Grasp China is a comprehensive guidebook for business professionals and company executives to become “China Experts” in a very short period of time. When working or conducting business in China, there are so many critical but untold cultural and business secrets that are never written down even by local Chinese. For instance, do you know that you should not accept business dinner invitation easily because it signals a commitment? Are you curious why your local partner refuses to hire people from certain provinces in China? The four sections in the book cover all the critical aspects business travellers and expats must know before they land in the country. The first section focuses on the key notion of “China is not one China” through the lens of geography, city tier classification, and income disparity. Section two covers common and up-to-date social topics popular amongst the locals, and can be used as an ice breaker. Some of the topics are real estate prices, common regional stereotypes, China mobile internet, etc. Section three goes deeper into the nuances of the Chinese business world: unspoken business rules, dining and drinking etiquette, gifting, etc. Section four is a survival guide providing tips on traveling and living in China. To make the book more interesting as an engaging read on your flight to China, and at the same time avoid the common mistakes in other China books of being too abstract and non-practical, the author used many real-life case studies from her years of professional experience and networking on the ground to illustrate the different aspects of today’s business world and people’s daily lives in China. These real-life examples help explain the different aspects of Chinese culture in a straightforward way, making the book really easy and fun to read, allowing the readers to quickly “internalize” the materials. “China is a big country with a lot of complexities in culture, customs, traditions, and habits. Most people found it very challenging to learn how to do business or develop a professional relationship. It is admirable that Christine was able to crystallize the crucial insights and lessons in simple and yet penetrating forms. The personal experiences and stories added so much color. The book is a must-read for people without much exposure to China, but even for veterans, I think you will learn a lot of new perspectives and gain new insights from reading the book.” - Professor Hau Lee, Stanford Graduate School of Business "Christine has provided simple but useful information for anyone involved in China. A good primer." - Achal Agarwal, President, Kimberly-Clark Asia Pacific “Chinese mobile internet is in many ways leadings the world trend, and affecting the daily lives of over a billion people, especially the younger generations. In Grasp China, Christine articulated this unique landscape through vivid examples to give perspective visitors a practical guide of this exciting digital world.” - Rui Yu, CEO of Yihaodian (Largest online grocer in China)

Despite decades of macroeconomic reforms, poverty reduction plans and rural growth strategies, poverty is persistent and environmental degradation is accelerating in the developing world. Though traditional economic indicators have improved in some countries, little has worked to open enduring economic and ecological opportunities to the rural poor. This unacceptable outcome grows, in large part, from the failure to place the needs of the poor at the centre of national development strategies and to link local level changes to urgently needed changes in national development policies. This book is designed to change all of that by showing how change must begin at the local level and, from there, push upwards to change policies and institutions at higher levels to remove political, economic and institutional impediments that stifle opportunities for the rural poor and improved environmental management. This approach challenges the notion that poverty reduction and improved natural resource management can originate with design masters in international organizations or national capitals.Working with teams in China, Indonesia, El Salvador, South Africa and Zambia, WWF devised the revolutionary '3xM' - micro (local), meso (sub-national) and macro (national) - Approach to analysing and intervening to change the poverty dimensions in a country. This approach helps improve the local environment and community livelihoods, and promotes policy and institutional changes at state/provincial and national levels that are essential for the sustainable, equitable development. This book provides both the tools and successful case studies to show practitioners how to adopt the 3xM Approach in diverse developing country contexts. Published with WWF

This book is dedicated to the memory of these two good friends and all the others from the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) at the Texas Western College in El Paso, Texas who gave their lives that the rest of us in the 12th Armored Division might live. John Fuchs and John Haufle were in the 17th Armored Infantry, 12th Armored Division and they were killed in action in Alsace, France in the winter campaign of 1944-45. The rest of us in the 12th Armored Division have had 60 more years to live, getting married, raising families and building careers. It is fitting that we give some time to studying the causes of wars and speaking out to make the changes in the United Nations that are necessary to make it effective in bringing peace.

This book focuses on the rapidly changing sociology of music as manifested in Chinese society and Chinese education. It examines how social changes and cultural politics affect how music is currently being used in connection with the Chinese dream. While there is a growing trend toward incorporating the Chinese dream into school education and higher education, there has been no scholarly discussion to date. The combination of cultural politics, transformed authority relations, and officially approved songs can provide us with an understanding of the official content on the Chinese dream that is conveyed in today’s Chinese society, and how these factors have influenced the renewal of values-based education and practices in school music education in China.

