ChinaFile Recommends
10.24.17China Enshrines ‘Xi Jinping Thought.’ What Does That Mean?
New York Times
Restoring China to greatness is a central message of “Xi Jinping Thought,” and a goal that has already guided policies to build up the military.
Books
04.25.17![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/ji-young_lee_hirez.jpg.jpg?itok=k98Ro3YE)
![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/assets/images/books/covers/book_cover-_chinas_hegemony_four_hundred_years_of_east_asian_domination_.jpg)
China’s Hegemony
Many have viewed the tribute system as China’s tool for projecting its power and influence in East Asia, treating other actors as passive recipients of Chinese domination. China's Hegemony sheds new light on this system and shows that the international order of Asia’s past was not as Sinocentric as conventional wisdom suggests. Instead, throughout the early modern period, Chinese hegemony was accepted, defied, and challenged by its East Asian neighbors at different times, depending on these leaders’ strategies for legitimacy among their populations. This book demonstrates that Chinese hegemony and hierarchy were not just an outcome of China’s military power or Confucian culture but were constructed while interacting with other, less powerful actors’ domestic political needs, especially in conjunction with internal power struggles.Focusing on China-Korea-Japan dynamics of East Asian international politics during the Ming and High Qing periods, Ji-Young Lee draws on extensive research of East Asian language sources, including records written by Chinese and Korean tributary envoys. She offers fascinating and rich details of war and peace in Asian international relations, addressing questions such as: why Japan invaded Korea and fought a major war against the Sino-Korean coalition in the late sixteenth century; why Korea attempted to strike at the Ming empire militarily in the late fourteenth century; and how Japan created a miniature tributary order posing as the center of Asia in lieu of the Qing empire in the seventeenth century. By exploring these questions, Lee’s in-depth study speaks directly to general international relations literature and concludes that hegemony in Asia was a domestic, as well as an international, phenomenon with profound implications for the contemporary era. —Columbia University Press{chop}
Environment
05.13.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/26171_sm.jpg?itok=u3R42H5U)
Why China's Nuclear Exports May Struggle to Find a Market
from chinadialogue
China’s nuclear power industry has eyed up a big push to export its technologies as countries around the world consider low-carbon alternatives to coal.But despite an increasingly clearer field for Chinese nuclear exports—mainly because of the woes...
Media
01.07.16![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/knittingxi.jpg?itok=ZlRcgr8G)
Assessing China’s Plan to Build Internet Power
When the Chinese Communist Party targeted clean energy in its 11th Five Year Plan (2006-2010), the resulting investment spree upended the global clean energy market almost overnight. Now, as China approaches its 13th Five Year Plan, a new policy...
ChinaFile Recommends
10.23.151 Month Later: What Are the Long-Term Implications of Xi's U.S. Trip?
Diplomat
While political and security matters dominated headlines, Xi’s U.S. trip was actually driven by economics.
ChinaFile Recommends
09.10.15Is Xi Jinping Living up to the Legacy of China’s Greatest Modern Reformer?
Quartz
The parade is a crowning ceremony to justify a leader’s power, meant to demonstrate national unity.
Features
09.02.15![](https://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/gettyimages-484954106_copy.jpg?itok=m3--KeLs)
Parading the People’s Republic
from China Heritage Quarterly
In light of the September 3, 2015, mega military parade held at Tiananmen Square in Beijing both to mark the seventieth anniversary of the end of Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945 and to acclaim the achievements of Xi Jinping, China’s Chairman of...
ChinaFile Recommends
04.01.15Xi Jinping Forever
Foreign Policy
Is China’s increasingly powerful president angling to break tradition and extend his rule indefinitely?
ChinaFile Recommends
01.23.15The Pacific Power Index
Foreign Policy
The world's most important relationship isn't the superpower showdown most analysts would have you believe. It’s a constantly shifting, symbiotic relationship shaped by millions of people, not just officials in Washington and Beijing.
ChinaFile Recommends
10.29.14China to Ban Extralegal Administration with Power List
Xinhua
The new policy hopes to curb problems in administration and law enforcement such as failure in strictly observing or enforcing the law, putting their power above law, bending law for personal gains and power-for-money trades, Xi Jinping said.