The theory and implementation of the People's Republic of China's revolutionary diplomacy

The foreign relations of modern China, starting from the birth of the People's Republic in 1949 until the Cultural Revolution, can be said to have had continuous ups and downs and twists and turns. Its underlying abstruse principles, while stemming from nationalism, contained for the most part the Chinese Communist Party's own revolutionary principles and individual revolutionary experiences. The Chinese Communist revolution was based on class analysis and class conflict, on struggle and ideology. This ideology determined how China viewed itself and the world; no views could be separated from the ideology of class struggle and class analysis. The leadership's adherence to this type of ideology led to the long-term instability of China's diplomacy. Though those who, like Mao Zedong, employed class revolution in order to seize political power while viewing class analysis, class struggle, and in particular the success of using class ideology in a united front policy as the magic wand of the revolution's success, were singularly able to adapt such views to China's foreign policy and diplomacy. This became the fundamental red line for China's foreign policy.     

Japan's response to China's rise: regional engagement, global containment, dangers of collision

Japan and China's ability to manage their bilateral relationship is crucial for the stability of the East Asian region. It also has a global impact on the security and economic development of other regions. For just as China's rise has inevitably involved an expansion of its global reach, so Japan's responses to the challenges posed by China have increasingly taken a global form, seeking to incorporate new partners and frameworks outside East Asia. Japan's preferred response to China's regional and global rise in the post‐Cold War period has remained one of default engagement. Japan is intent on promoting China's external engagement with the East Asia region and its internal domestic reform, through upgrading extant bilateral and Japan–China–US trilateral frameworks for dialogue and cooperation, and by emphasizing the importance of economic power to influence China. Japan is deliberately seeking to proliferate regional frameworks for cooperation in East Asia in order to dilute, constrain and ultimately engage China's rising power. However, Japan's engagement strategy also contains the potential to tilt towards default containment. Japan's domestic political basis for engagement is becoming increasingly precarious as China's rise stimulates Japanese revisionism and nationalism. Japan also appears increasingly to be looking to contain China on a global scale by forging new strategic links in Russia and Central Asia, with a ‘concert of democracies’ involving India, Australia and the US, by competing for resources with China in Africa and the Middle East, and by attempting to articulate a values‐based diplomacy to check the so‐called ‘Beijing consensus’. Nevertheless, Japan's perceived inability to channel China's rise either through regional engagement or through global containment carries a further risk of pushing Japan to resort to the strengthening of its military power in an attempt to guarantee its essential national interests. It is in this instance that Japan and China run the danger of a military collision.     

An overview of recent research on modern Chinese economic history

China formally adopted the policy of reform and opening up to the outside world in 1978. Since then, both economic practice and economic theory in China have undergone profound changes, and the academic study of modern Chinese economic history has been encouraged to expand its research horizons under the rubric of “liberating the mind and seeking truth in the facts”. A number of important monographs and essays have been produced and the study of modern Chinese economic history has entered a flourishing period. Current research focuses on two major topics: China's New Democratic economy and the planned economy during the period 1949–78; and, China's socialist market economy from 1978–2006. The study of these two areas shows numerous interconnections, points of comparison and causal links. The many and important lessons to be drawn from these studies both exhibit Chinese characteristics and have universal implications.     

The basic structure of Chiang Kai-shek's diplomatic strategy

As a leader of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek carried on Sun Yat-sen's legacy of using diplomacy as a force in the modern era and planned to rely on diplomacy to revise China's unequal treaties with foreign powers. Chiang elaborated on Sun's ideas and maintained that diplomacy as a war without battles worked more effectively than wars with battles. Faced with the threat of Japanese invasion, he upheld the strategy of using one foreign country to control another. He expected the outbreak of a war between Japan and the Soviet Union or between Japan and the United States so that a war between Japan and China could be avoided. Chiang engaged in active diplomacy aimed at turning these expectations into reality. His diplomatic strategy had an impact during the Anti-Japanese War.     

Economic statecraft in China's new overseas special economic zones: soft power,business or resource security?

