China’s Evolving Policy towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under Xi Jinping

Despite international pressure to condemn North Korea (DPRK), China’s successive leaderships have dealt carefully with Pyongyang, especially vis-à-vis its nuclear weapons program. This moderate stance reflects the two countries’ decades-long relationship, summarised in the Chinese idiom that Pyongyang and Beijing are “as close as lips and teeth”. Nevertheless, the DPRK’s third nuclear test in February 2013 raised enormous challenges for the new Xi Jinping leadership to maintain the previous DPRK policy focused on the status quo and stability on the Korean Peninsula. China’s attitudes and policies towards the DPRK after the provocative third test signified a possible reorientation of Beijing’s DPRK policy. This generated repercussions in the countries concerned and prompted debates among experts. This article asks how these events should be understood and what their implications are for the Xi leadership’s policy on the DPRK, the stability of the Korean Peninsula, and Northeast Asia. Given China’s competitive relations with other major powers, we conclude that the Xi leadership will not abandon the DPRK; indeed it will reinforce the policy of strengthening China’s influence over it. Nonetheless one aspect of doing so will involve China opening up to other – cooperative, multilateral – approaches to reinforcing stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.     

19世纪末至20世纪20年代美国外交思想探析

从19世纪末叶以来,美国外交思想经历了从孤立主义向所谓的“国际主义”的转变,这种转变到了第一次世界大战爆发后基本完成,其核心内容是美国借助着强大的经济、军事和化力量,大踏步地迈向国际政治竞技场,实现这一时期绝大多数美国领导人梦寐以求的世界领袖地位。然而,这种转变在国内外遇到了强大的阻力,最终把美国的世界领袖梦想化为烟云。不过,美国的政治、经济和战略等利益已经使美国无可解脱地与世界联系在一起。就美国外交而言,这是一个不可逆转的趋势,美国人厌恶卷入大洋之外政治事务的传统心态由此正发生着变化,这也预示着美国力图充任世界领袖的时代正在缓慢地到来。     

领袖人物与企业文化的形成--稻盛与京瓷

企业价值观是企业文化的核心。在企业价值观形成的过程中,企业领袖起着重要作用。本文以稻盛和夫为对象,通过分析其在京瓷企业价值观建立与实践的过程中所起到的作用,探究企业的领袖人物与企业文化之间的关联。     

The Pillars of “Mahathir's Islam”: Mahathir Mohamad on Being-Muslim in the Modern World

Unlike his bourgeois economic nationalism or diplomatic posturing on behalf of the developing world, Mahathir Mohamad's encounter with Islam remains a largely understudied aspect of his 22-year rule of Malaysia (1981–2003). There is a marked reluctance to take seriously his pronouncements on Islam and engage with his representations of what being-Muslim should entail in the modern world. This essay takes the view that Islam, in fact, represents a significant component of the former Malaysian prime minister's political repertoire, and that an analysis of what may be described as “Mahathir's Islam” can provide a compelling alternative account of his momentous premiership. It argues that while Mahathir's engagement with Islam was fraught with contradictions and has produced a number of negative consequences that affect Malaysian society as a whole, his discourse also contained the ingredients of what Bellah and Hammond (1980) have famously described as civil religion. Mahathir's public representations of Islam – in particular, his championing of the individually responsible believer and interpretation of the message to the Prophet Muhammad as a this-worldly and pro-active “theology of progress” – can thus provide religious validation to the cosmopolitanism of the street that has helped underwrite the social peace of multi-religious Malaysia.     

1959-1966年上海青年“红旗读书运动”研究

上海青年“红旗读书运动”是全面建设社会主义时期加强青年思想政治教育的一次重要实践,对确立马克思主义在意识形态领域的指导地位具有重要意义。这场读书活动以青年为对象,持续时间长达七年之久,从最初广大青年积极参与,到因国民经济困难而受到影响,再到结合毛泽东著作出版掀起高潮,形成了以党委为核心,共青团、工会等团体密切协作的领导机制,同时建立起多层级的指导委员会,通过思想动员、组织动员以及典型引导的动员机制,加强对青年的思想引领。“红旗读书运动”为党开展思想政治工作积累了丰富经验,对新时代加强青年培养提供了现实启示。     

