂optimistic,＂ or ＂pessimistic,＂ based on two major conflicting paradigms （or ＂grand narratives＂--Li often uses ＂narrative＂ and ＂paradigm＂ interchangeably）： ＂modernization＂ and ＂revolutionary.＂     

East German pragmatism,China’s policy of differentiation,and Soviet miscalculation: Hermann Matern’s 1961 trip to China revisited

This paper shows that Hermann Matern’s 1961 visit to China was mainly a trade mission whose connection with political affairs was minor and who had only an indirect influence on the Berlin Crisis. It further demonstrates that there was no Sino-East German rapprochement during Matern’s visit, but quite the contrary –relations between the two countries actually deteriorated, resulting in the East German delegation failing to achieve their goals. Yet, Soviet miscalculation and misunderstanding of China’s policy led them to substantially increase their economic assistance to East Germany, so as to ‘win their German comrades back’ to the Soviet side.     

Russia’s Natural Resources in the World Economy: history,review and reassessment

Abstract

Russia’s role in the global economic system today, and the Soviet Union’s in the past, is dominated by the export of natural resources, particularly oil and gas. The rents earned from these exports are both a source of strength and weakness, as they link the fortunes of Russia’s domestic economy to the volatility of global resource markets. This paper returns to a major research project conducted through the offices of the Association of American Geographers that resulted in Soviet Natural Resources in the World Economy, published in 1983. The project was first conceived in the aftermath of the resource crisis in the 1970s and concluded in the early 1980s as the Soviet Union sought to increase resource exports to support a failing domestic economy. This paper examines the origins, evolution, and management of this seminal work and presents a re-reading of the book in a contemporary context. We develop some of the key themes of the original project and conclude that it has contemporary relevance, as a reliance upon the resource sector remains a defining characteristic of Russia’s political economy and continues to shape Russia’s role in the global economy. We find that the regional dimension that was so important in the original project remains critical as Russia seeks to extend the resource frontier into new regions in the Arctic and the East and, at the same time, reduce its reliance on European markets – that are both stagnant and hostile – by developing new markets in Asia.