China's rapidly growing economic engagement with other developing countries has aroused intense debates, but these debates have often generated more heat than light. The Chinese government is clearly pushing its companies to move offshore in greater numbers, and state‐owned firms figure prominently in many of the major investments abroad. Yet relatively little research exists on when, how and why the Chinese government intervenes in the overseas economic activities of its firms. China's state‐sponsored economic diplomacy in other developing countries could play three major strategic roles: strengthening resource security, enhancing political relationships and soft power, and boosting commercial opportunities for national firms. This article examines China's programme to establish overseas special economic zones as one tool of Beijing's economic statecraft. It traces the process by which they were established and implemented, and investigates the characteristics of the 19 zones initially selected in a competitive tender process. The article concludes that even in countries rich in natural resources, the overseas zones were overwhelmingly positioned as commercial projects. Particularly in the Asian zones, China is following in the footsteps of Japan. The zone programme, and the Chinese foreign investment it hoped to foster, represents a clear case of the international projection of China's developmental state. However, in Africa (but not generally elsewhere) discourse surrounding the zones publicly positions them as a transfer of China's own development success, thus potentially enhancing China's political relationships and soft power on the continent.     

二叶亭四迷与鲁迅的关系考辨

二叶亭四迷作为日本近代文学的奠基人,在日本文学史中曾被埋没多年。同样,在中日两国的鲁研界,谈及对鲁迅产生影响的日本作家,二叶亭也不在其列。但是二叶亭在鲁迅留日期间发表了大量的俄罗斯文学及文论的译文,这成为鲁迅通往俄罗斯文学道路上的一座重要的桥粱。在小说创作上,因为中日两国近代社会变革和小说流变有着惊人的相似,二叶亭作为筚路蓝缕者,替鲁迅完成了过渡期的挣扎和探索,使鲁迅在高于历史的平台上起步,一举奠定了在中国现代小说史上的地位。     

日本中学历史教科书所见日清关系

在日本历史教科书的记述中,涉及日清关系演变过程中多个重要主题,在这些史实中着重叙述日本通过自身不断努力求得发展的过程和中国不断衰落的轨迹,以及由此引发中日关系在近代的转变。日本中学历史教科书中的叙述是将中国近代史作为理解日本近代史的背景来进行的,这样处理日清关系历史,就其实质而言,是其中国观的反映。     

Modern China's cultural transformation – problems and prospects

Modern China's cultural transformation has been a long, torturous, and complex process that even now has yet to come to a conclusion. Previous publications on China's intellectual and cultural history have touched on this issue to some extent, but there have been few wide‐ranging, focused, and systematic studies. This article is based on the author's systematic research into this question and argues that the Chinese people, burdened with the weight of a long history and with deeply ingrained cultural traditions, must negotiate the complexities and uncertainties of the present as they adapt to a new era and build a new culture. Questions of culture manifest themselves in many different ways: in distinctions between Eastern and Western culture and between “Chinese” and “barbarian”, in the different resources and possibilities inherent in ancient and modern culture, in the fate of China's ethnic minorities, and in the relationship between material and spiritual “civilization”. In addition, social conditions can pose almost insurmountable problems in the process of cultural transformation. These problems can only be solved when the whole nation is engaged in the practice of study and struggle, and the cultures of the world become more intimately linked through communication and the flow of ideas. Even then, solutions will not be quick in coming and the process of cultural change is necessarily gradual in nature. The transformation of China's culture in recent times and the modernization of the country as a whole are fundamentally concurrent processes that show a marked tendency towards globalization and individualism. Thus, externally, China must adhere to the idea of greater cultural openness while, internally, we must support the liberation of the people, and foster a positive creative spirit to the fullest potential.     

FROM REVOLUTION TO MODERNIZATION: THE PARADIGMATIC TRANSITION IN CHINESE HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE REFORM ERA

Chinese historiography of modern China in the 1980s and 1990s underwent a paradigmatic transition: in place of the traditional revolutionary historiography that bases its analyses on Marxist methodologies and highlights rebellions and revolutions as the overarching themes in modern Chinese history, the emerging modernization paradigm builds its conceptual framework on borrowed modernization theory and foregrounds top‐down, incremental reforms as the main force propelling China's evolution to modernity. This article scrutinizes the origins of the new paradigm in the context of a burgeoning modernization discourse in reform‐era China. It further examines the fundamental divides between the two types of historiography in their respective constructions of master narratives and their different approaches to representing historical events in modern China. Behind the prevalence of the modernization paradigm in Chinese historiography is Chinese historians' unchanged commitment to serving present political needs by interpreting the past.     

Studies of Chiang Kai‐shek by mainland scholars since the 1980s

Chiang Kai‐shek was one of the most influential leaders of twentieth‐century China. Since the 1980s, perceptions of Chiang in mainland academic circles have been continually sharpened. As an important subject of research for the history of modern China, Chiang has increasingly emerged from the shadows as a real figure. The extent to which scholars can make an in‐depth, objective and comprehensive study of Chiang will have a direct relationship to the progress made in the study of the history of the Republic of China, the Chinese revolution, and modern and contemporary China. It will also determine the depth of our understanding of many important issues both past and present. Armed with a broader knowledge of Chiang and modern Chinese history, scholars and historians now face the larger challenge of setting the new image of Chiang in the context of the development of modern China.     