Mobility,Land Use,and Leadership in Small-Scale and Middle-Range Societies

Over the past century, the fields of archaeology and anthropology have produced a number of different theoretical approaches and a substantial body of data aimed at ways to understand hunter-gatherer, horticultural, and agropastoral societies. This review considers four recent edited volumes on foraging and food-producing societies. These books deal in innovative ways with a broad array of issues, including transitions in human prehistory and history, mobility, land use, sharing, technology, social leveling strategies, leadership, and the formation of social hierarchies. Small-scale societies include hunter-gatherers or foragers, while middle-range societies may include complex hunter-gatherer (ones with storage and delayed return systems), horticultural, and agropastoral societies, some of them with institutionalized leadership, status hierarchies, and differential access to power and resources. An important set of themes in these books includes diversity in adaptations to complex social and natural environments, the significance of (1) matter, (2) energy, and (3) information in small-scale and middle-range societies on several continents, the persistence of foraging, and the development of inequality. The roles of sharing, exchange, and leadership in small-scale and middle-range societies are explored, as are explanations for social, economic, and political transformations among groups over time and across space.     

Funeral at the edge of a cliff: Israel bids farewell to David Ben-Gurion

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, passed away on 1 December 1973, weeks after the Yom Kippur War. His funeral reflected his unique political and symbolic standing as the “father of the nation,” as well as his wish to express national pioneering values. Buried on the cliff overlooking Wadi Zin, near his kibbutz home in the Negev desert, Ben-Gurion “forced” the Israeli leadership to follow a ritualistic pilgrimage path leading from Jerusalem to Sde Boker, similar to the one he had advocated and attempted himself. The article discusses how this watershed historical event was conceived, planned and carried out.     

The Democratic Party and the restructuring of the Italian party system

Abstract

Out of a quickly performed merger between the Left Democrats and the Daisy, a new party has made its appearance in Italy: the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico – PD). In the summer of 2007 three candidates, Walter Veltroni, Rosy Bindi and Enrico Letta campaigned in order to convince sympathizers and supporters of that, yet non-existing party, that they were worthy of the office of Secretary of the PD. The election of Veltroni contributed to the already existing tensions within the centre-left governmental coalition that led to the demise of Prodi's government and to early elections. In April 2008, though receiving 33 per cent of the vote, the Democratic Party suffered a serious defeat. This article explores the reasons of the defeat and analyses its consequences on the restructuring of the Italian party system and the future of the Italian political system. Unless the Democratic Party is capable of finding an adequate organizational model and of expanding its electoral support beyond the areas of the traditional entrenchment of the former Communist party, the centre-right seems destined to guide Italian politics for some time to come.     

Tracking democracies: Italy and Japan in historical perspective

Abstract

The Italian and Japanese roads toward democracy have been paved by external forces, by the timing of economic development, by ‘great’ leaders and by such factors as institutions, class structure, geography and even by accident. In finding a pair of countries where so much is similar, and yet where fundamental differences penist, comparativists have fertile ground in which to look for key factors in political (and democratic) change. This article, in short, takes aim at illuminating these factors by distinguishing between the structural and cultural conditions within which democratic tracks were laid in Japanese and Italian history. It concludes that a closer examination of leadership and agency is necessary to explain more fully democratic development in Italy and Japan.     

中国共产党三代领导集体的西部开发思想与实践

从毛泽东、邓小平到江泽民的三代中央领导集体先后进行了可称之为三次西部开发高潮的建设。第一次是 50年代大规模西部新工业基地建设 ;第二次是 1 964— 1 978年进行的三线建设 ;第三次是 1 999年至今的西部大开发战略。三次西部开发体现了三代领导集体在不同的历史阶段进行的思想探索和实践努力 ,是一个继承、发展和创新的过程。特别是 80年代以后 ,从邓小平关于一部分地区先富起来最终实现共同富裕的思想 ,到江泽民“三个代表”思想指导下的西部开发 ,是一个重要的思路飞跃 ,为西部地区最终取得适合自身特点的经济发展 ,奠定了成熟的思想基础