Commemoration or Provocation?
January 1, 2014
By Dr. David O’Brien, Assistant Professor, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is no longer welcome in China because of his visit to a shrine honouring war criminals, as relations between the two countries become ever more strained. Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni shrine …
Still as Close as Lips and Teeth?
December 17, 2013
By Dr. David O’Brien, Assistant Professor, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Mao Zedong said that China and North Korea are “as close as lips and teeth”. We can only wonder what Mao – a master of political theatre – would have made of the stunning purge of Jang …
Beyond the “Doubting of Antiquity”
December 11, 2013
Dr. Fangchun Li, Teaching Fellow & Senior Tutor, The School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Chinese communist revolution and “continuous revolution” profoundly transformed Chinese society and shaped the course of Chinese, East Asian and world history. In post-revolutionary China, the reassessment of the Chinese revolution and its political legacy …
Reading the writing on the wall – Recent developments in the study of Chinese Social Media
December 4, 2013
By Christian Shepherd, Studying an MA in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Chinese social media is both a blessing and a curse for Contemporary Chinese Studies’ research. The potential is obvious: over half of Chinese internet users are micro-bloggers and internet penetration has reached the 40th percentile, but the pitfalls …
Pollution and Civilisation
By Felicity Woolf, Studying an MA in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Recently when I looked out of my kitchen window, the view beyond the first few tower blocks was shrouded in thick mist; pollution hung heavy in the air. Yesterday a colleague had questioned our cavalier attitude towards cycling …
Xi’an and the Terracotta Army
November 27, 2013
By Felicity Woolf, Studying an MA in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. We recently travelled to Xi’an, the old imperial capital, about 1000 kilometres northwest of Shanghai. It is the home of the Terracotta Army – or Bing Ma Yong (soldiers horse clay) in Chinese. Our first impressions of the …
Party’s Reform Plan
November 19, 2013
By Dr. Zhengxu Wang, Associate Professor, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, and Deputy Director of the China Policy Institute, at the University of Nottingham, UK. Last week saw the eagerly anticipated event of the Plenum of the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee. It was planned as a milestone in China’s reform history, as the …
Go forth and multiply?
By Dr. David O’Brien, Assistant Professor, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. The headline-grabbing decision taken at the recent Third Plenum of the Communist Party of China Central Committee – that the One-Child-Policy is to be significantly relaxed – should come as no surprise. Questions remain however as to …
A world of shared influence
November 13, 2013
By Dr. Xiaoling Zhang, Head of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Associate Professor in Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham. Soft power has beguiled governments around the world. Appealingly, it serves national interests, cheaper than the exercise of hard power (money and force), at least in the short term, …
Unintended Nostalgia
November 6, 2013
By David Symington, Studying a Masters in Chinese Philosophy at Fudan University. Contemporary China is a place where history seems to race. Cityscapes morphing out of all recognition within three years of when you last visited them and new fads that become ancient rituals before they’ve barely seemed to take hold (only this morning I …