丸山真男学术立论中的事实与想象--"原型论"与"日本主义"情结

丸山真男的学术研究,在揭示出“日本早期近代化的基础奠定于江户时代”这一重要事实的同时,也超事实超学理地扩张了他的想象,这种想象,集中体现在他所提出的“原型论”当中,由于该理论与“日本主义”之间存有内在,本质和必然的联系,而这种联系又直接与少数人根深蒂固的“中国文化蔑视论”互为表里,因此,提出并正确认识这一问题,相信将有助于加强21世纪中日两国深层次的学术交流。     

How the other half live in modern China

China's economic development over the past decade has captured the world's imagination. But this has largely been an urban phenomenon. While the current Chinese government has lifted more people out of poverty than any other in history, there have still been a huge number of losers in the reform processes of the last three decades, many of whom are based in the countryside. Chen and Wu's study of the situation in the central province of Anhui for peasants raises some uncomfortable questions for anyone looking at the long‐term sustainability and stability of China's economic development.     

Book reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. International Relations theory The social in the global: social theory, governmentality and global politics. By Jonathan Joseph . Power, Realism and constructivism. By Stefano Guzzini . International organization, law and ethics * 1 See also Alex J. Bellamy, Massacres and morality: mass atrocities in an age of civilian immunity, pp. 1029–30.
The law of targeting. By William H. Boothby. Just business: multinational corporations and human rights. By John Ruggie . Unimaginable atrocities: justice, politics, and rights at the war crimes tribunal. By William Schabas. No one's world: the West, the rising rest and the coming global turn. By Charles A. Kupchan. Conflict, security and defence The Cambridge history of war, volume IV: war in the modern world. Edited by Roger Chickering, Dennis Showalter and Hans van de Ven. Invisible armies: an epic history of guerrilla warfare from ancient times to the present. By Max Boot . Massacres and morality: mass atrocities in an age of civilian immunity. By Alex J. Bellamy . After war ends: a philosophical perspective. By Larry May . Ballistic missile defence and US national security policy: normalisation and acceptance after the Cold War. By Andrew Futter . Privatizing war: private military and security companies under public international law. By Lindsey Cameron and Vincent Chetail . Governance, civil society and cultural politics Federal dynamics: continuity, change, and the varieties of federalism. Edited by Arthur Benz and Jörg Broschek . Of virgins and martyrs: women and sexuality in global conflict. By David Jacobson . Political economy, economics and development New spirits of capitalism? Crises, justifications, and dynamics. Edited by Paul du Gay and Glenn Morgan . Masters of the universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the birth of neoliberal politics. By Daniel Stedman Jones . Governing guns, preventing plunder: international cooperation against illicit trade. By Asif Efrat . Energy, environment and global health China's environmental challenges. By Judith Shapiro. Green innovation in China: China's wind power industry and the global transition to a low‐carbon economy. By Joanna I. Lewis . The governance of energy in China: transition to a low‐carbon economy. By Philip Andrews‐Speed . Global health and International Relations. By Colin McInnes and Kelley Lee . International history The sleepwalkers: how Europe went to war in 1914. By Christopher Clark . Lenin's terror: the ideological origins of early Soviet state violence. By James Ryan . Hitler's philosophers. By Yvonne Sherratt . Empire of secrets: British intelligence, the Cold War and the twilight of empire. By Calder Walton . Nasser's gamble: how intervention in Yemen caused the Six‐Day War and the decline of Egyptian power. By Jesse Ferris . The killing zone: the United States wages Cold War in Latin America. By Stephen G. Rabe . Visions of power in Cuba: revolution, redemption and resistance, 1959–1971. By Lillian Guerra . Europe European security: the roles of regional organisations. By Bjørn Møller . Six moments of crisis: inside British foreign policy. By Gill Bennett . Defending the realm? The politics of Britain's small wars since 1945. By Aaron Edwards . A special relationship? British foreign policy in the era of American hegemony. By Simon Tate . Britain's quest for a role: a diplomatic memoir from Europe to the UN. By David Hannay . Russia and Eurasia * 2 See also James Ryan, Lenin's terror: the ideological origins of early Soviet state violence, pp. 1046–7; and Marlene Laruelle and Sebastien Peyrouse, The Chinese question in Central Asia: domestic order, social change and the Chinese factor, pp. 1076–7.
Wheel of fortune: the battle for oil and power in Russia. By Thane Gustafson . Edge of empire: a history of Georgia. By Donald Rayfield . Georgia: a political history since independence. By Stephen Jones . Middle East and North Africa Revolutionary Iran: a history of the Islamic Republic. By Michael Axworthy . Lebanon after the Cedar Revolution. Edited by Are Knudsen and Michael Kerr . Dynamics of change in the Persian Gulf: political economy, war and revolution. By Anoushiravan Ehteshami . Sub‐Saharan Africa Multiethnic coalitions in Africa: business financing of opposition election campaigns. By Leonardo R. Arriola . Nigeria since independence: forever fragile? By J. N. C. Hill . Peacebuilding, power, and politics in Africa. Edited by Devon Curtis and Gwinyayi A. Dzinesa . South Asia Policing Afghanistan. By Antonio Giustozzi and Mohammed Isaqzadeh . East Asia and Pacific * 3 See also Judith Shapiro, China's environmental challenges; Joanna I. Lewis, Green innovation in China: China's wind power industry and the global transition to a low‐carbon economy; and Philip Andrews‐Speed, The governance of energy in China: transition to a low‐carbon economy, pp. 1041–3.
The Chinese question in Central Asia: domestic order, social change and the Chinese factor. By Marlene Laruelle and Sebastien Peyrouse . China's search for energy security: domestic sources and international implications. Edited by Suisheng Zhao . North America Foreign policy begins at home: the case for putting America's house in order. By Richard N. Haass . US foreign policy and democracy promotion: from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama. Edited by Michael Cox, Timothy J. Lynch and Nicolas Bouchet . The Secretary: a journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the heart of American power. By Kim Ghattas . Latin America and Caribbean * 4 See also Stephen G. Rabe, The killing zone: the United States wages Cold War in Latin America, pp. 1052–3; and Lillian Guerra, Visions of power in Cuba: revolution, redemption and resistance, 1959–1971, pp. 1054–5.
The Mapuche in modern Chile: a cultural history. By Joanna Crow .     