An important, hopeful book that looks at the urgent problem of childhood malnutrition worldwide and the revolutionary progress being made to end it. A healthy Earth requires healthy children. Yet nearly one-fourth of the world’s children are stunted physically and mentally due to a lack of food or nutrients. These children do not die but endure a lifetime of diminished potential. During the past thirty years, says Sharman Russell, we have seen a revolution in how we treat these sick children and in how—with a new understanding of the human body and approach to nutrition, and new ways to reach out to hungry mothers and babies—we have gone from unwittingly killing severely malnourished children to bringing them back to health through the “miracle” of ready-to-eat therapeutic food. Intertwined with stories of scientists and nutrition experts on the front lines of finding ways to end malnutrition for good, Russell writes of her travels to Malawi, one of the poorest and least-developed countries in the world and also the site of pathbreaking, cutting-edge research into childhood malnutrition. (Eighty percent of Malawians are farmers subsisting on less than an acre of land and coping with erratic weather patterns due to global warming; fifty percent live below the poverty line; and forty-two percent of Malawi’s children are affected by a lack of food or nutrients.) As she writes of her personal exploration of new friendships and insights in a country known as “the warm heart of Africa,” Russell describes the programs that are working best to reduce childhood stunting and explores how malnutrition in children is connected to climate change, how vitamins and minerals are preventing these harmful effects, why the empowerment of women is the single most effective factor in eliminating childhood malnutrition, and what the costs of ending childhood malnutrition are. Sharman Russell, much-admired writer of luminous prose and humane heart, whose writing has been called, “elegant” (The Economist) and “extraordinarily well-crafted, far-reaching, and heart-wrenching” (Booklist), winner of the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished natural history writing, has written an illuminating, inspiring book that makes clear the promise of what is today, gratefully, within our grasp.

This book analyses China’s multidimensional rise in the context of the international political economy, drawing on Susan Strange’s concept of "structural power." Examining the sources of Chinese power along with its geopolitical, economic, and cultural reflections, the authors consider how China’s rise is linked with the incremental process of multipolarization in world politics. Providing a systematic, analytical, and empirically rich account of China's surge in the international political economy, this study will appeal to scholars, policy-makers, and students with interests in China studies, international political economy, and international relations.

This book is about how China strives to rebuild its soft power through communication. It recounts China's efforts by examining a set of public diplomacy tactics and programs in its pursuit of a 'new' and 'improved' global image. These case studies invites the reader to a more expansive discussion on the instruments of soft power.

This book offers a comprehensive review of the Communist Party of China's approach to diplomacy, through an extensive evaluation of the major practices and theories behind the Party's diplomacy, with its main achievements in its 90 years of diplomacy highlighted. It delves into the views held by the Communist Party of China on the changing times, the international system, national interests, and developments in China's diplomacy. Other topics covered at length include China's traditional and non-traditional diplomatic practices as well as basic characteristics of the Party's diplomacy.Few books have touched on the Communist Party of China's diplomatic history in detail. China's Diplomacy: Theory and Practice fills the gap by shedding insights on the Communist Party of China's global strategies and diplomatic planning, contributing to the building an international relations theory with Chinese characteristics. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of China's international relations from the forward-looking analyses on the Party's core role in leading China's diplomacy, and the theoretical explanations behind the practices.

AN INCISIVE "WHITE PAPER" ON THE UNITED STATES'S STRUGGLE TO FRAME A COHERENT MIDDLE EAST POLICY In this book, the Middle East expert Stephen P. Cohen traces U.S. policy in the region back to the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, when the Great Powers failed to take crucial steps to secure peace there. He sees in that early diplomatic failure a pattern shaping the conflicts since then—and America's role in them. A century ago, there emerged two dominant views regarding the uses of America's newfound power. Woodrow Wilson urged America to promote national freedom and self-determination through the League of Nations—in stark contrast to his predecessor Theodore Roosevelt, who had advocated a vigorous foreign policy based on national self-interest. Cohen argues that this running conflict has hobbled American dealings in the Middle East ever since. In concise, pointed chapters, he shows how different Middle East countries have struggled to define themselves in the face of America's stated idealism and its actual realpolitik. This conflict came to a head in the confused, clumsy Middle East policy of George W. Bush—but Cohen suggests the ways a greater awareness of our history in the region might enable our present leaders to act more sensibly.