Timothy Cheek
"The New Chinese Intellectual: Globalized, Disoriented, Reoriented" in China's Transformations: The stories beyond the headlines.
Lionel M. Johnson and Timothy B. Weston, eds.
(New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007)
“Seeking to bridge the gap between what specialists understand and the general public believes, the contributors [to China’s Transformations] challenge readers to move past the usual images of China presented by the media and to think about shared problems.”
– Rowman and Littlefield Publishers
Deborah Davis and Wang Feng, editors
Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China
Stanford University Press, 2008
The Chinese economy’s shift toward privatization has greatly diversified China’s institutional landscape. With the migration of more than 140 million villagers to cities and growing urbanization of rural settlements, it is no longer possible to divide the nation into strictly urban and rural classifications. Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China draws on a variety of recent national surveys and detailed case studies to capture the diversity of the period and identify the dynamics forging contemporary social stratification. Focusing on economic inequality, power relations, and everyday life opportunities, the book provides an overview of contemporary class order in China and contributes to current debates over the forces driving global inequalities. In fact, two national Committee members worked on this book – one of its editors, Dr. Deborah Davis, a professor of sociology at Yale University, and member Carl Riskin was a contributor to it.
Neil Diamant, Stanley Lubman, and Kevin O’Brien, eds.
Engaging the Law in China: State, Society and Possibilities for Justice
(Stanford University Press, 2005)
"This remarkable, perspective-setting study of the evolutions in Chinese law and its place in a changing society [is] highly beneficial. One can only strongly encourage this type of research, whose multidisciplinary ambitions allow us to grasp, if not in its entirety, at least certain important aspects of a process that tends to make the law the best ally of an emerging social justice."
—China Perspectives
Elizabeth Economy
The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge To China's Future
(Cornell University Press, 2005)
"Elizabeth C. Economy captures extraordinarily well the complex historical, systemic, political, economic, and international forces that are shaping China’s environmental outcomes. No other volume on this enormously important issue is as comprehensive, balanced, and incisive.”
– Kenneth Lieberthal
Mark W. Frazier
Socialist Insecurity: Pensions and the Politics of Uneven Development in China
Cornell University Press, 2010
Over the past two decades, China has rapidly increased its spending on its public pension programs, to the point that pension funding is one of the government's largest expenditures. Despite this, only about fifty million citizens—one-third of the country's population above the age of sixty—receive pensions. Combined with the growing and increasingly violent unrest over inequalities brought about by China's reform model, the escalating costs of an aging society have brought the Chinese political leadership to a critical juncture in its economic and social policies.
Merle Goldman
From Comrade to Citizen: The Struggle for Political Rights in China
(Harvard University Press, 2005)
“This book is the best that has been published in English on the subject to this day, and whoever wants to understand Chinese politics during the reform era must read it.”
--Jean-Philippe Béja, The China Quarterly
Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen, eds.
State and Society in 21st-century China: Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation
(RoutledgeCurzon, 2004)
“The chapters mix fresh research with bold new interpretations. Most of these authors show China's regime type as incoherent, neither residual-revolutionary nor transitional-liberal. The editors have thus unified the book around a theme that contributes to comparative politics. Everyone who is interested in contemporary China needs to read this book. I will certainly use it in courses.”
–Lynn T. White III, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University
Jason Kindopp and Carol Lee Hamrin, eds.
God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions
(The Brookings Institution Press, 2004)
“God and Caesar in China examines China's religion policy, the history and growth of Catholic and Protestant churches in China, and the implications of church-state friction for relations between the United States and China, concluding with recommendations for U.S. policy.”
– Brookings Institution
W.O. Lee, David L. Grossman, Kerry J. Kennedy, and Gregory P. Fairbrother, eds.
Citizenship Education in Asia and the Pacific Concepts and Issues
(CERC Studies in Comparative Education, Springer, 2004)
“This book is a landmark in citizenship and citizenship education discourse.”
– Springer Press
Cheng Li, ed.
Bridging Minds across the Pacific: U.S.-China Educational Exchanges, 1978-2003
(New York: Lexington Books, 2005)
“…reinterprets many of the important topics that are of importance to investigators of contemporary Chinese society and its efforts at modernization. Given the breadth of topics and wealth of information it covered, Li’s book serves as good source for students and scholars in education, IR Studies, and other relevant areas.”
– Education Review
Kevin J. O’Brien, editor
Popular Protest in China
Harvard University Press, 2008
Episodes of unrest in China offer rare opportunities to consider how popular contention unfolds in places where speech and assembly are tightly controlled. In Popular Protest in China, Dr. O’Brien and thirteen prominent scholars of China’s politics and society draw on social movements elsewhere and fieldwork in China as they explore topics as varied as student movements, worker protests, cyberprotests and anti-dam campaigns. Dr. O’Brien is a professor of Asian studies and of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li
Rightful Resistance in Rural China
Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics, 2006
"To the study of resistance, this superb book, is akin to the discovery of a major 'new species.' 'Rightful resistance' may well be the most significant form of popular protest in quasi-authoritarian systems. This closely-reasoned, broadly comparative and innovative book will inspire many new research programs in its wake."
