China’s Voting Practice at the UN Security Council, Its Legal and Political Interpretation: Case of Syria

This article examines intersection of three contemporary issues that occupy academic thought intensively: China’s global politics, its changing voting practice at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), and the international response to the civil war in Syria. The aim of the article is to provide quantitative and qualitative analysis of China’s voting practice in the UNSC regarding the civil war in Syria, to outline a legal and political interpretation of its voting patterns and to conceptualise China’s politics in the UNSC regarding this issue. The article argues that reasons behind China’s rapidly growing use of the veto in the UNSC regarding Syria are vaguely related to the case of Syria itself, but directly reflect the primacy of China’s domestic politics and its strategic aspirations to reshape global governance. Growing concern within the international community about the human rights abuses taking place on a mass scale against Uighurs in Xinjiang is the most prominent catalyst that enables and provokes China’s systemic reaction. Therefore, although China has neither geopolitical nor strategic interests in Syria, Syria’s case serves as a battleground for China’s attempts to transform the collectively accepted interpretation of multilateralism, democratic values, and norms. This aspect underlines the necessity to observe China’s politics from the perspective of social constructivism. Methodologically, this article draws on political discourse analysis theory, examines China’s arguments in the UNSC and argues that China’s voting behaviour in the UNSC regarding Syria focused on reinterpretation of two grand concepts of international law: state sovereignty and non-interference.

China’s Balancing Behaviour Against the United States and the Special Importance of Myanmar

As China rises, Sino–US competition for influence in East and Southeast Asia has become inescapable. China’s growing influence on its south-western neighbour, Myanmar, is a case in point. The impact of China’s rise is more strongly felt, politically and economically, in Myanmar than elsewhere in the world. This article asks the follow question: What explains China’s more aggressive political and economic clout in Myanmar than elsewhere in the world? To answer this question, this article argues that Myanmar holds a unique importance to China’s balancing act against the preponderance of American power in a unipolar world. Most of the available literature on China’s inroads into Myanmar focus on China’s geopolitical and strategic interests. With such focus, existing literatures take on Myanmar’s importance to China in terms of China’s politics of resource extraction that meets the requirement of its overall economic development. There is no denying it—resource extraction is important for China in order to feed its expanding economy. But hardly any study frames Myanmar’s special weight in China’s politics of resource extraction from the perspective of Beijing’s balancing act against the United States (US). China’s balancing act is characterized by an ‘economic prebalancing’ strategy. The strategy is rooted in China’s grand strategy of acquiring ‘comprehensive national strength’, and more precisely, it is embedded in Beijing’s ‘peaceful development’ strategy. The article asserts that Myanmar is critically important in China’s economic prebalancing strategy against the United States.

Improving Teacher Development in Rural China: A Case of “Rural Teacher Support Plan”

Since 2015, both the educational policymakers and practitioners in China passionately have sought to raise the educational quality, especially in Chinese rural schools. Series of significant and instructive reforms were designed to boost educational quality comes from China, where in 2015 the central government enacted an overwhelming educational policy to reform rural teacher development. China’s politics on reforming rural teacher development differ from similar reforms elsewhere in Asia countries due to the strong role of centralized top-down power representatives, various types of policy formation pathways and the final consulted settlement with the national and local teacher committees. This study also emphasizes the discussion on the complicated roles of distributive education politics and policy networks in contemporary Chinese education system.

Prospects for China's politics in 2020

Subject Prospects for Chinese politics and foreign relations in 2020. Significance A China-US trade deal involving partial removal of tariffs is likely, but the negative long-term trajectory of the bilateral relationship in almost all areas appears fixed, even if a Democrat is elected as US president next year. China is scheduled to conclude a long-awaited bilateral investment treaty with the EU by September 2020, but controversies over 5G infrastructure overshadow relations. North Korea’s threat of renewed confrontation with Washington would inevitably embroil Beijing.

How Middle School Curriculum in Chongqing Portrays Chinese Socialism

This project is contextualized in Shijing Xu and Michael Connelly’s (2013-2020) SSHRC Partnership Grant Project, Canada-China Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education. The goal of the SSHRC Partnership Grant Project is to compare Canadian and Chinese education in such a way that the cultural narratives of each provide frameworks for understanding and appreciating educational similarities and differences (Xu & Connelly, 2017). The overall goal centers on reciprocal learning in teacher education between Canada and China. Xu and Connelly (2017) emphasize research that focuses on centering the voices of teachers in both Canada and China. This work seeks to help the project by providing data about China’s politics curriculum to create a better understanding of China’s education system, and to gain some insight into the hopes and dreams of Chinese politics teachers.

China's “Politics of Harmony” and the Quest for Soft Power in International Politics

This article engages with China's “politics of harmony” to investigate the dangers and possibilities of soft power as a concept and practice. Chinese sources claim that China will be able to exercise soft power due to its tradition of thinking about harmony. Indeed, the concept of harmony looms large in Chinese soft power campaigns, which differentiate China's own harmonious soft power from the allegedly disharmonious hard power of other great powers—in particular Western powers and Japan. Yet, similarly dichotomizing harmony discourses have been employed precisely in the West and Japan. In all three cases, such harmony discourses set a rhetorical trap, forcing audiences to empathize and identify with the “harmonious” self or risk being violently “harmonized.” There is no doubt that the soft power of harmony is coercive. More importantly, the present article argues that it has legitimized and enabled oppressive, homogenizing, and bellicose expansionism and rule in the West and Japan. A similarly structured exercise of soft power may enable violence in and beyond China, too. Ultimately, however, we argue that China's own tradition of thinking about harmony may help us to theorize how soft power might be exercised in less antagonistic and violent ways.

A Dictionary of Politics and International Relations in China

Over 230 entries This new dictionary defines critical terms relating to China’s politics since 1949. It comprises succinct definitions covering core political structures, ideologies, and practices, as well as individuals, groups, and concerns that are essential to them. Covering the full spectrum of Chinese politics, authoritative and up-to-date entries include charm offensive, cybersecurity, hukou system, Silk Road, and United Nations Peacekeeping Operations. Complete with useful weblinks, this new addition to the Oxford Quick Reference series is an indispensable companion for students studying Asian and international politics, as well as for professionals whose interests relate to China’s expanding domestic and foreign politics.

Prospects for Chinese politics in 2019

Subject Prospects for China's politics and foreign relations in 2019. Significance The relationship with the United States, and its domestic repercussions, look likely to be the foremost political issue of 2019 -- even more so than this year.