China
September 1998

September Article Abstracts

Title: A Precarious Balance: Clinton and China
Author: Nancy Bernkopf Tucker
How to deal with China? Perhaps no other foreign policy issue has been such a nasty thorn in Bill Clinton's side. From the "delinking" of trade and human rights to the uproar over campaign money and satellite technology, seemingly everything the administration does or says about China sparks controversy. Historian Nancy Bernkopf Tucker looks back to find an administration slowly muddling toward some balance in its approach to China.

Title: Jiang Zemin Takes Command
Author: Joseph Fewsmith
Even after Deng Xiaoping's death last year, few predicted that Chinese President Jiang Zemin would be able to escape from the longtime leader's shadow. But in reviewing developments at the top of Chinese politics, Joseph Fewsmith concludes that "more than outside observers had anticipated, Jiang has demonstrated political strength and flexibility, and perhaps even vision."

Title: Spring Clamor and Autumnal Silence: Cultural Control in China
Author: Geremie R. Barmé
In the past year China has experienced a cultural liberalization that many have labeled a new "Beijing Spring." But "the combination of party censorship (even in its more benign 1998 guise) and market forces (which are neither as blind nor as free as generally imagined) continues to stifle public debate and awareness of important social and political issues. . . Without systemic change any toleration for divergent views in China may prove to be illusory."

Title: Village Elections: Democracy from the Bottom Up?
Author: Tyrene White
"In the end, the fate of China's experiment in grassroots democracy may hinge on whether Beijing will commit itself to extending the process upward. The risks to the regime in moving forward will be tremendous. But after promoting grassroots democracy for a decade and allowing democratic elections to take root in the countryside, the risks of retreat might be just as high."

Title: China's Emerging Business Class: Democracy's Harbinger?
Author: Margaret M. Pearson
"Claims that democratization will emerge out of China's economic success have been muted recently because of the ripple effects from the Asian economic crisis. . . Yet the real problem with these claims is not that current economic difficulties will postpone democratization to the future: it is that the assumption of a link between the rise of new economic elites and democratization is logically flawed and not supported by empirical data."

Title: China's Economy: Buffeted from Within and Without
Author: Barry Naughton
"At just the wrong time, the [Asian financial] crisis arrived to subtract growth momentum from an economy that was already slowing too rapidly for comfort. For perhaps the first time in its post-1949 history, China is facing an external macroeconomic shock that is having a significant destabilizing impact on its domestic economy."

Title: Holding Up Half the Sky: Women in China
Author: Susan Perry
"In analyzing the impact of economic reforms on women's lives in China, the government would evidently prefer to discuss its achievements in promoting gender equality and not the chronic discrimination problems that remain. At the other end of the spectrum, Western feminist discourse on China often presents an alarming portrait, replete with stark statistics on the skewed male-female birth ratio, domestic violence, and increased trafficking in women." Exactly how far have women in China come? And how far will Beijing let them go?