No Escaping from the Thucydides Trap

By Flair Donglai Shi, World Literatures in English (MSt) at University of Oxford. The whole the-rise-of-china-and-power-shift discussion has been heated up again since Xi Jinping’s first visit to the US as the president of PRC, despite its presence in the American media having been largely hijacked by the visit of the Pope. At the end …

Is China’s International Strategy a Trojan Horse?

By Joseph Healy, MA student in Contemporary Chinese Studies, UNNC When President Xi Jinping said in January 2014 that China would become “proactive” in international affairs, did this signal that China was abandoning its “non-interference” foreign policy stance, first enunciated as the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence by Zhou Enlai in 1955? Is the growing …

Another economic milestone but does it actually mean anything?

By Dr.  David O’Brien, Assistant Professor, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. In a matter of weeks China is very likely to surpass the United States and officially become the world’s leading trading nation.  According to official figures the value of China’s imports and exports in 2013 reached $4.16 …

A world of shared influence

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, …

The Chinese Dream Controversy

By Angela Wang, Assistant Research Fellow to the Dean of Arts & Education, At The University of Nottingham Ningbo. The Chinese Dream has become a blazing topic for months, prominent in discourse within every field (economic, political, entertainment, academic, individual, etc.). Ever since the central government implemented the idea of a Chinese dream, it has …

Religion in China: Christianity

By Ademola Akande, Studying Mathematics at the University of Nottingham UK. At virtually every place we visited, there was a substantial amount of fetish practices and beliefs proudly displayed to us tourists as Chinese history and culture. There was in fact a religious sculpture erected in front of a restaurant where we had lunch. However, …

China and Industrialisation

By Calvin Johnson, Studying Economics at the University of Nottingham UK. Over the past two weeks, I have had the opportunity to experience and witness the transformation that has occurred in China in recent decades, creating China into a truly economic superpower. However this is an achievement that could have happened centuries ago, had China …

The Rise of China: a threat to the world, or a model for the rest?

By Edward Pode, Studying Mathematics at the University of Nottingham UK. The question of whether China’s recent growth marks it as a model to be followed by other countries around the world or sets it up as a threat to them is dependent on several assumptions.  Firstly it presupposes that the two characteristics are mutually …

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams

By Finbar Edmond Hughes, Studying American and Canadian Studies with English at the University of Birmingham. The title of this blog comes from a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, the longest serving First Lady of the United States of America and in the words of President Harry S. Truman the ‘First Lady of the World’. Therefore …

Life in China in comparison to other places that I have visited

By Harvinder Singh Sandhu, Studying Finance, Accounting and Management at the University of Nottingham UK. Ni Hao! Having completed my second year of study at the University of Nottingham, I felt that this was my last opportunity to travel abroad to study in a different country. When I heard about the opportunity of a two-week …