The decisions that shape the policy of weapons procurement are an important area of national security policy. This is all the more true for China, which during recent decades has vacillated between different sources and directions of military build-up. This book explores the politics of military procurement in China under the successive leaderships of Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. It shows how China’s political and military leaders have sought to adjust military procurement policy to meet China's strategic objectives, to relate it to non-military needs, to strike a balance between the import of weapons and indigenous production, and to determine the connections between hardware and other components of military power. Exploring in detail five major shifts in the nation’s military procurement, it traces the considerations and negotiations among China's civilian and military leaderships. By doing so, it offers both a conceptual framework and empirical grounds for evaluating the factors that shape China's military procurement directions, as well as their limitations, prospects, and operational implications. As the first book to study comprehensively and systematically the attributes shaping China's military procurement, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics, Chinese history and military and strategic studies.

Examines the global interaction between military-civil fusion and the fourth industrial revolution, and how it affects military innovation.

This book examines the implications of disruptive technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) on military innovation and the use of force. It provides an in-depth understanding of how both large and small militaries are seeking to leverage 4IR emerging technologies and the effects such technologies may have on future conflicts. The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), the confluence of disruptive changes brought by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnologies, and autonomous systems, has a profound impact on the direction and character of military innovation and use of force. The core themes in this edited volume reflect on the position of emerging technologies in the context of previous Revolutions in Military Affairs; compare how large resource-rich states (US, China, Russia) and small resource-limited states (Israel, Sweden, Norway) are adopting and integrating novel technologies and explore the difference between various innovation and adaptation models. The book also examines the operational implications of emerging technologies in potential flashpoints such as the South China Sea and the Baltic Sea. Written by a group of international scholars, this book uncovers the varying 4IR defence innovation trajectories, enablers, and constraints in pursuing military-technological advantages that will shape the character of future conflicts. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies.

Having been state-owned for decades, the railway reform in China confused many people, particularly in terms of its ownership and property rights arrangements. Western literature always prescribes that the best model for railway reform is privatization. China’s leadership has also enunciated the state’s determination to re-arrange property rights and rejuvenate corporate governance. But is China’s railway reform really a story of convergence and will the Chinese government follow the western model of railway reform? Addressing these questions, this book provides a positive explanation of the reform in China’s railway sector between 1978 and the dissolution of the Ministry of Railways. It bridges the socialist reform and transport policy literature, and studies the empirical changes of the property rights arrangements in China’s railway system. Refuting the convergence theory, it concludes that the cyclical reform policies of decentralization and re-centralization were actually an exploratory and interactive mechanism of "assets discovery" and "assets recovery". This in-depth study is based on 21 face-to-face interviews with railway cadres as well as field trips to collect first-hand information in Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Wuhan. As one of the only empirical studies on the reform of the railway sector in China, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of China studies, Transport studies and Political Economy.

Under the direction of the Communist Party of China (CPC), key legal challenges have been identified which will shape the modernization of China’s legal and administrative institutions. An increasingly complex set of legal actors now seek to influence this development, including securities regulators, bankers, accountants, lawyers, local-level mediators and some of China’s newly rich. Whilst the rising middle class wants to voice its interests and concerns, the CPC strives to maintain its leading role. This book provides a critical appraisal of China’s deepening socialist rule of law and looks ahead to the implications of the domestic reforms for the international legal domain. With contributions from leading Chinese law specialists, it draws on specific illustrations from judicial reform, constitutional law, procedural law, anti-corruption, property law and urban development, socio-economic dispute resolution and Chinese macro-economics. The book questions how China’s domestic law reforms will impact international legal systems, and how international law can be used in managing key regional and bilateral relationships and in dispute resolution, such as in the South China Sea and international trade. Assessing the state and direction of domestic law reform and including debates around the legal implications of some of China’s most pressing foreign policy challenges today, this volume will be of huge interest to students, scholars and practitioners with an interest in Asia law, Chinese law, international law, comparative law and law reform.

