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School of Languages and Cultures · Te Kura o ngā Reo me ngā Tikanga-ā-iwi: Asian Studies Institute

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/123456789/21222

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Browsing School of Languages and Cultures · Te Kura o ngā Reo me ngā Tikanga-ā-iwi: Asian Studies Institute by Subject "China"

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    Getting peasants organised : peasants, the Communist-party and village organisations in Northwest China, 1934-45
    (Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 1998) Keating, Pauline B.
    Organising peasants was a Chinese Communist strategy for 'democratising' rural China. In the view of most western historians, the Communists’ grassroots organisations have been the means through which a hegemonising Partystate penetrated rural society to an extent that no state power in China has done before. This paper argues that, if 'democracy' is understood as community activism arising from a measure of local autonomy, there is not necessarily a contradiction between the goals of democratisation and overall state control at the national level. The paper makes a close study of the Communists’ rural organisational work in northwest China in the early 1940s for the purpose of demonstrating the dynamic interplay between the two goals. And it draws three broad conclusions: first, that getting peasants organised was very difficult, and many of the early grassroots organisations failed; second, that local conditions largely determined whether village democracy ever made it to the starter’s block; and third, that farmer mutualaid teams in districts close to Yan’an city serve as the best examples of the autonomycontrol dynamic at work.
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    International studies in Taiwan today : a preliminary survey of the problems and prospects
    (Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2000) Chan, Gerald
    International relations, as an academic study, is relatively new. It is much more developed, discussed and documented in the West, especially the US, than in other places. Within Asia, reports about international relations have begun to appear in Japan and China. This working paper is the first of its kind specifically to examine and make a survey of the study of international relations in Taiwan. The paper begins by giving an historical background, and then discusses the academic study of political science, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels in universities. Particular attention is paid to the activities of the Institute of International Relations, the leading institution in the country with a research focus on international relations and Chinese affairs. It ends by analysing the problems of and prospects for studying international relations in Taiwan. This analysis is placed within the context of Taiwan’s unique position in the world, its acrimonious relationship with China, its speedy process of democratisation and the recognised need among the country’s elite for a better understanding of international affairs. On the whole the study of international relations in Taiwan is distinctively policyoriented, with a specific focus on the country's relations with China and the United States, and with little theoretical interest. However, Taiwan's unique experience in world affairs offers a fertile ground for theoretical development which may contribute to an enrichment of the existing international relations scholarship.
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    Modern state building and the problem of intermediate institutions : religion, family and military in East Asia
    (Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, 2006) Huang, Xiaoming
    This article examines the problem of intermediate institutions in modern state building in Japan, Korea and China. In particular, it investigates how the state tried to redefine its relations with the forces of religion, family and military in building a direct, effective and exclusive relationship with the individual. The absence of religion-dominated governance, the long history of a centralized state system, and the critical role of the family and military in reinforcing the state in pre-modern society created a local pattern of modern state building in which these significant social and political forces have only gradually lost their capacity to compete with the state as a form of public authority and, consequently, their emergent relations with the state have been ambiguous. This study also finds evidence of a “breakthrough” that divided the process of modern state building into two distinct phases in which different patterns of power relations existed among the state, religion, family and military. These ambiguous emergent relations and the “mid-way breakthrough” constitute two defining elements of the institutional dynamism of modern political development in East Asia.