Bourgeois Hong Kong and its South Seas connections: a cultural logic of overseas Chinese nationalism, 1898–1933

This paper elaborates upon a cultural logic of overseas Chinese nationalism. Around the early twentieth century, some bourgeois members of overseas Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Seas mobilised Confucianism as an ethno‐symbol. The latter helped the overseas Chinese bourgeoisie to counter the quest for greater secularisation and to confront the surge of anti‐imperialist movements. The implications of this research include to recentre the role of overseas Chinese in China's modern transformation; to decentre the May Fourth agendas in the understanding of overseas Chinese nationalism; and to situate overseas Chinese nationalism in an extraterritorial space, which includes the Confucian zone created in the dialogical connections between Confucian intellectual elites (such as Zheng Xiaoxu and Chen Huanzhang) and overseas Chinese bourgeois networks that converged in Hong Kong and spread transnationally.     

Beyond win–win: rethinking China's international relationships in an era of economic uncertainty

China is the least disadvantaged major economy in the current era of global economic uncertainty. Thus it is becoming the focus of attention of its neighbours and is achieving a prominence in the world political economy unparalleled in its modern history. To a great extent, China's success is the result of ‘good neighbour diplomacy’ such as ‘win–win’ and the policies of reform and openness of the past thirty years. However, despite continuity in policy, China's ‘peaceful leap forward’ since 2008 has changed the context of its external relationships. The increasing asymmetries between China and its neighbours, as well as decreasing asymmetry with the United States, require an adjustment of win–win values beyond mutual benefit to credible reassurance. As China's neighbours become more dependent, they also become more anxious concerning their interests. Meanwhile, China's relative gain on the US requires a different kind of confidence‐building diplomacy.     

Tribal diplomacy and frontier territoriality in modern China: Hunza and Nationalist China, 1947–1948

In the immediate post-World War II period, the Chinese Nationalist regime was eager to consolidate its position and formulate a proactive policy toward China's traditional Central Asian peripheries. Postwar Nationalist China's momentary confidence in extending central influence into the Pamir and Kashmir regions can be understood in such a geopolitical context. The withdrawal of British colonial rule in India further increased Nanjing's optimism about bringing Hunza, a Muslim tribal state in northwest Kashmir, under its territorial and administrative sway. To prevent possible infiltration of Soviet influence in Central Asia, the Nationalists at one point even considered resorting to the restoration of imperial “tributary ties” as a political expedient in their dealings with postwar China's frontier territorial issues. A careful examination of the Nationalists' previously unknown abortive attempt to reclaim Hunza enables us to fill an important scholarly lacuna in the history of modern China's external relations with its South and Central Asian neighbors. This reevaluation, moreover, may also lead us to further reconsider modern China's intriguing and complicated frontier diplomatic and territorial scenario, as well as how that scenario could have been manipulated by a certain group of ambitious distant Nationalist border officials during the course of postwar China's problematic frontier undertakings.     