This handbook brings together a mix of established and emerging international scholars to provide valuable analytical insights into how China’s growing Middle East presence affects intra-regional development, trade, security, and diplomacy. As the largest extra-regional economic actor in the Middle East, China is the biggest source of foreign direct investment into the region and the largest trading partner for most Middle Eastern states. This portends a larger role in political and security affairs, as the value of Chinese assets combined with a growing expatriate population in the region demands a more proactive role in contributing to regional order. Exploring the effect of these developments, the expert contributors also consider the reverberations in great power politics, as the United States, Russia, India, Japan, and the European Union also have considerable interests in the region. The book is divided into four sections: • Historical and policy context • State and regional case studies • Trade and development • International relations, security, and diplomacy. This volume is an essential reference for scholars and policy-makers in the fields of international relations, political sociology, international political economy, and foreign policy analysis. Area studies specialists in Middle Eastern Studies, China Studies, and East Asian Studies will also find it an invaluable resource.

This book examines the changing relations between the Asian part of the Middle East and the rest of the continent during the 21st century. Written by leading experts, this ground-breaking volume utilizes a comprehensive and multi-dimensional perspective to offer a novel and unique outlook on the evolving shape of East-West Asia relations and their global impact. Critically, it demonstrates that the intensification and diversification of East-West Asia relations since the 1990s have altered them from a set of separated bilateral ties into complex interregional relations. The book presents a nuanced, comparative look at Asian countries’ responses to global developments, and China’s rise in particular, and offers a new perspective on the very concept of Asia itself. It will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners working in the fields of International Relations, Asian Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies.

By the turn of the 21st century, animation production has grown to thousands of hours a year in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Despite this, and unlike American blockbuster productions and the diverse genres of Japanese anime, much animation from the PRC remains relatively unknown. This book is an historical and theoretical study of animation in the PRC. Although the Wan Brothers produced the first feature length animated film in 1941, the industry as we know it today truly began in the 1950s at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio (SAFS), which remained the sole animation studio until the 1980s. Considering animation in China as a convergence of the institutions of education, fine arts, literature, popular culture, and film, the book takes comparative approaches that link SAFS animation to contemporary cultural production including American and Japanese animation, Pop Art, and mass media theory. Through readings of classic films such as Princess Iron Fan, Uproar in Heaven, Princess Peacock, and Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, this study represents a revisionist history of animation in the PRC as a form of "postmodernism with Chinese characteristics." As a theoretical exploration of animation in the People’s Republic of China, this book will appeal greatly to students and scholars of animation, film studies, Chinese studies, cultural studies, political and cultural theory.

Unprecedented social change in China has intensified the contradictions faced by ordinary people. In everyday life, people find themselves caught between official and popular discourses, encounter radically different representations of China's past and its future, and draw on widely diverse moral frameworks. This volume explores irony and cynicism as part of the social life of local communities in China, and specifically in relation to the contemporary Chinese state. It collects ethnographies of irony and cynicism in social action, written by a group of anthropologists who specialise in China. They use the lenses of irony and cynicism - broadly defined to include resignation, resistance, humour, ambiguity and dialogue - to look anew at the social, political and moral contradictions faced by Chinese people. The various contributions are concerned with both the interpretation of intentions in everyday social action and discourse, and the broader theoretical consequences of such interpretations for an understanding of the Chinese state. As a study of irony and cynicism in modern China and their implications on the social and political aspects of everyday life, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of social and cultural anthropology, Chinese culture and society, and Chinese politics.

In China, the central government has the political will to control organized crime, which is seen as a national security threat. The crux of the problem is how to control local governments that have demonstrated lax enforcement without sufficient regulation from the provincial governments. The development of prostitution, underground gambling and narcotics production has become so serious that the central government has to rely on anti-crime campaigns to combat these "three evils". This book explores the specific role of government institutions and agencies, notably the police, in controlling organised and cross-border crime in Greater China. Drawing heavily on original empirical data, it compares the both the states of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan, as well as city-states Hong Kong and Macao. This region has become increasingly economically integrated, and human interactions have been enhanced through improved trade relations, tourism, and increased individual freedom. The book argues that the regime capacity of crime control across Greater China has been expanded through regional and international police cooperation as well as anti-crime campaigns. It suggests that a strong central state in China is necessary to rein in the local states and to prevent the risk of deteriorating into a political-criminal nexus. Focusing on regime capacity in crime control, regime autonomy from crime groups, and regime legitimacy in the fight against organized crime, this thought-provoking book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics and criminology more broadly.