In this compelling history, award-winning journalist, Jon Mitchell, traces how the islands of Okinawa have been annexed by Japan, occupied by the United States and now menaced by China. In response, Okinawans have developed one of the world's most resilient – yet overlooked – pacifist movements.Once a wealthy kingdom, Okinawa was seized by Japan in the late-19th century and, after World War II, abandoned to US colonial rule. For twenty-seven years, ...

At this moment, Americans regard China as a major threat, both economically and strategically, while Chinese regard the US as determined to contain China and impede its development. Tensions between the two countries remain high: human rights, trade, Taiwan, the South China Sea, military budgets.Yet, in spite of all these points of contention, the search for common ground through diplomatic engagement goes on as both countries' leaders recognize that constant frict...

A striking first-person account of the Cultural Revolution in Inner Mongolia, embedded in a close examination of the historical evidence on China’s minority nationality policies to the present.During the Great Leap Forward, as hundreds of thousands of Chinese famine refugees headed to Inner Mongolia, Cheng Tiejun arrived in 1959 as a middle school student. In 1966, when the PRC plunged into the Cultural Revolution, he joined the Red Guards just as Inner Mongolia’s ...

Exploring contemporary Okinawan culture, politics, and historical memory, this book argues that the long Japanese tradition of defining Okinawa as a subordinate and peripheral part of Japan means that all claims of Okinawan distinctiveness necessarily become part of the larger debate over contemporary identity. The contributors trace the renascence of the debate in the burst of cultural and political expression that has flowered in the past decade, with the rapid growth of local museums an...

Prior to and during the Second World War, the Japanese Army established programs of biological warfare throughout China and elsewhere. In these “factories of death,” including the now-infamous Unit 731, Japanese doctors and scientists conducted large numbers of vivisections and experiments on human beings, mostly Chinese nationals. However, as a result of complex historical factors including an American cover-up of the atrocities, Japanese denials, and inadequate responses from successive ...

Drawing on more than a quarter century of field and documentary research in rural North China, this book explores the contested relationship between village and state from the 1960s to the start of the twenty-first century. The authors provide a vivid portrait of how resilient villagers struggle to survive and prosper in the face of state power in two epochs of revolution and reform. Highlighting the importance of intra-rural resistance and rural-urban conflicts to Chinese politics and soc...

This bestselling introduction to Chinese society uses the themes of resistance and protest to explore the complexity of life in contemporary China. An interdisciplinary and international team of China scholars draw on perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, history and political science and covers a broad range of issues.Topics covered include:labour and environmental disputesrural and ethnic conflictmigrationlegal challeng...

First published in 1982. The dramatic changes in policy and theory following the death of Chairman Mao in 1976 and the publication of the most extensive official and unofficial data on the Chinese economy and society in twenty years both necessitated and made possible a thorough reconsideration of the full range of issues pertaining to the political and economic trajectory of the People’s Republic in its first three decades. The contributors to this volume initiated a comprehensive effort ...

This book presents a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives on the problematic of reform in Vietnam. It explores the Vietnam's reforms in relation to those taking place in other countries of the socialist world, comparing doi moi with restructuring in other socialist states.

The first major study of the Great Leap Forward, this seminal volume has now been translated into English for a wider audience. Like no other work, it suggests compelling political and social answers to questions that have long plagued scholars: How could a party with such a successful rural base launch a movement so divorced from reality– especially in the countryside? Why was the movement pressed to the point of social chaos and economic collapse, giving rise to arguably the greatest fam...

In the confrontation between the two main economic systems that has marked the twentieth century, capitalism has been declared the winner–by default– over its adversary, socialism. Today, establishing a market economy has become the primary goal of the formerly socialist countries. The history of economic reform helps explain this remarkable turning point. Attempts to improve the old centralized system by expanding enterprise autonomy (in Poland, the Soviet Union, and East Germany) and mor...

Considering the great influence textbooks have as interpreters of history, politics and culture to future generations of citizens, it is no surprise that they generate considerable controversy. Focusing largely on textbook treatment of lingering - and sometimes explosive - tensions originating in World War II, "Censoring History" addresses issues of textbook nationalism in historical and comparative perspective. Discussions include Japan's Comfort Women and the Nanjing Massacre; Nazi genoc...