- James C. Scott, Yale University
Judy Polumbaum, with Xiong Lei
China Ink: The Changing Face of China
Rowman & Littlefield, 2008
China Ink explores individual and societal changes in contemporary China through personal accounts of young Chinese journalists from a range of news outlets. The subjects’ diversity, passion, humor and optimism illustrate the experiences and ideas of everyday Chinese journalists whose work exerts a pervasive influence in their rapidly changing country. This series of engaging oral histories puts a human face on vital political and philosophical issues of freedom of expression and information that will shape China’s future, and offers an intimate view of the lives of journalists in contemporary China. Dr. Polumbaum, a former newspaper reporter, is a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Iowa.
Gerard A. Postiglione
Education and Social Change in China: Inequality in a Market Economy
M.E. Sharpe Publishers, 2006
“...this volume offers a clear, considered and much-needed reminder of the scale of the challenge confronting educators and policymakers, and will be essential reading not only for those researching education, but also for scholars and students from whatever disciplinary background who are concerned with the broader issue of social inequality in China.”
- The China Quarterly
Gerard A. Postiglione and Jason Tan
Going to School in East Asia (The Global School Room)
Greenwood Press, 2007
“The history of the educational philosophies, systems, and curricula of seventeen East Asian countries are described here, with a timeline highlighting educational developments, and a special "day in the life" feature, a personal account of what it is like for a student to attend school in that country.”
– Greenwood Press
Sheridan Prasso
The Asian Mystique
Public Affairs, 2005
“…a compelling study… Prasso is realistic about the dynamics of power and sensitive to the vagaries of culture and sexuality. Her energetic reporting and depth of experience in Asia enable her to identify the superficial cultural practices that generate misunderstandings…”
– The Los Angeles Times
Susan L. Shirk (Editor)
Changing Media, Changing China
Oxford University Press, USA, 2010
Thirty years ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a fateful decision: to allow newspapers, magazines, television, and radio stations to compete in the marketplace instead of being financed exclusively by the government. The political and social implications of that decision are still unfolding as the Chinese government, media, and public adapt to the new information environment. This collection of essays brings together Chinese and American experts writing about all aspects of the changing media landscape in China. In detailed case studies, the authors describe how the media is reshaping itself from a propaganda mouthpiece into an agent of watchdog journalism, how politicians are reacting to increased scrutiny from the media, and how television, newspapers, magazines, and Web-based news sites navigate the cross-currents between the open marketplace and the CCP censors. China has over 360 million Internet users, more than any other country, and an astounding 162 million bloggers. The growth of Internet access has dramatically increased the information available, the variety and timeliness of the news, and its national and international reach.
Mark Sidel
More Secure, Less Free? Antiterrorism Policy and Civil Liberties after September 11
University of Michigan Press, 2004
“More Secure, Less Free? is essential reading for anyone interested in a concise analysis of American antiterror policy and civic freedom since September 11.”
– University of Michigan Press
Seymour Topping
On the Front Lines of the Cold War: An American Correspondent’s Journal from the Chinese Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam
Louisiana State University Press, 2010
In the years following World War II, the United States suffered its most severe military and diplomatic reverses in Asia while Mao Zedong laid the foundation for the emergence of China as a major economic and military world power. As a correspondent for the International News Service, the Associated Press, and later for the New York Times, Seymour Topping documented on the ground the tumultuous events during the Chinese Civil War, the French Indochina War, and the American retreat from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In this riveting narrative, Topping chronicles his extraordinary experiences covering the East-West struggle in Asia and Eastern Europe from 1946 into the 1980s, taking us beyond conventional historical accounts to provide a fresh, first-hand perspective on American triumphs and defeats during the Cold War era.
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know
Oxford University Press, 2010
The need to understand China has never been more pressing: China is constantly in the news, yet conflicting impressions abound. Within one generation China has transformed from an impoverished, repressive state into an economic and political powerhouse. In China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, Wasserstrom provides answers to the most urgent questions regarding the world’s newest superpower and offers a framework for understanding its meteoric rise. Focusing his answers through historical legacies – Western and Japanese imperialism, the Mao era, and the crackdown in Tiananmen Square – that largely define China's present-day trajectory, Wasserstrom introduces readers to the Chinese Communist Party, the building boom in Shanghai, and the environmental fallout of rapid Chinese industrialization. He also explains unique aspects of Chinese culture such as the one-child policy, and provides insight into how Chinese view Americans. Wasserstrom reveals that China today shares many traits with other industrialized nations during their periods of development, in particular the United States during its rapid industrialization in the 19th century.
Dali L. Yang
Remaking the Chinese Leviathan: Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China
Stanford University Press, 2004
“This is an important book that anyone interested in the role of the state in development and the politics of transition in China should read.”
– Tony Saich
Suisheng Zhao
A Nation-State by Construction: Dynamics of Modern Chinese Nationalism
Stanford University Press, 2004
"Suisheng Zhao's book is the new standard in the field for studies of Chinese nationalism, is a very important contribution to the comparative politics' nationalism literature in general, and should be a part of the discussion about China's rise given the role of nationalism in debates about Chinese foreign policy."
—Journal of Asian Studies