Leadership transfer in the Asian revolution: Mao Zedong and the Asian Cominform

On the eve of the victory of the Chinese revolution, Mao Zedong became interested in creating an Asian Cominform. Although Stalin agreed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should lead the Asian revolution and agreed in principle to the idea of an Asian Cominform, he was not in favour of immediate action. After hearing Moscow's opinion, the CCP started to train communist cadres from Asian countries. The CCP gained actual leadership of the Asian revolution after China's entry into the Korean War. Although the Asian Cominform was not formally established, China became the centre of the Asian revolution in the 1950s.     

Australia's ‘special strategic relationship’ with Japan: another ‘China choice’?

In July 2014, Australia's new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and his Japanese counterpart, Shinzō Abe, elevated the status of bilateral ties to a ‘special strategic relationship'. Both sides also agreed on intensifying their defence technology cooperation, including in the submarine space. As well, Prime Minister Abbott called Australia a ‘strong ally’ of Japan. Yet, the prospect of a further strengthening of Australia–Japan defence relations has led to criticism by Australian strategic commentators. In particular, critics argue that closer strategic relations with Japan could damage Australia's ties with a rising China. In a worst-case scenario, Australia might even become ‘entrapped’ in a Sino-Japanese conflict. However, this argues that a closer defence relationship is in Australia's strategic interests in the face of China's increasing challenge to the rules-based order in the region. China's uncompromising position in the South China Sea and its more assertive behaviour have led to a greater congruence of threat and risk assessment between Australia and Japan. Indeed, Australia and Japan are increasingly facing a security dilemma vis-à-vis China, albeit to varying degrees. Therefore, for Australia, promoting Japan's ‘security normalisation’ contributes to regional stability. As well, the article points out that closer strategic ties with Japan do not automatically come at the expense of Sino-Australia relations. China's leverage to ‘punish’ Australia for unwanted strategic behaviour is limited, and concerns about ‘entrapment’ in a Sino-Japanese war are exaggerated. However, the more China exerts coercive diplomacy, the closer Australia–Japan defence relations are likely to become.     

The emergence of NGOs in China and their transnational linkages: implications for domestic reform

In addressing the question of how China's rapid socioeconomic transformation is changing the nature of its international engagement we need to move beyond a traditional focus on state-centric analysis. Obviously a major stimulus for China's international engagement over the past 25 years of reform and opening has come from non-state economic activity. Growing economic interdependence, accelerated after China's accession into the World Trade Organization, provides the strongest argument in favour of a peaceful rise of China scenario in which both regional and global security are enhanced rather than threatened. Far less attention, however, has been given to the role and influence of Chinese non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and their transnational linkages. I argue in this article that in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of China's ongoing process of reform and opening to the outside world we need to incorporate a civil society dimension into our analysis. This is of particular relevance to ongoing foreign policy debates over democracy and human rights promotion in China. Indeed, in the absence of a more detailed understanding of current developments taking place at the grassroots, international support for progressive reform runs the risk of undermining positive change from below.     

Yoshikatsu Sugiura's Contribution to the Development of Quantum Physics in Japan

Previous research in the history of physics has led us to believe that Yoshio Nishina (1890–1951) virtually single‐handedly imported quantum physics into Japan. However, there are first‐hand accounts that Yoshikatsu Sugiura (1895–1960) also played an important role. Sugiura made his name in quantum chemistry with his contribution to the Heitler‐London theory of the chemical bond. Yet, historians of physics have paid scant attention to him. This paper brings forward information on Sugiura from his letters, his scientific papers, and his own recollections until ca. 1930. By examining this material, the present paper studies Sugiura's accomplishments in Europe and his contributions to the development of quantum physics in Japan. We conclude that Sugiura was one of the most important physicists when it comes to the arrival of quantum physics in Japan. In addition, we assess why he has been under‐appreciated in the history of physics in Japan. Our historical study on Sugiura suggests that, in addition to the position Nishina and his students rightfully occupy, there still are important unexplored aspects in the history of Japanese quantum physics.